Stories

When you listen with perfect awareness, then listening becomes possible.
Hearing is just like eating

without tasting. You can fill the belly, but deep down, the hunger remains. The body may be
satisfied, even overloaded, but the subtle hunger remains – because it can be satisfied only when
you become capable of taste. But to taste a thing is to be aware, alert.
Listen to it – the story is one of the most wonderful I have ever come across. It is a Hassidic story.
It says that there was a very great city. It appeared great to those who lived in it. In fact, it was not
bigger than a small saucer. The houses of the city were skyscrapers. And the people who were the
dwellers – they claimed that their house tops almost touched the sky. But to those who were not
deluded, the height of the city looked not more than that of an onion.
In that city, people of ten cities were assembled – millions of people. But to those who could count,
there were only three fools in that city, not a single person more.
The first fool was a great thinker; he was a great system-maker, a metaphysician – almost an
Aristotle. He could talk about anything. You could ask him, and he had ready-made answers. It was
spread in the town, the rumor was in the town that he was the greatest seer.
Of course, he was absolutely blind. He could not see the Himalayas just in front of his eyes, but he
could count the legs of the ants crawling on the moon. And he was absolutely blind – but he was a
logic-chopper.
He saw things which nobody had ever seen: God, angels, heaven and hell. He was very
condemnatory of the mundane world which could be seen. He was always appreciating the unseen,
which he only could see and nobody else could see.
The second man used to hear the music of the spheres. He used to hear the dancing atoms, the
harmony of existence – but he was stone-deaf.
And the third fool, the third man, was absolutely naked. He had nothing. He was the poorest man
who had ever existed – except that he had a sword which he always carried on guard. He was always
afraid, he was paranoid – afraid that somebody was going to rob him someday. Of course, he had
nothing.
They all conferred because there was a rumor that their city was in a deep crisis. All the three fools
who were thought to be very wise were asked to go deep into the phenomenon: Is it true that the
city is in danger? Some crisis is coming? Some future catastrophe?
The blind man looked into the far horizon and said: ‘Yes. I can see thousands of soldiers of the
enemy country coming. I cannot only see them, I can count how many there are. I can see to which
race and to which religion they belong.’
The deaf man listened silently, brooded, and said: ‘Yes. I can hear what they are saying, and I can
also hear what they are not saying and hiding in their hearts.’
The beggar jumped, the third fool jumped, took his sword in his hand, and said: ‘I am afraid. They
are going to rob us.’
This is your story. Think about it. Move around and around and penetrate deeper into it. This is the
story of man.
Man is always pretending that which he is not; that’s a way of hiding oneself. The ugly man tries to
look beautiful. The man who is in anguish tries to look happy. The man who does not know anything
tries to prove that he knows all. This is how it goes on and on. And unless you become aware of
these three fools within you, you will never become a sage. To go beyond the three fools, one
becomes the true sage.
Osho, The True Sage: Talks on Hassidism, Ch 5
Series compiled by Shanti

All excerpts of this series can be found in: 1001 Tales
Featured image: commons.wikimedia.org
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If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him immediately!’ – What about you? How do I both
love you and kill you?’
Do the same to me. First try to find me and then when you have found me – kill me
immediately. Because that’s how you will attain to your own perfection.
Even if I am there the duality will remain. An object in the mind is a disturbance. Drop
that object also. When you have killed me you have completely followed me. When I
have disappeared only then will you be grateful to me. […]
Buddha used to say that once it happened:
Five idiots were traveling. They came to a big river. They purchased a small boat.
They crossed the river.
Then they thought, “This boat is wonderful. It has helped us to come across the river,
otherwise it would not have been possible for us to cross it. So we should be grateful
to it.”
So they carried the boat on their heads into the marketplace.
People inquired, “What is the matter? Why are you carrying this boat?”
They said, “We are very grateful. This boat helped us to cross the river otherwise we
would still have been on the other shore. Now we can never leave it!”
Buddha said, “Always remember that the Master is a boat. Cross the river, but don’t
carry the boat on the head otherwise one who was going to free you will become
your bondage.”
That’s how when a boat is carried, the boat of Christ is carried, you become a
Christian, not a Christ. If you drop the boat you become a Christ; if you carry the boat
you become a Christian. If you drop the boat of Buddha you become a Buddha
yourself; if you carry the boat you become a Buddhist. Which is foolishness.
So don’t be one of those five idiots.
Love me only to drop me one day. And love me so deeply that you can drop without
any grudge without any clinging without any complaint. […]
Osho, Tao: The Three Treasures – Talks on Fragments from Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, Vol
4, Ch 2, Q 7 (excerpt)
All excerpts of this series can be found in: 1001 Tale
f you have accepted me as your Master then you have to understand what I am saying. If you have
accepted me as your Master then the only way for you is to know yourself.
Forget about me, move withinwards. One day when you will be standing in your own total glory, in
the magnificence of your inner being, in the inner light – there you will find me. Not as a separate
being, not as an object, but as the very innermost core of your own self.
It is reported:
Buddha was dying, and Ananda started weeping and crying – his oldest disciple, and the most
clinging one; for forty years he had been with Buddha and he had not attained, he had not realized
himself yet; he loved Buddha too much.
If you love too much… remember always, anything that is too much becomes part of the mind; only
balance is transcending mind; anything that is too much becomes part of the mind.
He loved Buddha too much, the love was not a freedom, it had become a bondage – anything of the
too much is a bondage – and now that Buddha is dying his whole life is ruined. Ananda cries and
weeps like a small child whose mother is dying.
And Buddha stops him and says, “What, Ananda, are you doing?”
He looks at Buddha with tear-filled eyes and says, “Now where will I see you? Where will I seek
you?”
And Buddha laughed and he said, “That has been my whole teaching! For forty years that is what I
have been telling you, that whenever you want to see me, look within! Appa deepo bhava; be a light
unto yourself. There, inside you, you will find me.”
If you cling to the outside, it may be a Buddha, a Jesus, but you cling to the world, because the
outside is the world. Your own innermost interior is the transcendental.
Move withinwards and you come closer to me. Come closer to me and you go far from yourself. Try
to understand this paradox: If you try to come closer to me you will go further from yourself, and
how can you come close to me if you are going further from yourself? Come closer to yourself and
you come closer to me, because how is it otherwise possible?
When you come closer to yourself you come closer to me because in the innermost being the centre
is one. On the periphery we differ; on the periphery I am an individual, you are an individual; the
move withinwards brings these peripheral points closer and closer and closer – and when you
exactly reach to the centre of your being there is no duality. The two have disappeared. The twoness
has disappeared.
Osho, Tao: The Three Treasures – Talks on fragments from Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, Vol 4, Ch 2, Q 1
(excerpt)
Lao Tzu says, “All the world says: My teaching greatly resembles folly, because it is great,
therefore it resembles folly.” […]
Because it is great, that’s why it looks like folly.
Deep down, if you search within yourself you will also see that if suddenly Mahavir
comes and stands here naked you will think that he is a fool, what is he doing here?
If Lao Tzu comes here you will not be able to recognize him, it will be impossible for
you to recognize him. He will look like a perfect fool!
Bodhidharma reached China. The whole country was waiting for him. The king
himself had come to the border of the country to receive him. A million people had
gathered, because a great Master was coming. And when the Master appeared,
people started giggling. It was impossible to believe their own eyes. Even the
emperor felt very uneasy because this man Bodhidharma had one shoe on one foot
and the other he was carrying on his head. W hat manner of man was this?
The king said, “Excuse me, sir, but what are you doing? We had come to receive a
sane man; are you insane?”
Bodhidharma laughed and said, “So you have failed in the examination. If you can
understand this only then can you understand other things that I have to say. If you
cannot tolerate such a small contradiction – it’s not much, just carrying a shoe on the
head – if you cannot tolerate and understand this much it will be useless for me to
stay here.”
He turned back. He left the town, went into the forest. He said, “There is no need to
stay, nobody will be able to understand me; now I will wait. Those who can
understand me, they should come to me.”
He never entered into the capital again.
Contradictions are very difficult for the mind. Mind lives in a routine. The shoe must
be on the foot, that’s the accepted thing. It should not be carried on the head. Such
an innocent thing – he was not doing any harm to anybody. But no, impossible.
We have a levelling of everything.

Osho, Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 4, Ch 1
Lao Tzu says, “All the world says: My teaching greatly resembles folly, because it is great,
therefore it resembles folly.”
All greatness is so beyond the mediocre mind! And mind is mediocre! Remember it;
mind itself is mediocre. The mind can never be great; there have never been great
minds. If you have heard about great minds you have heard wrongly. If you ask all
the great minds they will say that whatsoever they have attained has come from
beyond the mind, not from the mind; something that filters through the mind but is
not part of the mind.
Ask Madame Curie how she solved her problem and became a Nobel laureate. She
tried for years, for three years almost, to solve a single mathematical problem upon
which her whole research depended; she failed and failed and failed. Frustrated one
night, she dropped the whole project, went to sleep; and in the night, in a dream, the
problem was solved. She got up, wrote it down at the desk, went back to sleep; in
the morning she completely forgot about it.
When she came to work at the desk she was surprised – there was the answer,
miraculously there! For three years she had been working at it – where had it come
from? And there was nobody else, she was alone in the room, and nobody else
could have solved it even if there had been somebody there. Nobody, no servant,
could have done that trick, she herself had been working on it for three years. Then
she remembered a dream. In the dream she had seen the whole answer written.
Then she remembered that she had got up in the night; and then she looked at the
handwriting – it was her own.
Now, the Nobel Prize should not go to the mind – but it has gone to the mind. Now
Madame Curie is a great mind – and the answer has come from beyond the mind.
Always it has been so. Always it will be so. Mind is mediocre. It is good at small
things, petty things of the market – you can run a small business, you can earn a
little money, you can have a bank balance, there it is okay. But not beyond that.
Osho, Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 4, Ch 1

What is the difference between reaction and response?
There is much, a lot of difference, not only in quantity but quality. A reaction is out of
the past, a response is out of the present. You react out of the past old patterns.
Somebody insults you: suddenly the old mechanism starts functioning. In the past
people have insulted you and you have behaved in a certain way; you behave in the
same way again. You are not responding to this insult and this man, you are simply
repeating an old habit. You have not looked at this man and this new insult – it has a
different flavour – you are just functioning like a robot. You have a certain
mechanism inside you: you push the button, you say, This man has insulted me –
and you react; the reaction is not to the real situation, it is something projected. You
have seen the past in this man.
It happened, Buddha was sitting under a tree talking to his disciples. A man came
and spat on his face. He wiped it off and he asked the man: “What next? What do
you want to say next?”
The man was a little puzzled because he himself never expected that when you spit
on somebody’s face he will ask, Now, what next? He had had no such experience in
his past. He had insulted people, and they had become angry, and they had reacted;
or if they were cowards and weaklings they had smiled, trying to bribe the man.
But Buddha was like neither; he was not angry, nor in any way offended, nor in any
way cowardly, but just matter of fact; he said, “What next?” There was no reaction on
his part.
His disciples became angry, they reacted. Buddha’s closest disciple, Anand, s aid,
“This is too much, and we cannot tolerate it; you keep your teaching with you and we
will just show this man that he cannot do what he has done. He has to be punished
for it. Otherwise everybody will start doing things like this.”
Buddha said, “You keep silent. He has not offended me, but you are offending me.
He is new, a stranger, and he may have heard something about me from somebody,
has formed some idea, a notion of me. He has not spat on me, he has spat on his
notion, his idea of me, because he does not know me at all so how can he spit on
me? He must have heard from people something about me – that this man is an
atheist, a dangerous man who is throwing people off their track, a revolutionary, a
corrupter – he must have heard something about me, he has formed a notion, an
idea; he has spat on his own idea.”
“If you think on it deeply,” Buddha said, “he has spat on his own mind. I am not part
of it, and I can see that this poor man must have something else to say – because
this is a way of saying something; spitting is a way of saying something. There are
moments when you feel that language is impotent: in deep love, in intense anger, in
hate, in prayer; there are intense moments when language is impotent. Then you
have to do something – when you are in deep love you kiss the person or embrace
the person. What are you doing? You are saying something. When you are angry,
intensely angry, you hit the person, you spit on him – you are saying something. I can
understand him. He must have something more to say, that’s why I’m asking, ‘What
next?'”
The man was even more puzzled.
And Buddha said to his disciples, “I am more offended by you because you know me
and you have lived for years with me and still you react.”
Puzzled, confused, the man returned home. He could not sleep the whole night. It is
difficult, when you see a Buddha, it is difficult to sleep again the way you used to
sleep before. Impossible. Again and again he was haunted by the experience, he
could not explain it to himself, what had happened. He was trembling all over and
perspiring, he had never come across such a man; he had shattered his whole mind
and his whole pattern; his whole past.
Next morning he was back there. He threw himself at Buddha’s feet. Buddha asked
him again, “What next?”
This too is a way of saying something that cannot be said in language. When you
come and touch my feet you are saying something which cannot be said ordinarily,
for which all words are a little narrow, it cannot be contained in them.
Buddha said, “Look, Anand. This man is again here, he is saying something. This
man is a man of deep emotions.”
The man looked at Buddha and said, “Forgive me for what I have done yesterday.”
Buddha said, “Forgive? But I am not the same man to whom you did it. The Ganges
goes on flowing. It is never the same Ganges again. Every man is a river. The man
you spat upon is no more here. I look just like him but I am not the same; much has
happened in these twenty-four hours! The river has flowed so much. Only in
appearance I look the same. So I cannot forgive you because I have no grudge
against you. And you also are new. I can see you are not the same man who came
yesterday, because that man was angry. He was anger, he spat – and you are
bowing at my feet, touching my feet, how can you be the same man? You are not the
same man! So let us forget about it; those two – the man who spat and the man on
whom he spat – both are no more. Come closer, let us talk of something else.”
This is response.
Reaction is out of the past. If you react, out of old habits, out of mind, then you are
not responding. To be responsive is to be totally alive in this moment, here-now.
Response is a beautiful phenomenon, it is life; reaction is dead, ugly, rotten, it is a
corpse. Ninety-nine per cent of the time you react, and you call it response. Rarely it
happens in your life that you respond; but whenever it happens you have a glimpse;
whenever it happens the door to the unknown opens.
Osho, Tao: The Three Treasures – Talks on fragments from Tao Te Ching by Lao
Tzu, Volume 3, Ch 10, Q 2
What is the difference between reaction and response?
There is much, a lot of difference, not only in quantity but quality. A reaction is out of
the past, a response is out of the present. You react out of the past old patterns.
Somebody insults you: suddenly the old mechanism starts functioning. In the past
people have insulted you and you have behaved in a certain way; you behave in the
same way again. You are not responding to this insult and this man, you are simply
repeating an old habit. You have not looked at this man and this new insult – it has a
different flavour – you are just functioning like a robot. You have a certain
mechanism inside you: you push the button, you say, This man has insulted me –
and you react; the reaction is not to the real situation, it is something projected. You
have seen the past in this man.
It happened, Buddha was sitting under a tree talking to his disciples. A man came
and spat on his face. He wiped it off and he asked the man: “What next? What do
you want to say next?”
The man was a little puzzled because he himself never expected that when you spit
on somebody’s face he will ask, Now, what next? He had had no such experience in
his past. He had insulted people, and they had become angry, and they had reacted;
or if they were cowards and weaklings they had smiled, trying to bribe the man.
But Buddha was like neither; he was not angry, nor in any way offended, nor in any
way cowardly, but just matter of fact; he said, “What next?” There was no reaction on
his part.
His disciples became angry, they reacted. Buddha’s closest disciple, Anand, said,
“This is too much, and we cannot tolerate it; you keep your teaching with you and we
will just show this man that he cannot do what he has done. He has to be punished
for it. Otherwise everybody will start doing things like this.”
Buddha said, “You keep silent. He has not offended me, but you are offending me.
He is new, a stranger, and he may have heard something about me from somebody,
has formed some idea, a notion of me. He has not spat on me, he has spat on his
notion, his idea of me, because he does not know me at all so how can he spit on
me? He must have heard from people something about me – that this man is an
atheist, a dangerous man who is throwing people off their track, a revolutionary, a
corrupter – he must have heard something about me, he has formed a notion, an
idea; he has spat on his own idea.”
“If you think on it deeply,” Buddha said, “he has spat on his own mind. I am not part
of it, and I can see that this poor man must have something else to say – because
this is a way of saying something; spitting is a way of saying something. There are
moments when you feel that language is impotent: in deep love, in intense anger, in
hate, in prayer; there are intense moments when language is impotent. Then you
have to do something – when you are in deep love you kiss the person or embrace
the person. What are you doing? You are saying something. When you are angry,
intensely angry, you hit the person, you spit on him – you are saying something. I can
understand him. He must have something more to say, that’s why I’m asking, ‘What
next?'”
The man was even more puzzled.
And Buddha said to his disciples, “I am more offended by you because you know me
and you have lived for years with me and still you react.”
Puzzled, confused, the man returned home. He could not sleep the whole night. It is
difficult, when you see a Buddha, it is difficult to sleep again the way you used to
sleep before. Impossible. Again and again he was haunted by the experience, he
could not explain it to himself, what had happened. He was trembling all over and
perspiring, he had never come across such a man; he had shattered his whole mind
and his whole pattern; his whole past.
Next morning he was back there. He threw himself at Buddha’s feet. Buddha asked
him again, “What next?”
This too is a way of saying something that cannot be said in language. When you
come and touch my feet you are saying something which cannot be said ordinarily,
for which all words are a little narrow, it cannot be contained in them.
Buddha said, “Look, Anand. This man is again here, he is saying something. This
man is a man of deep emotions.”
The man looked at Buddha and said, “Forgive me for what I have done yesterday.”
Buddha said, “Forgive? But I am not the same man to whom you did it. The Ganges
goes on flowing. It is never the same Ganges again. Every man is a river. The man
you spat upon is no more here. I look just like him but I am not the same; much has
happened in these twenty-four hours! The river has flowed so much. Only in
appearance I look the same. So I cannot forgive you because I have no grudge
against you. And you also are new. I can see you are not the same man who came
yesterday, because that man was angry. He was anger, he spat – and you are
bowing at my feet, touching my feet, how can you be the same man? You are not the
same man! So let us forget about it; those two – the man who spat and the man on
whom he spat – both are no more. Come closer, let us talk of something else.”
This is response.
Reaction is out of the past. If you react, out of old habits, out of mind, then you are
not responding. To be responsive is to be totally alive in this moment, here-now.
Response is a beautiful phenomenon, it is life; reaction is dead, ugly, rotten, it is a
corpse. Ninety-nine per cent of the time you react, and you call it response. Rarely it
happens in your life that you respond; but whenever it happens you have a glimpse;
whenever it happens the door to the unknown opens.
Tzu, Volume 3, Ch 10, Q 2
Drop the self, and drop false consolations, because nobody else is fooled by it
except yourself. You are not deceiving anybody, but you can deceive yourself, for
eternity.
Drop the self, drop that ‘too much confidence’, it is egoistic, and suddenly
there is enlightenment – there is no need to wait! Waiting is there because of the
obstacles you are creating. Enlightenment is not creating any obstacles on your
path. God is not pushing you away from himself. Nobody is creating any difficulty for
you. If you are not reaching it is only because of you.
So drop self-confidence, drop the self, and then suddenly you find that enlightenment
is not something that happens to you; enlightenment is your very nature, your very
being. When the self is not – it is; then it is yourself.
And forget all consolations.
You must have heard, I have told it many times myself, the famous story of the fox
and the grapes. One of the very extraordinary men, Aesop, wrote it.
A fox comes near a tree, and the tree is full of grapevines, bunches of grapes. She
jumps, she tries hard, but cannot reach the grapes, they are too far away, her jump
is not long enough.
Then she looks all around – is somebody watching?
A small hare is watching from a bush, and he asks, “Auntie, what is the matter?
Couldn’t you reach the grapes”
She says, “No son, that is not the thing. The grapes are sour.”
This is consolation.
I tell you the grapes are never sour – at least the grapes of enlightenment; never
sour; they are always ripe and sweet; and if you cannot reach, don’t try to console
yourself that you love waiting, just try to understand why you are forced to wait. Who
is forcing you to wait? You will not find anybody else, just you yourself, that self-
confidence and the self.
Osho, Tao: The Three Treasures – Talks on fragments from Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, Vol
3, Ch 8, Q 1
Image: François Chauveau, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
A Chinese allegory tells about a monk who was in search of Buddha.
He travelled for years and years and then finally he arrived in the country where
Buddha lived. Just a river had to be crossed and he would be face to face with
Buddha. He was ecstatic.
He enquired whether he could get a ferry or boat to go to the other shore, for the
river was very wide. But people on the shore informed him: Nobody will be able to
take you there because there is a legend that whosoever goes to the other shore
never comes back. So nobody can dare to take you there. You will have to swim.
Afraid of course, because the river was very wide, but still finding no other way, the
monk started swimming. Just in the middle of the river he saw a corpse floating,
coming closer and closer towards him. He became afraid; he wanted to avoid the
corpse. He tried in many ways to dodge but he couldn’t, the corpse proved very
tricky; howsoever he tried, the corpse kept coming closer and closer.
Then finding no way to escape from it — and moreover curiosity also possessed him
because the corpse seemed to be the corpse of a Buddhist monk: the ochre robe,
the clean-shaved head – taking courage he allowed the corpse to come near; in fact
rather on the contrary he himself swam towards the corpse.
He looked at the face, and started laughing madly, because it was his own corpse;
he could not believe his eyes, but it was so. He looked again and again, but it was
his own corpse.
And then the corpse floated by, down the river, and he watched all his past go with it:
all that he had learnt, all that he had possessed, all that he had been, the ego, the
centre of his mind, the self — everything floated off with the corpse. He was totally
empty.
Now there was no need to go to the other shore, no need to go to the other shore
because once his past had been taken by the river he himself was Buddha. He
started laughing because he had been searching for the Buddha without, and the
Buddha was within.
He came back laughing to the same shore he had left just a few minutes before, but
nobody would recognize him. He even told people: I am the same man! but they
laughed.
He was not the same man. He was not really. And that was the reason for the legend
that nobody comes back – whosoever goes to the other shore. Everybody had come
back, but they were not the same, the old was dead, and the absolutely new had
come in its place.
I would like this allegory to be as deeply implanted in your being as possible. This is
going to be your future. If you really go on and on journeying towards the
Buddhaland to become the ultimate, to know the ultimate, one day or other you will
come to the wide river where all that you have done, all that you can do, all that you
have possessed, all that you can posses, all that you have been, all that you can be:
all is taken by the wide river – it moves with the flow slowly towards the ocean; and
you are left totally alone, with no possession, with no body, with no mind.
In that aloneness flowers the flower of Buddha.
You have come to the Buddhaland. You have come to know the Tao.
3, Ch 9
He who lightly makes a promise will find it often hard to keep his faith.
If you understand life you will never make promises, because a promise is a
postponement. You must either do it now or you must say, I don’t know, I will see
tomorrow.
In Mahabharata there is a beautiful anecdote. Pandavas, the five brothers, are hiding
in the forest. One day a beggar comes. Udhishthir is sitting outside the hut and the
beggar asks for nothing much, just some bread, a few chapattis.
Udhishthir is brooding – and as it happens always whenever there is a beggar, you
would like to postpone. You say, Come tomorrow, just to avoid. He may not come
again tomorrow. You don’t want to be so rude as to say, I will not give anything; also,
you want to protect your image that you are a great giver. So you say, Come
tomorrow. Don’t disturb me now. Udhishthir did the same; he said, Come tomorrow.
Bhima, another brother – who is not known much for his wisdom or intelligence, but
sometimes it happens that people who are not very intelligent flare up – he suddenly
started laughing and he ran out of the house with laughter, towards the town.
Udhishthir asked: Where are you going? He said, I am going to tell the people in the
town that my brother has conquered time! He has promised something to a beggar if
he comes tomorrow!
Suddenly Udhishthir became aware. Because how can you say, Come tomorrow?
You may not be here tomorrow. The beggar may not be here tomorrow. Udhishthir
ran off, caught hold of the beggar, gave him whatsoever he could give him, and
dropped the habit of promising.
Because a promise is possible only if tomorrow is certain. But who knows anything
about tomorrow?
Osho, The Three Treasures – Talks on fragments from Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, Vol 3, Ch
7
All excerpts of this series can be found in: 1001 Tale
All that is spoken is just a hint. Nothing is spoken in it. It is just a net, a fisherman’s
net, so that those who live in their heads can be caught.
Once they are caught, the use of language is finished. Then their heart starts
throbbing. Then a communion – not communication, a communion – happens
between the Master and the disciple, then their hearts start beating in the same
rhythm.
Then they breathe in the same rhythm. No need to say anything then. Then
everything is understood without being said.
All talk is to prepare you for silence, and only in silence can the truth be given.
It happened to another Zen Master who was dying. He called his most beloved
disciple and said, “Now the moment has come, and I must give you the scripture that
I have been carrying long; it was given to me by my Master when he was dying; now
I am dying.”
He pulled out a book, a book he had been hiding under his pillow. Everybody knew
about it but nobody had ever been allowed to look into it. He was very secretive
about it. When he went to the bathroom he would carry the book with him, nobody
had ever been allowed to see what was in the book; and everybody of course was
curious, tremendously curious.
Now he had called this disciple and said, “The last moment has come and I have to
give you the scripture that was given to me by my Master. Keep it! Preserve it as
carefully as possible – protect it so that it should not be destroyed. It is a valuable
treasure. Once lost – lost for centuries.”
The disciple laughed and said, “But whatsoever has to be attained I have attained
without this scripture, so what is the need? You can take it with you.”
The Master insisted.
The disciple said, “Okay, if you insist then it’s okay.”
The book was given to him – it was a winter evening, very cold, and the fire was
burning in the room – the disciple took the book and without even looking at it he
threw it into the fire.
The Master jumped and said, “What are you doing!”
And the disciple shouted even more loudly, “What are you saying! To preserve a
scripture?”
The Master started laughing, he said, “You passed the examination. Had you
preserved it you would have missed! And there was nothing in it, to tell you the truth,
it is completely empty. It was just to see whether you have become capable of
understanding silence, or if you still cling deep down to words, concepts, theories,
philosophies.”
All philosophies, all that can be said, are just like the porch of a palace. […]
All words at the most can become porches; they lead you towards the inner temple;
but if you cling to them then you remain in the porch – the porch is not the palace.
Lao Tzu is saying something which is just like a porch, a door. If you understand it,
you will drop all words, language – in fact the whole mind.
Where you leave your shoes in the porch, you should leave your mind also. Then
only you enter the innermost shrine of being.
Tzu, Vol 3, Ch 5
By continual losing one reaches doing nothing. By doing nothing everything is done.
That is the secret. By doing nothing everything is done. Everything is already being
done, you unnecessarily come in, you unnecessarily make much fuss. Without you
everything is going as beautifully as it can ever go. […]
Have you heard about an old woman who lived in a small village and who believed
that it was because of her that the sun rose in the village? She had many cocks, and
just before the sun rose they would start making noise, crowing, and she believed
that it was because of those cocks the sun rose.
It was a logical thing. Always, they made their noise – and immediately the sun
started rising, it had never been otherwise.
She told the villagers, “It is because of me the sun rises. Once I leave this village you
will live in darkness.”
They laughed.
Angry, she left the village with all her cocks. She reached another village, and of
course, in the morning the sun rose.
She laughed and said, “Now they will understand! Now the sun is rising
in this village! Now they will weep and cry and repent, but I am not going back!”
Things have been happening without you. Everything has been perfect without you.
When you will not be here everything will be as perfect as ever. But you cannot
believe in it because if you believe in it your ego disappears.
Things will go on when the doer disappears.
3, Ch 3
Photo by Niclas Dehmel on Unsplash
How can one come to know that neither he nor anybody else dies?
There is no other way except to die.
One Zen Master was asked…
A great emperor came to enquire; he was afraid of death, as everybody is, and of
course an emperor has more to lose than a beggar, so an emperor is bound to be
more afraid of death than a beggar; death will take more from an emperor than from
a beggar and so, of course, obviously he is more afraid.
He became old and he came to the Zen Master and he asked, “Tell me something
about death, Master.”
The Master said, “How am I to know about it?”
The emperor said, “But you are an enlightened Master.”
He said, “Yes, but an alive one, not dead; how am I to know about it?”
This moment life is there – live it. That is the training for death. Otherwise when you
are dead you will ask, “What is life?”
When you are asking, “what is death?” and whether the same continues to be after
death or not, know that you are alive missing the possibility, the opportunity, to know
what life is.
Osho, Tao: The Three Treasures – Talks on fragments from Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu,
Vol 3, Ch 2, Q 5
A true Master never promises anything. In fact he shatters you completely – your
greed, your desire, your idea of becoming somebody, being somebody – he shatters
all in all. A real Master is a rock against which your boat is completely shattered…
your whole mind is shattered. He drives you crazy; he does not argue. His argument
is more of his being than of his words.
But we are greedy. We live through greed, we are afraid, full of fear – somebody
gives us consolation, we become victims. A real Master is not a consolation, he is
not a solace. He is, in fact, death to you. He kills you, he destroys you, he is very
destructive… but creativity is possible only when the old is destroyed. When the old
ceases to be, the new can enter in.
I have heard a beautiful anecdote. Meditate over it….
The letter from Sean to his old, old mother was heartening.
‘Dear mother,’ he wrote, ‘I am sending you some pills that a witch doctor gave me
and if you take one, it will take years off your life.’
He came home a few weeks later, and there was a beautiful young woman outside
his house rocking a pram in which a baby lay sucking a bottle.
‘Where’s my mother?’ he asked.
‘Arrah, don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘I’m your mother and these pills were marvellous.’
‘Imagine!’ said Sean. ‘One pill, and you’re as beautiful as anyone could be – and
what’s more, you were able to have a baby. Lord, but they were powerful!’
‘You madman!’ she cried. ‘That’s not a baby, that’s your father. He took two!’
Avoid greed – otherwise you will take two pills.
Osho, The Divine Melody – Talks on Songs of Kabir, Ch 1

Image thanks to www.pexels.com
A famous Taoist story says a great emperor asked the greatest painter of his land to
paint the wall of his bedroom with Himalayan mountain peaks. “Paint the Himalayas”
– he was a lover of the Himalayas. The painter worked for two or three years, and
when the painting was completed he asked the king to come and see.
The curtain that was covering the wall was removed. The emperor was simply
transported to another world. He had been to the Himalayas many times, he was a
lover of the mountains, but the painting even surpassed the real. He looked and
looked and looked. He was so mystified that he could not utter a single word for
many minutes.
Then he suddenly said, “But I have been to these parts. I have never seen this path
that goes round and round the mountains. Where did you get the idea of this path?”
And the story says the painter said, “I don’t know, really. Let me go and see.” And he
went onto the path and disappeared behind the mountain – in the painting! – and
never came back again.
A strange story, unbelievable. How can you go into the painting and never come
back again? But it is of tremendous significance. It is not a historical event, but a
mythological, poetic event, which says much.
It says that the painter can disappear into his painting: only then is he a painter. The
poet can disappear in his poetry: only then is he a poet. If he cannot disappear in his
poetry then his poetry is just rubbish. If he cannot disappear in his painting, then he
may know all the techniques of painting but he is not a great artist. He may be a
technician, he may know about colors and canvasses and he may know how to
paint, but he has no real genius in him. His painting is something separate from him;
he has not yet found the union with his painting.
And whenever the union is found, God is found.
That’s why I say there are as many doors to God as there are people. All that is
needed is, whatsoever you are doing, get lost in it; be so totally one with it that
nothing is left behind. In that very moment, God is.
God is Unio Mystica: the Mystic Union. […]

If you are clinging to your separate existence, if you are clinging to your separate life,
God will not be yours – because God is the union. […]
You cannot have both separation and union; that is impossible. That is not possible
because of the very nature of things. Either you can be united or you can remain
separate. […]
And the paradox is, when you are no longer interested in your separate life, in your
separate being, you will have infinite being and you will have eternal life. You may
disappear as a small flame of a candle, but you will become the sun of all the suns.
You may disappear as a drop, but you will become the ocean.
Osho, Unio Mystica, Vol 2, Ch 9

It is said of a great Sufi mystic, Bayazid, that one night, Khidr, the great angel who
goes on helping people on the path, appeared to him.
The dark room, where Bayazid was meditating, became suddenly illuminated. He
opened his eyes; the light was so much that he could see it, even with closed eyes.
He opened his eyes: Khidr was there.
And Khidr said, ”God is very happy with you. You can ask for anything and your
desire will be fulfilled.”
Bayazid said, ”But you came a little late. All my desires have disappeared; now I
have no desire.”
Khidr insisted. He said, ”This will be insulting to God. You have to ask! You can ask
for anything, but you have to ask. This will be an insult to God, because when he
offers, you have to ask for something.”
He insisted so much. Again and again, Bayazid looked and thought, but no desire
was arising. And he would say, ”But what can I do? I cannot find a thing to ask. All is
always fulfilled. His compassion is such that before I can feel the desire, it is already
fulfilled; before I can even formulate the desire in my head, it is fulfilled. Before it
reaches me, it reaches him – so what can I ask for?”
But Khidr was insisting and saying, ”This is insulting and God will be very angry.”
So Bayazid said, ”Okay, if you insist, and if you think that this is not adab – that this
is not the right manner to behave with God – then tell him that I desire only him and
nothing else.”
Khidr laughed and said, ”You fool – you missed!”
Even to say, “I want God” is to ask. Even to desire God is a desire. […]
What can you ask for? He has already given all that can ever be received by you.
Your cup is full! Just look within: your cup is full, nothing is lacking.
That’s why I go on saying to you: You are gods already, all is fulfilled. See it! Nothing
is missing, nothing is lacking in you, you are perfect as you are. This is the greatest
declaration, and of all the mystics of the world, that you are perfect as you are.
The Upanishads say, “Out of perfection, only perfection can come.”
Osho, Unio Mystica, Vol 2, Ch 7

Hakuju, a great Zen-Master, served as a distinguished lecturer at the Tendai-Sect College. As
he was lecturing with his customary zeal on the Chinese Classics one hot summer’s
afternoon, he noticed that a few of the students were dozing off. He stopped his lecturing in
mid-sentence and said: “It’s a hot afternoon, isn’t it? Can’t blame you for going to sleep.
Mind if I join you?”
With this, Hakuju shut his textbook and, leaning well back in his chair, fell asleep. The class
was dumbfounded and those who had been dozing were awakened by his snores. All sat up in
their seats and waited for the Master to awaken.
This you can find only in Zen literature, this possibility of being so human, of being so
imperfect and yet unworried about it. A tremendous acceptance of all that is, of sleep, of
snoring. […]
This is the way of Zen. It is the most unique phenomenon in the whole world of religions.
Zen is the highest peak that religion has attained yet. It is the sanest religion.
Osho, The First Principle, Ch 5

F E A T U R E D A R TI C L E S O S H O S H A N TI
A king came to visit the monastery of a Zen master. The master took him around; he was
very interested in knowing everything about the monastery. He took the king to every
place… except one – the central temple. And that was the most imposing building, and yet,
whenever the king asked, ”Why don’t you take me to the temple?”, the master would behave
as if he had not heard.
Finally, the king was very angry, because he was even taken to bathrooms and toilets. He
said, ”Are you mad or something? Why don’t you take me to the temple?”
And the master said, ”For a certain reason – because you are constantly asking, ‘What do you
do here?’ In the library we read: I can take you to the library. In the bathrooms we take baths:
I can take you to the bathrooms. In the kitchen we prepare food. But to that temple I cannot
take you, because we don’t do a thing there! That is the place where we move into non-doing,
into non-action. And it will be impossible to explain that to you – that’s why. You are a great
king, you are a great doer, and you are so much engrossed with having more and more. You
understand the way of the mind, but you will not understand the ways which are not of the
mind.”
[…] Mind is the original fall – the fall from the state of being. Mind is the original sin. […]
The fall has to be understood. Meditate over three words:

being,
doing,
having.
From being to having is the fall, and doing is the process of coming from being to having.
[…]
Hence, the mind is a doer. The mind constantly wants to be occupied. A great hankering to
remain busy; that is the mind. One cannot sit alone; one cannot sit in passive receptivity, not
even for a few moments. It is such a torture for the mind, because the moment you stop
doing, the mind starts disappearing.
If you go to a Zen master and ask, ”What do you do here? What are these people, your
followers, doing?” he will say, ”They just sit. They don’t do a thing.” […]
The mind is a doer. Watch your own mind and you will understand. What I am saying is not a
philosophical statement, it is just a fact. I am not proposing any theory for you to believe or to
disbelieve, but something that you can watch in your own being. And you will see it –
whenever you are alone, you immediately start looking: something has to be done, you have
to go somewhere, you have to see somebody. You can’t be alone. You can’t be a non-doer.
Doing is the process by which the mind is created; it is condensed doing. Hence, meditation
means a state of non-doing. If you can sit silently, doing nothing, suddenly you are back
home. Suddenly you see your original face, suddenly you see the source. And that source
is satchitanand: it is truth, it is consciousness, it is bliss – call it God, or nirvana, or what you
will.
From being to doing to having – this is how Adam-consciousness arrives in the world. To
move backwards, from having to doing, from doing to being – this is what Christ-
consciousness means. But Sufis have a very tremendously significant message for the world.
They say, the perfect man is one who is capable of moving from being to doing to having to
doing to being, and so on, so forth. When the circle is perfect, then the man is perfect.
One should be capable of doing. I am not saying that you should become incapable of doing;
that will not be of any value, that will be simply impotence. You should be capable of doing,
but you should not be engrossed in it. You should not become involved in it, you should not
become possessed by it, you should remain the master.
And I am not saying that all that you have has to be dropped, I am not saying to renounce all
that you have. Use it, but don’t be used by it, that’s all. Then the perfect man is born.
I call that perfect man a sannyasin: he will be both Adam plus Christ. The worldly man is
Adam, and up to now the otherworldly man has been involved with Christ-consciousness.
But both are half-half. Man needs to become a totality, a wholeness.
And my definition of ‘being holy’ is nothing but to be whole – capacity to come into the
world and yet remain above it, beyond it; capacity to use the mind but yet remain centered in
your being.
Then the mind is a mechanism of immense value; then it is not a sin to have a beautiful mind.
You have a beautiful instrument of immense complexity, and it is a joy to use it, just as it is a
joy to drive a beautiful car which is a perfect mechanism.
There is nothing like the mind, if you can use it; then the mind is divine too. But if you are
used by it, and your sky gets lost in the clouds of the mind, then you’ll remain in misery, in
ignorance.
The arrival of the mind happens through getting identified with the contents of consciousness.
Just a small change, a single step is needed, and that step bridges this to that. That single step
bridges the world to God, the outer to the inner, the mundane to the sacred.
What is that single step? Non-identification.
Remain a witness. Always remember to remain a witness: whatsoever passes in the mind,
know perfectly well you are not it. You are not the stuff called the mind. Once you become
identified with any stuff of the mind, you are trapped in a prison. Then you can go on
changing and re-arranging the stuff again and again, but nothing will happen.
That’s what people go on doing – improving upon themselves, creating a beautiful character,
becoming saintly, religious, but the basic thing has not yet been done. They are simply
rearranging the stuff of the mind.
You can go on arranging the furniture of your house; you can arrange it in better ways, far
more aesthetically, but it remains the same stuff. The sinner and the so-called saint are not
very different; both are different arrangements of the same mind.
The real sage is one who has become aware that he is not the mind at all. The idea of sin
arises in him, and he remains aloof; and the idea of being a saint arises in him, and he
remains aloof. He gets identified with nothing – anger or compassion, hate or love, good or
bad.
He remains non-judgmental, he does not condemn anything in the mind. If you are just a
witness, what is the point of condemning anything?
And he does not praise anything in the mind – if you are just a witness, again, praise is just
futile. He remains cool and collected and centered. The mind goes on raving around him, just
from past momentum.
For thousands of lives you have remained identified with the mind, you have poured so much
energy into it. It goes on revolving and revolving for a few months, even for a few years. But
if you can remain a silent watcher, a watcher on the hills, then slowly slowly the energy, the
momentum, is lost and the mind comes to a stop.
The day the mind stops, you have arrived. The first vision of what God is and what you are
happens immediately – because once the mind stops, your whole energy that has remained
involved with it is released.
And that energy is tremendous, it is infinite: it starts falling on you. It is a great benediction,
it is grace.
Osho, Unio Mystica, Vol 2, Ch 3 (excerpt)

She, some final touches

Amazing gifts around the time of my Master’s death
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The man who has the sense that “God exists, and I am needed by God,” never feels
worthless — never. To the last moment, to the last breath of his life, he is
functioning, serving something higher than himself. He has a context bigger than
himself; in that context, meaning arises.
Meaning is always in a certain context. A single word is meaningless; when it is

arranged in a poem it has tremendous meaning: now it has a context. The color in a
tube is meaningless; once it is spread on the canvas and becomes part of a picture
that is bigger than it, it has a context, suddenly meaning arises.
It is reported that once a very rich man asked Pablo Picasso to make a portrait of
him. Picasso said, “It will be very costly.”
The man was so rich, he said, ”Don’t bother about it. You need not even talk about
the cost, money doesn’t matter. Make my portrait and whatsoever you demand, I will
give.”
After six months the portrait was ready.
The rich man came, but the price that was asked was fantastic: one million dollars,
just for a small canvas and a few colors! The rich man said, ”Are you joking? Just for
a few colors and a canvas?”
Picasso said, ”Then okay, you can take an empty canvas and a few tubes full of
color and you can pay as much as you want.”
The rich man said, “But that is not the same.”
Picasso said, ”That’s what I am trying to point out to you. I have created a context, I
have created a gestalt, a pattern. And nobody else can create it, hence the price. It is
a Picasso painting: nobody else can do it the way I have done it, it has my signature
on it. The harmony of the colors, the music of the colors, the poetry of the colors –
that is the thing. I am not asking the price for the colors, but for something that has
become expressed through the colors.”
A real painting is not just the sum total of the colors, it is more – and that “more” is
the meaning. A real life is not the sum total of what you do; unless there is something
more to it, you live an inauthentic life. That ”more” is God. That poetry is God, that
music is God, that surrounds you and floods you.
People come to me and ask, “Where is God?” It is not a question of asking “where”;
God is a meaning, not a person. I cannot indicate, “There – go there, and you will
find him.” God has no address, God cannot be located, it is a meaning. You have to
create meaning in your life, then God is. God has to be created.
And the beginning of creating God is to start becoming more and more sensitive to
the existence that surrounds you. The trees, the rocks, the stars, the earth – you are
surrounded by great poetry.
But you remain separate, hence you go on missing it. If you live as separate, if you
think, ”I am separate,” if you live as an ego, then your existence is a pretense. Then
your existence will remain meaningless. Then you will never know the glory and the
grandeur of life; you will never know the splendors that have always been available
to you but you went on missing. […]
If you exist as a separate individual, you have created a wall around yourself, you
have become an island. And no man is an island, we are parts of an infinite
continent: that continent is God. We are parts of an ocean. The moment you
recognize it, that we are parts of an ocean, your life starts having a context bigger
than you, higher than you.
In that context is the beginning of meaning – and meaning is God. […]
Just a single step is enough: lose yourself. Don’t exist as an ‘I’, don’t go on
proclaiming yourself as an ego. Drop the ego, and suddenly, immediately, instantly,
the hell of your life turns into a heaven.
Misery disappears.Misery is a by-product of your separation. Bliss is the shadow of

falling back into the unity: Unio Mystica. When again you start feeling like a wave in
the ocean, misery cannot exist. What is misery? The fear of death. But you can die
only if you are separate, you cannot die if you are not separate.
If the wave thinks, ”I am separate from the ocean,” it is going to die; it will remain
afraid, trembling. If it knows it is part of the ocean, it is not going to die. It will fall
back into the source, it will come again; it will go, it will come, it will appear and
disappear, but it cannot die.
Birth is appearance, death is disappearance. But neither is birth the beginning nor is
death the end: the ocean continues. To have this oceanic feeling is meditation, is
prayer. […]
Osho, Unio Mystica: Talks on Hakim Sanai’s The Hadiqa, Vol 2, Ch 1 (excerpt)
Unless you are a really deep disciple, you will not be able to become a teacher. If
your disciplehood is perfect, one day suddenly you will find the Perfect Master has
arisen in you. It comes only out of disciplehood. But disciplehood is difficult because
the ego has to be dropped. […]
It happened….
There was a Master, his name was Tapobana, and Tapobana had a disciple who
served him with irreproachable diligence. It was solely because of this diligence and
the services he rendered that Tapobana kept him, for he found the disciple rather
stupid.
One day, the rumor spread throughout the whole region that Tapobana’s disciple
had walked on water, that he had been seen crossing the river as one crosses the
street.
Tapobana called his disciple and questioned him: “Is what people are saying about
you possible?
Is it really true that you crossed the river walking on the water?”
“What could be more natural?” answered his follower. “It is thanks to you, Blessed
One, that I walked on water. At every step I repeated your saintly name, and that is
what upheld me.”
And Tapobana thought to himself, “If the disciple can walk on water, what can the
Master not do? If it is in my name that the miracle takes place, I must possess power
I did not suspect and holiness of which I have not been sufficiently aware. After all, I
have never tried to cross the river as if I were crossing the street.”
And without more ado, he ran to the river bank.
Without hesitation, he set his foot on the water and with unshakable faith repeated:
“Me!, Me!, Me! …”
…and sank.
[…] The first thing that you have to do is to learn the secrets of disciplehood; then
one day the Master will be born. It is on the way, but don’t be in a hurry; otherwise
you will miss being a Master. If you try to become a Master, you will miss being a
Master. The Mastership arises only when you learn slowly, slowly to dissolve into
existence. The day you are not, you will be the Master, not before it. If you are, then
still some work has to be done. You cannot be the Master. Only when you are
absent does the Master become present in you. […]
Osho, The First Principle: Talks on Zen, Ch 4, Q 4 (excerpt)

Traditionally, Zen monasteries will only admit wandering Zen monks if they can show
proof of having solved a koan.
It seems that a monk once knocked on a monastery gate. The monk who opened the
gate did not say “Hello” or “Good morning”, but “Show me your original face, the face
you had before your father and mother were born.”
This is a koan.
And the host is asking the guest to show some sign that he can solve a koan;
otherwise he is not worthy of being allowed to stay in the monastery; then he will
have to go away.
The monk, who wanted a room for the night, smiled, pulled a sandal off his foot and
hit his questioner in the face with it. The other monk stepped back, bowed
respectfully and bade the visitor welcome.
After dinner, host and guest started a conversation, and the host complimented his
guest on his splendid answer.
“Do you yourself know the answer to the koan you gave me?” the guest asked.
“No,” answered the host, “but I knew that your answer was right. You did not hesitate
for a moment. It came out quite spontaneously. It agreed exactly with everything I
have heard or read about Zen.”
The guest did not say anything and sipped his tea.
Suddenly the host became suspicious.
There was something in the face of his guest which he did not like.
“You do know the answer, don’t you?” he asked.
The guest began to laugh and finally rolled over the mat with mirth.
“No, reverend brother,” he said, “but I too have read a lot and heard a lot about Zen.”
Hearing me, there are many things you will start imagining, many things you will start
believing. Beware, because those things won’t help. Hearing Zen, reading Zen is not
going to give you Zen. Zen is a quality that you have to attain to. It is a new vision of
life and reality. It is a new penetration into the mystery of existence. It is not
intellectual; it is existential. You have to throb with it, your heart has to beat with it,
you have to breathe it in and out. It is not going to be just an intellectual
understanding.
Osho, The First Principle: Talks on Zen, Ch 4 (excerpt)

The pupils of the Tendai School used to study meditation before Zen entered Japan. Four of
them, who were intimate friends, promised one another to observe seven days of silence.
On the first day all were silent, but when the night came and the oil lamps were growing dim,
one of the pupils could not help exclaiming to a servant, “Fix those lamps!”
The second pupil was surprised to hear the first one talk. “We are not supposed to say a
word,” he remarked.
“You two are stupid! Why did you talk?” asked the third.
“I am the only one who has not talked, thank God!” concluded the fourth.
In the search for the first principle silence is the door – the only door. And except it
there is no way to approach the first principle. The first principle can be known only
when you move to the primordial state of your being. Thinking is secondary.
Existence precedes thinking, existence comes first. First you are, and then you start
thinking.
Thinking is secondary. Thinking is a shadow activity; it follows you. It cannot exist

without you, but you can exist without it. Through thinking you can know secondary
things, not the primary things. The most fundamental is not available to thinking; the
most fundamental is available to silence.
Silence means a state of consciousness where no thought interferes.
Osho, The First Principle: Talks on Zen, Ch 3

It is my own experience that there is no greater joy than to be alone; the joy of love is
secondary. And the joy of love is possible only if you have known the joy of being
alone, because then only do you have something to share. Otherwise, two beggars
meeting each other, clinging to each other, cannot be blissful. They will create
misery for each other because each will be hoping, and hoping in vain, that “The
other is going to fulfill me.” The other is hoping the same. They cannot fulfill each
other. They are both blind; they cannot help each other.
I have heard about a hunter who got lost in the jungle. For three days, he could not
find anybody to ask for the way out, and he was becoming more and more panicky –
three days of no food and three days of constant fear of wild animals. For three days
he was not able to sleep; he was sitting awake on some tree, afraid he may be
attacked.
There were snakes, there were lions, there were wild animals.
After the third day, the fourth day early in the morning, he saw a man sitting under a
tree. You can imagine his joy.
He rushed, he hugged the man and he said, ”What joy!”
And the other man hugged him and both were immensely happy.
Then they asked each other, ”Why are you so ecstatic?”
The first said, ”I was lost and I was waiting to meet somebody.”
And the other said, ”I am also lost and I am waiting to meet somebody. But if we are
both lost, then the ecstasy is just foolish. So now we will be lost together!”
Osho, Guida Spirituale: Discourses on the Desiderata, Ch 11, Q 1

Two unhappy persons meeting cannot make each other happy;
they will become doubly unhappy, that’s all. It is simple arithmetic.
They will become very very unhappy.
Not only doubled, in fact, their unhappiness will be multiplied because their
unhappinesses will clash.
They will be angry at each other.
They will take revenge on each other.
They will think the other has been a cheat,
because the other promised me a garden of roses,
and there seems to be no possibility of any delivery.
All promises prove false –

because out of unhappiness how can you promise?
Out of unhappiness how can you give?
You don’t have it in the first place, how can you share?
You share only that which you have.
If you are happy, you share happiness.
If you are unhappy, you share unhappiness.
If you are sad, you share sadness.
You are enlightened! You are Buddhas, pretending not to be, pretending to be
somebody else. And my whole work here is to expose you! […]
There is a beautiful story of Rabindranath Tagore.
He says: I was searching for God for thousands of lives. I saw him… sometimes far
away, close to a distant star. I rushed… by the time I had reached there, he had
gone further ahead. It went on and on.
Finally I arrived at a door and on the door there was a signboard:
“This is the house where God lives – Lao Tzu House.”
Rabindranath says, I became very worried for the first time.
I became very troubled. Trembling, I went up the stairs. I was just going to knock on
the door and suddenly, in a flash, I saw the whole point.
If I knock on the door and God opens the door, then what?
Then everything is finished, my journeys, my pilgrimages, my great adventures, my

philosophy, my poetry – all the longing of my heart – all is finished! It will be suicide.
Seeing the point so crystal clear, Rabindranath says: I removed my shoes from my
feet, because going back down might create some noise – he might open the door!
Then what?
And from the moment I reached the bottom of the steps, I have not looked back.
Since then I have been running and running for thousands of years.
I am still searching for God, although now I know where he lives.
So I only have to avoid that Lao Tzu House and I can go on searching for him
everywhere else.
There is no fear… But I have to avoid that house – that house haunts me; I
remember it perfectly.
If by chance I accidentally enter that house, then all is finished.
It is a beautiful insight.
Man lives in problems, man lives in misery. To live without problems, to live without
misery, needs real courage.
I have lived without any problems for twenty-five years, and I know it is a kind of
suicide. I simply go on sitting in my room doing nothing. There is nothing to do!
Osho, The Goose Is Out, Ch 10, Q 4 (excerpt)

You are enlightened! You are Buddhas, pretending not to be, pretending to be somebody else.
And my whole work here is to expose you! […]
There is a beautiful story of Rabindranath Tagore.
He says: I was searching for God for thousands of lives. I saw him… sometimes far away,
close to a distant star. I rushed… by the time I had reached there, he had gone further ahead.
It went on and on.
Finally I arrived at a door and on the door there was a signboard:
“This is the house where God lives – Lao Tzu House.”
Rabindranath says, I became very worried for the first time.
I became very troubled. Trembling, I went up the stairs. I was just going to knock on the door
and suddenly, in a flash, I saw the whole point.
If I knock on the door and God opens the door, then what?
Then everything is finished, my journeys, my pilgrimages, my great adventures, my

philosophy, my poetry – all the longing of my heart – all is finished! It will be suicide.
Seeing the point so crystal clear, Rabindranath says: I removed my shoes from my feet,
because going back down might create some noise – he might open the door! Then what?
And from the moment I reached the bottom of the steps, I have not looked back.
Since then I have been running and running for thousands of years.
I am still searching for God, although now I know where he lives.
So I only have to avoid that Lao Tzu House and I can go on searching for him everywhere
else.
There is no fear… But I have to avoid that house – that house haunts me; I remember it
perfectly.
If by chance I accidentally enter that house, then all is finished.
It is a beautiful insight.
Man lives in problems, man lives in misery. To live without problems, to live without misery,
needs real courage.
I have lived without any problems for twenty-five years, and I know it is a kind of suicide. I
simply go on sitting in my room doing nothing. There is nothing to do!
Osho, The Goose Is Out, Ch 10, Q 4 (excerpt)

Photo by Chuck Givens on Unsplash
F E A T U R E D A R TI C L E S O S H O R A B I N D R A N A TH T A GO R E S H A N TI
From Esalen to Pune: Osho and the Path of Humanistic Transpersonal Psychology
SEPTEMBER 4, 2022
There was no guru movement

SEPTEMBER 6, 2022
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The thinker is creative with his thoughts. This is one of the most fundamental truths to
be understood. All that you experience is your creation. First you create it, then you
experience it, and then you are caught in the experience — because you don’t know
that the source of all exists in you.
There is a famous parable:
Once a man was traveling; accidentally he entered paradise.

In the Indian concept of paradise there are wish-fulfilling trees there, kalpatarus. You
just sit underneath them, desire anything and immediately it is fulfilled – there is no
gap between the desire and its fulfillment. There is no gap between a thought and a
thing. You think and immediately it becomes a thing; the thought realizes
automatically.
These kalpatarus are nothing but symbolic for the mind.
Mind is creative, creative with its thoughts.
The man was tired, so he fell asleep under a kalpataru, a wish-fulfilling tree. When
he woke up he was feeling very hungry, so he simply said, ”I am feeling so hungry, I
wish I could get some food from somewhere.” And immediately food appeared out of
nowhere – just floating in the air, delicious food.
He was so hungry that he didn’t pay much attention to where it had come from –
when you are hungry you are not philosophic.
He immediately started eating and the food was so delicious that he was caught up
in the food. Once his hunger was gone, he looked around.
Now that he was feeling very satisfied, another thought arose in him: ”If only I could
get something to drink…” And there is still no prohibition in paradise; immediately
precious wine appeared.
Drinking the wine relaxedly in the cool breeze of paradise under the shade of the
tree, he started wondering, ”What is the matter? What is happening? Have I fallen
into a dream or are some ghosts around and playing tricks with me?”
And ghosts appeared. And they were ferocious, horrible, nauseating. And he started
trembling and a thought arose in him: ”Now I am sure to be killed. These people are
going to kill me.” And he was killed.
This parable is an ancient parable, of immense significance.
It portrays your whole life. Your mind is the wish-fulfilling tree, kalpataru –
whatsoever you think, sooner or later it is fulfilled. Sometimes the gap is such that
you have completely forgotten that you had desired it in the first place; sometimes
the gap is of years, or sometimes of lives. So you can’t connect the source.
But if you watch deeply you will find all your thoughts are creating you and your life.
They create your hell, they create your heaven. They create your misery, they create
your joy. They create the negative, they create the positive. Both are illusory — the
pain and pleasure, the sweet dream and the nightmare, both are illusory.
What is meant by calling these things illusory? The only meaning is that they are
your creation. You are creating a magic world around yourself – that’s what is meant
by the word maya. Everybody here is a magician. And everybody is spinning and
weaving a magic world around himself, and then is caught – the spider itself is
caught in its own web.
There is nobody torturing you except yourself. There is nobody except yourself; your
whole life is your work, your creation.
Osho, Take It Easy – Talks on Zen Buddhism, Vol 2, Ch 5

All those people who go on playing with beliefs, concepts, philosophies, theologies…
ask questions just to ask questions. The answer is the last thing they are interested
in. They don’t want the answer. They go on playing with questions, and each answer
helps them to create more questions. Each answer is nothing but a jumping board
for more questions.
I have heard:
A Zen Master, Shou-shan, was asked by a disciple, “According to the scriptures, all
beings possess the Buddha-nature; why is it that they do not know it?”
Shou-shan replied, “They know!”
This is a rare answer, very rare, a great answer.
Shou-shan said, “They know! But they are avoiding it.”
It is not a question of how to know the truth. The truth is here, you are part of it. The
truth is now, there is no need to go anywhere. And it has been there since the
beginning, if there was any beginning, and it will be there until the end, if there is
going to be any end. And you have been avoiding it. You find ways to avoid it. When
somebody asks, “What is the way to truth?” in fact he is asking, “What is the way to
avoid the truth?” He is asking, “How can I escape?”
You may not have heard:
Says that old rascal Bodhidharma: “All know the way, few walk it, and the ones who
don’t walk cry regularly, ‘Show me the way! Where is the way? Give me a map!
Which way is it?’“
And all know the way, because life is the way, experience is the way.
To be alive is the way, to be conscious is the way.

You are alive, you are conscious.
Osho, The First Principle – Talks on Zen, Ch 1

This is the whole secret of enlightenment: it happens in relaxation, it happens in a
deep state of rest. Surrender means relaxing. Ego means tension, carrying a load of
anxiety, and unnecessarily.
I have heard that one woman, an old woman, was traveling on a bus, and she was
trembling and continuously asking what stop it was.
The stranger sitting by her side said, ”Relax, don’t be worried. The conductor will go
on announcing what stop it is, and if you are too worried I will call the conductor. You
can tell him where you want to get off, so he can keep a note of it. And you relax!”
He called the conductor and the woman said, ”Please remember. I don’t want to
miss my stop. I have to reach somewhere very urgently.”
The conductor said, ”Okay, I will make a note of it, although even without your asking
I will be announcing it. But I will make a note of it and I will come to you particularly
and tell you whenever your stop comes. But you relax. Don’t be so worried about it!”
She was perspiring and trembling and looked so tense. So she said, ”Okay, you note
it down – The Bus Terminus.”
Now if it is the bus terminus, why should you worry? How can you miss it? There is
no way of missing it!
The moment you rest, the moment you relax, you know that existence is already
going, moving, reaching towards higher peaks. And you are part of it. You need not
have separate ambitions. You need not think of yourself in terms of a person. You
are not a person.
This is surrender: relaxing, resting, dropping all private goals, dropping the whole
achieving mind, all the ego projections. And then life is a mystery. Your eyes will be
full of wonder; your heart will be full of awe. And to me that is authentic
religiousness: wonder and awe.
Osho, Guida Spirituale – Discourses on the Desiderata, Ch 14, Q 1

Photo by Aris Sfakianakis on Unsplash
There was one man who was almost mad, a mad murderer. He had taken a vow that
he would kill one thousand people, not less than that, because the society had not
treated him well. He would take his revenge by killing one thousand people. And
from every person killed he would take one finger and make a rosary around his
neck – one thousand fingers. Because of this, his name became Angulimala: the
man with a rosary of fingers.
He killed nine hundred and ninety-nine people. Nobody would move in those parts;
wherever people came to know that Angulimala was, the traffic would stop. And then
it became very difficult for him to find one man – and only one more man was
needed.
Buddha was passing a forest; people came to him from the villages and they said,
”Don’t go!Angulimala is there, that mad murderer! He doesn’t think twice, he simply
murders; and he will not think that you are a buddha. Don’t go that way; there is
another way, you can move by that one, but don’t go through this forest!”
Buddha said, ”If I don’t go, then who will go? And he is waiting for one more, so I
have to go.” Angulimala had almost completed his vow. And he was a man of
energy, because he was fighting the whole society: only one man – and he had killed
a thousand people. And kings were afraid of him, generals were afraid and the
government and the law and the police – nobody could do anything.
But Buddha said, ”He is a man, he needs me. I must take the risk. Either he will kill
me or I will kill him.”
This is what buddhas do: they stake, they risk their lives.
Buddha went. Even the closest disciples, who had said that they would remain with
him up to the very end, they started lagging behind – because this was dangerous!
So when Buddha reached the hill, where Angulimala was sitting on a rock, there was
no one behind him, he was alone. All the disciples had disappeared. Angulimala
looked at this innocent man; childlike, so beautiful, he thought, that even a murderer
felt compassion for him.
He thought, ”This man seems to be absolutely unaware that I am here, otherwise

nobody goes along this path.” And the man looked so innocent, so beautiful, that
even Angulimala thought, ”It is not good to kill this man. I’ll leave him, I can find
somebody else.”
Then he said to Buddha, ”Go back! Stop there now and go back! Don’t move a step
forward! I am Angulimala and these are nine hundred and ninety-nine fingers here,
and I need one finger more – even if my mother comes I will kill her and fulfill my
vow! So don’t come near, I’m dangerous! And I am not a believer in religion, I’m not
bothered who you are. You may be a very good monk, a great saint maybe, but I
don’t care! I only care about the finger and your finger is as good as anybody else’s,
so don’t come a single step further, otherwise I will kill you. Stop!”
But Buddha continued moving. Then Angulimala thought, ”Either this man is deaf or
mad!” He again shouted, ”Stop! Don’t move!”
Buddha said, ”I stopped long ago; I am not moving, Angulimala, you are moving. I
stopped long ago. All movement has stopped because all motivation has stopped.
When there is no motivation, how can movement happen? There is no goal for me, I
have achieved the goal, so why should I move? You are moving – and I say to you:
you stop!”
Angulimala was sitting on the rock and he started laughing. He said, ”You are really
mad! I am sitting and you say to me that I am moving, and you are moving and you
say that you have stopped. You are really a fool or mad – or I don’t know what type,
what manner of man you are!”
Buddha came near and he said, ”I have heard that you need one more finger. As far
as this body is concerned, my goal is achieved, this body is useless. When I die
people will burn it, it will be of no use to anyone. You can use it, your vow can be
fulfilled: cut off my finger and cut off my head. I have come on purpose, because this
is the last chance for my body to be used in some way; otherwise people will burn it.”
Angulimala said, ”What are you saying? I thought that I was the only madman
around here. And don’t try to be clever, because I am dangerous, I can still kill you!”
Buddha said, ”Before you kill me, do one thing, just the wish of a dying man: cut off a
branch of this tree.”
Angulimala hit his sword against the tree and a big branch fell down. Buddha said,
”Just one thing more: join it again to the tree!”
Angulimala said, ”Now I know perfectly that you are mad – I can cut, but I cannot
join.”
Then Buddha started laughing and he said, ”When you can only destroy and cannot
create, you should not destroy, because destruction can be done by children, there
is no bravery in it. This branch can be cut by a child, but to join it a master is needed.
And if you cannot even join back a branch to the tree, how can you cut off human
heads? Have you ever thought about it?”
Angulimala closed his eyes, fell down at Buddha’s feet and he said, ”You lead me on
that path!”
And it is said that, in a single moment, he became enlightened.
It can happen in a single moment, if the energy is there.

Osho,The Mustard Seed – Commentaries on the Gospel according to Thomas, Ch 6
A Master reflects, mirrors. A Master simply gives you back again and again. A
master does not improve upon you. He does not give you a should, because all
shoulds create guilt. A Master does not give you any ideal, because all ideals create
tension, anguish. A Master never says, “This is bad and that is good.” He never
creates values, because all values create splits. A Master never teaches judgement,
he teaches you to live without judging, without condemning, without saying good or
bad. Let life flow as it is.
Listen to this beautiful parable and you will understand the mirror-like quality of a
Master. This is one of the most famous Zen stories about the great Zen Master
Hakuin, when he was at Shoinji temple.
A girl among the congregation became pregnant.
Her severe father bullied her for the name of the lover and in the end, thinking that if
she said so, she might escape punishment, she told him: ”It is that Zen Master
Hakuin.”
The father said no more, but when the time came and the child was born, he at once
took it to him and threw the baby down.
”It seems that this is your child.”
And he piled on every insult and sneer at the disgrace of the affair.
The Zen Master only said: ”Oh, is that so?” and took the baby up into his arms.
Thereafter, during rainy days and stormy nights, he would go out to beg milk from
the neighbouring houses. Wherever he went he took the baby, wrapped in the sleeve
of his ragged robe.
Now he, who had been regarded as a living Buddha, worshipped as a Shakyamuni,
had fallen indeed. Many of the disciples, who had flocked to him, turned against him
and left him. The Master still said not a word.
Meantime, the mother found she could not bear the agony of separation from her
child and, further, began to be afraid of the consequences in the next life of what she
had done. She confessed the name of the real father of the child.
Her own father, rigid in his conception of virtue, became almost mad with fear. He
rushed to Hakuin and prostrated himself, begging over and over again for
forgiveness. The Zen Master this time too said only: ”Oh, is that so?” and gave him
the child back.
[…] This is the mirror-like quality. Nothing is good, nothing is bad – all is divine. This
is Buddha’s message. A Master reflects in his each act.
Osho, Zen, the Path of Paradox – Talks on Zen, Vol 3, Ch 5

When the mind-needs are fulfilled – when you have listened to all kinds of music and
you have danced all kinds of dances, and you have gone deep into philosophy, art,
poetry, sculpture, architecture, when you have seen all these things and you are
satisfied, saturated – the third kind of need arises: that is religion. That is the God-
need, the spiritual need. That is the highest need.
If a hungry man is interested in God, his God cannot be the true God. His God will
only be a provider of food. […]
That is a poor man’s God. It is not strange that the Christian prayer has it: Give us
our daily bread.
Buddha could not have conceived such a prayer… Buddha’s miracles are so
different that you will be surprised!
A woman goes to Buddha: her child is dead and she is crying and she is weeping
and she is a widow and she will never have another child and the only child is dead
and that was all her love and all her attention.
She goes crying and weeping to Buddha.
If she had gone to Christ, then the miracle would have been that Christ would touch
and bring the dead back, as he brought Lazarus back.
What did Buddha do?
Buddha smiled and said to her, ”You go into the town and just find a few mustard
seeds from a house where nobody has ever died.”
And the woman rushed into the town and she went to each house.
And wherever she went they said, ”We can give you as many mustard seeds as you
want, but the condition will not be fulfilled, because so many people have died in our
house. And, woman, don’t be mad! Buddha has played a trick on you. You will not
find a single house on the whole earth.”
But she hoped, ”Maybe… who knows? There may be some house that has not
known death.” And she went around and around the whole day.
By the evening a great understanding had dawned on her: ”Death is part of life; it
happens. It is not something personal, it is not something like a personal calamity
that has happened to me.”
With that understanding she went to Buddha. He asked, ”Where are the mustard
seeds?” And she smiled … and she said, ”You did it!”
She fell at his feet and said, ”Initiate me. I would like to know that which never dies. I
don’t ask for my child back, because even if he is given, he will die again. So what is
the point? Teach me something so that I can know inside myself that which never
dies.”
Now this is a totally different story. Jesus’ miracle looks more miraculous because
the earth was still poor. Can’t you see the point? The East is turning Christian and
the West is turning Buddhist. The more the West becomes rich the more Buddhist it
will be. The new Christians are born in the East – poor tribes, primitive tribes,
untouchables, the downtrodden. To them, Jesus has appeal. They would like
somebody to turn stones into bread, they are hungry. What have they to do with
Buddha? Buddha seems too aristocratic, talks about great things which make no
sense to the poor and the hungry.
Osho, The Wisdom of the Sands, Vol 1, Ch 3, Q 2

Your face changes continuously. If you see a stranger you have a different face; if
you see a friend, immediately the face changes; if your servant is there you have a
different face; if your master is there you have a different face. You continuously
change your masks because you depend on the situation. You don’t have a soul,
you are not integrated, things around you change you. That is not the case with a
Joshu. With a Joshu, the case is totally different. He changes his surroundings, he is
not changed by his surroundings. Whatsoever happens around him is irrelevant, his
face remains the same; there is no need to change the mask.
It is reported that once a governor came to see Zen Master Joshu.
Of course, he was a great politician, a powerful man, a governor. He wrote on a

paper, “I have come to see you,” his name and governor of this-and-this state.
He must have, knowingly or unknowingly, wanted to influence Joshu.
Joshu looked at the paper, threw it away and said to the man who had brought the
message: “Say I don’t want to see this fellow at all. Throw him out.”
The man went and said: “Joshu has said, ‘Throw him out.’ He has thrown your paper
away and said, ‘I don’t want to see this fellow.’“
The governor understood.
He wrote again on a paper, just his name and, “I would like to see you.”
The paper reached Joshu and he said: “So this is the fellow! Bring him in.”
The governor came in and he asked: “But why did you behave in such a strange
way? You said, ‘Throw this man out.’“
Joshu said: “Faces are not allowed here. ‘Governor’ is a face, a mask. I recognize
you very well, but I don’t recognize masks and if you have come with a mask, you
are not allowed.
“Now it is okay; I know you very well, but I don’t know any governor. The next time
you come, leave the governor behind, leave it at your house; don’t bring it with you.”
We are almost continuously using faces; immediately we change. If we see changes

in the situation we change immediately, as if we have no integrated soul, no
crystallized soul.
Osho, Roots and Wings – Talks on Zen, later called A Bird on the Wing, Ch 4
Between two thoughts try to be alert; look into the interval, the space in between.
You will see no mind; that is your nature. For thoughts come and go – they are
accidental – but that inner space always remains. Clouds gather and go, disappear –
they are accidental – but the sky remains. You are the sky.
Once it happened that a seeker came to Bayazid, one Sufi mystic, and asked,
“Master, I am a very angry person. Anger happens to me very easily; I become really
mad and I do things. I cannot even believe later on that I can do such things; I am
not in my senses. So, how to drop this anger, how to overcome it, how to control it?”
Bayazid took the head of the disciple in his hands and looked into his eyes. The
disciple became a little uneasy, and Bayazid said, “Where is that anger? I would like
to see into it.”
The disciple laughed uneasily and said, “Right now, I am not angry. Sometimes it
happens.”
So Bayazid said, “That which happens sometimes cannot be your nature. It is an

accident, It comes and goes. It is like clouds – so why be worried about the clouds?
Think of the sky which is always there.”
This is the definition of Atma – the sky which is always there. All that comes and
goes is irrelevant; don’t be bothered by it, it is just smoke. The sky that remains
eternally there never changes, never becomes different. Between two thoughts, drop
into it; between two thoughts it is always there. Look into it and suddenly you will
realize that you are in no-mind.
Osho, A Bird on the Wing – Talks on Zen, Ch 2 (excerpt)

Our beloved Mster, Bankei was preaching quietly to his followers one day when his talking
was interrupted by a priest from another sect.
This sect believed in the power of miracles and thought that salvation came from repeating
holy words.
Bankei stopped talking and asked the priest what he wanted to say.
The priest boasted that the founder of his religion could stand on one bank of the river with a
brush in his hand and write a holy name on a piece of paper, held by an assistant on the
opposite bank of the river.
The priest asked: “What miracles can you do?”
Bankei replied: “Only one. When I am hungry I eat and when I am thirsty I drink.”
The only miracle, the impossible miracle, is to be just ordinary.
The longing of the mind is to be extraordinary. The ego thirsts and hungers for the
recognition that you are somebody. Somebody achieves that dream through wealth,
somebody else achieves that dream through power, politics, somebody else can
achieve that dream through miracles, jugglery, but the dream remains the same: I
cannot tolerate being nobody.
And this is a miracle – when you accept your nobodiness, when you are just as
ordinary as anybody else, when you don’t ask for any recognition, when you can
exist as if you are not existing. To be absent is the miracle.
This story is beautiful, one of the most beautiful Zen anecdotes, and Bankei is one of
the superb masters. But Bankei was an ordinary man.
Once it happened that Bankei was working in his garden. Somebody came, a
seeker, a man in search of a master, and he asked Bankei, “Gardener, where is the
master?”
Bankei laughed and said, “Wait. Come from that door, inside you will find the
master.”
So the man went round and came inside. He saw Bankei sitting on a throne, the
same man who was the gardener outside. The seeker said, “Are you kidding? Get
down from this throne. This is sacrilegious, you don’t pay any respect to the master.”
Bankei got down, sat on the ground, and said, “Now then, it is difficult. Now you will
not find the master here because I am the master.”
It was difficult for that man to see that a great master could work in the garden, could
be just ordinary. He left. He couldn’t believe that this man was the master; he
missed.
Osho, A Bird on the Wing – Talks on Zen, Ch 6 (excerp
He had a disciple, Vivekananda, who felt great power the first time he had a satori.
And in the ashram of Ramakrishna there was a very simple innocent man whose
name was Kalu. He was so innocent and so simple, so childlike, that Vivekananda
used to tease him always. Vivekananda was an intellectual type, argumentative. And
this Kalu was a simple villager.
And he used to worship. His room was a temple and in his room there were
hundreds of gods – in India you can purchase as many gods as you want. Any stone
can become a god. You just put red colour on it and it becomes a god. So he had
almost three hundred gods in his small room. There was no space left even for him
to sleep. And these three hundred gods he had to worship every day; it used to take
six to eight hours. By the evening he was finished with the worshipping, then he
would take his food.
Vivekananda was always saying, ‘This is stupid, this is foolish. You throw all these
gods in the Ganges. Be finished. This is nonsense. The god is within.’ But Kalu was
such a simple man that he said, ‘I love those stones. They are beautiful. Don’t you
see this stone? See how beautiful it is. And I have found it by the Ganges; the
Ganges has given it to me. Now how can I throw it back into the Ganges? No, I
cannot do that.’
The day Vivekananda attained his first satori, he was sitting in another room just
close by Kalu’s room. With the first power rush the idea came into his mind that Kalu
must be worshipping still. It was afternoon but he must be worshipping. So just to
have fun he thought of an idea, he projected an idea into Kalu’s mind from his room
– ‘Kalu, now take all your gods and throw them into the Ganges.’ He felt that the
power was there. He could project the thought and it would be received.
Ramakrishna was sitting outside. He saw this whole game – what Vivekananda had
done. He must have seen the thought being projected. But he waited. Then Kalu
came out with a big bundle; he was carrying all the gods in one big bag.
Ramakrishna stopped him and he said, ‘Wait, where are you going?’ Kalu said, ‘An
idea came into my mind that this is foolish. I am going to throw all these gods away. I
am finished.’
Ramakrishna said, ‘You wait. Call Vivekananda.’ Vivekananda was called and
Ramakrishna shouted very angrily and said, ‘Is this the way to use power?’ And he
told Kalu, ‘You go back to your room, put your gods back in their places. This is not
your idea, it is Vivekananda’s.’
Then Kalu said, ‘I felt as if somebody was hitting me like a stone, as if it had come
from the outside, but I am a poor simple man, I didn’t know what was happening.
And the idea took such possession of me and I was trembling with fear – “What am I
doing?” But I was almost possessed.’
Ramakrishna was so angry with Vivekananda that he said, ‘Now, I will keep your
key. You will only receive this key just before you are dying, just three days before.
You will never have any more satoris again.’
And this is how it happened. Vivekananda didn’t have another satori again. He cried
and wept for years but he didn’t, he could not have. He tried hard. And then
Ramakrishna died. When Ramakrishna was dying he was crying and saying to him,
‘Give my key back.’ And Ramakrishna said, ‘You will get it just three days before you
die – because you seem to be dangerous. Such power cannot be used in such a
way. You are not pure enough yet. You wait. You go on crying and you go on
meditating.’
And exactly three days before Vivekananda died he had another satori. But then he
knew his death had come, only three days were left.
Osho, Sufis, People on the Path, Vol 1, Ch 9 (excerpt)
Let me tell you a small story.
It happened that Moses was passing and he came across a man who was praying.
But he was doing such an absurd prayer (not only absurd, but insulting to God) that
Moses stopped. It was absolutely unlawful. It is better not to pray than to pray in
such a way, because the man was saying things which are impossible to believe.
The man was saying, “Let me come close to you my God, my Lord, and I promise
that I will clean your body when it is dirty. Even if lice are there, I will take them
away…. And I am a good shoemaker, I will make you perfect shoes. You are moving
in such ancient shoes – dirty, gone completely dirty…. And nobody looks after you,
my Lord. I will look after you. When you are ill, I will serve and give you medicine.
And I am a good cook also!”
This type of prayer he was doing! So Moses said, “Stop! Stop your nonsense! What
are you saying? To whom are you talking – to God? And he has lice on his body?
And his clothes are dirty and you will clean them? And nobody is there to look after
him, and you will be his cook? From whom have you learned this prayer?”
The man said, “I have not learned it from anywhere. I am a very poor and
uneducated man, and I don’t know how to pray. I have made it up myself and these
are the things that I know. Lice trouble me very much, so he must be in trouble. And
sometimes the food is not good – my wife is not a good cook – and my stomach
aches. He must be also suffering. This is just my own experience that has become
my prayer. But if you know the right prayer, you teach me.”
So Moses taught him the right prayer. The man bowed down to Moses, thanked him,
tears of deep gratitude flowing, and he went away. Moses was very happy. He
thought that he had done a good deed. He looked at the sky to see what God
thought about it.
And God was very angry! He said, “I have sent you there to bring people closer to
me, but you have thrown away one of my greatest lovers. Now he will be doing the
right prayer, but it won’t be a prayer at all – because prayer has nothing to do with
the law. It is love. Love is a law unto itself; it needs no other law.”
Osho, Come Follow To You – Reflections on Jesus of Nazareth, Vol 1, Ch 1 (excerpt)
Why struggle? Why bring your will into it? Surrender, relax… be with the ocean. Flow
with it. This is the single step. And once you have taken this step, the other step is
taken by God of his own accord. God comes only when you are in utter relaxation.
[…]
Narada, the great Indian mystic, is going to see God. Playing on his veena, he passes
a forest, and comes across a very old sage sitting under a tree.
The old sage says to Narada, “You are going to God – please ask one question from
me. I have been making all kinds of efforts for three lives, now how much more is
needed? How much longer do I have to wait? When is my liberation going to
happen? You just ask him!”
Narada laughed and said, “Okay.”
As he progressed, just by the side, under another tree, a young man was dancing
with his ektara, singing, dancing – very young. May have been only thirty. Jokingly,
Narada asked the young man, “Would you also like any question to be asked of God
– I am going. The old man, your neighbor, has asked.”
The young man did not reply. He continued his dance – as if he had not listened at
all, as if he was not there at all.
After a few days, Narada came back. He told the old man, “I asked God. He said
three lives more.”
The old man was doing his japa on his beads. He threw the beads. He was in a rage.
He threw the scriptures that he was keeping with him, and he said, “This is
absolutely unjust! Three lives more?!”
Narada moved to the young man who was again dancing, and he said, “Although
you had not answered, and you had not asked, just by the way I asked God about
you too. But now I am afraid – whether to tell it to you or not? Seeing the rage of the
old man, I am hesitating.”
But the young man did not say anything; he continued to dance. Narada told him;
“When I asked, God said, ‘Tell the young man that he will have to be born as many
times as there are leaves on the tree under which he is dancing.'”
And the young man started dancing even more ecstatically, and he said, “So fast?!
There are so many trees in the world and so many leaves… only this much? Only
these leaves? Only this many lives? I have already attained! When you go next,
thank him.”
And it is said the man became liberated that very moment. That very moment he
became liberated! If there is such test, such totality of trust, time is not needed. If
there is no trust, then even three lives are not enough. And my feeling is that old
man must be around somewhere on the M.G. Road! He cannot have become
liberated yet. Even three lives won’t do. Such a mind can’t become liberated. Such a
mind is what hell is.
Osho, The Perfect Master – Talks on Sufi Stories, Vol 2, Ch 9 (excerpt)

When he went to his Master in Tibet, he was so humble, so pure, so authentic, that
other disciples became jealous of him. It was certain that he would be the successor.
And of course there was politics, so they tried to kill him.
One day they said to him, “If you really believe in the Master, can you jump from the
hill? If you really believe, if the trust is there, then nothing – no harm is going to
happen.” And Milarepa jumped without even hesitating for a single moment. They
rushed down because it was almost a three-thousand-foot deep valley. They went
down to find his scattered bones, but he was sitting there in a lotus posture, very
happy, tremendously happy.
He opened his eyes and said, “You are right; trust saves.”
They thought it must be some coincidence, so when the house was on fire one day,
they told him, “If you love your Master and you trust, you can go in.” He rushed in to
save the woman and the child who were left inside. He came, and the fire was too
great and they were hoping that he would die, but he was not burned at all. And he
became more and more radiant, because the trust….
One day they were going somewhere, they were to cross a river, and they told him,
“You need not go in the boat. You have such great trust; you can walk on the river” –
and he walked.
That was the first time the Master saw him. He was not aware that he had been told
to jump into the valley and told to go into the burning house; he was not aware. But
that time he was there on the bank and he saw him walking, and he said, “What are
you doing? It is impossible!”
And Milarepa said, “Not impossible at all! I am doing it by your power, sir.”
Now the Master thought, “If my name and my power can do this to this ignorant,
stupid man…. I have never tried it myself”… so he tried. He drowned. Nothing has
been heard about him after that.
Even an unenlightened Master, with deep trust, can revolutionize your life. And the
reverse is also true: even an enlightened Master may not be of any help. It depends
on you, it depends totally on you.
There are people who go on thinking that if they had made the world it would have
been a better world. If they had made the world they would have done this and they
would have done that. There would have been no disease, there would have been
no death, there would have been no ugliness, there would have been no stupidity.
And it looks so logical: yes, if a world is there where no disease exists, how beautiful
it will be!
But do you know? – if there is no disease, there will be no health either.
Do you know? – if there is no ugliness, there will be no beauty either.
Do you know? – if there are no thorns, there will be no flowers either.
Do you know? – if there is no death, there will be no life either.
You cannot have a life without death. And if you could have a life without death it
would be utterly boring; there would be no way to get rid of it.
A story is told of Alexander the Great when he came to the East. He had heard that
in the desert there was a certain cave he was going to pass where there was a small
pond of nectar. If you drank that nectar you would become immortal.
And the story is beautiful. Alexander reached there and entered the cave. He was so
tremendously happy – just think of the happiness if you had been in his place! The
nectar was there: just a moment more and he would be immortal. He cupped his
hands, and just as he was going to drink, a crow who was sitting on the rock said,
“Wait, just a minute!”
Alexander was surprised – a crow speaking? He asked, “What do you want to say?”
The crow said, “Just one thing, that’s why I am sitting here. I have drunk from this
pool: now I am here for millions of years. I want to die. The only idea that persists in
me, twenty-four hours, is that of death. I want to get rid of this rotten body, but I
cannot. I have tried but nothing succeeds. I have taken poison but it won’t do. I have
fallen from the mountains, it won’t do. I have entered into fire, it won’t burn. Now
there is no way to die – and I am tired.
“Just think: for millions of years, I have to go on doing the same repetitive nonsense
every day. And there is no hope even in the future. I will never be able to die, I
cannot commit suicide, and I am tired of life! So now this is my mission: I sit here to
prevent other people.”
And it is said that Alexander thought for a moment, dropped the idea of drinking the
nectar and rushed out of the cave – afraid that he might be tempted to drink it.
Remember, wherever you pay your attention, that becomes your reality of life. If you
pay your attention to pebbles, they become diamonds – because wherever is your
attention, there is your treasure.
I have heard, it happened once:
A railway employee accidentally trapped himself in a refrigerator car. He could

neither escape nor attract the attention of anybody to his sad plight, so he resigned
himself to a tragic fate. The record of his approaching death was scribbled on the
wall of the car in these words: “I am becoming colder. Still colder now. Nothing to do
but wait. These may be my last words.”
And they were. When the car was opened, the searchers were astonished to find
him dead. There was no physical reason for his death. The temperature of the car
was a moderate fifty-six degrees. Only in the mind of the victim did the freezing
apparatus work. There was plenty of fresh air; he had not suffocated.
He died of his own wrong attention. He died of his own fears. He died of his own
mind. It was a suicide.
Remember, wherever you pay your attention, that becomes your reality. And once it
becomes a reality, it becomes powerful to attract you and your attention. Then you
pay more attention to it: it becomes even more of a reality and, by and by, the unreal
that is created by your mind becomes your only reality and the real is completely
forgotten.
Osho, Yoga, the Alpha and the Omega – Discourses on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Vol
7, Ch 1 (excerpt)
I am reminded of a Sufi story… It is not just a story, it is a historical fact.
Another great emperor of India was Akbar. Mohammedans pray five times a day and Akbar was very
particular. One day he had gone hunting in the forest with all his friends, and they all got lost.
Evening was descending, the sun was setting and it was the time to pray. So Akbar stopped under a
huge tree, tied his horse to the tree and sat on the ground to do his last prayer of the day. And as he
was praying, a woman, a young woman, ran just by his side, giving him such a shock – it seemed as if
she was mad or blind – that Akbar fell down. Still, she did not look back.
Akbar naturally was very angry. Mohammedans in prayer are very particular nobody should disturb
them. It can become a very dangerous thing and for the emperor… An ordinary village girl, not caring
at all, running like mad and hitting the emperor… The emperor fell down – because Mohammedans
pray sitting on their knees, so it is very easy just to push them a little and they will fall down.
It is very difficult to push a Buddhist or a Hindu when he is praying, because he is sitting in a lotus
posture. It is a very locked posture – you cannot just push him. He is very strong in his posture. But
to push the Mohammedan is very easy, howsoever strong he may be – his posture is such, sitting on
his knees.
Akbar finished his prayer quickly because he wanted to catch hold of the girl. She could not be
allowed to do such things. If she could behave with the emperor in such a way, what to say about
other people? But he could not figure out – it was getting dark – where she had gone. But he waited,
thinking she must come back to the village. He was just outside the village.
And finally she came. Akbar stopped her and said, “Do you remember what you have done?”
She said, “I don’t remember anything. Do you?”
Akbar said, “You seem to be very strange. You don’t understand. You are talking with the emperor of
the country.”
She said, “I understand, but I don’t remember anything of what you are talking about.”
He said, “What am I talking about? I have been praying here and you ran in such a way that you
pushed me, and I fell down. You disturbed my prayer!”
She said, “Perhaps if you say so, it must have been so, but you have to forgive me. I was going to
wait for my lover just on the road which runs through the forest. I wanted to greet him – he is
coming after many years – just outside the village. I could not remain sitting in the house and
waiting. It is just one mile distant, but he will be waiting, thinking that I must be standing just by the
side of a tree where we used to meet when we were young. That’s why I was so much concentrated
that I did not know I had committed any mistake. Please forgive me, it must have been committed
without my knowing at all.”
She was so innocent and tears came to her eyes because she had hurt her own emperor. “You can
give me any punishment, otherwise it will remain heavy on my heart. But just one question before
you punish me: you were in prayer – still you were not so much in concentration as I was, because I
don’t remember at all. It cannot be that I hit you… it cannot be one-sided. Your body also must have
touched my body, but I don’t remember having seen anybody on the way – praying or falling or
anything. I don’t remember that anybody touched my body. So I am puzzled, and I would like to be
clear about it. Is your prayer not as strong as as my love?”
Akbar remembers it in his autobiography, Akbar Nama. He says, “I had to ask forgiveness from that
village girl. I have never forgotten her face, and I have never forgotten that my prayer is just formal.
If I am lost in my prayer and my love, in my gratitude towards the ultimate, then how can I be aware
that somebody has touched me, pushed me, or that my body has fallen? I would not have been
aware of anything. But I was aware and that makes it certain that my prayer is just superficial.
“That girl’s love was far deeper. She was closer to God than I was, although she was not concerned
with God at all.”
A tremendous statement of understanding…
Yes, Sat-Chit-Anand – truth, consciousness, bliss. All are possible to you. In fact, they are your
birthright. You just have to claim them… and the claim needs a little patience.
There is a Sufi story:

A king stopped his horse. He was passing by a nursery that belonged to a poor gardener. And he
looked at the poor gardener – he had stopped for a special reason. He had wanted to stop many
times. He used to pass through that beautiful place where the nursery of the poor gardener was – it
was the most beautiful way to the palace.
Today he could not contain his curiosity. The curiosity was that the man looked so old… certainly he
had passed at least one century. Perhaps he was one hundred and twenty or even more. He looked
so old and yet he was preparing small plants and working the whole day on those plants.
And those were plants of trees which take at least one hundred years to grow to their full height.
Their lifespan is long – they live at least four thousand years. After one hundred years, they are still
just children. They can count on a lifespan of four thousand years, but only after one hundred years
do they start flowering – not before that. And after one thousand years, they start giving fruit.
The king was puzzled: this man seemed at least one hundred and twenty years old. “Is he mad, or
what? He cannot expect to see the flowers of these trees, to say nothing about the fruits. And he is
working so hard in his old age, the whole day in the hot sun” – it was a desert land.
He stopped and went close to the old man and said, “I watch you every day, and I see how hard you
work, but a question… Every day I go on repressing it, not wanting to interfere. But you will have to
forgive me – I want to ask one thing: Do you think you will be able to see the flowers of these
plants?”
The old man laughed. He said, “No, I will not be able to see the flowers of these plants. But do you
see just behind my hut those huge trees, thousands of years old? They are the same trees. They are
giving me fruits, they are giving me flowers.”
The king said, “I can see them, but I still don’t understand. What do you mean by bringing those
trees in?”
The man said, “If my parents or my forefathers had also thought that they would not be able to see
the flowers, to say nothing about the fruits, there would not have been those trees. I am not
thinking about myself. I am thinking about my forefathers and about my future children. I owe them
something.
“If my forefathers were so patient that they could be happy that some children whom they could
never know would enjoy the fruits and the flowers of these beautiful trees… Do you think I am a
worse human being than my forefathers? Can’t I think also of someone, far away in the future, being
thankful towards me?”
The king wrote in his biography: “The old gardener has shocked me with his patience and with his
infinite love and compassion and trust.”
Somebody, some day, is bound to see the flowers. And as far as your inner growth is concerned, it is
not a question of somebody else seeing the flowers. You are going to see and can’t you be patient –
just a little patient?
Osho, Sat Chit Anand, Ch 4, Q 3 (excerpt)
One of the great philosophers of Greece, Plato, was a contemporary of Diogenes.

They were continuously in controversy because Diogenes was a mystic and he knew
things which Plato could not even dream of, although Plato was a great philosopher.
And in the books and the histories of philosophy, you will find Plato, you will not find
Diogenes. But the real thing was with Diogenes, not with Plato, who was a great
thinker, a giant intellectual. Diogenes was a simple, childlike, innocent man, but he
knew something which thousands of Platos together could not know.
One day, when Plato was on a morning walk by the side of the sea, he saw a man. It
was early in the morning, a little dark – the sun had not risen yet. He could not figure
out who the man was. This man was Diogenes and in a spoon he was bringing… He
would go to the ocean, take the water in the spoon – he had made a small hole in
the sand – pour the water into the sand, and then go back.
Plato, standing there, saw him doing it. He looked like a madman. For a moment he
thought, “I should not interfere.” But such is the mind – it becomes curious: “Maybe
he is not mad; perhaps he is doing something meaningful and I am not aware of it.
And what is wrong if I ask him?” So he said, “Please forgive me for interrupting. I
don’t want to interrupt you – you may be involved in some great work – but what is
going on?”
Diogenes said, “I am trying to empty the ocean.”
Plato said, “My God, with this teaspoon?”
And then the sun was rising and Diogenes started laughing and said, “Plato, what
else are you doing?” Then Plato recognized Diogenes. He used to live naked, but
that day he was covered with a cloth, just to hide himself, so Plato would not know
him at first. Otherwise he might not have interrupted.
Plato was simply stunned, he could not answer. Diogenes said, “That’s what you are
trying to do. Your mind is nothing but a teaspoon and with it you are trying to exhaust
the oceanic existence. What I am doing is just to remind you… I know it is not
possible. You should also remember that what you are doing is impossible.”
When Socrates was poisoned, the chief judge said to him, “I feel sorry that I had to agree with the
majority. They all wanted to kill you. And you are such a strange fellow… I gave you three
alternatives, but you did not accept.”
The chief judge had tremendous respect, but what to do? The majority was shouting, “He should be
killed because he is corrupting our youth. He is giving them ideas which are against our tradition,
against our religion. He is making them skeptical of the old and the ancient. He is making them
explore the reality on their own, and not just believe in knowledge and ancient scriptures. He is
destroying our tradition. We don’t want this man; this man should be destroyed.”
But the chief judge understood the whole situation. He said to Socrates… because in those days in
Greece there were city states; Athens was a city state and the Athenian law was not applicable
outside Athens. So he said, “The first simple choice is, you just move out of Athens, just outside the
boundary line, and there you can make your school, your academy. Those who want to learn will
come there.”
Socrates said, “That will show my fear of death… and some day I am going to die, I am old enough.
These people are too impatient; I will die by myself. So to escape from Athens just for a few years…
my being does not support such an idea. I cannot act out of fear. I would rather accept death,
because you can only kill my body but not my spirit. And the body is going to die anyway, any
moment!”
The chief judge said, “The second alternative is if you promise not to talk about truth, to stop
teaching, you can live in Athens.”
He said, “Then what will be the point of living? To me, truth is higher than life. Life comes and goes;
truth remains. No, I cannot accept that.”
The chief judge said, “Then the last thing is that you can say, ‘I am sorry that I have hurt people’s
feelings.’ Just a simple apology will make me stand in your favor, and you can be saved from this ugly
act of poisoning you to death.”
Socrates said, “That is not possible, because I have not done anything wrong. I cannot say I am sorry.
I can only say I am immensely happy, and the question of an apology does not arise. For centuries
you all will be condemned because you poisoned me. And one thing I would like you to know is that
your name will be remembered only because you gave the judgment for my death; otherwise,
nobody will remember you.”
This is the man of individuality, who does not care for his life, for his body, who has no fear. He
accepted death with joy.
Osho, The Great Pilgrimage – From Here to Here, Ch 1, Q 1 (excerpt
A man came to Ramakrishna. He had been in the Himalayas for a long time; he heard about
Ramakrishna and he came to see him. Ramakrishna was sitting under a tree by the side of the
Ganges, near Calcutta, where he used to live. The man looked at Ramakrishna; he was
thinking that he would be a very marvelous man – but he was a simple villager, uneducated,
very humble.
So the man who had been in the Himalayas practicing yoga said, “I have come from afar and
I am very disillusioned seeing you. You look to be absolutely ordinary.”
Ramakrishna said, “You are right. I am absolutely ordinary. How I can serve you who have
come from so far?”
He said, “There is no question of service. You have so many followers – for what reason?
Can you walk on the water? I can.”
Ramakrishna said, “You are tired. Just sit a little, and then if you want to walk on the water
we will enjoy it. How long did it take you to learn the art of walking on water?”
The man said, “Nearabout twenty years.”
Ramakrishna laughed. He said, “You wasted your life. What is the point in the first place?
When I want to go to the other shore” – the ordinary rate in those days was two paise –
“because I’m a poor man and people love me, they won’t even take me to the other shore if I
insist on giving them two paise. They refuse. They say, ‘If you want to come, don’t talk about
money. You can come and we will feel blessed. It is enough to be with you while we are
crossing the Ganges.’ So something which costs only two paise… you wasted twenty years to
attain it? You surprise me.”
The man at first was shocked, but then he realized that what Ramakrishna was saying was
right: “What is the point? – I have become a showman. These twenty years… almost one
third of my life is wasted. And what is my achievement?”
The golden gate is open for those who are simple, who are humble, who are almost nobodies,
who don’t have great achievements to proclaim to the world, who don’t carry awards and
Nobel prizes, who have nothing to brag about… who are just as simple as birds, as trees.
Perhaps you have never thought about it, that the whole existence, the trees, the clouds, the
mountains, the stars, are all humble. There is no arrogance anywhere. Only a man who
understands the secret of being nobody can enter into the narrow gate.
The gate is very narrow; if you are somebody, you cannot enter into it. You have to be almost
nothing, only then the gate of the present is available to you. You have to be egoless, nothing
to claim, just being as ordinary as the rainwater or the silent trees, as innocent as the just-born
child. He looks all around, he is conscious, but he has no claim. He is, but he has no identity.
He does not say, “I am this, I am that”; he does not carry certificates and degrees and
miraculous powers.
Osho, The Great Zen Master Ta Hui, Ch 37 (excerpt)

For example, when you are seeing a sunset and you are overwhelmed by its beauty,
in that moment there is knowing. You don’t even say to yourself, “How beautiful!” –
because even the words “how beautiful” will be a disturbance, will take you away
from the present. If you simply stand before the setting sun, with all the colors spread
over the horizon, shadows, reflections in the ocean, it is so enchanting that you
almost stop breathing. You are in a state of awe. Those few moments are knowing.
Tomorrow you will tell somebody what a beautiful sunset you have seen the day
before – that will be knowledge. Now it is only words.
I have told you the story of Lao Tzu.
He used to go for a morning walk in the mountains. An old friend used to follow him,
and one day the friend told him, “I have a guest in my house, and he also wants to
come for the morning walk.”
Lao Tzu said, “I have no objection, just make sure that he does not start talking.
Knowing should remain knowing, it should not be converted into dead knowledge.”
The friend said, “I will take care of it.” He convinced his guest that it is a great
opportunity to be for two hours in the morning with Lao Tzu. “It is rare and invaluable,
but the condition is that you should not speak.”
The guest said, “That is not a problem. I will keep completely silent.” And then they
started. It was still dark and when they reached the peak of the mountain, the sun
was rising. The birds started chirping, the trees started coming out of their sleep…
flowers all around, wild flowers opened their petals and their fragrance. The man
forgot that he was not supposed to speak – and he did not think that this was much
speech. He simply said, “How beautiful.”
Lao Tzu looked at his old colleague and friend with such stern eyes… When they
were back home he told his friend, “Please don’t bring your guest again tomorrow
because he is too talkative” – and in two hours he had said only two words, “How
beautiful”!
Lao Tzu said to his friend, “I was present, he was present, you were present, the sun
was present, the songs of the birds were present, the fragrance of flowers was
present – there is no need to say anything. I was also aware… I am not saying that it
was not beautiful; I am saying that by saying it is beautiful, you have reduced its
multidimensional beauty into two ordinary words. You have made knowing into
knowledge.”
The difference is very subtle. Knowing is a living, flowing experience, still vibrating in
your heart. Knowledge is of the past – it may be just one minute past. Knowledge is
part of the memory; knowing is part of awareness.

I remember old Heraclitus, whose statement has not been taken very seriously in the
Greek tradition of philosophy because he goes against the whole trend. He is unique
and alone.
He says, “You cannot step in the same river twice,” because the river is constantly
flowing.
If I ever meet Heraclitus – and I think I am going to meet him some day, because in
this eternity people are bound to stumble again and again on the old fellows – I am
going to tell him, “Change your statement. It was great when you made it, but it has a
flaw in it. You say, ‘You cannot step in the same river twice.’ I want you to say, ‘You
cannot step in the same river even once’ – because even while you are stepping in,
the river is flowing.
When your foot touches the surface, the water underneath is flowing; when your foot
is in the middle, the waters above and below it are flowing; when you reach the
bottom, everything above it is flowing… you cannot enter into the same river even
once!”
And such is the nature of life. Everything goes on renewing itself; only mind is a dead
thing, it remains the same. Hence mind has no resonance with life. If the mind is
Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan it is fixed, it is a fossil, it is dead. It cannot live in
the present; it is still searching for answers in the ashes of the burned bodies which
do not have any life any more.
The golden gate is available only for those who are always alive to the new, and who
are open – and joyfully, not reluctantly – who are happy to drop the past and remain
unburdened.

Why have the awakened people always been against scriptures? This is a great
misunderstanding all around the world. The people who have awakened are against
the scriptures for a totally different reason than people understand. People think they
are against scriptures because scriptures are wrong; they are against scriptures
because if you get lost in the words of scriptures you will never come to know your
own truth. The scriptures may be right, that is not the point. Perhaps they are right –
but they are not right for you; they were right only for those people who had
experienced and have expressed something out of their experience.
But to you they are just dead words, and if you become too much interested in
collecting dead corpses around yourself you will soon be drowned in the dead words.
That’s what happens to all the scholars: their great effort simply becomes a suicide.
They work hard, but their gain is nothing.
Scriptures may have come from people who were awakened, but the moment
somebody says… It is no more the same as his own experience. And when it is
written it goes even further away. That’s why no enlightened person in the whole
world has written anything by his own hand; they have spoken – because the spoken
word and the written word have qualitative differences.
The spoken word has a warmth; the written word is absolutely cold, ice cold. The
spoken word has the heartbeat of the master. The spoken word is not just a word – it
is still breathing when it reaches you, it has still some flavor. It is coming from a
source of immense joy and light; it is bound to carry something of that fragrance,
some radiation from that light, some vibe which may not be visible but will stir your
being.
To listen to a master is one thing, and to read just the same words is totally different,
because the living presence of the master is no more behind the words. You can’t
see those eyes, you can’t see those gestures, you can’t see in those words the same
authority… you can’t feel those same silent gaps.
The presence of the master, his charisma, his energy is missing in the written word.
The written word is absolutely dead.
No master has ever written except Lao Tzu – and that too under imperial pressure.
His whole life he refused to write, and in the end he was going to leave China and go
towards the Himalayas for his ultimate rest.
The emperor of China ordered the armies on the boundary, “If Lao Tzu passes
through that area” – because that was the only gate towards the Himalayas, he was
bound to pass by there – “imprison him. Take good care of him, but make it clear to
him he cannot go out of China unless he writes his experiences. This is an order
from the emperor.”
Poor Lao Tzu was not aware what was going on. He simply went to the place where
it was easiest to move out of China. There was an army waiting, and he was caught
immediately. Respectfully, with great honor, they told him, “This is the imperial order.
Forgive us, we don’t want to hinder you, but just to fulfill the order – otherwise we will
not be able to allow you to go out of China. And we have made a special guesthouse
for you with every comfort, luxury, according to the orders from the emperor. You
stay and you write whatever you have experienced, what the truth is that you have
realized which has attracted so many people.”
Because he wanted to reach quickly to the Himalayas – his death was coming closer
and he wanted to die in the Himalayas… The Himalayas have an eternal silence, a
peace that you cannot find anywhere else. Under such circumstances he wrote Tao
Te Ching, a small booklet.
That is the only exception in the whole history when an enlightened man has written
anything. But the beginning of the book says, “Truth cannot be written. So
remember, whatever I am writing is not truth. I will try my best to be as close to truth
as possible, but approximate truth is not truth.” So he has begun his book with the
statement, “Whatever is written goes far away from the living experience.”
That is the reason why all the awakened people have been against scriptures
This is the problem with intellectual understanding. You seem to understand, and still
you go on somewhere missing the point. The intellectuals try in every way to be as
profound as the mystics, but their profundity is hilarious.
I am reminded of an ancient parable: A great archer – he was also the king of his
country – was going through a village in his golden chariot, and he was amazed to
see that on every tree there was a target, and an arrow or many arrows exactly
hitting the bull’s eye. There was a circle, and the arrow was exactly in the middle;
there was not a single miss, and on almost all the trees there were a few arrows. He
could not believe that in this small village there was such a great archer.
He stopped his chariot, and he enquired about the archer. The person he enquired of
started laughing. He said, “He is an idiot! Don’t be worried about him.”
But the king said, “You don’t understand. He may be an idiot – I’m not concerned
with that – but he is a greater archer than me, that is certain. I would like to see him.”
A crowd gathered, seeing the king, and they all laughed and said, “It is pointless. He
is really a fool.”
But the king could not understand how an idiot can manage such good shots,
absolutely perfect, impeccable. He said, “Stop laughing and call the man!” A young
man was brought to him; he looked stupid, retarded. The king was also puzzled. He
asked the young man, “What is your secret?”
The young man said, “What secret?”
The king showed him that every arrow is exactly in the middle of a circle.
The young man started laughing. He said, “I cannot lie to you. The truth is, first I
shoot the arrow and then I draw the circle. Naturally, one hundred percent… It does
not matter where the arrow goes; wherever it goes, I make the circle later on.
Everybody who passes through this village is struck by the great art. I remain quiet, I
never say the truth to anybody, but you are the king and I cannot lie to you.”
This is really the situation of intellectuals. They are profound archers – but first they
shoot the arrow and then they draw the target! Their work appears, to those who
don’t know their way and their strategy, as perfect.
While you are alive you are not really conscious how precious life is. In fact it is one
of the tricks of the mind: whatever you have, you don’t recognize its value unless you
lose it.
There was a great king who had conquered many lands and had accumulated
immense wealth, but was very unhappy and miserable. There was not a single
moment of joy, bliss… He started asking people, “What is the purpose of all my
wealth and all my kingdom? I cannot even sleep. My mind is so full of tensions,
worries, there is no space for anything else. Is there someone in my kingdom who
can help me?”
People had heard about a Sufi mystic and they said, “In your kingdom there is a Sufi
mystic, a very strange fellow. He has helped many people, although you have to be
a little alert with him because he is not predictable, he may do anything. But one
thing is certain: whatever he does, finally you find that it had a reason. In the
beginning it will look absolutely irrational. If you have courage enough, you can go.”
The king said, “Do you think me a coward? I have invaded great lands; my whole life
has been the life of a warrior. Can a poor Sufi mystic make me afraid? I will go… and
I will go alone, no body guards, no army, no advisers.”
But he took with him a big bag full of diamonds and rubies and emeralds, just to
show to the Sufi mystic: “This is only a sample. I have so much money but it is not
helping me at all. First I used to think that, when I have money, I will relax and enjoy.
But now money is there and I’m living in hell.”
The Sufi mystic was sitting under a tree. The king went there, got down from his
horse, touched the feet of the Sufi mystic and asked him, “Can you help me?”
The Sufi mystic said, “What do you want? I will help you immediately.”
He had heard that this man was strange – otherwise nobody would tell you, “I will
help you immediately.” He is going to do something… The king was a little afraid:
nobody wants to be helped immediately. He said, “There is no hurry, but…”
The Sufi mystic said, “Just tell me what you want. Don’t waste my time. You say it; I
will give it to you and be finished.”
The king said, “You don’t understand. I want peace of mind.”
And when he was saying “peace of mind,” the Sufi mystic took his bag of emeralds
and diamonds and rubies and ran away. The king said, “My God, what kind of man is
he? Is he a mystic or a thief?”
He ran – in his whole life he had never run. The village was unknown to him, with
small streets. The Sufi was perfectly well known; he lived in that village. The king
was shouting, “Catch hold of that thief” – and people were laughing, because people
knew that every day something or other happens. And it was really a laughing
matter: the king was huffing and puffing and shouting, “Catch him! Why are you just
laughing?” – and still running because that old fellow is taking away all his money
and he is going so fast.
The Sufi mystic gave him a good round of the whole village, made the whole village
aware that the mystic is ahead and the king is following, perspiring. Finally he
reached to the same tree, sat there, and waited for the king to come.
The king came very tired, perspiring, and the mystic gave him the bag. He took the
bag, put it on his chest and said, “My God!”
The Sufi said, “Have you got some peace of mind? Had not I told you I would help
you immediately?”
The king said, “Strange is your way… but it is true, I am feeling very peaceful, as I
have never felt in my life.
And the trouble is that this money was always with me, and I never felt so happy as I
am feeling now.”
The Sufi said, “I have solved your problem. Your problem is that you have got
everything. You need some distance, you need to lose it; only then will you
understand what you had. And this is not only true about your money. This is more
true about your life itself: because you have it, you have started taking it for granted.
It is too obvious it is yours. You are not at all concerned that tomorrow it may not be
yours, or even the next second.”
The day you become aware that death will destroy all opportunities for growth… Life
is a great opportunity to grow, but rather than growing you have been simply
accumulating junk which will all be taken away. People only grow old, but growing
old is not growing up.
Very few people grow up.
n the ancient story of Mahabharata – the great Indian war that happened five
thousand years ago – there was a famous archer, Dronacharya. All the princes used
to come to learn archery from him. His most intimate disciple was Arjuna, whose
concentration was the reason for this intimacy, because archery depends on
concentration.
One day Dronacharya was examining his disciples. He asked one disciple,
Yudhishthira, Arjuna’s eldest brother… Dronacharya had hung a dead bird on a tree,
and the dead bird’s right eye was the target. He told Yudhishthira – he was the first,
being the eldest – “Take the bow and the arrow, but before you shoot, I have to ask
you something.”
He became ready with his bow and arrow, and Dronacharya asked him, “W hat are
you seeing?”
He said, “I see everything – all the trees, all the birds.”
The second man was called in and asked, “What are you seeing?”
He said, “I can see only the bird.”
The third man was Arjuna. Dronacharya asked him, “What are you seeing?”
Arjuna said, “Only the right eye of the bird.”
Then Dronacharya told all three to shoot their arrows. Yudhishthira’s arrow went so
far off… you cannot even say it missed – the distance between his arrow and the
bird was so big. The second man’s was a little closer, but still did not reach the right
eye – it hit the bird. But Arjuna’s arrow hit exactly the right eye of the bird. And the
right eye of the bird on a faraway tree is such a small spot…
But Dronacharya said, “Just your answers had given me a sense of who was going
to hit the target. If you see so many trees, you are not focused. If you see only the
bird you are more focused, but still you are not focused on the right eye. The whole
bird is a big thing in comparison to the right eye. But when Arjuna said, ‘I can’t see
anything else except the right eye,’ then it was certain that his arrow was going to
reach the target.”
In science, in archery, in other arts, concentration may be of great use – but it is not
meditation. […]
Meditation is going beyond the mind. It has nothing to do with the mind – except
going beyond it. It is not a faculty of the mind, it is transcendental to mind. When you
can see without the mind in between you and existence, you are in meditation. It is
not concentration. It is utterly silent. It is not focusing… it is absolutely unfocused
awareness.
Yes, the old world will come to an end; Nostradamus is not going to be wrong. But his interpreters
are all wrong. My interpretation is: The death of the old is the birth of the new.
A man down on his luck goes home to his wife and tells her, “Look dear, we are running out of
money and we are gonna have to cut down on all the luxuries.” He then adds scornfully, “If you
would just learn to cook we could fire the chef.” “In that case,” replies the woman, “if you would
learn to make love we could fire the chauffeur.”
In critical moments one has to be truthful, and if things are going to change, then you have to
change also. Your ways of love have to change. You have to drop old kinds of jealousies,
competitions; you have to drop old values of honor, respectability, royal blood… all nonsense. You
have to learn that the whole humanity is one brotherhood. The black and the white and the in-
between, all are the same.
I am reminded…
Rabindranath was in Geneva. He had just been awarded the Nobel prize, and he was being received
by the government of Switzerland in a vast welcome party. Everybody was white. Somebody asked,
Rabindranath, “What is your explanation? Why has God created such discriminations – because you
insist on one brotherhood of the whole humanity.”
Rabindranath said, “God first created a man out of mud and baked him, but being inexperienced,
baked him too much. He’s the Black man. He created a second man. Being afraid that he may again
make another Black man, he pulled him out quite early, unbaked… he’s the White man.”
That’s why in the white man the desire for having a tan continues… a little more baking. And baking
powders are available, baking lotions are available; put on those lotions and powders and lie down
naked under the hot burning sun. This desire is because they were pulled out of the bakery a little
too soon. God said, “My God, I have committed another mistake.”
That’s why the Indian is in-between. That is the third person he baked, just right, neither a little
more, nor a little less. But more than that, there is not any difference… just a little more sun, a little
less sun.
There is no need for any color discrimination. There is no need to have boundaries of nations,
because the earth has no boundaries. There is no need to have flocks of people gathered separately
– the Catholics, the Protestants, the Hindus, the Mohammedans; each one should be free to have his
own immediate and personal contact with existence, his own prayer.
The new man is on the horizon.
All the preparations to destroy the world will only destroy the old man and the old world. They will
create the basic necessity for the birth of a new man. I can see him on the horizon already. He has
arrived; it will just take some time for people to recognize him.
I have always loved an ancient story:
A man, a great man, a fighter for freedom was traveling into the mountains. He stayed in a
caravanserai for the night. He was amazed that in the caravanserai there was a beautiful parrot in a
golden cage, continually repeating, “Freedom! Freedom!” And the serai was in such a place that
when the parrot repeats the word “Freedom!” it goes on echoing in the valley, in the mountains.
The man thought: I have seen many parrots, and I have thought they must be desiring to be free
from those cages… but I have never seen such a parrot whose whole day, from the morning to the
evening when he goes to sleep, is spent in asking for freedom. He had an idea. In the middle of the
night he got up and opened the door of the cage. The owner was fast asleep and he said to the
parrot, he whispered, “Now get out.”
But he was very surprised that the parrot was clinging to the bars of the cage. He told him again and
again: “Have you forgotten about freedom? Just get out! The door is open and the owner is fast
asleep; nobody will ever know. You just fly into the sky; the whole sky is yours.”
But the parrot was clinging so deeply, so hard, that the man said, “What is the matter? Are you
mad?” He tried to take the parrot out with his own hands, but the parrot started hitting him, and at
the same time started shouting, “Freedom! Freedom!” The valleys in the night echoed and re-
echoed… but the man was also stubborn, he was a freedom fighter. He pulled the parrot out, and
threw him into the sky; and he was very satisfied, although his hand was hurt. The parrot had
attacked him as forcefully as he could, but the man was immensely satisfied that he had made a soul
free. He went to sleep.
In the morning, as the man was becoming awake, he heard the parrot shouting, “Freedom!
Freedom!” He thought perhaps the parrot must be sitting on a tree, or on a rock. But when he came
out, the parrot was sitting in the cage. The door was open.
I have loved the story, because it is very true. You may like to be free, but the cage has certain
securities, safeties. In the cage the parrot has no need to worry about food, has no need to worry
about enemies, has no need to worry about a thing in the world. It is cozy, it is golden. No other
parrot has such a valuable cage.
Your power, your riches, your prestige – all are your cages. Your soul wants to be free, but freedom
is dangerous.
Freedom has no insurance.
Freedom has no security, no safety.

Freedom means walking on the edge of a razor – every moment in danger, fighting your way. Every
moment is a challenge from the unknown. Sometimes it is too hot, and sometimes it is too cold –
and nobody is there to take care of you.
In the cage, the owner was responsible. He used to cover the cage, when it was cold, with a blanket;
he used to put an electric fan close by when it was too hot.
Freedom means tremendous responsibility; you are on your own and alone.
Rabindranath is right: Freedom is all I want, but to hope for it I feel ashamed – because it is not a
question of hope; it is a question of taking a risk.
An ancient Eastern story is that ten blind men crossed a stream.

The current was very strong, so they took hold of each other’s hands because they were afraid
somebody may be taken away by the current. They reached the other shore, and somebody
amongst them suggested, “It is better we should count because the current and the stream were
really dangerous. Somebody may have slipped, and we may not even be aware.”
So they started counting. It was a great shock, and they were all crying and weeping; everybody
tried, but the count was always nine – because nobody was counting himself. Naturally, he would
start counting, “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine…. My God, one has gone!” So they
all were crying.
A woodcutter was watching all this drama and he said… he had never seen ten blind men together,
in the first place. Second, what a stupid idea these people had. What was the need to cross the
stream when it was so strong and flooded? And, above all, now they were counting, and crying and
weeping for someone – they did not know who, but certainly someone had been taken away by the
current. Watching them counting, he was simply amazed how was it possible that they were ten
persons, but the count always came to nine?
Some help was needed, so he came down from his tree and he said, “What is the matter?”
They all said, “We have lost one of our friends. We were ten, and now we are only nine.”
The man said, “I can find your tenth man. You are right, you used to be ten, but there is a condition.”
They said, “We will accept any condition, but our friend….”
He said, “It is not a very big condition, it is a simple condition. I will hit on the first man’s head; he
has to say “one.” Then I will hit on the second person’s head two times; he has to say “two.” Then I
will hit on the third person’s three times; he has to say “three.” As many times as I hit, the person
has to speak the number.”
They said, “If this is the way to find the lost friend, we are ready.”
So he enjoyed hitting very much, and he hit them in turn. When he had hit the tenth man ten times
he said “ten.” All the nine said, “You idiot, where have you been? Unnecessarily we have all been
beaten! Where you have been hiding up to now?”
He said, “I was standing here, I was myself counting, and it always came to nine. This man seems to
be a miracle man; he managed to find the tenth man.”
The story is significant for the simple reason that it has become our habit not to count ourselves. So
when you are watching your thoughts, inside, you are not aware that there is a watcher too. When
you are watching silence, you are not aware that you cannot watch silence if you are not there. […]
So all your work is concerned with shifting your focus from the object to the subject. Don’t be
bothered about anger, or silence, or love. Be concerned about whom all this is happening to, and
remain centered there.
Bodhidharma reached China. He was one of the greatest buddhas of all the ages. After Gautam
Buddha, Bodhidharma seems to be the most precious person in the Buddhist heritage. When he
reached China, his fame had reached far ahead of him. Even Emperor Wu who ruled over the whole
of China came to receive him at the boundary. And the conversation that transpired between the
two is of immense importance. It has to be meditated upon again and again. It has a tremendous
message for you all.
Emperor Wu was not only a great emperor, he was very religious too, and he had done much for
Gautam Buddha’s message. In fact no other person except Emperor Ashoka had done so much for
Buddhism as Emperor Wu had done. He transformed the whole of China into a Buddhist world. He
made thousands of temples for Buddha, he made hundreds of monasteries – millions of Buddhist
monks were supported by the royal treasury. He translated all the Buddhist scriptures into Chinese.
Thousands of scholars worked for years, almost their whole lives. He had done great work. Naturally,
he wanted to know from Bodhidharma, “What is my merit?”
The first thing that he asked Bodhidharma was, “I have done so much, what is my merit? What have
I gained? What virtue?”
Bodhidharma looked at him very sternly. If you have seen Bodhidharma’s pictures you will be
puzzled. He looks more like a lion than like a man – very fierce; his eyes are very penetrating, like
swords. He must have cut Wu down to his proper size just by his look.
Wu started trembling, he had never come up against such a man. He had conquered many enemies,
he had conquered many dangerous kings, but Bodhidharma was the most dangerous person he had
come across. It was a cool morning, but he started perspiring.
And Bodhidharma said, “Merit? Virtue? You are stupid! Now this is the ego and nothing else getting
nourished and fat in the name of religion and spirituality. You are bound for the seventh hell, mind
you!”
Wu could not believe his ears, could not believe his eyes. He said, “But thousands of other monks
have come from India and they have all said, ‘Wu, you have done a great service to Buddha’s
religion. You are a beloved of Buddha, you are blessed by Buddha.’ But you are saying just the
opposite!”
Bodhidharma said, “Forget all about those monks! They were buttressing you, they were praising
you because they knew that that’s what you expected from them. They are cunning and crafty
people. They know nothing of Buddha and his message. I am a buddha myself, I am not a Buddhist
monk. I speak on my own authority, and I say to you: You are cursed!”
Emperor Wu asked, “Do you mean to say there is nothing holy, nothing spiritual, in all these
beautiful acts?”
Bodhidharma said, “No action is holy, because every action arises out of the ego. When you forget
all about actions, when you disappear and things start happening on their own and you cannot claim
that they are your actions, only then does something of immense value, of immense beauty
penetrate your life.
“Spirituality has nothing to do with doing, spirituality is the fragrance of being, and you are not a
being yet. You are still concerned that you have done this, you have done that.
“The ego is a doer, your self-nature is a non-doer. Your self-nature simply allows existence to flow
through it, it simply allows the ultimate law to function through it. Your self-nature is just a hollow
bamboo. In the hands of the ultimate nature it becomes a flute and a beautiful song is born out of it.
But the flute cannot say, ‘This is my song. What is my merit? What am I going to gain out of it? To
what heaven, to what joys will I attain?’ The bamboo flute is just nothing. Its whole being consists of
nothingness. That’s why the song can flow through it, it is utterly empty.”
Shocked – but he could see the point – Wu said, “You are the first man who is not impressed by my
great power, money, my empire. You are the first man with whom I am feeling that something is
possible. How can I drop this ego? Yes, I can understand your point. First, I was claiming a great
empire, now I am claiming something of the beyond. But the claim is the same and the claimer is the
same. I can see your point. I bow my head to you. I am grateful that you have not been polite to me,
that you have hit me hard. You have wounded me but I am thankful. How can I drop this ego?”
Emperor Wu of Liang (梁武帝) (464–549)
And Bodhidharma asked, “What ego do you want to drop? Again you want to do something.
If you drop it, then the ego will persist. This is the subtle game of ego: if you drop it, the ego starts
coming from the back door. It starts saying, ‘Look! I have dropped the ego. Look how humble I am.
There is nobody who is more humble than me. I am the humblest person in the world – just dust
under your feet.’ But look into the eyes, look into the heart of the man who is claiming that he is the
humblest person – it is the same ego. It is not egolessness. Egolessness cannot claim humbleness.
Egolessness cannot claim egolessness. Egolessness cannot claim at all, it simply falls silent. It cannot
even say, ‘I am not, I am nobody’ – because the ‘I’ can exist in any claim whatsoever.”
The emperor asked, “Then help me because I cannot get out of this ego.”
Bodhidharma said, “Come early in the morning, three o’clock. Come alone, don’t bring anybody with
you. And don’t be worried – I will finish it once and for all.”
The emperor could not sleep the whole night. “What does he mean? – this mad monk. He will finish
it once and for all? And the man looks so dangerous… and three o’clock is not the time to meet such
a person. He can do anything, he’s so unpredictable. And he has asked that I should come alone.”
Many times he decided not to go, but the pull was great, the man had something magnetic. He had
to go. At three o’clock he found himself getting ready. He went. Bodhidharma was staying outside
the town in a small temple. It was dark, and Bodhidharma was waiting… with his staff in his hand.
And he said, “So you have come! although you hesitated much. You decided many times not to
come. You could not sleep the whole night, neither did you allow me to sleep – because I had to go
on pulling you. But now that you have come things can be settled forever. Sit in front of me, close
your eyes, go in, and find out where the ego is! And don’t fall asleep because I am sitting in front of
you with my staff. I will hit you on the head immediately if you go to sleep! Be alert because when I
hit I hit really hard. And find out…. If you can find the ego, just show me that this is the ego and I will
finish it. First you have to find it, where it is.”
The emperor followed the logic. He closed his eyes. It was impossible to fall asleep. Bodhidharma
was sitting there. Even with closed eyes he could see Bodhidharma sitting there, and once in a while
Bodhidharma would hit his staff on the ground just to let him know that “I am here. You go on
searching.”
Two hours passed, three hours passed. Wu looked and looked. For the first time he looked inside. In
fact if you look inside and you can remain alert, just for forty-eight minutes…. That is the limit. The
ego can go on eluding you only for forty-eight minutes, not more than that. This has been the
experience of all the buddhas down the ages. Now, don’t ask why forty-eight minutes, because
that’s impossible to answer. It is just like at a hundred degrees water evaporates, nobody asks why.
Why not at ninety-nine degrees? Why not at a hundred and one degrees? There is no question about
it, it is simply so, the law of nature. At a hundred degrees water evaporates. Exactly like that, if you
can remain alert and watchful continuously without wavering, for forty-eight minutes, your whole
inner being becomes so quiet, so silent, so peaceful, so alert. For the first time there is clarity,
transparent clarity. You can see everything that is there.
And Wu looked and looked and looked and could not find any ego – because ego cannot be found. It
is fictitious, it is just your idea, it has no substance in it. It is not even a shadow, what to say about
substance? It exists only because you have not looked in. Looking in, your light is discovered – which
is always there, you just have to look in and find it. He was looking for the ego but he found the light,
because the ego is not there and the light is there. He had gone to search for the ego but he found
the light. And once the light was found there was no darkness.
Three hours passed and then the sun was rising, and Wu’s face was transformed. He had a new
beauty, a new grace. Bodhidharma laughed and he said, “Now, open your eyes. You have not been
able to find it… so I have finished it forever.”
Wu opened his eyes, touched Bodhidharma’s feet and said, “Master, you have not done anything
and yet you have finished it.”
That’s the miracle of a master; he never does a thing, and yet the ultimate miracle happens in his
presence. His presence is the miracle, his presence has the magical quality.
I am reminded of a great Zen master.
The emperor of Japan had come to see him and he had been wanting to come to see him but the
path to his monastery was dangerous, going through wild forests, dangerous mountainous parts. But
finally, the emperor decided he had to go. His death was coming near and he couldn’t take the risk…
Before death came he must have some understanding that death cannot destroy.
He reached the Zen master who was sitting under a tree. He touched his feet and said, “I have come
to ask one question. Is there really a hell or heaven? Because my death is coming close and my only
concern is: where am I going; to hell or to heaven?” The master laughed and said, “I have never
thought that our emperor is such an idiot.”
To say to the emperor, “an idiot”…! For a split second, the emperor forgot and pulled out his sword,
and he was going to cut off the head of the Zen master.
The Zen master laughed and said, “This is the gate of hell.”
The emperor stopped, put his sword back in the sheath, and the master said, “You have entered into
heaven. Now you can go. Just remember: anger, violence, destructiveness. These are the gates of
hell. And the hell is in your mind.
“But understanding, compassion, silence, are the doors of heaven. They are beyond your mind. And I
have given you the experience of both. Forgive me that I called you an idiot. I had to. It was just a
response to your question, because I am not a thinker and I don’t answer the way thinkers answer
questions. I am a mystic. I simply create the device so that you can have some taste of the answer.
Now get lost.”
And the emperor touched his feet with tears of gratitude, because no other answer would have
been of much help. It would have remained just a hypothesis. But the man was a tremendously
insightful master. He created the situation immediately, just by calling him an idiot. And he showed
him both: the doors of hell and the doors of heaven.
Your mind is hell. Going beyond your mind is heaven.
Go beyond the mind. That is the essence of the whole teaching of all the awakened ones
your real home is where you are going. This world is not your real home. It is only a
so-called home. It is just a consolation to call it home. […]
I have told you the story of a Sufi mystic.
One night in Baghdad, the king heard somebody walking on the roof of his palace.
He shouted, “Who is there? And what are you doing there?”
The man was not a thief. Without any fear he said, “Don’t shout, that may disturb
other people’s sleep. It is none of your business. I am looking for my camel. My
camel is lost and it is time for you to go to sleep.”
The king could not believe what kind of madman could be on the roof of a palace
searching for his camel. He called the guards and they searched all over the place
but could not find the man. And the next day when he was sitting in his court he
heard the same voice again; he recognized it.
The king immediately said, “Bring that man in,” because he was arguing with the
guard in front of the gate that he wanted to stay in the caravanserai.
And the guard said, “You will be getting into problems unnecessarily. This is the
palace of the king; this is not a caravanserai.”
The man said, “I know it is a caravanserai and you are just a guard. Don’t bother me.
Just let me go in. I want to discuss the matter with the king himself. If I can convince
him that this is a caravanserai then I will stay. If he can convince me it is not a
caravanserai, then of course I will leave. But I won’t listen to you; you are just a
guard.”
And just at that moment the message came from inside, “Don’t stop that man. We
are in search of him; bring him in.”
The Sufi mystic was called in and the king said, “You seem to be a very strange
fellow. I recognize your voice. You were the man on the roof searching for your
camel and now you are calling my place, my home, a caravanserai.”
The man laughed and said, “You seem to be a man of some understanding. It is
possible to talk with you. Yes, it was me who was looking for the camel on the roof of
the palace. Don’t think that I’m insane. If you can look for blissfulness sitting on a
golden throne, if you can look for God while continuously conquering and butchering
and burning living human beings, what is wrong in searching for a camel on the roof
of the palace? You tell me!
“If I am inconsistent you are also not consistent. And what right have you got to call
this place your home, because I have been here before and on the same golden
throne I have seen another man sitting. He looked just like you – a little older.”
The king said, “He was my father. Now he’s dead.” And the mystic said, “I was here
even before that and I found another man. He also looked a little bit like you but very
old.” The king said, “You are right, he was my grandfather.” And the mystic said,
“What happened to him?” The king said, “He is dead.”
And the mystic said, “When are you going to die? They also believed that this is their
home. I have argued with your grandfather. Now the poor fellow is in the grave. I
have argued with your father; that poor fellow is also in the grave. Now I am arguing
with you and someday I will come back again and I will be arguing with your son and
you will be in a grave. So what kind of home is this where people go on changing? It
is a caravanserai. It is just an overnight stay, and then one has to go.”
The king was shocked but was silent. The whole court was silent. The man was
right. And the mystic finally said, “If you really want to know where your home is, go
to the graveyard where finally you will have to settle, where your grandfather is,
where your father is. That is the real place that you can call your home, but not this
palace. Here I am going to stay as if it is a caravanserai.”
The king was certainly not an ordinary man. He stood up and told the mystic,
“Forgive me, I was wrong. You are right. You can stay as long as you want. I am
going in search of my real home. This is not my real home.”
This world is only a caravanserai.
You all know people of great learning, great knowledge, but in whom deep down,
there is no light; they don’t radiate a blissfulness. In fact, their studies make them
serious. Rather than making them light, they make them burdened. They know too
much without knowing anything and it becomes a great tension in their being,
because actually they know nothing but they have accumulated so much information.
People worship them, people respect them, so they cannot accept the fact that all
our knowledge is superficial. It has not grown within our own being, it has no roots in
us. All these flowers have been purchased from the marketplace. They have not
grown in our own being.
I have heard about a man who had gone fishing.
The whole day he tried and could not get a single fish. Now he was worried about his
wife so he went to the fish market and purchased three beautiful big fish, but on a
condition. The fisherman who was selling those fish could not understand the
condition which was very strange, and it was the first time he had come across such
a thing.
The man was ready to pay the price, whatsoever the fisherman was asking, but the
condition was that he had to throw the fish and the man would catch them. The
fisherman said, “There is no problem. I will throw, you catch, but I don’t understand…
what is the point of it?”
The man said, “You don’t understand but I don’t like to lie. When I go home, my wife
will ask how many fish I have got. I will show the three fish I have caught with my
own hands. I want to be exactly true.”
Such a man can deceive his wife, but can he deceive himself? And is this really true
or just a falseness covered with the name of truth? And that is the situation of all
your so-called learned people. They have caught fish, not from the lake but from a
fisherman and his shop in the market, and they have certainly caught them. But they
themselves know that they have not caught, they have purchased – and truth cannot
be purchased.
You have to catch hold of your inner light with your own awareness. Other than that
there is no way.
Osho, Bodhidharma: The Greatest Zen Master, Ch 3 (excerpt)

Image: Balinese Batik Art Ulamsari mas
Unless you enquire on your own you will never find what life is all about, what truth
is, what these tremendous moments are, like when one becomes a disciple, when
one finds a master…. You will never know those moments of ultimate rejoicing. You
will never run in the street naked, shouting, “Eureka! I have found it!”
Archimedes was puzzled for months because the king had told him, “If you are really
a scientist you should find out one thing. Somebody, another king, has presented me
with a crown of gold. I want to know whether it is pure gold, or if there is some
mixture in it. Is any other metal mixed in with it? And I don’t want the crown to be cut.
I don’t want you even to touch it. You have to find the answer without spoiling the
beautiful present.”
For months Archimedes was troubled: how to find out? If he were allowed to cut a
little piece of the crown it would have been possible to find out whether other metals
were mixed in or not. When a question remains continuously with you for twenty-four
hours, it takes you, by and by, close to the answer. The answer comes in a moment
of relaxation. The question is a tension, but you can get the answer in relaxation only
if the tension has been to its uttermost climax.
It had been so for months, and the king was asking every day. Archimedes was
starting to feel embarrassed: a well-known scientist cannot find such a small thing?
People had started laughing at him. He could not sleep, he could not do anything –
only one question…. That day, relaxing in his bathtub – which was full of water,
completely full – as he sat in the tub, naturally some water flowed out to make a
space for him. And something clicked in his mind. He weighed the water that had
flowed out, and he found the principle. If pure gold is put in water, then a certain
amount of water will come out. If some other metal is mixed in it, then a different
amount of water will come out, because that certain metal will not have the same
effect on water as the gold if it is pure.
Now the crown need not be destroyed; it has just to be put in water, and another
piece of pure gold of the same volume can be put in water and you can see how
much water comes out from both. If it is exactly the same then the crown is of pure
gold; if it is not, then there is a mixture. The finding was not something great. He had
not found a master, or truth; he had not realized himself. He had not entered into
nirvana. But such a small finding…. The question is not of small or great; the
question is of finding yourself. The joy comes from finding, not what you find.
Archimedes jumped out of his bathtub, ran out of his bathroom, and rushed into the
street shouting, “Eureka!” A crowd followed him. They thought, “We were always
thinking this man is crazy, now he has gone completely crazy; naked, he is going
towards the palace!”
He reached the court naked, shouting “Eureka, I have found it!”
The king said, “It seems you must have found it. But where are your clothes?” That
moment Archimedes became aware that he was naked.
The king said, “Your coming naked shows that you must have found it, because
when someone finds something it is such a joy. Who cares about clothes? Who
remembers about manners? You need not say anything to me; just your coming in
this way has given me proof that you must have found it.”
Buddha is going from one village to another, and on the way – it is a hot day,
summer – he feels thirsty. He is old, so he asks Ananda, “Ananda, I am sorry but you
will have to go back. Two or three miles back we have left a small stream of water,
and I am very thirsty: you go and bring water.”
Ananda said, “There is no need to feel sorry. This is my joy – to serve you in any
way. I am obliged; you are not obliged. You rest under this saal tree, and I will go.”
He went back. He knew exactly where the stream was; they had just passed it. And
when they had passed by the side of the stream, it was crystal-clear – a mountain
stream has a clarity of its own. But when Ananda returned to take the water, two
bullock carts had passed through the stream, and the whole stream was muddy; all
the mud that was settled on the bottom had risen to the surface. Old leaves, rotten
leaves, were floating on top. He could not think that he could take this water for
Buddha to drink.
So he came back and said to Buddha, “This is the situation. I could not bring that
water for you, but don’t be worried. Four miles ahead you can rest; I know a big river,
and from there I will bring the water. Although it is getting late and you are thirsty,
what else can I do?”
Buddha said, “No, I want the water from that stream. You unnecessarily wasted time;
you should have brought the water.”
“But,” Ananda said, “the water is dirty and muddy; rotten leaves are floating all over
it. How can I bring it?”
Buddha said, “You go and bring it.”
When the Master says so…. Ananda went back reluctantly, but was surprised: by
that time the leaves had moved. The water was continuously flowing, and it had
taken the leaves away; the dust and the mud had settled down – just a little was left.
But Ananda got the message; he sat by the side of the stream.
That’s what Buddha had meant: “Go back.” And seeing that things had changed…. If
he had just waited, soon the crystal-clear water would have been there.
He waited, and soon the water was there. He brought some back.
Buddha said, “Ananda, did you get the message?”
Ananda was crying. He said, “Yes, I got the message. In fact, I had not told you:
when I went the first time and saw this whole thing – those two bullock carts passing
just ahead of me, just in front of me, disturbing the whole stream, I went into the
stream to settle it. And the more I tried to settle it, the more it became unsettled. The
more I walked into it, the more mud came up, more leaves.
“Seeing that it was impossible to settle it, I came back – I did not tell you this. I am
sorry, I was foolish. That was not the way to settle the stream back into its natural
way. I should have simply waited by the side, I should have simply watched.
“Things happen on their own. The leaves were going down the stream and the mud
was settling. And just sitting there watching the stream, I got the message, that this
stream is the stream of my mind – of all rotten thoughts, past, dead, mud – and I am
continuously trying to settle it. Jumping into it makes it worse than before and
creates a pessimistic attitude that ‘perhaps in this life I am not going to attain what
Buddha says – the state of no-mind.’
“But today, seeing that stream, a great hope has arisen in me: perhaps the stream of
my own mind is also going to be settled in the same way. And just sitting there I had
a little glimpse.”
Buddha said, “l am not thirsty, you are thirsty. And you were not sent to bring water
for me, you were sent to understand a certain message. While we were coming I had
seen those two bullock carts on top of the hill and I knew by what time they would be
passing, so l had sent you right in time to bring water.”
Just sit by the stream of your mind.

Don’t do anything; nothing is expected from you.
You just keep quiet, calm, as if it is none of your business. What is happening in the
mind is happening somewhere else.
The mind is not you; it is somebody else:
You are only a watcher.
The old man of Zen, Dr D. T. Suzuki, was asked by a student at a lecture once:
‘When you use the word reality are you referring to the relative reality of the physical
world, or to the Absolute Reality of the spiritual world?’ Saying nothing, Suzuki
closed his eyes. (‘Doing a Suzuki’ the students called it, for at such times it could not
be known whether he was profoundly meditating or just fallen asleep.) After a full
minute that seemed very much longer, Suzuki opened his eyes and said ‘Yes.’
This is the way of a wise man. Questions don’t mean much, this way or that.
Answers don’t mean much, this way or that. Life has to be lived without questions
and without answers, only then do you live in its authenticity.
So go to life – that is the only temple where God can be found. And with no
questions and with no answers, just go silently, innocently. Ignorantly. Just go there
and let life take possession of you.
Prayer is just your effort to persuade God to do things according to you… I am against
prayer. I am for meditation,” says Osho.
Prayer is a byproduct of theism. You start with a belief in God, then naturally some
kind of relationship between you and God is needed. That is prayer. You start
praising him. Of course there is some motivation, you are asking for something
through your prayer. Your prayer is not just a pure love affair, no – it is business.
Hence, when you are in trouble you pray; when you are out of trouble you forget it.
When you are in some difficulty, incapable of managing, you pray because you need
God’s help. The moment you are out of difficulty, you forget God and prayer both.
A famous Sufi story is that a ship is coming back to its home country. Suddenly the
ocean goes mad… great winds, and the ship is almost on the verge of sinking.
Everybody starts praying. At such a moment who will not pray? – even the atheist
will pray, the agnostic will pray, and pray, “Forgive what I have been saying, it was all
nonsense. Forgive me, but let me reach the shore.”
But the Sufi was simply sitting there, not praying. The people became angry; they
said, “You are a religious man, wearing the robe, the green robe of a Sufi. What kind
of a Sufi are you? You should have been the first to pray. And we are not religious
people, we are just business people, and to us this prayer is, too, nothing but
business. We are offering God, that ‘We will give you this, we will give you that, just
save us.’ Why are you sitting silently? Why are you not praying?”
He said, “You have already said it: because I am not a businessman. If he wants to
finish us all, good. If he wants to save us, good. I am in total agreement with him.
Why should I pray? For what? Prayer means some disagreement, something is
happening which you don’t want to happen. You want God to intercede, to interfere,
to stop it, to change it.”
The Sufi said, “I have no business of my own. It is his business to bother whether to
save or to drown us. If he wants this Sufi to be saved, it is his business, not my
business. And if he wants me to die, that is his business. I had not asked for birth;
suddenly I was here. I cannot ask about death. If birth is not in my control, how can
death be in my control?”
Those people thought, “This man is mad.” They said, “We will take care of you later
on. Let us get to the shore somehow and then we will take care of you. You are not a
Sufi, you are not religious; you are a very dangerous man. But this is not the time to
bother and quarrel with you.”
On board was the most wealthy, most famous man of the country, and he was
coming with millions of diamonds and precious stones. He had earned much. He had
a beautiful palace in the town – the most beautiful marble palace. Even the king was
jealous. Even the king had asked him many times, “You give this palace to me – any
price, and I will pay for it.”
But the madman, the rich man, said, “That is not possible. That palace is my pride.”
When the ship was almost sinking, the man shouted to God, “Listen, I give that
palace to you – just save me!” And as it happened, the winds disappeared, the
ocean became calm, the ship was saved. They reached the bank.
Now, the rich man was in a very difficult position because of what he had said. And
he had been angry with the Sufi – now he was not angry. He said, “Perhaps you
were right just to keep quiet. If I had followed you I would not have lost my palace.
But I am a businessman, and I will find a way.” And he found a way.
Next day he put the palace up for auction. He informed all the nearby kingdoms,
whoever was interested. Many kings, queens and rich people came; everybody was
interested. They were all puzzled to see that, just in front of the palace, there was a
cat chained to a marble pillar of the palace. The rich man came out and he said,
“This palace and the cat, both are up for auction together. The price of the cat is one
million dinars” – their dollars, one million dollars – “the price of the cat one million
dollars, and the price of the palace, one dollar: one million and one dollars.”
The people said, “For this cat one million dollars, and for this palace just one dollar?”
The businessman said, “You don’t bother about it. If you are interested, both are
going to be sold together. Less, I will not accept. If anybody is interested, this is my
minimum price.”
The king of the country said, “Yes, I will give you the price, but please tell me, what is
the secret of this cat and the palace?”
And he said, “No secret – I just got into trouble because of a prayer. I have told God
that ‘I will give you the palace.’ And I am a businessman; if he is a businessman, I
am also a businessman. The cat, one million dollars – that I will keep. And the
palace: one dollar – that will go to God’s fund.”
Prayer is just your effort to persuade God to do things according to you. And it is
absolutely your imagination. In the first place you don’t know God. You don’t know
his likes and dislikes. You don’t know whether he exists or not, and you are praying.
This is a poor state of affairs, and this is happening all over the world.
I am against prayer because it is basically business. It is bribing God. It is hoping

that you can buttress his ego: “You are great, you are compassionate, you can do
anything you want.” And all this is being said because you want something. There is
a motivation behind it; otherwise you would not pray, if there is no motivation.
I am against prayer. I am for meditation.
And these are the only two dimensions: prayer, the false dimension; meditation, the
right dimension.
In prayer you try first to imagine a God there, and then you project a prayer. In
meditation you don’t have to project any God, you don’t have to believe in any God,
you don’t have to utter a single word of prayer. On the contrary, you move inwards.
In prayer you are moving outwards: a God there… and then a bridge of prayer
between you and God.
In meditation you have no God, there. You search within. You search within for what
is there. Who am I? What is this life energy? What is this consciousness in me? If
only I can know this consciousness, this life in me, I have known the universal life, I
am part of it.
Just taste the ocean from anywhere and it is salty. Taste yourself – it is the closest
place, within yourself – taste your consciousness in silence and peace.
Prayer will be wordy. Again you will be talking, chanting, using a mantra or
something. No, in meditation words have to be dropped and you have to learn to
remain wordless, even for small moments. But in those small moments so much
blessing descends. From those small gaps the whole universe starts pouring upon
you.
I am for meditation and against prayer.
The meditator comes to know – feels reality throbbing within himself – the heartbeat
of existence. And then there is a thankfulness that is without any motive, a gratitude
to nobody in particular, simply a gratitude for all, for all that is. To me, if you want
something like prayer… but then that is a love affair, authentic, without any motive. It
is just a thank you, not addressed to anybody in particular, addressed to the whole.
Osho, From Unconsciousness to Consciousness, Ch 14, Q 2 (excerpt)

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When you listen with perfect awareness, then listening becomes possible.

Hearing is just like eating

Series compiled by Shanti

Featured image: commons.wikimedia.org

Buddha used to say that once it happened:

So they carried the boat on their heads into the marketplace.

So don’t be one of those five idiots.

Series compiled by Shanti

All excerpts of this series can be found in: 1001 Tales

He never entered into the capital again.

We have a levelling of everything.

Osho, Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 4, Ch 1

Then she looks all around – is somebody watching?

In that aloneness flowers the flower of Buddha.

The Master insisted.

The disciple said, “Okay, if you insist then it’s okay.”

The Master jumped and said, “What are you doing!”

Things will go on when the doer disappears.

The Master said, “How am I to know about it?”

The emperor said, “But you are an enlightened Master.”

I have heard a beautiful anecdote. Meditate over it….

‘Where’s my mother?’ he asked.

Avoid greed – otherwise you will take two pills.

Osho, The Divine Melody – Talks on Songs of Kabir, Ch 1

And whenever the union is found, God is found.

God is Unio Mystica: the Mystic Union. […]

Osho, Unio Mystica, Vol 2, Ch 9

Khidr laughed and said, ”You fool – you missed!”

The Upanishads say, “Out of perfection, only perfection can come.”

Osho, Unio Mystica, Vol 2, Ch 7

Osho, The First Principle, Ch 5

The fall has to be understood. Meditate over three words:

What is that single step? Non-identification.

Osho, Unio Mystica, Vol 2, Ch 3 (excerpt)

She, some final touches

Meaning is always in a certain context. A single word is meaningless; when it is

After six months the portrait was ready.

In that context is the beginning of meaning – and meaning is God. […]

Misery disappears.Misery is a by-product of your separation. Bliss is the shadow of

And without more ado, he ran to the river bank.

Osho, The First Principle: Talks on Zen, Ch 4, Q 4 (excerpt)

Suddenly the host became suspicious.

Osho, The First Principle: Talks on Zen, Ch 4 (excerpt)

Thinking is secondary. Thinking is a shadow activity; it follows you. It cannot exist

Silence means a state of consciousness where no thought interferes.

Osho, The First Principle: Talks on Zen, Ch 3

He rushed, he hugged the man and he said, ”What joy!”

Then they asked each other, ”Why are you so ecstatic?”

Osho, Guida Spirituale: Discourses on the Desiderata, Ch 11, Q 1

All promises prove false –

There is a beautiful story of Rabindranath Tagore.

Finally I arrived at a door and on the door there was a signboard:

“This is the house where God lives – Lao Tzu House.”

Rabindranath says, I became very worried for the first time.

Then everything is finished, my journeys, my pilgrimages, my great adventures, my

I am still searching for God, although now I know where he lives.

If by chance I accidentally enter that house, then all is finished.

Osho, The Goose Is Out, Ch 10, Q 4 (excerpt)

There is a beautiful story of Rabindranath Tagore.

Finally I arrived at a door and on the door there was a signboard:

“This is the house where God lives – Lao Tzu House.”

Rabindranath says, I became very worried for the first time.

Then everything is finished, my journeys, my pilgrimages, my great adventures, my