---
section: Library
booktitle: "The Original Man"
booktype: "Discourses"
bookcode: "ORIG"
dategiven: "20 August 1988 pm"
place: " in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium"
chapternum: "Chapter #5"
chaptertitle: "The sky of realisation"
acode: "8808205"
shorttitle: "ORIG05"
audio: "Yes"
video: "Yes"
esttime: "112mins"
displaytitle: "The Original Man: Chapter #5"
---

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.sutra {
  font-style: italic;
  white-space: pre-wrap !important;
}
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<p class="sutra">OUR BELOVED MASTER,
BASUI SAID:
UPON SUCH REALIZATION, QUESTION YOURSELF EVEN MORE INTENSELY IN THIS WISE: "MY BODY IS LIKE A PHANTOM, LIKE BUBBLES ON A STREAM. MY MIND, LOOKING INTO ITSELF, IS AS FORMLESS AS EMPTY SPACE, YET SOMEWHERE WITHIN, SOUNDS ARE PERCEIVED. WHO IS HEARING?"
SHOULD YOU QUESTION YOURSELF IN THIS WISE, WITH PROFOUND ABSORPTION, NEVER SLACKENING THE INTENSITY OF YOUR EFFORT, YOUR RATIONAL MIND EVENTUALLY WILL EXHAUST ITSELF AND ONLY QUESTIONING AT THE DEEPEST LEVEL WILL REMAIN.
FINALLY, YOU WILL LOSE AWARENESS OF YOUR OWN BODY. YOUR LONG-HELD CONCEPTIONS AND NOTIONS WILL PERISH, AFTER ABSOLUTE QUESTIONING, IN THE WAY THAT EVERY DROP OF WATER VANISHES FROM A TUB BROKEN OPEN AT THE BOTTOM. PERFECT ENLIGHTENMENT WILL FOLLOW LIKE FLOWERS SUDDENLY BLOOMING ON WITHERED TREES....
WHILE YOU ARE DOING ZAZEN, NEITHER DESPISE NOR CHERISH THE THOUGHTS THAT ARISE; ONLY SEARCH YOUR OWN MIND, THE VERY SOURCE OF THESE THOUGHTS. YOU MUST UNDERSTAND THAT ANYTHING APPEARING IN YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS OR SEEN BY YOUR EYES IS AN ILLUSION, OF NO ENDURING REALITY. HENCE YOU SHOULD NEITHER FEAR NOR BE FASCINATED BY SUCH PHENOMENA. IF YOU KEEP YOUR MIND AS EMPTY AS SPACE, UNSTAINED BY EXTRANEOUS MATTERS, NO EVIL SPIRITS CAN DISTURB YOU, EVEN ON YOUR DEATHBED. WHILE ENGAGED IN ZAZEN, HOWEVER, KEEP NONE OF THIS COUNSEL IN MIND. YOU MUST ONLY BECOME THE QUESTION, "WHAT IS THIS MIND?" OR, "WHAT IS IT THAT HEARS THESE SOUNDS?" WHEN YOU REALIZE THIS MIND, YOU WILL KNOW THAT IT IS THE VERY SOURCE OF ALL BUDDHAS AND SENTIENT BEINGS.</p>


Anando, before I say something about Basui's statements a small preface is needed, because it is very difficult to distinguish a teacher from a master. And it is essential for everyone who is on the path to exactly make that distinction, because both use the same language, and sometimes even the teacher may be more articulate. That is the case with Basui.


Unfortunately I have to say to you that he is still a teacher and not a master. I am hoping that before the series ends he will come to his senses. It will be difficult for those who have not experienced their innermost consciousness to know where he goes wrong, or where he is just repeating right words. Because even right words when used by the mind become wrong, and even wrong words when used by a master become devices. Anybody who is studying and not meditating, just studying the scriptures and not entering into his own consciousness, will find it very difficult to know whether Basui is a teacher or a master.


The master is one who knows. He may not be able to convey it. Most probably he will keep silent; even if he speaks his speech will be leading towards speechlessness. His words are pointing towards a wordless existence. He is not a man of language, he is a man beyond mind.


Basui's statements are mixed. A few he must have got from the scriptures because they appear to be exactly right, but the others expose that he has not experienced himself. He is a good spokesman... but a spokesman is just a spokesman! The teacher simply repeats perfectly, like a parrot, the ancient scriptures, sages, buddhas. He is very accurate. Years of training and discipline have made his mind a reservoir of wisdom, but it is all borrowed. Real wisdom can never be borrowed. You can befool people but you cannot convert and transform them. You yourself are not transformed. Your own light is not yet found -- how can you transmit the lamp of existential experience?


Basui is trying his hardest to be on the right lines, but he is helpless. Everybody is helpless. You cannot manage it; a blind man may remember perfectly well where the door is, but still you can see that his movement is hesitant. You can see that with his walking stick he is still trying to find the door. He does not have the right clarity about where the door is. He may have the right description, but he has not got the experience. A blind man can talk about light and about colors, but what does he know about colors, what does he know about rainbows, what does he know about the starry night?


It is hard work for me to bring down Basui from his idea of being a master and reduce him to the level of a teacher -- a good teacher of course, the best of the kind, showing every sign that sooner or later he will realize that he is repeating borrowed knowledge. The moment you realize that you are repeating borrowed knowledge, that all your mind is borrowed, the mind slips out of your hands. And without taking a single step, you have arrived home.


The moment you can say, "I do not know," you are just an open space, available to existence. Existence starts pouring through you -- it is that which you cannot say that you know, it is so vast.


The word 'knowledge' is very small; it is good for science. The word 'science' comes from a root which exactly means knowledge, but the word 'knowledge' is not right for the realm of religiousness. There it is too small. Knowledge is tethered to the mind, and wisdom is when the mind has disappeared.
With this clarity you have to listen to Basui's statements. Basui says:
<p class="sutra">UPON SUCH REALIZATION, QUESTION YOURSELF EVEN MORE INTENSELY IN THIS WISE...</p>


Now I will have to point out again and again where he shows that he does not know. If I were to write this sentence I would say that upon such realization all questions drop, but not only questions drop, answers drop also. You are left utterly silent, without any question and without any answer. You just are, a pure sky, unscratched.


He is saying, UPON SUCH REALIZATION, QUESTION YOURSELF EVEN MORE INTENSELY... After realization what is there to question? And if something remains to question after realization, the realization is fake. Realization simply means that you have become one with the universe. Who is going to question whom? You are no more. Realization means that you have dissolved yourself in the vastness of reality. Now who is going to question more intensely?


All these things, questioning and questioning intensely, are before realization, not after it. These things can bring you closer to realization, but after realization it is almost like saying to somebody, "When you become healthy, take the medicine more and more." The medicine was perfectly good when you were sick, but when you are healthy taking it more and more is going to make you sick.


Basui has no realization of his own, otherwise he could not have said: QUESTION YOURSELF EVEN MORE INTENSELY IN THIS WISE... He even shows the way. He is telling you what question to ask:
<p class="sutra">MY BODY IS LIKE A PHANTOM...</p>


All these things happen before realization, not after it. After realization all phantoms have disappeared, all shadows have gone. All that is false is no more; only the real shines in its splendor. No question is possible.
<p class="sutra">MY BODY IS LIKE A PHANTOM, LIKE BUBBLES ON A STREAM. MY MIND, LOOKING INTO ITSELF, IS AS FORMLESS AS EMPTY SPACE...</p>


All these questions are for the disciples, not for the master. He has passed through all that gibberish,
<p class="sutra">... YET, SOMEWHERE WITHIN, SOUNDS ARE PERCEIVED. WHO IS HEARING?</p>


A man of realization is asking such questions? Then what about a man of no realization, what will he ask? Leave something for the unenlightened, don't take away everything from them.


These questions are relevant when you don't know the watching self, the witnessing self, the innermost eye. Before it everything is absolutely clear. No bubbles arise, no sounds are perceived. It is absolute silence, but very alive; the silence of a garden, not the silence of a graveyard.


After realization there is no point in asking any question -- and I am saying this on my own authority. I did not ask a single question; it was impossible to ask. You are so peaceful, so calm, so clear, that that which is false, simply disappears, just as when you bring the light in, the darkness disappears.


When you become aware of yourself, all falseness, all lies, all the personality that you have cultivated around your essential being, drop suddenly. You are standing alone, a luminous flame in which everything false is burned. This luminous flame has only one quality and that quality is watchfulness. You simply watch just like a mirror.


Have you ever seen a mirror asking, "Why do you have such a Jewish nose? Can't you manage a little plastic surgery?" The mirror simply says nothing. Whether you have a Jewish nose or a Chinese nose is not the concern of the mirror. Its concern is only to reflect what comes in front of it, not to comment or judge. Judgment is of the mind, commentary is of the mind. The mirror simply watches silently. Everything is okay; the mirror is at ease with everything it reflects. The mirror will not ask you, "Hey man, where did you lose your tail? According to Charles Darwin you should have a tail when you dropped from the trees and became man. Who are you trying to cheat?" It will not ask a monkey, "Why don't you drop your tail and become a man? Just get a good tailor!"


Simple things, but the mirror is absolutely silent -- rejoicing in whatever is happening without any comment, any recommendations, any questions.
But Basui goes on being astray.
<p class="sutra">SHOULD YOU QUESTION YOURSELF IN THIS WISE, WITH PROFOUND ABSORPTION, NEVER SLACKENING THE INTENSITY OF YOUR EFFORT...</p>


This is too much! Zen is against effort, Zen is a let-go. All the religions of the world are for effort. Hence this statement will not be criticized anywhere except by a man of Zen. Zen is not effort. Effort is tension, effort is work, effort is to achieve something.


Zen is not something to achieve. You are already that. Just relax, relax so deeply that you become a revelation to yourself. Now Basui is going too far away from authentic Zen.
<p class="sutra">NEVER SLACKENING THE INTENSITY OF YOUR EFFORT, YOUR RATIONAL MIND EVENTUALLY WILL EXHAUST ITSELF AND ONLY QUESTIONING AT THE DEEPEST LEVEL WILL REMAIN.</p>


Who will question at the deepest level? If the rational mind is exhausted, there is nobody to question, there is only a mirror simply reflecting.


Poor Basui still has to go a few rounds of birth and death, unless by chance he meets an authentic master who gives him a good hit on the head and brings him to his senses -- "Forget this idea. Do you think you are realized? All your statements make it clear that you don't know the sky of realization, the space that opens up for a realized man." What to say about questions, even answers are not found.
<p class="sutra">FINALLY YOU WILL LOSE AWARENESS OF YOUR OWN BODY.</p>


This is not true. You will never lose awareness at any point. On this great pilgrimage your awareness will become more and more, but never will a point come when you will lose awareness. Awareness is the quality of the mirror. He is saying, FINALLY YOU WILL LOSE AWARENESS OF YOUR OWN BODY. You will certainly lose the identification with the body, but that is not losing awareness of the body. You will know: "This is the body, and I am not connected with it." But even this much will not be verbal. It will be just like when I can see that you are there, I can never think by mistake that I am sitting there, so I don't have to drop the idea that I am sitting there.


Once you are aware of it you don't even have to say, "I am not the body." You are not. You simply see it through and through. You are not the body, nor are you the mind, nor are you the emotions. All these are just reflected in you, but by mistake you have been identifying yourself with them.


You were thinking, "My body, my mind..." But your thoughts are not yours, nor is your mind yours, nor is your body yours. What remains when you negate all these identifications? Only a pure awareness, a kind of isness; a being who radiates light, who radiates eternity, who dances with joy that he has come home.
<p class="sutra">FINALLY, YOU WILL LOSE AWARENESS OF YOUR OWN BODY. YOUR LONG HELD CONCEPTIONS AND NOTIONS WILL PERISH...</p>


Basui is really poor. I have compassion for him because all these things have to happen before realization. But this is the problem with a man who has not traveled the path himself but has only collected wisdom from others. He will put things upside down. He does not know which comes first and which comes second.
<p class="sutra">YOUR LONG-HELD CONCEPTIONS AND NOTIONS WILL PERISH, AFTER ABSOLUTE QUESTIONING, IN THE WAY THAT EVERY DROP OF WATER VANISHES FROM A TUB BROKEN OPEN AT THE BOTTOM. PERFECT ENLIGHTENMENT...</p>


Nonsense has many forms, stupidity has no limits. Enlightenment as such is perfect, so don't use 'perfect' enlightenment. That is unnecessary repetition. 'Perfect' is enough or 'enlightenment' is enough, because both are the same.


Using 'perfect' enlightenment gives the idea that there can be imperfect enlightenment too -- fifty percent enlightenment, sixty percent enlightenment. Enlightenment is always one hundred percent, neither less nor more. No buddha is higher than another buddha. The moment you awaken to your being, you have gone beyond all categories, you have melted in the universe where everything is equal. Perhaps Zen is the only real communism.


The communism that we hear about from Marx and Engels and their followers is a very poor thing. And it is very unpsychological, because no two men are equal. You cannot find two men who are equal; every man has his own distinct individuality. Hence, on this level of the outside world, equality can only be imposed by force. It was not just because of the character Joseph Stalin, anybody in his place -- if he was obsessed with the idea of equality -- would have had to do the same. He killed one million Russians in an effort to make them equal.


I am reminded of a story from old Greek mythology.... A king was very much interested in gold. He prayed for it day and night. Finally, the gods gave him the power that whatever he touched would become gold. So he touched everything in his house and made it gold. But he lost his wife, he lost his daughter, he lost his son. They all escaped, because if he had touched them... He was really AIDS-positive -- the first pioneer!


He made a beautiful guest house, but only a few times did somebody become a guest, because in his guest house he had two rules -- his whole philosophy was that the world should be filled with gold, and that everybody should be equal.


He made a very beautiful bed out of solid gold especially for the guests. But some guests were taller, some guests were smaller, so he had wrestlers to stretch the guest exactly to the size of the bed.


Naturally, every guest died. You cannot stretch a man according to a measurement. He had decided on the right average size, and everybody had to be equal to the average. But somebody was five inches short... Now if you stretch a man five inches, do you think he will still be alive? Perhaps his head may come off or his legs may give way. But if somebody is bigger than the bed, then the problem is even more difficult. To force him, to press him, all his intestines are destroyed. But the rule had to be followed -- equality! He introduced the word 'equality' to the world.


I am not in favor of equality in the outside world because everybody has to be unique and himself. Certainly equal opportunity should be given to everybody -- equal opportunity to be unequal. That is a different matter. But in the inner world every buddha is just the same.


Gautam Buddha is reported to have said that if you taste the seawater from anywhere, you will find it has the same taste, the same salty taste. It is exactly the same with buddhahood. You can taste it from one buddha or from another buddha, it does not matter. It gives the same taste, the same fragrance, the same light, the same joy.
Basui is saying:
<p class="sutra">PERFECT ENLIGHTENMENT WILL FOLLOW LIKE FLOWERS SUDDENLY BLOOMING ON WITHERED TREES...</p>


There is no perfect enlightenment. Enlightenment is enough unto itself, it needs no perfection. The moment you use 'perfect' enlightenment, you are allowing yourself logically, rationally to accept that enlightenment can be of an imperfect quality. But you cannot conceive what kind of enlightenment it will be that is not perfect.


Enlightenment as such is perfect. Its perfection is intrinsic, so no master can use those two words together, it has to be either perfection or enlightenment. "Perfect enlightenment" is the expression of a teacher who has gathered much knowledge from the scriptures, who is a man of learning but not a man of knowing.
<p class="sutra">WHILE YOU ARE DOING ZAZEN...</p>


This is why I said that stupidity has no limits. When you have become a buddha, when you are enlightened, for what will you be doing zazen? Once you have learned the alphabet of a language, do you go on all your life learning the alphabet again and again in case you forget?


I have never come across a man who has forgotten a letter of the alphabet. It is almost impossible. If you can count up to ten, you can count millions and trillions, because they are all repetitions of ten, and you cannot forget that you have ten fingers.


Zazen means sitting in silence watching the mind. Now a buddha cannot do it. In the first place there is no longer any thought left. That's why he has become a buddha. Now what is he going to watch? The show is over, the people are gone and Gautam Buddha is sitting in his lotus posture watching the screen? Even the projector has been removed. This is great zazen -- a real stupidity, one hundred percent pure stupidity.


Zazen is needed for ignorant people who don't know who they are. Then sitting silently and watching your mind creates the distinction between the thoughts and yourself. You become aware for the first time that there is something beyond the mind -- the watcher. You cannot watch the watcher, that is impossible. You cannot go beyond the watcher, the watcher is the limit of the universe. You cannot say that you can watch the watcher -- watcher number one watching watcher number two watching watcher number three -- you will end up in a madhouse.

It happened to a centipede....


Early one spring morning a centipede was going for a walk. A little rabbit was very much puzzled looking from his hole. "My God!" he said. "How does this fellow remember which leg to put first?" He has a hundred legs, that's why he is called a centipede. He has made the century! You are far away -- just two legs and bragging so much.


He wondered and worried, and then came out and said, "Uncle, I cannot resist my curiosity. I should not interfere in your morning walk but I have just a small question. How do you manage a hundred legs? Which one first? Which one second?"


The centipede said, "The question is valid but I have never thought about it. Let me try."


So he started walking and counting, "One, two, three..." And just as I get lost after three, he got lost. By the fourth he had fallen, and the rabbit ran off because the question had been a disaster. The centipede somehow managed to drag himself to his hole and said to the other centipedes, "If somebody asks you how you manage your legs, never answer the question. They manage themselves! It is not our work, it is not our effort, our management."


Basui is saying that when you are a buddha, self-realized, you should sit doing zazen.
<p class="sutra">NEITHER DESPISE NOR CHERISH THE THOUGHTS THAT ARISE.</p>


Can you see his problem? He has read many scriptures and collected fragments from here and there, and now he does not know which leg to put first and which leg to put second. The last leg he has put first. He begins with: UPON SUCH REALIZATION... After that nothing has to be said, but he goes on to say everything that should come before realization.


All these things are valid, but in their place, in their context, not just anywhere. And I don't think that he has ever done zazen, because he says:
<p class="sutra">NEITHER DESPISE NOR CHERISH THE THOUGHTS THAT ARISE; ONLY SEARCH YOUR OWN MIND, THE VERY SOURCE OF THESE THOUGHTS. YOU MUST UNDERSTAND THAT ANYTHING APPEARING IN YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS OR SEEN BY YOUR EYES IS AN ILLUSION, OF NO ENDURING REALITY...</p>


All these things are perfectly right, but in a wrong place.
<p class="sutra">HENCE YOU SHOULD NEITHER FEAR NOR BE FASCINATED BY SUCH PHENOMENA.</p>


The whole world thinks that the man of realization still meditates, but the world is wrong. Once meditation is fulfilled, once you have reached to the point of knowing that you are a pure awareness beyond mind, beyond all thoughts, this very experience of beyondness disperses all clouds from the sky. Then you don't have to do all the work that he is suggesting.
<p class="sutra">HENCE YOU SHOULD NEITHER FEAR NOR BE FASCINATED BY SUCH PHENOMENA. IF YOU KEEP YOUR MIND AS EMPTY AS SPACE, UNSTAINED BY EXTRANEOUS MATTERS, NO EVIL SPIRITS CAN DISTURB YOU, EVEN ON YOUR DEATHBED.</p>


A man of realization knows there is no death. Death is a fiction, you have never died. Yes, you have changed your form many times. You have changed your house many times, many times. But you have never died. Have you ever seen yourself dying? It is always somebody else who dies.


That's why you go on enjoying all kinds of stupid things -- football, television rubbish... and people are glued...! An American survey says that everybody is glued to the chair in front of the television for seven and a half hours per day, and naturally meanwhile eating all kinds of things.


So they have created a television potato association. And thousands of Americans have joined the association, have become members.


The only thing is -- it is bound to happen -- you will become a potato. For seven and a half hours sitting in your seat pushing all kinds of rubbish -- ice cream, Coca Cola... keeping the fridge just within your reach -- you will turn into a potato. Soon you will see the world full of potatoes.


Somebody suggested to me that the tomato would be far better. I said, "Why tomato? A potato is at least harder. If a tomato gets so much rubbish, it will burst out -- it has a very thin skin -- then from all over, somewhere ice cream is coming out, somewhere else Coca Cola is coming out. Tomatoes cannot manage it. Potatoes are harder people."


A man doing zazen comes to the point of realizing that whatever is seen is phenomenal. It is made of just the same stuff as dreams are made of. Everything goes on changing. That is the Eastern definition of reality and unreality. The unreal is simply the one that changes.


You were a child, you have become a grown-up, you will become old. This is phenomenal, this is unreal. But there is something within you which never becomes anything other than itself. In your childhood it is the same, in your youth it is the same, in your old age it is the same, in your death it is the same. A man of meditation knows his eternal being, his immortal being. There is no deathbed for him.
<p class="sutra">WHILE ENGAGED IN ZAZEN, HOWEVER, KEEP NONE OF THIS COUNSEL IN MIND...</p>


He knows not even the ABC of zazen. He is saying that while doing zazen you should not keep any part of what he has described in your mind. But a man who has experienced zazen simply knows that whatever comes in front of the eyes is just phenomenal. It comes and goes, just like clouds come and go, flowers come and go. Everything in the world except your being goes on moving into new forms.


To find yourself is to find the center of the cyclone. The whole world is a cyclone. But once you have found the center, the cyclone disappears. The mirror remains empty. This emptiness is buddhahood. This nothingness is the ultimate peak of consciousness.


I hope that this fellow forgets all that he has learned and begins to meditate. Knowledge, howsoever valuable, is useless in transforming you. Only your own experience, your own fire, can transform you. And you have the fire, everybody is born with it. You just have to turn yourself inwards.


I hope that Basui may have turned inwards by now. If not then he will have to come here. Because now, even in Japan, Zen has become just a scholarly study. Zen is not a scholarly study. Zen is an existential quantum leap. It is not of the mind. It is going beyond the mind.

Dogen, a Zen master, wrote:
<p class="sutra">SCARECROW IN THE HILLOCK.
PADDY FIELD --
HOW UNAWARE! HOW USEFUL!</p>


A scarecrow is a false man which farmers make just by putting up a bamboo and covering the top with a mud pot, as if it is a monk's head, perfectly shaven. Then they put another bamboo just like a cross and cover the cross with a robe, and put two hands on it. It is to create fear in wild animals.


Sometimes in moonlit nights even the scarecrow looks so beautiful, and certainly it is useful. But it is not a true man. So if a thing is useful it does not mean it is true, and vice versa: if it is true it does not mean that it may prove useful. What use is enlightenment? You cannot sell it. Even if you want to, even if you can find somebody to purchase it, there is no way of selling it. What use is enlightenment?


Utility is not the goal of life. The goal of life is a deep relaxation from all effort, being in a dance with the dancing trees, with the dancing stars, rejoicing in existence without any worry, without any mind, just being part of the cosmos.
Dogen is right, "Scarecrow in the hillock. Paddy field -- how unaware..."


The poor fellow is absolutely unaware. But that is the situation of all of us. We are just scarecrows -- hung up on a skeleton and covered with a skin bag.


They have invented, and they are already making man-made men, robots. They will be perfectly good, in fact they will be more efficient than you. The only problem is when their battery runs out. Otherwise you will not be able to know... a person is saying to you, "I love you, sweetheart," and then rrrrr, rrrr... his battery runs out, and you suddenly become aware, "My God, it is a robot." Otherwise he had the whole program, the whole dialogue, computerized. He can do many things, he is very useful.


Just a few days ago in Japan, in a factory where they were using robots, an accident happened which may determine the future of robots in the coming century. Robots can work twenty-four hours at a time. They don't need Sundays or any other holiday. They don't go on strike, they don't ask for any raise. They are very good people, nice and gentlemanly. And they work continuously. One robot can do the work of almost one thousand people in the same time period. But in a factory where a few robots were used experimentally, something went wrong.


It always happens with electricity -- something goes wrong. Something went wrong and six robots just clutched at the nearest human being who was passing by, and hugged him. It was not in their program, and a robot hug? -- the man was finished.


You cannot survive after a robot hug. You will have so many fractures that it will not be worth hospitalizing you. They are still trying to find out what happened. Something went wrong because it was not only one, but six robots, all of whom were working in the factory. Suddenly a great love for humanity arose -- and they don't believe in heterosexuality or homosexuality; it doesn't matter... Anybody who was moving around, they simply pulled him close, gave him a good hug and finished him.


It has been known to biologists that there are a few spiders in Africa which are a very rare species, but very significant. When the male mounts the female, making love -- maybe he is talking in their language all kinds of movie dialogues -- when he comes onto her, the lady underneath starts eating the fellow. That spider makes love only once in his life, then his work is finished. But he has a great orgasm. He is trembling on long legs and the lady is eating him and he is in such ecstasy. He cannot even escape. Each love becomes death.


Perhaps it is very symbolic. If robots get mixed up in humanity, they will have everything that you have. The only thing will be that they will be running on batteries, so it depends on the battery, how powerful it is. If a robot makes love to a woman it will depend on his battery. After it that woman will never be satisfied by any man because human batteries are very small. There is human electricity in the body but a very small quantity.


Man is not just a utility, that can be done by machines, by robots. Man is a dance, a song, for no purpose at all. Do you think a rose has any purpose? Do you think a lotus has any purpose? Do you think these millions of stars have any purpose? Just out of sheer joy the whole existence is dancing. A man of meditation comes to the same point. He starts dancing in utter ecstasy and joy without any purpose. This kind of man may love you, he may have compassion, he may be creative but all for sheer joy. Only for a buddha is art for art's sake. For everybody else art is a commodity to be sold in the marketplace.

Another Zen poem:
<p class="sutra">THE MIND CANNOT
BECOME THE BUDDHA;
THE BODY CANNOT
BECOME THE BUDDHA.
ONLY WHAT CANNOT BECOME THE BUDDHA
CAN BECOME THE BUDDHA.</p>


What are the ingredients in you? The body cannot become the buddha, the mind cannot become the buddha. Apart from body and mind is there something else within you? That is what I am calling watchfulness, awareness, witnessing. Only that, but that also cannot become the buddha, it already is the buddha. It is a very beautiful poem and it shows that the man understands what he is saying....
<p class="sutra">THE MIND CANNOT BECOME THE BUDDHA;
THE BODY CANNOT BECOME THE BUDDHA.
ONLY WHAT CANNOT BECOME THE BUDDHA
CAN BECOME THE BUDDHA.</p>


That last part will look like a puzzle to anybody who does not understand his own awareness. You don't have to become a buddha. You already are a buddha, you just have to discover it. You are covered with a body, you are covered with a mind. You just have to discover yourself, you don't have to become. You just have to recognize. You just have to penetrate within your body and mind, reaching to the innermost core -- and suddenly you are the buddha. It is not that you have become a buddha, you are a fully-fledged buddha already. You have just not looked inside yourself.
<p class="question">Anando has asked a question:
OUR BELOVED MASTER,
LAST NIGHT YOU SAID THAT THE TRANSMISSION CAN HAPPEN IN A SECOND, THAT YOU REACH OUT TO US EVERY DAY -- BUT STILL OUR DOORS ARE CLOSED. SO MANY OF US HAVE BEEN WITH YOU SO MANY YEARS; YOU HAVE MELTED OUR HEARTS SO MANY TIMES. CAN IT BE THAT OUR DOORS HAVE SOMEHOW RUSTED SHUT?</p>


Anando, saying that your doors are closed is only symbolic. You don't have any doors. They cannot be rusted shut.
Have I told you the famous anecdote about Rabiya al-Adabiya?


She was a Sufi master, very rare because she was a woman, and very unique, almost like a Bodhidharma. She never went to the mosque and people used to ask her, "You are so religious, so simple, so innocent. Why don't you come to the mosque?"


She said, "What is the purpose now? The mosque is for you because you are not sincere and you are not simple. It is not for me. I have found my home." One day she was passing by the mosque and a man named Hassan, who afterwards became a great master himself, was praying in front of the steps with both his hands raised, kneeling down on the ground: "God, when will you listen to me? Why don't you open the door?"


When Rabiya heard it, she hit Hassan and told him, "You idiot, there are no doors! And to whom are you praying? There is nobody in the sky to answer your question. Just go home and look inwards -- there are no doors."


Nothing is preventing you except your own desire to remain outside, maybe to have a little more money, a little more political power, a little more influence in the world, a little more of a name to be written in the history books. This is all trivia. Just remember not to get caught by this trivia. Enter into yourself and the buddha is there.


Perfect! There is nothing missing in it. Before we enter again tonight -- because it is a dangerous journey... You may find the buddha and may not come out, but I take the risk, because I will be responsible before the court: "You told people to go in and they have gone. Now pull them out!" It is very difficult. So you have to remember, when I say come out, come out!


Going in is very easy. But the inside is so beautiful and so alluring that you may decide -- what is the point of coming out? Please don't do that because I will be responsible. So just see the buddha, understand that he is there, but when Nivedano gives you the drumbeat to come back, don't hesitate. Just come back slowly, gracefully, remembering the buddha. Keep the remembrance around your twenty-four-hour life, in your actions, in your gestures, in your words, in your silences.


But please, this one thing you have to remember: don't get stuck there inside, because then nobody can pull you out; no operation will help. If you decide to be in, finished! Then we will just have to make a ceremony, that one man has become a buddha. We don't say that anybody has died because here nobody dies. Up to now only three persons have become buddhas. Death is a fiction.


But there is no need and no hurry. Enjoy going in every evening just like going for an evening walk. Enjoy, relish, be nourished and let this experience transform your whole outer life. But one never knows what you will decide when you are inside. You will be alone.


So before that, a few good laughters, perhaps just those laughters will bring you out: "Let us have one night more, a few laughters more. Perhaps our master will tell some jokes tomorrow and I will not be here." Remember it!


Mad Marvin escapes from the crazyhouse and runs to a nearby town. He is seen standing by an old well, dancing and shouting, "Five! Five! Five!"
Curious, Officer Chump, the local cop, saunters over to Marvin.
"What is all this noise about?" inquires the cop.


"Look!" exclaims Mad Marvin, pointing into the well. "Look! Five! Five! Five!"


Officer Chump shakes his head at the looney, and just to humor him, steps up to the well. Then, with a wide grin and a big push, Mad Marvin shouts, "Six! Six! Six!"

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)
(Gibberish)

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)


Be silent, close your eyes. Sit just as a buddha, a frozen statue, no movement.


Gather your consciousness inwards. Go deeper and deeper.... At the very center of your being is your enlightenment.


This very moment, being at the center in such tremendous silence, you are a buddha. You don't have to become a buddha, you just have to discover. You have only forgotten, you have just to remember.
Don't be afraid, this is your space.


You will not meet anybody on the way except your own being in all its glory and splendor, in all its eternity, beauty, truth.
Everybody is carrying the ultimate treasure within himself.

To make it more clear....
Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)


Relax, let the body and the mind remain there. Withdraw your identification, just be a watcher.
Watching is the secret key.
It opens the doors of all that is mystery, all that is miracle.


Rejoice in it and remember the path, the way, by which you have come to this point, so that at any time you want you can enter in and get refreshed.


Bring out your buddhahood in your actions, in your gestures, in your responses.


Just this small thing of entering into your own center is the whole religion -- everything else follows on its own accord. When things happen spontaneously, they have a beauty of their own.

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)


Come back. Resurrect slowly, keeping your awareness, your remembrance. Sit down like a buddha for a few seconds.


This is an ever-deepening process. It is not that one day you become buddha and the pilgrimage is finished. You go on becoming more and more, your depth goes on becoming deeper and deeper, your clarity becomes absolutely dustless.


It is the greatest phenomenon in the world to experience your buddhahood and act it in your ordinary life.

Okay, Anando?
Yes, Beloved Master.

Can we celebrate the gathering of ten thousand buddhas?
Yes!
			

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> Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
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