---
section: Library
booktitle: "The Great Zen Master Ta Hui"
booktype: "Discourses"
bookcode: "TAHUI"
dategiven: "18 July 1987 am"
place: " in Chuang Tzu Auditorium"
chapternum: "Chapter #7"
chaptertitle: "The source"
acode: "8707180"
shorttitle: "TAHUI07"
audio: "Yes"
video: "Yes"
esttime: "82mins"
displaytitle: "The Great Zen Master Ta Hui: Chapter #7"
---

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<p class="sutra">BELOVED OSHO,
SEE THE MOON, FORGET THE POINTING FINGER
YOU MUST SEE THE MOON AND FORGET THE FINGERS. DON'T DEVELOP AN UNDERSTANDING BASED ON THE WORDS.
AN ANCIENT WORTHY SAID, "THE BUDDHAS EXPOUNDED ALL TEACHINGS TO SAVE ALL MINDS; I HAVE NO MIND AT ALL, SO WHAT'S THE USE OF ALL THE TEACHINGS?" IF THEY CAN BE LIKE THIS WHEN READING THE SCRIPTURES, ONLY THEN WILL PEOPLE OF RESOLVE HAVE SOME COMPREHENSION OF THE INTENT OF THE SAGES.
STORIES AND SAYINGS
THESE DAYS, IN THE CH'AN COMMUNITIES, THEY USE THE EXTRAORDINARY WORDS AND MARVELOUS SAYINGS OF THE ANCIENTS TO QUESTION AND ANSWER -- CONSIDERING THEM SITUATIONS FOR DISCRIMINATION, AND BEGUILING STUDENTS. THEY ARE FAR FROM GETTING TO THE ROOT OF THEIR REALITY.
WHEN PEOPLE ENGAGED IN MEDITATION READ THE SCRIPTURAL TEACHINGS, AND THE STORIES OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES IN WHICH THE ANCIENT WORTHIES ENTERED THE PATH, THEY SHOULD JUST EMPTY THEIR MINDS. DON'T LOOK FOR THE ORIGINAL MARVEL, OR SEEK ENLIGHTENMENT IN SOUNDS, NAMES, AND VERBAL MEANINGS. IF YOU TAKE THIS ATTITUDE, YOU'RE OBSTRUCTING YOUR OWN CORRECT KNOWLEDGE AND PERCEPTION, AND YOU'LL NEVER HAVE AN ENTRY.
P'AN SHAN SAID, "IT'S LIKE HURLING A SWORD AT THE SKY: NO TALK OF WHETHER IT REACHES OR NOT!" DON'T BE CARELESS! VIMALKIRTI SAID THAT THE TRUTH GOES BEYOND EYES, EARS, NOSE, TONGUE, BODY, AND INTELLECT.
TE SHAN WOULD SEE A MONK ENTER THE DOOR AND IMMEDIATELY STRIKE HIM WITH HIS STAFF; LIN CHI WOULD SEE A MONK ENTER THE DOOR AND IMMEDIATELY SHOUT! VENERABLE ADEPTS EVERYWHERE CALL THIS "BRINGING IT UP FACE TO FACE," "IMPARTING IT DIRECTLY," BUT I CALL IT FIRST CLASS TRAILING MUD AND DRIPPING WATER. EVEN IF YOU CAN TAKE IT UP WITH YOUR WHOLE BEING AT A SINGLE BLOW OR SHOUT, ALREADY YOU ARE NOT A MAN OF POWER -- IN FACT YOU HAVE BEEN DOUSED OVER THE HEAD BY SOMEONE ELSE WITH A LADLEFUL OF FOUL WATER. HOW MUCH MORE SO, IF AT A SHOUT OR BLOW YOU ARE LOOKING FOR MARVELS OR SEEKING SUBTLE UNDERSTANDING -- THIS IS THE STUPIDEST OF THE STUPID.</p>


Ta Hui is a strange fellow, but he represents all those people who try to find their self-nature by intellectual effort. The problem with these people is that they have a good intellect. They can grasp words from masters, they can repeat them; they can deceive people and they can be deceived themselves.


Now this is one of the most stupid sutras amongst all his teachings, and I will show you why I am saying that. As I go more and more into Ta Hui, I am wondering whether to call him a great teacher or just a pseudo teacher. A master certainly he is not; a teacher he may have been, but there are things which are even below the status of a teacher. He seems to be a pseudo teacher. He has not fulfilled even the qualifications for being an authentic teacher, just transmitting knowledge from the masters to the masses.


He cannot even understand what has been happening in the school of Zen. It is so special that a very rare insight is needed to comprehend it, and unless you have your own experience there will always remain something of a doubt in you.


For example, Zen is the only school in the world where the masters have slapped the disciples, hit them with their staffs, or even physically thrown students out of the window. Not only that, one master jumped on top of a disciple; sitting on his chest he asked, "Got it?"


The Zen master is mysterious in his working. People who simply read the anecdotes cannot make any sense out of them because they don't know the inner story which cannot be compiled in the anecdotes. It is a happening between the master and the disciple: it is the invisible transfer of energy.


Just to give you an insight so that you can see the stupidity of Ta Hui.... An understanding of this man who has been thrown out of the window by Lin Chi, who then jumped on him and asked, "Got it?", needs the total background to the story and the intrinsic undercurrent running through it.


The disciple had been working for almost a year on a koan which is the most famous koan in Zen -- 'the sound of one hand clapping.' Now, there cannot be any sound of one hand clapping. You can go on clapping one hand, but sound is not possible. Sound is only produced when two things clash; if there is only one thing, sound is not possible.


So the first thing to understand is that a Zen koan is not an ordinary puzzle which can be solved. It needs a different approach -- not that of solution, but that of dissolution.


The poor student went, sat under a tree, thought about it, meditated -- what can be the sound of one hand clapping? Do you hear the cuckoo...? He heard a cuckoo from a faraway bamboo grove. He said, "This is it!" -- so beautiful, so peaceful, bringing such joy. He rushed back and told the master, "I have heard it. It is the song of a cuckoo."


The master slapped him and said, "You idiot! I have told you to find out the sound of one hand clapping! What does a poor cuckoo have to do with it? Just go back and meditate."


He was very much puzzled, because his mind was searching for sounds -- which sound is it? One day he heard a breeze passing through the pine trees and he said, "This must be it!" And he rushed back....


This went on for one year. He would find some sound, the sound of running water, and he would go back. A point came when the master had no need to hear his answer. The moment he saw him, he slapped him, and he would say, "Go back."
He replied, "But I have not even said anything...."


The master said, "As long as you go on finding, you will not have found it. Just go back. I know you have brought some stupid sound again!"


This was the student.... After one year, when he came in, the master saw that slapping was not going to do it -- he had been slapping him for one year continually! He just took hold of him and threw him out of the window. It was a two-story building....


It was such a shock to the student. He was expecting a slap, but he was not expecting to be thrown from the window into a ditch. And besides that, the master jumped on top of him, so the few bones which had been left unbroken were now broken. He had multiple fractures! And on top of all that, the master was asking, "Got it?" The shock was such that his mind stopped -- it was so unexpected.


Mind stops only when there is something unexpected -- so unexpected that the mind cannot figure it out... it stops.


Absolute silence... and tears of joy in the eyes of the disciple. He touched the feet of the master and said, "Why have you waited for one year? You could have done it on the very first day."


The master said, "It would not have worked. I had to wait for the right moment, when you were ripe. You had worked hard with your mind. Your mind was tired, utterly tired; it had lost all hope that there is any possibility to find the answer. This was the moment when, if something unexpected happens to you, the mind may stop -- just for a single moment. And that's enough to hear the sound of one hand clapping."


The words are deceiving. It is not the sound of one hand clapping; it is the silence when the mind stops. Now anybody looking at the anecdote and not knowing the whole inner process -- just an outsider -- is bound to think this is simply stupid. But the disciple became enlightened, and it is always the end which decides whether the means were right or wrong.


Ta Hui is just an intellectual, so sometimes he repeats beautiful words. But here he has shown his reality, because he could not conceive any meaning in the stories and the anecdotes. I will go into them.


You must see the moon and forget the finger. This is so easy to repeat, because for the thousands of years since Gautam Buddha this has been one of the most important statements: the buddha only points the finger towards the moon.


His 'finger' means all that he says, all that he does, and it is only an indication -- a hint. You should not get too much attached to the finger, because the finger is not the point. What he is saying, what he is preaching, is not the point; it is only an indication. You should not get attached to the philosophy, you should not become a buddhist. You should look at the moon.


And if you want to look at the moon, the most fundamental thing is to forget all about the finger. If your eyes are focused on the finger, how are you going to see the moon? Unless you move your eyes from the finger towards the faraway moon in the sky, it is not possible.


Buddha was saying, "Don't get attached to what I say, don't get attached to any doctrine, to what I preach; don't get attached to my personality. These are all just fingers pointing to the moon. Forget me, don't start worshiping me; just look at the moon. And once you have looked at the moon, I don't matter at all."


It is a very pregnant statement, and a very courageous one, to make to one's own disciples: "Don't bother about what I say. I am not preaching any doctrine and I am not delivering to you a system of beliefs or a philosophy. These are all devices to indicate the truth. It is beyond all words, but words can be used as a finger pointing to it. They cannot express it, but they can indicate it."


It is very easy to repeat it, but I don't think Ta Hui understands. You must see the moon and forget the fingers. don't develop an understanding based on the words. But that's actually what he has done. All his understanding is based on words.
<p class="sutra">AN ANCIENT WORTHY SAID, "THE BUDDHAS EXPOUNDED ALL TEACHINGS TO SAVE ALL MINDS; I HAVE NO MIND AT ALL, SO WHAT IS THE USE OF ALL THE TEACHINGS?"</p>


The quotation is perfectly right, but this is what Buddha means by saving: The understanding arising in you that you don't have any mind, that you are a no-mind. And then there is no question of saving. While you are attached to the mind you are in a bondage, and you need to be brought out of the bondage.


So the ancient worthy is right when he says, "the buddhas expounded all teachings to save all minds. i have no mind at all" -- he is a saved man -- "so, what's the use of all the teachings?"


Certainly when you are saved there is no use. When you have seen the moon, what is the use of the fingers? When your disease is cured, what is the use of the medicine? Are you going to worship the bottle of medicine? Are you going to carry it wherever you go because it has saved you from a disease? The moment you are cured, you throw the medicine bottle; it is finished, its work is done.


It is almost as if you have a thorn in your foot: you take another thorn to take the first thorn out. The other thorn is as much a thorn as the first one, but you can manage to take out the first thorn with the other one. Now what are you going to do with the other thorn? Are you going to put it in the wound that has been created by the first thorn because it has saved you from that thorn? That would be utter stupidity -- then you still have what was wrong in the first place. No, once the first thorn is taken out, you throw away both the thorns together.


All teachings are just like that. The ancient worthy is saying it right, but Ta Hui does not understand what he is saying. He says,
<p class="sutra">"IF THEY CAN BE LIKE THIS WHEN READING THE SCRIPTURES, ONLY THEN WILL PEOPLE OF RESOLVE HAVE SOME COMPREHENSION OF THE INTENT OF THE SAGES."</p>


Ta Hui is saying that you can understand what the sage has said only if you are reading the scriptures; only if you are a man of resolve and determination, a man of comprehension, will you be able to understand the intent of the sages.


All the words that he is using are not needed to understand the sages. What is needed is an experience. Not your comprehension, because all comprehension is intellectual; nor your resolve, because all resolve is of the mind; nor your reading of the scriptures, because that is all your intellectuality -- these things are not going to help you understand such a profound statement as, "The moment you have seen the moon, forget all about the fingers."


This kind of statement can be experienced only through experience. Ta Hui has no experience at all, and that becomes very clear when he comes to the stories and sayings. Any intellectual, even today, will condemn Zen stories or simply laugh, thinking that perhaps they are just jokes, because they don't make any sense to the mind.
<p class="sutra">THESE DAYS IN THE CH'AN COMMUNITIES, THEY USE THE EXTRAORDINARY WORDS AND MARVELOUS SAYINGS OF THE ANCIENTS TO QUESTION AND ANSWER -- CONSIDERING THEM SITUATIONS FOR DISCRIMINATION, AND BEGUILING STUDENTS. THEY ARE FAR FROM GETTING TO THE ROOT OF THEIR REALITY.
WHEN PEOPLE ENGAGED IN MEDITATION READ THE SCRIPTURAL TEACHINGS, AND THE STORIES OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES IN WHICH THE ANCIENT WORTHIES ENTERED THE PATH, THEY SHOULD JUST EMPTY THEIR MINDS.</p>


He is not even aware that he goes on saying things in which he contradicts himself. Just look: when people engaged in meditation read the scriptures... A man who is engaged in meditation does not need to read the scriptures, because whatever the scriptures contain is a faraway echo of somebody's meditation. And if you are yourself meditating, you are at the very source. Why should you bother about faraway echoes, corrupted, distorted by the interpretations of intellectuals, teachers, pedagogues, commentators?


When you are at the very source yourself, you are at the very root from where all scriptures have arisen. A man of meditation has no necessity to read the scriptures and the teachings in the scriptures, but that is what Ta Hui is saying. Then immediately he says: ...and the stories of the circumstances in which the ancient worthies entered the path, they should just empty their minds.


How can you empty your mind when you are reading scriptures, teachings, and stories of how the ancient sages entered the path? you are filling the mind, not emptying the mind.


Meditation empties the mind; studying anything only fills it. They are diametrically opposite to each other. But Ta Hui, in a single sentence, is bringing the whole opposition together, without ever being aware that what he is doing will be thought utterly idiotic by anyone who knows what meditation is.
<p class="sutra">DON'T LOOK FOR THE ORIGINAL MARVEL, OR SEEK ENLIGHTENMENT IN SOUNDS, NAMES, AND VERBAL MEANINGS.
 How are you going to read the scriptures if you don't look for the verbal meanings? What other kind of meanings are there? In a scripture there are only words and nothing else; you can read the scripture only as verbal meanings.</p>
<p class="sutra">IF YOU TAKE THIS ATTITUDE, YOU'RE OBSTRUCTING YOUR OWN CORRECT KNOWLEDGE AND PERCEPTION AND YOU WILL NEVER HAVE AN ENTRY.</p>


He has no idea that knowledge is the problem. One has to get free of it. It is not knowledge that gives you perception; it is knowledge that hinders your perception. It is removing the knowledge that clears the sky, just as when the clouds have moved there is absolute clear perception.


But this is bound to happen to a man who has been gathering things from here and there and who has not gone into meditation himself. Not a single thing shows that he has had any taste of meditation.


P'an Shan said... he quotes people because he has been going to teachers, masters; he must have been taking notes of what they were saying. He quotes many people.
<p class="sutra">P'AN SHAN SAID, "IT'S LIKE HURLING A SWORD AT THE SKY: NO TALK OF WHETHER IT REACHES OR NOT!" DON'T BE CARELESS! VIMALKIRTI SAID THAT THE TRUTH GOES BEYOND EYES, EARS, NOSE, TONGUE, BODY, AND INTELLECT.</p>


I am simply amazed! This man quotes Vimalkirti, and Vimalkirti is saying, "Unless you go beyond intellect and all your senses, you will not have the perception of reality, you will not know your self nature." But it does not strike him that he is simply working through the intellect.
<p class="sutra">TE SHAN WOULD SEE A MONK ENTER THE DOOR AND IMMEDIATELY STRIKE HIM WITH HIS STAFF; LIN CHI WOULD SEE A MONK ENTER THE DOOR AND IMMEDIATELY SHOUT! VENERABLE ADEPTS EVERYWHERE CALL THIS "BRINGING IT UP FACE TO FACE," "IMPARTING IT DIRECTLY," BUT I CALL IT FIRST CLASS TRAILING MUD AND DRIPPING WATER. EVEN IF YOU CAN TAKE IT UP WITH YOUR WHOLE BEING AT A SINGLE BLOW OR SHOUT, ALREADY YOU ARE NOT A MAN OF POWER -- IN FACT YOU HAVE BEEN DOUSED OVER THE HEAD BY SOMEONE ELSE WITH A LADLEFUL OF FOUL WATER. HOW MUCH MORE SO, IF AT A SHOUT OR BLOW YOU ARE LOOKING FOR MARVELS OR SEEKING SUBTLE UNDERSTANDING -- THIS IS THE STUPIDEST OF THE STUPID.</p>


Because he cannot understand, because he has no experience of his own, he calls it stupidest of the stupid. I will try to explain to you exactly what these people were doing. They were immensely successful, and they are not stupid. Ta Hui is the stupidest of the stupid.


Te Shan is famous and a great master. A monk would enter the door and immediately he would strike him with his staff. You have to understand the situation. The master sees the disciple; he gives him a certain koan, an unsolvable puzzle. Then whenever he finds the right answer to it, he has to come and report to the master. Now there is really no answer for it -- so whenever a disciple enters to give him an answer, why waste time? He would simply hit him hard. He is making it as clear as possible that all answers are wrong, so there is no need to listen to your answer. Although it looks very strange that you have not given the answer and he is hitting you -- if you were wrong, he could have hit you... but you may have been right. But that is the problem: no answer is going to be right, only silence.


So it happened many times that the student will get hit -- many, many times. Then for a few days he will not appear, and Te Shan will enquire, "Where is he?" He will go to the place -- it was a big monastery, a beautiful Zen garden -- and he will find the disciple sitting under a tree, in utter silence. His face showed that the mind is no longer functioning, that there is no wavering inside, that everything is quiet and calm.


And the same Te Shan who has been hitting this disciple will touch his feet. As he will touch his feet, the disciple will open his eyes and he will say, "Master, what are you doing?"


Te Shan will say, "I am touching your feet because you have found the answer. I suspected that something else had happened, because for many days you did not come. It happens that students only stop coming when they have found, because what to say? -- there is no answer. And they are enjoying their silence so tremendously... they have forgotten the koan, they have forgotten the master, they have forgotten everything. They are living in such an ecstasy that everything is left far away."


Te Shan used to find the disciples, and it always proved right -- his hitting had helped. His hitting finally made them aware that he is so compassionate and so loving, he will not hit unnecessarily. His hitting again and again shows only one thing: that whatever answer you have found is wrong. There is no need to hear it because there is no possibility of a right answer. By hitting he is making it clear that there is no possibility of a right answer; mind is absolutely impotent to give you the answer.


Slowly, slowly, the disciple forgets about the koan, forgets about the sound, because it brings nothing but a hit from the staff of the master. But the moment he forgets the mind, and the koan, and the master, and the search for any answer, he falls into a deep, abysmal silence. That silence is the answer, but you cannot say anything about it. And it is so wonderful, mysterious... you are so contented with it that there is no need for recognition from the master that you have found the answer. All these things have become trivia.


But Ta Hui does not understand it at all, and perhaps nobody -- not even the greatest philosopher in the world -- will be able to understand what kind of things these are. It looks simply absurd: first you give him a koan, and then you don't even listen to his answer. But it is a strategy, a strategy of great love and great compassion.


The master touches the feet and asks to be forgiven for all the hits that he has given... he had to do it: "There was no other way to destroy your stubborn mind, to destroy your clinging with the mind, to destroy the idea that you can find an answer through the mind. It was not only you that was hurt by my staff, I was hurt more. For all that I touch your feet, and I ask for your forgiveness."


Te Shan was loved by his disciples even though he hit them with his staff; Ta Hui has no understanding at all.


Lin Chi would see a monk enter the door and immediately shout! Any intellectual will make a laughingstock of the whole thing. What is the point? -- you give the appointment to the student, to the disciple, to come to your room, and then you suddenly shout for no reason at all.


In my childhood I came across a man. His name was Sardar Chanchal Singh. He had been with Subhash Chandra Bose, a great Indian revolutionary, who had escaped from the jails of the British government. He had gone first in disguise to Germany to see Adolf Hitler, because he wanted to suggest, "You are fighting with the British. We are also fighting them, and we need your help. If you can give us help, the British Empire can be attacked from two sides. We can attack from inside and you can go on attacking it from the outside."


The policy was absolutely clear... and you will be surprised, Adolf Hitler never introduced any man to his armies the way he introduced Subhash Chandra Bose. He said to the armies, "Respect this man more than you respect me, because I am a fuhrer of only a small nation; this man is a revolutionary and the leader of a vast continent." And he gave him -- although he was not in any political position -- a guard of honor.


It was Adolf Hitler and Subhash Chandra's plan... they worked out that it would be better that Subhash Chandra went to Japan. In Japan there were thousands of Indian soldiers who were fighting for the British government against Japan.


It was a very clever policy: Subhash Chandra would go to Japan and Hitler would inform Japan -- because Japan was an ally with Germany against the British, against the Americans.... He would inform them, "Allow Subhash to talk to all the Indian soldiers who are prisoners in Japanese jails. I have every certainty that this man is capable." -- and he was a man of immense charisma -- "and that he will convince those soldiers, 'You are fighting for the British empire, which keeps your slavery intact. Instead, come with me, and we will make an army and fight against the British Empire.'"


It was so logical and simple that the prisoners were ready. First... if they are ready, they will not be prisoners any more; they will be guests of Japan. Secondly, they may have been fighting for the British, but deep down they were against the empire; just for their bread and butter, they had sold their souls.


Once Subhash told them, "You have sold your souls..." then all the camps of prisoners were opened. A new army -- the Indian National Army -- was created by Subhash Chandra Bose. Sardar Chanchal Singh was one of the close colleagues of Subhash. He was also a prisoner. He had had a high post in the Indian army, and he also had a very high post in the Indian National Army that was going to attack from Japan.


They succeeded as far as Rangoon; they defeated the British armies. Even Calcutta started feeling the fear that after Rangoon the next attack would be on Calcutta. All British were removed from Calcutta, and people who had enough money all moved from there. Calcutta was a danger point.


At that very moment Germany was defeated. Atom bombs were thrown on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so Japan surrendered.


Subhash was in a strange position. Now, both friends who were supporting him were defeated. He had a small army -- but although he was winning, how long could he go on? He could not even reach Calcutta, which was his home town. So he escaped from Rangoon....


It is still a mystery what happened to him. There are stories that he has been seen in the Soviet Union; there are stories that he lives in Tibet; there are stories which seem to have been created by himself.... The plane he had taken from Rangoon fell in Taipei and burned. The pilot and somebody else -- nobody knows who the other man was -- were immediately burned, without any press conference or without any medical examination. They were already burned in the crash, and because they were both Hindus, they were put on a funeral pyre.


Most probably, Subhash had been dropped somewhere else, and this plane was purposely burned to create the impression to the British Empire that Subhash was dead; otherwise he was enemy number one, to be caught dead or alive. So, this was a good fiction: he is dead, now there is no point... and he has even been burned.


Taipei gave out the report that he had been put on the funeral pyre -- but there was no point, the bodies were already burned, they were unrecognizable. They had not even photographed those bodies -- which is absolutely necessary for a man with the status of Subhash, for whom the British Empire was bloodthirsty. They should have taken photographs, they should have called medical people to examine the bodies. They should, in fact, have delivered the body to the British Empire. But my feeling is that it was not the body of Subhash; it was just a created facade. And that was the feeling of Sardar Chanchal Singh also.


He, by chance, met me in a restaurant in Jabalpur. He had been released from the Indian jail.... After Subhash left, all the Indian National Army people were again in jail -- but now they were in the jails of the British. But a case was fought for them, and Chanchal Singh was released. He was searching for employment, so I told him, "If you have learned any martial arts in Japan, I can arrange a group of college and university students. You can teach them martial arts, and they will pay you enough so that you can survive until you can get other employment."


I have told you about Chanchal Singh because he had learned from someone to shout exactly the way Lin Chi must have been shouting -- and I have heard him shout! I don't know Lin Chi -- he must have been more articulate in his shouting... but even if this man Chanchal Singh shouted at you, your mind would stop immediately. If you were going to strike him with a sword, and he shouted, your hand would stop.


His shout was so deep, so much penetrating in you, that whatever you were doing you would simply stop. We had tried bringing wrestlers to hit him, to punch his nose. They were expert boxers, but the moment he would shout, their hands would just stop, close to his nose.... Something strange in his sound.


Just jokingly we used to use him. somebody was urinating and we would say, "Chanchal Singh, give a good shout." He would give a good shout and the urination would stop! The man would look all around -- what happened?


I know perfectly well that there are many stories about Lin Chi, whose shout has awakened people, but it was not an ordinary shout. It was a certain training that enters into the deepest core of your being. The whole problem is that man is asleep. A good shout can wake him up.


Even today, in the school of Lin Chi, the shout is being used. But it is not being used on every disciple -- only when a disciple has worked hard with his mind and his mind is tired. Those koans are so tiring because you know that they are absurd. But if the master says, "Find the answer," and you have come to the master to become awakened, then you have to follow whatever discipline he gives you.


Those shouts are given only when the mind is almost on the brink of failure, and it is the understanding of the master that now is the time. Then a disciple enters in Lin Chi's room, without expecting that he will shout like a lion's roar for no reason at all... jump and shout as if he is going to kill the disciple. The disciple will remain just... the whole mind stops. And just for a moment he can see his self-nature.


The question is not of time. If you know your self-nature, even for a moment, things become easy. Now you know the way. Now you know yourself, you can reach to it again and again. Now a shout is not needed every time; it was only an arbitrary device.


But Ta Hui condemns it because he does not understand the deep compassion, the psychology, the articulateness behind it. He proves himself to be an ordinary intellectual. Only in one thing is he right, when he uses the words stupidest of the stupid. But those words belong to him, not to Lin Chi, not to the master Te Shan.


These people were using absolutely new methods to awaken people. Their contribution is great. Zen has made more people enlightened than any other school of any other religion. Even in one monastery you can find many enlightened people. And this has been the only living current which has not stopped somewhere in the past; it is still alive. There are still people like Te Shan and Lin Chi, but they have fallen into obscurity.


America has corrupted the Japanese atmosphere completely; otherwise, Japan would be a totally different world. Its whole genius was concentrated on how to become enlightened. Now, under the American rule, their whole energy has been diverted towards money. And, they are people of great integrity, so great that now their money has the greatest value. Even the dollar, the American dollar, is left far behind. They are one of the richest nations in the world, and their money is more trustworthy than any other nation's currency. But this is not a success; it is a tremendous failure.


America has corrupted Japan's universities. What is being taught now in their universities is borrowed from America; they are completely imitating America, competing with America. Certainly they have made America afraid: although their products are very highly taxed when they enter America, still they are able to compete in the American market with American products, which are not taxed at all. The taxation has been going higher and higher to prevent the American market from being completely taken over by Japan.


But even though the Americans are raising the taxation on any import, Japan is still competing very well on every front in the American market. And America is absolutely impotent to compete in the Japanese market.


The Japanese work hard, work totally, work intensely. Their only problem is that they don't have much land to create more factories. So just a few days ago they have succeeded in floating an artificial island. On this artificial island they will be making factories. Once they succeed on one island, they will float many other islands. They are creating land for the first time.


Ta Hui does not understand. And this is the sign of a stupid person -- that without understanding anything, he criticizes it. Intellectuals are very willing to criticize anything that does not come within their comprehension.


But there are methods which work whether you can comprehend them or not. You should look at the ultimate result. Although the Japanese monasteries have fallen into darkness, still there are people who are working with devices which can create awakening.


Ta Hui is absolutely wrong. I was thinking to call his teachings, "Teachings of a Great Teacher." But as I am going into his sutras, I will have to change the title of the book. It will be "Zen Teachings of a Pseudo Teacher -- Ta Hui."

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.
			

> [!info]
> Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
>