---
section: Library
booktitle: "Take It Easy, Vol 2"
booktype: "Discourses"
bookcode: "EASY2"
dategiven: "10 May 1978 am"
place: " in Buddha Hall"
chapternum: "Chapter #12"
chaptertitle: "In The House of the Moon"
acode: "7805100"
shorttitle: "EASY212"
audio: "Yes"
video: "No"
esttime: "98mins"
displaytitle: "Take It Easy, Vol 2: Chapter #12"
---

```style
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  font-style: italic;
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}
```
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<p class="sutra">THE MOON IS THE HOUSE,
THE MIND IS THE MASTER IN IT:
WHEN WE UNDERSTAND THIS,
IT IS ONLY A TRANSITORY WORLD
WE LIVE IN HERE.</p>
<p class="sutra">DEEPLY THINKING OF IT,
I AND OTHER PEOPLE --
THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE,
AS THERE IS NO MIND
BEYOND THIS MIND.</p>
<p class="sutra">EVERY SPRING WHEN YOU SEE
THE CHERRY BLOSSOMS BLOOM,
FEEL WITH PAIN
THE BREVITY OF YOUR LIFE!</p>
<p class="sutra">THE ORIGINAL MAN
MUST RETURN TO HIS ORIGINAL PLACE;
WHY SEEK THEN
THE NEEDLESS BUDDHA?</p>
<p class="sutra">THE MORNING DEW
FLEES AWAY,
AND IS NO MORE;
WHO MAY REMAIN
IN THIS WORLD OF OURS?</p>
<p class="sutra">WE PRAY FOR OUR LIFE OF TOMORROW,
EPHEMERAL LIFE THOUGH IT MAY BE;
THIS IS THE HABIT OF OUR MIND
THAT PASSED AWAY YESTERDAY.</p>
<p class="sutra">DO NOT TAKE IT TO HEART;
THE REAL WAY
IS ONE, ITSELF AS IT IS;
THERE ARE NOT TWO, OR THREE.</p>


THE ESSENTIAL TEACHING OF GAUTAM THE BUDDHA is not a teaching at all, but an awakening. A way to become more aware. He does not give you a doctrine about existence, but he gives you a methodology to see that which is. He is not concerned with God, he is not concerned with the other world beyond. His whole concern is you -- the awareness within.


Hence Buddha has been misunderstood by almost everybody. The religious people have not been able to understand him because he does not talk about God. They have not been able to appreciate him because he does not talk about the other world. And all the religions have depended on the other world. They are against THIS world and for some illusory world somewhere there in the future -- beyond this life, beyond this body, beyond this moment. Their whole world is a fantasy world. They persuade people to sacrifice the real for the unreal, they persuade people to sacrifice that which is for that which is not yet and may not ever be. They persuade people to sacrifice the present for the future -- how can they understand Buddha? Because he does not talk about the other world at all. He is not an other-worldly one.


But he has not satisfied the materialists either, the atheists either. Because they think this is all that there is -- eat, drink, be merry. And Buddha says: This is not all that there is. You are living only on the surface of things. There is a depth to things -- but that depth can be known, fathomed, only if depth to you go deeper into your own being, into your own consciousness.


The more conscious you are, the more intensely you live. The more conscious you are, the more reality becomes available to you. You EARN reality only through being conscious. When one is absolutely conscious, one is absolutely real.


Naturally, the materialists, the this-worldly people, cannot agree with Buddha, because they say, "This is all. The surface is all, the outside is all, there is no inside to it."


So nobody is agreeing with him. The religious don't agree, the irreligious don't agree. His approach is a very radical approach -- it is against the worldly, it is against the other-worldly. He brings a new light, he brings a new understanding. That understanding he calls 'mindfulness'.


You have to understand this word 'mindfulness'. If you can understand this single word 'mindfulness' you will have understood Buddha's whole being, his whole approach. And he is one of those who have known. If you want to ask anybody, ask a man like Buddha.


But his approach is a methodology, not a doctrine. It is a way of life. People live like robots, they live mechanically. Buddha says: Live non-mechanically. Each of your acts has to be luminous with awareness. And then each act starts revealing reality to you.


And he does not make any distinction between the profane and the sacred -- there is none. The profane is the sacred, if you live it consciously.


Just going for a morning walk -- if you can walk consciously, this is prayer. There is no need to go to any church. Prayer has no relationship with a church or a temple, prayer has something to do with your quality of awareness. You can do a thing prayerfully, and the thing may be anything, cleaning the floor, cooking the food, washing the clothes, taking a bath, going to sleep.


It reminds me of one of the most beautiful stories about Buddha's closest disciple, Ananda. Ananda lived with Buddha for forty years -- and he lived like a shadow. He never left Buddha for a single moment, not even in the night; he would sleep in the same room where Buddha was sleeping. He had taken a promise from Buddha...


When Buddha became enlightened, Ananda came to him to be initiated. He was a cousin brother of Buddha and older than Buddha. He asked Buddha, "I am your elder brother. Once I am initiated, I will be your disciple. Then whatsoever you say, I will have to do -- then I cannot say no.


That is the meaning of disciplehood -- a person decides, "Now I will say yes to my master, whatsoever he says. If he says 'Jump and kill yourself' I will jump and kill myself." Surrendering the no is the secret of disciplehood.


So Ananda said, "I am going to be your disciple. Before I become your disciple, as your elder brother I want one promise. Right now I am your elder brother and I can order you" -- the old Indian tradition -- "you are my younger brother and I can say this to you. You have to give me this promise, that you will never tell me to leave you. I will stay with you; wherever you go I will be with you. I will follow you like a shadow, I will serve you like a shadow. Even in the night I will be sleeping just by your side, continuously ready to serve you."


Buddha promised. And Ananda lived with Buddha for forty years. No other disciple lived so close. But because he was so close he started taking Buddha for granted -- naturally. He was so close, he started forgetting Buddha. He was so close that he never tried what Buddha was saying. And the day came when Buddha dropped his body...


Many who had come after Ananda had become enlightened. Ananda was not yet enlightened. He wept bitterly. His misery was great; there was no consolation. Now suddenly he became aware that forty years had been a wastage. "I lived with this man -- a rare opportunity, very rare. To find a Buddha is rare, and to live with a Buddha for forty years continuously -- it has not happened before, it may not happen again. Forty years in a long time. And still I have missed."


He stopped eating food, he stopped all kinds of other activities. He decided to become enlightened before it was too late -- it was already late. Day and night, he was trying to be aware...


And a great council was going to be arranged soon -- all the enlightened disciples were going to gather together to collect the sayings of Buddha. Ananda was not invited. And he was the most reliable source, obviously -- nobody had lived with Buddha so long, nobody had as much information as he had. Nobody had listened to Buddha so much -- morning and evening, day and night, he was always there, just watching. Whatsoever Buddha had said, he had heard it. And he had a miraculous memory, absolute memory -- he had the power of absolute recall. But still he was not invited to the council.


It was not possible to invite him. He had known Buddha, his word was reliable, his memory was perfect -- but he had no inner validity. He himself was not yet a Buddha. Yes, to collect facts he was the right person. But what about truth? And facts and truths are different dimensions. A fact may be a fact and yet may not be true. And a truth may be true, yet may not be a fact.


Truth is not the sum total of all the facts -- truth is something more. Facts are mundane, superficial. Truths are not on the surface, they are inner. Ananda could say everything factual, but he had no inner validity. He himself was not a witness. So even those who had not lived with Buddha were called to the council, but not Ananda.


He worked hard, he staked all. Each moment he was trying to be aware, alert, mindful.


And the last night came -- tomorrow morning the council was going to gather. Ananda was going mad: it had not happened yet. He was becoming more and more tense and he was putting in all that one could put, all that was humanly possible. He was ready to die for it.


The middle of the night had come and nothing had happened yet. And he was driving himself crazy. For days he had not eaten, he had not slept, he had not taken a bath -- there was no time to waste. One o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock, four o'clock in the morning... and he was just on the verge of either going mad or becoming enlightened. It looked more like madness: he was exploding, he was falling apart.


Then suddenly he remembered, Buddha had always said: Be aware, but in a relaxed way. Be aware, but without any tension. Attention without any tension. Calm and quiet. Alert, but with no strain.


That memory came in the right moment -- he relaxed. He was so tired, dead tired, that he went to bed. When he was just going to put his head on the pillow -- fully aware, relaxed -- he became enlightened. The moment his head touched the pillow, he became enlightened.


He slept, for the first time in his whole life, a different kind of sleep. He was asleep as far as the body was concerned, but his inner light was aflame. Deep within his being, he was alert and aware.


Morning came, and he was still asleep. Other monks came to see whether he had been able to make it. They looked in the room, and it had the same fragrance as that of Buddha -- the same luminosity, the same grace and grandeur. And Ananda was fast asleep but his face had the light, the light that comes from within. Even in his sleep he was mindful. There was grace, there was a silence surrounding the room, there was a new space.


He was invited immediately. He asked the other monks, "Why? What has happened now? Why were you not asking me to come to the council?" And they said, "Just one day ago, your memory was just the memory of the outside of things. Now you know from the inside -- you yourself have become a Buddha.


BUDDHAHOOD MEANS WHEN YOU BECOME SO ALERT that even in your sleep the alertness continues as an undercurrent. Even when you die, you die fully alert -- now there is no way to lose your alertness, your alertness has become your nature.


This is the essential message of Buddha. And unless you understand this, you will miss all the sutras of Ikkyu. Many have commented on the sutras, and particularly the Western commentators go on missing the point -- because they think what the sutra is saying is a philosophy. The best commentator is R. H. Blyth -- but even he misses, because he also seems to have no inner validity. He thinks these sutras are pessimistic. They are not. Pessimism has nothing to do with Buddha. They look pessimistic because they go against your so-called optimism.


Buddha does not give you any hope. But his message is not that of hopelessness. He takes away hope, and with hope he takes away hopelessness too. That is very difficult to understand, unless you have an inner validity. He destroys all optimism, but remember, he is not a pessimist. Once there is no optimism, how can there be pessimism? -- they go together. His vision of life is not dismal, but it looks dismal to people.


Even R. H. Blyth, who is the most perceptive commentator from the West on Ikkyu's sutras, goes on missing the point. He goes on showing where Buddha is wrong, he goes on saying where Ikkyu is morbid.


If you look at the sutras themselves, without making any effort to be mindful, you will miss the whole point. These sutras are just a device to make you mindful.


Buddha gave an example of just how mindful we should be. He told of a person who was ordered to walk through a very crowded marketplace with a water jug, full to the brim, balanced on his head. Behind him walked a soldier with a big sword. If a single drop of that water were to fall, the soldier would cut off his head. Assuredly, the person with the jug walked pretty mindfully. But it has to be mindful in an easy way. If there is too much forcing or strain, the least jostling will cause the water to spill. The person with the jug has to be loose and rhythmic, flowing with the changing scene, yet staying very attentive in each moment.


That is the kind of care we should take in developing awareness: a relaxed alertness.


These two words look diametrically opposite -- they are. Because whenever you are relaxed you lose alertness, and whenever you are alert you lose relaxedness. And unless they both happen together you will go on missing Buddha's message. It is a very strange message -- it wants you to bring this polarity together. It is the highest synthesis of human consciousness: one polarity is relaxedness, another polarity is alertness, attentiveness.


If you are only attentive then sooner or later you will be tired of it. You cannot be attentive for twenty-four hours; you will need holidays. You will need alcohol, drugs, to drop out of that attentiveness.


That's what is happening in the West. People have become more attentive; attentiveness has been cultivated. The whole educational mechanism forces you to become more attentive. Those who are more attentive succeed, those who are less attentive fail. It is a very competitive world -- if you want to succeed you have to be very attentive. But then it tires you. Then the tension becomes heavy on the head, then it drives you neurotic. Then madness becomes a very very natural by-product of it.


Many more people go neurotic in the West than in the East. The reason is clear: in the West, attentiveness has been practised, down through the ages. It has paid much. The technology, the scientific progress, affluence -- all that has come through being attentive. In the East, people have remained in a relaxed state. But if you are relaxed without being attentive, it becomes lethargy. It becomes passivity, it becomes a kind of dullness. Hence the East has remained poor, unscientific, non-technological, starving.


If Buddha's message is rightly understood, there will be a meeting of East and West. In Buddha, both can meet. His message is of relaxed attentiveness. You have to be very very relaxed, and yet alert. And there is no problem; it is possible.


And I say it to you from an inner validity: It is possible. And only this possibility will make you a whole man, a holy man. Otherwise you will remain half -- and a half man is always miserable, in one way or other. The West is miserable spiritually, the East is miserable materially. And man needs both -- man needs a richness of the inner and the outer, both.


With Buddha, a new age can dawn. And the secret is simple: learn relaxed awareness. When you are trying to be attentive, simultaneously keep in mind that the body should not become tense. It should be relaxed, loose, in a kind of let-go.


I like this story of Ananda becoming enlightened when his head touched the pillow. You cannot find a better place to become enlightened. Remember it.


And Buddha has not given you any objects to meditate upon. He has not told you to meditate on God, he has not told you to meditate on a mantra, he has not told you to meditate on an image. He has told you to do the small things of life with a relaxed awareness. When you are eating, eat totally -- chew totally, taste totally, smell totally. Touch your bread, feel the texture. Smell the bread, smell the flavour. Chew it, let it dissolve into your being, and remain conscious -- and you are meditating. And then meditation is not separate from life.


And whenever meditation is separate from life, something is wrong. It becomes life-negative. Then one starts thinking of going to a monastery or to a Himalayan cave. Then one wants to escape from life, because life seems to be a distraction from meditation.


Life is not a distraction, life is an OCCASION for meditation.


Walking, just be watchful of the breath going in, the breath going out. You are putting one of your feet ahead: watch, feel it from within. You are touching the earth: feel the touch of the earth. And the birds are singing and the sun is rising... One has to be multi-dimensionally sensitive. This will help your intelligence to grow; this will make you more brilliant, sharp, alive. And religion SHOULD make you more alive, more sensitive. Because life is God, and there is no other God.
Buddha would have agreed with Toscanini...


On Toscanini's eightieth birthday, someone asked his son what his father ranked as his most important achievement. The son replied, "For him, there can be no such thing. Whatever he happens to be doing at the moment is the biggest thing in his life -- whether he is conducting a symphony or peeling an orange."


Peel an orange as if you are conducting a symphony, and you will be coming closer and closer to Buddha. Peel an orange as if you are painting the greatest painting in the world -- with that alertness, with that care, with that love, with that totality. Peel an orange and be multi-dimensionally aware of it -- the smell that is coming from it, the feel, the touch, the taste. Then a small orange, an ordinary orange, is transformed -- transformed by the quality of the consciousness that you bring to it.


And if life can be lived in this way then religion is not life-negative -- it affirms. It does not take you away from life -- it takes you INTO it, to the deepest core of it. It takes you into its mysteries.


That's my approach too. And any religion that has to be maintained separate from life -- a prayer that you have to do in the temple, and a meditation that you can do only in a Himalayan cave -- is not worth much, because you cannot do it for twenty-four hours. Even the man who lives in a Himalayan cave will have to go to beg for his food, will have to collect wood for the winter that is coming, will have to protect himself because the rain is there, will have to think of something because in the night the wild animals are there. Even in that cave he will have to do a thousand and one things. YOU cannot simply meditate for twenty-four hours, it is not possible.


But Buddha makes it possible. He says: Don't separate meditation from life -- let them be together. Turn each opportunity of life into meditation. Do it fully aware, alert, watchful, witnessing.


A disciple had come to see Ikkyu, his master. The disciple had been practising for some time. It was raining, and as he went in, he left his shoes and umbrella outside. After he paid his respects, the master asked him on which side of his shoes he had left his umbrella.


Now, what kind of question...? You don't expect masters to ask such nonsense questions -- you expect them to ask about God, about kundalini rising, chakras opening, lights happening in your head. You ask about such great things -- occult, esoteric.


But Ikkyu asked a very ordinary question. No Christian saint would have asked it, no Jain monk would have asked it, no Hindu swami would have asked it. It can be done only by one who is really with the Buddha, IN the Buddha -- who is really a Buddha. The master asked him on which side of his shoes he had left his umbrella. Now, what do shoes and umbrellas have to do with spirituality?


If the same question was asked to you, you would have felt annoyed. You would have felt that this man is no master at all. What kind of question is this? What philosophy can there be in it?


But there is something immensely valuable in it. Had he asked about God, about your kundalini and chakras, that would have been nonsense, utterly meaningless. But this has meaning. The disciple could not remember -- who bothers where you have put your shoes and on which side you have put your umbrella, to the right or to the left. Who bothers? Who pays so much attention to umbrellas? Who thinks of shoes? Who is so careful?


But that was enough -- the disciple was refused. Ikkyu said, "Then go and meditate for seven years more."
"Seven years?" the disciple said. "Just for this small fault?


Ikkyu said, "This is not a small fault. Faults are not small or big -- you are just not yet living meditatively, that's all. Go back, meditate for seven years more, and come again."


This is the essential message of Buddhism: Be careful, careful of everything. And don't make any distinction between things, that this is trivia and that is very very spiritual. It depends on you. Pay attention, be careful, and everything becomes spiritual. Don't pay attention, don't be careful, and everything becomes unspiritual.


Spirituality is imparted by YOU, it is your gift to the world. When a master like Ikkyu touches his umbrella, the umbrella is as divine as anything can be. And if you touch even God, God will become trivia. It depends on your touch.


Meditative energy is alchemical. It transforms the baser metal into gold; it goes on transforming the baser into the higher. The more meditative you become, the more you see God everywhere. At the ultimate peak, everything is divine. This very world is the paradise, and this very body the Buddha.

The sutras.
<p class="sutra">THE MOON IS THE HOUSE,
THE MIND IS THE MASTER IN IT:
WHEN WE UNDERSTAND THIS,
IT IS ONLY A TRANSITORY WORLD
WE LIVE IN HERE.</p>


OUR REAL HOME IS NOT THE MIND. The mind is just a caravanserai -- good to stay for the night, good for an over-night's stay. But remember, in the morning we have to go. The mind is not your real home. The mind creates only dreams -- and how can dreams be your real home? The mind creates only desires -- and how can you live in desires?


And that's what people are doing and why they are suffering. They are trying to live in desires. They are trying to live in that which is not -- that's what desire means. They are trying to live in the future. How can you live in the future? The only life possible is in the present -- and the mind is never in the present, it is either in the past or in the future. It is always in that which is not. It exists only with non-existence -- with existence it disappears. And we have made our homes in the mind.


Just watch your mind and you will see the point. Either you are thinking of the past, which is no more, and you are wasting your energy. Or you are projecting into the future, which is not yet -- again you are wasting your energy.
Live here! Live now! Now is the home.


But the mind does not allow you to live in the now. If you are in the herenow, the mind disappears. If you are in the mind, now and here don't exist for you.
<p class="sutra">THE MOON IS THE HOUSE...</p>


The moon is a symbol of dreaming, of hallucinating. That's why mad people are called lunatics -- they live in the moon, they live through the moon. The moon is your dreaming faculty, the moon creates fantasies in you -- it is unreal, imaginary.
<p class="sutra">THE MOON IS THE HOUSE,
THE MIND IS THE MASTER IN IT...</p>


The moon, your dreaming faculties, create the house. The house is false. And then of course the mind becomes the master. The mind can be master only with the false. With lies the mind is perfectly at ease, with truth it becomes frightened.


That's why the closer you come to meditation, the more and more fear arises in you. The closer you come to me, the more and more your mind says, "Escape from here." The closer you come towards me the more fear. You can make it a measurement: you can know if you are becoming very much afraid of me that means you are coming closer -- you MUST be coming closer. If you are becoming afraid of meditations, that simply shows one thing, that the mind has become apprehensive -- now there is danger. One step more, and it may be too late and you may have reached the point of no return.


Mind is perfectly at ease with hallucinations, and mind creates all kinds of dreams. Not only in the night, remember -- even in the day. When you are fully awake... at least, you think you are fully awake -- you can't be, because a fully awake man becomes a Buddha. When you are asleep with open eyes -- that's what I mean by 'fully awake' -- watch. Just close your eyes and look within, and you will find just dreams flowing there.


It is like the stars: in the day you can't see them -- but don't believe that they have disappeared; they are there. In the night you will be able to see them. In the day they only disappear because the light of the sun is too much.


Exactly is the case with your dreaming faculties. In the night they are very clear. In the day there are so many other occupations, they go into the background -- but they are there. Close your eyes any moment of the day, stand in the middle of the road and close your eyes, and you will be surprised: the dream is there. Some dream is going on. It goes on without your cooperation -- it continues.
<p class="sutra">THE MOON IS THE HOUSE,
THE MIND IS THE MASTER IN IT...</p>


And the mind can remain the master only if dreams are there. Hence the mind has always been in search of drugs, hallucinogens, which create new illusions. It is not new -- it has nothing to do with the modern generation and the young people, it is as old as man. It existed in the Rigveda it was called SOMARAS. It was the LSD of those days.


Down through the ages, man has been searching for drugs, because drugs help your dreaming faculties. They make your dream more colourful, psychedelic, more real, more solid. And they can supply you anything that you ask: if you want SAMADHI, marijuana will give it to you. But the samadhi will be just a dream. It will not transform you, it will not change you, it will not bring any radical transmutation in your being -- you will remain the same. Or you may fall even lower than before; you may regress.
<p class="sutra">THE MOON IS THE HOUSE,
THE MIND IS THE MASTER IN IT:
WHEN WE UNDERSTAND THIS,
IT IS ONLY A TRANSITORY WORLD
WE LIVE IN HERE.</p>


If you don't understand, dreams become real. If you understand, what you call reality ITSELF becomes a dream. Just see the point of the sutra -- it is one of the most significant sutras. If you don't understand, then even dreams look as if they are real. If you understand, if you become aware, if you become alert and you see into things, even that which you had always been thinking was real is no more real. Then all is a dream.


That is the meaning when Buddha says, "The world is a dream." He is not condemning it, remember. He is not saying "Renounce it" -- how can you renounce a dream? He is not saying, "Escape from it" -- what is the point of escaping from a dream? He is simply saying, "Know it as it is."


And remember, many people ask me, "If it is a dream, and we KNOW it is a dream, will it stop?"


It will not stop, because it is a collective dream. You can stop your private dreams by understanding them. You cannot stop collective dreams -- they don't depend only on you, they depend on the collective mind.


It is as if you are sitting in a movie house and seeing the film. The film is a dream -- you know it, there is nothing on the screen. But sometimes you forget; you become very excited, you become very identified, and it starts taking on a reality for you. Then you remember. Then you relax again in your chair and you know that this is just a game, shadows moving on the screen, and there is nothing.


But feeling this, that there is nothing, it is just like a dream, will not stop the movie -- the projector will continue. IT does not depend only on you. But one thing will change: you will relax. You will not be perturbed, you will not be disturbed. The story will continue, you will remain aloof; there will be a distance between you and the story. You will not become a character in it, you will not become obsessed by anything in it.


Buddha says: With understanding, what you have been thinking of up to now as real, that too becomes unreal. By 'unreal' he does not mean that it will disappear -- it will continue.


For example, you think this is your wife, this is your child, this is your husband. If understanding arises, if you become more meditative, the woman will not disappear because of your meditation -- the woman will be there. But the dream, the identification that "This is my wife" -- that idea of possessiveness will be gone. The woman will be there in all her beauty, in fact more so -- because the moment you possess a woman she becomes a thing. Possessiveness is ugly, it is violent; possessiveness is cruel. Whenever you possess somebody, you are insulting them. How can you possess a person?


The woman will be there but she will be no more a wife, you will be no more a husband. The child will be there -- he has come through you but he does not belong to you. You will not claim him; you will not use the child for your ambitions in the future. You will not ride on the child, you will not force the child, you will not mould the child according to your desires -- who are you? Everything will continue, but in a totally different light...


I, you, possessiveness, ownership -- these things will disappear. And just think -- when there is no possessiveness, no I, no you, what silence will descend on you, what peace will prevail!
<p class="sutra">WHEN WE UNDERSTAND THIS,
IT IS ONLY A TRANSITORY WORLD
WE LIVE IN HERE.</p>


Then this whole world is just a transitory world -- we are here only for the moment and then we are gone. Why be so worried about it? If it is only such a transitory world, why be so much concerned about it?


Somebody has insulted you -- what difference does it make? Within a few years, nothing will be heard of you and him. And dust will fall unto dust and disappear. How many millions of people have lived on this earth before you? And they were also worried like you -- somebody insulted them, somebody said something, or when they were passing on the road somebody smiled, laughed, ridiculed them. And they were hurt and they were wounded...


And where are those people? What happened to those friends and those enemies? And while they were here, how much fuss they were making!


Buddha simply says: If you understand, you will not make much fuss, that's all. You will pass through the world without making much fuss. That is real renunciation, that is sannyas -- passing through the world without making much fuss, without taking it too seriously, without taking it so significantly. It is nothing -- a tale told by an idiot, full of fury and noise, signifying nothing. Enjoy the story, but don't think that it is something serious.
<p class="sutra">DEEPLY THINKING OF IT,
I AND OTHER PEOPLE --
THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE,
AS THERE IS NO MIND
BEYOND THIS MIND.</p>


Deeply thinking of it, becoming aware, meditating over it -- over all the relationships and all the entanglements and all the complexities of life...
<p class="sutra">DEEPLY THINKING OF IF,
I AND OTHER PEOPLE --
THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE.

We are just waves in the same ocean.</p>
<p class="sutra">AS THERE IS NO MIND
BEYOND THIS MIND.</p>


And there is only one kind of mind -- the illusory mind. When my illusions have disappeared and your illusions have disappeared, what will be there to make us separate, distinct? Our illusions are our boundaries. That's why people cling to them, because they are your definitions.


A man says, "I am beautiful, you are ugly" -- he is defining. A man says, "I am very intelligent, you are not so intelligent" -- he is defining. A man says, "I am so strong, and you are weak" -- he is trying to define.


Our definitions are nothing but our illusions. If you drop all illusions, how will you be able to demark yourself? What boundaries will exist then?
"I am a Hindu and you are a Christian. I am a woman and you are a man. I am black, you are white. I am educated, you are uneducated. I am this, you are that." We are trying to create definitions so we can feel who we are. But all our definitions are just illusions.
<p class="sutra">AS THERE IS NO MIND
BEYOND THIS MIND.</p>


This dreaming mind, this lunatic mind, this mind which thinks of the past and the future and never arrives in the herenow -- this is the only mind. Once this is dropped, what is the difference? What is the difference between a black man and a white man? What is the difference between a Christian and a Hindu? Once the mind is dropped, all distinctions disappear. That is reality. That is one.
<p class="sutra">EVERY SPRING WHEN YOU SEE
THE CHERRY BLOSSOMS BLOOM,
FEEL WITH PAIN
THE BREVITY OF YOUR LIFE!</p>


THIS IS THE POINT where R. H. Blyth remarks, in ZEN AND ZEN CLASSICS, "This verse has something morbid in it."


It has nothing like that; it is not morbid. R. H. Blyth must have become frightened by this verse, some fear must have arisen in him -- he is protecting himself. This is a simple statement:
<p class="sutra">EVERY SPRING WHEN YOU SEE
THE CHERRY BLOSSOMS BLOOM,
FEEL WITH PAIN
THE BREVITY OF YOUR LIFE!</p>


It is a simple statement. And anybody who watches will feel it -- and will feel it with pain! Such a beautiful life, and so fragile? Such splendour, and so momentary? Such beauty, and so transitory? Such beautiful people, and just ripples on the ocean -- one moment here, and then gone? Who can avoid the pain?


If you see, then each roseflower will remind you of the pain of life. What is the pain? The pain is that beauty should be eternal, that love should be eternal, that truth should be eternal. Truth, and momentary? Love, and transitory? Beauty, and just a dream?


This is the pain. There is nothing morbid in the verse, it is not possible. Ikkyu is not a poet, Ikkyu is a Buddha.


Whatsoever comes out of him can't have any morbidity. Something must have been wrong with R. H. Blyth's mind -- maybe he became afraid of the truth of the verse. Reading it, translating it, commenting on it, he may have thought of his woman, he may have thought of flowers, he may have thought of the spring, and he may have become afraid.


We don't want to see this fleetingness of life; we want to cling. We want to believe that this is going to remain. When you fall in love with a woman you want to believe that this is going to be eternal. And you know, and everybody knows, that here on this earth nothing can be eternal.


You know. But you don't want to know that you know. You want to hide it, you want to believe that "Maybe it has not happened to others but it may happen to me. I may be the exception." When a flower blooms in your garden, you would like to believe that "In other people's gardens flowers wither away, but in my garden, no. How can God be so angry with me? A miracle will happen -- my flower will remain."


But there are no miracles, no exceptions. The law is absolute.
<p class="sutra">EVERY SPRING WHEN YOU SEE
THE CHERRY BLOSSOMS BLOOM,
FEEL WITH PAIN
THE BREVITY OF YOUR LIFE!</p>


This pain is not to make you sad, remember. That's where people go on missing these sutras. This pain is just to make you more ALERT -- because people become alert only when the arrow goes deep into their heart and wounds them. Otherwise they don't become alert. When life is easy, comfortable, convenient, who cares? Who bothers to become alert? When a friend dies, there is a possibility. When your woman leaves you alone -- those dark nights, you are lonely. You have loved that woman so much and you have staked all, and then suddenly one day she is gone. Crying in your loneliness, those are the occasions when, if you use them, you can become aware. The arrow is hurting: it can be used.


The pain is not to make you miserable, the pain is to make you more aware! And when you are aware, misery disappears. So there is nothing morbid in the verse. But this has been an argument against Buddha, down the centuries, that Buddha's approach towards life makes people miserable. No, it is not so -- life is miserable, Buddha simply makes you aware of it. And he wants you to become aware so that something can be done, so that life need not be miserable.


There is another kind of life possible. There is a life which has no momentariness; there is a kind of life which is eternal. But you can attain to that only if you are finished with this so-called life -- if your attachments with this life are broken. And of course when an attachment is broken there is pain.


Use all occasions. Don't hide your wounds. That's why Blyth says there is something morbid in it -- he is saying, "Why open your wounds again and again? WHY go on looking at the wounds? Forget them! Look at the positive side of life. Why think of other things? Why think this flower will die?"


But whether you think it or not, the flower is going to die.


And Buddha's insistence is this: if you know that THIS flower is going to die, there is a possibility to attain to that flower which never dies. That lotus can open within you. But if you remain obsessed with these flowers which come and go, then that lotus will remain unopened for ever.
<p class="sutra">THE ORIGINAL MAN
MUST RETURN TO HIS ORIGINAL PLACE;
WHY SEEK THEN
THE NEEDLESS BUDDHA?</p>


THE ORIGINAL MAN IS THE GOAL OF BUDDHISM. What is meant by 'the original man'? The original man is man without the mind, the original man is man without any conditioning. The original man is the natural man.


We condition, we culture, we cultivate. We create certain types of minds -- Hindu, Christian, Jain, Buddhist. These are all the unnatural man. A Christian is an unnatural man, so is a Hindu. The natural man cannot be Christian or Hindu. The natural man is simply a kind of is-ness, empti-ness -- with no ideology, with no character, with no morality, innocent, childlike.
<p class="sutra">THE ORIGINAL MAN
MUST RETURN TO HIS ORIGINAL PLACE...</p>


And the way to return to that original place, to that original space, is awareness.


You have been conditioned. You have been taught what to be, how to be, and you have been following that conditioning automatically. You are living like a robot.


Buddha says: This robot-like existence has to be dropped. De-automatize it. And the only process to de-automatize you is to become more alert. Do whatsoever you are doing with more awareness. And you will be surprised that the more alert you are, the less rigid you become; the more alert you are, the more unpredictable you become. The more alert you are, the more you function without your habits. Otherwise you function just as habits, you go on functioning through habits.


When somebody asks a question, just wait for a moment before you answer. Just see for a moment whether the answer is automatic. If it is automatic don't give that answer, you are being a machine. Respond. Somebody asks, "Do you believe in God?" and an automatic answer comes, "Yes, I am a Catholic Christian." Is this YOUR answer? or has this answer been given to you by others -- by your parents, teachers, church? If you were brought up in a Mohammedan country or if you were brought up in a communist family, can you imagine the same answer?


One of my friends went to Soviet Russia. He was a Buddhist monk -- a very intelligent man, a world-famous author. In a primary school, he asked a small child, "Do you believe in God?" The child laughed and said, "God? People used to believe, in the past. God is a myth." A small child saying "God is a myth. People used to believe in God -- now who is so stupid as to believe in a God?"
And the boy asked, "Do YOU still believe in God?"


If you are brought up in a communist country you don't believe in God, you believe in Karl Marx. But it is the same. You don't believe in the Bible, you believe in DAS KAPITAL -- but it is the same.


Belief comes from others. The original man has no belief. Drop belief systems and you will become original. When you answer, remember: is it your answer, authentically yours? Is it your response? Or is your mother speaking through you -- your father, your priest, your teacher? Just listen a little watchfully, and you will be surprised -- you will be able to hear exactly the voice, who is speaking: your mother, your father, your teacher. But then this is mechanical.


Drop it. It is better to say, "I don't know." At least that is your answer closer to truth, closer to God. Because truth is God, and there is no other God.


In small things go on watching how you behave. Do you react? Or do you respond? From reaction, lean more and more towards response. Reaction is conditioned, response is aware.


This is Buddha's technique to transform you. Slowly slowly, the original man arrives. Slowly slowly, the conditioned man disappears. If you don't help the conditioned man, it has to go -- it lives through your help, it can live only through your cooperation. You nourish it, you feed it.
Stop nourishing it. Let it die of starvation!
<p class="sutra">THE ORIGINAL MAN
MUST RETURN TO HIS ORIGINAL PLACE;
WHY SEEK THEN
THE NEEDLESS BUDDHA?</p>


And this is a beautiful statement. Ikkyu says: Don't be bothered about the Buddha, don't start seeking the Buddha. Seek the original man, and you will find the Buddha! And if you start searching for the Buddha you will never find the original man.


You must have heard about the famous book of Thomas a Kempis, IMITATION OF CHRIST. Now, no Zen man can even think of such a title: "Imitation of Buddha" -- no, impossible. And Kempis' book is so famous that it is almost second in importance to the Bible itself. Imitation of Christ? But if you are searching for Christ you will become an imitator -- that is bound to happen. You will start ACTING like a Christ or like a Buddha. You will start pretending; you will start cultivating a certain character, a certain structure. And slowly slowly you will become more and more unoriginal.


Nobody can become a Christ and nobody can become a Buddha. But everybody can become an original man. Your originality has to be sought within YOU. You have to go withinwards, you have to dig there deep inside yourself. Your sources are there; you are not to look outside. Buddha may be very beautiful -- so what! If you imitate, you become ugly, because all imitation is ugly. And what will you do if you want to become a Buddha? You will start walking like him, you will start talking like him, you will eat what he eats, you will move the way he moves. But this will be only on the surface. Deep down, you will remain the same stupid person you have always been.


This will be creating an illusion. Again you have created a moon-house, and the mind will become the master.


The great teachers have always been against imitation. Don't try to become a Buddha, try to become an original man -- and that is the way to become a Buddha. But when you become a Buddha by finding your original man, this will be a new expression of Buddhahood. It will not in any way be a repetition of the old Buddha. Once is enough. And it is good -- just think of a world where there are so many Buddhas and so many Christs and so many Krishnas, just think of such a world. It will not be worth living in!


Wherever you go, you come across Christ. The milkman comes, and there is Christ. And the postman comes, and there is Christ. You will commit suicide, you will become so tired of Christs!


No, it is good that God never repeats. One Christ is utterly beautiful, one Buddha is beautiful. When you attain to your original nature, it will be a new expression of God -- a new phenomenon, a new splendour, a new song never sung before.
<p class="sutra">WHY SEEK THEN
THE NEEDLESS BUDDHA?</p>
<p class="sutra">THE MORNING DEW
FLEES AWAY,
AND IS NO MORE;
WHO MAY REMAIN
IN THIS WORLD OF OURS?</p>


JUST REMEMBER ONE THING: everything is fleeing away, it is a flux. We are like morning dew -- the sun will rise and we will disappear. Before it happens, do only one thing: become aware of your innermost core. Before the dewdrop disappears, become aware of your innermost core -- because in the disappearing dewdrop there is something which never appears and never disappears. In this fleeting world, there is something which is utterly eternal.
<p class="sutra">WE PRAY FOR OUR LIFE OF TOMORROW,
EPHEMERAL LIFE THOUGH IT MAY BE;
THIS IS THE HABIT OF OUR MIND
THAT PASSED AWAY YESTERDAY.</p>


And what are you asking for tomorrow? Have you ever thought about it? It is just a repetition of your yesterday. Maybe a little more modified, a little more painted, a little more sophisticated, a little more decorated -- but what are you asking for tomorrow? You will ask for your yesterday. And what was yesterday? Were you really happy yesterday? Just out of old habit, we go on praying and asking for the past to be repeated again and again in the future.


Stop all this! Let the past disappear from your mind, and don't ask for it again. Live in the moment without any expectation from it -- and then great is the benediction. When you can live the moment without expectation, infinite blessing happens. But when you ask for some expectation to be fulfilled, you are only frustrated; nothing happens.


The blissful man is one who lives without expectations, who simply lives -- who is not asking that "Things should be like this." Who knows how to live fully alert, whatsoever happens. In life he is aware, in death he is aware. In happiness he is aware, in unhappiness he is aware. In success he is aware, in failure he is aware. He has the secret key.


That secret key is awareness. He does not ask for anything else now. He knows the art of transforming every situation into blissfulness. The grace of awareness transforms even hell into a heaven.
<p class="sutra">DO NOT TAKE IT TO HEART;
THE REAL WAY
IS ONE, ITSELF AS IT IS;
THERE ARE NOT TWO, OR THREE.

This is the last sutra of Ikkyu.</p>
<p class="sutra">DO NOT TAKE IT TO HEART;
THE REAL WAY
IS ONE, ITSELF AS IT IS.</p>


IT IS THE ULTIMATE RADICAL STATEMENT. It says: Life is the way, as it is. Do not try to change it. Do not ask for some other life, do not ask for paradise. Life, as it is, is as it should be. If you are missing it, that simply shows one thing, that you are fast asleep -- that's all.
Awake, and all is as it should be.


You need not be a saint. You need only one thing -- to be awake. There are no sinners and no saints, there are only people who are asleep and people who are awake. The only difference in people is this: somebody is asleep and somebody is awake.


That is the only difference between a Buddha and you -- not much. You are exactly a Buddha. You have just not opened your eyes yet. You are still living in the house of the moon: you are still allowing the mind to be your master. You have not searched for awareness, you have not shaken yourself into wakefulness.


Do not worry because you are a fool or a sinner. Folly and wisdom, illusion and enlightenment, salvation and damnation, are at bottom one thing. There is in reality only one world -- however we divide it into scientific and poetic, finite and infinite, absolute and relative, this and that. Those divisions are all mind things. The world is one -- it is neither poetic nor scientific. The world is one -- it is neither good nor evil. The world is one -- it is neither hell nor heaven.
This is the only world there is.


All that is needed is to be awake to this world -- to be awake to the sunrays, to be awake to the greenery of the trees, to be awake to the birds and the traffic noise, to be awake to the people around you, to be awake to yourself.


Awareness is the key word. The very word 'Buddha' means one who is aware, one who has awakened. And see the difference: other religions say to you, "Become good, become moral, become saints." Other religions condemn you as sinners, other religions condemn you as being unworthy as you are.


Buddhism has no condemnation. Buddhism has no idea of the original sin. And Buddhism does not teach you to become saints -- because what will you do? If you want to become saints, what will you do? You will repress the so-called sins. And repressed, they will be there in your unconscious -- they will not leave you. They will boil there within you; they will drive you crazy and perverted.


How can you become a saint? What will you do? You are angry: what will you do to become a saint? Repress the anger! You are sexual, what will you do? Repress sex. But sex will be there -- repressed, it will go deeper into your roots. It will poison your whole life. It will start happening in perverted ways, it will start dominating you from the back door. Your life will not be transformed by repression.


Buddhism has no idea of sin and no idea of saintliness. Buddhism says: Simply one thing has to be done. People go on doing wrong things, not because they are bad but because they are asleep. See the difference. And how can you expect a man who is asleep to do right things? People are somnambulistic.


Have you seen somebody sleep-walking? There are people, and many, who can: almost one out of ten people, ten percent of people, have the capacity to walk in their sleep. If there are one thousand people here, then many of you can walk in your sleep. But when a person walks in his sleep, naturally he may stumble upon something, he may hit his head against the wall. You will not call him a sinner -- or will you? You will not condemn him, you will not send him to hell for eternity -- that seems to be too cruel. All that is needed is to wake him up! And that wakefulness will change everything.


Buddhism says: There is only one sin, if you want to call it a sin, and that is sleep, unawareness. And there is only one virtue, if you want to call it a virtue -- that is awareness, wakefulness. Buddhism is a very very scientific religion, psychological to its very roots. The greatest psychological insight yet.
			

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> Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
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