---
section: Library
booktitle: "Christianity: The Deadliest Poison and Zen: The Antidote to All Poisons"
booktype: "Discourses"
bookcode: "CHRIST"
dategiven: "26 January 1989 pm"
place: " in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium"
chapternum: "Chapter #5"
chaptertitle: "Turning lions into sheep"
acode: "8901265"
shorttitle: "CHRIST05"
audio: "Yes"
video: "Yes"
esttime: "200mins"
displaytitle: "Christianity: The Deadliest Poison and Zen: The Antidote to All Poisons: Chapter #5"
---

```style
.sutra {
  font-style: italic;
  white-space: pre-wrap !important;
}
```
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<p class="sutra">OUR BELOVED MASTER,
ON A RAINY DAY, MONK GAO VISITED YAKUSAN, WHO COMMENTED, "TODAY IT'S QUITE HUMID."
"I WILL BEAT THIS DRUM," SAID GAO.
UNGAN SAID, "THERE IS NO LEATHER -- WHAT DRUM DO YOU BEAT?"
DOGO ADDED, "THERE IS NO DRUM -- WHAT LEATHER DO YOU BEAT?"
AND YAKUSAN COMMENTED, "TODAY, THE MELODY IS VERY GOOD."
ONCE, AT THE MEALTIME, YAKUSAN HIMSELF BEAT THE DRUM, AND MONK GAO ENTERED THE HALL, DANCING. YAKUSAN DROPPED THE DRUMSTICK AND ASKED, "WHICH PIECE IS THAT?"
"THIS IS THE SECOND PIECE," SAID GAO.
YAKUSAN ASKED, "WHAT IS THE FIRST PIECE?"
GAO TOOK THE SEAT, HELPED HIMSELF TO SOME RICE, TOOK THE BOWL OF RICE WITH HIM AND LEFT.
ON ANOTHER OCCASION, A MONK CAME TO YAKUSAN FOR GUIDANCE.
"WHO ARE YOU?" YAKUSAN ASKED HIM.
"JOTAN," REPLIED THE MONK.
YAKUSAN SHOUTED, "LAST TIME IT WAS JOTAN AND THIS TIME, TOO, IT IS JOTAN!"</p>


Friends,


First I have to answer the Christian monks who have sent many questions. Only twenty-one have come here, but now the whole seminary is agog and talking only about what I have said.
<p class="question">They have sent a monk here today asking for the video; the whole seminary wants to see it. I am sending it with Prasad, and he has to inform them that this is only the beginning. I have been speaking continually since then, answering their questions. If they have any more questions, he should collect them. He should not enter into any dialogue, he should only collect the questions. I am going to answer them.
The first question today is: THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH DEFENDS TRUTH, HONESTY, AND LOYALTY ....</p>


In the first place, does the Christian church know the truth? It believes in a fictitious God, it believes in a fictitious devil, it believes in heaven and hell, and it has no evidence for them. What truth does it guard?


It has, in fact, no way to reach to the truth. Prayer is not the way, because prayer is based on belief in a God. You have already accepted a belief. A belief is not a truth. You have not to believe in a truth; truth overwhelms you. You become it! It is not a question of faith or belief, it is a question of deepest inquiry into your own being, into your own consciousness. It is an inward journey.


Christianity still hangs around the objective world. Its God is an object outside, its heaven is outside, its hell is outside. The prayer is for an outside God; it has not yet learned that there is an inner space in human beings, and unless you touch the very center of your consciousness, you don't have the truth.
What are you guarding? -- all kinds of lies!
Virgin birth -- is it a truth?


Only amoebas have immaculate conception. Except amoebas, nobody can have a virgin birth. Amoebas are very strange people, celibate. In fact they don't have any sex; nobody is male, nobody is female. You will be surprised: how do they go on multiplying?


Their process is very simple. They go on eating, and there comes a time when they become fat in the American way. There is a limit beyond which they cannot go on eating. They divide themselves in two. One amoeba becomes, at a certain stage, two amoebas. They are immortal unless they are killed. Then two amoebas go on eating more and more, and soon there will be four amoebas. This is the only animal in existence which has no sexuality.


Why this insistence on immaculate conception? -- just to make Jesus a very special human being, far above, beyond the ordinary mankind.


I have heard ... A psychoanalyst was dealing with a young girl. Her mother had brought the girl to him. The girl was pregnant, she was almost ready to give birth. Nine months were over, and it was so apparent, but the girl denied absolutely that she was pregnant. She said she had not even touched any man, she had not been in company with any man; how can she be pregnant?


The psychoanalyst tried in every way to persuade her to tell the truth, but she simply denied it: "How can I be pregnant? I have no relationship with anybody -- and particularly a sexual relationship."


Finally the psychoanalyst got very irritated. He went to the window, opened the window, and stood there looking far away towards the horizon. It had not been more than five minutes, but it felt as if years had passed. The mother and daughter both could not believe it: what is he doing there?


Finally the mother asked, "What are you thinking? What are you doing standing there facing towards the horizon?"


He said, "I am watching for the three wise men from the East! -- because this is the second case of immaculate conception. But I don't see any camels carrying the three wise men from the East, I don't see any star moving towards this place where this pregnant girl is saying that she is a virgin."


To make it a little bit rational, Christians have gone into an absurdity which they don't understand. Because they could not prove how a woman without sexual contact with a man could become pregnant, they brought in the idea that she became pregnant by the Holy Ghost.


Then it is no more an immaculate conception, and the Holy Ghost is no more holy. He is the most unholy ghost in the whole world, making a poor girl pregnant. And the absurdity does not end here, it goes on further. Asked, "Who is the Holy Ghost?" they say, "It is part of God."


Which part? -- the hand? the head? By hand you may tickle her, but you cannot make a woman pregnant; neither can you do the job with your head. It is absolutely obvious which part the Holy Ghost is: God's sexual machinery!  ... And not an ordinary sexual machinery, but portable. God remains where he is in the heavens, and the portable machinery comes and makes poor Mary pregnant!
These are the truths you are guarding? Then what can be a bigger lie?


Christianity doesn't have any approach towards truth, because truth is intrinsic in your consciousness, beyond your mind. It is not a thought. It is not a question of philosophy, nor a question of theological discussions. It is a question of deep meditation that leads you beyond thinking, beyond mind, and you become simply a witness, a pure witness.


That witness is divine because it is eternal. It is the ultimate in intelligence, it is the greatest clarity of vision. It takes you away from all dualities. Even the true and the false are a duality, just as birth and death are a duality, just as light and dark are a duality. Passing beyond the mind, you have passed beyond duality.


Mind functions by dividing everything into polar opposites; that is the functioning of the mind. The no-mind functions totally differently, by bringing both contradictions closer and merging them into one. No-mind knows only one existence, in which everything is dissolved. You are no more you, I am no more I. This immersion into existence is the ultimate truth.


But it is not God, it is divine. It is godliness. That's why there are religions like Buddhism, Jainism, who don't believe in any God, but they believe in godliness. That is a totally different concept.


God is a person; godliness is a quality. You cannot become God, but you can be godly.


H.G. Wells has written in his world history that Gautam Buddha was "the most godless man and yet the most godly."


What truth is Christianity defending? First you have to have the truth, then you can defend it.


And defending against whom? Your God is false, your devil is false. Once you know the truth, truth defends you, not that you defend the truth.


Truth is far bigger than you, it is infinite, it is eternal. You are just a dewdrop, and it is a vast ocean without any boundaries. The dewdrop is defending the ocean -- do you see the nonsense intrinsic in the concept?


The ocean can protect the dewdrop, just the dewdrop has to slip from the lotus leaf and melt into the vast ocean. Religiousness is an oceanic feeling, an oceanic experience. The whole cosmos is one, and the whole cosmos has immense intelligence, multidimensional.


But Christianity is stuck with prayer. Any religion that is stuck with prayer is not a religion in fact. Only meditation makes the door open to religiousness, to godliness. Prayer is moving again outwards, looking upwards beyond the clouds. The more you pray, the further away you are from truth.


Meditation is not a prayer, it is utter silence. Prayer is gibberish. To whom are you talking? -- it is insanity, there is no God.


I have heard that Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel for years on end. Now he was painting the roof inside the chapel on a long ladder.


He used to lie down and paint, and one day an old woman came to pray. She was not aware of Michelangelo on the ladder far away, and she was too old; perhaps she could not see that far either. But she was praying to Mary, the mother of Jesus.


Michelangelo was bored with the work, and just wanted to have a little break. She was praying again and again, so he boomed like God from far away on the top of the ladder, "I am here! I am Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God! You tell me and I will tell my mother and my father: What do you want?"


The woman was a very fanatical Christian. She looked up, but she could not see because she was almost blind. She said, "You shut up! I am talking to your mother!"


Michelangelo writes in his diary, "I could not have believed that this could happen!" -- and the woman continued her praying.

To whom are you praying? To whom is it addressed?


Meditation is not addressed to anyone; it is a pure inquiry, an exploration of your ultimate depth and of your ultimate height. The moment you know your ultimate height and your ultimate depth, you know the very secret of existence. That secret is not a person, that secret is enlightenment. That secret makes you a buddha, a godly man.


Buddha can say anything about truth, but not Jesus. Jesus lived in hallucinations himself. To the modern, contemporary psychiatrist or psychoanalyst, he will look like a lunatic. He was.


His disillusionment came at a very late stage. When he was crucified he was still faithful, was still believing that his father, God, was going to come on a white cloud and save him. But no white cloud came, and nobody came to save him. Finally, in despair and frustration he shouted at the sky -- again at the sky -- "Why have you forsaken me?"


This is the end result of believing, of having faith in a truth that you have not realized yourself. It is hearsay. You have heard other people saying that there is a God, but have you met anyone who has seen God?
What truth are they defending? and against whom?


Truth is self-evident. It needs no defense, it is our ultimate being. Neither a sword can destroy it nor nuclear weapons, nor fire can burn it, nor death can touch it. There is no question of defending the truth.
The question is knowing the truth.


The moment you know the truth you are no more. The dewdrop has slipped from the lotus leaf into the ocean. Now only the truth is. And all around, everywhere, from the smallest leaf of grass to the greatest star far away, millions of light-years away, it is the same one existence, one cosmos of tremendous intelligence.


You disappear. You are no more a Christian, you are no more a Hindu, you are no more a Mohammedan. You are not, truth is.


Meditation brings you to this space, where you are not and truth is. Prayer is a fallacy, it is a consolation, it is hallucination.

And the second thing they say ..."honesty."


All Christian values are imposed from the outside. It is a programming of the mind, which is a biocomputer. From the very childhood you start telling the child, "Be honest, be truthful, be this, be that ...." Continuously, from the church, from the school, from the family, from the neighborhood, he is being programmed.


All religions have been doing this programming for centuries. They are not allowing the person to know the truth. They are not allowing the person to be really honest, they are forcing values from outside.


When you force a value from outside it remains only skindeep. Just scratch the skin and all honesty disappears, and the barbarious, the gorilla, the chimpanzee, comes out.


Jesus says that if somebody slaps you on one cheek, give him the other cheek too ....


A Christian monk was wandering and teaching in different villages. In every sermon he would quote Jesus, "If somebody slaps you on one cheek, give him the other cheek too."


Ordinarily people think it is a great commandment. It is not -- but I will discuss it just a little later.


What happened to the monk? In one village there was a wrestler, an agnostic -- he did not believe, he did not disbelieve, he was an inquirer. And when the monk said his familiar quotation, "If someone slaps you on one cheek, give him the other too," the wrestler stood up and said, "Wait!"


He came forward and he slapped the monk really hard on one cheek. The monk almost got dizzy, he had never expected such a response, but he remembered even in his dizziness that he had to give the other cheek. So he gave the other cheek, hoping that the man would not hit it.


But that wrestler was not a believer, he was an inquirer. He was inquiring, "What happens then?" So he hit even harder on the other cheek.


And what happened? The skindeep morality dropped. The monk jumped on the wrestler. Although the wrestler was a very heavy and strong man ... in his rage, in his anger, even the weaker man can be ferocious. He started hitting the wrestler.
The wrestler said, "What are you doing?"


He said, "Jesus has said only up to the second cheek, and I don't have a third cheek! Now I am free from Jesus, and I will show you what I mean!"
The wrestler said, "Where has your great statement gone?"


The monk said, "It was only true about the second cheek. Now you have the third and the fourth. From the second, one has to move to the third; it is simple arithmetic!"


I appreciate Friedrich Nietzsche more on this point than Jesus Christ. Perhaps in the whole of history, only Friedrich Nietzsche has got the point. He says, "When somebody hits you on one cheek and you give him the other cheek you are insulting him. You are saying 'I am holier-than-thou. You are just an ordinary human being; I am a superman, I am divine. You hit me, but I will still love you and give you the other cheek.'"


Friedrich Nietzsche's argument is that this is humiliating the other person. It is a very pious way of insulting the other person, forcing him to be subhuman, and raising your ego to a superhuman level.


Nietzsche's advice is: when somebody hits you on one cheek, it is your duty to hit the other cheek of the person who has hit you. That makes you equal; that does not insult the other person. That is not a humiliation, you are not reducing him into a subhuman being. You are respecting him man-to-man.


But Jesus was pretending that he was not an ordinary man; he was the only begotten son of God -- and he was calling the whole of humanity just a crowd of sheep.


You may not have gone deep into the logic, but it is absolutely clear that he was an arch-egoist. He did not talk man-to-man; he was talking from a high, very high space, and you were just creatures crawling on the earth. You were sheep, and he was your shepherd.


All values imposed from outside never get to your center. The only authentic values are those which come from your center and spread outwards, not vice versa. That's exactly the meaning of education: drawing the water out from the well.


Education means drawing your inner being into expression in your living, your day-to-day life. Your honesty, your love, your compassion, should come from your inner being, not from teachings and scriptures, not from rabbis and bishops and shankaracharyas and Ayatollah Khomeini.
Who are these people? Pretenders, hypocrites.


And as far as honesty is concerned ... Because of thousands of years of conditioning, you have never thought what it means. It means not to live moment to moment. What was honest yesterday may not be honest today. What is honest today may not be honest tomorrow. Life is a flux.


The real honesty is not towards the society, towards the church, towards God -- no. The real honesty is a responsibility to the present moment. It needs tremendous awareness. You have to be honest to the present moment, not to the past, not to the future. And the present moment is changing ....


A truly honest person will go on changing with every moment. He will keep in tune with existence -- that is what I call honesty -- he will not lag behind. He will be always harmonious and in deep synchronicity with existence. If existence is moving and changing like a river, he will be moving and changing like a river.


But Christian honesty does not mean responsibility. I want to break that word in two: response and ability.


Christianity has also responsibility as one of its pillars, but their meaning of responsibility is duty: responsibility to your parents, responsibility to your friends, responsibility to your neighbors, responsibility to the church, responsibility to God, responsibility to everybody. But their meaning is 'duty'.


To me, responsibility is not one word, it is two words, response ability, and only a man of deep awareness has the quality. He can respond to everything, but his response is not a reaction, his response is not out of his conditioning. His response comes from his very being.


One day a man asked Gautam Buddha in the morning, just as the sun was rising, "Is there a God?"
Buddha said, "No, there is no God."


In the afternoon another man asked, "What do you think about God? Is there a God or not?"
Buddha said, "Yes, there is a God -- not as a person, but as a quality."


By the evening a third person came and asked Buddha, "I don't know anything, I am utterly ignorant. Will you please help me to inquire into the truth of existence, or, in other words, into the reality of God? I don't know anything."


Buddha did not answer. He simply closed his eyes, sat in a lotus posture. There was utter silence under the tree where he was sitting. The man also sat. He thought, "Perhaps he is showing the way -- sit in the lotus posture." So he sat in the lotus posture, he closed his eyes, and the silence deepened.


There was also a third man present, Ananda, who was Gautam Buddha's constant companion his whole life, who took care of his food, his clothes, his shelter. He was also present while all these three answers were given. He was in deep confusion. To one man Buddha says that no, there is no God; to another man Buddha says yes; and to the third he does not speak at all. That silence went on deepening, and it lasted almost one hour.


Finally Buddha opened his eyes, and what was strange for Ananda -- the moment Buddha opened his eyes, the other man also opened his eyes. They looked into each other's eyes, and the other man touched Buddha's feet and he said, "I am so grateful for your teaching." And Buddha had not spoken a single word.


When the man was gone, Ananda was furious. He said, "You are creating confusion in me! You have no consideration for me! I have been continuously with you since the morning, and to one man you said no, to another you said yes, and to the third you didn't say anything. That guy simply followed you, sat in the lotus posture, closed his eyes -- and the most mysterious thing was that when you opened your eyes, he opened his eyes immediately. Nothing was said. You looked into each other's eyes, and the man was so grateful for your teaching -- and you had not spoken a single word!


"The man touched your feet and he said, 'Whatever I was seeking, I have found. My search is finished, I have come home.' Now please explain it to me before you go to sleep."


Buddha said, "Those questions were not yours, you need not be worried. I have not answered you, neither have you asked."


Ananda said, "That's right -- but I have ears, I can hear! I am following you like a shadow!"


Buddha said, "Listen. The first man who had come to me was an atheist. The second man was a theist. The third man was just an innocent man.


"I function like a mirror, I don't have a prejudice of any kind. I don't have a philosophy, or dogma, or creed, or cult. I reflect just like a mirror. This is my honesty, this is my response ability. I responded to the different people according to their needs."


He said, "Ananda ..." Ananda was his cousin-brother, elder brother, and they both had been educated in the same school where all the princes of India used to be educated. They had learned swordsmanship, archery, riding on the fastest horses -- because they were going to be the successors of their fathers.


So Buddha said, "Perhaps you will understand .... There are different kinds of horses. The first kind needs beating, otherwise he will not move; the second kind needs just the sound of the whip, you don't have to beat him, and he will move; and there are horses which need only the shadow of the whip, not even the whip. The moment they see the whip's shadow in front of them, they go as fast as they can.


"The same is the situation about mankind. There are different kinds of people, and I cannot strictly follow any dogma; otherwise I will not be responsible, and I will not be honest to the person. I will be simply repeating a program, not caring at all to whom I am talking and what is his need. I respond to the needs. They change moment to moment."


When you look into the mirror you see your face. When a donkey looks into the mirror, the donkey sees his face. The mirror has no idea of its own, it is simply reflecting.


The truly honest person is simply a reflecting mirror. He will do whatever the moment demands, not according to some promises given in the past. The past is no more. A man of true honesty never gives any promises, because promises are given for the future -- and who knows about the future?


An awakened man simply lives moment to moment in pure honesty. But the honesty is not according to the past, according to any promise, according to the church, to the scripture. It is according to the moment. He responds with his total consciousness, he does not hold anything back.


But the Christian honesty and the honesty of other religions is a reaction, not a response. They have been told, and they are following the program. They are robots, not even human beings. Your mind is a robot. Just feed it with information and it will follow that information. Go on telling it to be honest and it will be honest, but that honesty is very superficial and meaningless.


One of my friends was visiting the Soviet Union, and he asked a small boy, "Do you believe in God?"


The small boy laughed, and he said, "God? In the past, in the dark ages of humanity, people used to believe in all kinds of stupid things. Do you want to see God? It is in the museum."


Don't think that this boy is responding. This is another conditioning. When the friend reported to me -- and he was a great scholar, Rahul Sanskritayana, he was teaching Sanskrit in the Moscow University -- when he reported to me, I said to him, "You have misunderstood the whole situation."
He said, "What do you mean?"


I said, "That boy has been fed with atheism, no-God. God is out of date, it is a superstition of the past, of the dark ages. He is repeating his program.


"In India, if you ask any boy, he will say, 'Yes, there is God.' But there is no difference between the two, they are both reacting according to their programming."


A Christian will say that yes, there is God; a communist will say there is no God. The Christian believes, the communist disbelieves -- but beliefs and disbeliefs are in the mind, they are not your experience. You have not known even yourself, how can you be honest? One has to know oneself, one has to be oneself, only then there is a possibility of honesty.


Socrates is right: "Be thyself." But he was not complete, because he was not a meditator. This conclusion was a logical, rational conclusion. First, be thyself.


But all the mystics of the world say, first be thyself, then dissolve thyself also into the eternity of existence. Then whatever comes out of that eternity, you are just a vehicle, you are just a hollow bamboo. Whatever song is sung on the hollow bamboo, it becomes a flute. It does not obstruct, it allows the song to flow through it. Whatever existence wants to sing through it, you are just a hollow bamboo -- no self, no I, just a pure passage for existence to respond.


Then there is honesty, there is truth, there is morality -- but of a totally different coin, a totally different quality. It is individual, it is your own in a way. You are not following anybody -- all following is wrong -- you are simply being in tune with existence.


And the third thing they have asked about is loyalty. Loyalty to whom? To a God which you don't know? To the church?


And remember perfectly: Jesus Christ was a Jew. He was born a Jew, he lived a Jew, he died as a Jew. He had never heard the word Christian, he had never heard the word Christ. It was three hundred years later when the gospels were translated into Greek .... Christ is the Greek word for the Hebrew 'messiah', and from that Greek word 'Christ' comes 'Christian'.


Christianity was not founded by Jesus Christ, it has to be remembered. It was founded eighty years after his death, by people who had not directly known him.


Now even Christian scholars have come to the conclusion that the Christian gospels were not written by the apostles but were written by somebody else, because the mountains described are not in the same place where they are described in the gospels. The rivers described are not in the same place where they are described in the gospels. The lakes ... Everything was written by people who had not known Jesus Christ, and neither had they lived with Jesus Christ.


Christianity is one of the most fake religions of all. Jesus has nothing to do with it. And the pope represents Jesus, and the pope wants you to be loyal to him. The pope wants you to be loyal to the vested interests.


The whole of Christianity is a very dangerous, poisonous phenomenon, because it teaches people that God made the world perfect, you don't have to change it, no revolution is needed. Be loyal to God, and be loyal to everything as it is. The capitalist has to remain as a capitalist -- that's the way God wanted it, and nothing can happen against the will of God. If you are poor, that's how God wanted you to be. If you are a woman and you are not equal to man, that's how God wanted it to be. God created the world as it is.


Christianity does not believe in evolution, it believes in creation. You should understand the difference clearly.


President Ronald Reagan has tried to ban all the books of Charles Darwin, because Darwin preaches evolution. He wanted to completely remove Charles Darwin's books from all the universities, all colleges, all schools, all libraries. Why? -- because his theory goes against the idea of creation. That was President Ronald Reagan's fundamentalist Christian mind.


God created the world as it is, it is not a question of evolution. So you should settle with the world as it is, you should settle as you are. If you are poor, you should settle as you are. If God has made somebody a king and somebody a beggar, he knows best; you are not to change anything.


Christianity is absolutely against any revolution in the world, any change in the social structure. That is what is hidden behind the word 'loyalty'. You should be loyal to God and his creation, you should not try to improve it. Do you think you are wiser than God? You should understand that God is perfect, and whatever he creates is perfect. Out of perfection only perfection comes. So this world of misery, poverty, starvation, has to remain as it is.


Because God has told Adam and Eve, "Multiply, produce as many children as you can," the Christian church still goes on insisting that no birth control methods, no condoms, no pills should be used -- because God wants you to multiply.
We have multiplied enough.


Just in this country, when it became independent forty years ago, the population was four hundred million. Now the population has gone beyond nine hundred million, and by the end of the century it will go beyond one billion. For the first time, India will be the greatest nation in the world! Up to now China used to be the leader.


But what kind of greatest nation? Half of the population will have to starve, and die from starvation, and the Christians go on saying, "Multiply! That is a commandment from God. Be loyal to God and never think of changing anything in the world."


Galileo was called by the pope because he had written against the commonly accepted idea which was that the sun goes around the earth. Galileo, in his scientific investigations, found just the reverse: it is the earth that goes around the sun. But the Bible says the common sense idea ....


The pope said to Galileo, who was old and almost on his deathbed -- he had been dragged to the court of the pope -- "You have to change your book. You have to write that it is the sun that goes around the earth, because that's how it is written in the Bible. The Bible is a divine scripture written by God himself, and God cannot commit a mistake." Even the pope cannot commit a mistake, he is infallible.


Galileo must have had a very great sense of humor. He said, "There is no problem, I can change my book. I can write that the sun goes around the earth, but remember, it won't change anything. The earth will still continue to go around the sun. The earth is not going to read my book, and neither is the sun going to listen.
"But why are you so much afraid? I can prove it scientifically."


The pope said, "I don't want to listen, because if even one thing is found to be wrong in the Bible, people will start thinking that if one thing can be wrong, other things can also be wrong. And if the Bible can be wrong, what will happen to my infallibility?"


The question is not of truth, the question is of dogma. You have to be loyal to the dogma whether the dogma fits with reality or not, and you have to be loyal to superstitions, all kinds of superstitions, which are killing humanity.


The Bible says, "Spread the word, even if you have to fight. The pagans are subhuman, they have to be changed into Christians, otherwise they will never be saved." That's how crusades were created.


The Christians have killed more people in the world than any other religion. Second to the Christians are the Mohammedans -- but the Christians are at the top, and for very good reasons. They have been killing people in order to force them to become Christians. Obviously, if it is a question of choice between death and Christianity, any fragile human being will choose Christianity rather than death. So create the fear that "You will be killed. The only other way is to be a Christian."


And it is not only Christians ... Even Jesus says, "Anybody who goes to God's paradise goes through me, via me, there is no other way. I am the way. Bring people on the way, even if you have to force them."


It is done with great good intentions -- and that is the problem to be understood.


An old proverb is very relevant. It says, "The path to hell is paved with good intentions." Now, the Christian crusades against the pagans are with great good intentions. They want them all to go to paradise. Because they are resistant, they have to be killed. That will be an example for other pagans: "If you don't want to be killed, become a Christian!"


Jesus talks about loving your enemies, and loving your neighbors. That is all talk. Christianity has proved that killing your enemies ... And Jesus Christ himself is responsible for it, because he says, "Who is not with me is against me." Now this is a very ugly, political statement. Do you call it religious?
"Who is not with me is against me."


It can be said by Adolf Hitler, by Joseph Stalin, by Benito Mussolini, but not by a religious person. Because the person may not be with me, but it is not necessary that he should be against me. He can be indifferent. Why are you leaving out the category of the indifferent? This is dictatorial.


This is not religious, this is against humanity. You are not allowing people to be free to choose what path they want. You are forcing them to be Christians -- and you are forcing the whole of humanity into loyalty, when loyalty in fact means a slavery to the status quo -- if the society is divided into classes, you should not change it. If a few people go on becoming rich and creating millions of poor people, this is how God wants it. You should not interfere in the work of God.


It is not a religious idea; it is a very cunning strategy to keep the slaves slaves, to keep women subhuman, to keep the poor poor, and to keep the rich rich. It supports all that is ugly in a beautiful name: loyalty.


I say unto you: Find out the truth in yourself, and be loyal to your truth. That truth will bring a revolution in the world. And that loyalty will not be for any status quo, that loyalty will be for making a better world, a new humanity, a new man -- more joyous, more healthy, more blissful.


It is time -- a very decisive time. All religions are out of date, particularly Christianity. It is the largest religion -- half of the world is Christian -- and they talk all kinds of nonsense.
Their pillars are the resurrection of Jesus Christ ....


He never died on the cross, how can he resurrect? His grave is in Kashmir, in India. It was because of a conspiracy to save him, a conspiracy between one rich disciple and the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, that the crucifixion was to be delayed as long as possible. The crucifixion was fixed for Friday, because Saturday is Sabbath for the Jews; they don't work at all. The idea was that because the Jewish cross kills very slowly ... It takes forty-eight hours for a healthy man to die on the Jewish cross. It is a very torturous thing. An electric chair is far more merciful, but God never created the electric chair.


So the crucifixion was delayed for this excuse, that excuse. Finally, Pontius Pilate wanted to see Jesus Christ before he was taken to the cross -- just to delay it -- and he talked to him. Then the procession was going uphill to where the crucifixions used to happen. There were thousands of people, and Jesus ...


He was only thirty-three, healthy, was a carpenter's son, was accustomed to carry wood from the forest, so it is easy for him to tell people, "Carry your cross on your own shoulders." He carried his.


The cross was very heavy, and he fell three times on the way. I suspect that perhaps it was also part of delaying -- because he was thirty-three and he used to carry big logs. He was not a man like I am, who has never done anything in his life, good-for-nothing!


When Rahul Sanskritayana came back from Russia, he shook hands with me, and he told me, "Never go to Russia."
I said, "What?!"
He said, "Your hands are very bourgeois."


I said, "They have to be, because I have never used them. I don't carry anything, I don't do anything."


From my very childhood, my father, my mother, everybody used to tell me, "You will turn out good-for-nothing!" I have fulfilled their promise, their prophecy. You will not find another man in the world who is so good for nothing. I teach nothing.


Jesus was on the cross for only six hours. In the whole of history nobody has ever died on the Jewish cross in six hours. He was too young, healthy. And after six hours, as the sun was setting, all work had to be stopped -- that was the conspiracy -- and Jesus had to be brought down. He could not remain on the cross on the Sabbath. So he was brought down, put into a cave, and the guards were Roman, not Jews.


In the middle of the night he was taken out of Judea by his richest followers -- Judea was a small place -- and he healed within a week. There was not much wrong, just a little blood had flowed out. Once he was healed, his friends and followers suggested to him not to go back to Judea, "otherwise you will be killed again. It is better to move far away from Judea."


Jesus must have heard about Moses -- because he was a Jew -- that Moses had gone in search of a lost tribe in the desert. When all the followers had reached Israel, which took forty years of wandering in the desert ... The Jews can never forgive Moses because he passed by Saudi Arabia and all the oil countries, and went on wandering in the desert -- hungry, starving, thirsty. Three-fourths of his people died on the way; only one-fourth of the original lot ...


New people had come into being, because for forty years you cannot keep people celibate. So new children were born, even a third generation had come into being, and Moses experienced the first generation gap. The people who had come with him were no more there, and the new generation had no idea about Egypt, no idea about slavery, no idea about the meeting of Moses with God, and the Ten Commandments, and they did not care about this old fellow.


Just to escape ... The situation was becoming hotter and hotter against Moses, because the new generation was talking, saying that "This ugly place is the Holy Land of God? For this place our forefathers died in the desert in tremendous misery, poverty, hunger, thirst. This place ...?"


Moses must have been worried. To escape from Israel, he had the excuse that "One tribe of the Jews has lost its way somewhere in the desert. You settle down, and I will go and find the lost tribe."


The lost tribe reached Kashmir, which is really, one can say, a holy land -- the world's most beautiful place. When the first Mogul emperor, Babar, came to India, he passed through Kashmir. He could not believe his eyes. He said, "If there is any paradise anywhere, it is here, it is here!"


Moses died in Kashmir. His grave and Jesus' grave both are on the same hillside, under the same old trees, and still today a Jewish family takes care of both the graves. Those are the only two graves on which the inscription is in Hebrew.


Now, in India there are no Jews. The other Jews in Kashmir have been converted by the Mohammedans, forcibly, into Mohammedanism. But because Mohammed had accepted Moses and Jesus as prophets of God, they did not destroy the two graves, and they did not convert the family who was taking care of those two graves. Descendants of the same family -- that is the only Jewish family in Kashmir -- are still taking care of them.


I have been to the graves. They are nearby a village which is called Pahalgam. In Kashmiri, Pahalgam means the village of the shepherd; it must have been named according to Jesus' claim that he was the shepherd. There is no other reason for it to be called the village of the shepherd.


I asked the guardians of those two graves what is written on them. On one is Moses' name, on the other is Jesus' name, in Hebrew -- in Hebrew it is Joshua -- "Joshua, who claimed to be the last prophet of the Jews."


Resurrection never happened -- and those kinds of things are the pillars: virgin birth, resurrection, creation of the world as opposed to evolution.


If it is true that God created the perfect world and there has been no evolution, then all the popes, the cardinals, the archbishops, the bishops and the priests would have been naked just like Adam and Eve. Or they may have been hiding their private parts, either with big leaves, as they hide them on the statues, or by hunting animals and using their skins.


Certainly God did not create railway trains, airplanes, cars, electricity, post offices. All this has come as part of the evolutionary program. Whether science believes in Charles Darwin's idea of evolution or not is not the question. Christianity will have to believe in evolution. It may be a different version, but evolution is the scientific truth. You can see it all around ....


And I am seeing immense contradictions. On the one hand they say, "You should not change anything, God is more wise than you" -- then why are you converting people to Christianity? God made them pagans, and you are converting them to Christianity. You are converting the poor, the downtrodden, the beggars, the orphans, to Christianity -- and particularly to the Catholic sect. It is against God, against the Christian God.


Creation is a dead word. It is just like a pond, it does not flow. And a pond has as its destiny only death. Its water will evaporate, and soon there will be mud and nothing else. A river is life. Everything is moving, everything is evolving.


God has not created a Gautam Buddha, and God has not created a Mahavira. Adam and Eve he has created -- and even he could not tolerate Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. He threw them out because they had committed the fundamental sin of disobedience -- his own children, naked, thrown out into the world.


God created only one couple. Now there are more than five billion people on the earth. By the end of the century there will be seven billion people on the earth. And you say things are not moving, everything is static?


Christians say that death is the punishment for your sins. I wonder that even intelligent people go on reading such rubbish. Then why do saints die? If it is because of sins that people die, then why do popes die? Why did Jesus die? And according to Friedrich Nietzsche ... why has God died?


Either everybody is committing sin, or the whole idea is absolutely wrong. Death is a natural phenomenon, it has nothing to do with sin.


In fact, everything that is pleasant has been destroyed by Christianity. It is said that you cannot be rejoicing and enjoying life when other people are suffering. What do you mean? -- if other people have cancer, you should have cancer also?


If other people are suffering, that does not mean that you should suffer also. You should help the suffering to cut the roots of their suffering. That you don't allow: God has made them to suffer; they are suffering because it is the will of God, so don't change their suffering but change your joyousness, your cheerfulness, your laughter, your blissfulness. While other people are suffering you are laughing? you are dancing? you are singing?


Christians have made the whole world miserable. The churches are the most sad places; even graveyards are more joyous, with flowers and beautiful trees. Churches ...? I have been into churches. As you enter a church it feels as though you are entering hell -- just the fire is missing, so it is all cold. Perhaps the fuel is finished in hell! -- there is an end to everything. Now be careful: when you go to hell, take woolen clothes with you, because there is no more hellfire, just an eternal winter which goes on getting colder and colder.


What kind of nonsense is this? If other people are sick, do you have to drop your healthiness? If other people are stupid, idiotic, retarded, do you have to drop your intelligence? This is a strange theology of destroying people's happiness. If people are suffering, share your happiness with them, make them also laugh. Cut the roots of their suffering. That seems to be human.


This teaching is absolutely inhuman! A few are suffering because God wants them to suffer -- and you have to suffer because Christianity wants you to suffer. Don't laugh, don't smile, don't enjoy anything, don't rejoice .... Then why not commit suicide? For what are you living? Just to watch the suffering of others, and your own?


Christianity leaves no other alternative than suicide. It is not an accident that the Western philosophers have come to the point of existentialism, which preaches that suicide is the only way out. It is Christianity deep down which has made the whole world so miserable that there seems almost to be no need to wake up tomorrow morning. For what? just to continue this misery?


And it is strange: on the one hand they say, "Know thy place. God makes everyone as they are ...." Do you see the contradiction? If God has made you a laughing, enjoying, rejoicing person, then this principle does not apply. It only applies to the sufferers: "Don't change your place, suffer. God makes everyone as they are." If it is true, then God has made many people loving, laughing, rejoicing, dancing. Who are you to prevent them?


But no, it is not applicable as far as joy is concerned, only suffering. What can be the reason behind it?


The reason is clear. Only the people who are miserable will seek the advice of the priests and the popes. Only the people who are miserable can be enslaved, can be told that "You are sheep and we are the shepherds." Only miserable people need salvation. A happy person, a blissful person does not need any salvation.


I don't need any salvation! I have solved all my problems. I have found myself. I have found the door to the divine. I don't need any shepherd, and I don't want to be called a sheep. If I had been present I would have slapped Jesus Christ.
Christianity has turned lions into sheep.


I want you to roar in laughter and joy like lions. Cut the roots of misery, suffering, slavery, all kinds of exploitation.


We need a classless society, and ultimately we need a world without any government.


As I entered America, the first question they asked me was, "Are you are a communist? Are you an anarchist?"
I said, "Both, and something more."
They said, "Something more?"


I said, "Yes. Communism is only a step. The Soviet Union has missed, it is just clinging to that step ...."


Karl Marx's idea was that as communism settles down, the government will disappear; otherwise, the bureaucrats become the new bourgeois. That is what happened in Russia, that is happening in China. That is going to happen in every communist country. The Communist Party takes the place of the capitalists -- no change. The poor remain the poor. Of course, they are equally poor. The only equality that communist countries know is equality of poverty.


I want equality of richness, a rich world -- which is possible, because if we use science and technology not to exploit people but to create more and more wealth, more and more nourishment for people, scientists say we can support through science and technology a seven times bigger population than exists today.


But they are being prevented by the churches, by all the religions, by the capitalists. The fear is that if there is nobody poor, who is going to go to the church? If there is nobody poor, who is going to pray to God? If there is nobody who is suffering, the priest is not needed.


A rich world, an equal world, a world without government, without crime, a world of meditators, a religious world, will not need three hundred religions as they exist today.


And Christianity is the biggest religion, of course, and the biggest crime against humankind.
<p class="sutra">A MAJOR CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC PRIESTS IN AMERICA HAS PRODUCED A VIDEOTAPE ON PRIESTS WITH AIDS, THAT CANDIDLY DISCUSSES HOMOSEXUALITY AMONG THE CLERGY. EXPERTS ESTIMATE AS MANY AS FORTY PERCENT OF CATHOLIC PRIESTS ARE GAY.
ON THE TAPE ONE PRIEST CONFESSES TO BEING GAY SINCE HE WAS SEVENTEEN. HE TRIED TO RENOUNCE HIS DESIRES AFTER BECOMING A PRIEST, BUT FAILED. "I COULD PRAY ALL DAY, AND A HANDSOME MAN WOULD STILL CATCH MY EYE," HE CONFESSED.
THE TAPE ACKNOWLEDGES THERE IS AN INCREASING NUMBER OF PRIESTS WITH AIDS, AND ADVISES OTHER PRIESTS HOW TO HELP THEM PSYCHOLOGICALLY AND MEDICALLY.
ONE FORMER JESUIT, WHO IS NOW A NEW YORK PSYCHOTHERAPIST, SAYS HE HAS A DOZEN PRIESTS WITH AIDS AS HIS CLIENTS.
AND THE ARCHBISHOP OF NEW YORK DENIES THAT ANY PRIESTS HAVE AIDS.</p>


In fact, in the oldest monastery of Mount Athos ... It is near Greece, a sovereign country, it has its own government. It is a thousand-year-old monastery. Once a man becomes a monk in this monastery of Mount Athos, he cannot leave the monastery alive, only his corpse will come out.
This they call loyalty.


I call it slavery. I call it absolute destruction of freedom of choice -- because tomorrow I may not feel like being in Mount Athos, but I have no choice. They have not only taken my present, they have taken my future also.


It is the ugliest place in the world, because no woman has ever entered, has ever been allowed to enter, Mount Athos. You will be surprised: what kind of people are living there? Even a six-month-old baby girl cannot be allowed in Mount Athos. Are these monks or monsters?
But that is not the end of the story.
<p class="sutra">THE MONASTERY AT MOUNT ATHOS, AN INDEPENDENT CHURCH STATE IN GREECE, STRICTLY FORBIDS THE ENTRY OF FEMALES OF ANY KIND ....</p>


Have you known females of any kind? I was surprised, I have known only one kind. When I first heard it, I could not believe that there are other kinds of female also. But then I understood there are.      ... EVEN BABIES, PET DOGS, CATS OR PARROTS WHICH ARE FEMALE. This can give you a clear-cut indication what kind of people are living there. They are not only homosexuals; the fear is that if even animals enter there which are female, these monks are not going to leave those animals alone. They will commit sodomy. Sodomy means making love to animals.
And this you call religion? This you call transformation of human beings?


One journalist who has just visited there found that "THERE ARE SOME MEN WHO WERE TAKEN THERE IMMEDIATELY AFTER BIRTH, HAVE NEVER SEEN A WOMAN IN THEIR LIVES" -- not even their mothers. As they were getting out of the womb, they were immediately transferred to Mount Athos. They have never seen that any kind of woman exists in the world.


One monk stated to the journalist, "IT TOOK ONLY ONE WOMAN TO UNDO THE GARDEN OF EDEN. IT WOULD TAKE THE SAME NUMBER TO DAMN MOUNT ATHOS." Just one woman, he is saying, destroyed the Garden of Eden; one woman will destroy Mount Athos. And these are great monks, holy people, loyal to God, constantly praying.


But nothing seems to have changed in their biology, nothing seems to have changed in their minds, in their dreams, in their imagination. But they are forced, they cannot go out -- that's why Mount Athos has its own government, its own police, its own guards continuously guarding the monastery. Nobody can escape out of the monastery. Do whatever you want to do, but do it in the monastery.


I have heard a few days ago about another monastery where there are one thousand monks who were divided with a wall, because fifty percent want homosexuality to be accepted by the church, and fifty percent are against it. Not that they are not homosexuals, they just don't want to make it public. Keep it quiet.


Christianity and other religions have helped all kinds of sexual perversions in the world -- and they think they have been very beneficial? they have been a blessing to the world? They are absolutely a curse, categorically a curse, and unless they disappear, man cannot live in peace.

The sutra:
<p class="sutra">OUR BELOVED MASTER,
ON A RAINY DAY, MONK GAO VISITED YAKUSAN, WHO COMMENTED, "TODAY IT'S QUITE HUMID."
"I WILL BEAT THIS DRUM," SAID GAO.</p>


The drum is beaten in a Zen monastery, or the bell is rung, only to gather all the monks. Gao said, "I WILL BEAT THIS DRUM so everybody comes here. It is a very humid day."


He was making an ordinary statement, but in the world of Zen, when you are talking to the masters, everything is taken to the highest potentiality. Even ordinary statements are given a golden touch.
<p class="sutra">UNGAN, a master, SAID, "THERE IS NO LEATHER -- WHAT DRUM DO YOU BEAT?"</p>


He is giving him a koan. Zen has thousands of koans, and this is one of the koans. He changed the whole topic. The drum was there -- but he is a master, he said, "THERE IS NO LEATHER -- WHAT DRUM DO YOU BEAT? Meditate upon it. If there is no leather, can you beat the drum?"


A koan is a puzzle which has no solution. A koan is a puzzle which is never solved, but as you go on meditating and becoming silent and silent and more silent, it dissolves. Suddenly there is no puzzle, no problem, nothing to solve. The koan disappears in deep meditation with all other thoughts. It is a thought.


DOGO -- another master who was present -- ADDED, "THERE IS NO DRUM -- WHAT LEATHER DO YOU BEAT?"


Meditate upon it. Both are similar, you cannot find a solution. If you try to think you are lost. If you get out of thinking there is a possibility to rise above the koan, but only if you rise above the mind.


Zen is the small stream of masters who are teaching the no-mind. All other religions are confined to the mind. In that way, Zen is not an ordinary religion. It is a totally unique spirituality. It teaches you to drop the mind, because the mind has all the programs, it has all the conditionings, it has the whole past in it.


The moment you drop the mind, put it aside, a clearing opens, a door widens into the mystery of existence. Suddenly there is no problem and there is no answer either, but a great contentment, a tremendous fulfillment arises in your being.


And the third master who was also present, Yakusan, commented, "TODAY, THE MELODY IS VERY GOOD."


What melody? A small statement from a disciple, "I will beat the drum," is completely forgotten. One master has given him a koan, another has turned the koan upside down, and the third is saying about his no-mind, "TODAY, THE MELODY IS VERY GOOD. I am feeling in deep synchronicity with existence. Everything is song, everything is dance."


Yakusan is perhaps the greatest master among these three. He is saying, "Don't bother about the drum." The first man is trying to beat it, the second one is giving him a koan: "How will you beat it if there is no leather?" The third person is turning the koan upside down: "How will you beat it if there is no drum?"


Yakusan says, "Today, this moment, the melody of existence is too good. Forget all this nonsense about the drum. Listen to the melody of existence. It is a silent, soundless music."


In a madhouse it happened once, a madman was listening, keeping his ear just by the side of a wall. The superintendent came, went, came again, went, came again .... For almost five hours the man was listening, and he wondered what he was listening to. He opened the door, went in, and said, "What are you listening to?"
The madman said, "Come close. You can also listen."


The superintendent put his ear to the wall for a few moments and there was nothing to hear. He said, "I don't hear anything."
The madman said, "Neither do I!"
Five hours have passed, and nothing is heard ....


But that's what Zen says: "If you can hear the nothing ..." Break the word in two: if you can hear no-thing, if you can go beyond things, a melody without sounds, a music without instruments, a poetry without words, a dance without movements ...


The whole existence is in continuous celebration, just we have to drop our constant traffic of the mind, which goes on keeping us away from existence. It is far thicker than the China Wall, thousands and thousands of thoughts, layer upon layer -- dreams, imagination, feelings, emotions, sentiments. They all constitute the mind -- and you are not the mind.


That's the fundamental finding of the East: you are not the mind, you are no-mind. You are pure consciousness without any thoughts. Then everything is joy, then everything is blissfulness, then everything is a benediction.
<p class="sutra">ONCE, AT THE MEALTIME, YAKUSAN HIMSELF BEAT THE DRUM, AND MONK GAO ENTERED THE HALL, DANCING. YAKUSAN DROPPED THE DRUMSTICK AND ASKED, "WHICH PIECE IS THAT?"
"THIS IS THE SECOND PIECE," SAID GAO.
YAKUSAN ASKED, "WHAT IS THE FIRST PIECE?"
GAO TOOK THE SEAT, HELPED HIMSELF TO SOME RICE, TOOK THE BOWL OF RICE WITH HIM AND LEFT.</p>


This will look very mysterious to you.
Yakusan was beating the drum, and the same monk, Gao, who wanted to beat the drum on that humid day, came dancing. YAKUSAN DROPPED THE DRUMSTICK AND ASKED, "WHICH PIECE IS THAT?" He is not asking about the drumstick, although it appears he is asking about the drumstick. He dropped the drumstick and asked, "WHICH PIECE IS THAT?" He is asking about the dance: Which piece is that? Why are you dancing? What has happened?
<p class="sutra">"THIS IS THE SECOND PIECE," SAID GAO.</p>


Now he has entered the world of no-mind. He is no more the same Gao who wanted to beat the drum in the first instance. Maybe years had passed between these two occasions.
He said, "THIS IS THE SECOND PIECE -- my dance."
<p class="sutra">YAKUSAN ASKED, "WHAT IS THE FIRST PIECE?"</p>


The first piece is that Gao is no more in his mind. He has become equal to the master. He has attained to enlightenment.


To show it, GAO TOOK THE SEAT -- of the master -- HELPED HIMSELF TO SOME RICE, TOOK THE BOWL OF RICE WITH HIM AND LEFT.


By his gesture he is saying, "First I attained to no-mind -- that was the first piece. Then came the dance, the celebration -- that was the second piece."


But he did not say it. Now he understands the language of Zen just as Yakusan understands it. Without saying anything he took the seat of the master, sat on the seat -- this is not expected of a disciple unless he becomes a master -- and without any fear he took some rice, HELPED HIMSELF TO SOME RICE, TOOK THE BOWL OF RICE WITH HIM AND LEFT. He did not say a single thing about the first piece.


Nobody can say. One can act it, one can show it. It is a gesture. But it is not an absurd anecdote as ordinarily people will understand. It says that once you enter into the no-mind the whole of life is just a dance.


This is not Christianity -- where dancing and rejoicing and blissfulness are banned. This is the only authentic religion in three hundred religions of the world. It does not call itself a religion because that will give a misunderstanding to people. It is a science of transformation of consciousness.


Yakusan understood. He did not prevent him from sitting on his seat. He did not prevent him from helping himself and taking his rice. He did not stop him. He is taking Yakusan's bowl full of rice and leaving the place. He is showing that "I am now exactly where you are." That is the first piece.


The dancing was the second, the shadow of a meditative state. "You heard that day the great melody; today I am dancing it." It is not said .... There are things in Zen which are not said but only understood. It is the most subtle way of communication.
<p class="sutra">ON ANOTHER OCCASION, A MONK CAME TO YAKUSAN FOR GUIDANCE.
"WHO ARE YOU?" YAKUSAN ASKED HIM.</p>


It is not that he does not know him, he knows him perfectly well; but whether he knows himself or not, that is the question.
<p class="sutra">"WHO ARE YOU?" YAKUSAN ASKED HIM.
"JOTAN," REPLIED THE MONK.</p>


YAKUSAN SHOUTED, "LAST TIME IT WAS JOTAN AND THIS TIME, TOO, IT IS JOTAN! You are not changing! Are you dead? Life knows only change. Last time you were Jotan and this time also -- so what happened in between? All that time is lost. You have not reached to some new peak, to some new depth. You have not gone beyond your personality that you call Jotan. Jotan is only your name, you are not it."
That's why he shouted.


Jotan must have been at a loss. Certainly the master is right. All this time he has been involved in trivia, all this time he has not meditated. All this time he has not inquired into his innermost being. All this time he has been asleep, a robot, a dead man.


Zen wants you living, living in abundance, living in totality, living intensely -- not at the minimum as Christianity wants you, but at the maximum, overflowing.


Your life should reach to others. Your blissfulness, your benediction, your ecstasy should not be contained within you like a seed. It should open like a flower and spread its fragrance to all and sundry -- not only to the friends but to the strangers too.


This is real compassion, this is real love: sharing your enlightenment, sharing your dance of the beyond.

Basho wrote a haiku:
<p class="sutra">STILLNESS EVERYWHERE.
THE CICADA'S VOICE
PIERCES ROCKS.</p>


Always remember, haikus are not to be understood as words but as pictures. Haikus have never happened anywhere else than China and Japan, and that happened particularly because both the countries don't have the alphabet. They have pictures for everything, characters for everything; hence they are very difficult to learn. To become a scholar it will take almost twenty to thirty years of your life, because you need to know millions of characters.


Alphabetical languages are simple. You have to learn twenty-six letters. The greatest number of letters is in Sanskrit -- fifty-two, double the number in English. Its expressiveness is also double, its beauty and its poetry are also double. You cannot believe that medical books in Sanskrit are written in poetry, you cannot believe that books on astrology are written in poetry. In Sanskrit anything can be written in poetry, even mathematics. It has such a poetic humming sound that each word in itself is a part of a poetic line.


But Chinese and Japanese are more vast; their world is far bigger than any alphabetical language. Their language is pictorial, and the difference is the same. While awake you think -- that is alphabetical. While asleep you dream -- that is pictorial. Nobody dreams alphabetically.


Have you ever thought about it? Your dreams are pictorial, so colorful -- but very few people's dreams are colorful. Most people's dreams are just like their mundane existence -- in black and white. Poets, painters, dancers, all creative people dream in psychedelic colors.


Haikus have to be understood as pictorial. Just visualize them as a dream, not as alphabetical. That is the trouble: how to translate them into alphabetical languages.
STILLNESS EVERYWHERE ... make it an experience.


STILLNESS EVERYWHERE. THE CICADA'S VOICE ... hear the voice of the cicada ... PIERCES ROCKS. It is so intense it almost becomes an arrow and comes with such intensity that it pierces rocks.


These are expressions of meditative people. When they open their eyes out of meditation the whole world looks psychedelic. The trees are more green than they have ever been, and they have been seeing the same trees always. The roses are more rosy.


You have heard the phrase, A rose is a rose is a rose. It is not so. After meditation a rose is much more rosy than it was before. It is not the same experience, not the same fragrance. Your sensitivity has grown deeper, your nose is more receptive, your eyes are clearer, your silence so deep that everything around you ...
Do you hear the noises of the night?


As your silence deepens the noises become more and more clear. The whole night seems to be humming .... Small insects creating all that music around you ...


When you listen after meditation ... you will see today that the sounds have become a great melody, because you have become deeper. You are not superficial. Your meditation has taken you beyond the body and beyond the mind, beyond the bones and beyond the marrow, and when you come out of meditation you are as fresh as a newly-born child.


A newborn child sees colors you cannot even imagine. What a tremendous world opens to him! He does not know anything. He cannot say what is green and what is yellow and what is red, but the way he sees them is far deeper and clearer than you can see. In fact, the more you become acquainted, the less you see, the less is your clarity. You become more dull.


Just ask a husband to describe his wife and he will be at a loss. For the first time he will remember: "My God! For thirty years I have not looked at her. On the contrary, I have been avoiding her by my newspaper -- remaining longer in the office, going to the pub, coming home late in the night, just to avoid her!" The same is the situation with the wife. Ask her.


You can experiment. Do you remember exactly the face of your mother? First you will think, "Yes," but as you go deeper the face of the mother fades. You are not certain how she looks, what color her eyes are, how old she is. How many wrinkles are under her eyes? -- you have never seen. Who sees one's mother? Who sees one's father? We are too much acquainted with each other, there is no need.


It happened in America ... it could have happened only in America. A man married for the twelfth time, and after three days of honeymooning he remembered that "I have married this woman one time before!"


But who remembers ...? Twelve wives ... she may have been the second or the third. Neither had she recognized him. Meanwhile she had also gone through many husbands. But after three days -- for three days he enjoyed a new woman, and the fourth day he was feeling to divorce her.

Our dullness of senses is great!


Meditation sharpens every sense -- not only the eyes, not only the ears, but every sense, even your touch. A meditator's touch will be so full of warmth and love, you will feel something is flowing through him towards you. He has so much joy, so much contentment, he cannot contain it. It goes on flowing all around him. He creates a certain feel. If you come closer to a master, into his field of energy, suddenly you will feel a change.


Have you ever observed it? When you come from the outside, from the city, and enter the gate, you suddenly feel a different breeze, a different freshness. People's faces look so joyous, so un-Christian. You have entered into a different world.
<p class="question">Maneesha's question:
OUR BELOVED MASTER,
COULD YOU TALK ABOUT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A WORKAHOLIC AND SOMEONE WHO IS TOTAL IN THEIR WORK?</p>


Maneesha, the difference is very great. The workaholic is not total in his work. The workaholic is addicted to work, he cannot sit silently. He has to do something; whether it is needed or not, that is not the question.


Now in Japan they are trying more and more for robots to work in the factories, because the robot can work twenty-four hours a day, with no strikes, no trouble with the labor unions, not constantly asking for a raise in the wages, no holidays. Robots are not religious anyway! But the workers are absolutely against it -- and the government is only asking them to take one day off in seven.


In Japan, even on Sunday people work -- there is no holiday as such -- and people are resisting the government, there is great turmoil. They are not ready to take one holiday per week. They will be paid for it, what is the problem? They are addicted. They say, "What will we do at home? No, we don't want such trouble. At home there will be fighting with the wife, with the children -- and we are addicted to work.


"We will open the bonnet of the car, although everything is alright, and we will destroy the car by trying to refine the engine. We will open the television set and destroy it. We have already done it! Sometimes when a national holiday comes, we have done it -- destroyed our old grandfather clocks, and they were working perfectly well, but something had to be done!"


These are workaholics -- addicted to work just as people are addicted to drugs. Work is their drug. It keeps them engaged. It keeps them away from their worries, it keeps them away from their tensions. It keeps them just like any drug: it drowns your worries, tensions, anxieties, sufferings, Christianity, God, sin, hell -- everything is drowned. A miserable person suddenly starts laughing, enjoying.


You just go in a pub and see. A pub is a far more joyous place than a church. Everybody is laughing, enjoying, fighting, punching each other's noses, and when they get back home ... it is late in the night, they are staggering, falling on the road.


One man came home and he was trembling so much, so drunk he could not manage to open the lock, because the key and the lock ... The key was in one hand, the lock was in the other hand, and there was no meeting, no dialogue!


Finally, the policeman on the street saw the poor fellow, so he came. He said, "Can I help you?"


The drunk said, "Yes, just hold the house steady. There seems to be such a great earthquake!"


They have forgotten everything ... the world and its troubles and the third world war. But you can use anything as a drug -- just become addicted.


A few people are just chewing gum. You take their gum and see how miserable they become! Immediately they start thinking, "Life is useless. There is no meaning in life. Where is my chewing gum?"


The chewing gum keeps them engaged, and that's how cigarettes keep them engaged. That's how people go on gossiping with each other. That keeps them engaged. Nobody bothers whether it is true or false, that is not the point. The question is: How to keep engaged and away from yourself?


So the workaholics are against meditation. Every addiction is going to prevent you from becoming a meditator. All addictions have to be dropped.


But to be total in your work is a totally different thing. To be total in your work is not addiction, it is a kind of meditation. When you are totally in your work, your work has a possibility of perfection, you will have a joy arising out of a perfect work.


If you can be perfect and total in work, you can be total in no-work -- just sitting silently, totally silent. You know how to be total. You can close your eyes and you can be totally in. You know the secret of being total.


So to be total in work is helpful in meditation. The workaholic cannot meditate, he cannot sit silently even for a few minutes. He will fidget, he will change his position, he will do something or other -- look into this pocket or that pocket, and he knows that there is nothing in those pockets. He will take out his glasses, clean them, put them away, and he knows they are clean.


I have been traveling for twenty years around this country, continuously, on the train, on the plane, and I have seen people opening their suitcases, looking into them, closing the suitcase -- as if there was something to see. They are just at a loss what to do. They will open the window of the train, close the window, they will lie down, close their eyes, open their eyes.


I used to tell people in trains ... In India, if you are going from Bombay to Calcutta it will take forty-eight hours. I would enter into my air-conditioned coupe -- mostly I was alone, but once in a while there was somebody else, because the coupe can have two persons -- and I would immediately tell my name, my father's name, my grandfather's name, from where I come, without being asked. They would be shocked. I would say, "I am finishing my whole autobiography so that you need not ask anything."


And then I would sit and that man would look very strange .... He would say, "What kind of man ...?"


I would tell him, "Now keep quiet, I have told the whole autobiography, there is nothing more!" And I would sit and look at him -- forty-eight hours -- and whenever he would start opening his mouth I would say ... Then he would start doing things. He would read the same newspaper again from the very beginning, the name of the newspaper, to the very end, the publishers, the editors -- and once in a while he would look at me.


It happened many times that he would call the conductor and say, "I want to change from this compartment."


The conductor would say, "Why? You have a very good companion. I know him because he is continuously traveling. He is a nice man. You be here."


He would say, "It is not a question of a nice or a good man. He is too nice -- but please put me into some other compartment where there are people to talk to! This man is dangerous. He goes on staring at me without blinking, and I become afraid. I have taken three showers since the morning just for no reason at all. Just to avoid him I go into the bathroom; then I say, 'It is better to take a shower. At least a few minutes will be passed.'"


But forty-eight hours ... and he would start seeing his insanity, that he is unnecessarily opening the window, closing the window, unnecessarily lying down, turning this side, that side -- and I am watching! Then he would sit down, then he would go on the upper berth. I would keep my hand up, so that he could see my hand, because I could not say it: "I am here! You go on doing all your insanities!"
These are the workaholics.


But a man who is total in his work is not a workaholic. He can be total -- in anything, he will be total. He will be total while he is sleeping, he will be total while he is going for a walk. He will be just a walker, nothing else -- no other thoughts, no other dreams, no other imaginations. Sleeping, he will simply sleep; eating, he will simply eat.


You don't do that. You are eating and your mind is doing hundreds of trips ....


I have been seeing -- in every bed there are never two people, but a great crowd. The husband is making love to his wife but he is thinking of Sophia Loren; the wife is not making love to her husband, she is making love to Muhammad Ali. In every bed you will find such a crowd! Nobody is total in any act, not even in love.


So be total in everything that you do or do not do. Be total -- then your whole life becomes a meditation.

Now it is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh.


Grandpa Babblebrain is going deaf, so he is sitting on the couch watching the TV at full volume. Suddenly Boris, his wife and their kids all come bursting into the house, returning from their vacation in Hawaii.
"Hi, Grandpa," shouts Billy Babblebrain, jumping into the old man's lap. "We are back from our vacation!"
"What?" shouts Grandpa, holding his ear.
"We are back!" shouts Billy. "We saw that famous volcano!"
"What?" shouts Grandpa.
"VOLCANO!" shouts Billy. "You know, one of those things that belches and spits fire!"
"Oh, yes," says Grandpa, shaking his head. "I married one!"


Rambo Retard, the American, and Boris Bog, the Russian, are sitting in MacDonald's hamburger restaurant in Santa Fe, discussing communism.


"In America we have such freedom," claims Rambo Retard, stuffing his mouth with a cheeseburger. "For example, any man who wants to can walk right up to the steps of the White House and call President Bush an asshole!"


"Ah!" retorts Boris, the Russian. "We have equal freedom in Russia. Any man who wants to can walk right up to the steps of the Kremlin and call President Bush an asshole, too!"


It is quiet in the Kremlin, in Moscow, one morning, and Mikhail Gorbachev is just finishing his black bread toast when the phone rings.


"Hey, Mikey," comes the voice of George Bush on the other end. "You must come here right away -- I have something to show you!"


So Gorbachev finishes his breakfast, flies over to America, and arrives at the White House. He is escorted to George Bush's office, where Bush shows him a large black machine with three buttons sitting on a table.


"You must try this," says Bush. "It is our latest American technology. Just push one button."


Gorbachev steps forward with a big smile on his face, pushes the first button, and a giant red boxing glove springs out and POW! -- punches him on the nose.


Laughing, George Bush picks Gorbachev off the floor. "That was very good, Mikhail; now try button number two!"


Dazed, but still smiling, Gorbachev pushes the second button, and POW! -- a huge white boxing glove belts him on the nose, knocking him to the floor.


"Just great!" giggles Bush, lifting Gorbachev again. "Come on now, be a sport. Try number three!"


Stunned, but in the interest of friendship, Gorbachev pushes the third button. A massive blue boxing glove jumps out and POW! -- cracks Gorbachev on the chin.
An hour later when Gorbachev wakes up, he flies back home to Moscow.


Two weeks pass, and George Bush is in the bath, when he gets a phone call from the Kremlin.


"Hey, Georgie," says Gorbachev. "I have something you must see. Come right away!"


Bush gets into Air Force One, the presidential jet, and flies directly to Moscow. When he arrives at the Kremlin, Gorbachev excitedly shows him a huge black machine with two buttons sitting on his desk.
"Go on, George," says Gorbachev. "Try it! It is our latest technology."


Smiling nervously, Bush steps forward, touches the first button, and ducks his head to one side.
Nothing happens.
"Well, okay," says Gorbachev, "then try the second button."


Bush edges towards the machine, reaches out, touches the second button, and quickly leans back.
Again, nothing happens.


"Very good, Mikhail," laughs Bush. "I enjoyed that very much. But I am a busy man, and I must get back home to America!"
"America?" says Gorbachev. "What America?"

Nivedano ...

(drumbeat)

(gibberish)

Nivedano ...

(drumbeat)

Be silent ...
Close your eyes ... and feel the body completely frozen.


This is the right moment to look inwards. Gather your whole life energy, and your total consciousness. With an immense urgency you have to reach to the center of your being, just like an arrow.
Faster and faster, deeper and deeper ...
As you come closer to yourself,
a great silence descends over you.
A little closer and you can see flowers from the beyond
showering on you like rain.


A little deeper and you can see fountains of peace all around you. The coolness becomes cooler.


The moment you reach to the center, you are no more. You find for the first time your original face. I call that original face the buddha, the awakened one.
At this moment,
the Buddha Auditorium is filled with ten thousand buddhas.
At this moment
you are the most blessed people on the earth.
Just remember one thing:
at the center you can be only a witness.
Watch.
As a witness you are not the body.
Witness ... you are not the mind.


Witness ... you are not other subtle layers of astral bodies inside you. There are seven bodies inside you, very thin layers. Just go on watching: you are none of them.


And finally, witness that you are only a witness. This is your buddha nature. This is your ultimate nature.

To make the witnessing complete, Nivedano ...

(drumbeat)

Relax ...
But remember that you are only a witness, nothing else.
Silence gathers more and more around you.


This is the peace that has been called "the peace that passes understanding."


Slowly slowly your consciousness starts melting like ice. All separation from others dissolves. The Buddha Auditorium becomes an ocean of consciousness without any ripples ... utter silence, ultimate beauty, a feeling of divineness, of godliness, that you are one with the whole.


This whole cosmos is nothing but a womb, and we are all in it -- not separate, but utterly melted.


This is the first step of meditation: to reach to the center, to become the buddha.


The second step is very simple, I don't have to teach you. The second step depends on you. Whenever you want, you can take a jump from the buddha and disappear into the blue cosmos, opening your wings, flying to the ultimate freedom. This freedom is the final goal of all religiousness.


Gather as much experience of the center ... all the flowers, all the fragrances, all the juice that you can find only at the center.
It is your life, it is your love, it is your laughter.


And before Nivedano calls you, do one thing more. Persuade the buddha to come along with you. He has to become one with you, so much so that one day you are no more, only your ultimate nature, the buddha, remains.


First he will become your shadow; second, you will become his shadow. That day will be the greatest day of celebration in your life.

Nivedano ...

(drumbeat)

Come back ...


But come back as buddhas, with the same peace, the same silence, the same grace, the same blissfulness. Sit down for a few seconds, just to remind yourself of the golden path that you have traveled, the great experience that you have gone through.


And see? -- the buddha is coming closer and closer to you every day, inch by inch. He is just behind you. One day you will be behind him.


Remember around the clock that essentially you are a buddha. Behave as a witness, with great grace. And by and by, even your ordinary activities of day-to-day life will become divine.


Unless we can transform the mundane into the sacred, your meditation is not complete, is not perfect.
To be here now,
to be totally here now, and you are the buddha,
the ultimate perfection humanity has ever achieved.


You have the same potential, the same height and the same depth. It is only a question of taking the challenge and exploring your own inner sky, and you will be surprised.


Outside you have been a beggar -- even the richest man is a beggar because he still wants more. When you get settled at the center, for the first time you are an emperor, because everything is fulfilled. There is no desire for more, there is no desire at all, but a pure isness, a transparent isness.
Here you will find the truth.
Here you will find the beauty.


Here you will find the meaning of godliness -- and you don't have to defend them. They are eternal, they have always been here now, only you have not looked in.

Okay, Maneesha?
Yes, Beloved Master.
			

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> Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
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