Discourses on Zen



Discourses on Zen

From May 1988, on all discourses are on Zen. Osho comments on anecdotes about Zen masters.

Zen is special in many ways from other traditions of the mystics. But one thing that stands out, very unique, is these strange, small dialogues: just reading them you cannot see how those small dialogues can bring enlightenment to someone.
Secondly, Zen itself gives no explanations. That is one of the reasons a living tradition of enlightenment has not overtaken the whole world. I would like you to understand these small dialogues which apparently mean nothing, but in a certain circumstance, produced by other Zen methods, can bring awakening. The dialogues are remembered down the centuries; and the people on the path of Zen enjoy them immensely. But for outsiders they remain an anathema, because the context is never told; in what reference the awakening happened is never discussed.
Behind these small dialogues there is a long discipline of meditation, understanding--maybe years and years of work. But only the dialogue is known to the outside world. You don't know the men who are discussing with each other; they are not ordinary people. The awakening is possible only if they have a background which can make the small piece of dialogue--which in itself is nothing--of tremendous importance.
But when you read them, you cannot believe how these dialogues can make somebody enlightened--because you are reading them and you are not becoming enlightened! Something is missing in your perspective.
My effort will be to give you the whole context, and to explain not only the words of the dialogue but also the individuals who are engaged in these small dialogues. Only then will you see that they are not small things, they are the very optimum. Those people have reached to the last point; these dialogues are just a little push. They were almost ready...it can be said that even without these dialogues they were going to become enlightened, maybe a week later. These dialogues have cut not more than one week from their being enlightened.
Now that Zen has become fashionable all around the world there is so much written about it. But nobody I have come across up to now...and I have seen almost everything that has been written about Zen by people who don't have any enlightenment, but who are impressed by the beauty of the people who have been following Zen. They have picked up things which make no sense, are almost nonsense, and they don't have the capacity to give you the background.
Remember, everything depends on the background: long years of preparation are there, long years of waiting, longing, long years of silent patience, meditating. This dialogue comes at the apex, at the very end. If you can understand the whole process, then it will be explained to you how the dialogue can bring enlightenment to someone.
Without knowing the whole process, Zen will remain just entertainment to the world. What is enlightenment to Zen people falls down to a state of entertainment. These dialogues are not the whole process. It is just like an iceberg: a small piece is showing above the sea--one-tenth of the whole iceberg--and nine-tenths is underneath. Unless you understand that nine tenths, this one tenth will not give you any insight....
Zen believes in the very essentials. It has no nonsense around it, no rituals, in which all other religions have got lost, no chanting, no mantras, no scriptures--just small anecdotes. If you have the right awareness, they will hit you directly in the heart. It is a very condensed and crystallized teaching, but it needs the person to be prepared for it. And the only preparation is meditative awareness. tahui25

These small anecdotes are small only in size; in depth, no ocean can compete with them. It is a miracle that in such small dialogues, the greatest of experiences, which are inexpressible, are expressed. cuckoo11

I hope these anecdotes will take away all the nonsense that modern times have forced upon you and will give you a taste of eternity. quant12

I am interested in Zen only because Zen is pure meditation. The very word `Zen' means meditation. It has nothing else, it requires no rituals. Just as you are, the only requirement is to go in and discover your eternal self.
That eternal self is pure ecstasy. You can sing and you can dance and your singing and your dancing, if they are coming from your innermost core, become your only prayers. They are the only authentic prayers; all others are composed by man, and a prayer composed by man is of no value.
A prayer that arises within you, like a flame...and that is what happens in deep meditation. Suddenly you start experiencing a new warmth and a new flame, a new joy that you have never experienced before. It has been dormant, it has been repressed continuously, for millions of years. It has gone so deep that you will have to go that deep to find it.
That's why I go on insisting: go on, deeper and deeper, and go on throwing the garbage that the past has left in you.
These small anecdotes are all concerned with meditation in different ways. cuckoo15

These anecdotes belong to another dimension which the world has completely forgotten. It is a totally different language, a different understanding, a different kind of opening of the mysteries of existence. In these simple anecdotes you will see the world that we have lost, and the world that we want to create again. This is the man who has reached to the ultimate peaks of consciousness at a time far away in the past, and this is the man who is needed again so that this whole stupidity of the world--its politicians, its priests--can all be dissolved and the world can again dance with joy and rejoice in love.
I am fortunate to have the right assembly; otherwise these anecdotes will not be of any meaning--because you are also searching for the same door, you are all one in this search, dissolved into a deep silence. Only this silence can understand, because out of this silence these anecdotes have arisen--this silence is their source. The clouds are the witness; the bamboos are the witness; you in your silence are the witnesses. These are your stories. So don't think that you are reading some fiction. It is simply a hint to show you the way into your own being.
A man is utterly useless, his life has no meaning, his love is futile, if he himself is not aware who is residing in. Of course, the body is not you, nor the mind; there is something else which is witnessing both the mind and the body. To provoke that witness is the whole art of any master, and these anecdotes are about great masters. bolt08

I call Zen the only living religion because it is not a religion, but only a religiousness. It has no dogma, it does not depend on any founder. It has no past; in fact it has nothing to teach you. It is the strangest thing that has happened in the whole history of mankind--strangest because it enjoys in emptiness, it blossoms in nothingness. It is fulfilled in innocence, in not knowing. It does not discriminate between the mundane and the sacred. For it, all that is, is sacred.
Life is sacred whatever form, whatever shape.
Wherever there is something living and alive it is sacred. livzen01

Zen comes closer to science than any other religion for the simple reason that it does not require any faith. It requires of you only an intense inquiry into yourself, a deepening of consciousness, not concentration--a settling, a relaxing of consciousness, so that you can find your own source. That very source is the source of the whole existence. orig06

Zen is the very principle of existence. Whether there is anyone who teaches it or not, whether there is anyone who learns it or not, it is there. Zen is the very heartbeat of existence. It is not dependent on any teaching, not dependent on any masters, not dependent on disciples. Masters come and go, disciples come and disappear; Zen remains. Just as it is. It is always just as it is.
I have made my comment....
I know Zen--not from any scripture. I do not belong to the tradition of Zen; I belong to these clouds. I belong to existence on my own accord. I have found Zen--not through the scriptures. That's why I can say, even in Japan there are only teachers and followers, no Zen. I am almost a stranger to the tradition; but I have found Zen on my own accord. It is my discovery, it is not an inheritance from the tradition, an inheritance from Mahakashyapa, Bodhidharma, Obaku. I don't have anything from these people--I don't owe anything to anybody....
I am not a man who follows anybody; I am nobody's disciple. I have tasted existence and I have declared that I have known it. Anything that goes against my experience is wrong. livzen05

These evenings have been very special and those who are present are very fortunate. The silences, the laughter, my eyes and your eyes meeting, my hands being understood...and we have created a golden age which has disappeared from the world. We have brought back the times of Mahakashyapa, Bodhidharma.... This assembly would have made any enlightened person rejoice.
It is true that when communication happens, the communicators disappear--you can feel it immediately. Here you are as if one consciousness, undivided. In your silence you are one, in your laughter you are one. This oneness is the door to the ultimate awakening of your consciousness.
We have been one in silence, let us also be one in our laughter. To me a silence that cannot laugh is dead and a laughter that has no silence in it is superficial. When silence and laughter meet they create a dance, and our effort here is to join in this cosmic dance.
Just relax into the whole...
Don't keep yourself as a spectator.
Don't remain separate.... livzen06

Master Shui Lao asked Ma Tzu...Ma Tzu is one of the strangest masters in the assembly of strange masters of Zen. Shui Lao is asking a simple question: "Why did Bodhidharma come to China? What special transmission was there that he had to deliver?" Ma Tzu then knocked him down with a kick to the chest: Shui Lao was greatly enlightened.
Now incidents like this make intellectuals confused. What has happened? Ma Tzu has shown him that Bodhidharma has come to kill your ego, to release you from the fear of death. He kicked him in the chest, knocked him down. It was so strange and so sudden, it was not expected. He had asked a simple routine question; any intellectual could have explained why Bodhidharma had come to China--to spread Buddhism, to spread the message of the great master.
But nobody could have thought that Ma Tzu would do this to the poor questioner and it was so sudden and so unpredictable...But it is only sudden and unpredictable to us; Ma Tzu could have seen the ripeness of the man, the maturity...that he needs just a small push, that this moment should not be missed. His kicking him on the chest and knocking him down may have completely stopped the functioning of his mind, because it was so unexpected and so strange. In that stopping of the mind is the release. Suddenly the goose is out! Shui Lao became enlightened.
He got up, clapping his hands and laughing loudly, and said, "How extraordinary! How wonderful! Instantly, on the tip of a hair, I have understood the root source of myriad states of concentration, and countless subtle meanings." Then he bowed--in deep respect--and withdrew. Afterwards, he would tell the assembly--he became himself a great master--"From the time I took Ma Tzu's kick, up until now, I have not stopped laughing. How can one stop laughing? This great affair is so ridiculous!...
Naturally, people who have not been accustomed to the tradition of Zen will be shocked by such behavior. If I suddenly knock Maneesha here and now, although she is not yet ripe--but if I knock, will you understand? You will think, "This man has gone mad." You will think, "We already knew that he was mad; now he has crossed all the boundaries." And from tomorrow, those who sit in front will remain alert: at any moment...
And this is going to happen, because I am not going to leave this world unless I make more people enlightened than Gautam Buddha. I am watching who is growing wings, who is becoming ready to be knocked--so don't be surprised. And when somebody gets knocked, rejoice in the happening! The man has become enlightened.
But people who are not in a deep resonance with Zen will not be able to understand it--Hindus or Mohammedans or Christians or Jews--because there is nothing like that in their whole history. Their whole history is more or less just intellectual gymnastics.
Zen is absolutely existential. The master is there not only to teach you certain doctrines; he has to release you from the prison that you yourself have made. Whatever arbitrary, expedient methods are needed, he is not going to be worried about what people will think of them; he will use them.
There have never been more compassionate beings than Zen masters....
Get ready and be prepared. It is a totally different world from the days of Ma Tzu, but I would like to make that beautiful time and those beautiful incidents contemporary again. But it all depends on you. If you are gradually dropping all your garbage, becoming more alert, not forgetting for a single moment--walking, sitting, working, lying down, a constant undercurrent of remembrance--then the day is not far away when I will start knocking people down. There is no necessity to actually knock somebody down, because between me and Ma Tzu much time has passed, and I have got more refined methods! He is, in a way,primitive.
I do my own kind of kicking and knocking, so don't wait for me to actually hit you on your chest. There is no need...I have developed more subtle methods--but you have to be ready anyway. tahui31

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