Rinzai's Answer

One day the Zen monk Rinzai is speaking in a temple. He has gone into a sermon, but someone is disturbing him there. So Rinzai stops and asks, "What is the matter?" The man stands up and says, "What is soul?" Rinzai takes his staff and asks the people to give him way. The man begins to tremble. He never expected that such will be the answer.




Rinzai comes to him, takes hold of his neck with both hands and presses it. The man's eyes bulge out. He goes on pressing and asks, "Who are you? Close your eyes!" The man closes his eyes. Rinzai goes on asking, "Who are you?" The man opens his eyes and laughs and bows down. He says, "I know you have really answered what is soul."



Such a simple device! But the man was ready. Someone asks Rinzai, "Would you do the same thing when anybody asks?" He says, "That man was ready. He was not just asking for the question's sake, he was ready. The first part was fulfilled; he was really asking. This was a life and death question to him: `What is soul?' The first part was fulfilled completely. He was disillusioned completely of life, and he was asking, `What is soul?' This life has proved just a death to him; now he is asking, `What is life?' So no answer from me would have been meaningful. I helped him to just stand still in the present."



Of course, when someone presses your neck just on the verge of killing you, you cannot be in the future, you cannot be in the past. You will be here and now. It is dangerous to miss the moment. If you just say to such a man, "Go deep and know who you are," the man becomes transformed. He goes into samadhi; he stands still in the moment.



If you are in the present, even for a single moment, you have known, you have encountered, and you will never be able to lose the track again.



Spiritual feeling is to know what is -- what is all this. Not that, this. What is all this -- this me speaking, this you hearing, this whole? What is this? Just stand, be deep in this. Let it open to you, and let yourself open to it. Then there is a meeting. That meeting is the seeking.



That meeting is the whole search. That is why we have called it yoga. Yoga means meeting. The very word yoga means meeting -- joining again, becoming one once more. But so-called spiritual seekers are not seeking any spirituality. They are only projecting their desires in a new dimension. And no desire can be projected in this spiritual dimension, because this spiritual dimension is only open to those who are not desiring. So those who desire go on creating new illusions, new dreams.



Source: “I am the Gate” - Osho

Judging a Saint

Judging a Saint




Osho : Remember: a saint is really a saint only when he has abandoned the whip and the rope. That is the criterion. If he is still trying to pray, to meditate, to do this and that, and to discipline himself, then he is still not yet enlightened. Then he is still there and some doing continues. And doing accumulates the ego. He has not reached home. The journey is yet to be completed."



In China there exists a beautiful Zen story:



A very rich woman served one monk for thirty years. The monk was really beautiful, always aware, disciplined. He had a beauty that comes naturally when your life is ordered – a cleanness, a freshness. The woman was dying, she was very old. She called a prostitute from the town and told the prostitute, ”Before I leave my body I would like to know one thing – whether this man I have been serving for thirty years has yet attained or not.”



The suspicion is natural, because the man has not yet abandoned the whip and the rope. The prostitute asked, ”What am I supposed to do?”



The woman said, ”I will give you as much money as you want. You just go in the middle of the night. He will be meditating, because he meditates in the middle of the night. The door is never closed because he has nothing which can be stolen, so you just open the door, and just watch his reaction. Open the door, come close, embrace him, and then come back and just tell me what happened. Before I die, I would like to know whether I have been serving a real master or just an ordinary, mediocre being.”



The prostitute went. She opened the door. A small lamp was burning; the man was meditating. He opened his eyes. Seeing the prostitute, recognizing the prostitute, he became afraid, a slight trembling, and he said, ”What! Why have you come here?” And when the woman tried to embrace him, he tried to escape. He was trembling and furious.



The woman came back and told the old lady what had happened. The old lady ordered her servants to burn the cottage that she had made for this man, and be finished with him. He had not reached anywhere. The old woman said, ”At least he could have been a little kind, compassionate.” This fear shows the whip is not yet abandoned. This anger shows awareness is still an effort, it has not become natural, it has not become spontaneous.



Source: "The Search" - Osho

Mind of a Sage

Mind of a Sage


Osho : One Zen monk, Bokuju, was passing through a street in a village. Somebody came and struck him with a stick. He fell down, and with him, the stick also. He got up and picked up the stick. The man who had hit him was running away. Bokuju ran after him, calling, ”Wait, take your stick with you!”



He followed after him and gave him the stick. A crowd had gathered to see what was happening, and somebody asked Bokuju, ”That man struck you hard, and you have not said anything!”



Bokuju is reported to have said, ”A fact is a fact. He has hit, that’s all. It happened that he was the hitter and I was the hit. It is just as if I am passing under a tree, or sitting under a tree, and a branch falls down. What will I do? What can I do?”



But the crowd said, ”But a branch is a branch, this is a man. We cannot say anything to the branch, we cannot punish it. We cannot say to the tree that it is bad, because a tree is a tree, it has no mind.”



Bokuju said, ”This man to me is also just a branch. And if I cannot say anything to the tree, why should I bother to say anything to this man? It happened. I am not going to interpret what has happened. And it has already happened. Why get worried about it? It is finished, over.”



This is the mind of a sage – not choosing, not asking, not saying this should be and this should not be. Whatsoever happens, he accepts it in its totality. This acceptance gives him freedom, this acceptance gives him the capacity to see. These are eye diseases: shoulds, should nots, divisions, judgments, condemnations, appreciations.



Source: from book “Vedanta: Seven Steps to Samadhi” by Osho

Beautiful Zen Story

Osho - Master's Compassion


Osho : It happened once, a Zen master was celebrating his master’s birthday. The master had died. Somebody asked him, why are you celebrating? – Because as far as I know, the master denied you. He never accepted you as his disciple. You tried long, that I know. You tried again and again, that I know, but every time you were refused. You were never initiated by him. So why are you celebrating his birthday? Traditionally it is to be celebrated only by the accepted disciples.’



The master laughed and he said, ’precisely because he refused me, I celebrate. Now I can understand his compassion. If he had accepted me, I may have become just an imitator. Because he threw me into myself continuously, by and by I stood on my own feet. By and by I dropped the desperate search to cling to somebody else. He helped me. He was my master. In his rejection he accepted me.’



Source: "Nirvana The Last Nightmare" - Osho

Polarities of Mind

The bourgeoisie and the proletariat cannot disappear by communist revolutions, no,


because the communist revolution is by the same people. The Czar ruled Russia; he ruled

it through the left hemisphere of the mind. Then he was replaced by Lenin who was of

the same type. Then Lenin was replaced by Stalin who was even more of the same type.

The revolution is false because deep down the same type of people are ruling -- the ruler

and the ruled mean the same, and the ruled are those of the right-sided hemisphere. So

whatsoever you do in the outside world makes no difference really, it is superficial.

The same applies to men and women. Women are right-hemisphere people, men are lefthemisphered.

Men have ruled women for centuries. Now a few women are revolting but

the amazing thing is that these are the same type of women. In fact they are just like men

-- rational, argumentative, Aristotelian. It is possible that one day, just as the communist

revolution has succeeded in Russia and China, somewhere, maybe in America, women

can succeed and overthrow men. But by the time the women succeed, the women will no

more be women, they will have become left-hemisphered. Because to fight, one has to be

calculative, and to fight with men you have to be like men: aggressive. That very

aggressiveness is shown all over the world in women's liberation. Women who have

become part of that liberation movement are very aggressive, they are losing all grace, all

that comes out of intuition. Because if you have to fight with men you have to learn the

same trick; if you have to fight with men, you have to fight with the same techniques.

Fighting with anybody is very dangerous because you become like your enemy. That is

one of the greatest problems of humanity. Once you fight with somebody, by and by you

have to use the same technique and the same way. Then the enemy may be defeated but

by the time he is defeated you have become your own enemy. Stalin is more Czar-like

than any Czar, more violent than any Czar. Of course it has to be so: to throw Czars, very

violent people are needed, more violent than the Czar himself. Only they will become the

revolutionaries, will come out on top. By the time they reach there they have become

Czars themselves, and the society continues on the same way. Just superficial things

change, deep down the same conflict remains.

The conflict is in man. Unless it is resolved there, it cannot be resolved anywhere else.

The politics is within you; it is between the two parts of the mind.

A very small bridge exists. If that bridge is broken through some accident, through some

physiological defect or something else, the person becomes split, the person becomes two

persons -- and the phenomenon of schizophrenia or split personality happens. If the

bridge is broken -- and the bridge is very fragile -- then you become two, you behave like

two persons. In the morning you are very loving, very beautiful; in the evening you are

very angry, absolutely different. You don't remember your morning... how can you

remember? Another mind was functioning -- and the person becomes two persons. If this

bridge is strengthened so much that the two minds disappear as two and become one, then

integration, then crystallization, arises. What George Gurdjieff used to call the

crystallization of being is nothing but these two minds becoming one, the meeting of the

male and the female within, the meeting of yin and yang, the meeting of the left and right,

the meeting of logic and illogic, the meeting of Plato and Aristotle.

If you can understand this basic bifurcation in your tree of then you can understand all the

conflict that goes on around and inside you.

Sacred Distance

Its a hopelessly inevitable reality which stares you in your face , Like the sun , The early morning sunshine . . . I m talking about being alive . As someone trapped in a body . A soul … A song .. Something incomplete I felt in me . It was her . My soul in a different body , other than mine . I think , I felt it . My soul . . The part of my soul in a different , beautiful , human form . Was it her .. No it was the morning . It was an illusion . . . Was it love ! Questions . . . Mind was alive and active . It was asking me . . It was wanting . . To know . Why I was .. I N C O M P L E T E

I , ME , YOU . Different forms of yourself to you ! Various forms of myself to me ! We are the biggest personality in our lives . It is always My father , My mother , My brother , My friends . My world . My Cosmos . We are all egoist . We all believe that the universe surrounds us . Well its not wrong , Its not a lie . It is but true that when you close your eyes . The world stops existing as the things you see . That when you die . THe world dies . The universe stops existing . . . . For you ! As what you see it as . You are the something which sees and recognises this world for what it is .. . .. For you !!

This personality that you got . Is the biggest gift that the random and hopelessly chaotic world by accident stumbles upon ! There is no particular reason why you are ! Alive .. and recognise that you are .. Alive . This is always something which is taken for granted . That which is accepted without being asked any questions . For someone who has also been gifted with avenues of material wealth , even dreams as coloured by fulfilled wants and needs .

Until you ask ! ? Until you see ! that you are incomplete

I was told once .. That love is a mirror on which you see your incompleteness .

I am an ordinary day , You are my sun , I am morning only when you smile

I am the silence which yearns to speak and I sing when you speak to me

You are the face of my soul , In my life , My soul , Its depth and its light !

Dont say no . Dont deny me with love ! Walk with me and let me grow

Sometimes you cant make it on your own , You need help to stay alive and see your soul . I know it is her , But she said no . I dont cry , I m not sad . May be not this life , May be not when I am alive , But I know my love is true . I let go . If it is true . It will come back to me ! It is but my soul , It wont let me die … . . . Alone !

Avenues

Please do read this at your own risk .. As suggested by Roy who seems to think Disclaimer should be put before reader get a chance to go through the content .This is not an intelligent blog ! I would not claim that it is beautiful either ! Yet I had to write ..Just to get it out of my head !
Recently I had a conversation with a friend of mine who incidently happened to be female . Usually I have very few female friends .They usually tend to be very offended by my very poor and unimaginative jokes and also the taste of movie and music . And yeah some do persist only due to their temprement which rival that of saints .
Unintentionally our conversation strayed into morality .She was worried to call herself a mallu seeing how her roommates were leading a life devoid of any sense of morality .They apparently came very late at night and had at times not come at all .She sounded like my grandmother in her moral lessons that she gave me that day . And her preference of Groom she said has to be a city dweller or some one who is used to city life.She said she had many friends and she would expect her husband to understand her friendship with these guys (No ironies ..sarcasm here please )
I was reminded of two people .One was Fredrich Netieshe .He was a german Philosopher .He strictly advocated a life questioning all diktats of morality .He questioned and made fun of all of our hypocritic moral and religious outlook of life . Is our love for an individual compromised to any extent just because we are with another individual . Does love demand that we be confining all our imagination,love and life with only the person we claim we are in love with .
He claimed that faithfullness was only a crude tool for sexual selection . You see tigers and lions .They have territory . They usually mate with a lioness and mark their territory with their piss .If another Lion happened to trespass into his territory he had to fight and establish . They defended their territory with claws and life .And if the other lion has won the fight , he would first kill the children of the previous lion . It was a cruel reality of feline social life . But it was a good evolutionary tool for these panthers .This ensured that only the strongest reproduced and passed on their genetic traits to the next generation . This ensured that the next generation of cubs had he strongest genes and their chances of survival was ensured by genetic superiority .
We humans ..our jealously .our possesiveness of things ..friends ..lovers .Marriage .Fidelity and very unfortunately our concept of love too is deeply rooted in this territorial pissings . We too would feel infuriated when our lovers ,friends ,wife , of the opposite sex had a relationship with another human/computer/internet friend what not !! We had fought world wars and killed several lives and ravaged civilizations itself in a feeling rooted in this territorial pissings .We felt jealous and insecure if our neighbours built nuclear weapons .We bombed their city and deprived mothers of their sons and joys just to have enough fossil fuels to foster our sense of well being .We felt jealous of all devloping countries which were advancing on the streets of capitalism . We called them a threat to national security . You see we close our eyes to all these injustices and brainlessness and call ourselves the most advances creatures with intelligence . Nietizhe questioned these very moral triats of ours and proposed free living ..Free living with all its perks and pangs .Do we really need this tools of sexual selection in among us humans with age of internet blogging.We already have enough population .People only think in terms of marriage . trust me Humans will outlive bacterias and dust too . We are now social beings .We need to ensure collective survival of a race ..not individual .We are intelligent enough to ensure that we survive without need to fight with claws and life !We could live as a collective family .Poly family ..A commune .Where sexuality is not exloited as a tool of evolution .Where an entire human life and his incredible intelligence is not wasted thinking about raising a family ..Kids ! Where humans supported each others feelings and cherished this human life they are endowed with .Where no one owned anything individually .Where everything and anything was shared and used for collective human growth . Where people did not own anything and was not owned by anything ..Devoid of religion .Devoid of nations .Living life .Enjoying some sixty odd years that we are gifted with .Without any worries . Where we cherish our planet earth .Where we would discover and marvel our forefathers .and one fine day die a life with feeling of having seen a rock show !
Another charector which she reminded me that day was the Charector of wife in the movie unfaithful . She was a liberated woman .with a really loving husband (Richard gere )Somehow mid life crisis drives her to a lover half her age .They have this affair running .And one fine day she finds her lover with another woman , She is completely broken . She confronts him ..He questions her sense of morality .She was a woman cheating her husband and she questions her lover when he is seen with another woman . Sarcasms of a modern sense of moral justice !

Of course both of them were hypocrites .Netiezshe prophesed a moral free societ yet lived life like a monk .He was even a celebate .I doubt if he was a virgin like me !! And this woman ..Liberated who upheld morality and faithfulness conveniently forget morality to cater and satiate her love ! I respect both .I AM BOTH yet a male too ! A virgin male !
No matter how modern we claim to think , we need to understand that we are deeply rooted in our territorial pissings , Jealousy ,this feeling ..this undercurrent of constant insecurity , where our sense of self is qeustionned constantly by behaviour and life of the one with whom we share our time and space with . Marriage was only a reinforcement of our hypocritic outlook of life .
I heard that man's intelligent and thinking mind is only as thin as Onion's out skin ,Deep inside of that is layers upon layers of evolutionary slumber . He was a lion , donkey and dog at times .All of his poetry , his prose and epic wars were only a sophisticated MASKS of his dull wit !
OFcourse there is always an exceptional human who thought from beyond his human frame .Who questionned this hypocracies .Who threatened and challenged this dwarf and imbecile thinking of our human leaders and religions . yeah he was last seen asking for water in a crucifix . He was poisoned ..killed tortured ..and threatened with Marriage ! At times ..kind poeple thought he was poet and honoured him/her with a booker prize

Humans ..Brothers and sisters of slumber ! I too was one of them . But when I question their stupidities ..our collective dark humour !… Well lets just say that I get my head banged against the bathroom door by my lovely room mates ! I do not make any inference here . No nothing I am implying here .I do not even say marriage and possesiveness is wrong . Only I ask you ..Implore you ..That we atleast aknowlege our hypocracies . Otherwise we would not be different from a blind monkey scratching his loins on top a nuclear weapon warhead ready to destroy life as we know it only because his wife had slept with his best friend

Humans being humans .. Read it completly only after reading the disclaimer ! I dont blame them ..I celebrate them and thank them ..To have gone through this and understood .. ! Thank you for reading this ! Please do leave your comments and views on the same ! And in case you need to bang my head against the bathroom door . Please atleast ensure that its clean ! (I mean my head )