:: BOOK OF THE MONTH ::

KYOZAN: A TRUE MAN OF ZEN

These four discourses were delivered from December 3rd to 6th, 1988, between two long periods when Osho’s body was too sick to come to Gautama the Buddha Auditorium. He had stopped dancing with us on October 14th: “I have to express my apology to you that I could not join in your dance. The whole credit goes to president Ronald Reagan…” and he told us how he had been poisoned in American jails. “I have almost overcome the poison, just… in the bones and particularly in the joints it is still stuck. I have been dancing with you without bothering about it. I would have continued, but today the pain became too much. The pain is not the problem for me. The problem was: if I continue then perhaps I may have to stop speaking. So it is better to let this pain settle.”

We could see during these few days, as he walked to his chair, how frail his body was, and despite the strength of his voice and the power of his presence, many hearts and minds feared his body might not be with us much longer. It was no surprise when there was no discourse on December 7th and not again until December 26th, when he said:

“My Beloved Ones, I have been too long away from you…. These few days and nights have been days and nights of a certain purification. The poison delivered to me by President Ronald Reagan and his staff….. from all over the world experts in poison said that amongst all the poisons this is the one which cannot be detected in any way. It has been the practice of the CIA in America to give this poison, because there is no way to find it out. And if you cannot find it you cannot give any antidotes, death has been almost certain.

“These long days and nights I had taken the challenge of the poison, just witnessing. The poison was a constant torture on every joint of the bones, but a miracle has happened. Slowly slowly, from all joints it has disappeared. The last were the two arms. Today” – December 26 – “I am free from that too. I have a strong feeling that, although I was not physically present here, you have felt me in the air. You have felt me more strongly than ever before. And in your songs I was present. In your meditations, remember, I was more present than physical presence allows.

When asked to talk about his sickness he said, “No… being sick is enough….. And remember my body can be sick, I am never sick. I watch everything, whatever happens. I will watch my death as I watched my life, and that’s my simple teaching to you.”

In the same discourse he dropped the name we had called him for twenty five years, which we had loved, which had become part of us – though I wonder now, have w ever been totally at ease with it? He said he had used it to provoke the Hindus. “I hate the word. I don’t want to be called Bhagwan again. Enough is enough! The joke is over!”

The next night he said: “ I am feeling so light just by dropping a single word. I feel I can fly like a swan to the eternal snows of the Himalayas.” And it was obvious that his body was marvelously stronger – though not simply because of dropping a name. “For seven weeks I was fighting with the poison day and night. One night even my physician, Amrito became suspicious that perhaps I cannot survive. He was taking my pulse rate and heartbeats on his cardiogram. Seven times I missed one heartbeat.”

“The seventh time I missed a heartbeat it was natural for his scientific mind to think, ‘ now we are fighting a battle that is almost lost.’ But I said to him, ‘Don’t be worried. Your cardiogram can be wrong; it’s just a mechanical device. Trust in my witnessing. Don’t bother about my heartbeats.”

“ On the last day of the seven weeks’ struggle when all pain from my body disappeared, Amrito could not believe it. It was happening almost like a miracle. Where has all the pain disappeared?”

So these few discourses islanded in those seven weeks of struggle against the poison have the fragility of a reprieve and also a delicacy, breathtaking as the tiny sky-blue speedwell flowers I saw recently, the first to reappear after grass-burning, but strong with the life force – like silence itself, immensely strong an deep and easily broken. Here is the Zen paradox of delicate strength, a tremendous statement in a few light words.

He said at the start of the December 6thy discourse: “It hurts me to disturb your silence by using words, but I hope a day will arrive when we will be sitting together allowing the silence to become deeper- because whatever can be said only touches the periphery. It never goes beyond the periphery; no word has ever reached to the center. You are not only hearing my words, you are also hearing me, and that is the true hearing, my heartbeat.”

In an earlier discourse: “The Zen encounter is not one of words.”… “The Zen counter is a communion in silence.”…. “The silence here is so dense one feels a little afraid even to utter a word. It may disturb the silent lake of your consciousness. But always remember that in the wake of words, silence is deepened…. He essential Zen is an effort to bring you to the language of existence that you have forgotten completely.”

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