Osho,
Yakusan asked a monk, “Where do you come from?”
“From Nansen,” was the reply.
“How long were you there?” Yakusan continued.
“From last winter to summer,” replied the monk.
“Then you must have become a good ox,” commented Yakusan.
The monk said, “The thing is, I was there, but I didn’t even go to the dining hall.”
“But you cannot get by just through breathing the wind!” Yakusan commented.
“It was not that bad, Osho,” said the monk. “There is surely a man who will hold a spoon for me.”
On another occasion, Yakusan was returning to his temple with a bundle of firewood when a monk asked him, “Where have you been?”
Yakusan replied, “I’ve got firewood.”
The monk pointed to Yakusan’s sword and said, “It makes the sound ‘tap-tap.’ What in the world is it?”
At this the master unsheathed the sword and assumed a warrior’s stance.

Friends,
There is a group of Soviet comrades present here today. They have a few very beautiful and simple questions. First I am going to answer them.
The first question:
You have dedicated a book to Gorbachev. Since you are against politicians, is this a contradiction?
Not at all, because Gorbachev is not a politician. His every act proves that he is a man in politics but not a politician. My dedication to Gorbachev and the academic scientist Sakharov was for this simple reason, that he is not a politician and is immensely interested in having peace in the world. He is for friendship in the world, not for war.
The politician’s mind is always concerned with war. Adolf Hitler in his autobiography, My Struggle, says that if a politician wants to remain in politics he has to continue creating enemies. If there are no real enemies, create fictions that somebody is going to attack you, that you are surrounded by enemies. Only that will keep you in power – not peace.
And it is a factual thing to know; your whole history is filled with heroes who were nothing but warmongers, people who massacred millions of people. Your history does not consist of a single name who was a peacemaker.
I have dedicated my book with deep love to Gorbachev and Sakharov because they are both working for world peace. That is not the way of the politician, that is the way of a humanitarian. That is the way of one who loves humanity, who loves this beautiful planet and wants to save it at any cost. And all his actions prove what I am saying.

Their second question is:
As a religious leader, you are above human hurts, but do you criticize America and Christianity so much because you feel hurt?
In the first place I am not a religious leader. I am a religious man. A leader is fundamentally a politician. Whether or not his politics is hidden behind religion does not matter; the very word leader comes from politics.
I don’t have any followers here; these are all my friends. So please don’t call me a religious leader – I am just religious.
Secondly, I am not criticizing America and Christianity because they have tried to destroy my body. That does not matter to me. It does not hurt me, because I know something which is indestructible; no poison, no bombs, no nuclear weapons can destroy it. My being, my spirituality is beyond any destruction. It is eternal and immortal. So it is not a question of hurting me.
My criticism of America and Christianity has nothing to do with my personal attitude. I am against all religions, not only Christianity. I am against God because I am against all fictions. I am against hell and against heaven because I don’t want to create a schizophrenia in humanity. I don’t want human beings to live in fear of hell and greed for heaven.
And I don’t want people to have any kind of belief system. Whether it is Christianity or Hinduism or Buddhism, it does not matter. To me, any organized religion – and Christianity is the most organized religion in the world – is a danger to human beings. Their individuality, their freedom, their dignity is destroyed.
Jesus goes on saying to people, “You are sheep, and I am the shepherd.” That is the attitude of all so-called religions: “You don’t know – I know. And you have simply to believe in me and all your sins will be forgiven.” Just believing in Jesus, or in Krishna, or in Buddha, cannot erase anybody’s crimes and sins. Every action has its reaction: if you have done something wrong, you will have some bitter experiences following it. If you are doing something good, you will have flowers showering on you, a deep peace, a deep silence, and a growth of your inner consciousness.
I have criticized America because I have been there for five years and seen with my own eyes that this is the most hypocritical country in the world. Talking about democracy, talking about freedom, talking about freedom of speech – and none of these things exist there.
Because they were against me they could not follow their own constitution concerning freedom of speech. They had no argument against me. Naturally, they became absolutely mad: how to destroy me, how to destroy the commune?
The commune was a far superior version of communism. No dictatorship, no money – in the commune there was no need for money. People donated to the commune, but as far as their needs were concerned, the commune was responsible to fulfill their needs. And the commune was living at a far better, higher standard than any American. The richest American was jealous of the commune.
The commune was in the midst of a capitalist world. And when they deported me the representative of the attorney general of America, Ed Meese, admitted in a press conference that I had not committed any crime. The reason he gave for deporting me was: “We wanted to destroy the commune. That was our priority.” And without deporting me, it was impossible to destroy the commune.
But why? Why did you want to destroy the commune? Our commune was not at all concerned with America. The commune was located in a desert, one hundred twenty-six square miles of desert which had been for sale for forty years. And nobody had purchased it, at any price, because what will you do with a desert?
But my people converted the desert into an oasis. That hurt America very much. My people were living with such joy, such laughter, and they were working hard. All their needs were fulfilled. They had the whole commune centrally air-conditioned; they had everything that they wanted, and there was no exchange of money in the commune. This made the American government completely mad.
They arrested me without any arrest warrant, and without showing me any reason for arresting me. Just a piece of paper on which there were a few names – “We have been ordered from above that these people should be immediately arrested.”
I said, “But you should look at our passports! My name is not on this paper; neither are the names of the six people who are with me on this paper. You are absolutely absurd. Just look at our passports and compare with your names; you are arresting the wrong people.” Still, we were arrested.
In fact, they had no evidence at all to arrest me. But they did not give me bail for twelve days. They arrested me in North Carolina, and the flight from North Carolina to Oregon, where the commune was located, was only five hours. It took twelve days for me to reach Portland, and they dragged me from jail to jail; in twelve days I was dragged to six jails.
Only later on I became aware of it, when the British experts in poisoning looked into my symptoms and gave the verdict, that I was given a certain poison, thallium. It is not detectable either from blood or from urine; it simply disappears. I had all the symptoms – when the poison disappears, it leaves certain kinds of sicknesses in the body. This poison has been used against political prisoners. But if you give it in a bigger dose, the person dies immediately. That’s why they wanted twelve days, to give it to me in small doses so I would not die in their jails – they would be condemned by the whole world.
And when they released me, I was ordered to leave America immediately, within fifteen minutes. My car was in front of the courthouse, and my jet plane was kept with its engine running at the airport; I should leave immediately. They were afraid that if I stayed one day more, I might appeal to the Supreme Court. And there was every reason for me to win the case, because none of their charges…thirty-four charges against a man who was in silence, had never moved out of his house. How can he commit thirty-four crimes? And they had no evidence of any crime.
When I saw democracy, American style, at work…it was absolute nonsense to talk about democracy. Their constitution is just a showpiece for the world. The country consists of criminals talking about freedom.
I raised the question that they are all foreigners. I said, “All Americans are foreigners in America. It belongs to the Red Indians whom you have killed, whom you have forced into deep forests which you call reservations. In fact, they are the same as the concentration camps of Adolf Hitler. You are occupying the land of somebody else and you talk about freedom?”
Looking at American crime…when I moved through those six jails I could not believe my eyes. Every jail had at least six hundred, seven hundred criminals – all were black! Not a single white man did I come across in six jails. It seems only black people commit crimes. And these black people are all young people. America is very much afraid of a black revolution, so all these young people have been forced into jail, without any trial.
Whenever I arrived in a jail, the prisoners shouted to me…because they had been seeing my face on television continually. They were rejoiced to see me, and they said, “You will be going out of jail soon. The whole world has been alerted about your arrest; thousands of telegrams from the most prominent people around the world – painters, poets, actors, film producers, mystics, Nobel Prize winners…”
In the first jail so many telegrams came that the jailer came to me saying that “We don’t have space for so many telegrams, and we don’t have space for so many flowers, and we don’t have enough personnel to receive all the telephone calls that are coming from all over the world! What do you suppose? What should we do?”
I said, “It is your problem. Why have you arrested me?”
Because they were afraid of my death – that may create great opposition around the world, particularly among the intellectuals, intelligentsia, artists; all kinds of creative people will be opposed to it – they gave me the poison in small doses. And still they were afraid that perhaps those small doses were not going to kill me, so finally they put a bomb under my chair. It is by the courtesy of the bomb that I am alive; it did not go off at the right time. I had left the chair. I heard it at the airport from the journalists that the bomb did not go off, something went wrong.

I am not against the American people. I love them as I love all the people of the earth, and I have received much love from the American population. But I am absolutely against the American politicians and the American bureaucracy. It is absolutely against humanity. It is suicidal, murderous – it is preparing to destroy this world.
Every day, more and more nuclear weapons are gathering. They have spent trillions of dollars on nuclear weapons. And Ronald Reagan has left the post of president, but he has given a budget of one and half trillion dollars to create more weapons. Now George Bush is at a loss – from where to get this money?
My criticism of American politicians is based not on my personal hurts – they don’t matter. At least to me they don’t matter. But I am certainly hurt because of America’s anti-human attitude. There are three million street people and this winter they are dying in thousands. America goes on sending aid to poor countries, and it cannot save its own poor.

Karl Marx had never an idea that communism would happen in the Soviet Union. His idea was that communism would happen first in America, where exploitation of the poor has reached its climax.
Russia was a poor country with a small group of rich people, the czar and a few other rich people. The whole country was poor; there were not yet class distinctions. It was a feudal country, it had not yet become capitalist. According to Karl Marx’s analysis, only a capitalist country can move towards communism; a feudal country first has to become capitalist. Capitalism means a clear-cut division of the poor and the rich, and the middle class simply disappears. A few move into the rich, most of them fall back into the poor, and when one country is divided clearly into the poor and the rich, revolution is possible. Russia was not in such a position. It was a feudal country. The czar was a feudal lord.
But existence does not work according to logic. It was a certain situation that made Russia communist. The situation was the first world war. The czar’s own soldiers did not have sufficient clothes, boots, food. They turned against czar – his own army – and it was a great strategy of Lenin to ride on the wave. It was not really a conflict between the poor and the rich; it was a conflict between the czar and his own armies. And Lenin took advantage of the opportunity. He rushed back – he was in Germany – he rushed back immediately. And he was a man of immense clarity. He immediately rode on the wave of the armies. And when the czar had no armies, his own armies were against him….
Communism happened as an accident in Russia. It was not according to the economic analysis by Karl Marx. But whatever the cause, it happened. It is the first communist country in the world, the only hope.
And I am not against only Christianity. I am against all religions except Zen, because Zen is not a religion but only religiousness. I have to make it clear to you that religion is a doctrine, an organized church, a belief system, a fictitious God, heaven and hell, and a great priesthood which functions as a mediator between you and God and exploits you in the name of religion, in the name of God.
Zen is the only religious phenomenon in the world which has no doctrine, no scripture, which has no God, no belief system, no organized church. It is an individual phenomenon, just like love. You don’t have a church of love. You don’t have a political party for love. It is an individual freedom.
Just as love is individual, so is meditation. And to me, religion only means one thing: meditation, going inwards and exploring your consciousness. Just the way science explores matter, meditation is the science of the inner; it explores consciousness.
I have my points of agreement with Karl Marx, with Engels, with Lenin, with Gorbachev. I have my points of disagreement.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were aware only of two religions, Judaism and Christianity, which are both just so-so religions. Marx and Engels were not aware of Zen, they were not aware of Tao, they were not aware of meditation. It is not their fault; their whole concern was how to make society economically equal. So they said that man is only matter, and consciousness is a by-product of matter. When the man dies, the consciousness also dies. On that point I am in absolute disagreement.
I am against all religions because they have been exploiting humanity, and they are exactly what Karl Marx called the “opium of the people.” They are giving the poor consolation, that “Your poverty is a fire test. Just listen to the words of Jesus. He says, ‘Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the earth.’”
If blessed are the poor, then there is no need to remove poverty. In fact, make more poor people so they can become more blessed people and can inherit the kingdom of God! Spread poverty, breed like animals, as many children as you can. These all will be the inheritors of God’s kingdom.
Such consolation has been given by all religions in different ways. The Bible says, “Don’t change anything, because God has made it so, and he is wiser than you.” So don’t change any structure of the society, don’t change the family. But God never made the family. In fact, God is the greatest lie in existence. And from one central lie, thousands of lies go on growing.
I am against not only Christianity, I am against Hinduism, I am against Buddhism, I am against Mohammedanism, because they are functioning in the same way – only their names are different.
It is not that Christianity has hurt me so I am against it. Judaism has not hurt me, Mohammedanism has not hurt me, Buddhism has not hurt me, but I am against them on principle. These are the people who have been exploiting humanity and protecting the vested interests.
Hinduism says that you are poor because of your past life’s bad actions, and you are rich because of your past life’s good actions. They distract the mind from the reality. The reality is that you are poor because you are being exploited by the rich continuously. You are sucked, your blood is continuously being taken out of you; your very life is at the minimum so that you can function as a slave. You are allowed to live just because without you, who is going to be able to create a vast army of slaves?
And all religions are in favor of the rich because the rich are donating to the churches, to the temples, to the religions, a small part, not even one percent, of their exploitation. But they keep the priests rich, comfortable, because the priests are protecting the status quo.
I am against the status quo. I want to change the whole society, its structure. I want a classless society, a world without boundaries, without nations. A world which is one, neither black nor white, neither Indian nor Russian nor American.
This small planet can live in peace.
In three thousand years the politicians have dragged humanity into five thousand wars, but you will be surprised: even in five thousand wars politicians have not been able to kill more people than religions have killed. They have their religions wars: crusades, jihad….
Jesus says, “Whoever is not with me is against me.” Now these are the words of a politician – not the words of a religious man, not the words of a man who is meditative, who can see things. The person who is not with me may be just indifferent; it is not necessary that he should be against me. The person who is with me can be against me any day, and the person who is against me can be in favor of me any day. And there is a third category which Jesus completely forgets: the indifferent, the agnostic who is neither theist nor atheist, who does not believe in any “ism” who simply wants to inquire into truth.
I am against Christianity and other religions because they are preventing people from finding out the truth of their own being.
To me, religiousness is acceptable. It is a quality – a quality which brings grace to you, which brings blissfulness to you, which brings a silence to your mind, which brings an encounter with your original being. It is absolutely a science – a science of the inner space, just as there is a science of the objective world. It is not a belief system. You don’t have to believe in any savior, in any messiah, in any prophet, in any reincarnation of God – these are all arch-egoists who are pretending to save you.

Their third question is:
You once said in a discourse that Lenin was against marriage and wanted to dissolve the family.
In reality, Lenin always followed Engels in saying that the family is the nucleus.
Nucleus of what? Nucleus of the capitalist society!
Both Marx and Engels, in their analysis of the economic structure, are very clear about it: the family came into being only with private property. Before private property there was no family; hence it follows logically that if private property is dissolved, marriage will be dissolved automatically. It is a logical conclusion; whether Lenin agrees with it or not, does not matter. I don’t care about anybody – I care about intelligence. It is not a question whether Engels contradicts himself.
The family has been the nucleus of all the organized religions; it has been the nucleus of all the feudal and capitalist societies; it has been the nucleus of all exploitation and war. That nucleus has to be completely withdrawn. Without the family dying out, you cannot have a real humanity arising, of individuals.
I have not said that Lenin was against marriage. I have said that it is the logical conclusion from Marx and Engels’ analysis of society. They say that the family came into being with private property. Why did it come into being with private property? – because every father wanted his property to be inherited by his son. Hence, he had to guard his wife so that she would not get pregnant with somebody else.
The family became an imprisonment of the woman, so that the child would certainly be the son of the father. The father has no other evidence; only the mother knows exactly to whom the child belongs. So keep the mother completely out of society: no education, no economic freedom, no financial status. In Mohammedan countries she cannot even show her face to anybody. Keep the woman completely imprisoned – that is the only security you have that your son is your son, and the property that you have gathered will be inherited by your son.
But in a communist society, when the property is not private, there is no need for any family to protect it. The property belongs to everyone. Then why bother about it, that “My son has to be my son.” In fact, I had said that this was the logical conclusion.
I have read all the communist literature that has been published from Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and I have read all the literature that has been published against communism. I would like my Soviet comrades to look at my library, and they will find all the communist literature and all the anti-communist literature there.
It is my understanding that marriage cannot exist in a communist society. A commune will take the place of marriage. And I have read somewhere…because for fifteen years I have not been reading at all. I have read somewhere that when the revolution happened in 1917 in Russia, in the beginning they had tried for three, four, or five years to dissolve marriage, to dissolve the family. But they found it very difficult.
It is one of the most ancient institutions. Emotionally, sentimentally, psychologically, it is very difficult to dissolve it. It was difficult to dissolve private ownership of property and make it public – Stalin had to kill at least one million Russians just to make a classless society possible. They found it was difficult: “It can be taken care of later on when communism becomes more established; don’t take on too many problems.”
The whole world was against Russia when it went through its revolution. The whole world wanted to destroy communism. If communism succeeded, that would be a danger for other nations; then the poor in other nations would start rising up and asking for the same equality.
After five years of failure, they could not dissolve the family. But my understanding is that they could not dissolve the family unit because they themselves have betrayed Karl Marx and Engels. The Soviet Union has become another class society: the bureaucrats have become a class and the non-bureaucrats, the public, are another class. So the bureaucrats, who are the communists, have replaced the capitalists. The Soviet Union is still not classless; it has created a new class friction. Because it is not classless, it could not dissolve the family; otherwise there would be no problem to dissolve marriage and the family. Now the family has become the nucleus of communism, which is a contradiction.
I follow my own intelligence, and my conclusions don’t have to be in agreement with anybody else’s. But anybody who is intelligent enough can see the problem.

Their fourth question is:
What would you do if you went to the Soviet Union?
A revolution!
It has been too long since the Soviet Union has seen revolution. Of course, my revolution will be of spirituality. I want the Soviet Union to add something more to its dignity: meditation. Just economic equality is not enough – a spiritual equality is needed.
Just being a body is so poor. I want the Soviet Union to become richer – not only richer in objects but richer in consciousness, in enlightenment. I want the Soviet Union also to have awakened people like Gautam Buddha, or Lao Tzu, or Chuang Tzu.
I would like to introduce Zen to the Soviet Union. That is my revolution.

One of the most famous spiritualists of Europe, Francis Israel Regardie, a famous occult magician who was regarded as a great magus and scholar of the Golden Dawn Society, stated just prior to his death: “If I were to choose in what form I would come back in terms of reincarnation, I would like to continue the great work until I become a Rajneesh.”
Just today I received his book, and I could not believe what kind of spiritualist this fellow Francis Israel Regardie was.
A spiritualist, in the first place, knows he is not going to be born again. If he has not come to that point, he has no right to call himself a spiritualist. A person who has known his spirituality has no need to come back to any body, in any reincarnation. This imprisonment in the body is only up to the point when you become a buddha. When you become a buddha, you have learned everything that life could teach you, and you have not only learned the outside world, you have learned your inner world also. Now there is nothing left.
What happens to a Gautam Buddha? He simply dissolves into the universal life, into the eternal life. He does not come back to the earth in a body.
This man Francis Israel Regardie knows nothing of spirituality. But in the West it is very easy to befool people, because the West has no understanding of the inner world. So any idiot can manage to deceive them – occultism, esotericism, spiritualism, just big words without any experience supporting them.
Because if this man was really spiritual, he would not…at the point of death he wants a reincarnation! But he has a condition also: “I would like to continue the work until I become a Rajneesh.” I was alive, he was alive, he could have come here. Rather than having the courage and guts to come here, he is thinking of becoming “a Rajneesh” after death – if there is a reincarnation. That is a big if!
He could have come here. Thousands of people come and go every day, and ten thousand people remain around me continuously. And I am not a leader, and I am not a priest, and I am not teaching any philosophy or any doctrine. I am simply helping them to enter inwards – how to turn your eyes inwards so you can see yourself. Once you have seen it, you are the buddha.
Then there is no birth, no death. You have gone beyond the circle of birth and death.
This is the only spirituality, the only religiousness that I would like to teach to my Soviet friends.
I have already in the Soviet Union at least three hundred sannyasins, underground. Because I was in America, the KGB was thinking that I was an American agent. They were harassing my people in the Soviet Union; they burned my books, they took away all the books, and my people were meeting underground, writing and typing my books by hand.
I would like, through my comrades here, to help my people. I am not against communism. I am a far bigger communist than you have ever known, because I am a spiritual communist!
Marx and Engels are out-of-date. The Soviet Union needs a new revolution, a spiritual revolution, and I think Gorbachev is making a great mistake in allowing the old priests back in the name of opening the doors of the Soviet Union.
Perhaps he does not understand these old priests – Catholic and Protestant, or old Russian Orthodox. They belonged to a certain society; they belonged to a feudal society. They cannot belong to a communist society.
Opening the doors of Russia is beautiful. Open the doors for science, open the doors for art, open the doors for meditation. But that does not mean that you have to open the doors to all kinds of diseases.
Christianity is a disease, and if you open the doors for the pope you are going against Karl Marx, you are going against communism. You don’t understand the implications: these are the people who are the real agents of capitalism. They are against any revolution.
You can see it in India. In India, for five thousand years, as far back as history can approach…India is far more ancient than five thousand years, but for five thousand years we have not known anything like revolution against the social structure. And India is one of the poorest countries, but the poor are given the opium continuously, that “You are poor because of your past evil acts. It has nothing to do with the capitalist people; they have money because they did good deeds in the past.”
Now do you want shankaracharyas from India to be imported to the Soviet Union? They will teach reincarnation, they will teach that “You are poor because of your past actions, it has nothing to do with the capitalists. And the capitalist is a capitalist because he has done good deeds in the past, it is a reward from God.”
Please tell Gorbachev from me: allow everything, but don’t allow Christianity again! Christianity will bring homosexuality, it will bring sodomy, it will bring bestiality, it will bring AIDS to the Soviet Union. Are you opening the door for all this?
Be careful, and very alert. It has taken seventy years to preserve a communist country against the whole world. Don’t take any risk. Opening the door is good, but be on guard that the Pope the Polack does not enter Russia, and that Christianity has no revival in Russia.
Communism can be at ease with Zen, because Zen has nothing to do with your social structure. Zen has nothing to do with your poverty or with your richness. Zen has nothing to do with the outside world. Zen is a science to explore the inner. Invite Zen masters, Zen mystics; that will be inviting health and wholeness.
A man who believes only in the body is half, and a man who believes only in the spirit is also half. I have called Gautam Buddha only half, because he denies the body, he renounces the body. I am not in absolute favor of Gautam Buddha – only fifty percent. And that is my situation with Karl Marx also: I am in agreement only with fifty percent. His acceptance of the body is good, but his denial of the spirit is wrong.
Buddha and Marx have to join hands – that is my revolution. Bring Buddha and Marx both together, hand in hand, dancing in the Soviet Union!
If you cannot find Gautam Buddha and Karl Marx – because both are dead – I can bring my ten thousand buddhas you see all around! These people are living a whole life – of the body and of the soul in absolute synchronicity. I can bring all my ten thousand buddhas to reach to every nook and corner of the Soviet Union.
And these are not the only people with me; there are two million people around the earth. If you have a real opening, I can even bring two million people to the Soviet Union, to bring a new revolution, a fresh revolution which will make the Soviet citizen a complete citizen, body and soul together.
We have to live outside and we have to live inside, in deep balance, in harmony.
This man Regardie must have been a hocus-pocus. At least I hope that he does not become a Rajneesh! He can have reincarnation as whatever he wants. He can become a buffalo, he can become a donkey, there are so many species available – just please don’t think about me! If you had courage, then…at the moment of death you talked about me; in your whole life you never talked about me. Such chickens! Talking about occultism, spiritualism…I have been here, he could have come. I could have turned him into a meditator.
And if your meditation starts blossoming you will not have any other birth in the body. You will simply disappear, like incense disappearing into the blue sky, or fragrance of roses disappearing into the blue sky. You will become part of the cosmos.
And as far as I am concerned, unless you are a meditator you cannot be truly a communist. Because as far as the body is concerned, no two persons are exactly equal. In their talents, in their intelligence, in their body, physical strength – no two persons are equal as far as the body is concerned. You can give equal opportunity for growth, but the growth will bring unequal persons. Somebody will become a scientist and somebody will become a shoemaker; somebody will become a great novelist like Tolstoy, or Turgenev, or Chekhov, or Dostoevsky, or Gorky, and somebody may become just a flutist.
Everybody needs equal opportunity to grow unequal! But as far as spirituality is concerned, everybody can be equally a buddha. That is true communism – deeper, higher, more authentic. And if we can create a situation, an education for people to understand their inner being, they will come out of it with great compassion, with love for every being. They will have a tremendous reverence for life. They cannot exploit. In fact, spiritual communism should be first; only then can the economic communism follow it as a shadow.
Just tell Comrade Gorbachev: I am ready to come any moment. Just gather courage, because I am not in absolute agreement…Marx is now old-fashioned, and I don’t know any communist who ever reads Das Kapital. It gathers dust just like the Holy Bible. I have never come across any communist in India who has read Das Kapital. It is complicated, it is old, it is out-of-date. In its own time it was a great phenomenon, but time goes on changing. Now neither Engels nor Lenin nor Stalin are relevant. They were very relevant in their own time.
Now Gorbachev can open the door because for seventy years Lenin kept it closed, Stalin kept it closed, to protect communism. Now communism is strong enough to open the doors. But be careful – don’t open the doors to old diseases. They are just lurking by the side, and very anxious to enter in.
Mohammedan priests, because you have so many Mohammedan countries in the Soviet Union, are ready to go in. Christians are very anxious, and Christianity is also not worthy to be called a religion. It is just an old cult.
I suggest there is only religiousness, which has come as a crossbreed between Buddha and Lao Tzu. And the crossbreed is always better than both the parents. That crossbreed is Zen. Its Sanskrit name is dhyan; its Pali name, which Buddha used, is zhan. When it reached China with Bodhidharma it became ch’an. When it reached Japan with Rinzai it became Zen. Now I am bringing it back to the land of Buddha – the circle is going to be complete.
It went out of India because of the brahmin priests. You will be surprised to know that for two thousand years India has had no Buddhists. At the time of Buddha almost the whole country was impressed by the man. But what happened? The moment Buddha died – he was against the caste system, he was against the rituals of the brahmins, he was against exploitation by the priesthood – the moment he died, the whole priesthood started killing Buddhists, burning them alive, destroying their scriptures. Those who could save themselves rushed all over Asia, to Tibet, to Ladakh, to Nepal, to Thailand, to China, to Korea, to Taiwan, to Japan, to Sri Lanka – the whole of Asia became Buddhist except India.
This is a strange phenomenon. Buddha was born here; here he used to teach meditation, and this country simply rejected him.
Beware! Don’t allow any priests of any religion in the Soviet Union if you want to save communism. Otherwise, these priests will prove just like a cancer. They will destroy the whole of communism and they will bring all the old rotten ideologies back into people’s minds. Beware of so-called religions.
This is my message to the Soviet people. I love them. I would love to bring meditation into their life, because meditation brings grace, peace, silence, blissfulness…a freedom which nobody can take away from you.

The new series begins today: Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind.
Osho,
Yakusan asked a monk, “Where do you come from?”
“From Nansen…”
Nansen was one of the great masters of Zen. The monk’s reply is that he is coming from Nansen, and Yakusan immediately asks,
“How long were you there?”
“From last winter to summer,” replied the monk.
“Then you must have become a good ox,” commented Yakusan.
I have to tell you about the ox – I have told you about it before.
In ancient China, there used to be ten cards, ten beautiful pictures about ox-herding, mastering the ox.
In the first picture, the ox has escaped from its owner into the deep forest. The owner is looking all around, but he can see only trees and trees and trees, and no ox.
In the second picture, he finds the footprints of the ox. Now there is some hope he may find the ox – he follows the footprints. In the third picture, he finds that the ox is hiding behind a bush; just his tail and the backside he can see. But he is immediately happy – “He is trying to deceive me!”
In the fourth picture he has seen the whole ox. In the fifth picture, he takes hold of the ox by the horns. It is a difficult struggle; the ox is far more powerful an animal than man. With difficulty he manages. In the sixth picture, he is riding on the ox. In the seventh he is moving towards home.
In the eighth, he has put the ox in its stable. In the ninth picture, he is sitting before his cottage, playing a flute.
When these pictures came to Japan, the tenth picture was dropped out, thinking that it might be dangerous, particularly for people who are very new and don’t know the whole world of Zen.
The tenth picture shows that the man is so happy…he takes a bottle of wine and rushes towards the marketplace, perhaps towards the pub, to enjoy with his friends. He has found his ox – now this is a celebration.
Being afraid that this will mean that you can drink wine – and this will go against Buddha – they dropped the tenth picture.
But I love the tenth picture, because it does not represent wine; wine is only a symbol of being drunk with the divine. Wine is only a symbol of being utterly at ease with existence – relaxed, in tune, in harmony, in accord. And his rushing towards the pub is also symbolic. It is rushing towards your own juices of life, to the very center of your being, where you will get drunk.
This kind of getting drunk is unending. Once you have tasted it, you have tasted it; it is not going to fade way. It is going to overwhelm your whole life. Your whole life will become a festival of lights; your whole life will become a ceremony of laughter, of dance, of song, of music.
The tenth picture was dropped out of fear, but I want to bring that tenth picture back – even to Japan.
Ishida is here, sitting. She has come from Japan, from a Shinto temple. I will make her my ambassador in Japan – I have my ambassadors all over the world. Soon I will appoint an ambassador to the Soviet Union.
I would like to tell Ishida that the tenth picture has to be added to the nine pictures, because those nine pictures are incomplete.
This is the story of the ox.
So when Yakusan said, “Then you must have become a good ox,” the monk said:
“The thing is, I was there, but I did not even go to the dining hall.”
“But you cannot get by just through breathing the wind!” Yakusan commented.
“It was not that bad, Osho…”
Osho is a very beautiful word. It should be added to every language. Just the sound is beautiful in the first place: Osho. It shows respect, it shows love, it shows gratitude. It is not just a dry word like “Reverend.” It is a very loving and friendly word, almost having the sense of “The Beloved.”
The man said, “It was not that bad, Osho.” – Yakusan was also a great master – “There is surely a man who will hold a spoon for me.”

Zen talks in symbols; that’s why it has remained a very small stream of great mystics but it has never become a mass phenomenon. Perhaps it is good that it never became a mass phenomenon. Everything that becomes a mass phenomenon becomes degraded, because the majority of the people consist of idiots. And every second, one idiot is born in the world. They go on increasing.
When I was in America, I just made a comment to a television interviewer, that “All Oregonians” – where I was – “are retarded people.” Obviously, Oregonians were very furious, particularly the attorney general of Oregon, David Frohnmeyer. And the governor, and the all the politicians were absolutely angry that I had called the whole of Oregon “retarded.”
But the University of Oregon took the case in hand. They surveyed a cross section of Oregon society, and they surveyed my commune. And their results silenced the governor, the attorney general and all the politicians. The results were that the average mental age of Oregonians is seven years – that is the age of retarded persons. And the age of the commune people was fourteen – double that of the Oregonians.
But the idiots destroyed the most intelligent commune in the world. It had great surgeons, doctors, professors; almost everybody was a postgraduate in some subject, hundreds were PhDs, hundreds were DLitts. It was absolutely an utterly intelligent group of people.
Zen has remained a small, thin line, but immensely rich. It deals in symbols. If you don’t understand the symbols, the story is meaningless.
What is the symbolism of what the monk said? – “It was not that bad, Osho. Don’t think that I was hungry because I never went into the kitchen. There was always a man who would hold a spoon for me. That was Nansen, who was my nourishment. Seeing that I would not enter the dining hall, he was always – and he was the master! – always bringing food for me. Not only physical food, he was also my nourishment spiritually.”
“Holding a spoon for me” means nourishment. “There was someone who took care of me: my master, Nansen. I simply waited outside the dining room just to see whether the master takes care of everybody, whether he will look out of the window and see one monk standing outside, not coming in.”
“So it was not so bad that I was hungry and starving; Nansen was always holding out nourishment for me, through the window. And it was not only nourishment for my body; his attention, his care for me was also nourishment. I am nobody, and he took so much care. Every day he remembered me, that I would be standing outside.”
“Leaving his dining table, he would come and give me food, and he never asked, ‘Why do you go on standing outside?’” – because that is one of the fundamentals of Zen: don’t interfere into anybody’s life. Everybody has a territorial imperative, a certain area. Don’t enter into it; that is his dignity, that is his pride. Leave it to his intelligence.”
“And he was not only giving me food, he was giving me spiritual nourishment. It was not bad, Osho. Don’t misunderstand me, and don’t misunderstand my master, Nansen.”
On another occasion, Yakusan was returning to his temple with a bundle of firewood when a monk asked him, “Where have you been?”
Yakusan replied, “I have got firewood.”
The monk pointed to Yakusan’s sword and said, “It makes the sound ‘tap-tap.’”
Perhaps because he was carrying the firewood, and the sword was hanging around his waist…it may have been hitting the firewood and making the sound “tap-tap.” He said, “What is that which makes the sound ‘tap-tap’?”
At this the master unsheathed the sword and assumed a warrior’s stance.
He stood like a warrior.
What is Yakusan intending to show to the monk?
First, the monk has asked, “Where have you been?” He has not answered that, because what is past is past, and what is future is future. They are not the concern of Zen.
The concern of Zen is the present moment. You can ask a question about the past, but you cannot distract the master from the present. So he did not answer where he had been; on the contrary, he simply said, “I have got firewood.” Just in the present, right now, you can see the firewood and you can understand where I must have been – collecting firewood. But that has not to be said. That is a past thing. I simply show you the present. And the present implies the past, and in a subtle way it implies the future, but nothing can be said about that. That which is gone, is gone, and that which has not come yet, has not come yet.
We can live only in the present moment. That is our only time. One never knows what is going to happen in the next moment.
Just three days ago, a Canadian sannyasin who had been here for only three days, was meditating. And before meditating he had expressed the desire that, “I want to become a sannyasin this evening.” While meditating, he died. The evening never came.
People thought, for two and a half hours, that he was meditating. But when he did not move at all, somebody shook him and found that he was dead. But as far as I am concerned, because he was intending to become a sannyasin in the evening it is enough. He has become a sannyasin.
Sannyas is not something outward, it is something that arises in you, an urge, a deep longing. And he died in meditation – what better initiation can there be? He died as a sannyasin. In utter silence, in absolute peace, he disappeared into the beyond.

Zen does not talk about past and future. Its whole concentration is in the now and here.
I always love to tell a small story….
A great atheist advocate had written in his sitting room, on the wall, in capital letters: God is nowhere. Of course, everybody who came to see him had to read it; it was in such big letters, just in front of their eyes.
His first child was born, and one day he was playing with the child. The child was learning the language slowly, so he started reading the sentence on the wall. He could read, “God is nowhere,” but “nowhere” was such a big word, the child could not manage to read it in one go. He cut it in two. He read, “God is now here.” The word nowhere has been cut into two pieces.
For the first time the father looked at the sentence, and he said, “My God! This child has made me aware. Now I can never read that sentence completely; I will always remember ‘Now Here.’”
It was a moment of transformation for the advocate. For the first time he started thinking, “Do I know really that God is nowhere? Have I explored the whole space? Have I explored my inner being?”

Just as the theists are blind, so are the atheists. Both are believers. The only right person is an agnostic, who is neither theist nor atheist, who is simply in search of the truth. He has no belief system, no prejudice, no ideology already programmed.
I don’t see much difference in the atheism of the Soviet Union and the theism of the Vatican. The theism of the Vatican is based on a belief. Das Kapital is the bible for the Soviet Union – because Marx says there is no God, it has become a program for every child. In seventy years the old generation has disappeared. Now every child believes there is no God. In India every child believes there is God. Both are beliefs: one is positive belief, one is negative belief, but belief is belief. Neither the Soviet Union knows, nor the Vatican.
The people who know, say it is impossible to say anything about the ultimate reality. It cannot be brought into language; it remains mysterious. You can enter into it, but you cannot say anything about it. You can enjoy it, you can rejoice it, you can dance it, but language is too poor.
This is the real poverty of philosophy, that it cannot express the ultimate experience of meditators.
Only the agnostic can be a meditator. He puts aside all programming, whether the programming is from the theist or from the atheist does not matter. All programming, the whole mind, has to be put aside, and you have to enter into a space of no-mind.
In that no-mind there is no time, just the present moment and utter silence, and great clarity, and you are a luminous being, now, here.
That’s why Yakusan said, “I have got firewood. The rest you can understand. But don’t ask me about the past.”
The monk then pointed to Yakusan’s sword and said, “It makes the sound ‘tap-tap.’ What in the world is it?”
Have you ever thought about it? – even small things cannot be defined. If somebody asks you, “What is yellow?” what will you do? You can point to the color yellow, but you cannot give any definition. What is yellow? What is red? You will say, “Red is red.” But that is not giving the answer. This is tautology; you are simply repeating “A rose is a rose is a rose,” but you have gone nowhere. You have not defined what is rose. You can only indicate – “This is.” No definition is possible – only indication.
So when the man asked, “What is that which is making the sound ‘tap-tap’?” the master did not answer, “It is a sword,” because Zen does not believe in language; it believes in existence.
He took out the sword and showed the man a warrior’s stance, the way the warrior stands with his sword: “This is it! If you have eyes you can see. If you don’t have eyes I am helpless.” But no dialogue, just existential indications.

Shiro wrote:
In snow-white mist
where sea and sky are one,
a single disk of red – the rising sun.
Haikus are pictures, visualize them. They are not poetries in the ordinary sense. Just visualize:
In snow-white mist
where sea and sky are one,
a single disk of red – the rising sun.
These haikus have come out of meditation.
Perhaps Shiro was meditating by the seaside, and as he opened his eyes
In snow-white mist where sea and sky are one,
on the horizon, suddenly
A single disk of red – the rising sun.
And utter silence on his part, he is no more there. He is completely absorbed in the ocean, in the mist, in the rising sun.

It happened to Picasso – it will help you to understand.
He was painting. One man was watching continuously for one and a half hours. Finally he could not resist the temptation – because he could not understand what Picasso was painting. Just colors, colors, but no idea what he was painting. Finally he shook Picasso and asked, “What are you painting?”
As if from a trance, Picasso was awakened. He said, “What…? I was not there. Just the painting was happening, I was not painting. I don’t know what. When the painting is complete, the critics will find out what I have painted, because I am not. I am simply my brush, my colors, my canvas. Something is happening, something is cooking, but I don’t know exactly.”
A rich young woman, very super-rich, asked him, “You have never made any portrait…” He has never made any portrait, because who will ask him to make a portrait? Just look at his paintings!
He said, “I have never done any portrait.”
The woman said, “I am willing to pay any amount of money. Don’t bother about money, money does not matter.” She was a widow of a super-rich American.
Just to avoid the woman, Picasso said, “It will cost one million dollars.” She said, “Agreed, start!”
He started painting her portrait. When the portrait was complete, the woman was completely in amazement! She said, “Just one question. Where is my nose in this portrait? Because from the nose I can find out where my eyes are, where my mouth is, where my ears are. A central point…Just one question, I will not ask anything more.”
Picasso said, “I told you before, I don’t do portraits! I knew perfectly well where it was, but now I don’t know. I was so lost in painting it – who cares about your nose? You can take it to the critics, art connoisseurs. Show them; perhaps they can find it.”

When a meditator is in deep meditation, he is no more. And the morning, early morning, when it is still dark and the sun is still under the horizon, is the best time, the most cool. And if you are near the sea…the cool crisp salty breeze, and the silence surrounding you, and the continuous sound of the waves creating a certain vibration of music…. It works almost like a lullaby. Just as your mother moves you in her arms and sings a song…continuous waves, making the same sound again and again and again…it creates a lullaby. It helps you to relax. Now people are using that sound for sleep.
Shiro must be sitting on the sea beach, utterly relaxed, and then he opened his eyes, clean and clear, just like mirrors, and there is a reflection: the mist meeting the sea. And suddenly out of the mist and out of the sea rises a red disk – the rising sun.
These haikus are word-pictures. The necessity of a meditative mind as a background is absolute. No one except a meditator can write haiku.
Now many Westerners are writing haiku. They don’t understand that without meditation you cannot write haiku. You can compose a poem, you know how many syllables are in a haiku. You can compose, but that composition is from the mind, and haiku is from the no-mind, from the utter silence when you are nothing but a mirror – not out of thought, but from no thought.

Maneesha has asked a question:
Osho,
Is not the urge to understand, actually the urge to become one – both inwardly and with our outer world?
Yes, Maneesha. It is a very complicated question that you have asked – it looks simple. I have to bring Sigmund Freud in.
Sigmund Freud was the first man in the world who said that the whole urge for finding the truth, liberation, salvation, is arising out of nothing but a deprivation. The child lived in the mother’s womb for nine months, one with the mother. That was his whole world, his whole cosmos; he knew nothing else.
The womb was the whole universe, and it was so beautiful, so relaxed. He had no worries of going bankrupt, he had no worries about the wife, and the children becoming hippies. He had no worries at all. All nourishment was given by mother, all oxygen was given by the mother – everything was supplied without asking. He had lived for nine months in paradise.
But after nine months he is thrown out of paradise, just the way Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden of Eden. Then he encounters the whole world – such a helpless child – and the world is too big, and every day brings new problems. Every day he has to learn new things, problem upon problem.
Soon he will be going to school – and there are so many subjects. Soon he will be getting married – and there are so many troubles. Soon he will be in business, or in service…and all kinds of masks he will have to wear: before the wife, before the girlfriend, before the boss, before the servant. He will have to change his mask continually. A tremendous desire is to go back to the womb.
According to Sigmund Freud – and I agree with him – the desire to know the truth, the desire to be liberated, the desire to become one with existence, is an extension of the experience in the womb of the mother. The whole cosmos becomes your womb the moment you enter into deep meditation.
At the very center of your being you are connected with the cosmos; otherwise you cannot live even for a single moment. Your life is not your life, it is the life that the cosmos is pouring in you continuously. Your breath is not your breath, it is the cosmos that is continuously pouring oxygen in the exact proportion needed by you. If it were left to you to breathe, I don’t think anybody would survive. You will forget. Somebody insults you and you will forget breathing – first things first! You see a beautiful woman and you will forget that the heart has to continue beating; it stops. It will be so difficult….
Existence has taken care to keep every essential thing in its own hands. What is given to you is trivia; all essential things that are absolutely necessary for life are still in the hands of existence.
When you reach in deep meditation to your roots, you will find that a door opens into the beyond and you know that every moment life is rushing into you. The more you become open, at the center, the more life you have – abundance of life, so much that you would like to share with the whole world; still it is inexhaustible.
Yes, Maneesha, the desire, the urge to understand is really the urge to become one with the cosmos. Then there is no birth; then there is no death. The cosmos is eternal. It has never been created, as Christians have been telling you, and other religions also. It is evolving from eternity to eternity.
I am against America, Christianity, I am against President Ronald Reagan, not because of personal hurts that they have done to me and to my commune. I am against them because Ronald Reagan made a tremendous wound in the whole intelligentsia of the world by trying to burn all Charles Darwin’s books – in every library, in every college, in every school, in every university – because it teaches evolution, and Christianity teaches creation.
These are two contradictory concepts. Creation means once and forever complete. Evolution means never complete, always going on and on. Always the goal is just nearby – but as you move on, the goal also moves on. It is just like the horizon: it looks just a few miles away. You drive, and as you drive the horizon goes on moving, further and further. The distance between you and the horizon will remain exactly the same – you can go around the earth – because the horizon is just an illusion.
The goal, every goal, is an illusion. The man of understanding lives without any goal. He simply loves to live, he simply loves to love. He simply loves to sing and dance and enjoy the moment, the opportunity that existence has given to him.
In that total dance, you become one. In that total singing, when the singer disappears, you become one.
I have told you about Nijinsky, one of the greatest dancers the world has ever known. His greatness was not just his dance. His greatness was that once in a while, while dancing, he would jump so high…which is not possible according to scientists. Because gravitation is pulling you down, there is a limit, but he always transcended the limit so much that it was a miracle – what happens? What happens to gravitation?
And not only this, when he would come back down…Gravitation pulls with force; you will fall on the stage with a thump! But Nijinsky would fall down like a feather, just slowly moving. That too is against gravitation.
He was asked again and again, “What is the secret?” He said, “The secret I don’t know. All that I know is, whenever I try to do it I never succeed. In my aloneness I try to do it – I never succeed. When I forget myself completely in the dance, when there is no Nijinsky, only the dance, suddenly it happens. It is a surprise to you, it is a surprise to me. It is not my doing.”

Meditation is not your doing. You simply make the effort, but it is not your doing. Your effort is needed to prepare the ground. As the ground is ready, immediately you see you are no more; the whole cosmos is. You have entered a greater womb, an eternal womb of tremendous peace and ecstasy.

Now it is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh.

(Sardarji, as he is affectionately known, has earned the distinction of being “the only man who laughs before the joke is told” and the honor of having this part of the discourse announced as his special time. Tonight, his hearty and infectious laughter is not heard….)

Where is Sardar?! Absent? Perhaps in deep meditation….

That old dried-up prune, Mother Teresa, invites that old rotten fruitcake, Pope the Polack, to come and visit her Bleeding Hearts Home for the Dead and Dying in Calcutta.
The Polack is thrilled to receive the invitation, so he gets Cardinal Catzass to pack their bags, and they fly off to India.
Their first day is spent touring Mother Teresa’s Bleeding Hearts Home, blessing all the half-dead Christian converts.
The next morning, the two Catholic cowboys from Rome go out into the streets of Calcutta, to wave at the crowds of starving Hindus. But all day long, Pope the Polack has been acting very strangely.
Cardinal Catzass is worried about the old Polack and asks him, “Your Holiness, what is the matter?”
“Listen,” says the old fruitcake, “as soon as we get back to that Bleeding Hearts Home, the first thing I want to do is rip off Mother Teresa’s knickers!”
“Really?” replies the shocked cardinal. “Why do you want to do that?”
“Because,” says the pope with a groan, “they are much too tight for me!”

“How much for a roast beef sandwich?” asks Little Feenie Finkelstein, standing in Chicken Chopper’s Sandwich Shop.
“Two dollars,” replies Chicken Chopper, from behind the counter.
“How much for a cheese sandwich?” asks the little Jew.
“One dollar,” replies Chicken.
“What about a ham sandwich?” asks Feenie. But before Chicken Chopper can reply there is a loud clap of thunder in the sky overhead.
Feenie Finkelstein falls to his knees, looks up at the sky and prays out loud, “Okay! Okay! – I was only asking!”

Dimmel Himmel, a nice Jewish boy from Berlin, goes to live in America to make his fortune, and ends up in L.A., California.
After a few years, he comes back to Berlin to visit his old mother, Mrs. Hattie Himmel. He walks through the door in his stone-washed Levi jeans, alligator tennis shirt, and Reebok sneakers.
“Oy, veh!” cries Mamma Himmel, “but where are your beautiful long whiskers?”
“Ah, Mamma!” replies Dimmel. “Nobody wears a beard in L.A.”
“Oy, my baby!” cries Hettie Himmel. “But tell me, you have at least been keeping the Sabbath?”
“Look, Mamma,” says Himmel. “Business is business! In America, people work on the Sabbath.”
“Ah, God!” cries Mamma Himmel. “But kosher food you still eat?”
“Listen, Mamma,” replies Himmel, “I am an American now. It is very difficult to keep kosher in America.”
The old lady looks at her son in shock. She hesitates for a moment and then goes up to him and whispers, “Dimmel, my son, tell me one thing – are you still circumcised?”

Nivedano…

(Gibberish)

Nivedano…

Be silent…
Close your eyes…and feel your body to be completely frozen.
This is the right moment to look inwards. With your whole life energy, rush towards the center of your being.
Your total consciousness is needed
to become just an arrow,
forcing itself deeper and deeper,
faster and faster,
with an urgency as if this is going to be
your last moment on the earth.
Without this urgency you will never be able to reach to the center of your being.

That is the point from where you are connected with the cosmos. And that is also the point which transforms you into a buddha, into an awakened one. That is also the point when you learn you are immortal: you have been here always, and you will be here always – whether in body or no body.

As you are coming closer and closer to your being, a great silence descends over you, and a great peace arises within your being.
The moment you reach to the very center
you are no more,
the buddha is.
The only quality that buddha has
is pure awareness
consciousness
witnessing.
Witnessing is a key word for all meditators.
Witness that you are not the body…
Witness that you are not the mind…
Witness that you are only a witness.

Suddenly, great bliss arises in you
out of nowhere
flowers of invisible ecstasy
start showering on you.
You are at the very source of your life juices.

To make the witnessing clear, Nivedano…

Relax.
Let go…but keep on witnessing.
That is the only thing you have to remember – you are a witness – and everything else will happen on its own.
I can see ten thousand buddhas utterly relaxed in their center. Gautam the Buddha Auditorium is changing into an ocean of consciousness, because you are all melting, dissolving your separation from existence.
The ocean of consciousness is without any waves,
without any ripples.
It is utterly calm and quiet.

This moment you are the most blessed people on the earth, because everybody is concerned only with the trivia – money, prestige, power. Nobody seems to be concerned to know themselves, and nobody seems to be concerned to know their eternity.
This moment, now and here, you are experiencing the most intimate, the most ultimate experience that is possible to man.
This experience is going to become your Zen Fire, Zen Wind. The fire will burn everything that is false in you, and the wind will take away all that is only a personality.
Out of this fire and wind
will arise your pure gold.
You will need to understand the transformation that happens in this moment. You have lived your whole life horizontally, in a line, from the cradle to the graveyard. In meditation the transformation happens: you are no more a horizontal line, you become vertical. You reach to the highest peak of your consciousness, and you reach to the deepest point of your consciousness.
The height
and the depth
reveal you
your godliness.
There is no God, but there is certainly a quality I call godliness. It comprises compassion, love, friendship, joy, creativity. It brings you new songs, it brings you new dances. It brings you the truth, and the immersion of you into the truth.

Collect as much experience you can collect, because you have to bring it with you. It has to become part of your day-to-day routine life.
Chopping wood, you should be as silent as you are now. Drawing water from the well, you should be as blissful and ecstatic as you are now.
Sitting silently, doing nothing, you should be as blissful as you are now.
And persuade the buddha, which is your eternal nature, to come along with you.
First, the buddha will come as a shadow to you, following you – but even that shadow will bring great grace and abundance of life, great benediction you can shower all over the world. But this is only the beginning – buddha as a shadow. Soon, buddha will be ahead of you, and you will become the shadow. That is the second step.
And the third step…you merge into the buddha; even the shadow disappears, only buddha is, only pure awareness is.
You have entered into the cosmic womb.

Nivedano…

Come back, but come as a buddha, with the same grace, with the same silence, with the same bliss.
Sit down for a few moments just to recollect the golden path that you have followed.
And feel – the presence of buddha is just behind you.
Remember – in every activity, howsoever ordinary, the buddha is present behind you. His presence transforms every ordinary action into an extraordinary act. Every word becomes so rich and so full of poetry, so full of truth, so full of silence. Every silence is as deep as the Pacific Ocean. Every moment in your life you are just moving upward in consciousness, as if you are moving on the greatest peak of the Himalayas, the Everest.

I teach you this Fire of Zen.
I teach you this Wind of Zen.
That is going to burn everything that is wrong, that is going to take away everything that is wrong in you and leave only the truth, the ultimate truth.
That ultimate truth brings freedom.
This is the only spirituality,
the only religion.
It is individual – it has nothing to do with any church, with any organized religion. It has nothing to do with any scripture. It has to do only with your inner search and finding your authentic nature – what Zen people call “the original face.”
The buddha is your original face.

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