TANTRA

Tantra Supreme Understanding 04

Fourth Discourse from the series of 10 discourses - Tantra Supreme Understanding by Osho.
You can listen, download or read all of these discourses on oshoworld.com.


The song continues:
Do naught with the body but relax; shut firm the mouth and silent remain; empty your mind and think of naught. Like a hollow bamboo rest at ease with your body. Giving not nor taking, put your mind at rest.
Mahamudra is like a mind that clings to naught.

Thus practicing, in time you will reach buddhahood.
First, the nature of activity and the hidden currents in it have to be understood, otherwise no relaxation is possible. Even if you want to relax, it will be impossible if you have not observed, watched, realized, the nature of your activity because activity is not a simple phenomenon.
Many people would like to relax, but they cannot. Relaxation is like a flowering; you cannot force it. You have to understand the whole phenomenon: why you are so active, why so much occupation with activity, why you are obsessed with it.
Remember two words: one is action; another is activity. Action is not activity; activity is not action. Their natures are diametrically opposite. Action is when the situation demands it, you act, you respond. Activity is when the situation doesn’t matter, it is not a response; you are so restless within, that the situation is just an excuse to be active.
When action comes out of a silent mind, it is the most beautiful thing in the world. When activity comes out of a restless mind, it is the ugliest. Action is when it has relevance; activity is irrelevant. Action is moment to moment, spontaneous; activity is loaded with the past. It is not a response to the present moment; rather it is pouring your restlessness, which you have been carrying from the past, into the present. Action is creative. Activity is very, very destructive; it destroys you, it destroys others.
Try to see the delicate distinction. For example, if you are hungry then you eat. This is action. But if you are not hungry, you don’t feel any hunger at all, and still you go on eating, this is activity. This eating is like a violence; you destroy food, you crush with your teeth and destroy food; it gives you a little release of your inner restlessness. You are eating not because of hunger; you are simply eating because of an inner need, an urge to be violent.
In the animal world, violence is associated with the mouth and hands; the fingernails and the teeth too are the violent things in the animal kingdom. With food, while you are eating, both are joined together; with your hand you take the food, and with your mouth you eat it; violence is released. But there is no hunger; it is not an action, it is a disease. This activity is an obsession. Of course, you cannot go on eating like this because then you will burst. So people have invented tricks, they will chew pan or gum, they will smoke cigarettes. These are false foods, without any nutritious value in them, but they work well as far as violence is concerned.
A man sitting chewing pan, what is he doing? He is killing somebody. In the mind, if he becomes aware, he may have a fantasy of murdering, killing, and he is chewing pan – a very innocent activity in itself. You are not harming anybody, but it is very dangerous for you because you seem to be completely unconscious of what you are doing. A man smoking, what is he doing? Very innocent in a way, just taking the smoke in and bringing it out, inhaling and exhaling, a sort of ill pranayama, and a sort of secular transcendental meditation. He is creating a mandala: takes smoke in, brings it out; takes it in, brings it out; a mandala is created, a circle. Through smoking he is doing a sort of chanting, a rhythmic chanting. It soothes, his inner restlessness is relieved a little.
If you are talking to a person, always remember – it is almost hundred percent accurate – if the person starts looking for his cigarettes, it means he is bored, you should leave him now. He wanted to throw you out; that cannot be done, that will be too impolite. He is finding his cigarettes; he is saying, “Now, finished! I am fed up.” In the animal kingdom he would have jumped on you, but he cannot – he is a human being, civilized. He jumps on the cigarettes; he starts smoking. Now he is not worried about you, now he is enclosed in his own chanting of the smoke. It soothes.
But this activity shows that you are obsessed. You cannot remain yourself, you cannot remain silent; you cannot remain inactive. Through activity you go on throwing off your madness, insanity. Action is beautiful, action comes as a spontaneous response; life needs response. Every moment you have to act, but the activity comes through the present moment. You are hungry and you seek food. You are thirsty and you go to the well. You are feeling sleepy and you go to sleep. It is out of the total situation that you act. Action is spontaneous and total.
Activity is never spontaneous; it comes from the past. You may have been accumulating it for many years, and then it explodes into the present – it is not relevant. But the mind is cunning; the mind will always find rationalizations for the activity. The mind will always try to prove that this is not activity, this is action; it was needed. Suddenly you flare up in anger. Everybody else becomes aware that it was not needed, the situation never demanded it; it was simply irrelevant – only you cannot see. Everybody feels, “What are you doing? There was no need for it. Why are you so angry?” But you will find rationalizations; you will rationalize that it was needed.
These rationalizations help you to remain unconscious about your madness. These are the things that Gurdjieff used to call buffers. You create buffers of rationalization around you so you don’t come to realize what the situation is. Buffers are used in trains; between two bogies, two compartments, buffers are used so that if there is a sudden stop, there will not be too much shock to the passengers – the buffers will absorb the shock. Your activity is continuously irrelevant, but the buffers of rationalization don’t allow you to see the situation. Buffers blind you, and this type of activity continues.
If this activity is there, you cannot relax. How can you relax? It is an obsessive need; you want to do something, whatsoever it is.
There are fools all over the world who go on saying, “Do something rather than nothing.” And there are perfect fools who have created a proverb all over the world that an empty mind is the Devil’s workshop. It is not. An empty mind is God’s workshop. An empty mind is the most beautiful thing in the world, the purest because how can an empty mind be a workshop for the Devil? The Devil cannot enter an empty mind, impossible! The Devil can enter only a mind which is obsessed with activity – then the Devil can take charge of you, he can show you ways and means and methods how to be more active. The Devil never says, “Relax!” He says, “Why are you wasting your time? Do something, man! Move! Life is going by, do something!” And all the great teachers, teachers who have awakened to the truth of life, have come to realize that an empty mind gives space to the divine to enter into you.
Activity can be used by the Devil, not an empty mind. How can the Devil use an empty mind? He will not dare to come near because emptiness will simply kill him. But if you are filled with a deep urge, mad urge to be active, then the Devil will take charge, then he will guide you – then he is the only guide.
I would like to tell you that this proverb is absolutely wrong. The Devil himself must have suggested it.
This obsession to be active has to be watched. And you have to watch it in your own life because whatsoever I say, or Tilopa says, will not be of much meaning unless you watch it in yourself: your activity is irrelevant, it is not needed. Why are you doing it?
Traveling, I have seen people continuously doing the same thing again and again. For twenty-four hours I am with a passenger in the train… He will read the same newspaper again and again, not finding what else to do. Enclosed in a railway compartment there is not much possibility to be active, so he will read the same newspaper again and again, and I am watching. What is this man doing?
A newspaper is not a Gita or a Bible. You can read the Gita many times because each time you come to it a new significance is revealed. But a newspaper is not a Gita; it is finished once you have seen it! It was not even worth reading once, and people go on reading it. Again and again, they will start. What is the problem? Is it a need? No, they are obsessed; they cannot remain silent, inactive. That is impossible for them; it looks like death. They have to be active.
Traveling for many years gave me many opportunities to watch people without their knowing. Sometimes only one person was with me in the compartment, and he would make all sorts of efforts to bring me to talk to him and I would say only yes or no; then he would drop the idea. Then I would simply watch – a beautiful experiment and without any expense.
I would watch him and he would open the suitcase – and I saw that he was not doing anything – then he would look in it, close it. Then he would open the window, and then would close it; then again he would go to the newspaper, then he would smoke, then again open the suitcase, rearrange it, go and open the window, look out. What was he doing, and why? An inner urge, something was trembling within him, a feverish state of mind. He had to do something; otherwise he would be lost. He must have been an active man in life, now when there is a moment to relax, he cannot relax, the old habit persists.

It is said that Aurangzeb, a Moghul emperor, imprisoned his father in his old age. Aurangzeb’s father, Shah Jehan built the Taj Mahal. Aurangzeb imprisoned him, dethroned him. It is said, and it is written in the autobiography of Aurangzeb, that after a few days, Shah Jehan was not worried about imprisonment because every luxury was provided. It was a palace and Shah Jehan was living as he was living before; it was not like a prison; absolutely everything that he needed was there. Only one thing was missing and that was activity – he couldn’t do anything. So he asked his son Aurangzeb, “It is okay, you have provided everything for me, and everything is beautiful. Just one thing I will be grateful forever and ever if you can do, and that is, send thirty boys. I would like to teach them.”
Aurangzeb could not believe it: “Why would my father like to teach thirty boys?” He had never shown any inclination to be a teacher, was never interested in any type of education. What has happened to him? But he fulfilled the desire. Thirty boys were sent to him and everything was okay. He became the emperor again – thirty small boys…

Go into a primary school, the teacher is almost the emperor; you can order them to sit and they will have to sit; you can order them to stand and they will have to stand. Shah Jehan created in that room with thirty boys the whole situation of his court – just old habit and the old addiction to ordering people.
Psychologists suspect that teachers are in fact politicians. Of course, not self-confident enough to go into politics, they move to the schools and there they become presidents, prime ministers, emperors. Small children – and they order them and force them.
And psychologists also suspect that teachers have an inclination toward being sadistic, they would like to torture. You cannot find a better place than a primary school. You can torture innocent children; you can torture them for their own sake, for their own good. Go and watch! I have been reading in primary schools, and I have been watching teachers. And psychologists suspect they are torturers – I am certain. And you cannot find more innocent victims: completely unarmed, they cannot even resist; they are so weak and helpless – and a teacher stands like an emperor.

Aurangzeb writes in his autobiography: “My father, just because of old habits, still wants to pretend that he is the emperor. So let him pretend and let him fool himself, there is nothing wrong. Send him thirty boys or three hundred, whatsoever he wants. Let him run a madrassa, a small school, and be happy.”

Activity is when the action has no relevance. Watch it in yourself and see: ninety percent of your energy is wasted in activity. And because of this, when the moment for action comes, you don’t have any energy. A relaxed person is simply non-obsessive, and the energy starts accumulating within him. He conserves his energy. It is conserved automatically and then when the moment for action comes, his total being flows into it. That’s why action is total. Activity is always half-hearted because how can you befool yourself absolutely? Even you know that it is useless. Even you are aware that you are doing it for certain feverish reasons within, which are not even clear to you, very vague.
You can change activities, but unless activities are transformed into action, that won’t help. People come to me and they say, “I would like to stop smoking.” I say, “Why? This is such a beautiful transcendental meditation, continue!” And if you stop it you will start something else – because the disease doesn’t change by changing the symptoms. Then you will chew pan, then you will chew gum; and there are even more dangerous things. These are innocent because if you are chewing gum, you are chewing gum by yourself. You may be a fool, but you are not a violent man; you are not destructive to anybody else. If you stop chewing gum, smoking, then what will you do? Your mouth needs activity; it is violent. Then you will talk, then you will talk continuously; yakety-yakety-yak – and that is more dangerous!

Mulla Nasruddin’s wife came just the other day. She rarely comes to see me, but when she comes I immediately understand there must be some crisis. So I asked, “What is the matter?”
Thirty minutes she took, and thousands of words, to tell me: “Mulla Nasruddin talks in his sleep, so suggest something – what should be done? He talks too much and it is difficult to sleep in the same room. And he shouts and says nasty things.”
So I said, “Nothing is to be done. Simply give him a chance to talk while you are both awake.”

People go on talking, they don’t give any chance to anybody else. Talking is the same as smoking. If you talk twenty-four hours… And you talk while you are awake… You talk, your body is tired, you fall asleep, but the talk continues. Twenty-four hours, round the clock, you go on talking and talking and talking. This is like smoking because the phenomenon is the same: the mouth needs movement. And the mouth is the basic activity because that is the first activity you started in your life.
The child is born: he starts sucking the mother’s breast; that is the first activity, and the basic activity. And smoking is just like sucking the breast: warm milk flows in. In smoking, warm smoke flows in, and the cigarette in your lips feels just like the breast of the mother, the nipple. If you are not allowed to smoke, chew gum, and this and that, then you will talk, and that is more dangerous because you are throwing your garbage on other people’s minds.
Can you remain silent for a long time? Psychologists say that if you remain silent for three weeks, you will start talking to yourself. Then you will be divided into two: you will talk and you will also listen. And if you remain silent for three months, you will be completely ready for the madhouse because then you will not bother whether somebody is there or not. You will talk, and not only talk, you will answer too. Now you are complete, now you don’t depend on anybody. This is what a lunatic is.
A lunatic is a person whose whole world is confined within himself. He is the talker and he is the listener; he is the actor and he is the spectator; he is all, his whole world is confined in himself. He has divided himself into many parts and everything has become fragmentary. That’s why people are afraid of silence – they know they may crack up. And if you are afraid of silence that means you have an obsessive, feverish, diseased mind inside, which is continuously asking to be active.
Activity is your escape from yourself. In action you are; in activity you have escaped from yourself – it is a drug. In activity you forget yourself, and when you forget yourself there are no worries, no anguish, no anxiety. That’s why you need to be continuously active, doing something or other, but never in a state when non-doing flowers in you and blooms.
Action is good. Activity is ill. Find the distinction within yourself: what is activity and what is action; that is the first step. The second step is to be more involved in action so that the energy moves into action; and whenever there is activity, be more watchful about it, more alert. If you are aware, activity ceases, energy is preserved, and the same energy becomes action.
Action is immediate. It is nothing readymade; it is not prefabricated. It doesn’t give you any chance to prepare, to go through a rehearsal. Action is always new and fresh like the dewdrops in the morning. And a person who is a person of action is also always fresh and young. The body may become old, but his freshness continues. The body may die, but his youth continues. The body may disappear, but he remains because existence loves freshness. Existence is always for the new and the fresh.
Drop activity more and more. But how can you drop it? You can make dropping itself an obsession. This is what has happened to your monks in the monasteries: dropping activity has become their obsession. They are continuously doing something to drop it: prayers, meditation, yoga, this and that – now that is also activity. You cannot drop it in that way; it will come from the back door.
Be aware! Feel the difference between action and activity. And when activity takes hold of you – in fact it should be called a possession when the activity possesses you, like a ghost… And activity is a ghost, it comes from the past, it is dead – when activity possesses you and you become feverish, then become more aware; that’s all that you can do. Watch it. Even if you have to do it, do it with full awareness. Smoke, but smoke very slowly, with full awareness so that you can see what you are doing.
If you can watch smoking, suddenly some day, the cigarette will fall from your fingers because the whole absurdity of it will be revealed to you. It is stupid; it is simply stupid, idiotic! When you realize that, it simply falls. You cannot throw it away because throwing is an activity. That’s why I say it simply falls just like a dead leaf from the tree, falling; just like that it falls. If you have thrown it, you will pick it up again in some other way, in some other form.
Let things drop; don’t drop them. Let activity disappear, don’t force it to disappear because the very effort of forcing it to disappear is again activity in another form. Watch, be alert, conscious, and you will come to a very, very miraculous phenomenon: when something drops by itself, on its own accord, it leaves no trace on you. If you force it, then a trace is left, then a scar is left. Then you will always brag that you smoked for thirty years, and then you dropped it. Now this bragging is the same; talking about it you are doing the same thing – not smoking, but talking too much about having dropped smoking. Your lips are again in activity, your mouth is functioning; your violence is there.
If a man really understands, things drop – and then you cannot take the credit of, “I have dropped it.” It dropped itself! You have not dropped it. The ego is not strengthened through it. And then more and more actions will become possible. And whenever you have an opportunity to act totally, don’t miss it, don’t waver, act.
Act more, and let activities drop on their own accord. A transformation will come to you by and by. It takes time, it needs seasoning, but there is no hurry.
Now we will enter into the sutra.
Do naught with the body but relax; shut firm the mouth and silent remain; empty your mind and think of naught.
Do naught with the body but relax… Now you can understand what relaxation means. It means no urge for activity in you. Relaxation doesn’t mean lying down like a dead man; and you cannot lie down like a dead man, you can only pretend. How can you lie down like a dead man? You are alive; you only can pretend. Relaxation comes to you when there is no urge for activity; the energy is at home, not moving anywhere. If a certain situation arises you will act, that’s all, but you are not finding some excuse to act. You are at ease with yourself. Relaxation is to be at home.
I was reading a book a few years ago. The title of the book is: You Must Relax. This is simply absurd because the must is against relaxation, but such books can only sell in America. Must means activity; it is an obsession. Whenever there is a must, an obsession is hidden behind it. There are actions in life, but there is no must, otherwise the must will create madness. You must relax – now relaxation has become the obsession. You have to do this posture and that, and lie down, and suggest to your body from the toes to the head. Tell the toes, “Relax!” and then go upward.
Why must? Relaxation comes only when there is no must in your life. Relaxation is not only of the body, it is not only of the mind, it is of your total being.
You are in activity too much, of course tired, dissipated, dried up, frozen. The life energy doesn’t move. There are only blocks and blocks and blocks. And whenever you do something you do it in madness. Of course the need to relax arises. That’s why so many books are written every month about relaxation, and I have never seen a person who has become relaxed through reading a book about relaxation – he has become more hectic because now his whole life of activity remains untouched. His obsession to be active is there, the disease is there, and he pretends to be in a relaxed state so he lies down. All turmoil within, a volcano ready to erupt, and he is relaxing, following the instructions from a book: how to relax.
There is no book that can help you to relax, unless you read your own inner being, and then relaxation is not a must. Relaxation is an absence, absence of activity, not of action. So there is no need to move to the Himalayas. A few people have done that: to relax, they move to the Himalayas. What is the need to move to the Himalayas? Action has not to be dropped because if you drop action you drop life. Then you will be dead, not relaxed. So in the Himalayas you will find sages who are dead, not relaxed. They have escaped from life, from action.
This is the subtle point to be understood: activity has to go, but not action – and both are easy. You can drop both and escape to the Himalayas, that’s easy. Or, the other thing is easy: you can continue in the activities, forcing yourself every morning or every evening, for a few minutes, to relax. You don’t understand the complexity of the human mind, the mechanism of it. Relaxation is a state. You cannot force it. Simply drop the negativities, the hindrances, and it comes; it bubbles up by itself.
What do you do when you go to sleep in the night? Do you do something? If you do, you will be an insomniac, you will move into insomnia. What do you do? You simply lie down and go to sleep. There is no “doing” to it. If you “do,” it will be impossible to sleep. In fact, to go to sleep, all that is needed is that the continuity in the mind of the activities of the day has to discontinue. That’s all! When the activity is not there in the mind, the mind relaxes and goes to sleep. If you do something in order to go to sleep, you will be at a loss, then sleep will be impossible. Doing is not needed at all.
Says Tilopa: Do naught with the body but relax… Don’t do anything! No yoga posture is needed; no distortions and contortions of the body are needed. Do naught… Only an absence of activity is needed. And how will it come? It will come by understanding. Understanding is the only discipline. Understand your activities and suddenly, in the middle of the activity, if you become aware, it will stop. If you become aware why you are doing it, it will stop. And that stopping is what Tilopa means: Do naught with the body but relax…
What is relaxation? It is a state of affairs where your energy is not moving anywhere, not to the future, not to the past; it is simply there with you. In the silent pool of your own energy, in the warmth of it, you are enveloped. This moment is all. There is no other moment. Time stops; then there is relaxation. If time is there, there is no relaxation. Simply, the clock stops; there is no time. This moment is all. You don’t ask for anything else, you simply enjoy it. Ordinary things can be enjoyed because they are beautiful. In fact, nothing is ordinary – if God exists then everything is extraordinary.
People come to me and ask, “Do you believe in God?” I say, “Yes, because everything is so extraordinary, how can it be without a deep consciousness in it?” Just small things: walking on the lawn when the dewdrops have not evaporated yet, and just feeling totally there – the texture, the touch of the lawn, the coolness of the dewdrops, the morning wind, the sun rising. What more do you need to be happy? What more is possibly needed to be happy? Just lying down in the night on the cool sheet on your bed, feeling the texture, feeling that the sheet is getting warmer and warmer, and you are shrouded in darkness, the silence of the night… With closed eyes you simply feel yourself. What more do you need? It is too much, a deep gratitude arises; this is relaxation.
Relaxation means this moment is more than enough, more than can be asked and expected; nothing to ask, more than enough, more than you can desire – then the energy never moves anywhere. It becomes a placid pool. In your own energy, you dissolve. This moment is relaxation. Relaxation is neither of the body nor of the mind, relaxation is of the total. That’s why buddhas go on saying, “Become desireless,” because they know that if there is desire, you cannot relax. They go on saying, “Bury the dead,” because if you are too concerned with the past, you cannot relax. They go on saying, “Enjoy this very moment.”
Jesus says, “Look at the lilies. Consider the lilies in the field, they toil not and they are more beautiful, their splendor is greater than King Solomon. They are arrayed in more beautiful aroma than King Solomon ever was. Look, consider the lilies!”
What is he saying? He is saying, “Relax! You need not toil for it – in fact, everything is provided.” Jesus says, “If he looks after the birds of the air, the animals, wild animals, trees and plants, then why are you worried? Will he not look after you?” This is relaxation. Why are you so worried about the future? Consider the lilies, watch the lilies, and become like lilies – and then relax. Relaxation is not a posture; relaxation is a total transformation of your energy.
Energy can have two dimensions. One is motivated, going somewhere, a goal somewhere; this moment is only a means and the goal is somewhere else to be achieved. This is one dimension of your energy; this is the dimension of activity, goal-oriented. Then everything is a means; somehow it has to be done and you have to reach the goal, then you will relax. But for this type of energy the goal never comes because this type of energy goes on changing every present moment into a means for something else, in the future. The goal always remains on the horizon. You go on running, but the distance remains the same.
Now, there is another dimension of energy; that dimension is unmotivated celebration. The goal is here now; the goal is not somewhere else. In fact, you are the goal. In fact, there is no other fulfillment than of this moment – consider the lilies. When you are the goal and when the goal is not in the future, when there is nothing to be achieved, rather you have to just celebrate it, you have already achieved it, it is there. This is relaxation, unmotivated energy.
So, to me, there are two types of people: the goal-seekers and the celebrators. The goal-oriented, they are the mad ones; they are going crazy, by and by, and they are creating their own craziness. And then the craziness has its own momentum. By and by, they move deeper into it; then they are completely lost. The other type of person is not a goal-seeker – he is not a seeker at all, he is a celebrator.
And this I teach you: be the celebrators, celebrate! Already there is too much: the flowers have bloomed, the birds are singing, the sun is there in the sky – celebrate it! You are breathing and you are alive, and you have consciousness – celebrate it! Then suddenly you relax, then there is no tension, then there is no anguish. The whole energy that becomes anguish becomes gratitude; your whole heart goes on beating with a deep thankfulness – that is prayer. That’s all prayer is about: a heart beating with a deep thankfulness.
Do naught with the body but relax… No need to do anything for it. Just understand the movement of the energy, the unmotivated movement of the energy. It flows, but not toward a goal, it flows as a celebration. It moves, not toward a goal, it moves because of its own overflowing energy.
A child is dancing and jumping and running around; ask him, “Where are you going?” He is not going anywhere – you will look foolish to him. Children always think that adults are foolish. What a nonsense question, “Where are you going?” Is there any need to go anywhere? A child simply cannot answer your question because it is irrelevant. He is not going anywhere. He will simply shrug his shoulders. He will say, “Nowhere.” Then the goal-oriented mind asks, “Then why are you running?” To us an activity is relevant only when it leads somewhere.
And I tell you, there is nowhere to go: here is all. The whole of existence culminates in this moment; it converges into this moment. The whole existence is already pouring into this moment; all that is there is pouring into this moment; it is here now. A child is simply enjoying the energy. He has too much. He is running, not because he has to reach somewhere, but because he has too much; he has to run.
Act unmotivated: just an overflow of your energy. Share, but don’t trade, don’t make bargains. Give because you have, don’t give to take back – because then you will be in misery. All traders go to hell. If you want to find the greatest traders and bargainers, go to hell, there you will find them. Heaven is not for traders. Heaven is for celebrators.
In Christian theology, again and again, for centuries it has been asked, “What do angels do in heaven?” This is a relevant question for people who are goal-oriented: “What do angels do in heaven?” Nothing seems to be done; there is nothing to do. Somebody asked Meister Eckhart, “What do angels do in heaven?” He said, “What type of a fool are you? Heaven is a place to celebrate. They don’t do anything. They simply celebrate the glory of it, the magnificence of it, the poetry of it, the blooming of it; they celebrate. They sing and they dance and they celebrate.” But I don’t think that man was satisfied by Meister Eckhart’s answer because to us an activity is meaningful only if it leads somewhere, if there is a goal.
Remember, activity is goal-oriented; action is not. Action is overflowing of energy; action is in this moment, a response, unprepared, unrehearsed. Just the whole existence meets you, confronts you, and a response comes. The birds are singing and you start singing – it is not an activity. Suddenly it happens. Suddenly you find it happens that you have started humming – this is action.
And if you become more and more involved in action, and less and less occupied in activity, your life will change and it will become a deep relaxation. Then you do but you remain relaxed. A buddha is never tired. Why? – because he is not a doer, whatsoever he has, he gives, he overflows.
Do naught with the body but relax; shut firm the mouth and silent remain… The mouth is really very, very significant because that is where the first activity landed; your lips started the first activity. Surrounding the area of the mouth is the beginning of all activity: you breathed in, you cried, you started groping for the mother’s breast. And your mouth remains always in a frantic activity. That’s why Tilopa suggests: understand activity, understand action, relax, and: …shut firm the mouth…
Whenever you sit down to meditate, whenever you want to be silent, the first thing is to shut the mouth completely. If you shut the mouth completely, your tongue will touch the roof of your mouth, both the lips will be completely closed and the tongue will touch the roof. Shut it completely, but that can be done only if you have followed whatsoever I have been saying to you, not before it.
You can do it! Shutting of the mouth is not a very big effort. You can sit like a statue, with a completely shut mouth, but that will not stop activity. Deep inside the thinking will continue, and if thinking continues you can feel subtle vibrations in the lips. Others may not be able to observe it because they are very subtle, but if you are thinking then your lips quiver a little: a very subtle quivering.
When you really relax, that quivering stops. You are not talking, you are not making any activity inside you: …shut firm the mouth and silent remain… And then don’t think.
What will you do? Thoughts are coming and going. Let them come and go, that’s not the problem. Don’t get involved; remain aloof, detached. Simply watch them coming and going, they are not your concern. Shut the mouth and remain silent. By and by, thoughts will cease automatically – they need your cooperation to be there. If you cooperate, they will be there; if you fight, then too they will be there because both are co-operations: one for, the other against. Both are sorts of activity. Simply watch.
But shutting the mouth is very helpful. So first, as I have been observing many people, I will suggest that first you yawn: open your mouth as wide as possible, tense your mouth as wide as possible, yawn completely; it even starts hurting. Do this two or three times; this will help the mouth to remain shut for a longer time. And then for two or three minutes, say gibberish, nonsense, loudly. Anything that comes to the mind, say it loudly and enjoy it. Then shut the mouth.
It is easier to move from the opposite end. If you want to relax your hand, it is better to first make it as tense as possible. Clench the fist and let it be as tense as possible, do just the opposite and then relax, and you will attain a deeper relaxation of the nervous system. Make gestures, faces, movements of the face, distortions, yawn, speak two or three minutes of nonsense – and then shut the mouth. And this tension will give you a deeper possibility to relax the lips and mouth. Shut the mouth and then just be a watcher. Soon a silence will descend on you.
There are two types of silences. One: a silence that you can force upon yourself. That is not a very graceful thing, it is violence; it is a sort of rape of the mind, it is aggressive. Then there is another sort of silence that descends on you, like night descends. It comes upon you; it envelops you. Simply create the possibility for it, the receptivity, and it comes. Shut the mouth, watch; don’t try to be silent. If you try, you can force a few seconds of silence, but they will not be of any value; inside you will go on boiling. So don’t try to be silent. Simply create the situation, the soil, put in the seed and wait.
…empty your mind and think of naught. What will you do to empty the mind? Thoughts are coming, you watch. And watching has to be done with a precaution: the watching must be passive, not active. These are the subtle mechanisms and you have to understand everything, otherwise you can miss anywhere. And if you miss a slight point, the whole thing changes its quality. Watch; watch passively, not actively.
What is the difference? You are waiting for your girl, or your lover – then you watch actively. Then somebody passes by the door and you jump up to look whether she has come. Then, just leaves fluttering in the wind, and you feel maybe she has come. You go on jumping up; your mind is very eager, active. No, this will not help. If you are too eager and too active this will not bring you to Tilopa’s silence or my silence. Be passive as you sit by the side of a river and the river flows by, and you simply watch. There is no eagerness, no urgency, no emergency. Nobody is forcing you. Even if you miss, there is nothing missed. You simply watch; you just look. Even the word watch is not good because the very word watch gives a feeling of being active. You simply look, not having anything to do. You simply sit by the bank of the river, you look, and the river flows by. Or you look in the sky, and the clouds float passively.
This passiveness is very, very essential; it is to be understood because your obsession for activity can become eagerness, can become an active waiting. Then you miss the whole point; then the activity has entered from the back door again. Be a passive watcher: …empty your mind and think of naught.
This passivity will automatically empty your mind. Ripples of activity, ripples of mind energy, by and by will subside and the whole surface of your consciousness will be without any waves, without any ripples. It becomes like a silent mirror.
Like a hollow bamboo rest at ease with your body.
This is one of Tilopa’s special methods. Every master has his own special method through which he has attained, and through which he would like to help others. This is Tilopa’s specialty: Like a hollow bamboo rest at ease with your body.
A bamboo: inside, completely hollow. When you rest, you just feel that you are like a bamboo: inside, completely hollow and empty. And, in fact, this is the case, your body is just like a bamboo, and inside it is hollow. Your skin, your bones, your blood; all are part of the bamboo, and inside there is space, hollowness.
When you are sitting with a completely silent mouth, inactive, tongue touching the roof and silent, not quivering with thoughts, mind watching passively, not waiting for anything in particular, feeling like a hollow bamboo – suddenly infinite energy starts pouring within you. You are filled with the unknown, with the mysterious, with the divine. A hollow bamboo becomes a flute and the divine starts playing it. Once you are empty there is no barrier for the divine to enter you.
Try this; it is one of the most beautiful meditations, the meditation of becoming a hollow bamboo. You need not do anything else. You simply become it, and all else happens. Suddenly you feel something is descending into your hollowness. You are like a womb and a new life is entering you, a seed is falling. And a moment comes when the bamboo completely disappears.
Like a hollow bamboo rest at ease with your body. Rest at ease; don’t desire spiritual things, don’t desire heaven, don’t even desire God. God cannot be desired – when you are desireless, he comes to you. Liberation cannot be desired because desire is the bondage. When you are desireless, you are liberated. Buddhahood cannot be desired because desiring is the hindrance. When the barrier is not, suddenly Buddha explodes in you. You already have the seed. When you are empty, space is there – the seed explodes.
Like a hollow bamboo rest at ease with your body. Giving not nor taking, put your mind at rest.
There is nothing to give, there is nothing to get. Everything is absolutely okay as it is. There is no need for any give and take. You are absolutely perfect as you are.
This teaching of the East has been very much misunderstood in the West because they say, “What type of teaching is this? Then people will not strive, and then they will not try to go higher. Then they will not make any effort to change their character, to transform their evil ways into good ways. Then they may become a victim of the Devil.” In the West, “Improve yourself,” is the slogan; either in terms of this world, or in terms of the other, but to improve. How to improve? How to become greater and bigger?
In the East we understand it more deeply, that this very effort to become is the barrier because you are already carrying your being with you. You need not become anything. Simply realize who you are, that’s all. Simply realize who is hidden within you. Improving, whatsoever you improve, you will always be in anxiety and anguish because the very effort to improve is leading you on a wrong path. It makes the future meaningful, a goal meaningful, ideals meaningful, and then your mind becomes a desiring.
Desiring, you miss. Let desiring subside, become a silent pool of nondesiring, and suddenly you are surprised, unexpectedly it is there. And you will have a belly laugh, as Bodhidharma laughed. Bodhidharma’s followers say that when you become silent, again you can hear his roaring laugh. He is still laughing. He has not stopped laughing since then. He laughed because, “What type of joke is this? You are already that which you are trying to become! How can you be successful if you are already that, and you are trying to become that? Your failure is absolutely certain. How can you become that which you are already?” So Bodhidharma laughed.
Bodhidharma was exactly a contemporary of Tilopa. They may have known each other, maybe not physically, but they must have known each other – the same quality of being…
Giving not nor taking, put your mind at rest.
Mahamudra is like a mind that clings to naught.
You have achieved if you don’t cling; nothingness in your hand and you have achieved. Mahamudra is like a mind that clings to naught.
Thus practicing, in time you will reach buddhahood.
What then, is to be practiced? It is to be more and more at ease, to be more and more here and now, to be more and more in action and less and less in activity. To be more and more hollow, empty, passive. To be more and more a watcher: indifferent, not expecting anything, not desiring anything. To be happy with yourself as you are. To be celebrating.
And then, any moment, any moment when things ripen and the right season comes, you bloom into a buddha.
Enough for today.

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