BUDDHA AND BUDDHIST MASTERS
The Heart Sutra 07
Seventh Discourse from the series of 10 discourses - The Heart Sutra by Osho.
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Therefore, O Sariputra, it is because of his non-attainmentness that a bodhisattva, through having relied on the perfection of wisdom, dwells without thought-coverings. In the absence of thought-coverings he has not been made to tremble, he has overcome what can upset, and in the end he attains to nirvana.
All those who appear as buddhas in the three periods of time fully awake to the utmost, right and perfect enlightenment because they have relied on the perfection of wisdom.
What is meditation? This whole Heart Sutra is about the innermost core of meditation. Let us go into it.
The first thing: meditation is not concentration. In concentration there is a self concentrating and there is an object being concentrated upon. There is duality. In meditation there is nobody inside and nothing outside. It is not concentration. There is no division between the in and the out. The in goes on flowing into the out, the out goes on flowing into the in. The demarcation, the boundary, the border, no longer exists. The in is out, the out is in; it is a nondual consciousness.
Concentration is a dual consciousness: that’s why concentration creates tiredness; that’s why when you concentrate you feel exhausted. And you cannot concentrate for twenty-four hours, you will have to take holidays to rest. Concentration can never become your nature. Meditation does not tire, meditation does not exhaust you. Meditation can become a twenty-four hour thing – day in, day out, year in, year out. It can become eternity. It is relaxation itself.
Concentration is an act, a willed act. Meditation is a state of no will, a state of inaction. It is relaxation. One has simply dropped into one’s own being, and that being is the same as the being of all. In concentration there is a plan, a projection, an idea. In concentration the mind functions out of a conclusion: you are doing something. Concentration comes out of the past.
In meditation there is no conclusion behind it. You are not doing anything in particular, you are simply being. It has no past to it, it is uncontaminated by the past. It has no future to it, it is pure of all future. It is what Lao Tzu has called wei-wu-wei, action through inaction. This is what Zen masters have been saying: “Sitting silently doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself.” Remember, “by itself” – nothing is being done. You are not pulling the grass upward; the spring comes and the grass grows by itself. That state – when you allow life to go on its own way, when you don’t want to direct it, when you don’t want to give any control to it, when you are not manipulating, when you are not enforcing any discipline on it – that state of pure undisciplined spontaneity is what meditation is.
Meditation is in the present, pure present. Meditation is immediacy. You cannot meditate, but you can be in meditation; you cannot be in concentration, but you can concentrate. Concentration is human, meditation is divine.
Concentration has a center in you; it comes from that center. Concentration has a self in you. In fact the man who concentrates much starts gathering a very strong self. He starts becoming more and more powerful, he starts becoming more and more of an integrated will. He will look more collected, more one piece.
The man of meditation does not become powerful: he becomes silent, he becomes peaceful. Power is created out of conflict; all power is out of friction. Out of friction comes electricity. You can create electricity out of water: when the river falls from a mountainside there is friction between the river and the rocks, and the friction creates energy. That’s why people who are seeking power are always fighting. Fight creates energy. It is always through friction that energy is created, power is created. The world goes into war again and again because the world is too dominated by the idea of power. You cannot be powerful without fighting.
Meditation brings peace. Peace has its own power, but that is an altogether different phenomenon. The power that is created out of friction is violent, aggressive, male. The power – I am using the word because there is no other word – the power that comes out of peace, is feminine. It has a grace to it. It is passive power, it is receptivity, it is openness. It is not out of friction; that’s why it is not violent.
Buddha is powerful, powerful in his peace, in his silence. He is as powerful as a roseflower, he’s not powerful like an atom bomb. He’s as powerful as the smile of a child – very fragile, very vulnerable; but he’s not as powerful as a sword. He is as powerful as a small earthen lamp, the small flame burning bright in the dark night. It is a totally different dimension of power. This power is what we call divine power. It is out of non-friction.
Concentration is a friction: you fight with your own mind. You try to focus the mind in a certain way, toward a certain idea, toward a certain object. You force it, you bring it back again and again. It tries to escape, it runs away, it goes astray, it starts thinking of a thousand and one things, and you bring it again and you force it. You go into a self-fight. Certainly power is created; that power is as harmful as any other power, that power is as dangerous as any other power. That power will again be used to harm somebody, because the power that comes out of friction is violence. Something out of violence is going to be violent, it is going to be destructive. The power that comes out of peace, non-friction, non-fight, non-manipulation, is the power of a roseflower, the power of a small lamp, the power of a child smiling, the power of a woman weeping, the power that is in tears and in the dewdrops. It is immense but not heavy; it is infinite but not violent.
Concentration will make you a man of will. Meditation will make you an emptiness. That’s what Buddha is saying to Sariputra. Prajnaparamita exactly means meditation, the wisdom of the beyond.
You cannot bring it but you can be open to it. You need not do anything to bring it into the world – you cannot bring it; it is beyond you. You have to disappear for it to come. The mind has to cease for meditation to be. Concentration is mind effort; meditation is a state of no-mind. Meditation is pure awareness, meditation has no motive in it.
Meditation is the tree that grows without a seed: that is the miracle of meditation, the magic, the mystery. Concentration has a seed in it: you concentrate for a certain purpose, there is motive, it is motivated. Meditation has no motive. Then why should one meditate if there is no motive?
Meditation comes into existence only when you have looked into all motives and found them lacking, when you have gone through the whole round of motives and you have seen the falsity of it. You have seen that motives lead nowhere, that you go on moving in circles; you remain the same. The motives go on and on leading you, driving you, almost driving you mad, creating new desires, but nothing is ever achieved. The hands remain as empty as ever. When this has been seen, when you have looked into your life and seen all your motives failing…
No motive has ever succeeded, no motive has ever brought any blessing to anybody. The motives only promise; the goods are never delivered. One motive fails and another motive comes in and promises you again and you are deceived again. Being deceived again and again by motives, one day you suddenly become aware – suddenly you see into it, and that very seeing is the beginning of meditation. It has no seed in it, it has no motive in it. If you are meditating for something, then you are concentrating, not meditating. Then you are still in the world – your mind is still interested in cheap things, in trivia. Then you are worldly. Even if you are meditating to attain to godliness, you are worldly. Even if you are meditating to attain to nirvana, you are worldly – because meditation has no goal.
Meditation is an insight that all goals are false. Meditation is an understanding that desires don’t lead anywhere. Seeing that… And this is not a belief that you can get from me or from Buddha or from Jesus. This is not knowledge; you will have to see it. You can see it right now! You have lived, you have seen many motives, you have been in turmoil, you have thought about what to do, what not to do, and you have done many things. Where has it all led you? Just see into it! I’m not saying agree with me, I’m not saying believe in me. I’m simply making you alert to a fact that you have been neglecting. This is not a theory, this is a simple statement of a very simple fact. Maybe because it is so simple, that’s why you go on without looking at it. Mind is always interested in complexities, because something can be done with a complex thing. You cannot do anything with a simple phenomenon.
The simple is overlooked, the simple is neglected, the simple is ignored. The simple is so obvious you never look into it. You go on searching for complexities – the complexity has a challenge in it. The complexity of a phenomenon, of a problem, of a situation, gives you a challenge. In that challenge comes energy, friction, conflict: you have to solve this problem, you have to prove that you can solve this problem. When a problem is there you are thrilled by the excitement, that there is a possibility to prove something. But what I am stating is a simple fact, it is not a problem. It gives you no challenge, it is simply there. You can look at it or you can avoid it. And it doesn’t shout; it is so simple. You cannot even call it a still, small voice within you; it does not even whisper. It is simply there – you can look, you may not look.
See it! And when I say, “See it,” see it right now, immediately. There is no need to wait. And be quick when I say, “See it”! Do see it, but quickly, because if you start thinking, if you don’t see it quickly, immediately, in that split second the mind comes in and the mind starts brooding, and the mind starts bringing thoughts, and the mind starts bringing prejudices. And you are in a philosophical state – many thoughts. Then you have to choose what is right and what is wrong, and speculation has started. You missed the existential moment.
The existential moment is right now. Just have a look, and that is meditation – that look is a meditation. Just seeing the facticity of a certain thing, of a certain state, is meditation. Meditation has no motive, hence there is no center to it. And because there is no motive and no center, there is no self in it. You don’t function from a center in meditation, you act out of nothingness. The response out of nothingness is what meditation is all about.
Mind concentrates: it acts out of the past. Meditation acts in the present, out of the present. It is a pure response to the present, it is not reaction. It acts not out of conclusions, it acts seeing the existential.
Watch in your life: there is a great difference when you act out of conclusions. You see a man, you feel attracted – a beautiful man, looks very good, looks innocent. His eyes are beautiful, the vibe is beautiful. But then the man introduces himself and he says, “I am a Jew” – and you are a Christian. Something immediately clicks and there is distance: now the man is no longer innocent, the man is no longer beautiful. You have certain ideas about Jews. Or, he is a Christian and you are a Jew; you have certain ideas about Christians – what Christianity has done to Jews in the past, what other Christians have done to Jews, how they have tortured Jews down the ages…and suddenly he is a Christian – and something immediately changes.
This is acting out of conclusions, prejudices, not looking at this man – because this man may not be the man that you think a Jew has to be: each Jew is a different kind of man, each Hindu is a different kind of man, so is each Mohammedan. You cannot act out of prejudices. You cannot act by categorizing people. You cannot pigeonhole people; nobody can be pigeonholed. You may have been deceived by a hundred Communists, and when you meet the hundred and first Communist, don’t go on believing in the category that you have made in your mind: that Communists are deceptive – or anything. This may be a different type of man, because no two persons are alike.
Whenever you act out of conclusions, it is mind. When you look into the present and you don’t allow any idea to obstruct the reality, to obstruct the fact, you just look into the fact and act out of that look, that is meditation.
Meditation is not something you do in the morning and you are finished with it, meditation is something that you have to go on living every moment of your life. Walking, sleeping, sitting, talking, listening – it has to become a kind of climate. A relaxed person remains in it. A person who goes on dropping the past remains meditative. Never act out of conclusions; those conclusions are your conditionings, your prejudices, your desires, your fears, and all the rest of it. In short, you are there!
You means your past. You means all your experiences of the past. Don’t allow the dead to overrule the living, don’t allow the past to influence the present, don’t allow death to overpower your life – that’s what meditation is. In short, in meditation you are not there. The dead is not controlling the living.
Meditation is a kind of experience which gives you a totally different quality to live your life. Then you don’t live like a Hindu, or a Mohammedan, Indian or German; you simply live as consciousness. When you live in the moment and there is nothing interfering, attention is total because there is no distraction – distractions come from the past and the future. When attention is total the act is total. It leaves no residue. It goes on freeing you, it never creates cages for you, it never imprisons you. And that is the ultimate goal of Buddha; that’s what he calls nirvana.
Nirvana means freedom – utterly, absolute, unobstructed. You become an open sky. There is no border to it, it is infinite. It is simply there. And then there is nothingness all around you, within and without. Nothingness is the function of a meditative state of consciousness. And in that nothingness is benediction. That nothingness itself is the benediction.
Now the sutras:
Therefore, O Sariputra, it is because of his non-attainmentness that a bodhisattva, through having relied on the perfection of wisdom, dwells without thought-coverings. In the absence of thought-coverings he has not been made to tremble, he has overcome what can upset, and in the end he attains to nirvana.
Remember, that “therefore” is always an indication that Buddha is going on looking into Sariputra’s nothingness – as he goes on feeling that his energies are relaxing, that his energies are no longer in turmoil, that he is not brooding but listening, that he is not thinking but is just there with Buddha, present, open, available. That “therefore” indicates to that unfoldment of Sariputra’s being. Buddha is seeing more and more petals are opening so he can go a step further, so he can take Sariputra a little deeper. Sariputra is available.
This “therefore” is not logical, this “therefore” is existential. Looking into Buddha, Sariputra is unfolding. And looking into Sariputra, Buddha is ready to take him a little further toward the beyond. Each statement is going deeper and higher.
Therefore, O Sariputra, it is because of his non-attainmentness that a bodhisattva, through having relied on the perfection of wisdom, dwells without thought-coverings. Each single word has to be meditated upon – not concentrated on, mind you, but meditated upon; listened to, looked into, not contemplated, not thought about. These things are higher than thought, bigger than thought. Thought is silly in these realms.
First he says: …it is because of his non-attainmentness… Meditation cannot be attained, because meditation cannot have a motive. When you attain something you attain through a motive. When you attain something you always have to work for the future and plan for the future. You cannot attain anything right now – except meditation. Let me repeat it: you cannot attain anything right now, except meditation. Why? If you want money you cannot attain it right now, you will have to work hard for it; legally, illegally, but you will have to work for it.
There are slow ways, you may become a businessman; and there are faster ways, you may become a politician – but you will have to do something. Slow or fast, but time will be needed. Time is a must. Without time you cannot attain money. If there is no time, how can you attain in this very moment? Even if you want to rob a neighbor, even if you want to pick the pocket of the person who is sitting by your side, that will take time. Time is a must. If you want to become famous, time will be needed. If you want to become politically powerful, time will be needed.
Only meditation can be attained right now, this very moment, instantaneously. Why? – because it is your nature. Why? – because it is already there. You have not claimed it, that’s right; but it remains there, unclaimed. You can claim it right now. Not even a single moment has to be lost.
…it is because of his non-attainmentness… Nirvana is nothing but meditation come to a full circle. God is nothing but the bud of meditation become a flower.
These are not attainments, these are your very realities. You can go on overlooking them for ages, neglecting them for ages, but you cannot lose them; they are there, just sitting inside you. Any day you close your eyes and look you will start laughing. You have been searching for this blessing, and searching in wrong places. You were searching for this security that comes out of nothingness, but you were searching in money, bank balances, this and that. And it never happened through that. It cannot happen through that. Nothing outside you can make your life secure. The outside is insecure; how can it make your life secure? The government cannot make your life secure because the government itself is insecure – a revolution may be coming. The bank cannot make your life secure because the bank may go bankrupt. Only banks can go bankrupt, what else? The woman that you love cannot make your life secure – she may fall in love with somebody else. The man that you love cannot make your life secure – he may die.
All these things remain there. So the more you have securities outside the more insecure you become, because then you are afraid of the bank going bankrupt. If you don’t have any account you don’t care; let it go bankrupt any day. But if you have a bank account there then you are worried. Then you have attained to one more insecurity: the possibility of the bank going bankrupt. Now you cannot sleep because you go on thinking about what is going to happen.
If you have put your trust in anything outside, it creates more insecurity. That’s why the richer a person becomes, the more insecure. And I am not in favor of poverty, remember. I am not saying be poor. Poverty has nothing holy in it. And I am not saying that the poor person is secure; he has his insecurities. The rich man has his insecurities; of course the rich man’s insecurities are more complex and the poor man’s insecurities are simple, but the insecurities are there. And I’m not saying that to be poor is something very special, or that to be poor is something very important and significant, or that you can brag that you are poor.
To be poor has nothing to do with spirituality. Neither has being rich anything to do with spirituality. Those are irrelevant facts. The poor also looks outside as much as the rich. Maybe the poor has only a bullock cart and the rich has a Cadillac, but that doesn’t matter. The bullock cart is as much outside as the Cadillac; both look outside. The rich may have many bank accounts, and the poor may have just a small purse or may have a little money saved, but that doesn’t matter – both look outside.
Security is on the inward path, because there you come to know that there is nobody to die, that there is nobody to suffer, that there is nothing that can happen, that there is pure sky. Clouds come and go, and the sky abides. Lives come and go, forms come and go, but the nothingness abides.
This nothingness is already there. That’s why Buddha says it can be attained only when you understand that it is nonattainable. It can be attained only when you understand the basic fact: that it is already there, that it is already the case.
This emptiness that is there is not in any way to be evolved, developed. It is fully there. Hence it can be attained in a single moment. Buddha calls it “full emptiness,” because emptiness can only be full if it is there. If it is not full, that means something other than the emptiness is also there, and that something else will hamper, obstruct, and that something else will create a duality, and that something else will create a friction, and that something else will create tension, and that something else will create anxiety – you cannot be at ease with “something else.”
Emptiness is there only when it is full, when all obstructions have been dropped, when you don’t have anything inside, when nobody is there to be an observer to it. Buddha says: “This emptiness is not even an experience, because if you experience it that means you were there to experience it.” It is you, so you cannot experience it. You can experience only something that is not you. Experience means duality – the observer and the observed, the knower and the known, the subject and the object, the seer and the seen. But there is only emptiness, nobody to see it, nobody to be seen, nothing as an object, nothing as a subject. This nondual emptiness is full. It is utterly full. Its fullness cannot be refined, its fullness cannot be added to. Nothing can be taken out of it because there is nothing, and nothing can be added to it; it is utterly full.
“Full emptiness” is not an experience, because there is no experiencer in it. Hence, Buddha says: “Spirituality is not an experience. God cannot be experienced.” Those who say, “I have experienced God,” either don’t understand what they are saying or they are using a very, very inadequate language. You cannot experience God. In that experience you are not found. The experience is there, but the experiencer is not there – so you cannot claim it as an experience. So, whenever somebody asked Buddha, “Have you experienced God?” he kept quiet; he did not say a single word. He immediately changed the subject, he started talking about something else.
Whenever it was asked, his whole life, he consistently remained silent. Many people thought that he had not experienced God; that’s why he kept quiet. But he’s the only person who has not said anything – negative or positive. And it is not because he has not experienced. He has experienced, but it cannot be talked of as an experience; that’s why he keeps quiet. That’s why Jesus remained silent when Pontius Pilate asked, “What is truth?”
J. Krishnamurti makes a very subtle distinction between experience and experiencing, and that is a beautiful distinction: he says, “It is an experiencing, not an experience.” It is a process, not a thing. It is alive, not dead. It is ongoing, not finished. You enter into God, and then it is an ongoing phenomenon: it goes on and on and on for eternity; you never come out of it. It is an experiencing, an alive process – like a river, like a flower opening and opening and opening, and going on opening. And there never comes any end to it.
To say that one has experienced God is stupid, cheap and silly. To say that one has attained moksha, nirvana, truth, is not very meaningful, because these are things which cannot be categorized as attainments.
So Buddha says: Therefore, O Sariputra, it is because of his non-attainmentness… When the mind has come to a stop and is no longer interested in attaining anything, then it attains buddhahood. When the mind has come to a full stop and is not going anywhere, it starts going inward, it starts falling into one’s own being, that abysmal abyss. Full emptiness is attained by a non-attainmentness. So don’t become achievers, don’t start thinking in terms of achievement – that you have to achieve this and that, that you have to attain godliness. These are games; the mind is again deceiving you. The name of the game changes but the game, the subtle game, remains the same.
…that a bodhisattva attains through non-attainmentness, through having relied on the perfection of wisdom… This is a very, very significant statement. Buddha says: “One should rely on nothing whatsoever.” Now this is against the ordinary Buddhist religion, because the ordinary Buddhist religion has three fundamental refuges: Buddham sharanam gachchhami, sangam sharanam gachchhami, dhammam sharanam gachchhami. When the disciple comes to Buddha, he bows down to him, surrenders to him and says, “I take refuge in the Buddha – buddham sharanam gachchhami.” “I take refuge in the community of the Buddha – sangam sharanam gachchhami.” “I take refuge in the law taught by the Buddha – dhammam sharanam gachchhami.” And Buddha says here that one should not rely on anything; there is no refuge, nowhere any shelter.
This Heart Sutra has been called the soul of Buddhism, and the church of Buddha has been called the body. Those three refuges are for the very ordinary mind which is in search of some shelter, some prop, some support. These statements are for the highest soul – one who has come to the sixth, and is just hanging between the sixth and the seventh, just a little push…
Therefore, O Sariputra… It has been said that the first sermon of Buddha, which is called the Sermon of the Turning of the Wheel of Religion, Dhamma Chakrapravatan Sutra – that was his first sermon, near Varanasi – created the so-called ordinary religion, for the ordinary masses. In that sermon he declares, “Come and take refuge in Buddha; come and take refuge in the law taught by the Buddha; come and take refuge in the community, in the commune of the Buddha.”
After twenty years he declares this second dispensation. He took twenty years to bring a few people to the highest possibility. This is called the second most important sermon. The first was in Saranath, near Varanasi, when he told people, “Come and take refuge in me. I have attained! Come and take refuge in me. I have reached! Come and partake of me. I have arrived! Come and follow me.” That was for the ordinary mind; it is natural. Buddha could not have declared the Heart Sutra; the masses would not have been able to understand.
Then he worked for twenty years with his disciples. Now Sariputra is coming very close. Because of that closeness, he says:
Therefore, O Sariputra… “Now I can say it to you. I can say to you that having relied on the perfection of wisdom…” Only on one thing does one have to rely, and that is meditation. Only on one thing does one have to rely, and that is awareness, attentiveness. Only on one thing does one have to rely, that is one’s own inner source, being. Everything else has to be dropped, all refuges.
Through having relied on nothing but the perfection of meditation, what one has to do is not to rely on anything, worldly or otherwise, to let it all go, to give the resulting emptiness a free run, unobstructed by any for-or-against attitude, to stop relying on anything, to seek nowhere any refuge or support – that is the real renunciation.
Our separate self is a spurious reality which can maintain itself only by finding supports or props on which to lean or rely. To go for refuge to the three treasures is the central act of the Buddhist religion – refuge in the Buddha, refuge in the sangha, refuge in the dhamma. Here Buddha refutes that. It is not contradictory. He simply says that which you can understand. In my assertions you will find a thousand and one contradictions, because they have been in reference to different people. The more you will grow, different assertions will be made by me because my assertions are a response to you. I am not talking to the walls. I am talking to you, and I can give only that much which you can receive. The higher your consciousness, the deeper your consciousness, different things will be stated by me.
Naturally, those different statements will be very contradictory. If one goes for a logical consistency, he will not find any. You cannot find any logical consistency in Buddha’s statements. That’s why, the day Buddha died, Buddhism was divided into thirty-six schools. The exact day he died, and the disciples were divided into thirty-six schools.
What happened? – because he had been making so many statements to different people, because of their different consciousness and understanding, they all started quarreling and fighting. They said, “This has been said to me by Buddha!” Just think: the first five disciples, to whom he had said, “I have attained, now come to me and I will take you there”… If those first disciples met Sariputra and Sariputra said, “It is attained through a kind of non-attainmentness. One who declares that he has attained is wrong, because it cannot be attained,” what would those first disciples have said? They would have said, “What are you talking about? We are the oldest disciples, the seniormost, and this was the first statement that Buddha has made to us: ‘I have attained!’ In fact we would have never followed him if he had not declared that. Because he declared it, we followed him. Our motive was clear: that he had attained, we also wanted to attain; that’s why we followed him. And he said to us, ‘I am your refuge. Come and take refuge in me. Let me be your shelter.’ And what nonsense are you talking about? Buddha could not have said this. You must have misunderstood. Something has gone wrong, or you have fabricated it.”
Now this statement, this Heart Sutra, was made in privacy. It was said to Sariputra, it was specifically addressed to Sariputra. It is like a letter. Sariputra cannot produce any proofs, because in those days tape recorders were not in existence. He can simply say, he can take an oath: “I am not saying anything untrue. Buddha has said to me, ‘Rely only on your meditation and nothing else.’”
The mind that relies on something else is the spurious self, the ego. The ego cannot exist without props, it wants props. Something has to support it. Once all props have been removed, the ego falls to the ground and disappears. But only when the ego falls to the ground does that consciousness arise in you which is eternal, which is timeless, deathless.
Here, Buddha says: “There is no refuge, Sariputra. There is no remedy, Sariputra. There is nothing and nowhere to go. You are already there.”
If you reach into this full-emptiness unprepared, it will give you a great trembling. If you are thrown into it by somebody… For example, sometimes people come to me with deep love and respect; they say, “Osho, why don’t you push me a little harder?” If you are not ready for it and you are pushed into it, it is not going to help. It may hinder your progress for many lives to come. Once you have gone into that nothingness unprepared you will be so shocked, so frightened, so scared to death, that never again, for at least a few lives, will you come to any person who talks about nothingness, who talks about godliness. You will avoid. That fear will become a seed in you.
No, you cannot be pushed unprepared. You can be pushed only slowly, slowly, only in the same proportion as you are prepared.
Have you heard the famous statement of Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, the founder of modern existentialism? He says, “Man is a trembling, constant trembling.” Why? – because death is there. Why? – because the fear is there: “One day I may not be.”
This is true about the ordinary mind: everybody is trembling. The problem is always, “To be or not to be.” Death is always hanging there. You cannot conceive of yourself disappearing into nothingness; it hurts, it frightens. And if you look deep inside yourself, you will find yourself trembling with the idea of being nothing. You want to be, you want to remain, you want to persist. You want to persist forever. That’s why people who don’t know anything about their inner being go on believing that the soul is immortal; not because they know, but because of fear. Because of that trembling they have to believe that the soul is immortal. That is a kind of wish fulfillment.
So any idiot who is talking about the immortality of the soul will appeal to you. You will get hooked. Not that you have understood what he is saying – he may not have understood himself – but it will be very appealing. In India people believe in the immortality of the soul, and you cannot find more cowardly people anywhere else. For one thousand years they remained slaves, slaves to very small countries. Anybody who came to India conquered it with no difficulty at all. It was so simple. And these are the people who believe in the immortality of the soul. In fact, a country that believes in the immortality of the soul cannot be conquered at all, because nobody will be afraid to die. How can you conquer a person who is not afraid to die? They would have all died, but they would not have yielded to any kind of submission, they could not have yielded to any conqueror. But for one thousand years, India remained a slave. It remained a slave very easily.
England is a very small country, there are a few districts in India which are bigger. England could rule over this big country easily; it was not difficult. Why? And these people believed that the soul is immortal! But the belief is not their experience, the belief is out of fear. Then everything is explained. These are cowardly people, afraid, afraid to die; hence they cling to the idea that the soul is immortal. Not that they know, not that they have experienced; they have never experienced anything like that, they have only experienced the death that surrounds. They are so afraid because of death. So on the one hand they go on believing in the immortality of the soul; on the other hand, anybody can torture them and they are ready to submit and touch the feet.
It is out of fear that man believes in immortality. It is out of fear that man believes in God. It is out of trembling. Søren Kierkegaard is right about the ordinary mind.
Another existentialist philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, says: “Man is condemned to be free.” Why “condemned”? Why this ugly word condemned? Freedom – is it a kind of condemnation? Yes, for the ordinary mind it is, because freedom means danger. Freedom means you cannot rely on anything, you have to rely only on yourself. Freedom means all props have been taken away, all supports disappear. Freedom basically means nothingness. You are free only when you are nothing.
Listen to what Sartre says: “Man, as freedom, becomes anguish.” Anguish? Out of freedom? Yes, if you are not ready for it, if you are not prepared to go into it, it is anguish. Nobody wants to be free, notwithstanding what people go on saying. Nobody wants to be free. People want to be slaves because in slavery the responsibility can be thrown on somebody else. You are never responsible, you are just a slave: what can you do? You did only that which was ordered.
But when you are free, you are afraid. Responsibility arises. Each act, and you feel responsible: if you do this, this may happen; or if you do the other thing, then something else may happen. Then choice is yours, and choice creates trembling. And Jean-Paul Sartre is right about the ordinary mind: freedom creates anguish.
He says, “Man is condemned to be free,” because freedom creates dread. It is dreadful freedom. Nothing can guarantee me against myself when I am free. There is no value given to me in which I can take shelter. I have to create those values myself. I decide the meaning of myself and my universe, alone, unjustifiable, and without excuse. I am one unveiling of freedom, you are another. My freedom is a constant unveiling of my being, so is yours. Our uniqueness consists in the fact that each of us does this in his own way.
But Sartre thinks freedom creates anguish, and freedom is a kind of condemnation, a curse. And Kierkegaard says, “Man is a constant trembling.” And Buddha wants you to go into this freedom, into this nothingness. Naturally, you have to be prepared for it.
Sariputra is ready now.
Therefore, O Sariputra,
it is because of his non-attainmentness that a bodhisattva,
through having relied on the perfection of wisdom,
dwells without thought-coverings.
In the absence of thought-coverings
he has not been made to tremble,
he has overcome what can upset,
and in the end he attains to nirvana.
…he has overcome what can upset… and he has no trembling in this nothingness.
It looks almost impossible to the ordinary mind: how can you remain without trembling when you are disappearing? When you are melting into the unknown how can you remain unscared? How can you manage not to escape? How can you manage not to start finding props and shelters and supports so that you can again create that feeling of being the ego, the self?
That’s why Buddha had to wait for twenty years. And then, too, he stated this truth to Sariputra in a personal dialogue, not as a public sermon. And if people did not believe Sariputra, they are also right because Buddha had been saying something else to them.
Remember this about me! Remember this: my statements are contradictory because they are made to different people, they are made to different consciousnesses. And the more you grow, the more I will be contradictory; the more I will have to refute what I have said before because it will no longer be relevant to you. With your growing consciousness I will have to respond in a different way. Each turn in your consciousness will be a turn in my statements. And when I am gone don’t create thirty-six schools – because thirty-six won’t do!
Nothingness brings freedom. Freedom from the self is the ultimate freedom. There is no freedom higher than that. Nothingness is freedom. And it is not anguish, as Jean-Paul Sartre says, and it is not trembling, as Kierkegaard says. It is benediction, it is the ultimate bliss. It is not trembling because there is nobody to tremble.
Meditation prepares you for that, because as you enter into meditation you find less and less of yourself every day. And the less you find yourself, in the same proportion grow your blessings, your benediction, your blissfulness. Slowly, slowly, you learn the mathematics of the inner world – that the more you are, the more in hell; the less you are, the more in heaven. The day you are not, it is nirvana; the ultimate home has arrived. You have come full circle, you have become a child again. There is no self any more.
Remember, freedom does not mean the freedom of the self. Freedom means: freedom from the self. To Sartre it means “freedom of the self.” That’s why it feels like a condemnation; the self remains. It becomes free, but it remains and that’s why there is fear.
If freedom is such that the self has disappeared in it, and there is only freedom and nobody free, then who can tremble, and who can feel the anguish, and who can feel condemned? Then there is no question of choice; that freedom acts on its own. One acts out of choicelessness, and there is no responsibility left – because there is nobody who can feel any responsibility. Nothingness acts. Wei-wu-wei – non-action acts. It is a response between the inner nothingness and the outer nothingness, and there is nothing obstructing.
…it is because of his non-attainmentness that a bodhisattva, through having relied on the perfection of wisdom – alone – dwells without thought-coverings. Now there is no thought-covering. And thought-covering is the barrier that divides you from the outer nothingness. That’s what I was saying last night to Neelamber, the ex-Mark that I talked about yesterday.
Yesterday evening he entered into sannyas; he became Neelamber. Neelamber means blue sky. What is dividing the outer sky from the inner sky? Your thought-coverings. Those are the clothes that don’t allow your nudity to be in touch with the sky, your nude being to be bridged with the sky. The thought that you are a Hindu, the thought that you are a Christian, the thought that you are a Communist or a Fascist, divides. The thought that you are beautiful or ugly divides. The thought that you are intelligent or unintelligent divides. Any kind of thought – and the division. And you have millions of thoughts. You will have to peel yourself like you peel an onion, covering after covering. You peel one cover, another layer is there; peel it, another layer is there. And naturally when you peel an onion tears come to the eyes; it is painful. When you start uncovering your being, it is more painful. It is not like taking your clothes off, it is like taking your skin off.
But if you go on peeling, one day you come to when the whole onion has disappeared and only nothingness is left in your hands. That nothingness is bliss.
Buddha says a bodhisattva …dwells without thought-coverings. He is here, but he is nobody; he is here, but he has no ideas; he is here, but he has no thoughts. Not that he cannot use thoughts: I go on using thoughts continuously. I am talking to you right now, I have to use the mind and thoughts – but they don’t cover me. They are by the side. Whenever I need, I use them. Whenever I am not using them, they are not there – my inner sky and the outer sky are one. And even while I am using them I know that they cannot divide me. They are instrumental, you can use them, but you are not in any way covered by them.
…dwells without thought-coverings. Buddha says there are three kinds of thought-coverings. The first is karma averna – incomplete acts. Untotal acts cover your being. Each act wants to be completed. There is an intrinsic urge in everything to complete itself. Whenever you allow some act to hang around you incomplete, it covers you: karma averna, karma that covers you.
The second is klesas averna. Greed, hate, jealousy and things like that: they are called klesas, impurities; they cover you.
Have you seen it? An angry person remains almost always angry – sometimes less, sometimes more, but angry all the same. He is ready to jump upon anything. He is ready, with any excuse, to go into rage. He is boiling within. And so is the jealous person: the jealous person goes on searching to find something about which he or she can be jealous. The jealous wife goes on looking in the pockets of the husband to see if she can find something, in his letters, in his files to see if she can find something.
Whenever Mulla Nasruddin comes home there is a fight, for something or the other. His wife is such a great searcher that she always finds something or other. A phone number in his diary, and she becomes suspicious. A hair on his coat, and she goes into a great investigation – where has this hair come from?
One day she could not find anything, not even a hair. Mulla had done everything that day; she still started crying and weeping.
And Mulla said, “Now what is the matter? Not even a single hair have you been able to find on my coat…?”
She said, “That’s why I’m crying. So now you have started going with bald women!”
It is very difficult, really, to find a bald woman, but that is the mind of a jealous person. These are coverings. Buddha calls them klesas, impurities; the egoist is always in search of something to either brag about or to feel hurt about. The possessive person is always in search of finding something so that he can show his possessiveness, or in finding something negative so that he can fight for it.
People go on – and I’m not talking about others, I am talking about you. Just watch your mind, watch what you go on searching for. Watch your mind for twenty-four hours and you will come across all these coverings, avarnas.
There are either incomplete acts, or impurities; or, the third is called ghaya avarnas – beliefs, opinions, ideologies, knowledge coverings. They don’t allow you to know, they don’t give you enough space to see. These three coverings have to be dropped.
When these three coverings are dropped, then one dwells in nothingness. That word dwelling is also to be understood.
Buddha says: “He dwells in nothingness.” It is his home, nothingness is his home. He dwells in it, it is a dwelling. He loves it, he is utterly in tune with it. It is not alien, he does not feel like an outsider there. And he does not feel like he’s staying in a hotel and tomorrow he will have to leave it. It is his dwelling. When thought-coverings have been dropped, nothingness is your home. You are in utter harmony with it.
Kierkegaard and Sartre have never been there. They have only speculated about it. They only think about it, about how it will be. That’s why Kierkegaard feels trembling. He simply thinks, as you think…
Just think how it will be when you die, and you will be put on a funeral pyre, and you will be finished forever. And then you will not be able to see these beautiful trees, these beautiful people, and you will not laugh again, and you will not love again, and you will not see the stars. And the world will continue, and you will not be here at all. Can’t you feel a shivering? Can’t you feel a trembling? All will continue – the birds will sing and the sun will rise and the oceans will roar and some eagle will go on and on flying higher and higher, and the flowers will be there and their fragrance, and the fragrance of the wet earth – all that will be there. And suddenly one day you will not be, and your body will be dead. This beautiful body that you have been living with and you have been taking so much care of: it was ill and you were disturbed and one day it will be so useless that the people who had loved it, the same people, will take it to a funeral pyre and set it on fire. Just visualize it. Speculate, and trembling comes.
Kierkegaard must have speculated about it. He must have been a very fear-oriented person. A story is told about him that he was a rich man’s son: the father died; he had left Kierkegaard enough money so he never worked, he continuously contemplated. He could easily afford it; there was nothing to do. He had enough money in the bank. The first day of every month he would go to the bank – that was his whole work – to take some money. And then he would live and meditate. In his sense of meditation it means contemplation, brooding, thinking. That’s what the English word meditation means. It is not a right translation for dhyana.
When people come to me and I tell them to meditate they say, “On what?” The English word means meditating upon something, some object. The Indian word dhyana means being in it, not meditating on something. It is a state, not an activity.
So he would contemplate and think, and brood and philosophize. It is said that he fell in love with a beautiful woman, but could not decide to marry or not to marry. The very phenomenon of love became a trembling in him. For three years he brooded over it, and finally he decided not to marry. And he was in love. His whole life he could not forget the woman, his whole life he felt miserable for the woman. The woman was in love, he was in love; still he decided not to marry. Why? – because the very idea of love created trembling in him.
Love is a kind of death. If you really love a person you die in him, you disappear in him.
When you make love… I have to use this word make – it is not right, but no language is really right. So remember, I have to use words with all their limitations. Love cannot be made. “Making love” is a wrong expression: it happens. But when it happens, when you are in a loving space with somebody, fear comes because you are disappearing. That’s why very, very many people, millions of people, never attain to orgasm, because orgasm is a death.
And Kierkegaard was so much in love that he became afraid that he may lose himself in this woman. That fear was too much. He dropped the idea. He refused, he would not marry; he suffered for his whole life – that he accepted – but because of fear… He was a fear-oriented person.
He lived perfectly well, doing nothing, just philosophizing. And there is a very strange anecdote of the day he died. He died when he was coming from the bank. It was the first day of some month; he was coming from the bank, taking his money, but this was the last money. He died on the road. It is thought that he died out of fear, because now no more money was left in the bank. He was perfectly healthy, he was not ill, there was no reason for him to die so suddenly. But coming from the bank – and the bank manager had said, “This is the last; your money is finished” – he could not reach his home. He died on the road.
He could not have experienced the nothingness Buddha is talking about. He must have only thought about it – hence, the fear. And Jean-Paul Sartre also has not been in that space called meditation. He is not a meditator; he is again a thinker, and utterly Western. He has not known the Eastern way to go in. Hence freedom looks like a condemnation, and freedom looks like anguish.
The truth is just the opposite. If you go into freedom, into nothingness, there is bliss. If you go into that utter death called love, there is satori, samadhi. Buddha says: “He dwells in that nothingness, it is his house.” It is not anguish, it is not trembling, it is not a condemnation. He dwells there. It is his home.
…he has not been made to tremble, he has overcome what can upset, and in the end he attains to nirvana. Buddha does not say anything else. He says: “Go into this state of nothingness, then nirvana is a natural outcome. In the end it comes on its own accord.” You need not worry about it; you cannot do anything about it in the first place. You just go into this nothingness, and then nothingness starts growing, growing, becomes vaster and vaster, and one day becomes your whole existence. Then there is nirvana – you have ceased to be. You have disappeared into the universe.
Somebody asked Buddha, “When you are gone and you will never be coming into the body again, what will happen to you?”
And he said, “I will disappear into existence. If you taste existence, you will taste me.”
And yes, that is true: if you taste existence you will taste all the buddhas – Krishna, Christ, Buddha, Mahavira, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Kabir, Nanak. You will taste all the buddhas. The day you enter into that nothingness, you will be welcomed by all the buddhas. The whole existence is throbbing with buddhahood because so many buddhas have disappeared into it. They have raised the very level of existence.
You are fortunate, because before you so many buddhas have entered into existence. When you go there, you will not be unwelcome.
All those who appear as buddhas
in the three periods of time
fully awake to the utmost, right and perfect enlightenment
because they have relied on the perfection of wisdom.
The only refuge is the perfection of wisdom, the perfection of meditation. In the past it has been so, in the present it is so, in the future it will be so. Anybody who becomes a buddha becomes one through meditation. Take refuge in meditation. Take refuge in nothingness.
Enough for today.
All those who appear as buddhas in the three periods of time fully awake to the utmost, right and perfect enlightenment because they have relied on the perfection of wisdom.
What is meditation? This whole Heart Sutra is about the innermost core of meditation. Let us go into it.
The first thing: meditation is not concentration. In concentration there is a self concentrating and there is an object being concentrated upon. There is duality. In meditation there is nobody inside and nothing outside. It is not concentration. There is no division between the in and the out. The in goes on flowing into the out, the out goes on flowing into the in. The demarcation, the boundary, the border, no longer exists. The in is out, the out is in; it is a nondual consciousness.
Concentration is a dual consciousness: that’s why concentration creates tiredness; that’s why when you concentrate you feel exhausted. And you cannot concentrate for twenty-four hours, you will have to take holidays to rest. Concentration can never become your nature. Meditation does not tire, meditation does not exhaust you. Meditation can become a twenty-four hour thing – day in, day out, year in, year out. It can become eternity. It is relaxation itself.
Concentration is an act, a willed act. Meditation is a state of no will, a state of inaction. It is relaxation. One has simply dropped into one’s own being, and that being is the same as the being of all. In concentration there is a plan, a projection, an idea. In concentration the mind functions out of a conclusion: you are doing something. Concentration comes out of the past.
In meditation there is no conclusion behind it. You are not doing anything in particular, you are simply being. It has no past to it, it is uncontaminated by the past. It has no future to it, it is pure of all future. It is what Lao Tzu has called wei-wu-wei, action through inaction. This is what Zen masters have been saying: “Sitting silently doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself.” Remember, “by itself” – nothing is being done. You are not pulling the grass upward; the spring comes and the grass grows by itself. That state – when you allow life to go on its own way, when you don’t want to direct it, when you don’t want to give any control to it, when you are not manipulating, when you are not enforcing any discipline on it – that state of pure undisciplined spontaneity is what meditation is.
Meditation is in the present, pure present. Meditation is immediacy. You cannot meditate, but you can be in meditation; you cannot be in concentration, but you can concentrate. Concentration is human, meditation is divine.
Concentration has a center in you; it comes from that center. Concentration has a self in you. In fact the man who concentrates much starts gathering a very strong self. He starts becoming more and more powerful, he starts becoming more and more of an integrated will. He will look more collected, more one piece.
The man of meditation does not become powerful: he becomes silent, he becomes peaceful. Power is created out of conflict; all power is out of friction. Out of friction comes electricity. You can create electricity out of water: when the river falls from a mountainside there is friction between the river and the rocks, and the friction creates energy. That’s why people who are seeking power are always fighting. Fight creates energy. It is always through friction that energy is created, power is created. The world goes into war again and again because the world is too dominated by the idea of power. You cannot be powerful without fighting.
Meditation brings peace. Peace has its own power, but that is an altogether different phenomenon. The power that is created out of friction is violent, aggressive, male. The power – I am using the word because there is no other word – the power that comes out of peace, is feminine. It has a grace to it. It is passive power, it is receptivity, it is openness. It is not out of friction; that’s why it is not violent.
Buddha is powerful, powerful in his peace, in his silence. He is as powerful as a roseflower, he’s not powerful like an atom bomb. He’s as powerful as the smile of a child – very fragile, very vulnerable; but he’s not as powerful as a sword. He is as powerful as a small earthen lamp, the small flame burning bright in the dark night. It is a totally different dimension of power. This power is what we call divine power. It is out of non-friction.
Concentration is a friction: you fight with your own mind. You try to focus the mind in a certain way, toward a certain idea, toward a certain object. You force it, you bring it back again and again. It tries to escape, it runs away, it goes astray, it starts thinking of a thousand and one things, and you bring it again and you force it. You go into a self-fight. Certainly power is created; that power is as harmful as any other power, that power is as dangerous as any other power. That power will again be used to harm somebody, because the power that comes out of friction is violence. Something out of violence is going to be violent, it is going to be destructive. The power that comes out of peace, non-friction, non-fight, non-manipulation, is the power of a roseflower, the power of a small lamp, the power of a child smiling, the power of a woman weeping, the power that is in tears and in the dewdrops. It is immense but not heavy; it is infinite but not violent.
Concentration will make you a man of will. Meditation will make you an emptiness. That’s what Buddha is saying to Sariputra. Prajnaparamita exactly means meditation, the wisdom of the beyond.
You cannot bring it but you can be open to it. You need not do anything to bring it into the world – you cannot bring it; it is beyond you. You have to disappear for it to come. The mind has to cease for meditation to be. Concentration is mind effort; meditation is a state of no-mind. Meditation is pure awareness, meditation has no motive in it.
Meditation is the tree that grows without a seed: that is the miracle of meditation, the magic, the mystery. Concentration has a seed in it: you concentrate for a certain purpose, there is motive, it is motivated. Meditation has no motive. Then why should one meditate if there is no motive?
Meditation comes into existence only when you have looked into all motives and found them lacking, when you have gone through the whole round of motives and you have seen the falsity of it. You have seen that motives lead nowhere, that you go on moving in circles; you remain the same. The motives go on and on leading you, driving you, almost driving you mad, creating new desires, but nothing is ever achieved. The hands remain as empty as ever. When this has been seen, when you have looked into your life and seen all your motives failing…
No motive has ever succeeded, no motive has ever brought any blessing to anybody. The motives only promise; the goods are never delivered. One motive fails and another motive comes in and promises you again and you are deceived again. Being deceived again and again by motives, one day you suddenly become aware – suddenly you see into it, and that very seeing is the beginning of meditation. It has no seed in it, it has no motive in it. If you are meditating for something, then you are concentrating, not meditating. Then you are still in the world – your mind is still interested in cheap things, in trivia. Then you are worldly. Even if you are meditating to attain to godliness, you are worldly. Even if you are meditating to attain to nirvana, you are worldly – because meditation has no goal.
Meditation is an insight that all goals are false. Meditation is an understanding that desires don’t lead anywhere. Seeing that… And this is not a belief that you can get from me or from Buddha or from Jesus. This is not knowledge; you will have to see it. You can see it right now! You have lived, you have seen many motives, you have been in turmoil, you have thought about what to do, what not to do, and you have done many things. Where has it all led you? Just see into it! I’m not saying agree with me, I’m not saying believe in me. I’m simply making you alert to a fact that you have been neglecting. This is not a theory, this is a simple statement of a very simple fact. Maybe because it is so simple, that’s why you go on without looking at it. Mind is always interested in complexities, because something can be done with a complex thing. You cannot do anything with a simple phenomenon.
The simple is overlooked, the simple is neglected, the simple is ignored. The simple is so obvious you never look into it. You go on searching for complexities – the complexity has a challenge in it. The complexity of a phenomenon, of a problem, of a situation, gives you a challenge. In that challenge comes energy, friction, conflict: you have to solve this problem, you have to prove that you can solve this problem. When a problem is there you are thrilled by the excitement, that there is a possibility to prove something. But what I am stating is a simple fact, it is not a problem. It gives you no challenge, it is simply there. You can look at it or you can avoid it. And it doesn’t shout; it is so simple. You cannot even call it a still, small voice within you; it does not even whisper. It is simply there – you can look, you may not look.
See it! And when I say, “See it,” see it right now, immediately. There is no need to wait. And be quick when I say, “See it”! Do see it, but quickly, because if you start thinking, if you don’t see it quickly, immediately, in that split second the mind comes in and the mind starts brooding, and the mind starts bringing thoughts, and the mind starts bringing prejudices. And you are in a philosophical state – many thoughts. Then you have to choose what is right and what is wrong, and speculation has started. You missed the existential moment.
The existential moment is right now. Just have a look, and that is meditation – that look is a meditation. Just seeing the facticity of a certain thing, of a certain state, is meditation. Meditation has no motive, hence there is no center to it. And because there is no motive and no center, there is no self in it. You don’t function from a center in meditation, you act out of nothingness. The response out of nothingness is what meditation is all about.
Mind concentrates: it acts out of the past. Meditation acts in the present, out of the present. It is a pure response to the present, it is not reaction. It acts not out of conclusions, it acts seeing the existential.
Watch in your life: there is a great difference when you act out of conclusions. You see a man, you feel attracted – a beautiful man, looks very good, looks innocent. His eyes are beautiful, the vibe is beautiful. But then the man introduces himself and he says, “I am a Jew” – and you are a Christian. Something immediately clicks and there is distance: now the man is no longer innocent, the man is no longer beautiful. You have certain ideas about Jews. Or, he is a Christian and you are a Jew; you have certain ideas about Christians – what Christianity has done to Jews in the past, what other Christians have done to Jews, how they have tortured Jews down the ages…and suddenly he is a Christian – and something immediately changes.
This is acting out of conclusions, prejudices, not looking at this man – because this man may not be the man that you think a Jew has to be: each Jew is a different kind of man, each Hindu is a different kind of man, so is each Mohammedan. You cannot act out of prejudices. You cannot act by categorizing people. You cannot pigeonhole people; nobody can be pigeonholed. You may have been deceived by a hundred Communists, and when you meet the hundred and first Communist, don’t go on believing in the category that you have made in your mind: that Communists are deceptive – or anything. This may be a different type of man, because no two persons are alike.
Whenever you act out of conclusions, it is mind. When you look into the present and you don’t allow any idea to obstruct the reality, to obstruct the fact, you just look into the fact and act out of that look, that is meditation.
Meditation is not something you do in the morning and you are finished with it, meditation is something that you have to go on living every moment of your life. Walking, sleeping, sitting, talking, listening – it has to become a kind of climate. A relaxed person remains in it. A person who goes on dropping the past remains meditative. Never act out of conclusions; those conclusions are your conditionings, your prejudices, your desires, your fears, and all the rest of it. In short, you are there!
You means your past. You means all your experiences of the past. Don’t allow the dead to overrule the living, don’t allow the past to influence the present, don’t allow death to overpower your life – that’s what meditation is. In short, in meditation you are not there. The dead is not controlling the living.
Meditation is a kind of experience which gives you a totally different quality to live your life. Then you don’t live like a Hindu, or a Mohammedan, Indian or German; you simply live as consciousness. When you live in the moment and there is nothing interfering, attention is total because there is no distraction – distractions come from the past and the future. When attention is total the act is total. It leaves no residue. It goes on freeing you, it never creates cages for you, it never imprisons you. And that is the ultimate goal of Buddha; that’s what he calls nirvana.
Nirvana means freedom – utterly, absolute, unobstructed. You become an open sky. There is no border to it, it is infinite. It is simply there. And then there is nothingness all around you, within and without. Nothingness is the function of a meditative state of consciousness. And in that nothingness is benediction. That nothingness itself is the benediction.
Now the sutras:
Therefore, O Sariputra, it is because of his non-attainmentness that a bodhisattva, through having relied on the perfection of wisdom, dwells without thought-coverings. In the absence of thought-coverings he has not been made to tremble, he has overcome what can upset, and in the end he attains to nirvana.
Remember, that “therefore” is always an indication that Buddha is going on looking into Sariputra’s nothingness – as he goes on feeling that his energies are relaxing, that his energies are no longer in turmoil, that he is not brooding but listening, that he is not thinking but is just there with Buddha, present, open, available. That “therefore” indicates to that unfoldment of Sariputra’s being. Buddha is seeing more and more petals are opening so he can go a step further, so he can take Sariputra a little deeper. Sariputra is available.
This “therefore” is not logical, this “therefore” is existential. Looking into Buddha, Sariputra is unfolding. And looking into Sariputra, Buddha is ready to take him a little further toward the beyond. Each statement is going deeper and higher.
Therefore, O Sariputra, it is because of his non-attainmentness that a bodhisattva, through having relied on the perfection of wisdom, dwells without thought-coverings. Each single word has to be meditated upon – not concentrated on, mind you, but meditated upon; listened to, looked into, not contemplated, not thought about. These things are higher than thought, bigger than thought. Thought is silly in these realms.
First he says: …it is because of his non-attainmentness… Meditation cannot be attained, because meditation cannot have a motive. When you attain something you attain through a motive. When you attain something you always have to work for the future and plan for the future. You cannot attain anything right now – except meditation. Let me repeat it: you cannot attain anything right now, except meditation. Why? If you want money you cannot attain it right now, you will have to work hard for it; legally, illegally, but you will have to work for it.
There are slow ways, you may become a businessman; and there are faster ways, you may become a politician – but you will have to do something. Slow or fast, but time will be needed. Time is a must. Without time you cannot attain money. If there is no time, how can you attain in this very moment? Even if you want to rob a neighbor, even if you want to pick the pocket of the person who is sitting by your side, that will take time. Time is a must. If you want to become famous, time will be needed. If you want to become politically powerful, time will be needed.
Only meditation can be attained right now, this very moment, instantaneously. Why? – because it is your nature. Why? – because it is already there. You have not claimed it, that’s right; but it remains there, unclaimed. You can claim it right now. Not even a single moment has to be lost.
…it is because of his non-attainmentness… Nirvana is nothing but meditation come to a full circle. God is nothing but the bud of meditation become a flower.
These are not attainments, these are your very realities. You can go on overlooking them for ages, neglecting them for ages, but you cannot lose them; they are there, just sitting inside you. Any day you close your eyes and look you will start laughing. You have been searching for this blessing, and searching in wrong places. You were searching for this security that comes out of nothingness, but you were searching in money, bank balances, this and that. And it never happened through that. It cannot happen through that. Nothing outside you can make your life secure. The outside is insecure; how can it make your life secure? The government cannot make your life secure because the government itself is insecure – a revolution may be coming. The bank cannot make your life secure because the bank may go bankrupt. Only banks can go bankrupt, what else? The woman that you love cannot make your life secure – she may fall in love with somebody else. The man that you love cannot make your life secure – he may die.
All these things remain there. So the more you have securities outside the more insecure you become, because then you are afraid of the bank going bankrupt. If you don’t have any account you don’t care; let it go bankrupt any day. But if you have a bank account there then you are worried. Then you have attained to one more insecurity: the possibility of the bank going bankrupt. Now you cannot sleep because you go on thinking about what is going to happen.
If you have put your trust in anything outside, it creates more insecurity. That’s why the richer a person becomes, the more insecure. And I am not in favor of poverty, remember. I am not saying be poor. Poverty has nothing holy in it. And I am not saying that the poor person is secure; he has his insecurities. The rich man has his insecurities; of course the rich man’s insecurities are more complex and the poor man’s insecurities are simple, but the insecurities are there. And I’m not saying that to be poor is something very special, or that to be poor is something very important and significant, or that you can brag that you are poor.
To be poor has nothing to do with spirituality. Neither has being rich anything to do with spirituality. Those are irrelevant facts. The poor also looks outside as much as the rich. Maybe the poor has only a bullock cart and the rich has a Cadillac, but that doesn’t matter. The bullock cart is as much outside as the Cadillac; both look outside. The rich may have many bank accounts, and the poor may have just a small purse or may have a little money saved, but that doesn’t matter – both look outside.
Security is on the inward path, because there you come to know that there is nobody to die, that there is nobody to suffer, that there is nothing that can happen, that there is pure sky. Clouds come and go, and the sky abides. Lives come and go, forms come and go, but the nothingness abides.
This nothingness is already there. That’s why Buddha says it can be attained only when you understand that it is nonattainable. It can be attained only when you understand the basic fact: that it is already there, that it is already the case.
This emptiness that is there is not in any way to be evolved, developed. It is fully there. Hence it can be attained in a single moment. Buddha calls it “full emptiness,” because emptiness can only be full if it is there. If it is not full, that means something other than the emptiness is also there, and that something else will hamper, obstruct, and that something else will create a duality, and that something else will create a friction, and that something else will create tension, and that something else will create anxiety – you cannot be at ease with “something else.”
Emptiness is there only when it is full, when all obstructions have been dropped, when you don’t have anything inside, when nobody is there to be an observer to it. Buddha says: “This emptiness is not even an experience, because if you experience it that means you were there to experience it.” It is you, so you cannot experience it. You can experience only something that is not you. Experience means duality – the observer and the observed, the knower and the known, the subject and the object, the seer and the seen. But there is only emptiness, nobody to see it, nobody to be seen, nothing as an object, nothing as a subject. This nondual emptiness is full. It is utterly full. Its fullness cannot be refined, its fullness cannot be added to. Nothing can be taken out of it because there is nothing, and nothing can be added to it; it is utterly full.
“Full emptiness” is not an experience, because there is no experiencer in it. Hence, Buddha says: “Spirituality is not an experience. God cannot be experienced.” Those who say, “I have experienced God,” either don’t understand what they are saying or they are using a very, very inadequate language. You cannot experience God. In that experience you are not found. The experience is there, but the experiencer is not there – so you cannot claim it as an experience. So, whenever somebody asked Buddha, “Have you experienced God?” he kept quiet; he did not say a single word. He immediately changed the subject, he started talking about something else.
Whenever it was asked, his whole life, he consistently remained silent. Many people thought that he had not experienced God; that’s why he kept quiet. But he’s the only person who has not said anything – negative or positive. And it is not because he has not experienced. He has experienced, but it cannot be talked of as an experience; that’s why he keeps quiet. That’s why Jesus remained silent when Pontius Pilate asked, “What is truth?”
J. Krishnamurti makes a very subtle distinction between experience and experiencing, and that is a beautiful distinction: he says, “It is an experiencing, not an experience.” It is a process, not a thing. It is alive, not dead. It is ongoing, not finished. You enter into God, and then it is an ongoing phenomenon: it goes on and on and on for eternity; you never come out of it. It is an experiencing, an alive process – like a river, like a flower opening and opening and opening, and going on opening. And there never comes any end to it.
To say that one has experienced God is stupid, cheap and silly. To say that one has attained moksha, nirvana, truth, is not very meaningful, because these are things which cannot be categorized as attainments.
So Buddha says: Therefore, O Sariputra, it is because of his non-attainmentness… When the mind has come to a stop and is no longer interested in attaining anything, then it attains buddhahood. When the mind has come to a full stop and is not going anywhere, it starts going inward, it starts falling into one’s own being, that abysmal abyss. Full emptiness is attained by a non-attainmentness. So don’t become achievers, don’t start thinking in terms of achievement – that you have to achieve this and that, that you have to attain godliness. These are games; the mind is again deceiving you. The name of the game changes but the game, the subtle game, remains the same.
…that a bodhisattva attains through non-attainmentness, through having relied on the perfection of wisdom… This is a very, very significant statement. Buddha says: “One should rely on nothing whatsoever.” Now this is against the ordinary Buddhist religion, because the ordinary Buddhist religion has three fundamental refuges: Buddham sharanam gachchhami, sangam sharanam gachchhami, dhammam sharanam gachchhami. When the disciple comes to Buddha, he bows down to him, surrenders to him and says, “I take refuge in the Buddha – buddham sharanam gachchhami.” “I take refuge in the community of the Buddha – sangam sharanam gachchhami.” “I take refuge in the law taught by the Buddha – dhammam sharanam gachchhami.” And Buddha says here that one should not rely on anything; there is no refuge, nowhere any shelter.
This Heart Sutra has been called the soul of Buddhism, and the church of Buddha has been called the body. Those three refuges are for the very ordinary mind which is in search of some shelter, some prop, some support. These statements are for the highest soul – one who has come to the sixth, and is just hanging between the sixth and the seventh, just a little push…
Therefore, O Sariputra… It has been said that the first sermon of Buddha, which is called the Sermon of the Turning of the Wheel of Religion, Dhamma Chakrapravatan Sutra – that was his first sermon, near Varanasi – created the so-called ordinary religion, for the ordinary masses. In that sermon he declares, “Come and take refuge in Buddha; come and take refuge in the law taught by the Buddha; come and take refuge in the community, in the commune of the Buddha.”
After twenty years he declares this second dispensation. He took twenty years to bring a few people to the highest possibility. This is called the second most important sermon. The first was in Saranath, near Varanasi, when he told people, “Come and take refuge in me. I have attained! Come and take refuge in me. I have reached! Come and partake of me. I have arrived! Come and follow me.” That was for the ordinary mind; it is natural. Buddha could not have declared the Heart Sutra; the masses would not have been able to understand.
Then he worked for twenty years with his disciples. Now Sariputra is coming very close. Because of that closeness, he says:
Therefore, O Sariputra… “Now I can say it to you. I can say to you that having relied on the perfection of wisdom…” Only on one thing does one have to rely, and that is meditation. Only on one thing does one have to rely, and that is awareness, attentiveness. Only on one thing does one have to rely, that is one’s own inner source, being. Everything else has to be dropped, all refuges.
Through having relied on nothing but the perfection of meditation, what one has to do is not to rely on anything, worldly or otherwise, to let it all go, to give the resulting emptiness a free run, unobstructed by any for-or-against attitude, to stop relying on anything, to seek nowhere any refuge or support – that is the real renunciation.
Our separate self is a spurious reality which can maintain itself only by finding supports or props on which to lean or rely. To go for refuge to the three treasures is the central act of the Buddhist religion – refuge in the Buddha, refuge in the sangha, refuge in the dhamma. Here Buddha refutes that. It is not contradictory. He simply says that which you can understand. In my assertions you will find a thousand and one contradictions, because they have been in reference to different people. The more you will grow, different assertions will be made by me because my assertions are a response to you. I am not talking to the walls. I am talking to you, and I can give only that much which you can receive. The higher your consciousness, the deeper your consciousness, different things will be stated by me.
Naturally, those different statements will be very contradictory. If one goes for a logical consistency, he will not find any. You cannot find any logical consistency in Buddha’s statements. That’s why, the day Buddha died, Buddhism was divided into thirty-six schools. The exact day he died, and the disciples were divided into thirty-six schools.
What happened? – because he had been making so many statements to different people, because of their different consciousness and understanding, they all started quarreling and fighting. They said, “This has been said to me by Buddha!” Just think: the first five disciples, to whom he had said, “I have attained, now come to me and I will take you there”… If those first disciples met Sariputra and Sariputra said, “It is attained through a kind of non-attainmentness. One who declares that he has attained is wrong, because it cannot be attained,” what would those first disciples have said? They would have said, “What are you talking about? We are the oldest disciples, the seniormost, and this was the first statement that Buddha has made to us: ‘I have attained!’ In fact we would have never followed him if he had not declared that. Because he declared it, we followed him. Our motive was clear: that he had attained, we also wanted to attain; that’s why we followed him. And he said to us, ‘I am your refuge. Come and take refuge in me. Let me be your shelter.’ And what nonsense are you talking about? Buddha could not have said this. You must have misunderstood. Something has gone wrong, or you have fabricated it.”
Now this statement, this Heart Sutra, was made in privacy. It was said to Sariputra, it was specifically addressed to Sariputra. It is like a letter. Sariputra cannot produce any proofs, because in those days tape recorders were not in existence. He can simply say, he can take an oath: “I am not saying anything untrue. Buddha has said to me, ‘Rely only on your meditation and nothing else.’”
The mind that relies on something else is the spurious self, the ego. The ego cannot exist without props, it wants props. Something has to support it. Once all props have been removed, the ego falls to the ground and disappears. But only when the ego falls to the ground does that consciousness arise in you which is eternal, which is timeless, deathless.
Here, Buddha says: “There is no refuge, Sariputra. There is no remedy, Sariputra. There is nothing and nowhere to go. You are already there.”
If you reach into this full-emptiness unprepared, it will give you a great trembling. If you are thrown into it by somebody… For example, sometimes people come to me with deep love and respect; they say, “Osho, why don’t you push me a little harder?” If you are not ready for it and you are pushed into it, it is not going to help. It may hinder your progress for many lives to come. Once you have gone into that nothingness unprepared you will be so shocked, so frightened, so scared to death, that never again, for at least a few lives, will you come to any person who talks about nothingness, who talks about godliness. You will avoid. That fear will become a seed in you.
No, you cannot be pushed unprepared. You can be pushed only slowly, slowly, only in the same proportion as you are prepared.
Have you heard the famous statement of Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, the founder of modern existentialism? He says, “Man is a trembling, constant trembling.” Why? – because death is there. Why? – because the fear is there: “One day I may not be.”
This is true about the ordinary mind: everybody is trembling. The problem is always, “To be or not to be.” Death is always hanging there. You cannot conceive of yourself disappearing into nothingness; it hurts, it frightens. And if you look deep inside yourself, you will find yourself trembling with the idea of being nothing. You want to be, you want to remain, you want to persist. You want to persist forever. That’s why people who don’t know anything about their inner being go on believing that the soul is immortal; not because they know, but because of fear. Because of that trembling they have to believe that the soul is immortal. That is a kind of wish fulfillment.
So any idiot who is talking about the immortality of the soul will appeal to you. You will get hooked. Not that you have understood what he is saying – he may not have understood himself – but it will be very appealing. In India people believe in the immortality of the soul, and you cannot find more cowardly people anywhere else. For one thousand years they remained slaves, slaves to very small countries. Anybody who came to India conquered it with no difficulty at all. It was so simple. And these are the people who believe in the immortality of the soul. In fact, a country that believes in the immortality of the soul cannot be conquered at all, because nobody will be afraid to die. How can you conquer a person who is not afraid to die? They would have all died, but they would not have yielded to any kind of submission, they could not have yielded to any conqueror. But for one thousand years, India remained a slave. It remained a slave very easily.
England is a very small country, there are a few districts in India which are bigger. England could rule over this big country easily; it was not difficult. Why? And these people believed that the soul is immortal! But the belief is not their experience, the belief is out of fear. Then everything is explained. These are cowardly people, afraid, afraid to die; hence they cling to the idea that the soul is immortal. Not that they know, not that they have experienced; they have never experienced anything like that, they have only experienced the death that surrounds. They are so afraid because of death. So on the one hand they go on believing in the immortality of the soul; on the other hand, anybody can torture them and they are ready to submit and touch the feet.
It is out of fear that man believes in immortality. It is out of fear that man believes in God. It is out of trembling. Søren Kierkegaard is right about the ordinary mind.
Another existentialist philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, says: “Man is condemned to be free.” Why “condemned”? Why this ugly word condemned? Freedom – is it a kind of condemnation? Yes, for the ordinary mind it is, because freedom means danger. Freedom means you cannot rely on anything, you have to rely only on yourself. Freedom means all props have been taken away, all supports disappear. Freedom basically means nothingness. You are free only when you are nothing.
Listen to what Sartre says: “Man, as freedom, becomes anguish.” Anguish? Out of freedom? Yes, if you are not ready for it, if you are not prepared to go into it, it is anguish. Nobody wants to be free, notwithstanding what people go on saying. Nobody wants to be free. People want to be slaves because in slavery the responsibility can be thrown on somebody else. You are never responsible, you are just a slave: what can you do? You did only that which was ordered.
But when you are free, you are afraid. Responsibility arises. Each act, and you feel responsible: if you do this, this may happen; or if you do the other thing, then something else may happen. Then choice is yours, and choice creates trembling. And Jean-Paul Sartre is right about the ordinary mind: freedom creates anguish.
He says, “Man is condemned to be free,” because freedom creates dread. It is dreadful freedom. Nothing can guarantee me against myself when I am free. There is no value given to me in which I can take shelter. I have to create those values myself. I decide the meaning of myself and my universe, alone, unjustifiable, and without excuse. I am one unveiling of freedom, you are another. My freedom is a constant unveiling of my being, so is yours. Our uniqueness consists in the fact that each of us does this in his own way.
But Sartre thinks freedom creates anguish, and freedom is a kind of condemnation, a curse. And Kierkegaard says, “Man is a constant trembling.” And Buddha wants you to go into this freedom, into this nothingness. Naturally, you have to be prepared for it.
Sariputra is ready now.
Therefore, O Sariputra,
it is because of his non-attainmentness that a bodhisattva,
through having relied on the perfection of wisdom,
dwells without thought-coverings.
In the absence of thought-coverings
he has not been made to tremble,
he has overcome what can upset,
and in the end he attains to nirvana.
…he has overcome what can upset… and he has no trembling in this nothingness.
It looks almost impossible to the ordinary mind: how can you remain without trembling when you are disappearing? When you are melting into the unknown how can you remain unscared? How can you manage not to escape? How can you manage not to start finding props and shelters and supports so that you can again create that feeling of being the ego, the self?
That’s why Buddha had to wait for twenty years. And then, too, he stated this truth to Sariputra in a personal dialogue, not as a public sermon. And if people did not believe Sariputra, they are also right because Buddha had been saying something else to them.
Remember this about me! Remember this: my statements are contradictory because they are made to different people, they are made to different consciousnesses. And the more you grow, the more I will be contradictory; the more I will have to refute what I have said before because it will no longer be relevant to you. With your growing consciousness I will have to respond in a different way. Each turn in your consciousness will be a turn in my statements. And when I am gone don’t create thirty-six schools – because thirty-six won’t do!
Nothingness brings freedom. Freedom from the self is the ultimate freedom. There is no freedom higher than that. Nothingness is freedom. And it is not anguish, as Jean-Paul Sartre says, and it is not trembling, as Kierkegaard says. It is benediction, it is the ultimate bliss. It is not trembling because there is nobody to tremble.
Meditation prepares you for that, because as you enter into meditation you find less and less of yourself every day. And the less you find yourself, in the same proportion grow your blessings, your benediction, your blissfulness. Slowly, slowly, you learn the mathematics of the inner world – that the more you are, the more in hell; the less you are, the more in heaven. The day you are not, it is nirvana; the ultimate home has arrived. You have come full circle, you have become a child again. There is no self any more.
Remember, freedom does not mean the freedom of the self. Freedom means: freedom from the self. To Sartre it means “freedom of the self.” That’s why it feels like a condemnation; the self remains. It becomes free, but it remains and that’s why there is fear.
If freedom is such that the self has disappeared in it, and there is only freedom and nobody free, then who can tremble, and who can feel the anguish, and who can feel condemned? Then there is no question of choice; that freedom acts on its own. One acts out of choicelessness, and there is no responsibility left – because there is nobody who can feel any responsibility. Nothingness acts. Wei-wu-wei – non-action acts. It is a response between the inner nothingness and the outer nothingness, and there is nothing obstructing.
…it is because of his non-attainmentness that a bodhisattva, through having relied on the perfection of wisdom – alone – dwells without thought-coverings. Now there is no thought-covering. And thought-covering is the barrier that divides you from the outer nothingness. That’s what I was saying last night to Neelamber, the ex-Mark that I talked about yesterday.
Yesterday evening he entered into sannyas; he became Neelamber. Neelamber means blue sky. What is dividing the outer sky from the inner sky? Your thought-coverings. Those are the clothes that don’t allow your nudity to be in touch with the sky, your nude being to be bridged with the sky. The thought that you are a Hindu, the thought that you are a Christian, the thought that you are a Communist or a Fascist, divides. The thought that you are beautiful or ugly divides. The thought that you are intelligent or unintelligent divides. Any kind of thought – and the division. And you have millions of thoughts. You will have to peel yourself like you peel an onion, covering after covering. You peel one cover, another layer is there; peel it, another layer is there. And naturally when you peel an onion tears come to the eyes; it is painful. When you start uncovering your being, it is more painful. It is not like taking your clothes off, it is like taking your skin off.
But if you go on peeling, one day you come to when the whole onion has disappeared and only nothingness is left in your hands. That nothingness is bliss.
Buddha says a bodhisattva …dwells without thought-coverings. He is here, but he is nobody; he is here, but he has no ideas; he is here, but he has no thoughts. Not that he cannot use thoughts: I go on using thoughts continuously. I am talking to you right now, I have to use the mind and thoughts – but they don’t cover me. They are by the side. Whenever I need, I use them. Whenever I am not using them, they are not there – my inner sky and the outer sky are one. And even while I am using them I know that they cannot divide me. They are instrumental, you can use them, but you are not in any way covered by them.
…dwells without thought-coverings. Buddha says there are three kinds of thought-coverings. The first is karma averna – incomplete acts. Untotal acts cover your being. Each act wants to be completed. There is an intrinsic urge in everything to complete itself. Whenever you allow some act to hang around you incomplete, it covers you: karma averna, karma that covers you.
The second is klesas averna. Greed, hate, jealousy and things like that: they are called klesas, impurities; they cover you.
Have you seen it? An angry person remains almost always angry – sometimes less, sometimes more, but angry all the same. He is ready to jump upon anything. He is ready, with any excuse, to go into rage. He is boiling within. And so is the jealous person: the jealous person goes on searching to find something about which he or she can be jealous. The jealous wife goes on looking in the pockets of the husband to see if she can find something, in his letters, in his files to see if she can find something.
Whenever Mulla Nasruddin comes home there is a fight, for something or the other. His wife is such a great searcher that she always finds something or other. A phone number in his diary, and she becomes suspicious. A hair on his coat, and she goes into a great investigation – where has this hair come from?
One day she could not find anything, not even a hair. Mulla had done everything that day; she still started crying and weeping.
And Mulla said, “Now what is the matter? Not even a single hair have you been able to find on my coat…?”
She said, “That’s why I’m crying. So now you have started going with bald women!”
It is very difficult, really, to find a bald woman, but that is the mind of a jealous person. These are coverings. Buddha calls them klesas, impurities; the egoist is always in search of something to either brag about or to feel hurt about. The possessive person is always in search of finding something so that he can show his possessiveness, or in finding something negative so that he can fight for it.
People go on – and I’m not talking about others, I am talking about you. Just watch your mind, watch what you go on searching for. Watch your mind for twenty-four hours and you will come across all these coverings, avarnas.
There are either incomplete acts, or impurities; or, the third is called ghaya avarnas – beliefs, opinions, ideologies, knowledge coverings. They don’t allow you to know, they don’t give you enough space to see. These three coverings have to be dropped.
When these three coverings are dropped, then one dwells in nothingness. That word dwelling is also to be understood.
Buddha says: “He dwells in nothingness.” It is his home, nothingness is his home. He dwells in it, it is a dwelling. He loves it, he is utterly in tune with it. It is not alien, he does not feel like an outsider there. And he does not feel like he’s staying in a hotel and tomorrow he will have to leave it. It is his dwelling. When thought-coverings have been dropped, nothingness is your home. You are in utter harmony with it.
Kierkegaard and Sartre have never been there. They have only speculated about it. They only think about it, about how it will be. That’s why Kierkegaard feels trembling. He simply thinks, as you think…
Just think how it will be when you die, and you will be put on a funeral pyre, and you will be finished forever. And then you will not be able to see these beautiful trees, these beautiful people, and you will not laugh again, and you will not love again, and you will not see the stars. And the world will continue, and you will not be here at all. Can’t you feel a shivering? Can’t you feel a trembling? All will continue – the birds will sing and the sun will rise and the oceans will roar and some eagle will go on and on flying higher and higher, and the flowers will be there and their fragrance, and the fragrance of the wet earth – all that will be there. And suddenly one day you will not be, and your body will be dead. This beautiful body that you have been living with and you have been taking so much care of: it was ill and you were disturbed and one day it will be so useless that the people who had loved it, the same people, will take it to a funeral pyre and set it on fire. Just visualize it. Speculate, and trembling comes.
Kierkegaard must have speculated about it. He must have been a very fear-oriented person. A story is told about him that he was a rich man’s son: the father died; he had left Kierkegaard enough money so he never worked, he continuously contemplated. He could easily afford it; there was nothing to do. He had enough money in the bank. The first day of every month he would go to the bank – that was his whole work – to take some money. And then he would live and meditate. In his sense of meditation it means contemplation, brooding, thinking. That’s what the English word meditation means. It is not a right translation for dhyana.
When people come to me and I tell them to meditate they say, “On what?” The English word means meditating upon something, some object. The Indian word dhyana means being in it, not meditating on something. It is a state, not an activity.
So he would contemplate and think, and brood and philosophize. It is said that he fell in love with a beautiful woman, but could not decide to marry or not to marry. The very phenomenon of love became a trembling in him. For three years he brooded over it, and finally he decided not to marry. And he was in love. His whole life he could not forget the woman, his whole life he felt miserable for the woman. The woman was in love, he was in love; still he decided not to marry. Why? – because the very idea of love created trembling in him.
Love is a kind of death. If you really love a person you die in him, you disappear in him.
When you make love… I have to use this word make – it is not right, but no language is really right. So remember, I have to use words with all their limitations. Love cannot be made. “Making love” is a wrong expression: it happens. But when it happens, when you are in a loving space with somebody, fear comes because you are disappearing. That’s why very, very many people, millions of people, never attain to orgasm, because orgasm is a death.
And Kierkegaard was so much in love that he became afraid that he may lose himself in this woman. That fear was too much. He dropped the idea. He refused, he would not marry; he suffered for his whole life – that he accepted – but because of fear… He was a fear-oriented person.
He lived perfectly well, doing nothing, just philosophizing. And there is a very strange anecdote of the day he died. He died when he was coming from the bank. It was the first day of some month; he was coming from the bank, taking his money, but this was the last money. He died on the road. It is thought that he died out of fear, because now no more money was left in the bank. He was perfectly healthy, he was not ill, there was no reason for him to die so suddenly. But coming from the bank – and the bank manager had said, “This is the last; your money is finished” – he could not reach his home. He died on the road.
He could not have experienced the nothingness Buddha is talking about. He must have only thought about it – hence, the fear. And Jean-Paul Sartre also has not been in that space called meditation. He is not a meditator; he is again a thinker, and utterly Western. He has not known the Eastern way to go in. Hence freedom looks like a condemnation, and freedom looks like anguish.
The truth is just the opposite. If you go into freedom, into nothingness, there is bliss. If you go into that utter death called love, there is satori, samadhi. Buddha says: “He dwells in that nothingness, it is his house.” It is not anguish, it is not trembling, it is not a condemnation. He dwells there. It is his home.
…he has not been made to tremble, he has overcome what can upset, and in the end he attains to nirvana. Buddha does not say anything else. He says: “Go into this state of nothingness, then nirvana is a natural outcome. In the end it comes on its own accord.” You need not worry about it; you cannot do anything about it in the first place. You just go into this nothingness, and then nothingness starts growing, growing, becomes vaster and vaster, and one day becomes your whole existence. Then there is nirvana – you have ceased to be. You have disappeared into the universe.
Somebody asked Buddha, “When you are gone and you will never be coming into the body again, what will happen to you?”
And he said, “I will disappear into existence. If you taste existence, you will taste me.”
And yes, that is true: if you taste existence you will taste all the buddhas – Krishna, Christ, Buddha, Mahavira, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Kabir, Nanak. You will taste all the buddhas. The day you enter into that nothingness, you will be welcomed by all the buddhas. The whole existence is throbbing with buddhahood because so many buddhas have disappeared into it. They have raised the very level of existence.
You are fortunate, because before you so many buddhas have entered into existence. When you go there, you will not be unwelcome.
All those who appear as buddhas
in the three periods of time
fully awake to the utmost, right and perfect enlightenment
because they have relied on the perfection of wisdom.
The only refuge is the perfection of wisdom, the perfection of meditation. In the past it has been so, in the present it is so, in the future it will be so. Anybody who becomes a buddha becomes one through meditation. Take refuge in meditation. Take refuge in nothingness.
Enough for today.