Hyakujo: The Everest of Zen, with Basho's Haikus - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 9. THE BUDDHA IS YOUR EMPTY HEARTWhat is enough, what is needed is that the successor should be able to say it. His whole life will bedevoted to teaching people, to provoking people, to challenging people to get it. If he cannot say it,how can he be a successor?A successor has to be a master. You are all mystics but none of you is capable of being a successor,a master. This will help you to understand. The mystic is one who can experience, but is notarticulate enough that through some gestures, some device he can manage to convey it to others.Out of a hundred mystics perhaps one is a master, because the task is immensely difficult. To say itperhaps is the most impossible thing in the world. You can go roundabout, you can bring the personto the experience by creating false devices, but you cannot say it. Those false devices needs a veryarticulate craftsman – a master who knows that even lies can be used to indicate the truth. Hyakujosaid, ”Perhaps I will not have any successors.”A little biographical note:ALL THAT IS KNOWN ABOUT HYAKUJO’S LAST DAYS IS THAT ONCE, WHEN HE WASGETTING RATHER OLD AND FEEBLE, HIS MONKS TRIED TO PERSUADE HIM NOT TO WORK,BUT THEIR WORDS HAD NO EFFECT ON HIM.FEARING FOR HIS HEALTH, THEY FINALLY RESORTED TO HIDING HIS WORKING TOOLSFROM HIM. BUT HYAKUJO REFUSED TO EAT, FOLLOWING HIS OWN PRECEPT OF: ”A DAYWITHOUT WORK IS A DAY WITHOUT FOOD.” FINALLY, HIS MONKS RETURNED HIS TOOLS.HYAKUJO DIED IN 814 AT THE AGE OF 90.He did not choose anyone as a successor. He left it to the assembly to find out a successor. So theassembly of the sannyasins nominated a successor. This nomination is just like nominating a pope;he is not authentically a successor. And nobody even objects to the very idea of how unenlightenedpeople can elect the successor of Jesus Christ, who is the representative of God.Two hundred cardinals come to the Vatican when one pope dies. There is a special place for thesetwo hundred cardinals – small caves in absolute secrecy. Everybody goes into a cave, differentcaves. Nobody is allowed to talk to each other, or confer with each other about whom to choose.Twenty-four hours are given and everybody meditates. I don’t know how they meditate, because Ihave not come across any bishop or cardinal... I have met these people and none of them knowshow to meditate.What they call meditation is contemplation. They contemplate over who will be the right personout of two hundred. So they write down the name, and after twenty-four hours those names arecollected. Whoever is chosen by the majority becomes the pope. Of all these two hundred cardinalsnone of them is enlightened, so it is simply a political election.As for becoming a successor to a master, it cannot be an election, it can only be a transmission ofthe lamp. Only the master can choose. But it was a strange situation because the master refused toaccept the most intimate three followers. This shows something special about Zen – that it will notchoose anything less than the best.I am reminded of another choosing of the successor by Bodhidharma....Hyakujo: The Everest of Zen, with Basho’s Haikus 125 Osho