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

CHAPTER 4. LIE DOWN AND WITNESSWhen a man kills a lion, they call it a game. And when a lion kills a man, they call it a disaster. Whydo you change the word? In a game both the parties should be respected equally. For thousand ofyears man has been hunting without even bothering that he is destroying life. We are part of thatsame life. It is almost like destroying one’s own hand or one’s own eyes. Those animals are part ofthe cosmic whole just as we are. But the blindness of man can do both the things together. He can’tsee the so obvious contradiction that the worshipped cannot be hunted. And if you are hunting, youknow perfectly well, your worship is just phony.Do you think even for a moment that you can go hunting for God? Searching for God is okay,but hunting for God? I have never heard that expression before. But that’s what you have beendoing. First you make these animals gods and then you go hunting them. And you don’t see thecontradiction. Your consciousness is also very superficial.This museum of gods will provoke great criticism around the world. So many cases are bound to beforced on me, but I love to fight for unpopular causes. Who cares about animals? Who bothers thatmuch to go to the court and to fight for them? I am not only fighting for the animals that they shouldnot be worshipped, but that they should be respected and loved. They are our common brothers andsisters. We share the same existence. We should give them the dignity that belongs to them. Andwe should not destroy our dignity. But the priests want us not to be dignified. They want us to beas undignified and as great sinners as possible, because that makes them saints, and that makesthem mediators between God and you.The fish in the Hindu mythology is the first reincarnation of God. Why does God go on choosingsuch reincarnations? – and nobody ever thinks about these incarnations. Each incarnation hascommitted so many crimes that it is out of the question to worship them. They should simply belisted on the criminal records.You cannot believe... One Hindu god, Parasuram... His name became Parasuram because parasuis a special kind of sword, very heavy. In a single blow it takes away the head. Parasuram carriedthis sword continuously. He killed as many people single-handedly as perhaps anybody has killed.He killed his own mother because of an old suspicious father. The father was suspicious that themother was having some love affair, and of course, when the father orders...Obedience has been proclaimed a fundamental virtue by all religions. The father orderedParasuram, ”Go immediately and cut the head of that woman.” And it was only a suspicion, noevidence, no witness. It may have been just an idea in his mind. And my feeling is, it was just hismind because he was getting very old, and his wife was very young compared to him.Old people who become inadequate start becoming suspicious about everything. But Parasuramdid not even ask, ”Let us first investigate the case.” Just because he did not ask the question, butimmediately went and cut the mother’s head and brought it to the father’s feet, he is recognized asGod’s incarnation – for his great obedience.That was the beginning of his great journey of violence. He was a brahmin, and the suspicionwas that the mother was having an affair with a warrior, a chhatriya. Not knowing who the manwas, he decided to destroy all the warriors on the earth. Such a strange violent mind: because hedoes not know who is the right person to be killed, he kills the whole category, millions of warriors,single-handedly. He was a great warrior, there is no question about it.Hyakujo: The Everest of Zen, with Basho’s Haikus 57 Osho