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

CHAPTER 6. THE DISCIPLE IS THE SEEDManeesha, listening to these dialogues and anecdotes, the more important thing should not beforgotten. This is not a school or a university. You are not here learning any knowledge. Youare being transformed, awakened. All these sutras are meant only to wake you up, to catch yourattention – which is vibrating continuously, moving around thousands of things – to make it absolutelyhere is the whole purpose of all these sutras.This is possible only if you are only listening and not interpreting, listening and not makingjudgments, listening and not saying, ”Yes, this is right; no, this is not right...” You don’t have tosay anything. That is not the point of the whole process. The point is that you can be just a listenerwithout any judgment. That prepares you for your meditation.Maneesha has brought these dialogues,ONCE A TAOIST... In the first place nobody can be a Taoist. Tao is neither a religion nora philosophy. It is simply the purest understanding of meditation where everything disappears,including you. Then what remains is Tao. Buddha will call it dhamma; you can call it truth,consciousness, beauty. But all these words denote one oceanic feeling of awareness in whichyou are not separate from the cosmos. But the difficulty with man is, he makes everything into anism.So when Lao Tzu died, people started making an ism. And his whole life he had been teaching thatthere is no ism, no philosophy, no theory. You have to drop all these mind activities. You have toattain to a silent and empty space. That is Tao.Nobody can be a Taoist, so from the very beginning, we know that the questions are going to bewrong. Of course you can answer rightly to wrong questions – and that’s what Hyakujo is going todo.ONCE A TAOIST, HAPPENING TO PASS BY HYAKUJO’S MONASTERY, ASKED, ”IS THEREANYTHING IN THE WORLD MORE MARVELOUS THAN THE FORCES OF NATURE?”HYAKUJO REPLIED, ”THERE IS.”But being a follower of a certain dogma, his eyes are as blind as any Hindu, any Mohammedan, anyChristian’s eyes are. He could not understand that there could be ANYTHING MORE MARVELOUSTHAN THE FORCES OF NATURE. He is forgetting himself completely. Anybody could have saidthat the seer is far more marvelous than the seen. The knower is more marvelous than the known,because the known is just an object. The knower shows a different quality of consciousness. He isalive, not only alive, but consciously alive.”AND WHAT IS THAT?” THE TAOIST INQUIRED.HYAKUJO SAID, ”THE POWER OF comprehending THOSE NATURAL FORCES.”What I have said to you, the seer, the witness, the watcher – that’s what Hyakujo is calling the powerof comprehending the natural forces. That is more marvelous. That is the ultimate splendor.THE VISITOR ASKED, ”IS COSMIC VITALITY THE TAO?”Hyakujo: The Everest of Zen, with Basho’s Haikus 90 Osho