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Part VII : Discourses: The Classic of Purity
The Classic of Purity is one of the most profound insights into
nature. I call it an insight, not a doctrine, not a philosophy,
not a religion, because it is not intellectual at all; it is existential.
The man who is speaking in it is not speaking as a mind, he is
not speaking as himself either; he is just an empty passage for
existence itself to say something through him.
That's how the great mystics have always lived and spoken. These
are not their own words—they are no more. they have disappeared
long before; it is the whole pouring through them. Their expressions
may be different, but the source is the same. The words of Jesus,
Zarathustra, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Krishna, Mohammed are not ordinary
words; they are not coming from their memory, they are coming
from their experience. They have touched the divine, and the moment
you touch the divine you evaporate, you cannot exist any more.
You have to die for God to be.
This is a Taoist insight….
This profound insight is also one of the smallest treatises
ever written. It is so condensed—it is as if millions of
roses have been condensed in a drop of perfume. That's the ancient
way of expressing truth: because books were not in existence,
people had to remember it.
It is said that this is the first mystic treatise ever written
down as a book. It is not much of a book, not more than one and
a half pages, but it existed for thousands of years before it
was written. It existed through private and personal communion.
That has been always the most significant way to transmit truth.
To write it down makes it more difficult because then one never
knows who will be reading it; it loses all personal contact and
touch.
In Egypt, in India, in China, in all the ancient civilizations,
for thousands of years the mystic message was carried from one
person to another, from the Master to the disciple. And the Master
would say these things only when the disciple was ready, or he
would say only as much as the disciple could digest. Otherwise
words can also produce diarrhea they certainly do produce it—our
century suffers very much from it. All the mystics for centuries
resisted writing down their insights.
This was the first treatise ever written; that's its significance.
It marks a certain change in human consciousness, a change which
was going to prove of great importance later on because even though
it is beautiful to commune directly, person to person, the message
cannot reach many people; many are bound to miss. Yes, it will
not fall in the wrong hands, but many right hands will also remain
empty. And one should think more of the right hands than of the
wrong hands. The wrong people are going to be wrong whether some
profound insight falls in their hands or not, but the right people
will be missing something which can transform their being.
Ko Hsuan, who wrote this small treatise, marks a milestone in
the consciousness of humanity. He understood the significance
of the written word, knowing all its dangers. In the preface he
writes: "Before writing down these words I contemplated ten
thousand times whether to write or not, because I was taking a
dangerous step." Nobody had gathered that much courage before.
Ko Hsuan was preceded by Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu. Even they
had not written anything; their message was remembered by their
disciples. It was only written after Ko Hsuan took the dangerous
step. But he also says, "Ten thousand times I contemplated,"
because it is no ordinary matter. Up to that moment in history
no Master had ever dared to write anything down, just to avoid
the wrong people….
Ko Hsuan is simply writing it, remember it; he is not the creator
of the treatise. He has also experienced the same truth because
the truth is always the same whoever experiences it. Whenever
one experiences it it is always the same, it does not change;
time makes no difference. But what he is saying has been transferred
by word of mouth for centuries, maybe for thousands of years.
That's why we don't exactly know whose words they are. ggate101
But when such great truths are put into language, difficulties
arise because our language is made by us. It is not made by people
like Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu, Ko Hsuan, it is made by the
mediocre people the world is full of. Obviously, language is their
invention and it carries their meanings, their attitudes towards
life. So whatsoever you say is going to be somewhere inadequate—not
only inadequate but deep down wrong also.
This has to be remembered, and even more so about these sutras
because these sutras were written originally in Chinese. Chinese
is a language totally different from any other language, it is
the most difficult language in the world for the simple reason
that it has no alphabet, it is a pictorial language. Pictorial
languages are the most ancient languages; they must have come
from the very dawn of human consciousness, because when man is
a child he thinks in pictures, he cannot think in words, so his
language is pictorial. That's why in children's books there are
so many colored pictures; the text is not much but pictures are
many….
And that's the difficulty with the Chinese language: it is a
dream language, a pictorial language—each picture can mean
many things. Hence there are translations of Chinese scriptures,
many translations, and no two translations ever agree, because
a picture can be interpreted in as many ways as there are people
to interpret it. The Chinese language is only symbolic; it indicates.
It is very poetic, it is not like arithmetic.
If you remember this, only then will you not fall into the trap
in which almost all the scholars have fallen.
These sutras were not written in an alphabetical language so
whatsoever is being said in these sutras is an interpretation.
And I myself don't agree in many places; if I were to translate
it it would be a totally different translation. I will tell you
where I differ and why. ggate109
If you can meditate, start from within, then look around and then
look into things at their deepest core. First mind disappears,
then form disappears, then matter disappears. Then what is left?
That which is left is Tao, is nature. And to live in that nature
is to live in freedom, is to live in eternal bliss.
"Tao" is the word of Ko Hsuan for God. "Dhamma"
is the word of Buddha for Tao. Buddha says: Ais Dhammo sanantano—this
is the eternal law. Once you have seen the eternal law you become
part of eternity. Time is transcended, space is transcended. You
are no more and for the first time you are. You are no more as
a separate entity, but for the first time you are the whole.
This is my vision too. My agreement with Tao is absolute. I
cannot say that about other religions; with Tao I can say it without
any hesitation. Tao is the most profound insight that has ever
been achieved on the earth. ggate109
About Enlightenment
Why does everybody think enlightenment is a joke?
Sarito, it is! But only a child can ask such a beautiful question—Sarito
is only twelve years of age. Enlightenment is a joke because it
is not something that you have to achieve, yet you have to make
all possible efforts to achieve it. It is already the case: you
are born enlightened.
The word "enlightenment" is beautiful. We come from
the source, the ultimate source of light. We are small rays of
that sun, and howsoever far away we may have gone, our nature
remains the same. Nobody can go against his real nature: you can
forget about it, but you cannot lose it. Hence attaining it is
not the right expression; it is not attained, it is only remembered.
That's why Buddha called his method sammasati.
Sammasati means right remembrance of that which is already there.
Nanak, Kabir, Raidas, they have all called it surati. Surati means
remembering the forgotten, but not the lost. Whether you remember
or not, it is there—it is there exactly the same. You can
keep your eyes closed to it—it is there. You can open your
eyes—it is there. You can keep it behind your back—it
is there. You can take a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn and
see it—it is there. It is the same.
George Gurdjieff used to call his method self-remembering. Nothing
has to be achieved, nothing at all, but only to be discovered.
And the discovery is needed because we go on gathering dust on
our mirrors. The mirror is there covered by the dust. Remove the
dust, and the mirror starts reflecting the stars, the beyond.
Krishnamurti calls it awareness, alertness, attentiveness. These
are different expressions for the same phenomenon. They are to
remind you that you are not to go anywhere, not to be somebody
else. You just have to find out who you are, and the finding is
not difficult because it is your nature—just a little reshuffling
inside, a little cleaning.
It is said that when Bodhidharma attained enlightenment, he
laughed for seven days continuously. His friends, his disciples,
thought he had gone mad. They asked him, "Have you gone mad?"
He said, "I was mad, now I have become sane. I have gone
sane!"
"Then why are you laughing?" they asked.
He said, "I am laughing because I have been searching for
thousands of lives for something which was already within me!
The seeker was the sought, and I was looking everywhere else—I
was looking everywhere except inside."…
Sarito, in that sense enlightenment is certainly a joke. If
you understand it, there is no need to seek and search; you can
just close your eyes and find it. But this question coming from
a small child is beautiful. The grown-up person will not be able
to ask such a sane question. The grown-up person will ask, "What
is enlightenment? How has it to be found? What are the right methods,
ways and means? How should one live? What virtues should be cultivated?
What prayers should be said?" And all those questions look
very relevant.
Sarito, your question does not look very relevant, but it is
relevant, more relevant than any grown-up person can ever ask.
Grown-up people ask questions which look good in the asking, but
they are not really interested in asking an authentic question—they
are afraid of asking the authentic question….
Children have their own interests and they must be wondering,
"Why? What is this enlightenment? And why are so many people
interested in it? It must be some kind of joke!"
In fact, it is a cosmic joke. It is God seeking himself. It
is a game of hide-and-seek: God hides himself and then tries to
find himself! Being alone, what else to do? come14
Gunakar is one of my most beloved sannyasins. He is immensely
talented…a keen intelligence, and an authentic search. He
had come to me many years ago, and he has remained with me in
many ups and many downs.
The biggest problem with him was that he is a German, and a German
finds it easier to be a master than to be a disciple, naturally.
So while he was here with me in India he was intelligent enough
to understand that he is not a master, and he worked as a disciple.
But whenever he would go back to Germany, the trouble would arise:
in Germany he would become enlightened.
There are no outer criteria for enlightenment, so he would get
a few Germans to support him also as the enlightened master. And
once he got into the trip then it was not only that he would sit
silently—that is very difficult for a German—he had
to do something. Now that he was enlightened, he started enlightening
the whole world: writing letters to prime ministers, presidents,
all the ambassadors of all the countries, to the UNO, convincing
them that except for enlightenment there is no way out.
And when he would be going full-fledged, I would send him a
message, "Come back to India because you have done enough.
A little rest will be good." And coming back to India, his
enlightenment would disappear. Sitting in front of me, he had
to become a disciple again. He started feeling very strange because
it happened once, twice, thrice….
Then he said, "This is a strange thing. We think Osho helps
people to become enlightened. I become enlightened when I am in
Germany, and whenever I go back to Osho he finishes my enlightenment—I
am back to zero!" So for almost six years, he had not come.
Who wants to lose enlightenment? You come to me to be enlightened,
and poor Gunakar had to come here to lose enlightenment.
But a false thing is a false thing, an imagination is an imagination.
You can brag, you can deceive, you can become a con man, but
deep down you will know what you are doing.
And finally he realized, in Germany, that once a man becomes enlightened
he cannot become unenlightened; that is impossible, that has never
happened in the whole of history—except to Gunakar. There
is no other precedent. And he is intelligent enough and courageous
enough; he dropped it himself. upan07
Desiderata
In August 1980, Osho comments on Desiderata of mysterious origin
We enter today into one of the most beautiful worlds, that of
a small document called the Desiderata. It is strange because
it has appeared many times and disappeared many times; hence nobody
exactly knows who wrote it. Truth has the capacity to appear again
and again; because of human stupidity it is lost again and again
too.
The Desiderata seems to be one of the most ancient documents
available today, but it is copyrighted by a poet, Max Ehrmann.
In his book of poems it is also given as a poem authored by him,
copyrighted in 1927 in America, although in the first edition
he talks about the legend that this small document was discovered
on a plaque installed in St. Paul's Church in Baltimore when built
in 1692, but it was lost. There is no proof any more whether it
was installed as a plaque in St. Paul's Church or not. The legend
is there; it has persisted. It seems Max Ehrmann again had the
vision of it. It came to him as a vision. He is not really its
author but only a receptacle, a medium.
This has happened to many other documents too. It happened in
the case of Blavatsky's The Voice of Silence: she is known as
the authoress of the book, but the book is very ancient. She discovered
it in her meditations; it appeared to her.
Many parts of Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra are
also very ancient, and the same is the case with Omar Khayyam's
Rubaiyat. Mabel Collins' Light on the Path is of the same category,
Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet also.
I have looked into all Max Ehrmann's poems but no other poem
has the same quality, not even a single poem. If the Desiderata
was written by him then many more poems of the same quality would
have flowed. It has not happened. In fact, the Desiderata seems
to be so different from all his poems that it is impossible to
believe that it has come from the same person.
The same is true about Mabel Collins' Light on the Path. These
are strange documents. The possibility is that they have always
existed—again and again lost visibly, but truth manifests
itself…. Whenever there is a vulnerable soul, a receptive
person, truth again starts flowing through him. And of course
the person will think, "I am writing it."
It is because of this fact that the Upanishads have no names
of authors; nobody knows who wrote them, because the people who
received them were very alert and aware. There were mystics, not
only poets.
This is the difference between the poet and the mystic: when
something happens to the mystic he is perfectly aware that it
is from the beyond, it is not from him. He is immensely glad;
he rejoices that he has been chosen as a vehicle, as a medium,
but his ego cannot claim it. In fact, you become a mystic only
when you have dropped the ego. But the poet is full of the ego—not
always but almost always. Once in a while, when he forgets his
ego, he touches the same world that is the mystic's world. But
the mystic lives there; the poet once in a while gets a glimpse
of it. And because his ego is not dead he immediately claims it
as his creation. But all the ancient seers were aware of it.
The Vedas, the Bible, the Koran, the three greatest scriptures
of the world, are known not to have been written by anyone. The
Vedas are known as apaurusheya—not written by any person.
Certainly somebody wrote them, but they are from God, from the
beyond, from some unknown source. The mystic becomes possessed
by it, he dances to its tune. He is no more himself—he is
it. The poet once in a while gets a glimpse of it, a faraway glimpse….
…Once in a while the mystic is also a poet; that is a
coincidence. Whenever it happens—as in the case of Lao Tzu,
Zarathustra, Mohammed—then we have something of the beyond
available to us. But a mystic is not necessarily a poet; to be
a poet is a different talent. One can be a mystic without being
a poet, one can be a poet without being a mystic.
When a mystic is a poet an Upanishad is born, a Srimad Bhagavad
Gita is born, a Koran comes to the earth. But it is not always
so. So many times it happens that the truth has to find the way
through the poet because the mystic is not available.
That's what happened with this small document, the Desiderata.
No mystic seems to be available who can sing this song; hence
Max Ehrmann is chosen to be a vehicle—but he is an unconscious
person. He thinks he is writing a poem of his own; it is not his
own, it has nobody's signature on it. And as you enter into this
small document you will understand: it cannot be from a poet.
It has the same quality as the Koran, the same quality as the
Upanishads.
It is also a strange document because in such a small space
it says so much. It is really made of sutras—just a few
hints. Nothing is said very solidly: just a few hints, fingers
pointing to the moon. It is so small that after Adlai Stevenson's
death in 1965 it was discovered that he had intended to send out
the Desiderata as a Christmas card to his friends. It can be printed
on a small card, a postcard, but it contains infinity—a
dewdrop that contains all the oceans.
It can be of immense help to you on the path; hence I call it
Guida Spirituale. It begins: guida01
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