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Part X : 1987-1990 Poona-Two : Silence,
bamboos, and cuckoos
Buddha Hall is surrounded by tall trees and stands of giant
bamboo, which sigh and creak in the monsoon thunderstorms. Osho
comments on the silences, and the sounds of bamboos and birdsong
Listen to the bamboos. They are giving their support to my statement.
Listen to your hearts and you will find all the buddhas together,
silently dancing without making any noise.
Before you enter into your living flame, the bamboos are asking
for some laughter. They cannot laugh, but they can hear. They
can give commentaries. This series is dedicated to these bamboos.
this09
A real master will simply sit silently, listening to the wind
coming from the mountains, listening to these bamboos chitchatting
amongst themselves….
Listen to the bamboos….
(Osho waits for the bamboos, but at this moment they sing very
quietly.)
These bamboos are mischievous fellows! When you are ready to listen
to them, they become silent. And when nobody is listening they
are telling great truths.
(The bamboos answer—very loudly!)
Perfectly good!…
Now something particularly for the bamboos; a few of them are
bananas…(jokes follow) livzen08
I hear the gossip has spread in the garden—the bamboos
have told the birds—that you dedicated one of these zen
discourse series to the bamboos. Is that why the birds were singing
so fervently last night?
I have heard them. That's why I am dedicating this series to the
birds. I knew that they were feeling neglected: the bamboos were
standing proudly in the sky and the poor birds were thinking,
"Nothing is being said about us, and we are singing here
and nobody is being even thankful to us."
I am thankful to the birds. This series will be known in Basho's
words—Zen: The Solitary Birds, Cuckoo of the Forest.
Zen is very pagan; it trusts in nature, not in nurture. It trusts
in the original, not in the carbon copy. It wants you to make
your statement, but don't repeat the scriptures; they take away
your dignity as man.
Find your own signature.
This is our whole search—finding your own signature.
Before we enter into our daily meditation…now I have to
mention also the birds. They are silent, being happy and proud.
Soon the clouds will start asking! Before they ask…the coming
series will be devoted to them.
To the birds and to the bamboos and to the clouds, a few laughs,
because they cannot understand our language but they can understand
our laughter. cuckoo01
In Zen, a saint means one who can listen, who can listen to the
profound silence of existence. It has nothing to do with virtue,
with doing good things. It has something to do with your being
conscious, alert, aware…waking up, and suddenly you see
the bamboos are saying the same truth that the buddhas have said.
The birds are singing from the same life source that you are breathing
from. It is one cosmic mystery, in which we all share….
(In the pause, a cuckoo sings her evening song.)
The cuckoo has just spoken it. Do you hear it?
(And the cuckoo repeats her song.)
It is the same life source, without any discontinuity…the
heart of the cuckoo and her song is also your being. You don't
hear it, you simply become it. You forget the distance between
the singer and the listener, you simply become the song. In this
silence, this cuckoo is doing her job, knowing perfectly well
that these lectures are dedicated to the solitary cuckoo, deep
in the forest….
In the silences of the heart, there is a meeting between the master
and the disciple.
Both know that something has moved, some energy has been transferred,
transmitted. The flame that was asleep in the disciple is asleep
no more; it has jumped into aliveness and consciousness.
This is the transmission of the lamp. But you can do it only if
you have it. A strange situation is needed: the master has to
have it and the disciple has to be ready to receive it.
Nothing is said, nothing is heard and the dialogue is over. cuckoo07
Listen carefully….
The cuckoos are absolutely free to sing their song or not. Listen
carefully to the birds, because these sounds are coming from the
very center of existence. It is life singing, dancing, rejoicing.
cuckoo08
Is it not so, that we are literally "lost in thought"
and found again in meditation?
Ordinarily what you are saying is absolutely right. In thought,
you are lost, in meditation you are found. But if you want to
listen to the answer in Zen language, there is no losing and no
finding.
There is simply silence.
You are not.
These songs of cuckoos pass through you just as through a hollow
bamboo.
In thoughts, you start imagining that you are. When thoughts are
not there, don't start imagining that now you are REALLY. Once
thoughts are gone, you are also simply a thought; you are also
gone. Then what remains is only a pure consciousness, without
any "I" attached to it.
You don't find yourself, you simply lose yourself, both the ways:
either you lose yourself in thoughts or you lose yourself in no-thought.
But losing yourself in thought is very ordinary; losing yourself
in no-thought has a splendor and an eternity of joy and bliss.
You are not there, but there is a dance of pure consciousness.
It is not your dance—you are gone with your thoughts. You
were nothing but the combination of your thoughts. As one by one
your thoughts disappear, part by part you melt away. Finally,
you are no more.
And this is the moment—when you are no more—that the
ultimate is in your hands.
It is a strange situation:
When you are, your hands are empty.
When you are not, your hands are full.
When you are, you are simply misery, anguish. When you are not,
there is bliss. You cannot say, "I am blissful"; there
is only bliss.
There is only silence.
There is only truth.
The cuckoos have become silent, waiting for a few laughs from
you. Remember, laughter is one of the ways in which you can disappear.
Only laughter remains….
The cuckoo has started again, calling forth. cuckoo11
Once a monk asked Joshu, "What is the word of the ancients?"
Joshu said, "Listen carefully! Listen carefully!"
In this silence, listen carefully.
It is an actual experimentation, it is not a sermon or a preaching.
Listen carefully.
You will not find any word but you will find a wordless silence,
drowning you in immense joy.
Joshu's answer is one of the great answers:
Listen carefully!
Just be silent and the whole existence opens its doors. cuckoo08
"My religion has no words and sentences. It has nothing
to give anybody."
In that silence, he suddenly became awake.
In this silence, anyone can become awake….
This whole silence says more than any scripture can say. cuckoo08
Sit still and all three worlds disappear. In this moment, listening
to the cuckoo, all has disappeared. There is only a deep silence,
in, deepening within your being. cuckoo11
The bamboos are very silent, waiting to have a few laughs. Poor
bamboos, they cannot laugh with you. But trust me: they hear your
laughter, they feel the touch of your silence. They are with you,
part of the assembly. cuckoo08
Only in this silence have buddhas blossomed. Every day you have
some feel of it. One day, suddenly, this feel will become your
very breathing, the very beating of your heart. I declare this
assembly to be the most blessed on the earth at this moment. Everywhere,
there is the clicking of teeth. This small assembly of seekers
is moving in a totally different dimension to the mind. It is
moving in the dimension of no thought, no feeling, no emotion—just
pure nothingness.
Once you have attained to pure nothingness you have found the
dance of the universal, of the eternal. You have found the meaning
of life. There is no other way to find the significance and the
fragrance of your own being.
Before we enter into our silence, into the very essence of Zen,
the bamboos are silent, waiting for a few laughs from you. Shunyo
informed me yesterday that, since these meditations, since this
silence and this laughter have begun, the bamboos have grown so
much and new sprouts have come.
Just for these bamboos, particularly for the new ones… quant13
Before we enter into today's meditation…the bamboos are
very silent and waiting for your laughter. My gardeners have informed
me that they have never seen bamboos growing so fast. Particularly
as the evening arrives they all start jumping up. They are participants,
they meditate with you. They cannot say anything, but saying does
not matter. They understand your laughter certainly. dogen04
Poona has never known such rains as it has known this year. What
is the reason? When ten thousand people sit silently, the clouds
come by themselves. You just be silent, and everything comes simultaneously
to you—and in abundance! Nature is absolutely ready to give
up all its treasures to the empty heart. empti04
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