Diya Tale Andhera #11

In the search for truth there is only one struggle: freedom from thought. How to step outside thought—every method, every practice, exists only for that small step: that the process of thinking may stop. The moment thought stops, the eye opens. The moment thought stops, you are able to truly see. As long as thought persists, the eye is filled with haze. As dust gathers on a mirror, so on consciousness gather layer upon layer of thought. Innumerable devices have been devised to draw you out—out of the circle of your thinking.

Zen has its own method. They call it a “koan.” A koan is a riddle that cannot be solved, and by thinking-thinking-thinking, thinking itself gets exhausted. You become so bored with thinking, so harassed by it, it feels so futile, that you drop it. Not easy—intellect doesn’t tire quickly; it keeps thinking even against all odds.

I have heard: Mulla Nasruddin saw a friend walking ahead of him on the street—from the back. He hurried up, tapped him on the back and said, “Abdul! Where have you been lost? Years since I saw you!” The man turned around, startled. Nasruddin too looked startled and said, “Heavens! What disaster has befallen you? Last time we met you were short and fat; now suddenly you’re tall and thin. Even your face has completely changed. When did you grow that beard and mustache?” The man said, “Sorry, you must be mistaken—I’m not Abdullah.” Nasruddin tapped his back again: “Dear fellow—so you even changed your name!”

That’s what thought is like. It keeps finding arguments for itself, keeps finding a way for itself. It is easy to deny a fact; it is hard to deny an inner process. And thought is much like a damaged gramophone record, repeating the same line over and over. Thought is mechanical, repetitive. And you go on repeating the same-old, same-old.

If you watch your thinking closely, you will realize there aren’t many thoughts within you. There are a few thoughts that recur again and again. A groove has formed; the mind keeps circling in that groove. The needle is stuck and the record keeps repeating.

I have heard the first fully automatic airplane was made. No pilot needed; no attendants. Press a button—tea arrives; press a button—food arrives. Not a single person aboard was required; everything was automatic. As the plane took off, the announcement began: “This is the first fully automatic airplane. Press the red button for tea, water, snacks; press the yellow button for meals; press the green button for all other needs. There is no pilot. This automatic aircraft will land at its destination by itself. Please do not worry at all. There is absolutely no need to panic, for every precaution has been taken. There is no error anywhere in the machine—there is no error anywhere in the machine—there is no error anywhere in the machine…” and the announcement got stuck on that line. Imagine the condition of the passengers! The error was obvious. And if this error could occur, any error could.

Your mind too is practically an automatic computer. You don’t even have to run it; it runs by habit. It has its fixed grooves and keeps repeating them. That is why you don’t even make new mistakes in life. To make an original mistake via the mind is hard—you keep repeating the old ones. Even to err anew, step outside the mind; the new is always outside the mind. Sin anew, and you will have to step beyond mind too; but you repeat stale, familiar sins.

The mind has no relationship with the new, while life is new every moment. Mind is of the old; it is the distillate of experience. Experience means the past, what has already happened, what is gone—its leftover imprints add up to mind. Mind is the storehouse of memory. But life is here and now—it is not past; it is present.

Grasp this first truth: Mind is always past; life is always present. Hence mind and life never meet. The day mind drops, you will be in tune with life. The day mind steps aside, the door to that which is—existence—opens.

Meditation methods are methods to break the mind. A koan is a precious method—Zen’s special method. Every religion has its special methods; the koan is profoundly meaningful.

The Zen master gives his disciple a riddle and says, “Contemplate it.” It’s absurd—because the riddle is of a kind you cannot think about; there is no way to think it, no space for thought. If you could think it, your mind would go on; you would “solve” it. But the riddle is such that no matter how much you think, you will find it useless. You will see there is no substance in thinking here. But the master says, “Think.” Do not come back and say, “There’s no point in thinking.” Go on thinking. A moment will come when, tired, thinking will fall. In that very instant, suddenly you will be startled awake—as if sleep broke, as if a lamp was lit in the dark, as if lightning flashed.

This too is a Zen koan.

Master Shuzan raised his short staff and said…

Zen masters keep a staff by their side—to thwack disciples on the skull. Outwardly it is a symbol; inwardly it has value. For what else can the master do? He has to erase your head—the very place you are lost in. He must pull you out of it. And sometimes there are moments when a blow on the head startles you—it is a shock treatment.

Just as we give an electric shock to a madman, a psychotic, and sometimes he is cured. He is cured because the circular flow of his thoughts is broken.

An electric shock can cure madness because the inner stream of insanity—the stuck record repeating one phrase—gets its needle knocked aside. The jolt disarranges everything; when he returns to normal, the needle is no longer stuck where it was. So shock is useful to treat madness. Any shock is useful.

But a Zen master does not use electric shocks, because there are dangers and harms. It may happen that the old madness goes, but a new, more troublesome madness arises—because it is groping in the dark. Your mind is shaken; who can guarantee it will settle better than before? It may settle in a worse condition. And as electric shocks are repeated, the mind grows weaker; insanity may go, but intelligence does not arise from it. Gradually the nerves lose their elasticity, and as elasticity goes, intelligence withers. You may become not-mad, but you will not remain bright.

The Zen master uses the staff; the shock is subtler. And he uses it only at special moments, not always: when he sees you are right at the edge, that you have come to the very brink of thought, that just a nudge and you will leap. He need not drag you for miles. When you are at the edge, a mere gesture and you will jump. If he misses that moment, you may set off again on a long journey; the shore recedes; the leap becomes difficult again.

So the master roams among the disciples while they meditate, carrying his staff. When you reach the edge of thought, your face changes. Even before the leap, as you come closer to the ocean where thought dissolves and no-thought is, everything within begins to change. The restlessness in your every fiber drops away. You become still. Bliss has not yet arisen, but peace comes. Peace is the first stage of bliss. When the master sees you have reached that place from which just a nudge and you will enter the ocean, he strikes your head. In that shock, for a split-second, thought stops.

Anyone can strike your head and you will startle, but realization will not happen. If the edge is far, you may be startled, but by the time you reach the brink again, thought has restarted. It is the advantage of striking at the very brink. Disciples wait for years for the master to hit them—when will he deem them worthy of the push? They sit six hours a day in meditation. The master comes daily, searching: Who is on the edge? Sometimes, a single blow has brought supreme enlightenment.

When the West first heard this, people laughed: “So enlightenment is cheap—you get it by a whack!” They don’t know that before that whack, the disciple may have sat six or eight hours daily for twenty or thirty years. The master’s staff must be earned—it is not free; it is the fruit of long sadhana.

So Master Shuzan must have been sitting with his short staff. He gave a disciple a koan, raised the staff, and said:

“If you call this a short staff, you oppose reality. And if you do not call it a short staff, you ignore the fact. Now tell me, what would you like to call it?”

First, understand the riddle at the intellectual level—since we are still there. Then we’ll try to glimpse it beyond intellect.

Shuzan says three things. First: the staff is short. If you call it a short staff, you deny its truth. Why? If the staff is short, how is calling it “short” a denial of truth? Understand this.

The staff is merely a staff—neither short nor long. The staff has no idea whether it is short or long. Short/long are your mind’s interpretations. In itself, is the staff short or long? It is simply a staff. Only when you bring in another staff does short/long arise—by comparison.

So short or long is not inside the staff as truth; it is imposed from outside by comparison. In relation to some other staff it is short; in relation to yet another, it may be long. Large and small are mental predicates. The staff in itself is neither short nor long—you are bringing the ideas of short and long.

The intellect brings comparative predicates; it thrives on comparison. Unless you drop comparison, you won’t drop intellect. Haven’t you seen yourself say, “Very beautiful,” or “Very ugly”? But is anyone ugly or beautiful in themselves? You are importing outside comparisons.

You call a woman beautiful. Why? You are comparing her with other women. Is this woman beautiful or ugly in her inner reality? What use is a second woman?

Nasruddin returned after some time in the Himalayas. I asked, “Was the journey safe? Did you enjoy your days? How was your time in the mountains? Did you find contentment?” I know him—wherever he goes, he finds trouble. What will the Himalayas change? You will go, and you will be you.

He said, “If only the tea, coffee, and soup had been as hot as the wine; and if only the wine had been as old as the chicken; if only the chicken had been as tender as the maid; and if only the maid had been as eager to sleep with me as the old mistress of the house—then everything would have been perfect.”

That’s how the mind runs—never seeing anything directly, always dragging comparisons into it. You never see a fact straight. Comparison always creeps in—the intellect brings it. A fact stands alone. If there were no humans on this earth, would some trees be tall and some short? Trees would be there, but neither tall nor short. A blade of grass would not be “small,” nor would the Himalayas be “large.” The one who brought short/long—man—would be gone. Would anything be beautiful or ugly? Flowers would still bloom: the marigold would not be ugly, the rose would not be beautiful; even the grass-flower would be just as the lotus—no difference.

Remove man, differences vanish. Difference is not in existence; man brings it. You call a child highly gifted; another a total fool—this difference you bring. Change the standards and the differences change. At one time a certain look is fashionable, hence “beautiful”; when fashion changes, the same look becomes “ugly.” In some tribes, women shave their heads—there, a shaved head is beautiful; hair is ugly. Elsewhere, hair symbolizes beauty. In some tribes, women tattoo and paint their heads; to us it seems strange, but there it is a mark of beauty. In our society, women pierce their noses and ears—once a symbol of beauty. Fashion is changing—now piercing seems to mar naturalness; it is no longer a sign of beauty.

As human opinion changes, beauty and ugliness change. What is beautiful? What is ugly? There is no definitive yardstick; it depends on your intellect. The intellect lives by comparison, so the very moment you see something you start comparing.

This Zen master says to his disciple: do not compare—and without comparison, tell me what this is. He says: if you call it a short staff, you oppose truth—because in truth there is no comparison; comparison is of the mind. As long as mind remains, you will not know truth.

Truth is incomparable. It is neither beautiful nor ugly; neither auspicious nor inauspicious; neither good nor bad. There is no division—there is only “is-ness.” Will you call this entire existence beautiful or ugly? Good or bad?

People have called it one thing or another: the theist says “absolutely good—God created it.” The atheist says, “How can it be good with so many wars, so much disease, children rotting and dying, cancer, TB—ugly it is; what could be worse!”

Ask a knower, and he will say: since existence is one and there is no second, even calling it “good” is meaningless, and calling it “bad” is meaningless. Compared to what would you judge? If there were another existence, comparison would be possible. But existence is one spread—what will you weigh it against? That is why, if you call God “beautiful,” you err—against what do you measure? Other than him there is nothing; only he is. Where there is only one, how can there be comparison? Comparison is possible only with two. The intellect compares; it lives in duality and conflict. Truth is non-dual. Until you drop the intellect’s comparisons…

Just look at a rose. Do not say “beautiful,” do not say “ugly.” Against what do you measure? The roses you saw yesterday? Where are they now? The neighbor’s rose? That is that; this is this. Why measure at all? Isn’t it enough to see this rose directly? Do not bring words, concepts, notions in between. Do not interpose doctrines. Is there any difficulty in direct seeing?

But your eyes are full of words—you don’t even notice. Before you have seen, an interpretation has arrived. Before the ear has fully heard, a judgment is formed. Before the hand has touched, whether you say it or not, something within has said, “very soft,” or “very hard.”

You call a face beautiful? Go to a scientist’s lab and look at your beloved’s face through a microscope—you will be scared. Crevices, ravines, mountains! Tiny pores become great valleys; little pimples become huge hills. You’ll be terrified.

Is the microscope lying? It has no grudge against your beloved, no other woman’s jealousy. What is the truth—the microscope’s view or the naked eye’s? Both are true. And if the naked eye is true, the microscopic view is even truer—you are seeing in greater detail. Where does the difficulty arise? Because with the naked eye you had already made an interpretation—“beautiful.” Now you are in trouble.

The microscope shows there is nothing beautiful here—everything is ugly. The skin looked beautiful from above; go a little inside. Visit the hospital—see those emaciated patients, all bone; such bones hide in everyone. Or look at a skeleton in a medical college—your beloved or lover has the same skeleton within. Or place your beloved before an X-ray screen and see.

What will you say then? Is what appears beautiful or ugly? The same beloved, whom you called “like the moon,” whose skin you compared to petals—today the X-ray—does it deceive you? Is it intent on destroying your love? The machine cares nothing for your interpretation. What you saw yesterday, you now see in more depth. Your earlier notion is in trouble. Whoever clings to notions will be in trouble.

Why? Because the way of seeing changes moment to moment; life flows on, while the notion remains fixed. It becomes rigid. You do not see the other at all; you carry your notion. With a net of notions over the eye, comparison persists.

So the Zen master says: if you call this staff “short,” you oppose truth—because in truth nothing is short or long. In reality, things are as they are. Comparison has no place. Comparison is external, alien. In the staff there is no smallness and no bigness; you are importing an alien measure, smuggling in another staff.

If you call it “short,” you have brought in some larger staff. But why call it short at all? Bring a smaller staff and this one will be “big.” Can one and the same staff be both small and large?

You’ve heard Akbar’s story. He drew a line in court and told his courtiers, “Make it shorter without touching it.” They were stumped—they did not recall the little rule of intellect. All were “intelligent,” yet missed the elementary rule! Birbal stood up and drew a longer line beside it. Without touching, the first became shorter.

But if the line wasn’t touched, how could it become shorter? Yet the whole court agreed; Akbar agreed—the problem was solved.

How did it become shorter without being touched? By comparison. No one sees the line; each sees his comparison. The original line could be made “long” by drawing a shorter one beside it.

Your intellect lives by comparison. So take note—you always seek the company of those smaller than you. You gather around you people who are inferior to you—in character, intelligence, behavior, beauty—because among them you get the pleasure of being “big.” One fears moving near the “bigger.” They say, even a camel fears going near the Himalayas. A camel finds comfort among donkeys and horses—there he can strut; he is “tall.” With short lines around, your line looks long.

Watch what kind of people you seek—you’ll find they are always smaller than you. Among them you enjoy being the longer line. Ego does what Birbal did, by using intellect.

And if, by accident, you meet someone greater than you, you refuse to acknowledge it. You search for devices to cut him down. If he is superior in character and you cannot diminish him there, you say, “Maybe in character—but as for intelligence…” You will cut him somewhere else.

I have heard: one man said to a friend, “In our village there is a young man—his flute is incredible; never heard playing like his.” The other said, “Nonsense! I know him well—he’s a thorough thief and crook.” Flute-playing has nothing to do with theft and honesty. No one has ever said honesty improves flute-playing. But even a man’s good flute-playing shrinks your ego; you want to pull his leg from elsewhere—“A crook! What flute could he play!”

The same man went to a Sufi and said, “In my village there is a man—he’s a terrible crook and thief.” The Sufi said, “Don’t trust such talk. I know him: perhaps a crook, perhaps a thief—but an extraordinary flautist!”

The point is the same. One drew a longer line beneath to make him small; the other drew an even shorter line to make him big.

Beware: if you are keen to make others small, your ego will grow. If you are keen to make others big, your humility will grow. But both tricks are the same—draw a longer or a shorter line. One makes you “impious,” one “pious,” but neither makes you a saint, for in both you continue to compare. Either you say, “How can a thief play the flute?” or, “How can he be a thief when he plays so well?” Both are wrong, for good flute-playing does not hinder theft, nor does thievery hinder flute-playing. The dimensions are different; the delusion is one.

Hence I say: the so-called good and bad, virtuous and vicious—there is no difference in their delusion; both compare. The saint is the one who drops comparison—who accepts fact as it is, without importing other facts, without drawing any line.

Akbar’s court had clever men. They tried to make the line shorter without erasing it; they failed—orthodox intelligence. Birbal too was intelligent, but original, a bit revolutionary—he found a trick. The others were rigid, stuck to the beaten track. But both emphasized comparison.

Had Shuzan been in Akbar’s court, he would have said: this line can be neither shortened nor lengthened. Even if you “make it small,” it is not small; even if you “make it big,” it is not big. If the line is within itself, in its own essence, it is as it is. Small/big are external comparisons—why bring the outside inside? Inside is truth; comparison births a world of untruth.

Thus Shuzan said: if you call it a short staff, you oppose its truth. If that were all, there’d be no problem. But he adds a second thing, and the tangle deepens: if you do not call it a short staff, you deny the fact. As a matter of fact, it is a short staff.

Understand truth and fact. Truth means: a thing as it is in itself—subjective. Fact means: a thing as it is among things—objective, worldly. Truth is the thing-in-itself; fact is the thing-in-relation. In fact, comparison will be; in truth, comparison will not.

Had the Zen master said only the first, the disciple could have “solved” it: “Alright, Master, I won’t say ‘short staff’; I’ll say ‘staff’.” But the master says: if you don’t call it short, it’s still wrong—because among staffs, this one is short. It does not exist alone; whether you say so or not, nothing in this world exists alone—it is interrelated. Everything is interwoven in an inter-relationship.

Whether you say the grass is short and the peepal tree tall or not—what difference does it make? Whether anyone says it or not, whether humans exist or not, still the peepal is tall and the grass short—because grass and tree are not isolated; they are related. It is not about saying.

So “fact” means: the interrelations of things; “truth” means: the thing’s own being. And we cannot know a thing in its own nature; only in relation to others. In its nature, only one can enter: oneself. One cannot enter another’s nature.

Hence the great German thinker Immanuel Kant based his entire philosophy on a small phrase: “the thing-in-itself.” He says: the thing-in-itself cannot be known. We can only know how a thing relates to other things. There is no way to know it otherwise. If you try to know a thing as it is in itself, you will know nothing—how will you enter the thing? You are always outside.

You say, “Jaggery is sweet.” What do you mean? Is jaggery sweet in itself, or does it taste sweet to you? It is difficult to know what it is in itself—because unless you taste it, how will you know? The moment you taste, you have entered—“Jaggery tastes sweet to me.” Do not say, “Jaggery is sweet.” Often, when you are ill and your mouth is bitter, jaggery won’t taste so sweet; it may taste bitter.

So “Jaggery is sweet” is a fact—a relationship between you and jaggery—not a truth. What jaggery is in itself—no one knows; no one will ever know. Jaggery does not speak; whenever taste is known, it is in relation to someone.

“These trees are green,” we say. Are they? No one knows whether, when all observers leave, the trees remain green; when there is no seer, is a tree green? Is a rose red?

Modern physics says: no—when you withdraw, color withdraws. Color is a relationship between eye and object. The tree appears green not because it “is” green, but because sunlight falls on it, and light has seven colors. When the spectrum splits, rainbows form. When a ray strikes an object, the object absorbs some colors and reflects others. A tree appears green because it has reflected the green component and absorbed the other six. That reflected green strikes your eye—thus it appears green. Strictly, the tree is every color but green; it has rejected green and kept the rest. But even then, color appears only when it strikes an eye. Without an eye, there are no colors; objects are colorless. At night, switch off the light—colors vanish; the observer sleeps, light is gone, color ends. You labored all day arranging colors, matching curtains, hanging pictures; all wasted—your room is colorless.

Kant says: what things are in themselves is unknowable; we only know how they appear—things as they appear. This is Shankara’s doctrine of maya: whatever appears is maya; truth itself cannot appear—appearance is superficial; the inner cannot be seen.

Thus, Shuzan says: if you say “the staff is short,” you deny its truth—because in itself it is neither short nor long. If you say, “It is not short,” you deny the fact—because in the world it is related to other staffs, and among larger staffs it occupies a place in a hierarchy.

Where is Shuzan leading us? Then he says the third thing: Now tell me—what would you like to call it?

This is the koan. A disciple may take six months, ten years—it depends on him. He must take this riddle and sit with it. There is a method; let me tell you.

First, for about three months, practice sitting utterly still. The seeker first sits and sways his body side to side, as a tree sways in wind. Then gradually the swaying is reduced; finally, stillness. The swaying allows bodily restlessness to discharge: numbness in a leg, tingling, pricking, itching—the body’s fidgets. It can take three months to learn to sit. And that is only half the art.

When the seeker can sit at least an hour utterly motionless—like a lamp-flame in windless air—then a miraculous thing happens. As the body grows still, the speed of the mind immediately drops—for body and mind are linked; two sides of one coin. As the body stills, the mind stills. When mind grows nearly still, then the koan is taken up. The riddle is repeated—but repeated by a special method. It is remarkable—but do not try it before the three months of still sitting.

The method: write the koan word by word on the screen of the closed eyes. Then drop each word from the head into the belly. “If,” you write above—then let it drop, as if falling off the board, into the navel. It sits there: “If.” Then: “you,” “call,” “this,” “a,” “short,” “staff”… one by one drop each word out of the head into the belly.

Zen says: what won’t solve in the head will solve in the belly. The head created the tangle—do not ask it for the cure. You must move away. Zen holds—and it is true—that your center is the navel, not the head. From there you are connected to the world and to the divine. The child is connected to the mother at the navel; life flows through the navel. The umbilical cord to the mother is cut, but the invisible cord to the divine is not—and cannot be; through it you live. There, at the navel, are all answers.

So first, learn to sit still. When you are still, you become an empty space; a passage opens from head to belly. Then drop each word down. Slowly you succeed; all the words fall into the belly. When all the words have dropped, you can see them there—just watch them.

You are not to “find” the answer, because whatever you find will be wrong. What can you do? Either call it short or not short—but the master has closed both doors. It is a dilemma—the “horns of a dilemma.” If you avoid this horn, you are gored by the other; avoid the well, you fall into the ditch; avoid the ditch, you fall into the well. What will you do? You may think, “Say nothing.” You will decide what to say and come each morning…

Each morning the disciple must present himself. After twenty-four hours of effort, he comes to the master—who sits with the staff. The disciple says humbly, “This is my answer.” Whatever you bring, the master says, “No—work more; it hasn’t happened.” Whatever you bring will be wrong.

And the day you bring the right “answer,” the master will say it without your speaking—for there will be nothing to say. He will know as you enter. You will come anxious, worried—“Will it be accepted?” And you know, for years answers are rejected; people toil for years and return dejected. Then you try new answers—“We’ll say this, we’ll try that; perhaps this escape route will work.”

The intellect tries every angle; the master denies every angle. He is there only to refuse every support to your mind. You tire; you are harassed; many feel like quitting. Some run away mid-way—those who run, go astray.

Some say, “What madness is this—short or long, what’s the point? We came to find God, not staffs!” They flee. But if you cannot know the truth of a small staff, how will you know the truth of this vast existence? The staff is not small; the same vast divine is hidden there. Those who persist…

Persistence is the greatest art. The master discourages you daily: “No, not this; keep working.” Months, years pass. The mind exhausts all answers; all are rejected.

Gradually you begin to see that no answer of the intellect will be accepted. It dawns on you that whatever you brought was childish. One day it becomes clear: there can be no answer. This should not be an intellectual conclusion; your whole being must feel it: there is no answer.

Then you become light. The tension, wound tighter and tighter over two or three years, reaches its peak—beyond which there is nowhere further to go. Even tension has a limit; touch it, and it shatters. Suddenly you feel weightless—after the storm, calm. That day you rise—today there is no answer. You are carrying nothing. Your gait is different.

A worried person walks differently. One with a problem walks differently. One entangled without resolution—his every pore is entangled; he himself is a riddle. After three years with a single riddle, it seeps into your every fiber. You rise fearful, walk fearful; anxiety surrounds you. The very vibrations from your being are fear and worry.

At the master’s door, you begin to tremble—rejection again! Your ego finds no support. The master never says, “Right”—always, “Wrong.” He labors only to break your ego. On the steps, your hands and feet tremble: “Again…” You come with great expectation—“Perhaps this time!” Every expectation is crushed.

Remember: a master who gratifies your expectations cannot lead you to truth. He will destroy your expectations. Expectations have thrown you into the world; a master is not here to fulfill your demands, but to shatter the very habit of demanding. He will not approve any answer from your mind. It will mislead you; it has misled you for lifetimes.

The master will be tough—and the more capable you are, the tougher he will be. The greater your capacity, the harsher he becomes: “No! Get out. This too is not it. Don’t bring such childish answers.” And still you must come each morning—he awaits you. You climb his steps, trembling; fear grips you—again the same! Your ego finds no satisfaction anywhere.

And the day the question itself drops… mark this: the question does not get an answer. The day the question falls, tension disperses. You were a peak of tension; suddenly, all is gone—you are a valley.

That day you come—your gait is different, your being’s rhythm is different. There are anklets on your steps; an unearthly aura on your face. Now there is no expectation; you bring no answer. You are utterly empty and still.

You climb the same steps that for years made you tremble; even the steps will sense the difference in your footfall. Today you are different. You open the door—no sweat on your palms. You have come with no demand, no hope, no begging. Free of worry, you bow and sit silently. There is nothing to say.

You did not arrive thinking, “I will not answer.” If you come with that thought, it is useless—thought and worry will be within, and you cannot deceive a master. One you can deceive is not worthy to be a master. He does not listen to what you say; he sees what you are.

Today a flower of peace has blossomed within. There is neither question nor answer; no duality. You are of one taste—uncut, whole. Whatever happens today—yes or no—makes no difference. Acceptance and rejection are equal. You sit quietly.

On that day the master says, “It has happened! Your first samadhi has blossomed.” The first samadhi is a taste—it can still be lost; guard it. It is a glimpse. You are not yet accomplished; you have seen the peak from afar. But one who has seen will arrive today or tomorrow. God is no longer a mental problem; the taste has come.

Until now you pushed and drove yourself, made resolutions. Now, no resolution is needed; now you are pulled. God becomes a gravitation; you are drawn. Until now the journey was austere; now it becomes a great celebration. Until now it was labor; now effortlessness. As long as you answer, you err. The day you arrive answerless, utterly empty—the master will recognize—it is done.

A koan is a meditation method—tough. It is a direct fight with the mind, with no support of posture or exercise. The mind is cunning; it will give you all kinds of answers. It will say, “Take this—perfect. Tell the master: ‘We can neither say this nor that; we will remain silent.’” But within you are not silent; inside you are talking, taut with expectation—“Let’s see what he says—yes or no?” Your answer has not come; otherwise you would be content. The master’s yes or no would make no difference.

There are thousands of koans. Different masters use different koans. The fun is they are all written in scriptures—yet you cannot copy the answers. For the answer must arise from you. The riddle is in the book, and even the accounts are written: when someone’s answer was accepted, what happened, what the master said. Still it makes no difference—you cannot imitate on the path of the divine. Whom will you deceive? Can existence be deceived?

A disciple labored long. Harried, he was told by the master, “Better you die.” He thought, “Perhaps this is the answer.” Next morning he came; as soon as the master saw him, he fell down as if dead. The master said, “Perfect—now tell me, what of the riddle?” He opened one eye: “That is not yet solved.” The master said, “Fool—get out! Dead men don’t speak.”

The imitator will speak even when dead. How will you imitate dying? If you cannot imitate death, how will you imitate life? If the negative cannot be faked, how will you fake the supreme affirmative? Yet people imitate both death and life.

There are countless sannyasins in the world. Some imitate Buddha, some Mahavira, some Jesus—but imitation nonetheless; otherwise, life would change—and it doesn’t. Even a “dead” man, asked about the riddle, says, “Not solved.” He cannot remember he is “dead.”

I know many sannyasins with hundreds of disciples who show others the way and have none themselves; who come to me in private and say, “Tell us something; our life is slipping away.” At least be honest enough not to guide others. How will you give what you don’t have?

But the scriptures have everything written; you read, you become adept at imitation—and imitation is easy, requiring nothing but a costume. Reality is costly—you must stake all. It is a journey into darkness, a gamble. You wager what you have for something that may or may not be—no guarantees. You may lose what you have, and the distant may remain distant.

So I say: religion’s way is a gambler’s way—not a shopkeeper’s, tallying pennies. The gambler throws in everything; whether the prize will come is uncertain. Only one with courage, even audacity, can walk the path of religion. It is not for the weak.

But if you look closely, courage comes—because what do you have anyway? Even if you stake it, what will be lost? What do you have besides self-deceptions? You have gathered all kinds of lies. Understand this.

In the West, Adler discovered the “inferiority complex.” Those afflicted by it gather grandiose lies around themselves—to hide the pain of inferiority, by its opposite. A man feeling weak becomes a politician; one who fears he is nothing without money becomes miserly, mad for wealth—not for you, but to convince himself he is not poor. The one climbing positions does it for himself—to prove, “I am not weak; I am powerful.”

Psychologists studied Hitler: weak in every way, failing everywhere. One small failure became huge—he wanted admission to an art school; he wanted to be a painter. Rejected there, the blow burned: “I am worthless.” Only one path remained—to enter politics and prove to his own eyes that he had worth.

Lenin’s legs were short; when he sat, they didn’t reach the ground. Psychologists say those legs influenced his life—until he reached the highest throne from which he could show, “My legs may not reach the ground, but they reach the throne.”

Stalin, Mao, Mussolini—study their lives deeply and you’ll find some inferiority driving them to greatness. One who truly has something won’t care for your opinion; only the frightened asks your vote—he knows if your opinion is lost, everything is lost.

Those pained inwardly by lack of intelligence become pundits, erecting the lie of scholarship. Everyone’s life is a construction of lies to cover what is missing.

I have heard: a woman went to a bird shop. “I want a parrot,” she said. “A-a-a parrot who can s-s-speak well.” The shopkeeper said, “Madam, please step out quickly—if the parrots hear you, everyone’s speech will be ruined.” Why does this lady want a parrot who speaks well? Because she herself cannot; she wants to fill her lack with the parrot.

Look closely at your life—the things you have filled it with are the precise opposites of your inner state.

What to stake? What do you have? You fear to look—because if you discover you have nothing, you sweat. People prefer assumptions.

Nasruddin had lost some money. He had many pockets—as misers do. He searched them all except one left-side pocket. I watched him, perplexed. I said, “You’ve left one.” He said, “I’m leaving it on purpose—at least there is hope that maybe it’s there. I’ve checked the rest and am disappointed. If I check this too and it isn’t there, all hope will be gone.”

You fear to investigate what you have. Even to find out you have nothing terrifies you; until now you had the intoxication of an illusion. But if you seek truth, illusions must go. I say: what you wager are only lies; you have nothing else. Only the disease, ignorance—you risk these.

Marx ended his Communist Manifesto: “Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.” I tell you the same. Workers may still have something; you have nothing to lose. Marx called workers “proletariat.” I call you all proletariat: rich and poor, learned and ignorant, old and young, man and woman—you have lost all; nothing is yours. If anything is to be staked, it is only this poverty. But you fear to open the safe; your hand trembles—you live by belief. Look closely and you will find nothing—then staking becomes easy.

And when you are ready to stake, then the koan-process is to be done: break the mind. Its circle is terrible. There is no way to break it directly; you must exhaust it. Let the mind run to the very limit of anxiety—so intense you cannot bear it, so it becomes unbearable. Only at the point of the unbearable do revolutions happen.

You are lukewarm; your worry is lukewarm. You neither let your worry die nor let it complete; you keep it in the middle. Either finish it or live it fully. I say: the only way to finish it is to live it fully.

The koan is a method to live anxiety to the full. Never are you as anxious as you will become by holding a koan this way. Your anxiety will grow into a forest fire—not a lukewarm ember, but a boiling explosion. Everything will shake; every moment you will feel: “I am going mad, now I am going mad!”

Do not fear then. That is why a true master is needed—someone nearby—because you could go mad. Such methods are done only in a master’s presence—there is danger. You are already mad—lukewarmly. If you push too fast, you may tip over; the possibility is real. The master is needed so you don’t go mad. For the process of liberation and of derangement is the same—the difference is only at the end. The deranged reach the brink of anxiety and cannot leap; they arrive at the last point and get stuck. There, the master’s staff can push. At that moment, a small blow from someone you trust—a small shove, his word: “Jump!” Your mind will say, “There is a bottomless pit.” If you listen to the mind, you will turn back. Many retreat even from the final moment. Hence the need for the master—and hence his insistence on trust, for in the end only trust works. When the master says, “Jump,” your mind says, “A chasm—you will die.” If your love is greater than your mind, you will say, “If the master says so, it is right.” Better to risk your life on his word than to break his word and go back. Then you can wager.

The moment you jump, the abyss disappears. But until you jump, it is there—in your mind’s view, your mind’s interpretation. There is no abyss.

I have heard: a man lost his way at night in the mountains—new moon, pitch dark. He groped ahead, shouting—no one heard. He felt himself slipping into a pit and grabbed a root, hanging on. He screamed and cried—only his own echo answered, making it scarier. Dawn was far; the night was cold; his hands were freezing; his grip weakening, as if paralyzed. He felt the root slipping out of his hands—“Now I am gone!” The root slipped—and laughter rang out in the valley; the man was laughing. There was no ravine below; he had been suffering for nothing. There was level ground beneath; he landed on his feet. In the darkness, he had imagined a chasm. The root that he clung to kept him in hell; as it slipped away, he stepped out of hell.

Just so in meditation: at the final moment you reach where the abyss seems infinite. Clinging to the last roots of thought, you hang there, wanting to be saved, wanting to return home, vowing never again to get entangled in meditation. At that time the master is needed—to say, “Let go; I am there below to catch you. Let go—the abyss is your mind’s interpretation. It is your dying mind showing you a chasm, showing you death. There is nectar there; there is level ground.”

Trust is tested there, in the end. If you let go on trust, you arrive where there is no more falling. You find the level ground that is your own being.

There, there is no duality—no two. There is non-duality. Nothing is small, nothing is large; there is only One. No low or high; no auspicious or inauspicious; only One. Where there are two, there can be comparison; there, the taste is incomparable. You cannot know it while the mind remains. The Zen koan-process is a most effective device to get free of mind.

Enough for today.