Can you provide a new Zen koan for meditation?

Osho, Master Shuzan raised his short staff and said: If you call it a short staff, you oppose its truth. And if you do not call it a short staff, you deny the fact. Now tell me, what would you like to call it? Osho, kindly explain the intent embedded in this Zen master's riddle.

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…

Osho, in intense moments of repentance at the feet of the Buddha, the golden fish remembered its past lives. In moments of grace, too, does one remember past lives? Please tell us.

It may be that happiness remains for years; it needn’t be momentary. You fall in love; the love can last for years, and you can be happy through it for years. Yet the statement remains true that happiness is momentary—the years will feel as if they passed like a moment. You’ve seen it in Hindi films: the dates on a calendar fly off in the wind! Just so, in happiness the dates fly by. Happiness is like a Hindi film. Days pass, months pass, years pass—but so swiftly! By its very nature happiness shortens time. Then bliss is another matter altogether; bliss means ultimate happiness. Happiness means: pain has left, but it stands waiting just around the corner, watching for when you are done with happiness so it can return. It never goes very far. Pain, during happiness, doesn’t go far; it stands at the door, saying, “All right, enjoy…

A monk came to a master for help on working on one of the classic questions in zen dialectic: 'what is the meaning of bodhidharma's coming from the west?' the master suggested that before proceeding with the problem the monk should make him a low salaam. As he was dutifully prostrating himself the master gave him a good swift kick. The unexpected kick resolved the murk irresolution in which the monk had been foundering on for some time. When he felt the master's foot he attained immediate enlightenment. Subsequently he said to everyone he met, 'since I received that kick from matzu, I haven't

That is primal innocence, and that is our ultimate. Our ultimate being is before thought and after thought. Not that it disappears when thought is there, but it becomes clouded -- just like the sun surrounded by too many clouds, dark clouds. It appears as if the sun has disappeared. We never lose our ultimacy, we cannot. That's what ultimacy is -- it cannot be lost. It is our innermost nature. There is no way to lose it. But it can become clouded. The flame can become too clouded with smoke; can almost be thought of as lost. The sun can be so clouded that it appears as if it has become dark night. That's the situation. We are before thought, we are while thought is there, we will be there when thought has disappeared -- we are always there. But when thought is there it is very difficult to…

Osho, knowing words to be inadequate, Kabir casts them into ulatbansis—inversions. For example: “Everyone knows the sky rains and the earth gets wet. Rare is the one who understands that the earth rains and the sky gets wet.” What does it mean?

The earth returns too. The Ganges runs toward the ocean; all rivers run to the sea. What can the ocean do? It lifts them up to the sky, pours them back. Clouds form again, thicken in the sky; the earth calls; rain falls; rivers run to the sea. It is a circle, a cycle of give-and-take. There is never a moment’s break. The name of this circle is joy. Wherever it is broken, there is sorrow. Why is Kabir saying this? He is not declaring a meteorological truth. He is speaking about you. Within you too are earth and sky. Your body is your earth; your soul is your sky—the inner sky. Between them too a vast exchange should flow. But often your inner sky gives much to your bodily earth, and you fail to return. What should return to the sky gets lost in the world’s deserts; the river…

Now, a blind man can become a philosopher about light. He can think much about light. He can go on making great systems of thought about light. He can imagine, and he has much more freedom to imagine than the person who has eyes, because the person who has eyes knows what light is; he cannot imagine something contrary to reality. The blind man can imagine in every direction, in every possible way. He can be very imaginative and he can be very logical; he can make a systematic, logical philosophy about light out of his blindness, but it will be about light. And beware of the word 'about'. Unless somebody sees light, all that he is saying is nonsense. The mystics have always said that philosophy is nonsense because it is thinking. It is like a thirsty man thinking about water.