Is there any authenticity to the Zen that exists in America and Europe today?

Why have so many western intellectuals been drawn to an examination of zen?

They are feeling a great vacuum, and they want to fill the vacuum. You cannot live with a vacuum. The vacuum is empty, and out of that emptiness, life becomes sad, serious. All the religions have been filling your vacuum with lies. Now those lies are exposed. Science has done much in exposing those lies, and great meditators, mystics, have done tremendous work around the world in exposing all the lies of religions. The contemporary man stands in a strange position: the old has fallen, it was a deception, and the new has not yet arrived. So there is a gap, an interval, and the Western intelligentsia is trying to find something which will not be again a lie, which will not just give you consolation, but which will transform you, which will be a deep revolution in your very being. Zen certainly is the right approach towards existence, the…

Maneesha has asked one question: our beloved master, I have met someone with enlightened eyes who does not just bring us water to drink, but showers us with it. And yet, and yet.... Are we so neurotic, so complex, so far removed from innocence, that we can only receive that for which we have suffered?

It is the whole wrong training of the religions, of the societies, of the cultures, which says that unless you deserve a thing, unless you are worthy of it, you cannot get it. That is the reason, Maneesha, that if I tell you that you are enlightened, you look here and there. You cannot trust -- "My god, I am enlightened! And I have not done anything. I have not tortured myself, I have not prayed. I have not fasted, I don't know the scriptures." But I say to you that for everything except enlightenment you will have to work. If you want money, you cannot sit with closed eyes. If you sit with closed eyes, you may even lose money -- somebody may cut your pocket. For money you have to work hard. If you want political power, you have to work hard. You have to be cunning, you…

Ascending to the high seat, dogen zenji said: "zen master hogen studied with keishin zenji. Once keishin zenji asked him, joza, where do you go?' hogen said. 'I am making pilgrimage aimlessly.' keishin said, 'what is the matter of your pilgrimage?' hogen said, 'I don't know.' keishin said, 'not knowing is the most intimate.' hogen suddenly attained great enlightenment."

Beware of getting lost in philosophy and religion if you really want to know what truth is. Beware of being Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, because they are all ways of being deaf, blind, insensitive. Three deaf British gentlemen were traveling on a train bound for London. The first said, "Pardon me, conductor, what station is this?" "Wembley, sir," answered the conductor. "Good Lord!" exclaimed the second Englishman. "I am sure it is Thursday." "So am I," agreed the third. "Let us all go into the bar car and have a drink." That's how it goes on between professors, philosophers, theologians. They can't hear what is being said. They have their own ideas and they are so full of them, so many thick layers of words, that reality cannot reach them. ZEN SAYS: IF YOU CAN DROP PHILOSOPHIZING, there is a hope for you. The moment you drop philosophizing you become innocent…

Osho, what is zen?

These sounds, these birds, these trees, these people, this silence... three thousand people disappearing into a silence, losing their identities, egos... and suddenly Zen is there! It becomes almost tangible. You can touch it, you can eat it, you can drink it. But there is no way to convey it through words. You have to be calm and quiet and contented so that you can be in the present. You have to be free of all care. Care simply means you are not trusting existence; you are trying to be careful on your own. You are afraid. You are not yet aware that existence cares for you, that it mothers you, that it fathers you. Once you start feeling the mothering, the fathering that surrounds you, in the air, in the sun, in the moon, in the stars, you drop caring for yourself. There is no need to be worried.…

Osho, in lecture yesterday you spoke about the master's work: keeping his disciples from settling for less than "freedom from the self". In the west, much is made of the experience that "this is it," that nothing can be different than it is -- right now! Is this a copper mine experience? How can there be anything else?

I ALSO SAY THIS IS IT, but when I say this is it, it has a totally different meaning. It is not the same statement as it is being made in the West. The statement in itself has no meaning of its own; the meaning comes through your experience. Man can live on different planes. When Gautam the Buddha says "This is it!" he is using the same words as you use. The words are exactly the same and the dictionary meaning is the same, but the existential meaning is totally different; it may be even diametrically opposed to your meaning. In the West it has become fashionable to say that this is all, to live right now is all there is. But the people who are saying it have no idea of meditativeness, have no idea of absolute silence, thoughtless awareness, they have not experienced witnessing. Hence what they…