What is the most basic secret of Zen?

Can you tell us in just a few words what the most basic secret of zen is?

Let go. Life reveals itself most plainly when you don't clutch at it, when you don't cling to it, when you don't hoard, when you are not a miser, when you are loose and ready to lose, when your fist is not closed, when your hand is open. Life reveals itself most plainly when you do not clutch at it -- either with your feelings or with your thoughts. Touch and go -- that is the secret, the whole secret, the whole art. Everything kept goes stale -- everything, I say. Hoard and you kill it, hoard and it stinks. The reason is that whatever is momentous, living and moving, is momentary. By hoarding you want to make it permanent. You love a woman, you love a man -- and you want to possess it, you want it to be permanent. It can be eternal but it cannot be permanent.…

Osho, what is zen?

Sagar, IT IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO ANSWER because Zen is not a philosophy, it is not a doctrine. It is an experience, an experience of your own interiority, of your own subjectivity -- not an objective experience. If it were some object outside you, there would be a possibility of describing it, of analyzing it, of defining it. It is indefinable by its very nature; it is not within the grasp of intellect. It is an experience of dropping out of your mind, disappearing from your mind into your being, slipping out of the mind and entering into your being. The mind is a false entity; your being is your real face, your original face. The mind is created by the society, hence there are different kinds of minds -- Hindu mind, Christian mind, Jewish mind -- but the being is one; it is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Mohammedan.…

Question: OUR BELOVED MASTER, SHOITSU SAID TO CHIZEN: IN THE SCHOOL OF THE ANCESTRAL TEACHERS, WE POINT DIRECTLY TO THE HUMAN MIND. VERBAL EXPLANATIONS AND ILLUSTRATIVE DEVICES ACTUALLY MISS THE POINT. NOT FALLING INTO SEEING AND HEARING, NOT FOLLOWING SOUND OR FORM, ACTING FREELY IN THE PHENOMENAL WORLD, SITTING AND LYING IN THE HEAP OF MYRIAD FORMS, NOT INVOLVED WITH PHENOMENA IN BREATHING OUT, NOT BOUND TO THE CLUSTERS AND ELEMENTS OF EXISTENCE IN BREATHING IN, THE WHOLE WORLD IS THE GATE OF LIBERATION. ALL WORLDS ARE TRUE REALITY. A UNIVERSAL MASTER KNOWS WHAT IT COMES TO, THE MOMENT IT IS RAISED. HOW WILL BEGINNERS AND LATECOMERS COME TO GRIPS WITH IT? IF YOU DON'T GET IT YET, FOR THE TIME BEING WE OPEN UP A PATHWAY IN THE GATEWAY OF THE SECONDARY TRUTH. SPEAK OUT WHERE THERE IS NOTHING TO SAY; MANIFEST FORM IN THE MIDST OF FORMLESSNESS.

Like the empty sky it has no boundaries, yet it is right in this place, ever profound and clear. When you seek to know it, you cannot see it, you cannot take hold of it, but you cannot lose it. In not being able to get it you get it. When you are silent it speaks; when you speak, it is silent. The great gate is wide open to bestow alms, and no crowd is blocking the way.

And remember, when Zen says 'just sitting' it means just sitting -- nothing else, not even a mantra. If you are repeating a mantra you are not just sitting, you are again getting into some tommyrot, again into some mind thing. If you are not doing anything whatsoever.... Thoughts are coming, coming; they are going, going -- if they come, good; if they don't come, good. You are not concerned with what is happening, you are simply sitting there. If you feel tired you lie down. If you feel your legs getting tense you spread them. You remain natural. Not even watching. Not making any effort of any kind. That's what they mean by just sitting. Just sitting it happens. Zen is the feminine approach and religion is basically feminine. Science is male, philosophy is male -- religion is female. All that is beautiful in the world -- poetry, painting,…

Beloved Osho, being with you I feel so blissful and liberated, and there seems to be no end to it. You must have tricked me. What is your secret?

And in fact the no seems to be more rational, more loving, more meaningful, more humane. Rather than arguing with that man, Arjuna had just to say: "I have accepted your idea that whatsoever happens, happens according to God" -- and then should have left for the Himalayas. He wanted to be a sannyasin, a meditator in the Himalayas. Krishna would not have been able to stop him -- just because of his own argument. Arjuna could have said, "If war is to happen, God will bring me back -- but you keep quiet." Hence Hindus would not like anybody else to be accepted as a prophet of God. Mohammed talks nonsense. You cannot expect anything better from an uneducated man who could not write, who could not read, who had never been in any way a meditative man. He married nine women. Now, I cannot support that, because in…