According to Osho, Christian mysticism and Zen are incommensurable: the former pursues personal union with a projected God, a hallucination born of belief, while Zen realizes shunyata, pure nothingness beyond mind and language. Because mind can project deities but not nothingness, their foundations diverge utterly. Genuine awakening requires dropping all concepts (God, heaven, hell), emptying thought until mind ceases; only then is the Zen experience possible.
Christian mystics imagine meeting God; Zen lets go of every idea until only quiet nothingness remains, so they aren’t the same.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Maneesha's question: beloved Osho, thomas merton wrote: "if a christian mystic has an experience which can be phenomenologically compared with a zen experience, does it matter that the christian in fact believes he is personally united with god, and the zen man interprets his experience as `shunyata', nothingness, or the void being aware of itself? In what sense can these two experiences be called mystical?" beloved master, why do so many christians and admirers of zen try to make the two fit together?
Richer countries are frustrated, utterly frustrated, because they have found money and they have found respectability. They are educated, they are sophisticated, they are intellectually far more advanced than the backward countries. Naturally, Christianity is the only religion in the world which is becoming aware that their congregation is disappearing -- they are all going to Poona! You don't see many Indians here -- very few. Very few are intelligent enough. But it is really sad. The country of Gautam Buddha is no longer interested in meditation; it is interested in bringing more technology, more riches. And most of the people who go outside to learn technology, never return -- just as you would not like to return -- because there they get more money. A doctor can earn more in Germany or Japan. In America a professor can earn more, a scientist is needed more in those countries. In…
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.…
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,…
Osho, what is mysticism?
Mysticism is the experience that life is not logic, that life is poetry; that life is not syllogism, that life is a song. Mysticism is the declaration that life can never really be known; it is essentially unknowable. Science divides existence into two categories: the known and the unknown. The known was unknown one day; it has become known. The unknown is unknown today; tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, it will also become known. Science believes that sooner or later a point of understanding will arrive when there will be only one category: the known, all will have been known. The unknown is slowly being reduced to the known. Mysticism is the declaration that life consists of three categories: one, the known; another, the unknown; and the third, and the most important, is the unknowable -- which has not been known and which will never be known. And that…
Osho, I cannot understand the philosophy of zen. What should I do to understand it?
When all words are gone, your mirror has no more dust on it, no more mist on it. When you look at things you collect impressions; that is the dust -- that's what you call thinking. When you see a rose flower, the rose flower is outside you but it makes a reflection inside you. The rose flower will fade away by the evening, the petals will fall and disappear, but the inner rose flower, the rose that has become imprinted in your memory will continue. It will remain forever with you, you can always remember it. And if you are a sensitive, aesthetic, artistic person you can visualize it again and again; you can imagine it as if it is true. In fact, if you try you will be surprised: you can even experience the fragrance of the rose again. If you create the whole situation in your imagination:…