Heaven & Hell

 

 

This story is beautiful. The Zen master Hakuin is one of the rare flowerings. A warrior came to him, a samurai, a great soldier, and he asked "Is there any hell, is there any heaven? If there is hell and heaven, where are the gates? Where do I enter from? How can I avoid hell and choose heaven?" He was a simple warrior. Warriors are always simple. [....]

 

he was a warrior. He had come with a simple question. He was not interested in scriptures, not in cost, not in any verbal answer. He was interested in reality. And what did Hakuin do? He said, "Who are you?" And the warrior replied, "I am a samurai." It is a thing of much pride to be a samurai in Japan. It means being a perfect warrior, a man who will not hesitate a single moment to give his life. For him, life and death are just a game.

 

He said, "I am a samurai, I am a leader of samurais. Even the emperor pays respect to me."

 

Hakuin laughed and said, " You, a samurai? You look like a beggar."

 

The samurai's pride was hurt, his ego hammered. He forgot what he had come for. He took out his sword and was just about to kill Hakuin. He forgot that he had come to this master to ask where is the gate of heaven, to ask where is the gate of hell. Then Hakuin laughed and said, "This is the gate of hell. With this sword, this anger, this ego, here opens the gate." This is what a warrior can understand. Immediately he understood: This is the gate. He put his sword back in its sheath. And Hakuin said, "Here opens the gate of heaven."

 

Hell and heaven are within you, both gates are within you. When you are behaving unconsciously there is the gate of hell; when you become alert and conscious, there is the gate of heaven.

 

What happened to this samurai? When he was just about to kill Hakuin, was he conscious? Was he conscious of what he was about to do? Was he conscious of what he had come for? All consciousness had disappeared. When the ego takes over, you cannot be alert. Ego is the drug, the intoxicant that makes you completely unconscious. You act but the act comes from the unconscious, not from your consciousness. And whenever any act comes from the unconscious, the door of hell is open. Whatsoever you do, if you are not aware of what you are doing the gate of hell opens. Immediately the samurai became alert. Suddenly, when Hakuin said, "This is the gate,

 

you have already opened it --" the very situation must have created alertness.

 

Just imagine what would have happened if you had been the warrior, if you had been the samurai, sword in hand, just about to kill. A single moment more and Hakuin's head would have been severed; a single moment more and it would have been separated from the body. And Hakuin said, "This is the gate of hell." This is not a philosophical answer; no master answers in a philosophical way. Philosophy exists only for mediocre, unenlightened minds. The master responds but the response is not verbal, it is total. That this man may have killed him is not the point. "If you kill me and it makes you alert, it is worth it" -- Hakuin played the game. If a single moment had been lost this man would have killed him. But at the right moment Hakuin said, "This is the gate."

 

You may not have heard about samurais. Say you are about to kill a samurai: your sword is in your hand, it is just about to touch his neck. He is standing before you, unprotected, without any weapon. Samurais have a particular sound, a mantra. He will just say a single word so loudly that all your energy will go. You will become as if dead, a statue. He may simply say, "Hey!" You will become static, your hand will not move. That sound will hammer the heart, which controls everything. Your hand will become static, your mind will be shocked; all activity will disappear. You cannot kill a samurai, even if he is without weapons. A sound becomes a protection. If you have a gun, your hands cannot move or you will miss the aim. It is just a sound, a sound that has to be made in a particular way, so that it goes deep into your heart and changes your activity completely, changes the pattern of your activity.

 

When Hakuin said, "This is the gate," the samurai must have remained static. In that static state, when all activity ceases, you become alert. Some activity is needed... otherwise your unconscious would break and you would become conscious. Zen says if a person can sit for six hours without doing anything he will become enlightened. Just for six hours... but six hours is really too long; I say six minutes is enough. Even six seconds will do if you can be absolutely without activity. When you are not occupied, you cannot be unconscious; when you are unoccupied your whole energy becomes consciousness. A tremendous release occurs.

 

Your energy is engaged in occupation. Your mind is thinking, your body is working, you are occupied. Your whole energy is moving in activity, is being dissipated into the world. When you think, you are dissipating energy; each thought takes energy, needs energy. You are continuously thinking and dissipating energy for nothing -- just dissipating energy. Activity needs energy, and your infinite source of energy is continuously being dissipated. You are leaking from everywhere. That's why you feel so weak, so frustrated, so impotent. This impotence feels like helplessness; you are omnipotent and you feel impotent. You have all the sources of infinite energy within you, you are related to the cosmic source, but you feel impotent because you are continuously dissipating energy. If thought stops even for a single moment and activity is no more, if you have become like a statue, unmoving within or without, if there is no movement, either of body or of mind, then tremendous energy is released. Where will it go now there is no activity? It cannot go without. You become a pillar of energy, a flame of energy. Everything becomes conscious inside, everything is lighted; your whole being is filled with light.

 

This must have happened to the warrior -- stopped, sword in hand with Hakuin just before him, with a master, an enlightened master, before him. The eyes of Hakuin were laughing, the face was smiling, and the gate of heaven opened. He understood: the sword went back into its sheath. While putting the sword back into the sheath he must have been totally silent, peaceful. The anger had disappeared, the energy moving in anger had become silence. If you suddenly awake in the middle of anger, you will feel a peace you have never felt before. Energy was moving and suddenly it stops. You will have silence, immediate silence. You will fall into your inner being and the fall will be so sudden, you will become aware. It is not a slow fall, it is so sudden that you cannot remain unaware. You can remain unaware only with routine things, with gradual things; you move so slowly you can't feel movement. This was sudden movement -- from activity to no-activity, from thought to no-thought, from mind to no-mind. As the sword was going back into its sheath, the warrior realized. And Hakuin said, "Here open the doors of heaven."

 

Silence is the door.

 

Inner peace is the door.

 

Non-violence is the door.

 

Love and compassion are the doors.

 

Heaven and hell are not geographical, they are psychological, they are your psychology. And this is not a question to be decided on the day of judgment. The human mind is so clever: in avoiding, in escaping, Christians, Mohammedans and Jews have created a concept of the last day when everybody is to be judged -- you will be taken out of your grave and judged. Those who have followed Jesus, who have been good, who have believed, will go to heaven; those who have misbehaved, who have not followed Jesus, who have not been to church, will be thrown into hell. Christian hell is one of the most ridiculous things. It is eternal, there is no end to it. This seems injustice, sheer injustice; whatsoever sin you have committed no punishment which is eternal can be just. Bertrand Russell somewhere has joked, "If I calculate all my sins, sins that I have committed and sins that I have not committed, only brooded over -- if even they are included -- the hardest judge can't send me to jail for more than four years. And Christianity sends you to hell forever." Bertrand Russell has written a book, Why I am not a Christian; this is one of his arguments. It is a beautiful argument because the whole thing seems to be ridiculous.

 

-Osho, "A Bird on the Wing, #3"