People expect something, and it is never fulfilled. There is always frustration all around. People are living in despair, and the reason is that what they expected… existence has no desire, no reason to go according to their expectations. If you want to be happy, go along with existence and its ends wherever it takes you.
That’s what I mean by let-go: you simply drop your projections, your imaginations, and let the existence take hold of your whole life. Then there is no despair, because there is no possibility of being frustrated. There is no anguish and no anxiety; you are relaxed with existence. Whatever happens, that is good.
The whole existence is wiser than you, so whatever happens – Buddha says suchness – just whatever happens, remember, such is the nature of existence. Don’t stand aloof and against existence; be part, and feel a certain oneness.
That oneness can be called suchness, or isness, or thisness, but the meaning is that whatever happens is good. You have to find out the beauty of it and the joy of it. Only such a man can be blissful; otherwise there is always the feeling of being deceived.
Every man – out of a thousand, perhaps one man dies without the idea that he has been deceived by life. Almost everybody dies with the idea, “What was it? Seventy years I struggled; what is the game?” All your expectations are shattered, all your dreams are broken, all your promises remain unfulfilled. You are dying a bankrupt.
Almost everybody dies a bankrupt as far as his expectations are concerned. Only a man of let-go is not deceived by anything. He takes everything that comes in the way happily and joyously, and if things change, he allows the change without any hindrance, without creating any barriers to prevent the change. Such a man knows no deceptions. He knows life has never deceived him, but has always fulfilled those longings which he was not even aware of.
Horin then said: “Seeing there is wind, waves arise; playing with the water, the rough sail flaps.”
He did not understand that Rinzai was not talking about the fish, and he is trying to explain his own statement without listening to what Rinzai has raised as a question.
Rinzai said: “The frog in the moon shines brightly alone, and all rivers and hills are at peace. The long breath of the wind is the voice of autumn in earth and sky.”
Everything is as it should be. So peaceful are the hills in the full moon night . . . rivers are at peace, dancing in the full moon night. Because of their dance the full moon’s reflection becomes a silver spread over all. Everything is silent and peaceful, there is no frustration in the hills, there is no frustration in the rivers. Even the frog in the moon shines brightly alone.
If you look at nature, just taking man and his mind away, everything is bliss, everything is buddha. It is only man’s mind that creates trouble, because it cannot allow a let-go.
The long breath of the wind is the voice of autumn in earth and sky.
And there is great joy that autumn is coming. The moon is full of blissfulness and all that shines in the moonlight, except man . . .
Man can also be as happy as the hills and as peaceful as the rivers if he looks at the moon and the surroundings without any mind. With no thought, he will also become part of the whole scene.
But man remains always concerned with his own stupid ideas. When the whole existence is rejoicing, it is only man who is worried. Have you ever seen a tree worried? No animal is ever worried. Even in dying, it dies peacefully. Such is the way of existence, that anything that is born is going to die.
But man’s mind intrudes, always creates problems, because it expects things to be different than they are. He is not ready to accept the suchness of existence; he wants it according to him. This, according to him, is the whole misery. Everybody is trying that everything should be according to him. One may say it, one may not say it, but even without saying it, your mind is weaving thoughts about how things should be brought according to your idea – and this is impossible.
You cannot change existence.
All that you can do is drop your mind.
Horin said: “Though you may spread your three inches of tongue, and illuminate the celestial quietness, just try and say a single word to fit the occasion!”
Rinzai responded – and his response is of fundamental importance: “When you meet a master swordsman, show him your sword. When you meet a man who is not a poet, do not show him your poem.”
Each according to his worth, each according to his receptivity. You are not yet able to receive one word and understand it. I cannot recite a poem to you, because you will not understand it; you will certainly misunderstand.
I have heard, a thief was brought into the court, and the judge said, “Why have you entered this man’s house?”
The poor thief said, “I have entered to steal something. But the man was so strange: he caught hold of me, and when I tried hard to escape he said, ‘Don’t be worried, just sit down and listen. I have written a new poem.’ I thought it was better to listen silently, but the poem went on and on and on. And he was holding me by the hand, so this way the whole night he tortured me. I didn’t understand a single word of what he was saying, and I could not escape either.
“By the morning the police came, and now I am standing here before you with only one hope: that you will not give me the punishment to listen to this poet again. I am ready even to go to the gallows. I had no idea that this house belongs to a poet, otherwise I would not have entered.”
Poets are like that. It is very difficult for them to find audiences. They go on searching around to see if they can find somebody, and everybody goes on running away saying, “I have to do some special work. Right now, I am not available.” Who wants to waste time?
“Unless you are a poet,” Rinzai is saying, “don’t say anything to a person who is not worthy of it, because that is insulting him, that is degrading him, that is taking his dignity, that is bringing up his unworthiness. So don’t ask me for a single word; you are not yet capable of receiving it. You have not understood a single thing, and you went on explaining. You are not a fish and you don’t know what goes on in the mind of the fish.
“Talk about man and talk about his deceptions, and find out the reason why he gets deceived. It is his own resistance to existence, and an effort to give a mold to the whole life – which is not possible. He is trying the impossible and goes on failing.”
This failure is not just his mistake. It is not that he has not been doing rightly; whatever he does he will be a failure. Nobody can be wiser than the cosmic existence. So the wise people allow themselves to go along with the existential river, not even asking, “Where are we going?”
Existence is going nowhere. It is simply here, just playing with thousands of forms, thousands of situations, creating more and more consciousness, more and more happiness, more and more love. If it is not happening to you, it simply means you are keeping your doors closed.
Just open your heart and relax with existence and suddenly you will see, The frog in the moon shines brightly alone. No company is needed, no richness is needed – just a poor frog. No political position is needed – and all rivers and hills are at peace. They don’t have anything, but they have peace, which you cannot purchase.
The long breath of the wind is the voice of autumn in earth and sky. Just be with existence wherever it is going and you will be unworried. Your tensions will disappear. You will be as happy as a child, you will be as beautiful as a flower.
Ikkyu wrote:
When you break up a cherry tree
And look,
There are no flowers at all;
The flowers are brought by the
Spring wind.
Even though you soar boundlessly
Even beyond the clouds,
Just don’t rely on
The teachings of Gautama.
Two things Ikkyu is saying: one, you cannot bring the flowers, which will come in their own time. You have to wait; you have to be patient. You cannot ask, “Why are the cherry flowers not coming?” The tree is there, you are watering the tree . . . You can even, Ikkyu says, break up a cherry tree and look inside the tree to find where the flowers are hidden. There are no flowers at all.
The flowers are brought by the spring wind. Let the spring come, let the right moment and the climate and the right wind reach the cherry tree. It will blossom suddenly; it will explode into immense beauty.
The cherry tree is waiting; it is not in a hurry; it is not running somewhere to catch up with spring. It is simply waiting silently, joyously. Spring comes; even if it is a day or two late, what does it matter? It has always been coming.
The second thing Ikkyu says: Even though you soar boundlessly even beyond the clouds, just don’t rely on the teachings of Gautama. That can be said only by the Zen masters about their own originator: “Don’t rely on Gautama the Buddha’s teachings” – because his teachings were in a different context. He was talking to a different kind of people. You may not be that kind of person at all, and the times have changed; those teachings may be no more relevant.
Only rely on your own consciousness. Even Gautama’s consciousness is not reliable. He is not saying that Gautama is wrong; he is saying that Gautama was dealing with situations fifteen hundred years before.
I have told you of an instance when just in a single day . . . In the morning a man asked Gautam Buddha, “Is there a God?”
And Gautama said, “No, there is no God.”
In the afternoon another man asked, “What do you think about God?”
Gautama said, “Yes, God is.”
You can understand the trouble Ananda, who was continuously with him, was in. He started having a migraine. What kind of man is this? In the morning he says, “There is no God,” and in the afternoon he has forgotten completely, and he is saying, “There is God.”
He waited for the time in the night when there would be nobody around, but before that a third person came in the evening, sat down and asked Gautama, “I have no conception either for or against God. Just help me to understand.”
And Gautam Buddha did not say anything to the man, but on the contrary simply closed his eyes, remained silent. Seeing this, the other man also closed his eyes and sat. He thought perhaps Buddha was going to say something in his silence and they both remained in silence for two hours.
The man felt so beautiful and so fresh and so young, so rejuvenated, that after two hours he opened his eyes and he was a changed man. He touched Gautam Buddha’s feet, thanked him and told him, “I was not expecting that much. You have given me more than I had asked. You have given me a taste. I had come only to ask a question; you have taken me to the experience itself. I will remain grateful to you my whole life.”
In the night Ananda said, “You should at least think of me. The whole day I have been in such a trouble. What kind of man are you? In the morning you say no, in the afternoon you say yes, in the evening you don’t say anything, but just remain silent – and that fellow gets the answer and you have not said anything.”
Buddha said, “The first man, to whom I said, ‘There is no God,’ was an atheist, and he had come to get a confirmation of his atheism, that if Gautam Buddha also is an atheist, then there is no problem. Atheism is certainly the right approach. There is no God. “The second man had also come for confirmation of his own prejudice. He was a theist and he wanted support. They were not seekers; they were only asking for consolation. They had already got the idea; they were simply asking me to support their ideas. They were satisfied with their ideas without ever moving into any new space.
“But the third man was really a seeker. He plainly said, ‘I don’t have any idea for or against.’ For such a man only, silence is the answer. And because he had no prejudice, seeing me closing my eyes and becoming silent, he immediately understood the hint. He closed his eyes and he went deep into silence. Although I had not said anything to him, he went away immensely richer than he had come.
“And Ananda,” Buddha said, “you should not be disturbed, because none of these questions were yours. It is not your problem.”
Ananda said, “It is not my problem, but I have ears and I am always close to you.”
Buddha said, “You will have to learn that I don’t have any fixed philosophy so that I can hand over immediately ready-made answers. I have to see the person, his capacity. I don’t want to insult anybody. I don’t want to give something which they cannot understand, which is going to be over their heads.”
If this was the situation in Buddha’s own time, Ikkyu is right: Just don’t rely on the teachings of Gautama. Find out your own sources. Go deeper into your own being. You will find there the affirmation of Gautam Buddha.
But don’t rely on the teachings. Just don’t sit with the scriptures, reading them for years, studying them for years. That is not going to help. Gautam Buddha had not read those scriptures before he became enlightened, so it is absolutely certain that they cannot be the cause of anybody’s enlightenment. Just do what he did; don’t be too much concerned what he said. Whatever he said was meant for his contemporaries, for his time, for the people he was talking to.
Do what Buddha did. He became a no-mind, and becoming a no-mind, you will have to throw even Buddha and his scriptures out of your being. Only in this emptiness is there a possibility of the cherry blossoms of your being coming from the potential to the actual. You can bring the spring by bringing the no-mind.
As no-mind comes, thousands of miracles follow. But don’t desire those miracles; if you start desiring them, you will never have the no-mind, because those desires will not allow the mind to be empty.
So remember, it is one of the most significant things for a seeker that he should not become too much concerned about the search. He should remain playful. “If there is a truth in existence, someday, somewhere I am going to encounter it.”
But don’t be serious, just be playful. In playfulness you are relaxed, and in relaxation, utter relaxation, you will find Gautam Buddha himself, so why bother about his teachings? When you can find Gautam Buddha himself, then why bother about dead scriptures? Ikkyu is right, absolutely right.
-Osho, “Rinzai: Master of the Irrational, #6”