Suresh,
Some errors but overall an informative post...
Thanks,
Edgar
On Mar 5, 2013, at 6:47 AM, SURESH JAGADEESAN wrote:
> The small word `zen' contains the whole evolution of religious
> consciousness. It also represents freedom from religious
> organizations, from priesthood, from any kind of theology, from God.
> This small word can bring fire to your being.
>
> Zen is the very essence of all religions, without their stupid
> rituals, nonsensical theologies. It has dropped everything that could
> be dropped. It has saved only that which is the very soul of
> religiousness. So even drinking a cup of tea with a Zen master, you
> will find you are participating in a religious phenomenon.
>
> Zen believes that truth cannot be expressed by words, but it can be
> expressed by gestures, action. Something can be done about it. You
> cannot say it, but you can show it.
>
> Zen, in the first place, is not a teaching but a device to awaken you.
> It is not information, it is not knowledge. It is a method to shake
> you up, to wake you up. Teaching means you are fast asleep and
> somebody goes on talking about what awakening is — and you go on
> snoring and he goes on talking. YOU are asleep, HE is asleep;
> otherwise he will not talk to you. At least when he sees that you are
> snoring he will not talk to you.
>
> Zen wants you to approach life unconditionally. That means without any
> prejudice, without any precondition, without any expectation. You can
> be total only if you are standing at your very center.
>
> Zen approaches things from the very other extreme: wherever there is
> sacredness, God is. Wherever there is holiness, God is. Not vice versa
> -- not that God's presence makes any place holy, but if you make any
> place holy, the presence of the divine, of godliness, is immediately
> felt there. So they have tried to bring the sacred into everything. No
> other religion has gone that far, that high, that deep. No other
> religion has even conceived the idea. In Zen there is no God. In Zen
> there is only you and your consciousness. Your consciousness is the
> highest flowering in existence up to now. It can go still higher, and
> the way to take it higher is to create your whole life in such a way
> that it becomes sacred.
>
> Pain has a tremendous value in awakening. Pain has been used by many
> masters to awaken the sleeping disciple. All your old religions, on
> the contrary, console the disciple and help him to sleep well -- God
> is in heaven and everything is okay on the earth, you don't be
> worried! But Zen is not at all interested in consoling you. It is
> interested in awakening you.
>
> I call Zen the only living religion because it is not a religion, but
> only a religiousness. It has no dogma, it does not depend on any
> founder. It has no past; in fact it has nothing to teach you. It is
> the strangest thing that has happened in the whole history of mankind
> -- strangest because it enjoys in emptiness, it blossoms in
> nothingness. It is fulfilled in innocence, in not knowing. It does not
> discriminate between the mundane and the sacred. For it, all that is,
> is sacred.
> Life is sacred whatever form, whatever shape. Wherever there is
> something living and alive it is sacred.
>
> Zen has only created devices, leaving you completely free to find the
> truth. And it is strange, more people have become enlightened through
> Zen than through any other religion of the world. The other religions
> are very big, and Zen is a very small stream. You can see these small
> things, and a master uses them in such a way that they start pointing
> to the moon.
>
> Organized religions are political. Zen is a non-political
> religiousness. You cannot call it even religion. It is so
> individualistic and so emphatically concerned only with the potential
> of the individual. It does not want anything from the individual, it
> simply wants him to be himself.
>
> In Zen an empty-headed fool is almost ready for meditation. A man full
> of knowledge is far away from meditation. An empty-headed fool is
> simply a loving way of saying that you are not far away from becoming
> wise. The fool can become wise; the knowledgeable never. The
> empty-headed can become empty-minded, but the man who is carrying
> scriptures and degrees and the universities and the libraries in his
> head, he is far away. A master will not unnecessarily waste time on
> such a person.
>
> In Zen an empty-headed fool is almost ready for meditation. A man full
> of knowledge is far away from meditation. An empty-headed fool is
> simply a loving way of saying that you are not far away from becoming
> wise. The fool can become wise; the knowledgeable never. The
> empty-headed can become empty-minded, but the man who is carrying
> scriptures and degrees and the universities and the libraries in his
> head, he is far away. A master will not unnecessarily waste time on
> such a person.
>
> The internal and the external are in absolute harmony. There is no
> division. But man has created the division and has created much
> anxiety about it. Drop the division, and go beyond anxiety. Dropping
> dualities one becomes religious. Don't think yourself separate from
> the world. That's why Zen people say: The world is Nirvana. There is
> no other enlightenment.
>
> Zen does not want anybody to be a believer. Either experience or just
> go home. Except experience, no belief is going to help. So those who
> have followed Zen masters were not followers, they were fellow
> travelers. They were rejoicing in the master’s enlightenment. They
> were drinking as much of his wisdom as possible, and they were finding
> the path so that they could also experience the same lightning
> experience which dissolves all questions, all answers, and leaves you
> simply innocent, centered — eternity in your hands. But they were not
> followers, and this is very difficult for the ordinary masses to
> understand.
>
> When you are a master of your own being, then you live in the same
> world but with totally different eyes -- the same world becomes
> divine. That is the meaning of the declaration of Zen Masters: samsara
> IS nirvana -- this very world is enlightenment. All that is needed is
> a change in you from foolishness to wisdom, from unawareness to
> awareness.
>
> The path of Zen starts by dropping thoughts, becoming more and more
> alert to the thought process -- becoming so aware that in that
> awareness, in that heat of awareness, thoughts start evaporating and
> you are left in your total nudity and aloneness. That is the path of
> meditation; it works through the mind. It is against mind, it
> transcends mind, but the path goes through the mind.
>
> AUM is the unstruck sound; there is no instrument. When you become
> absolutely silent, suddenly it is there. Zen people have the right
> expression for it; they call it'the sound of one hand clapping'. If
> two hands are there, of course, the clapping is easy, but one hand
> clapping and the sound of one hand clapping seems to be absurd -- but
> they are truly expressing the reality. When you go inside and you are
> absolutely silent you hear for the first time the inner music.
>
> Zen wants everybody to be a glory unto himself. It is not an
> achievement, it is not competition; it is simply originality. And the
> originality is already there, you have just to throw away all the
> rubbish that you have been collecting from others. However valuable it
> may be, it is destroying your original being, covering it with dust;
> and you will never be happy unless you find your original being. The
> very finding of your original being is such a dance, such a joy, that
> you can bless the whole world yet you will remain overflowing.
>
> FROM ZEN MASTER OSHO
>
> --
> Thanks and best regards
> J.Suresh
> New No.3, Old No.7,
> Chamiers road - 1st Lane,
> Alwarpet,
> Chennai - 600018
> Ph: 044 42030947
> Mobile: 91 9884071738
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Current Book Discussion: any Zen book that you recently have read or are
> reading! Talk about it today!Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
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