The Great Zen Master Ta Hui, Chapter 6: Innocence

BELOVED OSHO,

THERE IS NOTHING TO ATTAIN

ONLY IF THE PERSON TRULY POSSESSES THE FACULTY OF WISDOM AND WILL POWER WILL HE CONSENT TO STEP BACK AND REFLECT.

YUNG CHIA ALSO SAID, "THE REAL NATURE OF IGNORANCE IS IDENTICAL TO THE NATURE OF ENLIGHTENMENT. ORIGINAL INHERENT NATURE IS THE NATURALLY REAL ENLIGHTENED ONE." IF YOU THINK LIKE THIS, SUDDENLY, IN THE PLACE WHERE THOUGHT CANNOT REACH, YOU WILL SEE THE BODY OF REALITY IN WHICH THERE IS NOT A SINGLE THING -- THIS IS THE PLACE FOR YOU TO GET OUT OF BIRTH AND DEATH. WHAT I SAID BEFORE, THAT ONE CANNOT SEEK THE DHARMA, WHICH HAS NOTHING TO ATTAIN, WITH THE ATTITUDE THAT THERE is SOMETHING TO ATTAIN, IS JUST THIS PRINCIPLE.

GENTLEMEN OF AFFAIRS MAKE THEIR LIVING WITHIN THE CONFINES OF THOUGHT AND JUDGMENT THEIR WHOLE LIVES: AS SOON AS THEY HEAR A MAN OF KNOWLEDGE SPEAK OF THE DHARMA IN WHICH THERE IS NOTHING TO ATTAIN, IN THEIR HEARTS THERE IS DOUBT AND CONFUSION, AND THEY FEAR FALLING INTO EMPTINESS.

AS SOON AS YOU HEAR IT SAID THAT YOU SHOULDN'T THINK, IMMEDIATELY YOU ARE AT A LOSS AND CAN'T FIND YOUR GRIP. YOU'RE FAR FROM REALIZING THAT THIS VERY LACK OF ANYWHERE TO GET A GRIP IS THE TIME FOR YOU TO LET GO OF YOUR BODY AND YOUR LIFE.

IF CORRECT MINDFULNESS IS PRESENT AT ALL TIMES, AND THE ATTITUDE OF FEAR FOR BIRTH AND DEATH DOESN'T WAVER, THEN, OVER LONG DAYS AND MONTHS, WHAT WAS UNFAMILIAR WILL NATURALLY BECOME FAMILIAR, AND WHAT WAS STALE WILL NATURALLY BECOME FRESH. BUT WHAT IS THE STALE? IT'S THE BRILLIANCE AND CLEVERNESS, THAT WHICH THINKS AND JUDGES. WHAT IS THE UNFAMILIAR? IT'S ENLIGHTENMENT, NIRVANA, TRUE THUSNESS, THE BUDDHA-NATURE -- WHERE THERE'S NO THOUGHT OR DISCRIMINATION, WHERE FIGURING AND CALCULATING CANNOT REACH, WHERE THERE'S NO WAY FOR YOU TO USE YOUR MENTAL ARRANGEMENTS.

This is a special evening, because one of us has left for the other shore. Swami Anand Maitreya was certainly a man of tremendous courage. He met me sometime near 1960. He had already been a member of parliament for twelve years and he was very close to the first prime minister of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. But the moment he heard me he simply dropped his whole political career.

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru tried to persuade him, saying, "There is every chance for you to become the chief minister of your state." -- he was from Bihar, the land of Buddha.

But Maitreya said, "I want one thing understood clearly: ambition is hell and I am not going to look back; politics is finished for me. All ambitions are finished for me." And since then he has been with me.

He has never asked a single question. He has never doubted, his trust was absolute. In these years, thousands of people have come to me; many have been lost, but he remained unwavering. He could not conceive how people can find contradictions in my statements.

Sometime in 1984 Maitreya became enlightened, but he had chosen to remain silent, so he remained silent. He did not even tell me what had happened to him. But the day it happened I called a small meeting of a few sannyasins in Rancho Rajneesh in America. I declared that there were going to be three special committees: one of mahasattvas, the great beings who are destined to become enlightened in this very life; the second of sambuddhas, who have already become enlightened; and the third of bodhisattvas, who will also become enlightened... but perhaps they will take a little longer than the other two categories, but certainly before their death.

Because I had included Maitreya's name, he was shocked. He wanted to keep it completely to himself, not to say anything about enlightenment to anybody. As he left the meeting, he told a few people outside, "It is very strange, I have not said -- I have been trying to hide it -- but somehow he has seen it. And not only has he seen it, he has declared me enlightened."

And his response was truly a response of great love. He said, "Osho is really a rascal."

All these years before his enlightenment and after his enlightenment, he just remained absolutely ordinary, with no ego, with no desire, with no greed.

Just before I came back to Poona, Maitreya told me in Bombay, "I have got ten thousand rupees in a post office deposit in Patna, Bihar; that's all I have, but now I will not need it." Certainly he was becoming aware that his time of departure was coming closer. And he transferred the money to Neelam for the ashram. He died without anything, any possessions. And he slipped very slowly, very silently, from sleep into eternal sleep.

I am saying this evening is special, because one of us has moved from the world of mortals to the world of immortals. He will not be born again. He has attained to the freedom and the liberation we have been talking about.

This is a moment of great celebration and rejoicing. It happens very rarely. In millions of people perhaps one comes to this silent explosion of light and disappears into the ocean of consciousness that surrounds existence.

I would like these talks to be dedicated to Swami Anand Maitreya, who slipped from sleep into eternal sleep. But he was not asleep! He has gone in full awakening. He has gone with full awareness. You will keep him in your memories because he has shown the path to you, too. He lived joyously, although he had nothing, and he died peacefully, blissfully.

That's what attaining to one's destiny means. Those who live in misery and die in misery go on missing their destiny. They are failures, and because they have failed so many times, they become accustomed to failing again and again. But even if one person amongst you succeeds, it is your success, too. He has proved that what we have been talking about is not mere philosophy -- it is an authentic path to self-realization.

Maitreya will be missed. Just the other night, when I last saw him, I had a certain strange feeling... as if he is going to depart very soon. And this feeling happened to many other people too; it was as if he was gathering himself and preparing for the eternal pilgrimage. He has gone the way a man should go -- joyously, ecstatically.

You have to remember that his whole experience was based on two things: one, that he has fallen in trust with me... It is a strange language that I am using. You may not have ever heard the phrase `falling in trust'. Falling in love happens every day. Falling in trust happens only once in a while.

And secondly, not for a single moment since he has met me has he missed entering into meditation as much as possible. His death was not an end to life, but the ultimate culmination of a tremendous trust and meditativeness. Where trust and meditation meet, one attains to one's potential in its whole glory and splendor.

Now the sutras:

ONLY IF THE PERSON TRULY POSSESSES THE FACULTY OF WISDOM AND WILL POWER WILL HE CONSENT TO STEP BACK AND REFLECT.

Ta Hui is a strange mixture. Perhaps he is not even aware that the words he is using are not the right words. For example, wisdom is not a faculty; intelligence is a faculty.

Wisdom is your whole being. Wisdom is you. It is not a faculty, it is your wholeness that becomes luminous.

But Ta Hui is an intellectual and is trying his best to teach people something which even those who have attained find it difficult to teach. And he is meddling in people's minds: `faculty of wisdom' -- and then the second word he uses, `will power.'

Will power is nothing but another name of ego power. A man of wisdom has no will, just as he has no mind -- because to will means to keep yourself separate from existence. It is a little subtle, but try to feel it. The moment you will it means you are always willing against things as they are. You want them to be some other way.

A man of enlightenment has no will. The universal will is enough, there is no need of having an individual will. He has surrendered his individual will to the universe, now wherever the river takes him, he goes. He is not even swimming, he is simply floating.

Will is struggle, fight.

WILL TO POWER is the name of the book by Friedrich Nietzsche. It was published after his death because even Nietzsche himself could not imagine how he would face the world when the book was published. It will be criticized, because will to power means a continuous struggle, violence -- for money, for power, for position. Life becomes a war field, no more a rejoicing. It is simply competition -- and a very terrific competition because everybody is trying to reach to the same place.

Ta Hui uses the word without understanding the nature of meditation: there is no will power, there is no faculty of wisdom. And he goes on to say, only if the person truly possesses the faculty of wisdom and will power will he consent to step back and reflect.

The man of wisdom does not reflect. Reflection is another name for thinking, a superior kind of contemplation. But howsoever superior it may be, it is a form of thinking. The man who has eyes knows that light is; he never thinks about whether light is or is not. And if a man reflects about whether the light is or is not, one thing is certain: he has no eyes. Eyes don't have to think. Eyes simply know, spontaneously know that light is.

The same is true when you have gone beyond the mind. There is no question of any reflection; you simply see whatsoever is the case. And because it is the nature of things, it cannot be otherwise; hence there arises a tremendous acceptance, called by Buddha tathata -- `suchness' or `thusness'. You cannot do anything. It is simply the nature of things.

All that is needed is for you to relax, be at rest, and accept the reality as it is -- a total "yes," holding nothing back. Naturally in this state of thusness there cannot be any misery and there cannot be any suffering. There is only immense silence and tremendous joy. Your whole being is continuously surrounded by music; you are still, and yet in a dance -- a dance without movements and a song without words.

But Ta Hui is not yet aware of it. He goes on quoting masters whom he has been meeting.

YUNG CHIA ALSO SAID, "THE REAL NATURE OF IGNORANCE IS IDENTICAL TO THE NATURE OF ENLIGHTENMENT. ORIGINAL INHERENT NATURE IS THE NATURALLY REAL ENLIGHTENED ONE."

He is quoting Yung Chia, but I don't see that he understands what he is saying, or what he is quoting, because the following sentences show his ignorance. He has not understood Yung Chia.

He says,

IF YOU THINK LIKE THIS, SUDDENLY, IN THE PLACE WHERE THOUGHT CANNOT REACH, YOU WILL SEE THE BODY OF REALITY IN WHICH THERE IS NOT A SINGLE THING -- THIS IS THE PLACE FOR YOU TO GET OUT OF BIRTH AND DEATH.

Can you see the contradiction?

First, Yung Chia's statement is of great importance. He is saying "The real nature of ignorance..." What is the real nature of ignorance? Perhaps you have never thought about it.

What is the real nature of ignorance?

The real nature of ignorance is innocence.

It knows nothing; hence it is clean, pure, unpolluted.

Yung Chia is saying, "The real nature of ignorance is identical to the nature of enlightenment" -- because the enlightened man also knows nothing. He is also innocent, just like a small child. A very strange statement... it can disturb many who think only intellectually. The question is bound to arise in their minds: if the real nature of enlightenment is the same as the real nature of ignorance, then why bother? You are already ignorant. Now meditating and contemplating and concentrating, and standing on your head, and doing yoga postures, and fasting, and going to the caves and to the Himalayas, renouncing the world... Why do this whole circus if the nature of enlightenment is just the same as the nature of ignorance? In a way it is the same; in a way it is not.

As far as innocence is concerned, it is the same. But the child's innocence is corruptible, and the enlightened man's innocence is incorruptible -- there is the difference. The child will become knowledgeable; he cannot resist. There is no way to keep the child continuously ignorant. The child's innocence will soon be lost. In fact every effort is being made so that he will soon become knowledgeable and adult, mature.

But the sage has passed through all those stages of knowledge, maturity; he has come round the whole circle. He is incorruptible. Now nobody can tell him, "You should try to know something." He has known everything and dropped it. He has not only dropped knowledge, he has dropped the very faculty of knowing: the mind. He has seen that the whole game is simply futile; his innocence is now incorruptible. So there is a similarity -- and there is a great unbridgeable difference.

Ta Hui is quoting this great statement, but I don't have the feeling, looking at the following statements, that he has understood it. If you think like this he says... It is not a thinking. You cannot think like this. Thinking always leads to knowledge, never to innocence. So the moment he says, if you think like this, he misses the whole point. And you can see how very intellectual people can behave in a very stupid way.

Listen to the whole sentence: If you think like this, suddenly, in the place where thought cannot reach... and he is asking you to think, and to think about a place where thought cannot reach...you will see the body of reality in which there is not a single thing -- this is the place for you to get out of birth and death. One does not get out of birth and death; one simply becomes awakened, and one is out of death, out of birth.

It is not a question of first becoming aware... and then you have to do something to get out of the circle of birth and death. No, the moment you are aware, you are out of it. They are simultaneous.

Just as in the morning when you get up -- have you to do something to get out of your dreams? The moment you get up, you are out of your dreams already; otherwise it would have been very difficult to know whether you are dreaming or whether you are awake. If there were some effort needed to get out of your dreams, who will make the effort? You are fast asleep, you are dreaming -- who will get out of the dreams?

You must have had dreams, once in a while, when you dream that you are awake. And only when you really become awake you find, "My God, that was only a dream, and I was thinking that I am awake." Awakening and getting out of the dreams have to be simultaneous.

This life, this birth, this death, this whole circle of events -- in which we go on and on moving from one life into another -- is only because we are spiritually asleep.

Meditation wakes you up.

It is simply a method of awakening, and the moment you are awake, you are out of the whole circle of birth and death.

But Ta Hui is still talking about having "to get out of birth and death." You don't have to get out. Even if you want to get in, you cannot get in either.

I have heard... one night Mulla Nasruddin saw an angel who said, "You have been so virtuous, Mulla, I am going to give you a gift." And he gave him one rupee note.

Mulla said, "Are you joking? For my virtues, just one rupee reward! I cannot accept it, it is humiliating."

Haggling, the angel said, "Okay, two, three, four"... finally they came to ninety-nine rupees.

Mulla said, "Listen, just for one rupee, don't destroy the whole thing. Make it just a one hundred rupee note. That seems to be correct, complete. Ninety-nine looks so incomplete." But he said it so loudly -- "Make it one hundred!" -- that his wife woke up. She thought, "What is he saying and to whom is he talking?" So she shook him and he woke up.

Mulla said, "You idiot! You don't understand that I was getting one hundred rupees from an angel. My whole night I have been haggling and haggling, and that was such a miserly angel. I have never seen such a miserly person. He was stuck at ninety-nine, and now you have awakened me. Just bring my glasses. I will go to sleep again, but I need glasses because I suspect that that angel is so miserly, the hundred rupee note may be false. Be quick!"

The poor woman thought, "This is absolutely stupid; in sleep you don't need glasses." But not wanting to quarrel in the middle of the night and disturb the neighbors, she brought the glasses and Mulla put them on. And then he started, "Come on! Where have you gone? Okay, ninety-nine. I will settle even for ninety-eight." And in this way he went down again, but the angel was nowhere to be seen. When a dream is broken, you cannot reconnect it. Finally he said, "Okay, one rupee. Now don't hide."

His wife was listening to the whole thing. She said, "Don't waste your night. You can take one rupee from me, and just go to sleep. You will not get that dream sequence again, and for God's sake, take those glasses off; otherwise you will break them in your sleep. And sleeping by your side, knowing that you have your glasses on, I cannot sleep. I feel uneasy... what kind of thing is happening?"

So Mulla said, "Okay, you give me one rupee. In fact, you disturbed the whole thing. I was going to manage that fellow for one hundred rupees. If I and pull him from one rupee to ninety-nine, and then it was only a question of one rupee more... I was going to convince him! You woke me up and disturbed the whole thing, and meanwhile that miserly fellow has escaped. Now when I close my eyes, he is not there -- nowhere to be seen."

You cannot continue the same dream again. Once you are awake, to enter into the same dream is impossible -- and this is about ordinary awakening. When you are truly awakened, your whole being conscious, there is no question of getting out of birth and death. You are out of it. Now even if you want to get into it, it is not possible.

A young boy, not more than seven years old, was arguing with his father: "You said yesterday, `Always remember, nothing is impossible.' And you said this statement is from Napoleon Bonaparte. And I say to you that I have found one thing which is impossible."

The father asked, "You have found something which is impossible? What is it?"

The boy said, "It is just in our bathroom."

The father said, "Just show me."

The boy brought the tube of toothpaste and he said, "This is impossible -- even if Napoleon Bonaparte wants to do it, he cannot do it -- once you take it out, to put it back in. I have tried my best, it does not go back. Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, no Napoleon Bonaparte can put it back in. You try! You are a great fan of Napoleon Bonaparte. Do this small thing. Just the other day you were bragging that nothing is impossible in the world, and in your bathroom, the impossible thing is there."

The most impossible thing in the world is: once you are awake, you cannot go back to your unconsciousness. There is just no way. Even if you want, even if you try, nothing is going to succeed. Just as you cannot go back in time, you cannot go back to yesterday, to the day before yesterday. You cannot go back into a state of unconsciousness.

All your problems of life and death are of unconsciousness.

So although these are very small mistakes, they show a great misunderstanding on the part of Ta Hui. He has listened to masters, but he is only an intellectual. He has not experienced... So it is very easy to detect where the loopholes are.

WHAT I SAID BEFORE, THAT ONE CANNOT SEEK THE DHARMA, WHICH HAS NOTHING TO ATTAIN, WITH THE ATTITUDE THAT THERE IS SOMETHING TO ATTAIN, IS JUST THIS PRINCIPLE.

GENTLEMEN OF AFFAIRS MAKE THEIR LIVING WITHIN THE CONFINES OF THOUGHT AND JUDGMENT THEIR WHOLE LIVES: AS SOON AS THEY HEAR A MAN OF KNOWLEDGE SPEAK OF THE DHARMA, IN WHICH THERE IS NOTHING TO ATTAIN, IN THEIR HEARTS THERE IS DOUBT AND CONFUSION AND THEY FEAR FALLING INTO EMPTINESS.

In the first place, he uses the phrase, "a man of knowledge," which is never used for anyone who is enlightened. He can be called a man of wisdom, he can be called a man of knowing, he can be called a man of innocence, but he cannot be called a man of knowledge. Knowledge always belongs to the mind.

What is the difference between knowing and knowledge? Knowing is actual experience in the moment. Knowledge is when knowing goes dead, when knowing becomes past. Knowledge is stale, knowing is fresh.

Knowing is the rose dancing in the sun, yet connected with the roots deep in the earth, alive. Knowledge is a roseflower you have put in your holy scripture. It still has the shape of the flower but the color has faded, the fragrance is no longer there, and there is no way to make it dance in the sun, in the wind, in the rain. It is dead, it is a corpse.

Knowing is living experience.

Knowledge is a corpse.

A man of enlightenment can be called a man of knowing, of experiencing, but not a man of experience, not a man of knowledge. These are subtle differences, but they make one thing clear: Ta Hui does not have any experience of the things he is talking about. And to talk about things when you don't have the experience is one of the greatest crimes -- because you will stuff people's minds with all your nonsense.

AS SOON AS YOU HEAR IT SAID THAT YOU SHOULDN'T THINK, IMMEDIATELY YOU ARE AT A LOSS AND CAN'T FIND YOUR GRIP.

Perhaps he is saying it about himself. Tell any thinker, "You should not think; only then can you enter into the temple of meditation," and he cannot conceive the idea -- without thinking? He immediately imagines that without thinking he will fall into a darkness, into emptiness, into ignorance, into stupidity -- without thinking, he will be lost. Thinking is the only light that he has.

He is saying it about others, but my feeling is that it is his own experience.

IF CORRECT MINDFULNESS IS PRESENT AT ALL TIMES...

Now he sometimes talks so stupidly that it is amazing that he has been thought to be a great master. He is saying: if correct mindfulness... which means there is a possibility of incorrect mindfulness. There is no possibility of incorrect mindfulness. Mindfulness is simply awareness. It is the wrong word for awareness, but it actually means awareness.

Buddha has used a word which has been translated in all these languages: Chinese, and Japanese, and Korean. That word is sammasati. Samma means `right,' and sati means `remembering.' Sammasati has been translated as `correct mindfulness.' But in the case of sammasati, it can be said that this is not a contradiction.

Sammasati is Pali for the Sanskrit words, samyak smriti. From language to language, small nuances go on changing. Samyak smriti is the root word. And samyak smriti means `balanced remembrance.' In Pali, it becomes sammasati. There it also means `right remembrance.' Remembrance can be wrong. There are two kinds of remembrance, right and wrong.

Right remembrance is concerned with your own being, when you remember yourself. When you are aware of yourself that is sammasati. When you remember other things that is not right remembrance. You may remember a thousand and one things, but if you don't remember yourself, your remembrance is wrong.

But when it is translated as `mindfulness,' then the whole word has taken on a new meaning. There cannot be any wrong mindfulness. All mindfulness is right. And mindfulness doesn't mean anything to do with the mind; it simply means you are conscious, alert, aware. If you are walking mindfully, it means you are walking with consciousness. If I am moving my hand mindfully, it means I am moving it knowingly, not just like a robot.

What he is saying is so stupid that even to call it stupid does not seem right; he needs something more powerful. He is saying something which can be perfectly right for an intellectual, but it is not right as an experience. And you can see it if you are just a little bit aware.

First, whenever one becomes aware, one becomes aware for twenty-four hours. It is not a question of becoming aware and then losing it, and then becoming aware again -- it is not like that.

Awareness is just like your heartbeat.

When you are asleep, the heart is beating, when you are working, the heart is beating, when you are talking, the heart is beating. Whatever you are doing or not doing, the heart is continuously functioning. When your awareness becomes just like a continuous undercurrent, only then is it worthy of being called awareness. So to say, if correct mindfulness is present at all times -- it is present at all times -- and the attitude of fear for birth and death does not waver... is nonsense.

A man of awareness has no problem of fear as far as birth and death are concerned. Once awareness has arisen, you are free from the fear of birth and death; there is no question of wavering. Wavering can arise only if it is just an intellectual conviction, not an actual experience. Then doubts can always arise; in fact they will arise.

And then Ta Hui goes on and on making wrong statements: then, over long days and months, what was unfamiliar will naturally become familiar. He is thinking of awareness as if it were a habit which you have to practice continuously, so after months and days, slowly, slowly it will become familiar.

Awareness is not a gradual phenomenon. It does not come slowly, slowly, in installments. It is an explosion, it is always sudden; it comes to you in its totality. It is not that slowly, slowly it comes and you become familiar with it.

And because he is making a wrong statement, he goes on round and round making more wrong statements: and what was stale will naturally become fresh. Now that which was stale, after days and months will become fresh. Can you see the contradiction? What is fresh may become stale after months. He is saying what was stale in the beginning, after days and months becomes fresh. He is not aware that even a small child who has nothing to do with enlightenment can say that this is stupid. As time passes, fresh things become stale, not vice versa.

The same is true about awareness. It goes on and on being fresh because it never becomes old. For consciousness there is no time -- neither days, nor months, nor years, nor lives.

Awareness is beyond time and beyond mind.

It never becomes stale, and it has never been stale. First you were unaware of it; now you are aware of it.

IT'S THE BRILLIANCE AND CLEVERNESS, THAT WHICH THINKS AND JUDGES. WHAT IS THE UNFAMILIAR? IT'S ENLIGHTENMENT, NIRVANA, TRUE THUSNESS, THE BUDDHA-NATURE -- WHERE THERE IS NO THOUGHT OR DISCRIMINATION, WHERE FIGURING AND CALCULATING CANNOT REACH, WHERE THERE'S NO WAY FOR YOU TO USE YOUR MENTAL ARRANGEMENTS.

Ta Hui is important for you to understand, because he is a representative of thousands of intellectuals in the world who go on deceiving themselves because they can consistently, logically, think about experiences that have not happened to them. Perhaps they are influenced by people who have actually experienced, and that impact is so great that they start believing that certainly such things happen. Then they are capable of intellectual systematizing -- and they can go on systematizing -- but underneath they don't know a thing.

These people are the theologians, these people are religious heads, these people are philosophers, these people are great professors. These people dominate humanity, and they are the wrong people -- wrong because they are dishonest, wrong because they don't accept that it is not their experience. They simply go on fabricating beautiful words and theories and creating an illusion in the minds of people that perhaps they are authentic seers, enlightened people.

I will tell you an actual incident that happened, just at the beginning of this century. One young man, Ramateertha, was a professor of mathematics in Lahore University, and he was certainly a genius. He is well known for this incident -- perhaps nobody else has done it this way... In examinations, the question paper comes with a note, "Answer any five out of the seven questions." When he was a student this was his consistent practice: he would answer all seven questions with a note, "Examine any five questions." He always answered all seven questions exactly right, so there was no problem for him -- you could choose any five yourself, whichever ones you wanted to examine. When he passed his post-graduation -- he topped the university in mathematics, he was a gold medalist -- he was immediately appointed as a professor. He had the caliber of a great intellectual. And just then Vivekananda returned from America.

Vivekananda was a monk and a disciple of Ramakrishna, who was an enlightened man but uneducated. Ramakrishna was not articulate enough to manage to say something about his experience, so he had chosen Vivekananda, who was a very intelligent person, from the cream of Bengal's intelligentsia. Vivekananda impressed people all over the world, wherever he went; now he had come back from America and was going around India. He came to Lahore, to the university where Ramateertha was a professor, and Ramateertha was so much impressed by Vivekananda that he wanted to be initiated by him immediately.

Vivekananda himself was just an intellectual, but a very forceful personality, a very imposing personality. He appealed to Ramateertha immediately because they were both intellectuals, so there was immediately a harmony, a synchronicity between their minds. Vivekananda initiated him into sannyas, and Ramateertha left for a world tour himself.

Ramateertha was far more articulate than Vivekananda himself, far more poetic, far more impressive... not as a personality, because Vivekananda looked like a giant -- he had a huge body -- but Ramateertha seems to have been far superior, intellectually. In particular, he was so much drowned in Persian, Arabic, and Urdu poetry, which are all unique as far as their mysticism is concerned -- they all belong to the Sufi tradition of mystics.

So Ramateertha had some new area about which Vivekananda had no knowledge. He also impressed people very much wherever he went. And the problem with the mind is that if people are impressed by you, slowly, slowly, it has a feedback effect. Because they get impressed by you, you become impressed by yourself: "I must be carrying some great message; otherwise why are so many people mad about me?" He became convinced that he was enlightened. The crowd that was following him everywhere convinced him that he was enlightened.

When he came back to India, he was imagining a great reception... Naturally, an enlightened person coming back home, after impressing the whole world... He went directly to Varanasi, which has been the Hindu citadel for centuries, and where the Hindu learned people have their council which decides who is enlightened and who is not. None of these learned people is enlightened, but they are immensely learned as far as scriptures are concerned. So Ramateertha first approached the council of the learned to get recognition.

Now to me, even the idea of getting recognition from someone means you are not certain about your own attainment -- you are asking recognition from those who are not enlightened! On what grounds do they have the authority to recognize you?

In the first place, your asking makes it certain that you are not enlightened. Secondly, you are asking people who are not enlightened themselves -- that reinforces that you don't understand what enlightenment is. It never needs anybody's recognition; it is a self-evident phenomenon. Even if the whole world says you are not enlightened, it does not matter. And even if the whole world says you are enlightened and you are not, then too, you will not become enlightened.

Something very strange happened there: one scholar of the council asked Ramateertha -- It was sheer stupidity for Ramateertha to go to the council -- one scholar asked, "Do you know Sanskrit?" And Ramateertha had no knowledge of Sanskrit, because he came from the part that is now in Pakistan. It was a Mohammedan area; there the language of the learned people was Arabic, Persian, Urdu. It was not the part where Sanskrit had any influence. So he was very deeply rooted in Persian and Arabic literature, and certainly Sufi literature has a beauty which Sanskrit literature does not have.

Sanskrit literature is very dry, like mathematics. Sufi literature is pure poetry. It has a certain juiciness about it, because the whole of Sufism is based on a foundation of love. Sufis are the only people in the world who think of God as the beloved, like a girlfriend. Naturally they have written beautiful poetry for the beloved. God is not a man, but a beautiful woman! No poetry can reach to the heights of Sufi poetry.

Ramateertha was at a loss. He said, "No, I don't know anything about Sanskrit. I come from the part of the country where Sanskrit is far away; even Hindi is not spoken.

All those scholars laughed, and they said, "Without knowing Sanskrit, do you think one can become enlightened? First learn Sanskrit."

I can forgive all those idiots, but I cannot forgive Ramateertha, because he started learning Sanskrit! -- just to get the recognition from unenlightened people that he is enlightened.

I have always liked his discourses, but I have always found places in them which show decisively that the man is only an intellectual. He has no experience of his own. He knows beautiful poetry, he can talk in a very poetic way; he knows beautiful Sufi stories, he can explain those stories very impressively. But he himself is a beggar -- his bowl is empty.

Such is the situation of Ta Hui. Understanding Ta Hui will help you to understand many others who are in the same boat.

Ramateertha went to the Himalayas, to a small state called Tihri Garhwal. The king of that state was very much impressed by Ramateertha, so he made him a special bungalow in the mountains, where he was learning Sanskrit in order to be recognized.

One day it happened... Ramateertha had a secretary, a certain Sardar Pooran Singh who was a great writer in Punjabi, certainly a very refined writer -- his prose is almost like poetry. He was so impressed by Ramateertha that he dropped his job, became Ramateertha's secretary and was taking care of his body, his letters and the correspondence from all over the world...

One day, looking out of the window, Ramateertha saw his wife coming. He had been married, but he had renounced his poor wife and become a sannyasin. The wife was so poor that she was doing all kinds of jobs in the village, grinding people's wheat or washing people's clothes. She did not even have the tickets for traveling...

When she heard that Ramateertha was in Tihri Garhwal, she had sold a few ornaments that had been given to her at the time of their marriage. She just wanted to touch the feet of Ramateertha. She had not come to complain -- she was really glad. In the East that has been the tradition: if the husband becomes a world-renowned sannyasin... even though the wife was living in rotten circumstances, still she was very happy that she had a husband whose name would go down in the corridors of history.

When Ramateertha saw his wife coming, he told Sardar Pooran Singh, "Close the window and close the door, and go out on the veranda. My wife is coming. Tell her that I am not here, that I have gone into seclusion in the forest, and nobody knows when I am supposed to return. Just somehow get rid of her."

Sardar Pooran Singh was a very sincere man. He said, "This is strange, because I have seen you allowing people, both men and women, to see you. Why are you preventing your own wife, whom you have renounced? Now she is no longer any relation to you. Your preventing her means that deep down your mind still believes that she is your wife. Why are you discriminating between other women and her? And why are you so afraid?

"Certainly that poor woman cannot do anything to you. It must be something inside you of which you are afraid. I am not going to close the window or the door. And I cannot lie to the woman. You have to decide one thing: either you have to see her or I am no longer your secretary, no longer your disciple. I am going."

Ramateertha could not afford for Pooran Singh to go. He was dependent on him for everything. So he said, "Okay, if you insist, I will see her." And his wife came with tears of joy and just touched the earth, not even his feet. And Pooran Singh wrote in his diary, "Even my tears started flowing. The woman is so respectful, she does not consider him her husband anymore. He has become so divine to her that even to touch his feet will be defiling him."

Pooran Singh touched the feet of Ramateertha's wife. He said, "To me you are more religious and more understanding than Ramateertha." And Ramateertha felt so ashamed... you will not believe what he did: he immediately changed his clothes. He was wearing the orange robe of a Hindu sannyasin. He dropped that and took clothes from Sardar Pooran Singh -- ordinary clothes, not those of a sannyasin. Sardar Pooran Singh asked, "What are you doing?"

Ramateertha said, "I am so ashamed. I am not enlightened; I am not even worthy to be called a sannyasin. The recognition has come to me, although late, but still it is good that it has come to me. I have been believing that I am enlightened, that I have renounced the world. No, seeing my wife I could see all my lust, all my repressed sexuality. I am not worthy of these orange clothes." And then he went out of the bungalow, and jumped from the mountains into the Ganges -- the Ganges flows just nearby, coming down from the mountains. He committed suicide.

But such is the hypocrisy of the society that the same learned people who refused to accept him as enlightened started saying that he had "renounced his body" -- not that he committed suicide, not that he had committed a crime. Their actual word is jal samadhi: "He has dropped into the water and become one with existence."

And still there exists a Ramateertha League, and there are followers... and his books are published, and people are reading those books in order to become enlightened.

Intellect can deceive you, can deceive others.

Beware of the intellect.

Beware of the mind.

Be very careful; don't be impressed easily. Certainly don't be impressed through intellect. If suddenly a connection happens from being to being, that's another matter.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

Zen

The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

Chapter-6

Innocence