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ZEN: THE PATH OF PARADOX
VOL. 2
Chapter 4: Slipping Lazily into Divinity
Question 4
Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Zen Paradox, Vol. 2
Question 4
THE LECTURES ON ZEN DELIGHT ME TO NO END. I FEEL MYSELF FALLING IN TUNE WITH IT MORE AND MORE. BUT IT SEEMS SO EASY. AM I BECOMING LAZY? I THOUGHT SPIRITUALITY IS SUPPOSED TO BE ARDUOUS -- NOT A FREE AND EASY LET-GO.
Yes, it has been supposed so -- by the sadists, by the people who Like to torture other people. In fact, you have been brought Up with this idea, you have been fed this idea from your mother's milk -- that all that is joyful has to be earned by great effort. Joy has to be earned, bliss is a long way away. One has to travel, and the journey is arduous and uphill.
It is sheer nonsense. Joy is herenow! And one needs only one thing to be joyful, and that is: Be joyful. Nothing else, no other requirement.
Joy is not a goal. God is not a goal, God is already the case. God has happened to you -- you are carrying him within yourself. This is the Zen emphasis. Zen does not say that you have to go somewhere to find him. He is not hiding, he is not playing hide-and-seek. He is not sitting somewhere in the caves of the Himalayas, he is sitting in the cave of your heart! Don't go to the Himalayas, look within yourself. And that look needs no preparation, that look needs no requirement. Nothing is presupposed; as you are, you are capable of it. This is the Zen emphasis, this is the Zen revolution.
Zen does not teach that truth is difficult. Lies are difficult. They have to be difficult, because they are lies -- you have to maintain them. For one lie, you have to tell a thousand lies. To protect one lie you have to become a liar, you have to create your whole life according to one lie. Tell one lie, and then see what happens -- you are telling a thousand and one lies to protect one. And then what will happen to these thousand and one lies? Each lie will be protected by another thousand and one.
Lies are difficult, truth is simple. Truth is already the case. Truth is there -- truth is showering in the sun, truth is raining all over the place. Wherever you are, truth is available. You are not to go, you are not to even take a single step! -- and the journey is over. You have to just become silent and aware of it.
Yes, let-go is the door. Drop all that rubbish that you have been taught.
The society is dominated by the sadists -- they always say it is difficult; they make everything difficult. If something is easy, it is worthless. If something is easy, why is it worthless? Because an easy thing does not give you the sense of ego. So everything has to be made difficult. Life is to be made a hurdle race -- difficulties have to be created on your path so you can have a feeling that you have achieved.
The ego can arise only when there are difficulties, and the ego is the greatest barrier to God. So God cannot be difficult -- one thing is certain, the mathematics is very simple. Ego needs difficulties, ego feeds on difficulties. The more difficult a thing, the more ego feels the pull towards it -- more attracted, magnetically pulled. Difficult, hard, unapproachable, unachievable, impossible, and the ego becomes tremendously excited. 'This is the thing to do, because nobody else can do it. If I can do it, I will be at the top.'
Ego needs difficulties, and our whole society is structured according to the ego. The deepest philosophy of all the cultures in the world is ego. Whatsoever they say, notwithstanding that, deep down all societies exist around the idea of the ego: make things difficult, make things as difficult as possible. So the idea has got roots in you.
Truth is not difficult, love is not difficult, joy is not difficult. You have just to start living it. And nothing is missing, not a single thing is missing. Everything is ready, you have to just start.
Don't feel puzzled because it seems so easy. It is the easiest thing in the world -- if you are simple, it is the easiest thing in the world. If you are difficult, then of course you make it difficult; if you are complex, you make it complex.
AM I BECOMING LAZY? Laziness is also very much condemned. It should not be so much condemned. Lazy people have not done anything wrong in the world -- you can look into history. Lazy people have been the best kind of people in the world. A lazy person cannot become an Adolf Hitler or a Khan. A lazy person cannot become Tamurlaine, a lazy person cannot become a Nadirshah, a lazy person cannot become this and that. A lazy person can only become Lao Tzu. If he wants to become anything, he can become only Lao Tzu.
Laziness, in itself, has nothing wrong in it. But we are dominated by an ethos of action, work, aggression. We are dominated by people who should be called 'The Achievers'. Of course, if you want to achieve something you cannot be lazy, certainly. If you want to have more money than others, you cannot be lazy -- money won't come that way. Money never comes to lazy people, that's certain.
If you want to become a prime minister, it does not happen easily; you have to work hard for it. You have to go to jail, and you have to be beaten by the police, and all that is on the way. Mm? That is how one reaches Delhi. That's how Morarji becomes prime minister. You have to go on a fast, and do a thousand and one things and create trouble and chaos. You have to learn many many things. You have to go on creating disturbance for those who are in power -- you have to create such difficulties that they start thinking, 'It will be better if this power is taken away from us.' You have to create such a situation where they will feel relieved if somebody else takes this power from them. If you want to go to Delhi or to Washington or to London, you have to work hard; you cannot be lazy. If you want to become a Rockefeller or a Morgan, you have to work hard.
But to achieve God, the achiever's mind itself is not needed. You can be lazy and you can slip into divinity. In fact you can slip into divinity more easily if you are lazy. To me laziness is nothing wrong. I am not saying to you 'Become lazy' -- I am simply saying that there is no 'disvaluation' in laziness. If you feel in tune with laziness, be lazy. If you feel in tune with action, be active. If an active person wants to become lazy it will be difficult, very difficult, for him. If a lazy person wants to become active it will be very difficult -- it will be an impossible task.
I am not in favour that you should become anybody else that you are not. I accept you as you are. If you are lazy, perfectly good, there is a way for the lazy man too. You have to choose your guides rightly -- Lao Tzu or me. Then don't choose Mahavira, he won't help. He was a warrior, he was a KSHATRIYA, and he knew only how to fight. So when he finally came across God, he fought with God too. Hence his name, Mahavira -- 'the great brave man'. Hence his system is called 'Jaina' -- it means 'the system that helps you to conquer'. 'Mahavira' means the conqueror, and 'Jaina' means the methodology to conquer. Even with truth he is a conqueror, a warrior. That is the path of the will and action.
If you are basically in your element a KSHATRIYA, a samurai, a warrior, then choose Mahavir -- then he is the right guide. But you need not feel depressed if you are not a KSHATRIYA. If you are a lazy man, perfectly good -- there are guides available for you too. And my own feeling is that many more people have attained to God through surrender than through will. It is not an accident that Mahavira could not get many followers; it is not accidental that through Mahavira many people have not attained to truth. Many more attained through Lao Tzu, many more attained through Buddha.
Buddha is a strange case. For six years he was just like Mahavira. For six years he tried hard, he went almost half the way on the path of will. Mahavira worked for twelve years and attained. On the same route, Buddha worked for six years and came to understand that 'This is not for me.' He did hard work. He was also, at least by birth, a born KSHATRIYA, a born warrior. But he seems to be a different kind of man; it was not his natural element. After six years he understood that all this effort is meaningless. He relaxed. And the night he relaxed, he attained. So he is a strange case. He worked for six years, hard -- and then one night he dropped all effort, he relaxed, he became lazy. That night he slept, without any desire to attain anything; he accepted his hopeless state. And in that hopelessness is born his enlightenment. He is half Mahavira and half Lao Tzu.
And Buddha has helped millions of people -- more than anybody else. The reason may be this, that for a few people those six years may be helpful -- so they go on that, and a path called HINAYANA is created. That is the path of the will. For others, he has the other approach also available, the other door also available -- the MAHAYANA. Those who cannot struggle hard, those who don't feel like fighting with truth -- those who want to surrender and become receptive, those who want to be feminine, womb-like, and would like to receive the truth whenever it comes, and are ready to relax and wait -- yes, they can also attain through Buddha.
Mahavira is one pole, will. Lao Tzu is another pole, surrender. Buddha is just in the middle -- half Mahavira, half Lao Tzu. That's the reason he has been able to help many more people -- many more than Lao Tzu, many more than Mahavira. He is a great synthesis. A few people who want to struggle, they follow his first six years, they don't talk about the last night. Hence, there are two kinds of stories.
Just the other day, Maitreya asked a question -- I was waiting for the right moment to answer it. There are two stories of how Buddha attained. One story, the HINAYANA story -- the people who follow the path of will, that is their story. They say: After six years he sat under the Bodhi tree, with absolute determination that if enlightenment does not happen now, he will not leave this place. He will not move, he will not open his eyes, he will not go begging. He will die, sitting in this place, if enlightenment does not happen. He staked all. And by the morning he became enlightened.
This is the HINAYANA story, the path of the will. For six years he worked hard, but it was not total. The ultimate culmination comes with total determination, with total will -- that now he will die. Either it happens, or he will die -- but he is not going to move from here. This utter determination is one story.
The other story is the MAHAYANA story -- the story of the lazy people, the story of those who follow the path of surrender, effortlessness. They say: After six years, the same night, he became enlightened. The night is the same but the stories differ; it depends on the interpretation. The same night, they say, after six years -- about the six years there is no difference of opinion. The last night is the problem, what actually happened. And Buddha has not said anything of what actually happened. These two stories have been there always. And with these stories, Buddhism divided into two religions, HINAYANA and MAHAYANA -- the arduous path, and the path of surrender.
The MAHAYANA story is that Buddha, after six years, came to realize that all effort is meaningless. Truth cannot be achieved by achieving, because in the very idea of achieving, ego remains -- the achiever remains. Understanding this, he dropped the very idea. He forgot all about achievement, he relaxed. He said: 'No more.' He had dropped out of the world one day; money, power, prestige -- he had dropped those goals. Then he had put all his energies into one goal -- enlightenment, NIRVANA. Now he saw the point, that this is again an ego-goal, again an ego-trip: 'I am again trying to achieve something.' Seeing this, he must have laughed. He dropped that idea too; he relaxed.
That night a young woman had come to worship the tree. She was a worshipper of the tree, a pagan. And it was a full-moon night and she had come with KHEER, a sweet made from milk and rice, to pour on the roots of the tree. The full moon was there, and she saw this beautiful man, this utterly beautiful man, sitting there. And she thought, she imagined, 'It must be the god of the tree who has taken this form, who has become real for me.' For years she had been worshipping the tree, and she thought, 'My prayers have been accepted.'
So she presented the KHEER to Buddha. Had she gone one day before, he would have thrown it away -- KHEER IS a luxury for an ascetic, an ascetic does not eat things like KHEER. He would have said no. He would not have even looked at the woman -- an ascetic does not look at women. But he accepted it, he drank the kheer. His body must have felt, after many many years, very satisfied. And then he fell into a great sleep.
When you are too desirous of attaining something, sleep is always disturbed, because the desire goes on disturbing it -- it remains a constant hangover there. Buddha slept for the first time. No desire left, no dream is possible any more -- because dreams are there only because you have some desires to fulfill. Your desires stir dreams in your consciousness.
That night, the body satisfied tremendously, after many years... the cool breeze, the full-moon night, the shade of the tree... he fell asleep, with no dreams, with no disturbance. The sleep was total. And when in the morning he opened his eyes.... The mahayana sutra does not exactly say 'He opened his eyes', the mahayana sutra says 'When he found his eyes opening' -- so relaxed that he will not even open his eyes any more.
When he found his eyes opening -- because out of rest, naturally a moment comes when the eyes will open -- when he found his eyes opening, he saw the last star disappearing in the sky. The morning was coming, the last star was disappearing... and with the disappearance of the last star, his ego also disappeared. He became enlightened.
Enlightenment happened on the same full-moon night. How it happened, there are two interpretations. My own choice is for the second. But if you are a man of will and action, you can choose the first -- nothing is wrong in it. My own choice is of the second.
Next: Chapter 4: Slipping Lazily into Divinity, Question 5
Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Zen Paradox, Vol. 2
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