OUR BELOVED MASTER,

ONE NIGHT ISAN WAS IN ATTENDANCE ON HYAKUJO, SITTING TILL LATE IN THE QUIETNESS OF THE MOUNTAIN TEMPLE.

"WHO ARE YOU?" HYAKUJO ASKED.

"REIYU," REPLIED ISAN.

"RAKE IN THE FIREPLACE," INSTRUCTED HYAKUJO.

ISAN DID AS HE WAS TOLD AND SAID, "I FIND NO EMBERS LEFT." HYAKUJO TOOK UP THE TONGS AND, RAKING DEEP DOWN, BROUGHT UP A TINY BURNING EMBER, WHICH HE SHOWED TO ISAN, AND SAID, "JUST THIS, YOU SEE!"

ISAN WAS SUDDENLY ENLIGHTENED. HE BOWED DEEPLY AND RELATED HIS POINT OF REALIZATION TO HYAKUJO, WHO SAID, "YOU HAVE REACHED A CROSSROADS ON THE BUDDHA NATURE; YOU SHOULD OBSERVE TIME AND CAUSATION. WHEN THE TIME COMES, YOU WILL REALIZE IT, JUST LIKE REMEMBERING SOMETHING YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN. IT IS NOT OBTAINED FROM OTHERS. THEREFORE, WHEN YOU ARE ENLIGHTENED, YOUR ORIGINAL NATURE MANIFESTS ITSELF. NOW YOU HAVE ATTAINED IT -- CAREFULLY CULTIVATE IT."

Maneesha, today we start a new series of talks on Zen, particularly on Master Isan. The name of the series will give you an indication what kind of man Isan was. The title of the series is ISAN: NO FOOTPRINTS IN THE BLUE SKY. He was as great a master as one can be, but has left behind him neither great scriptures nor great commentaries. Isan functioned exactly as Buddha had said an authentic master would -- to disappear in the blue sky like a bird, leaving no footprints.

Why this idea of leaving no footprints? It has great implications in it. It means a great master does not create a following; he does not make a path for everybody to follow. He flies in the sky, he gives you a longing for flying, and disappears into the blueness of the sky -- creating an urge in you to discover what it is like to disappear into the ultimate.

Isan followed exactly what Buddha had said. He is a great master, but almost forgotten. Who remembers people who have not created great followings, who have not made organized religions, who have not chosen their successors, who have not made their religion a politics, a power in the material world? Isan did none of that. He simply lived silently. Of course thousands of disciples were attracted towards him, but it was not his fault. You cannot blame him for it -- it was just the magnetic force that he had become by disappearing into enlightenment. The light shone to faraway lands and those who had eyes started moving towards a small place hidden in the forest where Isan lived. Slowly slowly, thousands of disciples were living in the forest -- and Isan had not called a single one. They had come on their own.

And remember the difference: when you come on your own, you come totally. When you are called, there is a reluctance, a fear: perhaps you will be dominated. But when you come on your own, you have lived your life, you have known the meaninglessness of it. You are coming out of a great understanding that life has nothing to offer. You are coming with your wholeness and totality -- and with an urgency, because nobody knows: tomorrow you may be here on the earth or not. Death can knock on your doors any moment, it is unpredictable. It rarely comes to warn the person, "I am coming." Once in a while it has happened, in stories....

The next moment is not certain. All that you have is this moment. So don't disperse your consciousness; concentrate it on this moment. If you want really to know the ultimate source of being and the tremendous blessings of it, this single moment is enough.

Don't follow anybody's footprints. Truth cannot be borrowed, neither can the path that somebody else has trodden. You have to enter into a virgin land of your own inner space, where nobody can enter in any way.

The deeper you go, the more alone you are. Friends and foes, families and the society, slowly slowly, all drop away as you are dropping your mind. Once the mind is finished, you are left in total aloneness. And this aloneness is such a great joy.... Remember, it is not loneliness. Loneliness is a desire for the other. Aloneness is a fulfillment unto oneself. One is enough, one is the whole universe. So whatsoever the dictionaries say is absolutely wrong. They make aloneness and loneliness synonymous -- that is not true.

As far as existential experience is concerned, Isan lived alone. But his aloneness became such a radiant splendor that people came towards him on their own, towards this great silence, this immense beauty of truth.

This man has reached home; just being in his presence, perhaps you may find your way also. He is not going to give you the way, but in his presence many things are possible. One is that you will become certain that the experience of enlightenment is not an imagination of poets, or a philosophical system of philosophers. It is an authentic realization. You can feel it, you can almost touch it, and if your heart is open, you can see your heart dancing with joy. Your whole life near a man like Isan will take wings.

So thousands came. But Isan has not given any guidance; therefore I have chosen the title from Buddha's statement: ISAN: NO FOOTPRINTS IN THE BLUE SKY. He just fluttered into the sky, attracting those who had forgotten their wings; provoking, challenging those who had forgotten their sky, their freedom. Then he disappeared into the faraway sky, into the blueness, leaving no footprints but leaving a tremendous urge to go to those dimensions where you are no more.

Your being no more is the ultimate realization of truth.

You are the barrier, you are the problem. You are the only problem. As you melt away, something in you which is eternal, which you cannot call your self, something in you which belongs to the whole cosmos, starts appearing. What you used to call your self was only dust.

Before I take the sutras, a little introductory note about the life of Isan:

ISAN REIYU, OTHERWISE KNOWN AS KUEI-SHAN LING-YU, LIVED FROM 771 TO 853. HE LEFT HOME AT FIFTEEN TO BECOME A MONK, STUDYING UNDER THE LOCAL VINAYA MASTER IN WHAT IS TODAY THE FUKIEN PROVINCE.

These are things that may seem non-essential, but I feel they have a great meaning to be understood. He left home at fifteen... there was a totally different world, a totally different urge in humanity. What is a fifteen-year-old boy...? But the urge must have been so widespread and so thick in the atmosphere that even a fifteen-year-old boy is intelligent enough; he will catch the fire.

It is said that there are people who go on repeating the same foolish act again and again, but never learn anything. That's why history repeats. It is because of the idiots; otherwise there is no reason for history to repeat. It will always bring a new dawn -- not old, rotten, lived, finished completely. But history has to repeat because idiots go on and on repeating themselves, and they are the makers of history. It is unintelligence that makes it possible for history to repeat.

The saying is that the unintelligent will not learn from his own mistakes, but the intelligent can even learn from others' mistakes. And the man who can learn from others' mistakes has a great potential. At the age of fifteen, Isan must have learned from others' mistakes. He must have watched carefully his parents, his neighbors, his teachers -- their lifeless lives, their meaningless wanderings, no sense of direction except misery and suffering. All that they have is some promising hope that may be fulfilled in the future, perhaps in the next life or perhaps in paradise. But this life is going to be a suffering, it cannot be otherwise. It is the nature of life and they have accepted it. At the age of fifteen he left his home. He was not going to commit the same mistakes that everybody else was committing.

HE LEFT HOME AT FIFTEEN TO BECOME A MONK, STUDYING UNDER THE LOCAL VINAYA MASTER. A Vinaya master is only a rabbi, a pundit, a learned scholar. Vinaya is the name of the Buddhist scriptures. The very word `vinaya' means humbleness, and Buddha teaches that to be humble is to be close to nature. All his scriptures -- and they are many -- have been called the Vinaya scriptures because their fundamental teaching, from different directions, is the same: just to be nobody, just to be ready to disappear into the blueness of the sky without leaving any footprints.

Obviously he was in search; he went to study under the local Vinaya master. A fifteen-year-old boy does not know where to go. So whoever was in the locality, the most famous and learned scholar -- he went to him.

HE WAS ORDAINED AT HANGCHOW AT THE AGE OF TWENTY-THREE.

Being ordained means that now he is making an absolute commitment to find himself. He is declaring to the world, "Help me not to go astray." It is an announcement on his part of his innermost longing. Now it becomes socially known that he is a seeker, and in those days seekers were helped by the society in every possible way -- with food, clothes, shelter. The whole society seemed to be running around the central longing of becoming a buddha. If circumstances wouldn't allow them now, people were waiting for the right circumstances so they could escape in the blue sky.

Today we are very small in that sense. Our desires are for money, our desires are for beautiful houses, our desires are for success in the world -- fame, name, political power. In terms of spiritual skill we have fallen, certainly. In those old days people were poor, with no science, no technology, but still they were superior in the sense that their whole longing was to search for the meaning of life. And anybody who was searching for the meaning of life... at least if you could not go so far, you could help. Helping anybody who was searching for truth was in itself considered a great virtue.

And I accept the idea. A society should live... of course everybody cannot be a monk unless my strategy is followed. And it is a little complicated to remain a witness in your ordinary life. It is easier to be a witness if you live in a monastery, or if you are a monk and you don't deal with ordinary life. You don't earn any money, you don't have any power, you live just on begging -- just one meal a day. Because the society was so poor, Buddha told his ordained monks, "You should collect your one meal" -- only one meal was allowed in twenty-four hours -- "from seven houses. Just piece by piece, so you are not a burden on anybody."

Now, just one monk going to beg from seven houses is not a burden, because every house is giving him such a small piece. Because of this fact, the seekers and searchers would not be involved in business and waste their time. Their total energy should be directed towards a single point, their central being. Society should help them because their rising consciousness is going to help the society also.

You may know, you may not know: the few buddhas that have happened in history have raised your consciousness without your knowing. Without them you would still be in the jungles. You have not done anything, but the atmosphere has been changed by each buddha. He has given so much in abundance... don't think that a piece of bread is enough to pay him. We cannot pay him in any way; his contribution to human consciousness is so great and his carefulness....

Buddha told his monks, "Take your one meal from seven houses and never stay in one village for more than three days. Go on moving, because by remaining in one village you may become a kind of drag to people. Every day they have to give something to you. Leave before they become in any way annoyed by you."

And it is a great psychological insight, because it takes people four days to become familiar with persons or places. If you change your house, it will take four days for you to become at ease with the new house. Before the village becomes familiar, you should leave. You are an outsider, you are not allowed to become familiar, friendly. You have to remain a stranger. You have chosen the path of being a stranger.

ORDAINED AT HANGCHOW AT THE AGE OF TWENTY-THREE, HE TRAVELED TO CHIANG-SI AND BECAME A DISCIPLE OF HYAKUJO.

He found the master. The learned teachers that he must have come across could not fulfill his appetite. They could not give him what he was asking for. He was not asking for more knowledge; he was searching for the one who knows. He was interested to inquire into the very structure of the knower, of the witness.

Naturally, the scholars cannot do that. They can quote great quotations, but they cannot radiate buddhahood. They are not an argument for their own quotations, they are not a support to their own learnedness. Their whole life is so ordinary; it does not show the grace and the beauty and the blissfulness of which they are talking. So any intelligent seeker will soon realize that this man has only words; he does not know the meaning. He is carrying a dead corpse but he is not aware that the person is dead.

All the scholars of the world are gravediggers. They dig deeply into graves and find bones of all kinds of people, but they never dig deep into themselves. They may find the bones of Buddha... they even worship the bones when they find them.

In Sri Lanka, in Kandy, they have a great temple devoted to a tooth of Buddha. Every scientific test has proved that it is not a tooth of a human being, it is too big; it can only be that of an animal. But who cares about it? Kandy attracts more pilgrimages to Sri Lanka than any other temple because it has a tooth of Gautam Buddha.

Scholars sometimes seem to be so stupid. There was a hair in Srinagar, in Kashmir, thought to be Hazrat Mohammed's. Mohammedans worshipped it because that was the only relic left from the body of Mohammed. Nobody knows whose hair it is, and there is no way to prove that it is Mohammed's hair. But a few years back it was stolen.

Then there was great fuss all over the world amongst the Mohammedans. That mosque, Hazrat Bal...bal means hair; even the bal is to be called Hazrat, Osho -- "revered hair." And it was such a difficult situation. Riots started happening because Mohammedans thought certainly it must be the Hindus. And Hindus are a very small minority in Kashmir. Even though Hindu leaders in Kashmir declared again and again, "We are not concerned at all with your religion," it was to no avail.

Finally the Indian prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, had to send the chief of the armies with a great number of soldiers to surround the mosque and somehow manage to restore the hair.

Now, how can you manage? Somehow it was managed: somebody's hair has been put in the tube which was empty. Now everybody is happy that the hair has been found. What kind of stupidity...? What will you do with the hair? If you find the whole head of Mohammed, that too will not help. But people are concerned with absolute absurdities, so much involved, and this is because of the scholars, the so-called learned who provoke the masses.

Isan must have moved from one teacher to another teacher. He went on, looking for a man who is essential, who is not a Buddhist but a buddha, who does not believe in any hypotheses -- who knows. And when he came to Hyakujo, immediately something transpired. He found the master.

That was the way students, disciples, devotees, went on searching, from one monastery to another monastery, from one monk to another monk. There are no visible signs, no certificates to say who is enlightened. You have to find with your own heart someone in whose presence your heart starts dancing. It is an inner finding -- one in whose presence your whole life becomes light, in whose presence certainly your mind is gone as if it had been a shadow, and utter silence falls over you.

When he came to Hyakujo, he immediately became a disciple.

LATER, HYAKUJO SENT ISAN TO MOUNT I AS ABBOT. ISAN LIVED AS A WILD HERMIT INITIALLY, BUT BY AND BY BEGAN TO ATTRACT DISCIPLES; THEY FINALLY INCREASED TO ONE THOUSAND IN NUMBER. ISAN TAUGHT AT MOUNT I FOR MORE THAN FORTY YEARS.

This was just a small biographical note. Now the sutras.

ONE NIGHT ISAN WAS IN ATTENDANCE ON HYAKUJO, SITTING TILL LATE IN THE QUIETNESS OF THE MOUNTAIN TEMPLE.

"WHO ARE YOU?" HYAKUJO ASKED.

"REIYU," REPLIED ISAN.

"RAKE IN THE FIREPLACE," INSTRUCTED HYAKUJO.

ISAN DID AS HE WAS TOLD AND SAID, "I FIND NO EMBERS LEFT" -- the fire is completely gone, there are no more embers left.

HYAKUJO TOOK UP THE TONGS AND, RAKING DEEP DOWN, BROUGHT UP A TINY BURNING EMBER, WHICH HE SHOWED TO ISAN, AND SAID, "JUST THIS, YOU SEE! -- you did not go deep enough."

On a silent night in a mountain temple... everything a master does has a purpose. He has asked Isan to find out if there is any fire left in the wood. The night is becoming colder; just find out. Ordinarily, it is an insignificant act. Isan did as he was told, but said, "I find no embers left. The fire has completely gone out."

HYAKUJO TOOK UP THE TONGS.... This is the way Zen is -- a direct teaching, no words. HYAKUJO TOOK UP THE TONGS AND, RAKING DEEP DOWN, BROUGHT UP A TINY BURNING EMBER, WHICH HE SHOWED TO ISAN, AND SAID, "JUST THIS, YOU SEE! You did not go deep enough."

ISAN WAS SUDDENLY ENLIGHTENED... because this was the exact situation in his meditations. He was going, but not deep enough to find the fire of life. Immediately, without saying anything -- enlightenment is not being talked about -- but seeing Hyakujo's action, that by going deep he has found an ember, Isan must have gone deep into himself. He had been meditating, but must not have been going deep enough to find the living fire.

ISAN WAS SUDDENLY ENLIGHTENED.

It is very difficult for rational people to understand how enlightenment can be sudden. It is sudden if you understand how Zen masters create, out of every situation, some indication which cannot be said in words. In words he has said again and again, "Go deep!" But it can be only said; it all depends whether you go deep or not.

Hyakujo has to create a very clear-cut, existential situation to show Isan that he has not been going deep enough. And a simple thing -- finding the ember -- made Isan go as deep as possible within himself. In that silent night he found his inner fire; he became enlightened. It looks sudden. It is not so sudden -- years of studying, years of meditating. But at the right moment the master gives you a situation which will indicate to you what is missing.

He was not daring to go to the very center; otherwise how can you miss the living fire? You are alive! How can you miss your divinity, how can you miss your buddha?

ISAN WAS SUDDENLY ENLIGHTENED. HE BOWED DEEPLY AND RELATED HIS POINT OF REALIZATION TO HYAKUJO, WHO SAID, "YOU HAVE REACHED A CROSSROADS ON THE BUDDHA NATURE; YOU SHOULD OBSERVE TIME AND CAUSATION."

Even though he has become enlightened, he has to give roots to his enlightenment. Otherwise, it will remain only a faraway glimpse, soon forgotten, or maybe remembered only as an echo, miles away. Now you should water carefully the sudden flowering within you. Now you should keep watch around the clock that your treasure is increasing, that your inner sky is spreading wider and wider, that your wings are growing, that the time for the ultimate flight of the dewdrop to the ocean is coming closer.

Hyakujo said to him: "YOU HAVE REACHED A CROSSROADS ON THE BUDDHA NATURE; YOU SHOULD OBSERVE TIME AND CAUSATION."

Now, be watchful. What has caused your enlightenment is an ordinary, mundane thing. You should remember now that by going deeper, suddenly you became enlightened; you can go still deeper. There is, in fact, no boundary line where you have to stop. You can go so deep that you become the depth. Only then has your enlightenment grown roots. Now it cannot be destroyed, it is no longer a seasonal flower.

"WHEN THE TIME COMES, YOU WILL REALIZE IT, JUST LIKE REMEMBERING SOMETHING YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN."

What you have seen today is the first glimpse, which has put you on a crossroads. You can still go astray, the other roads are still available. Now be careful. What has caused it is going deeper, so go on, deeper and deeper and deeper. Never stop before you yourself become the depth, just an empty abyss.

That is the time when spring comes to your being. You will realize it then, that you have not achieved anything; it is just like remembering something you have forgotten. It has always been there, so it is not something new that you have achieved. It is something that you have forgotten so long ago that you don't have any idea when you forgot it. Now you have remembered.

The moment your enlightenment becomes just a remembrance, it becomes your very breathing, it becomes your very heartbeat. Then you don't need any meditation. Then your whole life is meditation. Without any effort, effortlessly, you are a buddha. If there is any effort, that means something is missing. When the buddha is natural, you are a buddha even in your sleep. Waking, working, whatever you do -- your fragrance of buddhahood will be there around you.

But this will happen only when you have reached to the ultimate depth and the realization is not taken as an achievement but only as a remembrance. So don't start bragging about it, because it is not an achievement -- what is there to brag about? You simply drown yourself into this new, abandoned, forgotten space, which is your very being.

And millions of things are going to happen, but you are not the doer. They will be simply happening because your presence has reached such depths. When your witnessing has reached to the ultimate depth, flowers will start blossoming, lotuses will open -- a dawn has come to you, you are reborn. You were dead, now you are alive. A new life spreads all over you and brings great beauty and truth and grace.

"IT IS NOT OBTAINED FROM OTHERS. THEREFORE, WHEN YOU ARE ENLIGHTENED, YOUR ORIGINAL NATURE MANIFESTS ITSELF. NOW YOU HAVE ATTAINED IT -- CAREFULLY CULTIVATE IT."

This is a very significant statement of Hyakujo. You cannot cultivate enlightenment, that will be phony. You can walk like a buddha, you can manage to sit in the lotus posture -- it may take a little time for you, the bones... and particularly people coming from the West will find it more difficult. Colder countries devise chairs; hotter countries have no problem in sitting on the floor. But in colder countries, to sit on the floor is difficult. So if Buddha is sitting in the lotus posture, that does not mean that you have to sit in the lotus posture, only then you will become a buddha. You can practice it -- there are many idiots who are doing that, unnecessarily torturing themselves.

Buddhahood is your nature, so you cannot cultivate it. But what Hyakujo means is totally different. He is saying, "NOW THAT YOU HAVE ATTAINED IT -- CAREFULLY CULTIVATE IT. This attainment is so new, it is possible to fall back into darkness. It is possible to start thinking again that it may have been an imagination. All kinds of possibilities are there. The glimpse that you have is very fresh and young, and your past of ignorance is very long -- four million years; it has a weight. This new insight can be destroyed by that weight. This new flower that has blossomed in you can be crushed by a mountainous past."

You cannot cultivate enlightenment if you have not attained it. So first, attain it -- it looks strange -- first attain the glimpse and then protect, cultivate it; then make arrangements so that the past does not overtake you, because the weight of the old is very great and the new is always delicate.

So remember, Hyakujo is not saying to cultivate enlightenment. He is saying, first get it and then be careful in every possible way to protect it, to refine it, to go deeper into it, to find more roots to it. The real work starts when you have become enlightened. All that work you have done before enlightenment looks like a very tiny effort.

The great effort starts with your first glimpse of enlightenment. You can fall from it -- the whole past will be pulling you backwards, the whole past will be saying to you that this is all imagination.

You have to be very alert. The past is your enemy, and this fresh sprout, this new flower -- so small and so fragile, but so beautiful -- if you can manage to protect it, soon it will become your eternity. Soon it will become your nature. Then there is no effort.

When Zen masters say "effortlessness" they are referring to the state when your enlightenment is well rooted. Now there is no need of any effort; now you can be relaxed and at ease, it will grow on its own accord. It will bring much foliage, and many flowers, and many blessings.

Sekiso wrote:

THE DHARMA SPRING

HAS NEVER RUN DRY;

IT IS FLOWING EVEN NOW.

A SINGLE DROP HAS FALLEN AND SPREAD

FAR AND DEEP.

DON'T BE CAUGHT

BY THE DECORATIONS AT THE EDGE

AND THE WALL AROUND IT.

IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT THE MOON SHINES

FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE POND.

What Sekiso is saying is very symbolic. THE DHARMA SPRING -- the spring when those who are ripe become suddenly full of flowers, when the dark night ends and the morning has come -- THE DHARMA SPRING HAS NEVER RUN DRY. He is saying, "Remember, the dharma spring has never run dry; it always comes, just as it used to come in Gautam Buddha's time, or even before." It is part of eternal nature. It is just that you have to be ready to catch the train. The train always comes, but mostly either you reach the railway station before the train has come, or you reach after the train has left -- you always find an empty platform. Sad and frustrated, you go back home.

I have heard, three professors were discussing very hotly some philosophical point at the railway station. They got so involved in the discussion, and they forgot that the train stops for only three minutes. As the train started moving, still they were not aware. Suddenly one of them saw, and all three ran to catch the train. Only two could manage to get on to the last compartment. One was left, and he was standing there so sad that a porter, who had been watching what was happening, said, "Why are you so sad? Soon there will be a second train coming, and just within a few hours you will meet your friends."

He said, "That is not the point. I am the one who was supposed to go! They had come only to see me off. Now everything has become a mess...."

But in a hurry, it can happen.

THE DHARMA SPRING HAS NEVER RUN DRY. It always is available; just you are not ready. The whole responsibility has to be taken by you, on your own shoulders. The existence is as much in favor of buddhas as it has always been, but you are not even looking at it. You are not preparing, you are not even witnessing so that when it comes...

In fact it never comes, it is always there -- YOU come to IT. The deeper your witnessing, and suddenly you find a tremendous reality flooding you. In your very innermost center it is still waiting.

THE DHARMA SPRING HAS NEVER RUN DRY; IT IS FLOWING EVEN NOW. A SINGLE DROP HAS FALLEN AND SPREAD FAR AND DEEP.

The ocean of dharma spring is always ready to absorb you; it has always space for you, you are always welcome. Nobody has been rejected by dharma nature. If even a single drop has fallen, it has spread all over the ocean, FAR AND DEEP.

DON'T BE CAUGHT BY THE DECORATIONS AT THE EDGE AND THE WALL AROUND IT. IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT THE MOON SHINES FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE POND.

We are all attracted by decorations, by the non-essentials. A lake may have a wall around it with beautiful statues, sculpture, architectural designs. And you may get so much involved in those decorations that you fail to see that the pond is reflecting the moon, exactly in the middle.