Zen

THE FIRST PRINCIPLE

Chapter 10: All Going Is Going Astray

Question 3

 

 

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Question 3

IT ALL SOUNDS SO GREAT, AS PERFECT AS CAN BE ARTICULATED. BUT WHAT THE HELL DO YOU DO IN THE MEANTIME?

You have missed. You have not understood what has been said to you. You have not heard. Again the greed has become a barrier. Listening to me you are listening through the greed.

When you listen to me, if I am talking about enlightenment and the joy of it, you become greedy. You start thinking, "When am I going to become enlightened?" So you say it is great -- it all sounds great, "as perfect as can be articulated". Now, this greed creates a problem. You put whatsoever I am saying as a goal. Of course, the goal is far away. There is a distance between you and the goal, and the distance has to be traveled, so the second question arises: "What the hell do you do in the meantime?"

But there is no meantime. I am not talking about the goal; I am talking about the way. And I am not saying anything about the future or afterlife; I am saying something about THIS moment, this very moment! This is it! You think in terms of tomorrow. I am talking about today.

Jesus says to his disciples, "Look in the field. Look at the beautiful lilies. They don't think of the morrow, they toil not, they labor not. Look at these beautiful flowers. They are just herenow. Even Solomon attired in all his costly clothes was not so beautiful. Look at these lilies in the field."

I am talking about THIS moment. What do you mean by "meantime"? There is no meantime. This is it! These birds, this cuckoo, these trees, you and me: this moment. This is the moment of nirvana.

But you start thinking in terms of desire. You say, "It sounds great." In fact, a thing that could have released your celebration becomes a desire, and through desire you start feeling sad because the goal is far away.

The cuckoo is singing right now. And the trees have flowered right now. It is all beautiful this moment. It will never be more beautiful. It has never been less beautiful. Each moment is perfect. But you start thinking about the tomorrow. Then the whole glory is there, somewhere away from you, and here you are a miserable creature, crying and weeping for the goal.

You create the meantime. I am not talking about the meantime. I am not talking about time at all, so what to say about meantime? I am talking about the eternal moment, about eternity. You bring time in. The mind always brings time in. Time is a mind faculty.

The mind cannot be herenow. The mind says, "Right. Hoard this, whatsoever Osho is saying. Hoard it. Someday we are going to practice it, and one day we are going to attain to this Buddhahood. It sounds great." Then the misery, then the sadness. Then you will remain miserable your whole life. This Buddhahood will never happen, because you missed it in the first place.

You have become so miserable that you cannot trust me that the celebration is possible right now. You say, "First one has to prepare. First one has to become this and that. First one has to meditate. First one has to become a great saint. First one has to become virtuous." This is something which from the very childhood has been deeply conditioned on your mind.

The parents, the teachers, the schools, the universities, the priest, the politician, they all have been teaching you, "Get ready. Get ready; something is going to happen." And then you go on getting ready -- and one day you simply die, just getting ready. It never happens. When you were a child they were saying, "Wait, grow up, first be educated. Go to the university, come back home." Thrilled, you go to the university and you suffer all sorts of tortures there, in the hope that it is not going to last forever, in the hope that now you are getting ready. You don't know what for, what you are getting ready for.

To listen to this cuckoo singing? To watch a bird on the wing? To see a full moon in the night? To hold a friend's hand? To love? For what? Because all this is available right now.

You go to the university, you go through a thousand and one imprisonments; by the time you come back home you are destroyed. It is very rare; very fortunate people come back from the university without being destroyed by the education system.

Then they come home. Then the father says, "Now find a job -- and get ready. Get married, and get ready. Then everything is going to be beautiful." And you read the novels and you go to the movie and you see the film, and once the marriage happens, the story says, "Ever afterwards they lived in happiness." Have you ever seen anybody living after marriage and happy? But these stories circulate, they condition the mind: Get ready.

So one day you find a job. Another humiliation. One day you get married. Another distraction from the moment. And so on, so forth. Then you go on missing, it is not happening, so somebody says, "How can you have it unless you have a child?" Right. So get ready, have a child. And so on, so forth.

Finally you recognize the fact that the whole life has been a wastage.

I am not saying don't go to the university, and I am not saying don't get married, I am not saying don't get a job. Please, don't misunderstand me. What I am saying is: For happiness don't get ready, it is already here. Go to the university. Enjoy. Have a job, but enjoy it. It is not going to lead to happiness. Each moment is an end unto itself; it is not to be converted into a means towards something else. Love, and enjoy love. Don't think that you will be happy while you are married. Get married, and BE happy. Don't think that when you will have a child and you will become a mother or a father then you will be happy. Have you not seen your mother and your father? So what are you hoping for? And don't wait and don't go on postponing.

The greatest calamity that has happened to humanity is postponement -- always postponing. There are people who are always looking at the timetable and thinking about where to go on the holidays, what trains to catch and what planes to go by, this place or that, to the Himalayas or to the Alps, to Kashmir or to Switzerland. And they are always preparing and preparing, and they never go. What will you say about these people? You will think they are mad. They have all the guidebooks and all the maps of the world and all the literature that government information services go on publishing. They have a whole library, and they go on looking into it and they go on preparing, but they always prepare and they never go. What will you think about them? Will you not call them neurotic?

This is what the situation is with everybody. You always talk about God, you always talk about MOKSHA, nirvana, heaven, paradise, you always talk about it, but it is always tomorrow. So you have to prepare. "Meantime" you prepare.

I am saying there is no meantime. God is available right now, just for the asking.

Start enjoying. Don't ask how to dance! Start dancing. Can't you move your body? It may not be very graceful. So who bothers? It may not be a trained, disciplined thing. So who bothers? Start dancing. Don't go on consulting manuals about love. Start loving. Don't go on and on in the mind. Start moving into existence, be existential. That is the message of Zen.

 

Next: Chapter 10: All Going Is Going Astray, Question 4

 

Energy Enhancement                Enlightened Texts                Zen                 The First Principle

 

 

Chapter 10

 

 

 

 
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