OUR BELOVED MASTER,

ONCE, WHEN HE WAS STILL WITH HIS MASTER, KYOZAN SAID TO ISAN, "WHERE DOES THE REAL BUDDHA DWELL?"

ISAN REPLIED, "BY MEANS OF THE SUBTLETY OF THOUGHTLESS THOUGHT, CONTEMPLATE THE BOUNDLESS SPIRITUAL BRIGHTNESS. CONTEMPLATE IT UNTIL RETURNING TO THE GROUND OF BEING, THE ALWAYS ABIDING NATURE, AND ITS FORM OF THE UNDICHOTOMOUS PRINCIPLE. THIS IS THE REAL BUDDHA."

ON HEARING THIS, KYOZAN WAS ENLIGHTENED.

LATER, WHEN KYOZAN HAD BECOME A MASTER HIMSELF, ISAN SENT HIM A MIRROR AS A GIFT. WHEN HE WENT TO THE HALL WHERE HIS MONKS WERE ASSEMBLED, KYOZAN HELD UP THE MIRROR AND SAID TO THE ASSEMBLY, "PLEASE SAY WHETHER THIS IS ISAN'S MIRROR OR KYOZAN'S MIRROR. IF SOMEONE CAN GIVE A CORRECT REPLY, I WILL NOT SMASH IT."

NO ONE ANSWERED, AND KYOZAN SMASHED THE MIRROR.

Maneesha, a new series of talks begins today.

These are not sermons in a church; these are communions. A discourse, a sermon, remains within the limits of the mind. Only a communion can raise you beyond the mind, and that which is beyond the mind is Zen. A new series of communions is a great event. We will be looking into the very heart of Kyozan.

Kyozan was a very simple man -- not the philosophic kind, not a poet, nor a sculptor. Nothing can be said about him except that he was absolutely authentic, honest. If he does not know a thing he will say so, even at the risk of people thinking that he has fallen from his enlightenment. But this makes him a unique master.

Zen is full of unique masters, but Kyozan's uniqueness is his simplicity. He is just like a child. It took Isan, his master, forty years of hard work to make Kyozan enlightened. He was determined, and he said he would not leave the body until Kyozan became enlightened -- though he was old enough.

Kyozan did everything that Isan said, but nothing penetrated to his very being. He was a very ordinary man. Heaven and hell, God and the beyond had never worried him. He was not a seeker in the sense every seeker is -- a seeker of truth.

No, he was not seeking truth, because he is reported to have said that, "If you are seeking the truth you have certainly accepted that truth exists, and I will not accept anything on belief. So I am just seeking, searching in all directions, trying to come in tune with the universe. It may be just my fallacy, my fantasy, but I want to go without any prejudice."

Even the prejudice may prove right, but when a prejudice proves right, you will never know the truth. You will go on projecting your prejudice. And you can create a whole paraphernalia of prejudices, a system of beliefs -- rational, logical, appealing, presentable -- but if belief is the base stone on which you are creating the whole palace, you are working unnecessarily hard.

Nobody can come to know the truth by any preconceived idea. His preconceived idea will give a certain shape, a certain color to the experience. The experience will not be pure. It will be as polluted as Poona's air!

But Isan, it seems, took it as a challenge: if an ordinary man like Kyozan cannot be transformed into a buddha, how can you allow others to trust in the existence of the buddha?

All the religions have done just the contrary. Krishna is God's incarnation, so is Rama, so is Parasurama. They have made them sit on such a high pedestal that you can only worship, you can only pray; you cannot conceive that you yourself can also experience what these people on the heights are experiencing.

And the creation of hierarchies makes it difficult for almost anyone to be unprejudiced. When the child is born, we have good intentions, but good intentions do not mean that they are going to lead you to the truth. Everybody is burdened with good intentions -- with Shrimad Bhagavadgita, with the Holy Koran, with the Holy Bible. Continuously repeating anything, slowly slowly it becomes a truth to you. And for centuries these religions have been repeating.

Isan chose Kyozan to be his successor. It took forty years of tremendous work on him, because he was a simple man, and in the first place he was not in search of truth. Just think of some man who is not in search of truth, and you go on knocking on his door every day.

Look at the Witnesses of Jehovah! Whether you want to listen to them or not -- that is immaterial -- you have to listen, you have to confess. And now Pope the Polack has made it a sin... He is a discoverer of a new sin -- all old sinners who are dead must be tossing and turning in their graves that they missed -- he has declared that to confess to God directly is a sin; you should go through the right channel. You should go to the priest, confess to him, receive the punishment, and the priest will take care of you, so that on the Judgment Day when God opens all the graves, the priest will be a witness that, "This fellow is good; as punishment he has given five dollars to you."

But God is going to be in a difficulty, particularly in India. Most of the population believe in fire and burn the dead body. When he opens the Hindu graves, he himself may freak out -- just skeletons, and not even a passport! But I always think how you will look, something similar to the photo that you are carrying in your passport but without the skin.

And I cannot conceive that the judgment is going to be over in one day. In the millions of years, trillions of people have lived on the earth. Some researcher has calculated that, wherever you are sitting, you are sitting on ten dead men's skeletons. Don't be afraid, they are very good people! And remember also that the judgment is not only for men. Women will also be there. And women will be chattering so much: "What is the news? Who are the new arrivals?"

I don't think God will be able to manage, and perhaps that is the reason Jesus says, "The Judgment Day is coming soon -- in your life," but it has not even come up to now, though two thousand years have passed. I can say to you the judgment will never come, because it is not feasible.

And there will be on Judgment Day a tremendous bloodless fight amongst the skeletons; because one man has been a husband in his hundreds of lives to hundreds of women, one woman has been a wife to hundreds of men in her past lives. And everybody will be pulling at each other. Somebody is pulling at your leg, "Where are you going?" The whole world will be such a mess that I say unto you definitively that the idea of judgment has been postponed forever.

Choosing Kyozan as his successor, and waiting for forty years -- what patience! -- almost transforming a stone into a diamond. But Isan was determined to make one point absolutely clear to humanity: if Kyozan, a simple and ordinary person, not belonging to any speciality, any category, without any talent, any genius -- if he can become enlightened, it will be a proof. To give this proof to humanity he chose Kyozan and worked hard on him. And the day Kyozan became enlightened, the day Isan transferred his enlightenment and the two flames became one, Isan disappeared from the world of matter, body, mind.

Kyozan was so radiant now. He was not only once enlightened, he was twice enlightened. His master has given him richer experiences, far deeper spaces, far clearer skies.

A little biographical note:

WHEN KYOZAN WAS FIFTEEN, HE WANTED TO BECOME A MONK, BUT HIS PARENTS WOULD NOT ALLOW IT. TWO YEARS AFTER THAT, HE CUT OFF TWO FINGERS OF HIS LEFT HAND AND PLEADED WITH HIS PARENTS TO LET HIM FOLLOW THE SPIRITUAL PATH, AND FINALLY THEY AGREED.

They had to agree. If he can cut off two fingers he can cut off his whole hand, and the blame would be on them.

KYOZAN STUDIED UNDER SEVERAL MASTERS AND THEN REMAINED WITH ISAN FOR MANY YEARS, BEFORE MOVING TO MOUNT KYO WHERE DISCIPLES CAME TO BE WITH HIM.

In Zen, there is not much to a biography. What is important is that the man has become an eternal flame, that the man has achieved his ultimate potential, that his blue lotus has blossomed. Who cares about dates of birth, about your parents? Those become negligible. That's why in the East there is nothing like Western history.

Western history is factual; it take notes of all the facts from birth to death. Eastern history does not bother about physical appearance; it takes care of your spiritual growth. Those are the real progress points.

For the experience you should go to a Jaina temple. Don't mention my name! And you will see in the temple twenty-four statues of the Jain masters. And you will be puzzled because they all look alike; there is no way to find out who is who.

I am trying to make the point clear to you that it does not matter who is who. Those statues don't represent the physical body; they represent spiritual silence, spiritual grace, spiritual peace. If you sit there, you will be engulfed if you are not a Jaina -- because the Jaina goes with a prejudice.

Just go on inquiring why these twenty-four statues are exactly the same. The reason is, the inner experience is the same- whether it happens to Adinath or to Mahavira or to Gautam Buddha, it does not matter. The inner flame and the fragrance and the silence will surround you. Just sit silently, let it happen. Don't be in a hurry.

So we don't know many names, we don't know when they were born, we don't know when they became enlightened, but we know that a sudden explosion of light has happened in a man. We have included only these people in our history.

All that is concerned with the physical we have deleted from Eastern history. But we have remembered, and we continue to remember... and if you sit before the statue of Buddha outside the entrance, just sitting silently, you will be surprised how for the first time you feel so relaxed, so peaceful, so unworried. The form of the statue creates a certain space and a certain energy.

This was discovered in the early days of this century when there was great excitement about the Egyptian pyramids. They are completely sealed. When one pyramid was opened -- the first pyramid -- there was a strange peace inside, a strange fragrance inside.

And the most puzzling thing that came to light was a cat that must have died hundreds of years before, but there was no rottenness of the body. It was as if she had died just then. They could not believe it because the stupa was three thousand years old, and it had never been opened.

When they were closing the last doors, somehow the cat must have got in, and remained in, and of course had to die; there was no way out. She must have died three thousand years before, but the problem is there was no deterioration.

And scientists became interested that perhaps the form of the pyramid creates a certain space in which nothing can die. Death came because there was no food, no water, but the pyramid kept the cat as if it was as alive as any cat can be.

Now there are on sale in the world markets small pyramids. You just sit under the pyramid for an hour and you will see some changes; you are no more in a hurry, you don't have any tension. The stupa has done something, but it is still a mystery.

The Buddhists also have made stupas: in India, Bodhgaya, where Buddha became enlightened... in Sanchi, where many buddhas became enlightened. But nobody seems to be interested except in their architecture. Studying the architecture is not the way to find the mystery of why these stupas were made in a certain way.

In India, in Tibet, in China, in Japan, in Ceylon -- wherever Buddhism went, these stupas, these memorials were raised to give an indication that nobody dies; only the body and the mind are left behind and you open your wings of consciousness. And for the first time when all the shutters are broken the whole blue sky is your empire.

Kyozan studied with many masters, but either they were not masters... and certainly he was not ready to be a disciple. The moment he saw Isan, suddenly a new breeze, a new fragrance passed through him.

They met on a small footpath on the mountain. He could not resist... this man smells like sandalwood and has such a light around him, such an at-easeness.

He turned and asked Isan, "Can you accept me as a disciple?"

Isan looked at him. He said, "I have never rejected anyone, that would be humiliation -- although I am aware, looking at you, that it is going to be a long task. But if you are ready to go on a long pilgrimage with me, perhaps that which can happen may now happen."

Isan had one thousand disciple-monks, and they were all puzzled that, having such a great scholarly assembly, he had chosen a farmer, uneducated, who had not even heard the names of the Buddha's sutras. "Why has he become so interested in him?" And they were great scholars with a fine discipline who had been with him for years -- and, "This is a newcomer, a villager."

Isan said to his other disciples, "Today he is not ready, he is just a seed. But tomorrow you will know why I have chosen him. I am trying to serve two purposes in a single event. If this man can become a buddha, then the doors are open for all men." And he made it a promise that he would not leave his body until Kyozan could satisfy the whole assembly of disciples that the master had not been wrong.

The sutra:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

ONCE WHEN HE WAS STILL WITH HIS MASTER, KYOZAN SAID TO ISAN, "WHERE DOES THE REAL BUDDHA DWELL?"

ISAN REPLIED, "BY MEANS OF THE SUBTLETY OF THOUGHTLESS THOUGHT, CONTEMPLATE THE BOUNDLESS SPIRITUAL BRIGHTNESS. CONTEMPLATE IT UNTIL RETURNING TO THE GROUND OF BEING, THE ALWAYS ABIDING NATURE, AND ITS FORM OF THE UNDICHOTOMOUS PRINCIPLE. THIS IS THE REAL BUDDHA."

ON HEARING THIS, KYOZAN WAS ENLIGHTENED.

It is a very strange incident.

Western education everywhere has made us very limited and one-dimensional. So if you read this you will simply laugh. You can understand each word and its implications, but that is not the real thing that is happening between Isan and Kyozan.

ONCE, WHEN HE WAS STILL WITH HIS MASTER, KYOZAN SAID TO ISAN, "WHERE DOES THE REAL BUDDHA DWELL?"

ISAN REPLIED, "BY MEANS OF THE SUBTLETY OF THOUGHTLESS THOUGHT, -- when the mind is thoughtless and just empty, that is the temple of the buddha -- CONTEMPLATE THE BOUNDLESS SPIRITUAL BRIGHTNESS. CONTEMPLATE IT UNTIL RETURNING TO THE GROUND OF BEING, THE ALWAYS ABIDING NATURE, AND ITS FORM OF THE UNDICHOTOMOUS PRINCIPLE. THIS IS THE REAL BUDDHA."

Always move into unity with the cosmos. Dichotomy is division; undichotomy is no division, no division of any kind. Contemplate it, and this very contemplation... you will not find the buddha; you will find you are the buddha. There will not be two, because that will create dichotomy. There will not be you standing looking at buddha. You will merge in silence, disappear in the oceanic experience of consciousness, the eternal serenity of existence. There is no knower and nothing is known, but everything is. This `isness' is buddha.

ON HEARING THIS, KYOZAN WAS ENLIGHTENED.

This makes difficulty for the modern mind. How can one become enlightened just by listening to a few lines? You can go on reading these lines again and again, you will not become enlightened; you will simply become crazy.

Underneath, something else is happening. While the master is speaking, the disciple is not only listening because he has ears. The disciple is listening with his total being, every fiber of his being; not only with ears, he is also listening with his eyes, looking at the master; he is also feeling the master, his vibe. It is a total phenomenon. He has forgotten himself and disappeared in the tremendous statement.

The moment you forget yourself and only a silent consciousness remains, you have come home. Enlightenment is not something special; it is hidden in you, your hidden splendor. It is just that you are so much occupied with the outside world that you can forget anything, particularly those things which are very obvious.

In the first world war rationing was introduced and everybody had to appear before the rationing officer to get a ration card. Thomas Alva Edison, a world-famous figure -- all your facilities and comforts, most of them are because of Edison; he discovered one thousand things -- he was also standing in the queue. And as he was coming closer to the top of the queue, people were leaving, taking their cards, and finally the clerk shouted, "Now it is time for Thomas Alva Edison."

Edison looked here and there; he could not see anybody. A long queue was behind him. Somebody from the back said, "As far as I know, the man who is standing in front of you is Thomas Alva Edison."

Edison said, "Perhaps I may be, but for fifty years nobody has used my name in front of me." He was so famous; in the university he was called `the professor', nobody used his name. And he was so engrossed and engaged in his experiments, he had no time to meet people, to talk to people. He was a man who was absolutely alone in the crowd. He had forgotten his own name -- fifty years is a long time.

If nobody uses your name, you will also forget, or you may think, "Perhaps I have heard this name somewhere far away, far back, as an echo, but I cannot guarantee it. I have to find witnesses."

Now, if your name is not used by others out of respect and love, you are not going to use it yourself. Naturally, not being used for fifty years -- and a name is an arbitrary device -- Edison forgot his.

But you have forgotten your innermost being. His loss was not much of a loss, just a label. Your loss is far deeper and greater. For centuries you have lived, but you don't know who you are.

The explosion of enlightenment is: Suddenly you become aware of your eternal being.

LATER, WHEN KYOZAN HAD BECOME A MASTER HIMSELF, ISAN SENT HIM A MIRROR AS A GIFT. WHEN HE WENT TO THE HALL WHERE HIS MONKS WERE ASSEMBLED, KYOZAN HELD UP THE MIRROR AND SAID TO THE ASSEMBLY, "PLEASE SAY WHETHER THIS IS ISAN'S MIRROR OR KYOZAN'S MIRROR. IF SOMEONE CAN GIVE A CORRECT REPLY, I WILL NOT SMASH IT."

This is how in Zen very subtle and intricate matters become immensely important. To the outsider it will look a stupid question.

In the first place, you should remember that sending a mirror as a gift -- he is opening a new monastery, he will be the master -- sending the mirror to him is to remind him: "Don't forget. This mirror will remind you that whatever the mirror reflects is not you. But whoever witnesses the reflection in the mirror, that is your buddhahood."

Kyozan rose to these heights. He said to the assembly of monks:

PLEASE SAY WHETHER THIS IS ISAN'S MIRROR OR KYOZAN'S MIRROR. IF SOMEONE CAN GIVE A CORRECT REPLY, I WILL NOT SMASH IT."

NO ONE ANSWERED, AND KYOZAN SMASHED THE MIRROR.

To answer the question a man of enlightenment was needed. Spontaneously he would have responded -- thousands of ways are open -- but remaining silent, dumb, simply shows your ignorance, your unawareness. And Kyozan's smashing the mirror is just to make a beginning to what is going to happen in his monastery.

If anyone had been enlightened he could have done anything. He could have come and slapped Kyozan and taken the mirror from him, and said to the assembly, "The mirror is mine! There is no need to smash it." Or anything!

The mirror is nobody's. And to use a gift of the master on the first day of the opening ceremony... this is not nice to smash the mirror. Somebody was needed to smash the face of Kyozan, which would have saved the mirror! But nobody was enlightened enough.

You will come across many incidents, and when you hear about them, just think that you were there; just close your eyes and feel the energy that had gathered in Kyozan's monastery; what would you have done?

It reminds me:

A great Zen master had two wings to his monastery, and he had a beautiful cat. Everybody loved that cat, and everybody claimed that, "Of course the master cannot possess anything, so it belongs to the right wing," or "it belongs to the left wing."

Things became so hot that one day the master had to call the whole assembly of both wings, to say, showing the cat and a sword, "Do you see this cat and this sword? If anybody can answer -- this is a question about this cat and this sword -- if anybody can answer, the cat will belong to him. If nobody answers then the only possible way for me to settle this hot dispute and struggle is to cut the cat in two pieces and divide it between the right wing and the left wing."

A great chill went through the people, but what is the right answer?

Seeing their silence, the master cut the cat in half. He gave a bleeding half to each of the parties. At that very moment Lieh Tzu, who was going to be his successor and had gone to the marketplace for some work, entered in and slapped the master, and said to him, "You old idiot! You unnecessarily killed a beautiful cat."

The master laughed and said, "Lieh Tzu, if you had been here the poor cat would still be alive."

Zen has a language of its own. Most particularly, it needs courage, spontaneity, clarity, and then out of that clarity whatever you do is right.

Issa wrote:

PLUM BLOSSOMS:

MY SPRING

IS AN ECSTASY

Just visualize.

PLUM BLOSSOMS:

MY SPRING

IS AN ECSTASY

If you start looking silently at things, the roses will become your ecstasy, the mountains will become your ecstasy, the naked tree without any leaves will become your ecstasy. The ecstasy is an utter silence, watching, witnessing the tremendous beauty that surrounds you. This beauty is alcoholic. Experiencing this beauty around you, you forget about small things. Your life becomes a golden life.