Sunday AM Thoughts.. Humanity, Buddha and Zen- for Pure Bliss!
Please read these passage clips from Osho. A man who ponders and writes about man. To me, spirituality is like being a student of philosophy and psychology and the message is delivered through many different cultures. It is not out of reach for all of us and encompasses and delivers solutions to many modern day dilemmas. If you keep an open mind and heart, you can eliminate some unproductive thinking, and gain immeasurable perspective.
If you think of meaning as a result, then you will miss the whole point. ‘That is where Buddha’s insight is of tremendous importance, he says’ Meaning is not in the result but in the act.’ And if you are not looking for the meaning it CAN only be in the act. If you are looking for the meaning you have moved into the future, you have missed this moment, you have missed the present. You have missed that which is, and the beauty of that which is — the benediction of it, the utter joy of it.
Zen gives you a new insight, a new vision; a life of freedom, utter freedom; a life of spontaneity, absolute spontaneity; a life of the moment, in the moment, for the moment. And… there is nowhere else to go.
And remember again, you are not falling into a despair; you cannot — a Buddha cannot fall into a despair. It is impossible: hope has disappeared, so has hopelessness. The goal has disappeared, how can you be anxious now? Anxiety arises only because of the goal — whether you are going to make it or not, hence the anxiety. There can’t be any tension when there is no meaning. Then all that is left is play. All that is left is to live this moment. Then eating, eat; sleeping, sleep; then walking, walk. And each act is ultimate, and it has no reference to anything else. It has not to have any reference to be meaningful. It is neither meaningful nor meaningless; it simply is.
This is going to be the future of humanity, this is the only possibility for man’s survival.
Existentialism in the West has created the atmosphere for Zen to pop up. Existentialism is half-hearted Zen, unconscious Zen. Zen is conscious existentialism. Sartre and Camus and Heidegger and Berdyaev and Marcel and others — they are just predecessors of something that is coming, that has really already arrived for those who can see. Hence I am speaking so much on Zen: because it has the flavour of the future.
That is-ness Buddha calls TATHATA, suchness: is is is. Buddha calls this is-ness freedom. And the freedom is not like Sartre’s freedom: that ‘man is condemned to be free’; it is glory, it is great splendour. It is releasement — releasement from ego-ing, releasement from all confinements and identities, releasement of the inner splendour. You bloom — without any future, you bloom in the present. This moment is all.
Buddha started a revolution in human consciousness. His religion is not an ordinary religion, it is utterly extraordinary. It is rare, it is not the common or garden variety. It is very special — a special transmission. Buddha’s insight has penetrated the very core of existence. Zen bloomed out of that insight. What happened to Buddha in Bodhgaya on that certain morning under a BO tree has lived and grown. It has gathered more and more energy to it; it has become a big river now — that is Zen.
