Author: Catalin Amza

There is nothing more valuable than meditation. The people who have not tasted meditation are the poorest in the world. They may have all the riches, but still they are beggars because they have not known the real treasure yer — the treasure that cannot be destroyed by death, the treasure that cannot be taken away from you, the treasure that you are.

We are carrying an inexhaustible treasure of diamonds but we are not exploring it. We have completely forgotten to explore our own inner world. We have become too obsessed with the outside. We have become so outwardly, so extrovert, that not only do we not explore the inside, we don’t believe that there is any inside. That’s what people say when they say there is no soul, no god. In fact they are saying there is no interiority to man. They are saying there is no interiority to existence. They are talking nonsense because the outer cannot exist without the inner, nor can the inner exist without the outer.

In the ancient days the so-called saints talked nonsense: they said the outer is false, the inner is true. Now the pendulum has moved to the other extreme. Now people say that the inner is false, only the outer is true. Both are wrong, both are lopsided, both are extremists. My approach is that both the outer and the inner are true, and one has to be aware of both, then only is life really balanced, harmonious. Then life is a synthesis and a song.

Turn in, search inside. Our true reality is there. And the wonder of wonders is that the moment you know your own treasure, the whole existence becomes infinitely more beautiful because it starts reflecting your richness. Existence is like a mirror: it reflects you. If you are rich, fulfilled, contented, it reflects your richness, fulfillment, contentment. If you are poor, ugly, depressed, it reflects that. It simply goes on echoing you. The same existence becomes hell for a few people and becomes a paradise for a few other people. It all depends on you.

The whole magic is in the art of meditation. Without meditation the world is a hell, life is hell. With meditation it is paradise.

Osho – Fingers Pointing to the Moon (With Meditation Life Is Paradise)

I’m the beginning and the end of every word, every feeling, every beat…everything. I am mostly what I always dreamed to be and sometimes what I feared more to became. I’m my biggest love and sometimes I simply choose not to love the most my own. I believe and fear the most my nature. I love and adore everyday the most the way I am and still I continue to worship “Something” I don’t really know and I will never understand. I believe every night in my strength and that I am the only owner of my destiny but someday I just surrender hopeless to the fate and gods. I was able to give an explanation to everything that surrounds me but at times I don’t even understand the way I feel. I am the beginning and the end of every breath, every smile, every tear…everything…

The meeting with oneself is, at first, the meeting with one’s own shadow. The shadow is a tight passage, a narrow door, whose painful constriction no one is spared who goes down to the deep well. But one must learn to know oneself in order to know who one is. For what comes after the door is, surprisingly enough, a boundless expanse full of unprecedented uncertainty, with apparently no inside and no outside, no above and no below, no here and no there, no mine and no thine, no good and no bad. It is the world of water, where all life floats in suspension; where the realm of the sympathetic system, the soul of everything living, begins; where I am indivisibly this and that; where I experience the other in myself and the other-than-myself experiences me.

Carl Gustav Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (via yourbonyknees)

One day the Zen monk Rinzai is speaking in a temple. He has gone into a sermon, but someone is disturbing him there. So Rinzai stops and asks, “What is the matter?” The man stands up and says, “What is soul?” Rinzai takes his staff and asks the people to give him the way. The man begins to tremble. He never expected that such will be the answer.

Rinzai comes to him, takes hold of his neck with both hands and presses it. His eyes come out. He goes on pressing and asks, “Who are you? Close your eyes.” The man closes his eyes. Rinzai goes on asking, “Who are you?” The man opens his eyes and laughs and bows down. He says, “I know you have really answered ‘what is soul’.”

Such a simple device! But the man was ready. Someone asks Rinzai, “Would you do the same thing when anybody asks?” He says, ”That man was ready. He was not just asking for the question’s sake. He was ready. The first part was fulfilled. He was really asking. This was a life and death question to him: ‘What is soul?’ The first part was fulfilled completely. He was disillusioned completely with life, and he was asking, ‘What is soul?’ This life has proved just a death to him. Now he is asking, ‘What is life?’ So no answer from me would have been meaningful. I helped him to just stand still in the present.”

Of course, when someone presses your neck just on the verge of killing you, you cannot be in the future, you cannot be in the past. You will be here and now. It is dangerous to miss the moment. I just say to such a man, “Go deep and know who you are.” The man becomes transformed. He goes into samadhi. He stands still in the moment. If you are in the present even for a single moment, you have known, you have encountered, and you will never be able to lose the track again.

A Zen Story

We are partners in the same organic unity and everybody is essential; from the smallest blade of grass to the biggest star, everybody is needed, equally needed. There is no hierarchy in existence. The grass blade and the star have no inequality; they are equal. Existence supports them both in the same way, it makes no discrimination. To the sinners, to the saints, it is the same. The sun shines for all, the flowers bloom for all, the birds sing for all. It is our home! But without a taste of blissfulness it cannot be felt.

Your love makes you ready to go into aloneness, because one can be with people only for a certain time then the desire to be alone arises. It is a necessary phenomenon, a natural phenomenon. And when one is alone one can be alone only for a certain period because when one is alone one accumulates energy. It is not used, one becomes a reservoir and then one needs people to share it. That is what love is sharing the energy that becomes accumulated in your aloneness. But when you share your energy, when you live with people, slowly you feel exhausted, tired, depleted; again the need has come to move into aloneness.

Love means that you are grateful to existence for giving birth to you and out of that gratefulness you would like to do something for existence. Love is prayer, it is thankfulness. And slowly slowly as you start moving higher into the world of love new dimensions start opening up in you. A moment comes when love is no more a relationship, you are simply loving.

Man can either exist in conflict with existence or in harmony with existence, either as an enemy or as a friend. Existence is the same, it is neither inimical to you nor friendly; it is simply available — the whole thing depends on you. It simply reflects you, echoes you; it is a mirror. If you are inimical you will see your own face in nature and nature will look inimical. If you are friendly you will see your own face in nature and the whole existence will look friendly.

Because most humans spend their entire lifetime looking outward at thoughts, the body, the world, people, places, things, etc., most humans have never even once observed their own awareness, not even for one second, in their entire lifetime.

There is a parable. Buddha comes one day with a flower in his hand. He is to give a sermon, but he remains silent. Flower in his hand, eyes on it, he remains silent. Those who have come to listen to him begin to wonder what he is doing. Time is passing. It has never happened like this. What is he doing? They wonder whether he is going to speak or not. Then someone asks, “What are you doing? Have you forgotten that we have come to listen to you?” Buddha says, “I have communicated something. I have communicated something which cannot be communicated through words. Have you heard it or not?”

No one has heard it. But a disciple, a very unknown disciple known for the first time, a bhikkhu named Mahakashyap, laughs, heartily laughs. Buddha says, “Mahakashyap, come to me. I give you this flower, and I declare that all that could be given through words I have given to you — all; and that which is really meaningful, which cannot be given through words, I give to Mahakashyap.”

So Zen tradition has been asking again and again, “But what has been communicated to Mahakashyap? What was transmitted to Mahakashyap? A transmission without words. What has Buddha told? What has Mahakashyap heard?” And whenever there is someone who knows, he laughs again, and the story remains a mystery. When someone understands, he laughs again. Wherever there are persons who are scholars, who know much and who know nothing, they will discuss about what has been told They will decide about what has been heard. But someone who knows will laugh.

Bankei, a great Zen teacher, said, “Buddha said nothing. Mahakashyap heard nothing.” So someone asks, “Buddha said nothing?” “Yes,” Bankei said, “Yes, ‘nothing’ was said, ‘nothing’ was heard. It was said and it was heard. I am a witness.” So someone said, “You were not there.” So Bankei said, “I need not have been there. When ‘nothing’ was communicated, no one is needed to be a witness. I was not there, and yet I am a witness.” Someone laughed, and Bankei said, “He was also a witness.”

The living current cannot be communicated. It is always there; someone has to go to it. It is nearby, just by the corner. It is in you. You are the living current. But you have never been in. Your attention has always been out. You have been out-oriented. You have become fixed. Your focus has become deadly fixed, so you cannot conceive of what it means to be in. Even when you try to be in, you just close your eyes and go on being out. 

To be in means to be in a state of mind where there is no out, where there is no in. To be in means there is no boundary between you and the all. When there is nothing out, only then do you come to the inner current. And once you have a glimpse, you are transformed. You know — you know something which is incomprehensible. You know something which intellect cannot comprehend. You know something which intellect cannot communicate. But yet one has to communicate, even with a flower, even with a laugh. It makes no difference: they are gestures. Does it make any difference if I use my lips or if I use my hands with a flower? Only the gesture is new. So it disturbs you. Otherwise, it is as much a gesture as any lip moving. make a sound; it is a gesture. I remain silent; it is a gesture. But the gesture is new, unknown to you, so you think something is different. Nothing is different. The living current cannot be communicated, yet has to be communicated, somehow has to be indicated, somehow has to be shown.

Osho – I Am The Gate (Buddha parrable)