People ask me why society is against me. Society is not against me – I am antisocial. I can’t help it. I have to do my thing. I have to share what has happened to me, and in that very sharing I go against the society. Its whole structure is rooted in knowledge, and the master’s function is to destroy knowledge; to destroy ignorance and to bring you back your childhood.
Jesus says, “Unless you are like small children you will not enter into the Kingdom of God.”
Society, in fact, makes you uprooted from your nature. It pushes you off your center. It makes you neurotic.
Conducting a university course, a famous psychiatrist was asked by a student, “Sir, you have told us about the abnormal person and his behavior, but what about the normal person?”
“When we find him,” replied the psychiatrist, “we cure him.”
Society goes on curing normal people. Every child is born normal, remember; then society cures him. Then he becomes abnormal. He becomes Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Communist, Catholic… There are so many kinds of neurosis in the world. You can choose, you can shop for whatever kind of neurosis you want. Society creates all kinds; all shapes and sizes of neuroses are available, to everybody’s liking.
Zen cures you of your abnormality. It makes you again normal, it makes you again ordinary. It does not make you a saint, remember. It does not make you a holy person, remember. It simply makes you an ordinary person – takes you back to your nature, back to your source.
This beautiful anecdote:
Ascending to the high seat, Dogen Zenji said: “Zen master Hogen studied with Keishin Zenji. Once Keishin Zenji asked him, ‘Joza, where do you go?’
Hogen said, ‘I am making pilgrimage aimlessly.’
Keishin said, ‘What is the matter of your pilgrimage?’
Hogen said, ‘I don’t know.’
Keishin said, ‘Not knowing is the most intimate.’
Hogen suddenly attained great enlightenment.”
Now meditate over each word of this small anecdote; it contains all the great scriptures of the world. It contains more than all the great scriptures contain – because it also contains not knowing.
Ascending to the high seat…
This is just a symbolic, metaphorical way of saying something very significant. Zen says that man is a ladder. The lowest rung is the mind and the highest rung of the ladder is no-mind. Zen says only people who have attained no-mind are worthy enough to ascend to the high seat and speak to people, not everybody. It is not a question of a priest or a preacher.
Christians train preachers; they have theological colleges where preachers are trained. What kind of foolishness is this? Yes, you can teach them the art of eloquence; you can teach them how to begin a speech, how to end a speech. And that’s exactly what is taught in Christian theological colleges. Even what gestures to make, when to make a pause, when to speak slowly and when to become loud: everything is cultivated. These stupid people go on preaching about Jesus, and they have not asked a single question!
Once I visited a theological college. The principal was my friend; he invited me. I asked him, “Can you tell me in what theological college Jesus learned because the Sermon on the Mount is so beautiful, he must have learned in some theological college? In what theological college did Buddha learn?”
Mohammed was absolutely uneducated, but the way he speaks, the way he sings the Koran, is superb. It is coming from somewhere else. It is not education, it is not knowledge. It is coming from a state of no-mind.
Little Johnny was the son of the local minister. One day his teacher was asking the class what they wanted to be when they grew up.
When it was his turn to answer he replied, “I want to be a minister just like my father.”
The teacher was impressed with his determination and so she asked him why he wanted to be a preacher.
“Well,” he said thoughtfully, “since I have to go to church on Sunday anyway, I figure it would be more interesting to be the guy who stands up and yells than the one who has to sit down and listen.”
You can create preachers, but you cannot create masters.
In India, the seat from where a master speaks is called vyasa peetha. Vyasa was one of the greatest masters India has ever produced, one of the ancientmost buddhas. He was so influential; his impact was so tremendous that thousands of books, which were not written by him, exist in his name. Vyasa’s name became so important that anybody who wanted to sell a book would put Vyasa’s name on it instead of putting his own name. Vyasa’s name was guarantee enough that the book was valuable. Now scholars go crazy deciding which is real, the real book, written by Vyasa.
The seat from where a buddha speaks is called vyasa peetha – the seat of the buddha. Nobody is allowed to ascend to the seat unless he has attained no-mind. Ascending to the high seat… is a metaphor: it says the man has attained the state of no-mind. He has attained the state of not-knowing which is true knowing.
…Dogen Zenji said: “Zen master Hogen studied with Keishin Zenji. Once Keishin Zenji asked him, ‘Joza, where do you go?’”
This is a Zen way of saying, “What is your goal in life? Where are you going?” It also implies another question, “From where are you coming? What is the source of your life?” It also implies “Who are you?” because if you can answer where you are coming from and where you are going to, that means you must know who you are.
The three most important questions are: “Who am I? From where do I come? And to where am I going?”
“…Keishin Zenji asked ‘Joza, where do you go?’
Hogen said, ‘I am making pilgrimage aimlessly.’”
See the beauty of the answer. This is how tremendously beautiful things transpire between a master and a disciple. He said: ‘I am making pilgrimage aimlessly.’
If you are going to Kaaba, then it is not a pilgrimage because there is an aim in it. If you are going to Jerusalem or to Kashi it is not a pilgrimage. Wherever there is a goal there is ambition, and wherever there is ambition there is mind, desire. And with desire there is no possibility of any pilgrimage.
A pilgrimage can only be aimless. See the beauty of it! Only a Zen master can approve it and only a Zen disciple can say something so tremendously revolutionary: ‘I am making pilgrimage aimlessly.’
The master asks, “Where are you going?” And the disciple says, “Nowhere in particular.” Aimlessly, just like a dry leaf in the wind, wherever the wind takes it; to the north, then the north is beautiful; to the south, then the south is beautiful – because all is divine. Wherever you go you encounter it. There is no need to have any aim.
The moment you have any aim you become tense, you become concentrated on the aim. The moment you have any aim you are separate from the whole. You have a private goal and to have a private goal is the root of all ego. Not to have a private goal is to be one with the whole, and to be one with the whole is possible only if you are aimlessly wandering.
A Zen person is a wanderer, aimless, with no goal, with no future. Moment to moment he lives without any mind; just like the dry leaf he makes himself available to the winds. He says to the winds, “Take me wherever you want.” If he rises on the winds high in the sky, he does not feel superior to others who are lying down on the ground. If he falls to the ground, he does not feel inferior to others who are rising on the wind high in the sky. He cannot fail. He cannot ever be frustrated. When there is no goal, how can you fail? When you are not going anywhere in particular, how can you be in frustration? Expectation brings frustration. Private ambitions bring failures.
The Zen person is always victorious,