When all the faces have been rejected and emptiness is left, you have found the original face. Emptiness is the original face. Zero is the ultimate experience. Nothingness, or more accurately, no-thingness is your original face.
Another famous koan is: “The sound of one hand clapping.” The master says to the disciple, “Go and listen to the sound of one hand clapping.” Now, this is patent absurdity. One hand cannot clap and without clapping there can be no sound. The master knows it, the disciple knows it. But when the master says, “Go and meditate on it,” the disciple has to follow…
The disciple starts making efforts to listen to the sound of one hand clapping. Many sounds come to his mind; the birds singing, the sound of running water… He rushes immediately to the master. He says, “I have heard it! The sound of running water, isn’t that the sound of one hand clapping?”
And the master hits him hard on the head and he says, “You fool! Go back, meditate more!”
He goes on meditating and the mind goes on providing new answers, “The sound of wind passing through the pine trees, certainly this is the answer.” He is in such a hurry! Everybody is in such a hurry. Impatiently he rushes to the door of the master, a little bit apprehensive, afraid too, but maybe this is the answer…
Even before he has said a single thing the master hits him! He is very puzzled and he says, “This is too much! I have not even uttered a single word, so how can I be wrong? Why are you hitting me?”
The master says, “It is not a question of whether you have uttered something or not. You have come with an answer – that is enough proof. You must be wrong. When you have really found it you won’t come. There will be no need. I will come to you.”
Sometimes years pass. Then one day it has happened. There is no answer. First the disciple knew that there is no answer to it, but it was only an intellectual knowing. Now, he knows from his very core: “There is no answer!” All answers have evaporated.
And the one sure sign that all answers have evaporated, is only when the question also evaporates. Now he is sitting silently, doing nothing, not even meditating. He has forgotten the question: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” It is there no more. It is pure silence.
There are ways…there are inner paths which exist between a master and a disciple.
And now the master rushes toward the disciple. He knocks on his door. He hugs the disciple and says, “So it has happened? This is it! No answer, no question. This is it. “Ah, this!”
The second question:
Osho,
I feel life is very boring. What should I do?
As it is you have already done enough. You have made life boring, some achievement! Life is such a dance of ecstasy and you have reduced it to boredom. You have done a miracle! What else do you want to do? You can’t do anything bigger than this. Life boring? You must have a tremendous capacity to ignore life.
Just the other day I told you that ignorance means the capacity to ignore. You must be ignoring the birds, the trees, the flowers, the people. Otherwise, life is so tremendously beautiful, so absurdly beautiful that if you can see it as it is, you will never stop laughing. You will go on giggling, at least inside.
Life is not boring, but the mind is boring. And we create such a mind, such a strong mind, like the Wall of China around ourselves. It does not allow life to enter into us. It disconnects us from life. We become isolated, encapsulated, windowless. Living behind a prison wall you don’t see the morning sun, you don’t see the birds on the wing, you don’t see the sky in the night full of stars. And, of course, you start thinking that life is boring. Your conclusion is wrong. You are in the wrong space; you are living in the wrong context.
You must be a religious person, because to make life boring one has to be religious. One has to be very scholarly. One has to know Christianity, Hinduism, Islam. One has to learn much from the Vedas and the Koran and the Bible. You must be very well-informed. A man who is too well-informed, too knowledgeable, creates such a thick wall of words, futile words, empty words around himself so that he becomes incapable of seeing life. Knowledge is a barrier to life.
Put aside your knowledge! And then look with empty eyes. Life is a constant surprise. I am not talking about some divine life; the ordinary life is so extraordinary. In small incidents you will find the presence of godliness; a child giggling, a dog barking, a peacock dancing. But you can’t see if your eyes are covered with knowledge. The poorest man in the world is the man who lives behind a curtain of knowledge.
The poorest are those who live through the mind. The richest are those who have opened the windows of no-mind and approached life with no-mind.
This is not only your experience. You are not alone in it. In fact, the majority of people will agree with you. They don’t find any surprise anywhere. And each moment there are surprises and surprises because life is never the same. It is constantly changing and it takes such unpredictable turns. How can you remain unaffected by the very wonder of it? The only way to remain unaffected is to cling to your past, to your experience; to your knowledge, to your memories, to your mind. Then you cannot see that which is. You go on missing the present.
Miss the present and you live in boredom. Be in the present and you will be surprised that there is no boredom at all. Start by looking around a little more like a child. Be a child again! That’s what meditation is all about, being a child again – a rebirth, being innocent again, not-knowing. That’s what we were talking about the other day. The master said: “Not knowing is the most intimate.”
Yes, you must have become very alienated from life, hence boredom. You have forgotten the intimacy, the immediacy. You are no longer bridged. Knowledge functions as a wall, innocence functions as a bridge.
Start looking around like a child again; go to the seashore and start collecting seashells again. See a child collecting seashells, as if he has found a mine of diamonds. So thrilled he is! See a child making sand castles. How absorbed he is, utterly lost, as if there is nothing more important than making sand castles. See a child running after a butterfly…and be a child again. Start running after butterflies again. Make sand castles, collect seashells.
Don’t live as if you know. You know nothing! All that you know is about and about. The moment you know something, boredom disappears. Knowing is such an adventure that boredom cannot exist. With knowledge, of course it can exist. With knowing it cannot exist.
Let me remind you, I am not talking about some divine knowledge, some esoteric knowledge; I am simply talking about this life. Just look around with a little more clarity, with a little more transparency, and life is hilarious!
A downtown store in New York featured a plaque in its window reading “Buy American.” Printed in small letters at the bottom was “Made in Japan.”
Just start looking around a little more carefully.
A German in the Soviet Zone reported to the police that his parrot was missing. He was asked whether the parrot talked.
“Yes,” he replied, “but any political opinions he expresses are strictly his own.”
Molly, aged seventy-nine, complained of abdominal swelling and pain to the doctor. He examined her thoroughly, put her through a series of laboratory tests, and then announced the results.
“The plain fact, madam,” said the medical man, “is that you are pregnant.”
“That’s impossible!” said Molly, “Why, I am seventy-nine years old and my husband, although he still works,