A man who wants to enter into the world of mindlessness has to learn only one thing – a single step and the journey is over. That single step is to do everything watchfully. You move your hand watchfully; you open your eyes watchfully; you walk, you take your steps alert, aware; you eat, you drink, but never allow mechanicalness to take possession over you. This is the only alchemical secret of transformation.
A man who can do everything fully consciously becomes a luminous phenomenon. He is all light, and his whole life is full of fragrance and flowers. The mechanical man lives in dark holes, dirty holes. He does not know the world of light; he is like a blind man. The man of watchfulness is really the man who has eyes.
Ta Hui slowly, slowly is penetrating into the deeper secrets of inner transformation. He says,
Though you may not fully know whether the teachers of the various localities are wrong or right, if your own basis is solid and genuine, the poisons of wrong doctrines will not be able to harm you…
He says it is useless to think who is right and who is wrong. There are thousands of doctrines, hundreds of philosophies, and if you go on searching for truth in those words, you will be lost in a jungle where you cannot find the path. All that you know is to attain to a solid basis within yourself.
… “Keeping the mind still,” and “forgetting concerns” included. If you always “forget concerns” and “keep the mind still,” without smashing the mind of birth and death, then the delusive influences of form, sensation, perception, volition, and consciousness will get their way, and you will inevitably be dividing emptiness into two. Let go and make yourself vast and expansive….
It is not a question of controlling yourself separate from existence; it is a question of letting–go and becoming vast – as vast as existence itself. And in watchfulness you become infinite: that is the only thing within you which has no limits.
Just have a look at your watching, witnessing. It is unlimited. No beginning, no end…it is formless.
This absolute stillness of the mind is exactly no–mind or mindlessness. It is not control, it is not discipline; it is not that you are putting all your pressure on your mind and keeping it silent. No, it is simply not there. The house is empty. There is nobody to control and there is nobody to be controlled. All concerns for control have disappeared into a simple watchfulness. This watchfulness is expansive. Once you have tasted it a little, it goes on expanding to the very limits of the universe.
When old habits suddenly arise, don’t use your mind to repress them. At just such a time, it’s like a snowflake on a red–hot stove.
He is reminding you that even when you are moving on the path of watchfulness, sometimes old habits may revive. But don’t be concerned; they are like snowflakes on a red–hot stove, they will disappear of their own accord. You simply watch. Don’t get concerned, don’t get disturbed, don’t be worried.
Sometimes there will be anger, sometimes there will be a desire, sometimes there will be an ambition, but they cannot disturb your watchfulness. They will come and they will go without leaving a trace on your mirror–like purity. But you have only to remember one thing: not to start fighting with them, smashing them, destroying them, throwing them away. It comes very naturally to the mind that if something wrong is happening, jump on it and destroy it. This is the only thing you have to be aware of, because this is what never allows a man to get beyond the mind. Old habits will come – and old habits are very old, many, many lives old. Your awareness is very fresh and very new; your mechanicalness is ancient, so it is very natural that it will come back.
Somebody insults you – you don’t have to be angry, but suddenly you find anger arising. It is not an effort, it is just an old habit, an old reaction. Don’t fight with it, don’t try to smile and hide it. Just watch it, and it will come and it will go…. Like a snowflake on a red–hot stove.
For those with a discerning eye and a familiar hand, one leap and they leap clear. Only then do they know lazy Jung’s saying: right when using mind, there’s no mental activity. If a man has learned the art of watchfulness he can use his mind too, and still he has no mental activity.
I am talking to you, and I am using my mind because there is no other way.
Mind is the only way to convey any message in words; that is the only mechanism available. But my mind is absolutely silent, there is no mental activity: I’m not thinking what I’m going to say, and I’m not thinking what I have said. I’m simply responding to Ta Hui spontaneously without bringing myself into it.
It is as if you go into the mountains and you shout and the mountains echo: the mountains are not doing any mental activity, they are simply echoing. When I am talking on Ta Hui, I am just a mountain echoing.
Right when using mind, there’s no mental activity. Crooked talk defiled with names and forms, straight talk without complications. Without mind but functioning…. This is a strange experience, when you can use mind without any mental activity…. Without mind but functioning, always functioning but non–existent.
I was from my very childhood in love with silence.
As long as I could manage I would just sit silently. Naturally my family used to think that I was going to be good for nothing – and they were right. I certainly proved good for nothing, but I don’t repent it.
It came to such a point that sometimes I would be sitting and my mother would come to me and say something like, “There seems to be nobody in the whole house. I need somebody to go to the market to fetch some vegetables.” I was sitting in front of her, and I would say, “If I see somebody I will tell….”
It was accepted that my presence meant nothing; whether I was there or not, it did not matter. Once or twice they tried and then they found that “it is better to leave him out, and not take any notice of him” – because in the morning they would send me to fetch vegetables, and in the evening I would come to ask, “I have forgotten for what you had sent me, and now the market is closed…” In villages the vegetable markets close by the evening, and the villagers go back to their villages.
My mother said, “It is not your fault, it is our fault. The whole day we have been waiting, but in the first place we should not have asked you. Where have you been?”
I said, “As I went out of the house, just close by there was a very beautiful bodhi tree” – the kind of tree under which Gautam Buddha became awakened. The tree got the name bodhi tree – or in English, bo tree – because of Gautam Buddha. One does not know what it used to be called before Gautam Buddha; it must have had some name, but after Buddha it became associated with his name.
There was a beautiful bodhi tree, and it was so tempting for me.
There used to be always such silence, such coolness underneath it, nobody to disturb me, that I could not pass it without sitting under it for some time. And those moments of peace, I think sometimes may have stretched the whole day.
After just a few disappointments they thought, “It is better not to bother him.” And I was immensely happy that they had accepted the fact that I am almost non–existent. It gave me tremendous freedom. Nobody expected anything from me. When nobody expects anything from you, you fall into a silence…. The world has accepted you; now there is no expectation from you.
When sometimes I was late coming home, they used to search for me in two places. One was the bodhi tree – and because they started searching for me under the bodhi tree, I started climbing the tree and sitting in the top of it. They would come and they would look around and say, “He does not seem to be here.”
And I myself would nod; I said, “Yes, that’s true. I’m not here.”
But I was soon discovered, because somebody saw me climbing and told them, “He has been deceiving you. He is always here, most of the time sitting in the tree” – so I had to go a little further.
There used to be a Mohammedan cemetery….
Now people ordinarily don’t go to graveyards. Of course, everybody has to go once, but except that, people don’t like going to graveyards. So that was the most silent place… because dead people don’t talk, they don’t create nuisance, they don’t ask you unnecessary questions, they don’t even ask you who you are or for introductions.
I used to sit in the Mohammedan graveyard. It was a big place, with many graves, with trees, very shadowy trees. When my father came to know that I was sitting there he said, “This is too much!” He came one day to find me and he said, “You can start sitting in the bodhi tree, or under the bodhi tree, and nobody will disturb you. This is too much, this is dangerous – and in fact, when somebody goes to the graveyard he should take a bath and change his clothes. You have been sitting here the whole day and sometimes at night, and when you come home we don’t know from where you are coming.”
This is usual, that when you come back from the graveyard…. Ordinarily nobody goes there unless they are sent, and they have to go; so, reluctantly they go. From the graveyard people normally go directly to the river to take a bath, to change their clothes, and only then do they enter the house. So my father said, “I don’t know how long you have been doing this.”
I said, “Since you disturbed me on the bodhi tree. I had to find some place….” And I told him, “Even you will enjoy it once in a while. When you get tired and too tense, just come here – no dead man disturbs anybody.”
He said, “Don’t talk to me about dead men – and particularly in a Mohammedan grave….” Mohammedans are poor; their graves are mud graves. In the rain, sometimes a dead body will appear. The mud has washed away and you can see the dead body – somebody’s head is showing, somebody’s leg is showing. He said, “Don’t ever tell me to go there. Just the idea that one day I will be in such a position, with my head showing out of a grave, makes me feel so frightened… you are a strange boy!”
I said, “What is wrong with it? The poor fellow is dead, he cannot do anything. It is raining, he cannot manage to have an umbrella, what can he do? If one of his legs is showing, what can he do? He cannot pull it in – if he pulls it in then too there will be trouble, so he keeps silent and lets things be as they are.”
A love of silence and a love of being absent has helped me so tremendously that I can understand when he says, always functioning but non–existent – the mindlessness I speak of now is not separate from having mind. These are not words to deceive people.
Ta Hui is saying, “I am not using these words to deceive anyone; I am not trying to show my knowledge; I am not trying to pretend that I am more knowledgeable than you are. I am saying these words just to share my experience that no–mind and mind can exist together. There should be no repressive methods used, only pure watchfulness… and slowly, slowly mind loses all content. It becomes no–mind.”
So mindlessness and mind are not separate. Mindlessness is mind without any content, without any thought. It is just like a mirror not reflecting anything.
The silence of being a mirror not reflecting anything is the greatest bliss that existence allows man to have. And from there things go on expanding – mysteries upon mysteries… no questions, no answers, but tremendous experiences… nourishing, fulfilling, giving contentment to the hungry soul which has been wandering for lives upon lives.
It is time to stop this wandering.
To stop this wandering there is a simple method, and that is to start watching your mind, your body, your actions. Whatever you are doing or not doing, one thing you have to be alert of – that you are watching. Don’t lose the watcher – then it doesn’t matter whether you are a Christian or a Hindu or a Jaina or a Buddhist.
The watcher is no one. It is just pure consciousness.
And this pure consciousness can only bring a new humanity, a new world, where people will not discriminate against each other for stupid reasons. Nations, races, religions, doctrines, ideologies – those are just for children to play with, not for mature people. For mature people there is only one thing in existence, and that is watchfulness.
… A monk is going to spread Gautam Buddha’s message. He himself is not enlightened yet; that’s why Gautam Buddha calls him and tells him, “Remember, I have to say this because you are not enlightened yet… you are articulate, you speak well, you can spread the message. You may not be able to sow the seeds but you may be able to attract a few people to come to me – but use this opportunity also for your own growth.”
The monk asked, “What can I do, how can I use this opportunity?”
And Buddha said, “There is only one thing that can be done in every opportunity, in every situation, and that is watchfulness. You will sometimes find people irritated by you, angry because you have hurt their ideologies, their doctrines, their prejudices. Remain silent and watchful. You may have days when you cannot get food because the people are against you, they will not even give you water. Watch… watch your hunger, watch your thirst… but don’t get irritated, don’t get annoyed. What you will be teaching people is of less importance than your own watchfulness.
If you come back to me watchful, I will be immensely joyful. How many people you approached does not matter; how many people you spoke to does not matter. What ultimately matters is whether you have come home, whether you yourself have found the solid basis of witnessing. Then all else is insignificant.”
This is the only meditation there is; all other meditations are variations of the same phenomenon.
Osho, The Great Zen Master Ta Hui, Talk #28
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