Essential Zen

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As work is done in regards to the Naassenes, this information became available. Author is not revealed, yet it rings of Osho.

"Religion is not a quest for the explanation. Rather, it is an exploration of love, a non ending journey into love.

But about religion, there is difficulty. When you come to listen to a religious person you argue. And the responsibility lies with the so-called religious people themselves because they have been arguing. There have been foolish people who have even tried to prove God through argument. As if God depends on your argument. As if, if you cannot argue, he will not be able to be there; he will become non existential. As if God is a syllogism.

Neither in rites and ceremonies.... Religion deteriorates into rituals. When a religion is dead, it becomes ritualistic. When a religion is alive, it remains spontaneous. If you want to pray, let it be spontaneous. Don’t repeat rituals; otherwise it is futile, it is meaningless, you are wasting time. If you get up every day – a particular time, a particular prayer, a particular way to do it, and you repeat it in a mechanical way, you will never come to know what prayer is.

And the revelation of religion is that you need not become anybody; you are already that – you are the supreme most. You are God himself. What more can you have? What more is possible? You cannot be improved upon".

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"Your so-called religions have already done much damage to you. They have created a schizophrenic world in which everybody is split. And of course then there is tension, anxiety, anguish, because you become two. By just calling yourself a spiritual being, you are condemning your body and you are creating a rift between the body and the soul, between God and the world.

You say,”What I mean by sannyas is a spiritual discipline, and through this discipline one becomes a religious man.” If you become a religious man by discipline, you will be a bogus religious man. What does discipline have to do with religion? If you practice religion you will be false. Ordinarily it has been told to you, whatsoever you preach, practice it. And I say to you, if you practice it, you will become false, because practice means you are creating character armor around you. Now you will be living according to a certain ideology, and that ideology will function as a barrier. It will become your prejudice. And a religious man is absolutely unprejudiced. He has no outlook, he has no philosophy, and he has no ideology. He is very, very natural. He is more like animals, more like small babies, more like trees and rocks... and yet, very, very different from them. But the difference comes from his awareness.

You say if we practice a certain discipline we will become religious. As if religiousness is something like a goal in the future: you have to practice today so tomorrow you become religious. No, religiousness is your nature. You are already that. No practice is needed for it".

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"The Indian term for religion is very, very beautiful; the Indian term is DHARMA. DHARMA means your intrinsic nature. Whatsoever you want to become, in fact, you are already; it is already the case. It is not a question that you have to practice something and then as a result, as a reward, you become religious. No, you become religious if you just become aware. This very moment you become religious.

Sometimes even without knowing it you become religious. Whenever you are alert, silent, peaceful, you are religious. Whenever you are not alert, tense, worried, you are irreligious. Religion and irreligion continuously change. Sometimes sitting with your friends, listening to music, and you are so quiet and so happy – for no reason at all, just feeling joyful – you are religious. You are in tune with your nature. You may not even be conscious of the fact that in this moment you are religious.

You have gone for a morning walk, the sun is rising, and it is beautiful all around and the air is cool and fragrant and the birds have started singing and there are a few white clouds floating in the sky, and suddenly you are no longer the ordinary, miserable person. You feel good. Suddenly you feel turned on. The vast sky and the clouds and the birds and the morning breeze and the sun rising slowly: something rises in you too, something becomes alert. You have a dance to your feet and a song arises. You would like to sit under a tree and sing a song. You are religious".

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"When you are in love you are religious. Holding the hand of your friend or your woman or your man, not doing anything, just sitting silently, looking at the stars, you are religious.

Religion is not a result of something that you practice. Religion enters in you any moment you relax. Religion is a flowering of relaxation, not a result of practicing. Remember the difference because when you practice you become more tense.

You can see the people who practice. They are very tense because every moment they are fighting. How can they relax? Have you seen a saint relaxing? Impossible. A saint cannot relax, because if he relaxes he is afraid of becoming a sinner. He has to be constantly on guard. He sits upright – because deep inside he is uptight. You can go and see these saints in India. They are on exhibition everywhere. Upright they sit, with their backbone straight, in a dead yoga posture. Like statues. They can’t relax.

Saints cannot laugh, because if they laugh there is danger. If you laugh you become ordinary, just an ordinary human being. They have to remain serious! And they have to be continuously on guard.

You don’t understand their misery. They are imprisoned, and their imprisonment is such that they are the prisoner and they are the jailer too. So a prisoner can escape from the prison, there is a possibility, because the jailer is a different person; you can deceive. But a saint cannot, because he himself is the jailer. He goes on whipping himself, torturing, starving. He is very nasty with his body. But you say,”He is a great ascetic” – these nasty people. Horrible and hideous. Then, also, they are waiting: in some future there is going to be a result".

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"No, I don’t teach you the result-oriented life at all. I teach you the relaxed way of life. Here and now you can be religious. You are, this moment, if you are relaxing with me.

Those who have come to feel me, understand me, those who have come to have a taste of my presence, they relax. They are not here for any gain, they are not here for any greed, and they are not here to attain something in future life. They are just here to be with me – to laugh a little with me, to have a little fun, to joke a little. And then you are religious. In that moment, if you allow a little relaxation, you are religious. Because religion is your innermost nature. Whenever you are not tense, it is there. When you become tense, you lose contact with it.

The questioner has asked:”What do you mean by ’the way of religion’? I have always been so strongly against religion that I cannot imagine what it means.” True. If you are against religion, how can you understand it? If you are FOR religion, then too you cannot understand it. The people who are for and against can never understand because they have decided a priori – without experiencing they have decided. They are prejudiced.

If you have decided God exists, you will never be able to know him. If you have decided God does not exist, how can you know him?

Be more vulnerable. Don’t be so prejudiced, don’t decide. Experience, and let experience be decisive. Never decide before the experience – never, never. Otherwise you will always be surrounded by your prejudice and your prejudice will become a screen. And that won’t allow you to see that which is".

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""The way of religion” is the way of truth, the way of nature. The word "religion" comes from a root which means ”to tie you together” – RELIGARE. Ordinarily you have fallen apart from existence.

You have forgotten that you are not in rhythm with existence. You have started moving on your own. You have lost contact with the real. Yon have started living in your imagination. That is what I call the lie. You have started living a private life; you are no longer living an existential life. You have become ”idiots.” The word ”idiot” is beautiful; it comes from a root which means ”one who lives a private life.” One who has his own idiom of life that is the idiot. The world is going one way and you are going another: then you are an idiot. The whole existence moving in one way and you have your own private goal!

”The way of religion” means not to be idiotic – don’t have any private goal. The universal goal is enough. Be in tune with it, be together with it. Don’t fight it; flow with it. Wherever the whole is going, move with it, and you will not have any worry and you will not have any anguish and you will not be split and will not be torn apart. Religion means that which puts you together. You are not torn apart, you are not falling in fragments; you become integrated".

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"Religion is the science of how to find the forgotten language of ecstasy. Whenever you are in tune with existence, there is ecstasy, there is bliss, and there is benediction.

The East has a totally different message. Religion is the Eastern message. All the great religions were born in the East. The West has not given birth to a single religion; it has given birth to great science, great scientific endeavor, but not to religion. Science is a human, idiotic effort to conquer nature. Religion is to fall in tune with nature. Call it religion, call it TAO, call it DHARMA; it means the same: to fall in tune with nature.

But it will be difficult if you have certain ideas implanted in you for or against. A Christian cannot be a religious man, neither can a Hindu be, nor a communist. A theist cannot be religious, an atheist cannot be religious; they are already full of ideas. They have already decided, without experiencing anything".

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"Here I am not trying to convince you about any ideology. I am trying to help you to drop all ideology so you become empty, pure, virgin, your eyes become unclouded and you attain to a clarity. In that clarity you will understand what religion is. Not through books, not through Bibles and the Koran and the Vedas, no, but through clarity. When the part looks at the whole and understands ”I am part of this whole” and feels happy – ”This vastness is my vastness; I am not separate from it; I am one with it” – and starts dancing in that oneness, religion is born. Religion is not an ideology; it is an experience.

To be in tune with nature is to be religious, to me. My definition of religion is: to be in tune with nature. And that is the meaning of the Indian word DHARMA; it means ”nature,” intrinsic nature. Trust nature and don’t violate it.

These bondages that have been created by religion are just in your idea. If you become aware, you can drop them immediately, instantly.

Religion is romance with existence".

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"The whole approach of all the mystics of the world – depends on this. If you see God outside and you have not seen him within, it is going to be just a dream, a projection, a wish fulfillment; so don’t start the journey that way. The journey starts by closing the eyes; the journey ends by opening the eyes. First, one closes the eyes in meditation, goes deep into oneself. When one has realized, touched the very core, has known who is there; one opens the eyes – and finds him all over, spread everywhere.

But you cannot begin from the outside. That’s where organized religion misses the whole point. The Christian goes to the church, the Hindu goes to the temple, the Mohammedan goes to the mosque. The Mohammedan travels thousands of miles to go to Mecca, the Hindu goes to Kailash; and Kabir says he is neither in Kaaba nor in Kailash. He is within you. Not that he is not in Kaaba and Kailash!

Once you have found him within yourself you will find him everywhere – but then there will be no point of going to Kaaba and Kailash because wherever you are, wherever you look, you will find Kaaba, you will find Kailash.

That’s why Freud is right when he says that the so-called religions are nothing but collective neuroses. The so-called religions are! Buddha may not have been a neurotic, Jesus may not have been a neurotic; but Christians are, Buddhists are. The difference is Buddha starts from his with inwards, from his inwards, and the Buddhist starts from the idea. Jesus looks into his being, and the Christian looks at Jesus, looks outside. There is the whole difference".

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"To whom are you praying? Who is there outside you? Your prayer is a sort of a dream which you are creating.

The real religion consists of going inwards. And when you want to go inwards you have to drop all thinking, you have to drop all images. You have to become completely empty; only then can you go inwards. To go inwards, this is a basic need: that all thinking stops completely. Then you cannot hypnotize yourself. Without thinking, hypnosis cannot exist. All imagery stops. Only in that state of no-imagination, no-thought, no-mind, one comes to feel the reality that is there at the innermost core of your being.

But our habit is very, very powerful, so when a person becomes fed up with the world, feels frustrated with the world, sees that there is nothing there, and starts thinking about religion, again the old habit works: he again starts looking for God outside. He was looking for money; now he looks for God. First he was looking for political power; now he looks for religious power. But he looks outside. His old habit remains the same; he has not changed at all".

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"In fact these religions that exist, they are not religions. They are just sedatives, tranquilizers. Marx is also right of course, only ninety-nine percent – that religion is the opium of the masses. He is right. These religions help you to tolerate your misery. They help you, they console you, they give you hope that ”Yes, today you are miserable; tomorrow you will be happy.” And that tomorrow never comes. They say, ”In this life you are miserable, but in the next life.... Be good, be moral, follow the rules of the society – be a slave, be obedient – and in the next life you will be happy.” And nobody knows about the next life. Nobody ever comes and says anything about it. Or if they don’t believe in the next life, they say, ”When you have gone to the other shore, to heaven, there is your reward.” But be obedient to the priest and the politician.

Religion does not consist of laws. It consists only of one thing, and that is love.

Religion is not the adoration of the past. It has nothing to do with the past. Religion is possibility, not past. Religion is potentiality for the future, not past. Religion is not looking backwards; it is looking forwards. Religion is not memory, but hope. But you have been trained to look at the past because you have been trained not by religious people but by Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans. These are not religious people. You have been conditioned by the priests and the popes and the SHANKARACHARYAS. These are not religious people.

If you come to a religious person, he will give you hope for the future – he will give you a fire for the future. He will not talk about the dead past. To look at the dead past is dangerous. For one thing, it cannot be repeated. Second, one who goes on looking back cannot live the future. It is as if you are driving your car looking only in the rearview mirror. You are doomed! The rearview mirror is not for that. When you reverse your car, it’s okay, use it; or sometimes somebody is honking his horn from behind, look. But don’t get obsessed with the rearview mirror. It may be a beautiful mirror, but please, look ahead. You are driving in the future. Looking backwards and driving in the future is dangerous; then the accident is almost predictable. It is not an accident; it is a certainty; it is going to happen.

And to be in the present is to be religious. Because to be in the present needs awareness. And awareness is the very key of all religion.