Rinzai bowing down to Buddha, who was never born and never died

One Zen monk, Rinzai, used to say: This man, Buddha, was never born, he never walked on this earth, he never died – he is just a dream. And every day he would go to the temple and bow down before Buddha’s statue!

Then somebody said: Rinzai, you are just mad! Every day you go on insisting that this man was never born, never died, never walked on this earth, and still you go to the temple and bow down.

Rinzai said: Because this man was never born, never walked on this earth, never died, that’s why I go and bow down.

The questioner persisted, saying: We can’t follow you. Either you are mad or we are mad, but we cannot follow – what do you mean?

And Rinzai said: The birth of this man was just a dream to him. Walking on this earth was just a dream to him. Death was not real to him – just an end to a long dream. And this man, the center of his being, remained beyond birth, beyond death.

It is said that Buddha always remained in the seventh heaven. He never came down – only his reflection was here. And this is true! This is true for you also. You have never come down – only the reflection. But you have become so identified with the reflection that you have forgotten. You think that you have come down. You cannot come down – from your being, there is no way to fall down.

You can look into a river and you can see the reflection, and you can become so identified with it that you can think that you are underwater. You can suffer because of it; you can feel suffocated, and you can feel now you are going to die. And you are always standing on the bank, you have never come down to the water – you cannot come!

So I say to you: Not only Buddha, nobody has come down from the seventh heaven, ever. But a few people get obsessed, identified with their reflections. This is what Hindus call the world of maya, the world of reflections. We remain in the Brahma – we remain in the ultimate reality – rooted there eternally. Nobody ever comes down. But we can get identified with the reflection, with the dream.

Osho, My Way, the Way of the White Clouds, Ch 12, Q 2

Series compiled by Shanti
All excerpts of this series can be found in: 1001 Tales

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