Remain with the fact, for one year

It is said about Do-zen, one Zen master, that when he attained enlightenment many people asked, “What did you do after that?” He said, “I ordered a cup of tea.” What is there to do next? Everything is finished. And Do-zen was serious about his playfulness, playful about his seriousness. Really, what remains?

Don’t pay much attention to what others say and remember only one thing: don’t force and cultivate stillness. A cultivated stillness will be serious, ill, tense. But how can a real silence come to you?

Try to understand this. You are tense, you are unhappy, you are depressed, angry, greedy, violent. A thousand diseases are there. Still, you can practice silence. These diseases will be within you, and you can create a layer of silence. You can do transcendental meditation; you can use a mantra. The mantra is not going to change your violence, neither is it going to change your greed. It is not going to change anything deep. The mantra can just give a tranquilizing effect. Just on the periphery, you will feel more silent. This is just a tranquilizer, a sound tranquilizer, and tranquilizing is possible through many ways — many ways. When you repeat a mantra continuously, you become sleepy. Any continuous repetition of a sound creates boredom and sleep. You feel relaxed, but this relaxation is just on the surface. Within, you remain the same.

Go on practicing a mantra every day, and you will feel a certain stillness – but not really, because your diseases have not changed, your personality structure remains the same. It is just whitewashed. Stop the mantra, stop the practice, and all your diseases will come up again.

This is happening everywhere. Seekers move from one teacher to another. They go on moving, practicing, and when they stop their practice they find they are the same; nothing has happened. Nothing will happen in this way. These are cultivated silences. You have to go on cultivating them. Of course, if you go on cultivating them, they remain with you just like a habit, but if you break the habit they disappear. A real silence comes not by just using some superficial technique, but by being aware of all that you are – not only being aware, but remaining with the fact of what you are.

Remain with the fact. This is very difficult because the mind wants change. How to change violence, how to change depression, how to change unhappiness? The mind seeks change to create somehow a better image in the future. Because of this, one goes on seeking this and that method.

Remain with the fact, and don’t try to change it. Do this for one year. Fix a date, and say that “From this date, for one year, I will not think in terms of change. I will remain with whatsoever I am; I will just be alert and aware.”

I am not saying that you are not to do anything, but that alertness is the only effort. You have to be alert, not thinking in terms of change; remaining whatsoever you are – good, bad or whatsoever.

One year, with no attitude of change, just being alert, suddenly one day you will find you are no more the same. Alertness will have changed everything.

In Zen, they call it “zazen” – just sitting and doing nothing. Whatsoever happens, happens; you are just sitting. Zazen means just sitting, doing nothing. In Zen monasteries, monks will sit for years, the whole day. You will think they are meditating. They are not! They are just sitting silently. And by silence it is not that they are using some mantra to create any silence; they are simply sitting. If a leg goes dead, they feel it. They are alert. If the body feels tired, they are alert: the body feels tired. This is how the body has to feel. If thoughts are moving, they know it. They are not trying to stop them; they are not trying to push them away. They are not doing anything. Thoughts are just there like clouds in the sky, but they know the clouds cannot destroy the sky: they come and go.

So thoughts are moving in the sky of consciousness; they come and go. They don’t force them, they don’t stop them, they don’t do anything;. They are just alert that the thoughts are moving. Sometimes depression comes, a cloud; everything becomes shadowy. Sometimes happiness comes, a sunshine; everything starts dancing, as if flowers have opened all over the consciousness. But they are not disturbed by either this or that, by cloudy weather or by sunshine. They just wait and see that things are moving. They are just sitting on the bank of a river, and everything goes on moving. They don’t try to change anything.

If a bad thought comes, they don’t say, “This is bad,” because the moment you say, “This is bad,” you have a greed to change it. The moment you say, “This is bad,” you have pushed it away; you have condemned it, and you would like to change it into something good. They simply say this is this, that is that – no condemnation, no evaluation, no justification. Simply, watching, witnessing.

Sometimes they forget witnessing. Then too they are not disturbed. They know that “Of course it is so,” that “I forgot to witness; now I remember and I will witness again.” They don’t create any problem. They live what is. Years come and go, and they go on sitting and seeing what is.

Then one day everything disappears. Just like a dream, everything disappears and you are awakened. This awakening is not a practiced thing; this awakening is not cultivated. This awakening is your nature, your basic nature. It has erupted because you could wait patiently and watch, and you didn’t create any problems.

Osho, Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1, Ch 38, Q 3 (excerpt)

Featured image credit to Deva Muni
Credit for finding the quote: Parambodhi via FB