When you stop asking for knowledge you have stopped asking about the truth, for truth is the goal of knowledge. If you don’t inquire what is, rather you become so silent, so mindless, that which is, is revealed.
My work is done as far as I am concerned because I am done. Now the energy has become a compassion and an overflowing, and all those who really want to taste are invited to do so without any condition. You are not to give anything, you simply are to take. No discipline, no bargain- nothing is expected on your part. It is a gift. It has always been so, it will always be so; the ultimate bliss is always a gift. That’s why we have been calling it grace, PRASAD… as if the divine gives to you out of his overflowing energy.
A buddha will help you to relax, because only in your deep relaxation will you also become a buddha. There is no other way.
That is the golden rule: Before you die, share whatsoever you have. If you are of a sound mind you will share your whole life. Before you die, spend yourself in love.
The great miracle of Zen is in the transformation of the mundane into the sacred. And it is tremendously extraordinary because THIS way life has never been approached before, THIS way life has never been respected before.
Zen lives in the present. The whole teaching is: how to be in the present, how to get out of the past which is no more and how not to get involved in the future which is not yet, and just to be rooted, centered, in that which is.
The Master liberates you from words, he liberates you from all kinds of imaginative philosophies. He brings you to a state of wordless silence. The failure of religion and philosophy is that they all become substitutes for real experience. Beware of it!
The society teaches you knowledge. So many schools, colleges, universities…they are all devoted to creating knowledge, more knowledge, implanting knowledge in people. And the function of the Master is just the opposite: what your society has done to you the Master has to undo. His function is basically anti-social, and nothing can be done about it. The Master is bound to be anti-social.
The society, in fact, makes you uprooted from your nature. It pushes you off your center. It makes you neurotic.
Zen cures you of your abnormality. It makes you again normal, it makes you again ordinary. It does not make you a saint, remember. It does not make you a holy person, remember. It simply makes you an ordinary person — takes you back to your nature, back to your source.
From mind to no-mind is the revolution of sannyas.
