Chapter 13: #
Basho wrote a haiku:
STILLNESS EVERYWHERE.
THE CICADA'S VOICE PIERCES ROCKS.
Always remember, haikus are not to be understood as words but as pictures. Haikus have never happened anywhere else than China and Japan, and that happened particularly because both the countries don't have the alphabet. They have pictures for everything, characters for everything; hence they are very difficult to learn. To become a scholar it will take almost twenty to thirty years of your life, because you need to know millions of characters.
Alphabetical languages are simple. You have to learn twenty-six letters. The greatest number of letters is in Sanskrit -- fifty-two, double the number in English. Its expressiveness is also double, its beauty and its poetry are also double. You cannot believe that medical books in Sanskrit are written in poetry, you cannot believe that books on astrology are written in poetry. In Sanskrit anything can be written in poetry, even mathematics. It has such a poetic humming sound that each word in itself is a part of a poetic line.
But Chinese and Japanese are more vast; their world is far bigger than any alphabetical language. Their language is pictorial, and the difference is the same. While awake you think -- that is alphabetical. While asleep you dream -- that is pictorial. Nobody dreams alphabetically.
Have you ever thought about it? Your dreams are pictorial, so colorful -- but very few people's dreams are colorful. Most people's dreams are just like their mundane existence - - in black and white. Poets, painters, dancers, all creative people dream in psychedelic colors.
Haikus have to be understood as pictorial. Just visualize them as a dream, not as alphabetical. That is the trouble: how to translate them into alphabetical languages.
STILLNESS EVERYWHERE ... make it an experience.
STILLNESS EVERYWHERE. THE CICADA'S VOICE ... hear the voice of the cicada ... PIERCES ROCKS. It is so intense it almost becomes an arrow and comes with such intensity that it pierces rocks.
These are expressions of meditative people. When they open their eyes out of meditation the whole world looks psychedelic. The trees are more green than they have ever been, and they have been seeing the same trees always. The roses are more rosy.
You have heard the phrase, A rose is a rose is a rose. It is not so. After meditation a rose is much more rosy than it was before. It is not the same experience, not the same fragrance. Your sensitivity has grown deeper, your nose is more receptive, your eyes are clearer, your silence so deep that everything around you ...
Do you hear the noises of the night?
As your silence deepens the noises become more and more clear. The whole night seems to be humming .... Small insects creating all that music around you ...
When you listen after meditation ... you will see today that the sounds have become a great melody, because you have become deeper. You are not superficial. Your meditation has taken you beyond the body and beyond the mind, beyond the bones and beyond the marrow, and when you come out of meditation you are as fresh as a newly-born child.
A newborn child sees colors you cannot even imagine. What a tremendous world opens to him! He does not know anything. He cannot say what is green and what is yellow and what is red, but the way he sees them is far deeper and clearer than you can see. In fact, the more you become acquainted, the less you see, the less is your clarity. You become more dull.
Just ask a husband to describe his wife and he will be at a loss. For the first time he will remember: "My God! For thirty years I have not looked at her. On the contrary, I have been avoiding her by my newspaper -- remaining longer in the office, going to the pub, coming home late in the night, just to avoid her!" The same is the situation with the wife.
Ask her.
You can experiment. Do you remember exactly the face of your mother? First you will think, "Yes," but as you go deeper the face of the mother fades. You are not certain how she looks, what color her eyes are, how old she is. How many wrinkles are under her eyes? -- you have never seen. Who sees one's mother? Who sees one's father? We are too much acquainted with each other, there is no need.
It happened in America ... it could have happened only in America. A man married for the twelfth time, and after three days of honeymooning he remembered that "I have married this woman one time before!"
But who remembers ...? Twelve wives ... she may have been the second or the third.
Neither had she recognized him. Meanwhile she had also gone through many husbands.
But after three days -- for three days he enjoyed a new woman, and the fourth day he was feeling to divorce her.
Our dullness of senses is great!
Meditation sharpens every sense -- not only the eyes, not only the ears, but every sense, even your touch. A meditator's touch will be so full of warmth and love, you will feel something is flowing through him towards you. He has so much joy, so much contentment, he cannot contain it. It goes on flowing all around him. He creates a certain feel. If you come closer to a master, into his field of energy, suddenly you will feel a change.
Have you ever observed it? When you come from the outside, from the city, and enter the gate, you suddenly feel a different breeze, a different freshness. People's faces look so joyous, so un-Christian. You have entered into a different world.
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