Kapitel 34: #
Nothing can be called existent, because everything is in a flux. This is a Buddhist attitude, that you cannot refer to anything with a noun or a pronoun. Their approach is really deep. They say, "You say, 'the river is,' but the river is constantly flowing."
They are saying exactly what Epicurus and Heraclitus in Greece said: "You cannot step in the same river twice."
When I read Heraclitus for the first time, that you cannot step in the same river twice, I tried. And my conclusion was that if I meet Heraclitus somewhere - not much chance because he was a contemporary of Gautam Buddha, but one never knows, everything is possible in this vast universe - I am going to tell him, "You cannot step in the same river even once. I have tried; you were simply postulating. When you put your feet in the river, the water is flowing. As your foot goes a little deeper, the water is flowing... a little more, and water is flowing. By the time you touch the ground, perhaps so much water has gone - every second it is flowing - that you cannot say that you have stepped in the same river, in the same water."
Gautam Buddha's very profound approach was, that for mediocre reasons we have made all verbs into nouns. Otherwise a tree should be called treeing; it is continuously growing. At no point you can call it a tree; either it is growing or it is dying. Everything is a process, not a thing - an event, but not a thing. And if everything is a process, you cannot call anything a being. The river is flowing, the water is flowing, the trees are growing, the stars are moving, the earth is moving, you are moving...
The whole existence all around is in movement. There is not a single thing in the outside world which is not moving either backwards or forwards. But movement is the reality, that's why it is called ephemeral. Only one thing is not moving, has never moved, and that is your ultimate center of being.
That has remained the same in this whole world going around in circles.
The great scientist, Bacon, can be called the father of Western science. He wrote a very great book, NOVUM ORGANUM, in which he has stated in aphorisms the differences between philosophical attitudes and science. He says in NOVUM ORGANUM - Novum Organum means a new canon of thought - "If I can find a center in the world which is not moving, I can explain the whole world without any difficulty. But there is no center in the world which is not moving; everything is moving.
By the time you have explained it, it is no longer the same."
He was not aware of the inner world. There, there is a center which is unmoving, but he was not a religious man.
We are in search of a center inside, and all the mystics, all the buddhas, are in absolute agreement that in the deepest core of your being there is a center which is the only unmoving center in the whole of existence.
And strangely enough, that unmoving center is not only yours. At that center we all meet, just like lines drawn from the circumference to the center. You can draw many lines from the circumference to the center. On the circumference they are different lines. As they move closer to the center, they also become closer to each other. When they reach the center, they are one.
We are many on the circumference.
At the center we are one.
And that oneness is the only freedom, because now there is no other to make you a slave. Only you are, and because only you are, you cannot even say that you are. To say that you are, you need others for context. Unless the other is, you cannot be. You need for your I a thou. Without a thou the I cannot exist; linguistically it is impossible.
So at the very center only is-ness remains.
Neither me nor you, but just a pure existence.
"THE SURANGAMA SUTRA SAYS, PERCEPTIONS EMPLOYED AS A BASE FOR BUILDING UP POSSIBLE CONCEPTS ARE THE ORIGIN OF ALL IGNORANCE. PERCEPTION THAT THERE IS NOTHING TO PERCEIVE - THAT IS NIRVANA."
There is nothing to perceive, only you are. Only the mirror is there and nothing to reflect. So deeply are we rooted in one cosmic whole, that there is no other which can be reflected. All around there is nothingness, but this nothingness is very alive. It is not the nothingness of a cemetery, it is the nothingness that you experience every day in meditation - everything becomes absolutely silent.
Somebody passing by the side of the road cannot infer that there are ten thousand people.
This silence is vibrating, has a heartbeat.
This is a small example of the ultimate silence that surrounds the cosmos. It has a heartbeat, it is not simply nothing. It is called nothingness because there is nothing to perceive, no reflection is made. When you go deep inside you, you will see that no reflection is made. A pure mirror without any reflections, a purity without any ripples - this, according to Buddha, is nirvana.
A QUESTION WAS ASKED, "WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THE PHRASE 'NOTHING TO PERCEIVE'?"
How can you perceive nothing? You can perceive an object, a tree, a moon. You can perceive an object, but how can you perceive nothing? The question is very philosophical, but it is good to face it because some day it may arise in you too, that when you are absolutely silent, just a mirror, nothing to perceive, how do you know? Nothing to perceive - can you perceive nothing? You can perceive no-thing, and that perception of no-thing, gives you the idea of nothingness. There is no-thingness around you, no objects but just a pure space.
Have you ever thought about the word 'object'? We call things 'objects'. 'Object' simply means that which obstructs, hinders, prevents. It is an objection; you cannot go. It is a barrier. Things are called objects because they prevent you from moving beyond them. They are like walls; they are not like doors. No object, or no thing simply means there is nothing around to "object" you.
This is the perception that as far as you can see, there is no thing left. The mirror is pure, unreflective, centered in itself in deep blissfulness.
Hyakujo replied: "THAT WHICH OCCURS WHEN WE ARE CONFRONTED BY ALL SORTS OF SHAPES AND FORMS IS CALLED PERCEPTION. CAN WE SPEAK OF PERCEPTION TAKING PLACE WHEN NOTHING CONFRONTS US?"
"YES," REPLIED HYAKUJO.
"WHEN SOMETHING CONFRONTS US, IT FOLLOWS THAT WE PERCEIVE IT."
If we can perceive something, it means that when something will be removed, we will perceive nothing.
The question continues: "BUT HOW CAN THERE BE PERCEPTION WHEN WE ARE CONFRONTED BY NOTHING AT ALL?"
HYAKUJO ANSWERED BY SAYING: "WE ARE NOT TALKING OF THAT PERCEPTION WHICH IS INDEPENDENT OF THERE BEING AN OBJECT OR NOT. HOW CAN that BE?"
"THE TRUE NATURE OF PERCEPTION BEING ETERNAL, WE GO ON PERCEIVING, WHETHER OBJECTS ARE PRESENT OR NOT."
A mirror can exist without reflecting. Just take that case, that a mirror can exist without any reflection.
A consciousness can exist without any perception. There is no need, no necessity. The mirror and its mirror quality is not dependent on anything and its reflection. For example, the lake can go on existing whether the moon comes or not. If it comes, it will be reflected; if it does not come, who cares? The lake is perfectly satisfied unto itself, so is the case of the inner lake of consciousness.
"THEREBY WE COME TO UNDERSTAND THAT, WHEREAS objects NATURALLY APPEAR AND DISAPPEAR, THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION DOES neither OF THOSE THINGS."
The mirror remains; things come and go. Consciousness remains, awareness remains, witnessing remains; things come and go. Life comes, death comes, your mirror-like witnessing remains eternally. It is the only thing in the whole of existence which never changes.
Basho wrote:
AUTUMN EVE - PLEASE TURN TO ME.
I, TOO, AM A STRANGER.
Basho's haikus have no parallel. All Zen masters have written haikus, but Basho seems to have melted and merged into nature more deeply than anybody else.
"Autumn eve - please turn to me. I, too, am a stranger." Just as you are, he is saying, "Here in this world we are all strangers."
We ordinarily forget the matter, we start taking everybody for granted. Have you ever thought about it? These ten thousand buddhas are all strangers. We make efforts to forget that everybody is a stranger - we make marriages, friendships, we try to introduce each other - just to forget the feeling that everybody is a stranger. It will make us very much frightened, that we are surrounded with strangers. All our families, all our clubs, all our religions, all our nations are only an opportunity to hide the fact that we are all strangers.
Zen is an effort to make you fully aware of your strangeness. This will give you freedom from the crowd. This will give you a sense of being yourself, a deep intensity of consciousness that you are surrounded in a strange world where everybody is a stranger.
It has many deeper implications. If you can understand the fact that everybody is a stranger, all your expectations will drop. Who are you to expect? A husband expects certain things from the wife.
He has forgotten the fact that the wife is a stranger. We have just met on the way, talked a little bit, walked together on the way, and we have forgotten the fact that we are still strangers.
We don't know ourselves, how can we know others? But on the surface, we try to make familiarity, we try to forget the fearsome idea that we are alone. The wife, the children, the Rotary Club...
somewhere we want to be associated.
We don't want to stand alone in deep freedom under the sky, and dance under the sun and the rain.
No, we simply want a coziness with the crowd, we want to disappear in the crowd - it feels warmer there.
It is not without any reason that Jesus could call people sheep, and himself the shepherd - and nobody objected. This is strange: Jesus was crucified, but nobody ever objected to any of his teachings, and nobody ever argued against him.
The reality seems to be that people accepted it deep down themselves that they were nothing but sheep, they needed a crowd to surround them, they could not move alone in an unknown territory.
Nobody stood up to Jesus, and said to him, "You are insulting humanity. You are humiliating us by being a shepherd and making us sheep."
That nobody objected makes it clear that the people felt he was right, "We need a crowd."
Basho is saying, "Autumn eve - please turn to me." - you are not the only stranger here - "I, too, am a stranger."
I have heard...
An Englishman who got off the train was feeling very dizzy. His wife had come to pick him up from the station. She asked, "What is the matter? You are looking very pale and dizzy."
He said, "It was a difficult situation. Whenever I sit in the opposite direction - the train is going to the East, and I am sitting facing the West - it makes me dizzy."
The wife said, "It is such a small thing, you could have said to anybody, 'This makes me dizzy, please change the seat.'"
He said, "You are right, but we were all strangers. Nobody has introduced me to anybody."
The wife said, "You are an idiot! We are strangers, that is true, but that does not mean that you cannot ask a small thing."
He said, "Next time I will try."
And the next day, he came back even more dizzy.
The wife said, "What happened now?"
He said, "On the front seat there was nobody, so I could not ask. You need somebody to ask; the seat was empty..."
The wife said, "I will not interfere in your matters. You are simply either a philosopher or insane."
Both mean the same.
Another haiku by Basho:
THE CRESCENT MOON - THE EASTERN SKY IS DARK, AND THE SOUND OF A BELL.
He depicts in words. Without any colors he makes paintings. "The crescent moon - the eastern sky is dark, and the sound of a bell." You can almost hear the sound of a bell. These are his moments of meditation. When he opens his eyes once in a while, he sees something: "The crescent moon - the eastern sky is dark, and the sound of a bell" - just fragments out of a meditative mind. They don't say much, they simply depict a situation. Very visual - you can see it, you can hear it. Basho is very earth bound.
Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
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