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from the world -- you look at trees and you only see trees and no God hidden there, you look at the sky and you only see the sky and not his infinite presence -- then Zen is going to be your path.
Zen is going to be the religion of the coming century because science has killed, or damaged very badly, the capacity to trust. But there is nothing to be worried about -- you can move from another direction. But then there is no question of love, of presence, of God, of prayer -- nothing of the sort.
When the Western world for the first time became aware of Buddhism, Jainism, Tao, they could not believe it. What type of religions are these? There is no God in them. They could not believe that religion could exist without the concept of God; God has always been the centre of religion. So they thought that these must be just moral codes. They are not. They are a totally different kind of religion. And India, in the days of Buddha and Mahavir, twenty-five centuries before, reached to the same scientific attitude as the Western world has reached now. Twenty-five centuries before, India realised -- at least, those who were very, very intelligent, brilliant, alert -- they realised that the old God was dead. They realised that the God of prayer was dead.
To say this was simply to say that the heart of man was dead; it was no longer functioning. So a new path had to be found in which heart was not a basic necessity. Buddha and Mahavir worked out a new sort of religion -- the religion of meditation, without any God, without any prayer, without any belief. Nothing is required of you except a seeking, except a searching mind, except a deep enquiry -- that's all.
The world is going to be more and more 'zenist'. Zen is the ultimate flowering of the Buddha-mind.
Before we enter into the world of Zen, some things are needed to be understood about the mind. One thing: mind functions because of your co-operation. You can stop it if you withdraw your co-operation. Without withdrawing your co-operation you cannot stop it. So the whole method of Zen is how to withdraw the co-operation. Many people try to stop the mind without withdrawing the co-operation
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