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the experience is tremendously vast. But from both the paths, people reach to the same goal.
Truth is one. Vedas say, 'Truth is one but it has been seen in different ways by the seers.'
So remember that. All religions are basically, intrinsically, leading to the same goal. Even when they appear very opposite, even when they appear diametrically opposite, they are leading to the same goal.
So it depends on you which path you would like to choose. If you have a feeling for God -- not a belief, belief alone won't do, belief is just a dead thing -- if you have a feeling for God, if, by hearing the word 'God', you start a subtle throbbing, you feel a trembling, you feel inspired, your heart starts beating faster, if the very word 'God' gives you a great awe, then you can move on the path of prayer. Then Zen is not for you, then Zen is to be simply forgotten, because then Zen will be a disturbance.
But if the word 'God' has no meaning for you, if it has really died for you, if God is really dead, it provokes no feeling in you, no emotion in you, it does not vibrate you, it does not pulsate you, it does not whirl your being into the unknown, then Zen is for you. More and more people will have to be moving on the path of Zen because Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism -- all, in a way, have been exploited too much. They have lost their appeal.
Buddhism is still unspoiled, still fertile, and for the modern mind particularly it has a very deep appeal -- because the modern mind is made of a scientific attitude and Zen is absolutely scientific, super-scientific. It goes to the very roots of your mind and it does not ask you to believe in anything. It has no hypothesis whatsoever. It does not ask that you should believe in something, it has no superstition.
The word 'superstition' is very beautiful. It comes from the Latin 'superstes' which means: that which survives, remnants of the past, things which have become futile but persist out of habit. You go to the church but you don't have any feeling for going there, and every night before going to the bed you may pray also -- but it is just an impotent gesture because there is no heart
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