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| | | Book Name: God is Dead, Now Zen is the Only Living Truth | Previous Next | |
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accident that Friedrich Nietzsche became insane, it was the outcome of his negative philosophy. Hence, I am calling this series, "God is Dead, Now Zen is the Only Living Truth."
I absolutely agree with Friedrich Nietzsche as far as God is concerned, but I want to complete his statement, which he could not do. He was not an awakened being, he was not an enlightened being.
Gautam Buddha also does not have a God, nor does Mahavira have a God, but they never went mad. All the Zen masters and all the great Tao masters -- Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu -- nobody went mad, and they don't have any God. They don't have any hell or heaven. What is the difference? Why did Gautam Buddha not go mad?
And it is not only Gautam Buddha. In twenty-five centuries hundreds of his people have become enlightened, and they don't even talk about a God. They don't even say that there is no God, because there is no point. They are not atheists. I am not an atheist, nor am I a theist. God simply is not there, so there is no question of atheism or theism.
But I am not mad. You are my witnesses. It does not create a vacuum in me; on the contrary, there being no God, I have gained the dignity of an individual who is free -- free to become a buddha. That is the ultimate goal of freedom. Unless your freedom becomes your very flowering of awareness, and the experience of freedom leads you into eternity, leads you into the roots, into the cosmos and existence, you are going to be mad. Your life will be meaningless, with no significance. Whatever you do it does not matter.
Existence according to the so-called existentialists, who are all following Friedrich Nietzsche, the founder, is absolutely unintelligent. They have taken away God, so they think -- according to logic it seems apparently true -- if there is no God, existence also becomes dead, with no intelligence, with no life. God used to be the life, God used to be the consciousness. God used to be the very meaning, the very salt of our being. With God no longer there, this whole existence becomes soulless, life becomes just a by-product of matter. So when you die, everything will die, nothing will remain.
And
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