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ATTAIN BUDDHAHOOD" WAS MA TZU'S REPLY.
It has to be understood that buddhahood cannot be attained, it is already your nature. If you try to attain it, you will miss it. You have just to relax and see within yourself, and the buddha is already there in its absolute splendor.
The use of the word `attain' means that something has to be done, you have to go somewhere. There is a possibility of failure -- you may succeed, you may not succeed. And attainment is always of the outside world, of the objective world -- riches, or fame, or power....
But buddhahood is not an attainment. It is simply a remembrance, as if you had forgotten something, and suddenly in a silent relaxed state you remember it.
I think every one of you must have come at one time or other to the experience when you know that you know something, and you say that it is just on the tip of your tongue, but still you cannot remember. A very strange and weird feeling arises at that time. You know somebody's name -- you are absolutely sure that you know, you can even close your eyes and see the person -- you feel that the name is just on your tongue, but you are stuck there, it is not becoming expressed.
It is a very weird feeling -- that you know it, and you know that you know, and yet you cannot express it. It is just on the tip of your tongue, but the more you try, the more it becomes difficult.
The reason is that every effort makes your mind tense; and the more the mind is tense, the more it becomes closed. What is needed... you should go into the garden, and start digging or watering the plants, and forget all about this fellow who you remember and who is just sitting on the tip of your tongue. Just simply spit it out. Get engaged in something simple -- watering the roses; and while you are watering the roses, the mind will start relaxing. The closedness will start opening, and suddenly, from nowhere, the name has bubbled up to the surface.
While you were trying it was not possible for you to get it. But when you were not trying, and you simply dropped the idea of getting it, it came back with such a rushing force.
To be a buddha is exactly like
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