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There has never been anybody. It is just a dream.
In the night you dream and you think you have become an emperor. And in the morning you find yourself in the same old bed, and you are not an emperor. But the mind can imagine; the mind is a great imaginative force. The self is mind's imagination. It does not exist in reality.
Those who have penetrated deep into their own being have come to know utter silence. Nobody has been found there. And that is the greatest realization: to find nobody there... then all problems disappear, because the problem creator has disappeared.
MY SELF OF LONG AGO,
IN NATURE NON-EXISTENT;
NOWHERE TO GO WHEN DEAD,
NOTHING AT ALL.
Nothing' means NO THING AT ALL. There is a famous Zen anecdote:
A man came to a Zen master and asked, "Does a dog have Buddha-nature?"
Now you cannot ask such a question anywhere else. If you ask a Christian, "Does a dog have Christ-nature?" he will be absolutely enraged. You are insulting Christ, the only begotten Son of God. This is not only profane, this is sacrilegious. But in Buddhism you can ask; there is no problem about it.
The disciple asked the master, "Has a dog the same nature as Buddha?"
And the master's answer is very strange and very puzzling, and down the centuries people have been contemplating it; it has become a koan to meditate over.
The master said, "Mu." means nothing. Now the problem is: what does he mean by saying MU? It can also mean no; it can mean nothing, it can mean no. Is he saying that the dog has not the same nature as Buddha? That is not possible from a Zen master. Then what does he mean by MU? He does not mean no -- he means nothing. He is saying: Buddha is nothing, so is dog. He is saying yes by saying no.
He is saying: Yes, the dog has the same nature as Buddha, but Buddha is nothing! so is a dog. There is no self, either in Buddha or in a dog. There is nobody there inside! Buddha is empty and so is the dog. Only the forms are different, dreams are different. The dog is dreaming it is a dog -- that's all. You are dreaming you are a man, somebody is dreaming he is a tree. But inside there
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