| |
disappears. In fact, it has never been there. Eating is not a dream -- the eater is the dream.
The whole emphasis has changed from the seed to the flower.
That's why many people in the West think that to call Zen, 'Zen Buddhism,' is not good, because a vast difference is felt in the answers. But they are wrong. Zen Buddhism is absolute pure Buddhism, even purified of Buddha, purified of Buddhist concepts. It is the most essential, the purest dhyan, the purest flowering of consciousness. Without any center, you exist. Without any center, you exist. Without there being anybody, you exist. You are, and still you are not. That's what Tilopa is emphasizing: no-self, anatta, emptiness, void.
What does Bokuju say? He says: We dress, we eat. His answer is finished. His answer is complete, perfect. He says simply: we eat, and we dress, and we have never found any problem, and we have never found anybody who can come out. There is nobody inside. Eating exists, dressing exists, ego does not.
He is saying: Don't ask a foolish question. The questioner had said: I don't understand. He may have come to find some rules and disciplines, how to become a religious man, how to drop these trivial things of eating and dressing, that same routine; every day, again and again, one goes on doing the same thing. He must have been fed up, bored; everybody comes to this point. If you are a little intelligent, you will have to come to a point when you will feel bored. Only idiots and sages are never bored, otherwise intelligent people are bound to get fed up. What is going on? Every day you go to sleep, just to get up again in the morning. And then the breakfast, and then the going to the offence,, and the this and the that. And you know you are doing all this to go to sleep again, and you know well that in the morning again the same routine will start. One starts feeling robot-like.
And if you become aware, as in India where people have become aware in the past, that this has been going on for millions of lives, you are bound to feel completely bored to death. That's why they say: How to get out of it? This wheel of life and death goes on, grinding and grinding
|
|
|