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West is absolutely ready for a Zen manifesto. Intellectually, D.T. Suzuki, Alan Watts, and many others -- we will be discussing each one -- have prepared the road. Now only a Bodhidharma is needed, a Gautam Buddha is needed, or a Mahakashyapa -- someone whose Zen is not just a philosophy but an actual experience of no-self, an actual experience of entering into nothingness.
And once you enter into nothingness, you will be surprised that it is nothing to be afraid of. This is your real home. Now you can celebrate, because there is nothing more than this mystery. That nothingness opens all the doors. As long as you are confined by the self, the very idea of separation from existence keeps you miserable.
You have to find ways -- and these ways can be found easily only when you have somebody who has already traveled the path, who knows that nothingness is not something empty. By disappearing, you are not really disappearing, you are becoming the whole. From this side, it looks like you are disappearing; from that side, it looks like you are becoming the whole. Just ask a dewdrop.
I have told you about Kabir....
When he first entered into this nothingness, he immediately wrote a beautiful poem, in which comes the sentence, "The dewdrop has fallen into the ocean." His own sentences are very beautiful:
HERAT HERAT HEY SAKHI, RAHYA KABIR HERAYI -- "O, my friend, my beloved, I had gone to search, to seek myself, but something strange has happened. Rather than finding myself, I have disappeared just like a dewdrop disappearing in the ocean."
BUNDA SAMANI SAMUNDA MEN SO KAT HERI JAYI -- "The dewdrop has disappeared in the ocean. Now how can you find the dewdrop again?"
That was his first experience. Then he became more and more aware of the ocean, and forgot all about the dewdrop. Before dying he called his son, Kamal. He was certainly rightly named by Kabir. Kamal means a miracle -- and the son of Kabir was certainly a miracle. He called Kamal and said to him, "I am going to leave my body soon. Before I leave, you have to correct one of my poems. Just a little change...
"I have written, BUNDA SAMANI SAMUNDA MEN -- the
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