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the religions have been filling your vacuum with lies. Now those lies are exposed. Science has done much in exposing those lies, and great meditators, mystics, have done tremendous work around the world in exposing all the lies of religions.
The contemporary man stands in a strange position: the old has fallen, it was a deception, and the new has not yet arrived. So there is a gap, an interval, and the Western intelligentsia is trying to find something which will not be again a lie, which will not just give you consolation, but which will transform you, which will be a deep revolution in your very being.
Zen certainly is the right approach towards existence, the ultimate truth. Without believing in anything, without being a follower or a believer, you simply enter into your own interiority, and you are entering into the immense nothingness of the whole. But it is the same nothingness from where you had come and to where you are going again.
When the source and the goal become one, you will have a great celebration. In that celebration you will not be, but the whole existence will be participating. The trees will be showering flowers, and the birds will be singing songs, and the oceans and the rivers will all be rejoicing.
The whole existence becomes your home the moment your heart melts into the universal heart. That is where Zen is happening. In that melting into the universe you are back to the original source, fresh, eternal, timeless, spacious. The only thing needed is freedom from the self. That is the very essence of Zen.
You have heard about many freedoms: political freedom, psychological freedom, economic freedom -- there are many kinds of freedom. But the ultimate freedom is Zen, freedom from yourself. That is not to be accepted as a belief, that has to be experienced. Only then you know. It is a taste. Anybody can describe that sugar is sweet, but if you have not tasted sugar, you hear the word `sweet' but you don't understand what it is. The only way is for somebody to force some sweetness into your mouth.
The master's function in Zen is to force nothingness into your experience, or in other words, to bring you
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