This book is for those searching for the ultimate freedom, the ultimate flowering,
 and for dissolving into  the  ocean of existence.

Osho takes on many well known members of the Western Zen tradition such as D. T. Suzuki, Paul Reps, Nyogen Senzaki, Thomas Merton, Alan Watts, Philip Kapleau, Gesta Ital, and Nancy Wilson Ross, as he gives the reader glimpses of the authentic Zen experience.

Osho also speaks on Wilhelm Reich: "In the East, he would have become a Gautam Buddha. He had the quality, the insight. But a wrong society, a society of very little men, of very small people... small-minded, who cannot conceive the vast, who cannot conceive the mysterious."
Osho’s Zen is for everyone, no matter who they are or where they are from. He says it is "simply a technique of entering into your veryness."

Reviews

"As you savor the chapters, you’ll discover that Osho is like a Zen archer. Almost poetically he circles his target, surveying it over and over again from many positions before he draws back his bow and lets the arrow fly."
Robert Rimmer, USA. Author of The Harrad Experiment and Proposition 31

 

     Chapter Titles 

 ·  Chapter   1: This Disappearance Is Anatta

 ·  Chapter   2: Let the Christian Ship Drown

 ·  Chapter   3: To Wait, to Wait for Nothing

 ·  Chapter   4: Freedom Not Licentiousness

 ·  Chapter   5: The Sky of Completion

 ·  Chapter   6: Chaos - The Very Nature of Existence

 ·  Chapter   7: Mind Only Thinks, Meditation Lives

 ·  Chapter   8: Inscape - The Ultimate Annihilation

 ·  Chapter   9: Small Intervals of Light

 ·  Chapter 10: The Less Your Are, the More You Are

 ·  Chapter 11: Sammasati - The Last Word

 Excerpt

The Western intelligentsia have become acquainted with Zen, have also fallen in love with Zen, but they are still trying to approach Zen from the mind. They have not yet come to the understanding that Zen has nothing to do with mind. Its tremendous job is to get you out of the prison of mind. It is not an intellectual philosophy; it is not a philosophy at all. Nor is it a religion, because it has no fictions and no lies, no consolations.
It is a lion's roar.
‘Sit for a few moments just to remember what space you entered into, what golden path you have followed.
And it is not a question just to do meditation at some time of the day. Meditation has to become your very breathing.
Whatever you have been in these silent moments, you can be twenty-four hours... an undercurrent of joy, peace, love, compassion.
In whatever you are doing, you can do it as if you are a buddha. The "as if" will disappear soon, because fundamentally you are buddhas. It is not something that you have to achieve, it is something that you have forgotten and you have to remember it - sammasati.’

Our search is for the immeasurable. The measurable can be left to the scientists. The mystics are concerned with the immeasurable.
...

Now, it is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh....
Captain Codfish, the old pirate, is in the Stoned Seagull Pub one night, telling stories from his life at sea.
"I had a parrot once," declares Codfish, drinking his rum. "He was the most incredible bird! He could imitate anything -- Charlie Chaplin, Jack the Ripper, Marilyn Monroe, Pope the Polack... even Nancy Reagan!"
"Wow!" says Igor, the barman. "Where is he? What happened to him?"
"Ah!" cries the old pirate. "Times got hard, and I got hungry -- I ate him!"
"You ate your parrot?" cries Igor in disgust. "What did he taste like?"
"He tasted just like turkey," replies Codfish. "That parrot could imitate anything!"

Paddy has a late night at the pub, and when it closes, he staggers outside in a drunken stupor. He wanders around the streets trying to remember which way to go home, and finally gives up. Paddy sits down on the street and looks all around him until a taxi pulls up beside him.
"Ah!" groans Paddy, clambering into the back and lying down on the seat. "Can you take me to number five, Fergus Street?"
The cabdriver looks around at Paddy and replies, "Hey, mister, this is number five, Fergus Street!"
"Ah!" groans Paddy. "Alright! But next time, don't drive so fast!"

On a foggy morning in Vienna, Austria, the two famous psychoanalysts, Doctor Sigfried Mind, and Doctor Krazy Karl Kong, meet in the little Brown Danube Cafe.
Over a table set with coffee and cream cakes, Doctor Kong suddenly jumps up, grabs Sigfried by the neck, and shakes him.
"We must go this time!" shouts Karl. "We have tried six times already! We must go to the pyramids in Egypt to see the mummies!"
"MUMMIES?" screeches Sigfried, collapsing into the cream cakes in a dead faint.
Doctor Kong pours coffee on Doctor Mind's head until he recovers.
"Come on, Mind," cries Doctor Kong, slapping him across the face. "We can do it! We have to explore this mystery of death!"
"DEATH?" screeches Mind, and he faints again into the plate of cream cakes.
Half an hour later, at the Vienna airport, Doctor Krazy Karl Kong is dragging Doctor Sigfried Mind by the collar onto the plane bound for Cairo.
"Come on, Mind!" cries Krazy Kong, huffing and puffing. "We have made it this far, we have got to see those mummies!"
"MUMMIES?" screeches Sigfried, falling in a faint on top of Nellie Knickers, the stewardess.
Kong and Nellie drag Mind to his seat, and strap him down. The plane takes off, and three hours later, arrives in the Land of the Pyramids. Kong carries the babbling Doctor Mind to the herd of rented camels, which are waiting to take them to the pharaohs' tombs.
Doctor Kong shouts out to their guide, Abdul Babul, "Take us to the mummies!"
"MUMMIES?" screeches Mind, fainting and falling straight off his camel, nose first, into a sand dune.
Two days later, the famous psychoanalysts and their camels arrive at the huge pyramids. Doctor Kong jumps down, lights a torch, grabs Doctor Mind by the collar, and starts dragging him into the dark, mysterious crypts.
Suddenly, in the darkness, Doctor Kong trips over something.
"What is that?" screeches Mind.
"Ah! It is alright -- it is only a dead cat!" exclaims Doctor Kong.
"DEATH!" screeches Mind. And he falls over in a cold faint.
"Pull yourself together, Doctor!" shouts Kong. "We are almost there!"
And Kong grabs Sigfried by the shoe, and drags him feet first towards a huge golden coffin. "Stand up!" cries Doctor Kong, propping Mind up against the wall, and handing him the burning torch.
Then Krazy Karl Kong bends over and lifts back the heavy, creaking coffin lid. The lid falls to the ground with a loud crash, and when the dust clears, Doctor Kong is left standing with his mouth wide open, gazing at the spooky sight before his eyes.
He turns and grabs the frozen Doctor Mind by the collar and pulls his face down into the coffin.
"There!" shouts Kong, in triumph. "This is a MUMMY!"
"MUMMY?" screeches Sigfried. But he just stares in disbelief, with his eyes popping out.
"MUMMY?" he screeches again. "Hey, this looks more like daddy!"

It is time, Nivedano...
(Drumbeat)
(Gibberish)
Nivedano...
(Drumbeat)

Be silent... Close your eyes... and feel yourself completely frozen.
This is the right moment to enter inwards.
Gather all your energy, your total consciousness, and rush towards the inner center with deep intensity and urgency.
The center is just two inches below the navel, inside the body.
Faster... and faster... Deeper... and deeper...
As you come closer to the center of being, a great silence descends over you, and inside a peace, a blissfulness, a light that fills your whole interior. This is your original being. This is your buddha.
At this moment, witness that you are not the body, not the mind, not the heart, but just the pure witnessing self, the pure consciousness. This is your buddhahood, your hidden nature, your meeting with the universe. These are your roots.

Relax...
Nivedano...
(Drumbeat)

Relax... and just be a silent witness.
You start melting like ice in the ocean. Gautama the Buddha Auditorium becomes an oceanic field of consciousness. You are no longer separate -- this is your oneness with existence.
To be one with existence is to be a buddha, it is your very nature. It is not a question of searching and finding, you are it, right now.
Gather all the flowers, the fragrance, the flame and the fire, the immeasurable, and bring it with you as you come back.

Nivedano...
(Drumbeat)

Come back peacefully, silently, as a buddha.
Just for a few seconds close your eyes and remember the path and the source you have found, and the buddha nature that you have experienced.
This moment you are the most blessed people on the earth. Remembering yourself as a buddha is the most precious experience, because it is your eternity, it is your immortality.
It is not you, it is your very existence. You are one with the stars and the trees and the sky and the ocean. You are no longer separate.
The last word of Buddha was, sammasati.
Remember that you are a buddha -- sammasati.

Okay, Maneesha?
Yes, Osho.

sex was a taboo
On no other subject Osho has talked more than on Zen.