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1、God is Dead, Now Zen is the Only Living TruthTalks given from 06/02/89 pm to 12/02/89 pmEnglish Discourse series7 ChaptersYear published: 1989God is Dead, Now Zen is the Only Living TruthChapter #1Chapter title: God is a puppeteer6 February 1989 pm in Gautam the Buddha AuditoriumArchive code: 890206
2、5ShortTitle: GDEAD01Audio: YesVideo: YesLength: 195 minsOUR BELOVED MASTER,ON THEIR FIRST MEETING, SEIGEN ASKED SEKITO, WHERE DO YOU COME FROM? AND SEKITO REPLIED, I COME FROM SOKEI.SEIGEN HELD UP A WHISK AND SAID, DID YOU FIND THIS OVER THERE?SEKITO REPLIED, NO, NOT ONLY WAS IT NOT OVER THERE, BUT
3、IT WAS ALSO NOT IN THE WEST LAND.SEIGEN ASKED, YOU REACHED THE WEST LAND, DIDNT YOU? TO WHICH SEKITO REPLIED, IF I HAD REACHED, I COULD HAVE FOUND IT.SEIGEN SAID, NOT YET ENOUGH - SPEAK FURTHER.SEKITO REPLIED, YOU SHOULD ALSO SPEAK FROM YOUR SIDE. HOW IS IT YOU URGE ONLY ME?SEIGEN SAID, THERES NO PR
4、OBLEM FOR ME IN ANSWERING YOU, BUT NOBODY WOULD AGREE WITH IT. SEIGEN CONTINUED, WHEN YOU WERE AT SOKEI, WHAT DID YOU GET THERE?SEKITO REPLIED, EVEN BEFORE GOING TO SOKEI, I HADNT LOST A THING. THEN SEKITO ASKED, WHEN YOU WERE IN SOKEI, DID YOU KNOW YOURSELF?SEIGEN SAID, HOW ABOUT YOU? DO YOU KNOW M
5、E NOW?SEKITO ANSWERED, YES, I DO. HOW CAN I KNOW YOU ANY FURTHER? HE CONTINUED, OSHO, SINCE YOU LEFT SOKEI, HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN STAYING HERE?SEIGEN REPLIED, I DO NOT KNOW EITHER. AND YOU, WHEN DID YOU LEAVE SOKEI?SEKITO SAID, I DONT COME FROM SOKEI.SEIGEN RESPONDED, ALL RIGHT - NOW I KNOW WHERE Y
6、OU COME FROM.SEKITO SAID, OSHO, YOU ARE A GREAT ONE - DO NOT WASTE TIME.Friends, a new series of talks begins today: GOD IS DEAD, NOW ZEN IS THE ONLY LIVING TRUTH. The series is dedicated to Friedrich Nietzsche, who was the first man in the history of mankind to declare, God is dead, therefore man i
7、s free.It was a tremendous statement; its implications are many. First I would like to discuss Nietzsches statement.All the religions believe that God created the world and also mankind. But if you are created by someone, you are only a puppet, you dont have your own soul. And if you are created by
8、somebody, he can uncreate you any moment. He neither asked you whether you wanted to be created, nor is he going to ask you, Do you want to be uncreated?God is the greatest dictator, if you accept the fiction that he created the world and also created mankind. If God is a reality, then man is a slav
9、e, a puppet. All the strings are in his hands, even your life. Then there is no question of any enlightenment. Then there is no question of there being any Gautam the Buddha, because there is no freedom at all. He pulls the strings, you dance; he pulls the strings, you cry; he pulls the strings, you
10、 start murders, suicide, war. You are just a puppet and he is the puppeteer.Then there is no question of sin or virtue, no question of sinners and saints. Nothing is good and nothing is bad, because you are only a puppet. A puppet cannot be responsible for its actions. Responsibility belongs to some
11、one who has the freedom to act. Either God can exist or freedom, both cannot exist together. That is the basic implication of Friedrich Nietzsches statement: God is dead, therefore man is free.No theologian, no founder of religions thought about this, that if you accept God as the creator, you are d
12、estroying the whole dignity of consciousness, of freedom, of love. You are taking all responsibility from man, and you are taking all his freedom away. You are reducing the whole of existence to just the whim of a strange fellow called God.But Nietzsches statement is bound to be only one side of the
13、 coin. He is perfectly right, but only about one side of the coin. He has made a very significant and meaningful statement, but he has forgotten one thing, which was bound to happen because his statement is based on rationality, logic and intellect. It is not based on meditation.Man is free, but fre
14、e for what? If there is no God and man is free, that will simply mean man is now capable of doing anything, good or bad; there is nobody to judge him, nobody to forgive him. This freedom will be simply licentiousness.There comes the other side. You remove God and you leave man utterly empty. Of cour
15、se, you declare his freedom, but to what purpose? How is he going to use his freedom creatively, responsibly? How is he going to avoid freedom being reduced to licentiousness?Friedrich Nietzsche was not aware of any meditations - that is the other side of the coin. Man is free, but his freedom can o
16、nly be a joy and a blessing to him if he is rooted in meditation. Remove God - that is perfectly okay, he has been the greatest danger to human freedom - but give man also some meaning and significance, some creativity, some receptivity, some path to find his eternal existence. Zen is the other side
17、 of the coin.Zen does not have any God, thats its beauty. But it has a tremendous science to transform your consciousness, to bring so much awareness to you that you cannot commit evil. It is not a commandment from outside, it comes from your innermost being. Once you know your center of being, once
18、 you know you are one with the cosmos - and the cosmos has never been created, it has been there always and always, and will be there always and always, from eternity to eternity - once you know your luminous being, your hidden Gautam Buddha, it is impossible to do anything wrong, it is impossible t
19、o do anything evil, it is impossible to do any sin.Friedrich Nietzsche in his last phase of life became almost insane. He was hospitalized, kept in a mad asylum. Such a great giant, what happened to him? He had concluded, God is dead, but it is a negative conclusion. He became empty, but his freedom
20、 was meaningless. There was no joy in it because it was only freedom FROM God, but for what? Freedom has two sides: from and for. The other side was missing. That drove him insane.Emptiness always drives people insane. You need some grounding, you need some centering, you need some relationship with
21、 existence. God being dead, all your relationship with existence was finished. God being dead, you were left alone without roots. A tree cannot live without roots, nor can you.God was non-existential, but it was a good consolation. It used to fill peoples interior, although it was a lie. But even a
22、lie, repeated thousands and thousands of times for millennia, becomes almost a truth. God has been a great consolation to people in their fear, in their dread, in their awareness of old age and death, and beyond - the unknown darkness. God has been a tremendous consolation, although it was a lie. Li
23、es can console you, you have to understand it. In fact lies are sweeter than the truth.Gautam Buddha is reported to have said, Truth is bitter in the beginning, sweet in the end, and lies are sweet in the beginning, bitter in the end - when they are exposed. Then comes a tremendous bitterness, that
24、you have been deceived by all your parents, by all your teachers, by all your priests, by all your so-called leaders. You have been continuously deceived. That frustration brings up a great distrust in everybody. Nobody is worthy of trust. It creates a vacuum.So Nietzsche was not insane in this last
25、 phase of his life, it was the inevitable conclusion of his negative approach. An intellect can only be negative; it can argue and criticize and be sarcastic, but it cannot give you any nourishment. From no negative standpoint can you get any nourishment. So he lost his God, and he lost his consolat
26、ion. He became free just to be mad.And it is not only Friedrich Nietzsche, so it cannot be said that it was just an accident. Many intellectual giants find themselves in mad asylums or commit suicide, because nobody can live in a negative darkness. One needs light and a positive, affirmative experie
27、nce of truth. Nietzsche demolished the light and created a vacuum in himself and in others who followed him.If you feel deep down a vacuum, utter emptiness with no meaning, it is because of Friedrich Nietzsche. A whole philosophy has grown in the West: Nietzsche is the founder of this very negative
28、approach to life.Soren Kierkegaard, and Jean-Paul Sartre, and Marcel, and Jaspers, and Martin Heidegger - all the great giants of the first half of this century - were talking only about meaninglessness, anguish, suffering, anxiety, dread, fear, angst. And this philosophy has been called in the West
29、 existentialism. It is not. It is simply non-existentialism. It destroys everything that has consoled you.I agree with the destruction because what was consoling man was only lies. God, heaven, hell - all were fictions created to console man. It is good they are destroyed, but you are leaving man in
30、 an utter vacuum. Out of that vacuum existentialism is born, thats why it talks only about meaninglessness: Life has no meaning. It talks about no significance: You are just an accident. Whether you are here or not does not matter at all to existence. And these people call their philosophy existenti
31、alism. They should call it accidentalism. You are not needed; just by accident, on the margin, somehow you have popped up. God was making you a puppet, and these philosophers from Nietzsche to Jean-Paul Sartre are making you accidental.And there is a tremendous need in mans being to be related to ex
32、istence. He needs roots in existence, because only when the roots go deep into existence will he blossom into a buddha, will he blossom into millions of flowers, will his life not be meaningless. Then his life will be tremendously overflowing with meaning, significance, blissfulness; his life will b
33、e simply a celebration.But the conclusion of the so-called existentialists is that you are unnecessary, that your life has no meaning, no significance. Existence is not in need of you at all!So I want to complete Friedrich Nietzsches work; it is incomplete. It will lead the whole of humanity to madn
34、ess - not only Friedrich Nietzsche, but the whole of humanity. Without God certainly you are free, but for what? You are left with empty hands. You were with empty hands before also, because the hands that looked full were full of lies. Now you are absolutely aware that the hands are empty and there
35、 is nowhere to go.I have heard about one very famous atheist. He died, and his wife brought his best clothes, best shoes, before he was put in the coffin - the best tie, the costliest possible. She wanted to give him a good farewell, a good send-off. He was dressed as he had never dressed in his who
36、le life.And then friends came, and neighbors came. And one woman said, Wow! Hes all dressed up and nowhere to go. He was an atheist, so he did not believe in God, he did not believe in heaven, he did not believe in hell - nowhere to go, and so well-dressed!But this is the situation any negative phil
37、osophy is going to leave for the whole of mankind: well-dressed, ready to go, but nowhere to go! This situation creates insanity.It was not an accident that Friedrich Nietzsche became insane, it was the outcome of his negative philosophy. Hence, I am calling this series, God is Dead, Now Zen is the
38、Only Living Truth.I absolutely agree with Friedrich Nietzsche as far as God is concerned, but I want to complete his statement, which he could not do. He was not an awakened being, he was not an enlightened being.Gautam Buddha also does not have a God, nor does Mahavira have a God, but they never we
39、nt mad. All the Zen masters and all the great Tao masters - Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu - nobody went mad, and they dont have any God. They dont have any hell or heaven. What is the difference? Why did Gautam Buddha not go mad?And it is not only Gautam Buddha. In twenty-five centuries hundreds of
40、his people have become enlightened, and they dont even talk about a God. They dont even say that there is no God, because there is no point. They are not atheists. I am not an atheist, nor am I a theist. God simply is not there, so there is no question of atheism or theism.But I am not mad. You are
41、my witnesses. It does not create a vacuum in me; on the contrary, there being no God, I have gained the dignity of an individual who is free - free to become a buddha. That is the ultimate goal of freedom. Unless your freedom becomes your very flowering of awareness, and the experience of freedom le
42、ads you into eternity, leads you into the roots, into the cosmos and existence, you are going to be mad. Your life will be meaningless, with no significance. Whatever you do it does not matter.Existence according to the so-called existentialists, who are all following Friedrich Nietzsche, the founde
43、r, is absolutely unintelligent. They have taken away God, so they think - according to logic it seems apparently true - if there is no God, existence also becomes dead, with no intelligence, with no life. God used to be the life, God used to be the consciousness. God used to be the very meaning, the
44、 very salt of our being. With God no longer there, this whole existence becomes soulless, life becomes just a by-product of matter. So when you die, everything will die, nothing will remain.And there is no question of being good or bad. Existence is absolutely indifferent, it does not care about you
45、. God used to care about you. Once God is removed, a great strangeness starts happening between you and existence. There is no relationship, existence does not care, cannot care because it is not conscious anymore. It is no longer an intelligent universe, it is simply dead matter, just as you are. A
46、nd the life that you know is only a by-product.A by-product disappears immediately when the elements that were creating it separate. For example, some religions believe that man is made of five elements: earth, air, fire, water, sky. Once these five elements are together, life is produced as a by-pr
47、oduct. When these five elements separate in death, life disappears.To make it clear to you. in the beginning as you learn to ride a bicycle you fall many times. I have also learned, but I did not fall while learning, because first I watched the learners and why they fall. They fall because they dont
48、 have confidence. To be on two wheels you need tremendous balance, and if you hesitate. it is just like walking on a tightrope. If you hesitate just for a moment those two wheels cannot keep you on your seat. Those two wheels can keep you in balance only at a certain speed, and the learner is bound
49、to move slowly. Obviously - it seems to be rational - if you are a learner, you should not go with great speed.I watched all my friends learning to bicycle, and they always said to me, Why dont you learn?I said, I am watching first. I am watching why you fall, and why after a few days you stop falling. And once I got the point, the ver
