Osho Om Bodhisattva Commune/Research

	To feel en rapport with my writings is one thing, to feel en rapport is totally another. To be convinced by my writings will not change you, it will simply add to your knowledge. To fall en rapport with me will destroy you, annihilate you, will transform you. When you are reading you are the master, you own the book, and you can go on finding ways and means to defend yourself against the book. And the book cannot do much; you are free to interpret it in your own ways.





	I speak to seduce you into silence. I use words so that you can be persuaded towards the wordless existence.





	These books are not necessary. Their need is because of you. If you can jump them, avoid them, bypass them-- beautiful... Nobody gains through books, but books can help you to go beyond. All the scriptures say the same thing... The point from where words turn back and cannot go beyond--that is the point, the door. The Bible, the Koran--they all exist to help you to go beyond them. If you have been carrying them on your head it is your stupidity; you have not looked into them. Because they say: Don't cling to words, don't cling to theories, to concepts, philosophies. All is rubbish! My books are there to be transcended. Enjoy them on the way but don't cling to them. And get ready to go beyond. We enter on a rare pilgrimage. The Ten Bulls of Zen are something unique in the history of human consciousness. Truth has been expressed in many ways, and it has always been found that it remains unexpressed whatsoever you do.





	The Ten Bulls of Zen have tried in a single effort to express the inexpressible.





	Kakuan is rare, and he must have been a great master. His painting is superb, his prose is superb. It rarely happens that one man is so extraordinarily talented in all the directions, all the dimensions of consciousness.





	The bull is a symbol of energy, vitality, dynamism. The bull means the very life itself. The bull means your inner power. Your potentiality. The bull is a symbol, remember that. Once you know what life is, tremendous beauty arises in your being. Everything become luminous, illumined with God. Each stone becomes a sermon. Each silence becomes a song.





	There is nothing to be achieved. Life is not an achievement, it is a gift. It has already been given-- for what are you waiting? The door is open and the host has already invited you. Come in!

	Whenever you overflow, whenever you share, you never feel tired afterwards. In fact you feel more energetic, more in tune, more at home. Everything settles, unburdened. You grow wings, you can fly in the sky. You are so weightless, gravitation disappears.





	Everything is in its nature. You are in your nature also. And the world is perfectly good, the world is perfectly beautiful. It is the best world there can be.





	The siddha -- the one who has attained -- comes back into the world as an ordinary man. Sometimes you may not even be aware that a siddha lives just in your neighborhood. Somebody you know may be a siddha and you may not be aware. The circle may be so complete that he will look just an ordinary man, because the effort to look like an extraordinary man is still an ego trip. So be careful! -- you may be passing many siddhas in the marketplace. And alert -- just by your side there is a buddha may be sitting who has come full circle.

My sannyasnis have to transform lust into love, love into friendliness. The moment you have reached to the state of friendliness you have arrived home.

Man's interiority, his subjectivity, cannot be trespassed. There is no way to make it an object of study. Research is absolutely impossible -- even search has not been done, and you are thinking of research. Man can experience his subjectivity on his own, but he cannot invite a researcher to go into him and to find out who is he. This is, by nature impossible. And it is very fortunate that it is impossible that your subjectivity, at least, is always private, always your freedom. No trespass is possible.

The beginning of the pilgrimage starts with searching seeking, inquiring; there is no other way to begin. Unless you inquire what is the meaning of life, unless you go in search of the essential core of existence, you will never move, you will not even take the first step. Hence the search has to begin, but if you continue searching for ever and ever, if your search never comes to an end, you will remain in the mind . It is the mind which searches.

Search is also a subtle desire. Even the inquiry to know is ambitious . The very desire to achieve something--money, power, prestige, meditation, God, whatsoever it is--any desire, any ambition leads you into future; it distracts you from the present. And present is the only reality, the only truth there is.

The person who never begins the search will remain unconscious; the person who always remains in the search will go crazy. The search has to begin so that you become a little more alert, a little more observant, vigilant, aware, and then the search has to be dropped so that you become silent. so that the mind disappears, so that the future evaporates and you are simply here now, neither seeking nor searching. In that stillness of no-search, truth is found.

It is not only man who is in search of God, God is in search of man. If only men were in search there would be no possibility of ever finding God, because man's capabilities are very tiny. It is just like dewdrops in search of the ocean: it may get lost anywhere. There are deserts and deserts to cross and the journey is long, arduous, and the address of the ocean is not known, nor is the direction. Neither does there exist any map.

Yes, sometimes there are guides-- Buddhas, Christ-- but the way they have reached the ultimate can't be your way. They moved from a different point, from different angle, from a different space. Each individual has to find his own way. And the way is not ready-made, it is not like a super highway already there that you just have to walk on. It is by moving towards God that you create the way, the way is created by you. It is a footpath in the jungle of life: there is no direction, no map: no guide can hold your hand. Yes, they can indicate a few things, they can give you a few hints which will be helpful on the way, but they cannot give you the exact map -- that is impossible.

So if men were alone in his search for God it would be impossible. But it has happened to many people for the simple reason that God is also searching for them, he is also groping for them. Once you start groping then your hands are going to meet somewhere. It is not only that the dewdrop is moving towards the ocean, the ocean is also rushing towards the dewdrop. The dewdrop may not be able to cross the deserts but the ocean can.

To know this, trusting that God loves you, is a great foundation. Then the whole of your life can be built accordingly, then your life can become a temple-- but the right foundation is needed. Never forget for a moment that God is not searching for you-- that he is calling not you, that he is not calling everybody, that he is not searching for everybody.

"We enter on a rare pilgrimage.
These ten bulls are a pictorial representation of the inquiry, the inquiry I call man! "Osho tells us." The bull means your energy, the unknown strange energy that you are. . . Kakuan painted ten pictures of the whole search of man, and man is a search. "A search which, Osho tells us, starts at conception and continues until death.

Seasoned seekers are already familiar with the story of the Ten Bulls of Zen. (This is what they came to be known as after Kakuan added images of the man, without the bull, returning to the marketplace with little more than a bottle of wine.)

The Search for the Bull ( Discovering the Footprints )
The bull never has been lost -- because the bull is you.
The bull is your energy, it is your life.
The principle of your dynamism is the bull.
The bull never has been lost.

1. The Search for the Bull

2. Discovering the Footprints

The bull has never been lost. What need is there to search? Only because of separation from my true nature, I fail to find him. In the confusion of the senses I lose even his tracks. Far from home, I see many crossroads, but which way is right one, I know not. Greed and fear, good and bad, entangle me

Understanding the teaching, I see the footprints of the bull. Then I learn that, just as many utensils are made from one metal, so too are myriad entities of the fabric of self. Unless I discriminate, how will I perceive the true from the untrue? Not yet having entered the gate, nevertheless I have discerned the path.

3. Percieving the bull

4. Catching the Bull

When one hears the vice, one can sense its source. As soon as the six senses merge, the gate is entered. Wherever one enters one sees the head of the bull! This unity is like salt in water, like color in dye stuff. The slightest thing is not apart from self.

He dwelt in the forest a long time, but I caught him today! Infatuation for scenery interferes with his direction. Longing for sweeter grass, he wanders away. His mind still is stubborn and unbridled. If I wish him to submit, I must raise my whip.

5. Taming the Bull

6. Riding the Bull Home

When one thought arises, another thought follow. When the first thought springs from enlightenment, all subsequent thoughts are true. Through delusion, one makes everything untrue. Delusion is not caused by objectivity; it is the result of subjectivity. Hold the nose ring and do not allow even a doubt.

This struggle is over; gain and loss are assimilated. I sing the song of the village woodsman, and play the tunes of the children. Astride the bull. I observe the clouds above. Onward I go, no matter who may wish to call me back.

All is one law, not two. We only make the bull a temporary subject. It is as the relation of rabbit and trap, of fish and net. It is as gold and dross, or the moon emerging from a cloud. One path of clear light travels on throughout endless time.

Mediocrity is gone.
Mind is clear of limitation. I seek no state of enlightenment. Neither do I remain where no enlightenment exists. Since I linger in neither condition, eyes cannot see me. If hundreds of birds strew my path with flowers, such praise would be meaningless.

9. Reaching the Source

10. In the World

From the beginning, truth is clear, Poised in silence, I observe the forms of integration and disintegration. One who is not attached to from need not be reformed. The water is emerald, the mountain is indigo, and I see that which is creating and that which is destroying.

Inside my gate, a thousand sages do not know me. The beauty of my garden is invisible. Why should one search for the footprints of the patriarchs? I go to the marketplace with my bottle and return home with my staff. I visit the wine shop and the market, and everyone I look upon becomes enlightened.



	The guide has not to be followed, but understood. The guide can tell you about his experience, the path that leads to the peak of existence. But he also knows that every individual is unique; hence you cannot follow the footprints of another person. You will have to -- find your own path. There are not ready-made paths already available and that's the beauty, the beauty of total freedom. As you walk you create the path. But your very search you create the path. The guide is only a friend, to help you discover yourself.

	The Master knows there is no Master and no disciple. The Master knows that it is a company of friends. The Master is not holier-than-thou; the Master has no superiority complex. The Master is a nobody; the Master is just ordinary, but his ordinariness is luminous. The whole existence is either ordinary or extraordinary-- but the whole. It is not that a few things are ordinary and a few things are extra- ordinary. For the Master, everything is unique. His reverence for life is infinite.