|
OSHO
Yakusan: |
|
This book is an encouragement for a today’s seeker for truth. There is nothing except witnessing, because there is nothing more valuable than witnessing. Witnessing is you nature, your very nature.
A collection of five talks given
on stories of the Zen master, Yakusan. Osho uses these anecdotes as a
springboard into the reality of the Zen approach to truth, a book not so
much "about" Zen, but instead a Zen look at the world around us. The range
and diversity of the subjects covered is vast as Osho points out, lovingly
and often with humor, the ridiculousness and the sickness of the human
condition and our world; sickness that Osho says could prove terminal if we
don’t wake.
These talks are an urgent and tantalizing call to "wake up" to the inner
potential we each carry - our buddhahood; to give a taste of truth, a taste
of Zen. Osho says: "Zen is very straightforward. Neither statues can help,
nor scriptures can help. The only thing that can help is going deeper into
yourself, realizing the inner sky and the freedom that comes with it."
At the end of each talk Osho guides the reader into this space of
meditation. From a crescendo of laughter and gibberish, he guides us
straight to the place where the inner buddha resides: straight to the point
of enlightenment. A fantastic book for those wishing to go inside
themselves.
Chapter Titles
Chapter 1: Whatever the Cost Enlightenment Is Cheap
Chapter 2: There Is No Way to Compare Me with Anybody
Chapter 3: A Grand Approach to Reality
Chapter 4: The Sutra Is Long, the Night Is Short
Chapter 5: The Truth Is What Works
Excerpt
from Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment
Chapter 4
"While I am speaking on Zen masters, I am speaking in a way which is
absolutely contemporary; you can understand it. They are still speaking the
language of the past.
It is a calamity that the so-called religious people get caught up in a
certain moment in history. Then they don’t progress from that place. The
Buddhists are caught up with Gautam Buddha, twenty-five centuries back.
Everything has changed, but their ideology remains twenty-five centuries
old. It does not ring bells in your heart, hence you cannot feel at home.
Never think for a moment that what I am saying about Zen has been said by
the Zen masters themselves. I am constantly improving, improvising. With me
religion is not something static. It is an evolutionary process. It grows
like a tree, hundreds of feet high, it moves like a river, thousands of
miles; not for a single moment does the movement stop. Since eternity rivers
have been moving and moving and moving.
I am not a pond; and when you go to Japan you will find ponds. I make every
effort to make the ponds flow like a river. A pond knows nothing but death;
it is dying every moment, the water is evaporating. Soon there will be just
mud left."