You Are Ordinary – In Gita Verse 11.39 You are air, and You are the supreme controller! You are fire, You are water, and You are the moon! You are Brahmā, the first living creature, and You are the great-grandfather. I therefore offer my respectful obeisances unto You a thousand times, and again and yet again!
Why does Arjuna feel totally in gratitude? Through his Divine Eyes he went inside of him when he went inside of him then only he is able to see the opulence form of Krishna. He became nobody.
Why are we not able to see what Arjuna can see? It is just because we are busy with our ego. Unless we drop the ego we will not be able to see what Arjana has seen. We need to be ordinary to go inside of us and merge in our own source.
Ego is the biggest barrier to go in. What Arjuna has seen if we want to experience then first let’s know our ego. Zen lives a very ordinary life. They become totally ordinary. And ego will drop on its own.
The first thing to be understood, and understood as deeply as possible is that Zen is nothing special. It is nothing extraordinary. The people who are in search of religion are always, almost always, very egoistic. Their very search starts because their egos are not satisfied with this world. They would like something more precious, to be more of the Divine – something extraordinary. Egoists are attracted towards religion more easily, and this is the problem – because religion says that if the ego is there, there can be no growth. And egoists are easily attracted towards religion but religion starts only when you drop the ego.
But this world is temporary; nothing is permanent here and the ego would like something permanent, eternal. Everything in this world is made of the same stuff as dreams, and the ego is not content. The ego would like things made of solid rock. So the ego condemns this world and starts a journey towards the eternal. But the eternal has its own conditions, and this is the first condition: if you don’t drop the ego, you cannot enter the gate.
Religion basically is the understanding that all the trips of the ego are materialistic. Even the trip towards God is materialistic. It is not a question of what you seek, it is a question of who the seeker is. If the ego is the seeker then whatsoever you seek is material, is of this world. You may call it God, you may call it MOKSHA, you may call it anything you like: the Truth, the Absolute, the BRAHMA – it doesn’t matter. If the ego is the seeker, then whatsoever you seek is of this world. When the ego is not the seeker then everything, everything, I SAY, is of that world.
Even if you chop wood, even if you are a small shopkeeper, a clerk, a sweeper, nobody in particular, just ordinary; nobody knows about you, nobody ever thinks that you are a chosen one, nobody will ever hear about you – that doesn’t matter. If the ego has dropped within, whatsoever you do is Divine. Otherwise, the ego poisons everything and whatsoever you do is of the devil, and not of the Divine.
Zen is just being ordinary. And Zen is the essence of all religion, just to be ordinary. Realizing the fact that ego creates a hell around it, that ego is the source of all hell, that it has all the seeds of misery, anguish, one simply drops it without a second thought. Once one simply realizes the fact that one is suffering because of the ego, one simply drops it – but not in search of something.
You can drop the ego in search of something. Then you have not really dropped it – you are bargaining. Realizing the fact that ego is ugly, the source of all misery and illness, you simply drop it. You don’t ask: What will I gain out of it if I drop my ego? – Because all gain is the subtle search of the ego. You simply drop it because it is useless, harmful, poisonous.
You are passing through the woods, you come across a snake – you simply jump out of the way. You don’t ask: What will I gain out of it? I will not jump out of the way unless I am certain of what I am going to gain out of it. You simply jump without a second thought, because if you have a second thought about it, by that time the snake may have attacked you. You simply jump, realizing the fact that the snake is there; death is there, you simply simply jump out of it.
The house is on fire. You don’t ask: What will I gain if I run out of it? You simply run out of it without a second thought. You think about it when you are out of it – in fact, you run without thinking. When you are out of danger, then you sit under a tree and you have a look; then you think over all that has happened – why did you run away? You realize it, and the realization becomes a change, a transformation, a revolution. If you realize that the ego is your house on fire, you drop it. You don’t ask: What will I gain out of it? You simply become a nobody, an ordinary being. And once you are ordinary, everything starts happening.
Zen is ordinary – it makes people just nobodies, and this is the beauty of it. When you become a nobody, when you are ordinary, this is the most extraordinary phenomenon possible. Listen – everybody wants to be extraordinary. So the longing to be extraordinary is very ordinary because everybody wants it. And to become ordinary is absolutely extraordinary because nobody wants it; nobody longs for it – remember this. Only then can you understand Zen Masters.
Not only Zen Masters but God, Krishna, your own Godliness you will understand. Once you understand your own godliness like Arjuna you will also realize that everything is nothing but Universe, Existence, God or your own Godliness. In that you will feel Gratitude towards everything.
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