If you are concerned about success, success is not going to come to you, because your mind will be somewhere in the future and you will not be working in the present – and success can only come if the work is totally done in the present. This moment is going to give birth to the next moment. If this moment has been totally lived, the next moment is bound to be of a deeper totality, of a higher quality of totality.
Let me tell you one anecdote:
Guruji, “Let us play a game to know what success is.” He pointed to a building and said, “This building has 3 rooms in a row. Success lies in room no 3. You start with room no 1. It is recommendatory, not mandatory. You can also directly enter into room no 3. Door between room no 1 and 2 is also two way but the door between room no 2 and 3 is one way only.”
Everyone picks up a key. All keys are master keys and start the journey to success. Every student picked up a key and started their journey. Most of the students directly entered into room no 3. Room no 3 was filled with unlimited material wealth.
Those who directly entered room no 3 returned back to Guruji within minutes to hours with lots of wealth. Those who entered room no 1, met with relatives and friends and enough wealth.
All tried to enter room no 2. But the door was not opening. All of them tried many times. Many thought that this door will not open and they have got what is necessary to live a life and they returned back to Guruji. Few remained and tried the whole night to open the door but all efforts were in vain. The door opened the next morning. When they entered, the room was full of light, fragrance and music. They were not able to see anybody but they were able to feel themselves. They were happy. What else does anybody need in life?
Many of them returned to Guruji. Countable students remain trying to enter room no 3. But the lock was behaving differently for different people. For some it opened in one trial, for some few trials, for some it took days and for others it never opened after their best and full efforts. For whom it did not open, they returned contented. Rest returned in a few days.
All the students were standing in front of Guruji. Guruji affirmed, “Now you can understand success. For those who consider it only material wealth, they will be wealthy but not content and happy. So this is not a permanent success as material wealth will end someday. For those who left all efforts after entering room no 1 and returned without entering room no 2 because of little satisfaction, they are also not successful as their mind will always linger on wealth and other things also. They have forced satisfaction. For those who continued their efforts with patience will be content, happy and wealthy, though their requirements will be little. Their success is permanent and this is true success. For true success first you have to make a choice whether to take a right path or shortcut. And once you have started your efforts, willpower and patience will be tested. And of course, awareness is the master key.
What Guruji has conveyed through these three rooms in one sentence is A Whole Man is the Only Holy Man.
If we want a whole man – and to Guruji a whole man is the only holy man – then Zorba has to be absorbed into Buddha. They have to be accepted totally as one. And I don’t see where the trouble is. In fact, Zorba plus Buddha will be a tremendous enrichment.
Buddha cannot laugh, cannot dance, cannot sing, cannot love. Now what kind of life will it be? Hollow!
Zorba can sing, dance, enjoy food, drink, and love. He will have a life, but he will not know who he is. He will not know the meaning of existence. He will never come to experience the deathlessness of life, the eternity of his existence – that he has been here always, and will be always; only forms change. He will never enter into his own center. He will always remain in the cyclone, very busy, concerned with everything except himself. And the center of the cyclone is the most ecstatic experience, the ultimate experience of human consciousness. Beyond that there is nothing; you have arrived home.
But Guruji doesn’t see that there is any problem, there is no contradiction. You can arrive home, you can be at your center – what prevents you from laughing? In fact, you should be the only one who can really laugh, can become laughter; who can really love, can become love itself – where the lover disappears and only love remains; one who can dance and dance to such abandon that the dancer is completely gone, there is only dance.
This is Guruji’s effort: To bring Zorba the Buddha into the world.
That will create a unity in you; your body and soul will have a unity. You will not have to fight against your nature, you can use it as a stepping stone. There is no need to fight, there is no need to repress. All psychological diseases are out of repression. All psychopathological people are just incurable unless they accept their nature totally, without any grudge. You have to use your natural energies to grow. It will bring man into a totality.
All religions have made you schizophrenic, split. They have created guilt in you by creating a split; it is their whole business. Only a guilty man will go to church, will go to the synagogue, will go to the temple; otherwise there is no need. If you are one, you would like to dance in the open air under the sun. That will be your real prayer. Nothing is said, nothing is asked, but you are showing your gratitude to existence.
Zorba the Buddha will not only destroy the split in man, it will destroy the split in society.
Zorba loves singing, playing on his musical instruments, and dancing. Buddha will make it perfect, absolute. Even silence will become a song, even stones will become sermons, and whatever you touch will become a musical instrument because your hands will now have the magic of the whole existence; they will have the grace, the beauty, the poetry…
This man Zorba to be alive in everybody, because it is your natural inheritance. But you should not stop at Zorba.
Zorba is only the beginning. Sooner or later, if you allow your Zorba full expression, you are bound to think of something better, higher, greater. It will not come out of thinking; it will come out of your experiences – because those small experiences will become boring.
Buddha himself had come to be Buddha because he had lived the life of a Zorba.
Zorba Is the Foundation and Buddha Is the Palace
Zorba is the foundation and Buddha is the palace. Buddha is the peak, but the foundation stones are laid by Zorba. It will be foolish to choose to be a Buddha without having the foundation stones.
Guruji was absolutely mathematical about it: Zorba should be there and the stronger a Zorba is there, the better a Buddha is possible. So you can become a Buddha any moment, Zorba is absolutely needed as the basic energy out of which the Buddha is going to be carved. Zorba is the marble rock out of which the Buddha statue has to be carved. Choose the rock…and Buddha is easy. “It is just a question of opening your eyes. Don’t bother about Buddha; Guruji was worried about people who are not Zorbas. How will they become Buddhas? They don’t have the basic material out of which a Buddha is made.
And this poverty has been given to people by our religious leaders. They have been told not to be materialists. They have been told to be celibate. They have been told to live in poverty. They have been told that life is out of sin. All these things have destroyed their Zorbas. Otherwise, every man is a born Zorba the Greek.
And if everything goes according to me, every man will die as Zorba the Buddha. Between the Greek and the Buddha there is not much distance, but first you must be the Greek.
Tags: Zorba The Buddha
