VBT – Week’s Meditation 33

VBT – Week’s Meditation 33

Found The Source

If you understand – that everything comes from nothingness …If you can return to nothingness consciously you have found the source.

That’s what meditation is: returning consciously to the very source not only of your being but of the very cosmos.

There you find an eternal flame. Things come, things go. Waves arise, and waves disappear. But everything remains, rooted in nothingness.

This nothingness is very miraculous because one would think that things should be rooted in something. But if you ask the Zen masters if things should be rooted in something, they will simply laugh and ask, “In what will your something be rooted?”

You cannot ask the same question about nothingness. Nothingness simply means nothingness, there is no question of any roots. It neither comes nor goes. Nothing happens to it; it simply remains, utterly silent.

You touch this nothingness when you are deep in your being, because that being is already rooted in this nothingness. You are driving your life, moment to moment, from that nothingness.

The flowers may not understand where they have come from. The branches may not know from where they have come. The trunk of a tree may not know from where it has come, because the roots are hidden underground. The roots are hidden for security purposes, otherwise you could be harmed very badly.

You cannot take even your very intimate friend into your nothingness; you cannot invite anybody there – no party! You have to go alone. It is such a sacred place.

In the old Jewish tradition … It is significant to understand, because Jews, their rabbis, will not be able to give the explanation. Zen can give an explanation for many things in other religions also, because it has gone to the very root, it has traveled the whole path. It has not chosen one path, it has accepted all paths, and still it has gone beyond all paths. So it knows more than anybody else and yet it is absolutely innocent because it knows nothing.

In the great temple of Jerusalem there used to be a festival once a year. The temple had an inner sanctum, a small room, and only the chief rabbi was allowed to enter into it. He would enter, close the doors, and in that silent, small chamber he was allowed to whisper the word “God”. It has a beauty of its own, why was it done in such a way? To use the word “God” as a mundane word makes it also like a thing. Jews have avoided it … you can only whisper in silence. Perhaps you don’t even have to whisper; you can simply feel the presence of nothingness.

Judaism is the only religion which does not write the whole word “God”. They leave the “o” out: “G-d”. The “o” in between is left out, they don’t write it. It is sacrilegious to pronounce the name of God; something of it is bound to remain beyond words. In fact, the most important part – the middle part – is missing. You have touched only one side or another side, but you have not touched the heart of it. In the word also, you are making it clear that unless you touch the heart of God … and the only way is to touch your own heart. You don’t know your own heart. Your heart has roots in the universal heart from where it gets its life. And as the universal heart withdraws man dies, but the life that was is not finished. It may move into a new ripple, into a new flower, into a new cuckoo … millions are the ways. Or it may remain silent in the ocean of the cosmos.