Principles Of Calligraphy

Zazen

One of the seekers asked a question to Osho: I heard You say that our energy is based on the ‘hara’, and that it is expressed through the different chakras in the body. Traditional Zen seems to emphasize Zazen as the way to come in touch with that energy, whereas You have allowed, even encouraged, Your disciples to have more freedom to explore the various avenues of expression.

Osho replied: I am not a traditional man at all. I am untraditional in every possible way. I am not confined to any technique.

Zen is confined, in a way, to Zazen. Zazen means just sitting and doing nothing. It is perfectly right, but my experience of the modern man is that the most difficult thing for him is just sitting and doing nothing. If you ask him to go to the moon, he can go. If you ask him to go to Everest, he can go. But just sitting? That is the most difficult thing. Finally, you will have to come to the point.

I have nothing to do with tradition. My Zen is absolutely untraditional. First, I make you jump and shout and scream, and do all kinds of gibberish. Then finally, tired, you can sit for a few moments….

I am dealing with the contemporary man, who is the most restless being that has ever evolved on the earth. But people do become silent; you just have to allow them to throw out their madness, insanity, then they themselves become silent. They start waiting for the moment when I will say, “Be silent.” They become tired of their gibberish. They also become aware that this gibberish is there….

You have to be total, otherwise things remain inside you. You have to empty your continuous gibberish that goes on inside, “Yakkety-yak, yakkety-yak…” Don’t do it partially. Don’t be bothered about being seen, because nobody is looking at you; everybody is in his own insanity. This is a good time for you to say and do anything which ordinarily you will not say….

The contemporary man is the most restless man. And I am dealing with the contemporary man, not the dead of the past. I have to devise ways and methods so that you can become silent. Finally, that is the goal – Zazen. But before that you have to throw out many things. Perhaps in the past when man was much more natural, unrepressed…

If it is possible for a single man, it is possible for the whole of humanity. We have just to throw out all the garbage that comes up in our minds, in our dreams. And it affects our actions, our attitudes, our miseries, our anger, our despair. It is better to throw it before it affects your actions.

And that is the whole psychology behind meditation: emptying you, creating a nothingness in you. Out of that nothingness blossoms the ultimate joy, the ultimate bliss.