No Sound

Shoichi was a one-eyed teacher of Zen, sparkling with enlightenment. He taught his disciples in Tofuku temple.

Day and night the whole temple stood in silence. There was no sound at all. Even the reciting of sutras was abolished by the teacher. His pupils had nothing to do but meditate.

When the master passed away, an old neighbor heard the ringing of bells and the recitation of sutras. Then she knew Shoichi had gone.

See The One

Shoichi was introduced to us as a one-eyed teacher of Zen. One-eyed teacher means  one who sees, the cognizant one, the seeing one.

And it all depends on how you look at the world. It is your seeing that determines the world. We don’t live in the same world, because our ways of seeing are different. There are as many worlds as there are people, hence the clash. Hence the conflict in love, in friendship, because two ways of seeing can’t agree. They overlap, they collide, they try to manipulate each other, they try to dominate each other, but deep down the fact is that there are two kinds of seeing, and there is a great fight going on about who wins, whose eye proves to be the right eye.

Religion is a way of seeing with closed eyes. Science observes with open eyes: it looks out. Religion observes with closed eyes. And when these two eyes are closed, absolutely closed, a third eye opens inside – that is ‘Khabiro.’ These two eyes create a duality, so whatsoever you see is always divided into two.

For example: what you call love and hate is one energy; it is not two energies, it is one energy. There is no division in it. But when you see with two eyes, it looks as if there is love and hate. There is only love/hate, there is only darkness/light, not darkness and light. There is only cold/hot, not cold and hot. That ‘and’ is created by the two eyes. The whole reality becomes divided. These two eyes function like a prism in which the ray enters and becomes divided into seven colours. It was pure white. When it was one, undivided, it was pure white. When it is divided it is so many colours – it is no more white, it is no more one.

Turning in, there is a third eye. These two eyes meet at a point deep within you. They will never meet outside; they can’t meet there. The farther away you look, the farther away they are; the closer you come, the closer they are. When you close your eyes they have become one. That is ‘Khabiro’, and that one eye can see reality as it is. It is seeing without seeing. It is seeing without any medium. It is uncorrupted seeing. All those seven colours have fallen into one and become white again.

People are very interested in having beautiful eyes. Rather, they should be interested more in having a beautiful way of looking at things. Rather than having beautiful eyes, have a beautiful vision. See beautifully. See the one, the undivided, the eternal – that’s what I mean when I say ‘See beautifully.’ And it is possible. It is within our grasp; it is just that we have never tried to attain it. We have never looked at the potential at all. We have never worked out the possibility of its actuality. It has remained like a seed. The third eye remained like a seed.

Once your energy enters and falls on the third eye, it starts opening; it becomes a lotus, it blooms. And suddenly your whole life-pattern is changed. You are a different person. You are no more the same; you can never be the same again and the world can never be the same. Everything is the same and yet nothing will ever be the same again. You have attained a single eye. Jesus says ‘Have the single eye and then you will know what God is.’

Learning from the story No Sound: See The One

Experience Learning

From outside we are separate from each other; from the inside we are one. That’s why awareness is universal. That does not mean that it becomes outside you. It simply means that only awareness is, only consciousness is: there is no longer any distinction of inner and outer.

The distinction between inner and outer is created because there is a mind which is dividing things, making things outside and inside. In awareness, the mind disappears, and with it all distinctions of inner and outer are gone. There is a single oneness.

For thousands of years in India people have been working on the same problem and they don’t even say, “Oneness remains,” because of a logical difficulty; if there is one, that means there must be two, there must be three. One cannot exist without the whole spectrum of numbers. What meaning will “one” have? If there is no two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, then what meaning will “one” have? It will not have any meaning.

So in India they don’t say, “Only oneness remains,” they say, “What remains is nondual” – just a roundabout way not to get caught in any logical difficulty. What remains is a nondual phenomenon. It is not two. They won’t say it is one; they will say it is no longer divided. And I think they have a certain insight into it.

When you say “nondual” the other numbers are not implied. But when you say “one” the other numbers are implied. But you need not go crazy; just be aware and don’t bother what is in and what is out. Your awareness will make you clear that it is a nondual existence: nothing is in, nothing is out.

In Jaipur in India there is a palace made by a mystic king. He was really a great architect; he planned Jaipur. His name was Jai Singh; hence the name of the city. Jaipur is the only planned city in India, and planned so beautifully! His idea was to defeat Paris, and he would have succeeded but he died. The city remained incomplete, but even the incomplete city gives the sense that he was on the right lines to defeat Paris.

It was one color, the red color of the sannyasin – a whole city of red stones. All the houses, all the shops, made exactly the same, to give you the feeling that all is one: neither is there any possibility of two. And the roads are so beautiful. Just in the middle of the roads are very shadowy trees – the roads are wide enough – and on both sides the pavement is covered so that in the rainy season you need not walk with an umbrella…or in the hot sun with an umbrella. You do not need an umbrella in Jaipur. And everything is exactly the same, made of the same red stone.

This man was trying to make a city which had no differences of any kind. Only one tree was used on all the roadways, miles long. Only one color, only one stone was used, and the same design – a beautiful design.

He made a temple with red stones outside, and inside it is made of small mirrors…millions of mirrors inside. So when you go inside you see yourself reflected in millions of mirrors. You are one, but your reflections are millions.

It is said that once a dog entered and killed himself in the night. Nobody was there: the guard had left the temple, locked it, and the dog remained inside. He would bark at the dogs…millions of dogs. And he jumped from this side to that side and hit himself against the walls. And all those dogs were barking…You can see what would have happened to the poor dog: the whole night he barked and he fought, and he killed himself by hitting himself against the walls.

In the morning when the door was opened the dog was found dead and his blood was all over the place – on the walls – and the neighbors said, “The whole night we were puzzled about what was the matter. This dog continued barking.”

That dog must have been an intellectual. Naturally he thought, “So many dogs, my God! I am alone and it is nighttime and the doors are closed, and surrounded by all these dogs.. they are going to kill me!” And he killed himself; there was no other dog at all.

This is one of the basic and essential understandings of mysticism: the people we are seeing all around are only our reflections. We are unnecessarily barking at each other, unnecessarily fighting with each other, unnecessarily afraid of each other. There is so much fear that we are gathering nuclear weapons against each other – and it is just one dog, and all others are just reflections.

The way the dog died, there is every possibility that man will die the same way. And against whom? Against his own reflections.