Sake And Zazen

Witnessing Self

The sins, all that you have done, simply disappear because you come to realize your being which is not a doer at all. It has not done anything; it is just a witnessing self. And all that was done, was done by nature – the natural laws.

It is very difficult for society to understand it. That is why no society exists in the world which has Upanishadic teaching as its basis. No society can exist with it, it is so dangerous a teaching. Hindus go on reading the Upanishads but even they never try to construct a society, to create a society around this teaching, because this is such a high standpoint for looking at things. It says that if a murderer is committing a murder this is how things are – how nature is functioning within him, how nature has become murderous through him. One day, when this man will achieve the final consciousness, he will laugh. He will say, “I never committed this. Just a situation, natural forces, did the whole work.”

But if this is taught right now, this will create a confusion in the mind and a fear that “If this is taught then everyone will commit murder and will say, ‘What can I do? It is how nature is functioning in me.’” This fear is also false because those who commit murder will commit it no matter what you say. We have been giving punishment as much as possible – imprisonment, life sentence, even death – but nothing has changed. Murders go on being committed; rather, they go on increasing.

We have never tried the other alternative. As far as I feel, as far as I know, if we base the society on the Upanishadic teaching, not a single extra murder will be there. Things will remain as they are but there will be more possibility for man to be transformed.

This is difficult because the whole of humanity has been conditioned to believe that man is a sinner and he must be prevented; otherwise he will go on committing sins. He must be imprisoned, punished. He must be tortured so that he is prevented from committing sins. But we have not prevented anyone – not a single man have we been able to prevent.

I have heard that in England, in the old days just two hundred years ago, whenever a thief was caught he was to be flogged naked before the whole town at the crossroads. He would be hanged there and flogged just to teach the whole town what happens if you commit stealing. But then it had to be stopped because the whole village would gather to see the thief being flogged, and the pickpockets would try their art just there in the crowd. And people were so attentive in looking at this torture that they would forget their pockets. So then it became obvious that this was nonsense; no one was learning anything. Exactly there on the spot people were committing stealing, they were doing the exact same thing.

To me, this phenomenon seems to be very symbolic. All our imprisonments, sentences, death sentences, our tortures, have been futile; they have not changed a single man. They cannot because a man is a configuration of so many natural forces. Just by punishing; you cannot change that configuration. A man is such a deep-rooted phenomenon that just by beating him you cannot change his consciousness.