Zen has no theory. It is a non-theoretical approach into reality. It has no doctrine and no dogma – hence it has no church, no priest, no pope.
The West is concentration of the mind: the East is meditation of the mind. The West is thinking: the East is non-thinking. The West is mind: the East is no-mind.
Meditation is unfocussed mind, you simply listen silently, not with a tension in the mind, not with an urge to know and learn, no, with total relaxedness, in a let go, in an opening of your being. You listen, not to know, you simply listen to understand.
Children can be taught meditation more easily because they are not yet spoiled. When you have been spoiled the hard work is to help you to unlearn.
Drop dreaming and you are there where you have really been always, but you were never aware. All meditation techniques are just antidream efforts, just dream-negating devices.
The secret of meditation is the art of unlearning. Mind is learning; meditation is unlearning: that is – die constantly to your experience; let it not imprison you; experience becomes a dead weight in the living and flowing, riverlike consciousness.
Put your whole energy into meditation. Once you are centered in your being, once you know the inner path, then wherever you are you can manage to go to the center without any difficulty. Even when you are dying, it will not make any difference. You may be sick, it will not make any difference.
But everybody is afraid of death; that too is contagious. Your parents are afraid of death, your neighbors are afraid of death. Small children start getting infected by this constant fear all around. Everybody is afraid of death. People don’t even want to talk about death.
Darkness is the absence of light. Absences do not exist. Sin does not exist .
In the East, all the religions preach egolessness. So in the East, everybody is against the ego from the very beginning.
I believe that the very effort to convert anybody is violence, it is interfering in his individuality, in his uniqueness, into his freedom.
Zen lives in the present. The Whole teaching is: how to be in the present; how to get out of the past which is no more and how not to get involved in the future which is not yet, and just to be rooted, centered, in that which is.
Your life is enough, don’t be concerned with others. And I tell you that if you can live unconcerned your life will flower, and then others can share in it. You would like to share, and you can give much to others, but first you must stop thinking about others and what they are thinking about you.
Action done totally brings relaxation; relaxation done totally brings more action.
Yoga is negation; Tantra is affirmation.
In every relationship, you can always see the ego of the other, but you cannot see your own – and the other one goes on seeing your ego.
Don’t be worried about the future. Live this moment so totally that the next moment comes out of it golden.
There is a story told of one old wise man, whose name was Mencius. He was a follower of Confucius and he died when he was very, very old. Somebody asked him: If you were given life again, how will you start it? Said Mencius: I will pay more attention to my needs and less attention to my desires. And this realisation will come to you also. But it always comes very late and then life is no more in your hands. If you were given life again...
A man of wisdom always looks at every problem from the other’s point of view also. You cannot be wise if you have only one point of view. Sometimes try to stand in others’ shoes and just look from there.
This is one of the subtle things to be understood. We are always wise if we have to advise others but when we are in the same trap, with the same problem, the same crisis, we are not so wise. If somebody else comes to you with a problem, you will give him good advice and the advice may be right. But if you have the same problem you will not be able to give yourself the same advice. Why? Because when it is somebody else’s problem you are detached.
Meditation means a state of unconditioned mind. Meditation is the process of undoing the harm that every society goes on doing to every individual – communist or Catholic, Jaina or Jew, it does not matter. I am not talking about any particular conditioning that is wrong; I am saying conditioning AS SUCH is wrong.