Zen stories. Osho

Dogo, the elderly Zen master, had a disciple named Soshin. When Soshin arrived as a beginner under Dogo, he no doubt expected the teacher to instruct him in Zen in the way a school teacher instructs his students. But Dogo did not say anything special to him and certainly did not seem to have any intention of communicating anything unusual to the disciple. Finally, Soshin could not take it anymore and he reproached his teacher for not showing him anything of Zen. <But I've been giving you Zen lessons since you arrived> said Dogo

You say it seriously, and when could that be?
<When you bring me my cup of tea in the morning> I say Dogo <I accept it. When you serve me the food, I eat it. When you bow to me, I take it for granted. How else do you hope to learn Zen?>

The Tao can be shared, but it can not be divided. The Tao can be shown, but it can not be said.

The teacher lives in the Tao. The disciple has to imbibe his spirit. It is not a teaching, it can not be a teaching. All the teachings are superficial. It has to be deeper than a teaching. It has to be an energy transfer. It has to be from heart to heart, from soul to soul, from body to body. It can not be verbal. And the disciple has to see, look, observe, feel, love the energy that is manifesting in the teacher. Little by little, slowly, sitting simply by the side of the teacher, the disciple learns many secrets, although they are never taught.
One of the greatest secrets is that when sitting next to the teacher, the disciple begins to breathe in the same way that the teacher breathes.
A synchrony originates, and in that synchrony the two come together. It also happens to lovers. If you are deeply in love with someone, sitting next to you, sitting next to your beloved, you will be surprised to see that, suddenly, without any reason at all, without doing anything for it, you are breathing in the same way. When the beloved exhales, you breathe out, when the beloved inspires you inspire. And suddenly you are connected, linked.

Breathing is of tremendous importance. This is how the mother connects with the child. And sometimes there may even be more than a thousand kilometers between the child and the mother, but the mother's heart is immediately affected if the child is in danger. Your breathing is so connected. They breathe in the same way. And there is an obvious reason for this. In the uterus of the mother the child was breathing through the mother for nine months. I did not have my own breathing. It was the mother's breathing, and he simply followed the mother's breathing. The mother breathed for him, in his name; for nine months they lived in deep synchrony. It continues even after the child is born. If there is true love, it can continue throughout his life.
Now there is also scientific evidence of this. In America, in Russia and also in other countries, many experiments with birds, with animals, have recently been carried out. They take the son and then kill him, and observe the mother with all the sophisticated instruments available. By the time they kill the son, and it may be a thousand miles away, he immediately changes the mother's breathing, immediately, at the exact moment. His breathing shudders, a tremor arises in it. Feel panic, pain, without any reason, without any apparent reason: something intuitive, something without any means between the two. They are not visibly connected by anything, but there are also some invisible threads.

The disciple does not have to learn what the teacher teaches, but how the teacher is. That's what Dogo refers to when he says: <But I've been giving you Zen lessons since you arrived. When you bring me tea in the morning, I accept it. Have not you observed it, the way I accept it? Have you not harmonized deeply with me when I accept the tea you bring me?

When you serve me the food, I eat it. When you bow to me, I take it for granted. How else do you hope to learn Zen?

The teacher is saying: Observe my gestures, my way of walking, my way of sitting, my way of breathing, my way of simply sitting with you, my way of looking at you, my way of responding in a thousand and one ways. Do not expect a doctrine; the presence of the teacher is the only doctrine there is. True teaching is not a teaching at all, it is a transference, a transference beyond words and beyond the scriptures. And the transfer happens through the harmony of the breath.

I would also like to tell you that I have nothing to offer you in terms of teaching, doctrine, philosophy or religion. I have nothing at all to teach you. I have a lot to share, but nothing to teach.
What I can share can be interfered with, small details can disturb what I have to share

In the afternoon Dashan, I sometimes call a few Sannyasins to help me transfer energy to someone. I have called Pradeepa many times, but every time I call her, afterwards I feel nauseous. I was perplexed. What's going on? She is a beautiful woman, with a lot of love for me. That's why I'm calling her to help me. But it has been happening every time I do it. The last time I felt it so intensely that I had to examine it, consider the whole thing. Then I understood. He must have been eating non-vegetarian food, meat, eggs, and other things. That makes his breath unpleasant, that disturbs all his internal harmony. That's why you can not harmonize with me. And if it can not harmonize, that creates a disturbance.
He loves me, but his love is still unconscious. If she becomes a little more conscious, she will see it, she will see that to be with me you have to change many things of yourself.
To be with me and to deepen with me, to have a heart to heart contact, you will have to release the unnecessary baggage that you carry with you. Thus there is no need to be non-vegetarian; there is not for a meditator. Otherwise you will be creating unnecessary obstacles. It will disturb your softness, it will create a kind of cruelty in you. You may not be aware of it but when you come to me I am only a mirror.
Praddepa must be creating a great nausea in his own being. He may have become used to it, so he is not conscious. But I felt nauseous again and again, because when you relate to me with energy it does not happen in one direction, my energy enters you, your energy enters me. It can not be in one direction. A circle is created, circulation begins to happen. This is just an example. And this is not just for Pradeepa, it is for all of you.
If you want to be in deeper and deeper harmony with me, if you want to share the Tao that has happened to me, you will have to be more aware, be more alert to what you are doing, what you are eating, what you are reading, what you are listening to , where are you going, who are you relating to? It has to be a total effort. It has to be an awareness of twenty-four hours a day, because small things accumulate and the impact is great.

If you have been cheating someone and you have been fighting with someone and then you come to see me, naturally you will be far from me. That's why Jesus says that if you go to pray in the temple and you remember that you have hurt someone, insulted someone, that you are angry with someone, or if you have infuriated someone, first go and ask for forgiveness, and only then do you see to pray, otherwise, you can not relate to God. First go to apologize. First clean your things.

It happened that when Michelangelo was working in the Sistine Chapel, he was doing a painting of Jesus. The painting was almost complete, just missing the final touches, but those final touches were very difficult. Jesus was not leaving him like Jesus, something was missing in Jesus' face; I did not have that softness, that feminine energy, that quality of love. He tried and tried for days, and then he remembered that he had quarreled with a friend and had it with him. And then he remembered the saying of Jesus, that if you are going to pray and you do not feel good about a friend or a brother, then first go and ask for forgiveness.
He ran out of the chapel, went to see the friend, apologized and told him the whole story.
<I have been working for whole days, but I can not bring to light the face of Jesus as it should be. He remains in some anger,> because there was some anger inside him. And if there is anger and feelings of grievance, and you are going to paint, your hands will paint: your painting will represent you, your painting will basically reflect you. And the day he apologized and was forgiven, he arrived in a completely different mood. And in a few minutes of work the painting finished. And it is one of the most beautiful paintings of Jesus. Only a few touches and the painting came to life and Jesus appeared, because Michelangelo's heart was in harmony.

The Tao can be shared. But then you have to learn the ways to share it with the teacher, and you have to be very careful with many things. In a way it is very simple and yet also very complex, simple because if you are really receptive and in harmony it can happen in a single fraction of a second, complex, because you will have to change your little habits, of which you are not conscious at all. You will have to change your whole life

That's why I say that I have nothing to offer you in terms of teaching; I have energy to impart as a provocation. I do not give you a philosophy system, a theology, I give to myself. It is a challenge. My effort here is for you to wake up. You will have to be receptive, measured, and you will have to be careful with the little things in your life. And breathing is the most important thing. You will have to learn how to breathe in satsang, how to breathe when you are in the company of a teacher, how to breathe when you are in love
The breathing changes continuously with your emotions. When you are angry, your breathing is unbalanced, asymmetric. When you are full of sexual desire, your breathing is almost crazy. When you are calm and calm, happy, your breathing has a musical quality: your breathing is almost a song. When you feel at home in existence, when you have no desires and you feel happy, suddenly the breathing almost stops.
When you are in a state of awe, amazement, breathing stops for a moment. And those are the great moments of life, because only in those moments when breathing almost stops are they in absolute harmony with existence: You are in God and God is in you.

Your experience of breathing has to be deeper and deeper, scrutinized, observed, watched, analyzed. Notice how your breathing changes with your emotions, and vice versa, how your emotions change with your breathing.
For example, when you are afraid, watch the change in your breathing, and then one day try to change your breathing at the same pace you had when you felt fear. And you will be surprised to notice that if you change your breathing so that it is exactly the same fear will arise in you, you will have the same mental state. Observe your breath when you are deeply in love with someone, by holding your hand, by embracing the beloved, observe your breathing. And then one day, when you are sitting silently under a tree, observe yourself again breathing in the same way. Create the rhythm, go back into the Gestalt itself, breathe in the same way you had when you were with the person you loved and you will be surprised: the whole existence becomes your beloved, a lot of love reappears in you. Both things go together.
That is why in Yoga, in Tantra, in Tao, in the three great systems of human consciousness and the science of the expansion of human consciousness, breathing is one of the key phenomena. All these systems work with breathing.