Buddhism: The Heart Sutra

Excerpts from the discourses given by Osho

Knowledge is the curse, the calamity, the cancer. It is through knowledge that man becomes divided from the whole. Knowledge creates the distance.

To understand this is to understand much. To understand that knowledge divides, knowledge creates distance, is to understand the very secret of meditation.

Meditation is a state of not knowing. It is pure space, undisturbed by knowledge.

The biblical story is true - that man has fallen through knowledge, by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. That parable is the last word. No other parable has reached to that height and insight.

It looks so illogical that man has fallen through knowledge. It looks illogical because logic is part of knowledge. Logic is all in support of knowledge.

Knowledge creates "I" and "thou", subject and object, the knower and the known, the observer and the observed.

[Relative] reality is what you have created around yourself - projecting, desiring, thinking. It is your interpretation of truth.

Truth is simply that which is. [Relative] reality is that which you have come to know - it is your idea of truth.

[Relative] reality consists of things, separate. Truth consists of only one cosmic energy. Truth consists of oneness. [Relative] reality consists of many-ness.

Knowledge must be negated. It is not negated by replacing knowledge with other knowledge.

Just seeing into the fact that knowledge creates distance, seeing into it intensely and totally, is enough. Not that you have to replace it with something else.

That intensity is fire, it will reduce your knowledge to ashes. That intensity is enough. That intensity is what is called "insight".

Insight will burn your knowledge and it will not be replaced by other knowledge. Then there is emptiness, shunyata. There is no content; there is undisturbed, undistorted truth.

When I am saying knowledge is a curse, you can agree or disagree - and you have missed insight. Just listen to it, just see into it, go into the whole process of knowledge.

See how knowledge creates distance, how it creates a barrier, how innocence is lost through knowledge, how wonder is crippled, destroyed, murdered through knowledge.

See how life becomes a dull and boring affair through knowledge. Mystery is lost, and with the mystery, God is lost.

Mystery disappears because you start having the idea that you know. Mystery is possible only when you don't know.

All the knowledge man has gathered is just rubbish. The ultimate remains beyond the grasp of knowledge. What we have gathered are just facts, truth remains untouched by our efforts.

The intelligent mind remains above knowledge. The intelligent mind uses it - it is useful, it is utilitarian, but knows perfectly well all that is true is hidden, remains hidden.

Thought can not operate in truth, but truth can operate through thoughts. You can not attain truth by thinking, but when you have attained it you can use thinking in its service.

What I am saying is a thought, but behind this thought is emptiness. That emptiness has not been produced by thought, that emptiness is beyond thought.

You can not think about emptiness, it is unthinkable. If you can think about it, it will not be emptiness at all.

Thought has to go for emptiness to come; they never meet. Once emptiness has come, it can use all kinds of devices to express itself.

Insight is a state of non-thinking, of no-thought. It is a gap, an interval in the process of thought, and in that gap is the glimpse, the truth.

An empty mind is pure presence, and all is possible in that pure presence, because the whole existence comes out of that pure presence.

The trees grow out of that pure presence, the stars are born out of that pure presence; we are here - all the Buddhas have come out of this pure presence.

In that pure presence you are in God, you are God.

When the mind is not occupied by [relative] reality, by things, by thoughts, then there is that which "is". That which "is" is the truth.

There are three states of mind. The first is content and consciousness. You always have contents in the mind - a thought moving, a desire arising, anger, greed, ambition. The mind is never unoccupied.

The [thought] traffic goes on, day in, day out. While awake you call it thinking, while asleep you call it dreaming.

The second state of mind is consciousness without content; that's what meditation is. You are fully alert, and there is a gap, an interval. No thought is encountered. You are not asleep, you are awake - but there is no thought.

Then there is the third sate. When the content has disappeared, the object has disappeared, the subject can not remain for long - because they exist together. They produced each other.

Without the content, the consciousness can not be there long; it will not be needed, because a consciousness is always a consciousness about something. That object is needed, it is a must for the subject to exist.

Once the object has disappeared, soon the subject will also disappear. First goes the contents, then the consciousness disappears.

The third state is called samadhi. - no content, no consciousness.

Samadhi is not a state of unconsciousness, it is a state of transcendental super-consciousness. It is consciousness turned upon itself; the circle is complete. You have come home.

This third state is what the Buddha means by shunyata.

First drop the content - you become half-empty. Then drop the consciousness - you become fully-empty; this full-emptiness is the most beautiful thing that can happen, the greatest benediction.

When Sariputra had come to Buddha for the first time, he had come to argue, debate with and defeat Buddha.

When he has come with his five thousand disciples - to impress. When he stood before Buddha, Buddha laughed.

The Buddha said to him, "Sariputra, you know much, but you do not know at all. I can see you have accumulated great knowledge, but you are empty."

"You have come to discuss, debate, and defeat me, but if you really want to discuss with me, you will have to wait at least one year."

Sariputra said, "One year? For what?"

Buddha said, "You will have to remain silent for one year; that will be the price to be paid. If you can remain silent or one year, then you can discuss with me, because what I am going to say to you will come out of silence."

This was strange. Sariputra had been traveling all over the country, defeating people. That was one of the tings in India: knowledgeable people would travel all over the country and defeat others in great debates.

That was thought to be one of the greatest things to do. If somebody had become victorious and had defeated all the scholars, that was a great ego satisfaction. That man was thought to be bigger than kings, emperors.

Sariputra was traveling,  and naturally you can not declare yourself the victorious one if you have not defeated Buddha. So he had come for that. So he said, "OK, If I have to wait for one year, I will wait."

For one year he was sitting there in silence with the Buddha. In one year the silence settled him.

After one year the Buddha said, "Now we can discuss and you can defeat me, Sariputra. I will be immensely happy to be defeated by you."

Sariputra laughed, touched Buddha's feet, and said, "Initiate me. In this one years silence, listening to you, there have been a few moments when the insight has happened to me."

"Although I had come as an antagonist, I thought, 'While I am here for one year, why not listen to this man, to what he is saying?' So out of curiosity I started listening."

"But sometimes those moments came and you penetrated me, and you touched my heart, and you played in my inner organ. and I have heard the music. You have defeated me without defeating me."

Sariputra became Buddha's disciple, and his five thousand disciples also became Buddha's disciples.

The whole Buddhist approach depends on this: That the manifest is the unmanifest; that form is nothing but the form of emptiness itself. and the emptiness is also nothing but the form, the possibility of the form.

The statement is illogical and obviously appears to be nonsense. How can form be emptiness, they are opposites. How can emptiness be form? They are polarities.

One thing has to be understood before we can proceed. The Buddha is not logical. He is dialectical.

God is dialectical. Everywhere, opposites are meeting. In you birth and death are meeting. Day and night, summer and winter, all opposites are meeting and a higher synthesis evolves. This is how life moves.

Thus Buddha's approach is dialectical, more existential, more true, and more valid than logic.

Buddha says all dharmas are full of emptiness. That nothing exists at everything's core: that nothingness exists in a tree, nothingness exists in a rock, nothingness exists in a star.

Now scientists will agree: They say that when a star collapses it becomes a black hole, nothingness, but that nothingness is not nothing. It is immensely powerful, it is very full, overflowing.

A star exists for millions and trillions of years, but one day it has to die. Everything that is born has to die.

The same happens to everything. Man is a miniature of the whole existence. What happens to man happens to the whole existence on a bigger scale,  that is all.

Every night you disappear into nothingness, every morning you come into form. Form, no form, form, no form, this is how life moves, these are the two steps.

Nobody is producing form, nobody is stopping form. Accept it. It is so. It is in the nature of things. it is just natural, things come and go.

In this acceptance, in this suchness, all worries disappear. Then there is no problem.

Be.. in that being there is silence, in that being there is joy, in that being there is freedom.

This existence is neither impure nor pure. There is nobody who is a sinner, and nobody who is a saint.

It is all mind games that we play around, and we create the idea of purity - and then comes impurity. We create the idea of a saint - and then in comes the sinner.

You want sinners to disappear? They can only go when your saint have disappeared, not before that. You want immorality to disappear? - then morality must go.

Good and bad are created by thought. It is thought alone that makes distinctions. When knowledge disappears, thought disappears.

Negate the mind and there is silence - and in that silence you are divine. You have never been anything else, you have always been that.

Negate knowledge and be - and you are a Buddha, and you have always been a Buddha.

This nothingness is what the Buddha calls nirvana. First we have to understand what nothingness actually is, because it is not just empty, it is full, it is overflowing.

Never for a single moment think that nothingness a negative state, an absence, no. Nothingness is simply no-thing-ness. Things disappear, only the ultimate substance remains.

Form disappears, only the formless remains. Definitions disappear, only the undefined remains.

So nothingness is not as if there is nothing, it simply means there is no possibility of defining what is there.

Nothingness can be achieved only when there are no thought-clouds in you. When you say "I am such and such" you are getting caught by a cloud. This is the state of the mind. The mind is constantly clouded.

You are becoming identified by a thought-cloud. No book should be your bible. No Veda should ever define you, no Gita should confine you. You should not allow any philosophy, theology, dogma, theory, hypothesis to overcrowd you.

All knowledge creates projections. Knowledge is a bias, a prejudice. Knowledge is a conclusion - you have concluded before even having gone into it.

For example: If you come to me with a conclusion in your mind - it may be against me, it may be for me, that doesn't matter - you come to me with a cloud. Then you will go on looking at me through your cloud.

Naturally your cloud will throw shadows on me. If you come to me with the idea "This is the right man," then you will find something which goes on supporting your idea.

If you come to me with the idea "This is the wrong man, dangerous, and evil," then you will go on finding something which supports your idea.

Whatsoever idea you bring is self-perpetuating, it goes on finding proofs for itself. A man who comes with a prejudice will go with his prejudice strengthened. In fact, he has never come to me.

If you want to know the truth you will have to drop all kinds of knowledge you have gathered through the ages. Knowledge blinds you. Knowledge is a great illusion.

Nothingness means a state of not knowing, a state where no cloud floats in your consciousness. When your consciousness is unclouded, then you are nothing.

"Nothing" goes perfectly well with truth - ONLY nothing goes perfectly well with truth.

Knowledge can not contain the mystery of being; knowledge is against the mysterious. The mysterious is that which is not known.

Knowledge is mediocre, borrowed, never authentic, never original. To know truth you need an insight, original insight.

All knowledge is a map, don't start worshiping a map. Don't start creating a temple around the map. That is how temples have been created. One for the Vedas. Another for the Bible. Another for the Koran. These are maps!

Nothingness can know truth because in nothingness intelligence functions totally. ONLY in nothingness does intelligence function totally.

The Buddha says: Nothingness allows intelligence to function.

The word buddha comes from the word buddhi - it means intelligence. When you are nothing, when nothing confines you, defines you, contains you, when you are just an openness, then there is intelligence.

When you are nothing, fear disappears, and when fear disappears, you function intelligently. If fear is there you can not function intelligently. Fear cripples you, paralyzes you.

Out of fear there is no possibility of intelligence. Fear is there for a very fundamental reason - because you think you are!

The Ego brings fear as a shadow. The ego itself is illusory, but the illusion casts a big shadow on your life.

To live without fear you will have to come to see into the fact of your ego. If there is no ego, if "I am not", then where can fear exist?

An intelligent person living without fear, He is aware, "I can not be thrown into hell because 'I am not' in the first place, and I can not be rewarded in heaven because 'I am not' in the first place...

...I am not. Only God is, so how can I be a sinner or a saint? If only God is then what is there for me to fear? I am not born because 'I am not' in the first place. I will not be dying because 'I am not' in the first place...

...So there is no birth, no death. I am not separate, I am one with this existence. As a wave I may disappear, but as the ocean I will live. The ocean is reality, the wave is just arbitrary."

There are seven doors where the go enters in, seven doors from where we learn the ego.

The first door is 'the bodily self', which is the result of distinguishing between something 'in me' and something 'outside me'.

The second door is self-identity, the belief that the sense of 'me' or self persists in the face of changing experiences.

The third door is self-esteem, which is concerned with the feeling of pride resulting from learning to do things.

The fourth door is self-extension, belonging, possession, my house, my mother, my school, the increasing of the field of 'mine'.

The fifth door is self-image, referring to how a person sees himself, which is most often based on external input.

The sixth is self as reason. Reason, logic, argument. Learning to solve problems. Reason becomes the great support to the ego - that is why people argue.