The mind is very ordinary, mundane. It is useful for day-to-day work; its function is in the outside world. In the inner world it is absolutely useless. Those who want to know their inner being have to go beyond mind.
They have to leave the mind behind.
That is the whole process of meditation.
One word TATHAGATA has to be understood. The translator could not find any word to translate it; perhaps he could not even understand the meaning of the word because in the West and in Western languages, no parallel word exists. Tathagata is specifically a Buddhist term.
Gautam Buddha preached the philosophy of TATHATA and tathata is very close to the word `suchness.' Whatever happens, Buddha says, such is the nature of things. There is no need to be happy, there is no need to be miserable, there is no need to be affected at all by anything that happens.
Birth happens, death happens, but you have to remain in a suchness, remembering that this is how life functions.
This is the way of life.
You cannot do anything against it.
Just as rivers move towards the ocean, that is their suchness. Just as fire is hot, that is its suchness. Suchness is our self-nature.
So whatever happens …somebody comes and insults Gautam Buddha, abuses him. He listens silently and when asked by his disciples, when the man went, "Why did you remain silent?" Buddha said, "That was his suchness, that was his way of behaving. It was my suchness to remain silent. I'm not holier than that man, I'm not higher than that man, just our suchness is different, our natures differ."
The word tathata is of great profundity. A man who understands what tathata is becomes undisturbed in every situation; nothing can disturb him, he becomes unperturbable. And TATHAGAT means one who has been living moment-to-moment in tathata. Tathagat is one of the most beautiful words possible in any language: one who lives simply according to his nature without being bothered about other people's nature.
Gautam Buddha used to say, "Once I was passing through a forest, and a branch of a tree fell on me. What do you think? Should I beat that branch of the tree because it hurt me, it wounded me?" The person to whom he was talking said, "There is no question of beating the branch; it had no desire to hurt you, it had no desire to fall on you. It was just a natural accident that you happened to be under the tree when the branch fell."
Buddha said, "If somebody insults me, that is also the same. I simply happened to be there and that man was full of anger. If I had not been there he would have been angry with somebody else. It was his nature; he was following his nature. I followed my nature."
And to be in tune with your nature, you certainly become impenetrable, unperturbable. You become so crystallized in yourself that nothing can disturb you.
OSHO
