BELOVED OSHO
THE MORE YEARS I AM WITH YOU, THE LESS I KNOW WHO I AM. AM I MISSING YOU ?
This is the way of getting me, and this is the way of getting yourself too.
You are not missing anything, but the mind will again and again raise the question, because mind needs information — more information means you are getting it, you are becoming more knowledgeable.
Here, we are not concerned with information at all. My work is transformation.
The less information you have the better, because the more innocent you are. The moment you can say, “I know nothing” you have come very close. Remember, I am saying you have come very close; you have not got it yet- because to say “I know nothing” means at least you know this much, that you know nothing; there is still some information.
Let me tell you one beautiful story. I have loved many stories, but this is something that beats them all.
One of the greatest mystics India has produced was Bodhidharma. He was born fourteen hundred years ago. He went to China for a strange reason. When asked why he was going to China he said, “Because in India people know too much, and I need people who are innocent.”
In China, he worked for twenty years. Now he was very old, nearabout ninety years. And he said, “It is time for me to go back to the Himalayas, because there is no other place in the whole world which is better as far as death is concerned- so silent, so eternally silent that you can receive death lovingly, meditatively, consciously. But before I go, I would like to give the mystery school that I have created in these twenty years to one of my disciples. So those who feel that they are capable of running my school should stand up.”
He had hundreds of disciples. Only five persons stood up.
He laughed. He said, “You are the ones who have missed me, so just get out of the school and get lost.”
Then he went through the crowd of disciples, looking into each disciple’s eyes, and he found four persons. He brought them out and he said, “I am going to ask a single question. The answer is going to decide who will be my representative when I am gone. What is the essence of my whole mystic approach? Just use the minimum of words.”
The first man said, “It is meditation.”
Bodhidharma said, “You have my skin. You have penetrated me only skin deep. Just get back to your seat.”
And he asked the second man, “What is your answer?”
The second man said, “Enlightenment.”
Bodhidharma said, “You have my bones; just get back to your place.”
The third man said, “Master, I do not know.”
Bodhidharma said, ‘You have my very marrow. It is good, but not good enough; you still know something. Just go and sit down.”
He looked at the fourth man. The man had just tears in his eyes, no words. He fell at the feet of Bodhidharma. Bodhidharma said, “You have been chosen, you will represent me. You have my being.
You have got it — what they cannot say with words, you have said by your silence. What they cannot say… although one of them came very close when he said, ‘I do not know,’ deep inside himself he was full of the pride of not knowing, he was full of knowing that ‘I don’t know.’ What he could not say, you managed to say loudly with your tears.”
This man became the second patriarch of Zen Buddhism.
Bodhidharma, before leaving, advised him, “Take care. I have created so many enemies who would like to kill you. Those five who were the most knowledgeable scholars will take revenge. These three that have been rejected will turn sour against you. Protect — because I am giving you my very heart.”
The more you come closer to me the less you will know. One day you will come closest, when you feel “I do not know.” But even to be closest is as far away as the farthest star, because closeness — even the closest point — is a distant phenomenon.
The day you have become one, only then… but then there are no words left. Just gratitude, tears, a song, a dance — things which are thought crazy in the world of the intellect, but which are the only possible ways to express the inexpressible.
OSHO
from : The Osho Upanishad Ch. 26
