No Water No Moon: Talks on Zen Stories

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Osho uses these Zen stories to illustrate that holding onto the unessen- tial is the barrier to our inner nature; losing needless attachments is a way to realization.

In the title story, the nun Chiyono is carrying a pail of water and gazing at the reflection of the moon in the water. The pail starts to fall apart. She tries desperately to hold it together but fails. The water pours out, and the reflection of the moon disappears. As the bucket falls apart, so do her mental constructs, and she realizes her inner self.

These Zen stories on the surface seem absurd, but the meaning of Zen cannot be stated in words; it can only be implied by parable. Osho employs these parables to elucidate the foibles of common thinking and to suggest ways to become aware of who we really are.

Osho's unique contribution to the understanding of who we are defies categorization. Mystic and scientist, a rebellious spirit whose sole interest is to alert humanity to the urgent need to dis- cover a new way of living. To continue as before is to invite threats to our very survival on this unique and beautiful planet.

His essential point is that only by changing ourselves, one individual at a time, can the outcome of all our "selves" - our societies, our cultures, our beliefs, our world - also change. The doorway to that change is meditation.

Osho the scientist has experimented and scrutinized all the approaches of the past and examined their effects on the modern human being and responded to their shortcomings by creating a new starting point for the hyperactive 21" Century mind: OSHO Active Meditations.

Once the agitation of a modern lifetime has started to settle. "activity" can melt into "passivity," a key starting point of real meditation. To support this next step, Osho has transformed the ancient "art of listening" into a subtle contemporary method- ology: the OSHO Talks. Here words become music, the listener discovers who is listening, and the awareness moves from what is being heard to the individual doing the listening. Magically, as silence arises, what needs to be heard is understood directly, free from the distraction of a mind that can only interrupt and interfere with this delicate process.

The Western intelligentsia have become acquainted with Zen, have also fallen in love with Zen, but they are still trying to approach Zen from the mind. They have not yet come to the understanding that Zen has nothing to do with mind.

Its tremendous job is to get you out of the prison of mind. It is not an intellectual philosophy; it is not a philosophy at all. Nor is it a religion, because it has no fictions and no lies, no consolations. It is a lion's roar. And the greatest thing that Zen has brought into the world is freedom from oneself.

All the religions have been talking about dropping your ego- but it is a very weird phenomenon: they want you to drop your ego, and the ego is just a shadow of God. God is the ego of the universe, and the ego is your personality. Just as God is the very center of existence according to religions, your ego is the center of your.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages