ZenZestZipZapandZing.doc

Zen: Zest, Zip, Zap and ZingTalks given from 27/12/80 am to 10/01/81 amEnglish Discourse series15 ChaptersYear published: 1981Zen: Zest, Zip, Zap and ZingChapter #1Chapter title: Zen: The Koan of Life27 December 1980 am in Buddha Hall Archive code: 8012270 ShortTitle: ZZZZZ01 Audio: Yes Video: NoThe first questionQuestion 1OSHO,DO YOU REALLY THINK ZEN IS FULL OF ZEST, ZIP, ZAP AND ZING?Samadhi,Zen is not a religion, it is living life in its totality, herenow. Religions are always postponing life: they are giving you beautiful illusions about life somewhere in the future, far away, beyond death. That is a strategy to divert and distract you from the realities of life. That is pure cowardice. It is also a rationalization so that you can be consoled: 'If life is miserable today there is nothing to be worried about, tomorrow everything is going to be well. In fact, to suffer life today is a preparation for enjoying life tomorrow, so the more you suffer the better. There is no reason to complain, no reason to rebel, no reason to revolt against all those things which are causing misery.'Religion protects the establishment and the vested interests. It is a very subtle strategy -- so subtle that for thousands of years man has lived under its weight without ever becoming aware of what is being done to him. Karl Marx is almost right: that religion is nothing but opium for the people. It keeps you drugged, it keeps you hoping, waiting -- and the tomorrow never comes. Desiring, fantasizing about life after death is a sheer waste of time, energy, and also it keeps you stupid. Life is herenow -- there is no other life. Life knows no past, no future, it knows only the present.Zen is of tremendous importance. It is the greatest flowering of human consciousness yet achieved and it is one of the fundamental revolutions: it cuts the very roots of the so-called religious structure of the mind. It is not religion, it is pure religiousness. It is not religion in the sense of being Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Buddhist. Hence to call Zen 'Zen Buddhism' is wrong: it has nothing to do with Buddhism at all. It is not oriented in the past, it is not inspired by the past -- it has no goal in the future either -- it is living your life passionately, intensely, ecstatically this very moment.The very idea of this very moment is shattering to the mind because mind lives in the past and the future. And Zen is a tremendous blow to the mind: it cuts it in a single blow, it destroys it, it takes you beyond immediately. Zen is a device of sudden enlightenment.Mind wants to be slow, gradual, it wants to move carefully, cautiously, guardedly, thinking about the pros and cons. Zen is a jump into the very thick of life. And life surrounds you within and without. Just as a fish is in the ocean you are in life. Don't wait for the next moment, live it now. Zen is a challenge, a risk, a gamble: putting everything at stake for the moment.The religious people cannot understand it -- I mean the so-called religious. And the world is full of them: there are Christians, and there are Hindus, Mohammedans, Jews, Buddhists, and Jainas -- these people cannot understand Zen at all. Unless you get rid of all these ideologies you will not understand what Zen is.Zen is not an ideology, it is not a philosophy, it is living in an existential way, not in an intellectual way. Zen is not concerned with words, concepts, theories, hypotheses, assumptions, beliefs, its total concern is with the immediate reality. The reality has to be encountered without any barrier. Unless your whole mind is put aside you cannot understand Zen.Samadhi, it certainly is full of zest, zip, zap and zing.James Broughton has said: 'Zen is another word for Zest. For zip and zap and zing. If you have no appetite for life as it is, and are not excited by the koan of what this here life is about, then Zen is not for you.'What I am doing here is pure Zen. I am helping you to get rid of your mind.Mind has many characteristics, many aspects. And each religion has chosen one aspect of the mind and made much fuss about it, has dragged that aspect to its ultimate, logical conclusion. This is something to be very deeply understood because it is fundamental for the understanding of the Zen approach.Ordinarily you think somebody is a Mohammedan and somebody is a Hindu and somebody is a Jaina. That's not really true. Every human being in his unconsciousness carries all these characteristics within him: he is a Hindu, he is a Mohammedan, he is a Christian, he is a Jaina, he is a Jew, he is a Buddhist. Of course, if he is born into a Buddhist family then the Buddhist aspect surfaces, becomes too big, too overwhelming, and the other aspects of the mind are repressed, are covered up. If he is born into a Mohammedan family another aspect of the mind becomes prominent. But the others are always present there, and they go on working from yo。