Tarot in the Spirit of Zen

by Osho

  A person who lives in the present—neither bothering about the past nor bothering about the future—is fresh, young. He is neither a child nor an old man. And one can remain young to the very last breath. The body may be old but the consciousness remains fresh, just like a fresh breeze, cool, fragrant in the early morning sun.

  The whole problem is that we are caught up with our past. It is holding us back, it does not allow us to go against it. And if you don’t go against it, your whole life will be simply boredom, because you will be repeating and repeating the same past, the same routine.

  Time is still, just as space is still. It neither goes anywhere nor comes from anywhere. It is just our language that goes on saying that time is passing. In fact, we are passing; time stands still. Time is still; only the mind is moving.

  These tenses—past, present, and future—are not the tenses of time; they are tenses of the mind. That which is no longer in front of the mind becomes the past. That which is in front of the mind is the present. And that which is going to be in front of the mind is the future.

  Past is that which is no longer in front of you. Future is that which is not yet in front of you. And present is that which is in front of you and is slipping out of your sight. Soon it will be past.

  What is gone is gone!

  And don’t cling to the present, because that is also going and soon it will be past. Don’t cling to the future—hopes, imaginations, plans for tomorrow—because tomorrow will become today, will become yesterday. Everything is going to become yesterday.

  Everything is going to go out of your hands. Clinging will simply create misery.

  You will have to let go. You cannot manage to prevent the process of things moving out of your sight, so it is better just to watch, just to witness and let things be wherever they want—in the past, in the present, in the future. Don’t you be disturbed, because everything is going to fall into the past.

  Only one thing is going to remain with you: that is your witnessing, that is your watchfulness. This watchfulness is meditation.

  Mind is a clinger—it clings, it hoards, it possesses. In the name of memory it collects all the past. In the name of planning for the future it clings to hopes, desires, ambitions—and it suffers. Mind is continuously in tension, is continuously in anguish—always in a turmoil.

  Buddha has said: If you can just remain silent and a witness, every misery, every worry, every tension will disappear. And there will be a silence and a clarity that you had never even thought about.

  6 of Water: The Dream

  Deep down there are dreams and dreams and dreams. An undercurrent of dreaming goes on—and that undercurrent goes on corrupting our vision.

  Only when the dreaming mind has stopped is there truth. Why? Because the dreaming mind continuously projects and distorts that which is. If you look at a thing with desire, you never look at the thing as it is. Your desire starts playing games with you.

  A woman passes by, a beautiful woman, or a man passes by, a handsome man—suddenly there is desire: to possess her, to possess him. Then you cannot see the reality. Then your very desire creates a dream around the object. Then you start seeing the way you would like to see. Then you start projecting—the other becomes a screen and your deepest desires are projected. You start coloring the object; then you don’t see that which is. You start seeing visions, you start moving into fantasy.

  Of course, this fantasy is bound to be shattered. When the reality erupts, your dreaming mind will be shattered. It happens many times. You fall in love with a woman and then, one day, suddenly, the dream has disappeared. The woman does not look so beautiful as she used to look. You cannot believe how you were deceived into being with her. You start finding faults with the woman. You start finding rationalizations—as if she tricked you into it, as if she deceived you, as if she pretended to be beautiful when in fact she was not.

  Nobody is cheating you—nobody can cheat you except your own desiring and dreaming mind. You created the illusion. You never saw the reality of the woman. Sooner or later reality will win over.

  That’s how all love affairs are always on the rocks. And lovers become afraid, by and by, to see the reality—they avoid it. The wife avoids the husband, the husband avoids the wife. They don’t look directly at each other. They are afraid. They are already aware that the dream has disappeared. Now, don’t rock the boat. Now, avoid each other.

  Husbands stop seeing things that they used to see in their wives. Wives stop seeing things in their husbands that they used to see. What happens? The reality remains the same, only against the reality the dream cannot win forever. Sooner or later the dream is shattered. And that happens in all directions.

  Man continuously dreams about power, prestige, respectability. And whenever he gets it, there is frustration. The happiest people are those who never attain to their desires. The unhappiest people are those who have succeeded in attaining their desires—then there is frustration.

  The nature of desire is dreaming, and you can dream only when things are not there. You can dream about the neighbor’s wife—how can you dream about your own wife? Have you ever dreamt about your own wife? It never happens. You can dream about somebody else’s wife. He may be dreaming about your wife … .

  Whatever is far away looks beautiful. Come closer and things start changing. Reality is shattering.

  To be aware means not to dream, to be aware means to drop this unconscious sleep in which we live ordinarily. We are somnambulists, sleepwalkers. We go on living, but our living is superficial. Deep down there are dreams and dreams and dreams. An undercurrent of dreaming goes on—and that undercurrent goes on corrupting our vision. That undercurrent of dreaming goes on making our eyes cloudy. That undercurrent of dreams goes on making our heads muddled.

  A person who lives in a sort of sleep can never be intelligent—and awareness is the purest flame of intelligence. A person who lives in sleep becomes more and more stupid. If you live in stupor, you will become stupid, you will become dull.

  This dullness has to be destroyed. And it can be destroyed only by becoming more aware.

  Start contemplating in this way: if you are walking on the street, contemplate that people passing by are all dreams. The shops and the shopkeepers and the customers and the people coming and going, all are dreams. The houses, the buses, the train, the airplane, all are dreams.

  You will be immediately surprised by something of tremendous import happening within you. The moment you think, “All are dreams,” suddenly, like a flash, one thing comes into your vision: “I am a dream too.” Because if the seen is a dream, then who is this “I”? If the object is a dream, then the subject is also a dream. If the object is false, how can the subject be the truth? Impossible.

  If you watch everything as a dream, suddenly you will find something slipping out of your being: the idea of the ego. This is the only way to drop the ego, and the simplest. Just try it—meditate this way.

  Meditating this way again and again, one day the miracle happens: you look in, and the ego is not found there.

  The ego is a by-product, a by-product of the illusion that whatsoever you are seeing is true. If you think that objects are true, then the ego can exist; it is a by-product. If you think that objects are dreams, the ego disappears. And if you think continuously that all is a dream, then one day, in a dream in the night, you will be surprised: suddenly in the dream you will remember that this is a dream too! And immediately, as the remembrance happens, the dream will disappear. And for the first time you will experience yourself deep asleep, yet awake—a very paradoxical experience, but of great benefit.

  Once you have seen your dream disappearing because you have become aware of the dream, your quality of consciousness will have a new flavor to it. The next morning you will wake up with a totally different quality you had never known before. You will wake up for the first time. Now you will know that all those other mornings were false; you were not really awake. The dreams continued�
�the only difference was that in the night you were dreaming with eyes closed, in the day you were dreaming with eyes open.

  But if the dream has disappeared because awareness happened, suddenly you became aware in the dream … . And remember, awareness and dreaming cannot exist together. Here, awareness arises, and there, the dream disappears. When you become awake in your sleep, the next morning is going to be something so important that it is incomparable. Nothing like it has ever happened. Your eyes will be so clear, so transparent, and everything will look so psychedelic, so colorful, so alive. Even rocks will be felt to be breathing, pulsating; even rocks will have a heartbeat. When you are awake, the whole existence changes its quality.

  We are living in a dream. We are asleep, even when we think we are awake.

  7 of Water: Projections

  You never look at things as they are; you mix them with your illusions.

  And you are so afraid to look straight because you know, unconsciously, deep down somewhere, you know that things are not as you see them.

  You think if you look at the reality of things it will be too much, too heavy—you may not be able to stand it. You mix it with dreams just to make it a little sweeter. You think it is bitter so you coat it with sugar. You coat a person in dreams and you feel the person has become sweet? No, you are simply deceiving yourself, nobody else. Hence so much misery. It is out of your dreams that the misery has happened, and one has to be aware of this phenomenon. Don’t throw responsibility on the other, otherwise you will create other dreams. See that it is you who are projecting—but it is difficult to look.

  In a theater, in a cinema hall, you look at the screen, you never look at the back of the theater—the projector is at the back. The film is not there really on the screen; on the screen it is just a projection of shadow and light. The film exists just at the back, but you never look at that. The projector is there.

  Your mind is at the back of so many things, and the mind is the projector. But you always look at the other because the other is the screen. When you are in love the person seems beautiful, no comparison. When you hate, the same person seems to be the ugliest, and you never become aware of how the same person can be the ugliest and was the most beautiful.

  When you are in love, the person is a flower, a rose, a rose garden with no thorns. When you dislike, when you hate, the flowers disappear. There are only thorns, no more garden—the ugliest, the dirtiest, you would not like even to look. And you never become aware of what you are doing. How can roses disappear so soon, in a single minute? Not even a gap of a single minute is needed! This moment you are in love and the next moment you are in hate; the same person, the same screen, and the whole story changes.

  Just watch and you will be able to see that this person is not the point, you are projecting something. When you project love the person looks lovely, when you project hate the person looks ugly. The person doesn’t exist; you have not seen the real person at all.

  You cannot see the reality through the eyes of the mind. If you really want to know what the truth is, scriptures won’t help. Neither will going to the Himalayas be of any help. Only one thing can help and that is to start looking at things without the mind. Look at the flower and don’t allow the mind to say anything. Just look at it. It is difficult because of an old habit of interpreting.

  Mulla Nasruddin asked the court for a divorce. He said to the judge, “Now it is impossible. Every day I come back home and I find my wife is hiding some man or other in the closet.”

  Even the judge was shocked and he said, “Every day?”

  Nasruddin said, “Every day! And not the same person either—every day a new person.”

  Just to console Nasruddin the judge said, “Then you must be very hurt. You come home tired and you think the wife must be waiting for you, to receive and welcome you and be loving. And you come home and you find a new man is hiding in the closet every day!”

  Nasruddin said, “Yes, I feel very hurt—because I never have any space to hang my clothes.”

  It depends on the mind how you interpret things.

  So the only way to reach to truth is to learn to be immediate in your vision, to drop the help of the mind … . This agency of the mind is the problem, because mind can create only dreams. So what to do?

  Try in small things not to bring the mind in. You look at a flower— you simply look. You don’t say, “Beautiful! Ugly!” You don’t say anything. Don’t bring words in; don’t verbalize, simply look. The mind will feel uncomfortable, uneasy. The mind would like to say something. You simply say to the mind, “Be silent! Let me see. I will just look.”

  In the beginning it will be difficult, but start with things in which you are not too much involved. It will be difficult to look at your wife without bringing words in. You are too much involved, too much emotionally attached. Angry or in love, but too much involved.

  Look at things that are neutral—a rock, a flower, a tree, the sun rising, a bird in flight, a cloud moving in the sky. Just look at things with which you are not much involved, from which you can remain detached, to which you can remain indifferent. Start from neutral things and only then move towards emotionally loaded situations.

  By and by one becomes efficient. It is just like swimming: in the beginning you feel afraid and in the beginning you cannot believe that you will survive. And you have been working with the mind so long you cannot think that without the mind you can exist for a single moment. But try!

  And the more you put the mind aside, the more light will happen to you, because when there are no dreams, doors are open, windows are open, and the sky reaches to you, and the sun rises and it comes to the very heart, the light reaches you. You become more and more filled with truth as you are less and less filled with dreaming.

  8 of Water: Letting Go

  When the ocean has called you, trust it—take a jump and disappear into it.

  The essence of faith or trust is letting go. The fearful person can never let go. He is always on the defense, he is always protecting himself. He is always fighting, he is always antagonistic. Even his prayer, his meditation is nothing but a strategy to protect himself.

  The man of faith knows how to let go, the man of faith knows how to surrender. The man of faith knows how to flow with the river and not to push it. He goes with the stream wherever it takes him. He has that courage and confidence that he can go with the stream.

  A fearful person is incapable of surrender, although he thinks it is because he is so strong that he cannot surrender. Nobody likes to feel that he is weak; particularly the weaklings never like it. They don’t want to come to the realization that they are weak, that they are cowardly. They think they are very strong—they can’t surrender.

  My own observation is the stronger the person, the easier is the surrender. Only the strong man can surrender, because he trusts himself, he is confident of himself, he knows that he can let go. He is unafraid. He is ready to explore the unknown, he is ready to go into the uncharted; he is thrilled by the journey of the unknown. He wants to taste it, whatsoever the cost and whatsoever the risk. He wants to live in danger.

  A man of faith always lives in danger. Danger is his shelter, insecurity is his security, and a tremendous, inquiring quest is his only love. He wants to explore, he wants to go to the very end of existence, or to the very depth of existence, or to the very height of existence. He wants to know what it is—“What is it that surrounds me? What is it that I go on calling ‘I’? Who am I?”

  A strong person is ready to surrender. He knows that there is no need to fear. “I belong to existence, I am not a stranger here. Existence has mothered me, existence can’t be inimical to me. Existence has brought me here, I am a product of existence. Existence has some destiny to fulfill through me.”

  The strong person always feels that destiny is there: “I am here to do something that is needed by the existence and nobody else can do it except me, otherwise why should I be created?” So he is always ready to
go into the dark, to search, to seek.

  There are things that can be achieved through effort, but there are also things that can never be achieved through effort. The things that can be achieved through effort are always mundane—money, power, prestige; and the things that cannot be achieved through effort are always sublime—love, prayer, meditation, godliness, truth.

  All that is really significant always comes as grace. You have only to become capable of receiving it. You cannot achieve it, you can only receive it. You cannot make any positive effort toward it. Our hands are very small, our reach is not great, but we can wait—and we can wait with great expectancy, although without expectations. We can wait throbbing tremendously, pulsating. In that waiting the beyond penetrates, eternity penetrates into time; the sky comes to the earth.

  One has to learn how to wait. One has to learn how to be effortless, one has to learn how to be in a state of surrender. One has to learn how to be in a let-go. The greatest secret in life is the secret of let-go, of surrender, of trusting existence.

  All that is great always comes as a gift. Don’t strive for it, otherwise you will miss.