Osho Talks on Zen

Science nor Religion can answer the really Big Questions of Life.
These questions are for example: What is Life? What is Death? What is the Nature of Religion?

In next section Osho explains the Four Ways ‘life of Man’ is Approached :

Man is a crossroads, where four ways meet. The First way is that of matter. The atheist takes that road, the scientist takes that road: “Man is nothing but matter.” And almost half of the world today is on that path, because communism does not believe in anything else but matter – mind is only an epiphenomenon. Epiphenomenon means just a shadow: when the man disappears, the shadow disappears. There is nothing beyond death, and there is nothing before birth. The Second road defines man as a duality between matter and mind. Most of the philosophers of the world have chosen that definition because it seems completely rational. All that we know about man is that his body consists of matter, and we know that he has thoughts which are not material. These things can be observed from outside. Hence, man is basically matter with an addition of a shadow that is his mind. As the body dies, mind also dies. On this path also, life extends only between birth and death. The Third possibility, which has been accepted by all religions, is that man is not just matter or just mind; he is also a soul. Matter is his outer expression, soul is his inner expression, and mind functions as a bridge between the two. On the third path there is a possibility of a life beyond death. The people who have accepted it have created on this foundation the idea of reincarnation: birth after birth, one changes houses but the essential soul remains.

Zen has a Fourth standpoint. Man is not matter, although he is covered with matter. He is not mind, although he is covered with mind. Nor is he an individual soul. He is a pure nothingness. Man, from this fourth standpoint, which is the standpoint of Zen, is almost like an onion. You go on peeling it, one layer after another layer, hoping that you are going to find something. Finally, when you have peeled all the layers off, your hands are full of emptiness; nothing is left. The onion was only layers and layers and layers and layers. Behind those layers was emptiness, nothingness, which will not be visible to the eyes, which will not be tangible to the hands. 

Availability of  Zen: The Miracle

The Osho Book Zen: The Miracle is available on Amazon.in

Osho About The Authentic Master

An authentic master is going to emphasize in thousands of ways that you are your own savior. In fact this should be the criterion of whether the master is true or a fraud. If he says, “I am going to save you,” he is a fraud, because he is keeping you away from yourself; he is preventing you from discovering your Buddhahood; he is putting himself above you – superior, savior, messenger, God’s son, God’s incarnation. And you? You are just poor animals, just monkeys who have accidentally fallen from the trees and in falling have lost their tails.

This was a very great problem for Charles Darwin. When he proposed his thesis that man is a descendant of the apes, the question was necessarily asked, “Where is man’s tail?” But fortunately or unfortunately, there is a place in your backbone which shows that there used to be something attached which is now missing. A monkey without a tail is impossible; the tail is his glory. But Darwin found on skeletons the place where the tail must have been attached, otherwise why is this place left there? Something is missing.

Structure of the discourses: Joke and No Mind meditation

Each lecture of this series contains one of more Jokes. They mostly are the lead in for the well known No Mind meditation Osho offers to the seekers. This meditation makes the way free for any participant to slowly their Buddhahood. 
We are all Buddha’s, as Osho emphasizes again and again, only we have to strengthen our confidence in it.

Also Haikus in this book Zen: The Miracle

which Osho explains, because they are so compact. 

HAIKU OF BASHO:

“HARVEST MOON

AROUND THE POND I WANDER

AND THE NIGHT IS GONE”

“Have you even seen night going? Very few people even become aware of things which are happening every day. Have you ever seen the evening coming? The midnight and its song? The sunrise and its beauty? We are behaving almost like blind people. In such a beautiful world we are living in small ponds of our own misery. It is familiar, so even if somebody wants to pull you out, you struggle. You don’t want to be pulled out of your misery, of your suffering. Otherwise there is so much joy all around, you have just to be aware of it and to become a participant, not a spectator.

Philosophy is speculation, Zen is participation. Participate in the night leaving, participate in the evening coming, participate in the stars and participate in the clouds; make participation your lifestyle and the whole existence becomes such a joy, such an ecstasy. You could not have dreamt of a better universe.” Osho