Zen Is for Nobodies

Individual Talk

From:This. This. A Thousand Times This: The Very Essence of Zen

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"Maneesha, it will be very difficult to understand this small anecdote without going back twenty-five centuries to Gautam Buddha and Mahakashyapa.
"It must have been an assembly like this – utterly silent and waiting for..."
"Maneesha, it will be very difficult to understand this small anecdote without going back twenty-five centuries to Gautam Buddha and Mahakashyapa.
"It must have been an assembly like this – utterly silent and waiting for..."

Osho continues:
"It was such an extraordinary event because Buddha had never come the way he came that day. He had always come with empty hands. Holding a beautiful roseflower… Everybody must have thought – if you had been present you would have thought – 'Perhaps he is going to say something about the rose.'

"But he was not a poet. He was not a painter. What could he say about the rose? And he did not talk either. He simply sat in his place and went on looking at the roseflower, making everybody almost crazy. What has happened to him? This is the time to speak to the commune and he is looking at the roseflower without even uttering a single word. There is a point of waiting… People became very impatient. One could feel the impatience all around.

"At this moment, Mahakashyapa, who had never spoken a word before nor after, laughed loudly. He had been a disciple of Gautam Buddha for twenty years. He had never asked a question. He used to sit under a special tree; it had almost become his monopoly. Nobody ever sat under that tree. Everybody knew: 'Mahakashyapa will be coming, his place has to be left.'

"But his place was very strange. He was a prince before he renounced his kingdom – just like Gautam Buddha – well educated and cultured in all the ways of religion and philosophy. But it is strange that for twenty years he had been just sitting there, not asking even a single question.

"And suddenly today, when everybody is impatiently waiting for Buddha to speak, this strange fellow Mahakashyapa starts laughing. He had not even laughed for twenty years.

"This incident is the beginning of a very special branch of mystics called Zen.

"Mahakashyapa was called by Gautam Buddha to come close to him. Buddha offered the roseflower to him and the sermon was over.

"Without a single word being uttered, something was transferred; something as beautiful as a roseflower can represent – invisible, perhaps, like the fragrance of a rose. Mahakashyapa bowed down, touched his feet, took the rose on his head and went back to his tree. And the whole audience of ten thousand monks simply watched this drama."
More Information
Publisher Osho International
Duration of Talk 81 mins
File Size 20.32 MB
Type Individual Talks