Apparently this riddle has been driving Zen monks crazy for the past several. The goose symbolizes your consciousness your free spirit your ultimate reality. The Goose Is Out: Zen in Action. There is a famous Zen story about a disciple, Riko, who once asked his master Nansen to explain to him the old Zen koan of the goose in the bottle. Namely, if a man puts a gosling into a bottle, and feeds the gosling through the bottle’s neck until it grows and becomes a goose – and then there is simply no more room.
There is a famous Zen story about a disciple, Riko, who once asked his master, Nansen, to explain to him the old Zen koan of the goose in the bottle. Namely, if a man puts a gosling into a bottle and feeds the gosling through the bottle's neck until it grows and becomes a goose - and then there is simply no more room inside the bottle - how can the man get it out without k There is a famous Zen story about a disciple, Riko, who once asked his master, Nansen, to explain to him the old Zen koan of the goose in the bottle. Namely, if a man puts a gosling into a bottle and feeds the gosling through the bottle's neck until it grows and becomes a goose - and then there is simply no more room inside the bottle - how can the man get it out without killing the goose or breaking the bottle?
In response, Nansen shouts, 'Riko!' And gives a great clap with his hands. Startled, Riko replies, 'Yes master!' And Nansen says, 'See!
The goose is out!' In this Zen-flavored series of responses to questions, the contemporary mystic, Osho, cuts through the mad complexity of the contemporary human mind and its self-created 'problems' with humor, compassion, and even an occasional shout and clap of his hands. The goose in the questioner's bottle may be a philosophical problem or an existential dilemma, a relationship drama or an emotional crisis - in each case, Osho's unique and transformational response sets the goose free, allowing us to rediscover the simple and innocent clarity each of us brings with us when we come into the world. From this space, problems are not solved but rather are dissolved: 'The goose is out.'
This is a beautiful audio series giving an experience of a mystic working with people who are searching for themselves. The days in the shadow of a big cypress, the nights under the luminous light of a white moon. There goes the goose giggling at us, but we someday shall giggle at her remembering that she was in the hands of a wrong company. Here comes the last evening star fading in mu cigarette.
Oh madame, there we are, Look the goose thinks that she is out. My hands are in your pocket.
But what matters? Whether my hand or my heart, in your pocket or in your heart. Because the goose is out.
Excerpts The days in the shadow of a big cypress, the nights under the luminous light of a white moon. There goes the goose giggling at us, but we someday shall giggle at her remembering that she was in the hands of a wrong company. Here comes the last evening star fading in mu cigarette. Oh madame, there we are, Look the goose thinks that she is out.
My hands are in your pocket. But what matters? Whether my hand or my heart, in your pocket or in your heart. Because the goose is out. Excerpts from a Korean drama. Rajneesh (born Chandra Mohan Jain, 11 December 1931 – 19 January 1990) and latter rebranded as Osho was leader of the Rajneesh movement. During his lifetime he was viewed as a controversial new religious movement leader and mystic.In the 1960s he traveled throughout India as a public speaker and was a vocal critic of socialism, Mahatma Gandhi, and Hindu religious orthodoxy.Rajneesh emphasized the Rajneesh (born Chandra Mohan Jain, 11 December 1931 – 19 January 1990) and latter rebranded as Osho was leader of the Rajneesh movement.
The Goose Is Free Zenith
Would you like to become a Buddha? It will be a wonderful experience, and how the neighbours will talk about you! There are two kinds of Buddhas so you can take your choice. One belongs to the Theravada school of Southern Buddhism where they tell of a Buddha who spent most of his enlightened years making rules and telling other people what to do.
Oddly enough. Before he became an enlightened Buddha. We are led to believe that he spent his life either silent or speaking very little. This could have been his most interesting period and more intimate details of his life and experience which led to his great realization could have been of much practical value to his followers.
But practically nothing is recorded of this period, only the latter part where we are overwhelmed by sermons. The other Buddha belongs to the Zen tradition and reveals a wiser man and one who had the wisdom to keep quiet. Zen does have scriptures passed on from ancient tradition, but they are from Mahayana sources, and thereby tactfully, have rejected the whole of the Pali Canon. Although Zen does have these scriptures, now translated from the original Sanskrit, none are accepted as being an authority or final word. The Buddha of Zen presents a different and wiser type. The Pali Canon relates that soon after the experience of Awakening (Bodhi), the Buddha rushed to the Deer Park near Varanasi to preach and convert his former associates.
Zen has a very different viewpoint and tells us the Buddha 'never said a word'. This must not be taken to imply the Buddha lived a life of complete silence but rather that Truth cannot be expressed in words. Thus the viewpoint of Zen must be that sermons and sutras can never in themselves express the final Truth. Zen had little regard for chronology or history and never tried to invent any. They tell a wonderful and beautiful story which serves to illustrate their viewpoint rather than as an event in history. The story is told that the Sage Gautama was sitting quietly beneath a tree surrounded by disciples, a curious public and odd sight-seers. Then suddenly a local panjandrum waddled into the scene, paid his respects, gave his dakshina or offering, and presented the Buddha with a beautiful yellow flower of golden hue.
Then, perhaps with a sincere desire for spiritual food or the mere intention to get something for his money, he begged the Sage Gautama to preach a sermon on the golden flower which he held in his hand. When the official was seated, all listened intensely for the sermon. The Buddha held up the flower so that all the audience could both see and gaze at it.
Gautama himself did precisely the same thing and sat silently gazing at the flower and smiled to the mystified mob to indicate the sermon was finished. But practically everyone betrayed a puzzled countenance and revealed their bewilderment. When-the glance of the Buddha fell on the face of Mahakashyapa, his leading disciple, their eyes met and they both smiled.
Then the Buddha knew that of all the congregation, only Kashyapa got the message. Zen calls this the transmission of mind to mind. Thus Zen dragged Buddhism out of the relative ruts into which it was rapidly sinking. The cult of Zen Buddhism first came to bloom in China and became known as Ch'an. It was the real Golden Flower and had grown on a spectacular plant which had its roots in the Tantra of the Hindus, Taoism and Buddhism of the Indian school of Mahayana. The Hindu roots are there, and most obvious, but seldom is any reference made because scholars, especially foreign scholars, who write most of the Zen books, have never yet studied the higher Upanishad teachings, and less so the Agamas of ancient India and the expressions of these which are found in the teaching of Sri Dattatreya.
So vivid are these relationships and so similar the. Fundamentals that it would not now appear odd if Bodhidharma, who is said to have taken the Dhyana cult to China, was proved to be a Hindu. He himself never claimed to be a Buddhist but it could easily have happened that the Chinese thought all monks or sadhus from India were all Buddhists. Prior to Bodhidharma, they had all been so.
Certainly the pattern of his visit to the Chinese court, his answers and general behaviour were not the usual pattern of a Buddhist of any' school. The story of Bodhidharma being the twenty- eighth Patriarch of Indian Buddhism is doubted even by the Zen people themselves and no Indian records of his period even mention him. Buddhism in India never did have an exclusively Dhyana school or cult but always existed in -mixed patterns.
Ch'an tradition tells us that he arrived in China about 520 A.D. Zen, however rises above all these things, because it is the living lamp which gives the light and not the burnt- out wick of tradition. Ch'an flourished in China for about 800 years and terminated as a monastic sect with its own Masters in the 13th century. In spite of its brilliance it reached a stage of weakness and became transformed into the very relativistic Pure Land school. Earlier it had spread into Tibet Korea and Japan and only in the latter country was it able to continue as two separate but related schools of Zen.
Its existence in Japan in the present day is well known but Ch'an in China never completely died. It continued with separate monks who had access to its vast literature, records and teachings. But nearly all Chinese schools began to merge and the late Patriarch was known by the title of Patriarch of the Five Schools. It also existed in Malaysia where a very fine monk had a temple in Kuala Lumpar and identified himself completely as a Ch'an monk. People have become somewhat conditioned to think of Buddhism as an atheistic religion. In some schools this could be so, but the interesting feature of early Ch'an is that the Patriarchs and Masters so rarely used the word Buddha or Buddhism.
Instead, we find them talking and thinking in terms of the Tao and the Supreme Reality. Lao Tzu was generally the most quoted, not by name, but by the teachings he had expounded in the Tao Teh Ching. The Meditation Master Fa-Y ung tells us: 'No-thought is the Abso lute Reality'. He correctly used the term Ultimate Essence.
For the Sanskrit word Sunyata, though it later degenerated into being regarded as 'nothingne ss' or 'void'. He also used the term of one's 'Original Nature' to mean this 'Ultimate Essence', but it too became changed, in time, to 'Buddha's Nature'. The oldest Zen poem, by Seng-Ts'an, the Third Patriarch begins with the words 'The Perfect Tao is without difficulty', and 'Follow your nature and accord with the Tao'. The early period of Ch'an was much neglected by the recorders, but having become more Buddha.conditioned, they might have neglected what was obviously Ch'an's earlier Tao period. As time passed, the Tao of Supreme Substance was thought of as Nothingness - a void. Perhaps rivalry with the existing Taoist religion may have had something to do with the change.
The Goose Is Out
Zen values are infinite. It helps one to better understand Yoga Vidya, and Yoga Vidya helps one to better understand Zen.
Both can play important parts in man's attainment of Immortality. Now that Zen no longer exists as an organized cult in China, it is useless for Western people to go there to find it, also, unless you are a ping-pong player, you might have potential difficulties.
While Japan still retains the Zen cult, even in a modernized form, the country does present great difficulties to the foreigner. Zen training today has now developed into a system of hardening and character building for young Japanese gentlemen and is considered an excellent introduction to a business career. To become involved in this system is not what the sincere seeker of wisdom really wants. The scanty diet and bitterly cold climate in the winter season do not provide the ideal conditions for any foreigner to spend t wo or three years in meditation. Language is also an insurmountable barrier and even where English is spoken it is not easy for teachers to translate into those subtle idioms of English which Zen requires.
Yet there is still an answer to the inherent desire of the awakened man to find the Supreme Absolute. To do this does not require any fixed religious or cult patterns. One need not join a new religion or even seek an entirely different way of life.
Though these things have their values to the local people of different lands, they might be impediments to one from abroad. It is like trying to put the wind in a bottle. This must not be taken to imply that the cultural patterns and conventions of your own land will provide you with the ideal conditions. You must get the mind and body disentangled from these also. Zen, Yoga-Vidya and Tao all teach a Supreme.
Attainment but one which is only attainable by a natural man or woman. Stories you can read in books, but to acquire naturalness, to be natural, and to revert to your own primitive nature, this you must do yourself and empty the mind of wrong ideas and free the body from its obligations and impediments. Thus Zen can help us much by a study of the teachings and injunctions of those who walked the path, achieved success and became competent as guides for others. Zen and Yoga-Vidya lie close together. Zen is only the Japanese, but now the most universal form of the Chinese Ch'an. This in its turn is taken from the Sanskrit Dhyana and was the Chinese equivalent to the colloquial form (which generally drops the last letter) of Dhyan. Yoga- Vidya is a rather modern form of Brahma-Vidya or Atma-Vidya.
It only means the Science of Attainment. Al though popular opinion associates it with the highest form of Hinduism it actually comes from the ancient pre-Aryan Tantric cult. But these associations should not mislead anyone into thinking of them as cult concepts of a separate religion.
They arose in Ancient India long before people thought of themselves as Indians and lived without any ideas of separatene ss or nationalism. They lived in a world without fences, frontiers and borders. The cult of Yoga-Vidya, of which Zen become another expression, is international and.belongs only to the cosmos. Thus it becomes the Science of the Microcosm attaining the Macrocosm. Yoga- Vidya expounds only the One Supreme Reality (Paramatman), the Cosmic Soul. Belief in relative gods and goddesses were only, necessary to people of lower wisdom. Zen was imported into Japan and developed as two separate but related schools.
Soto-Zen is exclusively a meditation sect and tends to imply gradual awakening through mind training. Rinzai-Zen came through a monk who studied under Huang Po and Lin-Chi. It is the 'Sudden' school of Zen which utilized the verbal and mental conundrums known as the Ko-an plus the well-directed applica tion of a big stick.
This amusing process assumes that some people behave better when battered. At least, it keeps the boys awake, if not 'awakened'. The real characters of Zen were always the most fantastic and unconventional.
Lin-Chi became so free from entanglements that his own disciples failed to recognize him. When he removed his outer robe and appeared only in his undergarment his students knew him instantly and would playfully cluster around him. Lin-Chi was so pleased with the results that he decided to take the experiment to its obvious conclusion. He removed the undergarment and put on a nude act.
The Goose Is Free Zen Music
But then everything changed and the students ran away. Later he lectured to his boys, 'not to try to recognize a man only by what he wears, since a man's clothes are only attachments'. He then explained that 'To be a great Zen Master one must be free from all these attachments and a good disciple is one who can see and recognize the Master's freedom ' Truth does not become more valid because it is seen by the light of a Chinese lantern or wrapped in a Japanese kimono. The Masters may have been distinguishable because they wore Mongolian masks, but the real souls of Absolutism were universal and cosmopolitan. Take them out of the Oriental environment and they are still great Masters. Many of the greatest are probably unknown, preached but little, did not seek disciples and were never entangled in monastic life.
They lived like leaves blown by the wind. If realization does not give real freedom, then it is not realization. Liberation has no entanglements and involvements and those who permit them are not liberated. Japanese Zen was much reflected in Japanese art, yet the f avourite subjects of the artists were Patriarchs and Masters revealed in their Absolute expression s and not as conventional preachers and seat-sitters. Instead they were presented in wild abandon ment, shouting, laughing, yelling and scolding. They became the insane ideals of Japanese spiritual life. It may also be noted that the characters most commonly represented were not the big names in Zen, but the obscure hermits Han-Shan and Shih-Te, dirty, ragged vagabonds of the hills and forests.
Another was the fat-bellied folk-god of the Chinese, Pu-Tai, whom Zen transformed into a Zen Bhikshu to make him more welcome on Japanese soil. Here was the real cult of Zen and the men of real value, living in just the same way as their forerunners had lived in India and the true pattern of drop-outs all over the world. One cannot become real Yog, Zen or Tao, until one reaches the stage of Naturalness (Chinese Tzu jan; Japanese Shizen; Sanskrit Sahaja). So if one distinguishes natural difference s, then the thinking must be at fault.