Chapter 3 first morning

May 10, 1974 The way of white clouds Beloved Master, why do you call your Tao the "White Cloud Way"? Just before the Buddha passed away, someone asked him, where does a Buddha go after his death, will he continue to live?Or just disappear into nothingness?This is not a new question, it's one of the oldest and has been asked many times. The Buddha is said to have replied as if a white cloud were disappearing. Just this morning, there were some white clouds in the sky, now they are not there, where did they go?Where do they come from?How are they formed?How did they disappear?

The white cloud is a mystery—its coming, its going, and its existence are all a mystery. That is the first reason why I call my Tao the Tao of the White Cloud. But there are many reasons, and it is best to contemplate them, to meditate on them. The existence of Baiyun has no roots, it is a rootless phenomenon, it does not take root anywhere, or in other words, it takes root in nowhere, but it still exists. The whole existence is like a white cloud without any root, without any causality, without any ultimate cause, it just exists, it exists as a mystery. A white cloud really has no path of its own, it just wanders, it has no desire to go anywhere, no destination, no destiny to fulfill, no end, you can't frustrate a white cloud, because wherever it goes is a goal.

If you have goals, you are bound to have setbacks.The more goal-oriented the mind is, the more pain, anxiety and frustration it will have, because once you have a goal, you are going in a certain direction. And the whole exists without any purpose, the whole is not going anywhere, it has no goal, no purpose. Once you have a purpose you are against the whole - remember this - then you will have frustration, when you are against the whole you cannot win.Your being is very small, you cannot fight, you cannot conquer.It is impossible to imagine how an individual unit can conquer the whole.If the whole is purposeless and you have purpose, you will be defeated.

Where the wind blows, the white cloud floats there, it does not resist, it does not fight, the white cloud is not a conqueror, but it still covers everything, you cannot conquer it, you cannot defeat it.It has no mind to conquer, so you cannot beat it. Once you fixate on a goal, a purpose, a destiny or a meaning, once you have the madness of wanting to get somewhere, then problems will arise and you will be defeated, that is for certain.Your frustration is in the very nature of existence itself. The white cloud has nowhere to go, it moves, it moves everywhere, all levels belong to it, all directions belong to it, nothing is denied, everything is fully accepted.

So I call my way "the way of white clouds". White clouds have no path of their own, they just float.A road means where you want to go, and Baiyun's road means a road without a road.Move, but without a fixed mind -- move without mind. This has to be understood because purpose and mind are synonymous, that's why you cannot conceive to live without purpose, because mind cannot exist without purpose. People are so ridiculous that they even come to me and ask: what is the purpose of meditation?Meditation cannot have any days.Because meditation basically means a mindless state where you are where you are and don't go anywhere, just being is the goal.

The object is here and now, and as soon as the object is somewhere else, the mind starts its journey, then the mind starts thinking, then the mind starts a process.If the future exists, then the mind can flow, then the mind can have its course, then the mind has room to move. With a purpose, there is a future, and with a future, there is time. White clouds hang over the sky, it has no home because it has no future and no mind, it is here and now, and every moment is totally eternity. But mind cannot exist without purpose, so mind keeps creating purpose.If the so-called worldly purpose is gone, then the mind creates a religious or otherworldly purpose; if money becomes useless, then meditation becomes useful; if the world of so-called competition or politics becomes useless, then another A new world of competition, religion or achievement becomes relevant.The mind is always longing for some meaning or some purpose.

For me only the mind which has no meaning is religious, but that means the mind is no longer a mind at all.Think of yourself as a white cloud, mindless. In Tibet there is a kind of meditation - the monks are on the mountains, completely alone, just meditating on the white clouds floating in the sky, and continue to meditate, gradually merged by the white clouds, and then they become white clouds - like a white cloud dwelling on the mountain.No mind, just being, no resistance, no struggle, nothing to achieve, nothing to lose, just enjoy that being, celebrate that moment -- that joy, that ecstasy.

So I call my way "the way of white clouds".I also want you to become white clouds.floating in the sky.I say float, not move, not move to a certain point, just float, wherever the wind takes you, you float there. Wherever you happen to be, that is the goal, so the goal is not something that ends somewhere, it is not the end of a line, the goal is every moment. Here, for me, you are an enlightened person, here you have achieved, here you are as perfect as you can be, like a Buddha, a Mahavira, or a Khara Krishna.Nothing else is going to be achieved, at this very moment everything is there, you are just not aware of it.

You are not aware because your mind is in the future, you are not here, you are not aware of what is happening to you this very moment. This has been happening all the time, for millions of lifetimes, this has been happening.Every moment you are a buddha, it has never been missed a single moment, it cannot be missed, nature itself is the way it is, it is the way it is, you cannot miss it! But you are not aware, and you are not aware because there is a goal somewhere, a thing has to be achieved, and because of that, obstacles arise and you yourself miss out. Once this is revealed, once this is understood, once you become aware of it, the greatest mystery of existence is revealed -- that everyone is perfect.That is what we mean when we say everyone is Brahma, everyone is a soul, everyone is an ultimate soul, everyone is "that divine", that is what we mean by "Tat Wamasi" - meaning "you are the one".

Not that you have to become that, because if you have to become that, then you are not that.And if you are not already that, how can you become that?The seed becomes the tree because the seed is already that.A stone cannot become a tree, but a seed can become a tree, because the seed is already that! So, it is not a matter of becoming, it is only a matter of revealing it.The seed manifests one moment as a seed, the next moment as a tree, so it is only a matter of manifestation.If you can penetrate very deep, just this very moment, the seed is the tree. Tibetan mystics, Zen masters, or Sufi monks all talked about Baiyun. Baiyun has been capturing the inner essence of many people, and they seem to have reached a harmonious relationship with Baiyun.

Make it a meditation and many things will happen to you. Life should not be seen as a problem, once you start that way you are lost, once you think life is a problem it can never be solved. This is how philosophers work, and therefore philosophy always works wrongly.There is no right philosophy, there cannot be, all philosophy is wrong, it is wrong to philosophize things because basically philosophy sees life as a problem, that is wrong.Once life is a problem, it cannot be solved. Life is not a problem but a mystery, and religion sees it in this way. The white cloud is the most mysterious, it appears suddenly, and then disappears suddenly.Have you ever thought that Baiyun has no name and no form?Its form is not the same for a moment.It is always changing, it is always changing, it flows like a river. You can give the white cloud a form, but that is your projection, the cloud has no form, it is formless, or it can be said that it is always being formed, it is a flow, life is like this.All forms are projected. In this life you call yourself a man, in the previous life you may be a woman; in this life you are white, in the next you may be black; in one moment you are smart, in the next moment you may be stupid Come to act; one moment you are peaceful, the next moment you may be crazy, fiery, active. Do you have a form?Or are you changing all the time?You are a flow, a cloud.do you have a nameDo you agree with anything?Can you call yourself this or that?The moment you say you are this, the very moment you say it, you know that you are also its opposite. When you tell someone "I love you," in that very moment there is also hate.When you tell somebody that you are a friend, at that very moment the enemy is laughing in you, waiting for the moment when he can appear.There are moments when you say you are happy, and at that moment the happiness disappears, you become unhappy. You are nothing, and if you realize this you become a cloud -- formless, nameless, then you start floating. For me, Baiyun's life is the life of a disciple—a disciple means one who has renounced the world. A housekeeper whose life is a fixed routine, it is a dead thing, it is a pattern, it has a name or a form, it moves on a definite line, it is like the rails of a train.Trains move on tracks, they have a goal, they have to get somewhere. But a sannyasin is like a cloud floating in the sky -- for him there are no tracks, no lines, no identifications.He was nobody, he lived a "nobody" life - he lived as if he didn't exist. If you are able to live as if you do not exist, you have entered into My Way. The more you exist, the more your sickness exists; the less you exist, the healthier you are; When I say that life is not a problem but a mystery, I mean that you cannot solve it, you can only become it. A problem is something to be solved intellectually, but even if you solve it, you achieve nothing.You may gather a little more knowledge, but you cannot get ecstasy from it. Mystery is something that you can become, you can become one with it, you can merge with it, then ecstasy arises, there is bliss, and then that ultimate bliss can happen in a person body. Religion sees life as a mystery?What can you do with mysteries?You cannot do anything with the mystery, but you can do something with you, you can become more mysterious, and then the like can meet the like, the same can meet the same. Seek the mystery of life, wherever you look - in a cloud, in the stars at night, in a flower, or in a flowing river - wherever you look, you will seek the mystery , whenever you find that there is a mystery there, you go to meditate on it. Meditation means: dissolve yourself before the mystery, dissolve yourself into nothingness before the mystery, dissolve yourself before the mystery, you become non-existent, let the mystery become very total, so that you are absorbed into it. Suddenly a new door will open, a new perception will arise, and suddenly the secular world of division and separation will disappear, and then a different, totally different world of oneness will appear before you .Everything loses its boundaries, everything is with everything else, not separate but one. But this can only be achieved if you put some work into yourself.If you have to solve a problem, you have to do something with that problem, you have to find a key or a clue, you have to study the problem, you have to go into a laboratory, you have to do something, But when you are faced with a mystery, you have to work something on yourself, not to do something with that mystery, you cannot do anything with that mystery. Before a mystery, we are powerless.That is why we have been changing mysteries into problems, because with problems we become powerful, with problems we feel we are in control, with mysteries we are powerless.We can do nothing; facing the mystery, we are facing death, which we cannot manipulate. That is why the more mathematical and logical a man's intellect becomes, the less ecstasy becomes possible for him, poetry becomes less and less possible, romance is lost, life becomes practical, not symbolic. So when I say my Tao is "the Tao of the white cloud", it is just a symbol, and the white cloud is not used as a fact.It is used as a symbol, it is used as a poetic symbol, it is used as an indication of the way into the mystical and miraculous life. relationship is enough Dear Master, could you please tell us the relationship between Buddha and Baiyun? I am a white cloud, no relationship exists, no relationship exists. Relationship exists when you are two, you are divided, so relationship is not actually a relationship, where there is separation there is separation. I am a white cloud, you cannot have a relationship with a white cloud, but you can become one with it and make the cloud one with you, but relationship is impossible.In relationship you remain separate, in relationship you are always manipulating. This is one of the tragedies of human life - even in love we create relationships and then the love is lost. Love should not be a relationship, you have to be a lover or to be loved, you should become the other and let the other become you, there should be a fusion, only then the conflict will stop, otherwise love will become A conflict and a struggle. If you exist, then you try to manipulate, you want to possess, you want to be the master, then exploitation comes in, then the other is used as a tool, not as an end. You can't do that with white clouds, you can't make them Mr or Mrs, you can't tie them or talk them into a relationship, they won't let you, they won't listen to you, they've had enough of it , so now they become white clouds. You can become one with them, and their hearts are opened. But the human mind cannot think beyond relationships, because we cannot think of ourselves as if we do not exist.We are, no matter how we hide it, we are, deep down, the ego is there, deep down, the ego is always manipulating. For a white cloud, this is impossible.You can look at the cloud with your ego, you can think about it, but the mystery will not be opened, the door will remain closed, you will remain in the dark night. If your ego disappears, you become a white cloud. In Zen they have a very old tradition of painting.There is a Zen master who has a disciple who is learning to paint. Of course, he meditates through painting.That disciple was very attached to bamboo, so he kept painting bamboo.The master is said to have told his disciples that nothing will happen unless you yourself become a bamboo. For ten years, that disciple had been drawing bamboo, and then he became so proficient that even with his eyes closed in the dark at night, he could draw bamboo, and the bamboo he drew was perfect, very alive. But the master still didn't agree, he would say: No, unless you yourself become a bamboo, how can you draw it?You remain separate, remain a spectator, so you may know the bamboo from the outside, but that is only the periphery, that is not the soul of the bamboo, unless you become one with the bamboo, unless you become a bamboo, Otherwise how can you know it from within? The disciple struggled for another ten years, but the master still didn't approve, so the disciple disappeared and entered a bamboo forest. For three years, there was no news about him at all, and then there was news that he had turned into a bamboo: now he no longer paints, he lives with the bamboo, he stands with the bamboo, when the wind When the blow came, the bamboo was dancing, and he danced too. Then the master saw by himself, really, that disciple has become a bamboo.The master said: No, completely forget about the bamboo and you.The disciple said, but you told me to become a bamboo, and I have already become it. Master said: Forget even this now, because now this is the only obstacle.When you remember that you have become bamboo, it means somewhere in the depths.You are still separate, so you are not yet a perfect bamboo, because a real bamboo must not remember this, so forget that too. For ten years there was no discussion of bamboo at all, and then one day the master called the disciple and said: Now you can paint.First become the bamboo, then forget the bamboo, so you become a perfect bamboo so that the painting becomes not a painting but a growth. So I am not related to Baiyun at all, I am Baiyun, and I hope you become Baiyun instead of being related to it. Relationships are enough!You have suffered enough.You have been related to this or that for many, many lifetimes, and you have suffered enough, enough!You have suffered more than you deserved. That suffering is centered on the wrong idea of ​​relationship, the wrong idea that you have to be yourself and then to relate, then there is tension, conflict, violence and aggression, and so the whole hell follows. Saud said somewhere; others are hell.But in fact the other is not hell, the other is the other because you have an ego, and if you cease to exist, the other also disappears. Whenever this happens—between a person and a tree, between a person and a cloud, between a man and a woman, or between a person and a rock—every time When your absence happens, hell disappears, and suddenly you are transformed, you are in Paradise. That old biblical story is beautiful: Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden of Eden because they ate of the forbidden fruit, the fruit of the tree of knowledge.This is the best fable ever devised. Why was the fruit of the tree of knowledge forbidden?Because the moment knowledge enters, the ego exists, and the moment you know that you exist, you fall, and this is the most primitive sin.No one cast Adam and Eve out of heaven, the moment they became aware of their existence, Eden disappeared.For such eyes - eyes full of ego, Eden cannot exist. It's not that they were cast out of Eden - Eden is here and now, it's next to you, it follows you wherever you go, but you can't see it.If the ego is not there, you have re-entered, Eden has reappeared, you have never come out of it. Try this: sit under a tree, forget yourself and just let the tree be. This happened to Buddha.When he is sitting under the bodhi tree, he does not exist, at that moment everything happens, only the bodhi tree exists. You may not know that for five hundred years after the death of Buddha, no statue was made of him, no picture of him was painted.For five hundred years, whenever a Buddhist temple was built, there was only a picture of the Bodhi tree there, which was beautiful because the moment Gautama Siddhartha became Buddha, he did not Not there, only the tree is there, in that moment he disappears, only the tree is there. Find those moments when you were not there, those are the first moments when you really were. So, I am a white cloud, and my whole effort is to make you also a white cloud, floating in the sky, coming from nowhere and having nowhere to go, just in this moment, as long as you exist, that's perfect. I don't teach you any ideals, I don't teach you any shoulds, I don't tell you to be this or to be that.My whole teaching is just: whatever you are, you have to accept it completely, there is nothing else to achieve.You will become a white cloud. don't push the river Beloved Master, is it true that if we want to really break through, to become fully present, to become a white cloud, we have to go through all our dreams and all our fantasies? How could that be as true in "singing to Krishna" as it was in Eden, or in the heart of nature? The question is not whether one has to go through all the dreams and all the fantasies, you have lived in those, you have been in those, it is not a matter of choice, you cannot choose. Can you choose?Can you abandon your dream?Can you let go of your fantasies?If you try to drop your dreams, you will have to replace them with other dreams; if you try to change your fantasies?They will change into another form of fantasy, yet they will remain dreams and fantasies. So what to do? — accept them.Why go against them?This tree has red flowers, that tree has yellow flowers, it doesn't matter; you have a certain dream -- a green dream, someone else has another dream -- a blue dream or a red dream, it doesn't matter. Why fight dreams, why try to change them?When you try to change them, you believe in them too much, you don't think they are dreams, you think they are real, so it makes sense to change them.If dreams are dreams, then why not accept them. As soon as you accept them, they disappear, that is the mystery.As soon as you accept them, they disappear, because the dreaming mind exists through denial, and the phenomenon of the dreaming mind is denial. You have been rejecting many things and that is why they popped up in your dreams.You are walking down the street, you see a beautiful woman or man, and then your desire arises, and suddenly you put it aside, you say; this is wrong!You are rejecting it.Tradition, culture, society and morality inside you say: this is not good. You can look at a beautiful flower and there is nothing wrong with that, but when you look at a beautiful face you immediately feel something is wrong -- you are rejecting it, and then the face becomes A dream, that rejected thing will become a dream, now this face will haunt you, now this body will envelop you.Desires you deny become a dream, desires you repress become dreams and fantasies. So how do you create a dream?That secret is: no.The more you refuse, the more dreams will be born. So those who go to the mountains, those who refuse to live, they will be full of dreams, and their dreams will become so real that they cannot tell whether it is a dream or the truth. Don't say no, or you will create more dreams.Accept, whatever happens to you, accept it as part of who you are, don't condemn it. When you become more receptive, the dream will disappear.A man who has fully accepted his life becomes dreamless because the basis for dreaming has been cut off.This is the first thing to understand. The second thing: the whole is nature—I say the whole, not just the trees, not just the clouds, but the whole.Whatever happens, it happens because of nature, there is nothing unnatural - there cannot be, otherwise how could it happen?Everything is natural. So don't create division: don't say it's natural, it's unnatural.Whatever exists is natural, but the mind lives according to divisions and divisions.Don't allow division, accept whatever exists, accept without any analysis. Whether you are in the market, or on the hill, you are in the same nature, and somewhere nature becomes the hill and the trees, and somewhere it becomes the shops in the market.Even the market can be beautiful once you know the secret of acceptance.The market has its own beauty, where there is life, there is activity, there is a beautiful madness going on, it has its own beauty!Remember, if there is no market, the mountain will not be so beautiful; the reason why the mountain is so beautiful and peaceful is because there is a market, and the market gives the mountain peace. So, anywhere, whether you are in a market, or "singing Krishna," or sitting quietly under a tree - see them all as one piece, don't divide it.When you are dancing and singing Krishna, enjoy it!This is how you flower in this moment. "Singing praises to Krishna" can become a flowering in you, and it has become a flowering in many people.When Caitanya danced and chanted Krishna in the Bengali village, it was a flowering, it was one of the most beautiful things that ever happened, not just Buddha sitting under the bodhi tree is beautiful, a Caitan Ya dancing in the street singing about Krishna is also beautiful - they are the same...that is the other pole. You can sit under a tree and forget yourself so completely that you disappear, you can dance in the street, so completely absorbed in your singing and dancing, so absorbed that you become lost -- wherever it happens. It happens to different people in different ways.We cannot imagine Buddha dancing, he is not that type of person, he is not the type of person who dances, but you may be the type of person who dances.So don't force yourself, otherwise, sit quietly under the Bodhi tree and you will be in trouble.To force yourself to make yourself peaceful, that is violent, then your face will not become like a Buddha, it will be tortured, it will be a self-torture.You may be like Caitanya, you may be like Meera. Find out how your own cloud moves, where is it drifting?Allow it total freedom to move and float, wherever it goes, it will reach the divine, as long as you don't fight, as long as you flow with it.Don't push the river, go with the flow. Dancing is beautiful, but you have to be totally involved, that's the point. Don't reject anything, rejection is irreligious, accept it completely, and to accept is to pray.