All prayers are in vain. And they don’t show your religiousness, they simply show your IQ – your intelligence quotient. They show that you are still a child, that you still want someone else to take the responsibility. There is nobody in the sky to take the responsibility. For Jesus there is a God, but for Seigen and any Zen master there is no God to answer. You are the answer – just don’t ask! Be silent! Don’t ask! And there is the answer.

Jesus says, “Knock, and the door shall be opened unto you.” The very language indicates that the door is somewhere outside you – you have to knock. But the reality is, you have to go in. There is no question of knocking. Stop all knocking on the doors outside you! Just relax into your center and you have found it. And you will be surprised that you were searching for something which has always been there inside you.

But if, having found the ass one is unwilling to dismount, this disease is most difficult to cure.

Only a master can say that enlightenment is also a disease. Perhaps a better, a cleaner disease. But remember the meaning of the word disease – it does not mean sickness, it does not mean illness, it simply means “dis-ease”. And to be at ease with the universe you cannot think yourself enlightened and others unenlightened. To be at ease with the universe you have to dismount from your enlightenment and just be simple…nobody. And the whole universe is yours.

I say to you, do not ride the ass at all.

In the first place, riding the ass you are getting into difficulty. Don’t seek enlightenment, because that will ultimately end up in your finding it. And it will be very difficult for you to get free of enlightenment. It will become a new disease, a new imprisonment – so cozy and so special for the ego that who wants to just be? Dismount from it! You have been in search for so long and now you have found. Your whole search…you have invested your whole life!

But a real buddha, a man of existential knowledge will say, I say to you, do not ride the ass at all! You yourself are the ass!

The ass is just a symbol.

Mountains, rivers and plains are all the ass. Why do you ride on it? If you ride, you cannot cure your disease. But if you do not ride, the universe in all directions becomes one wide expanse. With these two diseases expelled, nothing remains to affect your mind. This is spiritual cultivation. You need do nothing more.

Enlightenment is the last disease, the last barrier.

There have been wise friends who used to say to me, “You are a blessed soul.”