The poem has a tremendous beauty. It says, “Since then I am again searching. I know where God is, so I avoid only that place! But I go on searching because in searching there is so much joy, and I am thought to be a great saint. I am enjoying the great adventure of searching for God. There is only one thing I have to remember – not to go to that place again! But the whole world is available to search, except that house.”

Zen has never bothered about God; neither has it said anything against God. That is a very strange situation to understand, because people either believe in God or not. But Zen is simply unconcerned. There is no question of belief or disbelief; it simply puts God out of the way. It is unnecessary luggage.

Zen has taken only the essential point, and that is the source of your life. Just go deepening on that road so that you can reach the final transformation, from the individual to the universal.

Just before his death Basui turned to the crowd that had gathered around and said in a loud voice:

Look straight ahead.
What is there?
If you see it as it is
you will never err.

He is talking about inside. These are his last words; he is saying, “Look straight forward!” He is not telling anybody, he is simply saying it to himself, Look straight ahead. What is there? – just a pure clarity, a silent sky, an eternal silence. If you see it as it is, without any preconceived ideas, without any religions and philosophies – just as it is – you will never err. You will never make a mistake. You will reach directly like an arrow, and hit the moon.

Zen’s concern is absolutely you – you in your original nature.

Maneesha has asked:

Osho,
Is it because you speak from your own fundamental experience that your words spontaneously impress one as true, as unequivocal common sense, even though the listener may not have had such experience?
From the first sentence of yours that I ever read – before I could have developed the eyes and ears of love – there was no decision to choose to accept that you were right. You simply were – whether it suited me or not. I just don’t get it: how is it that others could possibly feel otherwise?

Maneesha, you can speak on the authority of others, but then your words are dead corpses, like the dry roses you can find in Holy Bibles. But when someone speaks from his own experience it is a living phenomenon. You may agree with it, you may not agree, but it leaves the impact on you that you have been in contact with someone who knows.