“The real way is not difficult.”

Our minds say that spiritual growth is very difficult. Our religions make it as difficult as possible. According to them it takes many, many lives to reach to your own self – how ridiculous, how stupid! If I am to reach to myself…in fact I will tell Zen Master Niskriya to give a good Yaa-Hoo hit to Joshu.

Niskriya…

[Niskriya is dressed up as a zen monk and has cut his hair very short. He hesitates over what to do.]

Give it without any fear.

[Niskriya gets up.]

Where is your staff?

[To everybody’s astonishment, he produces a long wooden staff.]

Right! You have the staff. Good.

Whom do you think to hit?

[Niskriya hits his own head with the staff. Osho laughs and signals to him to sit down again.]

Good.

The real way is not difficult, because there is no way. You are already where you have always been and will always be. What nonsense to talk about The Way! That’s why I said that, although Joshu is second in the hierarchy of Zen he has not that magic, that touch. That has been monopolized by Bodhidharma.

Even to talk about the way is to make things difficult. I absolutely agree with Joshu that the way is very easy, but I cannot agree with his expression in the way I can agree with Bodhidharma, with absolute synchronicity, as if I have spoken those words myself: Emptiness, nothing holy, no knowing.

With Joshu I can only sympathize. I will not say he is wrong, but I will certainly say that the moment you start talking about the way, it becomes difficult. It becomes difficult because from here to here, there is no space for the way. If you are going somewhere else a way is possible – difficult or easy, it depends. But if you are not going anywhere, but simply being yourself, here and now….

Joshu needs a good hit.

By chance today Master Niskriya is dressed up exactly, but Joshu is not here. But wherever Joshu is, and whoever the people are who believe in Joshu’s enlightenment, Master Niskriya’s hit will reach. I am using Master Niskriya’s hit because I am a very nonviolent person; moreover, so lazy that I have dedicated my whole function of hitting people to Master Niskriya. And he really looks…he is not only dressed up, at this moment he is. It is another matter that the next moment he may forget.