But it is something far more important than just an incident. When you have a headache, how do you know? There must be a watcher behind the head who knows the headache. The headache itself cannot know; there must be a witness, a watcher, who knows the headache, who knows the stomachache, who feels emotions and can watch those emotions.

When you are full of anger, if you sit down and watch you can watch the anger clouds all around you, dark. When you are in love you can watch a certain perfume, a certain beauty, a certain blissfulness all around you. Every moment in ordinary life you are coming across the witness but you have never recognized it, you have just not taken note of it. At this very moment I am speaking to you, you are hearing me. Just look a little more back – there is a witness who knows that you are hearing. That witness is your eternity.

“By all these mystics, the message has been conveyed intimately” means, they have brought people closer to them. All their words are nothing but fishermen’s nets. Through their words they bring you closer. If their words trigger something in you, you feel pulled, magnetized, and the closer you come the less you are. And when you have become really intimate, you disappear – you, as you have known yourself – and the one who is behind, who you had never taken note of, comes in front. For the first time you know you are only a witnessing consciousness, everything else is a clothing.

Your inner center, which is the connecting link with the universal heart from where you get your life, your love, your joy, is to be found in witnessing. The master is a witness. Becoming intimate with him, the fire of witnessing simply jumps in a single, instantaneous moment. Where there was all dark suddenly becomes light; where there was all misery suddenly becomes a tremendous joy overflowing you, and a great longing arises in you.

Just as before you wanted more money, more power, more prestige, now there is only one longing – how to spread this fire. Because unless a person is burned completely, all his falsities gone, he will never know the beauty and the truth and the splendor of existence, which was available to him every moment.

“The teaching of thusness has been intimately communicated by buddhas. Now you have it…”

Tozan must be talking to his disciples.

I am saying to you, you have it. I am not simply reading Tozan. On my own accord I am saying to you: you have it. Take note of it and don’t forget it. In ordinary life go on remembering that you are a buddha. Nothing else is needed, this very remembrance that you are a buddha is going to transform all your activities.

I am reminded of a great mystic, Nagarjuna. He used to live naked, and even kings and queens used to touch his feet. He was absolutely a beggar – he had not even a begging bowl. So while he was visiting the capital the queen presented him with a golden begging bowl studded with diamonds. With tears she asked him not to reject it.