The first question:

Osho,
What is Zen?

It is almost impossible to answer because Zen is not a philosophy, it is not a doctrine. It is an experience, an experience of your own interiority, of your own subjectivity – not an objective experience. If it were some object outside you, there would be a possibility of describing it, of analyzing it, of defining it. It is indefinable by its very nature; it is not within the grasp of intellect. It is an experience of dropping out of your mind, disappearing from your mind into your being, slipping out of the mind and entering into your being.

The mind is a false entity; your being is your real face, your original face. The mind is created by the society, hence there are different kinds of minds – Hindu mind, Christian mind, Jewish mind – but the being is one; it is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Mohammedan. Being is not even individual, it is universal.

It is like a dewdrop slipping into the ocean. As a dewdrop, it disappears; nothing remains of it as a dewdrop. It dies. On the other hand, it is reborn; it becomes the ocean. But there is nobody to say what has happened and there is no way to say it; no words are adequate enough.

I can tell you how it happens, but I cannot tell you what it is. I can indicate toward it – fingers pointing to the moon – but fingers are not the moon. And there are millions of people who go on worshipping the fingers. The more attached you become to the fingers the less capable you will be of seeing the moon. The fingers have to be forgotten. Once you have got the point, where to look, then forget the fingers and look at the moon.

Zen is one of the purest spiritual experiences, uncontaminated by any thought, any theology, any speculation. It is non-argumentative, it simply is.

Listen to Yoka. Yoka says:

Dear friend, do you know the true man of Zen?
He has forgotten the intellectual understanding of what he has learned in order to reach profound understanding.
He lives in equanimity, calm and content.
He is free from all care, and he acts naturally and reasonably.
He does not struggle to avoid illusion nor does he seek for satori.

He knows that illusion is unfounded and that
satori is none other than himself.
He sees the real nature of not-knowing as the nature of the Buddha
and he sees that the reality of his illusory body is equivalent to…
the eternal body of the Buddha.