Tarot in the Spirit of Zen Read online

  I. Existence

  We are part of existence, we are not separate. Even if we want to be separate, we cannot be … . And the more you are together with existence, the more alive you are.

  Live totally, live intensely, because the deeper your living is the more you are in contact with existence. You are born of it; every moment you are renewed, rejuvenated, resurrected by each of your breaths, by each of your heartbeats—existence is taking care of you.

  Just as you start watching your breathing, you start seeing a great phenomenon—that through your breath, you are continuously connected with existence. Uninterruptedly—there is no holiday. Whether you are awake or asleep, existence goes on pouring life into you, and taking out all that is dead.

  When I say, “Existence takes care,” I am not talking philosophy. Philosophy is mostly nonsense. I am simply talking an actual fact. And if you become consciously aware of it, this creates a great trust in you. My saying, “Existence takes care,” is meant to trigger a consciousness that can bring the beauty of trusting in existence.

  There is no need to believe in a hypothetical God, and there is no need to have faith in a messiah, in a savior; these are all childish desires to have some father figure who takes care of you. And they are all hypothetical. There has not been any savior in the world.

  Existence is enough unto itself. Inquire into your relationship with existence, and out of that inquiry trust arises—not belief, not faith. Trust has a beauty because it is your experience. Trust will help you to relax because the whole existence is taking care—there is no need to be worried and to be concerned.

  The whole of existence is full of rejoicing; you just need to open your windows. Your darkness is your own creation, your alienation is your own creation; otherwise you are not a stranger to yourself. You are not a stranger to the trees, to the rivers, to the mountains.

  It is our existence; we are part of it.

  Our heartbeat is part of the universal heartbeat.

  And it is not a dead universe; it is immensely intelligent, conscious, sensitive. It is divine in its every dimension. But you have to learn to participate in the dance.

  II. Inner Voice

  We unnecessarily go on seeking advice from the outside when existence is ready to speak to us from the innermost core of our being. It is already there, but we never listen to that still, small voice.

  None of the voices inside you come from the inner self. All voices come from the mind. When all voices are absent, the inner self inspires you in silence toward a certain action, a certain direction. It does not come in words—it is just a silent indication. Otherwise it would be absolutely impossible to find out which is the voice of the inner self.

  It is easy because no voice is of the inner self. So when all voices have died down and there is utter silence, the inner self is capable of taking your hand and moving you. That is the moment to be in a let-go, and allow it to take you wherever it takes you.

  In language we have to use words that do not apply to the inner reality—for example, the “inner voice.” There is no voice—it is simply the inner silence. But if we use the words inner silence, you will not get the idea that there is some inspiration or some direction which is being pointed to. Hence the words inner voice have been used. But these are not the right words.

  We unnecessarily go on seeking advice from the outside when existence is ready to speak to us from the innermost core of our being. It is already there but we never listen to that still, small voice.

  In fact, we cannot listen because we are living in such a noisy head, there is so much chattering going on. That still, small voice cannot penetrate unless you make your mind absolutely silent.

  In many universities in America they have made a few experiments with total silence. Of course their experiments are concerned with the outer noise. It happened to a musician that he went into a chamber that was absolutely soundproof, no noise penetrated from the outside. He entered the chamber and he was surprised, because he was told there was absolute silence—and he was a trained musician, he was not deaf; he had an ear for sound … . He was very much puzzled; he started hearing two sounds. He rushed out and told the director, “What is the matter? I hear two sounds.”

  The director laughed; he said, “Yes, those two sounds will be there. One is of your heart beating and the other is of the blood circulating. Those we cannot stop because they go with you.” The musician said, “I have never heard them before!”

  Nobody ever hears them. But if you go into an absolutely silent chamber, one hundred percent soundproof, you will suddenly hear your heart beating—you cannot imagine that the heart beats so loudly, it is almost as if the sound is coming from the outside—and your blood circulating. Blood circulates with very great speed, it is a constant flow. It is riverlike; it has its own sound.

  The same happens when your inner mind is completely silenced by meditative awareness. Then you hear the innermost advice … and you will be able to hear it in every situation. That is the finding of the inner guide.

  The whole purpose of meditation is just to find the inner guide. Once you have found the inner guide, meditation also is no longer needed; then nothing is needed. You have got your eyes open, now you can live your life with total spontaneity. You need not depend on the memory system at all; now your answers will be real responses. Your actions will be real responses, not reactions.

  Reactions come from the mind, responses come from the innermost core—and there is a vast difference, an immense distance between the two. A reaction is borrowed, hence you are not your own self. A response is yours; hence it fulfills you, it helps you to go on growing, to go on moving higher and higher. Finally, following the inner advice one comes to the point where one becomes absolutely harmonious with the whole, because when you go right always you become harmonious with the whole. That’s exactly the meaning of right and wrong. Wrong means going astray from the whole, becoming discordant with the whole, and right means falling into harmony with the whole. And the whole has a direct connection with your being. You have to discover it, then it will become a truth to you.

  III. Creativity

  Creativity happens only when ego is absent, when you are relaxed, in deep rest, when there is really no desire to do something. Suddenly you are gripped; some unknown force overwhelms you, takes possession of you.

  The only way to be really in tune with existence is to be creative. While you are creating something, whatsoever it is—poetry, a song, some music, some dance, whatsoever it is—whenever you are creating, you participate in existence. You are no longer separate from it; in fact, you disappear and existence starts creating through you. And if you can catch hold of those moments, if you become aware of those rare moments when there is no ego and creation is simply flowing through you, then creativity becomes meditative.

  Every creator knows those moments, but in a vague way. Poets know that there are moments when poetry simply flows; even if you want to stop it you cannot stop it. And there are moments when you are simply dry, there are dry spells when you want to create something but nothing comes. The more effort you make, the less is the possibility … because the effort simply means ego effort.

  Creativity happens only when ego is absent, when you are relaxed, in deep rest, when there is really no desire to do something. Suddenly you are gripped; some unknown force overwhelms you, takes possession of you. That is exactly the right word—you are possessed.

  The poets, the painters, the sculptors, all know these moments but they know them only when they are gone. They only remember them; they look back and they feel that something of great importance was there, but it is no more. They catch hold of those moments only when they are gone. The meditator catches hold of them while they are there. That’s the only difference between the poet and the mystic: the poet remembers the creative moments, the mystic becomes aware in those moments themselves. And that makes a great difference.

  Once you have become aware that you are
not and still you are—that the ego is no longer there, the self is no longer there, still you are—you have had a totally new experience of your own being. Buddha calls it nirvana, no-selfness. And the creator comes to it many times; the only thing is that he should catch hold of it while it is there.

  Meditation is just to catch hold of those moments—and creativity is to create those moments. When creativity and meditation meet, you have arrived home; the journey is complete.

  IV. The Rebel

  The situation of the rebel is tremendously exciting: each moment he is faced with problems because the society has a fixed mode, a fixed pattern, fixed ideals. And the rebel cannot go with those fixed ideals—he has to follow his own still, small voice.

  The rebel is renouncing the past. He is not going to repeat the past; he is bringing something new into the world. Those who have escaped from the world and society are escapists. They have really renounced responsibilities, but without understanding that the moment you renounce responsibilities you also renounce freedom. These are the complexities of life: freedom and responsibilities go away together or remain together.

  The more you are a lover of freedom, the more you will be ready to accept responsibilities. But outside the world, outside the society, there is no possibility of any responsibility. And it has to be remembered that all we learn, we learn through being responsible.

  The past has destroyed the beauty of the word responsibility. People have made it almost equivalent to duty; it is not really so. A duty is something done reluctantly, as part of your spiritual slavery. Duty to your elders, duty to your husband, duty to your children—they are not responsibilities.

  To understand the word responsibility is very significant. You have to break it in two: response and ability. You can act in two ways—one is reaction, another is response. Reaction comes out of your past conditionings; it is mechanical. Response comes out of your presence, awareness, consciousness; it is non-mechanical. And the ability to respond is one of the greatest principles of growth. You are not following any order, any commandment; you are simply following your awareness. You are functioning like a mirror, reflecting the situation and responding to it—not out of your memory, from past experiences of similar situations, not repeating your reactions, but acting fresh, new, in this very moment. Neither is the situation old, nor is your response—both are new. This ability is one of the qualities of the rebel.

  V. No-Thingness

  To create nothingness in you is the goal of meditation, but this nothingness has nothing to do with the negative idea. It is full, abundantly full.

  It is so full that it starts overflowing. Buddha has defined this nothingness as overflowing compassion.

  Nothingness can either be just emptiness or it can be a tremendous fullness. It can be negative, it can be positive. If it is negative it is like death, darkness. Religions have called it hell. It is hell because there is no joy in it, no song in it; there is no heartbeat, no dance. Nothing flowers, nothing opens. One is simply empty.

  This empty nothingness has created great fear in people. That’s why, in the West particularly, God has never been called nothingness except by a few mystics like Dionysius, Eckhart, Boehme; but they are not the main current of Western thinking. The West has always conceived nothingness in negative terms; hence it has created a tremendous fear about it. And they go on saying to people that the empty mind is the devil’s workshop.

  The East has known its positive aspect too; it is one of the greatest contributions to human consciousness. Buddha will laugh at this statement that emptiness is the devil’s workshop. He will say: Only in emptiness, only in nothingness, does godliness happen. But he is talking about the positive phenomenon.

  For Gautam Buddha, for Mahavira, for the long tradition of Zen Masters and the Taoists, nothingness simply means no-thingness. All things have disappeared, and because things have disappeared there is pure consciousness left behind. The mirror is empty of any reflection, but the mirror is there. Consciousness is empty of content, but consciousness is there. When it was full of content, so many things were inside that you could not have known what consciousness is. When the consciousness is full of contents, that’s what we call mind. When consciousness is empty of all contents, that’s what we call no-mind or meditation.

  To create nothingness in you is the goal of meditation, but this nothingness has nothing to do with the negative idea. It is full, abundantly full. It is so full that it starts overflowing. Buddha has defined this nothingness as overflowing compassion.

  The word compassion is beautiful. It is made out of the same word as “passion.” When passion is transformed, when the desire to seek and search for the other is no longer there—when you are enough unto yourself, when you don’t need anybody, when the very desire for the other has evaporated—when you are utterly happy, blissful, just being alone, then passion becomes compassion.

  Only nothingness can be infinite; somethingness is bound to be finite. Only out of nothingness is an infinite expanse of life, existence, possible—not out of somethingness. God is not “somebody.” He is nobody or, more correctly, nobodiness. God is not “something.” He is nothing or, even more correctly, no-thingness. He is a creative void—what Buddha has called shunya. He is a creative void.

  Remember, nothingness does not mean that it is nothing; nothingness simply means that it is all. Nothingness means “no-thingness.” Things are forms; nothingness is a formless energy. It can manifest in millions of forms, and it can only manifest in millions of forms because it has no form of its own. It is fluid, it is available for any form, it has no resistance to any form. It can express itself in millions of ways because it has no obsession, it has no fixation. It can bloom as a rose, it can bloom as a lotus. It can be a song, it can be a dance, it can be silence. All is possible because nothingness simply means that no form has yet been taken. Once a form is taken, things become limited, alternatives become limited. Once a form is taken you are not totally free; your form becomes your bondage. Hence, meditation is an entry into nothingness.

  Thought is a world; hence Buddha calls mind “the world.” The moment a thought arises, a wave has arisen in the lake of consciousness, a form has arisen, and the form is only temporal, momentary. Soon it will disappear; it is not going to abide, it is not eternal. Don’t cling to it. Watch it come in and watch it go out. Watch it arising and watch it disappearing, but don’t cling to it. Remember consciousness, in which it arises and in which it dissolves again. That is your reality, that is your truth.

  VI. The Lovers

  To others it will look like madness—in fact all love is mad and all love is blind, at least to those who don’t know what love is. To “unlovers” love is blind; to lovers, love is the only possible eye that can see to the very core of existence.

  Love is the goal—life is the journey. And a journey without a goal is bound to be neurotic, haphazard; it will not have any direction. One day you are going north and another day you are going south. It will remain accidental—anything can lead you anywhere. You will remain like driftwood unless the goal is clear.

  The word intimacy comes from a Latin root, intimum. Intimum means your interiority, your innermost core. Unless you have something there, you can’t be intimate with anybody. You cannot allow intimum, intimacy, because the other person will see the hole, the wound, and the pus oozing out of it. He will see that you don’t know who you are, that you are a madman, that you don’t know where you are going, that you have not even heard your own song, that your life is a chaos, it is not a cosmos. Hence the fear of intimacy. Even lovers rarely become intimate. And just to be sexually related to somebody is not intimacy. The genital orgasm is not all that is there in intimacy. It is just the periphery of it; intimacy can exist with it, can exist without it.

  Intimacy is a totally different dimension. It is allowing the other to come into you, to see you as you see yourself, to allow the other to see you from your inside, to invite somebody to that deepest core
of your being. In the modern world intimacy is disappearing. Even lovers are not intimate. Friendship is only a word now—it has disappeared. And the reason? The reason is that there is nothing to share. Who wants to show one’s inner poverty? One wants to pretend: “I am rich, I have arrived, I know what I am doing, I know where I am going.”

  One is not ready and courageous enough to open up, to show one’s inner chaos and to be vulnerable. The other may exploit it—that fear is there. The other may become too dominant. Seeing that you are a chaos, seeing that you need a master, that you are not a master of your own being, the other may become the master. Hence everybody tries to protect themselves so nobody knows their inner helplessness; otherwise they can be exploited. This world consists of much exploitation.

  Love is the goal, and once the goal is clear you start growing an inner richness. The wound disappears and becomes a lotus; the wound is transformed into a lotus. That is the miracle of love, the magic of love. Love is the greatest alchemical force in the world. Those who know how to use it can reach the highest peak.