The essence of Zen
My favorite quote “Copying is slavery, you have to reach the Spirit.”
~ Zen proverb
When I read this proverb the first time, I was drawn to it and unconsciously embraced it right away. Now I’m more clear about the reason.
While reading the book “The Spiritual Path – Buddha Zen Tao Tantra” by OSHO it became more clear. We are mind-bound creatures. Our mind actually enslaves us, but in Spirit we are free. Actually, anything mind-bound is slavery.
Maybe the following excerpt from this book, p. 277, helps to clarify:
“People were talking about Zen as if it were another philosophy, which it is not; as it were another religion, which it is not. It is a rebellion against mind, and all your religions and philosophies are part of the mind.
This is the only rebellion against mind, against self, the only rebellion of withdrawing all the limits that imprison you and taking a quantum leap into nothingness. But this nothingness is very alive. It is life; it is existence. It is not hypothesis. And when you take the jump, the first experience is that you are disappearing. The last experience is that you have become the whole…
It is the same nothingness from where you have come and to where you are going again.
When the source and the goal become one, you will have a great celebration. In that celebration you will not be, but all of existence will be participating…
The whole existence becomes your home the moment your heart melts into the universal heart. That is where Zen is happening. In that melting into the universe, you are back to the original source, fresh, eternal, timeless, spacious.”