JAI SAI RAM!!!
diPika dear.....whenever something is mentioned about Buddha......my inner start twinkling......here something is said of not even Buddha but his disciple.....
Anand Shunyo. Anand means bliss; shunyo means absolute emptiness. Bliss descends only in absolute emptiness. It needs a space inside you, and it needs a space absolutely uncluttered by any furniture. And the mind is full of furniture: thoughts, memories, imagination, desires, projections, prejudices, philosophies, dogmas -- mind is almost a junkyard. It is so full of nonsense that there is no space left for bliss to enter.
Bliss goes on knocking from every door and window, but all is closed.
The whole work of a sannyasin is to empty oneself, to throw all this rubbish out. How not to be a Christian, how not to be a Hindu, how not to be a Mohammedan, how not to be a communist -- that's the work. How to negate this whole piled up nonsense of centuries; how not to be a German how not to be a Chinese, how not to be an Indian, how not to be that, how not to be white or black; and ultimately, how not to be a man or woman, tool.
Just to be, with no adjective attached to it, pure being, that's what I mean by absolute emptiness -- no past, no future. Then in the middle when you are just in the moment, there is space, infinite space. That space is shunyam. Buddha has called that space meditation. That is meditation. In that utter silence, in that utter emptiness, something from the beyond simply starts showering.
There is a beautiful parable about one of Buddha's chief disciples... He is sitting under a tree and then suddenly flowers start showering. He looks all around: "What is happening? -- the tree has no flowers, from where are the flowers coming? They are simply appearing from the sky!" He is puzzled, and then he sees gods above the tree showering flowers and he asks, "What is the matter?" And the gods say to him, "We are showering these flowers in gratefulness for your great sermon on silence."
But the disciple says, "I have not spoken a single word! What sermon are you talking about?" And the gods laugh and they say, "Yes, you have not spoken a single word and we have not heard a single word -- that is the sermon on silence. Neither have you spoken nor have we heard. You have been in silence -- that is the only sermon on silence. To be silent is the only way to say something about silence. You cannot say it in words. It can only be shown, it cannot be said. You have shown it so beautifully that we had to come from heaven. Just in tremendous gratitude we are showering these flowers on you!"
A beautiful story, of tremendous significance. Be silent, be empty, be a pure space, and flowers will go on showering -- flowers of bliss, flowers of love, flowers of beatitude, flowers of benediction.
OM SAI RAM!!!