Imagine for a moment that it was your privilege to have a brief interview with God, in the
 course of which you were allowed to ask one question.
 What would you ask?
 Now you would have to think this over very carefully, because this golden opportunity
 would come to you only once, and you would have to be most careful that you didn't ask
 a silly question.
 Well you might try God out with a Zen Buddhist koan, such as, "Beyond the positive and the
 negative, what is reality?"
 And the Lord would turn to you and say, "My dear child, your question has no meaning."
 And you wouldn't have the opportunity to think up a meaningful one and come back.
 So perhaps you should have asked, "What question should I ask?"
 And the Lord would say to you, "Why do you want a question?"
 See it seems you do want one, don't you?
 Because you feel that something is wrong if you don't have a problem.
 Well you've got one.
 That is, the insoluble problem of trying to win without losing.
 Now as long as you can keep that problem, you'll be busy.
 Only however, until you see that it can't be solved.
 But there are all sorts of ways of presenting that problem in such a way that you cannot
 see that it's meaningless.
 And the better gurus are very clever at bringing these ways out.
 You may see, for example, if you are invited to practice intense concentration, that after
 a while you find yourself thinking about concentrating, and therefore that your concentration is somewhat
 divided.
 Or he may ask you, "Why are you concentrating?
 What is your motivation for this activity?"
 And you find out that it's your element of irreducible rascality.
 So however, the teacher, once he's seen that we've mastered that lesson, has something
 still more ingenious.
 He says, "Now you've actually made progress, because finding out that you could not really
 concentrate was valuable because it began to prick the illusion of your ego.
 But you've only got your foot in at the door.
 Beyond this are many, many higher things to be learned, and you must redouble your efforts."
 And so, of course, you apply yourself all the more, again and again, on all sorts of
 tricks that these old gentlemen can come out with.
 And you will keep at it just as long as he can make you fall for it.
 But in the end, you see that it was all tricks, as the great Zen master Rinzai said.
 Well, after all, there was nothing much in Obaku's Buddhism.
 And he went on to explain to his students that the art of Zen, or teaching Zen, is like
 deceiving a child with an empty fist.
 You know how you can intrigue a child by pretending you've got something very precious in your
 fist.
 And you can play a game for an hour, provoking the child to ever greater enthusiasm to find
 out what you've got.
 And in the end, the revelation is that there was nothing there.
 So many people say, in the course of their Zen training, "I realized there was nothing
 to realize.
 It was all there from the beginning."
 Because you see, standing opposite to the realization that you can't do anything about
 it, and equivalently that you can't do nothing about it, comes, of course, the awakening
 that the reason for that is, there is no you separate from you.
 In other words, when you try to control your thoughts, or control your feelings, there
 is no difference between the thoughts and the controller.
 Because what you call the thinker is simply your thought of yourself.
 The thinker is a thought among thoughts, and the feeler is a feeling among feelings.
 And trying to control thoughts with thoughts is like trying to bite your own teeth.
 So you found that out.
 Well, then the other side of the picture is, of course, that if you do find that out, you
 discover that the project of controlling yourself was unnecessary, because you were yourself
 a Buddha from the very beginning.
 That's what the Upanishads mean when they say quite simply, "Tattva-masi."
 You're it.
 You as you are.
 Now how can you conceive that?
 First of all, you let your imagination go, and really think through what you would like
 to happen.
 Imagine the most gorgeous state of bliss that you can conceive, where there are no worries,
 no anxiety, no haunting future with unpleasant consequences.
 You're in control of the whole works, and you're sitting on your lotus, perfectly content.
 And I ask you seriously, is that really what you want?
 You're quite sure that's what you want.
 Imagine now, let's get this situation straight.
 You've got everything you want.
 You're in the highest possible spiritual state that you can conceive.
 And yet, I haven't really surrendered myself, because I know it all.
 Something I don't know.
 So please the surprise.
 You know what would happen?
 You would find yourself sitting here, in this building, tonight, feeling exactly the way
 you feel.
 There's your answer.
 Because, after all, don't you have it all?
 Look.
 You have the feeling of yourself.
 But the feeling of self depends on there being at the same time a contrast, the feeling of
 other.
 The self has a certain sensation of being in control of life to some extent, through
 voluntary action.
 The will seems to have a certain freedom.
 And yet on the other hand, there are limits to that.
 And it seems in the end, life sweeps us away, and we are overwhelmed by the involuntary.
 And yet, the voluntary keeps popping up.
 New voluntaries come into the world with every baby.
 So you see, you couldn't have the experience you call being a voluntarily acting self,
 without the contrast of the involuntary happening.
 Now do you want to be without the involuntary happening?
 You want to get rid of that?
 All right.
 If you get rid of it, you won't have the experience of the voluntary self.
 Or would you like to turn it the other way round?
 Would you like to have the experience of no voluntary self?
 And on the other hand, everything just happens.
 Well then you say, well I'm not sure about that.
 Because then, I would feel at first that I was floating.
 See that I had no further responsibilities.
 I was just walking on air.
 And we do get that feeling sometimes, if you take the ideas of determinism and fatalism
 to their final conclusion, you do have that sense of freedom from all responsibility.
 Freedom from worry and care.
 And you float along for a while, but it wears off.
 You don't somehow seem to be able to follow up that philosophy consistently.
 Especially if you have children.
 And somehow a society begins to push on you to be responsible, as it pushes on children
 to be responsible.
 And so this nagging duality keeps coming back.
 That I cannot realize the nice irresponsible condition of involuntary behavior, unless
 I have the contrast of the possibility of the voluntary, and vice versa.
 Now what does that mean?
 Obviously it means that these two aspects or sides of our experience, which we can call
 the voluntary and the involuntary, the knower and the known, the subject and the object,
 the self and the other, although appearing to be two, are indeed one.
 Because you can't have one without the other.
 And when that state of affairs arises, you know at once that there's a conspiracy.
 That two things, which look as different as different can be, are for that very reason
 the same.
 Now you can detect even under those actions of yours which you call voluntary, the voluntary
 movement of the muscles or of the mind, that there are processes which are not voluntary.
 You do not will your blood to circulate.
 You do not control by intention the synapses in your nervous system.
 And yet you would be incapable of any voluntary action unless those involuntary processes
 were going on.
 So you see these two things go together.
 And you begin to realize something which is rather difficult to describe, that what you
 call your experience is a do-happening.
 We don't have good words for this.
 We have some words which have this sort of sense, like the word cleave, which means to
 stick together or to hold together and also to split.
 And the word sacer in Latin means holy and accursed.
 And so I would like to propose we should find some word for a do-happening, because it's
 all a do-happening.
 That's what Buddhists mean when they talk about karma.
 The word karma means action.
 And when something happens to you, be it good or bad, they say it is your karma.
 That means quite simply it is your doing.
 But you say I didn't mean to do that.
 No.
 One school of thought will explain it by saying but you see you did something in a
 former life or at a former time which now has this consequence.
 But that's a very superficial understanding of karma.
 You don't need to believe in reincarnation to understand karma.
 Karma is simply that you don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.
 That with one aspect you are doing what you call the environment, and with the other aspect
 you are doing what you call the organism, the me, this living body.
 But as you cannot conceive possibly the existence of a living body with no environment, that
 is the clue that the two are basically one, like the two poles of a magnet.
 North is quite different from South and yet it's all one magnet.
 So in precisely the same way, you are both what you do and what happens to you.
 So that you have a little game in which you play that what happens to you, that you are
 not responsible for.
 That's not you, you see.
 You're only responsible for this side of it.
 And then you can compete with the other side.
 What it's like is this.
 Get two knitting pins, one in each hand, and have a fencing match with yourself.
 And really sincerely try to stick the other hand.
 But that other hand must really sincerely be trying to stick the first one and also
 to defend itself.
 It's like playing chess with yourself, you see.
 Now it won't work, you'll come to a sort of standstill, unless you decide for your
 right hand that that's the one that's really going to win.
 But then you've broken the rule of the game, you see.
 That's what we do.
 That's what is called by both the Hindus and the Buddhists, avidya, ignorance, which
 really better means ignorance.
 So what it comes down to, you see, is basically this.
 Just in the same way that the authority of the guru is your authority, you did it.
 So the place where you are in life is where you've put yourself.
 And just as on the surface of a sphere, every point may be regarded as the center of the
 surface, so every place may be regarded as the true place.
 And everyone's in his true place.
 Everybody in other words, put it in what language you will, is a manifestation of the divine,
 playing this game, that game, the other game.
 And your not knowing it, if you don't know it, is part of the game.
 Makes it all the more fun.
 Get lost, you say to yourself.
 And lost you get.
 Like children love to play hide and seek, to get lost.
 Like we all like to go to a play, see a horror movie, and have the cold shivers because we
 think the awful awfuls are going to happen, something is going to be seen on the screen
 which we can't stand to see.
 Ooh, won't that be a thrill, if it happens.
 We all expose ourselves to that, just as children and young people are always exposing themselves
 to dreadful things.
 And the parents get absolutely, they get the heebie-jeebies.
 They think if it isn't getting drunk, or driving hot rods, they take drugs.
 And that may ruin their sanity for life.
 How horrible can it be?
 And if they don't take drugs, they'll do something else.
 Always to see how close to the point of danger you can get.
 And most people who go in for racing cars usually end up in a crash.
 And they know it.
 But the life is all the sweeter for being played dangerously.
 So I would say to those among you who are the most deadheads, in the sense of unspiritual
 and square, if there are any here, a real stuffy people, congratulations.
 You see?
 You're playing a very far out game.
 See, you're so lost you don't even know where you stood.
 That's taking a gorgeous risk.
 Why?
 Because of you we might even blow up the planet.
 How close are we going to get to that one?
 Well, just in the same way as that car racer watches the needle going up, up, up, up, up,
 up, there are these people feeling more and more and more righteous.
 Determined that good shall prevail, watching that needle go up, it's getting hotter and
 hotter and hotter, and finally they go out in a blaze of glory.
 And then when the dust settles, they say, "Phew, that was a close squeak."
 I mean, that was quite a dream we'd woken up from.
 See where will we go next?
 See, that's the point, it's simple.
 That's why I would say that my function is liberative.
 I want you to see that it's you.
 It's not me, it's not Swami so and so, it's not Buddha so and so, it's not saint so and
 so, it's you.
 You do it.
 As Sir Edwin Armand put the words into the mouth of the Buddha, "You suffer from yourselves,
 none else compels, none other holds you that you live and die and whir upon the wheel and
 hug and kiss its spokes of agony, its tire of tears, its navel of nothingness."
 And when one of the old Zen masters went to his teacher and said, "What is the way to
 liberation?"
 The teacher said, "Who is restraining you?"
 He said, "No one."
 "If so, why should you ask for liberation?"
 See, it all bounces back to you.
 What do you want?
 Do you know what you want?
 Can you think it through, say exactly what you want?
 And invariably you'll get back to the place where you are.
 Because what you say you want is always the symptom, the expression of what you are now.
 If then that is the case, that it's all there because you're doing it, why meditate?
 Why do anything of a so-called spiritual nature?
 People don't understand really what meditation is.
 They take it up, like they take up psychotherapy or a course in weight reduction, in order
 to be better.
 But if you do that, you are not practicing what is called jhana or yoga or Zen.
 That's not it at all.
 Meditation is the one human activity which has no purpose.
 Buddhas who are supposed to have attained everything are invariably shown in some sort
 of meditation posture.
 Why should they meditate anymore?
 Because that just happens to be the way that a Buddha sits when he sits.
 When he sits, he sits.
 When he walks, he walks.
 He's not going anywhere, he's just going for a walk.
 Because he digs it.
 See, to dig, the very word means not merely to appreciate, but to penetrate.
 To go to the heart of the matter and to penetrate the moment.
 To get right to the root of the moment is nowhere else than the center of you, where
 you are, it's where you start this whole thing.
 So to get with yourself is to get at the moment where you begin all this questioning.
 Where does the question come from?
 Where does the desire spring from?
 Well that's you, and that you is the point from which the whole universe is created,
 flowing back into the past like the wake of a ship.
 The wake doesn't drive the ship, it's the ship that makes the wake.
 So here you are, producing it.
 Meditation is just sitting and watching it happen.
 And it's not done because it's good for you, it's done for fun.
 I might even say meditation is a fun thing.
 And if it isn't, you're not meditating.
 There's an awful game that meditators play, which is competitive suffering.
 You know, they go to some place where they sit for hours on end, until their legs ache
 and practically fall off.
 And they come back and brag about how they sat through all those hours of leg aching.
 Now it's very difficult to put down people who are suffering, because after all one has
 a natural sympathy for pain.
 But I sometimes want to say, for goodness sake don't throw your suffering at me in that
 way and in that spirit.
 Don't brag about it.
 Don't one-up me by saying, "Well I've suffered more than you have."
 People do things like that, they say, "Well I'm more aware of my shortcomings than you
 are.
 I'm more tolerant than you are.
 I'm recognized more than you do what a rascal I am."
 Every kind of way of one-upping somebody else in order to play the game in which I always
 win.
 So once we get into that kind of thing with the meditation scene, we get into hierarchies
 and ranks and degrees and who has attained number seven, who has attained number nine,
 and the expert guru will always put a stage higher than anyone, anybody's thought of.
 It serves to see how far your ambition will run.
 So this goes on endlessly, endlessly, endlessly, until you suddenly wake up and begin real
 meditation by realizing that you were there.
 That you do really meditate all the time by virtue of existing all the time.
 Only you miss that eternal now by always looking for something next minute, expecting a result.
 Now you can say, "Let me not expect a result," because one does anyway.
 So you may just as well sit and enjoy it.
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