Osho - A bird on the wing: Zen anecdotes for everyday life

The Japanese master Nan-in gave audience
to a professor of philosophy.
Serving tea, Nan-in filled his visitors cup,
and kept pouring.
The professor watched the overflow
until he could restrain himself no longer:
Stop!
The cup is overfull, no more will go in.
Nan-in said,
Like this cup,
you are full of your own opinions and speculations.
How can I show you Zen
unless you first empty your cup?

You have come to an even more dangerous person than Nan-in, because an empty cup wont do; the cup has to be broken completely. Even empty, if you are there, then you are full. Even emptiness fills you. If you feel that you are empty, you are not empty at all: you are there. Only the name has changed. Now you call yourself emptiness. The cup wont do at all; it has to be broken completely. Only when you are not, can the tea be poured into you. Only when you are not, is there no need really to pour the tea into you. When you are not, the whole existence begins pouring, the whole existence becomes a shower from every dimension, from every direction. When you are not, the divine is.

The story is beautiful. It was bound to happen to a professor of philosophy. The story says a professor of philosophy came to Nan-in. He must have come for the wrong reasons because a professor of philosophy, as such, is always wrong. Philosophy means intellect, reasoning, thinking, argumentativeness. This is the way to be wrong, because you cannot be in love with existence if you are argumentative. Argument is the barrier. If you argue, you are closed; the whole existence closes to you. Then you are not open and existence is not open to you.

When you argue, you assert. Assertion is violence, aggression, and the truth cannot be known by an aggressive mind; the truth cannot be discovered by violence. You can come to know the truth only when you are in love. But love never argues. There is no argument in love because there is no aggression. And remember, not only that man was a professor of philosophy, you are also the same. Every man carries his own philosophy, and every man in his own way is a professor because you profess your ideas, you believe in them. You have opinions, concepts, and because of opinions and concepts your eyes are dull, they cannot see; your mind is stupid, it cannot know.

Ideas create stupidity because the more the ideas there are, the more the mind is burdened. And how can a burdened mind know? The more ideas there are, the more it is just like dust which has gathered on a mirror. How can the mirror mirror? How can the mirror reflect? Your intelligence is covered by opinions the dust and everyone who is opinionated is bound to be stupid and dull. Thats why professors of philosophy are almost always stupid. They know too much to know at all. They are too burdened. They cannot fly in the sky, they cant have wings. They are so much in the mind that they cant have roots in the earth. They are not grounded in the earth and they are not free to fly into the sky.

And remember, you are all the same. There may be differences of quantity, but every mind is qualitatively the same, because the mind thinks, argues, collects and gathers knowledge, and becomes dull. Only children are intelligent. And if you can retain your childhood, if you continuously reclaim your childhood, you will remain innocent and intelligent. If you gather dust, childhood is lost, innocence is no more: the mind has become dull and stupid. Now you can have philosophies. The more philosophies you have, the more you are far away from the divine.

A religious mind is a nonphilosophical mind. A religious mind is an innocent, intelligent mind. The mirror is clear, the dust has not been gathered, and every day a continuous cleaning goes on. Thats what I call meditation.

This professor of philosophy came to Nan-in. He must have come for wrong reasons: he must have come to receive some answers. Those people who are filled with questions are always in search of answers. And Nan-in cannot give an answer. It is foolish to be concerned with questions and answers. Nan-in can give you a new mind, Nan-in can give you a new being, Nan-in can give you a new existence in which no questions arise. But Nan-in is not interested in answering any particular questions. He is not interested in giving answers. Neither am I.

You must have come here with many questions. It is bound to be so, because the mind gives birth to questions. The mind is a question-creating mechanism. Feed anything into it, out comes a question, and many questions follow. Give an answer to it; immediately it converts it into many questions. You are here, filled with many questions, your cup is already full. No need for Nan-in to pour any tea into it, you are already overflowing.