Famous and popular Zen story - Empty your cup
A university professor went to visit a famous Zen master. While the master quietly served tea, the professor talked about Zen. The master poured the visitor's cup to the brim, and then kept pouring. The professor watched the overflowing cup until he could no longer restrain himself. "It's full! No more will go in!" the professor blurted. "This is you," the master replied, "How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup."
Simon and Garfunkle sang their great song, Kodachrome, with the lyric, "When I think of all the crap I learned in high school, it's a wonder I can still think at all."
Our minds have been filled with all kinds of crap. We are conditioned through schooling to memorize and learn crap. Our religions have filled our minds with crap. The media, now days called "fake news", has filled our minds with crap. Gossip runs rampant in our families, our social circles, our work groups and this gossip fills our mind with crap.
The septic tank is full. It comes to a point where it won't take any more. We have to call the septic tank guy and get it pumped out.
Osho says to his sannyasins, "...because what I am doing every day is destroying your knowledge, destroying and destroying all your clingings and strategies of the mind. Any day when your mind collapses, when you cannot hold it together any more, there is bound to be sudden enlightenment. It is not attainment, hence it can happen in a single moment, instantly. Society has forced you to forget it; my work here is to help you remember it." p.27 "Ah, This!"
When we turn from the path of the ego and embark on the path of the spirit we must forgive ourselves and others for our ridiculousness. We have been wallowing in crap. We have forgotten who we are and in the turning, we begin to search for that which our conditioning has buried in crap.
The idea of the Perennial Philosophy of Aldous Huxley leads one to the idea that God is too big for any one religion. How is it that sometimes people outgrow their religion of childhood? James Fowler, among others, has mapped out a model of spiritual development. Osho says that a person cannot enter into a spiritual life until he/she rebels against childish religious beliefs. Notes On A Spiritual Life intends to explore deeper understandings of an authentic spiritual life.
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