No Judgement

By Reverend Ryugen Watanabe, Osho

Everything can be looked at in many different ways. Most people only believe what they see but forget that it is only their way of seeing and not necessarily somebody else's.

Zen teaches us to see things as they are. Almost no one sees things as they are. For example, three persons are talking about God, but all three have different concepts of God. While all three seem to be communicating well with one another, they are not really communicating at all.

In another example, two people are looking at a mountain, one of them admires the beauty of the mountain, its height, its color, its shape but when he turns to another person, he cannot understand why that person cannot appreciate the mountain, because he just broke up with his girlfriend of many years. It is the same mountain that both are looking at and yet it is a different mountain.

This shows us why people do not see things as they really are, they see the world through colored glasses - if you wear yellow glasses then everything looks yellow, green glasses turn everything green and if you are caught up in thoughts of sexuality, then everything you see is related to sex, whether you see a pencil or a cup. If people who think about stealing were to meet the Buddha, they would only see Buddha's pockets and not Buddha.

If a stranger owns a luxurious car and wears expensive clothes and another person drives an old car and wears simple clothing, we make judgments about them accordingly, even though the first person may be unenlightened and the other a Zen master.

Zen teaches us to see everything as it is, not through colored glasses, but rather through meditation which empties your mind: the emptying of the color of your mind.

People fight, countries wage war. The cause of disharmony lies in their seeing things only from their own point of view and not seeing things as they really are - they all see things differently. To bring harmony on the planet, everyone needs to practice meditation which enables one to see things as they are.

Many people, for example, think that to die is a bad thing. But is it really? Dying is part of a natural process and is not bad in and of itself.

Our mind attaches itself to things, but reality is not something attachable - every single thing in this universe is always changing and is thus part of the process of nature. The sun, the moon, planets, the earth and human beings, everything has come into being and will cease to be. Matter has its limitation.

Not a single thing is attachable and yet the nature of the human mind is such that it attaches to things: a husband, wife, car, etc. Most people are attached to these and as a consequence they suffer.

Meditation teaches you detachment.

Detachment is not a negative concept, it is rather full of love, full of unconditional love. Let us suppose that you act with attachment, you then do things for someone else because you love that person or need something from them - this is conditional love. But if you can do things without attachment, it is unconditional.

Zen teaches us not to have expectations.