The Goose is Loose!

Before I share a few thoughts, I'd like to share a relevant passage from the book "Life of Osho":

Quote :

The very last lecture Osho gave before he left Poona ended with his recounting the Zen story of Nansen and the koan of the baby goose brought up inside a bottle.

The official, Riko, once asked Nansen to explain to him the old problem of the goose in the bottle.

"If a man puts a gosling into a bottle," said Riko, "and feeds him until he is full-grown, how can the man get the goose out without killing it or breaking the bottle?"

Nansen gave a great clap with his hands and shouted, "Riko!"

"Yes, Master," said the official with a start.

"See," said Nansen, "the goose is out!"

"This," he continued, "is the only joke in existence. You are enlightened. You are Buddhas -- pretending not to be, pretending to be somebody else. And my whole work here is to expose you."

...

"Man lives in problems, man lives in misery. To live without problems, to live without misery, needs real courage.

"I have lived without any problems for twenty-five years, and I know it is a kind of suicide. I simply go on sitting in my room doing nothing. There is nothing to do!

"If you can allow that much silence to penetrate your very being, only then will you be able to let the goose out of the bottle. Otherwise, for a moment maybe -- and again you will push the goose back into the bottle. That gives you some occupation; it keeps you occupied, keeps you concerned, worried, anxious. The moment there are no problems, there is no ego. The ego and the mind can exist only in the turmoil of problems."

...

"You need not be grateful to me at all, because I am not giving you anything new. I am simply helping you to remember.

"You have forgotten the language of your being. I have come to recognise it -- I have remembered myself. And since the day I remembered myself I have been in a strange situation: I feel compassion for you, and deep down I also giggle at you, because you are not really in trouble. You don’t need compassion, you need hammering, you need to be hit hard on the head. Your suffering is bogus. Ecstasy is your very nature.

"You are truth.
"You are love.
"You are bliss.
"You are freedom."

Seems to dovetail pretty neatly with the "nothing needs to be fixed/everything is as it should be" concept, doesn't it? Even though I often have a hard time reconciling that viewpoint with what I see around me, I still recognize Truth in it. It's the reconciliation that concerns me.

I have a mass of good ideas, good concepts, floating around in my head. Bits of wisdom I've picked up or recognized over the years. I just don't like the way some seem to contradict others. It's untidy, and unsettling. I'd like to someday (soon) sort through all these ideas and try to fit them into a coherent whole. Every once in a while, I feel like I can grasp the bigger picture that all these puzzle pieces make. Little satoris, I suppose. But if I can't wrap my rational mind around it...?

(Still trying to get these ideas out...)

*Bump* I added a little.

Thanks for posting this Rogue, great read and something to think about thats for sure. The ego is can be a tricky thing sometimes.

Ego...?