In the morning the priest opened the door to see at what had happened to the
master. He was sitting by the side of the road. He had picked a few wild flowers
and he had put those wildflowers on a milestone. He was worshiping,
"BUDDHAM SHARANAM, GACHCHHAMI. SANGHAM SHARANAM
GACHCHHAMI. DHAMMAM SHARANAM GACHCHHAMI."
The priest could not believe it. "He is really mad. Last night he burned a buddha,
so costly" -- it was made of sandalwood -- "and now that madman is worshiping
a milestone as a buddha." The priest came close to him and said, "What are you
doing?"
The master said, "My morning prayer." The priest said, "But you look a strange
type. Last night you destroyed my buddha and now you are worshiping a
milestone."
He said, "You don't understand. It is only our visualization. If you visualize that
this is a buddha, this is a buddha. You visualized a buddha in the wooden statue
-- it became a buddha. It is all a mind game. I don't believe in prayers. It was just
for you that I waited and was worshiping the milestone -- just to show you that
whatever you worship, you are worshiping something wrong, because you are
the buddha. The worshiper is the buddha, not the worshiped. Can I come in the
temple again tonight?"
The priest said, "No, although you appear to be right and perhaps I am wrong, I
cannot follow your great understanding -- it is dangerous. It will be good if you
leave this place and do your act in some other temple. I am a poor priest; you
have already destroyed one of my most beautiful buddhas; now I cannot -- even
though you convinced me -- I cannot allow you inside the temple."
The master said, "It is not a question ...but I can see that you have understood
rightly, and one day you will come searching for me. I can see in your eyes the
light of understanding, a ray of understanding. Don't let me in ...but I am already
within you."
And after two years the priest had to come to the master to give an apology, and
he brought the remaining three statues, saying, "You can burn them whenever
you need. I have understood. Since that night, I have not been able for a single
moment to forget you -- your beauty, your grace, your peace, your silence and
your great effort to make me understand that what I had been doing was stupid.
And I misbehaved with you; I threw you out in the dark night, on a cold night.
Still you waited for me next morning, to give me another opportunity to
understand. And I was so foolish that I missed that opportunity too.
"But two years are enough. You have been haunting me. Now I have come,
knowing perfectly well that the buddha is within; he is not in the statues of the
temples, and the statues of the temples and the milestones are not different."
Bodhidharma The Greatest Zen Master Osho
That reminds me: when for the first time in India, the British government created
the roads and put the milestones, they painted those milestones red, because red
is a very brilliant color and you can see it from far away. Particularly in contrast
to the greenery of the fields and the forest, it looks separate. Any other color may
get mixed, but red stands absolutely separate.
The British engineers who were working on the roads were surprised that the
villagers started worshiping them! They thought that these were statues of
Hanuman. It was a great problem for the engineers to tell those villagers that
they were just milestones. But the villagers insisted, "They may be milestones for
you, but for us, it is perfectly good. They look so beautiful, and we are not doing
any harm to you. We will just be worshiping them."
I have been reading the history ...when the roads were first made in India, the
British engineers were shocked. They could not prevent the villagers who had
said, "You can think of them as milestones, but what is the harm if we worship
them? To us they look just the statues of Hanuman."
Bodhidharma's answer cannot be what the disciple has noted here. His answer
can only be: Remember your own buddhahood, awaken to your own
buddhahood, and this awakening will make your no-mind one with the buddha.
Don't misdirect your worship. You have to worship your own innermost
consciousness. You are the temple, you are the worshiper, and you are the
worshiped.