Life has to surprise itself, because if it doesn’t, you don’t know you’re there!
They found that was a kind of a pyrrhic victory; that what you gain by stopping your humanity and stopping your emotions isn’t worth getting. It’s like cutting off your head to cure the headache.
The whole point of mantra is that they don’t mean anything at all, and that the word ōṃ is completely meaningless, and that all these various different kinds of incantations are totally senseless. And the idea of repeating them is to liberate yourself from the notion that the universe means anything.
Satori: sudden awakening. It bounced! You know, you thought you were going to crash and you bounced. And, you see, this is the whole thing about Buddhism. We all think we’re going to crash. And it must seem that way, because otherwise it won’t be a surprise to bounce.
You press your selfishness and you go into this whole question of: what do I really want? Supposing I could have it. Supposing I have all the money, anything I can think of. What is it I’m after? And you explore all the sensations you can imagine—all the delights of pleasure, all the ecstasies, all the drunks, all the orgasms, all the anything you can think of—go right through to the end of it: what is it you’re looking for? You say, “Oh, I want to be flipped!” You know, I want to be let out of myself! Well, when you’re let out of yourself, that’s altruism. He that would save his life shall lose it. He that loses his life—or loosens his life—shall find it. You go one way or the other and it all becomes the same thing.
This isn’t something you’re supposed to do. That is to say: it isn’t a chore, it isn’t your solemn duty—unless you want to come on that’s the sort of person you ought to be. This is a delight: to get into that out of total fascination and joy and love of whatever it is that you are, and everybody else is.
Investigating the outer world, investigating the inner world—it’s all one. And that’s you. So Buddhist enlightenment is simply to know that secret. And that’s what it means—really, finally—to grow up.