"Zen Teaches Trust, Not Belief" Talks on Zen Anecdotes

Why does Osho say that nirvana, enlightenment, is a nightmare - and not only a nightmare but the last nightmare? Because as long as we keep hoping for some future paradise, we are sacrificing the present for a moment that will never come. Our desire to achieve nirvana becomes the very obstacle to its happening.
Osho challenges us to wake up and stop dreaming. He exposes the tricks and habits of our minds that keep us from being in the here and now, living this moment totally. As he relates them to our lives today, we begin to discover the art of being present and joyful in the simple ordinariness of life.

Muso, the national teacher,
And one of the most illustrious masters of his day,
Left the capital in the company of a disciple
For a distant province.

On reaching the tenryu river
They had to wait for an hour
Before they could board the ferry.
Just as the ferry was about to leave the shore
A drunken samurai ran up
And jumped into the packed boat,
Nearly swamping it.
He tottered wildly as the small craft
Made its way across the river.

The ferryman,
Fearing for the safety of his passengers,
Begged him to stand quietly.
'We're like sardines in here,'
Said the samurai gruffly.
Then, pointing to Muso,
'Why not toss out the bonzae?'
'Please be patient,' Muso said,
'We'll reach the other side soon.'
'What!' bawled the samurai, 'me be patient?
Listen here, if you don't jump off this thing`
I swear I’ll drown you.'

The master's calm so infuriated the samurai
That he struck muso's head with his iron fan,
Drawing blood.

Muso's disciple had had enough by this time,
And as he was a powerful man,
Wanted to challenge the samurai.
'I can't permit him to go on living after this,' he said.
'Why get so worked up over a trifle?'
Muso said with a smile.
'It's exactly in matters of this kind
That the bonzae's training proves itself.
Patience, you must remember,
Is more than just a word.'

Then he recited an extempore waka:
'The beater and the beaten:
Mere players of a game
Ephemeral as a dream.'

When the boat reached shore,
And Muso and his disciple alighted,
The samurai ran up
And prostrated himself at the master's feet.
Then and there he became a disciple.

SEEKING for something, desiring for something, is the basic disease of the mind. Not seeking, not desiring, is the basic health of your being.
It is very easy to go on changing the objects of desire, but that is not the way of transformation. You can desire money, you can desire power... you can change the objects of desire - you can start desiring god - but you remain the same because you go on desiring.
The basic change is to be brought not in the objects of desire, but in your subjectivity.
If desiring stops - and remember, I am not saying that it has to be stopped - if desiring stops, then you are for the first time at home, peaceful, patient, blissful, and for the first time life is available to you and you are available to life. In fact, the very division between you and life disappears, and this state of non division is the state of god.
People come to me from all over the world; they travel thousands of miles. When they come to me and I ask, 'Why have you come?' somebody says, 'I am a seeker of god.' Somebody says, 'I am a seeker of truth.'
They are not aware what they are asking. They are asking the impossible. God is not a thing. God is not an object. You cannot seek him. God is this whole. How can you seek the whole? You can dissolve in it, you can merge in it, but you cannot seek it. The seeking simply shows that you go on believing yourself separate from the whole - you the seeker and the whole the sought.
Sometimes you seek a woman, sometimes you seek a man. Sometimes, frustrated from the world, you start seeking the other world - but you are not yet frustrated with seeking itself.
A seeker is in trouble. A seeker is confused. He has not understood the basic problem itself. It is not that you have to seek god, then everything will be solved. Just the opposite - if everything is solved, suddenly there is god.
…
And if you stop seeking nirvana, you will find nirvana hidden in life itself. If you stop seeking god, you will find god everywhere... in each particle, in each moment of life. God is another name of life. Nirvana is another name of life lived. You have just heard the word 'life'; it is not a lived experience.
Drop all beliefs, they are hindrances. Don't be a christian, don't be a hindu, don't be a mohammedan. Just be alive. Let that be your only religion.
Life - the only religion. Life - the only temple. Life - the only prayer.
I have heard, a disciple came to a zen master, bowed down, touched his feet and said, 'How long do I have to wait for my enlightenment?'
The master looked at him long, long enough. The disciple started getting restless. He repeated his question and he said, 'Why are you looking at me so long? Why don't you answer me?'
And the master answered a really zen answer. He said, 'Kill me.'
The disciple could not believe that this is the answer for his enlightenment. He went to ask the chief disciple. The chief disciple laughed and he said, 'The same he did to me also.' And he is right. He is saying, 'Why do you go on asking me? Drop this master. Drop this asking. Kill me. Drop all ideology. Who am l? I am not preventing you. Life is available. Why don't you start livig? Why do you go on preparing, when and how?
This seems to be the most difficult thing for the human mind - just to live, naked; just to live without any arrangements; just to live the raw and the wild life; just to live the moment.
And this is the whole teaching of all the great teachers, but you go on making philosophies out of them. Then you create a doctrine, and then you start believing in the doctrine.
There are many zen people who believe in zen - and zen teaches trust, not belief. There are many people around me who believe in me - and I teach you trust, not belief. If you trust your life, you have trusted me. No intellectual belief is needed.
Let this truth go as deep In you as possible: that life is already here, arrived. You are standing on the goal. Don't ask about the path.

On no other subject Osho has talked more than on Zen.