Hollow Bamboo

EMPTY YOUR MIND AND THINK OF NOUGHT.


What will you do to empty the mind? Thoughts are coming, you watch. And watching has to be done
with a precaution: the watching must be passive, not active. These are the subtle mechanisms and
you have to understand everything, otherwise you can miss anywhere. And if you miss a slight point,
the whole thing changes its quality. Watch; watch passively, not actively.


What is the difference?

You are waiting for your girl, or your lover – then you watch actively. Then
somebody passes by the door and you jump up to look whether she has come. Then, just leaves
fluttering in the wind, and you feel maybe she has come. You go on jumping up; your mind is very
eager, active. No, this will not help. If you are too eager and too active this will not bring you to
Tilopa’s silence or my silence. Be passive as you sit by the side of a river and the river floats by, and
you simply watch. There is no eagerness, no urgency, no emergency. Nobody is forcing you. Even
if you miss, there is nothing missed. You simply watch, you just look. Even the word ”watch” is not
good, because the very word ”watch” gives a feeling of being active. You simply look, not having
anything to do. You simply sit by the bank of the river, you look, and the river flows by. Or, you look
in the sky and the clouds float, and passively.


This passiveness is very very essential; that is to be understood, because your obsession for activity
can become eagerness, can become an active waiting. Then you miss the whole point; then the
activity has entered from the back door again. Be a passive watcher.


EMPTY YOUR MIND AND THINK OF NOUGHT.



This passivity will automatically empty your mind. Ripples of activity, ripples of mind-energy, by and
by, will subside, and the whole surface of your consciousness will be without any waves, without any
ripples. It becomes like a silent mirror.


LIKE A HOLLOW BAMBOO REST AT EASE WITH YOUR BODY.


This is one of Tilopa’s special methods. Every Master has his own special method through which he
has attained, and through which he would like to help others. This is Tilopa’s specialty:


LIKE A HOLLOW BAMBOO REST AT EASE WITH YOUR BODY.


A bamboo: inside completely hollow. When you rest, you just feel that you are like a bamboo: inside
completely hollow and empty. And in fact this is the case: your body is just like a bamboo, and inside
it is hollow. Your skin, your bones, your blood, all are part of the bamboo, and inside there is space,
hollowness.
When you are sitting with a completely silent mouth, inactive, tongue touching the roof and silent,
not quivering with thoughts, mind watching passively, not waiting for anything in particular, feel like
a hollow bamboo – and suddenly infinite energy starts pouring within you, you are filled with the
unknown, with the mysterious, with the divine. A hollow bamboo becomes a flute and the divine
starts playing it. Once you are empty then there is no barrier for the divine to enter in you.
Try this; this is one of the most beautiful meditations, the meditation of becoming a hollow bamboo.
You need not do anything else. You simply become this – and all else happens. Suddenly you feel
something is descending in your hollowness. You are like a womb and a new life is entering in you,
a seed is falling. And a moment comes when the bamboo completely disappears.


LIKE A HOLLOW BAMBOO REST AT EASE WITH YOUR BODY.


Rest at ease – don’t desire spiritual things, don’t desire heaven, don’t desire even God. God cannot
be desired – when you are desireless, he comes to you. Liberation cannot be desired because
desire is the bondage. When you are desireless, you are liberated. Buddhahood cannot be desired,
because desiring is the hindrance. When the barrier is not, suddenly Buddha explodes in you. You
have the seed already. When you are empty, space is there – the seed explodes.


LIKE A HOLLOW BAMBOO REST AT EASE WITH YOUR BODY. GIVING NOT NOR TAKING, PUT
YOUR MIND AT REST.


There is nothing to give, there is nothing to get. Everything is absolutely okay – as it is. There is no
need for any give and take. You are absolutely perfect as you are.


Desiring, you miss. Let desiring subside, become a silent pool of nondesiring – and suddenly you
are surprised, unexpectedly it is there. And you will have a belly-laugh, as Bodhidharma laughed.
And Bodhidharma’s followers say that when you become silent again, you can hear his roaring laugh.
He is still laughing. He has not stopped laughing since then. He laughed because, ”What type of
joke is this? You are already that which you are trying to become! How can you be successful if you
are already that, and you are trying to become that? Your failure is absolutely certain. How can you
become that which you are already?” So Bodhidharma laughed.
Bodhidharma was just exactly a contemporary of Tilopa. They may have known each other, maybe
not physically, but they must have known each other – the same quality of being.


GIVING NOT NOR TAKING, PUT YOUR MIND AT REST. MAHAMUDRA IS LIKE A MIND THAT
CLINGS TO NOUGHT.


You have achieved if you don’t cling; nothingness in your hand – and you have achieved. 


MAHAMUDRA IS LIKE A MIND THAT CLINGS TO NOUGHT. THUS PRACTICING, IN TIME YOU
WILL REACH BUDDHAHOOD. 


What is to be practiced then? To be more and more at ease. To be more and more here and now.
To be more and more in action, and less and less in activity. To be more and more hollow, empty,
passive. To be more and more a watcher – indifferent, not expecting anything, not desiring anything.
To be happy with yourself as you are. To be celebrating.
And then, ANY MOMENT, any moment, when things ripen and the right season comes, you bloom
into a buddha.