Zorba, The Buddha is one of the most precious gifts to Man from my beloved master, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. As a sanyasin, I have nothing more to give, apart from some words and my unconditional love. So today, I’d like to share an understanding, an experience, a divine gift; as an offering of my Love to celebrate the birth of The New Man. Actually, with the understanding of Bhagwan’s consciousness, I’d say he was joking when he said ‘Zorba, The Buddha’ in one breath, but it became a gift to Man. History proves, nothing of meaning has ever been born of seriousness. And unfortunately, our world is a serious place. But Zorba, The Buddha is not.
Zorba is the greatest experiencer of life. He is the materialist, the entrepreneur, the adventurer, the creator, the great player! And Buddha is the God. He is the spiritualist, the saint, the lover, the meditator, the conscious being! They are the opposite, they are poles apart. Zorba can dance and Buddha cannot even move. They are the polarity. So ain’t it a joke? How can Zorba be Buddha? He is a player, so he can pretend being Buddha but he cannot be Buddha. More importantly, how can Buddha be Zorba? He cannot even pretend being Zorba. So where do Zorba and Buddha meet?
In Action. Zorba and Buddha meet in action. But how? Zorba is all action and Buddha is the absence of all action. The answer can be found in the ‘Gita’. In Krishna consciousness. It doesn’t matter if you believe in Krishna the god or not, what’s important here is that if ever there has been a consciousness such as that of Krishna, walking this planet then, what does that mean for Man?
In the middle of the battlefield, as the weapons were drawn and the war of Mahabharata began, Arjun, the most promising warrior of the Pandava side, froze! He was unable to draw his weapons on his own family and those who taught him with love, how to fight war. He was unable to see the point of his ‘action’, when either ways he would be the looser. If Arjun wins the war, he looses the ones he loves, and if he looses the war, he looses everything. He is experiencing an inner conflict between his dharma (responsibility) and his karma (action). Yet, He must fight the war. He is born to fight. Aren’t we all really? This world is a fight to survive, to sustain, to live, to experience, even to love.
In this context, ‘Gita’ is Krishna’s discourse to Arjun on the understanding of responsibility vs action; for the New Man, in the Kalayuga (dark ages). The Mahabharata is the beginning of Kalayuga and Krishna is here in consciousness to show us the meeting of Zorba & Buddha, in ‘action’. The ways of survival for the new man of a new age – Kalayuga. The age where brother kills brother & son kills father for power. In the Gita, Krishna talks about three kinds of action – Action (karma), in-action (akarma) & non-action (Vikarma)
Karma is what we all live through, unconsciously. We are the doers. Always trying to figure out what to do, how to do, why to do, when to do. The concept of ‘I’ must do. Karma is of the mind. It belongs to the world of the person, the personality. It is to do with an aim to receive an outcome, a fruit of the doing.
Akarma, is the way of Krishna consciousness. It is the way of the conscious being. Where he is not the doer. He need not figure out anything. What needs to be done, is done through him. He has no expectation of the fruits of his doings, no fear of the outcome. He is doing simply what his soul is calling him to do. For the love of it. That’s all. Akarma is of the heart. Actually it is of the soul but the soul can only be accessed through the heart. Through feeling. Through Love. Akarma belongs to the world of the soul.
Vikarma is beyond the mind and the soul. It belongs to the world of the being, the consciousness, the supreme consciousness. Functions that the body is doing but neither the doer nor the non-doer is involved in the action. Breathing, heart pumping blood, the digestive system; functionings of the body that are just happening. Must be God doing it! 😊. In understanding Vikarma, in accepting Vikarma as a doing of existence, a doing beyond our control; akarma becomes the only possibility. We recognize the futility of our doing, We recognize that life is beyond our control. We are here only to experience. Everything else is meaningless the moment we die. Akarma is where the Zorba meets the Buddha.
Akarma is when the doer is missing. The person is missing. The ‘I’ is missing. The doing is happening just because it must happen. It is in accordance with existence. When the ‘I’ is no more, then Man is Buddha. And when the ‘I’ is no more, Man can also truly experience like Zorba. If you observe yourself as a witness, you will see that it is really the concept of the ‘I’ that feels the pain, the anger, the frustration, the joy, the happiness, the thrill. You, in the being, in the soul, in consciousness and in truth; only feel the love. Love is your only nature. Love can be expressed as compassion, as understanding, as peace, as calm, and also as rebellion.
The non doer, the Akarmi, is the true rebel. Rebellion is not a doing, it is a happening, like love, like meditation. The non-doer cannot revolt because he is not doing anything. The doer can only revolt, not rebel because he is only doing. Revolution doesn’t succeed, it never has. Only rebellion creates meaningful change. Because the change is expressed through the being, not the doing. I’ve expanded a lot more on the rebel in a previous blog post, titled ‘Who do you think you are?’. So what is stopping you from being a Rebel, a non-doer?
Fear! It is Fear! Fear of tomorrow, Fear of the past repeating itself. Fear of loss of that which you are attached to. Be it money, a home, a business, a person, an image, a lifestyle, a project, an idea or even life itself. You must think your actions through, before you act because you fear the outcome. It is the same dilemma that Arjun faces on the battlefield of Mahabharata. Dharma vs Karma. Man cannot act without knowing the outcome, the fruit of his doing. Yet, there is no way to know the outcome. It is the future. It does not exist, except in concept. Do you see the paradox here? The illusion that our world lives in! It is essentially, only a fear of the unknown.
The biggest fear is the fear of death, because of an attachment to life. Why are you attached to life? Because you want to live. But the fear of death is not letting you live. Experience is in non-attachment. And non-attachment makes one fearless. When you are not attached to any outcome, any thing, any person, any image, any idea; when you can live everyday as an experience; then no matter what comes, you will be unaffected. Nothing outside of you can ever have control over you or your experiences.
I’m reminded of 2016, when I had exactly $20 in my bank account and an unpaid mortgage of over 3 months. The bank would fore-close on my home any day. I didn’t know how I was going to eat my next meal, I had been suffering depression for a few years by then. I didn’t know what to do. Then …. One day a thought, more like a feeling, just came to me. Something within me said, ‘Take it all from me, but you can’t take me from me.’ I had no clue what that meant back then but I felt a sort of calm. A survival instinct. A non-attachment to everything outside of me. A fearlessness. Now I know what it means. ‘I am complete unto myself’.
Inner fearlessness of the outcome, through non attachment to everything outside of the self; is the way of the non-doer. The akarmi. The Krishna. Of Zorba, the Buddha. But how to get there? By Focusing on you, the inner being, the inner reality. By focusing on the love, not the fear. You are re-creating yourself. You are your biggest creation. Focus on the re-creation, not the disruptions on the way. The form will change but the disruptions will continue, because you are an intrigue to others. You are different. You choose to know yourself, in a world that doesn’t even know what it is to know yourself. They are fearful too … and fascinated at the same time.
Others are also doers (karmic). They are not non-doers (akarmi). They also are acting from fear. If the actions of others, causes a reaction or any affect on your focus; it means you can be easily controlled. They want to control you so their fear is not realized. They want a reaction and only a doer reacts, a non-doer doesn’t react because his focus is unaffected. He is not interested in the outcome, He is interested in the experience. He knows that the outcome cannot be known. It is foolish to react. Reaction is based on past experiences, on fear. A non-doer only responds and the response is just happening through his being. Through his being focused on his present, on his being, on his plan, on his calling.
A response is based on the present. On the man you are today. The past experience means nothing. The man that experienced it, died with that moment. Then it doesn’t matter how dark the past is. Essentially we all die each moment to be reborn the next. You can choose any moment to respond as the new man. When there is no domination by the past, the non-doer has just moved out of the past. Others play on your fear but the moment you understand they are fearful too, the tables automatically turn. The game naturally flips. Power is not in doing, it is in understanding. Only in understanding. Then moving forward on your plan of choosing yourself, with that understanding. The rest will solve itself.
Actually, the real issue is rooted in deep subconscious human conditioning. It has come to be more commonly known as ‘The human condition’. When a man begins to transform, naturally, his immediate surroundings and people see the change first. Inner transformation is such an experience, that it fills the being with more & more bliss. And We live in a very sad world. I mean… the people of this world live in misery, and they are attached to their misery, because they fear the unknown.
The others, they are not happy to see you happy. And this is a subconscious conditioning of all humans. They don’t even know why they do what they do but I’ll tell you why. They can’t see you happy. It reminds them of what they are missing. That is how you become the change you want to see in the world. You become a mirror for others.
And for your experience, here’s a fact. For a Rama to be worshipped, Ravana must exist. The existence of the villain, makes the hero a hero. What if you embraced the villain in your story? As the villain of course, but accept it as it is, with understanding, with compassion. With love for love. Let it be where it is. Let it do what it’s doing. It is here to make you a hero. Let it watch you be the hero.
What if you did something different? What if you became fearless to the outcome and followed your calling? Followed your heart? What if you just refused to engage in the fight at all, What if you kept doing what is being done through you? What if you just dropped your past in a moment? Not by doing something but just by focusing on your present, on what you want to create. What you want to experience. In your being, the past has already dropped, that is why a conflict has arisen. There would be no conflict otherwise. What if you just said, ‘I will not identify myself with my past experiences’?
Then what would they do? They wouldn’t know how you will react. Because you won’t react. Your being will respond. And it will respond differently. Because you are not the person they controlled. You are Zorba, the Buddha. You are now unpredictable. Some may see you as irresponsible but you know, you are first responsible to the self. That is where dharma (responsibility) of the new man of Kalayuga comes in. The first responsibility is to the self. The Kalayuga is of ‘each man unto himself’.
I’m sure they will threaten to abandon, try to invoke the fear. But never forget, everyone has a fear. They fear loss as much as you do. That is precisely why they try to control the situation. Be it money, a home, a business, a person, an image, a lifestyle, a project, an idea or even life itself. If you become non-attached to it. You become fearless. If you trust. You trust that if it goes, it is for the best and if it comes, it is for the best. Then you move forward with faith, regardless of what it does in your outer reality. You take your power back. But they are not fearless, their power is still not with them. Hmm … Food for thought ! 🤔
The world outside you, doesn’t care about your experience or for that matter, what you think of them. They keep focusing on their agenda. To fill their voids at the expense of another. And they succeed. They succeed in blocking your experience. What if you did the same? but just with understanding and compassion. With love for love. You focus on yourself, on your creation, on your experience and you will succeed. Only thing worth focusing on in life is life itself, and nothing else.
You came alone, you’ll go alone and you will come back alone and go back alone again. Who gives a f### about the world? What if you did something different. Something unpredictable. Something uncontrollable! Zorba is blind but Buddha is not. Buddha is lame but Zorba is not. They will work as one being, to escape a fire.
Zorba can dance & Buddha can see! Then what’s the fear? Cheers to the birth of the fearless New man 🥂
खुदी को कर बुलंद इतना,
कि हर तकदीर से पहले,
खुदा बंदे से खुद पूछे,
‘बता तेरी रजा क्या है।’
Allama Iqbal
Translation:
Raise yourself to such heights,
That before every destiny,
God himself asks the Man,
‘Tell me, what YOU want!’
Allama Iqbal