Zen: Dang Dang Doko Dang

Life is wild, no path exists; you walk and you create your own path.

This book is a transcript of Osho’s talks on Zen and Zen masters. In his discourse he goes through a number of Zen stories. Zen means sitting. In Japanese they have the full word zazen, which means sitting silently, doing nothing. Zen simply says, sit and don’t do anything. Zen originated in India with Gautam Buddha.

When Gautam Buddha attained enlightenment, the state of no-mind, the world came to know the path of meditation, the path that needed no God. Buddhism is an effort to drop the mind totally.For Buddhists, God and Devil, heaven and hell , good and bad are all of the mind and hence they say, drop the whole mind.

Zen is an absolutely individual path. It is not a religion in the sense of Christianity or in the sense of any other organization. In Osho’s words”If you have a feeling for God - then Zen is not for you. But if the world has no meaning for you, if it has really died for you, if God is really dead for you, then Zen is for you.”.

Zen says that there is no need to talk about God; all talk about God is useless. ; they don’t talk about heaven and hell; they don’t talk about truth, they don’t talk about reality either.

Osho’s commentaries on Zen as well as his responses to questions from seekers and disciples are highly interesting. Stories, jokes and parables are galore in this book.

Here is a Zen story included in this book.:
Long ago in Japan a blind man, visiting a friend one night, was offered a paper-and-bamboo lantern to carry home with him. ‘I do not need a lantern,’ he said. ‘Darkness or light is all the same to me.’ I know you do not need a lantern to find your way,’ his friend replied, ‘but you must take it because if you don’t have one, someone else may run into you.’
The blind man started off with the lantern, and before he had walked very far, someone ran squarely into him. ‘Look out where you are going!’ he exclaimed to the stranger. ‘can’t you see this lantern?’
‘Your candle has burnt out, Brother,’ replied the stranger.

‘Dang, dang doko dang’ is what a zen master like Ho-shan will say mimicking as if beating a drum, when someone asks a foolish or stupid question. Only zen masters are courageous enough to answer like that. It implies that such question can only be answered in an absurd way. To all such questions a Ho-shan like master’s answer will always be the same: Dang, dang, doko dang, doko dang.’As the question is absurd, the answer cannot be anything else than that.

Osho’s observations are always unique and a few are given below:

Churches are the tombs of God where God has died.

Knowledge, if it is yours, is a light on the path. Knowledge if it is learned from others, is a burden.

.All our formalities are nothing but helping each others ego. They are all lies.

Even if a freedom is forced on you, it is a slavery, and if you accept a slavery on your own, it is freedom.

The ideas contained in this book are rebellious and inspiring, which can even transform the mind-set of the reader.