This is a continuation of the theme of the two truths from the previous article, “Depression and the Truth of the Body.” It begins with an excerpt from Nikos Kazantzakis’s Zorba the Greek, which Petya sent me and which beautifully illustrates what the union of these two truths looks like.
“*I stretched out in my cabin and took a book. Buddha was still ruling over my anxieties; I began reading ‘The Dialogue between the Buddha and the Shepherd,’ which in recent years had filled my chest with peace and security.
Shepherd: — My food is ready, I have milked my sheep; my hut is barred, the fire is blazing in my hearth; and you, sky, rain as much as you like!
Buddha: — I no longer need either food or milk; the winds are my hut, the fire in my hearth is extinguished; and you, sky, rain as much as you like!
Shepherd: — I have oxen, I have cows, I have my father’s meadows and a bull that covers my cows; and you, sky, rain as much as you like!
Buddha: — I have neither oxen nor cows; I have no meadows. I have nothing. I fear nothing; and you, sky, rain as much as you like!
Shepherd: — I have a shepherdess, obedient and faithful; for years now she has been my wife and it is good for me to play with her at night; and you, sky, rain as much as you like!
Buddha: — I have a soul, obedient and free; for years now I have been training it and teaching it to play with me; and you, sky, rain as much as you like!*”
— Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek
After the beauty of this dialogue, I feel uneasy continuing with rational commentary. And yet I will risk it, because I want to quote something else as well – one of Osho’s core ideas about the new human being of the future. He calls this new human being “Zorba the Buddha,” because its essential characteristic will be the union of Heaven and Earth, of the material and the spiritual. The human being of the future will be whole:
“*Zorba is the foundation, and Buddha is the palace. Buddha is the peak, but the stones in the foundation are laid by Zorba. It would be very foolish to choose to be Buddha without having the stones in the foundation.
I am absolutely mathematical about this: Zorba has to be there, and the stronger he is, the better it is for Buddha to come as a possibility. So I can become Buddha at any moment, but Zorba is absolutely necessary as the basic energy out of which the inner Buddha will be carved.
I choose the stone… and Buddha is easy. He is only a matter of opening your eyes. I am not worried about Buddha; I am worried about people who are not Zorba. How will they become Buddha? They have no basic material out of which Buddha can be made…
And all this poverty has come to people from our religious leaders. They have been told not to be materialistic. They have been told to be celibate. They have been told to live in poverty. They have been told that life has come through sin. All these things have destroyed their Zorba. If it were not for this, every human being is born as Zorba the Greek…
And if everything goes according to the way I see it, every human being will die as Zorba-Buddha. Between the Greek and the Buddha there is not a great distance, but first you have to be the Greek.*”
— Osho
This quotation adds something else that is very important about how to combine within ourselves the truth of the body and the truth of the spirit – by first taking care of the foundation. This foundation refers to the roots and is the other part of the truth of the body. After so many long years of spiritual one-sidedness, it is time to integrate the “dark part” and to realize that our problem is not Buddha. Our problem is Zorba, because he is the foundation.
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
Further reading on the topic: John Welwood, Toward a Psychology of Awakening
Note: The quotations are translated from Bulgarian and are not presented as verbatim citations.
