Osho on Ekido (Zen Master) – Only a Zen master beats his disciples

At this moment when the disciple missed awareness, the master hit him hard on the head. I would like to do the same for you in your moment of death, but it cannot be tolerated here. In Japan it was one of the oldest traditions: whenever a disciple came to a master, he said “My life, my death — both are yours. If you want to kill me, you can.” This is what surrender is. And he signed, he wrote it down; he gave it in writing because the law, the state, won’t listen. The law will not listen if you say that because he was going to die, that’s why you hit him. The law will say: you hit him, that’s why he has died.

The law moves from the visible and a master moves from the invisible. The master is seeing the invisible death reaching, and he hits just to make the disciple alert. And a very hard hit is needed. When the mind is moving in sex an ordinary hit won’t do; a real hit is needed, a real electric shock-like thing.

It is an old story. If in the future there are monasteries like old Zen monasteries, there will be no need to hit with a staff. An electric shock can be given — but something so shocking that the whole being trembles, something so shocking that there is a break in the desire that is leading you out.

The master hit the disciple so hard that he died. This is the visible part of it — he fell down and died. What happened inside? What is the inside story? When the master hit the disciple, it was the moment of his death, but desire was arising. And in the moment of death if sex is there, only then can you enter into another womb; otherwise you cannot enter.

Men dying in bed, if they are conscious, always think of sex. It may be strange but an old man, even a man of a hundred years, dying in bed, almost always thinks of sex, because sex is the first and the last in the body’s life. He may have been thinking of God before, he may have been chanting Ram, Ram, Ram, but suddenly at the moment of death everything drops and sex appears again. It is natural: the first must be the last. You were conceived out of sex and you must die with sex in your mind.

So, dirty, old men are not just a myth. The body is almost dead but the mind continues to think. And old men think more about sex than young men, because young men can do something about it. Old men cannot do, they can only think; the whole phenomenon becomes cerebral, mental.

In the moment of death you are preparing for a re-entry, for entering the womb. Try to understand deeply why there is so much attraction in entering the feminine body, the female body. What do you gain out of it? While making love, when your whole being wants to penetrate the feminine body, what do you gain out of it? Psychologists say — and spiritualists have always been alert about it — that it is again the same symbolic act of entry. It is not only when you are born that your being enters into the womb of a woman, this persists your whole life. Again and again you want to penetrate the female body; you want to reach the womb again and again.

Sex means the urge to penetrate the feminine body, to enter again into the womb. They are both the same: whether you enter as a seed or whether you enter just in a sex act, the urge is to enter. At the moment of death sex must come into the mind, and if it comes, you have missed. You have created a desire, and now this desire will lead you again into another womb. You will enter.

The master was waiting behind. Masters are always waiting behind disciples, whether physically or nonphysically, and this is one of the greatest moments — when a person is going to die. The master hit him hard, his body fell down, but inside he became alert. The desire disappeared; the girl passing was no more, the street was there no more. Everything dropped with the body, shattered; he became alert. In that alertness, he died. And if you can join alertness and death you have become enlightened. That’s why a miracle happened. Ekido’s tradition became one of the most significant traditions in Japan. Ten persons attained enlightenment. People started to wonder: this cruel man who has killed, this aggressive and violent man who has killed, why are his disciples becoming enlightened?

It is a rare number, Ten is rare. With one master, ten disciples becoming enlightened is very rare. Even to help one to become enlightened is too much. But there is nothing strange, it is plain arithmetic — only this type of master can help. And whenever I have read this story I have always wondered why others missed. This man could have enlightened many. But those who were afraid, scared, filled with fear, simply must have escaped from this man. People would have stopped coming to his monastery because he was dangerous.