BE A HOLLOW BAMBOO

“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, are all 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, the mind watching passively, not waiting for anything in particular, feel like a hollow bamboo. 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.

“Rest at ease – don’t desire spiritual things, don’t desire heaven, don’t desire even God. 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.

“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.

“You need not become anything; simply realize who you are, that’s all. Simply realize who is hidden within you. Improving, whatsoever you improve, you will always be in anxiety and anguish because the very effort to improve is leading you on a wrong path. It makes the future meaningful, a goal meaningful, ideals meaningful, and then your mind becomes a desiring.

"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.

“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.”