#

Basho wrote:

LET MY NAME BE TRAVELER; FIRST RAINS.

The first rains have come. Forget my name because all our names are nothing but writings on the sand. The first rains have come and the names will disappear.

Basho says, "Let my name just be traveler." More than that is getting identified with the vehicle on which you are traveling. You may be in a car, you may be in a bullock cart, you may be in a bus, a train or an aeroplane. It does not matter what the vehicle is - you are the traveler. A thousand times you have changed at many junctions. In many forms you have appeared in the world - sometimes as a tree and sometimes as a rose bush and sometimes as an eagle.

The Eastern clarity arising out of enlightenment does not believe in evolution in the sense that it is understood by Charles Darwin. It gives equality to all that is living in existence. You are not superior to the rose bush. But there are idiots, like the Shankaracharya of Puri, who think that brahmins are superior. It is not only a question of humanity, who is superior and who is inferior.

Just the other day I received a letter from another idiot. I attract idiots. They never come here but they at least go on writing letters; they do not dare to come here. He has written to me ... he is a swami of the old Hindu tradition. He belongs to the same temple as the Shankaracharya of Puri, and used to be his secretary; he is very well-educated, is a postgraduate and has a D. Litt., but it makes no difference.

He writes to me, "Your proposition that men and women are equal is not according to the scriptures."

Who bothers about your scriptures? Not even in my dreams have I mentioned your scriptures. All that I want is that they should all be burned.

He says, according to the scriptures, that women are earth, and the earth has forty qualities; and that the man has a hundred and eighty qualities. And of course, because it is written in the scriptures, in his eyes there is no question of any discussion. But for me it means that if this is so, then it is better that the Shankaracharya of Puri commits suicide to bring rains in Hyderabad - because he has a hundred and eighty qualities. The poor woman has only forty qualities - she is just the earth. So why kill a woman, just a little pile of earth, and put it on the funeral pyre?

That's what the harijans of Hyderabad have done; they have burned an effigy of Puri's Shankaracharya. But the rains have not come. Burning effigies or photographs won't help - catch the real old goat.

And I say that even then the clouds won't listen. Here, they come to listen uninvited. They know that here there are people who will love their dance, their song. It is to be noted that in the past every season was absolutely fixed. At a particular date the rains would come, and at a particular date summer would start, and at a particular date winter would start. In India there are only three seasons; it is an equal division - four months for each. And it has been so for thousands of years without any change.

Certainly, the people who lived on this land had a certain synchronicity with nature. They used to dance and sing when the first rains came. Just as the peacocks dance in colorful clothes, human beings used to dance when the first rains came, to welcome them - they were their nourishment.

Without them, there was no life. The people used to greet every season; all the festivals in India were devoted to seasons - it was a totally different mathematics.

Basho is saying rightly, "Let me be remembered just as a traveler. I stayed in your caravanserai overnight. Thank you - but don't remember my name." These people, who had no desire to be remembered, belong to a different consciousness.

Buson, another Zen poet, writes:

A FLASH OF LIGHTNING!

THE SOUND OF THE DEW DRIPPING DOWN THE BAMBOOS.

Life is not confined to you.

It is not your monopoly.

A FLASH OF LIGHTNING!

THE SOUND OF THE DEW .... You can hear right now the sound of the dew dripping down the bamboos. All this is one life: to see it is to have authentic eyes, to feel it is to have the real heart.

My effort here is to bring this synchronicity between you and the lightning and the dewdrops and the bamboos. This whole existence throbs with one heart; there is no question of inferior or superior.

Charles Darwin would not have understood it. Nothing is evolving; there are only travelers moving from one caravanserai to another, just enjoying the eternal pilgrimage.

#