Gautam Buddha was burning

The Zen story is:

A Zen monk is staying in a Buddhist temple.

The night is cold – and in Japan the statues are made of wood – so he takes one of Buddha’s statues and creates fire.

The priest was asleep, but he heard the crackling of the fire and saw the light.

He came up from his room.
He could not believe...

Gautam Buddha was burning and that man was sitting by his side enjoying!

He said, ”You seem to be mad.

You have burned one of my beautiful statues of Gautam Buddha.

You should be ashamed of yourself. I gave you shelter in the temple and this is the reward?– you have burned Gautam Buddha!”

The monk said, ”Wait!” And he took a small piece of wood and started searching in the ashes, but the Buddha was completely burned.

The priest asked, ”Now what are you looking for?”

He said, ”I am looking for the bones.” Actually he said, ”I am looking for the flowers” – because in the East the bones of a dead man are called ”flowers.”
”I am looking for the flowers.”

The priest said, ”You are certainly mad.
How can a wooden statue have flowers?”

The monk said, ”That means you agree with me.

Then please bring one more, because you have already too many and the night is long and it is too cold.

And you have understood that it is just wood – there are no bones, and

Buddha cannot be without bones. Just pick up one more.”
But the priest was mad. He said, ”I will not let you stay inside for a single moment more.
You just get out of the temple!”

While he was pushing him out the monk said, ”Listen, you are worshipping dead Buddhas and you are throwing out a living Buddha. 
You will repent for it.”

Only a Zen master could have done that.

No Christian bishop, or cardinal, or even a pope can burn Jesus Christ’s wooden statue.

He knows it is wooden but he cannot gather courage to burn it. No Hindu can do it.
Nobody in the whole world.

Zen has gone far beyond where Buddha left it.

If he comes back he will be rejoiced, but these scholars cannot understand that this is the ultimate growth.

Now there is nothing more than Zen.

There is no possibility I can conceive that can go beyond it. It has left everything possible behind; now only the essential has remained –

Pure consciousness.

OshO ❤
CHAPTER 5. THE MOMENT TRUTH COMPROMISES, IT DIES
The Path of the Mystic