http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Its-History-and-Teachings/dp/0681153172(1) Interesting from a historical perspective but doesn't it weaken much of the rest of his works when at the start of this book he claims, as do the Scientologists, that vegetation thinks and feels. What? "Plants are telepathic"?
(2) Osho claims that Zen is neither a religion nor a philosophy. What is it?
(3) Is it possible they're just trying to put it over us, and that Zen is pure nonsense? As with Scientology (and arguably, almost all religion) the individual might gain a feeling of detachment if not fulfilment and happiness purely through a process of autosuggestion.
Of course plants are telepathic. Did you not understand the Buddha's conversation with the flower? Let me tell you about my conversation yesterday with a snake.
The snake, a young copperhead, had somehow slithered inside my house. After a chase I cornered him behind a big chair and pinned him down with a broom handle. He was beautiful. I didn't want to kill him but I didn't want him to bite me or anyone else, and, as a matter of circumspection, I didn't want to beat him to death with the broom handle because the pounding might make deep indentures into the hardwood floor. So I just stood on the handle that pinned his head to the floor and watched him writhe and writhe for several minutes and during this time we had an honest man-to-snake, snake-to-man converstion about the nature of life and what we creatures are to each other and where we are going.
Then I grabbed a nearby metal floorlamp and with it's base I sawed his head off. And I've thought many thoughts about that snake today.
(2) Listen, Osho is telling you volumes about the nature of language.
(3) Hmm, dalehillman, it seems that you've missed Sosan's main point. Listen: (from pages 56-57)
If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinions for or against. Move naked, with no clothes, with no opinions about truth, because truth abhors all opinions. Drop all your philosophies, theories, doctrines, scriptures! Drop all rubbish! Become silent, unchoosing. Your eyes ready to see what is, not in any way hoping to see your wishes fullfilled. And then...
But if you drop these things then it will become a choice. -- this is a paradox. You are not supposed to drop it , because if you drop it that means you have chosen for or against and you are not supposed to make a choice.
And if you simply understand, then the very act of understanding becomes a dropping. Never drop it. Simply laugh...and ask for a cup of tea. Understand?
