Mystic Mantra: Two squirrels running on the roof

Sitting under a glass roof on a rainy day, enjoying the play of squirrels running in the rain. Can there be a more important event than this in your life? It depends on how deeply you look at it. You assign importance to things; therefore, you can deem anything important or unimportant. It’s a choice! Everyday, you see things that are important to you but are not important to many people just like you. Even your own life is unimportant unless you make it important. Instead of giving importance to outside things, it is far better to recognise that each small thing is as important as the biggest one can dream of. Because life is an organic whole where each speck contributes to the huge multitude of energy. Developing a consciousness that can see that every drop of water contains the ocean in it is the beginning of reverence for life.

Zen people express this profound fact in a very tender manner. There is a story of a Zen master, Lin Chi, who lay dying. Thousands of his disciples had gathered to listen to the last sermon, but Lin Chi was simply lying down — joyous, smiling, but not saying a single word.

Seeing that he was going to die and he was not saying a single word, somebody reminded Lin Chi — an old friend, a master in his own right. He was not a disciple of Lin Chi. That’s why he could say to him, “Lin Chi, have you forgotten that you have to say your last words? I have always said your memory isn’t right. have you forgotten?”

Lin Chi said, “Just listen!” On the roof, two squirrels were running, screeching. He said, “How beautiful!” And he died.

For a moment, when he said, “Just listen,” there was absolute silence. Everybody thought he is going to say something great, but only two squirrels fighting, screeching, running on the roof... And he smiled and died. What could be the message in this?

Osho brings it home that Lin Chi had given his last message: Don’t make things small and big, trivial and important. Everything is important. At this moment, Lin Chi’s death is as important as the two squirrels running on the roof, there is no difference. In existence, it is all the same. That was his whole philosophy, his whole life’s teaching — that there is nothing which is great and there is nothing small; it all depends on you, what you make out of it.

Osho adds further, “Start with meditation, and things will go on growing in you — silence, serenity, blissfulness, sensitivity. And whatever comes out of meditation, try to bring it out in life. Share it, because everything shared grows fast. And when you have reached the point of death, you will know there is no death. You can say goodbye, there is no need for any tears of sadness — maybe tears of joy, but not of sadness.”