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The world of Zen can be called the most special and also the most ordinary. It is a paradox if you
look from the outside; if you look from the inside there is no paradox at all. It is a very simple
phenomenon. The rose flower, the marigold, the lotus, or just the very ordinary blade of grass, they
are not trying to be special at all. From the blade of grass to the greatest star, they are all living in
their suchness. There is no effort, no striving, no desire. There is no becoming. They are absolutely
blissful in their being. Hence there is no comparison, no competitiveness. And there is no question
of any hierarchy – who is lower and who is higher. Nobody is lower, nobody is higher. In fact, the
person who is trying to prove himself higher is lower.
The person who accepts whatsoever he is with joy – not with resignation, mind you, not in despair
but in deep understanding, and is grateful for it, grateful to the existence, grateful to the whole – he
is the highest.
Jesus says it: Blessed are those who are the last in this world because they shall be the first in my
kingdom of God. He was speaking a different language because he was speaking to a different kind
of people, but the statement has the quality of Zen in it. Those who are the last… But if you are
trying to be the last you are not the last, remember.
That’s what Christians have been doing for hundreds of years: trying to be the last in order to be the
first in the kingdom of God. They have missed the whole point. To be the last – not by effort, not by
striving, but just by simple understanding that ”Whatsoever I am, I am; there is no other way for me
to be. I cannot be anybody else, I need not be anybody else. This is how the whole wants me to be
and I relax in it. I surrender to the will of the whole…”
A Zen Master will not say that ”You shall be the first.” That is because Jesus was talking to people
who were not at all acquainted with Zen. Jesus had known what Zen is. He has been to India, to
Ladakh, to Tibet, and there are stories that he had even been to Japan. There is a place in Japan
where people think he came and visited. It is possible, because for eighteen years he was traveling,
moving from one mystery school to another mystery school. But he had to speak in a Jewish way.