Osho Zen Tarot Cards

KING of FIRE: MASTERY of ACTION

The Zen mater in this card has harnessed the energy of fire and is able to use it for creation rather then destruction. He invites us to recognize and participate with him in the understanding that belongs to those who have mastered the fires of passion, without repressing them or allowing them to get destructive and out of balance. He is so integrated that there is no longer any difference between who he is inside and who he is in the world outside. He offers this gift of understanding and integration to all those who come to him, the gift of creative light that comes from the center of his being.
The King of Fire tells us that anything that we undertake now, with the understanding that comes from maturity, will bring enrichment to our own lives and to the lives of others. Using whatever skills you have, whatever you have learned from you own life experience, it is time to express yourself.

THE CREATOR

There are two types of creators in the world: one type of creator works with objects - a poet, a painter, they work with objects, they create things; the other type of creator, the mystic, creates himself. He doesn't work with objects, he works with the subject; he works on himself, his own being. And he is the real creator, the real poet because he makes himself into a masterpiece.
You are carrying a masterpiece hidden within you, but you are standing in the way. Just move aside, then the masterpiece will be revealed. Everyone is a masterpiece, because God never gives birth to anything less that that. Everyone carries that masterpiece hidden for many lives, not knowing who they are, and just trying on the surface to become someone.
Drop the idea of becoming someone, because you already are a masterpiece. You cannot be improved. You have only to come to it, to know it, to realize it. God has himself created you, you cannot be improved.

QUEEN of FIRE: MASTERY of ACTION

The Queen of Fire is so rich, so much a queen, that she can afford to give. It doesn't even occur to her to take inventories or to put something aside for later. She dispenses her treasures without limits, welcoming all and sundry to partake of the abundance, fertility and light that surrounds her. Wen you draw this card, it suggests that you too are in a situation where you have an opportunity to share your love, your joy and your laughter. And in sharing, you find that you feel even more full. There is no need to go anywhere or to make any special effort. You find that you can enjoy sensuality without possessiveness or attachment, can give birth to a child or to a new project with an equal sense of creativity fulfilled. Everything around you seems to be 'coming together' now. Enjoy it, ground yourself in it, and let the abundance in you and around you overflow.

SHARING

As you move above to the fourth center - that is the heart - your whole life becomes a sharing of love. The third center has created the abundance of love. By reaching to the third center in meditation, you have become so overflowing with love, with compassion, and you want to share. It happens at the fourth center - the heart. That's why even in the ordinary world people think love comes out of the heart. For them it is just hearsay, they have heard it; they don't know it because they have never reached to their heart. But the meditator finally reaches to the heart. As he has reached to the center of his being - the third center - suddenly an explosion of love and compassion and joy and blissfulness and benediction has arisen in him with such a force that it hits his heart and opens the heart. The heart is just in the middle of all your seven centers - three centers below, three centers above. You have come exactly to the middle.

KNIGHT of FIRE: MASTERY of ACTION

The figure in this card has taken on the shape of an arrow, moving with the singel-pointed focus of one who knows precisely where he is going. He is moving so fast that he has become almost pure energy. But his intesity should not be mistaken for the manic energy that makes people drive thier cars at top speed to get from point A to poin B. That kind of intensity belongs to the horizontal world of space and time. The intesity represented by the Knight of Fire belongs to the vertical world of the present moment - a recognition that now is the only moment there is, and here is the only space.
When you act with the intensity of the Knight of Fire it is likely to create ripples in the waters around you. Some will feel uplifted and refreshed by your presence, others may feel threatend or annoyed. But the opinions of other matter little; nothing can hold you back right now.

INTENSITY

ZEN SAYS: Think of all the great words and great teachings as your deadly enemy. Avoid them, because you have to find your own source.
You have not to be a follower, an imitator. You have to be an original individual; you have to find your innermost core on your own, with no guide, no guiding scriptures. It is a dark night, but with the intense fire of inquiry you are bound to come to the sunrise. Everybody who has burned with intense inquiry has found the sunrise. Others only believe. Those who believe are not religious, they are simply avoiding the great adventure of religion by believing.

PAGE of FIRE: MASTERY of ACTION

Life is rarely as serious as we believe it to be, and when we recognize this fact, it responds by giving us more and more opportunities to play. The woman in this card is celebrating the joy of being alive, like a butterfly that has emerged from its chrysalis into the promise of the light. She reminds us of the time when we were children, discovering seashells on the beach or building castles in the sand without any concern that the waves might come and wash them away in the next moment. She knows that life is a game, and she's playing the part of a clown right now with no sense of embarrassment or pretense.
When the Page of Fire enters your life, it is a sign that you are ready for the fresh and the new. Something wonderful is just on the horizon, and you have just the right quality of playful innocence and clarity to welcome it with open arms.

PLAYFULNESS

The moment you start seeing life as non-serious, a playfulness, all the burden on your heart disappears. All the fear of death, of life, of love - everything disappears. One starts living with a very light weight or almost no weight. So weightless one becomes, one can fly in the open sky.
Zen's greatest contribution is to give you an alternative to the serious man. The serious man has made the world, the serious man has made all the religions. He has created all the philosophies, all the cultures, all the moralities; everything that exists around you is a creation of the serious man.
Zen has dropped out of the serious world. It has created a world of its own which is very playful, full of laughter, where even great masters behave like children.

2 of FIRE

The eagle has an overview of all the possibilities contained in the landscape below, as he flies freely, naturally and effortlessly through the sky. He is really in his domain, very grand and self-contained.
This card indicates that you are at a point where a world of possibilities is open to you. Because you have grown more loving towards yourself, more self-contained, you can work easily with others. Because you are relaxed and at ease, you can recognize possibilities as they present themselves, sometimes even before others can see them. Because you are in tune with your own nature, you understand that existence is providing you with exactly what you need. Enjoy the flight! And celebrate all the varied wonders of the landscape spread before you.

POSSIBILITIES

Mind can accept any boundary anywhere. But the reality is that, by its very nature, existence cannot have any boundary, because what will be beyond the boundary? - again another sky. That's why I am saying skies upon skies are available for your flight.
Don't be content easily. Those who remain content easily remain small: small are their joys, small are their ecstasies, small are their silences, small is their being.
But there is no need!
This smallness is your own imposition upon your freedom, upon your unlimited possibilities, upon your unlimited potential.

3 of FIRE

An 'experience' is something that can be filed away in a notebook, or captured on film and pasted into an album. 'Experiencing' is the feeling of wonder itself, the thrill of communion, the gentle touch of our connectedness with all that surrounds us.
The woman in this card is not just touching this tree, she is in communion with it, she has almost become one with it. It is an old tree, and has seen many hard times. Her touch is gentle, reverent, and the white on the inside of her cape reflects the purity of her heart. She is humble, simple - and that is the right way to approach nature.
Nature doesn't bang on any drums when it bursts forth into flower, nor play any dirges when the trees let go of their leaves in the fall. But when we approach her in the right spirit, she has many secrets to share. If you haven't heard nature whispering to you lately, now is a good time to give her the opportunity.

EXPERIENCING

You just look around, look into the eyes of a child, or into the eyes of your beloved, your mother, your friend - or just feel a tree.
Have you ever hugged a tree? Hug a tree, and one day you will come to know that it is not only that you have hugged the tree but that the tree also responds, the tree also hugs you. Then for the first time you will be able to know that the three is not just the form, it is not just a certain species the botanists talk about, it is an unknown God - so green in your courtyard, so full of flowers in your courtyard, so close to you, beckoning you, calling you again and again.

4 of FIRE

Each figure in this mandala holds the right hand up, in an attitude of receiving, and the lft hand down, in an attitude of giving. The whole circle creates a tremendous energy field that takes on the shape of the double dorje, the Tibetan symbol for the thunderbolt. The mandala has a quality like that of the energy field that forms around a buddha, where all the individuals taking part in the circle make a unique contribution to create a unified and vital whole. It is like a flower, whoes wholeness is even more beautiful than the sum of its parts, at the same time enhancing the beauty of each individual petal.
You have an opportinity to participate with others now to make your contribution to creating something greater and more beautiful thatn each of you could manage alone. your participation will not only nourish you, but will also contribute something precious to the whole.

PARTICIPATION

Have you ever seen night going? Very few people even become aware of things which are happening every day. Have you ever seen the evening coming? The midnight and its song? The sunrise and its beauty? We are behaving almost like blind people. In such a beautiful world we are living in small ponds of our own misery. It is familiar, so even if somebody wants to pull you out, you struggle. You don't want to be pulled out of your misery, of your suffering. Otherwise there is so much joy all around, you have just to be aware of it and to become a participant, not a spectator.
Philosophy is speculation, Zen is participation. Participate in the night leaving, participate in the evening coming, participate in the stars and participate in the clouds; make participation your lifestyle and the whole existence becomes such a joy, such an ecstasy. You could not have dreamed of a better universe.

5 of FIRE

These three women are high in the air, playful and free, yet alert and interdependent. In a trapeze act, nobody can afford to be a little bit 'absent' even for split second. And it is this quality of total attentiveness to the moment at hand that is represented here.
We may feel there are too many things to do at once, but get bogged down in trying to do a bit here, a bit there, instead of taking one task at a time and getting on with it. Or perhaps we think our task is 'boring' because we've forgotten that it's not what you do but how you do it that matters. developing the knack of being total in responding to whatever comes, as it comes, is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself. Taking one step through life at a time, giving each step your complete attention and energy, can bring a wondrous new vitality and creativity to all that you do.

TOTALITY

Every moment there is a possibility to be total. Whatsoever you are doing, be absorbed in it so utterly that the mind thinks nothing, is just there, is just a presence. And more and more totality will be coming. and the taste of totality will make you more and more capable of being total.
And try to see when you are not total. those are the moments which have to be dropped slowly, slowly. When you are not total, whenever you are in the head - thinking, brooding, calculating, cunning, clever - you are not total. Slowly, slowly slip out of those moments. It is just an old habit. Habits die hard. But hey die certainly - if one persists, they die.

6 of FIRE

This character is obviously 'on top of the world' right now, and the whole world is celebrating his success with a tickertape parade!
Because of your willingness to accept the recent challenges of life, you are now - or soon will be - enjoying a wonderful ride on the tiger of success. Welcome it, enjoy it, and share your joy with others - and remember that all bright parades have a beginning and an end. If you keep this in mind, and squeeze every drop of juice out of the happiness you are experiencing now, you will be able to take the future as it comes without regrets. But don't be tempted to try to hold on to this abundant moment, or coat it in plastic so that it lasts forever.
The greatest wisdom to keep in mind with all the phenomena in the parade of your life, whether they be valleys or peaks, is that 'this too will pass'. Celebrate, yes, and keep on riding the tiger.

SUCCESS

Watch the waves in the ocean. The higher the wave goes, the deeper is the wake that follows it. One moment you are the wave, another moment you are the hollow wake that follows. Enjoy both - don't get addicted to one. Don't say: I would always like to be on the peak. It is not possible. Simply see the fact: it is not possible. It has never happened and it will never happen. It is simply impossible - not in the nature of things. Then what to do?
Enjoy the peak while it lasts and then enjoy the valley when it comes. What is wrong with the valley? What is wrong with being low? It is a relaxation. A peak is an excitement, and nobody can exist continuously in an excitement.

7 of FIRE

How many people do you know who, just when they were completely overloaded, with too many projects, too many 'balls in the air', have suddenly come down with the flu, or taken a fall and ended up on crutches? That's just the sort of 'bad timing' the little monkey with the pin in his hand is about to impose on the 'one-man-band' pictured here!
The quality of stress represented by this card visits all of us at times, but perfectionists are particularly vulnerable to it. We create it ourselves, with the idea that without us nothing will happen - especially in the way we want it to! Well, what makes you think you're so special? Do you think the sun won't rise in the morning unless you personally set the alarm? Go for a walk, buy some flowers, and fix yourself a spaghetti dinner - anything 'unimportant' will do. Just put yourself out of that monkey's reach!

STRESS

All private goals are neurotic. The essential man comes to know, to feel, "I am not separate from the whole, and there is no need to seek and search for any destiny on my own. Things are happening, the world is moving - call it God ... he is doing things. They are happening of their own accord. There is no need for me to make any struggle, any effort; there is no need for me to fight for anything. I can relax and be." The essential man is not a doer. The accidental man is a doer. The accidental man is, of course, then in anxiety, tension, stress, anguish, continuously sitting on a volcano. It can erupt any moment, because he lives in a world of uncertainty and believes as if it is certain. This creates tension in his being: he knows deep down that nothing is certain.

8 of FIRE

The tiny figure moving on the path through this beautiful landscape is not concerned about the goal. He or she knows the journey is the goal, the pilgrimage itself is the sacred place. Each step on the path is important in itself.
When this card appears in a reading, it indicates a time of movement and change. It may be a physical movement from one place to the next, or an inner movement from one way of being to another. But whatever the case, this card promises that the going will be easy and will bring a sense of adventure and growth; there is no need to struggle or plan too much. The Traveling card also reminds us to accept and embrace the new, just as when we travel to another country with a different culture and environment then the one we are accustomed to. The attitude of openness and acceptance invites new friends and experiences into our lives.

TRAVELING

Life is a continuity always and always. There is no final destination it is going towards. Just the pilgrimage, just the journey in itself is life, not reaching to some point, no goal - just dancing and being in pilgrimage, moving joyously, without bothering about any destination. What will you do by getting to a destination? Nobody has asked this, because everybody is trying to have some destination in life. But the implications...
If you really reach the destination of life, then what? Then you will look very embarrassed. Nowhere to go .. you have reached to the final destination - and in the journey you have lost everything. You had to lose everything. So standing naked at the final destination, you will look all around like an idiot: what was the point? You were hurrying so hard, and you were worrying so hard and this is the outcome.

9 of FIRE

This is the portrait of one whose whole life energy has been depleted in his efforts to keep fueling the enormous and ridiculous machine of self-importance and productivity. He has been so busy 'keeping it all together' and 'making sure everything runs smoothly', that he has forgotten to really rest. No doubt he can't allow himself to be playful. To abandon his duty for a trip to the beach could mean the whole structure might come tumbling down.
The message of this card is not just about being a workaholic, though. It is about all the ways in which we set up safe but unnatural routines for ourselves and by doing so, keep the chaotic and spontaneous away from our doors. Life isn't a business to be managed, it's a mystery to be lived. It's time to tear up the time-card, break out of the factory, and take a little trip to the uncharted. Your work can flow more smoothly from a relaxed state of mind.

EXHAUSTION

A man who lives through conscience becomes hard. A man who lives through consciousness remains soft. Why? - Because a man who has some ideas about how to live, naturally becomes hard. He has continuously to carry his character around himself. That character is like an armor; his protection, his security; his whole life is invested in that character. And he always reacts to situations through the character, not directly. If you ask him a question, his answer is ready-made. That is the sign of a hard person - he is dull, stupid, mechanical. He may be a good computer, but he is not a man. You do something and he reacts in a well-established way. His reaction is predictable; he is a robot.
The real man acts spontaneously. If you ask him a question, your question gets a response, not a reaction. He opens his heart to your question, exposes himself to your question, responds to it.

10 of FIRE

The figure on this card is quite literally 'all tied up in knots'. His light still shines within, but he has repressed his own vitality trying to meet so many demands and expectations. He has given up all his own power and vision in return for being accepted by the very same forces that have imprisoned him. The danger of suppressing one's natural energy in this way is apparent in the cracks of volcanic eruption about to take place around the edges of the image.
The real message of the card is to find a healing outlet for this potential explosion. It is essential to find a way to release whatever tensions and stresses might be building up inside you right now. Beat on a pillow, jump up and down, go out into the wilderness and scream at the empty sky - anything to shake up your energy and allow it to circulate freely. Don't wait for a catastrophe to happen.

SUPPRESSION

In Sanskrit the name is alaya vigyan, the house where you go on throwing into the basement things that you want to do but you cannot, because of social conditions, culture, civilization. But they go on collecting there, and they affect your actions, your life, very indirectly. Directly, they can not face you - you have forced them into darkness, but from the dark side they go on influencing your behavior. They are dangerous, it is dangerous to keep all those inhibitions inside you.
It is possible that these are the things that come to a climax when a person goes insane. Insanity is nothing but all these suppressions coming to a point where you cannot control them anymore. But madness is acceptable, while meditation is not - and meditation is the only way to make you absolutely sane.

ACE of FIRE

The SOURCE

KING of WATER: MASTERY of EMOTIONS

It is a time when the deeply buried wounds of the past are coming to the surface, ready and available to be healed. The figure in this card is naked, vulnerable, open to the loving touch of existence. The aura around his body is full of light, and the quality of relaxation, the caring and love that surrounds him is dissolving his struggle and suffering. Lotuses of light appear on his physical body, and around the subtle energy bodies that healers say surround each of us. In each of these subtle layers appears a healing crystal or pattern.
When we are under the healing influence of the King of Water we are no longer hiding from ourselves or others. In this attitude of openness and acceptance we can be healed, and help others. In this attitude of openness and acceptance we can be healed, and help others also to be healthy and whole.

HEALING

No, you carry your wound. With the ego your whole being is a wound. And you carry it around. Nobody is interested in hurting you, nobody is positively waiting to hurt you; everybody is engaged in safeguarding his own wound. Who has got the energy? But still it happens, because you are so ready to be wounded, so ready, just waiting on the brink for anything.
You cannot touch a man of Tao. Why? - because there is no one to be touched. There is no wound. He is healthy, healed, whole. This word 'whole' is beautiful. The word 'heal' comes from the whole, and the word 'holy' also comes from the whole. He is whole, healed, holy.
Be aware of your wound. Don't help it to grow, let it be healed; and it will be healed only when you move to the roots. The less the head, the more the world will heal; with no head there is no wound. Live a headless life. Move as a total being, and accept things. Just for twenty-four hours, try it - total acceptance, whatsoever happens. Someone insults you, accept it, don't react, and see what happens. Suddenly you will feel an energy flowing in you that you have not felt before.

QUEEN of WATER: MASTERY of EMOTIONS

Receptivity represents the feminine, receptive quality of water and of the emotions. Her arms are extended upwards to receive, and she is completely immersed in the water. She has no head, no busy and aggressive mind to hinder her pure receptivity. and as she is filled she is continuously emptying herself, overflowing, and receiving more. the lotus pattern or matrix that emerges from her represents the perfect harmony of the universe that becomes apparent when we are in tune with it.
The Queen of water brings a time of unboundedness and gratitude for whatever life brings, without any expectations or demands. Neither duty or thought of merit or reward are important. Sensitivity, intuition and compassion are the qualities that shine forth now, dissolving all obstacles that keep us separate from each other and from the whole.

RECEPTIVITY

Listening is one of the basic secrets of entering into the temple of God. Listening means passivity. Listening means forgetting yourself completely - only then can you listen. When you listen attentively to somebody, you forget yourself. If you cannot forget yourself, you never listen. If you are too self-conscious about yourself, you simply pretend that you are listening - you don't listen. You many not your head; you may sometimes say yes and no - but you are not listening. When you listen you become just a passage, a passivity, a receptivity, a womb: you become feminine. And to arrive one has to become feminine. You can not reach God as aggressive invaders, conquerors. You can reach God only ... or it will be better to say; God can reach you only when you are receptive, a feminine receptivity. When you become yin, a receptivity, the door is open. and you wait.
Listening is the art for becoming passive.

KNIGHT of WATER: MASTERY of EMOTIONS

Now is the moment to be a bungee jumper without the cord! And it is this quality of absolute trust, with no reservations or secret safety nets, that the Knight of Water demands from us. There is a tremendous sense of exhilaration if we can take the jump and move into the unknown, even if the idea scares us to death. And when we take trust to the level of the quantum leap, we don't make any elaborate plans or preparations. We don't say, "Okay, I trust that I know what to do now, and I'll settle my things and pack my suitcase and take it with me." No, we just jump, with hardly a thought for what happens next.
The leap is the thing, and the thrill of it as we free-fall through the empty sky. The card gives a hint here, though, about what waits for us at the other end - a soft, welcoming, yummy pink, rose petals, juicy ... c'mon!

TRUST

Don't waste your life for that which is going to be taken away. Trust life. If you trust, only then can you drop your knowledge, only then can you put your mind aside. And with trust, something immense opens up. Then this life is no longer ordinary life, it becomes full of God, overflowing. When the heart is innocent and the walls have disappeared, you are bridged with infinity. And you are not deceived; there is nothing that can be taken away from you. That which can be taken away from you is not worth keeping, and that which cannot be taken away from you, why should one be afraid of its being taken away? - it cannot be taken away, there is no possibility. You cannot lose your real treasure.

PAGE of WATER: MASTERY of EMOTIONS

The bird pictured on this card is looking out from what seems to be a cage. There is no door, and actually the bars are disappearing. The bars were an illusion, and this small bird is being summoned by the grace and freedom and encouragement of the others. It is spreading its wings, ready to take flight for the very first time.
The dawn of a new understanding - that the cage has always been open, and the sky has always been there for us to explore - can make us feel a little shaky at first. It's fine, and natural to be shaky, but don't let it overshadow the opportunity to experience the lightheartedness and adventure on offer, right there alongside the shakiness. move with the sweetness and gentleness of this time. Feel the fluttering within. Spread your wings and be free.

UNDERSTANDING

You are out of jail, out of the cage; you can open your wings and the whole sky is yours. All the stars and the moon and the sun belong to you. You can disappear into the blueness of the beyond ... Just drop clinging to this cage, move out of the cage and the whole sky is yours. Open your wings and fly across the sun like an eagle. In the inner sky, in the inner world, freedom is the highest value - everything else is secondary, even blissfulness, ecstasy. There are thousands of flowers, uncountable, but they all become possible in the climate of freedom.

2 of WATER

The branches of these two flowering trees are intertwined, and their fallen petals blend together on the ground in their beautiful colors. It is as if heaven and earth are bridged by love. But they stand individually, each rooted in the soil in their own connection with the earth. In this way they represent the essence of true friends, mature, easy with each other, natural. There is no urgency about their connection, no neediness, no desire to change the other into something else.
This card indicates a readiness to enter this quality of friendliness. In the passage, you may notice that you are no longer interested in all kinds of dramas and romances that other people are engaged in. It is not a loss. It is the birth of a higher more loving quality born of the fullness of experience. It is the birth of a love that is truly unconditional, without expectations or demands.

FRIENDLINESS

First meditate, be blissful, then much love will happen of its own accord. Then being with others is beautiful and being alone is also beautiful. Then it is simple, too. You don't depend on others and you don't make others dependent on you. Then it is always a friendship, a friendliness. It never becomes a relationship, it is always a relatedness.
You relate, but you don't create a marriage. Marriage is out of fear, relatedness is out of love.
You relate; as long as things are moving beautifully, you share. And if you see that the moment has come to depart because your paths separate at this crossroad, you say goodbye with great gratitude for all that the other has been to you, for all the joys and all the pleasures and all the beautiful moments that you have shared with the other. With no misery, with no pain, you simply separate.

3 of WATER

These three women dancing in the wind and the rain remind us that celebration never need depend on outside circumstances. We need not wait for a special holiday or a formal occasion, nor a sunny and cloudless day. True celebration arises from a joy that is first experienced deep within, and spills over into an overflow of song and dance and laughter, and yes, even tears of gratitude.
When you choose this card, it indicates that you are becoming more an more available and open to the many opportunities that are to celebrate in life, and to spread this by contagion to others. Don't bother about scheduling a party on your calendar. Let you hair down, take you shoes off, and start splashing in the puddles right now. The party is happening all around you every moment!

CELEBRATION

Life is a moment to celebrate, to enjoy. Make it fun, a celebration, and then you will enter the temple. The temple is not for the long-faced, it has never been for them. Look at life - do you see sadness anywhere? Have you ever seen a tree depressed? Have you seen a bird anxiety-ridden? Have you seen an animal neurotic? No, life is not like that, not at all. Only man has gone wrong somewhere, and he has gone wrong somewhere because he thinks himself to be very wise, very clever.
Your cleverness is you disease. Don't be too wise. Always remember to stop; don't go to the extreme. A little foolishness and a little wisdom is good, and the right combination makes you a buddha ...

4 of WATER

The woman in this image has a faint smile on her face. In fact she is just watching the antics of the mind - not judging, not trying to stop them, not identified, just watching as if they were traffic on the road, or ripples on the surface of a pond. And the antics of the mind are slightly amusing, as it jumps up and down and twists this way and that, trying to get your attention and seduce you into the game.
To develop the knack of taking a distance from the mind is one of the greatest blessings. It is what meditation is all about really - not chanting a mantra, or repeating an affirmation, but just watching, as if the mind belongs to somebody else. You are ready to take this distance now, and to watch the show without getting caught up in the drama. Indulge yourself in the simple freedom of Turning In whenever you can, and the knack of meditation will grow and deepen in you.

TURNING IN

Turning Inwards is not a turning at all. Going inwards in not a going at all. Turning inwards simply means that you have been running after this desire and that, and you have been running and running and you have been coming again and again to frustration. That each desire brings misery, that there is no fulfillment through desire. That you never reach anywhere, that contentment is impossible. Seeing this truth, that running after desires takes you nowhere, you stop. Not that you make any effort to stop. If you make any effort to stop it is again running, in a subtle way. You are still desiring - maybe now it is desirelessness that you desire.
If you are making an effort to go in, you are still going out. Any effort can only take you out, outwards.
All journeys are outward journeys, there is no inward journey. How can you journey inwards? You are already there, there is no point in going. When going stops, journeying disappears; when desiring is no more clouding your mind, you are in. This is called turning in. But it is not a turning at all, it is simply not going out.

5 of WATER

The figure pictured in this card is so preoccupied with clutching her box of memories that she has turned her back on the sparkling champagne glass of blessing available here and now. Her nostalgia for the past really makes her a 'blockhead', and a beggar besides, as we can see from her patched and ragged clothes. She needn't be a beggar, of course - but she is not available to taste the pleasures that offer themselves in the present.
It's time to face up the fact that the past is gone, and any effort to repeat it is a sure way to stay stuck in old blueprints that you would have already outgrown if you hadn't been so busy clinging to what you have already been through. Take a deep breath, put the box down, tie it up in a pretty ribbon if you must, and bid it a fond and reverent farewell. Life is passing you by, and you're in danger of becoming an old fossil before your time!

CLINGING TO THE PAST

These tenses - past, present and future - are not the tenses of time; they are tenses of the mind. That which is no longer before the mind becomes the past. That which is before the mind becomes the present. And that which is going to be before the mind is the future.
Past is that which is no longer before you.
Future is that which is not yet before you.
And present is that which is before you and is slipping out of your sight. Soon it will be past ... If you don't cling to the past ... because clinging to the past is absolute stupidity. It is no longer there, so you are crying for spilled milk. What is gone is gone! And don't cling to the present because that is also going and soon it will be past. Don't cling to the future - hope, imaginations, plans for tomorrow - because tomorrow will become today, will become yesterday. Everything is going to become yesterday.
Everything is going to go out of your hands.
Clinging will simply create misery.
You will have to let go.

6 of WATER

Some enchanted evening you're going to meet your soul mate, the perfect person who will meet all your needs and fulfill all your dreams. Right? Wrong! This fantasy that songwriters and poets are so fond of perpetuating has its roots in memories of the womb, where we were so secure and 'at one' with our mothers; it's no wonder we have hankered to return to that place all our lives. But, to put it quite brutally, it is a childish dream. And it's amazing we hang on to it so stubbornly in the face of reality. Nobody, whether it's your current mate or some dreamed-of partner in the future, has any obligation to deliver your happiness on a platter - nor could they even if they wanted to. Real love comes not from trying to solve our neediness by depending on another but by developing our own inner richness and maturity. Then we have so much love to give that we naturally draw lovers towards us.

THE DREAM

This has been said again and again, down through the ages. All the religious people have been saying this: "We come alone into this world, we go alone." All togetherness is illusory. The very idea of togetherness arises because we are alone, and the aloneness hurts. We want to drown our aloneness in relationship ...
That's why we become so much involved in love. Try to see the point. Ordinarily you think you have fallen in love with a woman or a man because she is beautiful, he is beautiful. That is not the truth. The truth is just the opposite: You have fallen in love because you cannot be alone. You were going to fall. You were going to avoid yourself somehow or other. And there people who don't fall in love with women or men - then they fall in love with money. They start moving into money or into a power trip, they become politicians. That too is avoiding you aloneness. If you watch man, if you watch yourself deeply, you will be surprised - all your activities can be reduced to one single source. The source is that you are afraid of your aloneness. Everything else is just an excuse. The real cause is that you find yourself very alone.

7 of WATER

The man and woman in this card are facing each other, yet they are not able to see each other clearly. Each is projecting a image they have constructed in their mind, covering the real face of the person they are looking at.
All of us can get caught up in projecting movies of our own making onto the situations and people surrounding us. It happens when we are not fully aware of our own expectation, desires and judgements; instead of taking responsibility for them and owning them, we try to attribute them to others. A projection can be devilish or divine, disturbing or comforting, but it is a projection nonetheless - a cloud that prevents us from seeing reality as it is. The only way out is to recognize the game. When you find a judgement arising about another, turn it around; Does what you see in others really belong to you? Is your vision clear, or clouded by what you want to see?

PROJECTIONS

In a cinema hall, you look at the screen, you never look at the back - the projector is at the back. The film is not there really on the screen; it is just a projection of shadow and light. The film exists just at the back, but you never look at that. And the projector is there.
Your mind is at the back of the whole thing, and the mind is the projector. But you always look at the other, because the other is the screen.
When you are in love the person seems beautiful, no comparison. When you hate, the same person seems the ugliest, and you never become aware of how the same person can be the ugliest and the same person can be the most beautiful ....
So the only way to reach to truth is to learn how to be immediate in your vision, how to drop the help of the mind. This agency of the mind is the problem, because mind can create only dreams .... Through your excitement the dream starts looking like reality. If you are too excited then you are intoxicated, then you are not in your senses. Then whatsoever you see is just your projection. And there are as many worlds as there are minds, because every mind lives in his own world.

8 of WATER

In this image of lotus leaves in the early morning, we can see in the rippling of the water that one drop has just fallen. It is precious moment, and one that is full of poignancy. In surrendering to gravity and slipping off the leaf, the drop loses its previous identity and joins the vastness of the water below. We can imagine that it must have trembled before it fell, just on the edge between the known and the unknowable.
To choose this card is a recognition that something is finished, something is completing. Whatever it is - a job, a relationship, a home you have loved, anything that might have helped you to define who you are - it is time to let go of it, allowing any sadness but not trying to hold on. Something greater is awaiting you, new dimensions are there to be discovered. You are past the point of no return now, and gravity is doing its work. Go with it - it represents liberation.

LETTING GO

In existence there is nobody who is superior and nobody who is inferior. The blade of grass and the great star are absolutely equal ... But man wants to be higher that others, he wants to conquer nature, hence he has to fight continuously. All complexity arises out of this fight. The innocent person is one who has renounced fighting; who is no longer interest in being higher, who is no longer interested in performing, in proving that he is someone special; who has become like a roseflower or like a dewdrop on the lotus leaf; who has become part of this infinity; who has melted, merged and become one with the ocean and is just a wave; who has no idea of the 'I'. The disappearance of the 'I' is innocence.

9 of WATER

LAZINESS

10 of WATER

The experience of rest in the heart in meditation is not something that can be grasped or forced. It comes naturally, as we grow more and more in tune with the rhythms of our own inner silences. The figure on this card reflects the sweetness and delicacy of this experience. The dolphins that emerge from the heart and make an arc towards the third eye reflect the playfulness and intelligence that comes when we are able to connect with the heart and move into the world from there.
Let yourself be softer and more receptive now, because an inexpressible joy is waiting for you just around the corner. Nobody else can point it out to you, and when you find it you won't be able to find the words to express it to others. But it's there, deep within your heart, ripe and ready to be discovered.

HARMONY

Listen to your heart, move according to you hear, whatsoever the stake:
A condition of complete simplicity costing not less than everything ...
To be simple is arduous, because to be simple costs everything that you have. You have to lose all to be simple. That's why people have chosen t be complex and they have forgotten how to be simple.
But only a simple heart throbs with God, hand in hand. Only a simple heart sings with God in deep harmony. To reach to that point you will have to find your heart, you own throb, your own beat.

ACE of WATER

The figure in this card is completely relaxed and at ease in the water, letting it take him where it will. He has mastered the art of being passive and receptive without being dull or sleepy. He is just available to the currents of life, with never a thought of saying "I don't like that," or "I prefer to go the other way."
Every moment in life we have a choice whether to enter life's waters and float, or to try to swim upstream. When this card appears in a reading it is an indication that you are able to float now, trusting that life will support you in your relaxation and take you exactly where it wants you to go. Allow this feeling of trust and relaxation to grow more and more; everything is happening exactly as it should.

GOING WITH THE FLOW

When I say 'become water' I mean become a flow; don't remain stagnant. Move, and move like water.
Lao Tzu says: The way of the Tao is a watercourse way. It moves like water. What is the movement of water? or of a river? The movement has a few beautiful things about it. One, it always moves towards depth, it always searches for the lowest ground. It is non-ambitions; it never hankers to be the first, it wants to be the last.
Remember, Jesus says: Those who are the last here will be the first in my kingdom of god. He is talking about the watercourse way of Tao - not mentioning it, but talking about it. Be the last, be non-ambitious. ambition means going uphill. Water goes down, it searches for the lowest ground, it wants to be a nonentity. It does not want to declare itself unique, exceptional, extraordinary. It has no ego idea.

	KING of CLOUDS: MASTERY of MIND	CONTROL
	QUEEN of CLOUDS: MASTERY of MIND Morality has restricted all the juice and energy of life to the narrow confines of her mind. It can't flow there, so she really has become 'a dried up old prune'. Her whole manner is very proper and stiff and severe, and she is always ready to see every situation as black and white, like the jewel she wears around her neck. The Queen of clouds lurks in the minds of all of us who have been brought up with rigid ideas of good and bad, sinful and virtuous, acceptable and unacceptable, moral and immoral. It's important to remember that all these judgments of the mind are just products of our conditioning. And whether our judgments are applied to ourselves or to others, they keep us from experiencing the beauty and godliness that lies within. Only when we break through the cage of our conditioning and reach the truth of our own hearts can we begin to see life as it really is. (related card - CONDITIONING)	MORALITY Dodhidharma ... far transcends moralist, puritans, so-called good people, do-gooders. He has touched the very rock bottom of the problem. Unless awareness arises in you, all your morality is bogus, all you culture is simply a thin layer which can be destroyed by anybody. But once your morality has come out of your awareness, not out of a certain discipline, then it is a totally different matter. Then you will respond in every situation out of your awareness. And whatever you do will be good. Awareness cannot do anything that is bad. That is the ultimate beauty of awareness, that anything that comes out of it is simply beautiful, is simply right, and without any effort and without any practice. So rather that cutting the leaves and the branches, cut the root. And to cut the root there is no other method than a single method: the method of being alert, of being aware, of being conscious.
	KNIGHT of CLOUDS: MASTERY of MIND The figure in this card is completely covered in armor. Only his glare of rage is visible, and the whites of the knuckles on his clenched fists. If you look closely at the armor, you can see it's covered with buttons, ready to detonate if anybody so much as brushes up against them. In the background we see the shadowy movie that plays in this man's mind - two figures fighting for a castle. An explosive temper or a smoldering rage often masks a deep feeling of pain. We think that if we frighten people away, we can avoid being hurt even more. In fact, just the opposite is the case. By covering our wounds with armor we are preventing them from being healed. By lashing out at others we keep ourselves from getting the love and nourishment we need. If this description seems to fit you, it's time to stop fighting. There is so much love available to you if you just let it in. Start by forgiving yourself; you're worth it.	FIGHTING One moment it was there, another moment it is gone. One moment we are here, and another moment we have gone. And for this simple moment, how much fuss we make - how much violence, ambition, struggle, conflict, anger, hatred. Just for this small moment! Just waiting for the train in a waiting room on a station, and creating so much fuss; fighting, hurting each other, trying to possess, trying to boss, trying to dominate - all that politics. And then the train comes and you are gone forever.
	PAGE of CLOUDS: MASTERY of MIND This is what happens when we forget that the mind is meant to be a servant, and start to allow it to run our lives. The head is filled with mechanisms, the mouth is ranting and raving, and the whole surrounding atmosphere is being polluted by this factory of arguments and opinions. "But wait," you say. "The mind is what makes us human, it's the source of all progress, all great truths." If you believe that, try an experiment: go into your room, shut the door, turn on a tape recorder, and give yourself total permission to say whatever is 'on your mind'. If you really allow it to all come out without any censorship or editing, you'll be amazed at the amount of rubbish that comes spewing forth. The Page of Clouds is telling you that somebody, somewhere, is stuck in 'a head trip'. Take a look and make sure it isn't you.	MIND This is the situation of your head: I see cycle-handles and pedals and strange things that you have gathered from everywhere. Such a small head ... and no space to live in! And that rubbish goes on moving in your head; your head goes on spinning and weaving - it keeps you occupied. Just think what kind of thoughts go on inside your mind. One day just sit, close your doors, and write down for half an hour whatsoever is passing in your mind, and you will understand what I mean and you will be surprised what goes on inside your mind. It remains in the background, it is constantly there, it surrounds you like a cloud. With this cloud you cannot know reality; you cannot attain to spiritual perception. This cloud has to be dropped. And it is just with your decision to drop it that it will disappear. You are clinging to it - the cloud is not interested in you, remember it.
	2 of CLOUDS The person on this card brings a new twist to the old idea of 'getting suck between a rock and a hard place'! But we are in precisely this sort of situation when we get stuck in the indecisive and dualistic aspect of the mind. Should I let my arms go and fall head-first, or let my legs go and fall feet-first? Should I go here or there? Should I say yes or no? And whatever decision we make, we will always wonder if we should have decided the other way. The only way out of this dilemma is, unfortunately, is to let go of both at once. You can't work your way out of this one by solving it, making lists of pros and cons, or in any way working it out with your mind. Better to follow your heart, if you can find it. If you can't find it, just jump - you heart will start beating so fast there will be no mistake about where it is!	SCHIZOPHRENIA Man is split. Schizophrenia is a normal condition of man - at least now. It may not have been so in the primitive world, but centuries of conditioning, civilization, culture and religion have made man a crowd - divided, split, contradictory ... But because this split is against his nature, deep down somewhere hidden the unity still survives. Because the soul of man is one, all the conditionings at the most destroy the periphery of the man. But the center remains untouched - that's how man continues to live. But his life has become a hell. The whole effort of Zen is how to drop this schizophrenia, how to drop this split personality, how to drop the divided mind of man, how to become undivided, integrated, centered, crystallized. The way you are, you cannot say that you are. You don't have a being. You are a marketplace - Many voices. If you want to say 'yes', immediately the 'no' is there. You cannot even utter a simple word 'yes' with totality ... In this way happiness is not possible; unhappiness is a natural consequence of a split personality.
	3 of CLOUDS In our society, men in particular have been taught not to cry, to put a brave face on things when they get hurt and not show that they are in pain. But women can fall into this trap too, and all of us at one time or another might feel that the only way to survive is to close off our feelings and emotions so we can't be hurt again. If our pain is particularly deep, we might even try to hide it from ourselves. This can make us frozen, rigid, because deep down we know that one small break in the ice will free the hurt to start circulating through us again. The rainbow-colored tears on this person's face hold the key to breaking out if this 'ice-olation'. The tears, and only the tears, have the power to melt the ice. It's okay to cry, and there is no reason to feel ashamed of your tears. Crying helps us to let go of pain, allows us to be gentle with ourselves, and finally helps us to heal.	ICE-OLATION We are miserable because we are too much in the self. What does it mean when I say we are too much in the self? And what exactly happens when we are too much in the self? Either you can be in existence or you can be in the self - both are not possible together. To be in the self means to be apart, to be separate. To be in the self means to become an island. To be in the self means to draw a boundary line around you. To be in the self means to make a distinction between 'this I am' and 'that I am not'. The definition, the boundary, between 'I' and 'not I' is what the self is - the self isolates. And it makes you frozen - you are no longer flowing. If you are flowing the self cannot exist. Hence people have become almost like ice-cubes. They don't have any warmth, they don't have any love - love is warmth and they are afraid of love. If warmth comes to them they will start melting and the boundaries will disappear. In love the boundaries disappear; in joy also the boundaries disappear, because joy is not cold.
	4 of CLOUDS The woman in this picture is living in a gray landscape, full of unreal, cut out clouds. Through the window frame she can see colors and light and aliveness, and although she would like to move through the frame - as we can see by the rainbow colors appearing in her garment - she can't quite manage to do it. There is still too much 'what-if?' activity in her mind. Tomorrow never comes, they say, but no matter how often it is said, it seems that most of us tend to forget the truth of it. In fact, the one and only result of postpoining things is a dull and depressing feeling of incompletion and 'stuck-ness' today. The relief and expansiveness you will feel once you put aside all the dithering thoughts that are preventing you from acting now will make you wonder why you ever waited so long.	POSTPONEMENT Postponement is simply stupid. Tomorrow you will also have to decide, so why not today? And do you think that tomorrow you will be wiser than today? Do you think that tomorrow you will be livlier than today? Do you think that tomorrow you will be younger than today, fresher than today? Tomorrow you will be older, you courage will be less; tomorrow you will be more experienced, your cunningness will be more; tomorrow death will come closer - you will start wavering and being more afraid. Never postpone for the tomorrow. And who knows? Tomorrow may come or many not come. If you have to decide you have to decide right now. Dr. Vogel, the dentist, finished his examination on a pretty young patient. "Miss Baseman," he said, "I'm afraid I'm going to have to pull out your wisdom teeth!" "Oh, my!" exclaimed the girl. "I'd rather have a baby!" "Well," said Dr. Vogel, "could you make up your mind so that I can adjust the chair?" Make up your mind. Don't go on postponing infinitely.