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Chapter title: A Zen Story
21 February 1976 am in Buddha Hall Archive
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GOSA HOYEN USED TO SAY:
'WHEN PEOPLE ASK ME WHAT ZEN IS LIKE I TELL THEM THIS STORY:'
NOTICING THAT HIS FATHER WAS GROWING OLD, THE SON OF A BURGLAR
ASKED HIS FATHER TO TEACH HIM THE TRADE SO THAT HE COULD CARRY
ON THE FAMILY BUSINESS AFTER HIS FATHER HAD RETIRED.
THE FATHER AGREED, AND THAT NIGHT THEY BROKE INTO A HOUSE
TOGETHER.
OPENING A LARGE CHEST THE FATHER TOLD HIS SON TO GO IN _ AND PICK
OUT THE CLOTHING. AS SOON AS THE BOY WAS INSIDE, THE FATHER
LOCKED THE CHEST AND THEN MADE A LOT OF NOISE SO THAT THE WHOLE HOUSE WAS AROUSED. THEN HE SLIPPED QUIETLY AWAY. LOCKED INSIDE THE CHEST THE BOY WAS ANGRY, TERRIFIED, AND
PUZZLED AS TO HOW HE WAS GOING TO GET OUT. THEN AN IDEA FLASHED TO HIM -- HE MADE A NOISE LIKE A CAT.
THE FAMILY TOLD A MAID TO TAKE A CANDLE AND EXAMINE THE CHEST.
WHEN THE LID WAS UNLOCKED THE BOY JUMPED OUT, BLEW OUT THE
CANDLE, PUSHED HIS WAY PAST THE ASTONISHED MAID, AND RAN OUT.
THE PEOPLE RAN AFTER HIM.
NOTICING A WELL BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD THE BOY THREW IN A LARGE STONE, THEN HID IN THE DARKNESS. THE PURSUERS GATHERED
AROUND THE WELL TRYING TO SEE THE BURGLAR DROWNING HIMSELF.
WHEN THE BOY GOT HOME HE WAS VERY ANGRY AT HIS FATHER AND HE
TRIED TO TELL HIM THE STORY; BUT THE FATHER SAID: 'DON'T BOTHER
TO TELL ME THE DETAILS, YOU ARE HERE -- YOU HAVE LEARNED THE
ART.'
Being is one, the world is many...and between the two is the divided mind, the dual mind.
It is just like a big tree, an ancient oak: the trunk is one, then the tree divides into two main branches, the main bifurcation, from which a thousand and one bifurcations of branches grow. The being is just like the trunk of the tree -- one, non-dual -- and the mind is the first bifurcation where the tree divides into two, becomes dual, becomes dialectical: thesis and antithesis, man and woman, yin and yang, day and night, God and Devil, yoga and Zen. All the dualities of the world are basically in the duality of the mind -- and below the duality is oneness of being. If you slip below, underneath the duality you will find one -- call it God, call it nirvana, or whatsoever you like.
If you go higher through the duality, you come to the many million-fold world. This is one of the most basic insights to be understood -- that mind is not one.
Hence, whatsoever you see through the mind becomes two. It is just like a white ray entering a prism; it is immediately divided into seven colors and the rainbow is created.
Before it entered the prism it was one, through the prism it is divided. and the white color disappears into the seven colors of the rainbow.
The world is a rainbow, the mind is a prism, and the being is the white ray.
Modern research has come to a very significant fact, one of the most significant achieved in this century, and that is that you don't have one mind, you have two minds. Your brain is divided into two hemispheres: the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere. The right hemisphere is joined with the left hand, and the left hemisphere is joined with the right hand -- crosswise. The right hemisphere is intuitive, illogical, irrational, poetic, platonic, imaginative, romantic, mythical,
religious; and the left hemisphere is logical, rational, mathematical, Aristotelian, scientific, calculative. These two hemispheres are constantly in conflict -- the basic politics of the world is within you, the greatest politics of the world is within you. You may not be aware of it, but once you become aware, the real thing to be done is somewhere between these two minds.
The left hand is concerned with the right hemisphere -- intuition, imagination, myth, poetry, religion -- and the left hand is very much condemned. The society is of those who are right-handed -- right-handed means left hemisphere. Ten per cent of children are born left-handed but they are forced to be right-handed. Children who are born left-handed are basically irrational, intuitive, non- mathematical, non-Euclidean... they are dangerous for society so it forces them in every way to become right-handed. It is not just a question of hands, it is a question of inner politics: the left-handed child functions through the right hemisphere -- that society cannot allow, it is dangerous, so he has to be stopped before things go too far.
It is suspected that in the beginning the proportion must have been fifty-fifty -- left-handed children fifty per cent and right-handed children fifty per cent -- but the right-handed party has ruled so long that by and by the proportion has fallen to ten per cent and ninety per cent. Even amongst you here many will be left- handed but you may not be aware of it. You may write with the right hand and do your work with the right hand but in your childhood you may have been forced to be right-handed. This is a trick because once you become right-handed your left hemisphere starts functioning. The left hemisphere is reason; the right hemisphere is beyond reason, its functioning is not mathematical. It functions in flashes, it is intuitive, very graceful -- but irrational.
The left-handed minority is the most oppressed minority in the world, even more than Negroes, even more than the poor people. If you understand this division, you will understand many things. With the bourgeoisie and the proletariat the proletariat is always functioning through the right hemisphere of the brain: the poor people are more intuitive.
Go to the primitive people, they are more intuitive. The poorer the person, the less intellectual -- and that may be the cause of his being poor. Because he is less intellectual he cannot compete in the world of reason. He is less articulate as far as language is concerned, reason is concerned, calculation is concerned -- he is almost a fool. That may be the cause of his being poor.
The rich person is functioning through the left hemisphere; he is more calculative, arithmetical in everything, cunning, clever, logical -- and he plans. That may be the reason why he is rich.
The bourgeoisie and the proletariat cannot disappear by communist revolutions, no, because the communist revolution is by the same people. The Czar ruled Russia; he ruled it through the left hemisphere of the mind. Then he was replaced by Lenin who was of the same type. Then Lenin was replaced by Stalin who was even more of the same type.
The revolution is false because deep down the same type of people are ruling -- the ruler and the ruled mean the same, and the ruled are those of the right-sided hemisphere. So whatsoever you do in the outside world makes no difference really, it is superficial.
The same applies to men and women. Women are right-hemisphere people, men are left-hemisphered. Men have ruled women for centuries. Now a few women are revolting but the amazing thing is that these are the same type of women. In fact they are just like men
-- rational, argumentative, Aristotelian. It is possible that one day, just as the communist revolution has succeeded in Russia and China, somewhere, maybe in America, women can succeed and overthrow men. But by the time the women succeed, the women will no more be women, they will have become left- hemisphered. Because to fight, one has to be calculative, and to fight with men you have to be like men: aggressive. That very aggressiveness is shown all over the world in women's liberation. Women who have become part of that liberation movement are very aggressive, they are losing all grace, all that comes out of intuition. Because if you have to fight with men you have to learn the same trick; if you have to fight with men, you have to fight with the same techniques.
Fighting with anybody is very dangerous because you become like your enemy. That is one of the greatest problems of humanity. Once you fight with somebody, by and by you have to use the same technique and the same way. Then the enemy may be defeated but by the time he is defeated you have become your own enemy. Stalin is more Czar-like than any Czar, more violent than any Czar. Of course it has to be so: to throw Czars, very violent people are needed, more violent than the Czar himself. Only they will become the revolutionaries, will come out on top. By the time they reach there they have become Czars
themselves, and the society continues on the same way. Just superficial things change, deep down the same conflict remains.
The conflict is in man. Unless it is resolved there, it cannot be resolved anywhere else.
The politics is within you; it is between the two parts of the mind.
A very small bridge exists. If that bridge is broken through some accident, through some physiological defect or something else, the person becomes split, the person becomes two persons -- and the phenomenon of schizophrenia or split personality happens. If the bridge is broken -- and the bridge is very fragile -- then you become two, you behave like two persons. In the morning you are very loving, very beautiful; in the evening you are very angry, absolutely different. You don't remember your morning... how can you remember? Another mind was functioning -- and the person becomes two persons. If this bridge is strengthened so much that the two minds disappear as two and become one, then integration, then crystallization, arises. What George Gurdjieff used to call the crystallization of being is nothing but these two minds becoming one, the meeting of the male and the female within, the meeting of yin and yang, the meeting of the left and right, the meeting of logic and illogic, the meeting of Plato and Aristotle.
If you can understand this basic bifurcation in your tree of then you can understand all the conflict that goes on around and inside you.
Let me tell you an anecdote.
Among the Germans, Berlin is considered to be the very epitome of Prussian brusqueness and efficiency, while Vienna is the essence of Austrian charm and slipshoddery.
There is the tale of a Berliner visiting Vienna who was lost and in need of directions.
What would such a Berliner do? He grabbed at the lapel of the first passing Viennese and barked out, 'The Post Office. Where is it?'
The startled Viennese carefully detached the other's fist, smoothed his lapel and said in a gentle manner,
'Sir, would it not have been more delicate of you to have approached me politely and to have said. "Sir, if you have a moment and happen to know, could you direct me to the Post Office?"'
The Berliner stared in astonishment for a moment, then growled, 'I would rather be lost!'
and stomped away.
That very same Viennese was visiting Berlin too that year and it turned out that now it was he who had to search for the Post Office. Approaching a Berliner he said politely,
'Sir, if you have a moment and happen to know, could you please direct me to the Post Office?'
With machine-like rapidity the Berliner replied,
'About face, two blocks forward, sharp turn right, one block forward, cross a street, half turn on the right, walk left over railroad tracks, pass news-stand into Post Office lobby.'
The Viennese, more bewildered than enlightened, nevertheless murmured, 'A thousand thanks, kind sir,' whereupon the Berliner snatched furiously at the other's lapel and shouted, 'Never mind the thanks, repeat the instructions!'
The male mind, the Berliner; the female mind, the Viennese. The female mind has a grace, the male mind has efficiency. and of course, in the long run, if there is a constant fight, the grace is bound to be defeated -- the efficient mind will win. because the world understands the language of mathematics not of love. But the moment your efficiency wins over your grace, you have lost something tremendously valuable: you have lost contact with your own being. You may become very efficient, but you will be no more a real person. You will become a machine, a robot-like thing.
Because of this here is constant conflict between man and woman. They cannot remain separate, they have to get into relationship again and again -- but they cannot remain together either. The fight is not outside, the fight is within you. And this is my understanding: unless you have resolved your inner fight between the right and the left hemispheres, you will never be able to be peacefully in love
-- never -- because the inner fight will be reflected outside. If you are fighting inside and you are identified with the left hemisphere, the reason hemisphere, and you are continuously trying to overpower the right hemisphere, you will try to do the same with the woman you fall in love with. If the woman is continuously fighting her own reason inside, she will continuously fight the man she loves.
All relationships -- almost all, the exceptions are negligible, can be left out of account --
are ugly. In the beginning they are beautiful; in the beginning you don't show the reality; in the beginning you pretend. Once the relationship settles and you relax, your inner conflict bubbles up and starts being mirrored in your relationship. Then come fights, then come a thousand and one ways of nagging each other, destroying each other. Hence the attraction for homosexuality. Whenever a society becomes too divided between man and woman, homosexuality erupts immediately. Because at least a man in love with a man is not that much in conflict. The love relationship may not be very satisfying, may not lead to tremendous bliss and orgasmic moments, but at least it is not so ugly as the relationship between a man and a woman. Women become lesbians whenever the conflict becomes too much, because at least the love relationship between two women is not so deep in conflict. The same meets the same; they can understand each other.
Yes, understanding is possible, but the attraction is lost, the polarity is lost -- it is at a very great cost. Understanding is possible, but the whole tension, the challenge, is lost. If you choose challenge, then comes conflict, because the real problem is somewhere within you. Unless you have settled, come to a deep harmony between your female and male mind, you will not be able to love.
People come to me and they ask how to go deep in a relationship, I tell them, 'First you go deep in meditation. Unless you are resolved within yourself you will create more problems than you already have. If you move in relationship, all your problems will be multiplied. Just watch. The greatest and the most beautiful thing in the world is love but can you find anything more ugly, more hell- creating?'
Mulla Nasruddin once told me, 'Well, I have been putting off the evil day for months but I have got to go this time.'
'Dentist or doctor?' I inquired.
'Neither,' he said, 'I am getting married.'
People go on avoiding marriage, people go on putting it off. When some day they find it impossible to get out of it only then they relax. Where is the problem? Why are people so afraid of getting deeply involved? Involvement immediately creates fear; commitment immediately creates fear -- and the modern man wants to have sex but no love.
A woman told me that she wants sex only with strangers. Traveling in a train, meeting with a stranger -- that's okay -- but not even with someone who is friendly or familiar. I asked, 'Why?' She said that once you make love to someone who is known to you, some involvement starts. In a train, on a journey, you meet, make love, you don't know even what the other person's name is, who he is, from where he comes. You get down when your station comes and he moves away, forgotten forever; he leaves no scratch, you remain completely clean. You come out of it completely clean and unscratched.
I can understand. This is the difficulty of the whole modern mind. All relationships are becoming by and by casual. People are afraid of any sort of commitment,, because they have come to know at least one thing out of bitter experience -- whenever you become related too much, the reality erupts, and your inner conflict starts being reflected by the other and then life becomes ugly, horrible, intolerable.
It happened once that I was sitting with a few friends in a university campus ground. One of the professors said, 'On the day my wedding occurred '
But the other professor stopped him immediately and said 'Pardon the correction, but affairs such as marriages, receptions, dinners, and things of that nature, take place. It is only calamities which occur. You see the distinction? Please don't say, "The day my marriage occurred, or the day my wedding occurred."'
The other was a professor of language and of course he was right. But the first man said,
'Yes, many, many things...' and again started, 'And as I was saying, the day my wedding occurred It is a calamity.'
If you are outside of it, it may look like a beautiful oasis in the desert but as you come close the oasis starts drying and disappearing. Once you are caught in it, it is an imprisonment, but remember, the imprisonment doesn't come from the other, it comes from within you.
If the left-hemisphere brain goes on dominating you, you will live a very successful life --
so successful that by the time you are forty you will have ulcers; by the time you are forty-five you will have had at least one or two heart-attacks; by the time you are fifty you will be almost dead -- but successfully dead. You may become a great scientist, but you will never become a great being. You may accumulate enough of wealth, but you will lose all that is of worth. You may conquer the whole world like an Alexander, but your own inner territory will remain unconquered.
There are many attractions to follow the left-hemisphere brain -- that is the worldly brain.
It is more concerned with things: cars, money, houses, power, prestige. That is the orientation of the man who in India we call a GRUSTHA, a householder.
The right-hemisphere brain is the orientation of the SANNYASIN. one who is more interested in his own inner being, his inner peace, his blissfulness, and is less concerned about things. If they come easily, good; if they don't come that is also good. He is more concerned with the moment, less concerned with the future; more concerned with the poetry of life, less concerned with the arithmetic of it.
I have heard an anecdote.
Finkelstein had made a huge killing at the races and Muscovitz, quite understandably, was envious.
'How did you do it, Finkelstein?' he demanded. 'Easy,' said Finkelstein, 'it was a dream.'
'A dream?'
'Yes; I had figured out a three-horse parley, but I was not sure about the third horse. Then the night before, I dreamed that an angel was standing over the head of my bed and kept saying, 'Blessings on you, Finkelstein, seven times seven blessings on you.' When I woke up I realized that seven times seven is forty- eight and that horse number seventy-eight was Heavenly Dream. I made Heavenly Dream the third horse in my parley and I just cleaned up, simply cleaned up.'
Muscovitz said, 'But Finkelstein, seven times seven is forty-nine!' And Finkelstein said, 'So you be the mathematician.'
There is a way to follow life through arithmetic and there is another way to follow life through dream -- through dreams and visions. They are totally different.
Just the other day somebody asked, 'Are there ghosts, fairies, and things like that?' Yes, there are -- if you move through the right-hemisphere brain, there are. If you move through the left-hemisphere brain, there are not. All children are right-hemisphered, they see ghosts and fairies all around, but you go on talking to them and putting them in their places and saying to them, 'Nonsense. You are stupid. Where is the fairy? There is nothing, just a shadow.' By and by you convince the child, the helpless child; by and by you convince him and he moves from the right-hemisphered orientation to the left-hemisphered orientation -- he has to. He has to live in your world: he has to forget his dreams, he has to forget all myth, he has to forget all poetry, he has to learn mathematics.
Of course he becomes efficient in mathematics -- and becomes almost crippled and paralyzed in life. Existence goes on getting farther and farther away and he becomes just a commodity in the market, his whole life becomes just rubbish... although, of course, valuable in the eyes of the world.
A SANNYASIN is one who lives through the imagination, who lives through the dreaming quality of his mind, who lives through poetry, who poeticizes about life, who looks through visions. Then trees are greener than they look to you, then birds are more beautiful, then everything takes a luminous quality. Ordinary pebbles become diamonds; ordinary rocks are no longer ordinary -- nothing is ordinary. If you look from the right hemisphere, everything becomes Divine, sacred. Religion is from the right hemisphere.
A man was sitting with his friend in a cafeteria drinking tea. He studied his cup and said with a sigh, 'Ah, my friend, life is like a cup of tea.'
The other considered that for a moment and then said, 'But why? Why is life like a cup of tea?'
The first man replied, 'How should I know? Am I a philosopher?'
The right-hemisphere brain only makes statements about facts, it cannot give you reasons. If you ask, 'Why?' it can only remain silent, there comes no response from it. If you are walking and you see a lotus flower and you say, 'Beautiful!' -- and somebody says, 'Why?' what will you do? You will say, 'How am I to know? Am I a philosopher?' It is a simple statement, a very simple statement, in itself total, complete. There is no reason behind it and no result beyond it, it is a simple statement of fact. Read the Upanishads --
they are simple statements of facts. They say, 'God is. Don't ask why.' They will say, 'Are we philosophers? How are we to know? God is.' They say God is beautiful, they say God is near, closer than your heart, but don't ask why -- they are not philosophers.
Look at the gospels and the statements of Jesus -- they are simple. He says, 'My God is in heaven. I am his son, he is my father. Don't ask why.' He will not be able to prove it in a court, he will simply say, 'I know.' If you ask him by whom he has been told, by what authority he says these things, he will say, 'It is by my own authority. I have no other authority.' That is the problem when a man like Jesus moves in the world. The rational mind cannot understand, he was not crucified for any other reason. He was crucified by the left hemisphere because he was a right-hemisphere man. He was crucified because of the inner conflict.
Lao Tzu says, 'The whole world seems to be clever, only I am muddle-headed; the whole world seems to be certain, only I am confused and hesitant.' He is a right-hemisphered man.
The right hemisphere is the hemisphere of poetry and love. A great shift is needed; that shift is the inner transformation. Yoga is an effort to reach the oneness of being through the left hemisphere, using logic, mathematics, science and trying to go beyond. Zen is just the opposite: the aim is the same but Zen uses the right hemisphere to go beyond.
Both can be used, but to follow yoga is a very, very long path; it is almost an unnecessary struggle because you are trying to reach from reason to super-reason which is more difficult. Zen is easier because it is an effort to reach the super- reason from irreason.
Irreason is almost like super-reason -- there are no barriers. Yoga is like penetrating a wall and Zen is like opening a door. The door may not be closed at all, you just push it a little and it opens.
Now the story. It is one of the most beautiful among Zen anecdotes. Zen people talk through stories. They have to talk through stories because they cannot create theories and doctrines, they can only tell stories. They are great story-tellers. Jesus goes on talking in parables, Buddha goes on talking in parables, Sufi mystics go on talking in parables -- it is not coincidental. The story, the parable, the anecdote, is the way of the right hemisphere; logic argument, proof, syllogism, is the way of the left hemisphere.
Listen to it.
GOSO HOYEN USED TO SAY, 'WHEN PEOPLE ASK ME WHAT ZEN IS LIKE, I TELL THEM THIS STORY.'
This story really tells what Zen is like -- without defining, it indicates. A definition is not possible because Zen in its basic quality is indefinable. You can taste it but you cannot define it; you can live it but language is not sufficient to say it; you can show it but you cannot say it. But through a story a little bit can be transferred. And this story really indicates, indicates perfectly the quality of what Zen is like. This is just a gesture, don't make it a definition, don't philosophize around it, let it be like lightning, a flash of understanding. It is not going to increase your knowledge but it can give you a shift, a jerk, a change of gestalt. You can be thrown from one corner of the mind to another...and that is the whole point of the story.
NOTICING THAT HIS FATHER WAS GROWING OLD,
THE SON OF A BURGLAR ASKED HIS FATHER TO TEACH HIM THE TRADE
SO THAT HE COULD CARRY ON THE FAMILY BUSINESS
AFTER HIS FATHER HAD RETIRED.
The trade of a burglar is not a scientific thing: it is an art. Burglars are as much born as poets; you cannot learn, learning won't help. If you learn, you will be caught because then the police know more than you. They have accumulated centuries of learning. A burglar is a born burglar; he lives through intuition, it is a knack; he lives through hunches. A burglar is feminine, he is not a businessman; he is a gambler, he risks all for almost nothing; his whole trade is of danger and risk. It is just like a religious man. Zen people say that religious people are also like burglars: in search of God they are also burglars.
There is no way to reach God through logic or reason or accepted society, culture, civilization. They break the wall somewhere, they enter from the back door If in the daylight it is not allowed, they enter in dark. If it is not possible to follow the crowd on the super-highway, they make their own individual paths in the forest. Yes, there is a certain similarity. You can reach God only if you are a burglar, an artist of how to steal the fire, how to steal the treasure.
The father was going to retire and the son asked, 'Before you retire teach me your trade.'
THE FATHER AGREED, AND THAT NIGHT THEY BROKE INTO A HOUSE
TOGETHER.
OPENING A LARGE CHEST THE FATHER TOLD THE SON TO GO IN AND PICK
OUT THE CLOTHING. AS SOON AS THE BOY WAS INSIDE, THE FATHER
LOCKED THE CHEST AND THEN MADE A LOT OF NOISE SO THAT THE WHOLE HOUSE WAS AROUSED. THEN HE SLIPPED QUIETLY AWAY.
A real master he must have been, no ordinary burglar...
LOCKED INSIDE THE CHEST THE BOY WAS ANGRY, TERRIFIED, AND
PUZZLED...
of course, naturally, what type of teaching is this? He had been thrown in a dangerous situation.
But that is the only way to teach something of the unknown; that is the only way to teach something of the right-hemisphere brain. The left hemisphere can be taught in schools: learning is possible, discipline is possible, gradual courses are possible. Then by and by, moving from one class to another, you become masters of art and science -- many things.
But there cannot be any schools for the right hemisphere: it is intuitive, it is not gradual, it is sudden. It is like a flash, a lightning in the dark night. If it happens, it happens; if it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen -- nothing can be done about it. You can only leave yourself in a certain situation where there is more possibility for it to happen. That's why I say the old man must have been a real master.
LOCKED INSIDE THE CHEST, THE BOY WAS ANGRY, TERRIFIED, AND
-- PUZZLED...
These are the three states your reason will pass through. In all my meditations the same is being done to you. Locked in a chest, with the key thrown away, first you feel angry.
Many SANNYASINS come to me and they say they feel very angry with me. I can understand, it is natural -- I am forcing them into situations where their old mind cannot function. That is the root cause of anger. They simply feel impotent, their old mind cannot function, they cannot make anything out of it. What is happening? And when you feel a situation where your mind is simply useless, you feel angry towards me -- angry and then terrified. Then one understands the whole situation and all that you have learned seems absolutely useless...hence fear.
Now there was no logical way to get out of that chest: it was locked from the outside, the father had made a noise, the whole house was awake, people were moving around, searching, and the father had escaped. Now is there any logical way to get out of this chest? Logic simply fails, reason is of no use. What can you think? Mind suddenly stops -
- and that is what the father is doing, that is what it is all about. He is trying to force the son into a situation where the logical mind stops, because a burglar does not need a logical mind. If he follows a logical mind he will be caught sooner or later by the police because they also follow the same logic.
It happened in the second world war. For three years Adolph Hitler continued to win, and the reason was that he was illogical.. All the other countries that were fighting with him were fighting logically. Of course, they had a great science of war, military training and this and that, and they had experts who would say, 'Now, Hitler is going to attack from this side.' And if Hitler was also in his senses he would have done that because that was the weakest point in the enemy's defense. Of course the enemy has to be attacked where he is the weakest -- it is logical. So they would be expecting Hitler at the weakest point, they would be gathering around the weakest point and he would hit anywhere, unpredictably. He would not even follow his own generals' advice.
He had an astrologer who would suggest where to attack. Now this is something never done before -- a war is not run by astrologers. Once Churchill understood, once the spies came with the report that they were not going to win with this man because he was absolutely illogical; that a foolish astrologer who didn't know anything about war, who had never been on the front, was deciding things, deciding by the stars -- what have stars got to do with a war going on on the earth? -- then Churchill immediately appointed a royal astrologer to the king and they started following the royal astrologer. Then things started falling in line because now two fools were predicting Things became easier.
If a burglar is going to follow Aristotle he will be caught sooner or later because the same Aristotelian logic is followed by the police. Just few days before, Vedanta did a beautiful thing: he escaped with the ashram jeep. Of course the police had to be informed.
Everybody was expecting that he would go towards Chanda, because he had been saying that he wanted to go to Chanda and re-open an old ashram which used to be there --
Kailash. Had he gone towards there the police may not have follow, but the police were thinking logically and they said, 'If he had been saying that he was going towards Chanda he will not go to Chanda now because he will be afraid he will be caught on that road. He is not going there.' So they were not worried
about that road and, of course, Vedanta was caught in Lonavalla. He was going towards Bombay. But the police also followed the same logic.
If you go through logic, then anybody who follows the logical method can catch you anywhere.
A burglar has to be unpredictable, logic is not possible. He has to be illogical -- so much so that nobody can predict him. But illogic is possible only if your whole energy moves through the right hemisphere.
LOCKED INSIDE THE CHEST, THE BOY WAS ANGRY, TERRIFIED, AND PUZZLED AS TO HOW HE WAS GOING TO GET OUT.
'How?' is a logical question. Hence he was terrified because there was no way -- 'How?'
was simply impotent. Then an idea flashed to him. Now this is a shift: only in dangerous situations where the left hemisphere cannot function, does it, as a last resort. allow the right hemisphere to have its say. When it cannot function, when it feels that now there is no go, now it is defeated, then it says why not give a chance to the oppressed, to the imprisoned part of the mind? Give that too a chance. Maybe...there can be no harm.
THEN AN IDEA FLASHED ON HIM -- HE MADE A NOISE LIKE A CAT.
Now this is not logical. Making a noise like a cat? Simply an absurd idea. But it worked.
THE FAMILY TOLD A MAID TO TAKE A CANDLE AND EXAMINE THE CHEST.
WHEN THE LID WAS UNLOCKED THE BOY JUMPED OUT, BLEW OUT THE
CANDLE, PUSHED HIS WAY PAST THE ASTONISHED MAID, AND RAN OUT.
THE PEOPLE RAN AFTER HIM.
NOTICING A WELL BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD THE BOY THREW IN A LARGE STONE, THEN HID IN THE DARKNESS. THE PURSUERS GATHERED
AROUND THE WELL TRYING TO SEE THE BURGLAR DROWNING HIMSELF.
This too is not of the logical mind. Because the logical mind needs time -- the logical mind needs time to proceed, to think, to argue this way and that, all the alternatives -- and there are a thousand and one alternatives. When you are in a situation there is no time to think. If people are pursuing you -- how can you think? Thinking is good when you are sitting in an armchair. With your closed eyes you can philosophize and think and argue, for this and against that, pro and con; but when people are pursuing you and your life is in danger you have no time to think -- one lives in the moment, one simply becomes spontaneous. It is not that he decided to throw the stone, it simply happened. It was not a conclusion, he was not thinking about doing it, he simply found himself doing it. He threw a stone in the well and hid himself in the darkness, and the pursuers stopped, thinking the burglar had drowned himself in the well.
WHEN THE BOY GOT HOME HE WAS VERY ANGRY AT HIS FATHER AND HE
TRIED TO TELL HIM THE STORY; BUT THE FATHER SAID: 'DON'T BOTHER
TO TELL ME THE DETAILS, YOU ARE HERE YOU HAVE LEARNED THE ART.'
What is the point of telling the details? They are useless. Details are useless as far as intuition is concerned because intuition is never a repetition. Details are meaningful as far as logic is concerned. So, logical people go on into minute details so that if the same situation happens again they will be in control and they will know what to do.
But in the life of a burglar the same situation never happens again. And in real life also the same situation never happens again. If you have conclusions in your mind you will become almost dead, you will not be responding. In life, response is needed, not reaction: you have to act out of nowhere, with no conclusions inside. With no center you have to act -- you have to act into the unknown from
the unknown.
And this is what Goso Hoyen used to say when people asked him what Zen is like. This story he would tell.
Zen is exactly like burglary: it is an art, it is not a science; it is feminine, it is not male; it is not aggressive, it is receptive; it is not a well-planned methodology; it is a spontaneity.
It has nothing to do with theories, hypotheses, doctrines, scriptures; it has something to do with only one thing -- that is, awareness.
What happened in that moment when the boy was inside the chest? In such a danger you cannot be sleepy, in such a danger your consciousness becomes very sharp, has to. Life is at stake, you are totally awake -- that's how one should be totally awake each moment.
And when you are totally awake, this shift happens: from the left hemisphere the energy moves to the right hemisphere. Whenever you are alert, you become intuitive; flashes come to you, flashes from the unknown, out of the blue. You may not follow them -- then you will miss much.
In fact all the great discoveries in science come from the right hemisphere also, not from the left. You must have heard about Madam Curie, the only woman who got a Nobel Prize. She had been working hard for three years on a certain mathematical problem but could not solve it. She worked hard. argued from this way and that, but there was no way.
One night. tired. exhausted. she fell asleep -- and while she was falling asleep then too she was trying to solve the problem. In the night she awoke. walked, wrote the answer on some paper. came back. and went to sleep. In the morning she found the answer there on the table but she could not believe who had done it. Nobody could do it! The servant --
you could not expect him to do it; he did not know anything about mathematics. She remembered well that last night she had tried her best and could not do it. What had happened? Then she tried to remember -- because the handwriting was hers. She tried to remember...and then a faint remembrance came: as if in a dream she had walked to the table and written.
From where had this answer come? It could not be from the left hemisphere. the left had been working hard for three years. And there was no process on the paper, just the conclusion. If it had come from the left there would have been a process, it goes step by step. But this was like a flash -- the same kind of flash that had happened to the boy in the chest. The left hemisphere, tired, exhausted, helpless, sought the help of the right hemisphere.
Whenever you are in such a corner that your logic fails, don't be desperate, don't become hopeless. Those moments may prove the greatest blessings in your life: those are the moments that the left allows the right to have its way. Then the feminine part, the receptive part. gives you an idea. If you follow it. many doors will be opened. But it is possible you may miss it; you may say. 'What nonsense!'
This boy could have missed. The idea is not very normal, regular, logical. Make a noise like a cat? For what? He could have asked, 'Why? and then he would have missed. But he could not ask because the situation was such that there was no other way. So he thought,
'Let us try. What is wrong in it?' He used the clue.
The father was right. He said, 'Don't go into details. they are not important. You are back home, you have learned the art.'
The whole art is how to function from the feminine part of the mind. because the feminine is joined with the Whole and the male is not joined with the Whole. The male is aggressive, the male is constantly in struggle -- the feminine is constantly in surrender, in deep trust. Hence the feminine body is so beautiful, so round. There is a deep trust and a deep harmony with nature. A woman lives in deep surrender -- a man is constantly fighting, angry, doing this and that, trying to prove something, trying to reach somewhere. A woman is happy, not trying to reach anywhere. Ask women if they would like to go to the moon. They will simply be amazed. For what? What is the point? Why take such trouble? The home is perfectly good. The woman is not interested in what is happening in Vietnam and what is happening in Korea and what is happening in Israel She is at the most interested in what is happening in the neighborhood, at the most interested in who has fallen in love with whom, who has escaped with whom... in gossips not in politics. She is more interested in the immediate, here now, and that gives her a harmony, a grace. Man is constantly trying to prove something. and if you want to prove of course you have to fight and compete and
accumulate.
Once a woman tried to get Dr. Johnson to talk with her but he seemed to take very little notice of her.
'Why, Doctor,' she said archly, 'I believe you prefer the company of men to that of women.'
'Madam,' replied Johnson, 'I am very fond of the company of ladies. I like their beauty, I like their delicacy, I like their vivacity, and I like their silence.'
Man has been forcing woman to be silent, not only outside, inside also -- forcing the feminine part to keep quiet. Just watch within you. If the feminine part says something you immediately jump upon it and you say, 'Logical? Absurd!' People come to me and they say. 'The heart says we would like to become SANNYASINS but the head says no...'
Dr. Johnson, trying to keep the woman silent. The heart is feminine.
You miss much in your life because the head goes on talking; it does not allow. And the only quality in the head is that it is more articulate, cunning, dangerous, violent. Because of its violence it has become the leader inside, and that inside leadership has become an outside leadership for man. Man has dominated women in the outside world also; the grace is dominated by violence.
I was invited to a school for a certain function. There was a rally of school- children and in the rally the procession had been arranged according to height -- from the shortest up to the tallest. But the pattern was broken, I noticed, by the first boy heading the procession. He was a gangling youth who looked a head taller than the rest. 'Why is he at the front?'
I asked a young girl, 'Is he the leader of the school, the captain, or something like that?'
'No,' she whispered, 'he pinches.'
The male mind goes on pinching, creating trouble. Trouble-makers become leaders. In the schools, all wise teachers choose the greatest trouble-makers as captains of the classes and the schools -- the trouble-makers. the criminals. Once they are in a powerful post their whole energy for trouble-making becomes
helpful for the teacher. They start creating discipline -- the same ones.
Just watch the politicians in the world: when one party is in power the opposite party goes on creating trouble in the country. They are the law-breakers, the revolutionaries.
And the party which is in power goes on creating discipline. Once they are thrown out of power, they will create trouble. and once the opposite party comes into power they become the guardians of discipline.
They are all trouble-makers.
The male mind is a trouble-making phenomenon -- hence it overpowers. it dominates.
But deep down. although you may attain power, you miss life -- and deep down, the feminine mind continues. Unless you fall back to the feminine and you surrender. unless your resistance and struggle become surrender. you will not know what real life, and the celebration of it, is.
I have heard one anecdote.
An American scientist once visited the offices of the great Nobel prize-winning physicist, Niels Bohr, in Copenhagen, and was amazed to find that over his desk was a horseshoe, securely nailed to the wall with the open end up in the approved manner so it would catch the good luck and not let it spill out.
The American said with a nervous laugh, 'Surely you don't believe the horseshoe will bring you good luck, do you, Professor Bohr? After all, as a level-headed scientist '
Bohr chuckled, 'I believe in no such thing, my good friend, not at all. I am scarcely likely to believe in such foolish nonsense. However, I am told that a horseshoe will bring you good luck whether you believe in it or not.'
Look a little deeper, and just underneath your logic you will find fresh waters of intuition, fresh waters of trust, flowing.
Yoga is a way to use reason to reach God -- of course very difficult, and the longest path.
If you follow Patanjali you are trying to do that which can happen without doing; you are trying hard to do something. You are trying to pull yourself by shoe- strings -- to pull yourself up.
Zen is the way of the spontaneous -- the effortless effort, the way of intuition.
A Zen Master, Ikkyu, a great poet, has said: I can see clouds a thousand miles away, hear ancient music in the pines.
This is what Zen is all about. You cannot see clouds a thousand miles away with the logical mind. The logical mind is like glass, too dirty, too covered with the dust of ideas, theories, doctrines. But you can see clouds a thousand miles away with the pure glass of intuition, with no thoughts -- just pure awareness. The mirror is clean and the clarity supreme.
You cannot hear ancient music in the pines with the ordinary logical mind. How can you hear the ancient music? Music once gone is gone forever.
But I tell you, Ikkyu is right. You can hear ancient music in the pines -- I have heard it --
but a shift, a total change, a change of gestalt, is needed. Then you can see Buddha preaching again and you can hear Buddha speaking again. You can hear the ancient music in the pines because it is eternal music, it is never lost. You have lost the capacity to hear it. The music is eternal; once you regain your capacity, suddenly it is there again.
It has always been there, only you were not there. Be here now and you can also see clouds a thousand miles away, and hear ancient music in the pines.
Change more and more towards the right hemisphere, become more and more feminine, more and more loving, surrendering, trusting, more and more closer to the Whole. Don't try to be an island -- become part of the continent.
Ancient Music in the Pines Chapter #2
Chapter title: A thousand and one bifurcations
22 February 1976 am in Buddha Hall Archive
code:
7602220
ShortTitle:
ANCIEN02
Audio:
Yes Video: No Length:
101
mins
The first question:
Question 1
YOU TOLD ME THAT MY MIND IS IMMATURE. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO
HAVE A MIND THAT IS MATURE?
To think that you know is to be immature. To function from knowledge, from conclusion, is to be immature. To function from no-knowledge, from no conclusion, from no past, is maturity.
Maturity is deep trust in your own consciousness; immaturity is a distrust in your own consciousness. When you distrust your consciousness you trust your knowledge, but that is a substitute and a very poor substitute at that. Try to understand this -- it is important.
You have been living, you have experienced many things; you have read, you have listened, you have thought. Now all those conclusions are there. When a certain situation arises. you can function in two ways. You can function through all the accumulated past, according to it -- that's what I mean by functioning through a center. through conclusions, through experience, stale, dead -- then whatsoever you do your response is not going to be a response, it will be a reaction. And to be reactionary is to be immature.
Or, if you can function right now, here in this moment, through your consciousness, through your being aware, putting aside all that you have known
-- this is what I call functioning through no-knowledge, this is functioning through innocence. And this is maturity.
I was reading one anecdote.
It seemed to Mr. Smith that now that his son had turned thirteen, it was important to discuss those matters which an adolescent ought to know about life. So he called the boy into the study one evening. shut the door carefully, and said with impressive dignity.
'Son, I would like to discuss the facts of life with you.'
'Sure thing, Dad.' said the boy. 'What do you want to know?'
The mind is immature when it is not ready to learn. The ego feels very fulfilled if it need not learn anything from anybody; the ego feels very enhanced if it feels that it already knows. But the problem is that life goes on changing, it is never the same; it goes on flowing, it is a flux. And your knowledge is always the same. Your knowledge is not evolving with life, it is stuck somewhere in the past, and whenever you react through it you will miss the point because it will not be exactly the right thing to do. Life has changed but your knowledge remains the same. and you act out of this knowledge. That means you face today with your yesterday's knowledge. You will never be able to be alive. The more you function through knowledge, the more immature you become.
Now let me tell you a paradox: every child who is innocent is mature.
Maturity has nothing to do with age because it has nothing to do with experience; maturity has something to do with responsiveness, freshness, virginity, innocence. So when I use the word 'mature' I don't mean that when you
become more experienced you will be more mature. That's what people usually mean when they use the word -- I don't mean that. The more you gather knowledge, the more your mind will become immature; and by the time you are seventy or eighty, you will be completely immature because you will have a stale past to function through. Watch a small child...knowing nothing, having no experience, he functions here and now.
That's why children can learn more than aged people. Psychologists say that if a child is not forced to learn, not forced to discipline himself, he can learn any foreign language in three months. Just left to himself with people who know the language he will catch it in three months. But if you force him to learn, it will take almost three years, because the more you force, the more he starts functioning through whatsoever he learns, through yesterday's knowledge. If he is left to himself he moves freely, spontaneously; learning comes easy, by itself, on its own accord.
By the time the child reaches the year eight he has learned almost seventy per cent of whatsoever he is going to learn in his whole life. He may live eighty years, but by the time he is eight he has learned seventy per cent -- he will learn only thirty per cent more, and every day his capacity to learn will be less and less and less. The more he knows, the less he learns. When people use the word 'maturity' they mean more knowledge; when I use the word 'maturity' I mean the capacity to learn. Not to know but to learn -- and they are different, totally different, diametrically opposite things. Knowledge is a dead thing; the capacity to learn is an alive process -- you simply remain capable of learning, you simply remain available, you simply remain open, ready to receive. Learning is receptivity. Knowledge makes you less receptive because you go on thinking that if you already know, what is there to learn? When you already know. you miss much; when you don't know anything you cannot miss anything.
Socrates said in his old age, 'Now I know nothing!' That was maturity. At the very end he said, 'I know nothing.'
Life is so vast. How can this tiny mind know? At the most, glimpses are enough. Even they are too much. Existence is so tremendously vast and infinite, beginningless, endless... how can this tiny drop of consciousness know it? It is enough even that a few glimpses come, a few doors open, a few moments happen when you come in contact with existence. But those moments cannot be turned into knowledge.
And your mind tends to do it -- then it becomes more and more immature.
So the first thing is that you should be capable of learning and your learning capacity should never be burdened by knowledge, never be covered by dust. The mirror of learning should remain clean and fresh so it can go on reflecting.
The mind can function in two ways. It can function like a camera: once exposed, finished
-- the film immediately becomes knowledgeable and it loses its learning capacity.
Exposed once and it already knows -- now it is useless; now it is not capable of learning more. If you expose it again and again it will become more confused. That's why people who know too much are always afraid of learning... because they will become confused.
They are already exposed films. Then there is another type of learning -- learning like a mirror. Expose the mirror for a thousand and one times, it makes no difference -- if you come in front of the mirror, you are reflected: if you go, the reflection goes. The mirror never accumulates.
The film in the camera immediately accumulates -- it catches hold, clings, but the mirror simply mirrors: you come in front, you are in it; you go, you are gone.
This is the way to remain mature. Every child is born mature and almost all people die immature. This will look very paradoxical but this is so. Remain innocent and you will remain mature.
The second thing is that the immature mind is always interested in trivia. The immature mind is always interested in things: money, houses, cars, power, prestige...all trivia, all rot. The mature mind is interested in existence, in being, in life itself. So when I say to you that you have an immature mind I mean you are still interested in things, not in persons; still interested in the outside, not in the inside; still interested in objects, not in subjectivity; still interested in the finite, not interested in the infinite.
Just watch your mind -- where it moves, what its fantasies are. If you find a valuable diamond on the road and just there by its side a rose has flowered, in what will you be interested? In the rose or in the diamond? You will not be able
to see the rose if you are interested in the diamond; you will simply miss the rose, it is valueless. Your eyes will be too clouded by the diamond, your whole mind will become focused on the diamond, and you will miss another diamond which was more alive -- the rose.
In the Hindu paradise they say roses are not ordinary roses, they are made of diamonds. I don't know, but I have seen roses. If you can see roses here exactly on this earth, they are made of diamonds -- so why go far away? Not in paradise but here now, once you know how to see a rose there is nothing comparable to it. And once you can see the rose you may forget completely about the diamond.
It happened that Mulla Nasruddin came to me one day. He was very much worried and he said, 'Ah, poor Mr. Jones. Did you hear, Osho, what happened to him? He tripped at the top of the stairs, fell down the whole flight, banged his head and died.'
Shocked, I said, 'Died?'
'Died,' he repeated with emphasis, 'and broke his glasses too!'
The immature mind is more interested in glasses than in life and death and love; more interested in things, like houses and cars. When I tell you that you have an immature mind, I mean you are still interested in that which is worthless, non- essential. At the most it can be used, at the most it can become a decoration in life, but it cannot replace life, it cannot substitute life, it cannot become life itself.
And there are many people who have made it a life. I know a few rich people who live such beggarly lives -- one cannot imagine it.
I used to know a man in Delhi who had six bungalows, all out on rent. And he lived in a small dark cell with no children and no wife.
I asked him once, 'You have enough. Why do you go on living in this small dark cell?
Why have you imposed this imprisonment upon yourself? What penance are you doing?'
He said, 'None. I have always lived this way and it is perfectly beautiful. And
people are living in those six bungalows.'
He goes to those bungalows only to collect rent. I asked him, 'Why have you never married?'
'I am a poor man and women are very costly. I could not afford it,' he said.
If you meet that man you will not be able to recognize that he owns six big houses and earns a lot of money. What has happened to this man? He is more interested in money than he is in himself, he is more interested in money than he is in love, he is more interested in the power that money brings -- but he has never shared anything with anybody.
These people are not rare, they are very common. Everybody has such a tendency inside.
And people go on rationalizing. Man is very clever -- he says, 'This is not miserliness.
Don't misunderstand me. I am a simple man. I live a simple life. I am a religious man, and a simple life is beautiful.'
If you are too interested in things you are immature. Shift your attention. Become more and more interested in people rather than in yourself.
I have a SANNYASIN here, Nisha. She always falls in love with beggarly people and she is tremendously rich. Just a few days before, she came and asked 'Why, Osho, do I go on falling in love with beggarly people -- people who are almost on the street?' I know the reason... with a beggarly man she need not be worried about her money. And she thinks that she helps these people -- by food, by small things -- in fact she has never fallen in love. She is so much in love with money that she cannot fall in love with persons. She purchases these people for money -- they are without any cost, without any risk. And they feel obliged because she gives food, clothing, shelter -- they feel obliged, so they pretend that they love her, and she goes on pretending that she has fallen in love. This is a way to protect the money and this is a way to remain closed, miserly.
And she is suffering, in pain, but she cannot see the point. She has to learn how to share.
If you know how to share, you are mature; if you don't know how to share, you are immature.
This sharing goes on on all levels, in all directions, in all dimensions. So one of the most basic things to understand is the more you share something, the more it grows in you.
Share whatsoever you have and it will grow; cling to it, become afraid of sharing, of friendship, of love, and it will shrink'. Life knows only one law and that law is of expansion and sharing.
Look at nature. Nature is such a spendthrift. When one flower is needed, a thousand and one flowers will bloom. When you make love to a woman or to a man, in each orgasm millions of cells are released. One would have been enough because at the most one child can be conceived, but millions of cells are released. One man can populate the whole earth -- just one man! One ordinary man has at least four thousand intercourses in his life -- one ordinary man -- and in each intercourse millions of cells are released. The whole world, the whole population that exists right now, can be produced by one man.
And yet the man will become the father of only two or three, if in the West; or twelve, fourteen, fifteen, if in the East -- that's all. For fifteen persons to be conceived, millions of cells are released.
Nature is a spendthrift. Where one flower is needed it produces millions. One tree will produce.… Look at the Gulmohr -- millions of seeds are ready. They will all fall down and a few, one, two, four, five, ten, twenty, a hundred, may become trees. Why so many seeds? God is not a miser. If you ask for one he gives millions. Just ask! Jesus has said,
'Knock and the doors shall be opened unto you, ask and it shall be given.' Remember, if you ask for one, millions will be given.
The moment you become miserly you are closed to the basic phenomenon of life: expansion, sharing. The moment you start clinging to things, you have missed the target
-- you have missed. Because things are not the target, you, your innermost being, is the target -- not a beautiful house, but a beautiful you; not much money, but a rich you; not many things, but an open being, available to millions of things.
When I say you are immature, I mean you are too concerned with things and you have not yet learned that life consists of consciousness -- of beings, not of things. Things are to be used, they are needed, but don't start living by them. Man cannot live by bread alone -- once living by bread alone, things alone, you are already dead.
And the third thing: maturity is always spontaneous. It does not plan, it makes no rehearsals.
People come to me.… Just the other night somebody was there. He said, 'I prepare so many questions when I come to see you. but when I come here I forget. What do you do to me?' I am not doing anything at all. It is YOU. The moment you prepare something you are already saying that it is false. The real thing need not be prepared. In life.
rehearsals are not needed, they are needed in a drama. A drama is a false thing. If you prepare your questions it means that those questions are not yours. If you are thirsty and you come to me, will you forget that you are thirsty and you would like your thirst to be quenched? How can you forget? In fact, when you reach the side of a river thirst will burn more intensely. The moment you see water flowing, and hear the sound of gurgling, immediately all that you have been suppressing will bubble up, it will respond, your whole being will say, 'I am thirsty!' If you are thirsty you will not forget.
But you prepare questions. You prepare yourself to go to the river and say, 'I am very thirsty.' What is the point of preparing? If you are thirsty, you are; if you are not, by the time you reach to the river, you will forget about it.
When I say you are immature I mean that you prepare your questions, your inquiries.
They are mind things. they don't come from your heart, they are not related to you, they have no roots in you.
It is related in George Bernard Shaw's life that once, at the opening of one of his plays, he stepped forward at its conclusion with obvious complaisance, to accept the rousing plaudits of the crowd. There was one dissenter, however, who seized the occasion of a lull in the applause to call out in stentorian tones, 'Your play stinks!'
There was a momentary horrified silence, but Shaw, unperturbed, exclaimed from the stage, 'My friend, I agree with you completely, but what are we two' -- here he waved his hand over the audience -- 'against the great majority?'
And applause returned more loudly than ever.
You cannot prepare something like that, it is impossible It is a spontaneous response --
hence the beauty of it. You cannot prepare for such things. And life is such a continuous thing: either you act or you miss. Later on, you will find a thousand and one answers --
you could have said this, you could have said that -- but they are of no use.
Mark Twain was coming back home with his wife from a lecture hall. He had just delivered a beautiful talk. His wife had not been present, she had just come to pick him up.
On the way she asked, 'How was the lecture?'
Mark Twain said, 'Which one? The one that I prepared, or the one that I delivered, or the one that I am thinking now that I should have delivered? Which one?'
If you prepare, this is going to be so. Remain conscious, alert, aware, and act out of your spontaneity. And not only will others see the alive response of it, you also will be thrilled by your own response. Not only will others be surprised, you will also be surprised yourself.
I call a mind mature which retains the capacity to be surprised. A mind is mature if it goes on continuously being surprised. by others, by himself, by everything. Life is a constant wonder: he has no ready-made plans or ready-made responses for it, he never knows what is going to happen, he moves into the unknown each moment. And he never jumps ahead of himself, he never lags behind himself, he remains simply himself, wherever he is.
And, the last and most basic thing: when I say that you have an immature mind, basically I mean that you have a mind. Mind as such is immature; only no-mind is mature.
Maturity has nothing to do with mind because mind means all that you know; mind means your experiences, mind means your past, your rehearsals, your preparations. All these things are implied in the word 'mind.' Mind is not something in particular, it is the whole accumulation, all the junk, the whole heap, of your dead past.
When I say, 'Be mature,' I mean become a no-mind. If you act spontaneously, you will act out of no-mind. If you remain capable of learning, you will remain capable of being a no-mind again and again and again -- the mind will never be accumulated. If you are capable of remaining alert-and spontaneous, able to be surprised by life and by yourself, you will become by and by more and more interested in the interior-most life, in the core of life. When you see a person, you will not see just the body, your gaze will become penetrating, your gaze will become like an x-ray. It will catch hold of the person -- of the consciousness there, of the inner light there in the other person. The body is just an abode -- you will meet the person, you will shake hands, but not only hands, you will shake the person, you will meet the person. And in your own life, by and by, you will become aware that the body is just the outermost garment: you have to take care of it, it is not to be neglected, it is valuable, but it is not the end. You are the master, not the servant. And by and by, the more you penetrate withinwards, you will see that the mind also is an innermost garment -- more valuable than the body but not more valuable than you. You remain the supreme value.
Once you know your supreme value, you have become mature; and once you know your supreme value, you know the supreme value of all: all beings are Buddhas -- nobody is less than that; the whole of life is Divine; you are always walking on holy ground.
It is said that when Moses went to the hill to meet his God, the bush was afire and from behind the bush he heard, 'Stop! Take your shoes off. This is holy ground.' I have always liked it, loved it. But all ground is holy ground and all bushes are afire with God. If you have not seen this yet you have missed much. Look again. All bushes are afire with God and from every bush comes the commandment, 'Stop and take your shoes off. It is holy ground you are walking on. All ground, the whole earth, the whole existence is sacred.
Once you have that feeling entering you, I will call you mature -- not before that. A mature mind is a religious mind.
The second question:
Question 2
WHY DO I MAKE MOUNTAINS OUT OF MOLEHILLS?
Because the ego does not feel good, at ease, with molehills -- it wants mountains. Even if it is a misery, it should not be a molehill, it should be an Everest. Even if it is miserable, the ego doesn't want to be ordinarily miserable -- it wants to be extraordinarily miserable!
Bernard Shaw is reported to have said, 'If I am not going to be the first in heaven, I would like to go to hell...but I would like to be the first.' In Christianity there is only one hell and Bernard Shaw never knew that in India we have a concept of seven hells. If he had heard about Hindu hells he would have chosen the seventh, because in the fifth he would have felt humiliated, others are still far ahead of him in the seventh -- the real sinners, the great sinners, are in the seventh!
Either this way or that -- but one wants to be the first. Hence one goes on making mountains out of molehills.
One woman hypochondriac died. The whole town felt relieved, the whole medical profession felt relieved, because she was a constant trouble to many people's heads, everywhere, all around. The family, the doctors, the physicians -- she had troubled everybody and nobody was of any help. And she relished the idea that nobody knew anything about the sort of disease she was suffering from
-- it was an extraordinary disease. In fact there was no disease.
Then she died, and it was almost a celebration in the town. But when they opened the will, she had written in her will that her request had positively to be fulfilled. Her request was that a carved tombstone had to be put on her tomb with these words inscribed on it: Now will you believe I was sick?
In this way she would haunt the whole town again.
People go on and on, creating big problems out of nothing. I have talked to thousands of people about their problems and I have not come across a real problem yet! All problems are bogus -- you create them. Because without problems you feel empty... then there is nothing to do, nothing to fight with,
nowhere to go. People go from one guru to another, from one master to another, from one psychoanalyst to another, from one encounter group to another, because if they don't go, they feel empty, and they suddenly feel life to be meaningless. You create problems so that you can feel that life is a great work, a growth, and you have to struggle hard.
The ego can exist only when it struggles, remember -- when it fights. And if I tell you,
'Kill three flies and you will become enlightened, you will not believe me. You will say,
'Three flies? There doesn't seem to be much to that. And I will become enlightened? That doesn't seem to be likely. If I say you will have to kill seven hundred lions, of course that looks more like it!
The greater the problem, the greater the challenge -- and with challenge your ego arises, soars high. You create problems. Problems don't exist.
And now if you allow me, there are not even molehills. That too is your trick. You say,
'Yes, there may not be mountains, but molehills?' No, not even molehills are there --
those are your creations. First you create molehills out of nothing, then you create mountains out of molehills. And the priests and the psychoanalysts and the gurus, they are happy because their whole trade exists because of you. If you don't create molehills out of nothing and you don't make your molehills into mountains, what will be the point of gurus helping you? First you have to be in a shape to be helped.
The real masters have been saying something else. They have been saying, 'Please look what you are doing, what nonsense you are doing. First you create a problem, then you go in search of a solution. Just watch why you are creating the problem, just exactly in the beginning, when you are creating the problem, is the solution -- don't create it!' But that won't appeal to you because then you are suddenly thrown flat upon yourself.
Nothing to do? No enlightenment? No satori? No samadhi? And you are deeply
restless, empty, trying to stuff yourself with anything whatsoever. You don't have any problems -- only this much has to be understood.
This very moment you can drop all problems
because they are your creations. Have another look at your problems: the deeper you look, the smaller they will appear. Go on looking at them and by and by they will start disappearing. Go on gazing and suddenly you will find there is emptiness -- a beautiful emptiness surrounds you. Nothing to do, nothing to be, because you are already that.
Enlightenment is not something to be achieved, it is just to be lived. When I say that I achieved enlightenment, I simply mean that I decided to live it. Enough is enough! And since then I have lived it. It is a decision that now you are not interested in creating problems -- that's all. It is a decision that now you are finished with all this nonsense of creating problems and finding solutions.
All this nonsense is a game you are playing with yourself: you yourself are hiding and you yourself are seeking, you are both the parties. And you know it! That's why when I say it you smile, you laugh. I am not talking about anything ridiculous -- you understand it. You are laughing at yourself. Just watch yourself laughing, just look at your own smile
-- you understand it. It has to be so because it is your own game: you are hiding and waiting for yourself to be able to seek and find yourself.
You can find yourself right now because it is you that is hiding. That's why Zen masters go on hitting. Whenever somebody comes and says, 'l would like to be a Buddha, the master gets very angry. Because he is asking nonsense, he IS a Buddha. If Buddha comes to me and asks how to be a Buddha, what am I supposed to do? I will hit his head.
'Whom do you think you are befooling? You are a Buddha.'
Don't make unnecessary trouble for yourself. And understanding will dawn on you if you watch how you make a problem bigger and bigger and bigger, how you spin it, and how you help the wheel to move faster and faster and faster. Then suddenly you are at the top of your misery and you are in need of the whole world's sympathy.
One sannyasin, Marga, wrote me a letter. She said, 'Osho, I feel very sad because when you talk, you look at everyone except me.' Now, I am not looking at anybody, but I have got eyes, so they have to be somewhere. It is not that I am looking at somebody, I am not looking at anybody. And you can see in my eyes that they are empty, they are vacant. But if you are trying to find your reflection in them and you don't, great sadness comes to you. Now there is a new problem. Now the ego feels hurt -- looking at everybody else except you! Just watch how you have made yourself an exception; extraordinary you have become. I look at everybody, the ordinary mass, except you. You have become unique. If I look at Marga -- which I am not going to do! Since I received her letter, I am never going to look at her -- if I look at her then the ego can have another trip: that I look only at her. Then that will create a problem!
You are a great problem-creator... just understand this and suddenly problems disappear.
You are perfectly in shape; you are born perfect, that is the whole message. You are born perfect; perfection is your innermost nature. You have just to live it. Decide, and live it.
But if you are not yet fed up with the game you can continue, but don't ask why. You know. The why is simple: the ego cannot exist in emptiness, it needs something to fight with. Even a ghost of your imagination will do, but you need to fight with someone. The ego exists only in conflict, the ego is not an entity, it is a tension. Whenever there is a conflict, the tension arises and the ego exists;' when there is no conflict the tension disappears and the ego disappears. Ego is not a thing -- it is just a tension.
And of course nobody wants small tensions, everybody wants big tensions. If your own problems are not enough, you start thinking about humanity and the world and the future... socialism, communism, and all that rubbish. You start thinking about it as if the whole world depends on your advice. Then you think, 'What is going to happen in Israel?
What is going to happen in Africa?' And you go on advising, and you create problems.
People become very excited, they cannot sleep because there is some war going on. They become very excited. Their own life is so ordinary that they will have
to reach extraordinariness from some other source. The nation is in difficulty so they become identified with the nation. The culture is in difficulty, the society is in difficulty -- now there are big problems and you become identified. You are a Hindu and the Hindu culture is in difficulty; you are a Christian and the church is in difficulty. The whole world is at stake. Now you become big through your problem.
The ego needs some problems. If you understand this, in the very understanding the mountains become molehills again, and then the molehills also disappear. Suddenly there is emptiness, pure emptiness all around. This is what enlightenment is all about -- a deep understanding that there is no problem.
Then, with no problem to solve, what will you do? Immediately you start living. You will eat, you will sleep, you will love, you will have a chit-chat, you will sing, you will dance
-- what else is there to do? You have become a God, you have started living.
If there is any God, one thing is certain: he will not have any problems. That much is certain. Then what is he doing with all his time? No problems, no psychiatrist to consult, no gurus to go and surrender to... what is God doing? What will he do? He must be getting crazy, whirling. No, he is living; his life is totally full with life. He is eating, sleeping, dancing, having a love affair -- but without any problems.
Start living this moment and you will see that the more you live, the less problems there are. Because now that your emptiness is flowering and living there is no need. When you don't live, the same energy goes sour. The same energy which would have become a flower, is stuck; not being allowed to bloom it becomes a thorn in the heart. It is the same energy.
Force a small child to sit in the corner and tell him to become completely immobile, unmoving. Watch what happens...just a few minutes before, he was perfectly at ease, flowing; now his face will become red because he will have to strain, hold himself. His whole body will become rigid and he will try to fidget here and there and he will want to jump out of himself. You have forced the energy -- now it has no purpose, no meaning, no space to move, nowhere to bloom and flower; it is stuck, frozen, rigid. The child is suffering a short death, a temporary death. Now if you don't allow the child to run again and move around
the garden and play, he will start creating problems, he will fantasize; in his mind he will Create problems and start fighting with those problems. He will see a big dog and he will get afraid, or he will see a ghost and he will have to fight and escape from him. Now he is creating problems. The same energy that was just a moment before flowing all around, in all directions, is stuck and becoming sour.
If people can dance a little more, sing a little more, be a little more crazy, their energy will be flowing more, and their problems will by and by disappear. Hence I insist so much on dance. Dance to orgasm; let the whole energy become dance, and suddenly you will see that you don't have any head -- the stuck energy in the head is moving all around, creating beautiful patterns, pictures, movement. And when you dance there comes a moment when your body is no longer a rigid thing, it becomes flexible, flowing.
When you dance there comes a moment when your boundary is no longer so clear; you melt and merge with the cosmos, the boundaries are mixing.
Watch a dancer -- you will see that he has become an energy phenomenon, no longer in a fixed form, no longer in a frame. He is flowing out of his frame, out OT his form, and becoming more alive, more and more alive. But only if you dance yourself will you know what really happens. The head inside disappears; again you are a child. Then you don't create any problems.
Live, dance, eat, sleep, do things as totally as possible. And remember again and again: whenever you catch yourself creating any problem, slip out of it, immediately. Once you get into the problem then a solution will be needed. And even if you find a solution, out of that solution a thousand and one problems will arise again. Once you miss the first step you are in the trap. Whenever you see that now you are slipping into a problem, catch hold of yourself, run, jump, dance, but don't get into the problem. Do something immediately so that the energy that was creating the problems becomes fluid, unfrozen, melts, goes back to the cosmos.
Primitive people don't have many problems. I have come across primitive groups in India who say they don't dream at all. Freud would not be able to believe that it is possible.
They don't dream, but if sometimes somebody dreams -- it is a rare phenomenon
-- the whole village fasts, prays to God. Something has gone wrong, something wrong has happened... a man has dreamed.
It never happens in their tribe because they live so totally that nothing is left in the head to be completed in the sleep. Whatsoever you leave incomplete has to be completed in your dreams; whatsoever you have not lived remains as a hang- over and completes itself in the mind -- that's what a dream is. The whole day you go on thinking. The thinking simply shows that you have more energy than you use for living; you have more energy than your so-called life needs.
You are missing real life. Use more energy. Then fresh energies will be flowing. Just don't be a miser. Use them today; let today be complete unto itself; tomorrow will take care of itself, don't be worried about tomorrow. The worry, the problem, the anxiety, all simply show one thing: that you are not living rightly, that your life is not yet a celebration, a dance, a festivity. Hence all the problems.
If you live, ego disappears. Life knows no ego, it knows only living and living and living.
Life knows no self, no center; life knows no separation. You breathe -- life enters into you; you exhale you enter into life. There is no separation. You eat, and trees enter into you through the fruit. Then one day you die, you are buried in the earth, and the trees suck you up and you become fruits. Your children will eat you again. You have been eating your ancestors -- the trees have converted them into fruits. You think you are a vegetarian? Don't be deceived by appearances. We are all cannibals.
Life is one, it goes on moving. It comes into you; it passes through you. In fact to say that it comes into you isn't right, because then it seems as if life comes into you, and then passes out of you. You don't exist -- only this life's coming and going does. You don't exist -- only life exists in its tremendous forms, in its energy, in its millions of delights.
Once you understand this, let that understanding be the only law.
And start living as Buddhas from this very moment. If you decide otherwise, it is for you to decide -- but as I see it, it is a decision: 'I am not going to befool myself anymore.
Now I start living as a Buddha, in emptiness. I will not try to find unnecessary occupations. I dissolve.'
The third question:
Question 3
I NOTICE THAT DEEP DOWN I WANT TO BE LOVED, ACCEPTED, LIKE THE
GREATEST MAN ON EARTH, THAT I WANT TO BE THE MOST FAMOUS
PERSON. AND I FEEL HURT WHEN SOMEONE REJECTS ME. WHAT TO DO
WITH THESE DREAMS?
If you understand that they are dreams then wash your face and have a cup of tea. What is there to be done about it? Dreams are dreams -- why be bothered?
But you don't understand that they are dreams. This is borrowed. You know that they are not dreams -- that s why you are worried. Otherwise why be worried? If in a dream you see that you have fallen ill, when you wake up in the morning do you go to the doctor?
In my dream I was very ill and now some medication is needed. You never go. You realize it was a dream -- finished! What is the point of going to a doctor?
But you have not yet understood that these are dreams. These are realities for you --
hence the problem.
I NOTICE THAT DEEP DOWN I WANT TO BE LOVED. If you want to be
loved --
love! Because whatsoever you give is returned back. If you want to be loved forget about wanting to be loved, and in a thousand ways love will come to you. Life reflects, life resounds, life echoes whatsoever you throw at life. So if you want to be loved forget about wanting and being loved -- that is not the point at
all then. Then simple is the rule
-- love.
And if you want to be accepted like the greatest man on earth, then start accepting everybody as the greatest man on earth. Otherwise how are they going to accept you as the greatest? They are also on the same trip. They are not going to accept you as the greatest because then what will happen to them? If you are the greatest, then who are they? Nobody wants to be anything else.
Once it happened, a friend of Mulla Nasruddin was talking to Mulla Nasruddin. They had met after many -- years. Both were bitter rivals; both were poets. Both started to boast about the progress they had made in their careers.
'You have no idea, Nasruddin, how many people read my poetry now,' bragged the friend. 'My readers have doubled.'
'My God, my God!' cried Nasruddin. 'I had no idea you got married!'
Everybody is on the same trip. If you want people to accept you as the greatest man on earth, let this be the rule: whatsoever you want others to do for you, do for them. But that is the trouble. The ego wants you to be the greatest man on earth -- nobody else. Then you will feel hurt. Because all are on the same trip -- can't you understand the simple point? They are also waiting for you to accept them as the greatest man.
I heard Mulla Nasruddin once. He was delivering a political speech.
He Said, 'It is with some trepidation that I address an audience of people all of whom are smarter than I am... all of them put together, that is.'
Everybody is trying to be at the top of the world -- then you are in competition with the whole world. Remember, you are going to be defeated. One man fighting against the whole world -- that is the situation.
If you see the point, there are two ways. One, forget about this trip, be ordinary, simple, whatsoever you are. There is no need to be great, the only need is to be real. Great is the wrong goal. To be real.… I have come across a hip slogan: Be realistic -- plan for a miracle. Yes. that s how it is. If you ale really realistic, you start living the miracle. And the miracle is: if you are real, you don't want to be
bothered with competition, comparison. Who bothers? You enjoy your food, you enjoy your breathing, you enjoy the sunlight, you enjoy the stars, you enjoy life, you enjoy being alive -- you are perfectly in tune. in harmony with the Whole. What is the point of being a great man? The great men, the so-called great men, are almost always phony -- they have to be. They cannot be real persons. They are plastic. Because they have chosen a wrong goal: to be great is an ego goal; to be real is existential.
If you want to be great you will be in continuous conflict. And of course you will be hurt by everybody. Not that everybody is trying to hurt you, they are doing their own trip.
You are unnecessarily coming in their way.
Get out of this rat race. Sit under the tree by the side of the road; it is tremendously beautiful and silent. Otherwise be ready to be hurt.
One politician used to come to me. Once he was the president of the Indian National Congress -- a great man in India.
And he told me, 'I am such a simple man. Why do people go on spreading nasty things about me? Why do people want to hurt me?'
I told him, 'Nobody wants to hurt you. You are unnecessarily coming in their way. They also want to be president of great parties -- you are standing in their way. They have to push you away.' I told him, 'You just remember what you did to the president before you.
The same thing they are trying to do with you -- leg-pulling.'
Once you are in a power post you are continuously being pulled and pushed. It has to be so.
Ramakrishna used to tell a beautiful story.
A bird was flying with a dead mouse and twenty or thirty birds were chasing him. The bird was very much worried.
'I am not doing anything to them, I am just carrying my dead mouse. They are all after me.'
And they hit him hard and in the conflict, in the struggle, the bird opened his mouth and the mouse dropped. Immediately they all flew towards the mouse; they all forgot about him.
Then he sat upon a tree and brooded.
They were not against him, they were also on the same trip -- they wanted the mouse.
If people are hurting you, open your mouth. You must be carrying a dead mouse! Drop it!
And then sit -- if you can, sit on the tree or under the tree and brood. And suddenly you will see that they have forgotten about you. They are not concerned. They never were concerned. The ego is a dead mouse.
Jones' oldest daughter had just given birth to a beautiful baby and Jones was being congratulated.
He looked downcast, however, and a friend said, 'What's the matter, Jones? Don't you like the idea of being a grandfather?'
Jones heaved an enormous sigh. 'No,' he said, 'I don't, but that doesn't bother me so much.
It is just that it is so humiliating to have to go to bed with a grandmother.'
Just watch your mind -- how it creates problems. The woman remains the same but now she has become a grandmother -- and one feels humiliated.
It is your idea that is giving you humiliation. If you are really concerned with your own well-being then nobody is hurting you -- just your own ideas. Drop them.
Or, two, it you feel good with them, don't be worried about the hurts. Carry them. But you have a decision inside. If you want the ego trip, if you want to be the greatest man in the world, then everybody is going to prove that you are the worst man in the world.
Then have courage and heart to suffer all that. It is futile, but if you choose that
way, it is your choice. If you really want your well-being and your inner calm and silence and bliss, then these hurts are indicative: you are carrying some wrong ideas within you.
Drop those ideas. The last question:, Question 4
I DON'T HAVE A QUESTION -- JUST A FEELING OF HOPELESSNESS. I CAN'T
BELIEVE MY QUESTIONS, I HAVE A FEELING THEY COME FROM SOMETHING BRITTLE AND UNREAL.
I DON'T HAVE A QUESTION -- JUST A FEELING OF HOPELESSNESS.
How does hopelessness arise? You must be hoping too much; it comes out of too much hope.
If you don't hope, all hopelessness disappears. If you expect too much, frustration is bound to come. if you are trying to succeed, you are bound to fail. Whatsoever you want to try too hard, just the opposite will happen.
You must have been trying too hard to fulfill some hope then hopelessness comes. If you really want to get rid of hopelessness -- and everybody wants that
-- then get rid of hope. Drop all hope and suddenly you will see that with the hope, hopelessness has disappeared. Then one comes to an inner tranquillity where no hope exists -- and no hopelessness. One is simply calm and quiet and collected -- a deep reservoir of energy, a pool of energy, cool.
But for that you have to sacrifice hope. The question shows that you are still hoping.…
Go a little more deeper and further: if you are really hopeless, hopelessness will disappear.
Let me tell it to you another way. Whenever a person says that he is hopeless he simply says he is still clinging to the same hope which has proved to be futile, of
which there is no indication of being fulfilled at all. One goes on holding it, hoping against all hope.
Then hopelessness continues.
Don't hope for anything. There is no need because all that you can hope for is already given. What more can you hope for?
You are here, everything is here -- just being is all. But you don't appreciate, you are asking for some dead mouse, some power trip, some ego trip, some success in the eyes of the world. Those are not going to be fulfilled, even Alexanders have failed. Even Alexander dies a poor man, a beggar, because everything that you accumulate is snatched back from you, you go empty-handed. Empty- handed you come; empty-handed you go.
So why bother about success, riches, power -- material or spiritual? Just be.… And being is the greatest miracle. Turn within yourself -- what Buddha calls PARABVRUTTI.
Turn yourself a complete turn, a total turn, and suddenly you are so full of joy, you don't need anything. In fact you have so much that you would like to shower it on others.
But things go on moving from one extreme to another. You hope -- then by and by the pendulum moves towards hopelessness. If you are too much in love with life, by and by you move towards suicide. If you are too religious, by and by you move and become anti-religious. The pendulum goes on moving towards the opposite.
Somewhere in the middle one has to stop. And if you stop in the middle, time stops with you. And when time stops, all hope, all desires have stopped. You start living. Now, now is the only time and here is the only space.
Let me tell you one story. It is a very beautiful Jewish anecdote.
Young Sammy Moskowitz had just bought himself a motor scooter, but he had been brought up in orthodox fashion and wasn't the least bit sure whether it was fitting for an orthodox Jew to ride one. He thought that the best way out would be to get his reverend rabbi to teach him a barucha -- a traditional prayer of blessing -- to intone over the motor scooter before he drove it. Surely that would
make it proper for him to use it.
He therefore approached his rabbi and said, 'Rabbi, I have bought a motor scooter and I wish to know if you could teach me a barucha to say over it each morning.'
The rabbi said, 'What is a motor scooter?'
Sammy explained, and the rabbi shook his head. 'As far as I know, there is no appropriate barucha for the occasion and I strongly suspect that riding a motor scooter is a sin. I forbid you to use it.'
Sammy was very downhearted for from his very soul he longed to drive his motor scooter, which had set him back a considerable sum. A thought occurred to him. Why not seek a second and perhaps more liberal opinion -- from a rabbi who was not orthodox, but merely conservative?
He found a conservative rabbi, who, unlike the orthodox rabbi earlier consulted, was not in the traditional long coat at all but wore a dark business suit. The conservative rabbi said, What is a motor scooter?'
Sammy explained.
The rabbi thought for a while, then said, 'I suppose there's nothing wrong about riding a motor scooter, but still I don't know of any appropriate barucha and if your conscience hurts you without one, then don't drive it.'
He journeyed out to the suburbs and met Rabbi Richmond Ellis, in his knickerbockers, about to leave for the golf-links on his motor scooter.
Sammy grew terribly excited, 'It's all right for a Jew to ride a motor scooter?' he said. 'I've got one but I didn't know.'
'Sure, kid,' said the rabbi. 'Nothing wrong with the motor scooter at all. Ride it in good health.'
'Then give me a barucha for it.'
The reformed rabbi thought, then said, 'What's a barucha?'
The orthodox doesn't know what a motor scooter is and the progressive is not aware of what a barucha is.
From religion, too much dogmatic religion, people become too irreligious. When they leave the church, they move to the prostitute.
Somewhere a deep balance is needed. Just between the two, exactly between the two, is transcendence.
So, you have lived with hope -- now the hope has failed and you are living in hopelessness. Now, let hopelessness also fail; you drop hope and hopelessness together.
You just transcend that attitude which lives in the future. Live here now! Living in hope is living in the future, which is really postponing life. It is not a way of living, but a way of suicide. There is no need for any hope and there is no need to feel hopeless. Live here now. Life is tremendously blissful, it is showering here and you are looking somewhere else. It is just in front of your eyes, but your eyes have moved far away, they look at the horizon. It is within you, but you are not there.
I am not for hope; I am not for hopelessness. I am against all extremism. All excess is futile.
Buddha used to say, 'My path is the middle path.' That is the path of transcendence.
Ancient Music in the Pines Chapter #3
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