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Chapter title: Wake up the Slave
27 February 1979 am in Buddha Hall Archive
code:
7902270
ShortTitle:
WISDOM17
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Yes Video: No Length:
107
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DON'T SEEK SORROW FOR SPURIOUS COMFORTS. ALL ABSORPTIONS ARE EFFECTED IN ONE.
ONE METHOD WILL CORRECT ALL WRONG. AT THE BEGINNING AND AT THE END THERE ARE TWO THINGS TO DO.
BE PATIENT, WHICHEVER OF THE TWO OCCURS. OBSERVE TWO PRECEPTS EVEN AT THE RISK OF LIFE.
LEARN THE THREE DIFFICULTIES.
TAKE UP THE THREE PARTS OF THE PRINCIPAL CAUSE. MEDITATE ON THE THREE THINGS NOT TO BE DESTROYED. MAKE THE THREE INSEPARABLE FROM VIRTUE.
An ancient story Jesus, son of Mary, once came upon an old man who lived on
a mountain in the open air without any shelter from heat or cold. Jesus asked him why he had not built himself a house.
"Ah, spirit of God!" said the old man. "Prophets before thee predicted that I would live for only seven hundred years. It is not worth my trouble to settle down."
Life is a wandering, it is not a home. It is a search for the home, but it itself is not the home. It is an inquiry, an adventure. It is not necessarily that you will succeed -- success is very rare, because the search is very complex and there are a thousand and one difficulties on the way.
But let this be your first understanding about today's sutras. They are of immense value.
When you meditate and when you go deeper into them you will be surprised: these sutras are just like oceans contained in dewdrops.
Mohammed says, "I am like a rider who shelters under a tree, then goes on his way." Yes, this life is an overnight's stay, a caravanserai. Don't settle in it. Use the opportunity to reach higher and higher and higher, because there is no end to heights, to depths. But remember always, don't take life for granted: it is only an opportunity, with immense potential and possibilities. But if you start thinking that you have already arrived because you are alive, you will miss the whole point.
Jesus says again and again, "The world is to be treated as a bridge, not as a stopping place." Use it as a bridge; it can bridge you to God. And when life becomes a bridge to God it is divine. But if you don't use it as a bridge towards God it remains mundane, spurious, illusory, imaginary, fictitious.
The first sutra:
DON'T SEEK SORROW FOR SPURIOUS COMFORTS.
Everybody seeks, searches for bliss, and almost everybody succeeds in finding just the opposite. I say "almost" because a few people have to be left out of the account -- a Buddha, a Zarathustra, a Lao Tzu, an Atisha. But they are so few and far between; they are exceptions, they only prove the rule. So I say almost everybody who searches for bliss finds misery and suffering. People try to enter into heaven, but by the time they have arrived suddenly they recognize the fact that it is hell.
There must be a great misunderstanding somewhere. The misunderstanding is that those who seek pleasure will find sorrow -- because pleasure is only a camouflage; it is sorrow hiding itself behind a curtain. It is a mask -- tears hiding behind smiles, thorns waiting for you behind flowers. Those who see it, and everybody can see it because it is so obvious...
everybody comes to experience it again and again. But man is the animal who never learns.
Aristotle has defined man as a rational being. That is sheer nonsense! Man is the most irrational being you can find anywhere. Man can be rational, but is not. It is not the definition of man as he is, it is the definition of man as he should be. A Buddha, yes; a Mohammed, yes -- they are rational beings, rational in the sense that they live intelligently, they live wisely, they use each single opportunity to grow, to mature, to be.
But as far as millions of human beings are concerned, ninety-nine point nine percent of people, they are not rational beings at all, they are utterly irrational.
Their first irrationality is that they pass through the same experience again and again, yet they learn nothing, they remain the same. How many times have you been angry, and what have you learned out of it? How many times have you been jealous, and what experience have you gained out of it? You go on moving through experiences without in any way being affected by them. You remain un- grownup; your way of life is very irrational, unintelligent.
The intelligent person will be able to see easily that, seeking pleasure, all that is found is sorrow. And what are those pleasures in fact? Very spurious ones.
Somebody wants to make a big house, and how much trouble he takes and how much suffering he goes through and how many anxieties and how many nervous breakdowns!
They say that if you are really a successful person you are bound to have a heart attack somewhere between forty-two and forty-eight. If you don't have a heart attack before you are fifty your life is wasted, you are a failure; you have not tried to succeed, you have not been ambitious enough. Ambitious people are bound to have heart attacks; the more ambitious will have nervous breakdowns.
If you don't need the psychiatrist, that simply means you have not used your mind in the ways of ambition. And the whole society is geared towards ambition, the whole educational system produces only ambitious minds. That means potential patients for the psychotherapist. It seems as if there is a conspiracy -- that the whole educational system only creates people for doctors, for priests, for psychotherapists.
The whole system seems to be sick, sick unto death. It does not create the healthy, alive, radiant human being; it does not create the joyous, the celebrating, the festive being. It does not teach you how to make your life a festival. Whatsoever it teaches takes you deeper and deeper into hell. And you know it -- because I am not talking about some speculative systems of thought, I am talking simply about your psychology, your state of being.
Atisha is right. He says:
DON'T SEEK SORROW FOR SPURIOUS COMFORTS.
How much suffering you have created -- for what? Somebody wanted a little bigger house, a little bigger bank balance, a little more fame, a little more name, more power.
Somebody wanted to become the president or the prime minister. All are spurious, because death will take them away. That is the definition of the spurious.
Only that which cannot be taken away by death is real. Everything else is unreal; it is made of the same stuff dreams are made of. If you are running after things which will be taken away by death, then your life is "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." You will never attain to any significance.
And without significance how can there be a song? And without significance how can you ever say that "I have lived"? The tree has not bloomed, the tree has not been fruitful.
What to say about fruits and flowers -- even leaves have not come.
Millions are born as seeds and die as seeds. From the cradle to the grave, their story is just of drifting. Accidental it is, and the ultimate result is great sorrow. The idea of hell only symbolizes the great sorrow that you create by a wrong kind of living.
Atisha says:
DON'T SEEK SORROW FOR SPURIOUS COMFORTS.
Then what has to be done? Think of something higher -- something that is beyond death, something that cannot be destroyed, something that is indestructible, something that transcends time -- and sorrow will not be created.
If you search the ultimate, each moment of your life will become more and more peaceful, calm, quiet, cool, fragrant. If you search for the ultimate, if you search for the truth, or God or nirvana or whatsoever you want to call it; if you are in search for the deepest in life and the highest in life and you are not after spurious things, then your very search will bring a new quality to your being. You will feel rooted, integrated; you will feel together. And you will feel a new joy arising in your heart, not coming from the outside.
The real joy never comes from the outside, it is the spurious that comes from the outside -
- death can take away only that which has come from the outside.
Death happens only on the without, it never happens within. Death happens on the outside, never on the inside; the inside is eternal. Your interiority is beyond death -- it has always been here, will always be here, but you are unaware of it. You go on running after shadows, and the real waits for you to look in, to turn in, to tune in.
So the first thing: seek that which is deathless, and sooner or later you will knock on the doors of heaven.
The second thing is: why in the first place do you run after spurious pleasures? This woman, that man... why do you run after spurious pleasures? What is the rationale behind it? The rationale is that you are already in sorrow. You want somehow to forget all about it; you want to drown yourself in alcohol, in sex, in money, in power politics -- you want somewhere to drown yourself.
Politicians can easily say that prohibition is needed, because they have a far more dangerous intoxicant available to them. Morarji Desai can insist for prohibition, because he is drinking out of his power politics; he is drowning himself in a very subtle kind of intoxicant. In fact, no alcohol is more dangerous than politics.
If anything has to be prohibited from the world, it is not alcohol, it is politics. And how many people drink alcohol in India? Not more than seven percent. And how many more people are political? I don't think you can find any person who is not political -- very difficult.
You may not be actually in politics, but politics is far more subtle. The husband is trying to dominate over the wife -- this is politics. The wife is trying to manipulate the husband in her own way -- this is politics. The child is in a tantrum and wants a toy immediately --
this is politics. Politics means an effort to dominate the other. And it is very intoxicating; it is the worst kind of alcohol available in the world.
A few people drown in power politics, a few seek shelter in sexuality, a few go to the pub, but many more simply go on searching spurious comforts, go from one comfort to another. When they have achieved one and found that it gives nothing, no nourishment, immediately they start seeking something else. Their life becomes a constant occupation so they need not look at the inner sorrow that is gathering like a cloud, a dark cloud.
So the second meaning of the sutra is: rather than seeking spurious comforts, the best way is to go into your sorrow. Meditate, go deep into it. Don't escape from your misery, because by escaping you will never learn what it is and you will never learn how to transcend it. The beauty is: if you really know the cause of your misery, in that very knowing misery is transcended -- because the cause is always and always ignorance and nothing else.
Jesus says: Truth liberates. This is one of the most important statements ever
made, very fundamental for every seeker to understand. Truth liberates -- not the truth that you gather from scriptures but the truth that you come across through your own experiencing.
You are sad. Go into your sadness rather than escaping into some activity, into some occupation, rather than going to see a friend or to a movie or turning on the radio or the tv. Rather than escaping from it, turning your back towards it, drop all activity. Close your eyes, go into it, see what it is, why it is -- and see without condemning it, because if you condemn you will not be able to see the totality of it. See without judging. If you judge, you will not be able to see the whole of it. Without judgment, without condemnation, without evaluation, just watch it, what it is. Look as if it is a flower, sad; a cloud, dark; but look at it with no judgment so that you can see all the facets of it.
And you will be surprised: the deeper you go into it, the more it starts dispersing. If a person can go into his sorrow deeply he will find all sorrow has evaporated. In that evaporation of sorrow is joy, is bliss.
Bliss has not to be found outside, against sorrow. Bliss has to be found deep, hidden behind the sorrow itself. You have to dig into your sorrowful states and you will find a wellspring of joy.
The second sutra:
ALL ABSORPTIONS ARE EFFECTED IN ONE.
So Atisha says: There is no need to have many goals, one goal is enough. Inquire into the truth of your life. Only one search is enough to deliver you from all your miseries, sufferings, hells. Inquire into the truth of your being, see all the facets of it -- the anger, the greed, the lust. Go into each. And by going into each, you will find always and always the same source of joy, the same spring of joy. Slowly slowly you will become a festival. Nothing has been added from the outside, but you have discovered yourself. You have come into the kingdom of God.
The third sutra:
ONE METHOD WILL CORRECT ALL WRONG.
One goal -- truth -- and one method. What is that method? I call it meditation,
Atisha used to call it awareness, Buddha used to call it mindfulness. These are different words for the same quality -- the quality of being attentive, alert, awake.
Atisha is very mathematical; no great mathematician can be so mathematical as he is. He is moving step by step. First he says: Don't seek spurious comforts; that is going astray.
Don't escape from your sorrowful state; go into it. Let this become your one goal: the search for the truth of your being. He is not talking about any truth that lives somewhere in the sky, he is not talking about any philosophical truth. He is talking about the truth that you are; he is talking about you. He is utterly psychological, he is not talking about metaphysics.
Then the method... and he goes so quick, not a single word wasted, not a single word superfluous. He is so telegraphic; that is the meaning of the word SUTRA. Sutra means very telegraphic. There was a great need in those days when Atisha was writing these sutras -- there was a great need to be very very short, condensed, telegraphic, because books were not available; people had to remember them. And it is better to make very very condensed sutras so people can remember. Now these are only seven points we are discussing, and can be easily remembered.
ONE METHOD WILL CORRECT ALL WRONG.
That method is awareness. There are many illnesses but there is only one health. The quality of health is one, always the same. Whether I am healthy or you are healthy, the feel of health is the same. Diseases are millions, wrongs are many, but the right key that unlocks all the doors, the master key, is only one. And rather than cutting the branches, rather than pruning the leaves, why not cut the very root? There are many people who go on pruning the leaves or cutting the branches; these people are known as moralists.
The moral person is a little-bit-stupid person, stupid in the sense that he thinks that by cutting the leaves he is going to destroy the tree. He is not going to destroy the tree this way. You cut one leaf and the tree will respond with three leaves instead, the foliage will become thicker. You cut one branch and the tree will pour its sap and juices into another branch, and the other branch will become thicker and bigger. This is what happens in your life.
Somebody is against sex; he represses sex, he cuts that branch. Now the whole energy becomes anger. You will find stories in Indian scriptures, stories like the story of Durvasa
-- a great so-called mahatma who repressed his sex totally, and then became all anger, just red-hot anger. It is bound to happen. You cannot destroy any energy -- never. It is not possible in the very nature of things. Energies can only be transformed, never destroyed.
If you close one outlet, the energy will start flowing from another. If you close the front door, then from the back door... and from the back door it is more dangerous, because it makes your life the life of a hypocrite, it makes your life double. You start living in a dual way: you say one thing, you do another; you show one thing, you are another. You become more and more split.
My emphasis is also exactly the same as Atisha's. You come to me with a thousand and one problems, but my answer is always the same. If you come with anger I say be aware of it, if you come with greed I say be aware of it, if you come with lust I say be aware of it -- because awareness cuts the very root. What is the root? Unawareness is the root.
One can be angry only if he is unaware. Try to be angry and aware together and you will find it impossible. Either you will be aware, then anger will not be found, or you will be angry and awareness will have disappeared. Up to now, nobody has been able to manage both together, and I don't think you can prove the exception. Try it. It is possible you may think both are happening, but if you minutely watch you will see: when awareness is there anger is not, when anger is there awareness is not. Unawareness is the root of all illnesses; then awareness is the only medicine.
Buddha says, "I am a physician." And once somebody asked, "You again and again say you are a physician, but I don't see any medicines around you. What medicines do you give?"
He said, "My medicine is only one: it is awareness. I prescribe awareness." And it has not to be brought from the chemist; you have to change your inner chemistry to bring it. You have to change your inner chemistry. Right now your inner chemistry functions in such a way that it produces unawareness, unconsciousness. It can be changed, it can be deautomatized. How to do it you
will find in the sutras that are to follow.
But remember, one method is enough to correct all wrong. That method is awareness.
And how will you know that you have attained it? Awareness is something inner, it is so deep that nobody can see it. Still, if you become aware, everybody who has a little intelligence, who has eyes to see, will become aware of it -- because as awareness happens at the inner core, compassion starts radiating, love starts radiating.
Buddha says: Light the candle of awareness in your heart, and your whole being will radiate compassion. Compassion is the proof. Unless compassion happens, remember, you must be deceiving yourself; you must be doing something else than being aware.
For example, you can try concentration. Concentration is not awareness, and the person of concentration will never show compassion. Compassion is not a consequence of concentration. Concentration means the focusing of the mind, the narrowing of the mind on only one point. The concentrated mind becomes a very powerful mind -- but remember it is mind, and very powerful, hence more dangerous than ever. Concentration is the method of science.
Awareness is totally different; it is not focusing, it is unfocused alertness. For example, right now you are listening to me. You can hear in a concentrated way, you can be focused on me; then you will miss the birds and their songs, then you will miss this noise on the road. Then you are not aware, then your mind has become very narrow. Awareness is not the narrowing of the mind but the disappearance of the mind. The narrowing of the mind makes the mind more of a mind -- hence the Hindu mind is more of a mind, the Mohammedan mind is more of a mind, the communist mind is more of a mind, because these are all narrowing. Somebody is focused on Das Kapital or the Communist Manifesto, somebody is focused on the Koran or on the Dhammapada, somebody on the Gita, somebody on The Bible -- focused people. They create narrow minds in the world.
They create conflict, they don't bring compassion.
For thousands of years religions have existed, but compassion is still a dream. We have not been able to create a world that knows what love is, friendship is,
brotherhood is.
Yes, we talk, and we talk too much about all these beautiful things. In fact the talk has become nauseating, it is sickening. It should stop. No more talk of brotherhood and love and this and that -- we have talked for thousands of years for no purpose.
The reason is that the concentrated mind becomes narrow, becomes more of a mind. And love is not the function of the mind, love is the function of no-mind -- or call it heart, which means the same. No-mind and heart are synonymous.
Awareness means to listen to me unfocused -- alert of course, not fallen asleep, but alert to these birds, their chirping, alert to the wind that passes through the trees, alert to everything that is happening. Concentration excludes much, includes little. Awareness excludes nothing, includes all.
Awareness is a state of no-mind. You are, yet you are not focused. You are just a mirror reflecting all, echoing all; see the beauty of it and the silence and the stillness. Suddenly you are and you are not, and the miracle starts happening. In this silence you will feel a compassion, compassion for all suffering beings. It has not to be practiced either; it comes on its own.
Atisha says: Awareness inside, compassion on the outside. Compassion is the outer side of awareness, the exterior of awareness. Awareness is your interiority, subjectivity.
Compassion is relating with others, sharing with others. The fourth sutra:
AT THE BEGINNING AND AT THE END THERE ARE TWO THINGS TO DO.
By the beginning is meant the morning, and by the end, the evening. In the morning remember one thing, says Atisha, that a new day, a new opportunity, has again been given to you. Feel grateful. Existence is so generous. You have wasted so many days, and again one day has been given to you. Existence is so hopeful about you! You have been wasting and wasting and doing nothing; you have wasted so much valuable opportunity and time and energy, but existence still hopes. One day more is given to you.
Atisha says: In the morning remember it is a new day, a new beginning. Have a decision deep in your heart that "Today I am not going to waste this opportunity. Enough is enough! Today I am going to be aware, today I am going to be alert, today I am going to devote as much energy as possible to the single cause, the cause of meditation. I will meditate in all my acts. I will do all the activities, the usual day-to-day activities, but with a new quality: I will bring the quality of awareness to them."
Welcome the new day. Feel grateful, happy that existence still trusts in you; there is still a possibility, the transformation can still happen. Start the day with a great decisiveness.
And in the evening again feel gratitude that the day was given to you, and feel gratitude for all that happened -- good and bad both, happiness and unhappiness both, because they are all teachers.
Everything is an opportunity. Taken rightly, every moment is a stepping-stone. Failure as much helps you to become alert as success; sometimes in fact failure helps you to become more aware than success. Success helps you to fall asleep. In happiness people forget; in happiness nobody remembers God. In unhappiness suddenly the remembrance comes.
Fortunate is the man who can remember even when he is happy; fortunate is the man who can remember when everything is going good and smooth. When the sea is rough, everybody remembers God; there is nothing special in it, it is just out of fear.
It happened: In the sea there was a ship, a ship which was carrying many Mohammedans to Mecca. They were on a pilgrimage. They were all surprised by one thing: because they were all pilgrims going to the holy of holies, each was praying all the five prayers prescribed for a Mohammedan every day -- except a Sufi mystic. But the mystic was so radiant with joy that nobody dared to ask him why.
Then one day the sea was very rough and the captain declared, "There seems to be no possibility that we can be saved, so please do your last prayer. The ship is going to sink."
And everybody fell in prayer except the Sufi mystic.
Now this was too much. Many people gathered around the mystic. They were really angry and they said, "You are a man of God. We have watched you, you have never prayed. But we didn't say anything; we felt that this would be disrespectful -- you are thought to be a holy man. But now it is unbearable. The ship is sinking, and you are a man of God -- if you pray, your prayer will be listened to. Why are you not praying?"
The mystic said, "To pray out of fear is to miss the whole point, that's why I am not praying."
And then they asked, "Then why did you not pray when there was no question of fear?"
He said, "I am in prayer, so I cannot pray. Only those who are not in prayer can pray. But what is the point of their prayer? Empty rituals! I am in prayer, in fact I am prayer. Each moment is a prayer."
Prayer is the Sufi word for the same quality for which Atisha will use the word awareness.
So in the evening thank again, thank the whole existence. For Atisha there is no God, remember. Even if I use the word god it is not Atisha's word; for Atisha the whole existence is divine, there is no personal God.
That has always been the attitude of the meditator. If you are a man of prayer, existence appears as God, as personal. If you are a man of meditation, existence is impersonal, just a wholeness, a divineness. For the man of prayer there is God; for the man of awareness there is godliness but no God.
H.G. Wells is reported to have said that Gautam Buddha was the most godless man, yet the most godly. This is true -- most godless because he never believed in any God, yet the most godly because he himself was divine. He himself was as godly as one can ever be or hope ever to be.
So in the evening feel grateful for whatsoever happened during the day. And two things more: remember when you failed in the day in being aware and being compassionate --
just remember. Atisha does not say repent, just remember. And let me remind you: when in The Bible Jesus says again and again "Repent!" it is a
mistranslation from the Aramaic. In English it has taken on a totally different meaning, a diametrically opposite meaning. It has become repentance -- "Feel guilty!"
In Aramaic, repent simply means return, look back; that's all. Take a count back: the day is gone, look back. Just watch again, take note when you failed in awareness -- that will help you tomorrow, it will enhance your awareness. And take note when you failed in compassion -- that will help you tomorrow to be more compassionate. And also take note when you succeeded in being aware and compassionate. Don't feel any pride for it either -
- no guilt, no pride. It is not a question of guilt and pride; it is simply taking an account of the day that is gone before you go to sleep, just looking back, with no evaluation --
neither condemning oneself as a sinner, nor being very very proud that "Today I have been so aware, so compassionate; I have done so many good deeds." Nothing of the sort -
- just noticing back, what happened from the morning to the evening. This is also a method of becoming more aware.
BE PATIENT, WHICHEVER OF THE TWO OCCURS.
Remember, whether you succeed in awareness or you fail, be patient. Don't be impatient, because impatience is not going to help. Just watch patiently and wait in tremendous trust that if this much can happen, more is possible. Another leaf will be born tomorrow, another flower will bloom tomorrow.
Also remember that this body is not the only body. Many more you had before, and many more you are going to have in the future. There is no hurry. Be patient, because hurry can only disturb things. Hurry is not going to help, but hinder.
OBSERVE TWO PRECEPTS EVEN AT THE RISK OF LIFE.
These two precepts of awareness and compassion are so valuable that even if you sometimes have to sacrifice your life for them, it is worth it. Life is nothing but an opportunity to attain to awareness and compassion. If you don't attain awareness and compassion, what is the point of going on living? It is meaningless.
Just meditate over it. If one is so much ready, so intent, so deeply committed to be aware and compassionate that he is ready to sacrifice his life, will he remain unaware long?
Impossible! This very moment, if this intensity is there, awareness will happen out of this intensity. This intensity will flare up like a light inside, and out of that light, the radiance of compassion.
Life in itself is not meaningful. It is meaningful only if you can sing a song of the eternal, if you can release some fragrance of the divine, of the godly, if you can become a lotus flower -- deathless, timeless. If you can become pure love, if you can beautify this existence, if you can become a blessing to this existence, only then does life have significance; otherwise it is pointless. It is like an empty canvas: you can go on carrying it your whole life and you can die under its weight, but what is the point? Paint something on it!
Meaning has to be created in life; meaning is not given already. You are given freedom, you are given creativity, you are given life. All that is needed to create meaning is given.
All the essential ingredients of meaning are given, but meaning is not given, meaning has to be created by you. You have to become a creator in your own right.
And when you became a creator in your own right, you participate with God, you become a part of God.
LEARN THE THREE DIFFICULTIES.
There are three difficulties in becoming aware. These are very essential for each seeker to understand. In fact everybody becomes aware, but only when the act is finished. You have been angry -- you slapped your wife or you threw a pillow at your husband. Later on when the heat is cooled, the moment has passed, you become aware. But now it is pointless, now nothing can be done. What has been done cannot be undone; it is too late.
Three things, Atisha says, are to be remembered. One is becoming aware while the act is happening. That is the first difficulty for the person who wants to become aware --
becoming aware in the act itself.
Anger is there like smoke inside you. Becoming aware in the very thick of it, that is the first difficulty, but it is not impossible. Just a little effort and you will be able to catch hold of it. In the beginning you will see, you become aware when the anger has gone and everything has cooled -- you become aware after fifteen minutes. Try -- you will become aware after five minutes. Try a little more -- you will become aware immediately after one minute. Try a little more, and you will become aware just when the anger is evaporating. Try a little more, and you will become aware exactly in the middle of it.
And that is the first step: be aware in the act.
Then the second step, which is even more difficult because now you are going into deeper waters. The second step, or the second difficulty, Atisha calls it, is remembering before the act: when the act has not yet happened but is still a thought in you; it has not been actualized but it has become a thought in your mind. It is there, potentially there like a seed; it can become the act any moment.
Now you will need a little more subtle awareness. The act is gross -- you hit the woman.
You can become aware while you are hitting, but the idea of hitting is far more subtle.
Thousands of ideas go on passing in the mind -- who takes note of them? They go on and on; the traffic continues. Most of those ideas never become acts.
This is the difference between sin and crime. Crime is when something becomes an act.
No law court can punish you for a thought. You can think of murdering somebody but no law can punish you. You can enjoy, you can dream, but you are not under law unless you act, unless you do something and the thought is transformed into actuality; then it becomes a crime.
But religion goes deeper. It says when you think it, it is already a sin. Whether you actualize it or not does not matter -- you have committed it in your inner world and you are affected by it, you are contaminated by it, you are blemished by it.
The second difficulty, Atisha says, is to catch hold when the thought is arising in you. It can be done, but it can be done only when you have crossed the first barrier, because thought is not so solid. But still it is solid enough to be seen; you have to just practice a little bit. Sitting silently, just watch your thoughts. Just see all the nuances of a thought --
how it arises, how it takes form, how it remains, abides, and how then it leaves you. It becomes a guest and then when the time comes it leaves you. And many thoughts come and go; you are a host where many thoughts come and go. Just watch.
Don't try from the very beginning with the difficult thoughts, try with simple thoughts.
That will make it easier, because the process is the same. Just sit in the garden, close your eyes and see whatsoever thought is passing -- and they are always passing. The dog barks in the neighborhood, and immediately a process of thought starts in you. You suddenly remember a dog you had in your childhood and how much you had loved that dog, and then the dog died, and how you suffered.
Then comes the idea of death, and the dog is forgotten and you remember the death of your mother. And with the idea of the mother suddenly you remember your father. And things go on and on. Just the whole thing was triggered by a foolish dog who is not even aware that you are sitting in your garden, who is simply barking because he knows nothing else to keep himself occupied. His barking is nothing but politicking -- his politics, power politics.
That's why dogs are very much against uniforms. The policeman, the postman, the sannyasin -- and the dogs are very angry. They don't tolerate uniforms. How dare you walk in uniform, trying to dominate them? They are angry against policemen and people like that.
He was not aware of you, he has not barked for you especially, but a chain was triggered.
Watch these simple chains, and then slowly slowly try them with more emotionally involved things. You are angry, you are greedy, you are jealous -- just catch hold of yourself in the middle of the thought. That is the second difficulty.
And the third difficulty is to catch hold of this process, which results ultimately in an act, before it becomes a thought. That is the most difficult; right now you cannot even conceive of it. Before anything becomes a thought, it is a feeling. These are the three things: feeling comes first, then comes thought, then comes the act. You may not be aware at all that each thought is produced by a certain feeling. If the feeling is not there, the thought will not come. Feeling becomes actualized in thought, thought becomes actualized in the act.
Now you have to do the almost impossible thing -- to catch hold of a certain feeling.
Have you not watched sometimes? You don't really know why you are feeling a little disturbed; there is no real thought that can be caught as the cause, but you are disturbed, you feel disturbed. Something is getting ready underground, some feeling is gathering force. Sometimes you feel sad. There is no reason to feel sad, and there is no thought to provoke it; still the sadness is there, a generalized feeling. That means a feeling is trying to come above ground, the seed of the feeling is sending its leaves out of the ground.
If you are able to become aware of the thought, then sooner or later you will become aware of the subtle nuances of the feeling. These are the three difficulties.
Atisha says:
LEARN THE THREE DIFFICULTIES.
And if you can do these three things, suddenly you will fall into the deepest core of your being.
Action is the farthest from the being, then comes thought, then comes feeling. And behind feeling, just hidden behind feeling, is your being. That being is universal. That being is the goal of all meditators, the goal of all those who pray
-- call it God, atman, self, no-self, whatsoever you wish to call it, but this is the goal. And these three barriers have to be crossed. These three barriers are like three concentric circles around the center of being.
TAKE UP THE THREE PARTS OF THE PRINCIPAL CAUSE.
Now a very important sutra. The last three sutras are just golden. Keep them in
your heart: they will nourish you, they will strengthen you, they will transform you.
Particularly for my sannyasins, they are of immense value. TAKE UP THE THREE PARTS OF THE PRINCIPAL CAUSE.
What are those three parts of the principal cause? In the tradition of Buddha there are three famous shelters: buddham sharanam gachchhami: I go to the feet of the buddha, I surrender myself to the buddha. sangham sharanam gachchhami: I go to the feet of the commune, I surrender myself to the buddhafield. dhammam sharanam gachchhami: I surrender myself to the ultimate law which is personified by the buddha and is searched for by the commune, which has become actual in the buddha and is an inquiry in the commune. These three are the most important things for a seeker: the master, the commune, and the dhamma, Tao, logos, the ultimate law.
Unless you are in contact with one who has already realized, it is almost impossible for you to grow. The hindrances are millions, the pitfalls many, the false doors many, the temptations are many; there is every possibility of going astray. Unless you are in the company of someone who knows the way, who has traveled the way, who has arrived, it is almost impossible for you to reach. Unless your hands are in the hands of someone whom you can trust and to whom you can surrender, you are bound to go astray. The mind creates so many temptations -- so alluring they are, so magnetic is their power --
that unless you are in the power-field of someone whose magnetism is far more powerful than any other kind of temptation, it is impossible to reach. That is the meaning of disciplehood.
BUDDHAM SHARANAM GACHCHHAMI: I surrender to the master.
The master is such a magnetic force that your surrender to the master becomes your protection; hence it is called the shelter. Then you are secure, then you are guarded, then you are protected. Then your hand is in those hands which know where to take you, what direction to give to you.
The second thing is the commune. Each buddha creates a commune, because without a commune a buddha cannot function. A commune means his energy field, a commune means the people who have become joined with him, a
commune means an alternate society to the ordinary mundane society which goes after spurious comforts -- it is there available to everybody.
A small oasis in the desert of the world is what is meant by a commune created by a buddha -- a small oasis in which life is lived with a totally different gestalt, with a totally different vision, with a totally different goal; where life is lived with purpose, meaning, where life is lived with method -- even though to the outsiders it may look like madness, but that madness has a method in it -- where life is lived prayerfully, alert, aware, awake; where life is not just accidental, where life starts becoming more and more a growth in a certain direction, towards a certain destination; where life is no more like driftwood.
And the third is the dhamma. Dhamma means truth. Buddha represents the dhamma in two ways: one, through his communication, verbal, and second, through his presence, through his silence, through his communion: nonverbal. The verbal communication is only an introduction for the nonverbal. The nonverbal is an energy communication. The verbal is only preparatory; it simply prepares you so you can allow the master to communicate with you energywise, because energywise it is really moving into the unknown. Energywise it needs great trust, because you will be completely unaware where you are going -- aware that you are going somewhere, aware that you are being led somewhere, aware that something is happening of tremendous import; but what exactly it is you don't yet have the language for, you don't have any experience to recognize. You will be moving into the uncharted.
The buddha represents dhamma, truth, in two ways. Verbally he communicates with the students; nonverbally, through silence, through energy, he communicates with the disciples. And then there comes the ultimate unity where neither communication nor communion is needed, but oneness has been achieved -- where the master and the disciple become one, when the disciple is just a shadow, when there is no separation.
These are the three stages of growth: student, disciple, devotee. MEDITATE ON THE THREE THINGS NOT TO BE DESTROYED.
The buddha, the sangha, the dhamma, meditate over these three things not to be destroyed. The world will be very much against all these three things; the world will be bent upon destroying them. Those who love truth, those who are real
seekers, inquirers, they will do everything to protect these three things.
First, the buddha. Why does the world creates so many difficulties for the buddha whenever he appears, in whatsoever form? He may be Krishna, Christ, Atisha, Tilopa, Saraha; he may appear in any form. By buddhahood I mean awareness, awakening.
Wherever awakening happens, the whole world becomes antagonistic. Why? -- because the whole world is asleep.
There is an Arabic saying: Don't wake up a slave, because he may be dreaming that he is free. Don't wake up a slave; he may be dreaming that he is free, that he is no more a slave.
But the buddha will say: Wake up the slave! Even though he is dreaming beautiful dreams of freedom, wake him up and make him aware that he is a slave, because only through that awareness can he really become free.
The world is fast asleep and people are enjoying their dreams. They are decorating their dreams, they are making their dreams more and more colorful, they are making them psychedelic. Then comes a man who starts shouting from the housetops, "Wake up!" The sleepers feel offended; they don't want to wake up, because they know that once the dream is gone they will be left with their misery and suffering and nothing else. They are not yet aware that behind their misery there is a source of joy that can be found.
Whenever something like awakening has happened to them they have always found themselves utterly miserable. So they want to remain drowned in something, whatsoever it is; they want to remain occupied.
The teaching of the buddhas is: Find time and a place to remain unoccupied. That's what meditation is all about. Find at least one hour every day to sit silently doing nothing, utterly unoccupied, just watching whatsoever passes by inside. In the beginning you will be very sad, looking at things inside you; you will feel only darkness and nothing else, and ugly things and all kinds of black holes appearing. You will feel agony, no ecstasy at all. But if you persist, persevere, the day comes when all these agonies disappear, and behind the agonies is the ecstasy.
So the first thing: whenever the buddha appears the world is against him. The
world is fast asleep, dreaming, and the buddha tries to wake people up. There are a thousand and one other reasons why the world wants to destroy a buddha, and why Atisha is saying: MEDITATE ON THE THREE THINGS NOT TO BE DESTROYED.
Had Jesus' disciples known something like this they would have tried in every way to protect Jesus, but they were not aware at all. Jesus could live only three years as a buddha. He could have lived to a very old age, he could have helped millions of people on the path, but the disciples were not aware that a great treasure was in their possession and it had to be protected and guarded.
There are many reasons. One reason why people are against is because whenever a buddha appears in the world he is unique, he cannot be compared to any other buddha of the past; that is the problem. People become accustomed, slowly slowly, to the past buddhas, but whenever a new buddha arrives he is so new, so unique, so different, that they cannot believe he is a buddha because they have a certain conception.
Those who have known Mahavira, how can they recognize me as a buddha? -- because I am not standing naked. Those who have seen Jesus, how they can recognize Atisha as the buddha? -- because Atisha is not curing the ill and helping the dead to be raised again, is not helping the blind to see. Atisha is a totally different kind of buddha; he is not serving the poor, his work is on a totally different plane.
The Christian cannot recognize Buddha as a buddha. What to say of the Christian --
Mahavira and Buddha were contemporaries, but Jainas don't recognize Gautam Buddha as the awakened one, and Buddhists don't recognize Mahavira as the awakened one. They were contemporaries, in the same province, sometimes lived in the same town and once stayed in the same SERAI. But each buddha has a unique quality, incomparable; hence no previous buddha can be used as a criterion. That creates difficulty.
Buddhas are unrecognizable, because your life has no experience through which you can recognize a buddha. The sexual person can recognize the sexual, the money minded can recognize the money minded, but how can you recognize a buddha? You don't have any experience of awareness. In the buddha you will
only see reflected your own mind. It is natural.
The buddha is uncompromising; that creates trouble. He cannot compromise. Truth cannot be compromised with any lies, comfortable lies. The buddha seems to be very unsocial and sometimes antisocial. The buddha never fulfills any expectations of the multitudes -- he cannot; he is not here to follow you. There is only one way: you can follow him if you want to be with him, otherwise get lost! He cannot fulfill your expectations. Your expectations are foolish, your expectations are your expectations --
out of unawareness and blindness. What value can they have?
The buddha is always rebellious, antitraditional, nonconformist. That creates trouble. The buddha does not belong to the past; in fact, the future belongs to the buddha. He is always before his time, he is a new birth of God.
All these things are enough for the society of the blind, mad, power-hungry, ambitious egoists, all kinds of neurotics, psychotics -- it is enough for them to be together and to destroy any possibility of there being a buddha.
And they are also against the sangha -- even more so. They can tolerate a buddha if he is alone; they know, what can he do? They have tolerated Krishnamurti more easily than they can tolerate me. What can Krishnamurti do? He can come and talk and people listen, and people have been listening for fifty years and nothing has happened -- so he can talk a few years more; there is nothing to be worried about him.
I was also alone, traveling all over the country from one corner to the other corner almost three weeks every month on the train, on the plane, continuously traveling, and there was not much problem. The day I started sannyas the society became alert. Why? -- because to create a buddhafield, to create a sangha, means now you are creating an alternate society; you are no more a single individual, you are gathering power, you can do something. Now you can create a revolution.
So people want to destroy all communes. Do you know, communes don't have long lives; very rarely do communes survive -- very rarely. Millions of times communes have been created, and the society destroys them sooner or later, and more sooner than later. But a few communes have survived. For example, Buddha's commune still continues -- not with the same purity, much garbage has
entered into it. It is no more the same crystal-clear water that you can see at Gangotri where the Ganges is born. Now the Buddha's commune is like the Ganges near Varanasi -- dirty, dead bodies floating in it, all kinds of garbage being poured into it. But still it is alive. Many have completely disappeared.
For example, no commune of Lao Tzu survives, no commune of Zarathustra survives.
Yes, a few followers are there, but they are not communes. No commune of Saraha, Tilopa, Atisha, survives. They all had created communes. But the society is really big, huge, powerful; when the master is alive maybe the commune can survive, but once the master is gone the society starts destroying the commune from all possible directions.
Atisha says:
MEDITATE ON THE THREE THINGS NOT TO BE DESTROYED.
And the third is dhamma, the truth. The world is against the truth, the world lives in lies.
Lies are very comfortable, very secure, cozy, and you can create lies according to yourself, according to your needs. Truth is never according to you; you have to be according to the truth, and that is difficult. Many chunks of your being will have to be cut so that you can fit with truth. Your ego will have to be dropped so that you can enter into the temple of truth.
Lies are perfectly beautiful, cheap, everywhere available. You can go shopping and you can purchase bagfuls of lies, as many as you want. And the best thing about them is that they fit with you, they never require that you should fit with them. They are very friendly; they don't require anything from you, they don't demand, they don't ask for any commitment. They are ready to serve you.
Truth cannot serve you, you will have to serve truth.
Atisha is giving you a great insight. Particularly for my sannyasins it has to be remembered, meditated upon. The buddha is here, the commune has started happening, the truth is being shared. Now it is up to you to help it survive, to protect it, so that it can live long and serve humanity long.
And the last sutra:
MAKE THE THREE INSEPARABLE FROM VIRTUE.
Let this be your virtue, your religion: serving the buddha, serving the commune, serving the truth. Let this be your only virtue, your only religion.
Enough for today. The Book of Wisdom Chapter #18
Chapter title: Dropping out of the Olympics 28 February 1979 am in Buddha Hall Archive
code: 7902280
ShortTitle: WISDOM18
Audio:
Yes Video: No Length:
106
mins
The first question:
Question 1
BELOVED OSHO, HOW TO SLOW DOWN?
Anand Somen, life is not going anywhere; there is no goal to it, no destination. Life is non-purposive, it simply is. Unless this understanding penetrates your heart, you cannot slow down.
Slowing down is not a question of any how; it is not a question of technique, method. We reduce everything into a how. There is a great how-to-ism all over the world, and every person, particularly the modern contemporary mind, has become a how-to-er: how to do this, how to do that, how to grow rich, how to be successful, how to influence people and win friends, how to meditate, even how to love. The day is not far off when some stupid guy is going to ask how to breathe.
It is not a question of how at all. Don't reduce life into technology. Life reduced into technology loses all flavor of joy.
I have come across a book; the name of the book is hilarious. The name is You Must Relax. Now the "must" is the problem, but it is there. It is because of the must that nobody is able to relax. Now another must on top of all other musts -- You Must Relax --
is going to create more tension in your life. Try to relax, and you will find out that you feel more tense than ever. Try harder and you will feel more tense and more tense.
Relaxation is not a consequence, is not a result of some activity; it is the glow of understanding.
This is the first thing I would like to relate to you: life is purposeless. It is very hard to accept it. And why is it so hard to accept that life is purposeless? It is hard because without purpose the ego cannot exist. It is hard to conceive that life has no goal because without any goal being there, there is no point in having a mind, in having an ego.
The ego can exist only in a goal-oriented vision; the mind can exist only in the future.
The purpose brings future in; the goal creates the space for thoughts to move, desires to arise. And then naturally there is hurry, because life is short. Today we are here and tomorrow we are gone -- maybe the next moment.
Life is very short. If there is a goal to be achieved, there is bound to be hurry. And there is bound to be worry, a constant worry "whether I am going to make it or not" -- a trembling heart, a shaking of the foundations. You will remain almost always in an inner earthquake, you will be always on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Have a goal, and sooner or later you will end up on the psychoanalyst's couch.
My vision is that of a goalless life. That is the vision of all the buddhas. Everything simply is, for no reason at all. Everything simply is utterly absurd. If this is understood, then where is the hurry, and for what? Then you start living moment to moment. Then this moment is given to you, a gracious gift from God or the whole or whatsoever you want to call it -- Tao, dhamma, logos.
This moment is available to you: sing a song, live it in its totality. And don't try to sacrifice it for any other moment that is going to come in the future. Live it for its own sake.
They say art is for art's sake. It may be so, it may not be so -- I am not an artist. But I can say to you: Life is for life's sake. Each moment is utterly for its own sake. To sacrifice it for anything else is to be unintelligent. And once the habit of sacrificing settles, then this moment you will sacrifice for the next, and the next for the next, and so on, so forth --
this year for the next year, and this life for the next life! Then it is a simple logical process: once you have taken the first step, then the whole journey starts
-- the journey that leads you into the wasteland, the journey that makes your life a desert, the journey that is self-destructive, suicidal.
Live in the moment for the sheer joy of living it. Then each moment has the quality of an orgasm. Yes, it is orgasmic. This is how my sannyasins have to live, with no should, with no ought, with no must, with no commandment. You are not here to be with me to become martyrs, you are here to be with me to enjoy life to its fullness. And the only way to live, love, enjoy, is to forget the future. It exists not.
And if you can forget the future, if you can see that it is not there, there is no
point in constantly getting ready for it. The moment future is dropped, past becomes irrelevant on its own accord. We carry the past so that we can use it in the future. Otherwise who will carry the past? It is unnecessary. If there is no future, what is the point of carrying the knowledge that the past has given to you? It is a burden which will destroy the joy of the journey.
And let me remind you, it is a pure journey. Life is a pilgrimage to nowhere, from nowhere to nowhere. And between these two nowheres is the now-here. Nowhere consists of two words: now, here. Between these two nowheres is the now-here.
It is not a question of following a certain technique to slow down, because if your basic approach towards life remains the same -- goal-oriented -- you may try to slow down, and you may even succeed in slowing down, but now you have started another tension in your life. You have to be constantly on guard so that you remain slow; you have to hold yourself continuously so that you remain slow.
You cannot have a free flow of your energies. You will be constantly afraid, because if you forget the technique, immediately the old habit will take possession of you. And the habit is there, because in fact the habit is rooted in the philosophy of your life. You have been taught to become achievers: Achieve something!
From the very first moment a child is born, we start feeding him poisons: ambition, achievement, success, richness, name, fame. We start poisoning his sources of being; we give great attention... twenty-five years are wasted in giving a poisonous education to children. It is one-third of life; it seems to be a wastage. And it is the most important one-third, because by the time a person is twenty-five he has already started declining in many ways. The highest peak of his sexuality is no longer there, it was nearabout when he was seventeen and a half; nearabout eighteen he had the highest sexual peak. By the time he is twenty-five he is already getting old.
Twenty-five years wasted in creating an achiever's mind.… And then there is competition, conflict. On each level of life, everywhere there is politics. Even in private intimate relationship there is politics: the husband trying to control the wife, the wife trying to control the husband, the children trying to control the parents, the parents trying to control the children. There is no intimacy left,
because for the achieving mind intimacy is not possible. He only knows how to use the other; he cannot be respectful to the other. He is exploitative. His relationship with life is what Martin Buber calls the "I-it" relationship: everything is reduced into a commodity.
You love a woman: immediately you start reducing her into a commodity, reducing her into being a wife, and she is trying to reduce you from a man into a husband. To be a man is something beautiful, to be a woman is something divine, but to be a wife or to be a husband is simply ugly. Love is no more there, it is law. Intimacy is gone; now it is bargain, business. Now the poetry is dead. And both are in politics now: who dominates whom?
From the most intimate relationship to the most impersonal relationship, it is the same story. The story is that of I-it. That's why we have created an ugly world. And naturally, when there is so much competition and so many competitors, Somen, how can you slow down? If you slow down you will be a failure, if you slow down you will never be able to succeed, if you slow down you are lost! If you slow down you will be anonymous, you will not be able to leave your signature in the world. Who will you be if you slow down?
Everybody else is not slowing down.
It is almost as if you are in an Olympic race and you ask me, "How to slow down?" If you slow down, you are a drop-out! Then you are no more in the Olympic race. And this whole life has been turned into an Olympic race. Everybody is racing, and everybody has to race to the optimum, because it is a question of life and death. Millions of enemies...
we are living in a world where everybody is your enemy, because with whomsoever you are in competition, they are your enemies. They are destroying your possibilities of success, you are destroying their possibilities of success.
In this ambitious world, friendship cannot bloom, love is almost impossible, compassion cannot exist. We have created such an ugly mess, and the root is that we think that there is something to achieve.
There is no difference between a capitalist country or a communist country, it is the same philosophy. Communism is a by-product of capitalism, just as Christianity is a by-product of Judaism. There is not much difference; only words change. The game remains the same -- translated into another language,
certainly, but the game is the same.
Power politics is as great in a communist country -- in fact there is more than there is in a capitalist country -- because we never change the foundation, we only go on whitewashing the walls. You can whitewash them, you can change the color; that is not going to make any real difference. And that's what we go on doing in our individual lives too.
One politician came to me and he wanted to learn how to meditate. I asked why.
He said
"Why? Meditation gives peace, silence, and I want to be silent, I want to be peaceful."
I asked him, "Do you really want to be silent and peaceful?" He said, "Yes, that's why I have come from so long a distance."
"Then," I said, "the first thing you will have to understand is that the political mind can never be silent and can never be peaceful. You will have to choose. If you want really to enter into the world of meditation, you will have to get out of the world of politics. You cannot ride on two horses, and two horses which are going in diametrically opposite directions."
He said, "That is too much! In fact I had come to you because of my political work.
There is so much tension in the mind, I cannot sleep in the night, I cannot rest, I toss and turn, and the whole day and the night too, the same political anxiety continues. I had come to you so that you can teach me a technique of meditation that can help me to relax and compete more efficiently in the world. I am not ready to pay that much for meditation. I want meditation to serve me in my political competition. Twenty years I have been in politics, and yet I have not become the chief minister of my state."
Now, this man cannot meditate. Meditation is not something that can grow in any soil. It needs a basic understanding; the change has to be very fundamental. It needs a new soil to grow in; it needs a new gestalt.
A meditator naturally slows down with no effort. He does not practice it. A
practiced thing is never true; it is artificial, arbitrary. Avoid practiced things -- at the most they can be actings, they are not true. And only truth liberates.
A meditator is naturally slow -- not because he is trying to be slow but just because there is nowhere to go. There is nothing to achieve, there is nothing to become, the becoming has ceased. When becoming ceases, being is. And being is slow, non-aggressive, unhurried.
Then you can savor the taste of each moment with total presence, you can be present to the present; otherwise you are in such a hurry that it is impossible to have any look at that which is. Your eyes are focused on a faraway distant goal, a faraway distant star; you are looking there.
I have heard an ancient story, it happened in Greece. A great astrologer, the most famous of those days, fell into a well. Because in the night he was studying the stars, walking on the road he forgot that there was a well by the side and fell into it.
The sound of his falling and his crying.… An old woman who lived in a hut by the side came out, helped him to get out of the well. He was very happy. He said, "You have saved my life! Do you know who I am? I am the royal astrologer. My fee is very great --
even kings have to wait for months to consult me -- but for you I will predict your future.
You come tomorrow morning to my house, and I will not take any fee."
The old woman laughed and she said, "Forget all about it! You cannot see even two feet ahead -- how can you see my future?"
This is the situation of millions of people on this earth. They cannot see that which is, they are obsessed with that which should be. The greatest obsession that humanity suffers is of "that which should be." It is a kind of madness.
The really healthy person has no concern with that which should be. His whole concern is the immediate, that which is. And you will be surprised: if you enter into the immediate, you will find the ultimate in it. If you move into that which is close by, you will find all the distant stars in it. If you move in the present moment, the whole eternity is in your hands. If you know your being, there is no
question of becoming. All that you could have ever imagined to become you already are.
You are gods who have forgotten who they are. You are emperors who have fallen asleep and are dreaming that they have become beggars. Now beggars are trying to become emperors -- in dreams they are making great efforts to become emperors, and all that is needed is to wake up! And when I say wake up, where can you wake up? In the future? In the past? The past is no more, the future not yet -- where you can wake up? You can wake up only now, and you can wake up only here. This is the only moment there is, and this is the only reality there is, and this is the only reality that has always been and will always be.
Change your basic philosophy of that of an achiever. Relax into your being. Don't have any ideals, don't try to make something out of yourself, don't try to improve upon God.
You are perfect as you are. With all your imperfections you are perfect. If you are imperfect, you are perfectly imperfect -- but perfection is there.
Once this is understood, where is the hurry? Where is the worry? You have already slowed down. And then it is a morning walk with no destination, going nowhere. You can enjoy each tree and each sunray and each bird and each person that passes by.
The second question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 2
IS THERE ANY REAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DIFFERENT RACES, NATIONALITIES, ETCETERA, ETCETERA?
Ramananda, there are no real differences, there cannot be. All differences are superficial.
The Jew is not different from the Hindu, the Mohammedan is not different from the Christian, the Chinese is not different from the American, the Negro is not different from the English.
Man is one, differences are superficial. Yes, they are there, obviously. A Negro is a Negro: he has black skin, he looks different from the white man. But the difference is not a difference that makes a difference. The difference is so small: just a little more black pigment in his skin, four ANNAS' worth more -- just that is the difference, four annas.
And remember, he is four annas more than the white man, not less -- richer by four annas.
But the difference of the color of the skin or the difference of the length of your nose is not an important difference. Just because you have a long nose, a Jewish nose, you don't become the chosen people of God. Or just because you are born in India you don't become religious either.
These are all stupid ideas. But these stupid ideas have persisted in the world; and not only persisted, have proved great calamities to humanity. They were very ego-gratifying. The Hindu thinks he is the most religious in the world, his country the most sacred -- what nonsense they go on talking!
Countries are separate only on the political maps; otherwise it is just one earth. Just thirty years ago, Karachi and Lahore used to be holy land -- just thirty years ago. But now they are in Pakistan and very unholy. Now Indians cannot think of a place which is more unholy than Lahore or Karachi. Now they are the unholiest of the unholy, and they used to be part of the holy land. Just a little change of politics, a line drawn on the map -- not on the earth; the earth is still undivided.
I have heard a story: When India and Pakistan were going to be divided, there was a madhouse just on the border, and nobody was particularly interested in having that madhouse, neither India nor Pakistan. But it had to go somewhere -- and because politicians were utterly uninterested, it was decided to ask the madmen themselves where they want to go.
A great gathering -- one thousand madmen were gathered and they were asked, "Where do you want to go?"
And they said, "We don't want to go anywhere, we simply want to remain here."
Again and again, in many ways it was explained to them, "You will not be going anywhere, you will remain here. But still we want to ask where do you want to
go -- to India or to Pakistan?"
The madmen could not believe their ears. They said, "Now you are creating great suspicion in us, whether we are mad or you are mad! If we are not going to go anywhere, then why should we decide where we should go?"
There was no communication possible. And you see, the mad people were far more right.
They are always far more right than your so-called politicians.
Then the leaders decided, just divide it in the middle. And a wall was raised in the middle of the madhouse. I have heard that still the madmen sometimes climb up on the wall and they laugh. The whole thing seems to be so ridiculous. They are exactly in the same place, but some have become Pakistanis and some have become Indians -- and just a wall in between. And they still talk about it: "What happened? -- because we are the same, you are the same, we don't see any difference! But now we are enemies -- we really should not talk."
Differences are not there. Or, if they are there, very small differences like.…
Do you know how many Indians it takes to screw in a lightbulb? Four. One to hold the bulb, and three to screw him round.
Or, do you know many Californians it takes to change a lightbulb? Four. One to change the bulb, and three to share in the experience.
The third question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 3
TODAY I SAW CLEARLY THAT I REALLY AM CAUSING MY OWN SUFFERING
AND THAT I DON'T HAVE TO, AND SOMETHING HEAVY LIFTED FROM MY
CHEST WHEN I SAW THAT I WAS NOT JUST GOING AROUND IN
CIRCLES!
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, BELOVED MASTER.
BUT OH, I AM SO AFRAID OF BECOMING LIGHT AND PERMEABLE. IT IS ALL
SO EMBARRASSING!
Deva Ashoka, the first experience of freedom is always embarrassing. The first ray of light to the blind is bound to be embarrassing. One who has always lived in chains, a sudden message from the king that he is freed... it is always embarrassing. He had become accustomed to live a certain kind of life, he had evolved a certain style of life.
There was security in the prison; he had settled. Now everything unsettles. It is not only the question that the chains are being taken away; now he will have to face the great wide world again. He will have to learn all that he has forgotten, he will have to relearn. It is going to be difficult, and he will look a little amateur compared to others. Even walking on the street without the chains to which he has become accustomed will be a little odd; he will not feel at ease.
When the French revolutionaries freed the prisoners from the great French prison of Bastille, they were surprised: the prisoners were not ready to go out. That was the biggest prison of France, where only people who had been sentenced for their whole life were kept. There were people who had been in the prison for thirty years, forty years, even fifty years.
Now, just think of a person who had come to the prison when he was only twenty, and had lived in the prison for fifty years. He has completely forgotten about the world, how it looks. Fifty years living in a dark cell with heavy chains.… Those chains had no lock because there was no need ever to unlock them. They were chained for his whole life; they were permanent, heavy. For fifty years he has slept with those chains on hands and feet; he has become utterly accustomed to that life. And the food comes at the right time, he has not to worry about it. It is not much of a food, but still, something is better than nothing. He has no responsibility, he need not care about anything, everything is being done for him.
Maybe, slowly slowly, he had started thinking that he is not a prisoner but a king
whose every need is fulfilled. Others take every care. Maybe, slowly slowly, he had convinced himself that the people who stand on guard are not there to prevent him from going out, but they are his bodyguards. And this is natural. When you live fifty years in a prison you have to create such rationalizations, such hallucinations, such beautiful theories. We all have done things like this.
Then one day suddenly the revolutionaries came and forced the prisoners to get out. The prisoners fought back -- they were not ready. This is something to be understood. Even when they were freed against their will, fifty percent of them came back in the night to sleep at least in their cells. Where else should they sleep?
One more important thing -- a very important thing -- happened. They demanded their chains, because they could not sleep without them. Fifty years sleeping with that heavy load of chains, it may have started sounding like music. Turning in the night, and the chains and the sound... now without chains they must be feeling so light that sleep was impossible.
This is the situation of all human beings. We are brought up in such a way that we only believe that we are free, but we are not. While nations exist, no man is really free. While politicians go on dominating humanity, the world will remain in slavery. They go on persuading you that you are free. You are not. There are a thousand and one walls around you -- maybe very transparent so that you can look through the walls, and that gives you a feeling that you are free, but you are not. While there are religions in your head --
Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Jainism, Buddhism -- you are not free. A mind cannot be free.
Freedom means freedom from the mind. Only a no-mind knows the taste of freedom.
But to be a no-mind is so risky; you will have to lose all that you have become accustomed to, all that you have become so attached to. All your possessions are contained in your mind: your philosophies, your religions, your concepts, your theories, all are contained in your mind. If you drop the mind -- and that's what meditation is all about, dropping the mind -- you will feel as if you have been robbed, as if you have suddenly been forced to be naked, as if suddenly inside you have become empty. You will miss that old fullness, although it was only
junk. But people's idea is that it is always better to have something than nothing, whatsoever that something is.
Even to be miserable is better than to be nothing, even to be in pain is better than to be nothing. People are so much afraid of being nothing. And nothing is freedom; nothing means no thing, no body, no mind.
And when the first glimpse arrives -- just a whiff of no-mind, a small breeze from the beyond -- Ashoka, it is embarrassing. Enchanting and embarrassing, both -- calling you forth to come out of your grave, and yet scary.
But now, when the call has been heard, it has to be respected. When you have seen a little glimpse that you are the creator of your own misery, it will be very difficult for you now to go on creating it. It is easy to live in misery when you know others are creating it --
what can you do? You are helpless. That's why we go on throwing responsibilities on others.
There are people who think they are in misery because of past karma, past life karma.
The whole idea is so foolish: put your hand in the fire now and you will be burned next life. Life is immediate. That's what life is -- immediacy. Life never postpones. You do something beautiful, and in that very doing you are rewarded; not that you will have to wait many lives for the reward. You do something ugly, and in that very act is the punishment; the punishment is not separate from the act.
This is one of my fundamental things -- you have to understand I am against the whole idea of karma. It is a strategy of the mind to throw responsibility on the past. And once the responsibility is thrown on something -- whatsoever it is, x, y, z, it doesn't matter what it is -- you can relax in your misery and you can remain miserable. What can you do? You start feeling like a victim. Now the past cannot be changed; what has been done has been done, you cannot undo it now, you have to accept it.
It is because of this foolish idea of karma that the East has suffered so much. People are poor, and they say what they can do? They are hungry, starving, dying, and they go on thinking what can they do? They have done something
wrong in the past, they have to suffer for it. A great invention of the priests to keep people in misery and yet contented, in great suffering yet creating no trouble for the status quo.
The greatest idea against revolution that has ever been invented is the idea of karma.
That's why in the ten-thousand-year history of India there has never been a revolution.
Unless the Indian mind changes totally, there is not going to be any revolution.
Revolution seems to be absolutely un-Indian. The Indian consciousness is so much burdened with the idea of karma, with the past, that you cannot create any revolt in this country.
This is strange. One of the most ancient lands of the world, and yet a revolution has never happened. People like Buddha, Atisha, Kabir, have walked on this earth, and yet not a single revolution. Yes, revolutionaries have happened -- Buddha is a revolutionary -- but the country remained unaffected.
In fact, Buddhism disappeared from this country for the simple reason that it was too revolutionary. It didn't fit with the conformist mind of the country, it didn't fit with the idea of accepting that whatsoever is, is; nothing can be done, no hope.
People go on throwing the responsibility on the past, or on fate, kismet, or on God. And if these things have become out of date, then the social structure or the economic system of the society, capitalism or communism or fascism -- but they need something as an excuse so that they can remain free, free from the arousal of the vision that "I am responsible for my suffering and nobody else."
Even if people drop God, society, karma, etcetera, then they start finding new ways.
Freudians will say you are suffering because of the unconscious. Freud says there is no hope for man, man will always remain miserable. All that we can manage is to keep him normally miserable; that is all that can be done. The best that can be done according to Freud is that people can be kept within limits of misery, that's all. Miserable they are going to be, there is no hope of a blissful humanity. Why? -- because of the unconscious.
The unconscious instincts are in conflict with society. And Freud says if you allow the unconscious instincts full play, then the society, the culture, the civilization disappears and you will be back in the world of the jungle, and you will suffer. Or, if you allow the society to have control over you, to inhibit your unconscious instincts, then there is a consistent conflict between your unconscious and the social code. And because of that conflict you remain miserable.
There seems to be no way out.
The really religious person is one who stops finding excuses for his misery. It needs guts to accept that "I am responsible," that "This is my choice, I have chosen my life this way," that "My freedom is there, has always been there, to choose whatsoever I want. I can choose misery, I can choose bliss."
Man's soul consists of freedom. I teach you freedom.
But freedom means taking the responsibility, total responsibility for your life, on your own shoulders, not throwing it onto somebody else.
Ashoka, something beautiful has happened to you, something tremendously significant.
Embrace it. Don't feel embarrassed -- embrace it. Love it, cherish it, nourish it, welcome it. Some truth has knocked on your door.
You say: "Today I saw clearly that I really am causing my own suffering and that I don't have to, and something heavy lifted from my chest when I saw that I was not just going around in circles. Thank you, thank you, Beloved Master. But oh, I am so afraid of becoming light and permeable!"
I can understand it. It is difficult to drop chains, prisons, bondages, slaveries. We have invested so much in them, and for so long. I can understand.
You say: "It is all so embarrassing!"
It is. But still, now there is no going back. Even if you want to go back, there is no going back. That glimpse will haunt you, that glimpse will follow you like a
shadow, that glimpse will remind you again and again: "Ashoka, you are responsible, and you are doing it again. Watch. You are again choosing misery, while the other alternative is available."
One Sufi mystic who had remained happy his whole life -- no one had ever seen him unhappy -- who was always laughing, who was laughter, whose whole being was a perfume of celebration.… In his old age, when he was dying, on his deathbed and still enjoying death, laughing hilariously, a disciple asked, "You puzzle us. Now you are dying, why are you laughing? What is there funny about it? We are feeling so sad. We wanted to ask you many times in your life why you are never sad. But now, confronting death at least, one should be sad. You are still laughing -- how are you managing it?"
The old man said, "It is simple. I had asked my master -- I had gone to my master as a young man; I was only seventeen and already miserable, and my master was old, seventy, and he was sitting under a tree, laughing for no reason at all. There was nobody else there, nothing had happened, nobody had cracked a joke or anything, and he was simply laughing, holding his belly. I asked him, 'What is the matter with you? Are you mad or something?'
"He said, 'One day I was also as sad as you are. Then it dawned on me that it is my choice, it is my life.'
"Since that day, every morning when I get up, the first thing I decide is... before I open my eyes I say to myself, 'Abdullah'" -- that was his name -- "'what do you want? Misery?
Blissfulness? What you are going to choose today?' And it happens that I always choose blissfulness."
It is a choice. Try it. When you become aware the first moment in the morning that sleep has left, ask yourself, "Abdullah, another day! What is your idea? Do you choose misery or blissfulness?"
And who would choose misery? And WHY? It is so unnatural -- unless one feels blissful in misery, but then too you are choosing bliss, not misery.
It has been good, Ashoka. Now let this insight gather more roots in you, help it. Slowly slowly you will become more and more attuned to this new feel of life and existence -- it is an attunement. And once you have learned how to be in
harmony with this inner blissfulness, you will become aware of higher and higher peaks of bliss. There are climaxes and climaxes, peaks beyond peaks. One peak leads to another peak, one small harmony soon opens a door for a bigger harmony, and so on, so forth, ad infinitum.
The fourth question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 4
I ENJOYED VERY MUCH YOUR COINING THE WORD ETCETERANANDAS. I WONDER HOW YOU DID IT!
It's simple. You can go and see many saints in India, and you will find that they have no individuality, no uniqueness, no originality, no flavor of their own. They are gramophone records -- His Master's Voice -- just quoting scriptures like parrots. They are imitators, pseudo, plastic; nothing has happened to them.
I am not saying that they are not saints -- they are saints, but nothing has happened to them. Their saintliness is just a cultivated gesture, it is not a happening. They have character -- certainly they have character, I am not denying that -- but their character is like a garment; it is just a cover up. Deep down they are just the opposite of it. They are saints on the surface in the conscious mind, and they are sinners in the unconscious. And ultimately it is the deeper unconscious that is more decisive than the superficial conscious.
You cannot be a saint if you don't repress the sinner. And when you repress the sinner, the sinner goes deeper into your being. So these saints are in constant conflict, a kind of civil war, fighting with themselves. You can see they don't have any zest for life: they don't have any energy for it, they don't have any cheerfulness. How can they be cheerful?
Their whole life is a miserable conflict with themselves. They cannot be at ease, they cannot relax, because they are afraid -- if they relax, the sinner is there and if they relax the sinner will raise its head. They have to constantly repress it.
Remember, if you repress something you have to repress it constantly -- day in, day out, year in, year out. And the problem is not solved by repressing. In fact it becomes more and more acute, chronic, because whatsoever is repressed
becomes more and more powerful. It gathers energy, it becomes a tumor inside you.
You will see more and more fear in your so-called saints' eyes. Character they have: they are good people, they don't do anything bad, they follow the dictates of the society, they fulfill the expectations of the worshippers.
I call them Etceteranandas because no buddha ever follows the dictates of the society, no buddha has any character. Let me repeat it: no buddha has any character. He need not have any character, he has consciousness. He has the real thing -- why should he have a plastic flower? When you can grow real roses, why bother about plastic roses? Character is a plastic flower, consciousness is a real rose. No buddha has any character, he has consciousness. He does not live out of readymade programs, he lives moment to moment out of his consciousness; he responds, he does not react.
Etceteranandas are predictable. You know what they are, and you can be perfectly secure that they are going to remain the same tomorrow too. They are dead people; you can depend on them. No buddha is predictable. You cannot say what he is going to be tomorrow or the next moment, because as life changes, his responses change. And life is constantly changing.
Old Heraclitus is right -- he is a buddha -- he is right when he says you cannot step twice in the same river. No buddha is ever the same again; not even for two consecutive moments is he the same. He moves with life, he is a river, he is not stagnant. He has uniqueness, originality. He speaks, not authoritatively, but on his own authority.
Remember the difference. The person who speaks authoritatively derives his authority from somewhere else -- from the Vedas, from The Bible, from the Koran, from the tradition, from the state, from the church. The man who speaks on his own authority derives his authority from nowhere. It is his own experience -- and experience is self-evident, self-validating.
You ask me how do I manage such coinage of words. I cannot help it. Look at any so-called saint and you will find written on his forehead, Etceterananda.
When Noah had built the ark and the time came to have all the pairs of animals go aboard, Noah named each one as it went by up the gangplank. As a strange looking animal passed by, Noah said, "The name of this animal is
hippopotamus."
Noah's wife looked at him and said, "Noah, why in the world did you call that animal, that strange-looking creature, a hippopotamus?"
Noah responded, "Well, it is the only one of the animals that has gone through that really looked like a hippopotamus."
There are people who look like a hippopotamus. I call them respectfully Etceteranandas.
It is just out of respect that I have coined the word. The fifth question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 5
HOW CAN WE KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SURRENDER AND
DEPENDENCY, NOT JUST WITH YOU BUT WITH ALL THAT COMES UP IN
OUR LIVES?
Veereshwar, the difference is so absolutely clear that once you have experienced surrender you will never miss understanding what is surrender and what is dependency.
Surrender is out of love, dependency is out of fear. Dependency is a relationship in which you are hankering for something, desiring something; there is a motive. You are ready to become dependent -- that's what you are willing to pay for something. Surrender has no desire in it. It is sheer joy, it is trust, it is unmotivated.
It is like falling in love. In fact it is exactly falling in love -- a love that knows no bounds, a love that is totally different from what you ordinarily call love. Your love is again a kind of dependency. You become dependent on the person you love, because in fact you don't love, you are simply finding somebody to cling
to; otherwise you feel very lonely.
You want to avoid your loneliness, you want somebody to fill your inner black hole, your emptiness.
But real love is not an escape from loneliness, real love is an overflowing aloneness. One is so happy in being alone that one would like to share -- happiness always wants to share. It is too much, it cannot be contained; like the flower cannot contain its fragrance, it has to be released.
Surrender is the highest form of love, the purest form of love. You will not feel dependent, because there will be no clinging in it. You will not feel dependent, because it is not out of loneliness that you have surrendered. If you have surrendered out of loneliness then it is not surrender at all, then it is something else.
Another thing: surrender always happens, it is not a doing. You cannot do it -- how can you do surrender? If you do it, it is not surrender. You are the doer -- and if the doer is there then it can be taken back any moment.
Surrender happens; the doer is not found. You simply find yourself melting into somebody, into something. You may find yourself melting into a sunset, and it is surrender. You may find yourself melting into the starry night, and it is surrender. You may find yourself melting into a woman or man, and it is surrender. You may find yourself melting into music, and it is surrender. Surrender has many dimensions, but the taste is the same: you simply find yourself melting. You simply find yourself no more; a kind of egolessness is felt.
You are... in fact you are very much, and yet you are not. Presence and absence both together -- surrender is paradoxical. Presence, because the ego is not there, so you are just awareness; and absence because the ego is not there, so you cannot say "I am."
Veereshwar, dependency is ugly, surrender is beautiful. Dependency will make you feel reduced, surrender will make you feel enhanced, expanded. Dependency will create reaction in you to revolt. Surrender will bring more and more trust.
But the distinction is delicate. Once known it is not difficult, but if you have not experienced it yet then surrender will look like dependency, because dependency
is what you know.
I cannot explain it to you, I can only indicate a few directions. In the morning when the sun is rising, just sit silently on the riverbank. Watch it. Doing nothing, just sitting silently, watch it. And some time in some blissful moment it will happen: there will be no observer, and nothing observed. The observer becomes the observed. It is not that you are separate from the rising sun -- you are it.
Sitting by the tree, just close your eyes, feel the tree. Hug the tree, just be one with it, as if you are with your beloved. And sometimes... and it is not predictable; I cannot say that it will happen each time. Only once in a while it will happen -- because it has to happen in spite of you, that's why only once in a while.
Or, loving your woman, melt into her warmth. For a moment forget sexuality, for a moment forget all that goes on in your head, in your fantasy. For a moment just melt into the real woman. Don't carry any pornography in your head, don't make sexuality something cerebral. Let your sexuality be a deep sensuousness, sensitivity, a gut feeling.
Melt into the woman, as if you are again a child in the mother's womb. Unless you have known this with your beloved, you have not known your beloved. A child again in the mother's womb, absolutely together, all distances gone -- and in that moment you will know what surrender is.
But the male ego creates trouble everywhere. Even being with your woman, you are trying to control the situation. Even in our language, ugly expressions have entered: we call it lovemaking. How can you make love? Nobody can make love. But it has come into language not without any reason. People are trying to make love; even in love they are doers. So the greatest opportunity of knowing surrender is missed.
And now you have manuals: How To Make Love, How To Attain Total Orgasm. And people are reading these manuals and following the instructions. I know of some foolish people who make love to their woman, and by the bedside is the manual and they go on looking into it: how to make total orgasm.
Some moments in life when you are not a doer, not a knower, when you simply are, you will have the taste. It can come through beauty, it can come through poetry, it can come through music, it can come through so many doors. God has
many doors to his temple.
But, Veereshwar, my feeling is that you know only dependency, hence the question has arisen. One who has known surrender cannot ask the question. Be in relaxation a few moments. It can be any kind of situations -- swimming in the river, relax with the river, or sunning on the beach, relax with the sun -- anything. Life is full of opportunities.
Remember Atisha. He says life is full of opportunities, life is the opportunity. Don't wait for the opportunity, the opportunity is already here.
But you will have to learn a totally different kind of consciousness -- not that of a doer, but that kind of consciousness which is simply existing... that simple consciousness, innocent.
And that happens so many times to you here while listening to me. In the pauses, when sometimes I stop... it is there.
Drink it.
The last question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 6
I WANT TO GET MARRIED. PLEASE GIVE ME YOUR BLESSINGS.
Prabhat, have you gone crazy or something? Love is enough; marriage is not going to add anything to it. In fact, why are you in such a hurry to finish some beautiful experience?
Wait. When you see that now love is finished, you can get married.
A minister received this thankyou letter from a bridegroom he had married: "Dear Reverend, I want to thank you for the beautiful way you brought my happiness to a conclusion."
Prabhat, you are very young, only twenty-two. One should marry only when one is wise enough. Marriage is not for young people. For young people is to fool
around. Marriage is for those who have experienced life in many ways, who have seen all the colors, the whole spectrum of it, and are now ready to settle.
My own suggestion is that nobody should marry before forty-two. When you have already had your first heart attack, then marry. Before that it is too early, and foolish. But maybe because you are only twenty-two and foolish the question has arisen.
Five-year-old Steven: "Are you a virgin?" Four-year-old Susan: "No, not yet."
It takes time. You are too young; wait a little. When you are tired -- when you are tired of adventures, when you are tired of your freedom, when you are tired of your openness to life and its millions of opportunities -- then you can go to a court and get married. But why now?
Student in the Highlands looking for summer work: "Got any odd jobs?" Farmer: "Well, you could try milking the bull."
That will be far better, Prabhat. You are in search for some odd jobs... otherwise why?
Love, and love as deeply as possible. And if love itself becomes the marriage, that is another thing, altogether different. If love itself becomes such an intimacy that it is unbreakable, that is another thing, that is not a legal sanction.
Legal sanctions are needed only because you are afraid. You know that your love is not enough; you need the legal support for it. You know perfectly well that you can escape or the woman can escape, hence you need the policeman to keep you together. But this is ugly, to need a policeman to keep you together. That's what marriage is!
I can bless your love, but I cannot bless your marriage. If love itself is your marriage, then all of my blessings are there for you; otherwise wait. There is no hurry. It is better to wait than to repent later on.
Enough for today.
The Book of Wisdom Chapter #19
Chapter title: The three rung ladder of Love 1 March 1979 am in Buddha Hall
Archive code:
7903010
ShortTitle:
WISDOM19
Audio:
Yes Video: No Length:
108
mins
The first question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 1
MANY TIMES I HAVE THOUGHT OF QUESTIONS FELT TO BE MEANINGFUL.
EACH TIME THE QUESTION RESOLVED ITSELF OR SEEMED ABSURD AFTER
LETTING IT GESTATE FOR A WHILE. THE PARADOX IS THAT THE WORDS
DISSOLVE BUT THE QUESTION MARK REMAINS.
Anand Shantam, the question mark is bound to remain forever, because the question mark has nothing to do with the question at all. It has something to do with the mystery of life itself. Life never becomes known, it always remains a mystery, a question mark --
and a question mark which cannot be dissolved. It is in the very nature of existence, it is the very center of existence; there is no way to find any answer or explanation for it.
That's why philosophy fails and poetry succeeds. That's why mathematics fails and music succeeds. That's why logic always lags behind and love reaches, arrives.
The question mark is immensely significant. All questions are absurd. And all questions are sooner or later resolved, are bound to be resolved, because all questions have answers. If you can formulate a question you can find an answer for it, but the question mark is not your formulation. It is there; it is on each leaf of the trees, on each sound of the birds. On each cloud, on each star, on each atom, the question mark is there.
Life is not a problem but a mystery. A problem is that which can be solved -- at least theoretically is soluble. A mystery is that which can be lived but can never be solved.
An ancient Hassid story:
An old Hassid master asked one of his disciples, "What do we mean when we use the word god?"
The disciple wouldn't answer, the disciple wouldn't look in the eyes of the master. With bent head, ashamed of himself, he remained silent.
The question was asked again and again. Thrice the master asked. The more the master asked, the more silent the disciple became. And the silence was very embarrassing. The disciple has to respect the question of the master -- and it was
as if he has not even heard; no response from the disciple. The master was irritated and he asked, "Why don't you answer me? What do we mean by the word god when we use it?"
And the disciple said, "Because I don't know, how can I answer? I don't know God!"
And the master laughed, a laughter which can happen only to those who have arrived. He said, "And do you think I know?"
Who knows? Who has ever known? But still God is, and still God has to be addressed.
Whoever told you that God is an object of knowledge? God is not an object of knowledge, God is not an object at all. God is the silence that pervades you when words dissolve. God is the question mark that remains, Shantam, when questions are gone, evaporated. God is the mystery -- unresolvable.
I am not here to give answers, I am here to provoke in you the question mark, the ultimate question mark. It is not a question, remember; the ultimate question mark is not a question. There is no question at all. Simply you are encountering something ineffable, indefinable, infinite, eternal, with no beginning and no end, with no possibility to comprehend it, with no possibility to encompass it. On the contrary, God is the one who encompasses you, God is the one who comprehends you. God is the one for whom you are not a question nor a question mark.
Slowly slowly, learn the ways of living in mystery. Mind continuously hankers to demystify everything; there is a deep urge in the mind to demystify. Why? -- because it can control only when something is demystified. Mystery starts controlling it, hence mind escapes from mysteries. Mind wants explanations, because once something is explained it can be manipulated; once something is no more a secret, then the mind is the master. In the presence of a secret the mind feels simply impotent. The greater the secret, the more the impotence of the mind.
But that is where prayer arises, meditation arises, and all that is beautiful. That is where truth is felt. Mind is not the door to truth, it is a door to power.
Francis Bacon is right when he says, "Knowledge is power." Mind is a power
seeker; mind is always after power, more and more power. Hence mind slowly slowly became too much attached to science; mind became science. Science is the search for power. And then automatically science becomes reduced to technology. What is technology? How to manipulate nature. That "how" is technology; know-how is technology. Science prepares the blueprint, science gives the idea how to demystify existence, and then technology implements it.
Religion is not of the mind, religion is of the heart. Mind raises questions, the heart knows only the ultimate question mark.
It is beautiful, Shantam, it is tremendously important that you became aware of this phenomenon, that questions arise; in the beginning they look meaningful, but soon they are resolved. If one can wait, all questions resolve; there is no need to go anywhere to ask. The mind that is capable of creating a certain question is capable of finding the answer too -- in fact if you dissect the question deeply you will find the answer hidden there. The answer is always in the question. The question is only a form of the answer, the question is only the beginning of the answer. The question is the seed and the answer will be the sprout -- and the seed contains the sprout.
If you wait a little, if you are a little patient, if you allow the question to move within you, you are capable of solving it. Either it will be solved or you will come to know that it is absurd. There are absurd questions which cannot be solved -- and they are not mysteries either, remember, they are simply absurd questions.
For example, linguistically it may look perfectly right, grammatically it may look perfectly right, and existentially it may be absurd. For example, you can ask, "What is the smell of the color red?" Linguistically, grammatically, there is no flaw in it. "What is the smell of the color red?" -- the question can be raised, but if you look deep into it, it is not a question, it is simply absurd. Colors have nothing to do with smells; there is no relationship at all. Colors are colors, smells are smells; neither smells have colors, nor colors have smells.
It is just like asking how to see music with the eyes. The question looks perfectly right: How to see music? But music is not an object to be seen, it is not an object for the eyes; it can only be heard, not seen. Beauty can be seen but cannot be heard.
We can make a thousand and one absurd questions. People have asked down the ages...
the so-called wise too. In the Middle Ages, the whole Christian world was so concerned, and there was such great argument and controversy on such absurd questions as: How many angels can stand on the point of a needle? Great theologians wrote great treatises on these questions.
In fact, the so-called learned people are always deep down very stupid people. Their learnedness is nothing but a cover up for this inner stupidity. They raise great fuss for nothing, great ado for nothing. They are clever, that is true -- clever to create such absurd questions. At least they are able to give to those absurd questions an appearance of rationality.
How many hells are there? In the times of Buddha the question became so important in India.… Hindus believe in three hells, Jainas started believing in seven hells, and then there was really a man of insight, Sanjaya Vilethiputta, who must have been able to laugh at absurdities. He said, "Who says seven? I have exactly counted: there are seven hundred!"
He must have been a wise man, he was simply joking about this absurd controversy. How many hells? How many heavens? How many angels? When did God create the world?
Why did God create the world? All are absurd questions: you cannot solve them, because they are not questions in the first place. Neither are they mysteries, because a mystery cannot be formulated in words. It is only a question mark, a question mark in the silent heart -- just a great surprise, a wonder, awe. And then each and every thing creates awe.
Allow this question mark to settle in you. The meaningful questions will be solved, the meaningless will be known as absurd; then finally remains only the question mark.
I am happy, Shantam. You say: "The paradox is that the words dissolve but the question mark remains."
Rejoice! Celebrate! This is a great moment, this is the door to the divine. The second question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 2
IS THERE REALLY SOMETHING LIKE AN INFERIORITY COMPLEX?
Psychobabble! the psychologists have taken the place of the theologist. The theologian is out of date, the psychologist is in. And psychology has created great psychobabble, great words, strange words, and when you can use great and strange words which are really nothing but gibberish, you can impress people.
Do you know from where the word gibberish comes? It comes from the name of a Sufi mystic, Jabbar. He used to talk nonsense, because he came to understand that whatsoever you say is nonsense. Then why even pretend that it is sense?
Jabbar started really talking nonsense. He would use sounds, words... nobody could follow what he was saying. Everybody was free to have his own interpretation. The followers of Jabbar were many -- because when the master cannot be understood, it is very easy for the disciples to follow him, because then they can interpret.
For example, if you had asked Jabbar, "Do you believe in God?" he would have said,
"Hoo hoo!" Now, it is up to you to find out what "Hoo hoo!" means. The very clever one will think it is the last part of Allah-hoo, that the master has given only a hint, and so on, so forth.
Or he will do something absurd. You ask, "What is God?" and he may stand on his head immediately. Now it is up to you to figure it out -- and everybody is clever in figuring out things. Somebody will think he had given the indication that everything is topsy-turvy, so whatsoever you have been thinking up to now has to be put upside down. Some disciples even started reading the scriptures backwards!
But one thing was good about it: Jabbar must have enjoyed the whole show! He must have really enjoyed how many interpretations people can find. The English word gibberish comes from Jabbar.
Now the greatest gibberish that is "in" is psychological. Freud really created a
new language: psychoanalysis is nothing but a new language. For small things, for things which everybody understands, he will find such difficult words: "Oedipus complex" --
for a small thing, that every boy loves his mother. Now if you say every boy loves his mother, nobody can think that you are very learned, but if you say, "This boy suffers from an Oedipus complex," it sounds.…
One Jewish lady was talking to the neighbor, and she said, "The psychoanalyst who is treating my son has said that my son suffers from an Oedipus complex."
And the neighbor lady said, "Oedipus schmoedipus! Doesn't matter as long as he is a good boy and loves his mother!"
Now, this word inferiority complex.… There is nothing like inferiority complex, all that is there is the phenomenon of the ego. And because of the phenomenon of the ego, two things are possible. If you are egoistic you are bound to compare yourself with others.
The ego cannot exist without comparison, hence if you really want to drop the ego, drop comparing. You will be surprised: where has the ego gone? Compare, and it is there; and it is there only in comparison. It is not an actuality, it is a fiction created out of comparison.
For example, you are passing through a garden and you come across a very big tree.
Compare: the tree is so big, suddenly you are so small. If you don't compare, you enjoy the tree, there is no problem at all. The tree is big -- so what! So let it be big, you are not a tree. And there are other trees also which are not so big, but they are not suffering from any inferiority complex. I have never come across a tree which suffers from inferiority complex or from superiority complex. Even the highest tree, a Lebanon cedar, even that tree does not suffer from superiority complex, because comparison does not exist.
Man creates comparison because ego is possible only if nourished by comparison continuously. But then you will have two outcomes: sometimes you will feel superior, and sometimes you will feel inferior. And the possibility of feeling inferior is greater than the possibility of feeling superior, because there are millions of people: somebody is more beautiful than you, somebody is taller
than you, somebody is stronger than you, somebody seems to be more intelligent than you, somebody is more learned than you, somebody is more successful, somebody is more famous, somebody is this, somebody is that. If you just go on comparing, millions of people... you will gather a great inferiority complex. But it doesn't exist, it is your creation.
Those who are more mad, they suffer from a superiority complex. They are so mad that when they compare they cannot see that there are millions of people who are different in many ways and superior in many ways. They are so obsessed with the ego that they remain closed to anything that is superior; they always look at the inferior. It is said that people like to meet people who are in some way inferior to them; it gives them great nourishment. People like people who support their ego.
The more mad person will suffer from a superiority complex, because he will always choose those things which make him feel superior. But he knows that he is playing a trick. How can he deceive himself? He knows that he has chosen only those points which make him feel superior; he knows what he has not chosen -- that is there on the margin, he is perfectly aware of it. So his superiority complex is always shaking: it is made on sand, the house can collapse any moment. He suffers from anxiety because he has made a house on the sand.
Jesus says: Don't make your house on the sand; find a rock.
The more sane person will suffer from an inferiority complex, because he will look all around, will be available to all that is happening all around, and will start collecting ideas that he is inferior. But both are shadows of the ego, two sides of the ego. The superior person deep down carries the inferiority complex, and the person who suffers from inferiority complex deep down carries a superiority complex; he wants to be superior.
I have heard -- I don't know how far it is correct -- that Morarji Desai asked a psychoanalyst -- of course in privacy -- "Why do I suffer from an inferiority complex?"
The psychoanalyst went into deep analysis: days and days with Morarji Desai lying on his couch free associating. And then one day, bouncing with joy, the psychoanalyst declared, "Sir, I certify that you don't suffer from inferiority
complex, you need not be worried about it."
And Morarji Desai was also happy. He said, "But I had always thought that I suffer, and now you say I don't suffer. You must be right, but can you give me the explanation as to how you say so so confidently?"
And the psychoanalyst said, "Sir, you don't suffer from inferiority complex -- you are simply inferior!"
Except politicians, I don't think anybody is inferior. I make an exception for politicians.
In fact, if somebody does not suffer from an inferiority complex he will not go into politics at all. Politics is the arena for those who suffer from an inferiority complex, because they want to prove to themselves and to the world that they are not inferior: Look, I have become the prime minister, or the president! Now who can say I am inferior? I have proved that I am not inferior. Politics attracts the people who are very egoistic and suffer from inferiority complex.
Artists are just on the other polarity: they suffer from superiority complex. They know they are creators, they know that they have come with a special quality to create something in the world. Politicians suffer from an inferiority complex, and try to reach to higher and higher power posts to prove to themselves and to others that it is not so.
Artists suffer from superiority complex; that's why artists constantly quarrel amongst themselves. No artist ever agrees that another artist has contributed anything to the world.
They are continuously criticizing each other; they cannot be friends, they are all superior people!
The mystic is the one who has come to see the whole stupidity of it, the whole game of the ego. And these are the three worlds available: the world of the politician -- the world of power politics -- the world of the artist, or the world of the mystic.
The mystic is one who has seen that all comparison is false, meaningless: he has dropped comparing. The moment you drop comparing, you are simply yourself -
- neither superior nor inferior. How can you be superior or inferior if you are just
yourself?
Just think: the Third World War has happened and everybody else has disappeared from the world, and only Anand Bashir, who has asked this question, is left. The whole world is suddenly gone, only Bashir is left, sitting in Koregaon Park, Poona. Will you be superior or inferior? You will be simply yourself, because there will be nobody to compare with.
A mystic is the one who simply knows that he is himself. He lives his life according to his own light, he creates his own space, he has his own being. He is utterly contented with himself, because without comparison you cannot be discontented either. And he is not an egoist, he cannot be -- ego needs comparison, ego feeds on comparison. He is simply doing his thing. The rose is a rose and the lotus is a lotus, and some tree is very high and some other tree is very small -- but everything is as it is.
Just try to see for a single moment without comparing, and then where is superiority and where is inferiority? And where is the ego, the source of it all?
The third question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 3
I AM ADDICTED TO TELLING LIES. WHY DO I DO IT?
Vimal, it may be just to feel superior! People start telling lies because that gives them a speciality: they can pretend that they know things which nobody else knows. Truth is universal, the lie is private. It is your own creation, nobody else knows about it; you become very special, the knower. If you say the truth you will not be special.
I have heard that in a village there was a wise man. Once it happened that from the palace of the king some very precious diamonds were stolen and the king's people were searching for the stolen treasure. The king had loved those stones so much that at any cost they had to be brought back, but no clue was available.
Then somebody suggested, "We have an old wise man in the town; maybe he can be of some support, some help, some insight he can give. Whenever we are
in trouble -- we are poor people, we cannot go to very learned scholars, we cannot go to the experts -- we always go to our old wise man. It has never been a disappointment; he always finds some beautiful advice for us."
So the authorities went to the wise man. The wise man closed his eyes, meditated a little, and then he said, "Yes, I know who has done it. But before I can tell you, a few promises from you. First, nobody should ever know that I have told you who has stolen the diamonds."
The promise was of course given. Then the wise man said, "You come with me. We will have to go very far away from people, deep in the forest, so nobody can hear something or even guess. And just the chief of you has to come with me." He took the chief, and the chief was very excited: he was just on the verge of discovering the treasure and he was hoping to be rewarded by the king immensely. It was a long walk into the forest. Again and again he said, "Now there is nobody," but the old man said, "Just a little more."
Finally the chief was tired and he said, "Why do you go on making me walk more and more? I am tired, utterly tired. If you know, please say. If you don't know, say it!"
The wise man said, "I know it. Come close to me. I will whisper in your ears, so nobody hears."
The chief said, "You seem to be almost mad. There is nobody here, we have left people miles away."
But the wise man said, "Just in case." And he whispered in the ears of the chief, "It is absolutely certain some thief has done it."
Now, if you say such universal truths you will not be very special. People love gossiping, people love telling lies, inventing lies. By inventing lies they have some special knowledge that nobody else in the world has; it is their own invention, so nobody knows about it. They can decorate it in such a way, they can rationalize, they can create many many strategies to protect it. And it always brings joy to people when they can befool others; then they know they are wiser than others.
This is an ego trip. The ego is the greatest lie in the world, and the ego always feels good whenever it can feel special. And it is not a question whether you are
telling a lie or not; the whole question is whether the other is believing it or not. If the other is believing, at least for the moment it looks like the truth. And when you create many believers in you, it gives you power.
Truth needs no believers. Let me remind you: truth needs no believers. The sun rises in the morning -- you don't believe in it, do you? Nobody asks anybody, "Do you believe in the sun, sir? Do you believe in the moon?" If somebody comes and asks, "Do you believe in the sun, do you believe in the moon, do you believe in the trees?" you will think him mad. What is he asking these things for? They are, so there is no question of believing in them.
People believe in lies; truth needs no believers. And when you invent lies you become a great leader. That's how on the earth three hundred religions exist. Truth is one -- and three hundred religions! People have shown great inventiveness. When lies are such that nobody can detect them and there is no way to prove for or against, you are protected. So many people go on talking spiritual lies; that is safer.
Vimal, if you really want to enjoy telling lies, tell spiritual lies -- that the earth is hollow, that inside the earth there is the real civilization, that ufo's come from the hollow earth.
Tell lies, supernatural, spiritual -- that God has not three faces but four. Nobody can prove or disprove how many faces God has; all that will be decisive is with what confidence you can lie. Your confidence will be catching people, it will become contagious. You can look, down the ages it has been happening.
Adolf Hitler has written in his autobiography, Mein Kampf, that a lie repeated again and again becomes a truth. And he knows -- in fact nobody else knows it so well as he knows; it is his own experience. His whole life he lived on lies, lies so blatant that on the surface of it nobody would have thought that anybody would believe in them.
For example, "The whole world is deteriorating, the whole world is going down to hell because of the Jews." How do the Jews come in? When for the first time he started talking about the Jews, even his friends laughed, even his friends told him, "This is stupid." He said "You simply wait. Go on repeating it, and not only non-Jews are going to believe it, even Jews will believe it. You just go on repeating it."
Beliefs are created by constant repetition. And he made the whole German race believe --
one of the most intelligent races on the earth, and it became victim to this stupid man. But he had a few qualities. For example, he was capable of repeating something continuously for years with confidence, from the housetops, with absolute certainty, with no hesitation.
It was contagious.
People don't believe in what you say, people believe in the way you say it. And once you have learned the art of telling lies it becomes an addiction, because people start believing in you, you start becoming powerful. And then, if you can manage a few more things, your power will be immense.
For example, if you can manage a certain character, that gives you credibility. If your character is such that people can believe in you more easily, that will help you. The people who live on lies always create a character around themselves; if not a character, then at least an appearance of it.
Hitler was a MAHATMA. He was not a drinker, he would not touch any intoxicant. How can you not believe in such a person? He would eat only vegetarian food, he would not touch nonvegetarian food. How can you not believe in such a person? He would not drink even tea or coffee, he would not smoke. How can you not believe in such a person? He was a greater mahatma than Morarji Desai, because he would not even drink his own urine. How can you not believe in such a person? You have to believe! He has all the credibility.
He would get up early in the morning, as has been taught down the ages; he would go early to bed. He remained a bachelor almost to the end -- I say almost, because only three hours before he died, committed suicide, he got married. I think that is the only thing that he ever did which can be called wise -- just three hours before! He must have thought,
"Now what can marriage do to me? I am going to die anyway."
Just three hours before... in the middle of the night, when he decided to commit suicide, he called the priest. The priest was awakened, was brought to his underground cell. Just three, four friends were present, the marriage ceremony was done quick and fast, and the only thing that they did after the marriage
ceremony was commit suicide -- that was their honeymoon. He had remained a bachelor his whole life.
These things give credibility. If you really want to be a liar, if you really want to go on lying, then you have to create proofs that you are a man of character, how can you lie?
People will believe you. That's why your saints, who live on so-called spiritual lies, depend on character.
A man who lives on truth need not depend on anything else; truth is enough. But truth does not create belief in people -- in fact, truth offends people. People love lies and are always offended by the truth. Vimal, that is the cause, not only of your addiction --
millions are addicted to lies, for the simple reason that people are never offended by lies.
In fact they want to hear more and more. They say, "What is new?
Truth is never new. If you are thinking about truth, then there is nothing new under the sun. When you say, "What is new? What is the news?" you are inquiring, "Give me a few more lies, a few more gossips, a few more rumors." And you are ready to believe. In fact the greater the lie is, the greater is the possibility of its belief, because if there is only a small lie it can be detected by people; they have that much intelligence. But if the lie is very big, bigger than their intelligence, they will never be able to detect it. That's why great lies live for centuries.
Now, hell is a lie; there is no hell. And heaven is a lie; there is no heaven. But they have lived for centuries and centuries, and I don't think they are going to disappear. They will live. God as a person is a lie. There is godliness, but there is no God. Whenever I use the word god I simply mean godliness, remember it. Translate it always as godliness. There is a quality of godliness in existence, but there is no God. But people want a God, not godliness; they are not interested in godliness.
That's why people like Buddha could not influence much. Buddha and his whole religion disappeared from this country. One of the most fundamental reasons was this: that he emphasized godliness and not God. If godliness is there, then it is a
difficult task. You have to grow into godliness; it is not something readymade there that you can possess. It is not something that you can pray to, it is not something that you can desire anything from. It is not already there, it has to be created in the innermost core of your being. It is like love -- it has to bloom in you, you have to release the fragrance of it. You have to become godly, only then there is God; otherwise there is no God.
But this is too much. Nobody wants to pay so great a price. Why not believe in a simple lie, that there is a God -- a very very old ancient man with a white beard, sitting on a golden throne, ready to fulfill any of your demands if you truly ask? And that is the trick.
If your prayer is fulfilled, the priest can say, "You really asked"; if it is not fulfilled,
"There was no trust in your prayer."
In fact there is never trust in your prayer, because when there is trust there is no need to pray. All prayers arise out of doubt. But sometimes -- it is just a coincidence -- some prayers happen to be fulfilled. It is just a happening, it is just a chance; there is nobody to fulfill them. But when they are fulfilled, the priest can exploit the situation. He can say,
"Look -- you prayed deeply, trustfully, your prayer is fulfilled."
But this happens only once in a while. Ninety-nine times in a hundred your prayer is not fulfilled. But you know yourself that there was not trust; doubt was there. Even when you were praying, there was doubt whether there is a God, whether he will hear, whether he will listen, whether he will oblige -- all kinds of doubts. In spite of all these doubts you say, "Why not try? What you are going to lose? Give it a try. Maybe, perhaps.…" You know it. So when it is not fulfilled, the priest can always say to you, "Your trust was not total."
God is a lie as a person. God is a quality, not a personality. You cannot pray to God. You can be in prayer, but when the prayer is really there it is only a quality of love, nothing else. No words to express it, nobody to address it, it is simply a song, a wordless song in the heart, just a stirring of the deepest in you.
People love lies. Truth is arduous. And people also love lies because they make them feel good. You must lie about somebody else: you meet a and you lie about
b and you make a feel good; then you meet b and you lie about a and you make b feel good. When you lie about others to people you give them the idea that they are better than others. You can play this game, and if you play it cleverly, cunningly, you can exploit very much.
Mulla Nasruddin and his friend Rahimtullah are standing on a street corner insulting one another. The one calls the other stupid, a cheat, a thief. The other says, "You are a coward, a miser, a hypocrite." Finally they begin insulting each other's families.
Mulla Nasruddin looks Rahimtullah straight in the eye and says, "Your sister is a stinking old whore; for twenty-five paisa she will let a one-eyed leper crawl over her."
Rahimtullah stands there, speechless. A bystander is amazed. He goes over to him and says, "For God's sake, man, how can you just stand there and let the Mulla insult your sister like that?"
Rahimtullah says, "I don't have a sister, I never had a sister, and now that my parents are both dead I never will have a sister."
So the bystander turns to Mulla Nasruddin and says, "Mulla, there is no point your insulting him like that, he does not have a sister."
"Sure," says the Mulla. "Of course not. I know it and he knows it, and now even you know it. But I ask you, how many of the people who had their windows open and were listening to our every word -- how many of them also know it?"
People are living in enormous ignorance; they have not lit the candle of light that is there in their hearts. Their interiority is full of darkness. They don't know even themselves --
what else can they know? Hence you can lie easily and they will believe it, and you can exploit their belief. The politicians have been doing it, the priests have been doing it, and it has been done down the ages. Exploit people. This is one of the most cunning businesses ever invented by man.
In the name of religion, only lies and lies are being propagated. Hence whenever a man of truth arrives, there is great confusion. Jesus creates confusion because he starts telling the truth as it is, and people have been accustomed to lies. They
think their lies are the truth, and now here comes this man and he starts saying something else, something totally different. Either they have to believe in this man... then they have to drop their whole tradition, which is a long long investment, and only a very few courageous ones can do it.
The easier way is to destroy this man, to make this man silent, so they can go on dreaming and believing in their lies.
You ask me, "I am addicted to telling lies. Why do I do it?"
You must have known the ancient art of the politicians and the priests; maybe you unconsciously have stumbled upon it. And now those lies are paying off for you.
I know one man, a very good man in a way. He has never worked, he has never done anything, but he is very good at a few things; at playing cards, at playing chess, at gossiping and things like that he is perfect. Very cultured, very educated
-- he is a Ph.D.; we had studied together. He has lived his whole life on lies and cheating people.
When I was a professor in the university, sometimes he would come and stay with me for a few days. Once I asked him, "When are you going to stop all this business of telling lies?"
He said, "Never!"
I said, "But sooner or later you will be caught."
He said, "Never... because there are so many millions and millions of people in this world, and I cheat a person only one time; then I forget about him, then I find another victim." And he said, "I have only a small life, maybe seventy, at the most eighty years, and the world is big and victims are so many -- I can go on cheating."
He was very clever in making friends, he was very clever at creating a feeling in you that he is a man who can be trusted. Once the trust has arisen, he would immediately deceive you. But that much is certain: he never deceived a person twice. There is no need either, there are so many people.
You must have found some nourishment in telling lies to people. Maybe they pay
you more attention, maybe they make you feel that you know more than they know. There are people who go on reading each other's hands. Nobody knows anything. There are people
-- tarot card readers, experts in I Ching reading.… These are all basically games. You can invent your own game. And if you start playing these games you will become more and more efficient. And these things pay -- although what you are gaining is mundane, spurious, and what you are losing is very essential. You are losing your very soul, you are committing suicide, but it feels as if it is paying.
Stop enjoying it, unlearn the whole art! Of course you will feel many difficulties arising, because you must have become dependent on the art of telling lies. Take the risk, let it be hard. For a few days, it will be hard. Stop immediately! Listen to Atisha's advice: three difficulties.
First: if you become aware when you are lying to somebody, immediately, in the middle of it, ask to be forgiven. Say immediately, "This was a lie, and I was again getting into my old trick. Forgive me, please." It will be hard, but there is no other way. When a habit has become very deep-rooted, it has to be hammered.
Second: become aware when you are just preparing to tell a lie. Just as it is on the lips, just on the tongue... stop it then and there, abort it then and there.
And third: become aware when a lie starts arising in your feelings, in the heart.
If you can do these three awarenesses, lying will disappear. And the moment lying disappears, truth arrives. And truth is the only thing worth seeking and searching, because truth liberates.
The fourth question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 4
YOU SPEAK ABOUT LOVE AND COMPASSION. I KNOW OF AND FEEL
DIFFERENT FORMS OF LOVE AND COMPASSION. CAN YOU EXPLAIN THE
DIFFERENT FORMS OF LOVE, AND WHAT YOU MEAN BY COMPASSION?
Dorothy Kaplan, love is a ladder, a ladder of three rungs. The lowest rung is sex, the middle is love, and the highest is prayer. Because of these three rungs there are a thousand and one combinations possible.
Real compassion appears only at the third rung when sex energy becomes prayer
-- the compassion of a buddha, the compassion Atisha is talking about. When passion has been transformed so totally, so utterly that it is no more passion at all, then compassion appears. Real compassion appears only when your sex energy has become prayer.
But compassion can appear on the second rung too, and compassion can appear on the first rung also. Hence there are so many different compassions. For example, if compassion appears on the first rung, when you are living at the lowest level of love-energy, sex, then compassion will be just an ego trip. Then compassion will be very egotistic: you will enjoy the idea of being compassionate. You will really enjoy the other's suffering, because it is the other's suffering that is giving you the opportunity to be compassionate.
Somebody has fallen in the river and is drowning. The sexual person can jump in and save him, but his joy is that he was so good, that he did something beautiful, something great. He will talk about it with pride, he will brag about it. Compassion on the lowest rung, that of sex, will appear only as an ego trip.
That's what millions of missionaries all over the world are doing -- serving the poor, serving the ill, serving the uneducated aboriginals, primitives. But the whole joy is that,
"I am doing something great." The 'I' is strengthened. That is an ugly form of compassion. It is called duty. Duty is a four-letter dirty word.
The second kind of compassion appears when love has arrived. Then compassion is sympathy: you feel, you really feel for the other. You fall into a harmony with the other, the other's suffering stirs you. It is not something to brag about. On the second rung, you will never talk about your compassion, never; it is not something to be talked about. In fact you will never feel that you have done anything special, you will simply feel you have done whatsoever was to be done. You will see that it was human to do it. There is nothing special in it,
nothing extraordinary; you have not attained some spiritual merit in doing it. There is nothing like merit in it: it was natural, spontaneous. Then compassion is becoming more soft, more beautiful.
At the third rung, where sex energy becomes prayer, compassion appears as empathy --
not even sympathy, but empathy. Sympathy means feeling the other's suffering, but you are still at a distance; empathy means becoming one with the other's suffering -- not only feeling it but suffering it, actually going into it. If somebody is crying, sympathy means you feel for the one who is crying, empathy means you start crying. You are not only in a feeling space, you become attuned, you become really one: at-one-ment happens.
A man came to Buddha and asked, "I am very rich and I have no children, and my wife has also died. Now I have all the money in the world. I would like to do some meritorious work. I would like to do something for the poor and the downtrodden. Just tell me, what should I do?"
And it is said Buddha became very sad and a tear rolled down from his eye.
The man was very much puzzled. He said, "Tears in your eyes? And you look so sad --
why?"
Buddha said, "You cannot help anybody, because you have not even helped yourself yet.
And you cannot do anything compassionate, because your energies are still at the lowest.
Your base metal has not yet become gold. In fact," Buddha said, "I am feeling so sorry for you. You want to be of some help to people, but you are not. You don't exist yet, because awareness has not happened, and without awareness how can you be? You don't have a real center from where compassion can flow."
Compassion can have these three categories, and love also has three categories. First, sex.
Sex simply means: "Give me -- give me more and more!" It is exploitation, it is what Martin Buber calls the I-it relationship: "You are a thing and I want to use you." The man uses the woman, the woman uses the man, the parents use the children and the children use parents, friends use friends. They say, "A friend is a friend only; a friend in need is a friend indeed." Use, reduce the other into a commodity.
To live in the I-it world is to miss the whole wonder of existence. Then you are surrounded by things -- not by persons, not by people, not by life, but just material things.
The poorest man in the world is one who lives in the I-it relationship. Sex is exploitation.
Love is totally different. Love is not exploitation. Love is not an I-it relationship, it is an I-thou relationship. The other is respected as a person in his own right; the other is not a thing to be used, to be possessed, to be manipulated. The other is an independent person, a freedom. The other has to be communicated with, not exploited. Love is a communication of energies.
Sex is only "Give me, give me, give me more!" Hence the sexual relationship is continuously that of war, conflict, because the other also says "Give me!" Both want more and more, and nobody is ready to give. Hence the conflict, the tug-of- war. And of course whosoever proves more strong will exploit the other. Because man has been muscularly stronger than woman, he has exploited, he has reduced women to utter nonentities; he has destroyed the soul of women. And it was easier for him if the soul was completely destroyed.
For centuries women were not allowed to read; in many religions women were not allowed to go to the temple, women were not allowed to become priests. Women were not allowed any public life, any social life. They were imprisoned in the houses; they were cheap labor, the whole day working, working, working. And they were reduced to sex objects. There has not been much difference between prostitutes and wives in the past. The wife was reduced into a permanent prostitute, that's all. The relationship was not a relationship, it was an ownership.
Love respects the other. It is a give-and-take relationship. Love enjoys giving, and love enjoys taking. It is a sharing, it is a communication. Both are equal in
love; in a sexual relationship both are not equal. Love has a totally different beauty to it.
The world is slowly slowly moving towards love relationships; hence there is great turmoil. All the old institutions are disappearing -- they have to disappear, because they were based on the I-it relationship. New ways of communication, new ways of sharing are bound to be discovered. They will have a different flavor, the flavor of love, of sharing. Nonpossessive they will be; there will be no owner.
Then the highest state of love is prayer. In prayer there is communion. In sex there is the I-it relationship, in love the I-thou relationship. Martin Buber stops there; his Judaic tradition won't allow him to go further. But one step more has to be taken: that is "neither I nor thou" -- a relationship where I and thou disappear, a relationship where two persons no more function as two but function as one. A tremendous unity, a harmony, a deep accord, two bodies but one soul. That is the highest quality of love: I call it prayer.
Love has these three stages, and compassion accordingly has three stages, and both can exist in different combinations.
Hence, Dorothy Kaplan, there are so many kinds of love and so many kinds of compassion. But the basic, the most fundamental, is to understand this three- rung ladder of love. That will help you, that will give you an insight into where you are, what kind of love you are living in and what kind of compassion is happening to you. Watch. Beware not to remain caught in it. There are higher realms, heights to be climbed, peaks to be attained.
And the last question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 5
I DON'T UNDERSTAND YOU. PLEASE DON'T CONFUSE ME. I HAVE COME
HERE TO ATTAIN SOME CLARITY.
Suraj, you have come to the wrong place. Confusion is my technique to bring
clarity. You are feeling confused because you must have come with certain prejudices and I am shattering them. Hence the confusion, hence you are feeling chaos. You had come here to be made more certain about your prejudices. I am not here to help your prejudices, I am not here to help your traditions, your conditionings. My work consists in demolishing you completely, because only when you are utterly demolished the new is born. When the old ceases to exist, the new appears -- and that new has clarity.
Clarity is not certainty, certainty is not clarity. Clarity comes not out of mind and its projections and ideas and philosophies, clarity comes out of the mirrorlike quality of no-mind. Clarity simply means that you have no idea of what is, that you have no philosophy to cling to, that you have no ideology -- Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, communist --
that you are simply without any ideology, without any philosophy, without any scripture: empty, utterly empty.
That virginity is clarity. Then all dust is gone and the mirror reflects that which is.
You say: "Beloved Osho, I don't understand you."
It is not a question of understanding at all. I am not trying in any way to make myself understood by you. It is not a question of understanding, knowing; it is a question of feeling, seeing, being. But that's what happens to many people: they come with a certain idea, with a certain language that they understand. I use different methods that they have never even heard about. They come with their expectations, their ideologies, their language. I speak a totally different language, and I have no ideology to teach you. I have nothing to teach you; I am not a teacher at all. I have nothing to convey to you, I have no message. You will have to learn my language; otherwise there is going to be more and more misunderstanding and more and more confusion.
Did you hear about the P.E. lecturer who went to the doctor and said, "When I was twenty it was like steel -- so solid I could not bend it at all. When I was thirty I could bend it, but only a wee bit, mind you. Now I'm sixty-four, I can tie a knot in it."
After listening to this, the doctor asked what it was that he wanted to know. And the lecturer replied, "Am I getting stronger, doctor?"
Meditate over it. Different languages.…
An inexperienced young man visits a house of prostitution. He is surprised at the politeness of the girl. In the morning he gets dressed and is about to depart.
"How about some money?" says the girl.
"Oh, no," he replies, "you have been kind enough already."
The traveling saleswoman goes to bed with the farmer's son. Trying to get something going, she says to him, "Would you trade sides with me? Roll over me and I will roll over you, and we will be more comfortable."
"Oh, that's all right, ma'am. I'll just walk to your side of the bed."
He does so. This happens several more times. Finally she says, "I don't think you know what I really want."
"Yes I do," he replies. "You want the whole darn bed, but you ain't gonna get it!"
The draft board examiners eyed the swishy young man with suspicion. They had orders to watch out for potential draft evaders feigning homosexuality. After subjecting the chap to an extensive physical and psychological examination, one of the examiners declared,
"Well, fellah, it looks like you are going to make a good little soldier." "Fabulous!" replied the young man. "When do I meet him?"
Enough for today. The Book of Wisdom Chapter #20
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