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Chapter title: Buddha in the Supermarket
22 February 1979 am in Buddha Hall Archive
code:
7902220
ShortTitle:
WISDOM12
Audio:
Yes Video: No Length:
90
mins
The first question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 1
ONE OF THE ESSENTIAL LAWS OF NATURE SEEMS TO BE RELATIONSHIP, INTERDEPENDENCE. I HAVE WATCHED TWO BIRDS FLY, INTIMATE WITH
EACH OTHER AND WITH THE WIND, SO EASY AND WITHOUT STRIFE, IN
PERFECT HARMONY. WHAT IS THE SECRET OF THIS THAT SEEMS SO HARD
FOR HUMAN BEINGS? PLEASE OSHO, SAY SOMETHING ABOUT RELATIONSHIP.
Vasumati, the most fundamental thing to be remembered is that life is dialectical. It exists through duality, it is a rhythm between opposites. You cannot be happy forever, otherwise happiness will lose all meaning. You cannot be in harmony forever, otherwise you will become unaware of the harmony. Harmony has to be followed by discord again and again, and happiness has to be followed by unhappiness. Every pleasure has its own pain, and every pain has its own pleasure.
Unless one understands this duality of existence, one remains in unnecessary misery.
Accept the total, with all its agonies and all its ecstasies. Don't hanker for the impossible; don't desire that there should be only ecstasy and no agony.
Ecstasy cannot exist alone, it needs a contrast. Agony becomes the blackboard, then ecstasy becomes very clear and loud, just as in the darkness of night the stars are so bright. The darker the night, the brighter are the stars. In the day they don't disappear, they simply become invisible; you cannot see them because there is no contrast.
Think of a life without death, and it will be unendurable pain, an unendurable existence.
It will be impossible to live without death. Death defines life, gives it a kind of intensity; because life is fleeting, each moment becomes precious. If life is eternal, then who cares?
One can wait for tomorrow forever -- then who will live now and here? Because tomorrow there is death, it forces you to live now and here. You have to plunge into the present moment, you have to go to its ultimate depth, because who knows, the next moment may come, may not come.
Seeing this rhythm, one is at ease, at ease with both. When unhappiness comes
one welcomes it, when happiness comes one welcomes it, knowing that they are partners in the same game.
This is something which has to be continuously remembered. If it becomes a fundamental remembrance in you, your life will have a totally new flavor -- the flavor of freedom, the flavor of unclingingness, the flavor of nonattachment. Whatsoever comes, you remain still, silent, accepting.
And the person who is capable of being still, silent, accepting of pain, frustration and misery, transforms the very quality of misery itself. To him, misery also becomes a treasure; to him, even pain gives a sharpness. To him, even darkness has its own beauty, depth, infinity. To him, even death is not the end but only a beginning of something unknown.
Vasumati, you say, "One of the essential laws of nature seems to be relationship, interdependence."
They are not synonymous. Relationship is one thing, interdependence totally another.
Relationship means you are separate; you are independent and so is the other, and you decide to relate. Relationship is not interdependence, it is a contract between two independent persons. Hence all relationships are false, because basically independence is false. Nobody is independent -- and if you are not independent how can you relate? With whom can you relate?
Life is interdependence. Nobody is independent, not for a single moment can you exist alone. You need the whole existence to support you; each moment you are breathing it in and out. It is not relationship, it is utter interdependence. Remember, I am not saying it is dependence, because the idea of dependence again presumes that we are independent. If we are independent then dependence is possible. But both are impossible; it is interdependence.
What do you say? Are waves independent from the ocean or are they dependent on the ocean? Neither is true. They are the ocean, neither independent nor dependent. The ocean cannot exist without the waves, the waves cannot exist without the ocean. They are utterly one, it is a unity.
And so is our whole life. We are waves of a cosmic ocean of consciousness. That means love can have three dimensions. One is that of dependence; that's what
happens to the majority of people. The husband is dependent on the wife, the wife is dependent on the husband; they exploit each other, they dominate each other, they possess each other, they reduce each other to a commodity. In ninety- nine percent of cases, that's what is happening in the world. That's why love, which can open the gates of paradise, only opens the gates of hell.
The second possibility is love between two independent persons. That too happens once in a while. But that too brings misery, because there is constant conflict. No adjustment is possible; both are so independent and nobody is ready to compromise, to adjust with the other.
Poets, artists, thinkers, scientists, those who live in a kind of independence, at least in their minds, are impossible people to live with; they are eccentric people to live with.
They give freedom to the other, but their freedom looks more like indifference than like freedom, looks more as if they don't care, as if it doesn't matter to them. They leave each other to their own spaces. Relationship seems to be only superficial; they are afraid to go deeper into each other, because they are more attached to their freedom than to love, and they don't want to compromise.
And the third possibility is of interdependence. That happens very rarely, but whenever it happens a part of paradise falls on the earth. Two persons, neither independent nor dependent but in a tremendous synchronicity, as if breathing for each other, one soul in two bodies -- whenever that happens, love has happened. Only call this love. The other two are not really love, they are just arrangements
-- social, psychological, biological, but arrangements. The third is something spiritual.
Vasumati, you also say, "I have watched two birds fly, intimate with each other and with the wind, so easy and without strife, in perfect harmony."
Yes, it creates jealousy. But birds are not aware; they have no consciousness, they exist below consciousness. Their harmony looks like harmony to you, not to them. And their joy on the wing is your interpretation, not theirs. Remember it: it is your interpretation.
They can't interpret; they have not yet evolved that consciousness which can interpret, which can look back, which can look forward, which can observe and look into things.
Their behavior is mechanical.
Man is a higher being, man has the capacity to be conscious. And with consciousness, trouble begins. The higher you move, the more dangerous becomes every step. If you fall, you will be falling from such heights that you will disappear somewhere in the valley. In the valley you can walk unconsciously, there is no fear. But when you are moving towards the top, reaching to the peak, you will have to be more and more conscious.
Man is very close to God, the closest. Hence the responsibility and the danger, the hazard, the adventure. You can fall. And what is the fall?
Because you are capable of being conscious, there are two possibilities. You can become self-conscious -- that is the fall. If the self overpowers your consciousness, you have fallen. If consciousness does not allow the self to overpower it, if you simply are conscious and there is no self in it -- a consciousness without a center, a consciousness without anybody being there to be conscious -- then you are rising and rising and rising and the climax is not far away. Maybe a few steps more, and you will have arrived home.
Then you will know what harmony is. And you will know the eternal harmony of existence, the silence that has never been broken; from the beginningless beginnings to the endless end, it continues the same. Then you will know the virgin purity of existence, which has never been polluted.
What can poor birds and animals know of it?
But I can understand, Vasumati, sometimes it creates great jealousy. Two birds on the wing in such harmony, in such love and intimacy, not only between themselves but with the wind, with the sun, with the rain, and man starts feeling, "Why can't I be so happy?
Why can't I relate with such beauty? Why can't I enjoy the wind and the rain and the sun so relaxedly?"
It is not because you are lower than the birds, it is because you are higher and much more is required of you. It is because you are higher that God's criterion for you is higher too.
Yes, a drunkard looks lost, without any anxiety, without any worry, and Buddha
also looks without any worry and without any anxiety; Buddha also looks drunk. But do you think they exist on the same plane? The drunkard has fallen from consciousness, and the buddha has risen from the self.
Self-consciousness is human. If you fall from consciousness you will have a certain forgetfulness of anxiety. If you rise from the self you will not only have a forgetfulness of anxiety; anxieties simply evaporate, they exist no more.
You can become buddhas. Vasumati, you have the capacity, the potential, to become a buddha. The birds are poor. But man has fallen so low that he even starts feeling jealous of poor birds.
You ask, "What is the secret of this that seems so hard for human beings?"
The secret is consciousness. Consciousness brings freedom. Freedom does not mean only the freedom to do right; if that was the meaning of freedom, what kind of freedom would it be? If you are only free to do right, then you are not free. Freedom implies both the alternatives -- to do right, to do wrong. Freedom implies the right to say yes or to say no.
And this is something subtle to be understood. Saying no feels more of a freedom than saying yes. And I am not philosophizing, it is a simple fact you can observe in yourself.
Whenever you say no, you feel more free. Whenever you say yes, you don't feel free, because yes means you have obeyed, yes means you have surrendered -- where is the freedom? No means you are stubborn, keeping aloof; no means you have asserted yourself, no means you are ready to fight. No defines you more clearly than yes. Yes is vague, it is like a cloud. No is very solid and substantial, like a rock.
That's why psychologists say that between seven and fourteen years of age each child starts learning to say no more and more. By saying no, he is getting out of the psychological womb of the mother. Even when there is no need to say no, he will say no.
Even when to say yes is in his favor, he will say no.
There is much at stake; he has to learn to say no more and more. By the time he is fourteen, sexually mature, he will say the ultimate no to the mother; he will
fall in love with a woman. That is his ultimate no to the mother, he is turning his back on the mother.
He says, "I am finished with you, I have chosen my woman. I have become an individual, independent in my own right. I want to live my life, I want to do my own thing."
And if the parents insist, "Have short hair," he will have long hair. If the parents insist,
"Have long hair," he will have short hair. Just watch a little longer. When hippies become parents then they will see, their children will have short hair -- because they will have to learn no.
If the parents insist, "Cleanliness is next to God," the children will start living in every kind of dirt. They will be dirty. They won't take a bath, they won't clean themselves, they won't use soap. And they will find rationalizations that soap is dangerous to the skin, that it is unnatural, that no animal ever uses soap. They can find as many rationalizations as possible, but deep down all those rationalizations are just cover-ups. The real thing is, they want to say no. And of course when you want to say no, you have to find reasons.
Hence, no gives you a sense of freedom; not only that, it also gives you a sense of intelligence. To say yes needs no intelligence. When you say yes, nobody asks you why.
When you have already said yes, who bothers to ask you why? There is no need of any reasoning or argument, you have already said yes. When you say no, why is bound to be asked. It sharpens your intelligence, it gives you a definition, a style, freedom. Watch the psychology of the no.
It is so hard for human beings to be in harmony, because of consciousness.
Consciousness gives freedom, freedom gives you the capacity to say no, and there is more possibility to say no than to say yes. And without yes, there is no harmony. Yes is harmony. But it takes time to grow up, to mature, to come to such a maturity where you can say yes and yet remain free, where you can say yes and yet remain unique, where you can say yes and yet not become a slave.
The freedom that is brought by no is a very childish freedom. It is good for
seven-year-olds up to fourteen-year-olds. But if a person gets caught in it and his whole life becomes a no-saying, then he has stopped growing.
The ultimate growth is to say yes with such joy as a child says no. That is a second childhood. And the man who can say yes with tremendous freedom and joy, with no hesitation, with no strings attached, with no conditions -- a pure and simple joy, a pure and simple yes -- that man has become a sage. That man lives in harmony again. And his harmony is of a totally different dimension than the harmony of trees, animals and birds.
They live in harmony because they cannot say no, and the sage lives in harmony because he does not say no. Between the two, the birds and the buddhas, are all human beings --
un-grown-up, immature, childish, stuck somewhere, still trying to say no, to have some feeling of freedom.
I am not saying don't learn to say no. I am saying learn to say no when it is time to say no, but don't get stuck with it. Slowly slowly, see that there is a higher freedom that comes with yes, and a greater harmony. A peace that passeth understanding.
The second question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 2
IS RELATIONSHIP THERE BECAUSE LOVE IS NOT?
Mukti Gandha, yes. Love is not a relationship. Love relates, but it is not a relationship. A relationship is something finished. A relationship is a noun; the full stop has come, the honeymoon is over. Now there is no joy, no enthusiasm, now all is finished.
You can carry it on, just to keep your promises. You can carry it on because it is comfortable, convenient, cozy. You can carry it on because there is nothing else to do.
You can carry it on because if you disrupt it, it is going to create much trouble
for you.
Relationship means something complete, finished, closed. Love is never a relationship; love is relating. It is always a river, flowing, unending. Love knows no full stop; the honeymoon begins but never ends. It is not like a novel that starts at a certain point and ends at a certain point. It is an ongoing phenomenon. Lovers end, love continues. It is a continuum. It is a verb, not a noun. And why do we reduce the beauty of relating to relationship? Why are we in such a hurry?
-- because to relate is insecure, and relationship is a security, relationship has a certainty. Relating is just a meeting of two strangers, maybe just an overnight stay and in the morning we say goodbye. Who knows what is going to happen tomorrow? And we are so afraid that we want to make it certain, we want to make it predictable. We would like tomorrow to be according to our ideas; we don't allow it freedom to have its own say. So we immediately reduce every verb to a noun.
You are in love with a woman or a man and immediately you start thinking of getting married. Make it a legal contract. Why? How does the law come into love? The law comes into love because love is not there. It is only a fantasy, and you know the fantasy will disappear. Before it disappears settle down, before it disappears do something so it becomes impossible to separate.
In a better world, with more meditative people, with a little more enlightenment spread over the earth, people will love, love immensely, but their love will remain a relating, not a relationship. And I am not saying that their love will be only momentary. There is every possibility their love may go deeper than your love, may have a higher quality of intimacy, may have something more of poetry and more of God in it. And there is every possibility their love may last longer than your so-called relationship ever lasts. But it will not be guaranteed by the law, by the court, by the policeman.
The guarantee will be inner. It will be a commitment from the heart, it will be a silent communion. If you enjoy being with somebody, you would like to enjoy it more and more. If you enjoy the intimacy, you would like to explore the intimacy more and more.
And there are a few flowers of love which bloom only after long intimacies. There are seasonal flowers too; within six weeks they are there in the sun, but within six weeks again they are gone forever. There are flowers which take years
to come, and there are flowers which take many years to come. The longer it takes, the deeper it goes.
But it has to be a commitment from one heart to another heart. It has not even to be verbalized, because to verbalize it is to profane it. It has to be a silent commitment; eye to eye, heart to heart, being to being. It has to be understood, not said.
It is so ugly seeing people going to the church or the court to get married. It is so ugly, so inhuman. It simply shows they can't trust themselves, they trust the policeman more than they trust their own inner voice. It shows they can't trust their love, they trust the law.
Gandha, forget relationships and learn how to relate. Once you are in a relationship you start taking each other for granted. That's what destroys all love affairs. The woman thinks she knows the man, the man thinks he knows the woman. Nobody knows either. It is impossible to know the other, the other remains a mystery. And to take the other for granted is insulting, disrespectful.
To think that you know your wife is very very ungrateful. How can you know the woman? How can you know the man? They are processes, they are not things. The woman that you knew yesterday is not there today. So much water has gone down the Ganges; she is somebody else, totally different. Relate again, start again, don't take it for granted.
And the man that you slept with last night, look at his face again in the morning. He is no more the same person, so much has changed. So much, incalculably much, has changed.
That is the difference between a thing and a person. The furniture in the room is the same, but the man and the woman, they are no more the same. Explore again, start again.
That's what I mean by relating.
Relating means you are always starting, you are continuously trying to become acquainted. Again and again, you are introducing yourself to each other. You are trying to see the many facets of the other's personality. You are trying to penetrate deeper and deeper into his realm of inner feelings, into the deep recesses of his being. You are trying to unravel a mystery which cannot be
unraveled.
That is the joy of love: the exploration of consciousness. And if you relate, and don't reduce it to a relationship, then the other will become a mirror to you. Exploring him, unawares you will be exploring yourself too. Getting deeper into the other, knowing his feelings, his thoughts, his deeper stirrings, you will be knowing your own deeper stirrings too. Lovers become mirrors to each other, and then love becomes a meditation.
Relationship is ugly, relating is beautiful.
In relationship both persons become blind to each other. Just think, how long has it been since you saw your wife eye to eye? How long has it been since you looked at your husband? Maybe years. Who looks at one's own wife? You have already taken it for granted that you know her. What more is there to look at? You are more interested in strangers than in the people you know -- you know the whole topography of their bodies, you know how they respond, you know everything that has happened is going to happen again and again. It is a repetitive circle.
It is not so, it is not really so. Nothing ever repeats; everything is new every day. Just your eyes become old, your assumptions become old, your mirror gathers dust and you become incapable of reflecting the other.
Hence I say relate. By saying relate, I mean remain continuously on a honeymoon. Go on searching and seeking each other, finding new ways of loving each other, finding new ways of being with each other. And each person is such an infinite mystery, inexhaustible, unfathomable, that it is not possible that you can ever say, "I have known her," or, "I have known him." At the most you can say, "I have tried my best, but the mystery remains a mystery."
In fact the more you know, the more mysterious the other becomes. Then love is a constant adventure.
The third question: BELOVED OSHO,
Question 3
I FEEL LIKE THE FROG IN THE FAIRY TALE WHO GETS KISSED AND STARTS
GROWING UP TO BE THE HANDSOME PRINCE. BUT I'M STILL WEARING
FROGGY CLOTHES AND THEY ARE TOO TIGHT AND THE PRINCESS ISN'T
INTERESTED AND WOULDN'T IT BE NICE JUST TO BE A FROG AGAIN? HELP!
Deva Saguna, you seem to be very old fashioned. The world has changed a lot since these kinds of stories were written. Now just the vice versa exists. Touch a prince and he becomes a frog, kiss a prince and immediately there is a frog.
This fable is no longer applicable. But it will be good to go a little deeper into it. Why were such kinds of stories invented? -- why in the first place? What is their psychology?
The psychology is to cover up something ugly about human beings. The reality is that the moment you kiss a woman or a man, the moment you fall in love with a man or a woman, immediately the process starts that the man starts becoming a frog, the woman starts becoming a frog.
Now, this is a fact, and you all know it. And these fables were created to cover up this reality. These fables were created to deceive you, that this is not so, that in reality you can kiss a frog and he becomes a prince. To deceive you about the reality of life, these stories were created. Small children read these stories and believe in them, and later on they are very much disillusioned.
These stories are fantasies, wish-fulfillments. That's how man would like things to be.
Kiss a frog and the frog is transformed into a handsome prince. These are wish- fulfillments; it does not happen, what happens is just the contrary. But how to hide it?
How not to look at it? Create beautiful fables around it.
Ninety-nine percent of our religion and a hundred percent of our literature consists of deceptions. It goes on talking about things as they are not, never have been, and never will be.
But man is the animal who lives through illusions. He cannot live with reality; reality is too much, it hurts. Have you not seen it in your own life? Fall in love with a woman; she was so beautiful when she was unavailable; when she was beyond your grasp she was like a Cleopatra. And once you are married to her you are fed up with her, bored to death.
Now you cannot believe how you managed to see Cleopatra in this woman; she looks utterly ugly in every possible way.
And the same is the case from her side. She was thinking you were a charming prince, like the princes in the fables who come on their beautiful horses. She thought she had found her charming prince. And when she lives with the reality, he snores in the night, he stinks, and he has such dirty habits -- he smokes, she cannot even kiss him because he smells so much of smoking. And suddenly she becomes aware that the charming prince was never there in reality; he was a projection, she had projected him.
Every day the person becomes more and more ordinary. The reality is: kiss a prince and he becomes a frog. But then how to live?
If all these realities are made known, then life will become impossible. So we create fantasies, fables, fictions, to create some consolation, to create a little cozy atmosphere. If it is not real, at least you can dream, you can fantasize, you can believe that if it is not real today, tomorrow it is going to be real. Go on kissing the frog, and sooner or later he will become a prince. These are make-believes.
People believe in the immortality of the soul because they are conscious of death
-- not that they know the soul is immortal, but just because they see everybody dying, they know the certainty of death. Now, how to escape from a certainty? Create a fiction.
Remember, I am not saying that the soul is not eternal, I am simply saying that people's belief that the soul is eternal is a fiction. The belief is a fiction.
People believe in a God who cares, because they feel so uncared for. Nobody cares about them, they feel so left alone, nobody seems to be interested in them;
whether they live or die will not matter. They have to create a father figure high in heaven who cares for them.
Even if nobody cares, God cares. It is a great solace.
In the name of religion, in the name of literature, in the name of poetry, music, we have been creating fictions -- we create a few buffers around ourselves, so the shocks of reality don't reach to us.
You must have seen buffers in railway trains. Between two bogies, two compartments, there are buffers, so if somehow some accident happens, the compartments don't run into each other and the shock of the accident can be absorbed by the buffers. Cars have springs so that you don't feel the bumps on rough roads. Those springs go on absorbing the bumps, the shocks; they are shock-absorbers.
Man has created many psychological shock-absorbers around himself. And what I would like to say to you is this: that unless you drop all shock-absorbers you are never going to be free.
Only truth liberates. And in the beginning, truth shocks very much -- but that's how it is, that's how things are, that's how nature functions. You have to open yourself, you have to be vulnerable to all the shocks of life. It will hurt, it will wound, you will cry, you will weep, you will be in a rage against life. But slowly slowly you will start seeing that truth is truth, and it is pointless to be in a rage against truth. And once the rage has subsided, the truth has a beauty of its own. Truth liberates.
The real work of a master is to destroy the absorbers of the disciples. And it is really very hard work -- hard in the sense that the disciples resist in every possible way. They protect their absorbers, and if they feel that there is some danger, they create more absorbers around themselves. If they see that somebody is after them to snatch their absorbers, they become very defensive, very protective and they create more armors around themselves.
The real master cannot give you solace, he can only give you freedom. He can give you bliss, but he cannot give you consolation. And he will have to destroy many things in you which you have cherished for long, nourished for long. He will have to take away all the clothes that protect you, he will have to leave you nude in reality.
It frightens, it scares, but that is the only way you can grow. Growth has to be with reality, not against reality. And once you have tasted something of reality as it is, you will never gather any other buffers, shock-absorbers, around you again.
Saguna, you say, "I feel like the frog in the fairy tale who gets kissed and starts growing up to be the handsome prince."
You must be dreaming. Things are not done that way here. You came here, Saguna, as a charming prince. You have been kissed, and now you are a frog. But there is nothing wrong with being a frog -- frogs are beautiful people.
You say, "But I'm still wearing froggy clothes.…" Of course -- you are still a frog!
"And they are too tight" -- you are imagining -- "and the princess isn't interested and wouldn't it be nice just to be a frog again?"
What are you talking about? You don't need any help, you already are one! Accept your frogginess and forget all about the princess. In fact I have never seen a frog interested in a princess -- foolish idea! Become interested in another frog! And in that way I can help you. I have so many frogs here.
The fifth question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 4
YOU HAVE SAID THAT KRISHNAMURTI CAN GET ANGRY. HOW IS THAT
POSSIBLE, AS IN ENLIGHTENMENT THERE IS NO ONE THERE TO BE ANGRY?
Henk Faassen, in enlightenment there is nobody there to get angry, and there is nobody there not to get angry either. So whatsoever happens, happens. Krishnamurti does not get angry the way you get angry. Everything with an enlightened person happens on a totally different plane. His anger comes out of his compassion. Your anger comes out of hate, aggression, cruelty. He becomes angry -- sometimes he starts pulling his hair out, he hits his own forehead -- but
out of compassion.
Just think, for fifty years or more he has been teaching a certain kind of truth to the world, and nobody understands him. The same people gather each year to listen to him --
the same people.
Once he was talking in Bombay... somebody reported this to me, and the person who reported it to me is an old lady, older than Krishnamurti. She saw Krishnamurti when he was a child, she has seen him and listened to him for fifty years. And because she is a little deaf, very old, she sits in the front on a chair. And for fifty years Krishnamurti has been saying that there are no methods for meditation, that meditation is not needed at all.
Just be in the present and live your life, that's enough meditation, no other technique is needed.…
For one and a half hours he poured his heart out, and at the end the lady stood up and asked, "How to meditate?" Now, what do you suppose he should do? He hit his head.
This is not your anger. This is so unbelievable! He is tired of this lady, but this lady is not tired of him. She comes to every talk to listen to him, and asks the same stupid questions.
When I say Krishnamurti can get angry, I don't mean, Henk, that he can get angry like you get angry. His anger is out of compassion. This situation is unbelievable! He wants to help this lady and he feels so helpless. He tries this way and that. His message is very simple, singular, one-dimensional. For fifty years he has been saying only a single word.
In essence his whole teaching can be printed on one side of a postcard. He has been saying it in as many possible ways as one can invent, but it is the same citadel that he attacks from the north, from the south, from the west, from the east. And still people go on listening to him and go on asking the same old foolish questions.
He certainly gets angry. And when a man like Krishnamurti gets angry, he is pure anger.
Many in India have felt very disappointed with Krishnamurti because he gets angry. They have a certain concept that a buddha should not get angry. They go with a prejudice. And when they see that Krishnamurti can get angry, they are disillusioned, "So this man is not a buddha, he has not become enlightened yet."
I say to you that he is one of the most enlightened persons who has ever walked on this earth. Still he can get angry, but his anger comes out of compassion; it is condensed compassion. He cares about you, so much so that he becomes angry. This is a totally different quality of anger.
And when he becomes angry he is real anger. Your anger is partial, lukewarm. Your anger is like a dog who is not certain how to behave with a stranger. He may be a friend of the master, so he wags his tail; he may be an enemy, so he barks. He does both together. On one hand he goes on barking, on the other hand he goes on wagging his tail.
He is playing the diplomat, so whatsoever the case turns out to be, he can always feel right. If the master comes and he sees that the master is friendly, the barking will stop and his whole energy will go into the tail. If the master is angry with the intruder, then the tail will stop completely, and his whole energy will go into barking.
Your anger is also like that. You are weighing up how far to go, how much will pay; don't go beyond the limit, don't provoke the other person too much.
But when a man like Krishnamurti becomes angry he is pure anger. And pure anger has a beauty because it has totality. He is just anger. He is like a small child, redfaced, just anger all over, ready to destroy the whole world.
That's what happened to Jesus. When he went into the great temple and saw the moneychangers and their tables inside the temple, he was in a rage. He became angry --
the same anger that comes out of compassion and love. Singlehanded, he drove all the moneychangers out of the temple and overturned their boards. He must have been really very angry, because driving all the moneychangers out of the temple singlehanded is not an easy thing.
And reports say -- I don't know how far they are right, but reports say that he was not a very strong man. Reports say that he was not even a very tall man; you
will be surprised, he was only four feet six inches. And not only that -- on top of it he was a hunchback. I don't know how far those reports are true, because I don't want to go to court! But it is there in the books, ancient books, very ancient books.
So how did this hunchback, four feet six inches high, drive out all the moneychangers singlehanded? He must have been pure rage!
Indians are angry about that. They cannot trust that Jesus is enlightened -- just because of this incident.
People have their prejudices, their ideas. Rather than seeing into reality, rather than looking into an enlightened man, they come ready with so many concepts, and unless he fits them he is not enlightened. And let me tell you, no enlightened person is going to fit with your unenlightened prejudices; it is impossible.
It happened, a lady came to me. She had been a follower of Krishnamurti for many years, then a small thing disturbed the whole thing and the whole applecart was upturned. The thing was so small that I was surprised. There was a camp in Holland where Krishnamurti holds a camp every year, and the woman had gone there from India. Nearabout two thousand people had gathered from all over the world to listen to him. The next morning the lectures were going to start, and the woman had gone shopping. And she was surprised, Krishnamurti was also shopping. An enlightened person shopping? Can you believe it? Buddha in a supermarket? And not only that -- he was purchasing a necktie.
Enlightened people need neckties? And not only that -- the whole counter was full of neckties and he was throwing them this way and that, and he was not satisfied with any.
The woman watched, looked at the whole scene, and fell from the sky. She thought, "I have come from India for this ordinary man who is purchasing neckties. And even then, of thousands of neckties of all colors and all kinds of material, nothing is satisfying to him. Is this detachment? Is this awareness?"
She turned away. She didn't attend the camp, she came back immediately. And the first thing she did was to come running to me, and she said, "You are right."
I said, "What do you mean?"
She said, "You are right that it was useless wasting my time with Krishnamurti. Now I want to become a sannyasin of yours."
I said, "Please excuse me, I cannot accept you. If you cannot accept Krishnamurti, how can I accept you? Get lost! ... Because here you will see far more disappointing things.
What are you going to do with my Mercedes Benz? So before it happens, why bother?
What are you going to do with my air-conditioned room? Before it happens, it is better that you go and find some Muktananda, etcetera. You have not been able to understand Krishnamurti, you will not be able to understand me."
People like Krishnamurti live on a totally different plane. Their anger is not your anger.
And who knows that he was not just playing with those ties for this stupid old woman?
Masters are known to devise things like that. He got rid of this stupid old woman very easily.
The last question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 5
IN ITALY, A POOR COUNTRY, WE HAVE ONLY THREE THINGS -- THE POPE, THE PIZZA AND GOSSIP. NOW IN COMING TO INDIA, WE HAVE LOST THE
PIZZA AND WITH YOU AS THE POPE, PLEASE AT LEAST LET US HAVE THE
GOSSIP!
Videha, I am not averse to gossiping. In fact, I love it. But what to do with this old man, Atisha? Every day I decide to gossip a little, and he says no. And I have
to be a little respectful towards him. And the problem is not so much with Atisha, the problem is the sutra that is coming. I will find a legal way to wriggle out of it. But gossiping is difficult -
- but if you promise me not to tell anybody, I will.…
A man was walking down the street looking into shop windows and his gaze stopped on a small overnight shaving-kit bag in a shop. What stopped him was the price -- an exorbitant three hundred dollars.
His curiosity got the better of him and he was compelled to go in and ask about it, although he did not need one. "Why is this little bag so expensive?" he asked.
The shopkeeper replied, "It is made out of a very special leather."
"Even if it was made out of alligator skin or mink-lined it wouldn't be so costly," said the inquiring man.
The shopkeeper answered, "The story behind this small bag is special. The leathersmith's uncle is a rabbi and this bag is made entirely out of foreskins."
"I can see that that would be unique," the man came back. "But three hundred dollars is still too high a price!"
The shopkeeper then said, "It is very convenient. When you rub it, it turns into a large suitcase."
Enough for today. The Book of Wisdom Chapter #13
Chapter title: Don't make Wicked Jokes 23 February 1979 am in Buddha Hall Archive
code:
7902230
ShortTitle:
WISDOM13
Audio:
Yes Video: No Length:
101
mins
ABANDON POISONED FOOD. DON'T BE CONSISTENT. DON'T MAKE WICKED JOKES.
DON'T WAIT FOR AN OPPORTUNITY. DON'T STRIKE AT THE HEART.
DON'T TRANSFER THE COW'S LOAD TO THE BULL. DON'T BACK THE FAVORITE.
DON'T HAVE WRONG VIEWS.
DON'T FALL FOR THE CELESTIAL DEMON.
The first sutra:
ABANDON POISONED FOOD.
According to the mystic traditions of the East, all that you think you are is
nothing but food. Your body is food, your mind is food, your soul is food. Beyond the soul there is certainly something which is not food. That something is known as anatta, no-self. It is utter emptiness. Buddha calls it shunya, the void. It is pure space. It contains nothing but itself; it is contentless consciousness.
While the content persists, the food persists. By "food" is meant that which is ingested from the outside. The body needs physical food; without it, it will start withering away.
This is how it survives; it contains nothing but physical food.
Your mind contains memories, thoughts, desires, jealousies, power trips, and a thousand and one things. All that is also food; on a little more subtle plane it is food. Thought is food. Hence when you have nourishing thoughts your chest expands. When you have thoughts which give you energy you feel good. Somebody says something good about you, a compliment, and look what happens to you -- you are nourished. And somebody says something wrong about you, and watch -- it is as if something has been snatched away from you, you are weaker than you were before.
The mind is food in a subtle form. The mind is nothing but the inner side of the body; hence what you eat affects your mind. If you eat nonvegetarian food you will have a particular kind of mind; if you eat vegetarian food you will certainly have a different kind of mind.
Do you know this immensely important fact about Indian history? India never attacked any country in its whole history of ten thousand years -- never, not a single aggressive act. How was it possible? Why? The same humanity exists here as exists everywhere else, but it is just that a different kind of body created a different mind.
You can watch it yourself. Eat something and watch, eat something else and watch. Keep notes, and you will become aware and surprised to find that each thing that you digest is not only physical, it has a psychological part to it. It makes your mind vulnerable to certain ideas, to certain desires.
Hence, down the ages, there has been a search for a kind of food that will not strengthen the mind but will help it to finally dissolve; a kind of food which, instead of strengthening the mind, will strengthen meditation, no-mind. No fixed
and certain rules can be given, because people are different and each one has to decide for himself.
And watch what you allow into your mind. People are completely unaware; they go on reading everything and anything, they go on looking at the tv, any silly stupid thing. They go on listening to the radio, they go on chitchatting, chattering with people, and they are all pouring rubbish into each other's heads. Rubbish is all that they have.
Avoid such situations in which you are unnecessarily burdened with rubbish. You already have too much as it is, you need to be unburdened of it. And you go on collecting it as if it is something precious.
Talk less, listen only to the essential, be telegraphic in talking and listening. If you talk less, if you listen less, slowly slowly you will see that a cleanliness, a feeling of purity, as if you have just taken a bath, will start arising within you. That becomes the necessary soil for meditation to arise. Don't go on reading all kinds of nonsense.
Once I used to live in a house where the neighbor was a madman who was very much interested in newspapers. He would come every day to collect all the newspapers from me. If sometimes he was ill or I was not at home, then he would come later on.
Once it happened, for ten days I was away, and when I came back he came again to collect all the newspapers. I said to him, "But these are old now -- ten days old."
He said, "What does it matter? It is the same rubbish! Only the dates change."
It must have been a very sane moment in that madman's life. Yes, there are insane moments in so-called sane people's lives, and vice versa. He was telling the truth, saying,
"It is the same old nonsense. What does it matter? I have time, and I have to remain occupied."
I asked him, "What did you do for these ten days?"
He said, "I was reading the old newspapers -- reading them again and again and
again."
Leave a few gaps in your mind unoccupied. Those moments of unoccupied consciousness are the first glimpses of meditation, the first penetrations of the beyond, the first flashes of no-mind. And then if you can manage to do this, the other thing is to choose physical food which does not help aggression and violence, which is not poisonous.
Now even scientists agree with this, that when you kill an animal, out of fear he releases all kinds of poisons. Death is not easy. When you are killing an animal, out of fear a great trembling arises inside. The animal wants to survive; all kinds of poisons are released.
When you are in fear you also release poisons in the body. Those poisons are helpful; they help you to either fight or take flight. Sometimes it happens that in anger you can do things which you could never have imagined yourself doing. You can move a rock which ordinarily you could not have even shaken, but anger is there and poison is released.
In fear, people can run so fast that even Olympic runners will be left behind. Just think of yourself running if somebody is behind you with a dagger to kill you. You will do the best you can do, your whole body will be geared to function at its optimum.
When you kill an animal there is anger, there is anxiety, there is fear. Death is facing him; all the glands of the animal release many kinds of poisons. Hence the modern idea is that before killing an animal, make him unconscious, give him anaesthesia. In modern butcheries, anaesthesia is being used. But that does not make much difference, only a very superficial difference, because at the deepest core where no anaesthesia can ever reach, death has to be encountered. It may not be conscious, the animal may not be aware of what is happening, but it is happening as if in a dream. He is passing through a nightmare.
And to eat meat is to eat poisoned food.
Avoid anything that is poisoned on the physical plane, avoid anything that is poisoned on the mental plane. And on the mental plane things are more complicated. If you think you are a Hindu, you are poisoned; if you think you are a Mohammedan, you are poisoned. If you think you are a Christian, a Jaina, a Buddhist, you are poisoned. And you have been poisoned slowly, so slowly
that you have become attuned to it. You are addicted to it.
You have been spoon-fed since the very first day; from your mother's breast, you have been poisoned. All kinds of conditionings are poisons. To think of oneself as a Hindu is to think of oneself opposed to humanity. To think of oneself as German, as Chinese, is to think of oneself opposed to humanity, is to think in terms of enmity, not friendship.
Think of yourself only as a human being. If you have any intelligence, think of yourself only as a simple human being. And when your intelligence grows a little more you will drop even the adjective "human"; you will think of yourself only as a being. And the being includes all -- the trees and the mountains and the rivers and the stars and the birds and the animals.
Become bigger, become huge. Why are you living in tunnels? Why are you creeping into small dark black holes? But you think you are living in great ideological systems. You are not living in great ideological systems, because there are no great ideological systems.
No idea is great enough to contain a human being; being-hood cannot be contained by any concept. All concepts cripple and paralyze.
Don't be a Catholic and don't be a communist, just be a human being. These are all poisons, these are all prejudices. And down the ages you have been hypnotized into these prejudices. They have become part of your blood, your bones, your very marrow. You will have to be very alert to get rid of all this poisoning.
Your body is not poisoned as much as your mind is. The body is a simple phenomenon, it can be easily cleaned. If you have been eating nonvegetarian foods it can be stopped, it is not such a big deal. And if you stop eating meat, within three months your body will be completely free of all the poisons created by nonvegetarian foods. It is simple.
Physiology is not very complicated.
But the problem arises with psychology. A Jaina monk never eats any poisoned food, never eats anything nonvegetarian. But his mind is polluted and poisoned by Jainism as nobody else's is.
The real freedom is freedom from any ideology. Can't you simply live without any ideology? Is an ideology needed? Why is an ideology needed so much? It is needed because it helps you to remain stupid, it is needed because it helps you to remain unintelligent. It is needed because it supplies you readymade answers and you need not find them on your own.
The real man of intelligence will not cling to any ideology -- for what? He will not carry a load of readymade answers. He knows that he has enough intelligence so that whatever situation arises, he will be able to respond to it. Why carry an unnecessary load from the past? What is the point of carrying it?
And in fact the more you carry from the past, the less you will be able to respond to the present, because the present is not a repetition of the past, it is always new, always always new. It is never the old; it may sometimes appear like the old, but it is not old, there are basic differences.
Life never repeats itself. It is always fresh, always new, always growing, always exploring, always moving into new adventures. Your old readymade answers are not going to help you. In fact they will hinder you; they will not allow you to see the new situation. The situation will be new, and the answer will be old.
That's why you look so stupid in life. But to remain stupid seems cheaper. To be intelligent needs effort, to be intelligent means you have to grow. And growth is painful.
To be intelligent means you have to be continuously alert and aware; you cannot fall asleep, you cannot live like a somnambulist.
And to be intelligent has a few more dangers too. To be intelligent is very difficult because you have to live with the stupid crowds. To live with blind people and have eyes is a dangerous situation; they are bound to destroy your eyes. They cannot tolerate you, you are an offense.
Hence Jesus is crucified, Socrates is poisoned, Al-Hillaj is killed, Sarmad is beheaded.
These were the most intelligent people that have ever walked on the earth. And how have we behaved with them? Why did a man of the intelligence of Socrates have to be killed?
He became intolerable. His presence became such an offense. To look into his eyes meant to look in the mirror. And we are so ugly that rather than accepting the fact that we are ugly, the easier course is to destroy the mirror and forget all about your ugliness, and start living again in the old dream that you are the most beautiful person in the world.
We destroyed Socrates because he was a mirror. Hence people have decided it is better to remain mediocre, it is better to remain unintelligent.
Just the other day, I was reading a report. A few psychologists in England have discovered that by the time great politicians reach the highest posts, their intelligence is already withering away. Just think of a man of eighty-four becoming a prime minister!
Those psychologists have warned the whole world that this is dangerous. People who have gone beyond the age of sixty, seventy, eighty, they become prime ministers and presidents. This is dangerous for the world, because they have so much power and so little intelligence left.
But those psychologists are not aware of another thing that I would like to tell you. In fact people choose them to be prime ministers and presidents because they are no longer intelligent. People don't like intelligent persons. People like people who look like them, who are like them; they feel they are not strangers. Intelligent people will be strangers.
I can't think of any country which could choose Socrates to be the prime minister
--
impossible. He is so different, his approach to life is so different, his insight into things is so deep. No country could afford, or no country could be so courageous, as to make him the prime minister, because he would bring chaos. He would start changing each and everything, because each and everything needs to be changed.
This rotten society has to be destroyed completely; only then can a new society be created. Renovation is not going to help. We have been renovating the same old ruins for centuries. No more props, no more renovations, no more whitewash! All that is needed is to demolish it, and let us create a new society. Let us bring a new human being, HOMO
NOVUS. Let us give birth to something new, a new mind, a new consciousness.
People choose dull dead persons to be in power because you can be safe with them. Now, India is very safe with Morarji Desai; he is not going to do a single thing. He will keep everything intact, he will keep this country's ugly bureaucracy as it is. He will not change anything; his whole effort will be to stop change. Jaiprakash Narayan was thinking of bringing about a total revolution, and what has happened is total failure.
Countries choose mediocre people to be in power, because they will save their tradition, their conventions, their prejudices. They will protect their poisons. Instead of destroying them, they will enhance them and strengthen them.
It is certainly dangerous to have unintelligent people in powerful posts. And it is becoming more and more dangerous, because they have more and more power and less and less intelligence. But why does it happen? There is a subtle logic in it. People don't want to change. Change is arduous, change is difficult.
If you change your poisonous foods you will be surprised; a new intelligence will be released in you. And this new intelligence will make it possible not to go on stuffing yourself with nonsense. This new intelligence will make you capable of dropping the past and its memories, of dropping unnecessary desires and dreams, dropping jealousies, angers, traumas and all kinds of psychological wounds.
Because you cannot drop psychological wounds, you become victims of psycho- fraud.
The world is full of psychoanalysts of many kinds, they come in all shapes and sizes. The world is full of all kinds of psychotherapies. But why are so many psychotherapies needed? They are needed because you are not intelligent enough to heal your own wounds. Instead of healing them, instead of opening them to the winds and to the sun, you go on hiding them. You need psychotherapists to help you to open your wounds to the sun so that they can be healed, so that they can be allowed to heal.
But it is very difficult to find a real psychotherapist. Out of a hundred psychotherapists, ninety-nine are psychofrauds, not psychotherapists.
You will be surprised to know that more psychotherapists and psychoanalysts
commit suicide than people in any other profession. The number is almost double. Now, what kind of people are these? And how were they going to help others? What were they doing their whole lives helping people?
More psychoanalysts go mad, insane, than people in any other profession of the world.
The number is almost double. Why?... and they were helping other people towards sanity, when they themselves were insane. There is every possibility that they became interested in psychotherapy because of their insanity. It was an effort to find a cure for themselves.
And you will be surprised to know that psychotherapists of one kind go for psychotherapy to psychotherapists of another kind. The Freudian goes to the Jungian, the Jungian goes to the Freudian, and so on and so forth. This is a very strange situation.
If intelligence is released in you, you will be able to do all that is needed. You will be able to heal your own wounds, you will be able to see your own traumas, you need not go to a primal therapist.
I am allowing all kinds of therapies in this commune. In fact, in no other place in the world are so many psychotherapies available -- sixty in all. Why am I allowing these therapies? Just because of you, because you are not yet ready to release your intelligence.
As the commune goes deeper and deeper into inner realizations, therapies can be dropped. When the commune has really bloomed, there will be no need of any therapy.
Then love is therapy, intelligence is therapy. Then living day to day, moment to moment, aware and alert, is therapy. Then all kinds of things that you do during the day, cleaning and cooking and washing, they are all therapy.
Therapies are here only for the time being. The day I become convinced that now the major part of you has gone beyond therapies, therapies will disappear, because then the major part will be able to pull the minor part into intelligence also.
We are trying to create an intelligent kind of life. I am not much of a religious
person, I am not a saint, I have nothing to do with spirituality. All those categories are irrelevant about me. You cannot categorize me, you cannot pigeonhole me. But one thing can be said, that my whole effort is to help you release the energy called love-intelligence. If love-intelligence is released, you are healed.
And the third kind of poisoned food is spiritual. That's what the self is. The self needs continuous attention. It feeds on attention, attention is its food. It is not only the politician who hankers for attention, more and more attention from more and more people. Your so-called saints are doing the same.
There is no difference between saints and politicians and actors, no difference at all.
Their basic need is the same -- attention: "More people should pay attention to me, more people should look up to me." That becomes food for the ego, and it is the subtlest kind of poisoned food.
These three things are implied in the first sutra. Atisha says: ABANDON POISONED FOOD.
Physical, psychological, spiritual. Let your physiological body be pure of all poisons and toxins, and your mind be unburdened from all kinds of rubbish and junk. And let your soul be free from the idea of the self. When the soul is free from the idea of 'I' you have arrived at that inner space called no-self, ANATTA. That is freedom, that is nirvana, that is enlightenment. You have come home. Now there is nowhere to go; now you can settle, rest and relax. Now you can enjoy the millions of joys that are being showered upon you by existence.
When these three poisoned foods are dropped, you become empty. But this emptiness is not a negative kind of emptiness. You are empty in the sense that all poisons, all contents, are gone. But you are full, full of something which cannot be named, full of something which devotees call God.
Atisha cannot use that word; he is not a devotee, he is not a BHAKTA. He cannot use any word for it, he remains completely silent about it. He says: Drop this, drop this, drop this, and then whatsoever remains is you, the real you.
And the second sutra is a very very significant sutra.
DON'T BE CONSISTENT.
Have you ever heard anything like that, "Don't be consistent"? When you hear it for the first time or read it for the first time, you will think there has been some mistake, maybe a proof mistake or something. Because your so-called saints have been telling you just the opposite. "Don't be inconsistent," they say. "Be consistent."
It is here that Atisha is superb. He says:
DON'T BE CONSISTENT.
Why? What is consistency? Consistency means living according to the past. With what will you be consistent? If you want to be consistent you can have only one reference, and that is the past. To be consistent means to live according to the past, and to live according to the past is not to live at all. To live according to the past is to be dead. Then your life will be just a repetition.
To be consistent means you have already decided that now there is no more to life, that you have already come to a full stop; you don't allow life to have anything new to give to you, you have closed your doors. The sun will rise, but you will not allow its rays to enter into your room. And the flowers will bloom, but you will remain unaware of their fragrance. Moons will come and go, but you will remain stagnant. You have stopped being a river.
A river cannot be a consistent phenomenon. Only a pond can be consistent, because it is nonflowing. The flow by its very nature has to be inconsistent, because it has to face new situations, new challenges. New spaces are constantly coming upon it; it has to respond spontaneously, not according to the past.
The consistent man is a logical man, his life is one-dimensional. He lives in arithmetic, he follows logic. If anything goes against logic he simply avoids seeing it; he pretends that it is not there, because it is so disturbing to his logic.
And the logical man is the poorest man in the world, because life consists not only of logic, but of love too. And love is illogical. Only a very small part of life is logical, the superficial part. The deeper you go, the more and more you move into the illogical, or, to be more accurate, the supralogical.
Logic is good in the marketplace, but not in the temple, not in the mosque, not in
the church. Logic is good in the office, in the shop, in the factory. Logic is not good when you are with your friends, when you are with your beloved, with your children. Logic is good when you are dealing in a businesslike way. But life is not all business; there is something far more valuable in life than any business. Allow that too.
A professor of philosophy went to a doctor and asked for advice on how to improve his sex life.
"You seem to be in good physical condition," said the doctor, after an examination. "You run ten miles a day, every day for seven days, then phone me."
A week later, the professor telephoned. "Well," said the physician, "has the running improved your sex life?"
"I don't know," said the professor. "I am seventy miles from home now."
This is the way a logical mind functions. It is one-dimensional. Life is multidimensional.
Don't confine it, don't make it linear, don't live like a line. Live the multidimensions of it, the multi-phases of it, and then you cannot be consistent, because life is paradoxical --
one moment it is joy, another moment it is sadness. If you are very consistent, then you have to go on smiling; whether your heart is crying or smiling, that doesn't matter, you have to be consistent. You have to be Jimmy Carter and go on smiling.
I have heard that his wife has to close his mouth every night, because at night also he goes on smiling. If you practice such a thing the whole day, naturally, how can you relax so suddenly at night? It becomes a fixed pattern.
Life consists of sadness too. And sadness is also beautiful; it has its own depth, its own delicacy, its own deliciousness, its own taste. A man is poorer if he has not known sadness; he is impoverished, very much impoverished. His laughter will be shallow, his laughter will not have depth, because depth comes only through sadness. A man who knows sadness, if he laughs, his laughter will have depth. His laughter will have something of his sadness too, his laughter will be
more colorful.
A man who lives life in its totality is a rainbow; he lives the whole spectrum of it. He cannot be consistent, he has to be inconsistent.
Atisha is giving you something tremendously valuable. Live all the moods of life; they are your own and they all have something to contribute to your growth. Don't become confined to a small space. Howsoever comfortable and cozy it looks, don't become confined to a small space. Be an adventurer. Search and seek all the facets of life, all the aspects of life.
It is said that you cannot write a novel about a good man. And that is true; a good man really has no life. What novel can you write about him? At the most you can write a character certificate saying that he is good -- and that is his whole life. He does not have much of a life, because he has no multidimensionality.
Live, and allow all that is possible. Sing, dance, cry, weep, laugh, love, meditate, relate, be alone. Be in the marketplace, and sometimes be in the mountains.
Life is short. Live it as richly as possible, and don't try to be consistent. The consistent man is a very poor man. Of course the society respects the consistent man, because the consistent man is predictable. You know what he is going to do tomorrow, you know how he is going to react. He is manageable, he can be easily manipulated. You know what buttons to push and how he will act. He is a machine; he is not truly a man. You can put him on and off and he will behave according to you; he is in your hands.
The society respects the consistent man; the society calls consistency "character." And the real man has no character. A real man is characterless, or beyond character. A real man cannot afford character, because character can be afforded only at the cost of life. If you renounce life, you can have character. If you don't renounce life, you will have many characters, but you will not have character. If you don't renounce life, how can you have a character? Each moment life is new, and so are you.
Society will not respect you, you will not be a respectable citizen -- but who cares? Only mediocre people care about the respect of the society. The real person cares about only one thing: Whether I am living my life or not, whether I am living it according to my own vision or not, it is my life, and I am
responsible to myself.
The most important responsibility is not to the nation or to the church or to anybody else.
The real responsibility is to yourself. And it is that you have to live your life according to your own light and you have to move wherever life leads, without any compromise.
The man of character compromises. His character is nothing but an effort to guarantee the society, "I am not dangerous," and to declare to the society, "I will follow the rules of the game, I am utterly at your disposal."
The saint has character, hence he is respected. The sage has no character, hence it is very difficult to recognize him. Socrates is a sage, Jesus is a sage, Lao Tzu is a sage but they are very difficult to recognize, almost impossible, because they don't leave any trace behind them. They don't fit into any mold, they are pure freedom. They are like birds flying in the sky, they don't leave any footprints.
It is only for a very few sensitive souls to find a sage as a master, because the mediocre follow the saint. Only very very intelligent people attune themselves to a sage, because the sage has no character and he cannot fulfill any of your expectations. He is bound to offend you, he is bound to disappoint you, he is bound to shake you and shatter you in many many ways.
Slowly slowly, he will make you as free as he himself is.
And now the third sutra, the most dangerous. I have been really worried about it. DON'T MAKE WICKED JOKES.
What is a wicked joke? First I will have to tell three just to explain. And three, because it is a very esoteric number.
The first:
With a buzz and a beep and a whirr, a strange spaceship descends to Earth. Two bizarre creatures emerge and float to the ground. They are a young Martian couple, both scientists, here on an exploratory visit. They decide that the best way to find out about Earth is to communicate with some of the inhabitants, so
off they bounce in search of some likely candidates. They enter an apartment building in the mysterious way Martians have of doing these things, and settle upon a newly-wedded couple by the names of Everett and Gladys Sprinkle (honest!).
Well, Everett and Gladys are as surprised as could be, but quickly adjust, in that special way newlyweds have of adapting to startling surprises. With one thing and another, the talk finally ends up on the subject of reproduction. The Martian male astounds the Sprinkles by offering to demonstrate the way people reproduce on his planet. Before they can protest in their embarrassment, he grabs the Martian woman, places the eight chubby fingers of his single hand on her forehead, and while he sparkles and she twinkles, an opening appears in her side and a tiny baby Martian hops out and starts prancing around Everett and Gladys' living room.
The Martian male then asks them how it is done on Earth. They hem and haw a bit, and finally decide that it would be too difficult to describe. So, in the interest of interplanetary cooperation, they take off their clothes and give a demonstration.
The Martians watch their performance, enthralled. When it is all over, the Martian woman asks, "When will the Earth child come out?" Gladys shakes her head and tells her that it will take nine months. The Martians are amazed at this, scratch their heads a bit, and then the male asks, "But if it isn't coming out right now, how come you were both so excited towards the end?"
The second:
A man went to see his doctor because he was feeling under the weather. The doctor asked the usual questions such as had the man been drinking or eating too much.
"No," said the man.
"Well, perhaps you have had too many late nights?" queried the doctor. "No," the man replied.
The doctor thought about the problem for a while and then asked, "Much sex?"
"Infrequently," came the reply. "Is that two words or one?" And the third:
A woman walked into a supermarket to buy some broccoli. She went up to a man in the vegetable department and said, "Sir, do you have any broccoli?"
The man replied, "No, ma'am, none today. Come back tomorrow."
A few hours later, the woman was back again, asking the man, "Sir, do you have any broccoli?"
"Look, lady, I already told you, we don't have any broccoli today."
The lady left, only to return again that same day. By this time, the man was exasperated and said, "What does t-o-m spell in the word tomato?"
She replied, "Tom."
"And what does p-o-t spell in the the word potato?" he asked. "Pot," was the reply,
He then said, "And what does f-u-c-k spell in the word broccoli?" She looked puzzled and said, "There's no fuck in broccoli."
He sighed a deep sigh and exclaimed, "Lady, that's what I've been trying to tell you all day!"
I don't know whether they are wicked jokes or not, but one thing is certain, Atisha would have enjoyed them.
In fact, by "wicked jokes" he means something totally different. He means: Don't say anything against anybody, don't hurt anybody when they are not present, don't hurt anybody behind their back.
The translation is not exact. Atisha's whole meaning is: Don't gossip about people with a deliberate intention to hurt them, because that is not really joking,
that is not fun, that is not humorous. Atisha can't be against the sense of humor, it is impossible. No man of his intelligence and awareness can be against the sense of humor. In fact, it is people like Atisha who have given the best religious humor to the world. Atisha comes from Gautam Buddha's tradition -- the same lineage as the Zen people. And Zen is the only religion which has accepted humor as prayer. It is not possible, not possible at all, that Atisha had no sense of humor.
Then the sutra cannot be really against jokes. It is against hurting people. What he is saying is going deeper into the psychology of the joke, into the rationale behind the joke.
It is what Sigmund Freud did one thousand years later. Sigmund Freud thinks that when you joke about somebody there is every possibility that you are aggressive, that you have anger, that in a vicarious way you are pretending to be humorous but you really want to be offensive.
But that cannot be decided by anybody else from the outside; only you can be the judge.
If there is a deliberate effort in your mind to offend somebody, to hurt somebody, if it is violence disguised as humor, avoid it. But if it is not violence but just a pure sense of humor, the sense of fun -- the sense of not taking life seriously, not taking it too seriously, then there is no problem.
If I meet Atisha some day, I am going to teach him a few jokes. And my feeling is he will enjoy it.
Jokes can be just pure humor without any violence in them. Sometimes on the surface one may think there is some violence, but the point is not what others think, the point is what your intention is. It is a question of intention. You can smile with an intention to offend, then smiling becomes a sin. Anything can become a sin if deep down the desire is to do violence. And anything can become virtue if deep down there is a desire to create more joy in life, more laughter in life.
My own understanding is that there is nothing more valuable than laughter. Laughter brings you closest to prayer. In fact only laughter is left in you when you are total. In everything else you remain partial, even in lovemaking you remain partial. But when you have a really heartfelt belly laugh, all the parts of
your being -- the physiological, the psychological, the spiritual -- they all vibrate in one single tune, they all vibrate in harmony.
Hence, laughter relaxes. And relaxation is spiritual. Laughter brings you to the earth, brings you down from your stupid ideas of being holier-than-thou. Laughter brings you to reality as it is. The world is a play of God, a cosmic joke. And unless you understand it as a cosmic joke you will never be able to understand the ultimate mystery.
I am all for jokes, I am all for laughter.
Atisha has been wrongly translated. What he actually means is: Don't be violent, even in your words. Even while joking, don't be violent, because violence breeds more violence, anger will bring more anger, and it creates a vicious circle that has no end.
The fourth:
DON'T WAIT FOR AN OPPORTUNITY.
Because the opportunity is now, the opportunity is here. So those who say, "We are waiting for an opportunity," are being deceptive, and they are not deceiving anybody but themselves.
The opportunity is not going to come tomorrow. It has already arrived, it has always been here. It was here even when you were not here. Existence is an opportunity; to be is the opportunity.
DON'T WAIT FOR AN OPPORTUNITY.
Don't say, "Tomorrow I will meditate, tomorrow I will love, tomorrow I will have a dancing relationship with existence." Why tomorrow? Tomorrow never comes. Why not now? Why postpone? Postponement is a trick of the mind; it keeps you hoping, and meanwhile the opportunity is slipping by. And in the end you will come to the cul-de-sac
-- death -- and there will be no more opportunity left.
And this has happened many times in the past. You are not new here, you have been born and you have died many many times. And each time the mind has
played the same trick, and you have not yet learned anything. Atisha says:
DON'T WAIT FOR AN OPPORTUNITY.DON'T STRIKE AT THE HEART.
He says: Criticize people's minds, criticize their ideologies, criticize their systems of thought, criticize everything -- but never criticize anybody's love, never criticize anybody's trust. Why? -- because love is so valuable, trust is so immensely valuable. To destroy it, to criticize it, to shatter it in any way, is the greatest harm one can do to anybody.
You can criticize the mind -- it should be criticized -- but not the heart. Whenever you see something of the heart, avoid the temptation to criticize it.
Just the opposite is the case with people. They can tolerate your ideology, they can tolerate your mind, but the moment they see your love, your trust, they jump upon you.
They cannot tolerate your trust; it is too much. They will say that this is hypnosis, that you have been hypnotized, you have been deceived, you are living in an illusion; that love is madness, love is blind; logic has eyes, and love is blind.
The truth is just the opposite. Logic is blind; criticize it! Love has eyes, only love has eyes, because only love can see God. Criticize beliefs, because beliefs are nothing but doubts hidden behind beautiful words. Criticize beliefs, but don't criticize anybody's trust.
And what is the difference? Trust has the quality of love. Belief is just a rational approach. If somebody says, "I believe in God because these are the proofs for God,"
then criticize him, because proofs can only prove the belief. But don't criticize somebody who says, "I love God. I don't know why, I simply love God. I am in love. There are no proofs, in fact there is every proof against him, but still I love God."
Remember the famous statement of Tertullian, a great Christian mystic: CREDO QUIA ABSURDUM Somebody asked him, "Why do you believe in God?" He
said, "Because God is absurd. Because God cannot be believed in, that's why I believe in God."
Everything else can be believed, only God cannot be believed. But in believing that which cannot be believed, one grows. That is reaching for the impossible.
So whenever you see somebody in love, somebody in trust, avoid the temptation to criticize. It is easy to criticize, it is easy to throw poison at somebody's love affair. But you don't know that you have been destructive, you don't know that you have destroyed something of immense beauty. You have thrown a rock on a roseflower.
DON'T TRANSFER THE COW'S LOAD TO THE BULL.
People are always finding scapegoats. Because they cannot answer the strong person, they take revenge on the weak.
There is a story about Mulla Nasruddin. He was in the court of a great king, he was the jester of the court. He said something very funny, but the king felt offended, and he slapped Mulla Nasruddin. Now, Mulla wanted to slap him back, but that was risky, that was dangerous, so he slapped the man who was standing by his side.
The man was taken aback; he said, "What are you doing? I have not done anything to you."
And Mulla said, "Why are you arguing with me? You can slap the man who is standing by your side. The world is big; by the time it comes back again we will see. Just let it go -
- pass it on!"
That's what people are doing, actually doing. It is not just a story. The husband has been humiliated by the boss and he comes home and is angry at the wife for no reason at all.
Or maybe he finds a reason; a reason can always be found, they are so simple to find.
There is too much salt in the vegetables or the chapatti is burnt, or something --
anything!
He will find a reason, and he will convince himself that he is angry because of this reason. The reality is that he is angry at his boss. But the boss is a powerful man; to say anything could be dangerous, he might lose his job. So he smiled when the boss was insulting him; he went on wagging his tail. Now he is projecting the boss onto the wife.
If the story is happening in the West, then the wife can also jump on him. But if it is happening in the East, the wife cannot do anything. In the East, husbands have been telling their wives that husbands have to be treated as gods. The wife cannot say anything; she will have to wait for the child to come back from school and then she will do with the child whatsoever she wanted to do with the husband. She will beat the child.
The child is late, his clothes are torn again, he has done this and that again, he has been playing with the wrong boys again.
And what can the child do? He will go into his room and beat or destroy his toys. In this way it goes on shifting.
Atisha is saying: Please don't shift things; otherwise your whole life you will be just shifting and shifting. Take the responsibility, take the risk. Respond to the situation, whatsoever the cost.
DON'T TRANSFER THE COW'S LOAD TO THE BULL.DON'T BACK THE FAVORITE.
Don't have likes and dislikes. Be just, be fair, don't decide through your prejudices, your likes and dislikes. Just decide the case on its own merit, and your life will have the beauty of truth, your life will have the strength of truth.
DON'T HAVE WRONG VIEWS.
All views are wrong. Life should be lived without views, life should be lived in immediate contact with reality. But if it is not possible, then at least don't have wrong views. What are wrong views? Views which are rooted in prejudice, hate, anger, greed, ambition, violence.
The first thing is, don't have any kind of views. Live life without a philosophy to live by.
No philosophy is needed to live life; in fact the best and most glorious life is the life which is lived without any philosophy -- simple, innocent, spontaneous.
But if it is not possible right now, then start by at least dropping wrong views. Don't live through prejudice, don't live through anger, don't live through hatred, don't live through greed and ambition, don't live through dreams. Be more real, more realistic. Be a little more alert and watchful, watching each act cautiously, because each act creates a chain of actions. Whatsoever you do will remain in the world even when you are gone, because the chain will continue. If you cannot do something beautiful in the world, at least don't do something ugly.
The highest possibility is to live without any views, to just live, to just be. The second best is to at least drop the negative part and follow the positive. And slowly slowly you will see that if you can drop the negative, the positive can also be dropped. In fact to drop the negative is more difficult than to drop the positive.
The person who can drop the no can easily drop the yes, because the no is more ego-strengthening than the yes. The person who can drop anger, hatred and greed can easily drop the positive feelings. And to remain transcendental to all dualities is the ultimate goal of Atisha and all the great masters.
And the last sutra:
DON'T FALL FOR THE CELESTIAL DEMON.
The ego is called the celestial demon. Remember constantly, each moment of your life has to become a constant remembrance, that the ego is very subtle and it has very cunning ways to come back again and again. It follows you to the very last, it hopes to the very last that you will be trapped. Beware of it.
This ego is called in Christian, Mohammedan and Judaic scriptures the devil. It is your own mind, the very center of your own mind.
In the beginning, just try for a few moments to live without any 'I'. You are digging a hole in the earth in the garden; just dig the hole, just become the digging, and forget that
"I am doing it." Let the doer evaporate. You will perspire in the sun, and there will be no doer, and the digging will continue. And you will be surprised how divine life is if the ego can disappear even for a single moment.
Taking a shower, just let the water fall on you, but don't be there as an 'I'. Relax, forget the 'I', and you will be surprised. The shower is not only cooling your body, it cools your innermost core too.
And if you search, you will find so many moments in ordinary life every day when the ego can be put aside. And the joy is so great that once you have tasted it you can do it again and again. And slowly slowly you become capable of putting it off, unless it is absolutely necessary.
And then that day of blessing also comes when you know it is not necessary at all. You say the final goodbye to it. The day the ego dies, you have reached the point of no-self.
That is your real being. Nonbeing is your real being. Not to be is to be for the first time.
Enough for today. The Book of Wisdom Chapter #14
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