22 Walk, enter \-- the way is here

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‌CHAPTER 22

Walk, enter – the way is here

24 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A new sannyasin says he is a musician. Osho says, perfectly good – that will fit with me!... ]

People who are in any way concerned with art are my people, because to me art is closer to religion than anything else. A mathematician is far away; a musician is very close. A logician is very very distant but a poet is just by the comer. Very good! Mm? now your music will start becoming more and more of the inner.

Meditate and it becomes inner... and the inner music is the real music; the outer is just an echo. The appeal of the outer is also because of that; it gives you a certain taste of the inner. Listening to great music people immediately start feeling a kind of relaxation... a rest arises, their mind stops and they become more and more heart-full.

That’s why they love music, but that is nothing compared to the inner music when it is heard. In fact, only when it is heard do you understand what you were doing outside. It was just a haphazard way of finding the inner; in a stuttering way you were doing something of which you were not aware.

And then your outer music will also become very very rich. When you have heard the original, then the echo becomes more and more understandable.

[A sannyasin returning to the West says: I feel very full and enriched. I gained very much.]

I know! I am coming with you. And this can go on growing wherever you are. One just has to be a little more careful in life, that’s all... just a little more careful so that old habits don’t destroy you, that’s all. When something beautiful is growing it is like a rose-bush: you just have to be watchful so

the weeds don’t start growing around the bush; otherwise they will choke the rose, they will kill the rose. They will take the juice from the earth and the flowers will not come up as big as they could have. And weeds are very persistent. If you throw away a rose-bush it will not grow by itself again. All that is good is very very non-persistent, fragile, has no resistance, simply surrenders, but all that is bad is very persistent, very stubborn. You throw the weeds and again next month they are there. You throw them again, and again they are there; they will go on fighting to the very.. and that’s how the mind is.

Now the rose is coming up so you have to be careful. In fact people who don’t have any inner experience, to whom nothing has happened inwardly, can afford to be careless; they have nothing to lose. But once something starts happening you have to be very very careful because now you have a responsibility to yourself. Otherwise this richness will disappear, and once it disappears one starts thinking, ‘Was it a dream?’ One cannot believe; it was so impossible that one starts thinking, ‘I must have imagined it. I must have been seeing dreams!’

Many times god comes very close to people – almost within reach: just a little groping and you will find. You feel the fragrance, you feel the silence, you feel the bliss, but those weeds are very persistent and they go on pulling. And once they have pulled you back you will forget this fragrance, and even if you remember or are reminded by somebody, you will say, ‘Yes, it was there but it must have been imagination or something. How can it be real?’

The weeds become so real that they start posing as the only reality. They not only destroy roses, they make you believe that roses are just imagination or dreams, fantasies; they are not reality.

So when something starts happening – and now it has started happening and it will go on growing – you have to be very watchful and not waste it on small things. Those weeds are very small.… Somebody says something and you get very much disturbed. It was such a small thing: if you think about it for a second you will see how trivial, how useless; what does it matter?

I have heard about a zen masterA woman came to him. She was a very simple, innocent woman

– a villager, a farmer’s wife – and she said, ‘Master, I don’t know how to grow and I don’t know what to do. I am very ignorant, uneducated, so I cannot even ask the right question. Just give me something, some small thing that I can do and I can understand.’

The master looked into her, and she had the potential, great potential. He said, ’Do only one thing

– this is your meditation. Whatsoever happens, simply repeat one thing: “Take no notice”.’ So she followed that – a simple instruction.

The next day her son died – he had been ill for many months – and the whole house started crying and weeping. The husband was beating his chest, children were crying and the neighbours gathered. She was sitting there silently and somebody said, ‘Have you gone mad? Your son is dead!’

She said, ‘Take no notice.’

After a few days the house caught fire: everybody was running about and it was a great mess. The whole town was trying to put the fire out and she was standing outside just looking at things.

Somebody said, ‘What are you doing here? Do something! Fetch something, whatsoever is valuable!’

And she said, ‘Take no notice’.

After a few more weeks one of her sons fell into the well. People tried to pull him out, and she was laughing! The husband thought, ‘Now it is absolutely certain that she is mad!’ And he asked, ‘Why are you laughing?’

She said, ‘Take no notice’.

He said, ‘You have gone mad and you are driving us all mad! Who has taught you this “Take no notice”?’

So she took him to the master and she said to the master, ‘I am immensely happy. Nothing makes any difference to me any more but my husband thinks I am mad. Say something to him; help him too.’

The master looked at the woman and said to the husband, ‘Don’t be worried. Her first satori has happened. She is not mad! I have never seen such a potential woman before. Within two, three months, she has come close to home... and just by a single thing, but she really followed it.’

By small things life is destroyed and by small things life is saved; in fact there are no big things. So just take care and don’t get into small things. And you will be surprised that ninety-nine percent of your life, everybody’s life, consists of foolish things: quarrelling with the husband or with the child or with the friends... for nothing! If you think about it, if you pay a little attention, you yourself will laugh: it is so ridiculous!

So just watch and it will go on growing.

[The sannyasin adds: I wanted to ask... I feel very lonely in my community. There is no support yet.]

Create it! Just start talking to people, giving books to people, and people will start coming. It is everybody’s need. They have just to know where they can quench their thirst, that’s all; they are thirsty. Soon you will find that friends are gathering and when they gather they will be a great help to you.

You don’t have any centre there yet?

Should I give you a name so that you start a small centre for me?

[She answers: People were coming but I felt it was egoistic on my part to help them and I pushed them away.]

No, no, no. Just give all your ego to me and start work, mm?

This will be the name for your centre: abyo namdam; it means welcome. So everybody is welcome there, and people will be coming soon. Just start, mm? Good.

[A visitor says: I can’t find the way.]

The way is here! There is no need to find it. Just walk, enter – the way is here. Courage is needed, the way is not needed... the way is available. Become orange!

Just courage is needed; the way is not the question! [He answers: I’ve got some fear.]

So it is not a question of the way; it is the question of fear!

With fear nothing ever happens. To get attached to fear is one of the most stupid things a man can do, because through fear nothing ever happens. Fear cripples you, paralyses you, kills you. What can happen with fear? You will shrink, you will become more and more closed. Fear won’t allow you any adventure in life – and life is adventure. It is only for those who are courageous enough to go into the unknown, the uncharted sea. One has to go without any map... One has simply to go!

Fear keeps you rooted in the past; fear is destructive to the future. So if you want to be afraid, only be afraid of fear and nothing else. One should fear only fear, that’s all.

[The visitor says: I’m a teacher... It’s difficult.] Good... you have a good job...

I am... I have always been a teacher, so I don’t see how it is difficult, mm? I never wanted to be anything else!

That may also be because of the fear – because fear never allows you to learn anything and without learning how are you going to teach? Fear makes you so self-conscious that you will be afraid of the disciples, students – you will be continuously afraid of what they are thinking about your performance.

Fear turns everything into a performance; life becomes bogus. Fear simply means that you are so concerned about the self – how you look to others, what their opinion is. Is some boy giggling and laughing? Is he trying to ridicule you? There is fear and you start trembling and you lose all consciousness; that may be the same thing.

Drop fear – I will make you a great teacher! [Osho gives him sannyas.]

... So forget the old name and forget all fear with it – and it is only a question of forgetting.

Man is nothing but the mind: if you think you are a coward you are a coward; if you think you are brave you are brave. It is thinking that makes it so: as a man thinketh, so he becomes. It is simply a question of his own thinking, but when you think something again and again it gets more and more deep in you; it becomes a rut in the brain cells.Immediately, whenever any situation arises, the deep-rooted habit starts asserting itself and you think you are that. You are not!

You are not your habits because you are not your brain and you are not your thoughts. You are this awareness that feels that there is fear. So you are not fear – you can see the fear. You are somebody else: the watcher.

Deva means divine and rasen means juice – divine juice. And it is there... it just has to start flowing. Once it starts flowing you will be in such a rejoicing.

Every human being carries such great joy but does not allow it to happen... carries an ocean of joy but remains a poor man, remains a beggar. So drop beggarly ways! From this moment you are a king, a master of yourself.

The old habits will come again and again but you have simply to say ‘No, nothing doing! I am free of you’ – and soon you will see that they have stopped coming. When you don’t receive them they don’t come; when they are not welcome they don’t come.

[The enlightenment intensive group is present. One member asks: I want to know – since you are a mirror – who I am.]

Mirrors don’t speak! They simply show. You have to look in the mirror, otherwise...

[The sannyasin continues: I want to know how to work past the limit of curiosity to attain the core of my question.]

It is going to happen, mm?.it is going to happen – wait. It is not a question that can be answered.

It will happen; just keep it inside you. Just go on holding it there: ‘Who am I?’ Not that you have to repeat it continuously. No, in some moments simply just once remember ‘Who am I?’ and leave it there. Before you go to sleep in the night, just remember ‘Who am I?’ and fall asleep. In the morning when you are waking up, just remember ‘Who am I?’.and don’t even think that the answer has to

come.

It is not that the answer has to come; it is not that somebody says, ‘You are xyz’, or something. If some answer comes like that, know it is wrong; all answers are wrong. It is not a question to find an answer for.

One day you will suddenly find, ‘Yes, it is there!’ You know it.and in that moment the question

disappears. Not that you receive an answer – the answer is never received and the question also disappears – but you have the taste of it.

A disciple came to a zen master. He had been meditating for three, four years, and he would come again and again and ask, ‘Sir, am I not ready yet?’

His question was the same as this ‘Who am I?’ – and the master would say ‘Wait! The answer is to come; go on questioning.’ By the time nine years had passed, one day the question disappeared. He tried to formulate it and he could not remember what it was. For nine years he was asking ‘Who am I?’ and suddenly one day he fell into such a new space that he could not remember what the question was! For nine years he had asked!

Then he knew, and he came laughing. The master said, ‘So now, now tell me: What is the answer?’ And he said, ‘It is like when you drink water: you know whether it is cold or hot.’

It is not a question that has to be answered. It is a question that explodes into no-question. Go on with it... this group has been really good for you!

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