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Chapter 5 - Perfectly imperfect
He had heard all the stories about Socrates and his wife, Xanthippe. She must have been a really dangerous woman, an Amazon! She used to beat Socrates. Once she poured hot water, boiling hot water on him; she was boiling it for tea but became angry and poured it on Socrates' face.
Socrates was an ugly man, very ugly -- snub-nosed, nothing worth looking at, disgusting.
Xanthippe made him more disgusting! Half of his face remained burned his whole life.
So this young man had come to the right person to ask: "You have experienced what it is to be a husband more than anybody else, and the whole of Athens is full of stories about your wife and you, and you are the wisest man, declared so by the Oracle of Delphi, so I have come to ask you -- I am in a dilemma -- should I get married or not?"
Socrates said, "You should get married."
The young man could not believe it -- he had not expected this answer. He said, "You are saying it after your whole experience of having Xanthippe as your wife?"
He said, "Yes. If you get a good wife she will make you succeed in life, she will put ambition in you. And you are young; you will need some ambition. If you get a wife like mine then you will become a philosopher. My wife has helped me immensely to learn the art of remaining unaffected. Whatsoever happens -- success or failure, misery or happiness -- it is all the same to me. She has made me centered. Either way you will not lose, so get married."
There is a possibility -- every possibility, in fact -- that the whole credit for Buddha becoming enlightened goes to Yashodhara, his wife. The whole credit for Mohammed becoming the prophet of God MUST go to his nine wives. There is every possibility that these people were trying somehow not to be disturbed, not to be distracted, and they started searching for a beyond, they started searching for a within, the beyond within, so that they could forget the whole
world. The wife, the woman is really the closest world around you: she surrounds you everywhere, from every nook and corner. So your so-called great men are indebted to women, and your many really great men are also indebted to women, although they have not accepted it. That is ugly.
Many times I am asked why women don't become enlightened. The reason is, no man is capable of driving them to that extreme! It has nothing to do with women, it is just the impotence of the man -- he cannot drive them to that point. Moreover, women are always grounded, centered, man is not grounded, not centered. He remains airy-fairy and he needs grounding, he needs centering.
Strolling through London's Soho district, the young cockney noticed an attractive girl furiously struggling to hold down her microskirt in the brisk wind. Tipping his hat, he said,
"Airy, ain't it?"
"What the hell did you expect?" she replied. "Feathers?"
Sheila and George were spending the first night of their honeymoon in a quaint medieval town in France. To add piquancy to the evening, Sheila suggested coyly that they make love every time the old night watchman rang his hourly bell. George smiled in delight at this Osho - The Goose is Out
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