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Chapter 11 - A noah's ark of consciousness
The tourist replies, "They told me that there is no room to turn a car around on top of the mountain."
The man says, "I have lived here all my life. I know there is enough space to turn around."
Half an hour later, he sees the tourist driving down again, backwards. He stops the car and says, "What are you doing now?"
The tourist replies, "You were right. There was enough room to turn around."
Whatever I have said is simple: Start being aware with day-to-day, routine actions, and while you are doing your routine actions, remain relaxed. There is no need to be tense. When you are washing the floor, what is the need to be tense? Or when you are cooking the food, what is the need to be tense? There is not a single thing in life which requires your tension. It is just your unawareness and your impatience.
I have not found anything -- and I have lived in all kinds of ways, with all kinds of people.
And I have always been puzzled: why are they tense?
It seems tension has nothing to do with anything outside you, it has something to do within you. Outside you always find an excuse only because it looks so idiotic to be tense without any reason. Just to rationalize, you find some reason outside yourself to explain why you are tense.
But tension is not outside you, it is in your wrong style of life. You are living in competition -- that will create tension. You are living in continuous comparison -
- that will create tension. You are always thinking either of the past or of the future, and missing the present which is the only reality -- that will create tension.
It is a question of simple understanding; there is no need of any competition with anybody.
You are yourself, and as you are, you are perfectly good. Accept yourself.
This is the way existence wants you to be. Some trees are taller; some trees are smaller.
But the smaller trees are not tense -- neither are the taller trees full of ego. Existence needs variety. Somebody is stronger than you; somebody is more intelligent than you -- but in something, you also must be more talented than anybody else.
Just find your own talent. Nature never sends any single individual without some unique gift. Just a little search... perhaps you can play on the flute better than the president of the country can be a president -- you are a better flautist than he is a president.
There is no question of any comparison. Comparison leads people astray. Competition keeps them continuously tense, and because their life is empty, they never live in the moment.
All they do is to think of the past, which is no more, or project in the future, which is not yet.
This whole thing drives people almost abnormal -- insane. Otherwise there is no need: no animal goes mad, no tree needs any psychoanalysis. The whole existence is living in constant celebration, except man. He is sitting aloof, tense, worried.
A small life, and you are losing it and every day death is coming closer. That creates even more angst -- "Death is coming closer and I have not even started living." Most people realize only when they die that they were alive -- but then it is too late.
Just live the moment.
Osho - The Hidden Splendor 115
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