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Chapter 19 - At the maximum you disappear
19
At the maximum you disappear
22 March 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
AS I WALK TO DISCOURSE EACH MORNING, THIS THOUGHT COMES BEFORE
ME: WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS BLISSFUL EXPERIENCE OF SITTING
AT YOUR FEET? JOYFULLY, SOMETIMES TEARFULLY, AWAITING YOUR
GLANCE UPON ME AND THEN LONGING FOR THE NEXT DAY TO DAWN AND
BRING WITH IT YET ONE MORE OPPORTUNITY OF BEING IN YOUR PRESENCE...
BELOVED MASTER, IS THIS NOT ALSO A TYPE OF GREED?
Zareen, existence is so generous, life is so bountiful that one need not deserve, need not be worthy to receive its gifts. On the contrary, one has to be absolutely humble, a nobody --
receptive, available, with all the doors of the heart open, trusting -- and existence showers on him flowers, like rain. The experience deepens one's humbleness and creates a new quality in one's being, of which one is generally not aware -- that of gratefulness, gratefulness to all, gratefulness to the whole.
Do we deserve life? Do we deserve love? The very idea of deserving has been
implanted in us by the marketplace. What do these trees deserve? But the sun comes every day and the stars come every night, and the trees are constantly in silent meditation. They are also waiting.
And waiting is not greed, waiting is simply our nature, waiting means that our doors are open and we are ready to welcome the guest whenever he comes.
A beautiful poem by Rabindranath Tagore, "The King of the Night"... There used to be a very huge temple, so huge that there were one hundred priests to worship the statues of gods in the temple. One night the chief priest dreamt, and the dream was such that it made him wake up -- he could not believe it, but he could not disbelieve it either.
In the dream he saw God himself saying to him, "Tomorrow is the fullmoon night. Clean the whole temple, get ready -- I may come any moment. For thousands of years this temple has been calling me, but the call was professional; hence it was not heard. Your call is not professional. You are the first chief priest in this temple whose heart is full of longing, full of prayer, full of waiting. You are not simply doing the rituals, your whole life is in it. So don't forget: tomorrow I am coming and I am giving you an advance notice, so that the temple is ready to receive the guest for which it was made many, many centuries before."
It was difficult to believe that God would speak to him -- he is nobody, he does not deserve it. On the contrary, he has so many weaknesses, so many frailties which every human being is prone to... but on the other hand, how to disbelieve? The dream was truer than our so-called true life.
Osho - The Hidden Splendor 189
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