10

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‌CHAPTER 10

10 June 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, prasthano means beginning – a divine beginning. Sannyas is a beginning, not the end – the first step but the most vital, the most radical. Even the last step will not be so radical, because the last comes of its own accord – the first has to be taken. It needs your decision, your commitment, your involvement. One hesitates, one feels confused. One feels split – to be or not to be. A thousand and one times one wants to take the step and then holds it back. It’s natural, that hesitation.

The first step is the most difficult, so I say that the first step is almost synonymous with half of the journey. After the first, the second becomes easier because you have taken the risk; and just by taking the risk, great thrill arises. The adventure starts and one becomes more and more fascinated as one moves in. Other steps are easier because then you have a little acquaintance with what it is all about, you have tasted a little bit of it. But the first step is bound to be the hardest, because you don’t know what you are getting into. And there is no way to tell you beforehand. The only way to know what sannyas is, is to go into it. It is an existential experience.

But remember it is only the beginning; don’t feel satisfied with it. The work starts with it – it doesn’t end. And much has to be done, much has to be changed. Much poison is there accumulated in so many lives; that poison has to be taken out. One has lost the very language of joy and bliss and peace; that language has to be learned from the absolute scratch. One has to learn how to unlearn the past, and that is the most difficult learning there is. To learn is easy; to unlearn is very difficult because we become too involved in our learning. We become it, it becomes our identity.

Taking sannyas means that you will be entering an identity crisis. For a few days you will not know who you are any more, because you are not the old one – that is finished; you have moved out of it, that belongs to you no more. It will go on receding, fading, disappearing; soon it will be just a memory. And the new has not yet come, the new has not taken form yet. It can take form only when

the old has utterly disappeared, because it has to be made in the same place. The old building has to be demolished, then the new building has to be built in the same place. It cannot be built before the old is destroyed. So you will be going into an identity crisis, and that is hard. One wants to know who one is, but before one can really know who one is, one has to unlearn all that has been taught: ‘This is you – a Christian, a Hindu, a Mohammedan, an Indian, a Chinese, a German, black, white.’ All that conditioning has to be wiped off.

Sannyas is a deconditioning. It leaves you utterly pure, empty, and that needs courage – to be empty. One would like to be pure, but purity comes only as a by-product of emptiness. When one is utterly empty, there is a purity not of this world.

So much has to be done, and if you keep it in mind it can be done fast. So don’t relax by taking sannyas. Millions of people around the world have been doing that. Somebody becomes a Christian, is baptised and thinks that all is done. Now whatsoever has to be done has to be done by Jesus Christ. He is the saviour and now they are ready – he should save them. There is no saviour. Nobody can save you except yourself.

I can help – I cannot save. I can point the way but I cannot walk for you; you will have to walk on your own. Sannyas is a gesture from your side that you are ready to listen to me. Giving you sannyas is a gesture from my side that I am ready to point the way to you.

[A sannyasin says: I feel more and more to be alone, but when I am alone I cannot do what I like – I don’t know why... I would like to play the guitar or to read or to do some handywork and I cannot – I feel so restless... ]

No, you have not understood the message that is being given by your heart to you; you have misinterpreted it. When you are alone and when you are feeling to be alone, these are all distractions. These are old tricks of the mind. It means you are only pretending you are alone when you start playing the guitar. You are not alone – the guitar is there, the aloneness is gone. Whether you are with a man or a woman or a tree or with a guitar does not make much difference. The other is there and you can start communicating with the other and the dialogue starts. Now the dialogue is between you and the guitar; you become occupied. How can you be alone when you are occupied? And the very desire to be occupied is coming from the mind. The mind wants to disturb your aloneness. That’s why the heart does not feel like doing anything that you like. It is not a question of liking or disliking – the heart wants simply to be.

The heart is not a doer. The mind is a doer and it is constantly hankering to do something. It disappears when you are a non-doer; when you are in ‘wu-wei’, non-doing, the mind cannot exist for a single moment. It is like a bicycle: you have to go on pedalling it. If you pedal, the bicycle goes; if you stop pedalling the bicycle stops. The mind needs continuous pedalling and the heart simply wants to be. You have to listen to the heart – there is no need to be distracted.

I know it is difficult to just be; one starts falling into a kind of abyss, a bottomless abyss. One starts moving into a kind of nowhereness. One does not know what is happening and one cannot even feel oneself, because one has always felt oneself when there was some action. One has a certain knowledge about oneself as the actor, the doer; that is your acquaintance with yourself. You have known yourself only while you were occupied, so when you ask a person ‘Who are you?’ he says

‘I am a doctor.’ Now, what nonsense is he answering? He says ‘I am an engineer.’ Nobody is a doctor, nobody is an engineer. These are the things you are doing. How can you be a doctor? It is a profession. You do it, but you are not it. Somebody says ‘I am a painter’ and somebody else says ‘I am a poet.’

The same question was asked of Bodhidharma by Emperor Wu of China. When Bodhidharma entered China, Wu received him and asked ‘Who are you, sir?’ He said ‘I don’t know.’ Now, you don’t expect an enlightened man to answer like that: ‘I don’t know.’ You will feel ‘Then what is the difference between an unenlightened and an enlightened person? We have been taught that the enlightened person knows who he is and if Bodhidharma says “I don’t know,” then is he enlightened?’ Even the Emperor became suspicious – ‘What kind of answer is this?’ But Bodhidharma was very true.

When you become a non-doer you cannot answer who you are. You don’t know because all knowledge consists of doing. One is a doctor, another is an engineer, the third is a plumber, the fourth is a therapist... but when all action disappears and there is pure being, who are you? There is absolute silence – you disappear! Hence the fear.

Cling to something. At least play on a guitar – that guitar is like a shelter – or paint or dance or sing, but do something! And once you start doing, the mind is happy. But the heart will feel very restless because you missed a great opportunity. You have to understand the desire of the mind and the desire of the heart. They are on totally different levels. And you have to go with the heart, not with the mind.

When you are feeling good being alone, then just be alone. Don’t do anything, unless the doing comes from the heart itself, and then it will be a totally different thing. You will not be a doer then. Just wait for a few months, just sit silently whenever you are feeling good in being alone. Just sit silently and don’t bring your conditioned mind into it which says ‘What are you doing? You are wasting your time.’ This is the only way not to waste time. All other ways are of wasting. This is the only way to save time.

And finally, when you have arrived home, you will understand what I am saying. Then looking backwards you will see that this is the only time that is saved – the time when you were not doing anything and were just sitting silently. All those things that you have been doing and doing are lost and the time is wasted. But the mind, and particularly the western mind, the modern mind – which are synonyms – is continuously saying ‘Do something, otherwise the time is wasted. Create something, otherwise the time is wasted.’ Time is not wasted! There is eternity – there is no fear of wasting it.

You just sit and enjoy sitting. That is the meaning of the word ‘zazen’: enjoying simple sitting. And then one day it happens, it certainly happens, that something comes out of that silence; but it is not a kind of doing. Suddenly you find that you are playing on the guitar... not that you decided to play, not that you were feeling restless, not that you were not feeling good sitting silently. Nothing of the kind. Suddenly you feel that the silence wants to sing or to create music – the silence itself. You are nowhere there. The silence takes the guitar in its hands and starts playing. Then there is great music, then the silence writes poetry. You are nobody, you are nowhere between the poetry and the silence. The poetry itself is translating, the music itself is creating itself. Then being and doing are no more opposites; they are bridged. But for that you will have to wait.

Something beautiful is on the way. Allow it – help it, co-operate with it.

[Another sannyasin asks about how to practise music. He previously wrote Osho a letter about this.]

Your introduction to music has been faulty from the very beginning. You became academically interested in it; that’s where a wrong step has been taken. You have to put it right now, otherwise you will suffer for your whole life.

Music is basically a non-academic phenomenon; it is not mathematics. And the highest realms of mathematics are also just like music; they are also non-academic. In fact wherever you go deep, you move beyond it – the academy.

But this happens to many people because the universities are there and nobody knows what they are doing. Once you are taught poetry in a university, your doors to poetry are closed forever. Then you will never feel the joy that is there; the joy has been killed. That is not the way to teach poetry. One cannot learn poetry for any kind of examination. Poetry should be a sheer joy, for no reason at all. The joy should be intrinsic – art for art’s sake. So is the case with music. Even great poets have been destroyed by the university. Once you read Shakespeare and you prepare for an examination, you are finished with that genius forever; you will never feel interested in him again. The examination has given such a bitter taste on the tongue. And poor Shakespeare has become associated with it; it is a kind of conditioned reflex.

You must have heard about the famous experiment of Pavlov; he discovered the conditioned reflex. He would give his dogs food and would go on ringing a bell; the bell would be rung only when the dogs were eating their food. Soon it became associated: he would just ring the bell and the dogs would start salivating. Now, there is no association between the bell and the saliva; the food has been withdrawn. But via the food the dog’s mind has become associated with the bell.

That’s just what has happened to you. Music became your academic career. You learned it, you went into it for your degrees, certificates, diplomas. Now those diplomas, degrees, are finished – the food has been withdrawn – but the bitterness of it... the bell goes on ringing. You cannot enjoy music. You have misused it.

In a more enlightened world, music, poetry, literature, painting – these things should be taken out of all academies. There should be no examination for them and no certification. People should be invited to enjoy; then more and more people will feel enhanced, blessed.

You have taken a wrong step; you have to put it right. My feeling is that for a few days you stop all kinds of music, forget all about it. A gap is needed so that your mind can become dissociated from the bell. After one year start moving into it again, fresh, as if you don’t know anything. Discover it again – you will have to discover it again; that’s the only way. Then you will have the joy; otherwise you will be doing it and it will be worthless.

That’s what is happening: you feel burdened by it. Just a gap is needed. For one year stop completely. Do something different, anything will do: gardening, farming – anything will do but not music. For one year, starve, be without music and let your appetite arise again. This time it will be pure because this time you will not be going to do some academic thing through it. Then one day

you will be able to move into it. It is worth moving into again, because music is one of the greatest things on the earth. In fact, it is incomparable.

Everything else that is beautiful is, in a subtle way, a kind of music. When you like a painting, it is music in colour. When you like poetry it is music in words. When you go to the Himalayas and you see it, the beauty is overwhelming, it is music – the Himalayan silence and the virgin snows. It is natural music, the harmony of it all.

But for one year you will have to fast – that is my suggestion. If you can do that fasting, your natural appetite will come back. Then start doing music again, but it will be a totally different kind of phenomenon; then do it for the sheer joy of it. Never make great values serve any other end. These are values. They cannot be subservient, they cannot be a means to anything else. Music is a god. It has to be worshipped, celebrated, but not used, not exploited.

This is possible and this will happen. You have just taken a wrong step so it has to be set right. One year of fasting from music will help.

[A sannyasin says: When I see a picture of you... I’m scared of your eyes.]

That’s true! Everybody should be scared of my eyes, but there are ignorant people who are not! You are wise – you have understood it.

[Osho gives an ‘energy darshan’ to a sannyasin and says:]

Just remain more and more open and joyous, because when you are in a state of joy many more things will happen to you. Things are going perfectly beautifully. Remain in a kind of inner dance.

God only comes to dancing people. He is tired and bored with the so-called saints; that is the worst company you can get anywhere. So be cheerful, be happy, and be joyous!

Jesus says so many times to his disciples ‘Rejoice, rejoice, I say unto you, rejoice!’ But something was wrong with those disciples – they don’t seem to have ever rejoiced. It was a sad bunch...(laughter) and I don’t want that kind of bunch here! (laughter) Mm? Laugh and rejoice!

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