18

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‌CHAPTER 18

18 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin had sent Osho some photos of his stone sculptures; stone arrangements.]

I looked at your stone sculpture – beautiful! In the new commune you will have to do a few things. When the new commune is ready you have to plan a small place for your statues. Just make as many Buddhas as possible!

Life should be a sweet song but man has made it very bitter, very ugly. It has lost all the qualities of music, rhythm, harmony. It has become an ugly struggle to survive, and survival to no purpose at all, just an ugly struggle which leads nowhere, a cut-throat competition, absolutely unnecessary.

Life is meant to be a celebration, not a competition. We need not be enemies here. If we are enemies to each other, that’s what competition means, then if life becomes a hell it is not a surprise, it should not be a surprise. We make it a hell because we make it a conflict; we reduce it to violent struggle. It is multi-dimensional: one nation against other nations, one religion against other religions, one caste against other castes, man against woman, rich against poor, one ideology against another ideology. It is multi-dimensional, it is very complicated, hence it has lost the rhythm, it has lost the quality of song and dance.

Man is missing something terribly; something has gone really wrong; man has moved astray. Even birds are far more in tune with god than man. Even animals, trees and rocks, are more in harmony with existence than man. And bliss is a by-product, a by-product of being in harmony with existence. My sannyas is an effort to bring a song to your life, to transform it from the ugly plane of conflict to the beautiful plane of celebration. And that is real revolution: when you are no more an enemy, when you befriend the whole, when you are in love with the whole as it is, when you are not in any need to impose yourself upon it, when you can accept and bless it as it is, and when you can feel grateful for all that god has given, for all that existence providesThen slowly slowly a new kind of

fragrance arises in you. That fragrance is sannyas. it’s taste is tremendously sweet; it is the taste of nectar.

The old religions were against life. They created more conflict, they made people very serious. My sannyas is playful, and life can be a song only when it is full of play, really playful, when it has no seriousness – sincere, of course, but not serious – when there is a sense of humour, when one is capable of laughing, weeping, dancing, when one is capable of enjoying the small moments and small joys that life brings every day, and in thousands of ways it brings them.

When one is not hankering for great things, extraordinary things, incredible things, when one is not desiring and hankering for exceptional, egoistic highs, but on the contrary one is satisfied with the ordinariness of every thing, then the very ordinariness becomes luminous. Then all ordinariness disappears, then nothing is ordinary. When you are satisfied with the ordinary, then nothing is ordinary, everything becomes extraordinary. Then every small thing contains the great and every small event is historical; it has a tremendous import. And your life goes on becoming richer and richer in songs.

And if man has lived rightly, his death becomes the crescendo, the ultimate song. Then death too is beautiful! And unless death is beautiful a man has not lived rightly. Death is the test, the criterion.

Sugat. It is a name of Buddha. It means well-gone, one who has gone so well this time that he will not be coming back again. Hence it was a name of Buddha. He has lived and learned the lesson of existence; now there will be no need for him to come back to the same school, he will not be born again in the body. The day he became enlightened, the first thing he declared – he looked at the sky and said – ‘Gods, now you will not need to make another body for me. Thank you for all those houses that you had built for me in the past, but now I will not need any Other structure. Now the journey is finished. I have come to the end!’ That is the meaning of Sugat: one who will not be coming back again... and this is possible for everyone.

It all depends on how deep we go within ourselves. It depends: if we penetrate the core of our being then we will not be coming back, because life is nothing but a training, a training to know oneself, and unless you know yourself you will be thrown back again and again into the womb. The lesson bas to be learned; there is no way of avoiding it.

And to be initiated into sannyas means to be initiated into the discipline which takes you to the beyond. Sannyas will make you sugat – one who has gone so perfectly that he will not be coming back!

[The new sannyasin asks: What is the essence of beauty?]

It is an experience of emptiness. When you are not, then beauty is. To be absent, to be utterly absent, that is the essence of beauty. And whenever it happens, you come across beauty. To the poet, to the painter, to the musician, it happens accidentally. He is not aware of how and why it is happening. To the mystic it happens knowingly; he is aware of the cause.

One day you see a sunset.… The impact is tremendous, the sky is so colourful; it bewilders you, it creates awe. In that moment of wonder, thinking stops, because whenever there is awe, thinking

disappears. They can’t exist together. And when there is no thinking there is no thinker. When the mind is not spinning and weaving thoughts, you disappear, and suddenly you see the beauty of the sunset!

The beauty is not in the sunset, the sunset has simply triggered emptiness in you. It became just an occasion for you to disappear, and now beauty comes out of you and spreads all over the sky. That’s how it always happens. But the poet naturally thinks that it is the beautiful sunset. He thinks the beauty is there in the object, and it is apparently so. But the mystic knows that it is not so; it is only apparently so.

The mystic knows that the beauty is coming from his innermost emptiness, the sunset is just reflecting his glory; the sunset is just a mirror. The mystic knows that beauty is subjective. the artist thinks that the beauty is objective. But the artist has not yet really known the root cause of it, so he rushes from one experience to another, from one woman to another woman, from one sunset to another sunset, from one flower to another flower, in search of beauty. But the mystic simply closes his eyes and disappears inside because he knows the source of all experiences; he need not go searching all over the world.

And if you search for it outside it is very illusive, because outside is only reflected. The real mystery is inside, in the heart of your hearts! And that centre has no ego, no self, hence one feels tremendous emptiness.

Buddha calls it cessation of the mind, nirvana. Nirvana is beauty – that is the very essence of beauty.

Arihanto means becoming victorious over the inner enemies. The real enemies are not outside; they are inside. The ego, greed, anger, possessiveness, and so on and so forth, are the real enemies, and unless they are all overcome one remains fragmentary, divided, split. one remains torn apart, one remains only somehow together, because greed pulls one on one side and hate pulls one on another side, and anger claims one on another side, and they are so manySo one moment you

go with the greed, another moment you go with the anger, another moment you go with love. But you go on moving in a kind of circle, a vicious circle. Your life does not grow, it simply moves in the same rut: the same anger, the same greed, again and again and again. That’s why life becomes so boring, because nothing new seems to happen.

All these enemies have to be overcome, and when I say ‘overcome’ I don’t mean that they have to he destroyed. By overcoming is meant that you have won them, their hearts, that you have persuaded and seduced them into your inner harmony, that they are no more fragments but have fallen into a kind of unity, that a kind of integration has arisen in you.

If anger has to be dropped you will lose much energy, because anger contains much energy. It has to be absorbed, not dropped. If greed is dropped you will miss all life; your life will become impotent, because greed has drive. Greed has to be absorbed so that its drive remains in you. If you totally cut your possessiveness from your being you will lose passion; you will become cold.

So this is one of the greatest problems for a seeker. It is easy to remain divided, because that is how one normally is, but one does not grow. The polar opposite is to drop all these things; that’s what the monk has been doing down the ages. Cut greed, escape from the world where greed

can have any possibility of growing, escape from relationships. When you are not related, how can possessiveness exist? Renounce all that you have so that there is no question of being greedy, possessive, attached.

The monk became afraid of life because he was afraid of these enemies, and in life they are all there. He became an escapist: go to the monastery or to the Himalayas, live in a cave. But just by escaping from the challenges nothing is transformed; greed remains in a seed form. Of course it cannot manifest in a Himalayan cave, there is no opportunity to express itself, but even if you have lived in a Himalayan cave for fifty years and you come back to the marketplace, you will find again that you are greedy. It will remain as a potential, it will wait. It will remain like a seed on a rock. It cannot grow on a rock, certainly, because it cannot send its roots down, but it will wait. Some time, some opportunity will arrive: the wind may take it to the soil, and once it falls into the soil, immediately it will grow its roots, immediately the tree will start growing. So the monk simply moves into a seed form. All that was there in the marketplace remains in him; it is not true transformation.

Hence I don’t tell my sannyasins to escape from the world. Live in the world and still all these enemies have to be overcome without destroying them, without fighting with them. One has to understand them, one has to go deep into them, watch them, feel them, feel their potential, feel what they can contribute to one’s life; and everything can contribute so much.

The really wise person is one who transforms even poison into medicine. And that’s the whole alchemy of sannyas: all poisons have to be transformed into nourishing medicines. So I am not telling you to drop these things; I am telling you to understand them. By understanding you will overcome. And the state when one has overcome all inner enemies and one has become integrated is called arihanto. It is one of the most beautiful words.

[The new sannyasin says: I’m wondering why I haven’t felt anything more from you than I have?]

You get only that much which you can get at the moment – you cannot get more. You can hanker for more but hankering is not the question. You get only that much for which you are ready, and that’s just fair. You get only that which you deserve; more is not possible.

For more you will have to become more open and more available.

If you open only one window you cannot see the full sky; you can see only a part of the sky, a few stars. But ordinarily people don’t even open the whole window; they simply look through the keyhole. Then even if you can get a glimpse of a single star, that is enough. But that single glimpse will help: tomorrow you may gather more courage to open a window or the door. Some day you may gather more courage to come out of the room. It depends on how much you open up.

And the opening cannot be forced, because that will be a kind of spiritual rape. And that is not helpful; it is very destructive. It can be done, something can be forced on you for which you are not ready, but you will not be able to digest it. It will be a load, it will be a poison in your system. And secondly: you will become afraid, frightened. You may never come to me again. It is always good to absorb in small homeopathic closes.

And always remember: god only gives you that much for which you are ready at a certain moment, never less, never more. But I can understand – the desire is always for more, and when you see that others are getting more then naturally you become disturbed: ‘Why is it not happening to me?’

You will need a little more work. Next time when you come, go through a few more groups, become more available... and it is going to happen. Even this much is good! Feel grateful for that which has happened.

Even if it is tiny, just a small opening, this is the beginning. Much more will be coming.

Madhunad. It means sweet music, sweet sound. The music is there in the heart. It is always there, it is our very life; it is the stuff we are made of. This is one of the greatest contributions of the mystics to the world. Just as physics has arrived at the conclusion that existence is made of the stuff called electricity, in the same way mystics down the ages, in different countries, unrelated to each other, have always arrived at one conclusion: that existence is made of a subtle music, of sound. Now both these findings can be correlated because according to physics sound is nothing but an expression of electricity, and according to the mystics electricity is nothing but an intensity of a certain sound.

In the East there have been certain melodies which can create fire. Just by singing, just by creating a certain sound and vibe, fire can be created. And those are not just stories: music can create heat. There is a certain kind of music which is war music, it creates heat, it creates a fighting energy. Modern music, jazz, etcetera, hits the sex centre. It creates heat, it drives people’s sexual energy to unknown peaks. It is sensuous, it is intoxicating.

The ancient music, particularly classical music, Eastern, is just the opposite: it cools you, it tranquillizes you; it brings an equilibrium, an equanimity. Sex simply disappears if you listen to Eastern classical music deeply. In those moments you cannot think of sex, it is impossible; you think only of meditation. Your higher centres of being start functioning; lower centres simply stop functioning. Music can create heat; music can create coolness. There is a possibility that mystics and a physicist can come to a conclusion together; maybe they have been exploring the same phenomena from different sides.

As you go deeper in meditation you will hear this music. Zen people call it the sound of one hand clapping. In India we call it nad; nad means: there is no instrument. There is nobody playing but still the music is heard. It is uncreated music, unstruck music. And this is our very being, but we are lost in the noise of the head and we cannot hear the still small voice within.

The whole work of meditation is to move from the noisy head to the musical heart. And once this starts happening you are on an incredible journey. For the first time you will feel ecstasy arising in you, for the first time a subtle spiritual drunkenness – one becomes a drunkard.

Deva means divine, mouni means the silent one – divine silence, and that has to be the key for you. Become more and more silent, speak less and less... only the necessary. Drop all that is unnecessary and you will be surprised at simply how much energy is saved. Read only very little; there is no need to read unnecessarily, and there is much that is unnecessary which we go on reading. Once you read it then it vibrates in your mind. When you say something again and again, you repeat it, it becomes a groove. When you say something, somebody says something in return; that is a continuous nourishment for the mind.

Speak less, listen less, read less: bring them to the minimum. And you will be surprised that all that you have always wanted to happen will start happening. Meditate more, sit silently more, just with closed eyes, with yourself. Enjoy your aloneness, and that is your way to god.…

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