15

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‌CHAPTER 15

15 May 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says: when people make him feel important, he feels bad because it seems to be helping him to go off on yet another ego-trip. Osho says this too is an ego-trip – to feel bad. If the ego is there, whatsoever you do is an ego-trip. Demanding that people not give you importance is ego-tripping as much as demanding that they do]

The ego is very subtle. Even the humble man is on the ego-trips: now he is thinking that he is egoless. But I understand your problem. The problem is: what to do about it? Just be watchful.

When people give importance to you, watch how the ego arises, how it starts taking possession of you. They are giving you an opportunityuse it as a meditation device. Sometimes they will not

give you importance, they may even insult you; so then too, watch it – how your ego feels hurt.

The feeling of being hurt or the feeling of being fulfilled in the ego is the same, it is the same wound! The only thing that is needed is to be watchful, to be alert about it. The more watchful you are, the less ego there will be. And when the alertness is almost like a light inside you, then whether people insult you or praise you makes no difference. In being watchful the ego becomes ridiculous.…

[A sannyasin, returning to the west, says she fears that the anger which was provoked in the primal group here will surface again with her family particularly her mother – or in self-destructive ways.

Osho checks her energy.]

Mm mm – it is there and very much. You have just touched the tip of it, mm ? The whole iceberg is there and you are very much afraid of it. The fear is not allowing you to express it; the fear is sitting on top of it.

And fear is bad – anger is good. If one has to choose between fear and anger, then anger has to be chosen, because anger is hot energy, anger is life energy; fear is death, fear helps you to shrink. Anger is in the service of life, anger has some survival value, great value. So start choosing anger instead of fear.…

But this is how it happens in the childhood: parents force fear to repress anger. They create much fear in the child – that the child will be punished, that the mother will die, the mother will leave the child, or something wrong will happen if the child does not listen to the mother or to the father – so rather than being angry, the child becomes afraid.

Anger is positive energy, fear is negative energy. Something can be done with anger because it is hot and alive; it can be transformed in many ways. Nothing can be done with fear. Fear creates sadness, fear creates lethargy, fear creates inactivity, and fear makes a person almost imprisoned.

So three things you have to do.…

One, if it is possible back home that you can go running, that will help tremendously. If it is possible, start running – there is nothing better than running – a three, four mile run.

By and by, slowly increase it to three, four miles, but really go into it like a meditation.

Go alone early in the morning, then you will be more free with the elements – the air, the sun, the atmosphere, the trees, the birds. Don’t be competitive in running. If you run with somebody, our minds are so poisoned by competition, that naturally you start competing. If you run with somebody, you want to defeat them – unconsciously, you want to come first. The poison has gone very deep, and when running becomes competitive it is no more meditation; it is a sport, not a meditation. So running has to be noncompetitive – one thing .…

The second thing: running has to be without any self-criticism – that you should improve it, that you should run more, that you can do better. That is nonsense! You are not competing with anybody, you are simply enjoying the thrill of it. So do it with no self-criticism – just for fun!

If we can do at least one thing in every day for one hour without any judgement, that is meditation. Just out of fun! And we have been so badly conditioned against fun; everything has to be turned into a utility. People will ask ‘Why are you running? You are not fat, so why? You are not interested in reducing your weight, so why? You are not going to compete, then why?’

We have been trained to be always seeking some utility, and all that is beautiful happens only when we are not utilitarians – when we are doing something just for the very joy of it, the sheer joy. And running goes very deep. That is why I am suggesting it. There is fear; below the fear there is anger and below the anger, there is love, and below all these things something has to be found, so start working below all these layers.

Running is one of the deepest layers of humanity because man has been a runner for millennia. Just for a few hundred years man has stopped running. He was a hunter – running was one of the basic things to know. Still in southern africa, hunters exist; there are tribes which are just hunting tribes.

They have such beautiful bodies, such long necks, that even animals will feel a little jealous. They are runners: they can run for twenty, thirty, forty miles without any gap. They have to run with the animals. Sometimes they are hunting the animals and sometimes the animals are hunting them, and each time they have to run, and run fast; it is a question of life and death.

So the deepest layer in humanity is that of hunting. Our brain cells have an in-built capacity to run. Swimming is not so deep – it is a learned thing – but this running is really deep. So sometimes it happens that a runner can achieve more meditative energy than a meditator! In meditation the possibility is ten percent, in running the possibility is eighty percent.

In a better world, running will become one of the most important meditations, because when you are running fast, breathing deeply, by and by, after the first mile you don’t have any separation between you and the body. That division of mind and body disappears, you become psychosomatic: you are one, one unity.

After the first mile when you are running and the breathing has taken hold of you and is really going deep – it has to go deep, exhaling, inhaling, both are the deepest possible – your whole blood is being purified, the air is passing through you – the sun rays are passing through, you are again part of nature, you are again an animal, not a civilised human being – which is a dead thingWhen

you are an animal again, suddenly worries disappear. A person cannot run and worry together – that has not been possible. Many people have tried.…

I, myself, was running fifteen miles a day for almost ten years. After the first mile you are turned on. No LSD can do that! You are simply no more part of humanity; you are part of the universe. And it is such a certain thing that after two, three months, you can depend on it; every day it will happen! It is just a question of three months.

Once the running reaches to your deepest core and your hunter which is there – you still carry it in the neurons of the brain; it just has to be tapped again, made alive, invoked – becomes alive again, once it is invoked, it will give you tremendous joy. And with that joy, fear will disappear; with that joy, anger will disappear and love will start flowing. One thing – if it is possible; this is the best meditation that I can prescribe for you.

If it is not possible, then jogging – just jog in the room; that is a substitute. But if the first is not possible then the second. If you feel that even the second is not possible, then put a pillow in front of you and be angry.

[See ‘Hammer on the Rock’ for a full description of the anger meditation.]

This pillow meditation then has to be done twice a day – twenty minutes in the morning, twenty in the evening – but if you can run then nothing else is needed. One hour running.…

[A sannyasin, returning to a sannyasin centre in the West, says that he has something to say but it is too much to express, it becomes caught up in his throat. Osho says that there is a block in the throat and to practise chanting will be helpful.]

Chanting any word will do. ‘Allah’ will be helpful, so say ‘allah’ going this way (swaying to the left) then say ‘allah’ going this way (to the right); one time this side, one time that, mm ? Go on swaying, and it will make you drunk. Say ‘allah’ loudly that will release the block.…

There are great possibilities with the sound ‘allah’, and when you do it with swaying.… Just get lost into it – for twenty minutes at least.

That will relax the whole throat centre and will make you very creative, because that is the centre of creativity too. That is the centre of expression, so all expression comes from that centre. And once it is released, you will have much energy to do many things.

If this centre is not relaxed, then a person can create but creativity will remain a little dragging, a burden. And creativity will remain almost like an obsession – that one has to do it; it will be as if one is possessed. If you don’t do it, you will feel uncomfortable; if you do it, you don’t really enjoy it as much as possible.

Once the throat centre is relaxed, there is no obsession – creativity is natural, it comes in a relaxed way. You do things but there is no duty to do. They have more the quality of spontaneity, and naturally they attain to greater beauty and greater perfection – with no idea of perfection.

This chanting will help, so while you are there, continue chanting. And teach people in [the centre] also – you can do it together, mm?

But if you do it together, then all the people have to sway the same way, otherwise it destroys the rhythm. They all should sit and sway, left and right, together, simultaneously, then you create much energy .… And this is the right posture to sit in (he is sitting with his legs folded under him). This is the Mohammedan posture to sit for ‘allah’.

[A sannyasin said she had been trying hard to witness, and although it gave her a headache, she was addicted to it.]

Awareness will come, witnessing will come, but you are not to do it. When you do it, you miss the whole point of it, because when you do witnessing it becomes more like attention than witnessing. And there is a lot of difference.

Attention is tension; the very word is made of tension. Attention means tension in a certain direction.

Witnessing is a non-tense state. You cannot do it. It happens, it happens while you are doing something else but doing it so totally that it comes. It is a guest: you can only invite it but you cannot pull it. You can wait for it, you can keep the door open. And to keep the door open, the only way is to get involved in things totally. Because of this attention, you cannot get involved totally.

Mm? you are always standing aloof, trying hard. That trying hard is your undoing, so relax.

... It will happen. You just have to remember it now, mm? It has become a pattern; it will take a few days to break.

Do the meditations as fun, like a small child – not like a grown-up person. Grown-up people are very dangerous people. They have not really become grown-up – they are simply tense, and they think that tension is their grown-up-ness. Deep down they have not grown, because through tension there is no growth; it is the only block.

... Do the meditations, but do them more as a play, not as a great work and great religious thing – that you are going to attain to god and nirvana and enlightenment... all rubbish!

... If you go to the meditations, go only to enjoy! If you feel that if you want to enjoy yourself you will not go, don’t go – go running, but be relaxed.

For these days that you are here you have to be utterly relaxed. Do things that you like and don’t do things that you don’t like. For your whole life you have been doing things that you don’t like and you have been avoiding doing things that you really like. That is your whole pattern.

That has to be broken now, you have to come out of this vicious circle.

Everything is possible – just your tension has to go. It is like a hard crust around you, otherwise you are very soft inside. Once this hard crust is broken and dissolved, the softness will start flowing. And there is not much trouble – just a small understanding. You are capable of it, so don’t be worried.

Here, from tomorrow morning do only things that you like and enjoy. And even if in the middle of the meditation you feel that now you are not enjoying, walk out, mm? I give you total freedom.

[A sannyasin asks about returning to the West to take custody of her son, as she and her husband are divorcing.]

This is my suggestion: if you feel that you are too disturbed you can go and do whatsoever you want to do. But this is my suggestion – that going and fighting for the son is not going to help you, is not going to help the father, is not going to help the son either! If you really love the son then there is no problem you can leave him with the father. There is no problem.

The father loves the son as much as you do, and he may be simply worried that you have gone berserk or something. Mm? – you have become a sannyasin in orange clothes, and you have fallen into some hypnotic situation, the father must be thinking. And of course he has to think about his son too. If you bring the son, he will become a sannyasin, so the father is afraid, mm? But my feeling is that there is no harm for the son.

And it is always good for the son.He has been with you for five, seven years; that is quite enough

education you have given, as much as he needs from a woman. Let him be with the father and he will be enriched by that; he will not suffer through it. But if he feels this conflict – that the father wants to pull him towards him and you want to pull him towards you – he will be torn. Think of him. If you love him, then think of him.

Never fight over children because then the child starts feeling ‘What is happening?’ – he is in a conflict then.

... This is hurting your ego, nothing else, so you want to take the revenge on the son. If he is settled and feeling good, then perfectly good.

That’s all love wants – that the child should be happy. If he is happy there, perfectly good! That’s why I am saying that you can be here for three or four months more. First you become really orange, not only from the outside but from the inside too.

When even your blood has become orange juice then you can go. And then the child will see what a beautiful mother! What has happened to the mother? – something beautiful, something tremendous! Then he will be able to come. He will become interested in me.

Right now there is no point. Right now you will go and you will be anxious and anxiety-ridden and you will start fighting and that will create a mess. The thing can go to the court and things become ugly, mm? That’s not good, not good for the child.

And what is wrong? He is seven years old, almost old – because children learn fifty percent by the age they are seven. He will learn only fifty percent more in the rest of his life, so he has been taught almost fifty percent by you. Now let fifty percent be done by the father. Nothing Is wrong in it.

But if you are worried too much, you can go and have your trip. It is meaningless. Then it will be having it the american way. You can go and fight and force the child... but I don’t see that it has any point. Even there the child can say ‘I don’t want to come’ – then? Then you will feel more hurt.

The child must be feeling more freedom with the father, because the father cannot be such a guard for twenty-four hours as the mother can be. The father has a thousand other things to do, so he must be free – looking at tv the whole day! He will be enjoying... more! When he is with you you are after him twenty-four hours!

My feeling is: let him enjoy, and after three months you can go. Then it will be possible. Let him become interested. Just go on writing letters to him about what is happening to you, that’s all. Let the child be acquainted, and once he wants to come there is no problem. Just wait, mm?

And it will help you, your growth also, to wait. This is just egoistic – and you understand it, but it is hard to follow your own intelligence sometimes. Other things become more valuable: revenge, and ‘what does this man think – that he can have the child? I will show him!’ No need to do that, no need.

You have taken such a turn, things are growing and much is possible now. Just going in the middle of it will not be good. You are very fragile. The plant has just come out of the earth. It is very soft and weak; it can be destroyed by anything. By any accident it can be destroyed.

I always allow people to go when I feel they are strong enough and there is no fear, they can go anywhere, and they will be growing anywhere they are... then I send them. But to you I will not suggest that right now. And you are going for a very wrong purpose... almost immoral. Wait, mm? just wait. Just enjoy it here and the child will come...

[A sannyasin, who is a film producer, says that his work has become a meditation, and very flowing.]

Once work becomes meditation, then there is naturally great joy. Meditation should never be against work, otherwise there is a conflict, then life is not harmonious. When everything fits together in one pattern there is beauty and balance. So the man who can find meditation in his work is the most fortunate man. Whatever you are doing is not the point – you may be a woodchopper, that will do; you may may be a brick-maker, that will do.

The point is that whatsoever you are doing is not against your being, and that your being and your doing go together hand in hand, in a dance. Then each experience is a growth experience, and out of each experience it is not only that your work grows, you grow. And it is not only that your work succeeds – you succeed... and that is the real value.

There are many people who are failures as beings and successful as great doers. They are the most unfortunate people in the world. They have all the success around them and deep inside are just poor beggars. They may be a president or a prime minister, may have gathered much money, but deep inside they are empty because they have not grown. Their work was not in tune with their being.

So you are blessed... just continue working. And remember always that the ultimate value is meditation, so anything you do, do meditatively; and all things can be done in a meditative way.

There is one story about a Buddhist mystic, Nagarjuna. Once a thief came to him – and he had not come to become a disciple; the thief had come only to steal something which he had seen Nagarjuna carrying. Nagarjuna used to live naked, but the king of the town was very impressed by him and the queen had given him a golden begging bowl with diamonds on it. A naked man with a golden begging bowl with precious stones? – the thief could not believe it when he saw this man moving towards the cemetery. So he followed him.

He thought ‘This man cannot keep it long. If I don’t take it, somebody else will, but this naked man cannot keep it long’, so he went after nagarjuna.

This Nagarjuna was staying in an old, ancient building – it was almost in ruins. Nagarjuna went in, and the thief tried to find a place where he could wait for the right moment, so he was hiding just behind a window. Nagarjuna had seen him coming, following him. He threw the begging bowl out of the window. The thief could not believe it – ‘What manner of man was this?’ He was really impressed in the first place that a naked man had such a precious thing – he must have been a precious man – but now he has thrown the bowl out of the window!

Then he heard Nagarjuna saying ‘Don’t be puzzled – just take it and go away.’ Now it was too difficult for the thief to go! He was provoked, challenged; he came in. He said ‘Sir, one thing I have to ask. I am a thief, a master thief. In this capital there is no other thief who can compete with me... but I feel jealous! When will I be able like you to throw such a precious thing so easily? How did it become possible for you?’ Nagarjuna said ‘It is very simple. Start meditating.’ He said ‘I am a thief, and meditation and stealing won’t go together.’

Nagarjuna said ‘You don’t know! Meditation can go with anything – remain a thief and continue to meditate.’ The thief said ‘This is puzzling. I have been with many saints but they always say “First stop the things that you are doing and then only can you meditate.” That is their first condition – that I should stop being a thief, only then can I meditate.’

Nagarjuna said ‘Then they are not saints and they don’t know what meditation is.’ He told him just to be alert and watchful about whatsoever he was doing: if he was going into a house to steal, he should be watchful and alert. He told him to return in three weeks.

The man came after three weeks and he said, ‘You are a tricky fellow! If I remain alert – even if I am standing inside the house and the treasure is open – I cannot steal. When I steal, I lose alertness.’

Nagarjuna said, ‘Now it is for you to choose. Anything that goes against meditation is not worthwhile. If you can manage to steal with meditation, I am not against it, I am all for it – do whatsoever you like – but if it goes against meditation and you can do it only in a non-meditative state, then it is for you to choose. You will have more riches but you will lose yourself. If your work and your meditation can go together, then any kind of work is religious work.’

And this is my definition too: I call a certain act ‘sin’ if it can only be done non-meditatively. If it cannot be done meditatively, then it is a sin. And my definition of virtue is: it can be done only meditatively; if you want to do it non meditatively, you cannot do it. Then there is no need to think about sin and virtue – a person should only remain alert about one thing: that nothing should go against meditation. Good! You continue.

[A visitor asks: how does one become compassionate?]

The same thing: one has to be meditative. Compassion is a by-product, a consequence. When you are silent, it is there. You cannot cultivate it: if you cultivate it, it will be a pseudo coin, a counterfeit.

Just become more silent, attain to a few moments of thoughtlessness, a few moments of joy and tremendous celebration where you are utterly lost. Those few moments will become like an oasis in your desert-like life, and out of those oases compassion will start flowing. Soon you will find the whole desert has become a green valley... but you cannot cultivate compassion. If you cultivate it, it will just be an ego-trip.

So to ask how one should be compassionate is not the right question because then there is danger: one can start trying to be compassionate. There is a beggar, give him something; here is an ill man, serve him; here is some old man, do something, whatsoever you can do... but you remain the same! You go on doing these things and naturally deep down you start accumulating a certain ego that you are doing great service – and that is a great disservice to yourself. No, compassion should come as a shadow. What I am saying is this: if I want to invite your shadow to my house, I will invite you, not your shadow. The shadow comes – I need not give a separate invitation to it.

Compassion is a shadow of meditation; a meditative mind is a compassionate mind. So learn meditation and forget about compassion, otherwise you can become a do-gooder, and that is a dangerous thing. Just think about one thing – how to cultivate a more silent mood... and that is possible through many things. Through dance it is possible, through music, through meditation, through running, through swimming it is possible – anything that can take total possession of you, in which you are utterly lost, and out of which there arises that meditative state. Then you will see that out of that meditation suddenly you have become full of compassion.

So my whole emphasis is on meditation and on nothing else. Try a few meditations here, mm? Good!

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