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CHAPTER 11
These creatures are found everywhere
29 March 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium
Question 1 BELOVED OSHO,
WHEN DOES THE DISCIPLE’S FREEDOM BECOME HIS MASTER’S CONDEMNATION?
Milarepa, the authentic disciple has never condemned the master. In fact, he cannot condemn the master; the master has become his own heart and being.
To condemn the master is to condemn oneself. But yes, there are so-called disciples. Your question can only be relevant to those so-called disciples. In the first place, they are not disciples this is condemnation enough, not of the master but of their own being, of their own sincerity, of their own authenticity.
As far as the master is concerned, he is the freedom of the disciple. If the master’s being in any way becomes a hindrance to the freedom of the disciple, the master is not true.
So your question raises a very complex experience of the relationship between master and disciple. If it is authentic, then the disciple never feels himself separate from the master. There is no question that he would act in any way or behave in any way in the name of freedom which goes against the master. It simply is not possible. He breathes the master; in a certain way, the master and his own being have become so deeply involved that it is difficult to make demarcations, where is the master and where is the disciple. They are one heart, beating in two bodies.
But if the disciple is pseudo, not a hundred percent but just so-so, a lukewarm disciple, then he is going to condemn the master sooner or later. Then it becomes almost a destiny which can be predicted, that he will condemn the master, because the master and his being have never become one. He was never able to dissolve totally into the master or let the master dissolve totally into him. He cannot forgive it; neither can he forget it. He will do things, consideredly, which go against the master and his teachings, just to condemn him and to protect himself: “Why have I become separated? The master was not worthy, I had to separate. The master was not truly a master, so the question of my being a disciple to him does not arise.” To protect his ego, he has to condemn the master. And the only way to condemn is to do things exactly against what the master has been teaching.
Every breath of the master’s life is devoted to a certain phenomenon: a certain ecstasy, a certain experience beyond which there is nothing higher or holier. The disciple will do things against the master just to protect his ego. If the master is also a false one, then certainly he will feel the condemnation and he will react furiously. He will also condemn the disciple.
But if the master is authentic, he will simply laugh at the stupidity of this ignorant man who does not know that he is cutting the same branch on which he is sitting by his acts he is simply becoming a laughingstock. But not for a moment can the authentic master think that he can be condemned. Thousands may be against him, thousands may be in opposition to him, thousands may come to be disciples and leave him at any point in the journey, but he will not feel any condemnation. Simply a great compassion, that it is not their fault.
If you are selling glasses ask Premda, my optician if you are selling glasses in a city of the blind you should know that nobody is going to accept that you have brought a great blessing to them. The people are blind, they have never seen anything, and your glasses cannot help them.
And all great masters have been selling glasses to the blind. If the blind are ready to follow all the instructions, disciplines, perhaps their eyes may start opening, because nobody is born spiritually blind. Only eyes are closed, and you have forgotten how to open your own eyes.
The whole function of the master is to help you to open your eyes. Sometimes it hurts. It is a surgery. And the disciple becomes offended when something hurts. But the master’s intention is never to hurt you; his only intention is to help you to a better and more spiritual, more beautiful, more immortal life.
How can one even think to do something, in the name of freedom, against his own master? The master is his freedom, and if something is going against the master, that is not freedom. You are going against yourself and against freedom. It may appear on the surface that you are acting on your own, but you will harm yourself. If you think harming yourself is your freedom, destroying the work that the master has been doing on your eyes... if you think it is your freedom to destroy the glasses that have been provided to you, then you are behaving in an absolutely idiotic way.
To find the master is a blessing, and to dissolve oneself into the master is the most delicious experience experience of freedom and joy, a kind of unburdening of all the unnecessary load, an experience of lightness and laughter.…
But it is very difficult to see one’s own faults. By our very nature we are made up in such a way that we can see the faults of others, but we cannot see our own fault. And our own fault may be big enough; then too, we will not be able to see because it is our own. We have become identified with it, it is our personality. If somebody points it out, it is going to hurt us.
The ancient Sufi proverb is, “One can see a small piece of sand in somebody else’s eye, but one cannot see a whole camel in one’s own eye.”
The big-mouthed frog is sitting by his pond in the jungles of Goa one day, when the tiger comes by and says, “Hey man, have you heard? There is a big full-moon party down at the beach tonight.”
The frog opens his huge mouth and says, “Faarrr out!”
“Yeah,” says the tiger, “and there will be lots of dancing sannyasin girls.” “Faarrr out!” says the frog.
“And there will be lots of jazz music and skinheads,” says the tiger. “Faarrr out,” says the frog.
“And there will be lots of booze and plenty to eat.” “Faarrr out,” says the frog.
“One thing only,” says the tiger, “has to be remembered: that people with big mouths are not allowed to go.”
The frog shuts his mouth with a ‘bang’ and says, “Poor crocodile, he will be so disappointed.” Faarrr out!
Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,
I AM QUAKING INSIDE AS I WRITE THIS QUESTION. MY GIRLFRIEND WANTS TO BE A ZEN MASTER. SHE DOES NOT HAVE A ZEN STICK BUT SHAKES PRETTY GOOD TAIL FEATHERS WHEN SHE GETS RUFFLED. SO FAR I’VE BEEN FIGHTING HER FOR MY SMALL PORTION OF THE TRUTH.
SINCE YOUR STATEMENT THE OTHER NIGHT ABOUT WANTING MANY WOMEN MASTERS, I THOUGHT MAYBE I SHOULD JUST GIVE UP MY FIGHT AND TOTALLY SURRENDER, BECOME ABSOLUTELY, TOTALLY HENPECKED!
Satyam Ambhoj, I agree with you on that question. Just one thing I have to remind you, that you may be thinking that you have to become henpecked; the reality is that once you are in the hands of
a girl, you are nowhere, nobody, just a henpecked husband! Just because of you, I am introducing the phrase ‘henpecked boyfriend’, because boyfriends think this is all about husbands.
It is not a question of husbands. It is just the very nature of relationship with a woman: she is the master. But she is clever enough to let you pretend that you are the master.
You are saying, “I am quaking inside as I write this question. My girlfriend” there is no such person as ‘girlfriend’; there are only girl enemies... what nonsense are you talking? “wants to be a Zen master.”
So what is wrong in it? Every woman is a born Zen master. That’s why there are so very few well- known women masters, because if every woman is a master... It is the poor man all men are not masters; only once in a while a Gautam Buddha, so you can count them on your fingers. But as far as women are concerned, the whole ocean...
And you are saying, “She does not have a Zen stick.” Don’t be worried, I will supply. I have a Zen stick which I never use, so just find out from Anando where the Zen stick is and give it to your girl-enemy.
You are saying, “So far I have been fighting her for my small portion of the truth.” Don’t fight. Nobody can have any portion of truth. Either one has the whole of it or one has none. Just please give it up why torture yourself? Truth cannot be divided. And you are not asking much, just a small portion, but a woman and particularly a woman who is my disciple is absolutely non-compromising. She has put you right in your place.
You are asking me! And the thing has happened long before.…
“Since your statement the other night about wanting many women masters, I thought maybe I should just give up my fight and totally surrender, become absolutely henpecked.”
A tremendously great insight! Almost a revelation!
Hymie Goldberg is drunk again, sniffing and spluttering in the bar.
“For eighteen years,” he says to his friend Moishe, “for eighteen years, me and my wife were the happiest people in the world!”
“What happened?” asks Moishe. “Then,” sobs Hymie, “we met!”
“I have been thinking it over, dear,” says Hymie Goldberg, “and I want you to know that I have decided to agree with you.”
“It won’t do any good,” snaps Becky, “because I have just changed my mind.” To live with a woman is the world’s worst horror.
... Niskriya is enjoying, because one woman tortured him for almost five months, it took him five months to get rid of her. But he could not enjoy his freedom long enough. Just a few minutes, and another woman jumped up. And now he gets free every day, and by the evening he is enslaved again. I wonder why people torture poor Niskriya when there are so many others. He is so simple that he never says no to anybody, so any woman gets hold of him and he has to surrender.
He is tired... the whole day working with his camera, he is a great scientist, working... because once I mentioned that in the future there will be cameras giving three-dimensional pictures. Since then he has been working on producing three-dimensional pictures. It was very difficult but he has managed. A German, after all, is a German. He could not manage one camera; he joined two cameras, and two cameras take the photographs.
And it is a hard job, each time to bring those two cameras together, and separate them, and bring them together, and separate them.
And then many people to whom he showed his first results... they all said, “Very great, good,” and to me they said, “We see nothing, but we don’t want to hurt his feelings.”
I said, “This is a great joy! He is showing people three-dimensional pictures, and they see nothing, and they say ‘Great, Niskriya, you have done it!’”
Finally he understood that it was nothing that he was showing these people. He had to work again in a different direction. And he managed: now he has come with a small box in which you put the slide and it gives a three-dimensional effect.
But to produce that slide is such a torture. Whenever my photographers want to take my picture, they all say to me, “Just don’t allow this Niskriya, because he does not care about anything and he disturbs everybody. He is just concerned about his three-dimensional pictures.” So instead of one camera, he has two cameras on a trolley, continuously moving them.
And he does not look at anybody. He does not think that there are other cameramen, he takes the main position in the middle. They say, “If Niskriya is coming then there is no point in us coming because he neither listens nor does he look at anybody.” He is so absorbed in his work. A real scientific mind.…
So he does not even bother who the woman is: if she wants to harass him, let her harass. Sometimes, the same woman goes on harassing him again after a few days. By that time he has forgotten her face. I have heard that one woman has harassed him three times and he thinks he has met three women.
But in fact, he never looks who is there and what is happening, he is totally satisfied with his camera. Now, if a poor woman wants some time, he gives her some time, but his mind is working on three- dimensional pictures. Who looks at women? he is thinking of new devices. Maybe it is the same woman who has come yesterday, or maybe it is somebody else, or maybe there is nobody; he simply thinks that a woman is sitting behind him.
But he is a happy person in that sense, that he does not need to surrender to anybody. He does not even know the name, he does not recognize who you are girl-enemy...?
Satyam Ambhoj, to be totally and absolutely henpecked is a great experience because then there is absolute peace. Rather than renouncing women and going to the Himalayas... where nobody knows, you may come across another woman, because these creatures are found everywhere. And their faces differ, their bodies differ, but under the bonnet every car is the same. So you can look at the bonnet and think that this is somebody else: Perhaps this is the right woman, she is born just for me. By god, I have found her!
But your happiness will not last even for twelve hours. Once the woman is certain that she has got hold of you, you will be surprised, that “This is a totally different woman, but behaving exactly like the woman I have renounced!”
I have heard of a man in California who married eight times. And each time, after three months he found that although the woman is different, everything else is the same. The same quarrel, the same fight, the same jealousy, the same demand. And the eighth time, it was a miracle: he married a woman whom he had married one time before also, but it was such a long time before that he had forgotten her. After three days he by and by recovered he remembered: “It seems I have seen you somewhere.”
The woman said, “I have also seen you somewhere! I have given you enough rope; now there is no question of any divorce. I have been waiting where will you go? Finally, you will have to come to me because every woman will do the things I am doing. In fact, you must have been remembering me on the way: ‘The first woman was far better.’”
It is the nature of the mind that it forgets that which is not very good and only remembers that which is beautiful. As time passes, the past becomes golden. “Those days were totally different...” And certainly he did not divorce her again, because what is the point? Unnecessarily going to the court, being tortured by the judges and the attorneys, and finally ending up with another woman.
Those who have escaped from the world have not escaped from the world, they were escaping from the woman.
This is perfectly good for a meditative man like you, Satyam Ambhoj, to surrender totally. Flat on the ground, Hindu style! Touching the feet of the enemy girl, and saying to her that “I am your servant. You are my master. You order and I will follow.”
And you will be surprised how much peace... I think not only you but many others are going to do the same, because everybody is in search of peace. And such a simple Hindu style! Flat on the ground, putting your head on the feet of the enemy. Christians could not understand what Jesus was saying “Love your enemy.” I am giving it for the first time the right interpretation.
It seems prayer time has come... In this congregation it comes so soon.
The 1988 meeting of the World Council of Churches is presided over by his holiness, Pope the Polack.
During the proceedings, he and brother Jesse Jackson, the American presidential candidate, are having an argument about whether God is black or white.
Soon, the whole Council joins in and the pope is screaming about white supremacy, and beating his fist wildly against his papal throne.
Finally, the dreadful noise wakes up God from his sleep. He is very pissed off, so he parts the clouds and bellows down in a thunderous voice, “I am what I am!”
A deathly silence falls over the Council, until Pope the Polack turns around and says, “See, you black idiot? I told you God is white, and there is your proof!”
“What do you mean?” cries brother Jesse. “He only said a few words.” “Aha!” says the Pope, “but if he was black he would have said, ‘I is what I is!’”
Pope the Polack is standing at the pearly gates demanding admission. Saint Peter lets him through, but warns him, “You are not in paradise yet! We have made a few alterations in heaven. Before you can finally be accepted you must walk along this passage. If a single evil thought enters your head during that walk, a trap-door will open beneath your feet and you will fall straight down into hell!”
Pope the Polack accepts the challenge and starts to walk along the passage. When he is halfway, Saint Peter cannot resist the temptation to whisper, “Osho!”
Instantly, the trap-door opens and the pope drops through.
A short while later, Ronald Reagan arrives. Saint Peter gives him the same instructions. Again, the temptation is too much for Saint Peter and the moment he whispers, “Osho!” the floor opens and Reagan drops down.
Some time later, Osho is touring the universe and arrives at the pearly gates, where he is welcomed by Saint Peter. Saint Peter shows Osho the passage to paradise and explains about the trap-door. Halfway across to heaven, Osho turns slowly round, raises his right hand to the sky and says, “Yaa-Hoo!”
Saint Peter drops through the floor. Okay, Maneesha?
Yes, Osho.
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