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CHAPTER 13
Just ordinary friday
1 April 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium
Question 1 BELOVED OSHO,
WE ARE TRYING TO LIVE IN THE HERE AND NOW – ESPECIALLY IF WE ARE IN POONA. BUT NEVERTHELESS WE SOMETIMES THINK OF THE FUTURE.
I ASK MYSELF, IF NOBODY ELSE HEARS YOUR VOICE EXCEPT US, WHAT WILL HAPPEN IN THE YEAR 2017? WHAT MORE CAN WE DO SO THAT YOU WILL BE HEARD AND THE BAD VISION OF THE YEAR 2017 THAT I HAVE WILL NOT HAPPEN?
Dhyandeep, the first thing to remember is: do not take anything seriously. What happens in 2017 is not your concern. One thing is certain: you will not be there. So who cares? Particularly herenow in Poona! If by chance you are still alive – which is very much an impossibility – still you will be living in the herenow. The years change, the centuries change, but life is always here and now.
Wasting it in thinking about the past... and there are many who do that. Just on my way here, Shunyo was saying, “Today is Friday...” I don’t know, because what concern have I to remember which day it is, or which year, or which century? I am herenow.
Her question was that “This is Friday; Jesus was crucified on this day. Why is it called Good Friday?” As if, it seems, I have crucified Jesus! I am not answerable at all. Naturally, the people who had crucified Jesus must have celebrated. That was their goodbye to Jesus – “We are finished with this guy who has been torturing us for so long.” It is not a good thing, but it is not in my hands.
If it had been in my hands, Jesus needed psychiatric treatment. A good body stretch until he had forgotten to say that “I am the only begotten son of God.” Then it would certainly have been Good Friday because then there would have been no Christianity. It is the crucifixion which started the greatest criminal religion on the earth, Christianity.
But the Jews were not so sophisticated that they could have tolerated a young man, only thirty-three years of age, trotting on his donkey here and there. Never went out of that small place, Judea. And he had a few followers – every idiot can collect a dozen followers, and he had exactly one dozen followers.
Those twelve idiots became twelve apostles, and they followed him because they had no other business. They were not educated; not a single one of them was cultured, educated, a rabbi, a learned man. None of them had any knowledge of the scriptures. And on their own, they knew one thing for certain, that they could not enter into paradise. They didn’t have any qualifications. And this guy sitting on the donkey says, “If you believe in me, I will take you into paradise.”
All those fools must have thought, “This is the simplest way. Rather than becoming a rabbi, a great learned scholar, virtuous, a saint, disciplining, torturing yourself... then, too, there is no certainty, no guarantee. Nobody is saying to you that ‘I am responsible.’ At least this guy says, ‘I am taking you. Just believe in me.’ And he is not asking anything, not even any entry fee.” And who would not like to see the scene without a ticket?
There were moments of doubt in their minds also, that God’s son should not sit on a donkey. And they all knew that he was a carpenter’s son, but what to do? He does not listen at all.
If people had simply tolerated him as a joke, which in fact he was – a practical joke... People should have laughed. And he was bringing such great news! They should have enjoyed, entertained him, but they were not sophisticated enough. They took him too seriously.
That’s what I am saying:
The most important thing is not to take anything seriously.
Jesus took himself very seriously. Even when they were putting him on the cross, he could have said, “Wait, I have changed my mind!” He carried the joke too far. In his place, I should have certainly said, “I have changed my mind.” A joke is a joke; one should not take it too seriously.
And he would have left the Jews and the Romans who crucified him in a very weird space: What to do? He has changed his mind! But he took himself so seriously that he allowed them to put him on the cross, nail him on the cross. Still, he was waiting for God and looking upwards. And the sky by chance was completely empty.
His idea was that on a white cloud... Obviously, it has to be a white cloud when God comes. He will come thundering and show all the Jews – “You are stupid, you are killing my own son and you think you believe in God?” But nothing seemed to happen.
Thousands of people had gathered to see – the one and only chance; for the first time somebody has claimed to be the only begotten son. And he was certainly serious because even on the cross
he did not just say, “It is enough. My father’s name is Joseph, my mother’s name is Mary, and I don’t know who is this God.” He had enjoyed enough, he was a celebrity in his own small country, but he waited.…
And the Jewish way of putting somebody on a cross is such that a person can be alive on the cross at least forty-eight hours, because they don’t kill you by breaking the neck. They kill you by nailing the hands and the feet to the cross, so drop by drop the blood oozes out. It is the most cruel and ugly way of taking revenge. But that was good in a way; it gave forty-eight hours for the person to change his mind.
But Jesus wouldn’t change. On the contrary, he shouted at God! Thousands of people are there, everybody wants to know God, to see God – so much one has heard about God, and never a single witness. And this great opportunity... people had come from faraway places.
Jesus shouted at God – “Father!”... but he still did not forget to call him “father.” He was really an absolute crackpot. “Father, have you forgotten me? have you forsaken me? Why is the miracle not happening?”
It was all his fiction – his God, who will descend on a white cloud; that he will save him and show the world that Jesus is his only son, “and anybody who wants to be saved from this miserable suffering life and enter into the eternal bliss of paradise has to believe in my son. He is my agent. You cannot directly contact me. Call him, and if he chooses you will be allowed. Even on the Judgment Day when all the dead of the past and the future will be raised from their graves...”
It is going to be a tremendous crowd. The world has never seen such a crowd. I don’t think the earth can contain that much crowd. Five billion people are alive today and man has existed for at least four million years. The crowd will be so much, and Jesus will choose: “Who are my people?”
But nothing happened. Fictions are fictions. There is no God and there is no God’s son.
And all the messengers are megalomaniacs who need to be immediately caught and treated before they get out of hand.
But they have founded religions, they have written great scriptures. They have done such harm to humanity.
So there are many who are concerned about the past.…
Now Shunyo is asking, “Why is this day called Good Friday?” Good for the Jews because they got rid of Jesus and good for Christians because this is the beginning of their religion. But as far as we are concerned it is just ordinary Friday. There is nothing special in it, neither good nor bad.
And I am not at all certain whether it is Friday or not. I am simply taking her question without giving my consent that this is Friday. In fact, all these seven days and their names are our arbitrary names. There is no existential reality behind them; it is not like the sun and the moon and the earth. They
are just our ideas. They represent one thing certainly, that once upon a time somewhere long past, thousands of years before, humanity must have lived in a small tribe. And from that tribe people started to grow more and more, and started spreading all over the earth. So a few things they have carried from those days.
For example, every language has ten digits because man has ten fingers. The primitive man counted everything on his fingers. Even I myself count everything on my fingers. Then, too, I get lost after the fourth because so many things come in between.
And just like the ten digits of language, of mathematics, all over the world the seven days have the same names. Slowly slowly, slight changes have happened down the centuries because people went very far away from the original source.
For example somwar – Monday. Som is the name in Sanskrit of the moon, and in English, monday is the day of the moon. How som became mon one never knows. Saturday is Sanskrit’s shaniwar. Shani is the name of Saturn; hence it became saturday. Sunday is the day of the sun. In Sanskrit it is raviwar. Ravi is the name of the sun.
All these names indicate that people at one time must have lived together and have carried fragments of those ancient days with them. All seven days can be found in Sanskrit; all ten digits can be found in Sanskrit – however they have changed, some trace... or if somebody is mad enough to go after them he can find exactly the whole sequence of change.
For example the English two. The Hindi do and the Sanskrit dwa are the same word. Just one word is missing which is twa; in Mongolian, it is twa. So from dwa to twa, from twa to two. It is not very difficult, these changes are very simple. The English three is Sanskrit tri – not much difference. The Hindi teen is not different; it is the same tri. And you can go on discovering. The English nine is sanskrit nav, is Hindi nau – in English, nine. These people must have lived together, then separated.
Sanskrit seems to be the original language of mankind. All languages of the world have a certain percentage of their basic roots in Sanskrit. You will be surprised... German has thirty percent of its roots, English has forty percent of its roots, Dutch has forty percent of its roots, Lithuanian has seventy percent of its roots – more than Hindi. They are all sister languages. All these people are coming from one source.
But the names are all arbitrary. They have no existential reality. It depends on you.
There have been mathematicians like Leibnitz who did not believe in ten digits. He worked out that three are enough and the whole mathematics can be done. It is hilarious to read Leibnitz because after three, four does not come. After three comes ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, twenty... But he has managed, there is no problem in it. It is fictitious.
Albert Einstein even tried to improve on Leibnitz. He says, “Two digits are essential, three are a little unnecessary. Just one and zero. And after one comes ten, eleven... and... I forget, but he has managed all his mathematical calculations with two digits.
There is no necessity that there should be only seven days. It depends on you.
So to me, it does not matter whether it is Friday or not. One thing is certain: every moment is Good, whether Jesus is crucified or not crucified. Here and now, life is blossoming, love is flowering. And there is so much – so many stars in the sky, so many trees with such colors, such depths of darkness, so many people with immense possibilities of consciousness... who cares about the past?
George Gurdjieff used to say that Jesus never happened; it is an old drama. Now what can you do? We know that for example in India, Ramayana, the story of Rama, is played every year all over the country in every village. It is conceivable that it may not be anything historical; Rama may not have ever existed. But the story is very ancient, and it has been played for so long, every year, again and again, that slowly a fictitious figure has become a historical figure.
It is a possibility. Except Gurdjieff, nobody has even raised the question. But a man like Gurdjieff has a clarity and intensity of seeing. He says, there is no mention of Jesus in any Jewish scripture. A man like Jesus – whom Jews could not tolerate alive, whom they had to crucify – is not even mentioned in any scripture, in any book. Jews don’t think that there has ever been any such person as Jesus. It was an old Jewish drama that a few people started taking seriously, and now on that fictitious drama, half of humanity has become Christian. Now if you go on digging deep, you will find simply a film story.
But there are many people who will waste their whole life looking towards the past. And in the same way your question, Dhyandeep, is about the future. “What will happen in the year 2017?”
I am not a prophet and I don’t think there has ever been anybody who was a prophet, except frauds. In fact, it is very easy to say what will happen in 2017 or 13, or any year, when I will not be there to answer if it does not happen.
Who cares? What can you do if it doesn’t happen? Nobody will bother that somebody has said something which has not happened. Or if it happens, then you will be too much involved in it. Who cares that fifty years before, somebody has said that it is going to happen?
As far as you are concerned, if you can learn to live here and now that is the most significant religious way of living. Silent and peaceful, joyful – if you can start living like the flowers and the birds, then if the whole world starts living in the same way perhaps nuclear weapons and nuclear wars will not happen.
People who live peacefully here and now are not going to be involved in any kind of war, in any kind of destructiveness. The people of herenow are bound to be creative and loving. They will not be Christians and they will not be Hindus and they will not be Catholics and they will not be communists. They will not belong to any denomination, any nation, any race.
They will belong only to this moment.
And they will rejoice so much in this moment that the whole existence will become a celebration, moment-to-moment celebration – a dance, a music, a poetry, a love affair.
But if you do not live here and now – and that’s what you are asking for, that “We are trying to live in the here and now, but nevertheless...” There is no question of, “but nevertheless we are sometimes thinking of the future.”
Why? What is the necessity of going on a holiday into the future? People think about the future only because the present is miserable. Then they think not only of this life and its future, they even think about what will happen after death.
I have been traveling for thirty years and I have come across thousands of people who ask, “What will happen after death?”
I have said, “Just die and see! It is not my problem, I am perfectly at ease. When I die, I will see what happens. But why should I die for you? And what is the guarantee that if I die, I will remember to tell you?”
At least up to now, nobody has remembered to give a phone call or just a telex saying that, “Don’t be worried, everything is good. God is still alive.”
All that can be done is hypothetical; your “sometimes thinking of the future” can only be hypothetical. What will happen tomorrow you cannot predict in any way. But one thing can be done: if you are joyous today, and you know the art of being joyful, if tomorrow ever comes you will still know how to be joyful and how to be festive and how to continue the celebration. If it does not come, it does not matter.
Just think about one thing:
Have you ever bothered about what was happening in the world when you were not yet born? Was there peace or war? Have you ever bothered whether things were going right or wrong before you were born? You have never bothered; that is not your concern. You were not here.
If the whole world disappears, then too there is no problem. The problem will be only for those who somehow don’t disappear in a nuclear war – and this is not possible, you cannot hide yourself anywhere.
Nuclear war is total war. All life on this earth will become impossible. Not even grass will grow. No man, no animals, no birds, no trees, no possibility for any living, breathing phenomenon after the nuclear war. So why worry about it?
Either it will not happen... then enjoy while it has not happened. And I think 2017... that is still enough time to enjoy. And if it happens, then if it is true that you are only consciousness and the body is only an abode... nuclear weapons can destroy bodies. You will all be ghosts, so we will be meeting still. What is the problem? And that will be a very beautiful meeting, because it has not been known that ghosts become sick, that ghosts become old, that ghosts commit crimes, that ghosts murder each other, that ghosts become politicians, prime ministers, presidents. They don’t do these things. They really enjoy life, without any burden of children and a wife.
If the year 2017 is really going to evaporate the whole existence, I don’t see anything to be worried about. We are all going to die separately anyway, why not enjoy dying collectively? Once and forever, all friends, wife, children – all become ghosts. No question of shortage of food, all these things don’t matter. And if you don’t believe in ghosts... there may be a few; they are laughing, although they don’t know that many ghosts are sitting inside you, hiding here and there.
I can indicate them to you – just touch somebody and if he laughs you can be certain. If there are no ghosts, then there is no problem either. There will be no meeting in Buddha Hall anymore. There will be silence; that’s what we are trying, to attain to silence. There will remain forever silence – no “Yaa-Hoo”... only silence.
I don’t bother about the future.
And you are asking, “What more can we do?” As if you are doing much! What are you doing? I don’t even know that you are doing something to prevent anything happening in 2017, and you are asking, “What more can we do so that you will be heard?”
What is the need?
If people want to live, if people want existence to continue, life to remain, they will hear me. There is no need for you to become messengers and prophets, torturing people like Witnesses of Jehovah. Or harassing people like Hare Krishna people. Just if you want there to be more love and more peace in the world, you be peaceful and you be more loving. On your part, you should not contribute anything to destructiveness – by your jealousy, by your anger, by your greed. You should simply rejoice the moment that is available to you.
If your dance goes on spreading ripples, if your song is heard and echoed in faraway souls, if your silence attracts, becomes a magnetic force, that’s another thing. You are not doing anything, it is happening.
But if it is not happening, there is nothing to be worried about. It is not your problem. The people who will be here, at any point in the future... it will be their problem. You cannot solve it, you cannot change it. In fact, you cannot even envisage.…
Just have a look. Do you think Gautam Buddha in his ultimate enlightenment could have conceived of railway trains? I am not talking about airplanes and rockets and nuclear weapons. Those are certainly big things. I am talking about small things. Do you think Gautam Buddha could have thought about a bicycle? With all his enlightenment, he could not have conceived that two wheels could possibly make a carriage. He had seen only four-wheeled carriages.
And it is really a miracle! But you don’t understand, when you sit on a bicycle, you are doing a great miracle – against gravitation! He could not have conceived of it in any way. Small things, which you use every day, which you never think about – the greatest man of the past would not have been able to conceive of them. Just three hundred years ago it was not possible for anyone to think about railway trains or motorcars or airplanes.
The Wright brothers, two young men who first conceived the idea of flying, were thought by their village to be either idiots or mad. If God wanted man to fly he would have given wings; it is certainly not the intention of God. And those two brothers, the Wright brothers, were the sons of a poor man who used to sell bicycles, give bicycles on rent, a small mechanic.He was ashamed of his own sons: “You idiots, you should work with me and help in the shop. What do you go on doing, always in the basement?” In the basement, they were preparing the first airplane!
But they did not listen to anybody; they went on working, and just out of broken cycles, cycle parts, the first airplane was made. They could not even tell anybody that they had made the airplane. Deep in the night when the whole village was asleep, they took their great invention out in the fields to try it out. Because if they fail, then they will be condemned by everybody, laughed at.
But they managed, deep in the night, to fly their first airplane – a small-sized open airplane which could remain in the air only for thirty seconds, and then came down. But that was enough to prove the point that it was possible. If you can be thirty seconds in the air, you can be thirty minutes, thirty years! Then it is only a question of getting more and more sophisticated.
Next day, they informed their father and the people of the village to come and see that what they had been thinking they could not do, they have done. Hundreds of people came. Hundreds did not; they thought, “They are idiots, don’t waste time. Who has ever heard of flying machines?” The word ‘airplane’ was not used – “flying machines.” But still a few people came to see and were amazed when they saw this small caricature of an airplane, made out of broken bicycle parts.
And they had managed in the night to improve it so that it stays in the air for at least one minute. And it stayed, a hundred feet high, for one minute; the principle was proved. But nobody in the whole of history before those Wright brothers would have conceived that flying in the sky was possible.
Just in this century, in the beginning of the century nobody thought that one day man would go to the moon, would walk on the moon. There is a Jaina monk who came here to see me. He is collecting money... and he has collected much money, because Jainas are rich people. Because it goes against Jaina scriptures that anybody can reach the moon: the moon is a god, it is not a planet, and you cannot walk on a god! That is inconceivable. God will throw you out into empty space and you will never be heard from again.
So this Jaina monk wants to prove that all these Russian astronauts, American astronauts, are all frauds; that they have been cheating the whole world by printing pictures of a man walking on the moon and he is not walking on the moon, he is walking somewhere in Siberia. They are bringing stones from the moon and they are not... those stones are from somewhere around the earth. And the pictures that show their rockets going to the moon are just photographic tricks.
I told him, “You are unnecessarily wasting your time and the money of others.”
He said, “No, it is a question of immense importance. Our whole religion is at risk. If people start landing rockets on a god... and they will do all kinds of nasty things there. Naturally, they will have to piss. This kind of thing happening on a god?”
I said, “This is right!” And he has a great file in which he is collecting all the pictures and things, and trying to prove that everything has been a deception.
Even though man has walked on the moon, there are people who are not believing that he has done it.
What will happen after thirty years is almost impossible to conceive. What I want to emphasize is that you should drop even thinking about the future. Your whole being should be involved in the present
moment. And if you can create a silent being, full of the song of existence and all the music and all the fragrance that comes from your innermost core, you have done more than can be expected of anyone.
Don’t ask what more you can do. You just be yourself – know thyself – and your very vibe will start creating ripples around you. The more people become meditators in the world, the less is the possibility of any war, because who is going to fight? You and your children, you and your brothers and sisters? If more and more people are peaceful and really enjoy peace, they will simply refuse to participate in war or any kind of destructive activity.
It happened in the second world war that thirty percent of the American soldiers did not use weapons. They would go to the battlefield and throw bombs where there were no human beings. When it was discovered... it was a very strange phenomenon. Thirty percent is not a small percentage – one third. Those soldiers said, “We cannot kill human beings – it is so barbarous – but because we are paid and we are employed, we go to the war front and we have to do something...” So in the rivers, in the ocean somewhere they threw the bombs and in the evening they would come back.
If this is possible for thirty percent, why is it not possible for a hundred percent? And if a hundred percent of people simply refuse to be destructive... just Ronald Reagan or a few other idiots can have a boxing match in Moscow or in the White House, wherever they want. And the whole world can enjoy it on television.
There is no need to bother, to destroy. You can have a “World Conqueror” cup, so sometimes Gorbachev can have it, sometimes Ronald Reagan can have it. And every year the World Conqueror’s Boxing Match happens, everybody enjoys it, and there is no harm.
If you want it to be even more harmless, then let it be Indian style. American boxing is a little cruel and primitive, punching each other’s noses – that doesn’t look good. The Indian style of wrestling is far superior. It is an art. And if to this style, the Japanese mannerism is also added, it can become really a joyous day, a Good Friday! Every Good Friday, in different capitals of the world, just as the Olympic championship happens, let some idiot declare that he is the world conqueror. There is no harm. We can give him the trophy and he can keep it if he wins three times in a row. Otherwise, every year it goes to other conquerors.
Make life a joy and a playfulness. Up to now, we have not been able to do it but now, we will be compelled to do it. Because up to now, we had not weapons enough to destroy all living beings, so partial wars were possible. For the first time, we are capable of destroying this earth seven thousand times. Each person we can kill seven thousand times, although ordinarily people die only one time. Except some few guys like Jesus, who resurrect... kill them again!
I don’t think even Jesus will be able to manage to resurrect himself seven thousand times. And even if he manages, it will be a great event. Everybody will rejoice in it, and he will certainly prove that he is the only begotten son of God. But the truth is, just one time is enough. Because of this totality of war and the possibility of absolute destruction, this war cannot happen. Nobody is ready now; that’s why it goes on being postponed.
Soon you will see: the same nuclear weapons and the same technology will be used for creative purposes – for creating more food, better clothes, better houses, more nourishment. Scientists say
they can – if war is stopped and the effort to manufacture war material is stopped – they can manage to support five times more people on this earth, living joyously, with a more healthy, longer life. It seems unbelievable but I can see the point that if war is not going to happen, then we have to do something with the war material that is accumulating in every nation. That war material has to be converted into creative resources.
But that is a question for the scientists. For you, the only thing to be done is to become a source of song and dance and beauty and love, and create as many ripples around you of your fragrance as you can.
The heart and its silence is as catching as anything else; it is contagious. We just want many many people to be silent, so they can spread this contagious health around the world. You don’t have to do anything else except change yourself as deeply as possible.
Just a little realization, for which the time has come.…
Paddy phones the police station one night to report that the steering wheel, brake pedal, accelerator and radio have been stolen from his car. The policeman says he will send a patrol car to investigate.
A few minutes later Paddy is back on the phone. “Don’t bother about the patrol car,” he says, “I just realized I got in the back seat by mistake.”
Paddy comes limping into the police station, covered in bruises, his clothes torn and dirty. “My mother-in-law just knocked me down with her car,” Paddy announces.
“Are you really sure it was your mother-in-law?” asks the police officer. “Did you see her face?” “No, I didn’t see her face,” admits Paddy, “but I would recognize that laugh anywhere.”
Ronald Reagan is visiting a mental hospital to boost his public image. After touring the wards, he wanders into the garden where he gets into conversation with one of the gardeners.
The gardener turns out to be a very intelligent and interesting man and Reagan suggests that he must find work amongst so many insane people rather depressing.
“Not at all,” replies the gardener, “You see, I am a patient myself.”
“Amazing,” says Ronald Reagan, “you sound like one of the sanest people I have ever met.”
“Well, it is true,” replies the gardener, “I have been trying to get them to release me for fifteen years.”
“That’s outrageous!” cries Ronald, and he assures the gardener that he will do everything possible to get him released.
The gardener is very grateful and the two of them shake hands. As the president turns to go, the gardener picks up his shovel and with a mighty blow, knocks Reagan flat. Lying on the ground,
dazed and astonished, Ronald Reagan watches in amazement as the gardener wags a finger at him and says, “Now, you won’t forget, will you?”
Just don’t take it seriously.
...2017... it is too far.
Miss Goodbody tells her class that they are going to play a spelling game. Telling little Bobby to stand up, she asks, “What does your father do for a living? Say it nice and clearly. And then spell it out.”
“My father is a baker,” says Bobby. “B-a-k-e-r.” “Good,” says Miss Goodbody, “now Cecily.”
“Doctor: d-o-c-t-o-r,” says Cecily smugly and sits down. “Excellent,” says Miss Goodbody, “Now Herbie.”
Herbie stands up and says, “Shipbuilder: s-h-i-t...” “No, Herbie,” says Miss Goodbody, “try again.” “Shipbuilder: s-h-i-t...”
“No, no,” cries Miss Goodbody, “go to the blackboard and write it out and they will see your mistake!”
As Herbie heads for the front of the class, Little Ernie jumps up and says, “My dad is a gambler: g-a-m-b-l-e-r. And I will bet you five bucks that idiot puts shit on the board.”
After three weeks of married life, Fagan Finkelstein makes the mistake of taking his young wife Rosa to one of the favorite discos from his bachelor days.
Rosa gets angry, as first the coat-check girl, then the barmaid, then the waitress – all of them pretty – welcome Fagan with great affection. But she gets really mad when a gorgeous blonde walks up to the table, sits for a moment in Fagan’s lap and kisses him on the cheek and says, “I will see you another night, darling, when you are not so busy.”
Rosa gets up from the table and heads for the door, closely followed by a protesting Fagan. They climb into a taxi with Fagan desperately trying to explain that the past is all behind him, and he loves only her.
“Please, listen to me,” pleads Fagan. “No,” shouts Rosa, “I will not.”
The taxi driver looks round and says, “She is no good, Mr. Fink. Shall we go back and get another?” Okay, Maneesha?
Yes, Osho.
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