International Day of Peace, September 21

This day calls for a moment to reflect on what peace actually means, beyond the mere absence of war, in our societies, homes and inner lives.

Peace is a strange thing. When you don't have it, you yearn for it. When you have it, you feel bored, restless, already looking for the next goal, the next target. The mind knows no other way; it runs an endless race that ends only at the deathbed. On this International Day of Peace, let's turn to Osho to understand what real peace is, and whether it can be tasted, in the thick and thin of everyday life.

Desire peace fervently.

The yearning for peace is mentioned immediately after the sutra on power. Whatever power comes from the outside brings worry with it. Wealth bestows power, but worry also comes in its wake. It is very difficult to find a rich man who is also peaceful. Sometimes you can find a poor man who is peaceful, but a rich man who is peaceful – never! And those who wanted to become peaceful renounced their wealth and became poor. The man who holds a political post can never be peaceful – he simply cannot. Power, whenever it comes from the outside, brings with it the shadow of turmoil. So if you want to live peacefully, there will be no way to have outer power.

I have a friend who is a government minister, and now he wants to become the chief minister. He always comes to me and asks me how to become peaceful. So I tell him, “First, become the chief minister. Right now you should ask me how to become worried. Right now don’t even ask me how to become peaceful, because if you find a way of becoming peaceful, one thing is certain: you will never become chief minister. So first be certain whether you want to be chief minister or not; only then will I tell you how to become peaceful. Otherwise don’t come to me and then tell me later on that I spoiled everything, that I ruined your life. It is better that you become chief minister first and then, when you are really troubled, the thirst to become peaceful will arise.”

When a man has worked hard, he starts to feel hungry. In the same way, when a man has become really troubled, he hungers for peace. I said, “Right now, even your hunger is not real. Right now, even your hunger comes from reading books; peace is just an idea, it is just your greed. Right now, you want to become chief minister and you also want to become peaceful.”

I told him that if he searched honestly within himself he would find that he only wanted peace in order to help him become chief minister. He replied, “How did you know? It is just as you say. I have to do so much running around that if my mind were to become just a little more peaceful, I could succeed. My mind becomes so restless that I can’t sleep at night; I become so tense that I become sick – and so the others are getting ahead of me. They have no problems sleeping, they don’t become sick. In the morning they start again, fresh for the race, and I am dead tired! That is why I have come to you – so that you can tell me a way to become peaceful so that I can really take on my opponents.”

We want to use even peace in the service of anxiety! We want peace so that we can worry more effectively, so that our worrying becomes even more efficient. We want peace so that we can draw power from it. But power brings worry.

So take this as your criterion: the power which brings turmoil is outer and is not worth longing for, and the power which creates peace in you is inner and is worth longing for. Outer power means turmoil, inner power means peace.

That’s why this sutra follows immediately after the sutra about power:

Desire peace fervently.

But to want power alone is dangerous. You can deceive yourself, thinking that you want inner power, but in fact that may still be a desire for outer power. That may still be a contest, a competition. That may still be a way to prove yourself to someone who is really enlightened: “How is it possible that while I am not enlightened another person can be? Now I will show that I too can attain.”

A very rich man, the richest in the town, came to see Mahavira. He came to him and said, “I want to buy meditation – and I am willing to pay any price you ask.”

Mahavira said, “That is impossible, meditation cannot be bought. A person who always thinks in terms of buying and selling cannot understand meditation, let alone attain to it. All your wealth will not be able to buy it.”

The rich man said, “Perhaps you don’t know how much wealth I have. Ask any price and I will pay you double. Just tell me how much it will cost.”

That man must have known only one language – the language of money. And it was not his fault either, because everything he had acquired in his life was with money, so he could be excused for thinking like that. He had bought everything. If he wanted a beautiful woman, he paid some money and he had her. If he wanted a big palace, he bought it. If he needed a good doctor, he paid for him. What can’t be bought with money? He had always bought everything, so he must have thought, “What’s so great about meditation that it cannot be bought with money? When everything else can be bought, then I must be able to buy this too.”

But actually, attaining to meditation was not the problem. A poor man of the village had attained to meditation, a poor man of the same village! And Mahavira had confirmed that this man had attained. It was this that was creating the problem.

Mahavira came to know what the rich man’s problem was, so he said, “Do this: go to the poor man in your village who has attained to meditation, and purchase it from him. He is a poor man – perhaps he will be tempted by the money. Perhaps he will sell it, and you can buy it from him.”

The rich man replied, “There is no problem, that’s very easy. If he refuses to sell meditation, I can buy him out. There will be no problem.”

Now what he said is completely right, because if a poor man can be bought out then what is so great about any meditation he may have? But even if you buy the poor man out, meditation cannot be bought. If you seize that poor man, put him in chains, and throw him into your house – even then meditation cannot be seized. The difficulty lies in the language: the rich man understood only the language of money.

He went to the poor man and said, “Look, I am willing to pay anything, you just name your price, but you must give me meditation. And if you refuse to hand over meditation, I have brought soldiers along with me – they will take you away.”

The poor man said, “Take me away – that will be easier. How can I give you meditation? Is meditation a commodity which I can give to you? Meditation is an experience. You can take me away, but how can I give you what I feel? You will have to experience that for yourself.”

There is a power which others can give you, and there is a power which can be found only through one’s own experience. The power that others give you will never give you peace, because fear is always a part of it. What is given to you by another can also be taken away from you by him. And what another has given me is simply not mine – whether I have gained it through stealing, or through persuasion, or through charity, or by force. It is not mine – it belongs to another, and what belongs to another remains his. That is why it always instills fear. Fear keeps following silently in your footsteps.

Fear gives birth to turmoil, anxiety grows out of that which can be taken away. And then the more outside power accumulates, the weaker you seem to be inside. This creates anxiety.

That is why no poor man can feel his poverty as much as a rich man can – that is, if he is intelligent. If he is a fool, without intelligence, then he isn’t even aware of it. A poor man will never feel his poverty to the extent that a rich person with even a little bit of intelligence does, because for the poor man there is no contrast, there is no comparison. A rich man accumulates great wealth, and then he looks within and finds a begging bowl in his heart – there is nothing inside. A poor man has a begging bowl in his hand, and a begging bowl within. There is no contradiction in the comparison, so he doesn’t realize how poor he is. Only when a man has become rich does he realize how poor a man can be.

That is why I always say that the poverty which Mahavira experienced after giving up his kingdom, or which Buddha experienced when he left his throne and became a beggar on the road, can never be felt by a common beggar. Wealth has a big hand in their poverty. Their poverty is royal, it is a poverty enriched by the experience of having been an emperor. And after becoming emperors they came to realize they could not get rid of the poverty that lies within; in fact now they could see it more clearly. The more you accumulate outer power, the more you come to see your inner helplessness. This creates anxiety – and remember, a poor man can never be as worried as a rich man.

If America is the most worried and tense country today, it is not because its morality has declined in some way, but only because it has become richer than other countries. Anxiety is a part of life in America. You are all trying to make your countries rich – and that is how it should be, but you must remember that all this anxiety will become yours too. With wealth comes worry. There is a carefree quality in poverty, because it creates no awareness of the real poverty. I am not saying that you should remain poor. All I am saying is that if you become aware of the poverty within, that awareness will give birth to spirituality. What I am really saying is: to be rich is a must in order to become religious. The more affluent a society is, the greater the possibility of its becoming religious.

A poor society cannot become religious – there is no way. A poor man’s desire for religion is only the desire for outer power. Even if he prays, it is for money; his worship is just for the sake of wealth. When a poor man prays and worships, his demands are materialistic. A rich man is materially satisfied; there is no question of his asking for more, he already has enough. Now there is no sense in adding any more to what he has. And from this arises a great worry, a deep anxiety: now what?

That is why no nation on earth today is in as much anguish as America is. But this is fortunate, because this madness shows that wealth simply highlights poverty, power simply highlights helplessness, education simply brings our inner ignorance to light.

If what we have attained in the outer world is the opposite of what we experience inside, then a tension arises, an anguish is born. Whatever we achieve in the outer world will give birth to a restlessness. Hence, along with the longing for power, a deep longing for peace should also be there. Only then can your power become an inner power.

Your search should always be for power and peace. And wherever you find that your power is working against peace, understand that this power is wrong. Let go of it. Let peace be the foundation. Whenever your power begins to interfere with your peace, let go of the power and hold onto the peace. Make peace your sutra, let it become the touchstone for testing the outcome. Understand that the power which passes this test is authentic and as pure as gold. And as for the power which does not pass this test – throw it away like dirt. Don’t let it hang around you, even for one moment.

If you always keep this criterion of peace in your mind, you will never be lost. Peace works like a compass. Whichever direction peace points to, know that this is the right one. And wherever the needle of peace does not point to is not the right destination; leave it. You need to take peace as the criterion so that power doesn’t give you false illusions.

The peace you shall desire

is that sacred peace which nothing can disturb,

and in which the soul grows

as does the holy flower upon the still lagoons.

The peace which you shall desire is that sacred peace which nothing can disturb… Remember, if someone can disturb it, it is not peace. It is necessary to understand this.

Often people complain that their peace has been disturbed. But if someone can disturb your peace, then that peace has been given to you by someone else – because only that which has been given to us can be disturbed, otherwise we cannot be affected. If you are sitting quietly and a child is making a noise, and you say that he is disturbing you, this means that if he sits quietly he will give you peace and if he makes a noise, he will disturb your peace. This peace doesn’t belong to you – it is the child’s.

You say that the noise from the market hinders your meditation: then it is not meditation. What is the value of a meditation that can be disturbed by the marketplace? It is not worth a penny. It has been given to you by the marketplace. You say that in the mountains meditation really flowers. This is not meditation, it is a gift from the mountains. What has been given to you by the mountains is not yours. What the marketplace can take away from you is not yours.

So you may sit for years on end in the mountains, but you will be living in illusion, because when you leave the mountains you will find yourself in turmoil again – and you will be in even more turmoil than you ever were before. If you have something which can be disturbed, it does not belong to you.

Search for a peace that no one can disturb. This means when you search, don’t avoid disturbances – rather search in the midst of them. If your child is not making a noise, go and collect all the children from the neighborhood, ask them to make a lot of noise and then meditate amongst them. The day you feel that you can meditate even though the children are making a noise, you will know that meditation is yours. Don’t search for mountains, the Himalayas, rather meditate sitting down right in the middle of the marketplace – because the mountains can deceive you. The mountains give you peace, that’s why they can be deceptive. Avoid the mountains, search for peace in the marketplace. The day you find peace even in the marketplace, from that day on, no one can take it away from you, because now you have found it in the middle of the very thing which could have taken it away from you.

So don’t run away from your home. Your sannyas is only true if you can become a sannyasin while being a householder. If you were to become a sannyasin after leaving your house, your wife, your children and your wealth, that sannyas would be false, a conditional, imposed sannyas. If your wife were given back to you, she would take away your sannyas in just one night – even sooner than that! It wouldn’t take much time.

That is why the so-called sannyasin always remains very fearful. He is afraid a woman may touch him. Why is he so afraid? Where will this fearful sannyas take him? What will be the fruits of such an impotent sannyas? Will the soul become weak or strong through it? We never consider all this.

A man is afraid to touch a woman and we think he is very religious. And he is afraid to touch a woman! If a woman touches him, his celibacy will be destroyed! This is the height of helplessness – what can such a helpless soul achieve? He goes around preaching that a woman is nothing but a bundle of skin and bones, but he is scared to even touch her! So all he is saying is superficial; it is nothing but a method to convince himself. Inside, his interest is very present. If he touches the woman the interest will be kindled, and once that happens he will begin to feel that he has fallen.

But no woman creates an interest in a man, and no man creates an interest in a woman. If the interest is already there, she brings it out. This will help your search: if desire is inside you, the presence of a woman will bring it out. So the woman only works as a mirror, the woman is only providing a diagnosis of what lies hidden within you. Why run away from it? It is good to keep her always beside you, so that you can remain aware of what lies hidden within you. And if your sexual desire vanishes while she is with you, only then have you attained real celibacy, only then have you attained to an inner power.

If you attempt to live avoiding the pull of opposites, you will become like a hothouse plant. You can make a greenhouse and provide it with air conditioning – and then any plant can be taken care of inside it. But don’t ever take this plant outside by mistake into the air and sunshine: it will die.

Your so-called sannyasins are such hothouse plants. They have created a certain structure and their sannyas survives within this framework. You only need to place them just a little outside this framework, in the real world, and they will prove to be made of mud. They are mud lions – a little water can wash them away. They are so afraid of water that they cannot be real lions. A real lion will enjoy being in the water, he will find it invigorating, he will become more powerful.

You should learn the art of becoming enriched through opposites. Escaping the opposite is a sign of weakness.

So don’t ever desire a peace which can be disturbed by someone. This kind of peace is of no use, in fact it will be trouble. The truth is that it will become the cause of even greater turmoil.

That is why, if someone in a family becomes religious, like these so-called sannyasins, he becomes a source of disturbance to the whole household – and remains disturbed himself. If you start to meditate, it becomes a trouble for the whole family, because now you will use meditation as a pretext for criticizing everyone. Now, even a small thing disturbs your peace and you will blame someone or other. Why did a utensil make so much noise when it fell? Why did the child shout? Why is someone crying? Why has someone put on the radio? You wanted to be peaceful but you have managed to gather around you the very setup which will keep you in turmoil!

Radios go on playing, children cry and laugh, utensils continue to fall – you will have to have a deep sense of acceptance towards all of this, you will have to become peaceful in the midst of all of this. Don’t be afraid of disturbances; see them as a part of the vast world of meditation. Then the peace you attain will be your own, you can rely on it. If you really become religious in the truest sense, then because of you your home will become more peaceful. If you become a pseudo-religious man, and this country is full of them, then each and every home will become troubled. If one member of a household becomes pseudo-religious he can drive the whole family mad.

A lady came to me and said, “Please, you have to save me! My husband has become religious and our whole house is in trouble.” Her husband too was not an ordinary person; he was a sardar.

I asked her, “What is he up to? What has happened?” She told me that he was getting up at two in the morning and doing loud devotional singing, so that no one else was able to get any sleep. The children’s exams were approaching, they were all beating their heads – but this religious man would start his kirtan at two every morning.

So then I sent for her husband. I asked him, “What are you doing?” He told me that he performed kirtan at the auspicious early-morning hour of the brahman, the divine. Two o’clock in the morning is the auspicious hour of the brahman!

He said, “Everyone should be awake by the hour of the brahman; the question of there being any disturbance doesn’t even arise.” He told me not to be taken in by all those heretics who were trying to disrupt the kirtan and make problems for such great religious work.

Now he was blaming the whole household – and whoever he would ask to perform kirtan at the hour of the brahman did not have the courage to ask him to stop – because who likes to be known as an irreligious person? So I told him, “Listen, no need to stop, but move the hour of the brahman a little forwards. Two o’clock is also a little too early for the divine – make it three o’clock. Then move it to four o’clock and then to five, and then do your kirtan.”

He replied, “What are you saying? How far do I have to move it?”

I said, “I call the hour of the brahman the hour when the divine in you opens its eyes. I can’t call it the divine if any device is used to make this happen. Right now you are using an alarm clock to get up, so this is not the auspicious hour of the divine, rather it is the alarm’s auspicious hour. Stop this. When that divine which lies hidden within you wakes up from sleep, then that is the hour of the brahman.”

He said, “You will lead me astray! I can’t get up before nine o’clock.”

So I said, “If you can’t get up, then think a little bit about your children. You have been kindled with spiritual fire, they haven’t yet, so why are you bothering them? And because of you, these children will be put off religion for ever. They will never be attracted to religion, even mistakenly, and you will be responsible for it because you are ruining their lives. Whenever anyone talks about religion, they will be reminded of two o’clock in the night, the hour of the brahman: ‘Let’s not get caught up in all this.’ You are blaming them, but it is you who is mad. You say that they are disturbing the peace, that they are causing a disturbance, but it is you who is destroying their peace.”

Almost all insane people are attracted to what goes on in the name of religion. You just cannot imagine how easy it is to hide madness under the guise of religion. Under the guise of religion people hide a thousand kinds of sickness. If you enjoy being dirty – and the psychologists say there are certain people who delight in having a dirty body – there are many paths available for you to choose from. You can become a Jaina monk, who is forbidden to take a bath – and so on. Then, what a delight you can take in being dirty! If a clean person approaches you, you can look down on him – because according to you, one who takes a refreshing bath is indulging himself because he is adorning the body. Bathing and washing are an unnecessary adornment of the body. Remaining dirty, not brushing your teeth, having a mouth reeking of bad breath – these are pious deeds!

In the West such types of mad people are medically treated. Here, they find some way to be religious. In the West if anyone behaves so foolishly he will be immediately taken to a doctor to be treated. He will be taken to a psychiatrist; they will say that something has gone wrong with him. But here, there is nothing wrong in it. Here, such a person will be accepted.

Jung has said that there are so few mad people in India because the mad have other avenues for their madness. They can remain mad without being thought of as mad. If a person is shitting while he is eating we call him “The Supremely Enlightened One”! Anywhere else in the world he will be immediately locked up. But we say that this man has attained to supreme indifference, non-duality; that he is the wise one, he is beyond discrimination. This man is mad, he is in need of treatment! He has lost his mind. He has not transcended mind, he has fallen below the mind – but we will honor him.

Always remember that a pseudo-religion will make you more anxiety-ridden, it will promote insanity. And a pseudo-religion will always put the blame on others: you are always right, others are always wrong. But a true religion doesn’t blame anyone. Others are what they are. They have a right to be what they are, they have the freedom.

A child has the right to sing, to dance. This is the child’s right. Your need is to meditate, but the child’s need is to dance, to shout. You enjoy your meditation. The child doesn’t say that your meditation is disturbing him, that your sitting down to meditate is getting in the way of his playing. So then why are you saying that his playing is disturbing your meditation? You meditate – and let the child play. Just forget this idea that someone can disturb your meditation. By dropping this idea you will start moving in the right direction of meditation. Whenever you feel that someone is causing a disturbance, immediately understand that it is you who is making some mistake – otherwise no disturbance is possible.

That is why this sutra says:

The peace you shall desire

is that sacred peace which nothing can disturb,

and in which the soul grows

as does the holy flower upon the still lagoons.

Just as a lotus blossoms in a peaceful lake, the lotus of your soul will blossom only in a peaceful state of meditation. There is no need to try to make it blossom, it will blossom of its own accord. Only two essential conditions must be fulfilled first: a peace that is free from the outer, and a power that is free from the outer. Then the lotus of your life will begin to bloom.

Sadhana-Sutra ~ 06