No Golden Rule
Osho on German Philosopher Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
27th August is the birthday of the acclaimed 19th century philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Born in 1770 in Stuttgart Germany, he was raised in a scholarly environment and he became a voracious reader by adolescence. Bonding with other prodigious intellectuals during his time in college, Hegel became steeped in philosophy reading and debating ideas of Aristotle, Fichte, Heraclitus, Kant, Rousseau etc. By this stage in his life, Hegel had envisaged that he would become a Popularphilosoph “man of letters” who would make abstruse ideas of philosophers accessible to a wider public. Hegel went on to propound some seminal theories in philosophy particularly absolute idealism that influenced generations of distinguished scholars after him notably Karl Marx, Engels, Bradley, Bosanquet, Feuerbach, Lenin, Nietzsche and others. At the same time, Hegel’s work inspired exceptional scholars that rebelled against Hegelian Idealism notably Schopenhauer, G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell.
Osho says Germany is one of the most intellectual countries in the world. Such a great tradition of learning and such refined intellect. Germany has produced the greatest logicians, theologians, psychologists, philosophers in the world – Hegel, Heidegger, Einstein, Feuerbach, Freud, Kant, Karl Marx, Schiller. But not a single mystic.
Osho relates a hilarious anecdote about Hegel. It is said that after one lecture a student said to Hegel, ‘Professor Hegel, I am confused by your teaching because reality looks quite different.’ To which Hegel replied, ‘My dear friend, all the worse for reality.’
Osho says all philosophies belong to the mind. The mind is interested in all kinds of gymnastics of words, beliefs, disbeliefs, arguments. The mind consoles itself by creating philosophies and gives you an illusion that it knows. But knowing is a totally different experience than knowledge. I am all for knowing and I am all against knowledge. Knowing is your insight, it is your capacity to see the reality. Philosophy means some doctrine about reality. Drop all philosophies. Let your eyes be empty, empty of all. Those empty eyes become full of truth.
BELOVED MASTER,
WHAT IS THE GOLDEN RULE IN GAUTAM BUDDHA’S PHILOSOPHY?
Prabhat,
Once George Bernard Shaw was asked, “Is there a golden rule in life?” He said, “There is only one golden rule: that there are no golden rules.”
Life is not mechanical; that’s why there is a possibility of religion. If life was mechanical, totally rooted in rules, in cause and effect, in causality, then science would have been enough. And science is not enough. Science only touches the periphery of life; the innermost core remains untouched. Science only knows the rudimentary; it does not know the highest peak. It knows only the bodily part of existence but not its spiritual center. It is concerned with the circumference and utterly unaware of the center. Hence there are no golden rules.
Life is freedom, it is consciousness, it is bliss, it is love — but not law. That’s why I am very reluctant to translate Buddha’s word ‘dhamma’ as the “universal law”; it misses something very significant. Dhamma has freedom in it; freedom is the goal of dhamma. And law is absolutely without freedom. Law is like a goods train running on tracks, and dhamma is like a river descending from the peaks of the Himalayas, going zigzag, in absolute freedom, spontaneity, with no fixed routine, unpredictable, towards the ocean.
Life can be lived in rules, but then life becomes superficial. Live life not according to the laws but according to consciousness, awareness. Don’t live life according to the mind. Mind has rules and regulations, mind has rituals. Live life from the standpoint of no-mind so that you can bloom into unpredictable flowers. Buddha has no golden rule in his philosophy.
According to Peter’s Principle, the golden rule of life is: Whoever has the gold makes the rules. And Buddha has no gold — he can’t make the golden rule. And secondly, he has no philosophy either. He has a vision, a DARSHAN, a PHILOSIA, but not philosophy. A philosia simply means the capacity to see. Philosophy is thinking, philosia is seeing. Buddha is not concerned with thinking at all; his whole emphasis is on seeing. See the truth, don’t believe in it. Don’t think about it. You can go on thinking about it and about it, but you will never arrive at it by thinking about it.
Thinking about God has nothing to do with God. Thinking about light has nothing to do with light. In fact, only a blind man thinks about light. The man who has eyes ENJOYS light, he does not think about it. Have you ever thought about light? You enjoy it, you live it. It is dancing everywhere amongst the trees… you feel it, you experience it. Buddha is not a philosopher, in the Western sense of the word. He is a seer who has seen. And because he has seen he has become free: free of mind. Mind is needed only if you are a thinker.
Plato and Kant and Hegel and Marx and Bertrand Russell, these are philosophers. Lao Tzu, Buddha, Zarathustra, Jesus, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Eckhart, these are not philosophers; these are seers. These are two totally different currents. Belong to the seers. Be a seer, because without seeing the truth there is no deliverance.
Source:
Listen to complete discourse at mentioned below link.
Discourse series: The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 8 Chapter #2
Chapter title: The who behind all who’s
22 December 1979 am in Buddha Hall
References:
Osho has spoken on eminent philosophers like Aristotle, Berkeley, Confucius, Descartes, Feuerbach, Hegel, Heidegger, Heraclitus, Huxley, Jaspers, Kant, Kierkegaard, Marx, Moore, Nietzsche, Plato, Pythagoras, Russell, Sartre, Socrates, Wittgenstein and others in His discourses. Some of these can be referred to in the following books/discourse titles:
- Beyond Psychology
- The Hidden Harmony
- Bodhidharma: The Greatest Zen Master
- Walk Without Feet, Fly Without Wings and Think Without Mind
- The Sword and The Lotus
- Yakusan: Straight to The Point Of Enlightenment
- Sufis: The People on The Path Vol.1-2
- The Golden Future
- Zarathustra, the laughing prophet
- Ecstasy – The Forgotten Language
- The Rebel
- I Am Not As Thunk As You Drink I Am
