Osho,
Why is communication so difficult, particularly between lovers?
Communication as such is difficult. Of course it is more difficult between lovers. But first you have to understand the general difficulty of communication.
Each mind has been conditioned by different parents, different teachers, different priests, different politicians. It is a different world in itself. When two minds try to communicate as far as the ordinary mundane things are concerned, there is no difficulty. But the moment they start moving beyond things into the world of concepts, communication starts becoming more and more difficult.
For example, Gautam the Buddha does not have any God in his philosophy. He is far freer of God than even Frederick Nietzsche. Frederick Nietzsche states that God is dead. The implication is clear: God used to be alive, now he is dead. Gautam Buddha does not talk about God at all. It is so irrelevant that he does not pay any attention to the subject.
Now, to a Christian, or to a Hindu, or to a Mohammedan, it is impossible to conceive of a religion without God. God is the center of most of the religions. Only three religions are free of God; one is Gautam Buddha’s, another is Mahavira’s, and the third is Lao Tzu’s.
When Christian missionaries came into contact with Buddhist scriptures for the first time, they could not even conceive of the idea that a religion could be without God. What kind of religion will there be if there is no God? To whom are you going to pray? Who is going to send his prophets and his only begotten Son? Who is going to send saviors for you? Who is going to judge whether you are to be sent to hell or heaven? God removed, hell and heaven are also removed. God removed, punishment and reward are also removed. God removed, the very idea of judgment is removed. Then there is no sin and no virtue. Who will decide it?
They were even more surprised that Gautam Buddha was known by his disciples – and now even by those who are not disciples – as Bhagwan Gautam Buddha. Now Bhagwan means God. This was very puzzling. Gautam Buddha did not believe in any God. Why did he allow his disciples to address him as Bhagwan?
The same is the situation with Jainism. They are even more strict about the absence of God. Buddha simply ignored the whole subject. It was not worth any consideration. Jainism did not leave it because once Mahavira was gone there was a danger of the whole thing cropping up again. He wanted it to be clearly stated that there is no God, there never has been any God and there is no creation because there is no creator. It is an evolving world.
What Charles Darwin found two thousand years later was known to Mahavira. It is not a creation, it is an evolving world – it has been here forever and will be here forever. The whole concept of creation and a creator is just idiotic. Mahavira was very strict; he did not want God to pop up in some disguise when he was gone just because people have a certain unconscious hankering for it. It gives a certain false consolation to people. If you really want to be consoled, it is absolutely necessary to avoid the false consolation. If you authentically want to be at peace with existence, then all that is false and based only on belief has to be discarded.
But again the problem – the followers of Mahavira addressed him as Bhagwan. Now communication becomes difficult because Bhagwan means a totally different thing to the Buddhists and the Jainas than it does to the Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians, Jews. Their whole concept developed in a totally different way.
For the religions which are God-centered, God comes in the beginning, before everything. He creates the world and nobody bothers from where he comes. If there was no world at all, how did he manage to exist and where? There must have been a small island, or some cloud – something. God cannot exist in nothingness, and if God can exist in nothingness, then what is the problem? Why bring him in unnecessarily? Existence is perfectly good, autonomous, not dependent on a despot you call God.
According to those who do not believe, he is whimsical because for eternity he just remained silent. What was he doing? Smoking? Taking drugs? Or just dreaming? Sleeping? In a coma? What is the situation? – because according to Christians he created the world only six thousand years ago. And six thousand years is such a stupid idea because India has scriptures which are far more ancient than the Christian God.
The Rig Veda according to the Hindu scholars – and I support them on that point… I don’t think the Rig Veda is something great, perhaps two percent of it has something beautiful and spiritual, ninety-eight percent is simply crap. So I don’t agree with their idea that the Rig Veda is written by God, but I certainly agree with their concept that the Rig Veda is ninety thousand years old because the proof and evidence are intrinsic.
Ninety thousand years ago, there occurred a certain constellation of stars which has not happened again since then. That constellation of stars is described in the Rig Veda in absolute and perfect detail. Now, there is an astronomical argument which is irrefutable; you cannot do anything. The whole of astronomy supports it – this kind of constellation happened.
According to their measurements it happened ninety thousand years ago, and also according to the Hindu scholars it happened ninety thousand years ago. Because it is described in such detail it cannot be said that the Rig Veda was written just three thousand or at the most five thousand years ago, as Christians think. People who were writing the Rig Veda five thousand years ago cannot in any way describe something which happened eighty-five thousand years earlier. There was no astronomical technology in their hands, and anyway somebody would be needed to remember it. Who is going to remember what happened eighty-five thousand years ago? Just think how long you can remember back: your father, your grandfather, perhaps your great-grandfather… Beyond that it is vague. It is not that the world began with your great-grandfather just because you cannot remember further back.
These religions – Hinduism, Judaism, Mohammedanism, Christianity – are all God-oriented. They believe God created the world. In fact they are believers in the concept of creation. And, naturally, creation needs a creator. But the whole scientific approach proves just the opposite. It is not a creation. Creation means complete. That’s what the Bible says: in six days God created the world in its perfection, and then on the seventh day he rested, and nobody knows what happened to him. Where did he go? Because the world was perfect, there was no need for him.
Evolution means the world is never perfect: it is trying to be perfect. It is evolving. Creation is something dead: everything has come to a full stop. That is a very dead idea about existence. Existence is a constant flow toward higher beings, higher consciousnesses. Certainly God did not create Gautam Buddha, and you cannot say that Adam and Eve had the same consciousness and the same sat-chit-anand as Gautam Buddha. Gautam Buddha was a very evolved being and the evolution was going on without God managing it. Existence is accepted by Buddhism, Jainism, and Taoism as autonomous and eternal. That looks meaningful. But God is removed completely.
The Christians who were translating Buddhist scriptures were worried why Buddha did not prevent his disciples from calling him Bhagwan. They could not understand that in Buddhism, Bhagwan takes on a totally different meaning. It means “the blessed one.” The same is true about Jainism. God-oriented religions have their God in the beginning and then not even a trace is found of that God. Atheists have been challenging him, but he seems to be either deaf or perhaps Nietzsche is right, he is dead. Or perhaps Gautam Buddha is right that he never existed. Who can give the proof?
One great English atheist, Edmund Burke, asked a very simple thing. Addressing a big meeting of an atheist association, he said, “If God exists, I will wait for five minutes” – looking at his watch – “and I don’t want him to do something as great as he did for Moses.”
God had separated the ocean into two parts and made a path for Moses and his followers to pass through the ocean surging on both sides. No walls, just water. A valley miles deep and on both sides water standing on its own.
Burke said, “I don’t want to give him that much trouble. All I want is for him to stop my watch within five minutes, then I will believe.” And God could not even do that.
Atheists have been continuously challenging God, but no answer. In fact he has not left his address with us. Even if you want to write a letter you cannot. Those who think the whole hypothesis of God is nonsense find your prayers very childish. Whom are you addressing? Where is he? You have not seen him. You know nobody who has seen him.
In Jainism and Buddhism, God comes at the end of evolution, and that is a more significant meaning. Then there is not a single God. It is also significant to remember that a single God is bound to become a dictator. And the world cannot be really free under a dictator – a Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Ronald Reagan. God is not elected by you. You are just puppets in his hands. As he created you out of mud, any day he can bulldoze you back into mud. There is no higher court of appeal. The whole idea of creation is whimsical. Buddhism says every living being is on the way to becoming a god. God is the ultimate evolution of consciousness.
That’s why Buddha did not prevent his disciples from addressing him as Bhagwan. Nor did Mahavira. They are Bhagwan, but their meaning is totally different. They are not creators of the world; they don’t claim any stupid, ridiculous idea. They are very straightforward. They are simply saying that consciousness evolves from animal to man, from man to God. So every living being one day is going to become God. The whole world will be full of Gods. And this seems to be more scientific – just one solitary God, and existence looks so poor. And that solitary God, what will he do? Marijuana? Hashish? Or play cards with the Holy Ghost? What is he going to do from eternity to eternity?
But that’s how communication becomes difficult. The Hindu papers in India never write my name as Bhagwan. That is a taboo because Bhagwan means one who created the world. I certainly am not so mad as to create this world.
Christians will be worried…

When I was in my first jail in America, I was sharing the cell with a criminal who had been there for many years. I was puzzled; I was first lying and resting – what else to do? But that man would get up – he had his Bible – and he would put the Bible on the bed, sit on the floor, put his head on the Bible and pray to God. His name was Bobby.
So one day I shook him and I said, “Bobby, what are you doing? If you were such a great Christian, you would not be in jail. You have murdered and you never thought about God, and about the Bible and everything. God cannot help because for four years you have been praying – and have you ever looked inside this Bible? Just putting your head on the Bible is not going to move the Bible into your head. It is not a creeping thing, it is just dead words.”
He was very much shocked. And he said, “I also wanted to ask you. When I heard that you are called Bhagwan, I was very surprised. Certainly you have not created the world.”
I said, “If I had created the world, you would not have been in it. You are enough proof I have not created this world.”
He was very shocked. He said, “You seem to be a very strange person.”
I said, “God has to be a strange person. And you are stupid, Bobby. I am sitting here and you are putting your head on a dead book. Turn toward me.”
He said, “But you are not a Christian.”
I said, “I am a god. Are you interested in God, or in a Christian God?”
He said, “You are raising problems that I have never thought about. Yes, it is true, I am interested in God, but if you are a god, then why are you in jail?”
I said, “This is nothing, Bobby. Who was Jesus Christ?”
He said, “He was God – God’s only begotten Son.”
And I said, “If he can be crucified, what is the problem of my being in jail? Your Christian God would also have been in jail, but because he has not been found yet, he is out of jail.”
He said, “That seems to be logical because Jesus Christ was crucified.”
He became friendly, very friendly. Just three or four days ago I received a letter from another jail. Bobby had been moved. He told his new cell-mate about me, and told him, “Write a letter to Bhagwan to tell him that poor Bobby remembers him.” He also said, “Bhagwan will have forgotten my name, but he shattered all my beliefs. Just being five days with him was enough.”
God created the world in six days. Bobby was finished in five days because I explained to him a simple fact, “God is the final evolution. Bobby, one day you are going to be a god. But it is not going to happen by prayer.”

The religions that believe in God are bound to believe in prayer. That’s why in the West, meditation has never developed. Only religions that don’t believe in God have developed meditation. Because God is out there somewhere, you have to pray, you have to depend on him. If he listens – good; if he does not listen – what can you do?
Meditation is developed by those whose god is inside. That’s where I find people like Jesus Christ contradictory. On the one hand he says “The Kingdom of God is within,” and then every day he prays to a God somewhere above in the skies. This is a simple contradiction which cannot be explained in any way. If God is within, then meditation is the way, not prayer. Prayer to whom? To yourself. That is the only way of getting deeper into your consciousness and finding the godliness which I call sat-chit-anand.
So when a Buddhist or a Jaina is talking to a Hindu or a Christian, if they mention the word God, there will be no communication at all. The Christian will hear one thing: he will hear about the God who created the world six thousand and four years ago, on the first of January of course, a Monday – because he cannot create in the middle of the calendar. There was no calendar before he created the world. The calendar starts with the world. You can’t have a calendar when there is no universe. Where will you hang it? Simple problems! Where will you print it? So Christians don’t say January the first, Monday. I am saying it. But if he ever created the world, at the same time he must have created the calendar.
The moment the Christian thinks of God, he immediately thinks of this whole thing that is lined up in his mind. When a Buddhist says “Bhagwan,” there is no question of creation. He is not looking backward, he is not looking into the past, he is looking forward. He is looking forward to everybody’s evolution, into the ultimate flowering of consciousness, truth and bliss. Each living being, sooner or later, is going to become a god. One day the whole of existence will be full of gods. And that will be its ultimate evolution.
How to communicate? On each single word you have different opinions, prejudices, conditions. The words are the same, but the moment you say them and the other hears them, he is not hearing the same meaning, he is hearing a different meaning. Of course the word is the same, but the word triggers a totally different meaning. So if your communication is about higher things, it is more difficult, almost impossible.
As far as lovers are concerned, they have still more difficulty in communicating because the feminine mind functions differently, and the masculine mind functions differently. The man has been conditioned by the society in a different way to how the woman has been conditioned. And they have to live together, twenty-four hours a day; it becomes heavy. It becomes heavy because whatever the man says, the woman hears something else. The woman is not much in the head, she is much more in the heart: the man is much more in the head. That creates a great disparity. The man is perfectly good in arguments.

A man and wife were fighting and the man said, “Sit down, be calm and quiet and let us reason it out.”
The wife said, “Never, because whenever we reason anything out, you are victorious. No reasoning! I am going to break things like furniture, burn clothes, if you are not going to agree with me.”
And the man said, “Wait. You are right. It is not a question of reasoning because each time I say ‘Calm down, sit quietly and let us argue it out,’ you are the winner.”

The woman has her own arguments: breaking plates. Of course those plates are ones which need to be broken. She never breaks the really beautiful ones. She hits the man with the pillow, but hitting somebody with a pillow is not violent. It is a very nonviolent fight, a soft pillow. She throws things at the man, but never aims at him. She aims here and there. But that is enough to create havoc in the neighborhood. That’s what she wants: the whole neighborhood should know what is happening. That humbles the husband. He starts crawling and saying, “Forgive me. I was wrong from the very beginning. I knew it.”
As couples settle, the husband forgets all about arguing. When he enters the house, he takes a deep breath, and prepares himself for any irrational thing that is going to happen.

A man saw written on a board in front of a restaurant, “Here you will feel at home.” Reading it, he entered.
The waitress came and asked, “What can I do for you?”
He said, “First, bring me chapatis, but all burned.”
The waitress could not understand.
“Vegetables, without any salt. Milk which has gone sour.” The woman thought this man seems to be mad. “And then come here and sit beside me and nag.”
The waitress thought, “A strange customer, but let us try.” What can be done?
She brought burned chapatis, rotten vegetables without any salt, milk which was no longer milk, it was almost curd. And then the man said, “Sit beside me and start nagging.”
The woman said, “What kind of person are you?”
He said, “What kind of person? Go out and look at the board you have put in front of the restaurant, ‘Here you will feel at home.’ This is how I can feel at home, otherwise not. This is what my wife has been doing to me for years. Now I have become accustomed to it. If you don’t nag me, I cannot eat, I have no appetite at all. Once you start nagging, I immediately start feeling hungry.”

It is conditioning. With lovers it becomes difficult, more difficult than for ordinary people because the ways a woman comes to conclusions are not logical, they are hunches. But they are mostly right. Logic may fail, but her hunches don’t fail. She has an intuitive approach – man has only an intellectual approach – and certainly the intuitive approach has a back door to know reality. Intellect simply goes knocking on the front door and nobody opens it. The back door is always open.

It is just after midnight and there is a knock on the doctor’s door. Dragging himself out of bed, and poking his head out of the window, he peers down at the figure on the doorstep. “Well?” he asks.
The woman looks up and says, “No, sick.”

Even in small words like well, the woman functions differently. Once that is understood then some kind of communication is possible.

A man goes into the pharmacy and says to the aging female assistant, “I’d like ten condoms please, miss.”
“Don’t you ‘miss’ me!” snaps the assistant.
“Okay,” he replies. “Then give me eleven.”

“No! No! A hundred times no!” cried the centipede to his wife, crossing his legs.

It is not only in the human world; even among the animals you will find the same conflict going on all over the world.

Old man Finkelstein is desperate to get married, but so far he has not met with any success.
Finally he advertises for a wife in the local newspaper. He gets almost two hundred replies, most of them from men, who write: “You can have mine.”

The pompous judge glares over the courtroom at the woman tramp who has been dragged into court on a charge of vagrancy.
“Have you ever earned an honest dollar in your life, you good-for-nothing?”
“Yes, your honor,” replies the woman. “I voted for you in the last election.”

Unless lovers come to a state of meditative consciousness, they will not be able to communicate. Their communication will always be a conflict; it will never be a communion. The only possibility is: if both evolve their consciousness to a point where it goes beyond the mind, then all conditionings are left behind. Even the biological differences are left behind. The consciousness that goes beyond the mind is no longer male, no longer female. Now there is a possibility to have not only conversation but some communion. A deep understanding is possible. But without meditation no such possibility exists.
For thousands of years man has lived in this situation of no communication and he has become accustomed to it: man has become accustomed, the woman has become accustomed – and they think nothing can be done about it. In fact, I am the first man who is saying something can be done about it. Neither Gautam Buddha, nor Jesus, nor Moses, nor Lao Tzu – none of them even thought about it. Yet it is one of the greatest problems.
Every house is full of this conflict. Children grow up in the atmosphere of this noncommunication, then naturally they start learning the same strategies as their parents. It is almost as if every husband has forced the woman into slavery, and every woman has taken revenge. It is natural. She has reduced every husband to a hen-pecked husband.
It is a very vicious circle. Man has taken away the freedom of woman, has taken away her education, has taken away her culture, has taken away her freedom of movement in society, has taken away her financial independence. Naturally she is burning with anger, and has been for centuries. Whatever she could do as a personal reaction to this was to torture the husband in a thousand-and-one ways. She has invented her own ways. If she is unhappy, the husband is going to get cold tea, may have to miss his lunch, or when he opens his lunchbox tiffin in the office, he may find that there is nothing in it.
It is said…

Akbar once asked his courtiers, “Do you think in the capital there are a few strong men who are not hen-pecked?”
All the courtiers said, “We think this is a vast capital. There may be at least a few people.”
But Birbal, the most intelligent man of this court, said, “My Lord, I think there is not a single man on the whole earth who is not hen-pecked. Husband means hen-pecked.”
The emperor was a little angry. He said, “What do you mean?”
Birbal said, “I mean exactly what I have said. These courtiers, these great warriors, your generals, they are saying there may be some people in the capital. None of them has raised his hand claiming he is not a hen-pecked husband. You yourself are asking the question, but can you raise your hand and say that you are not hen-pecked? And remember Allah: don’t lie.”
The emperor was completely stunned and he said, “I cannot lie, that’s true. About me, it is true. My wife tortures me. That is the only place where I am no longer emperor. But these people are saying ‘a few people.’”
Birbal said, “I am ready to investigate the whole capital. Give me your two beautiful Arabian horses. You have one white, one black. I will take those two horses and go for an investigation.”
He went to many people, strong people, wrestlers, professional fighters, warriors, but they all said…
He told them, “If you can say that you are not hen-pecked, you will have to come to the court and declare it. Then you can choose one of the horses. These are the greatest horses in the world. This is the very best breed which you will never manage to find, you could never afford. They have been brought from Arabia only for the emperor. One horse is yours; you can choose.”
But they said, “We love the horses. They look great, but we are sorry we cannot say anything. If our wives come to know that we have declared we are not hen-pecked, there will be great difficulty – much more difficulty than any horse is worth.”
Finally he came to a gardener’s hut, where a poor, but very strong, man – seven feet tall – was digging a hole. Birbal asked, “Are you hen-pecked?” He did not answer, but showed his muscles which were almost like steel.
He said, “Put your hand in my hand.”
Birbal himself was a warrior, a fighter. He gave his hand, but the gardener’s hand was almost like steel. As he pressed Birbal’s hand, Birbal hit the roof. He said, “Let go. You will kill me.” Certainly it seemed so, because he had not even answered about being hen-pecked or anything. He was simply saying, “Don’t dare to ask such a question of me!”
Birbal said, “Then you can choose one horse, whichever you like. Certainly you are not hen-pecked.” And the gardener called inside for his wife to come out.
She was a small woman, very thin. He asked her, “Which horse should I choose? – because I don’t want any quarrel later on. You tell me the color.”
Birbal said, “Stop! Now you don’t choose any. It is finished. You are a hen-pecked husband.” Even Birbal wondered how this small woman was harassing this giant of a man.
He came back to the court with two horses and told the emperor, “There is not a single person.”

It has deep roots in the psychology of man. Because man has misbehaved for centuries with women, women have found their own small strategies. They cannot revolt because they are so dependent. They have been crippled, they cannot become a class separate from man like the proletariat and the bourgeoisie – the poor and the rich – who can fight and have a great revolution like the Communist revolution in Russia. That is not possible. Because each woman is attached to a single man, women can’t function as a class, so they cannot go against man as a class. But each single woman finds her own strategy for torture.
It is very easy for her to torture. The fundamentals of the strategy are: first she makes the man completely dependent on her for his food, for his clothes, for his bed, for everything. This is absolutely unconscious. When the man becomes completely dependent on the woman, if there is any conflict, he does not get any food – and he cannot cook. He will not get fresh clothes because he cannot wash them himself because he knows nothing about it. He will not get a bed prepared for him because he has never prepared it. He does not know what to do. In the house the woman rules so totally that at any moment she can withdraw. That’s enough; she doesn’t have to do anything active and violent, she can simply withdraw. Then the man becomes almost a helpless child.
Communication is only possible between equals, and communication is only possible beyond the mind. Here, with my people, you will find, slowly, slowly, a communication is developing. As their consciousness goes higher, they will start understanding many things which they were not able to understand before. They will not only understand their own unconscious, they will also understand the woman’s unconscious. They will not only understand their own minds, they will also understand the feminine mind – and vice versa. And because they are both beyond, there is a possibility of tremendous understanding.
The world will be at peace only when man and woman have come to a deep understanding. And with that deep understanding there will be great love, great compassion, great friendliness. It is an absolute to be achieved. Without it man can never become civilized.

Osho,
My spelling error, “Lolita” for “Lokita,” has created havoc around here! Lovers of Lolita are tearing around calling, “Where is my Lolita?” and Lokita is dying to be called Lolita, and Milarepa doesn't know which is Lolita and which is Lokita!
This would have to be a “once” mistake!
Jivan Mary, they say history repeats itself, and history repeats itself because man is unconscious. So he goes on committing the same mistakes again and again. Although he decides every time that he is not going to commit the same mistake, the decision remains hanging in the conscious; it never reaches the unconscious from where all actions arise. And there is no communication between the conscious and the unconscious. There is no bridge; they don’t know each other. Nobody has ever introduced them to each other. And you will find this everywhere.
A smoker decides: “This is my last cigarette. Enough is enough. I am not going to smoke again.” And within two or three hours he feels so uneasy, so uncomfortable, so tense and under stress, he forgets all about the decision. He thinks, “Just one more cigarette is not going to kill me.” This has been going on for years. He decides, and even while he is deciding he knows this is not going to happen – “Let me try one more time, perhaps…” The problem is that the mistakes are unconscious. Unless your consciousness becomes deep enough so that it reaches the very bottom of your unconscious, you will have to repeat mistakes.
I was once an editor of a daily newspaper. In this small life I have done so many things. There I became aware of what they call “proof-reader’s blindness.” I have seen it myself that the proofreader goes on making the same mistake again and again. It seems to be strange that he goes on missing the same word. There seems to be some unconscious reason behind it that pulls him back, or makes him blind, and he passes the word without exactly reading it, or passes it quickly. And once he has committed that mistake he can read the whole passage with the wrong word many times; he will simply be unaware of it.
There may be some deep wound inside. For example, a man who has failed utterly in love, for whom love has left only a wound in his being, he will quickly pass the word love without realizing it. He will see that it is written perfectly correctly with the right spelling, but he is not looking at it. He does not want to look at it because it opens his wound. The same is the situation of the typist. It is not a different thing. One can commit the same mistake again and again because man is not conscious, his whole life is a repetition.
Just the other day I was telling you about a man who married ten women. He left them fast – three months, four months, was more than he could live with one woman. But finally he not only found that the tenth woman was a woman he had married once before, he also found that he always ended up with the same kind of woman. After three or four months he becomes fed up and divorces her, but when he falls in love again within two or three days he finds, “My God! Although she is a different woman, she has the same character.” He does not know that his choice is coming from the unconscious, and his decision is coming from the conscious. They are two separate parts of his being.
He loves a certain kind of woman – a certain hairstyle, a certain kind of eyes – a certain color – a certain face, a certain nose, a certain curvature of the body. He is not aware of why he falls in love with a certain woman, but it is always going to be the same woman in a different dress, with a different name. It is his choice because he is the chooser, but he again finds the same kind of woman, and the same kind of woman will show the same kind of character sooner or later.
The man was puzzled as to what was happening, but he was not aware it was happening because of his unconscious. This is our whole life story. We go on making the same mistake. We are bound to do it because we have not done anything to change the very structure of our consciousness.
Jivan Mary, it is possible not to commit the same mistake again. But you will need to be not only more alert in typing, you will have to be more conscious in your whole life – each moment. You will have to be more meditative. Then even to commit a mistake once becomes difficult – you can commit once, that is allowed; twice you cannot. Your whole being knows there is no division, your house is not divided; your house is one, you are one, you are not split.
But what do we go on doing? With one hand we make something, and with the other hand we destroy it. And we are not aware that both are our hands. It needs a tremendous revolution in your consciousness.

Hymie Goldberg gets a phone call from his lawyer. “What do you want to hear first, the bad news or the terrible news?” the lawyer asks.
“Hell!” says Hymie. “Give me the bad news first.”
“Okay,” replies the lawyer. “The bad news is that your wife has found a picture worth a hundred thousand dollars.”
“That is bad news?” cries Hymie. “In that case, I can’t wait to hear the terrible news.”
“The terrible news,” replies the lawyer, “is that the picture is of you and your secretary on Miami Beach!”

An old chicken farmer is very proud of his brood, so when two smartly-dressed city gentlemen ask to look at them, he quickly obliges.
“A very fine bunch of chickens,” says one of the men.
“Thank you, sir,” replies the farmer.
“And what do you feed them on?” asks the second man.
“Special chicken fertilizer, imported from China,” says the old man, proudly.
“A-ha!” cries the first man. “Just as we suspected, that is illegal. You will be fined two thousand dollars.”
A month later, two more well-dressed men show up and ask the farmer what he feeds to his magnificent chickens. The old man, wiser than the first time, says, “I just feed them on shit.”
“A-ha!” say the men. “We are from the Health and Hygiene Department, and what you are doing is illegal. You will be fined two thousand dollars.”
A few weeks later, another city gentleman arrives and asks the same question. This time the farmer shrugs and says, “Listen, mister, I just give them fifty cents each and tell them to go to the market and buy what the hell they want!”

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