Sitting Silently: Become a Mirror
Osho on Watching
When you act moment to moment out of your awareness and watchfulness, great intelligence arises. You start shining, glowing, you become luminous. But it happens through two things: watching, and action out of that watching. If watching becomes inaction, you are committing suicide. Watching should lead you into action, a new kind of action; a new quality is brought to action. You watch, you are utterly quiet and silent. You see what the situation is, and out of that seeing you respond.
The man of awareness responds, he is responsible – literally! He is responsive, he does not react. His action is born out of his awareness, not out of your manipulation; that is the difference. Hence, there is no question of there being any incompatibility between watching and spontaneity. Watching is the beginning of spontaneity; spontaneity is the fulfillment of watching.
The real man of understanding acts – acts tremendously, acts totally, but he acts in the moment, out of his consciousness. He is like a mirror. The ordinary man, the unconscious man, is not like a mirror, he is like a photo-plate. What is the difference between a mirror and a photo-plate? A photo-plate, once exposed, becomes useless. It receives the impression, becomes impressed by it – it carries the picture. But remember, the picture is not reality – the reality goes on growing. You can go into the garden and you can take a picture of a rosebush. Tomorrow the picture will be the same, the day after tomorrow the picture will also be the same. Go again and see the rosebush: it is no longer the same. The roses have gone, or new roses have arrived. A thousand and one things have happened.
It is said that once a realist philosopher went to see the famous painter, Picasso. The philosopher believed in realism and he had come to criticize Picasso because Picasso’s paintings are abstract, they are not realistic. They don’t depict reality as it is. On the contrary, they are symbolic, have a totally different dimension – they are symbolistic.
The realist said, “I don’t like your paintings. A painting should be real! If you paint my wife, then your painting should LOOK like my wife.” And he took out a picture of his wife and said, “Look at this picture! The painting should be like this.” Picasso looked at the picture and said, “This is your wife?” He said, “Yes, this is my wife!” Picasso said, “I am surprised! She is very small and flat.”
The picture cannot be the wife!
Another story is told: A beautiful woman came to Picasso and said, “Just the other day I saw your self-portrait in a friend’s home. It was so beautiful, I was so influenced, almost hypnotized, that I hugged the picture and kissed it.” Picasso said, “Really! And then what did the picture do to you? Did the picture kiss you back?” The woman said, “Are you mad?! The picture did not kiss me back.” Picasso said, “Then it was not me.”
A picture is a dead thing. The camera, the photo-plate, catches only a static phenomenon. And life is never static, it goes on changing. Your mind functions like a camera, it goes on collecting pictures — it is an album. And then out of those pictures you go on reacting. Hence, you are never true to life, because whatsoever you do is wrong; WHATSOEVER you do, I say, is wrong. It never fits.
A picture is static. It remains as it is, it never changes. The unconscious mind functions like a camera, it functions like a photo-plate. The watchful mind, the meditative mind, functions like a mirror. It catches no impression; it remains utterly empty, always empty. So whatsoever comes in front of the mirror, it is reflected. If you are standing before the mirror, it reflects you. If you are gone, don’t say that the mirror betrays you. The mirror is simply a mirror. When you are gone, it no longer reflects you; it has no obligation to reflect you anymore. Now somebody else is facing it — it reflects somebody else. If nobody is there, it reflects nothing. It is always true to life.
The photo-plate is never true to life. Even if your photo is taken right now, by the time the photographer has taken it out of the camera, you are no longer the same! Much water has already gone down the Ganges. You have grown, changed, you have become older. Maybe only one minute has passed, but one minute can be a great thing — you may be dead! Just one minute before you were alive; after one minute, you may be dead. The picture will never die. But in the mirror, if you are alive, you are alive; if you are dead, you are dead.
Buddha says: Learn sitting silently — become a mirror. Silence makes a mirror out of your consciousness, and then you function moment to moment. You reflect life. You don’t carry an album within your head. Then your eyes are clear and innocent, you have clarity, you have vision, and you are never untrue to life. This is authentic living.
Source:
Listen to complete discourse at mentioned below link.
Discourse series: The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 2 Chapter #10
Chapter title: The law — ancient and inexhaustible
10 July 1979 am in Buddha Hall
References:
Osho has spoken on ‘watching, witnessing, understanding, spontaneity’ in many of His discourses. More on the subject can be referred to in the following books/discourses:
- The Buddha: The Emptiness of the Heart
- The New Dawn
- The Hidden Splendor
- The Tantra Vision
- Tao: The Pathless Path
- Vigyan Bhairav Tantra
- The Zen Manifesto: Freedom From Oneself
- Satyam Shivam Sundram
- The Path of the Mystic
- I Celebrate Myself: God Is No Where, Life Is Now Here
