TAO
Tao The Pathless Path Vol 1 10
Tenth Discourse from the series of 14 discourses - Tao The Pathless Path Vol 1 by Osho.
You can listen, download or read all of these discourses on oshoworld.com.
The first question:
Osho,
Do you have favorites? Am I one of them?
I am reminded of an Arabian proverb.
It is said that whenever God creates a person he whispers into his ear, “You are my favorite. I have never made such a beautiful person before and I am not going to make such a beautiful person again. You are simply unique.” But this he has been doing to everybody, and everybody deep down in his heart thinks, “Whatsoever God has said, I believe.”
You are my favorite. And this is not addressed to anybody in particular, but to everybody. In fact, to choose as a favorite or not is not possible for me. It depends on you, you can become my favorite, you may not become; it is a one-way traffic. If you allow, you will become; if you don’t allow, you will not become. As far as I am concerned I am not.
The second question:
Osho,
Please explain the difference between rationalization and bullshit.
Bullshit is a far better word than rationalization but they mean the same. Rationalization is a clinical word – a word to be used by the professors, bullshit is more alive. Rationalization is bloodless; bullshit is very young, alive and kicking. But the meaning is the same, they are not different things.
The henpecked husband and his wordy wife were walking down the country road having one of their arguments in the usual way. She was winning. Suddenly she turned and saw a bull charging down the road. There was no time to warn her husband so she jumped into a hedge. The bull caught the man on its horns and sent him spinning fifty feet into the air. He came down in a ditch. When he finally managed to crawl out, he saw his wife standing on the road.
“Maria,” he said, “if you hit me like that again you’ll really make me lose my temper.”
Now this is bullshit. If you ask a psychoanalyst, he will call it a rationalization.
The culture society was organizing a group to be comprised strictly of virgins, when a young lady carrying a baby appeared.
“But, Madam,” protested the president, “that is evidence that you are not eligible for this society. Why do you think you will be able to join?”
“I was only foolin’ around when this happened,” she explained. “So I thought I could get in as one of those foolish virgins.”
This is bullshit. Rationalization is a philosophical term. Bullshit comes from the ordinary man, from the masses, people who live on the earth, with the earth, whose hands are muddy. The word bullshit is also muddy as it is being used by people who are working, living an ordinary life. It does not come from the ivory towers of a university. But remember, it is more authentic, it says much more than rationalization. Always remember that words that are coined by professors are always anemic. They are dead words – clinical, but they do not say much; rather than saying, they hide. Let me say it in this way, the very word rationalization is a rationalization: It is being used to avoid the word bullshit.
The third question:
Osho,
Why do you make so many mistakes when you quote other people or refer to Biblical events or to scientific discoveries? I have answered this question many times myself in various ways. Now I would like to hear your answer.
So allow me to commit a few more mistakes.
First: my memory is marvelous.
Mulla Nasruddin was talking to a man, and he said, “My wife has a very bad memory.”
And the man asked, “Do you mean she forgets everything?”
Mulla Nasruddin said, “No, she remembers everything!”
If Mulla Nasruddin’s wife has a bad memory, I have a marvelous memory. I forget everything. And I enjoy this forgetfulness; I am not worried about it.
Secondly: I am an ignorant person. I am not a scholar. I enjoy reading books, but I read the Bible, the Gita, the Koran just as one reads novels; they are ancient, beautiful stories. Krishnamurti says that he never reads any scriptures; he reads only detective stories. I read the scriptures, but I read in the scriptures just a detective story and nothing else. And I would suggest to Krishnamurti that it would be good if he looked into the Bible; you cannot find a more beautiful story, full of suspense. Everything is there: love, life, murder; everything is there. It is very sensational.
The scriptures, to me, have nothing special. The scriptures are as sacred as the trees and the rocks and the stars – or as secular. I don’t make a distinction so I am not very serious about the scriptures. The only thing I am serious about is jokes. So when I quote the scripture, I quote from memory; when I quote a joke, I have it written here in front of me. I never want to make a mistake about the joke – I am really serious. About everything else I am absolutely nonserious.
It is very obvious. Listening to me, you must have understood that my emphasis is not on what the scriptures say – that is not the point. My emphasis is on what I am saying. If you go to a Christian priest, he quotes the scripture; his emphasis is on the scripture. He is very literal, he has to be – he himself is secondary, the scripture is primary. He is a witness to the scripture. With me it is just the opposite: the scripture is just a witness to me. Whatsoever I have to say, only that have I to say. If I feel the scripture can be a witness to it, I use it.
I go on playing with the scriptures, sometimes in one way, sometimes in another. Remember always: I am not trying to prove the scripture – that the scripture is right, I am simply using it as an illustration. It is secondary, you can forget about it: nothing will be lost. Whatsoever I am saying is direct. Just to help you because you are not capable of listening to the direct truth, you need a few witnesses. So Jesus, Krishna and Buddha and Lao Tzu and Lieh Tzu are just witnesses to me. I am not adjusting to them; they have to adjust to me.
This should always be so: the dead should exist and adjust to the living and for the living. Why should the living adjust to the dead? Lieh Tzu has to adjust to me because only in adjusting to me can Lieh Tzu again have a little life. Jesus has to adjust to me; I am not to adjust to Jesus. The past has to adjust to the present, not otherwise. So I go on playing…
These are all just stories to me, and deep down, this is the approach: all of life is a fiction, it is maya – it is a dream. Jesus and Buddha and Krishna and I and you are all parts of a big dream – God is dreaming. Don’t be too serious about it. Scholars become too serious. I am not a scholar and I have no respect for scholars. In fact my attitude is exactly the same as Mulla Nasruddin’s.
Once it happened…
A man came to Mulla Nasruddin and said, “Nasruddin, have you heard? The great scholar of the town has died and twenty rupees are needed to bury him.”
Mulla gave him a hundred rupee note and said, “Take it, and while you are doing it, why not bury five? Remember, these scholars are very calculating and cunning people – bury them as deep as possible, otherwise they will come back. And if you need more money, come to me, don’t be shy about it!”
I am neither a scholar, nor am I in any way respectful toward scholars or scholarship. That is all bullshit.
I was reading a beautiful poem by E. Y. Harburg. A few lines are of tremendous import. Meditate over them.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree;
And only God who makes the tree
Also makes the fools like me.
But only fools like me, you see,
Can make a God, who makes a tree.
I am tremendously ignorant, and I am happy as I am, and I have no idea to improve upon myself. So if sometimes you are in an awkward situation – somebody says that Osho has said this and this is not correct – it is your problem. Then your master is found faulty; you feel a little disturbed, your ego is hurt. As far as I am concerned, I am perfectly okay. And I will continue to create problems for you! Now you find the answers. Invent something; be a little imaginative or inventive. When I can invent so much, why can’t you? You can find some esoteric, occult meaning in it. It is always easy: when you cannot find anything else, always try to find some esoteric, occult meaning in it – there must be.
The handsome, well-dressed man handed the poor beggar a fifty dollar bill. “Here, my good man,” he said, “eat your fill, and there’s enough there for a drink or two.”
The beggar entered Tony’s restaurant, where he ate the biggest dinner of his life and then topped it off with a bottle of wine and a big tip to Luigi, the waiter. “Ah,” said the handsome, well-dressed stranger, “it’s a good world. Everyone is happy. The poor beggar because he is no longer hungry, Tony because he has made a big sale, the waiter because he has received a nice tip. And me? I’m happy too because the bill was counterfeit.”
So make everybody happy. Create a few fictions, a few counterfeit bills; make everybody happy. The world is really beautiful.
Don’t be bothered too much about facts; there are none, all are fictions. Remember, all are fictions, even my being here and your being here is a tremendous fiction. Nothing ever happens. Truth is. All that happens is fictitious. History is a fiction because whatsoever is, is; nothing ever happens there. God has no history, and God has no biography. God only is, there is no “was,” and there is no “will be.” There is no past and no future.
All history is fictitious. That’s why in the East we have never been bothered by history, we have not written history at all – instead of history we have written myths. If you ask when Rama was born, Hindus cannot answer. Ask Hindus, and you will find as many answers as the persons you ask. Nobody knows, in fact nobody knows exactly whether he was born or not. The fiction is that the story writer, who wrote the story of Rama, wrote it before Rama was born: Balmiki wrote it before Rama was born. Look at the Eastern approach. You cannot conceive that the Christian apostles could have written the story of Jesus before he was ever born. But Balmiki wrote the story of Rama before he was born, and then Rama had to be born to prove that Balmiki was right; otherwise people would laugh at this old man. He had written, “So do it!” So Rama had to do the things that Balmiki had written already. He had prophesied it; it was a prediction, and then Rama followed. Look at the approach: history is thought of as fiction. Only novels are written first, then you can play, you can make movies out of them.
In the secret traditions of the Essenes it is said that Christ never existed, that in fact it was a drama, a Christ drama, that had been played for centuries before Christ was ever born. In fact he was never born, it was just a drama. By and by, people became so much attached to the drama, they started loving the drama so much, that it turned out to become a reality; it started looking like a fact. That’s why there are so many versions. If you look into the four gospels, all are different, sometimes contradictory. Four persons writing the same story are bound to be different.
The Eastern way of looking at things is that whatsoever is, cannot be seen by the eyes. And whatsoever can be seen by the eyes is just a fiction. Enjoy while you are seeing it, love it – it is leela, God’s play. So whatsoever surfaces in me, I tell you; and I am not worried whether it is proved by history or not because history itself is meaningless to me.
The fourth question:
Osho,
Why has there never been a single woman enlightened master?
A woman cannot be a master – it is not possible. When a woman arrives she becomes a mistress, not a master. The fulfillment of a woman is love. The flowering of a woman is love. Mastery is not the goal of the feminine mind; they don’t become masters, they become mistresses. To be a master is basically a male effort.
Awareness is the way of man; love is the way of woman.
On the path of awareness it is possible to teach; one can become a master. On the path of love, how can you teach love? You can flower, you can bloom in love, but how can you teach it? Yes, if somebody wants to learn from you, he will learn it, but you will not be a master. And such women have existed: Rabiya, Meera, Mallibai, Magdalen, Teresa. Such women have existed: Sahajo, Daya, Lalla. Many women have existed, but they were not masters. They were so surrendered to God that they became mistresses.
Meera says ,“I am a mistress to you. My Lord” – a mistress to Krishna, to God himself. She sings the song of the glory of her Lord, she dances. If somebody can catch something from her, it is overflowing; but she cannot be a teacher. She is surrendered, her surrender is absolute. Yes, if you are in her company, you will learn what surrender is. But you will have to learn, she will not teach. A woman cannot be a teacher.
To teach, a certain different quality of energy is needed. Let me say it in this way, this is my experience: it is very difficult for a man to become a disciple, very difficult for a man to become a disciple. Even if he becomes one, he becomes so reluctantly. Surrender is difficult. How to surrender the will? Even if he surrenders his will, he only surrenders conditionally, in order to become a master one day. He becomes a disciple in order to become a master. It is difficult for a man to surrender; it is very simple for a woman to surrender. It is very simple for a woman to become a disciple; it is very difficult for a woman to become a master. Even after she has arrived, she remains surrendered. And for the man, even when he has not yet arrived, he remains deep down unsurrendered. On the surface he will show surrender, but deep down somewhere the ego persists.
A man can become a good master. A woman can become a good disciple because to become a disciple means to become a receiver, to be receptive, to become a womb. To become a master means to become a giver.
The same phenomenon continues: as it is there on the biological level, it remains on the spiritual level. Biologically, a woman is ready to receive the sperm from the man she loves. The man cannot become a mother; he can only become a father. He can trigger the process: the woman will become the mother; she will carry the child in her womb for nine months; she will nourish the child with her blood and her being; she will be carrying the pregnancy. The same happens on the spiritual level too.
When a woman comes to a master she is immediately ready to surrender. If sometimes it happens otherwise – sometimes there are women who are very reluctant to surrender, that simply shows they have lost contact with their womanhood. They don’t know who they are; they have become distracted from their center. They don’t know how to surrender because they don’t know how to be a woman. If you know how to be a woman, if you are a woman, surrender is so simple, it comes so easily.
All the great disciples in the world were women. Buddha had thousands of disciples, but the proportion has always been the same: three women to one man. So was the proportion with Mahavira. He had forty thousand sannyasins: ten thousand men, thirty thousand women. And so was the case with Jesus.
The really devoted people around him were not the men but the women. When he was crucified, all the men escaped; there was not a single man who stayed. All those so-called apostles had all disappeared, but the women were there. Three women were there: they had no fear; they were ready to sacrifice themselves. When Jesus was taken down from the cross, it was not by men – those disciples had gone far away. One or two were there, but they were hiding in the crowd. Women took down the body. And it is very significant that when Jesus appeared after three days, resurrected, he appeared first to Mary Magdalen, not to a man. This is very significant. Why? What about those twelve apostles? Why to Mary Magdalen? She immediately recognized him, and she rushed to him and she said, “So, My Lord, you are still alive!” And when Jesus appeared to the disciples, male disciples, they did not recognize him; they thought, “It seems tricky. How can this man come back?”
It is said that when he appeared before two disciples, male disciples, he walked with them for hours, and they did not recognize him. They continued talking about Jesus, and Jesus was walking by their side. They were a little puzzled about the appearance of this man – he looked like Jesus but how could he be? Just the appearance? One should not be deceived by appearance alone. For two hours they walked together. When they went to an inn, all three sat there to eat their dinner, and when Jesus broke his bread, then they recognized him. Their very materialistic minds suddenly saw; because Jesus’ every act, his every gesture, was his, authentically his. Now they recognized him because he was breaking the bread in the same way that they had seen Jesus break bread for years – then they recognized him. But for two hours, his presence was not recognized. Magdalen recognized him immediately. When she went to tell the male disciples that Jesus was resurrected, they laughed. They said, “Woman, you are hallucinating.” They laughed and they said, “This is how women always are – imaginative, dreaming, romantic. Now look at this foolish woman. Jesus is dead. We have seen him die on the cross with our own eyes.” But she cried and she said, “Listen to me. I have seen him.” But they would not listen.
A woman can be a perfect disciple, and this is how it should be. Woman is receptive, an opening, a womb. They have never been masters in the sense that men have been masters – like Mahavira, Buddha, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu. No, they have never been masters like that. But there have never been disciples like women; no man has ever been able to equal them as far as disciplehood is concerned. Let me tell you this, that as far as this division of male and female is concerned, the female mind is more blessed. Because the real thing is to receive the truth; the real thing is not to give it – that is secondary. A woman is always more total than a man. Whenever she receives the truth, she becomes luminous: her whole body, her whole being shows it; she carries an aura. Have you not seen a woman who is pregnant, how beautiful she becomes? Her face glows, she is carrying a new life within her. And this is nothing compared to a woman who really becomes a disciple. She is carrying God himself within her. Her glory is infinite.
So don’t be worried about why women don’t become masters. There is no need. If you can become disciples, that is natural and you will always remain true to nature.
The fifth question:
Osho,
Yesterday you said that Zen is the beautiful result of melting Tao and Buddhism, and Sufism the flower that blooms out of Islam and Hinduism. Is your teaching the super flower, the crossbreeding between Zen and Sufism?
It is not a flower; it is just a meeting of two fragrances. Zen is a super flower, so is Sufism. Nothing can be added to them; they are perfect. As far as flowers are concerned, they have attained to perfection; nothing more can be added to them – they have bloomed. What I am doing here is trying to fuse their fragrances.
A rose has flowered and so has a lotus. Both are spreading their fragrances to the wind. What I am doing here is trying to fuse their fragrance, which is a very subtle phenomenon. A flower is gross; fragrance is subtle. A flower is visible, fragrance is invisible. A flower is material, the fragrance is simply spiritual. That’s what I am doing here – trying to bring together all the flowers of Tantra, Yoga, Tao, Sufism, Zen, Hasidism, Jews, Moslems. Hindus, Buddhists, Jainas. I am trying to bring together all the fragrances that have been released down the centuries. This is a great experiment which has never been done before. Buddha is concerned only with the path through which he has attained, so is Mahavira, so is Jesus. Never before on the earth has this been done.
You are blessed; you are fortunate. You may not realize this right now; nobody realizes it when the moment is alive. Have you ever thought about it? Were Jesus’ disciples aware of what was happening when it was happening? Were they aware that something of tremendous import was happening in their lives, which was going to decide the destiny of humanity for centuries to come? No, they were not aware. Were Buddha’s disciples aware that something of great import was happening? You are also not aware. Something of tremendous import is happening which has not happened ever, which is going to be decisive because now the old religions cannot survive in the future; their days are gone.
In the future a few things will disappear. Nations will have to disappear because the earth has become a small village; now they are meaningless. India and Pakistan and China and America and Canada and England and Germany are meaningless; the earth has become one. The day man became capable of going beyond gravitation, the earth became one. The first man in a spaceship started crying when he saw the whole earth as one. Nobody had ever seen the whole earth as one. As he looked at the earth he could not believe how there could be any division of America and Russia and China, and this and that. He could not think about himself as American or Russian. He could think about himself only as an earth dweller. He could not see any divisions on the earth because divisions are only on the political maps; the earth remained undivided. The day man crossed the barrier of gravitation, became free from gravitation, the earth became one. It is now only a question of time… Nations will have to disappear, and with nations will disappear the world of the politicians and the world of politics. A great nightmare will disappear from the earth.
The second thing to disappear with nations will be Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Christianity, Judaism. Just as politics have divided the map of the earth, religions have divided the consciousness of man. Certainly the divisions of religions are more dangerous than the divisions of politics because politics can only divide the earth, religions have divided the consciousness of man. Man has not been allowed total access to his being. One has to be just a Mohammedan – a very narrow thing. One has to be just a Hindu – just a very narrow thing. Why, when you can have the whole world’s heritage? When our entire past is yours and our whole future is yours, why should you divide it up? Why should I call myself a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian? One should claim the total. By claiming the total you become total: you lose all narrow divisions, distinctions, you become whole, you become holy. That is going to happen, that is bound to happen. That has to happen; otherwise man will not be able to grow any more.
It is very crucial that man has to drop all barriers of nation and religion and church. That’s what I am doing here: trying to bring together all the fragrances released in different centuries by differing flowerings of human consciousness. Lao Tzu is a flower, so is Buddha, so is Jesus, so is Mohammed, but now we have to melt all their fragrances into one – a universal fragrance. Then, for the first time, man will be able to be religious and yet undivided. Then the church is yours and the mosque too and the temple too. Then the Gita is yours, and the Koran and the Vedas and the Bible – everything is yours. You become vast.
No, I am not trying to create a new flower – flowers have happened. I am trying to create a new perfume out of all those flowers. It is more subtle, more invisible; only those who have eyes will be able to see it.
The sixth question:
Osho,
The danger of your talks on Taoism is that there are a lot of lazy, irresponsible people around who rationalize their bad habits by claiming to be inactive Taoists. Please clarify the difference between a Taoist and a lazy escapist.
The first thing is that there are two dangers I have talked about: one is of egoism, another is of lethargy, laziness. Remember, if you have to fall into a trap, the trap of laziness is better than the trap of egoism. Egoism is more dangerous because the lazy person has never done anything wrong; a lazy person cannot do anything wrong. He will never do any good – okay – but he will never do any wrong either. He will not bother to kill anybody, to torture anybody, to create concentration camps, to go to war – he will not bother. He will say, “Why bother? When one can rest, why?” A lazy person is naturally not a danger. The only thing that he may miss may be his own spiritual growth, but he will not interfere with anybody else’s growth; he will not be an interference. He will not be a do-gooder, and these are the greatest, most mischievous people in the world, the do-gooders. A lazy person is almost absent. What can he do? Have you ever heard of any lazy person doing anything wrong?
No, the real problem comes from the egoist, and that is your possibility. Don’t be worried about a few people here getting lazy – let them get lazy, nothing is wrong. The real problem is from the egoist; one who wants to be spiritual, one who wants to be special, one who wants to become a siddha, one who wants to attain spiritual powers. One wants to prove something spiritually in the world: that is the real danger. If you have to fall into a trap, choose laziness. If you cannot fall into laziness, if you have to avoid, it is best to avoid both.
Laziness is just like the common cold – nothing much to worry about. The ego is like cancer. It is better not to have either. But if you have to choose, and you would like to have something to cling to, the common cold is good – you can depend on it, it never kills anybody. But never choose cancer, and that is the greater possibility.
Now you say, “The danger of your talks on Taoism is that there are a lot of lazy, irresponsible people…” The first thing: the moment you start worrying about others you are getting into an ego trip. Who are you to think about others and their life? It is their life. If they feel like being lazy, who are you to interfere? Anand Prem has a do-gooder in her being; she is very worried about others – that is a dangerous thing. And of course she is condemnatory. This question has a condemnation: “The danger of your talks on Taoism is that there are a lot of lazy, irresponsible people around who rationalize their bad habits by claiming to be inactive Taoists.” Who are you to tell them that their habits are bad?
Laziness is a better habit than being obsessed with activity. Being obsessed with activity is madness. A lazy person can be sane. Sometimes the laziest people have been found to be the sanest. I have the feeling that if Anand Prem comes across Lao Tzu, she will think he is lazy. He will look lazy to all purposes. If she comes across Diogenes, she will think he is lazy. If she comes around Buddha, she will think he is lazy. Sitting under the Bodhi Tree? “What are you doing? At least you can run a primary school and teach children, or you can open a hospital and serve ill people. So many people are dying, starving. What are you doing here sitting under the Bodhi Tree?”
Anand Prem would have jumped on Buddha and taken him to task. “What are you doing? Just sitting, meditating? Is this the time to meditate? Is this the time to be just sitting silently and enjoying your bliss? This is selfish!” This condemnatory attitude is really dangerous: it gives you a holier-than-thou idea that: “I am better than you. You, you lazy people!” She goes on writing questions every day that I have not been answering; every day: “These people are hippies, these people are useless.”
She is in search of a lover, but she cannot find one here because she thinks that nobody here… She wants a “straight person,” and she cannot find a straight person here. These are all “hippies and yuppies,” and she wants somebody who is well-established. She wrote a letter. “…well-established, has a bank account, is a gentleman, a squire, has prestige, respectability. Here these people are just hobos, wanderers, vagabonds.” She would have refused Buddha; she would have refused Lao Tzu: they were not straight. She writes to me: “…these long-haired people!” She writes with such disgust, and because of this disgust she has become a very disgusting person, and she will not find a lover. For one year she has been in the West in search of one. She is Jewish. First she searched in America; then she went to Israel to search for a man. She could not find one in America; she could not find one in Israel – she will never find one anywhere. Even if she goes to heaven, God will look like a hobo. She has such condemnatory attitudes that she cannot love a simple human being. Yes, there are flaws, there are limitations, but everybody has those limitations. If you want to love, you have to love a man with all his limitations.
You cannot find a perfect person. Perfection does not exist. God never allows perfection because perfection is so monotonous. Just think: living with a perfect person, twenty-four hours a day; you will commit suicide. Living with a perfect person? How will you live? He will be more like a marble statue, dead. The moment a person becomes perfect, he is dead. An alive person is never perfect, and my teaching is basically not for perfection, but for totality.
Be total, and remember the difference. The ideal of perfection says: be like this – no anger, no jealousy, no possessiveness, no flaws, no limitations. The ideal of totality is totally different. If you are angry, be totally angry. If you are loving, be totally loving. If you are sad, be totally sad. Nothing is denied – only partiality has to be dropped, and then a person becomes beautiful.
A total person is beautiful. A perfect person is dead.
I am not trying to create mahatmas here. Enough! Those mahatmas have done enough nonsense in the world. We need beautiful people – flowering, flowing, alive. Yes, they will be sometimes sad, but what is wrong in being sad? Sometimes they will be angry, but what is wrong in sometimes being angry? It simply shows that you are alive, that you are not a dead thing, that you are not driftwood. Sometimes you fight; sometimes you let go. Just like climates change: it is rainy sometimes and it is cloudy; and sometimes it is sunny, and the clouds have disappeared. All the seasons are needed – the cold, the heat, the winter, the summer – all the seasons are needed. A real man, an authentic man, has all the climates in his being – only with one awareness: that whatsoever he is doing, he should do totally and should do it with full awareness. Enough, that’s enough, and you have a beautiful person.
But Anand Prem is in search of a perfect man.
I have heard…
Once a man traveled all over the world… Whenever I look at Anand Prem, I again and again remember that man. He traveled all over the world in search of a perfect woman. He wanted to get married, but how could he accept an imperfect model? He wanted a perfect woman. He came back, his whole life wasted; he could not find one. Then one day a friend said, “Now you are seventy, and you searched your whole life, couldn’t you find a single perfect woman?”
He said, “Yes, once I came across one woman who was perfect.”
So the friend asked, “Then what happened?”
But the man became sad; he said, “What happened? That woman was in search of a perfect man, so nothing happened!”
Remember, the ideal of perfection is an egoistic ideal.
Ronald Coleman told Herb Stein about a Hollywood phony who spoke with a fake Oxford accent, wore a fake Purple Star and Phi Beta Kappa key – and worst of all, passed a lot of fake checks. At the end of his rope, he decided to commit suicide, and went down to the Santa Fe railroad tracks. He calmly smoked several imported cigarettes while three or four heavy freights puffed by. A tramp who was watching jeered. “If you’re gonna do it, why don’t you do it?”
“Don’t be vulgar,” squelched the phony. “A man like me waits for the Super Chief.”
Even if an egoist goes to commit suicide, he waits for the Super Chief, the best train. He says, “Don’t be vulgar. A man like me waits for the Super Chief.” Even if he is committing suicide, he will not commit it under an ordinary train.
Marriage is like suicide – you can commit it anywhere. You should not wait for the Super Chief. Anand Prem is searching and it is impossible for her, the way she looks at things with such condemnation, to find anybody whom she can love.
“Please clarify the difference between a Taoist and a lazy escapist.” There is not much, and if there is, it is so inner that only the person will know – you will never be able to judge from the outside. Look at me. I am also a lazy person. Have you seen me doing anything, ever? It is very difficult from the outside to know. I love lazy people, Taoists or not; I love lazy people because out of lazy persons no Adolf Hitler is born, no Genghis Khan, no Tamerlane. Lazy people have silently lived their lives and disappeared, without leaving any trace on history, without contaminating humanity. They have not polluted consciousness. They were here as if they were not. To be lazy and aware, you become a Taoist. It does not mean that you become inactive. It simply means that the obsessive activity disappears. It simply means that you have become capable of not-doing too.
It is said about a Zen master that a person asked one of his disciples, “What miracles can your master do?”
And the disciple said, “Are you a follower of somebody?”
And the man said, “Yes, I am a follower of a certain master, and he is a great miracle man; he can do great miracles. Once it happened that I was standing on this shore of the river, and he was standing on the other shore, and he shouted to me, ‘I want to write something in your book.’ And the river was almost a half mile wide. So I took my book out, raised it, and from the other shore he started writing with his fountain pen, and the writing came onto my book. I have seen this miracle and the book is with me – you can see.”
And the disciple of the other master laughed and he said, “My master can do greater miracles.”
So the man said, “What miracles?”
And the disciple said, “My master can do miracles, and he is so capable, so capable, that he is capable of not doing them too.”
“Not doing them too.” See the beauty of it. He is “…so capable, so capable…of not doing them too.”
A Taoist is a man who does only that which is absolutely necessary. His life is almost like a telegram. When you go to the Post Office you don’t write a long letter when you are sending a telegraphic message. You go on cutting words, this and this can be dropped and then you come to ten or nine or whatsoever. If you write a letter, you will never write only ten words. And have you noticed? A telegram is more expressive than all letters. It says much more in a very few words. The unnecessary ones are dropped, only the most necessary are there. A Taoist is telegraphic; his life is like a telegram. The obsessive, the unnecessary, the feverish, have been dropped. He does only that which is absolutely necessary. And let me tell you that the absolutely necessary is so little that you will view a Taoist almost as if he were lazy.
Remember, I am not praising laziness. I am simply condemning the egoistic attitude. Against ego – I am for laziness. But I am not for laziness itself; it should be full of awareness. Then you pass from both activity and from laziness. Then you become transcendental. You are neither active, nor inactive; you are centered. Whatsoever is needed, you do; whatsoever is not needed, you don’t do. You are neither a doer nor a non-doer. Doing is no longer your focus. You are a consciousness.
So please don’t take whatsoever I have said in the sense that I am helping you to be lazy. To be really lazy means not to be inactive, but to be so full of energy that you are a reservoir of energy. Lazy as far as the world is concerned, but tremendously dynamic inside, not dull.
A Taoist is lazy from the outside; from the inside he has become a riverlike phenomenon, he is continuously flowing toward the ocean. He has dropped many activities because they were unnecessarily leaking his energy. The danger is always there – in whatsoever I say, there is danger – the danger of interpretation. If I say, “Be active,” there is the possibility that you will become egoists. If I say, “Be inactive,” there is the possibility that you may become dull. Man is very cunning.
I have heard…
He was the kind of a guy who would bet on anything – provided he was sure of winning. “I’ll bet that my wife’s first words will be ‘My dear’ when I get home,” he said to Lucky.
Lucky took him up on it. He knew the man’s wife very well, and she would be the last woman in the world to say, “My dear.”
Must have been like Anand Prem.
Lucky took him up on it, and they bet a hundred dollars. When they got to the sport’s house he stuck his head in the door and called, “My dear, I’m home.”
“‘My dear’ be hanged!” roared his wife. “Wait till I get you inside!”
And he looked at Lucky and said, “Give me a hundred dollars. Didn’t I tell you that the first words she would ever utter would be ‘My dear’?”
Mind is very cunning. The wife is saying, “‘My dear’ be hanged, wait till I get you inside!” But you can interpret it many ways. So he is demanding a hundred dollars. Mind is cunning. It goes on interpreting in its own ways; it goes on finding reasons, rationalizations, tricks to defend itself. It wants to remain as it is. That is the whole effort of the mind: it wants to remain as it is. If it is lazy, it wants to remain lazy. If it is active – too active, obsessively active, it wants to remain active. So whatsoever I say, you have to be careful not to defend your mind. You have to come out of your mind.
The man burst angrily through the door, threw his wife off the stranger’s knee and angrily demanded, “How do I find you kissing my wife?”
“I don’t know,” said the stranger. “Maybe you’re home early?”
People can find reasons. Be alert. But be alert about your own self, not about others. It is none of your business what others are doing. This should be one of the basic attitudes of a religious person – not to think about what the other person is doing; that is his life. If he decides to live it that way, that is his business. Who are you even to have an opinion about it? Even to have an opinion means that you are ready to interfere, you have already interfered. A religious person is one who is trying to live his life the best, the most total way he can; he is trying in the most alert way that he can. He is not interfering with anybody’s life, not even by having an opinion. Have you observed? If you pass somebody and you have a certain opinion about him, your face changes, your eyes change, your attitude, your walk. If you are condemnatory, your whole being starts broadcasting condemnation, disgust. No, you are interfering.
To be really religious means to be non-interfering. Give freedom to people; freedom is their birthright.
Once it happened…
I stayed with one of my professors, my teacher. Though I was a student and he was my teacher, he was very respectful of me. He was a rare, religious man, but he was a drunkard, and when I stayed in his home, he was very afraid to drink in front of me. What would I think? I watched him; I felt his restlessness. So the next day I told him, “There is something on your mind. If you don’t relax, I will immediately leave, and go to a hotel. I will not stay. There is something on your mind. I feel that you are not at ease; my presence is creating some trouble.”
He said, “Since you have raised the issue, I would like to tell you. I have never told you that I drink too much, but I always drink in my home to go to sleep. Now that you are staying here, I don’t want to drink before you and that is creating the trouble. I cannot go without drinking, and I cannot even conceive of drinking in front of you.”
I laughed. I said, “This is foolish. What have I to do with it? You would not force me to drink.”
He said, “No, never.”
“Then it is finished; the problem is solved. You drink, and I will keep you company. I will not drink alcohol, but I can drink something else, Coca Cola or Fanta. I will keep you company; you drink. I will fill your glass, I will help you.”
He could not believe it, he thought I was joking. But when that night I filled his glass, he started crying. He said, “I never thought that you would not have any opinion about it.” “I have been watching you,” he said, “and you don’t have any opinion about my drinking, about my behavior, about what I am doing.”
I said, “To have an opinion about you is simply foolish. It is not something very great that I don’t have any opinion about you. Why should I have one in the first place? Who am I? It is your life – you want to drink, then drink.”
To have an opinion about you means that deep down somewhere I want to manipulate you. To have some opinion about you, this way or that, means that I have a deep desire to have power over people. That’s what a politician desires. A religious person should be non-interfering.
The seventh question:
Osho,
You speak a lot about the ugliness of jealousy. Yes, it is quite ugly, but any suggestions to us sufferers of the disease who aren't enlightened on how to diminish it?
First, diminishing it is not going to help. You can diminish it to such proportions that it will almost become invisible, but that is not going to help. Diminishing simply means that you are throwing it into the unconscious and it goes deeper and deeper into the basement of your being. It becomes invisible. You may not be able to see it, but it will go on working from behind, it will go on pulling your strings from behind. It will become more subtle. Please don’t try to diminish it.
The first thing to remember: rather than diminishing it, magnify it so you can see all of it. That is the whole process of all the groups going on around here – Gestalt, Encounter, Psychodrama. The whole process is that whatsoever the problem is, please don’t diminish it, but magnify it. Bring it out totally as it is – even exaggerate it, so that you can see every detail of it. Down the centuries, in the past, jealousy, anger, sadness, this and that, have all been repressed. The effort was to diminish them. No, a seed is a diminished tree, but a seed is tremendously powerful. A seed can again at any time produce a tree. The right situation, the right season, and the tree will again sprout. You can diminish your jealousy; it can become just a seed, and you will not be able to see it; the tree has disappeared, but it is still there.
Diminishing is not the right process. That’s what you have been doing, that’s what you have done to your life: you have diminished everything. And another thing: when you diminish jealousy, your love will be diminished alongside it because your love and jealousy are so entangled with each other. If you diminish your sadness, your happiness will be diminished because your happiness and sadness are so together. If you diminish your hate, your love will disappear – that’s what has happened. You have been taught not to hate and the total result is that you have become incapable of love.
No, please don’t ever diminish anything. That is not the way. Rather, magnify it, exaggerate it, bring it to its total blossoming, and then see it – every detail of it, every minute detail of it. In that very awareness, in that very seeing, you will become capable of transcending it, and then there will be no need to do anything about it.
The second thing: you say, “You speak a lot about the ugliness of jealousy. Yes, it is ugly…” No, you don’t know. You are simply repeating what I have been saying. If you know it is quite ugly, in that very knowing it will disappear. You don’t know. You have listened to me; you have listened to Jesus; you have listened to Buddha, and you have gathered opinions. You don’t know. It is not your own feeling that jealousy is ugly. If it is your own feeling, then why do you carry it? It is not an easy thing; it takes a lot of investment. To be jealous is a very difficult thing: it needs a lot of effort on your part, a lot of involvement. It is so destructive of your own self that if it is ugly – and you have known the ugliness of it – you cannot carry it for a single moment. But listening to me you become knowledgeable.
I have heard…
“You can’t come in here,” the worried mother warned. “My son is sick.”
“I want to catch your son’s measles,” the man said, “because if I kissed the nurse she’d get it. She would kiss the doctor and he’d get it. The doctor would kiss my wife and she’d get it. My wife would kiss the landlord and that’s the guy I’m after.”
It is a great investment, and a great effort, and a very complex phenomenon.
And finally, it may destroy things. It may not destroy others – it certainly destroys you; it is suicidal. Not only that, it is ugly, it is poisonous. It is suicidal, it is slowly, slowly killing yourself every day.
See the fact of it. Don’t just become knowledgeable. What I say will not become an experience for you unless you experience it. And what is the way to experience it? The way is to bring it in front of you. It is hiding behind you.
Don’t repress it, express it. Sit in your room, close the doors, bring your jealousy into focus. Watch it, see it; let it become as strong a flame as possible. Let it become a strong flame, burn with it and see what it is. Don’t say, ”This is ugly” in the beginning because that very idea that it is ugly will repress it, will not allow it total expression. No opinions! Just try to see the existential effect of what jealousy is – the existential fact. No interpretations, no ideologies. Forget buddhas and work, forget me. Just let the jealousy be there. Look into it; look deeply into it. Do this with anger; do this with sadness, hatred, possessiveness. And, by and by, you will see that just by seeing through things you start getting a transcendental feeling that you are just a witness; the identity is broken. The identity is broken only when you encounter something within you.
The eighth question:
Osho,
What do you say to someone who, no matter what paths you talk about, always feels that he has one foot on each of them? And don't say that this must be my path! You only mentioned two yesterday, remember? Did I just put my foot in it?
You cannot put your foot in both that of Taoism and Confucianism, by their very nature. Those paths are so diametrically opposite that you cannot put one foot on one path, the other foot on another path – that is impossible. You must be imagining, you must be dreaming, hallucinating. It is so diametrically opposite – just as you cannot be alive and dead together. If you think you are both, you are simply alive and nothing else because even to think one has to be alive.
It is said that Mulla Nasruddin once asked…
Somebody had died and he rushed home and asked his wife, “You are very wise, just tell me one thing: if some day I die, how am I to decide whether I have really died or not? I have just seen somebody die, and one day or other I am going to die, but how will I know?”
The wife said, “Don’t be foolish, you will know it. You will become cold.”
So, one day it happened. He was cutting wood in the forest, and it was a very cold day and he started feeling cold. He said, “Okay, so the last day has come. So I am becoming cold.” So he said good-bye to his donkey – because only the donkey was there – and thinking that he was going to die, he made himself comfortable under the tree and closed his eyes. What else was there to do? Of course, when he closed his eyes, lying down under the tree, he became even colder. So he said, “Certain, death is certain; now it is coming. I am becoming colder and colder.”
Then, just out of curiosity, he opened one eye and looked at the donkey. What was happening to the donkey? A wolf had attacked the donkey! So he said, “What can I do?” Still he said loudly, “You can mess with my donkey because I am dead. But if I had been alive I would have shown you! But what can I do now?”
Talking, thinking, how can you be dead? Even to think this much is enough proof that you are alive.
No, you must have misunderstood. You cannot be on both paths. Look again. It is possible you may not be on either, but you cannot be on both.
The last question:
Osho,
You said today “Ask a buddha why he is happy and he will shrug his shoulders.” Please, why are you happy?
I will not even shrug my shoulders.
Enough for today.
Osho,
Do you have favorites? Am I one of them?
I am reminded of an Arabian proverb.
It is said that whenever God creates a person he whispers into his ear, “You are my favorite. I have never made such a beautiful person before and I am not going to make such a beautiful person again. You are simply unique.” But this he has been doing to everybody, and everybody deep down in his heart thinks, “Whatsoever God has said, I believe.”
You are my favorite. And this is not addressed to anybody in particular, but to everybody. In fact, to choose as a favorite or not is not possible for me. It depends on you, you can become my favorite, you may not become; it is a one-way traffic. If you allow, you will become; if you don’t allow, you will not become. As far as I am concerned I am not.
The second question:
Osho,
Please explain the difference between rationalization and bullshit.
Bullshit is a far better word than rationalization but they mean the same. Rationalization is a clinical word – a word to be used by the professors, bullshit is more alive. Rationalization is bloodless; bullshit is very young, alive and kicking. But the meaning is the same, they are not different things.
The henpecked husband and his wordy wife were walking down the country road having one of their arguments in the usual way. She was winning. Suddenly she turned and saw a bull charging down the road. There was no time to warn her husband so she jumped into a hedge. The bull caught the man on its horns and sent him spinning fifty feet into the air. He came down in a ditch. When he finally managed to crawl out, he saw his wife standing on the road.
“Maria,” he said, “if you hit me like that again you’ll really make me lose my temper.”
Now this is bullshit. If you ask a psychoanalyst, he will call it a rationalization.
The culture society was organizing a group to be comprised strictly of virgins, when a young lady carrying a baby appeared.
“But, Madam,” protested the president, “that is evidence that you are not eligible for this society. Why do you think you will be able to join?”
“I was only foolin’ around when this happened,” she explained. “So I thought I could get in as one of those foolish virgins.”
This is bullshit. Rationalization is a philosophical term. Bullshit comes from the ordinary man, from the masses, people who live on the earth, with the earth, whose hands are muddy. The word bullshit is also muddy as it is being used by people who are working, living an ordinary life. It does not come from the ivory towers of a university. But remember, it is more authentic, it says much more than rationalization. Always remember that words that are coined by professors are always anemic. They are dead words – clinical, but they do not say much; rather than saying, they hide. Let me say it in this way, the very word rationalization is a rationalization: It is being used to avoid the word bullshit.
The third question:
Osho,
Why do you make so many mistakes when you quote other people or refer to Biblical events or to scientific discoveries? I have answered this question many times myself in various ways. Now I would like to hear your answer.
So allow me to commit a few more mistakes.
First: my memory is marvelous.
Mulla Nasruddin was talking to a man, and he said, “My wife has a very bad memory.”
And the man asked, “Do you mean she forgets everything?”
Mulla Nasruddin said, “No, she remembers everything!”
If Mulla Nasruddin’s wife has a bad memory, I have a marvelous memory. I forget everything. And I enjoy this forgetfulness; I am not worried about it.
Secondly: I am an ignorant person. I am not a scholar. I enjoy reading books, but I read the Bible, the Gita, the Koran just as one reads novels; they are ancient, beautiful stories. Krishnamurti says that he never reads any scriptures; he reads only detective stories. I read the scriptures, but I read in the scriptures just a detective story and nothing else. And I would suggest to Krishnamurti that it would be good if he looked into the Bible; you cannot find a more beautiful story, full of suspense. Everything is there: love, life, murder; everything is there. It is very sensational.
The scriptures, to me, have nothing special. The scriptures are as sacred as the trees and the rocks and the stars – or as secular. I don’t make a distinction so I am not very serious about the scriptures. The only thing I am serious about is jokes. So when I quote the scripture, I quote from memory; when I quote a joke, I have it written here in front of me. I never want to make a mistake about the joke – I am really serious. About everything else I am absolutely nonserious.
It is very obvious. Listening to me, you must have understood that my emphasis is not on what the scriptures say – that is not the point. My emphasis is on what I am saying. If you go to a Christian priest, he quotes the scripture; his emphasis is on the scripture. He is very literal, he has to be – he himself is secondary, the scripture is primary. He is a witness to the scripture. With me it is just the opposite: the scripture is just a witness to me. Whatsoever I have to say, only that have I to say. If I feel the scripture can be a witness to it, I use it.
I go on playing with the scriptures, sometimes in one way, sometimes in another. Remember always: I am not trying to prove the scripture – that the scripture is right, I am simply using it as an illustration. It is secondary, you can forget about it: nothing will be lost. Whatsoever I am saying is direct. Just to help you because you are not capable of listening to the direct truth, you need a few witnesses. So Jesus, Krishna and Buddha and Lao Tzu and Lieh Tzu are just witnesses to me. I am not adjusting to them; they have to adjust to me.
This should always be so: the dead should exist and adjust to the living and for the living. Why should the living adjust to the dead? Lieh Tzu has to adjust to me because only in adjusting to me can Lieh Tzu again have a little life. Jesus has to adjust to me; I am not to adjust to Jesus. The past has to adjust to the present, not otherwise. So I go on playing…
These are all just stories to me, and deep down, this is the approach: all of life is a fiction, it is maya – it is a dream. Jesus and Buddha and Krishna and I and you are all parts of a big dream – God is dreaming. Don’t be too serious about it. Scholars become too serious. I am not a scholar and I have no respect for scholars. In fact my attitude is exactly the same as Mulla Nasruddin’s.
Once it happened…
A man came to Mulla Nasruddin and said, “Nasruddin, have you heard? The great scholar of the town has died and twenty rupees are needed to bury him.”
Mulla gave him a hundred rupee note and said, “Take it, and while you are doing it, why not bury five? Remember, these scholars are very calculating and cunning people – bury them as deep as possible, otherwise they will come back. And if you need more money, come to me, don’t be shy about it!”
I am neither a scholar, nor am I in any way respectful toward scholars or scholarship. That is all bullshit.
I was reading a beautiful poem by E. Y. Harburg. A few lines are of tremendous import. Meditate over them.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree;
And only God who makes the tree
Also makes the fools like me.
But only fools like me, you see,
Can make a God, who makes a tree.
I am tremendously ignorant, and I am happy as I am, and I have no idea to improve upon myself. So if sometimes you are in an awkward situation – somebody says that Osho has said this and this is not correct – it is your problem. Then your master is found faulty; you feel a little disturbed, your ego is hurt. As far as I am concerned, I am perfectly okay. And I will continue to create problems for you! Now you find the answers. Invent something; be a little imaginative or inventive. When I can invent so much, why can’t you? You can find some esoteric, occult meaning in it. It is always easy: when you cannot find anything else, always try to find some esoteric, occult meaning in it – there must be.
The handsome, well-dressed man handed the poor beggar a fifty dollar bill. “Here, my good man,” he said, “eat your fill, and there’s enough there for a drink or two.”
The beggar entered Tony’s restaurant, where he ate the biggest dinner of his life and then topped it off with a bottle of wine and a big tip to Luigi, the waiter. “Ah,” said the handsome, well-dressed stranger, “it’s a good world. Everyone is happy. The poor beggar because he is no longer hungry, Tony because he has made a big sale, the waiter because he has received a nice tip. And me? I’m happy too because the bill was counterfeit.”
So make everybody happy. Create a few fictions, a few counterfeit bills; make everybody happy. The world is really beautiful.
Don’t be bothered too much about facts; there are none, all are fictions. Remember, all are fictions, even my being here and your being here is a tremendous fiction. Nothing ever happens. Truth is. All that happens is fictitious. History is a fiction because whatsoever is, is; nothing ever happens there. God has no history, and God has no biography. God only is, there is no “was,” and there is no “will be.” There is no past and no future.
All history is fictitious. That’s why in the East we have never been bothered by history, we have not written history at all – instead of history we have written myths. If you ask when Rama was born, Hindus cannot answer. Ask Hindus, and you will find as many answers as the persons you ask. Nobody knows, in fact nobody knows exactly whether he was born or not. The fiction is that the story writer, who wrote the story of Rama, wrote it before Rama was born: Balmiki wrote it before Rama was born. Look at the Eastern approach. You cannot conceive that the Christian apostles could have written the story of Jesus before he was ever born. But Balmiki wrote the story of Rama before he was born, and then Rama had to be born to prove that Balmiki was right; otherwise people would laugh at this old man. He had written, “So do it!” So Rama had to do the things that Balmiki had written already. He had prophesied it; it was a prediction, and then Rama followed. Look at the approach: history is thought of as fiction. Only novels are written first, then you can play, you can make movies out of them.
In the secret traditions of the Essenes it is said that Christ never existed, that in fact it was a drama, a Christ drama, that had been played for centuries before Christ was ever born. In fact he was never born, it was just a drama. By and by, people became so much attached to the drama, they started loving the drama so much, that it turned out to become a reality; it started looking like a fact. That’s why there are so many versions. If you look into the four gospels, all are different, sometimes contradictory. Four persons writing the same story are bound to be different.
The Eastern way of looking at things is that whatsoever is, cannot be seen by the eyes. And whatsoever can be seen by the eyes is just a fiction. Enjoy while you are seeing it, love it – it is leela, God’s play. So whatsoever surfaces in me, I tell you; and I am not worried whether it is proved by history or not because history itself is meaningless to me.
The fourth question:
Osho,
Why has there never been a single woman enlightened master?
A woman cannot be a master – it is not possible. When a woman arrives she becomes a mistress, not a master. The fulfillment of a woman is love. The flowering of a woman is love. Mastery is not the goal of the feminine mind; they don’t become masters, they become mistresses. To be a master is basically a male effort.
Awareness is the way of man; love is the way of woman.
On the path of awareness it is possible to teach; one can become a master. On the path of love, how can you teach love? You can flower, you can bloom in love, but how can you teach it? Yes, if somebody wants to learn from you, he will learn it, but you will not be a master. And such women have existed: Rabiya, Meera, Mallibai, Magdalen, Teresa. Such women have existed: Sahajo, Daya, Lalla. Many women have existed, but they were not masters. They were so surrendered to God that they became mistresses.
Meera says ,“I am a mistress to you. My Lord” – a mistress to Krishna, to God himself. She sings the song of the glory of her Lord, she dances. If somebody can catch something from her, it is overflowing; but she cannot be a teacher. She is surrendered, her surrender is absolute. Yes, if you are in her company, you will learn what surrender is. But you will have to learn, she will not teach. A woman cannot be a teacher.
To teach, a certain different quality of energy is needed. Let me say it in this way, this is my experience: it is very difficult for a man to become a disciple, very difficult for a man to become a disciple. Even if he becomes one, he becomes so reluctantly. Surrender is difficult. How to surrender the will? Even if he surrenders his will, he only surrenders conditionally, in order to become a master one day. He becomes a disciple in order to become a master. It is difficult for a man to surrender; it is very simple for a woman to surrender. It is very simple for a woman to become a disciple; it is very difficult for a woman to become a master. Even after she has arrived, she remains surrendered. And for the man, even when he has not yet arrived, he remains deep down unsurrendered. On the surface he will show surrender, but deep down somewhere the ego persists.
A man can become a good master. A woman can become a good disciple because to become a disciple means to become a receiver, to be receptive, to become a womb. To become a master means to become a giver.
The same phenomenon continues: as it is there on the biological level, it remains on the spiritual level. Biologically, a woman is ready to receive the sperm from the man she loves. The man cannot become a mother; he can only become a father. He can trigger the process: the woman will become the mother; she will carry the child in her womb for nine months; she will nourish the child with her blood and her being; she will be carrying the pregnancy. The same happens on the spiritual level too.
When a woman comes to a master she is immediately ready to surrender. If sometimes it happens otherwise – sometimes there are women who are very reluctant to surrender, that simply shows they have lost contact with their womanhood. They don’t know who they are; they have become distracted from their center. They don’t know how to surrender because they don’t know how to be a woman. If you know how to be a woman, if you are a woman, surrender is so simple, it comes so easily.
All the great disciples in the world were women. Buddha had thousands of disciples, but the proportion has always been the same: three women to one man. So was the proportion with Mahavira. He had forty thousand sannyasins: ten thousand men, thirty thousand women. And so was the case with Jesus.
The really devoted people around him were not the men but the women. When he was crucified, all the men escaped; there was not a single man who stayed. All those so-called apostles had all disappeared, but the women were there. Three women were there: they had no fear; they were ready to sacrifice themselves. When Jesus was taken down from the cross, it was not by men – those disciples had gone far away. One or two were there, but they were hiding in the crowd. Women took down the body. And it is very significant that when Jesus appeared after three days, resurrected, he appeared first to Mary Magdalen, not to a man. This is very significant. Why? What about those twelve apostles? Why to Mary Magdalen? She immediately recognized him, and she rushed to him and she said, “So, My Lord, you are still alive!” And when Jesus appeared to the disciples, male disciples, they did not recognize him; they thought, “It seems tricky. How can this man come back?”
It is said that when he appeared before two disciples, male disciples, he walked with them for hours, and they did not recognize him. They continued talking about Jesus, and Jesus was walking by their side. They were a little puzzled about the appearance of this man – he looked like Jesus but how could he be? Just the appearance? One should not be deceived by appearance alone. For two hours they walked together. When they went to an inn, all three sat there to eat their dinner, and when Jesus broke his bread, then they recognized him. Their very materialistic minds suddenly saw; because Jesus’ every act, his every gesture, was his, authentically his. Now they recognized him because he was breaking the bread in the same way that they had seen Jesus break bread for years – then they recognized him. But for two hours, his presence was not recognized. Magdalen recognized him immediately. When she went to tell the male disciples that Jesus was resurrected, they laughed. They said, “Woman, you are hallucinating.” They laughed and they said, “This is how women always are – imaginative, dreaming, romantic. Now look at this foolish woman. Jesus is dead. We have seen him die on the cross with our own eyes.” But she cried and she said, “Listen to me. I have seen him.” But they would not listen.
A woman can be a perfect disciple, and this is how it should be. Woman is receptive, an opening, a womb. They have never been masters in the sense that men have been masters – like Mahavira, Buddha, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu. No, they have never been masters like that. But there have never been disciples like women; no man has ever been able to equal them as far as disciplehood is concerned. Let me tell you this, that as far as this division of male and female is concerned, the female mind is more blessed. Because the real thing is to receive the truth; the real thing is not to give it – that is secondary. A woman is always more total than a man. Whenever she receives the truth, she becomes luminous: her whole body, her whole being shows it; she carries an aura. Have you not seen a woman who is pregnant, how beautiful she becomes? Her face glows, she is carrying a new life within her. And this is nothing compared to a woman who really becomes a disciple. She is carrying God himself within her. Her glory is infinite.
So don’t be worried about why women don’t become masters. There is no need. If you can become disciples, that is natural and you will always remain true to nature.
The fifth question:
Osho,
Yesterday you said that Zen is the beautiful result of melting Tao and Buddhism, and Sufism the flower that blooms out of Islam and Hinduism. Is your teaching the super flower, the crossbreeding between Zen and Sufism?
It is not a flower; it is just a meeting of two fragrances. Zen is a super flower, so is Sufism. Nothing can be added to them; they are perfect. As far as flowers are concerned, they have attained to perfection; nothing more can be added to them – they have bloomed. What I am doing here is trying to fuse their fragrances.
A rose has flowered and so has a lotus. Both are spreading their fragrances to the wind. What I am doing here is trying to fuse their fragrance, which is a very subtle phenomenon. A flower is gross; fragrance is subtle. A flower is visible, fragrance is invisible. A flower is material, the fragrance is simply spiritual. That’s what I am doing here – trying to bring together all the flowers of Tantra, Yoga, Tao, Sufism, Zen, Hasidism, Jews, Moslems. Hindus, Buddhists, Jainas. I am trying to bring together all the fragrances that have been released down the centuries. This is a great experiment which has never been done before. Buddha is concerned only with the path through which he has attained, so is Mahavira, so is Jesus. Never before on the earth has this been done.
You are blessed; you are fortunate. You may not realize this right now; nobody realizes it when the moment is alive. Have you ever thought about it? Were Jesus’ disciples aware of what was happening when it was happening? Were they aware that something of tremendous import was happening in their lives, which was going to decide the destiny of humanity for centuries to come? No, they were not aware. Were Buddha’s disciples aware that something of great import was happening? You are also not aware. Something of tremendous import is happening which has not happened ever, which is going to be decisive because now the old religions cannot survive in the future; their days are gone.
In the future a few things will disappear. Nations will have to disappear because the earth has become a small village; now they are meaningless. India and Pakistan and China and America and Canada and England and Germany are meaningless; the earth has become one. The day man became capable of going beyond gravitation, the earth became one. The first man in a spaceship started crying when he saw the whole earth as one. Nobody had ever seen the whole earth as one. As he looked at the earth he could not believe how there could be any division of America and Russia and China, and this and that. He could not think about himself as American or Russian. He could think about himself only as an earth dweller. He could not see any divisions on the earth because divisions are only on the political maps; the earth remained undivided. The day man crossed the barrier of gravitation, became free from gravitation, the earth became one. It is now only a question of time… Nations will have to disappear, and with nations will disappear the world of the politicians and the world of politics. A great nightmare will disappear from the earth.
The second thing to disappear with nations will be Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Christianity, Judaism. Just as politics have divided the map of the earth, religions have divided the consciousness of man. Certainly the divisions of religions are more dangerous than the divisions of politics because politics can only divide the earth, religions have divided the consciousness of man. Man has not been allowed total access to his being. One has to be just a Mohammedan – a very narrow thing. One has to be just a Hindu – just a very narrow thing. Why, when you can have the whole world’s heritage? When our entire past is yours and our whole future is yours, why should you divide it up? Why should I call myself a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian? One should claim the total. By claiming the total you become total: you lose all narrow divisions, distinctions, you become whole, you become holy. That is going to happen, that is bound to happen. That has to happen; otherwise man will not be able to grow any more.
It is very crucial that man has to drop all barriers of nation and religion and church. That’s what I am doing here: trying to bring together all the fragrances released in different centuries by differing flowerings of human consciousness. Lao Tzu is a flower, so is Buddha, so is Jesus, so is Mohammed, but now we have to melt all their fragrances into one – a universal fragrance. Then, for the first time, man will be able to be religious and yet undivided. Then the church is yours and the mosque too and the temple too. Then the Gita is yours, and the Koran and the Vedas and the Bible – everything is yours. You become vast.
No, I am not trying to create a new flower – flowers have happened. I am trying to create a new perfume out of all those flowers. It is more subtle, more invisible; only those who have eyes will be able to see it.
The sixth question:
Osho,
The danger of your talks on Taoism is that there are a lot of lazy, irresponsible people around who rationalize their bad habits by claiming to be inactive Taoists. Please clarify the difference between a Taoist and a lazy escapist.
The first thing is that there are two dangers I have talked about: one is of egoism, another is of lethargy, laziness. Remember, if you have to fall into a trap, the trap of laziness is better than the trap of egoism. Egoism is more dangerous because the lazy person has never done anything wrong; a lazy person cannot do anything wrong. He will never do any good – okay – but he will never do any wrong either. He will not bother to kill anybody, to torture anybody, to create concentration camps, to go to war – he will not bother. He will say, “Why bother? When one can rest, why?” A lazy person is naturally not a danger. The only thing that he may miss may be his own spiritual growth, but he will not interfere with anybody else’s growth; he will not be an interference. He will not be a do-gooder, and these are the greatest, most mischievous people in the world, the do-gooders. A lazy person is almost absent. What can he do? Have you ever heard of any lazy person doing anything wrong?
No, the real problem comes from the egoist, and that is your possibility. Don’t be worried about a few people here getting lazy – let them get lazy, nothing is wrong. The real problem is from the egoist; one who wants to be spiritual, one who wants to be special, one who wants to become a siddha, one who wants to attain spiritual powers. One wants to prove something spiritually in the world: that is the real danger. If you have to fall into a trap, choose laziness. If you cannot fall into laziness, if you have to avoid, it is best to avoid both.
Laziness is just like the common cold – nothing much to worry about. The ego is like cancer. It is better not to have either. But if you have to choose, and you would like to have something to cling to, the common cold is good – you can depend on it, it never kills anybody. But never choose cancer, and that is the greater possibility.
Now you say, “The danger of your talks on Taoism is that there are a lot of lazy, irresponsible people…” The first thing: the moment you start worrying about others you are getting into an ego trip. Who are you to think about others and their life? It is their life. If they feel like being lazy, who are you to interfere? Anand Prem has a do-gooder in her being; she is very worried about others – that is a dangerous thing. And of course she is condemnatory. This question has a condemnation: “The danger of your talks on Taoism is that there are a lot of lazy, irresponsible people around who rationalize their bad habits by claiming to be inactive Taoists.” Who are you to tell them that their habits are bad?
Laziness is a better habit than being obsessed with activity. Being obsessed with activity is madness. A lazy person can be sane. Sometimes the laziest people have been found to be the sanest. I have the feeling that if Anand Prem comes across Lao Tzu, she will think he is lazy. He will look lazy to all purposes. If she comes across Diogenes, she will think he is lazy. If she comes around Buddha, she will think he is lazy. Sitting under the Bodhi Tree? “What are you doing? At least you can run a primary school and teach children, or you can open a hospital and serve ill people. So many people are dying, starving. What are you doing here sitting under the Bodhi Tree?”
Anand Prem would have jumped on Buddha and taken him to task. “What are you doing? Just sitting, meditating? Is this the time to meditate? Is this the time to be just sitting silently and enjoying your bliss? This is selfish!” This condemnatory attitude is really dangerous: it gives you a holier-than-thou idea that: “I am better than you. You, you lazy people!” She goes on writing questions every day that I have not been answering; every day: “These people are hippies, these people are useless.”
She is in search of a lover, but she cannot find one here because she thinks that nobody here… She wants a “straight person,” and she cannot find a straight person here. These are all “hippies and yuppies,” and she wants somebody who is well-established. She wrote a letter. “…well-established, has a bank account, is a gentleman, a squire, has prestige, respectability. Here these people are just hobos, wanderers, vagabonds.” She would have refused Buddha; she would have refused Lao Tzu: they were not straight. She writes to me: “…these long-haired people!” She writes with such disgust, and because of this disgust she has become a very disgusting person, and she will not find a lover. For one year she has been in the West in search of one. She is Jewish. First she searched in America; then she went to Israel to search for a man. She could not find one in America; she could not find one in Israel – she will never find one anywhere. Even if she goes to heaven, God will look like a hobo. She has such condemnatory attitudes that she cannot love a simple human being. Yes, there are flaws, there are limitations, but everybody has those limitations. If you want to love, you have to love a man with all his limitations.
You cannot find a perfect person. Perfection does not exist. God never allows perfection because perfection is so monotonous. Just think: living with a perfect person, twenty-four hours a day; you will commit suicide. Living with a perfect person? How will you live? He will be more like a marble statue, dead. The moment a person becomes perfect, he is dead. An alive person is never perfect, and my teaching is basically not for perfection, but for totality.
Be total, and remember the difference. The ideal of perfection says: be like this – no anger, no jealousy, no possessiveness, no flaws, no limitations. The ideal of totality is totally different. If you are angry, be totally angry. If you are loving, be totally loving. If you are sad, be totally sad. Nothing is denied – only partiality has to be dropped, and then a person becomes beautiful.
A total person is beautiful. A perfect person is dead.
I am not trying to create mahatmas here. Enough! Those mahatmas have done enough nonsense in the world. We need beautiful people – flowering, flowing, alive. Yes, they will be sometimes sad, but what is wrong in being sad? Sometimes they will be angry, but what is wrong in sometimes being angry? It simply shows that you are alive, that you are not a dead thing, that you are not driftwood. Sometimes you fight; sometimes you let go. Just like climates change: it is rainy sometimes and it is cloudy; and sometimes it is sunny, and the clouds have disappeared. All the seasons are needed – the cold, the heat, the winter, the summer – all the seasons are needed. A real man, an authentic man, has all the climates in his being – only with one awareness: that whatsoever he is doing, he should do totally and should do it with full awareness. Enough, that’s enough, and you have a beautiful person.
But Anand Prem is in search of a perfect man.
I have heard…
Once a man traveled all over the world… Whenever I look at Anand Prem, I again and again remember that man. He traveled all over the world in search of a perfect woman. He wanted to get married, but how could he accept an imperfect model? He wanted a perfect woman. He came back, his whole life wasted; he could not find one. Then one day a friend said, “Now you are seventy, and you searched your whole life, couldn’t you find a single perfect woman?”
He said, “Yes, once I came across one woman who was perfect.”
So the friend asked, “Then what happened?”
But the man became sad; he said, “What happened? That woman was in search of a perfect man, so nothing happened!”
Remember, the ideal of perfection is an egoistic ideal.
Ronald Coleman told Herb Stein about a Hollywood phony who spoke with a fake Oxford accent, wore a fake Purple Star and Phi Beta Kappa key – and worst of all, passed a lot of fake checks. At the end of his rope, he decided to commit suicide, and went down to the Santa Fe railroad tracks. He calmly smoked several imported cigarettes while three or four heavy freights puffed by. A tramp who was watching jeered. “If you’re gonna do it, why don’t you do it?”
“Don’t be vulgar,” squelched the phony. “A man like me waits for the Super Chief.”
Even if an egoist goes to commit suicide, he waits for the Super Chief, the best train. He says, “Don’t be vulgar. A man like me waits for the Super Chief.” Even if he is committing suicide, he will not commit it under an ordinary train.
Marriage is like suicide – you can commit it anywhere. You should not wait for the Super Chief. Anand Prem is searching and it is impossible for her, the way she looks at things with such condemnation, to find anybody whom she can love.
“Please clarify the difference between a Taoist and a lazy escapist.” There is not much, and if there is, it is so inner that only the person will know – you will never be able to judge from the outside. Look at me. I am also a lazy person. Have you seen me doing anything, ever? It is very difficult from the outside to know. I love lazy people, Taoists or not; I love lazy people because out of lazy persons no Adolf Hitler is born, no Genghis Khan, no Tamerlane. Lazy people have silently lived their lives and disappeared, without leaving any trace on history, without contaminating humanity. They have not polluted consciousness. They were here as if they were not. To be lazy and aware, you become a Taoist. It does not mean that you become inactive. It simply means that the obsessive activity disappears. It simply means that you have become capable of not-doing too.
It is said about a Zen master that a person asked one of his disciples, “What miracles can your master do?”
And the disciple said, “Are you a follower of somebody?”
And the man said, “Yes, I am a follower of a certain master, and he is a great miracle man; he can do great miracles. Once it happened that I was standing on this shore of the river, and he was standing on the other shore, and he shouted to me, ‘I want to write something in your book.’ And the river was almost a half mile wide. So I took my book out, raised it, and from the other shore he started writing with his fountain pen, and the writing came onto my book. I have seen this miracle and the book is with me – you can see.”
And the disciple of the other master laughed and he said, “My master can do greater miracles.”
So the man said, “What miracles?”
And the disciple said, “My master can do miracles, and he is so capable, so capable, that he is capable of not doing them too.”
“Not doing them too.” See the beauty of it. He is “…so capable, so capable…of not doing them too.”
A Taoist is a man who does only that which is absolutely necessary. His life is almost like a telegram. When you go to the Post Office you don’t write a long letter when you are sending a telegraphic message. You go on cutting words, this and this can be dropped and then you come to ten or nine or whatsoever. If you write a letter, you will never write only ten words. And have you noticed? A telegram is more expressive than all letters. It says much more in a very few words. The unnecessary ones are dropped, only the most necessary are there. A Taoist is telegraphic; his life is like a telegram. The obsessive, the unnecessary, the feverish, have been dropped. He does only that which is absolutely necessary. And let me tell you that the absolutely necessary is so little that you will view a Taoist almost as if he were lazy.
Remember, I am not praising laziness. I am simply condemning the egoistic attitude. Against ego – I am for laziness. But I am not for laziness itself; it should be full of awareness. Then you pass from both activity and from laziness. Then you become transcendental. You are neither active, nor inactive; you are centered. Whatsoever is needed, you do; whatsoever is not needed, you don’t do. You are neither a doer nor a non-doer. Doing is no longer your focus. You are a consciousness.
So please don’t take whatsoever I have said in the sense that I am helping you to be lazy. To be really lazy means not to be inactive, but to be so full of energy that you are a reservoir of energy. Lazy as far as the world is concerned, but tremendously dynamic inside, not dull.
A Taoist is lazy from the outside; from the inside he has become a riverlike phenomenon, he is continuously flowing toward the ocean. He has dropped many activities because they were unnecessarily leaking his energy. The danger is always there – in whatsoever I say, there is danger – the danger of interpretation. If I say, “Be active,” there is the possibility that you will become egoists. If I say, “Be inactive,” there is the possibility that you may become dull. Man is very cunning.
I have heard…
He was the kind of a guy who would bet on anything – provided he was sure of winning. “I’ll bet that my wife’s first words will be ‘My dear’ when I get home,” he said to Lucky.
Lucky took him up on it. He knew the man’s wife very well, and she would be the last woman in the world to say, “My dear.”
Must have been like Anand Prem.
Lucky took him up on it, and they bet a hundred dollars. When they got to the sport’s house he stuck his head in the door and called, “My dear, I’m home.”
“‘My dear’ be hanged!” roared his wife. “Wait till I get you inside!”
And he looked at Lucky and said, “Give me a hundred dollars. Didn’t I tell you that the first words she would ever utter would be ‘My dear’?”
Mind is very cunning. The wife is saying, “‘My dear’ be hanged, wait till I get you inside!” But you can interpret it many ways. So he is demanding a hundred dollars. Mind is cunning. It goes on interpreting in its own ways; it goes on finding reasons, rationalizations, tricks to defend itself. It wants to remain as it is. That is the whole effort of the mind: it wants to remain as it is. If it is lazy, it wants to remain lazy. If it is active – too active, obsessively active, it wants to remain active. So whatsoever I say, you have to be careful not to defend your mind. You have to come out of your mind.
The man burst angrily through the door, threw his wife off the stranger’s knee and angrily demanded, “How do I find you kissing my wife?”
“I don’t know,” said the stranger. “Maybe you’re home early?”
People can find reasons. Be alert. But be alert about your own self, not about others. It is none of your business what others are doing. This should be one of the basic attitudes of a religious person – not to think about what the other person is doing; that is his life. If he decides to live it that way, that is his business. Who are you even to have an opinion about it? Even to have an opinion means that you are ready to interfere, you have already interfered. A religious person is one who is trying to live his life the best, the most total way he can; he is trying in the most alert way that he can. He is not interfering with anybody’s life, not even by having an opinion. Have you observed? If you pass somebody and you have a certain opinion about him, your face changes, your eyes change, your attitude, your walk. If you are condemnatory, your whole being starts broadcasting condemnation, disgust. No, you are interfering.
To be really religious means to be non-interfering. Give freedom to people; freedom is their birthright.
Once it happened…
I stayed with one of my professors, my teacher. Though I was a student and he was my teacher, he was very respectful of me. He was a rare, religious man, but he was a drunkard, and when I stayed in his home, he was very afraid to drink in front of me. What would I think? I watched him; I felt his restlessness. So the next day I told him, “There is something on your mind. If you don’t relax, I will immediately leave, and go to a hotel. I will not stay. There is something on your mind. I feel that you are not at ease; my presence is creating some trouble.”
He said, “Since you have raised the issue, I would like to tell you. I have never told you that I drink too much, but I always drink in my home to go to sleep. Now that you are staying here, I don’t want to drink before you and that is creating the trouble. I cannot go without drinking, and I cannot even conceive of drinking in front of you.”
I laughed. I said, “This is foolish. What have I to do with it? You would not force me to drink.”
He said, “No, never.”
“Then it is finished; the problem is solved. You drink, and I will keep you company. I will not drink alcohol, but I can drink something else, Coca Cola or Fanta. I will keep you company; you drink. I will fill your glass, I will help you.”
He could not believe it, he thought I was joking. But when that night I filled his glass, he started crying. He said, “I never thought that you would not have any opinion about it.” “I have been watching you,” he said, “and you don’t have any opinion about my drinking, about my behavior, about what I am doing.”
I said, “To have an opinion about you is simply foolish. It is not something very great that I don’t have any opinion about you. Why should I have one in the first place? Who am I? It is your life – you want to drink, then drink.”
To have an opinion about you means that deep down somewhere I want to manipulate you. To have some opinion about you, this way or that, means that I have a deep desire to have power over people. That’s what a politician desires. A religious person should be non-interfering.
The seventh question:
Osho,
You speak a lot about the ugliness of jealousy. Yes, it is quite ugly, but any suggestions to us sufferers of the disease who aren't enlightened on how to diminish it?
First, diminishing it is not going to help. You can diminish it to such proportions that it will almost become invisible, but that is not going to help. Diminishing simply means that you are throwing it into the unconscious and it goes deeper and deeper into the basement of your being. It becomes invisible. You may not be able to see it, but it will go on working from behind, it will go on pulling your strings from behind. It will become more subtle. Please don’t try to diminish it.
The first thing to remember: rather than diminishing it, magnify it so you can see all of it. That is the whole process of all the groups going on around here – Gestalt, Encounter, Psychodrama. The whole process is that whatsoever the problem is, please don’t diminish it, but magnify it. Bring it out totally as it is – even exaggerate it, so that you can see every detail of it. Down the centuries, in the past, jealousy, anger, sadness, this and that, have all been repressed. The effort was to diminish them. No, a seed is a diminished tree, but a seed is tremendously powerful. A seed can again at any time produce a tree. The right situation, the right season, and the tree will again sprout. You can diminish your jealousy; it can become just a seed, and you will not be able to see it; the tree has disappeared, but it is still there.
Diminishing is not the right process. That’s what you have been doing, that’s what you have done to your life: you have diminished everything. And another thing: when you diminish jealousy, your love will be diminished alongside it because your love and jealousy are so entangled with each other. If you diminish your sadness, your happiness will be diminished because your happiness and sadness are so together. If you diminish your hate, your love will disappear – that’s what has happened. You have been taught not to hate and the total result is that you have become incapable of love.
No, please don’t ever diminish anything. That is not the way. Rather, magnify it, exaggerate it, bring it to its total blossoming, and then see it – every detail of it, every minute detail of it. In that very awareness, in that very seeing, you will become capable of transcending it, and then there will be no need to do anything about it.
The second thing: you say, “You speak a lot about the ugliness of jealousy. Yes, it is ugly…” No, you don’t know. You are simply repeating what I have been saying. If you know it is quite ugly, in that very knowing it will disappear. You don’t know. You have listened to me; you have listened to Jesus; you have listened to Buddha, and you have gathered opinions. You don’t know. It is not your own feeling that jealousy is ugly. If it is your own feeling, then why do you carry it? It is not an easy thing; it takes a lot of investment. To be jealous is a very difficult thing: it needs a lot of effort on your part, a lot of involvement. It is so destructive of your own self that if it is ugly – and you have known the ugliness of it – you cannot carry it for a single moment. But listening to me you become knowledgeable.
I have heard…
“You can’t come in here,” the worried mother warned. “My son is sick.”
“I want to catch your son’s measles,” the man said, “because if I kissed the nurse she’d get it. She would kiss the doctor and he’d get it. The doctor would kiss my wife and she’d get it. My wife would kiss the landlord and that’s the guy I’m after.”
It is a great investment, and a great effort, and a very complex phenomenon.
And finally, it may destroy things. It may not destroy others – it certainly destroys you; it is suicidal. Not only that, it is ugly, it is poisonous. It is suicidal, it is slowly, slowly killing yourself every day.
See the fact of it. Don’t just become knowledgeable. What I say will not become an experience for you unless you experience it. And what is the way to experience it? The way is to bring it in front of you. It is hiding behind you.
Don’t repress it, express it. Sit in your room, close the doors, bring your jealousy into focus. Watch it, see it; let it become as strong a flame as possible. Let it become a strong flame, burn with it and see what it is. Don’t say, ”This is ugly” in the beginning because that very idea that it is ugly will repress it, will not allow it total expression. No opinions! Just try to see the existential effect of what jealousy is – the existential fact. No interpretations, no ideologies. Forget buddhas and work, forget me. Just let the jealousy be there. Look into it; look deeply into it. Do this with anger; do this with sadness, hatred, possessiveness. And, by and by, you will see that just by seeing through things you start getting a transcendental feeling that you are just a witness; the identity is broken. The identity is broken only when you encounter something within you.
The eighth question:
Osho,
What do you say to someone who, no matter what paths you talk about, always feels that he has one foot on each of them? And don't say that this must be my path! You only mentioned two yesterday, remember? Did I just put my foot in it?
You cannot put your foot in both that of Taoism and Confucianism, by their very nature. Those paths are so diametrically opposite that you cannot put one foot on one path, the other foot on another path – that is impossible. You must be imagining, you must be dreaming, hallucinating. It is so diametrically opposite – just as you cannot be alive and dead together. If you think you are both, you are simply alive and nothing else because even to think one has to be alive.
It is said that Mulla Nasruddin once asked…
Somebody had died and he rushed home and asked his wife, “You are very wise, just tell me one thing: if some day I die, how am I to decide whether I have really died or not? I have just seen somebody die, and one day or other I am going to die, but how will I know?”
The wife said, “Don’t be foolish, you will know it. You will become cold.”
So, one day it happened. He was cutting wood in the forest, and it was a very cold day and he started feeling cold. He said, “Okay, so the last day has come. So I am becoming cold.” So he said good-bye to his donkey – because only the donkey was there – and thinking that he was going to die, he made himself comfortable under the tree and closed his eyes. What else was there to do? Of course, when he closed his eyes, lying down under the tree, he became even colder. So he said, “Certain, death is certain; now it is coming. I am becoming colder and colder.”
Then, just out of curiosity, he opened one eye and looked at the donkey. What was happening to the donkey? A wolf had attacked the donkey! So he said, “What can I do?” Still he said loudly, “You can mess with my donkey because I am dead. But if I had been alive I would have shown you! But what can I do now?”
Talking, thinking, how can you be dead? Even to think this much is enough proof that you are alive.
No, you must have misunderstood. You cannot be on both paths. Look again. It is possible you may not be on either, but you cannot be on both.
The last question:
Osho,
You said today “Ask a buddha why he is happy and he will shrug his shoulders.” Please, why are you happy?
I will not even shrug my shoulders.
Enough for today.