Osho on Russian Writer Anton Chekhov

Born on 29^th January 1860 in Russia, Chekhov was a Russian playwright and master of the modern short story. He was a literary artist of laconic precision who probed below the surface of life, laying bare the secret motives of his characters. Chekhov’s best plays and short stories lack complex plots and neat solutions. Concentrating on apparent trivialities, they create a special kind of atmosphere, sometimes termed haunting or lyrical. Chekhov described the Russian life of his time using a deceptively simple technique devoid of obtrusive literary devices, and he is regarded as the outstanding representative of the late 19th-century Russian realist school.

Chekhov renounced the theatre after the reception of The Seagull in 1896, but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Konstantin Stanislavski’s Moscow Art Theatre, which subsequently also produced Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya and premiered his last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. Chekhov had at first written stories to earn money, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations which have influenced the evolution of the modern short story. He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them.

Osho talking about “rejoicing in the mind” and mentions Chekhov. He says, “You have to decorate your mind with poetry, with music, with art, with great literature. Your trouble is, your mind is filled only with trivia. Such third-rate things go on through your mind that you cannot love it. You think of nothing which is great. Make it more in tune with the greatest poets; make it in tune with people like Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Turgenev, Rabindranath, Kahlil Gibran, Mikhail Naimy; make it filled with the greatest heights that mind has reached. Then you will not be unfriendly to the mind. Then you will rejoice in the mind; even if mind is there in your silence, it will have a poetry and a music of its own, and to transcend such a refined mind is very easy. It is a friendly step towards higher peaks: poetry turning into mysticism, great literature turning into great insights into existence, music turning into silence. And as these things start turning into higher peaks, beyond mind, you will be discovering new worlds, new universes which we don’t even have a name for. We can say blissfulness, ecstasy, enlightenment, but no word really describes it. It is simply outside the power of language to reduce it into explanations, into theories, into philosophies. It is simply beyond… but mind rejoices in its transcendence.”

Osho Says….

BELOVED MASTER,

AT WHAT POINT DID THE HUMAN MIND BECOME PERVERTED?

Shakti Agita,

the human mind became perverted when it started following priests and politicians against its own nature. Perversion happens the moment you go against your nature. You cannot throw your nature out of the window; it is within you. But if you go against it, its natural expression is closed. And when the natural expression is closed, the unnatural energy starts finding some other way, it has to come out.

For example, celibacy creates millions of people who are perverted. Their perversion is rooted in their idea of celibacy; then homosexuality arises, lesbianism arises, sodomy arises, pornography arises. And now all that perversion has brought a new disease in the world, AIDS, which knows no cure. Still, no man of any importance is saying that it is because of celibacy — because that means irritating and annoying all the religions. I have never thought that humanity is so poor that there are not even a dozen people who will say the truth — that when the time comes they will not hesitate to risk all their respectability.

But I am utterly disappointed in the intelligentsia of the world, nobody is saying that it is celibacy that should be made a crime. On the contrary, governments are making laws saying that homosexuality is a crime. You are making the symptoms a crime, and nobody is even asking why people turn out to be homosexuals, and who are the people who turn to homosexuality in the first place? The monks, the soldiers, the prisoners, the boys living separately in university hostels. They become sexually mature at the age of fourteen and they have to wait at least ten more years for their marriage. And the biologists have found that men’s sexuality, their sexual energy, is at its peak when they are nearabout eighteen years of age. By the time they get married they are already going down. And when they were at the peak of their energy, you prevented them from meeting girls; and the same is the situation of the girls. You don’t allow mixed hostels, otherwise there would be no homosexuality. You don’t allow nuns and monks to live in the same monastery, otherwise there would be no need for homosexuality.

Destroy the basis and the perversion disappears. Shepherds living far away in the forest or in the mountains, alone with their sheep, start making love to the sheep. That is sodomy; they can’t even find a man, they are so alone there, and their sexual energy wants some way to be relieved.

Perversion has been around man since religions began dominating. They started giving disciplines to people without any understanding of human nature, without any knowledge of human psychology. They are still doing that, and they are forcing governments to make homosexuality a crime punishable by at least five years in jail. And the strangest thing is, in the jail, homosexuality is the most prevalent thing. So by sending homosexuals into jails, you are giving them new pastures, new possibilities. But nobody will say that celibacy is the cause, because all the religions preach celibacy.

Perhaps I am the only person who is saying that celibacy should be completely banned, and that all monks and all nuns should be made to live together. This unnaturalness should be prevented. Just a few days ago a Jaina nun, just twenty-two years old, but courageous enough, escaped from the fold. She wrote a letter to her father, saying, “Don’t search or seek for me, otherwise I will expose everything that goes on inside the monasteries. I have suffered so much torture, so much indignity; I have been exploited sexually and in every other way. And we go on showing the face of celibacy and receiving the respect of people. “I was forced to become a nun when I was only nine years old, and I had no idea what was happening. Now I am an adult, I don’t want to remain a nun, it is absolutely unnatural and ugly. Everything goes on from the back door, and we have to be hypocrites; I hate this kind of life.”

But the government is supporting the Jainas. They have arrested the man with whom the girl has escaped. They have arrest warrants for the girl, and the family wants the girl to be returned to the fold. If she does not want to go back to the fold, she should come back to the family. The girl simply does not want to have any relations with those parents who forced her to be a nun when she was only nine years old. Now the whole Jaina community near Indore and Bhopal, where this case has happened, is in such an uproar because they are afraid that the girl may expose everything that goes on behind the curtains. And the government is supporting them — the magistrate has issued an arrest warrant.

It is a strange world; the politicians are interested only in the votes of the Jainas, and that area is one of the richest Jaina areas. All the richest people there are Jainas, so all the money for elections comes from them; the politicians cannot annoy them. The situation is absolutely clear, that the girl is now of age and she has every freedom and right to decide what way of life she wants to live. If she does not want to remain a nun you cannot force her — by police, by law or by the court — to live a life which she does not want to live, which she hates to live. Now the governor of Madhya Pradesh has appealed that, wherever that girl is hiding, she should be delivered to the nearest police station, and nobody should give her any shelter. And we call this twentieth century a civilized century, and we call this world democratic?

Perversions arise because religions are against nature. And God is the most important cause of all perversions. Those who want perversions to disappear, have to declare the death of God, because only with the death of God can those religions disappear and leave man in freedom to live according to his nature.

Elsie the Cow was on one side of the fence, and Ferdinand the Bull was on the other side. Elsie gave Ferdinand a wink, and he leaped over the fence to her side, “Are not you Ferdinand the Bull?” she asked. “Just call me Ferdinand,” he said. “The fence was higher than I thought.”

That’s how things become perverted.

Religion has proved to be the greatest man-made calamity, a disaster, a suicidal attempt by man himself. It has created institutions which are all unnatural:

celibacy on one hand, marriage on the other hand. And they have praised marriage as highly as possible. Marriages, they say, are made in heaven… but ask the married people — they live in hell. It is strange, marriages happen in heaven, and married people live in hell. But to say anything against marriage annoys even those people who are living in hell, and they will not raise their hands in support. I have heard about Leo Tolstoy, Chekov, and Gorky, three great novelists of Russia before the revolution. They were sitting in the garden of Leo Tolstoy just talking about things and, by the way, they started talking about women. Chekov said something, Gorky said something, but Tolstoy remained silent. They both turned to him and said, “Why you are not saying anything about it?”

He said, “I will say, but I will say only when one of my feet is in the grave. I will say it and jump into the grave, because if I say anything and my wife hears it… I am already living in hell, why make it even worse? I will just keep quiet.”

Source:

This is an excerpt from the transcript of a public discourse by Osho in Buddha Hall, Shree Rajneesh Ashram, Pune. 

Discourse name: The Rebel
Chapter title: Mind is a kind of insanity
Chapter #23
12 June 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

References:

Osho has spoken on prominent writers and philosophers like Albert Camus, Aristotle, Byron, Descartes, Fyodor Dostoevsky, D.H. Lawrence, H.G. Wells, Hegel, Huxley, John Milton, Kahlil Gibran, Kalidas, Kant, Leo Tolstoy, Nietzsche, Rabindranath Tagore, Shakespeare and many more in His discourses. Some of these can be referred to in the following books/discourses:

1. Come Come Yet Again Come
2. Beyond Psychology
3. The Dhammapada: the way of the Buddha Vol.1,3,7,9,10,12
4. The Transmission of The Lamp
5. I am That
6. The Perfect Master
7. The Golden Future
8. Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind
9. One Seed Makes the Whole Earth Green
10. Sufis: People on the Path Vol.1-2
11. The Empty Boat
12. Dang Dang Doko Dang
13. Zarathustra, the laughing prophet
14. From Personality to Individuality
15. From Death to Deathlessness