BUDDHA AND BUDDHIST MASTERS
The Diamond Sutra 02
Second Discourse from the series of 11 discourses - The Diamond Sutra by Osho.
You can listen, download or read all of these discourses on oshoworld.com.
The first question:
Osho,
Is it possible that the no-mind evolves quite naturally out of the mind without struggle and anguish, without exploding, hammering, cutting and such wild acts? Is the very idea of no-mind, which seems to be in the mind and yet transcending the mind, a seedlike form of the no-mind? Is it helpful to meditate along these lines of mind-transcending concepts like eternity, nirvana, death? My mind seems to explode when I do. It feels like I am pushing over my limit and I get afraid of becoming schizophrenic.
The no-mind cannot arise out of the mind. It is not a growth of the mind, it is not in continuity with the mind; it is discontinuous. It is as discontinuous as disease is with health. The health does not arise out of the disease, it arises out of the removal of the disease. Disease was encroaching the space and was not allowing the health to bloom. The disease has to be removed. It is like a rock blocking the path of a small spring. You remove the rock and the spring starts flowing. It does not arise out of the rock. The rock was blocking it, the rock was a block. So is the mind. Mind is the block for the no-mind.
No-mind simply means that which is not mind at all. How can it arise out of the mind? If it arises out of the mind it may be super-mind, but it can’t be no-mind. That’s where I differ from Sri Aurobindo. He talks about the super-mind. A super-mind is the same mind more decorated, more cultivated, more cultured, more sophisticated, more strong, more integrated – but all the time the same old mind.
Buddha says not super-mind but no-mind; not super-soul but no-soul; not super-individuality, super-self, but no-self, anatta. That is where Buddha is unique and his understanding the deepest. A super-mind is a growth, a no-mind is a leap, a jump. The no-mind has nothing to do with the mind at all. They never meet even, they never encounter each other. When the mind is there, the no-mind is not there. When the no-mind is there, the mind is not there. They don’t even say hello to each other – they can’t. The presence of the one is necessarily the absence of the other. So remember it.
That’s why I say Sri Aurobindo never became enlightened. He remained polishing the mind. He was a great mind, but to be a great mind is not to be enlightened. So is Bertrand Russell a great mind. But to be a great mind is not to be enlightened. So is Friedrich Nietzsche a great mind – and Aurobindo and Nietzsche have many similarities. Nietzsche talks about the superman and Aurobindo also talks about the superman. But the superman will be a projected man. A superman will be this man; all the weaknesses destroyed, all the strengths strengthened – but this man. Bigger than this man, stronger than this man, higher than this man, but still on the same wavelength, the same ladder. There is no radical change, there has never been a discontinuity.
No-mind means discontinuity with all that you are. You have to die for no-mind to be.
So the first thing. You ask, “Is it possible that the no-mind evolves quite naturally out of the mind?” No. It is not an evolution, it is a revolution. The mind is dropped and suddenly you find the no-mind is there, has always been there. The mind was clouding, making you confused, was not allowing you to see that which is. So it is not an evolution.
And you ask, “Is it possible without struggle and anguish?” It has nothing to do with struggle and anguish. No-mind has nothing to do with struggle and anguish. It does not come out of struggle and anguish. Anything that comes out of struggle and anguish will carry the wounds. Even if those wounds are healed, the scars will be carried. It will be again a continuity.
The struggle and anguish is not for the no-mind; the struggle and anguish arises because the mind struggles to keep itself in power. The fight is given by the mind. The mind does not want to go, the mind wants to stay. The mind has become so powerful it possesses you. It says, “No, I am not going to get out. I am going to stay here.” The whole struggle and anguish is because of the mind. The no-mind has nothing to do with it. And you will have to go through this anguish and struggle. If you don’t go through the anguish and the struggle, the mind is not going to leave you.
And again let me repeat, the no-mind is not born out of your struggle; out of your struggle only comes the mind. The no-mind comes without any struggle. The rock gives you the struggle. It does not want to move. It has remained in that spot for centuries, for millennia – who are you to remove it? “And about what spring are you talking? There is none. I have been here for centuries and I know – there is none. You forget all about it!” But you want to remove the rock. The rock is heavy, the rock is rooted in the earth. It has remained there for so long. It has attachments; it does not want to go. And it knows nothing of the spring. But you will have to remove this rock. Unless this rock is removed, the spring will not flow.
You ask, “…without exploding, hammering, cutting and such wild acts?” The no-mind has nothing to do with your acts. But the mind will not go. You will have to hammer and cut and you will have to do a thousand and one things.
“Is the very idea of no-mind, which seems to be in the mind and yet transcending the mind, a seedlike form of the no-mind?”
No – there is no seed in the mind of the no-mind. The mind cannot contain even the seed of no-mind. The mind has no space to contain it. No-mind is vast, like the sky. How can it be contained in a tiny thing, the mind? And the mind is already too full – full of thoughts, desires, fantasies, imaginations, memories. There is no space.
In the first place it is very tiny – it cannot contain the no-mind. In the second place it is so full, overcrowded, so noisy. The no-mind is silent; the mind is noisy. The mind cannot contain it; the mind has to cease. In that cessation is the beginning of a new life, a new being, a new world.
“Is it helpful,” you ask, “to meditate along these lines of mind-transcending concepts like eternity, nirvana, death?”
Those so-called mind-transcending concepts are still concepts and are of the mind. When you are thinking of eternity, what will you do? You will think. When you are thinking of nirvana, what is going to happen? Your mind will spin and weave, and your mind will give you beautiful ideas about nirvana – but that will be all mind work.
What can you think about death? What will you think if you think about death? You don’t know! How can you think anything about that which you don’t know?
Mind is perfectly capable in repeating the known; with the unknown it is impotent. You don’t know eternity, all that you know is time. Even when you think of eternity it is nothing but lengthened time, stretched time – but it is time. What do you know about nirvana? – all that you have heard about it, read about it. That is not nirvana. The word nirvana is not nirvana, and the concept of nirvana is not nirvana. The word God is not God, and all the pictures and all the statues that have been made of God have nothing to do with him – because he has no name and no form.
And what are you going to think about death? How can you think about death? You have heard a few things, you have seen a few people dying, but you have never seen death. When you see a man dying what do you see? He breathes no more; that’s all that you see. His body has become cold; that’s all that you see. What more? Is this death? – the body becoming cold, breathing stopping? Is this all? What has happened to the innermost core of the person? You cannot know without dying. You cannot know without experiencing. The only way to know the unknown is to experience it.
So these concepts won’t help. They may rather, on the contrary, strengthen the mind, because the mind will say, “Look, I can even supply you mind-transcending concepts. See what I am doing for you. Keep me with you always. I will help you to become enlightened. Without me you will be nowhere. Without me how will you think about death and nirvana and eternity? I am absolutely essential. Without me you will not be anything at all.”
No, these meditations won’t help. You have to see it – that the mind is not going to help at all. When you see the point that mind is not going to help at all, in that very helplessness, in that very state, there is silence; all stops. If the mind cannot do anything, then nothing is left to do. Suddenly all thinking is paralyzed; it is pointless. In that paralysis you will have the first glimpse of no-mind…just a small window will open. In that stopping of the mind you will have a taste of no-mind. And then things will start moving. Then it will be easier for you to get lost into the boundariless.
You cannot meditate, you have to go into it. Meditating upon it is a pseudo activity; it is a kind of avoiding, escaping. You are afraid of death, you think about death. You are afraid of nirvana, you think about nirvana. Thinking gives you the feeling that you are capable even of thinking about death and nirvana.
“My mind seems to explode when I do.”
Mind is very cunning. It must be deceiving you – because mind cannot explode while you are thinking. About what you are thinking does not matter; while you are thinking, mind cannot explode. Mind will be enjoying it, and in that very enjoyment you are thinking you are exploding.
“It feels like I am pushing over my limit and I get afraid of becoming schizophrenic.”
You need not be afraid of ever becoming schizophrenic, because you already are – everybody is. Mind is schizophrenic, because mind knows nothing of unity. Mind is always split. Mind always has alternatives. To be or not to be, to do this or to do that. Mind is always indecisive. Even if you choose something it is only a part of the mind that chooses it, the other part remains against it.
The mind is never total, so mind is schizophrenic. You need not be afraid of that. To be in the mind is to be schizophrenic. Only buddhas are beyond it. The whole humanity is schizophrenic, more or less. When you go beyond a point then you have to seek and search for the psychiatrist, but the difference is only of degrees; the difference is only of quantity not quality. Even between you and your psychoanalyst there is only a difference of degrees.
Remember, mind will not help. Mind cannot help, mind can only hinder. Seeing this, no-mind arrives. It is not that you bring it; it arrives on its own accord.
The second question:
Osho,
In yesterday's sutra, Buddha says: Someone who has set out in the vehicle of a bodhisattva should decide that “I must lead all the beings to nirvana, into that realm of nirvana which leaves nothing behind.” What is this realm of nirvana which leaves nothing behind?
Buddha has talked about two kinds of nirvana. One he calls nirvana with substratum. The tree has disappeared, the tree of desires. The foliage, the leaves, the flowers, the fruits – everything has disappeared. But the roots are still there underground, hidden in the dark soil. From the outside the tree has been removed, but the tree is still capable of renewing itself again. The substratum is still there, the seed has not been burnt yet. This he calls nirvana with substratum.
This is exactly the same that Patanjali calls sabeej samadhi – samadhi with seed. It is very difficult from the outside. The tree has been completely removed, but underneath the soil the roots are still alive waiting for the right moment to sprout again. Rains will come and they will sprout. They are waiting for their season, for the moment again to assert.
This is the state when many times you have come to the point where mind disappears, no-mind is felt, but again mind comes back, again it sprouts. You reach to a peak. In that moment of that peak experience you think all is finished, now you will never be falling back to the valley of darkness. You think that you will never go back into those ugly and miserable days, that the dark night of the soul is over, that the morning has arrived, that the sun has arisen.
But again one day you suddenly find you are slipping back into the darkness – again the valley, again light is no more, again that peak experience is just a memory. And one starts becoming doubtful whether it has happened or not, or “Have I been just imagining? Or maybe I was just dreaming.”…Because if it had happened, then where has it gone? Where is that sunlit peak? Where are those moments of ecstasy? And misery is back and anguish is back and agony is back – you have fallen into hell again. This happens many times.
This Buddha calls nirvana with substratum; sabeej samadhi in Patanjali’s words. Manifestation of the world is gone but the unmanifested seed remains.
The second nirvana Buddha calls the nirvana without substratum. In Patanjali’s words nirbeej samadhi – seedless samadhi. Not only the tree has been destroyed, but the seed also burned. A burned seed cannot sprout again; all substratum is gone. Then you remain on the peak forever, then there is no falling back.
That’s what Buddha says in yesterday’s sutra: Someone who has set out in the vehicle of a bodhisattva should decide that “I must lead all the beings into nirvana,…into that realm of nirvana which leaves nothing behind.” Which leaves no substratum, no roots, no seeds behind.
The third question:
Osho,
What is the Zen approach towards sex? The Zen people seem to have a neuter gender, or asexual aura about them.
Zen has no attitudes about sex, and that is the beauty of Zen. To have an attitude means you are still obsessed this way or that. Somebody is against sex – he has an attitude; and somebody is for sex – he has an attitude. And for and against go together like two wheels of a bullock cart. They are not enemies, they are friends, partners in the same business.
Zen has no attitude about sex. Why should one have any attitude about sex? That’s the beauty of it – Zen is utterly natural. Do you have any attitudes about drinking water? Do you have any attitudes about taking food? Do you have any attitudes about going to sleep in the night? No attitudes.
I know there are mad people who have attitudes about these things too: that one should not sleep more than five hours. Sleep is a kind of sin, something like a necessary evil, so one should not sleep more than five hours; or in India there are people who think only three hours. And I have come across one person who has not slept for ten years – and he is worshipped for this only; he has nothing else, no other creative talents. It is his only talent. Maybe he is just an insomniac. Maybe even this is not a talent, maybe he cannot sleep. He has gone so neurotic that he cannot relax, and he looks mad. One will become mad if one has not slept for ten years. And people come, crowds come, to worship him: “He has attained something great.” What has he attained? What is the attainment there? He is just an abnormal person, ill. To sleep is natural. And he is bound to be very tense – he is tense. He must be boiling within. Just think, for ten years not sleeping! But now it has become a great investment, now it is paying. His madness has become an investment, now thousands of people worship him – only for this?
Down the ages this has been one of the greatest calamities – that people have been worshipping uncreative things, and sometimes pathological things. Then you have an attitude about sleep. There are people who have an attitude about food. To eat this or to eat that; to eat only so much, not more than that. They don’t listen to the body, to whether the body is hungry or not. They have a certain idea and they impose the idea on nature.
Zen has no attitudes about sex. Zen is very simple, Zen is innocent. Zen is childlike. It says there is no need to have any attitudes. Why? Do you have any attitude about sneezing? – to sneeze or not, whether it is sin or virtue. You don’t have any attitude. But I have come across one man who is against sneezing, and whenever he sneezes he immediately repeats a mantra to protect himself. He belongs to a small foolish sect. That sect thinks that when you sneeze the soul goes out. In the sneeze the soul goes out, and if you don’t remember God it may not come back. So you have to remember, you have to immediately remember so that the soul is given back. If you die while sneezing you will go into hell.
You can have attitudes about anything. Once you have attitudes, your innocence is destroyed and those attitudes start controlling you. Zen is neither for anything nor against anything. Zen says whatsoever is ordinary is good. To be ordinary, to be a no one, to be a nothingness, to be without any ideology, to be without character, to be characterless….
When you have a character you have some kind of neurosis. Character means something has become fixed in you. Character means your past. Character means conditioning, cultivation. When you have a character you are imprisoned in it, you are no more free. When you have a character you have an armor around yourself. You are no more a free person. You are carrying your prison around yourself; it is a very subtle prison. A real man will be characterless.
What do I mean when I say he will be characterless? He will be free of the past. He will act in the moment according to the moment. He will be spontaneous; only he can be spontaneous. He will not look back into the memories for what to do. A situation has arisen and you are looking in the memory – then you have a character. Then you are asking your past, “What should I do?” When you don’t have any character you simply look into the situation and the situation decides what has to be done. Then it is spontaneous and there is response and not reaction.
Zen has no belief system about anything – and that is the case with sex too: Zen says nothing about it. And that should be the ultimate thing. Tantra has an attitude about sex. The reason? – it tries to redress what the society has done. Tantra is medical. The society has repressed sex; Tantra comes as a remedy to help you redress, balance. You have leaned too much to the left; Tantra comes and helps you to lean to the right. And to redress the balance sometimes you have to lean too much to the right, only then the balance is gained. Have you not seen a rope walker, a tightrope walker? He carries a staff in his hand to keep balance. If he feels he is leaning too much to the left, he immediately starts leaning to the right. Then again he feels that now he has leaned too much to the right, he starts leaning towards the left. This is how he keeps in the middle. Tantra is a remedy.
The society has created a repressive mind, a life-negative mind, an anti-joy mind. The society is very much against sex. Why is the society so much against sex? – because if you allow people sexual pleasure you cannot transform them into slaves. It is impossible – a joyous person cannot be made a slave. That is the trick. Only sad people can be turned into slaves. A joyous person is a free person; he has a kind of independence to him.
You cannot recruit joyous people for war. Impossible. Why should they go to war? But if a person has repressed his sexuality he is ready to go to war, he is eager to go to war because he has not been able to enjoy life. He has become incapable of enjoying, hence has become incapable of creativity. Now he can do only one thing – he can destroy. All his energies have become poison and destructive. He is ready to go to war – not only ready, he is hankering for it. He wants to kill, he wants to destroy. In fact, while destroying human beings he will have a vicarious joy of penetrating. That penetrating could have been in love and would have been beautiful. When you penetrate a woman’s body in love, it is one thing. It is spiritual. But when things go wrong and you penetrate somebody’s body with a sword, with a spear, it is ugly, it is violent, it is destructive. But you are searching for a substitute for penetration.
If society is allowed total freedom about joy, nobody will be destructive. People who can love beautifully are never destructive. And people who can love beautifully and have the joy of life will not be competitive either. These are the problems.
That’s why primitive people are not so competitive. They are enjoying their life. Who bothers to have a bigger house? Who bothers to have a bigger balance in the bank? For what? You are happy with your woman and with your man and you are having a dance of life. Who wants to sit in the marketplace for hours and hours and hours, day in, day out, year in, year out, hoping that in the end you will have a big bank balance and then you will retire and enjoy? That day never comes. It can’t come, because the whole life you remain an ascetic.
Remember, the business people are ascetic people. They have devoted everything to money. Now a man who knows love and has known the thrill of love and the ecstasy of it will not be competitive. He will be happy if he can get his daily bread. That is the meaning of Jesus’ prayer: “Give us our daily bread.” That is more than enough. Now Jesus looks foolish. He should have asked, “Give us a bigger bank balance.” He asks only for the daily bread? A joyous man never asks for more than that. The joy is so fulfilling.
It is only unfulfilled beings who are competitive because they think life is not here, it is there. “I have to reach to Delhi and become the president,” or to the White House and become this or that. “I have to go there, joy is there” – because they know there is no joy here. So they are always on the go, go, go, go. They are always on the go, and they never reach. And the man who knows the joy, is here. Why should he be going to Delhi? For what? He is utterly happy herenow. His needs are very small. He has no desires. He has needs certainly, but no desires. Needs can be fulfilled, desires never. Needs are natural, desires are perverted.
Now this whole society depends on one thing and that is sex repression; otherwise the economy will be destroyed, sabotaged. War will disappear and with it the whole war machinery, and the politics will become meaningless and the politician will no longer be important. Money will not have value if people are allowed to love. Because they are not allowed to love, money becomes the substitute, money becomes their love. So there is a subtle strategy. Sex has to be repressed, otherwise this whole structure of the society will fall immediately.
Only love released into the world will bring revolution. Communism has failed, fascism has failed, capitalism has failed. All “isms” have failed because deep down they are all sex repressive. On that point there is no difference – no difference between Washington and Moscow, Beijing and Delhi – there is no difference at all. They all agree upon one thing – that sex has to be controlled, that people are not to be allowed to have innocent joy in sex.
To redress the balance comes Tantra; Tantra is a remedy, so it emphasizes sex too much. The so-called religions say sex is sin and Tantra says sex is the only sacred phenomenon. Tantra is a remedy. Zen is not a remedy. Zen is the state when the illness has disappeared – and of course, with the illness, the remedy too. Once you are cured of your illness you don’t go on carrying the prescription and the bottle and the medicine with you. You throw it. It goes to the dustbin.
Ordinary society is against sex; Tantra comes to help humanity, to give sex back to humanity. And when the sex has been given back, then arises Zen. Zen has no attitude. Zen is pure health.
The fourth question:
Osho,
Is everything, is the world okay? And what has that to do with love? When you say the world is okay it sounds okay to me. If anybody else says so, or if I say so, it sounds wrong.
It depends who is saying it. When I say the world is okay, I am not propounding a theory, I am sharing a vision. In fact, the word theory comes from a Greek root theoria, and theoria means vision. When I am saying anything to you, it is not mind stuff; I am sharing my experience. In those moments, if you are available to me and open to me, you will also have the vision; a little bit of my vision will spill into your being. For a moment the doors will open and you will say, “Yes, this is so.”
When somebody else is saying it, and if it is not his vision…. Even when you say to somebody and it is no more your vision – it was just a borrowed eyesight – it will not sound right. If a man like Buddha even tells a lie, it will sound like truth. And if you tell even a truth, it will sound like a lie.
It depends more from where it comes, the source; not what you say, but who says. You can go on repeating Christ’s words and nobody is going to crucify you. Why? Why don’t they crucify you? You can declaim the whole Sermon on the Mount and you can go on standing. And that’s what people are doing all over the world – Christian priests, and missionaries and Witnesses of Jehovah, mm? All kinds of people are doing that – carrying the New Testament, quoting the New Testament, repeating the words, and nobody crucifies them. Why? When Jesus said these things what was the matter? The words had fire then. Jesus was sharing his vision. When you repeat, there is no vision in it; it is a mere word. It has no passion, no intensity, no truth. Truth comes only through experience.
You ask: “Is everything, is the world okay?” When I say the world is okay, what do I really mean? I mean this is the only world and there is no other world. You don’t have any way to compare. Okay or not okay is irrelevant. This is the only world there is; there is no other. You cannot compare whether it is better or not better. Comparison is not possible. Comparison is possible only when there are two worlds, but there are not.
So when I say all is okay, I mean there is no point in comparing. But why do people say that this is not the right world? They have created an utopia in their mind and they compare with the utopia. They have an idea of how things should be and then nothing seems to be right, because things are not like their utopian idea. If you think man should have four eyes…. And that looks very logical: two for the back. Two eyes don’t look right – what about the back? What if somebody comes from the back and hits you? God has missed there…two eyes in the back. Then things are not okay – man has only two eyes; man should have four. Then suddenly man is not okay. And man is the same; you have just created an idea, and that idea condemns.
Man should live more than seventy years. Why? Once you say that man should live seven hundred years then seventy years look very poor. But why? What will you be doing here for seven hundred years? Don’t you think seventy years are enough to do harm? to destroy? You need seven hundred years? Just think of Adolf Hitler living seven hundred years….
Once you have an idea, a goal, then things become different. I have no idea; I am absolutely non-utopian, I am absolutely realistic. I carry no ideals in my mind. Then this is the only world; roses are red and trees are green and people are this way – the way they are – and it is absolutely beautiful.
“Is everything, is the world okay? And what has that to do with love?”
That has much to do with love. If the world is okay, only then you can love. If the world is not okay you become a politician, you become political. The politician depends on the idea that the world is not okay: he has to bring a revolution, he has to change things, he has to put things right, he has to improve upon God. That is the politician’s mind. And the politician has no love, he has only condemnation, because he has judged.
The religious mind has no judgment. Jesus says, “Judge ye not.” The religious mind has no judgment, has no condemnation, hence he can love. And remember, in your life also, you can love only when you don’t judge. If you have too many ideas to judge with, you will never love. You will go on imposing your ideas on whomsoever becomes a victim of your so-called love. You will go on imposing your ideas on him. Even if a child is born to you, immediately you will jump on him and start manipulating, managing, improving. And you will destroy the being. That’s how everybody has been destroyed by the parents and by the society.
If you love a woman, you immediately start improving how she should be. And the woman, of course, is a great improver. If you become a victim of a woman’s love, then you are no more. Then she will improve you so much that she will make something else out of you. After a few years you will not be able to recognize who you are. She will cut and prune and do things and paint: “Behave this way” and “Speak this way” and “Talk this way.”
A young woman fell in love with a man. The woman was a Catholic and the man was a Jew. The woman’s family was very worried, and they said, “We cannot allow you.” The family was very rich, and they said, “If you marry this man then you will not inherit anything.” And she was the only child, so all the money was hers.
Now this was too much, so she asked, “What should I do?”
So they said, “First convert him, let him become a Catholic – then….”
So she tried, and she was very happy, because the Jew was more interested in the money than in the woman, so he was very willing. A Jew is a Jew, he was very willing. He started reading The Bible and started going to the church, and he was over-enthusiastic. The woman was very happy – things were going perfectly well – and after every month she would report to her parents that things are going perfectly well.
Then one day she came home and was crying and weeping and the father asked, “What is the matter? What happened?”
She had gone to ask the man to get married, she was thinking that he was ready. And she said to her father, “Yes, he is ready, but I have done too much reformation, I have reformed him too much.”
The father was confused. He said, “I don’t understand. What do you mean, too much?”
She said, “Yes, now he wants to become a Catholic monk. I have overdone it.”
What you call love is more or less reforming the other. And you go on saying that you want to reform the other because you love. This is absolutely untrue. If you love you never reform anybody. Love accepts. Love respects the other as he is.
If the world is okay as it is, only then can you love it. The revolutionary, the politician cannot love it; only the religious consciousness can love it. And when you love you come to know that it is even more okay than you had thought before. Then you love more, and then you come to find that it is immensely beautiful, not just okay. Then more love…and by and by you find that the world disappears – it is God himself.
The fifth question:
Osho,
The first time I saw a dead human being was when I saw my dead grandmother. She lay there and looked so white and peaceful, so silent and happy, open and closed at the same time. I was jealous, but at the same time afraid. I thought she must be so lonely. I could not reach her anymore. When I saw you, dear Osho, on your birthday darshan, I had exactly the same feelings. Did you not feel very very lonely between all the noises, shatterings, movings? You were so far and in holy silence – as never before for me. Are you dead and alive at the same time?
The question is from Aranyo.
Death is beautiful, as beautiful as life – if you just know how to communicate with death. It is beautiful because it is relaxation. It is beautiful because the person has fallen back into the source of existence – to relax, to rest, to be ready to come back again.
A wave rises in the ocean, then falls back into the ocean, then rises again. It will have another day, it will be born again in some other form. And then it falls again and disappears.
Death is just disappearing into the source. Death is going to the unmanifested. Death is falling asleep into the divine. You will bloom again. You will again see the sun and the moon, and again and again till you become a buddha – till you are capable of dying consciously, till you are capable of relaxing consciously, knowingly, into the divine. Then there is no coming back. That is utter death, that is ultimate death. The ordinary death is a temporary death; you will be coming back again. When a buddha dies, he dies forever. His death has the quality of eternity. But even the temporary death is beautiful.
And you are right, Aranyo, I am dead and alive at the same time. As a person, I am dead. As somebody, I am dead. As nobody, I am alive.
You say, “The first time I saw a dead human being was when I saw my dead grandmother. She lay there and looked so white and peaceful, so silent, so happy, open and closed at the same time. I was jealous but at the same time afraid.”
Remember, that may be your relationship with me too, jealous and at the same time afraid too. You will have to put your fear aside, because the fear can prevent you – can prevent you from enjoying this opportunity that is available to you. It is very difficult to find a nobody; you have found one. And unless you also become a nobody, go on remembering you are missing the opportunity. Die as I have died, and then you will be alive as I am alive.
There is a life which has nothing to do with any person. There is a life which has nothing to do with any self. There is a life of emptiness – innocent and virgin. I make it available to you. Put your fears aside, come closer to me. Let me become your death and your resurrection.
A Zen master, Bunon, has said, “While living, be a dead man, be thoroughly dead, and behave as you like and all is well.”
The last question:
Osho,
Is knowledge always dangerous?
Not always. And knowledge is not dangerous, knowledgeability is dangerous. To know about facts is perfectly good, but to forget the mystery of life is dangerous. So knowledge is not always dangerous; sometimes it can be of great help too.
A little anecdote:
Irish Paddy’s wife Maureen had been rushed to the hospital that morning. Nine months pregnant, and now in labor, she gives birth to two beautiful twin daughters.
Irish Paddy, after a day’s work laboring with rubble on the building site, marched up to the hospital in the cool of an autumn evening to visit his wife in the maternity ward.
“Oh, hello, little sweet darling,” he cooed to his Maureen, as he approached the bed with a glint of curiosity in his right eye, as he observed two tiny babies arriving by the bed, hand in hand with a nurse.
“I have had twins, me luv,” said Maureen.
For ten long minutes Paddy sat bemused by that bed, not knowing how to work it out.
The ward bell rang, Paddy kissed his wife and left. “By Christ!” he muttered, as he walked the long corridor, “If I find the other bugger I will kill him.”
Enough for today.
Osho,
Is it possible that the no-mind evolves quite naturally out of the mind without struggle and anguish, without exploding, hammering, cutting and such wild acts? Is the very idea of no-mind, which seems to be in the mind and yet transcending the mind, a seedlike form of the no-mind? Is it helpful to meditate along these lines of mind-transcending concepts like eternity, nirvana, death? My mind seems to explode when I do. It feels like I am pushing over my limit and I get afraid of becoming schizophrenic.
The no-mind cannot arise out of the mind. It is not a growth of the mind, it is not in continuity with the mind; it is discontinuous. It is as discontinuous as disease is with health. The health does not arise out of the disease, it arises out of the removal of the disease. Disease was encroaching the space and was not allowing the health to bloom. The disease has to be removed. It is like a rock blocking the path of a small spring. You remove the rock and the spring starts flowing. It does not arise out of the rock. The rock was blocking it, the rock was a block. So is the mind. Mind is the block for the no-mind.
No-mind simply means that which is not mind at all. How can it arise out of the mind? If it arises out of the mind it may be super-mind, but it can’t be no-mind. That’s where I differ from Sri Aurobindo. He talks about the super-mind. A super-mind is the same mind more decorated, more cultivated, more cultured, more sophisticated, more strong, more integrated – but all the time the same old mind.
Buddha says not super-mind but no-mind; not super-soul but no-soul; not super-individuality, super-self, but no-self, anatta. That is where Buddha is unique and his understanding the deepest. A super-mind is a growth, a no-mind is a leap, a jump. The no-mind has nothing to do with the mind at all. They never meet even, they never encounter each other. When the mind is there, the no-mind is not there. When the no-mind is there, the mind is not there. They don’t even say hello to each other – they can’t. The presence of the one is necessarily the absence of the other. So remember it.
That’s why I say Sri Aurobindo never became enlightened. He remained polishing the mind. He was a great mind, but to be a great mind is not to be enlightened. So is Bertrand Russell a great mind. But to be a great mind is not to be enlightened. So is Friedrich Nietzsche a great mind – and Aurobindo and Nietzsche have many similarities. Nietzsche talks about the superman and Aurobindo also talks about the superman. But the superman will be a projected man. A superman will be this man; all the weaknesses destroyed, all the strengths strengthened – but this man. Bigger than this man, stronger than this man, higher than this man, but still on the same wavelength, the same ladder. There is no radical change, there has never been a discontinuity.
No-mind means discontinuity with all that you are. You have to die for no-mind to be.
So the first thing. You ask, “Is it possible that the no-mind evolves quite naturally out of the mind?” No. It is not an evolution, it is a revolution. The mind is dropped and suddenly you find the no-mind is there, has always been there. The mind was clouding, making you confused, was not allowing you to see that which is. So it is not an evolution.
And you ask, “Is it possible without struggle and anguish?” It has nothing to do with struggle and anguish. No-mind has nothing to do with struggle and anguish. It does not come out of struggle and anguish. Anything that comes out of struggle and anguish will carry the wounds. Even if those wounds are healed, the scars will be carried. It will be again a continuity.
The struggle and anguish is not for the no-mind; the struggle and anguish arises because the mind struggles to keep itself in power. The fight is given by the mind. The mind does not want to go, the mind wants to stay. The mind has become so powerful it possesses you. It says, “No, I am not going to get out. I am going to stay here.” The whole struggle and anguish is because of the mind. The no-mind has nothing to do with it. And you will have to go through this anguish and struggle. If you don’t go through the anguish and the struggle, the mind is not going to leave you.
And again let me repeat, the no-mind is not born out of your struggle; out of your struggle only comes the mind. The no-mind comes without any struggle. The rock gives you the struggle. It does not want to move. It has remained in that spot for centuries, for millennia – who are you to remove it? “And about what spring are you talking? There is none. I have been here for centuries and I know – there is none. You forget all about it!” But you want to remove the rock. The rock is heavy, the rock is rooted in the earth. It has remained there for so long. It has attachments; it does not want to go. And it knows nothing of the spring. But you will have to remove this rock. Unless this rock is removed, the spring will not flow.
You ask, “…without exploding, hammering, cutting and such wild acts?” The no-mind has nothing to do with your acts. But the mind will not go. You will have to hammer and cut and you will have to do a thousand and one things.
“Is the very idea of no-mind, which seems to be in the mind and yet transcending the mind, a seedlike form of the no-mind?”
No – there is no seed in the mind of the no-mind. The mind cannot contain even the seed of no-mind. The mind has no space to contain it. No-mind is vast, like the sky. How can it be contained in a tiny thing, the mind? And the mind is already too full – full of thoughts, desires, fantasies, imaginations, memories. There is no space.
In the first place it is very tiny – it cannot contain the no-mind. In the second place it is so full, overcrowded, so noisy. The no-mind is silent; the mind is noisy. The mind cannot contain it; the mind has to cease. In that cessation is the beginning of a new life, a new being, a new world.
“Is it helpful,” you ask, “to meditate along these lines of mind-transcending concepts like eternity, nirvana, death?”
Those so-called mind-transcending concepts are still concepts and are of the mind. When you are thinking of eternity, what will you do? You will think. When you are thinking of nirvana, what is going to happen? Your mind will spin and weave, and your mind will give you beautiful ideas about nirvana – but that will be all mind work.
What can you think about death? What will you think if you think about death? You don’t know! How can you think anything about that which you don’t know?
Mind is perfectly capable in repeating the known; with the unknown it is impotent. You don’t know eternity, all that you know is time. Even when you think of eternity it is nothing but lengthened time, stretched time – but it is time. What do you know about nirvana? – all that you have heard about it, read about it. That is not nirvana. The word nirvana is not nirvana, and the concept of nirvana is not nirvana. The word God is not God, and all the pictures and all the statues that have been made of God have nothing to do with him – because he has no name and no form.
And what are you going to think about death? How can you think about death? You have heard a few things, you have seen a few people dying, but you have never seen death. When you see a man dying what do you see? He breathes no more; that’s all that you see. His body has become cold; that’s all that you see. What more? Is this death? – the body becoming cold, breathing stopping? Is this all? What has happened to the innermost core of the person? You cannot know without dying. You cannot know without experiencing. The only way to know the unknown is to experience it.
So these concepts won’t help. They may rather, on the contrary, strengthen the mind, because the mind will say, “Look, I can even supply you mind-transcending concepts. See what I am doing for you. Keep me with you always. I will help you to become enlightened. Without me you will be nowhere. Without me how will you think about death and nirvana and eternity? I am absolutely essential. Without me you will not be anything at all.”
No, these meditations won’t help. You have to see it – that the mind is not going to help at all. When you see the point that mind is not going to help at all, in that very helplessness, in that very state, there is silence; all stops. If the mind cannot do anything, then nothing is left to do. Suddenly all thinking is paralyzed; it is pointless. In that paralysis you will have the first glimpse of no-mind…just a small window will open. In that stopping of the mind you will have a taste of no-mind. And then things will start moving. Then it will be easier for you to get lost into the boundariless.
You cannot meditate, you have to go into it. Meditating upon it is a pseudo activity; it is a kind of avoiding, escaping. You are afraid of death, you think about death. You are afraid of nirvana, you think about nirvana. Thinking gives you the feeling that you are capable even of thinking about death and nirvana.
“My mind seems to explode when I do.”
Mind is very cunning. It must be deceiving you – because mind cannot explode while you are thinking. About what you are thinking does not matter; while you are thinking, mind cannot explode. Mind will be enjoying it, and in that very enjoyment you are thinking you are exploding.
“It feels like I am pushing over my limit and I get afraid of becoming schizophrenic.”
You need not be afraid of ever becoming schizophrenic, because you already are – everybody is. Mind is schizophrenic, because mind knows nothing of unity. Mind is always split. Mind always has alternatives. To be or not to be, to do this or to do that. Mind is always indecisive. Even if you choose something it is only a part of the mind that chooses it, the other part remains against it.
The mind is never total, so mind is schizophrenic. You need not be afraid of that. To be in the mind is to be schizophrenic. Only buddhas are beyond it. The whole humanity is schizophrenic, more or less. When you go beyond a point then you have to seek and search for the psychiatrist, but the difference is only of degrees; the difference is only of quantity not quality. Even between you and your psychoanalyst there is only a difference of degrees.
Remember, mind will not help. Mind cannot help, mind can only hinder. Seeing this, no-mind arrives. It is not that you bring it; it arrives on its own accord.
The second question:
Osho,
In yesterday's sutra, Buddha says: Someone who has set out in the vehicle of a bodhisattva should decide that “I must lead all the beings to nirvana, into that realm of nirvana which leaves nothing behind.” What is this realm of nirvana which leaves nothing behind?
Buddha has talked about two kinds of nirvana. One he calls nirvana with substratum. The tree has disappeared, the tree of desires. The foliage, the leaves, the flowers, the fruits – everything has disappeared. But the roots are still there underground, hidden in the dark soil. From the outside the tree has been removed, but the tree is still capable of renewing itself again. The substratum is still there, the seed has not been burnt yet. This he calls nirvana with substratum.
This is exactly the same that Patanjali calls sabeej samadhi – samadhi with seed. It is very difficult from the outside. The tree has been completely removed, but underneath the soil the roots are still alive waiting for the right moment to sprout again. Rains will come and they will sprout. They are waiting for their season, for the moment again to assert.
This is the state when many times you have come to the point where mind disappears, no-mind is felt, but again mind comes back, again it sprouts. You reach to a peak. In that moment of that peak experience you think all is finished, now you will never be falling back to the valley of darkness. You think that you will never go back into those ugly and miserable days, that the dark night of the soul is over, that the morning has arrived, that the sun has arisen.
But again one day you suddenly find you are slipping back into the darkness – again the valley, again light is no more, again that peak experience is just a memory. And one starts becoming doubtful whether it has happened or not, or “Have I been just imagining? Or maybe I was just dreaming.”…Because if it had happened, then where has it gone? Where is that sunlit peak? Where are those moments of ecstasy? And misery is back and anguish is back and agony is back – you have fallen into hell again. This happens many times.
This Buddha calls nirvana with substratum; sabeej samadhi in Patanjali’s words. Manifestation of the world is gone but the unmanifested seed remains.
The second nirvana Buddha calls the nirvana without substratum. In Patanjali’s words nirbeej samadhi – seedless samadhi. Not only the tree has been destroyed, but the seed also burned. A burned seed cannot sprout again; all substratum is gone. Then you remain on the peak forever, then there is no falling back.
That’s what Buddha says in yesterday’s sutra: Someone who has set out in the vehicle of a bodhisattva should decide that “I must lead all the beings into nirvana,…into that realm of nirvana which leaves nothing behind.” Which leaves no substratum, no roots, no seeds behind.
The third question:
Osho,
What is the Zen approach towards sex? The Zen people seem to have a neuter gender, or asexual aura about them.
Zen has no attitudes about sex, and that is the beauty of Zen. To have an attitude means you are still obsessed this way or that. Somebody is against sex – he has an attitude; and somebody is for sex – he has an attitude. And for and against go together like two wheels of a bullock cart. They are not enemies, they are friends, partners in the same business.
Zen has no attitude about sex. Why should one have any attitude about sex? That’s the beauty of it – Zen is utterly natural. Do you have any attitudes about drinking water? Do you have any attitudes about taking food? Do you have any attitudes about going to sleep in the night? No attitudes.
I know there are mad people who have attitudes about these things too: that one should not sleep more than five hours. Sleep is a kind of sin, something like a necessary evil, so one should not sleep more than five hours; or in India there are people who think only three hours. And I have come across one person who has not slept for ten years – and he is worshipped for this only; he has nothing else, no other creative talents. It is his only talent. Maybe he is just an insomniac. Maybe even this is not a talent, maybe he cannot sleep. He has gone so neurotic that he cannot relax, and he looks mad. One will become mad if one has not slept for ten years. And people come, crowds come, to worship him: “He has attained something great.” What has he attained? What is the attainment there? He is just an abnormal person, ill. To sleep is natural. And he is bound to be very tense – he is tense. He must be boiling within. Just think, for ten years not sleeping! But now it has become a great investment, now it is paying. His madness has become an investment, now thousands of people worship him – only for this?
Down the ages this has been one of the greatest calamities – that people have been worshipping uncreative things, and sometimes pathological things. Then you have an attitude about sleep. There are people who have an attitude about food. To eat this or to eat that; to eat only so much, not more than that. They don’t listen to the body, to whether the body is hungry or not. They have a certain idea and they impose the idea on nature.
Zen has no attitudes about sex. Zen is very simple, Zen is innocent. Zen is childlike. It says there is no need to have any attitudes. Why? Do you have any attitude about sneezing? – to sneeze or not, whether it is sin or virtue. You don’t have any attitude. But I have come across one man who is against sneezing, and whenever he sneezes he immediately repeats a mantra to protect himself. He belongs to a small foolish sect. That sect thinks that when you sneeze the soul goes out. In the sneeze the soul goes out, and if you don’t remember God it may not come back. So you have to remember, you have to immediately remember so that the soul is given back. If you die while sneezing you will go into hell.
You can have attitudes about anything. Once you have attitudes, your innocence is destroyed and those attitudes start controlling you. Zen is neither for anything nor against anything. Zen says whatsoever is ordinary is good. To be ordinary, to be a no one, to be a nothingness, to be without any ideology, to be without character, to be characterless….
When you have a character you have some kind of neurosis. Character means something has become fixed in you. Character means your past. Character means conditioning, cultivation. When you have a character you are imprisoned in it, you are no more free. When you have a character you have an armor around yourself. You are no more a free person. You are carrying your prison around yourself; it is a very subtle prison. A real man will be characterless.
What do I mean when I say he will be characterless? He will be free of the past. He will act in the moment according to the moment. He will be spontaneous; only he can be spontaneous. He will not look back into the memories for what to do. A situation has arisen and you are looking in the memory – then you have a character. Then you are asking your past, “What should I do?” When you don’t have any character you simply look into the situation and the situation decides what has to be done. Then it is spontaneous and there is response and not reaction.
Zen has no belief system about anything – and that is the case with sex too: Zen says nothing about it. And that should be the ultimate thing. Tantra has an attitude about sex. The reason? – it tries to redress what the society has done. Tantra is medical. The society has repressed sex; Tantra comes as a remedy to help you redress, balance. You have leaned too much to the left; Tantra comes and helps you to lean to the right. And to redress the balance sometimes you have to lean too much to the right, only then the balance is gained. Have you not seen a rope walker, a tightrope walker? He carries a staff in his hand to keep balance. If he feels he is leaning too much to the left, he immediately starts leaning to the right. Then again he feels that now he has leaned too much to the right, he starts leaning towards the left. This is how he keeps in the middle. Tantra is a remedy.
The society has created a repressive mind, a life-negative mind, an anti-joy mind. The society is very much against sex. Why is the society so much against sex? – because if you allow people sexual pleasure you cannot transform them into slaves. It is impossible – a joyous person cannot be made a slave. That is the trick. Only sad people can be turned into slaves. A joyous person is a free person; he has a kind of independence to him.
You cannot recruit joyous people for war. Impossible. Why should they go to war? But if a person has repressed his sexuality he is ready to go to war, he is eager to go to war because he has not been able to enjoy life. He has become incapable of enjoying, hence has become incapable of creativity. Now he can do only one thing – he can destroy. All his energies have become poison and destructive. He is ready to go to war – not only ready, he is hankering for it. He wants to kill, he wants to destroy. In fact, while destroying human beings he will have a vicarious joy of penetrating. That penetrating could have been in love and would have been beautiful. When you penetrate a woman’s body in love, it is one thing. It is spiritual. But when things go wrong and you penetrate somebody’s body with a sword, with a spear, it is ugly, it is violent, it is destructive. But you are searching for a substitute for penetration.
If society is allowed total freedom about joy, nobody will be destructive. People who can love beautifully are never destructive. And people who can love beautifully and have the joy of life will not be competitive either. These are the problems.
That’s why primitive people are not so competitive. They are enjoying their life. Who bothers to have a bigger house? Who bothers to have a bigger balance in the bank? For what? You are happy with your woman and with your man and you are having a dance of life. Who wants to sit in the marketplace for hours and hours and hours, day in, day out, year in, year out, hoping that in the end you will have a big bank balance and then you will retire and enjoy? That day never comes. It can’t come, because the whole life you remain an ascetic.
Remember, the business people are ascetic people. They have devoted everything to money. Now a man who knows love and has known the thrill of love and the ecstasy of it will not be competitive. He will be happy if he can get his daily bread. That is the meaning of Jesus’ prayer: “Give us our daily bread.” That is more than enough. Now Jesus looks foolish. He should have asked, “Give us a bigger bank balance.” He asks only for the daily bread? A joyous man never asks for more than that. The joy is so fulfilling.
It is only unfulfilled beings who are competitive because they think life is not here, it is there. “I have to reach to Delhi and become the president,” or to the White House and become this or that. “I have to go there, joy is there” – because they know there is no joy here. So they are always on the go, go, go, go. They are always on the go, and they never reach. And the man who knows the joy, is here. Why should he be going to Delhi? For what? He is utterly happy herenow. His needs are very small. He has no desires. He has needs certainly, but no desires. Needs can be fulfilled, desires never. Needs are natural, desires are perverted.
Now this whole society depends on one thing and that is sex repression; otherwise the economy will be destroyed, sabotaged. War will disappear and with it the whole war machinery, and the politics will become meaningless and the politician will no longer be important. Money will not have value if people are allowed to love. Because they are not allowed to love, money becomes the substitute, money becomes their love. So there is a subtle strategy. Sex has to be repressed, otherwise this whole structure of the society will fall immediately.
Only love released into the world will bring revolution. Communism has failed, fascism has failed, capitalism has failed. All “isms” have failed because deep down they are all sex repressive. On that point there is no difference – no difference between Washington and Moscow, Beijing and Delhi – there is no difference at all. They all agree upon one thing – that sex has to be controlled, that people are not to be allowed to have innocent joy in sex.
To redress the balance comes Tantra; Tantra is a remedy, so it emphasizes sex too much. The so-called religions say sex is sin and Tantra says sex is the only sacred phenomenon. Tantra is a remedy. Zen is not a remedy. Zen is the state when the illness has disappeared – and of course, with the illness, the remedy too. Once you are cured of your illness you don’t go on carrying the prescription and the bottle and the medicine with you. You throw it. It goes to the dustbin.
Ordinary society is against sex; Tantra comes to help humanity, to give sex back to humanity. And when the sex has been given back, then arises Zen. Zen has no attitude. Zen is pure health.
The fourth question:
Osho,
Is everything, is the world okay? And what has that to do with love? When you say the world is okay it sounds okay to me. If anybody else says so, or if I say so, it sounds wrong.
It depends who is saying it. When I say the world is okay, I am not propounding a theory, I am sharing a vision. In fact, the word theory comes from a Greek root theoria, and theoria means vision. When I am saying anything to you, it is not mind stuff; I am sharing my experience. In those moments, if you are available to me and open to me, you will also have the vision; a little bit of my vision will spill into your being. For a moment the doors will open and you will say, “Yes, this is so.”
When somebody else is saying it, and if it is not his vision…. Even when you say to somebody and it is no more your vision – it was just a borrowed eyesight – it will not sound right. If a man like Buddha even tells a lie, it will sound like truth. And if you tell even a truth, it will sound like a lie.
It depends more from where it comes, the source; not what you say, but who says. You can go on repeating Christ’s words and nobody is going to crucify you. Why? Why don’t they crucify you? You can declaim the whole Sermon on the Mount and you can go on standing. And that’s what people are doing all over the world – Christian priests, and missionaries and Witnesses of Jehovah, mm? All kinds of people are doing that – carrying the New Testament, quoting the New Testament, repeating the words, and nobody crucifies them. Why? When Jesus said these things what was the matter? The words had fire then. Jesus was sharing his vision. When you repeat, there is no vision in it; it is a mere word. It has no passion, no intensity, no truth. Truth comes only through experience.
You ask: “Is everything, is the world okay?” When I say the world is okay, what do I really mean? I mean this is the only world and there is no other world. You don’t have any way to compare. Okay or not okay is irrelevant. This is the only world there is; there is no other. You cannot compare whether it is better or not better. Comparison is not possible. Comparison is possible only when there are two worlds, but there are not.
So when I say all is okay, I mean there is no point in comparing. But why do people say that this is not the right world? They have created an utopia in their mind and they compare with the utopia. They have an idea of how things should be and then nothing seems to be right, because things are not like their utopian idea. If you think man should have four eyes…. And that looks very logical: two for the back. Two eyes don’t look right – what about the back? What if somebody comes from the back and hits you? God has missed there…two eyes in the back. Then things are not okay – man has only two eyes; man should have four. Then suddenly man is not okay. And man is the same; you have just created an idea, and that idea condemns.
Man should live more than seventy years. Why? Once you say that man should live seven hundred years then seventy years look very poor. But why? What will you be doing here for seven hundred years? Don’t you think seventy years are enough to do harm? to destroy? You need seven hundred years? Just think of Adolf Hitler living seven hundred years….
Once you have an idea, a goal, then things become different. I have no idea; I am absolutely non-utopian, I am absolutely realistic. I carry no ideals in my mind. Then this is the only world; roses are red and trees are green and people are this way – the way they are – and it is absolutely beautiful.
“Is everything, is the world okay? And what has that to do with love?”
That has much to do with love. If the world is okay, only then you can love. If the world is not okay you become a politician, you become political. The politician depends on the idea that the world is not okay: he has to bring a revolution, he has to change things, he has to put things right, he has to improve upon God. That is the politician’s mind. And the politician has no love, he has only condemnation, because he has judged.
The religious mind has no judgment. Jesus says, “Judge ye not.” The religious mind has no judgment, has no condemnation, hence he can love. And remember, in your life also, you can love only when you don’t judge. If you have too many ideas to judge with, you will never love. You will go on imposing your ideas on whomsoever becomes a victim of your so-called love. You will go on imposing your ideas on him. Even if a child is born to you, immediately you will jump on him and start manipulating, managing, improving. And you will destroy the being. That’s how everybody has been destroyed by the parents and by the society.
If you love a woman, you immediately start improving how she should be. And the woman, of course, is a great improver. If you become a victim of a woman’s love, then you are no more. Then she will improve you so much that she will make something else out of you. After a few years you will not be able to recognize who you are. She will cut and prune and do things and paint: “Behave this way” and “Speak this way” and “Talk this way.”
A young woman fell in love with a man. The woman was a Catholic and the man was a Jew. The woman’s family was very worried, and they said, “We cannot allow you.” The family was very rich, and they said, “If you marry this man then you will not inherit anything.” And she was the only child, so all the money was hers.
Now this was too much, so she asked, “What should I do?”
So they said, “First convert him, let him become a Catholic – then….”
So she tried, and she was very happy, because the Jew was more interested in the money than in the woman, so he was very willing. A Jew is a Jew, he was very willing. He started reading The Bible and started going to the church, and he was over-enthusiastic. The woman was very happy – things were going perfectly well – and after every month she would report to her parents that things are going perfectly well.
Then one day she came home and was crying and weeping and the father asked, “What is the matter? What happened?”
She had gone to ask the man to get married, she was thinking that he was ready. And she said to her father, “Yes, he is ready, but I have done too much reformation, I have reformed him too much.”
The father was confused. He said, “I don’t understand. What do you mean, too much?”
She said, “Yes, now he wants to become a Catholic monk. I have overdone it.”
What you call love is more or less reforming the other. And you go on saying that you want to reform the other because you love. This is absolutely untrue. If you love you never reform anybody. Love accepts. Love respects the other as he is.
If the world is okay as it is, only then can you love it. The revolutionary, the politician cannot love it; only the religious consciousness can love it. And when you love you come to know that it is even more okay than you had thought before. Then you love more, and then you come to find that it is immensely beautiful, not just okay. Then more love…and by and by you find that the world disappears – it is God himself.
The fifth question:
Osho,
The first time I saw a dead human being was when I saw my dead grandmother. She lay there and looked so white and peaceful, so silent and happy, open and closed at the same time. I was jealous, but at the same time afraid. I thought she must be so lonely. I could not reach her anymore. When I saw you, dear Osho, on your birthday darshan, I had exactly the same feelings. Did you not feel very very lonely between all the noises, shatterings, movings? You were so far and in holy silence – as never before for me. Are you dead and alive at the same time?
The question is from Aranyo.
Death is beautiful, as beautiful as life – if you just know how to communicate with death. It is beautiful because it is relaxation. It is beautiful because the person has fallen back into the source of existence – to relax, to rest, to be ready to come back again.
A wave rises in the ocean, then falls back into the ocean, then rises again. It will have another day, it will be born again in some other form. And then it falls again and disappears.
Death is just disappearing into the source. Death is going to the unmanifested. Death is falling asleep into the divine. You will bloom again. You will again see the sun and the moon, and again and again till you become a buddha – till you are capable of dying consciously, till you are capable of relaxing consciously, knowingly, into the divine. Then there is no coming back. That is utter death, that is ultimate death. The ordinary death is a temporary death; you will be coming back again. When a buddha dies, he dies forever. His death has the quality of eternity. But even the temporary death is beautiful.
And you are right, Aranyo, I am dead and alive at the same time. As a person, I am dead. As somebody, I am dead. As nobody, I am alive.
You say, “The first time I saw a dead human being was when I saw my dead grandmother. She lay there and looked so white and peaceful, so silent, so happy, open and closed at the same time. I was jealous but at the same time afraid.”
Remember, that may be your relationship with me too, jealous and at the same time afraid too. You will have to put your fear aside, because the fear can prevent you – can prevent you from enjoying this opportunity that is available to you. It is very difficult to find a nobody; you have found one. And unless you also become a nobody, go on remembering you are missing the opportunity. Die as I have died, and then you will be alive as I am alive.
There is a life which has nothing to do with any person. There is a life which has nothing to do with any self. There is a life of emptiness – innocent and virgin. I make it available to you. Put your fears aside, come closer to me. Let me become your death and your resurrection.
A Zen master, Bunon, has said, “While living, be a dead man, be thoroughly dead, and behave as you like and all is well.”
The last question:
Osho,
Is knowledge always dangerous?
Not always. And knowledge is not dangerous, knowledgeability is dangerous. To know about facts is perfectly good, but to forget the mystery of life is dangerous. So knowledge is not always dangerous; sometimes it can be of great help too.
A little anecdote:
Irish Paddy’s wife Maureen had been rushed to the hospital that morning. Nine months pregnant, and now in labor, she gives birth to two beautiful twin daughters.
Irish Paddy, after a day’s work laboring with rubble on the building site, marched up to the hospital in the cool of an autumn evening to visit his wife in the maternity ward.
“Oh, hello, little sweet darling,” he cooed to his Maureen, as he approached the bed with a glint of curiosity in his right eye, as he observed two tiny babies arriving by the bed, hand in hand with a nurse.
“I have had twins, me luv,” said Maureen.
For ten long minutes Paddy sat bemused by that bed, not knowing how to work it out.
The ward bell rang, Paddy kissed his wife and left. “By Christ!” he muttered, as he walked the long corridor, “If I find the other bugger I will kill him.”
Enough for today.