BUDDHA AND BUDDHIST MASTERS
The Diamond Sutra 08
Eighth 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,
Why have all the great masters come from the East?
Because humanity has yet not been total. The East is introvert, the West is extrovert. Man is split, mind is schizophrenic. That’s why all the great masters have come from the East and all the great scientists have come from the West. The West has developed science and has completely forgotten about the inner soul; is concerned with matter, but has become oblivious of the inner subjectivity. The whole focus is on the object. Hence all the great scientists are born in the West.
The East has become too much concerned with the inner soul and has forgotten objectivity, matter, the world. Great religious masters developed out of this, but this is not a good situation, this should not be so. Man should become one. Man should not be allowed to be lopsided anymore. Man should be a fluidity, neither extrovert nor introvert. Man should be capable of being both together. The inner and the outer, if balanced, give the greatest ecstatic experience.
The person who is neither leaning towards the inner too much nor towards the outer too much is the person of equilibrium. He will be a scientist and a mystic together. That is something that will happen, that is something that is going to happen. We are preparing the field for it. I would like to see a man who is neither Eastern nor Western, because to be Eastern as against Western is ugly. To be Western as against Eastern is again ugly. The whole earth belongs to us and we belong to the whole earth. A man should be just man, a man should be just human – total, whole. And out of that wholeness will arise a new kind of health.
The East has suffered, the West has suffered. The East has suffered; you can see it all around – the poverty, the starvation. The West has suffered, you can see inside the Western mind – tension, anxiety, anguish. The West is very poor inwardly, the East is very poor outwardly. Poverty is bad. Whether it is inner or outer makes no difference, poverty should not be allowed. Man should be rich, inner, outer, both. Man should have all dimensional richness.
Just think of a man who is an Albert Einstein and a Gautam Buddha both. Just meditate on that possibility – that is possible. In fact if Albert Einstein had lived a little longer, he would have turned into a mystic. He had started thinking about the inner, he was becoming interested in the inner mystery. How long can you remain interested in the outer mystery? If you are really interested in mystery then sooner or later you will stumble upon the inner too.
My concept is of a world which is neither Eastern nor Western, neither inner nor outer, neither extrovert nor introvert – which is balanced, which is whole. But this has not been the case in the past. That’s why your question is relevant.
You ask: “Why have all the great masters come from the East?” Because the East has been obsessed with the inner as against the outer. Naturally, when down the centuries you have been obsessed with the inner, you will create a Buddha, a Nagarjuna, a Shankara, a Kabir. It is natural.
If you are obsessed with the outer as against the inner, you will create an Albert Einstein, an Eddington, an Edison, that’s natural. But this is not good for the totality of human beings. Something is missing. The man who has inner growth and has not grown outwardly remains juvenile in the outside, remains stupid outside. And the same is the case with the man who has grown much, who has become mature, very mature, as far as mathematics goes and physics goes and chemistry goes, but who inside has not been even born yet, who is still in the womb.
This is my message to you: drop these hemispheres – East and West – and drop these hemispheres of inner and outer. Become fluid. Let movement, flow, be your very life. Remain available to the outer and to the inner both.
That’s why I teach love and meditation. Love is the passage to go out, meditation is the passage to go in. And a man who is in love and meditative is beyond schizophrenia, is beyond all kinds of split. He has become one, he is integrated. In fact, he has soul.
The second question:
Osho,
Don't you get bored, bored, bored and fed up, day after day answering the same questions, while we sit there with ears blocked, eyes tight, mouth sealed, never ever getting the message – that there are no answers? You continually astound me in your dewdrop freshness in the early morning light, and still I am blind, deaf and lame, cut off from sharing in your radiance except for brief moments.
The first thing: I am not, so I cannot be bored and fed up. First you have to be to be bored. The more you are the more you will feel bored; the less you are the less bored. That’s why children are less bored than old people. Have you not observed it? Children are almost not bored. They go on playing with the same toys, they go on running after the same butterflies, they go on collecting the same seashells. They are not bored.
Have you ever told a story to a child? After listening to it he says, “Tell it again…and again.” And whenever you will meet him again he will say, “Tell me that story. I loved it.” Why is a child not bored? – because he is not. Or, he is in a very rudimentary way; the ego has not evolved yet. The ego is the factor that creates boredom.
Animals are not bored, trees are not bored, and what novelty is there in the life of animals and trees? The rosebush goes on producing the same roses year in, year out, and the bird goes on singing the same song every morning and every evening. The cuckoo knows not many notes, just a single note. It goes on repeating it; it is monotonous. But not a single animal is bored, not a single tree is bored. Nature knows nothing of boredom. Why? – because nature has no ego yet.
A Buddha is not bored, a Jesus is not bored, because they have dropped the ego again. The nature has not evolved yet: Buddha has dropped it. Buddha and nature are almost the same. I say almost because there is only one difference – of great significance, but only one difference. The difference is that of awareness. Nature is without ego but unaware, Buddha is without ego but aware.
Once you know you are not there, who is going to be bored, who is going to be fed up? That’s why I can come every morning and go on answering your questions. I am not bored. I cannot be bored. For almost twenty-five years I have not tasted boredom. I have started forgetting the very taste of it, how it feels.
The second thing: the questions are not the same. They cannot be – they come from different people, how can they be the same questions? Yes, sometimes the words may be the same, but the questions are not the same. Two persons are so different from each other – how can they ask the same question? Even if the words are the same, even if the construction of the question is the same, yet – I would like you to be reminded – they can’t be the same.
Now this question is asked by Anand Shaila; nobody else can ask it. Nobody else upon this big earth can ask it. To ask this question a Shaila will be needed. And Shaila is only one; there are not many Shailas.
So remember, each individual has such uniqueness. To call those questions the same is disrespectful. I respect your questions. They are not the same. They have nuances of their own, colors of their own, but you need very penetrating eyes to see the difference; otherwise you may not be able to see.
When you look around and you see all the trees are green, do you think it is the same green? Then you don’t know how to look at color. Then bring a painter, then ask the painter and he will say, “They are all different greens. There are thousands of types of greens – different shades, different nuances. No two trees are the same green.” Just look around and you will see – yes, each green is a different green.
So are questions. And even if the same person asks the question again and again, then too it cannot be the same because you go on changing. Nothing is static. You cannot step in the same river twice, and you cannot meet the same person again. Shaila cannot ask this question tomorrow, because there will no longer be the same person tomorrow. The Ganges will have flowed, much water will have gone down. This moment it is relevant, tomorrow it may not be relevant, something else may surface in the consciousness.
No two persons can ask the same question, and not even the same person can ask the same question again, because the person goes on changing. A person is like a flame, constantly changing. But again you have to look very deep. I have never come across the same questions. I am always thrilled by your questions. I always wonder how you manage to ask.
“Don’t you get bored, bored and fed up, day after day answering the same questions while we sit here with ears blocked, eyes tight, mouths sealed, never ever getting the message that there are no answers?”
Just because you sit there “ears blocked, eyes tight, mouth sealed, never ever getting the message,” it becomes a challenge to me. It is a great adventure. You persist, I also persist. The question is: Who is going to win? Whether you will remain always closed or some day you will take pity on me and you will listen…open your ears, your heart, a little bit? It is a struggle. It is wrestling that goes on between the master and the disciple – a constant fight.
And the disciple cannot win. It has never been heard that he can win. He can postpone, he can delay, but he cannot win. And the more you delay the more your defeat becomes certain. I am encroaching on your being in different ways. You just go on sitting there with your closed ears and closed eyes and closed heart – you just remain there, that’s all. You just be here. Sooner or later, one day, you will have heard the message.
How long can you go on remaining closed? They say if a man persists in his folly he becomes wise. You persist. Some day, in spite of you, you will have heard. That’s why I go on speaking every morning, every evening, year in, year out.
And you say “…never ever getting the message – that there are no answers.” You will get that message only when there are no questions in your mind, never before that. How can you get the message that there are no answers if you have questions yet? The very question presupposes an answer. The question is the search for the answer. The question has taken it for granted that the answer exists, otherwise how will the question exist? The question cannot exist on its own, it depends on the answer or at least on the possibility of the answer.
The day you realize that there are no longer any questions in you, only that day will the message be heard that there are no answers. And that day you will see that neither you have asked nor I have answered. There has been utter silence. All that questioning and answering has been like a dream.
But because you question, I have to answer. That is the only way to help you to get rid of your questions. Remember, my answers are not answers but only devices. My answers are not answering your questions, because I know perfectly well that there are no questions. All questions are false. You have dreamed about them. But when you ask, I respect you. I answer. My answer is just a respect to you, and my answer is a device. It will help you to see that the question by and by disappears.
One day suddenly you will be awake with no questions. That day you will see that I have not answered a single thing. Nothing can be answered because there is not a single question in existence. Existence exists without any questions. It is a mystery – not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be loved, a mystery to be lived.
And Shaila says: “You continually astound me in your dewdrop freshness in the early morning light and still I am blind, dead, lame, cut off from sharing in your radiance except for brief moments.”
Those brief moments will do. Those brief moments are the hope. In those brief moments I will enter in you. Those brief moments will become bigger and bigger slowly. One day you will find those brief moments have won over you. Even if for a single moment there is a contact between me and you, it is enough, it is more than enough. Even that small insight will become a fire in you. That small spark is going to burn your whole mind utterly, to the very roots, root and all.
The third question:
Osho,
I don't enjoy these Buddha sutras. They are dry, difficult and complicated. Is not truth simple?
Truth is simple and truth is difficult. In fact it is difficult because it is simple. It is so simple and your minds are so complicated that you cannot understand it, you go on missing it. It is so simple that it gives no challenge to you. It is so simple that you pass by the side of it remaining completely unaware that you have passed truth.
Truth is simple because truth is obvious. But simple does not mean easy. The simplicity is very complex. If you enter in it you will be lost, you may never be able to get out of it. That simplicity has depth in it, it is not shallow. And to attain to that simplicity you will have to lose many things – and to lose those things is difficult.
For example, why do these Buddha sutras look difficult to you? – because they are illogical. If you can lose your logic, they will be simple. The difficulty is coming from your mind, not from Buddha’s sutras. He is a very simple man. He is simply stating a fact. But the problem arises from you, because you cannot accept that simple fact. You have your ideas. Those ideas interfere.
You say, “How can this be? If this man is right then my whole logic is wrong.” And that you cannot accept. Your whole education, training, has been of logic, and he goes on stating illogical things. He is helpless. At that height, at that plenitude, logic does not exist. What can he do? At that plenitude everything is paradoxical. At that plenitude, opposites meet, contradictions become complementaries. What can he do? He has to assert them. The problem is arising from you – because you want those truths to be translated according to your logic.
Suppose a boy in a high school physics class were to object, “I don’t approve of Albert Einstein’s formula.”
“No?” says the teacher. “Why not?”
“Well, firstly it is boring, and whenever you explain it I inevitably fall asleep. Secondly, it is unbalanced. Look at it! E = mc2. He has put one figure all by itself on one side of the equation, and three others all together on the other side. It is unartistic. Why didn’t he move one of those figures to the left side to make the formula more symmetrical? That’s why I hate it.”
Now he is raising beautiful questions. It is not symmetrical: “What kind of equation is this? Both sides are not equal. It is unartistic. Just by putting one figure on the other side, things would have been far better, more symmetrical.”
The boy is completely unaware of what he is talking about, but whatsoever he is saying looks logical. But the Einsteinian formula is not there to entertain you. It is to express reality. If you are bored with it, that simply shows that you are very dull witted, that you cannot understand that penetrating insight. It is said that only twelve persons used to understand Einstein’s theory of relativity. All around the earth, only twelve?
The truth is simple, but when you go into its details, when you start penetrating into its reality, it becomes difficult. For example, Saint Augustine is reported to have said, “Everybody knows what time is. I know what time is, but when somebody asks me: ‘What is time? Try to explain it to me,’ then I am at a loss.”
You know what time is, you live according to time. Six o’clock in the morning you get up, eleven o’clock in the night you go to bed, one o’clock you take your lunch. You go to the office, you come home. You use time, you know what time is, but can you explain it? The moment you try to explain it becomes elusive. You have never seen it, you have never seen it in your hand. You cannot grasp it. What is it?
Augustine is right – that the problem arises when you try to explain it. Light is so simple, it is all around, dancing on the trees, the whole sky is full of light. Try to explain it to a blind man and he will be bored and he will say, “Stop all this nonsense.” First, you will find it very difficult to put it into words. Or, drop the question of light. It is a scientific question, you may not be interested in it.
You have loved, you know what love is. You must have loved – at least you must have loved your mother, your father, your sister, some woman, your wife, your husband, your children. Can you explain what love is? Then you become dumb. Then suddenly you lose all intelligence – as if somebody has simply struck you dead. You become paralyzed. What is love? Can you define it?
Love is everybody’s experience, more or less, but nobody can define it. Nirvana is not everybody’s experience – once in a while nirvana happens – and Buddha is trying to explain to you what nirvana is.
Truth is simple, but the moment you try to explain it, it becomes difficult. But remember, you are not here only to be entertained. And I am not against entertainment either – it is good in its own time. But something more than entertainment is needed, only that will become your enlightenment. Entertainment is a very lower need. Enlightenment is the highest need. If you simply go on from one entertainment to another you will remain shallow, you will never grow, you will remain immature. You have to sometimes go into the depths of life and love and light and God. Sometimes you have to fly into eternity to have a taste of it. Only that will make you mature.
I understand your difficulties. You say: “I don’t enjoy these Buddha sutras.” Then learn how to enjoy. Then learn how to enjoy higher things. There are higher things. If you want to enjoy classical Indian music you will have to learn. You cannot just go and enjoy it, it needs a certain preparation in you, it needs a certain receptivity in you. It is not vulgar. It needs a certain understanding in you…a deep understanding of sounds and silence – because music consists of sound and silence. It is not only sound, it contains silence in it.
The music becomes higher and deeper when it contains more silence in it. When it provokes your silence, when it penetrates your heart and releases your inner silence, when listening to it your mind disappears, your thoughts stop…. But then you will have to learn, you will have to go through a certain discipline, you will have to become more meditative. One day you will be able to enjoy it. But if you want to enjoy it right now and you are not ready for it, don’t blame it.
Don’t say that Buddha’s sutras are boring, just say that you are not capable yet of understanding that plenitude, that you are not capable of looking to that height, that you are not capable enough to climb the Everest of consciousness. Buddha is talking from the highest peak. You will have to move from your dark hole a little bit. You will have to climb the mountains, only then you will understand those sunlit sutras.
It is a difficulty because for that understanding we are not prepared at all, hence sometimes you may feel bored. But fight with boredom, destroy your boredom, pull yourself out of it. You have to go with the Buddha, you have to see what he has seen. Seeing it, you will be fulfilled.
The fourth question:
Osho,
Is the only thing that keeps us from coming home the doubt that we are not already home, which is reinforced by everyone around us?
Yes, Shobha. The doubt is the only thing that prevents – the doubt that we are not as we should be, the doubt that the divine cannot be within us. How can God be within us? – because you have been taught God is there in the seventh heaven sitting on his golden throne, surrounded by his angels playing on their harps, singing hallelujah.
He is not here, he is far away. He is big, he is huge, he is eternal, he is this and he is that. How can he be in your heart? Such a tiny heart you have. And how can he be in your heart? – you are so ugly and you are so horrible and you condemn yourself in a thousand and one ways continuously. How can he be there? If God is there in you, then where will the devil live? The doubt….
And when somebody says that God is within you, you cannot accept it. You have heard it many times, Jesus saying to people, “The kingdom of God is within you.” But even Christians don’t listen, even the followers. Even Jesus’ intimate followers, immediate followers, go on asking about God who is in heaven and Jesus goes on saying, “He is within you,” and they go on talking about the God who is in heaven, and they go on saying, “When we all will die, how will we live in paradise? Who will be at the right hand of God? What will be our position there? Who will be who? What will be the hierarchy?” And Jesus goes on saying, “He is within you,” but nobody believes it, because you have not been taught to trust yourself.
From your very birth you have been distracted from your being. Everybody has condemned you – your parents, your teachers, your priests, your politicians. Everybody has condemned you. Everybody has said, “You! You are not right as you are. You have to become right. You have to attain to some perfection.”
Goals have been given to you, and because of those goals and those perfectionist ideals you remain condemned and crushed. How can you receive the message that the divine is within you, that you are already home, that you have never left it in the first place, that all is okay as it is? Just relax, and it is yours. Not that you have to search and seek, but just relax into it and it is yours.
Doubt arises: “God within me? And my father was saying, ‘You are the ugliest kid in the town.’ And my mother was saying, ‘Why didn’t you die? You are a condemnation to the family, you are a blame to the family. We are sorry that we have given birth to you.’” And your teacher was saying that you are a fool, that you are stupid, that you are idiotic. And the priest was saying that you are bound for hell, that you are a sinner.
Just the other night I was reading about an Indian mystic who was invited into a Christian church. After the talk the Christian priest shouted loudly to the congregation: “All you sinners! Now kneel down and pray! Kneel down in prayer!”
They all knelt down except the mystic, the Hindu mystic. The priest looked at him, he said, “Aren’t you going to participate with us in prayer?”
He said, “I was going to participate, but I am not a sinner. And I don’t see that anybody else here is a sinner. I was going to participate in the prayer, but now you have made it impossible for me. I cannot kneel down. I am not a sinner. God is within me; I cannot be that disrespectful to God. I can pray only because God is within me. And I am not praying for anything – my prayer is my thankfulness, my gratitude for all that he has already given to me. My thankfulness is that he has chosen me as his abode, that he has honored me, that I am part of him, that he belongs to me. I am ready to pray, I am ready to kneel down, but not as a sinner, because that is not true.”
You have been taught that you are sinners, that unless Jesus saves you, you are bound to go to hell. You have been condemned so much that when this Eastern message bursts forth in your being you start doubting: “This is not possible. I?…and I have never left home? Maybe it is true about Buddha, maybe it is true about Jesus, but I? – I am a sinner.”
Nobody is a sinner. Even while you are in the darkest hole of your life you are still divine. You cannot lose your divinity, there is no way to lose it. It is your very being. It is the stuff you are made of.
Shobha has asked: “Is the only thing that keeps us from coming home the doubt that we are not already home, which is reinforced by everyone around us?”
Yes, it is reinforced by everyone around you. That’s why I say love is only when somebody accepts you as divine. He reinforces the truth that you are divine. If anybody reinforces the untruth that you are not divine, it is not love. She may be your mother, he may be your father, it doesn’t matter. If anybody gives you a self-condemnatory idea, he is poisoning you. If anybody says that you are not accepted as you are, that God will love you only if you fulfill certain conditions, then he is destroying you, he is your enemy – beware of him.
The fifth question:
Osho,
The other day I came through the gates with an Indian sannyasin and he was turned away by the guard with no reason given. When I spoke to Laxmi about it, she more or less told me to mind my own business. Whenever I see people being unjustly treated, my immediate reaction is to go to their assistance. Is it really none of my business what happens to other people?
The question is from Ma Deva Tulika.
This is significant for everybody present here, and everybody who is going to be in any way related to me. Whatsoever happens in this commune happens according to me. I know who was turned from the gate. And the man who has been turned away knows why he has been turned from the gate. And it is none of your business to come into it.
This you have to understand absolutely, that whatsoever happens here…I may not come out of my room, I never come out except in the morning and the evening, and I never go around the ashram – but whatsoever happens here is perfectly known to me, is happening according to me. Please don’t interfere.
There are a few other people also like Tulika who are continuously interfering with the work. You are nobody to judge what is right and what is wrong. If you know it already you are not needed here, you have become enlightened – you go home.
This is none of your business to decide what is just and what is unjust. This is not an ordinary place, so ordinary things won’t apply here. Some extraordinary experiment is on. I know what is somebody’s need. If I feel that somebody has to be rejected from the gate, he has to be rejected. If I feel that no reason has to be given, then no reason has to be given. That’s my device for his life and for his work.
Now you should not come into it. If you start coming into it you will only lose your opportunity for growth. Guards have their duties, they know what they are doing. And I am in contact with them, with what they are doing. You simply bypass.
It is not an ordinary place. Everything is looked after, and if somebody needs a hit on the head, he is given. You should not prevent it; otherwise you will be coming into his growth too, you will hinder him, and you will be hindering yourself. And you can get unnecessarily excited about it.
There are a few people – Padma Sambhava is one. They go on writing to me that this has happened and somebody has done this and this should not be. Here you are nobody to decide what should be and what should not be. The moment you become part of my commune you leave everything to me; otherwise work will be impossible.
Now I know the man who has been rejected and I know why he is rejected – and he also knows why he has been rejected. There is no reason to give any reason. If reasons have to be given for each and every thing, then my whole work will be simply to go on supplying reasons. There are thousands of people coming, and everybody has to be given reasons and explanations about everything? Laxmi is right.
And always remember that Laxmi never does anything on her own. She is a perfect vehicle; that’s why she has been chosen for that work. Now I cannot choose Tulika for work, because she has her own idea what is right and what is wrong. Laxmi has no idea. She simply listens and does. Whatsoever is said, she does.
And you have to learn these ways, because soon we will be becoming a bigger commune and thousands of people will be coming, and these things have to be settled. You should not bring them again and again. Again and again you go on writing questions: “Somebody has done this….” That is for me to look to, and if I think that it is not right it will be prevented. You need not bring it to my notice even. You waste my time.
And you get so excited…. There are some foolish people who have renounced their sannyas because they saw something unjust was being done. Now they’re just losing their opportunity. It was not their business. You have come here for your own growth. This acceptance has to be total, only then work is possible, only then I can help you. Please don’t give suggestions to me. The moment you give me a suggestion, you are disconnected from me.
This is not going to be a democracy. You are not to be asked what should be done and what should not be done. This should be remembered from the very beginning – that this is not going to be a democracy. Your votes will never be taken. You become part of it with that knowledge, that whatsoever I decide is absolute. If you don’t choose that way, you are perfectly okay to leave.
People are prevented from entering, but nobody is prevented from leaving. You can leave. Have you seen anybody being prevented from leaving? Leaving is perfectly free – you are free, that is your decision. If you want to be here you have to be totally here. If you feel that this is not the place for you, that your ideas are not being fulfilled, that it is not according to you, you are free to leave.
This place will never be according to you. This place is to change you, it is not to be according to you. This place is going to be a transformation for you. And these are the beginnings. Who are you to know what is right and what is wrong? And who are you to ask for the reason? How do you come in?
The Indian who has been prevented, if he feels like asking he will come and ask. He has not asked because he knows, he has been told why he is being prevented. He has been a nuisance around here. But these things are not to be inquired about by everybody. And this is not good, that everybody should be told about this nuisance. This is disrespectful to him. He has been told, and he understands because he knows what he has been doing.
Now you suddenly jump in. You think you are doing some great work, some great service. You think you are saving some person from some injustice. You don’t know the whole story. And you need not know the whole story, because who is sitting there to tell you all the stories about everybody? You decide only about your own self. This is a place where many things will never be according to you. You have to fall in tune with things. If you think that that is not possible for you, you are free to leave.
And let this be the last question. Many questions have been coming to me. Somebody participates in a group and writes, “Why is there so much violence in the encounter group?” And that comes from a groupleader, a woman who has been a groupleader. She participated for one or two days in the encounter group and dropped out. And she had asked for it. I was not going to give her the encounter group, I was giving her some other groups, but she asked, “I want to do the encounter.” So I said “Okay.” But when I say, “Okay,” you should understand what I mean. I mean that then it is for you to decide.
She thinks she knows because she is a groupleader. She has been leading groups so she thinks she knows. And I knew that very moment that she would not be able to go through it, because the encounter group that is going on here is the best in the world at this moment. Nowhere else is such absolute freedom allowed.
In the West the encounter group has limitations, because the encounter groupleader has limitations. He can go only so far. When he sees that things are becoming difficult, that now he may not be able to control, that things may go too far, that he may not be able to bring them back, then he prevents.
Here we don’t believe in any boundaries.
I send people to the encounter group only when I see that now they understand that they have to go beyond all boundaries – boundaries of sex, boundaries of violence, anger, rage. They have to break all boundaries. That is breakthrough – when all those boundaries break down.
Now the woman became very much afraid, now she is against the group. Now she is asking me, “Why do you allow such violence?” That is not your business. If you are not capable of going into it, you are not required to go into it, mm? You can do some nonviolent group – Zazen, Vipassana. We have all kinds of toys around here. Mm? You can choose.
But don’t go on writing to me. Whatsoever happens here is happening with my knowledge. Not a single thing happens here which is not known to me, so you need not inform me about things, I know them already. It is a sheer wastage of time.
And the moment you surrender and become an initiate, a sannyasin, that surrender has to be total. Just live a few months in that total surrender and you will see – it is alchemical, it transforms you.
New people come and they think, “What is the matter? The old sannyasins don’t interfere? Somebody is prevented by the guard and the old sannyasins simply go by. What has happened to these people? Do they understand or not that this is not right? Have they become apathetic, indifferent?”
No, they have learned, and they have learned just like you. Slowly slowly they have learned that whatsoever happens is happening according to a plan, a device. There is some hidden pattern in it. And nobody except me knows what that hidden pattern is. So you cannot go to Laxmi, she does not know. She simply asks me what is to be done and she does it. You cannot ask Sant on the gate, “What are you doing?” He simply does what he is told to do.
If you are to be a part of this commune you have to understand this. You have to relax, you have to stop judging. Soon, after a few months of relaxation and acceptance, you will be able to understand. That’s what has happened to the older sannyasins – now they understand.
The sixth question:
Osho,
I have always felt the need for little rewards at the end of the day – a few beers, cigarettes or drugs. Now none of these things bring any satisfaction, yet the desire for something, some form of gratification, continues. What is this longing and what will satisfy it?
Nothing will satisfy it. There is a subtle mechanism of desire to be understood. Desire functions in this way: desire places a condition on your happiness: “I will be happy if I can get this car, this woman, this house.” Fulfillment of the desire removes that condition on your happiness. In your relief you feel good. Actually, all you have done is remove a quite unnecessary obstruction to your happiness, but it is not long before you find yourself thinking, “If I can create that obstruction again, then remove it all over again, the relief I feel in removing it will be as good as it was then.” And so it is that desires, even when we fulfill them, lead again and again to the creation of new desires.
Do you follow it? First you make a condition. You say, “Unless I get this woman I am not going to be happy. I can be happy only with this woman.” Now you start striving to get this woman. The more difficult it is the more you become enthusiastic, feverish. The more difficult it is the more you are challenged. The more difficult it is the more you put all your being at stake; you are ready to gamble. And of course more hope arises and more desire to possess the woman. It is so hard, it is so difficult. It must be something great, that’s why it is so hard, that’s why it is so difficult. You chase and chase and one day you get the woman.
The day you get the woman the condition is removed: “If I get the woman then I will be happy.” You had put that condition in the first place. Now you get the woman, you feel relief. Now there is no more chasing, you have arrived, the result is in your hands, you feel good – good because of the relief.
One day I saw Mulla Nasruddin walking, swearing and in great pain. I asked him, “What is the matter? Is your stomach aching or do you have a headache or something? What is the matter? You look in such agony.”
He said, “Nothing. The shoes that I am wearing are too small.”
“But then why are you wearing them?”
He said, “This is the only relief that I get at the end of the day – when I take my shoes off. God, it is such…then I enjoy. But this is the only joy I have, so I cannot drop these shoes. They are one size too small. It is really hell, but in the evening it gives heaven. When I go home and I take my shoes off and I fall on my sofa, I say I have arrived. It’s so beautiful!”
That’s what you are doing. You create pain, you create anguish, chasing, fever, and then one day you come home and take the shoes off and you say, “Great, this is great. So I have arrived!” But how long can it last? The relief lasts only a few moments. Then again you are hankering.
Now this woman is useless because you have got her. You cannot make a condition again. You can never say again, “If I get this woman I will be happy,” because she is already with you. Now you start looking around at somebody else’s woman, “If I get that woman….” Now you know one trick – that first you have to put a condition on your happiness, then you have to follow the condition desperately, then one day relief comes. Now this is futile. A man of understanding will see that there is no need to put any condition, you can be unconditionally happy. Why go on walking in small shoes and suffer just to get relief in the end? Why not have the relief all the time? But then you will not feel it, that is the problem. To feel it you need contrast. You will be happy but you will not feel it.
And that is the definition of a really happy man: a really happy man is one who does not know anything about happiness, who has never heard about it, who is so happy, so unconditionally happy, that how can he know that he is happy? Only unhappy people say, “I am happy, things are going great.” These are unhappy people. A happy person knows nothing about happiness. It is simply there, it is always there. It is like breathing.
You don’t feel very happy about breathing? – then just do one thing, close your nose. Do some yoga exercises and repress your breath inside and go on repressing and go on repressing. Now the agony arises. And you go on repressing. Be a real yoga disciple – go on repressing. And then it bursts forth and there is such great joy. This is foolish – but this is what everybody is doing. That’s why you wait for the result in the evening.
Happiness is herenow, it needs no condition. Happiness is natural. Just see the point of it. Don’t make any conditions on your happiness. Remain happy for no reason at all. There is no reason to find some cause to be happy. Just be happy.
Trees are happy and they will not get any beer in the evening and any cigarettes, and they are perfectly happy. Look!…And the wind blowing is happy, and the sun is happy, and the sands are happy and the seas are happy, and everything is happy except man – because nobody is making any conditions. Just be happy.
If you cannot be happy, then don’t make such impossible conditions – that it is difficult. Then Mulla is right – such a small thing. I understand. He is far more intelligent than you understand him to be. Such a simple device – wearing one size smaller shoes – such a small device, nobody can prevent you from it, and by the evening you are happy. Just small devices, create small devices, and be as happy as you want.
But you say, “I will be happy only when this great house is mine.” Now you are making a big condition. It may take years, and you will be tired and exhausted, and by the time you reach to the palace of your desires you may be close to death. That’s what happens. And you wasted your whole life and your great house will become your grave. You say, “Unless I have a million dollars, I am not going to be happy.” And then you have to work and waste your whole life. Mulla Nasruddin is far more intelligent: make small conditions and have as much happiness as you want.
If you understand, then there is no need to put any conditions. Just see the point of it – that conditions don’t create happiness, they only give relief. But the relief cannot be permanent, no relief can ever be permanent. It lasts only for a few moments. Have you not watched it again and again? You wanted to purchase a car; the car is in your porch and you are standing there, very very happy. How long does it last? Tomorrow it is this old car, one day old. Two days after it is two days old, and all the neighborhood has seen it and they all have appreciated it, and finished! Now nobody talks about it. That’s why car companies have to go on putting out new models every year, so that you can have new conditions.
People go on hankering after things just to get relief, and relief is available. Have you heard the story?
A beggar was sitting under a tree and a rich man’s car broke. The driver was fixing it and the rich man came out and the beggar was having a good rest under the tree. It was breezy and sunny and beautiful, and the rich man also came and he sat by the side of the beggar and he said, “Why don’t you work?”
The beggar asked, “For what?”
And the rich man said, “If you work, you can earn money.”
The beggar asked, “For what?”
The rich man felt a little annoyed and he said, “When you have money you can have a big balance in the bank.”
But the beggar again asked, “For what?”
The rich man was even more annoyed. He said, “For what? Then you can retire in your old age and rest.”
“But,” the beggar said, “I am resting now! Why wait for old age and do all this nonsense? – earn money and make a bank balance and then finally rest. Can’t you see I am resting now! Why wait?”
Why wait for the evening? And why wait for the beer? Why not drink water and enjoy it while you are drinking it?
You have heard Jesus’ story that he turned water into wine? Christians have missed it. They think he really turned it into wine. That is not true. He must have taught the secret that I am teaching you to his disciples. He must have told them, “Drink it so joyously that water becomes wine.”
You can drink water so joyously that it almost intoxicates you. Try! Just water can intoxicate you. It depends on you. It does not depend on the beer or the wine. And if you don’t understand it, ask some hypnotist, ask our Santosh. He knows. Even if only water is given to somebody who has been hypnotized and told under hypnosis that this is wine, he will become intoxicated – with water.
Now doctors know about placebos, and sometimes the results are very puzzling. In one hospital they were doing some experiments. To one group of twenty patients with the same disease medicine was given, and to the other twenty with the same disease just water was given – just to see whether water can work. Neither the doctor nor the patients know which is water and which is medicine, because if the doctor knows then even his behavior will change. Giving water he will not give it that seriously and that will make some suspicion arise in the patient. So neither the doctor nor the patient – nobody knows. The knowledge is kept in a vault, locked.
And the miracle is that the same number of patients are helped by water as are helped by medicine. Out of twenty, seventeen persons are healthy by the second week, from both the groups. And the more miraculous thing is, those who were kept on water remained healthy longer than those who were kept on medicine. The people who were kept on real medicine started coming back soon, after a few weeks.
What happened? Why did water help so much? The idea that it is medicine helps, not the medicine. And because water is pure water, it cannot harm. Medicine will harm. That’s why the people who had been given real medicine started coming back. They started creating some new desire, some new disease, some new problems…because no medicine can go without affecting your system in some way or other. It will have its reactions. Water cannot have any reaction. This is pure hypnosis.
You can drink water with such zest, with such prayer, that it becomes wine. You see the Zen people drinking tea with such ceremony and ritual, with such awareness, then even tea becomes something phenomenal. Ordinary tea is transformed. Ordinary acts can be transformed – a morning walk can be intoxicating. And if a morning walk cannot be intoxicating, then something is wrong with you. Just watching a roseflower can be intoxicating. And if it cannot intoxicate you, then nothing can intoxicate you. Just looking in the eyes of a child can be intoxicating.
Learn how to live the moment joyously. Don’t look for results, there are none. Life is not going anywhere, it has no ends. Life is not a means to any end, life is just herenow. Live it. Live it totally, live it consciously, live it joyously – and you will be fulfilled.
Fulfillment should not be postponed, otherwise you will never be fulfilled. Fulfillment has to be now – now or never.
The last question:
Osho,
People think I am mean, but I feel I am only miserly. What do you say, Osho?
I will tell you one anecdote.
A young man was overjoyed one morning to learn that he had won fifty thousand pounds on the football pools. He lived with his mother and father, both elderly and not too well off, and when he told them about his win they too were overjoyed.
“Naturally,” he said, “I want you to share in my good fortune, so I am going to make you a present of ten pounds each.”
There was silence for a moment and then the old man spoke. “Well, son,” he said, “we have done a lot for you, mother and I, and you have never gone short of anything over the years, but now you are able to stand on your own two feet, I think you should know that, well, your mother and I were never legally married.”
“What!” exclaimed the young man. “Do you mean to say that I am a…?”
“Yes, you are,” said the old man. “And a ruddy mean one at that!”
Enough for today.
Osho,
Why have all the great masters come from the East?
Because humanity has yet not been total. The East is introvert, the West is extrovert. Man is split, mind is schizophrenic. That’s why all the great masters have come from the East and all the great scientists have come from the West. The West has developed science and has completely forgotten about the inner soul; is concerned with matter, but has become oblivious of the inner subjectivity. The whole focus is on the object. Hence all the great scientists are born in the West.
The East has become too much concerned with the inner soul and has forgotten objectivity, matter, the world. Great religious masters developed out of this, but this is not a good situation, this should not be so. Man should become one. Man should not be allowed to be lopsided anymore. Man should be a fluidity, neither extrovert nor introvert. Man should be capable of being both together. The inner and the outer, if balanced, give the greatest ecstatic experience.
The person who is neither leaning towards the inner too much nor towards the outer too much is the person of equilibrium. He will be a scientist and a mystic together. That is something that will happen, that is something that is going to happen. We are preparing the field for it. I would like to see a man who is neither Eastern nor Western, because to be Eastern as against Western is ugly. To be Western as against Eastern is again ugly. The whole earth belongs to us and we belong to the whole earth. A man should be just man, a man should be just human – total, whole. And out of that wholeness will arise a new kind of health.
The East has suffered, the West has suffered. The East has suffered; you can see it all around – the poverty, the starvation. The West has suffered, you can see inside the Western mind – tension, anxiety, anguish. The West is very poor inwardly, the East is very poor outwardly. Poverty is bad. Whether it is inner or outer makes no difference, poverty should not be allowed. Man should be rich, inner, outer, both. Man should have all dimensional richness.
Just think of a man who is an Albert Einstein and a Gautam Buddha both. Just meditate on that possibility – that is possible. In fact if Albert Einstein had lived a little longer, he would have turned into a mystic. He had started thinking about the inner, he was becoming interested in the inner mystery. How long can you remain interested in the outer mystery? If you are really interested in mystery then sooner or later you will stumble upon the inner too.
My concept is of a world which is neither Eastern nor Western, neither inner nor outer, neither extrovert nor introvert – which is balanced, which is whole. But this has not been the case in the past. That’s why your question is relevant.
You ask: “Why have all the great masters come from the East?” Because the East has been obsessed with the inner as against the outer. Naturally, when down the centuries you have been obsessed with the inner, you will create a Buddha, a Nagarjuna, a Shankara, a Kabir. It is natural.
If you are obsessed with the outer as against the inner, you will create an Albert Einstein, an Eddington, an Edison, that’s natural. But this is not good for the totality of human beings. Something is missing. The man who has inner growth and has not grown outwardly remains juvenile in the outside, remains stupid outside. And the same is the case with the man who has grown much, who has become mature, very mature, as far as mathematics goes and physics goes and chemistry goes, but who inside has not been even born yet, who is still in the womb.
This is my message to you: drop these hemispheres – East and West – and drop these hemispheres of inner and outer. Become fluid. Let movement, flow, be your very life. Remain available to the outer and to the inner both.
That’s why I teach love and meditation. Love is the passage to go out, meditation is the passage to go in. And a man who is in love and meditative is beyond schizophrenia, is beyond all kinds of split. He has become one, he is integrated. In fact, he has soul.
The second question:
Osho,
Don't you get bored, bored, bored and fed up, day after day answering the same questions, while we sit there with ears blocked, eyes tight, mouth sealed, never ever getting the message – that there are no answers? You continually astound me in your dewdrop freshness in the early morning light, and still I am blind, deaf and lame, cut off from sharing in your radiance except for brief moments.
The first thing: I am not, so I cannot be bored and fed up. First you have to be to be bored. The more you are the more you will feel bored; the less you are the less bored. That’s why children are less bored than old people. Have you not observed it? Children are almost not bored. They go on playing with the same toys, they go on running after the same butterflies, they go on collecting the same seashells. They are not bored.
Have you ever told a story to a child? After listening to it he says, “Tell it again…and again.” And whenever you will meet him again he will say, “Tell me that story. I loved it.” Why is a child not bored? – because he is not. Or, he is in a very rudimentary way; the ego has not evolved yet. The ego is the factor that creates boredom.
Animals are not bored, trees are not bored, and what novelty is there in the life of animals and trees? The rosebush goes on producing the same roses year in, year out, and the bird goes on singing the same song every morning and every evening. The cuckoo knows not many notes, just a single note. It goes on repeating it; it is monotonous. But not a single animal is bored, not a single tree is bored. Nature knows nothing of boredom. Why? – because nature has no ego yet.
A Buddha is not bored, a Jesus is not bored, because they have dropped the ego again. The nature has not evolved yet: Buddha has dropped it. Buddha and nature are almost the same. I say almost because there is only one difference – of great significance, but only one difference. The difference is that of awareness. Nature is without ego but unaware, Buddha is without ego but aware.
Once you know you are not there, who is going to be bored, who is going to be fed up? That’s why I can come every morning and go on answering your questions. I am not bored. I cannot be bored. For almost twenty-five years I have not tasted boredom. I have started forgetting the very taste of it, how it feels.
The second thing: the questions are not the same. They cannot be – they come from different people, how can they be the same questions? Yes, sometimes the words may be the same, but the questions are not the same. Two persons are so different from each other – how can they ask the same question? Even if the words are the same, even if the construction of the question is the same, yet – I would like you to be reminded – they can’t be the same.
Now this question is asked by Anand Shaila; nobody else can ask it. Nobody else upon this big earth can ask it. To ask this question a Shaila will be needed. And Shaila is only one; there are not many Shailas.
So remember, each individual has such uniqueness. To call those questions the same is disrespectful. I respect your questions. They are not the same. They have nuances of their own, colors of their own, but you need very penetrating eyes to see the difference; otherwise you may not be able to see.
When you look around and you see all the trees are green, do you think it is the same green? Then you don’t know how to look at color. Then bring a painter, then ask the painter and he will say, “They are all different greens. There are thousands of types of greens – different shades, different nuances. No two trees are the same green.” Just look around and you will see – yes, each green is a different green.
So are questions. And even if the same person asks the question again and again, then too it cannot be the same because you go on changing. Nothing is static. You cannot step in the same river twice, and you cannot meet the same person again. Shaila cannot ask this question tomorrow, because there will no longer be the same person tomorrow. The Ganges will have flowed, much water will have gone down. This moment it is relevant, tomorrow it may not be relevant, something else may surface in the consciousness.
No two persons can ask the same question, and not even the same person can ask the same question again, because the person goes on changing. A person is like a flame, constantly changing. But again you have to look very deep. I have never come across the same questions. I am always thrilled by your questions. I always wonder how you manage to ask.
“Don’t you get bored, bored and fed up, day after day answering the same questions while we sit here with ears blocked, eyes tight, mouths sealed, never ever getting the message that there are no answers?”
Just because you sit there “ears blocked, eyes tight, mouth sealed, never ever getting the message,” it becomes a challenge to me. It is a great adventure. You persist, I also persist. The question is: Who is going to win? Whether you will remain always closed or some day you will take pity on me and you will listen…open your ears, your heart, a little bit? It is a struggle. It is wrestling that goes on between the master and the disciple – a constant fight.
And the disciple cannot win. It has never been heard that he can win. He can postpone, he can delay, but he cannot win. And the more you delay the more your defeat becomes certain. I am encroaching on your being in different ways. You just go on sitting there with your closed ears and closed eyes and closed heart – you just remain there, that’s all. You just be here. Sooner or later, one day, you will have heard the message.
How long can you go on remaining closed? They say if a man persists in his folly he becomes wise. You persist. Some day, in spite of you, you will have heard. That’s why I go on speaking every morning, every evening, year in, year out.
And you say “…never ever getting the message – that there are no answers.” You will get that message only when there are no questions in your mind, never before that. How can you get the message that there are no answers if you have questions yet? The very question presupposes an answer. The question is the search for the answer. The question has taken it for granted that the answer exists, otherwise how will the question exist? The question cannot exist on its own, it depends on the answer or at least on the possibility of the answer.
The day you realize that there are no longer any questions in you, only that day will the message be heard that there are no answers. And that day you will see that neither you have asked nor I have answered. There has been utter silence. All that questioning and answering has been like a dream.
But because you question, I have to answer. That is the only way to help you to get rid of your questions. Remember, my answers are not answers but only devices. My answers are not answering your questions, because I know perfectly well that there are no questions. All questions are false. You have dreamed about them. But when you ask, I respect you. I answer. My answer is just a respect to you, and my answer is a device. It will help you to see that the question by and by disappears.
One day suddenly you will be awake with no questions. That day you will see that I have not answered a single thing. Nothing can be answered because there is not a single question in existence. Existence exists without any questions. It is a mystery – not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be loved, a mystery to be lived.
And Shaila says: “You continually astound me in your dewdrop freshness in the early morning light and still I am blind, dead, lame, cut off from sharing in your radiance except for brief moments.”
Those brief moments will do. Those brief moments are the hope. In those brief moments I will enter in you. Those brief moments will become bigger and bigger slowly. One day you will find those brief moments have won over you. Even if for a single moment there is a contact between me and you, it is enough, it is more than enough. Even that small insight will become a fire in you. That small spark is going to burn your whole mind utterly, to the very roots, root and all.
The third question:
Osho,
I don't enjoy these Buddha sutras. They are dry, difficult and complicated. Is not truth simple?
Truth is simple and truth is difficult. In fact it is difficult because it is simple. It is so simple and your minds are so complicated that you cannot understand it, you go on missing it. It is so simple that it gives no challenge to you. It is so simple that you pass by the side of it remaining completely unaware that you have passed truth.
Truth is simple because truth is obvious. But simple does not mean easy. The simplicity is very complex. If you enter in it you will be lost, you may never be able to get out of it. That simplicity has depth in it, it is not shallow. And to attain to that simplicity you will have to lose many things – and to lose those things is difficult.
For example, why do these Buddha sutras look difficult to you? – because they are illogical. If you can lose your logic, they will be simple. The difficulty is coming from your mind, not from Buddha’s sutras. He is a very simple man. He is simply stating a fact. But the problem arises from you, because you cannot accept that simple fact. You have your ideas. Those ideas interfere.
You say, “How can this be? If this man is right then my whole logic is wrong.” And that you cannot accept. Your whole education, training, has been of logic, and he goes on stating illogical things. He is helpless. At that height, at that plenitude, logic does not exist. What can he do? At that plenitude everything is paradoxical. At that plenitude, opposites meet, contradictions become complementaries. What can he do? He has to assert them. The problem is arising from you – because you want those truths to be translated according to your logic.
Suppose a boy in a high school physics class were to object, “I don’t approve of Albert Einstein’s formula.”
“No?” says the teacher. “Why not?”
“Well, firstly it is boring, and whenever you explain it I inevitably fall asleep. Secondly, it is unbalanced. Look at it! E = mc2. He has put one figure all by itself on one side of the equation, and three others all together on the other side. It is unartistic. Why didn’t he move one of those figures to the left side to make the formula more symmetrical? That’s why I hate it.”
Now he is raising beautiful questions. It is not symmetrical: “What kind of equation is this? Both sides are not equal. It is unartistic. Just by putting one figure on the other side, things would have been far better, more symmetrical.”
The boy is completely unaware of what he is talking about, but whatsoever he is saying looks logical. But the Einsteinian formula is not there to entertain you. It is to express reality. If you are bored with it, that simply shows that you are very dull witted, that you cannot understand that penetrating insight. It is said that only twelve persons used to understand Einstein’s theory of relativity. All around the earth, only twelve?
The truth is simple, but when you go into its details, when you start penetrating into its reality, it becomes difficult. For example, Saint Augustine is reported to have said, “Everybody knows what time is. I know what time is, but when somebody asks me: ‘What is time? Try to explain it to me,’ then I am at a loss.”
You know what time is, you live according to time. Six o’clock in the morning you get up, eleven o’clock in the night you go to bed, one o’clock you take your lunch. You go to the office, you come home. You use time, you know what time is, but can you explain it? The moment you try to explain it becomes elusive. You have never seen it, you have never seen it in your hand. You cannot grasp it. What is it?
Augustine is right – that the problem arises when you try to explain it. Light is so simple, it is all around, dancing on the trees, the whole sky is full of light. Try to explain it to a blind man and he will be bored and he will say, “Stop all this nonsense.” First, you will find it very difficult to put it into words. Or, drop the question of light. It is a scientific question, you may not be interested in it.
You have loved, you know what love is. You must have loved – at least you must have loved your mother, your father, your sister, some woman, your wife, your husband, your children. Can you explain what love is? Then you become dumb. Then suddenly you lose all intelligence – as if somebody has simply struck you dead. You become paralyzed. What is love? Can you define it?
Love is everybody’s experience, more or less, but nobody can define it. Nirvana is not everybody’s experience – once in a while nirvana happens – and Buddha is trying to explain to you what nirvana is.
Truth is simple, but the moment you try to explain it, it becomes difficult. But remember, you are not here only to be entertained. And I am not against entertainment either – it is good in its own time. But something more than entertainment is needed, only that will become your enlightenment. Entertainment is a very lower need. Enlightenment is the highest need. If you simply go on from one entertainment to another you will remain shallow, you will never grow, you will remain immature. You have to sometimes go into the depths of life and love and light and God. Sometimes you have to fly into eternity to have a taste of it. Only that will make you mature.
I understand your difficulties. You say: “I don’t enjoy these Buddha sutras.” Then learn how to enjoy. Then learn how to enjoy higher things. There are higher things. If you want to enjoy classical Indian music you will have to learn. You cannot just go and enjoy it, it needs a certain preparation in you, it needs a certain receptivity in you. It is not vulgar. It needs a certain understanding in you…a deep understanding of sounds and silence – because music consists of sound and silence. It is not only sound, it contains silence in it.
The music becomes higher and deeper when it contains more silence in it. When it provokes your silence, when it penetrates your heart and releases your inner silence, when listening to it your mind disappears, your thoughts stop…. But then you will have to learn, you will have to go through a certain discipline, you will have to become more meditative. One day you will be able to enjoy it. But if you want to enjoy it right now and you are not ready for it, don’t blame it.
Don’t say that Buddha’s sutras are boring, just say that you are not capable yet of understanding that plenitude, that you are not capable of looking to that height, that you are not capable enough to climb the Everest of consciousness. Buddha is talking from the highest peak. You will have to move from your dark hole a little bit. You will have to climb the mountains, only then you will understand those sunlit sutras.
It is a difficulty because for that understanding we are not prepared at all, hence sometimes you may feel bored. But fight with boredom, destroy your boredom, pull yourself out of it. You have to go with the Buddha, you have to see what he has seen. Seeing it, you will be fulfilled.
The fourth question:
Osho,
Is the only thing that keeps us from coming home the doubt that we are not already home, which is reinforced by everyone around us?
Yes, Shobha. The doubt is the only thing that prevents – the doubt that we are not as we should be, the doubt that the divine cannot be within us. How can God be within us? – because you have been taught God is there in the seventh heaven sitting on his golden throne, surrounded by his angels playing on their harps, singing hallelujah.
He is not here, he is far away. He is big, he is huge, he is eternal, he is this and he is that. How can he be in your heart? Such a tiny heart you have. And how can he be in your heart? – you are so ugly and you are so horrible and you condemn yourself in a thousand and one ways continuously. How can he be there? If God is there in you, then where will the devil live? The doubt….
And when somebody says that God is within you, you cannot accept it. You have heard it many times, Jesus saying to people, “The kingdom of God is within you.” But even Christians don’t listen, even the followers. Even Jesus’ intimate followers, immediate followers, go on asking about God who is in heaven and Jesus goes on saying, “He is within you,” and they go on talking about the God who is in heaven, and they go on saying, “When we all will die, how will we live in paradise? Who will be at the right hand of God? What will be our position there? Who will be who? What will be the hierarchy?” And Jesus goes on saying, “He is within you,” but nobody believes it, because you have not been taught to trust yourself.
From your very birth you have been distracted from your being. Everybody has condemned you – your parents, your teachers, your priests, your politicians. Everybody has condemned you. Everybody has said, “You! You are not right as you are. You have to become right. You have to attain to some perfection.”
Goals have been given to you, and because of those goals and those perfectionist ideals you remain condemned and crushed. How can you receive the message that the divine is within you, that you are already home, that you have never left it in the first place, that all is okay as it is? Just relax, and it is yours. Not that you have to search and seek, but just relax into it and it is yours.
Doubt arises: “God within me? And my father was saying, ‘You are the ugliest kid in the town.’ And my mother was saying, ‘Why didn’t you die? You are a condemnation to the family, you are a blame to the family. We are sorry that we have given birth to you.’” And your teacher was saying that you are a fool, that you are stupid, that you are idiotic. And the priest was saying that you are bound for hell, that you are a sinner.
Just the other night I was reading about an Indian mystic who was invited into a Christian church. After the talk the Christian priest shouted loudly to the congregation: “All you sinners! Now kneel down and pray! Kneel down in prayer!”
They all knelt down except the mystic, the Hindu mystic. The priest looked at him, he said, “Aren’t you going to participate with us in prayer?”
He said, “I was going to participate, but I am not a sinner. And I don’t see that anybody else here is a sinner. I was going to participate in the prayer, but now you have made it impossible for me. I cannot kneel down. I am not a sinner. God is within me; I cannot be that disrespectful to God. I can pray only because God is within me. And I am not praying for anything – my prayer is my thankfulness, my gratitude for all that he has already given to me. My thankfulness is that he has chosen me as his abode, that he has honored me, that I am part of him, that he belongs to me. I am ready to pray, I am ready to kneel down, but not as a sinner, because that is not true.”
You have been taught that you are sinners, that unless Jesus saves you, you are bound to go to hell. You have been condemned so much that when this Eastern message bursts forth in your being you start doubting: “This is not possible. I?…and I have never left home? Maybe it is true about Buddha, maybe it is true about Jesus, but I? – I am a sinner.”
Nobody is a sinner. Even while you are in the darkest hole of your life you are still divine. You cannot lose your divinity, there is no way to lose it. It is your very being. It is the stuff you are made of.
Shobha has asked: “Is the only thing that keeps us from coming home the doubt that we are not already home, which is reinforced by everyone around us?”
Yes, it is reinforced by everyone around you. That’s why I say love is only when somebody accepts you as divine. He reinforces the truth that you are divine. If anybody reinforces the untruth that you are not divine, it is not love. She may be your mother, he may be your father, it doesn’t matter. If anybody gives you a self-condemnatory idea, he is poisoning you. If anybody says that you are not accepted as you are, that God will love you only if you fulfill certain conditions, then he is destroying you, he is your enemy – beware of him.
The fifth question:
Osho,
The other day I came through the gates with an Indian sannyasin and he was turned away by the guard with no reason given. When I spoke to Laxmi about it, she more or less told me to mind my own business. Whenever I see people being unjustly treated, my immediate reaction is to go to their assistance. Is it really none of my business what happens to other people?
The question is from Ma Deva Tulika.
This is significant for everybody present here, and everybody who is going to be in any way related to me. Whatsoever happens in this commune happens according to me. I know who was turned from the gate. And the man who has been turned away knows why he has been turned from the gate. And it is none of your business to come into it.
This you have to understand absolutely, that whatsoever happens here…I may not come out of my room, I never come out except in the morning and the evening, and I never go around the ashram – but whatsoever happens here is perfectly known to me, is happening according to me. Please don’t interfere.
There are a few other people also like Tulika who are continuously interfering with the work. You are nobody to judge what is right and what is wrong. If you know it already you are not needed here, you have become enlightened – you go home.
This is none of your business to decide what is just and what is unjust. This is not an ordinary place, so ordinary things won’t apply here. Some extraordinary experiment is on. I know what is somebody’s need. If I feel that somebody has to be rejected from the gate, he has to be rejected. If I feel that no reason has to be given, then no reason has to be given. That’s my device for his life and for his work.
Now you should not come into it. If you start coming into it you will only lose your opportunity for growth. Guards have their duties, they know what they are doing. And I am in contact with them, with what they are doing. You simply bypass.
It is not an ordinary place. Everything is looked after, and if somebody needs a hit on the head, he is given. You should not prevent it; otherwise you will be coming into his growth too, you will hinder him, and you will be hindering yourself. And you can get unnecessarily excited about it.
There are a few people – Padma Sambhava is one. They go on writing to me that this has happened and somebody has done this and this should not be. Here you are nobody to decide what should be and what should not be. The moment you become part of my commune you leave everything to me; otherwise work will be impossible.
Now I know the man who has been rejected and I know why he is rejected – and he also knows why he has been rejected. There is no reason to give any reason. If reasons have to be given for each and every thing, then my whole work will be simply to go on supplying reasons. There are thousands of people coming, and everybody has to be given reasons and explanations about everything? Laxmi is right.
And always remember that Laxmi never does anything on her own. She is a perfect vehicle; that’s why she has been chosen for that work. Now I cannot choose Tulika for work, because she has her own idea what is right and what is wrong. Laxmi has no idea. She simply listens and does. Whatsoever is said, she does.
And you have to learn these ways, because soon we will be becoming a bigger commune and thousands of people will be coming, and these things have to be settled. You should not bring them again and again. Again and again you go on writing questions: “Somebody has done this….” That is for me to look to, and if I think that it is not right it will be prevented. You need not bring it to my notice even. You waste my time.
And you get so excited…. There are some foolish people who have renounced their sannyas because they saw something unjust was being done. Now they’re just losing their opportunity. It was not their business. You have come here for your own growth. This acceptance has to be total, only then work is possible, only then I can help you. Please don’t give suggestions to me. The moment you give me a suggestion, you are disconnected from me.
This is not going to be a democracy. You are not to be asked what should be done and what should not be done. This should be remembered from the very beginning – that this is not going to be a democracy. Your votes will never be taken. You become part of it with that knowledge, that whatsoever I decide is absolute. If you don’t choose that way, you are perfectly okay to leave.
People are prevented from entering, but nobody is prevented from leaving. You can leave. Have you seen anybody being prevented from leaving? Leaving is perfectly free – you are free, that is your decision. If you want to be here you have to be totally here. If you feel that this is not the place for you, that your ideas are not being fulfilled, that it is not according to you, you are free to leave.
This place will never be according to you. This place is to change you, it is not to be according to you. This place is going to be a transformation for you. And these are the beginnings. Who are you to know what is right and what is wrong? And who are you to ask for the reason? How do you come in?
The Indian who has been prevented, if he feels like asking he will come and ask. He has not asked because he knows, he has been told why he is being prevented. He has been a nuisance around here. But these things are not to be inquired about by everybody. And this is not good, that everybody should be told about this nuisance. This is disrespectful to him. He has been told, and he understands because he knows what he has been doing.
Now you suddenly jump in. You think you are doing some great work, some great service. You think you are saving some person from some injustice. You don’t know the whole story. And you need not know the whole story, because who is sitting there to tell you all the stories about everybody? You decide only about your own self. This is a place where many things will never be according to you. You have to fall in tune with things. If you think that that is not possible for you, you are free to leave.
And let this be the last question. Many questions have been coming to me. Somebody participates in a group and writes, “Why is there so much violence in the encounter group?” And that comes from a groupleader, a woman who has been a groupleader. She participated for one or two days in the encounter group and dropped out. And she had asked for it. I was not going to give her the encounter group, I was giving her some other groups, but she asked, “I want to do the encounter.” So I said “Okay.” But when I say, “Okay,” you should understand what I mean. I mean that then it is for you to decide.
She thinks she knows because she is a groupleader. She has been leading groups so she thinks she knows. And I knew that very moment that she would not be able to go through it, because the encounter group that is going on here is the best in the world at this moment. Nowhere else is such absolute freedom allowed.
In the West the encounter group has limitations, because the encounter groupleader has limitations. He can go only so far. When he sees that things are becoming difficult, that now he may not be able to control, that things may go too far, that he may not be able to bring them back, then he prevents.
Here we don’t believe in any boundaries.
I send people to the encounter group only when I see that now they understand that they have to go beyond all boundaries – boundaries of sex, boundaries of violence, anger, rage. They have to break all boundaries. That is breakthrough – when all those boundaries break down.
Now the woman became very much afraid, now she is against the group. Now she is asking me, “Why do you allow such violence?” That is not your business. If you are not capable of going into it, you are not required to go into it, mm? You can do some nonviolent group – Zazen, Vipassana. We have all kinds of toys around here. Mm? You can choose.
But don’t go on writing to me. Whatsoever happens here is happening with my knowledge. Not a single thing happens here which is not known to me, so you need not inform me about things, I know them already. It is a sheer wastage of time.
And the moment you surrender and become an initiate, a sannyasin, that surrender has to be total. Just live a few months in that total surrender and you will see – it is alchemical, it transforms you.
New people come and they think, “What is the matter? The old sannyasins don’t interfere? Somebody is prevented by the guard and the old sannyasins simply go by. What has happened to these people? Do they understand or not that this is not right? Have they become apathetic, indifferent?”
No, they have learned, and they have learned just like you. Slowly slowly they have learned that whatsoever happens is happening according to a plan, a device. There is some hidden pattern in it. And nobody except me knows what that hidden pattern is. So you cannot go to Laxmi, she does not know. She simply asks me what is to be done and she does it. You cannot ask Sant on the gate, “What are you doing?” He simply does what he is told to do.
If you are to be a part of this commune you have to understand this. You have to relax, you have to stop judging. Soon, after a few months of relaxation and acceptance, you will be able to understand. That’s what has happened to the older sannyasins – now they understand.
The sixth question:
Osho,
I have always felt the need for little rewards at the end of the day – a few beers, cigarettes or drugs. Now none of these things bring any satisfaction, yet the desire for something, some form of gratification, continues. What is this longing and what will satisfy it?
Nothing will satisfy it. There is a subtle mechanism of desire to be understood. Desire functions in this way: desire places a condition on your happiness: “I will be happy if I can get this car, this woman, this house.” Fulfillment of the desire removes that condition on your happiness. In your relief you feel good. Actually, all you have done is remove a quite unnecessary obstruction to your happiness, but it is not long before you find yourself thinking, “If I can create that obstruction again, then remove it all over again, the relief I feel in removing it will be as good as it was then.” And so it is that desires, even when we fulfill them, lead again and again to the creation of new desires.
Do you follow it? First you make a condition. You say, “Unless I get this woman I am not going to be happy. I can be happy only with this woman.” Now you start striving to get this woman. The more difficult it is the more you become enthusiastic, feverish. The more difficult it is the more you are challenged. The more difficult it is the more you put all your being at stake; you are ready to gamble. And of course more hope arises and more desire to possess the woman. It is so hard, it is so difficult. It must be something great, that’s why it is so hard, that’s why it is so difficult. You chase and chase and one day you get the woman.
The day you get the woman the condition is removed: “If I get the woman then I will be happy.” You had put that condition in the first place. Now you get the woman, you feel relief. Now there is no more chasing, you have arrived, the result is in your hands, you feel good – good because of the relief.
One day I saw Mulla Nasruddin walking, swearing and in great pain. I asked him, “What is the matter? Is your stomach aching or do you have a headache or something? What is the matter? You look in such agony.”
He said, “Nothing. The shoes that I am wearing are too small.”
“But then why are you wearing them?”
He said, “This is the only relief that I get at the end of the day – when I take my shoes off. God, it is such…then I enjoy. But this is the only joy I have, so I cannot drop these shoes. They are one size too small. It is really hell, but in the evening it gives heaven. When I go home and I take my shoes off and I fall on my sofa, I say I have arrived. It’s so beautiful!”
That’s what you are doing. You create pain, you create anguish, chasing, fever, and then one day you come home and take the shoes off and you say, “Great, this is great. So I have arrived!” But how long can it last? The relief lasts only a few moments. Then again you are hankering.
Now this woman is useless because you have got her. You cannot make a condition again. You can never say again, “If I get this woman I will be happy,” because she is already with you. Now you start looking around at somebody else’s woman, “If I get that woman….” Now you know one trick – that first you have to put a condition on your happiness, then you have to follow the condition desperately, then one day relief comes. Now this is futile. A man of understanding will see that there is no need to put any condition, you can be unconditionally happy. Why go on walking in small shoes and suffer just to get relief in the end? Why not have the relief all the time? But then you will not feel it, that is the problem. To feel it you need contrast. You will be happy but you will not feel it.
And that is the definition of a really happy man: a really happy man is one who does not know anything about happiness, who has never heard about it, who is so happy, so unconditionally happy, that how can he know that he is happy? Only unhappy people say, “I am happy, things are going great.” These are unhappy people. A happy person knows nothing about happiness. It is simply there, it is always there. It is like breathing.
You don’t feel very happy about breathing? – then just do one thing, close your nose. Do some yoga exercises and repress your breath inside and go on repressing and go on repressing. Now the agony arises. And you go on repressing. Be a real yoga disciple – go on repressing. And then it bursts forth and there is such great joy. This is foolish – but this is what everybody is doing. That’s why you wait for the result in the evening.
Happiness is herenow, it needs no condition. Happiness is natural. Just see the point of it. Don’t make any conditions on your happiness. Remain happy for no reason at all. There is no reason to find some cause to be happy. Just be happy.
Trees are happy and they will not get any beer in the evening and any cigarettes, and they are perfectly happy. Look!…And the wind blowing is happy, and the sun is happy, and the sands are happy and the seas are happy, and everything is happy except man – because nobody is making any conditions. Just be happy.
If you cannot be happy, then don’t make such impossible conditions – that it is difficult. Then Mulla is right – such a small thing. I understand. He is far more intelligent than you understand him to be. Such a simple device – wearing one size smaller shoes – such a small device, nobody can prevent you from it, and by the evening you are happy. Just small devices, create small devices, and be as happy as you want.
But you say, “I will be happy only when this great house is mine.” Now you are making a big condition. It may take years, and you will be tired and exhausted, and by the time you reach to the palace of your desires you may be close to death. That’s what happens. And you wasted your whole life and your great house will become your grave. You say, “Unless I have a million dollars, I am not going to be happy.” And then you have to work and waste your whole life. Mulla Nasruddin is far more intelligent: make small conditions and have as much happiness as you want.
If you understand, then there is no need to put any conditions. Just see the point of it – that conditions don’t create happiness, they only give relief. But the relief cannot be permanent, no relief can ever be permanent. It lasts only for a few moments. Have you not watched it again and again? You wanted to purchase a car; the car is in your porch and you are standing there, very very happy. How long does it last? Tomorrow it is this old car, one day old. Two days after it is two days old, and all the neighborhood has seen it and they all have appreciated it, and finished! Now nobody talks about it. That’s why car companies have to go on putting out new models every year, so that you can have new conditions.
People go on hankering after things just to get relief, and relief is available. Have you heard the story?
A beggar was sitting under a tree and a rich man’s car broke. The driver was fixing it and the rich man came out and the beggar was having a good rest under the tree. It was breezy and sunny and beautiful, and the rich man also came and he sat by the side of the beggar and he said, “Why don’t you work?”
The beggar asked, “For what?”
And the rich man said, “If you work, you can earn money.”
The beggar asked, “For what?”
The rich man felt a little annoyed and he said, “When you have money you can have a big balance in the bank.”
But the beggar again asked, “For what?”
The rich man was even more annoyed. He said, “For what? Then you can retire in your old age and rest.”
“But,” the beggar said, “I am resting now! Why wait for old age and do all this nonsense? – earn money and make a bank balance and then finally rest. Can’t you see I am resting now! Why wait?”
Why wait for the evening? And why wait for the beer? Why not drink water and enjoy it while you are drinking it?
You have heard Jesus’ story that he turned water into wine? Christians have missed it. They think he really turned it into wine. That is not true. He must have taught the secret that I am teaching you to his disciples. He must have told them, “Drink it so joyously that water becomes wine.”
You can drink water so joyously that it almost intoxicates you. Try! Just water can intoxicate you. It depends on you. It does not depend on the beer or the wine. And if you don’t understand it, ask some hypnotist, ask our Santosh. He knows. Even if only water is given to somebody who has been hypnotized and told under hypnosis that this is wine, he will become intoxicated – with water.
Now doctors know about placebos, and sometimes the results are very puzzling. In one hospital they were doing some experiments. To one group of twenty patients with the same disease medicine was given, and to the other twenty with the same disease just water was given – just to see whether water can work. Neither the doctor nor the patients know which is water and which is medicine, because if the doctor knows then even his behavior will change. Giving water he will not give it that seriously and that will make some suspicion arise in the patient. So neither the doctor nor the patient – nobody knows. The knowledge is kept in a vault, locked.
And the miracle is that the same number of patients are helped by water as are helped by medicine. Out of twenty, seventeen persons are healthy by the second week, from both the groups. And the more miraculous thing is, those who were kept on water remained healthy longer than those who were kept on medicine. The people who were kept on real medicine started coming back soon, after a few weeks.
What happened? Why did water help so much? The idea that it is medicine helps, not the medicine. And because water is pure water, it cannot harm. Medicine will harm. That’s why the people who had been given real medicine started coming back. They started creating some new desire, some new disease, some new problems…because no medicine can go without affecting your system in some way or other. It will have its reactions. Water cannot have any reaction. This is pure hypnosis.
You can drink water with such zest, with such prayer, that it becomes wine. You see the Zen people drinking tea with such ceremony and ritual, with such awareness, then even tea becomes something phenomenal. Ordinary tea is transformed. Ordinary acts can be transformed – a morning walk can be intoxicating. And if a morning walk cannot be intoxicating, then something is wrong with you. Just watching a roseflower can be intoxicating. And if it cannot intoxicate you, then nothing can intoxicate you. Just looking in the eyes of a child can be intoxicating.
Learn how to live the moment joyously. Don’t look for results, there are none. Life is not going anywhere, it has no ends. Life is not a means to any end, life is just herenow. Live it. Live it totally, live it consciously, live it joyously – and you will be fulfilled.
Fulfillment should not be postponed, otherwise you will never be fulfilled. Fulfillment has to be now – now or never.
The last question:
Osho,
People think I am mean, but I feel I am only miserly. What do you say, Osho?
I will tell you one anecdote.
A young man was overjoyed one morning to learn that he had won fifty thousand pounds on the football pools. He lived with his mother and father, both elderly and not too well off, and when he told them about his win they too were overjoyed.
“Naturally,” he said, “I want you to share in my good fortune, so I am going to make you a present of ten pounds each.”
There was silence for a moment and then the old man spoke. “Well, son,” he said, “we have done a lot for you, mother and I, and you have never gone short of anything over the years, but now you are able to stand on your own two feet, I think you should know that, well, your mother and I were never legally married.”
“What!” exclaimed the young man. “Do you mean to say that I am a…?”
“Yes, you are,” said the old man. “And a ruddy mean one at that!”
Enough for today.