The Man of Awareness
Osho on Spontaneity and Watching
BELOVED MASTER,
IN THE WEST WE ARE CONSTANTLY DRILLED WITH THE APHORISM: DON’T JUST STAND THERE — DO SOMETHING! YET, BUDDHA WOULD SAY: DON’T JUST DO SOMETHING — STAND THERE! THE UNCONSCIOUS MAN REACTS WHILE THE WISE MAN WATCHES. BUT WHAT ABOUT SPONTANEITY? IS SPONTANEITY COMPATIBLE WITH WATCHING?
Buddha certainly says: Don’t just do something — stand there! But that is only the beginning of the pilgrimage, not the end. When you have learned how to stand, when you have learned how to be utterly silent, unmoving, undisturbed, when you know how to just sit…sitting silently, doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself. But the grass grows, remember! Action does not disappear: the grass grows by itself. The Buddha does not become inactive; GREAT action happens through him, although there is no doer anymore. The doer disappears, the doing continues. And when there is no doer, the doing IS spontaneous; it cannot be otherwise. It is the doer that does not allow spontaneity.
The doer means the ego, the ego means the past. When you act, you are always acting through the past, you are acting out of experience that you have accumulated, you are acting out of the conclusions that you have arrived at in the past. How can you be spontaneous? The past dominates, and because of the past you cannot even see the present. Your eyes are so full of the past, the smoke of the past is so much, that seeing is impossible. You cannot see! You are almost completely blind — blind because of the smoke, blind because of the past conclusions, blind because of knowledge. The knowledgeable man is the most blind man in the world. Because he functions out of his knowledge, he does not see what the case is. He simply goes on functioning mechanically. He has learned something; it has become a ready-made mechanism in him…he acts out of it…
Man ordinarily functions out of the past, and life goes on changing. Life has no obligation to fit with your conclusions. That’s why life is very confusing — confusing to the knowledgeable person. He has all ready-made answers: The Bhagavadgita, the holy Koran, the Bible, the Vedas. He has everything crammed, he knows all the answers. But life never raises the same question again; hence the knowledgeable person always falls short. Buddha certainly says: Know how to sit silently. That does not mean that he says: Go on sitting silently forever. He is not saying you have to become inactive; on the contrary, it is only out of silence that action arises. If you are not silent, if you don’t know how to sit silently, or stand silently in deep meditation, whatsoever you go on doing is reaction, not action. You react.
Somebody insults you, pushes a button, and you react. You are angry, you jump on him — and you call it action? It is not action, mind you, it is reaction. He is the manipulator and you are the manipulated. He has pushed a button and you have functioned like a machine. Just like you push a button and the light goes on, and you push the button and the light goes off — that’s what people are doing to you: they put you on, they put you off. Somebody comes and praises you and puffs up your ego, and you feel so great; and then somebody comes and punctures you, and you are simply flat on the ground. You are not your own master: anybody can insult you and make you sad, angry, irritated, annoyed, violent, mad. And anybody can praise you and make you feel at the heights, can make you feel that you are the greatest — that Alexander the Great was nothing compared to you. And you act according to others’ manipulations. This is not real action.
Buddha was passing through a village and the people came and they insulted him. And they used all the insulting words that they could use — all the four-letter words that they knew. Buddha stood there, listened silently, very attentively, and then said, “Thank you for coming to me, but I am in a hurry. I have to reach the next village, people will be waiting for me there. I cannot devote more time to you today, but tomorrow coming back I will have more time. You can gather again, and tomorrow if something is left which you wanted to say and have not been able to say, you can say it to me. But today, excuse me.”
Those people could not believe their ears, their eyes: this man has remained utterly unaffected, undistracted. One of them asked, “Have you not heard us? We have been abusing you like anything, and you have not even answered!”
Buddha said, “If you wanted an answer then you have come too late. You should have come ten years ago, then I would have answered you. But for these ten years I have stopped being manipulated by others. I am no longer a slave, I am my own master. I act according to myself, not according to anybody else. I act according to my inner need. You cannot force me to do anything. It’s perfectly good, you wanted to abuse me, you abused me! Feel fulfilled. You have done your work perfectly well. But as far as I am concerned, I don’t take your insults, and unless I take them, they are meaningless.”
When somebody insults you, you have to become a receiver, you have to accept what he says; only then can you react. But if you don’t accept, if you simply remain detached, if you keep the distance, if you remain cool, what can he do?
Buddha said, “Somebody can throw a burning torch into the river. It will remain alight till it reaches the river. The moment it falls into the river, all fire is gone — the river cools it. I have become a river. You throw abuses at me. They are fire when you throw them, but the moment they reach me, in my coolness, their fire is lost. They no longer hurt. You throw thorns — falling in my silence they become flowers. I act out of my own intrinsic nature.” This is spontaneity. The man of awareness, understanding, acts. The man who is unaware, unconscious, mechanical, robotlike, reacts.
Curtis, you ask me, “The unconscious man reacts while the wise man watches.” It is not that he simply watches — watching is one aspect of his being. He does not act without watching. But don’t misunderstand the Buddha. The buddhas have always been misunderstood; you are not the first to misunderstand. This whole country has been misunderstanding the Buddha; hence the whole country has become inactive. Thinking that all the great masters say: Sit silently, the country has become lazy, lousy; the country has lost energy, vitality, life. It has become utterly dull, unintelligent, because intelligence becomes sharpened only when you act.
And when you act moment to moment out of your awareness and watchfulness, great intelligence arises. You start shining, glowing, you become luminous. But it happens through two things: watching, and action out of that watching. If watching becomes inaction, you are committing suicide. Watching should lead you into action, a new kind of action; a new quality is brought to action. You watch, you are utterly quiet and silent. You see what the situation is, and out of that seeing you respond. The man of awareness responds, he is responsible – literally! He is responsive, he does not react. His action is born out of his awareness, not out of your manipulation; that is the difference. Hence, there is no question of there being any incompatibility between watching and spontaneity. Watching is the beginning of spontaneity; spontaneity is the fulfillment of watching.
The real man of understanding acts – acts tremendously, acts totally, but he acts in the moment, out of his consciousness. He is like a mirror. The ordinary man, the unconscious man, is not like a mirror, he is like a photo-plate. What is the difference between a mirror and a photo-plate? A photo-plate, once exposed, becomes useless. It receives the impression, becomes impressed by it – it carries the picture. But remember, the picture is not reality – the reality goes on growing. You can go into the garden and you can take a picture of a rosebush. Tomorrow the picture will be the same, the day after tomorrow the picture will also be the same. Go again and see the rosebush: it is no longer the same. The roses have gone, or new roses have arrived. A thousand and one things have happened…A picture is a dead thing. The camera, the photo-plate, catches only a static phenomenon. And life is never static, it goes on changing. Your mind functions like a camera, it goes on collecting pictures — it is an album. And then out of those pictures you go on reacting. Hence, you are never true to life, because whatsoever you do is wrong; WHATSOEVER you do, I say, is wrong. It never fits…
The photo-plate is never true to life. Even if your photo is taken right now, by the time the photographer has taken it out of the camera, you are no longer the same! Much water has already gone down the Ganges. You have grown, changed, you have become older. Maybe only one minute has passed, but one minute can be a great thing — you may be dead! Just one minute before you were alive; after one minute, you may be dead. The picture will never die. But in the mirror, if you are alive, you are alive; if you are dead, you are dead.
Buddha says: Learn sitting silently — become a mirror. Silence makes a mirror out of your consciousness, and then you function moment to moment. You reflect life. You don’t carry an album within your head. Then your eyes are clear and innocent, you have clarity, you have vision, and you are never untrue to life. This is authentic living.
Source:
Listen to complete discourse at mentioned below link.
Discourse series: The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 2 Chapter #10
Chapter title: The law — ancient and inexhaustible
10 July 1979 am in Buddha Hall
References:
Osho has spoken on ‘consciousness, awareness, silence, watchfulness, spontaneity, understanding’ in many of His discourses. More on the subject can be referred to in the following books/discourses:
- The Art of Dying
- The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha
- From Darkness to Light
- The Invitation
- The Path of the Mystic
- The Tantra Vision
- Vigyan Bhairav Tantra
- Sat Chit Anand
- The Buddha: The Emptiness of the Heart
- The Hidden Splendor
- Rinzai: Master of the Irrational
- Tao: The Pathless Path
- Rinzai: Master of the Irrational
