ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS
The Search 02
Second Discourse from the series of 9 discourses - The Search by Osho.
You can listen, download or read all of these discourses on oshoworld.com.
The first question:
Osho,
I don't know why I am here.
Nobody knows – and there is no way to know it, and there is no need to know it. This constant questioning – why am I here? Why am I doing this? This constant hankering for the why is a disease of the mind. No answer is going to satisfy you because the why can be asked again. If I say something – you are here because of this – the why will be pushed back a little, that’s all. You will again ask: Why? The why is never-ending.
Once you understand it, you drop it. The why is ridiculous. Rather than asking why you are here, it is better to use the opportunity, it is better to flower, it is better to exist authentically. And the beauty of it is that once you start existing authentically, truly, once you stop all nonsense thinking and you start delighting in life, once you are no longer a philosopher, the why is answered. But it is not answered by anyone from the outside, it is answered by your own life energy.
The answer is possible, but it is not going to come as an answer; it is going to come as a lived experience. The answer is going to be existential, not intellectual. The question is intellectual. Drop it! Rather, simply be! Otherwise, you can go on asking. For centuries man has asked millions of questions; not a single question has been solved by speculation, thinking, logic, reason. Not even a single question is solved. On the contrary, whenever people have tried to answer a question, the answer has created a thousand and one more questions.
Who created the world? That has been answered: God created the world. And then immediately the question arises: Who created God? Or: Why did he create the world? When did he create the world? And why did he create such a world – so miserable, so hell-like? The one who was answering you that God created the world must have thought that your question would drop; but out of one answer, a thousand and one questions arise. The mind is a question-creating mechanism.
So the first thing to understand is: drop questioning why. Immediately you become religious. Continue with the why, you remain philosophical. Continue questioning, and you remain in the head. Drop questioning. Suddenly the energy moves in a new dimension: the dimension of the heart. The heart has no questions, and in that the answer hides.
It will appear paradoxical, but still I would like to say to you that when your questioning stops, the answer comes. But if you go on questioning, the answer will become more and more elusive.
Why are you here? Who can answer it? If it can be answered, you will no longer be a man, you will become a mechanism. This mike is here and there is a reason for it; it can be answered. The car is there in the porch: the why can be answered. If your why also can be answered, you become a mechanism like a mike or a car – you become a utility, a commodity. But you are a man, not a machine.
Being man means freedom. Why is there freedom? You can ask the question, but the question is foolish. The why about man cannot be answered. And if the why about man cannot be answered, how can it be answered when you ask it of the ultimate, of God? Even about man, the why cannot be answered – about God it is also almost impossible even to raise the question rightly.
My effort is not to answer your questions, but to make you aware that out of a hundred questions, ninety-nine are simply foolish. Drop them! Once you have dropped the foolish questions – they look very philosophical – the one real question remains. And that question is no longer concerned about irrelevant, nonessential things. That one question is concerned about existence, about you, your being. Not why you are here, not about the purpose of your being here, but about your being here – who you are: Who am I?
This can be known because for it there is no need to go to anybody else; you can go inside. To answer it, there is no need to look in the scriptures – you can look inward. To answer it, you just have to close your eyes and go into inner silence. You can feel yourself – who you are. You can taste the flavor – who you are. You can smell it, you can touch it. This is existential questioning. But why you are here, I don’t know. And there is no need to know.
The second thing to be understood: whenever you ask such questions, they are indicative of certain states of mind. For example, whenever you are miserable, you ask why. Whenever you are blissful, you never ask why. If you are suffering, you ask: Why am I suffering? But if you are dancing blissfully, at ease, deep in contentment, do you ask: Why am I blissful? The why would then look ridiculous.
We ask why about something which is not acceptable to us. We ask why about suffering, misery, hell. We never ask why about love, happiness, blissfulness, ecstasy. So the why is simply an indication that you must be miserable. So rather than asking why you are here, ask why you are miserable. Then something can be done because misery can be changed.
Buddha used to say to his disciples: “Don’t ask metaphysical questions; ask existential questions. Don’t ask who created the world; don’t ask why he created the world. These questions simply show that you are living in misery. Ask why you are miserable, then the question is alive and something can be done about it. Something which will change your misery, which will transform the energy that is involved in misery, will release it from the misery. And the same energy can become a flowering of your being.”
You are here – who are you? You cannot ask me that question. A real question has to be faced by yourself. How can I answer your question, who you are? If you cannot answer, then how can I answer your question, who you are? Whatsoever I say will be from the outside – and you are there, deep, very deep within yourself. You have to go deep, you have to fall into your own abyss, into that inner space where only you are and nobody else; not even a thought passes by.
Only in that space will you have the answer – not a verbal answer, not that somebody will say from within you that you are a soul, or you are God. Nobody will say anything, because there is nobody – pure silence. But that silence is the answer. In that silence, you feel, you know. There is no need to give you any information. No words are needed. You have touched your rock bottom, your innermost core.
It happened that a small boy was initiating his younger brother about school. The first grader said to his four-year-old brother: “The smart thing for you to do is not to learn to spell your first word. The minute you learn to spell cat you are trapped. From then on the words get longer and longer and longer.”
If you are here, you have spelled the word cat. This question is asked by one of my sannyasins, Yoga Pratima. You have spelled the word cat already. Now the words will become longer and longer and longer – you are trapped! So rather than asking why you are here, use this opportunity. Allow me and allow yourself – toward a transformation of your being. Allow me to enter you! Don’t ask stupid questions. Open your doors.
Rather than answering you, I can help you toward an inner transformation where all questions disappear – and the answer appears. But that is experiential. You will know it, but you will not be able to tell others. You will know it, your whole being will show it; your eyes will say something about it – there will be a glow around you. People who have eyes to see will be able to see that you know it. But you will not be able to say who you are. No word can express that – it is so tremendously vast. You can have it, but you cannot express it.
So what do you want? Should I give you a verbal answer why you are here? Can’t you see that whatsoever I say will be irrelevant? I can say: Because in your past lives you have earned many good karmas, you have been very virtuous – that’s why you are here. Is that going to help? That will make you even more egoistic. That will create a barrier between me and you. Rather than being open, you will become more closed.
What do you want? Do you want me to say that I have called you as among a chosen few? You have not come, but you have been called? You would like such answers, but they are meaningless and harmful because once you start feeling that you are of the chosen few you will miss me, because these are all tricks of the ego. It goes on playing so many games.
Don’t ask for answers. Ask for the answer. Then I can show you the way, I can lead you toward the temple. Once inside the temple, you will know. And there is no other way to know it.
Knowing from somebody else can never really be knowledge. It remains, at the most, information. Knowing from somebody else is never intimate. It remains just on the periphery. It never penetrates to your innermost core, it never hits home. Philosophy and religion differ in this. Philosophy goes on thinking in terms of questions and answers, reasoning, syllogism, logic – it is thinking. Religion is not thinking at all. It is more practical – as practical as science, as pragmatic as science. The method of religion is not speculation; the method of religion is experience. Meditate more, and in the interludes, in the gaps, in the intervals when one thought has gone and another has not come in, you will have the first glimpses of satori, samadhi.
This word interlude is very beautiful. It comes from two Latin words: inter and ludus. Ludus means games, play, and inter means between. Interlude means between the games. You are playing the game of a husband or a wife; then you play the game of a father or a mother. Then you go to the office and you play the game of being a banker, a businessman – a thousand and one games you play, twenty-four hours a day. Between two games – interludes.
Go into yourself. For a few moments every day, whenever you can get an opportunity, drop all games, just be yourself – not a father, nor a mother, nor a son, nor a banker, nor a servant: nobody. These are all games. Find the interludes. Between two games, relax in, sink in, drown into your own being – and there is the answer.
I can show you how to drown in interludes, but I cannot give you the answer. The answer will come to you. It is true only when it comes to you. Truth has to be one’s own – only then is it truth, only then does it liberate. My truth will become a theory to you; it will not be a truth at all. My truth can blind you, but cannot make your eyes more perceptive. My truth can surround you as a security, but it will be borrowed – and truth cannot be borrowed.
The second question:
Osho,
Please explain the difference between decidophobia and disciplehood.
The question is complex, and you will have to be very alert to understand it because with complex questions misunderstanding is more possible than understanding.
The first thing: disciplehood is a great decision. You can become a disciple only if you drop your decidophobia because it is a great decision, it is a commitment. You cannot become a disciple if you are afraid of making decisions. This is the greatest decision in one’s life – to trust somebody else as the master, to trust somebody else and stake your whole life with the master. It is a gamble. Much courage is needed. Too many people come to me who say they would like to become sannyasins, but they are afraid. The decision is too much, and a thousand and one things have to be considered before they make the decision.
Decidophobia means you are afraid of deciding anything. Disciplehood is a decision. If you are born a Hindu, that is not disciplehood. If you are a born Hindu and a shankaracharya comes to your town and you go and pay your respects, that is not disciplehood. You never decided to be a Hindu in the first place. This is coincidence; your Hinduism is just an accident. Somebody else is a Christian, and the pope comes and he goes to pay his respects – that is not disciplehood. He never decided to be a Catholic or a Christian.
In fact, you remain a Hindu or a Christian because you cannot decide to get out of them. It is not a decision; it is a lack of decision. Because you are afraid of deciding, you continue whatsoever you have got from tradition, heritage, from your father and mother. Just think about it: people decide their religion by their blood. Is any greater stupidity possible? Your religion being decided by your blood? Then take the Mohammedan’s blood and the Hindu’s and the Christian’s blood, and go to an expert and ask him which is the Hindu’s blood and which is the Mohammedan’s blood. No expert can show you; blood is simply blood. There are differences in blood, but those differences are not religious.
Deciding your religion just by birth is as if you are deciding your future by the I Ching, or going to an astrologer, deciding your future by the stars, or Tarot cards. These are not decisions; these are tricks for how not to decide. Somebody else decides for you. The book of I Ching was written five thousand years ago – somebody, nobody knows his name now, is deciding for you. You ask long-dead people to decide your future. You ask the past to decide your future. It is helpful in a way, because you are no longer needed to decide. If you are a Hindu, you have not decided it just by your birth. Your disciplehood is not disciplehood, it is decidophobia.
Just observe: in small things you think too much, and in great things you don’t think at all. If you go to the market to purchase clothes, you decide – ordinary things, trivia, you decide. It is as if there is a rule that if you drive your car slowly then drive carefully, but if you are going beyond fifty miles per hour then close your eyes. In small things – purchasing clothes or toothpaste or soap – you decide. Religion, God, meditation, prayer, you leave to somebody else to decide.
In great things you want to be blindfolded, and tradition works as a blindfold. People who are not born blind become almost blind because of a constant blindfold. Blinkers are on your eyes. Somebody’s blinkers are known as Hindu, somebody else’s as Christian, somebody else’s as Jaina, but they are all blinkers, blindfolds, given to you by the society because you are afraid of opening your eyes. So better to let somebody else decide; then you are freed of the responsibility, and you can say: We are obedient. Tradition is great, we simply follow the tradition. The past is great, and we follow the past.
You can rationalize these things, but this is not disciplehood. Disciplehood is always a personal choice. For example, you are here. I am neither a Christian, nor a Hindu, nor a Mohammedan, nor a Jaina, nor a Buddhist, and if you decide to go with me, it is going to be a decision. If you suffer from decidophobia, you cannot go with me; then you will remain within the fold in which you were accidentally born.
Once you decide – and “decide” means you have to decide, the responsibility is yours and it is personal - it is a commitment. I know it is very difficult to decide; hence much courage is needed. You can be Hindu easily; you can be Christian easily. But to walk with me you will have to drop your decidophobia. Only then do you become a disciple.
So it depends what type of disciplehood you are keeping in your mind. In the world there are very few disciples. Yes, the people who decided to go with Jesus were disciples.
Jesus passed by a lake, and two fishermen had just thrown their net in the lake. He came to them, and put his hand on one of the fishermen’s shoulders. The fisherman looked at Jesus – those tremendously penetrating eyes, those tremendously silent eyes, more silent than the lake – and Jesus said to that man, “What are you doing? Why are you wasting your whole life in catching fish? Come with me, I will teach you how to catch men. Why go on wasting your life catching fish? Come follow me!”
A great moment. The man must have wavered between decidophobia and disciplehood. But then he gathered courage, he threw the net into the lake, and he followed Jesus.
When they were leaving the town, a man came running and said to the fisherman, “Where are you going? Your father who was ill is dead. Come back home!”
The fisherman asked Jesus’ permission: “Let me go for three, four days so I can finish with the last rites for my dead father, and then I will come.”
And Jesus said, “Forget all about it. There are enough dead people in the town, they will bury the dead. You come follow me!” And he followed, he forgot all about his dead father.
This is disciplehood. Those who followed Jesus were disciples, but Christians are not disciples; now they are following a dead tradition. Those who followed Buddha were disciples, but Buddhists are not disciples. You are my disciples. Some day or other your children’s children will also remember me – they will not be my disciples. If your children start remembering me, loving me, because of you, then they are not related to me – then they have a fear of decision. Don’t create that fear in your children’s minds. Let them decide for themselves.
Life can become very rich if people are left to decide. But society tries to force decisions on you. Society is afraid that if it does not decide for you, you may not be able to decide. But, in fact, because of this, by and by you lose the capacity to decide things. And once you lose your decisiveness, you lose your soul.
The word soul means an integrated unity within you. It comes out of great, fatal decisions. The more you decide and the riskier the decision is, the more integrated you become, crystallized.
If you have decided – and remember the emphasis – if you have decided to be with me, this is a great revolution in your life, a momentous phenomenon. But if you are not the deciding one – you came here because your wife was here or your husband was here, your friends were here and you came here and you saw so many people running around in orange, and you started feeling like an outsider, and you started feeling a little uneasy, so that you felt alien, and because of that you also took sannyas – then this is decidophobia, this is not disciplehood; then you have followed the crowd. Your sannyas is not worth anything, because it is not your sannyas at all. You have imitated. Never imitate. Be decisive on your own, and every decision will give you more and more integration.
This is a great decision – to commit, to get involved totally, to go with me toward the unknown. The mind will create a thousand and one doubts, hesitations; the mind would like to cling to the past. But if you decide, in spite of all this, you rise above your past, you transcend your past.
But don’t try to be clever. Try to be authentic and true. Don’t try to rationalize, because you may have taken sannyas without any decision on your part. You may have drifted with the crowd. Then you will rationalize it. You will say: Yes, this is my decision. But whom are you trying to kid? You are deceiving only yourself.
I have heard an anecdote:
The mother was scolding her oldest son: “I have told you before that you should let your little brother play with the toys half the time.”
“I do!” protested the kid. “I use the sled going downhill and let him use it going uphill – half the time!”
Don’t try to be clever. You can call your decidophobia a disciplehood – but you are not deceiving me, you are deceiving only yourself. Be clear about it. Great clarity is needed in the search for truth.
The third question:
Osho,
Why do I have such a strong reaction to discipline? And an attraction and a voice saying, “You must!”
Is there a difference between obeying and surrender?
There is a great difference. Not only a difference: obeying and surrender are diametrically opposite. Listen well.
If you are surrendered then there is no question of obeying. Then my voice is your voice; you don’t obey it. Then I am no longer separate from you. If you are not surrendered, then you obey it, because my voice is separate from yours. You manage to obey; you enforce a certain discipline on yourself. There must be some greed behind it. You must be looking for some result. So you obey, but deep down you remain separate. Deep down the resistance goes on continuing. Deep down you are still fighting with me. In the very word obey there is resistance.
Obeying is ugly. Either surrender or be on your own. Obeying is a compromise: you don’t want to surrender, one thing; and you are not confident to remain on your own, another thing. So you compromise. You say: I will remain on my own, but obey. I will listen to you, whatsoever you say, and will find ways and means to obey it.
Surrender is a totally different thing. There is no duality in surrender. When a disciple surrenders to a master, they have become one; that moment the duality has disappeared. Now the master is no longer thought of as separate, so who is going to obey and who is going to obey whom?
“Why does so much reaction come against discipline?” Because the surrender has not yet happened. Otherwise, discipline is beautiful; there is nothing like discipline. If surrender has happened, then you don’t enforce discipline, it comes spontaneously. When I say something to you, and you are surrendered, you hear my voice as your own. In fact, you will see immediately that this is what you wanted to do, but you were not clear about it. You will be able to understand that I have told you something about which you were groping in the dark. You had a certain feel for it, but things were vague – I have made them clear for you. I have spoken for you. I have brought your own heart’s desire to you.
In surrender that is going to happen. Then what is the point of calling it “obeying”? It is not obedience. In obedience, a certain conflict is hidden.
I have heard an anecdote…
A man had been having trouble with his teenage son, so he sent him out to a cattle ranch operated by an old friend. After the youth had been working on the ranch a couple of months, the father asked about his progress.
“Well,” said the rancher friend, “he’s been working good. Already he speaks cow language.”
“Sounds alright.”
“But,” said the old cowman seriously, “he ain’t learnt yet to think like a cow.”
That’s the difference. Once you start thinking like a cow, then there is no question of any obedience or disobedience. Once you start thinking like me, then there is no question, then there is no problem, no conflict, no struggle, no effort. Then, in fact, you are not following me, you are following yourself. This happens in deep surrender.
Ordinarily, people have a very wrong notion about surrender, particularly in the West. Surrender is a deeply Eastern concept. People think that in surrender your individuality will be lost. Absolutely wrong, one hundred percent wrong. In surrender your personality is not lost. In fact in surrender your personality for the first time becomes clear; because if you surrender, you surrender the ego, not the personality, not the individuality. It is just the wrong notion that you are somebody - you drop that notion. Once that notion is dropped, you are at ease; you grow. Your individuality remains intact, in fact it grows bigger and bigger. Of course there will not be the feeling of “I,” but a tremendous growth will happen.
If surrender is not there, then millions of questions arise about how to obey.
I was called to a seminar; chancellors and vice-chancellors from many universities had gathered there. They were very worried about the lack of discipline in the schools, colleges and universities, and they were worried about the new generation’s disrespectful attitude toward the teachers.
I listened to their views and I told them, “I see that somewhere the very basis is missing. A teacher is one who is respected naturally, so a teacher cannot demand respect. If the teacher demands respect, he simply shows that he is not a teacher; he has chosen the wrong profession; that is not his vocation. The very definition of a teacher is one who is naturally respected; not that you have to respect him. If you have to respect him, what type of respect is this going to be? Notice: ‘have to respect’ – the whole beauty is lost, the respect is not alive. If it has to be done, then it is not there. When it is there, nobody thinks about it, nobody is self-conscious about it. It simply flows. Whenever a teacher is there it simply flows.”
So I asked the seminar: “Rather than asking students to respect the teachers, please decide again – you must be choosing the wrong teachers, people who are not teachers at all.”
Teachers are as much born as poets, it is a great art. Not everybody can be a teacher, but because of universal education millions of teachers are required. Just think of a society that thinks that poetry is to be taught by poets and everybody is to be taught poetry. Then millions of poets will be required. Of course, then there will be poets’ training colleges. Those poets will be bogus, and they will demand: Applaud us because we are poets! Why are you not respecting us? This has happened with teachers.
In the past there were very few teachers. People used to travel thousands of miles to find a teacher, to be with him. There was tremendous respect, but the respect depended on the quality of the teacher. It was not an expectation from the disciple or from the student or the pupil. It simply happened.
If you are surrendered, obedience simply happens without any self-consciousness. Not that you have to follow, you simply find yourself following. One day you simply recognize the fact that you have been following, and there has been no conflict, no struggle. The more you try to be obedient, the more resistance will grow.
I have heard…
A woman complained to her doctor: “You just don’t know how bad I feel! Why, I can’t even eat the things you told me not to!”
Once you say to somebody, “Don’t do this!” a deep desire arises to do it. “Don’t eat this!” a deep desire arises to eat it. The mind always functions negatively; the very function of the mind is to negate, to say no.
Notice how many times you say no in the day, and reduce that quota. Watch yourself, how many times you say yes and increase that quota. By and by you will see just a slight change in the degrees of yes and no, and your personality is basically changing. Watch how many times you say no where yes would have been easier; there was no need really to say no. How many times you could have said yes, but either you said no or you kept quiet.
Whenever you say yes, it goes against the ego. The ego cannot eat yes; it feeds itself on no’s. Say: No! No! No! And great ego arises within yourself.
When you go to the railway station, you may be alone at the window to purchase a ticket, but the clerk will start doing something; he will not look at you. He is trying to say no. He will at least make you wait. He will pretend that he is very busy; he will look into this register and this and that. He will force you to wait. That gives him a feeling of power, that he is no ordinary clerk – he can make anybody wait.
It happened just in the beginning days of Soviet Russia when Leon Trotsky was the War Minister there. He was very strict with rules, discipline, this and that. There was going to be a great meeting of the Communist Party, and he was in charge of issuing passes. He completely forgot that he also needed a pass to enter the hall. When he went there the policeman who was standing at the gate stopped him. He said, “Where is your pass?”
Leon Trotsky said, “Don’t you recognize me?”
He said, “I recognize you perfectly well. You are our War Minister. But where is your pass?”
Trotsky said, “Look at the other passes you are holding in your hands. They are signed by me.”
The policeman said, “Maybe, but this is the rule, that nobody can enter without a pass. So go back home and find a pass.”
Leon Trotsky wrote in his diary, “I could see how powerful he was feeling that day: saying no to the War Minister, making him feel tiny.”
People go on saying no. The child asks his mother: “Can I go outside and play?” And immediately, without thinking for a single moment, she says no. Politics! What is wrong with being outside, going outside and playing? The child is going to go; the child will insist, and he will throw a tantrum, and then mother will say, “Okay, you can go.” This could have been done in the first place, in the very beginning, but even a mother cannot lose an opportunity to say no.
The first thing that comes to your mind is no. Yes is more difficult. You say yes only when you feel absolutely helpless and you have to say it. Just notice! Make yourself a yea-sayer; drop no-saying because it is the poison of no on which the ego feeds itself, nourishes itself.
A religious man is one who has said yes to existence. Out of that yes, God is born. Yes is the father of God; that yes attitude is a religious attitude.
But remember: I don’t insist on obedience. Either be with me totally, or don’t be with me at all. Compromise is not good, compromise kills. Compromise will make you lukewarm, and nobody can evaporate from that state. Compromise comes out of fear. Take courage – either be with me or don’t be with me; but don’t be in limbo. Otherwise, one part of your mind will go on saying: I have to follow, I have to do this, and another part will go on saying: No, why should I do it? And this constant conflict within yourself dissipates energy, it is destructive. It will poison your whole being.
The fourth question:
Osho,
What if there are not any gaps?
Look within; it has never been so and you cannot be an exception. All seekers who have gone within have gone through the gaps. The gaps are there, but you have not looked and hence the question has an “if.” Please don’t ask “if” questions. I am not talking about theories, I am talking about facts.
It is as if somebody asks: What if there is no heart within? But the “if” is just speculative. Close your eyes and you will hear the heartbeat. If you are to ask the question, the heart is bound to be there.
If you are there to raise this question, the gaps are bound to be there. Without gaps, thinking cannot exist. Between two words the gap is a necessity; otherwise the two words will not be separate, they will overlap. Between two sentences there is a gap – necessarily so, otherwise there will be no division between the sentences, between two thoughts.
Just look within.
At the supper table one night a farmer was very angry.
“Where were you boys when I called for you to help me an hour ago?” he demanded.
“I was in the barn setting a hen,” said one.
“I was in the loft setting a saw,” said another.
“I was in grandpa’s room setting the clock,” said the third.
“And I was in the pantry setting a trap,” said the fourth son.
“A fine set you are!” exclaimed the farmer. “And where were you?” he asked, turning to the youngest son.
“I was on the doorstep setting still.”
So find a few moments when you can be just be “setting still”; immediately you will be in the gaps. Sitting silently, you will be in the gaps.
Thoughts are intruders; gaps are your real nature. Thoughts come and go. The emptiness within you always remains; it never comes, never goes. The emptiness is the background; thoughts are moving figures against it. Just as you write on a blackboard with white chalk – the blackboard is there, you write with white chalk – your inner emptiness functions as a blackboard, and on that blackboard thoughts appear.
Slow down! Slow down a little. Just sit silently, relaxed, not doing anything in particular. When you ask “if” questions, you are wasting time. In the same time and with the same energy, those gaps can be experienced and you can become immensely rich. And once you have tasted the gaps, then thoughts’ hold on you will disappear.
The last question:
Osho,
Who cares? Is this creative indifference, or sleep?
Please comment.
Creativity can never be indifferent. Creativity cares because creativity is love. Creativity is the function of loving and caring. Creativity cannot be indifferent. If you are indifferent, by and by all your creativity will disappear. Creativity needs passion, aliveness, energy. Creativity needs you to remain a flow, an intense, passionate flow.
If you look at a flower indifferently, the flower cannot be beautiful. Through indifference, everything becomes ordinary. Then one lives in a cold way, shrunken in upon oneself. This calamity has happened in the East because religion took a wrong turn and people started thinking that you have to be indifferent to life.
One Hindu sannyasin came to see me once. He looked around my garden, and there were many flowers, and I was working in the garden when he came to see me. He said, “Are you interested in the flowers and gardening?” On his face there was a look of condemnation. He said, “But I was thinking you must be indifferent to all these things.”
I am not indifferent. Indifference is negative, it is suicidal; it is escapist. Of course, if you become indifferent many things will not bother you; you will live surrounded by your indifference. You will not be distracted, you will not be disturbed. But just not to be distracted is not the point. You will never be happy and overflowing.
In the East, many people think that to be indifferent is the way of religion. They pull away from life, they become escapists. They have not created anything. They simply vegetate and they think they have attained something. They have not attained anything.
Attainment is always positive and attainment is always creative. God is creativity – how can you reach God by being indifferent? God is not indifferent. He cares about even small blades of grass, he cares about them also. He takes as much care to paint a butterfly as he takes to create a buddha.
The whole loves. And if you want to become one with the whole, you have to love. Indifference is a slow suicide. Be in deep love, so much so that you completely disappear in your love, that you become a pure creative energy. Only then do you participate with God, hand in hand you go with him.
To me creativity is prayer, creativity is meditation, creativity is life.
So don’t be afraid of life, and don’t close yourself in indifference. Indifference will desensitize you; you will lose all sensitivity; your body will become dull, your intelligence will become dull. You will live in a dark cell, afraid of the light and the sun, afraid of the wind and the clouds and the sea – afraid of everything. You will wrap a blanket of indifference all around you and you will start dying.
Move! Be dynamic! And whatsoever you do, do it so lovingly that the very act becomes creative and divine. I am not saying that you all should become painters and poets; that’s not possible. There is no need. You may be a housewife – your cooking can be creative. You may be a shoemaker – your shoemaking can be creative. Whatsoever you do, do it so totally, so lovingly, so intimately; get involved in it so that your act is not something outside. Move into your act and your act becomes a fulfillment. This I call religious. A religious person, a religious consciousness, is immensely creative.
Never use the phrase: Who cares? That attitude comes from the ego – who cares? No, if you really want to grow, care more. Let care be your whole style of life. Care about each and every thing. And don’t make any distinction between the great and the small. Very small things – just cleaning the floor – do it with deep care, as if it is the body of your beloved, and suddenly you will see that you are being born anew through your own creativity.
Each creative act becomes a rebirth for the creator, and each indifferent act becomes a suicide, a slow death. Be overflowing. Don’t be misers. Don’t try to hold – share! Let care be the very center of your life. And then there is no need to go to church, no need to go to temple, no need to kneel down before any god and pray. Your “butterfly life,” your way of life, is prayer. Whatsoever you touch will become sacred. I say whatsoever, unconditionally.
Love makes everything sacred. Carelessness makes everything ugly.
Enough for today.
Osho,
I don't know why I am here.
Nobody knows – and there is no way to know it, and there is no need to know it. This constant questioning – why am I here? Why am I doing this? This constant hankering for the why is a disease of the mind. No answer is going to satisfy you because the why can be asked again. If I say something – you are here because of this – the why will be pushed back a little, that’s all. You will again ask: Why? The why is never-ending.
Once you understand it, you drop it. The why is ridiculous. Rather than asking why you are here, it is better to use the opportunity, it is better to flower, it is better to exist authentically. And the beauty of it is that once you start existing authentically, truly, once you stop all nonsense thinking and you start delighting in life, once you are no longer a philosopher, the why is answered. But it is not answered by anyone from the outside, it is answered by your own life energy.
The answer is possible, but it is not going to come as an answer; it is going to come as a lived experience. The answer is going to be existential, not intellectual. The question is intellectual. Drop it! Rather, simply be! Otherwise, you can go on asking. For centuries man has asked millions of questions; not a single question has been solved by speculation, thinking, logic, reason. Not even a single question is solved. On the contrary, whenever people have tried to answer a question, the answer has created a thousand and one more questions.
Who created the world? That has been answered: God created the world. And then immediately the question arises: Who created God? Or: Why did he create the world? When did he create the world? And why did he create such a world – so miserable, so hell-like? The one who was answering you that God created the world must have thought that your question would drop; but out of one answer, a thousand and one questions arise. The mind is a question-creating mechanism.
So the first thing to understand is: drop questioning why. Immediately you become religious. Continue with the why, you remain philosophical. Continue questioning, and you remain in the head. Drop questioning. Suddenly the energy moves in a new dimension: the dimension of the heart. The heart has no questions, and in that the answer hides.
It will appear paradoxical, but still I would like to say to you that when your questioning stops, the answer comes. But if you go on questioning, the answer will become more and more elusive.
Why are you here? Who can answer it? If it can be answered, you will no longer be a man, you will become a mechanism. This mike is here and there is a reason for it; it can be answered. The car is there in the porch: the why can be answered. If your why also can be answered, you become a mechanism like a mike or a car – you become a utility, a commodity. But you are a man, not a machine.
Being man means freedom. Why is there freedom? You can ask the question, but the question is foolish. The why about man cannot be answered. And if the why about man cannot be answered, how can it be answered when you ask it of the ultimate, of God? Even about man, the why cannot be answered – about God it is also almost impossible even to raise the question rightly.
My effort is not to answer your questions, but to make you aware that out of a hundred questions, ninety-nine are simply foolish. Drop them! Once you have dropped the foolish questions – they look very philosophical – the one real question remains. And that question is no longer concerned about irrelevant, nonessential things. That one question is concerned about existence, about you, your being. Not why you are here, not about the purpose of your being here, but about your being here – who you are: Who am I?
This can be known because for it there is no need to go to anybody else; you can go inside. To answer it, there is no need to look in the scriptures – you can look inward. To answer it, you just have to close your eyes and go into inner silence. You can feel yourself – who you are. You can taste the flavor – who you are. You can smell it, you can touch it. This is existential questioning. But why you are here, I don’t know. And there is no need to know.
The second thing to be understood: whenever you ask such questions, they are indicative of certain states of mind. For example, whenever you are miserable, you ask why. Whenever you are blissful, you never ask why. If you are suffering, you ask: Why am I suffering? But if you are dancing blissfully, at ease, deep in contentment, do you ask: Why am I blissful? The why would then look ridiculous.
We ask why about something which is not acceptable to us. We ask why about suffering, misery, hell. We never ask why about love, happiness, blissfulness, ecstasy. So the why is simply an indication that you must be miserable. So rather than asking why you are here, ask why you are miserable. Then something can be done because misery can be changed.
Buddha used to say to his disciples: “Don’t ask metaphysical questions; ask existential questions. Don’t ask who created the world; don’t ask why he created the world. These questions simply show that you are living in misery. Ask why you are miserable, then the question is alive and something can be done about it. Something which will change your misery, which will transform the energy that is involved in misery, will release it from the misery. And the same energy can become a flowering of your being.”
You are here – who are you? You cannot ask me that question. A real question has to be faced by yourself. How can I answer your question, who you are? If you cannot answer, then how can I answer your question, who you are? Whatsoever I say will be from the outside – and you are there, deep, very deep within yourself. You have to go deep, you have to fall into your own abyss, into that inner space where only you are and nobody else; not even a thought passes by.
Only in that space will you have the answer – not a verbal answer, not that somebody will say from within you that you are a soul, or you are God. Nobody will say anything, because there is nobody – pure silence. But that silence is the answer. In that silence, you feel, you know. There is no need to give you any information. No words are needed. You have touched your rock bottom, your innermost core.
It happened that a small boy was initiating his younger brother about school. The first grader said to his four-year-old brother: “The smart thing for you to do is not to learn to spell your first word. The minute you learn to spell cat you are trapped. From then on the words get longer and longer and longer.”
If you are here, you have spelled the word cat. This question is asked by one of my sannyasins, Yoga Pratima. You have spelled the word cat already. Now the words will become longer and longer and longer – you are trapped! So rather than asking why you are here, use this opportunity. Allow me and allow yourself – toward a transformation of your being. Allow me to enter you! Don’t ask stupid questions. Open your doors.
Rather than answering you, I can help you toward an inner transformation where all questions disappear – and the answer appears. But that is experiential. You will know it, but you will not be able to tell others. You will know it, your whole being will show it; your eyes will say something about it – there will be a glow around you. People who have eyes to see will be able to see that you know it. But you will not be able to say who you are. No word can express that – it is so tremendously vast. You can have it, but you cannot express it.
So what do you want? Should I give you a verbal answer why you are here? Can’t you see that whatsoever I say will be irrelevant? I can say: Because in your past lives you have earned many good karmas, you have been very virtuous – that’s why you are here. Is that going to help? That will make you even more egoistic. That will create a barrier between me and you. Rather than being open, you will become more closed.
What do you want? Do you want me to say that I have called you as among a chosen few? You have not come, but you have been called? You would like such answers, but they are meaningless and harmful because once you start feeling that you are of the chosen few you will miss me, because these are all tricks of the ego. It goes on playing so many games.
Don’t ask for answers. Ask for the answer. Then I can show you the way, I can lead you toward the temple. Once inside the temple, you will know. And there is no other way to know it.
Knowing from somebody else can never really be knowledge. It remains, at the most, information. Knowing from somebody else is never intimate. It remains just on the periphery. It never penetrates to your innermost core, it never hits home. Philosophy and religion differ in this. Philosophy goes on thinking in terms of questions and answers, reasoning, syllogism, logic – it is thinking. Religion is not thinking at all. It is more practical – as practical as science, as pragmatic as science. The method of religion is not speculation; the method of religion is experience. Meditate more, and in the interludes, in the gaps, in the intervals when one thought has gone and another has not come in, you will have the first glimpses of satori, samadhi.
This word interlude is very beautiful. It comes from two Latin words: inter and ludus. Ludus means games, play, and inter means between. Interlude means between the games. You are playing the game of a husband or a wife; then you play the game of a father or a mother. Then you go to the office and you play the game of being a banker, a businessman – a thousand and one games you play, twenty-four hours a day. Between two games – interludes.
Go into yourself. For a few moments every day, whenever you can get an opportunity, drop all games, just be yourself – not a father, nor a mother, nor a son, nor a banker, nor a servant: nobody. These are all games. Find the interludes. Between two games, relax in, sink in, drown into your own being – and there is the answer.
I can show you how to drown in interludes, but I cannot give you the answer. The answer will come to you. It is true only when it comes to you. Truth has to be one’s own – only then is it truth, only then does it liberate. My truth will become a theory to you; it will not be a truth at all. My truth can blind you, but cannot make your eyes more perceptive. My truth can surround you as a security, but it will be borrowed – and truth cannot be borrowed.
The second question:
Osho,
Please explain the difference between decidophobia and disciplehood.
The question is complex, and you will have to be very alert to understand it because with complex questions misunderstanding is more possible than understanding.
The first thing: disciplehood is a great decision. You can become a disciple only if you drop your decidophobia because it is a great decision, it is a commitment. You cannot become a disciple if you are afraid of making decisions. This is the greatest decision in one’s life – to trust somebody else as the master, to trust somebody else and stake your whole life with the master. It is a gamble. Much courage is needed. Too many people come to me who say they would like to become sannyasins, but they are afraid. The decision is too much, and a thousand and one things have to be considered before they make the decision.
Decidophobia means you are afraid of deciding anything. Disciplehood is a decision. If you are born a Hindu, that is not disciplehood. If you are a born Hindu and a shankaracharya comes to your town and you go and pay your respects, that is not disciplehood. You never decided to be a Hindu in the first place. This is coincidence; your Hinduism is just an accident. Somebody else is a Christian, and the pope comes and he goes to pay his respects – that is not disciplehood. He never decided to be a Catholic or a Christian.
In fact, you remain a Hindu or a Christian because you cannot decide to get out of them. It is not a decision; it is a lack of decision. Because you are afraid of deciding, you continue whatsoever you have got from tradition, heritage, from your father and mother. Just think about it: people decide their religion by their blood. Is any greater stupidity possible? Your religion being decided by your blood? Then take the Mohammedan’s blood and the Hindu’s and the Christian’s blood, and go to an expert and ask him which is the Hindu’s blood and which is the Mohammedan’s blood. No expert can show you; blood is simply blood. There are differences in blood, but those differences are not religious.
Deciding your religion just by birth is as if you are deciding your future by the I Ching, or going to an astrologer, deciding your future by the stars, or Tarot cards. These are not decisions; these are tricks for how not to decide. Somebody else decides for you. The book of I Ching was written five thousand years ago – somebody, nobody knows his name now, is deciding for you. You ask long-dead people to decide your future. You ask the past to decide your future. It is helpful in a way, because you are no longer needed to decide. If you are a Hindu, you have not decided it just by your birth. Your disciplehood is not disciplehood, it is decidophobia.
Just observe: in small things you think too much, and in great things you don’t think at all. If you go to the market to purchase clothes, you decide – ordinary things, trivia, you decide. It is as if there is a rule that if you drive your car slowly then drive carefully, but if you are going beyond fifty miles per hour then close your eyes. In small things – purchasing clothes or toothpaste or soap – you decide. Religion, God, meditation, prayer, you leave to somebody else to decide.
In great things you want to be blindfolded, and tradition works as a blindfold. People who are not born blind become almost blind because of a constant blindfold. Blinkers are on your eyes. Somebody’s blinkers are known as Hindu, somebody else’s as Christian, somebody else’s as Jaina, but they are all blinkers, blindfolds, given to you by the society because you are afraid of opening your eyes. So better to let somebody else decide; then you are freed of the responsibility, and you can say: We are obedient. Tradition is great, we simply follow the tradition. The past is great, and we follow the past.
You can rationalize these things, but this is not disciplehood. Disciplehood is always a personal choice. For example, you are here. I am neither a Christian, nor a Hindu, nor a Mohammedan, nor a Jaina, nor a Buddhist, and if you decide to go with me, it is going to be a decision. If you suffer from decidophobia, you cannot go with me; then you will remain within the fold in which you were accidentally born.
Once you decide – and “decide” means you have to decide, the responsibility is yours and it is personal - it is a commitment. I know it is very difficult to decide; hence much courage is needed. You can be Hindu easily; you can be Christian easily. But to walk with me you will have to drop your decidophobia. Only then do you become a disciple.
So it depends what type of disciplehood you are keeping in your mind. In the world there are very few disciples. Yes, the people who decided to go with Jesus were disciples.
Jesus passed by a lake, and two fishermen had just thrown their net in the lake. He came to them, and put his hand on one of the fishermen’s shoulders. The fisherman looked at Jesus – those tremendously penetrating eyes, those tremendously silent eyes, more silent than the lake – and Jesus said to that man, “What are you doing? Why are you wasting your whole life in catching fish? Come with me, I will teach you how to catch men. Why go on wasting your life catching fish? Come follow me!”
A great moment. The man must have wavered between decidophobia and disciplehood. But then he gathered courage, he threw the net into the lake, and he followed Jesus.
When they were leaving the town, a man came running and said to the fisherman, “Where are you going? Your father who was ill is dead. Come back home!”
The fisherman asked Jesus’ permission: “Let me go for three, four days so I can finish with the last rites for my dead father, and then I will come.”
And Jesus said, “Forget all about it. There are enough dead people in the town, they will bury the dead. You come follow me!” And he followed, he forgot all about his dead father.
This is disciplehood. Those who followed Jesus were disciples, but Christians are not disciples; now they are following a dead tradition. Those who followed Buddha were disciples, but Buddhists are not disciples. You are my disciples. Some day or other your children’s children will also remember me – they will not be my disciples. If your children start remembering me, loving me, because of you, then they are not related to me – then they have a fear of decision. Don’t create that fear in your children’s minds. Let them decide for themselves.
Life can become very rich if people are left to decide. But society tries to force decisions on you. Society is afraid that if it does not decide for you, you may not be able to decide. But, in fact, because of this, by and by you lose the capacity to decide things. And once you lose your decisiveness, you lose your soul.
The word soul means an integrated unity within you. It comes out of great, fatal decisions. The more you decide and the riskier the decision is, the more integrated you become, crystallized.
If you have decided – and remember the emphasis – if you have decided to be with me, this is a great revolution in your life, a momentous phenomenon. But if you are not the deciding one – you came here because your wife was here or your husband was here, your friends were here and you came here and you saw so many people running around in orange, and you started feeling like an outsider, and you started feeling a little uneasy, so that you felt alien, and because of that you also took sannyas – then this is decidophobia, this is not disciplehood; then you have followed the crowd. Your sannyas is not worth anything, because it is not your sannyas at all. You have imitated. Never imitate. Be decisive on your own, and every decision will give you more and more integration.
This is a great decision – to commit, to get involved totally, to go with me toward the unknown. The mind will create a thousand and one doubts, hesitations; the mind would like to cling to the past. But if you decide, in spite of all this, you rise above your past, you transcend your past.
But don’t try to be clever. Try to be authentic and true. Don’t try to rationalize, because you may have taken sannyas without any decision on your part. You may have drifted with the crowd. Then you will rationalize it. You will say: Yes, this is my decision. But whom are you trying to kid? You are deceiving only yourself.
I have heard an anecdote:
The mother was scolding her oldest son: “I have told you before that you should let your little brother play with the toys half the time.”
“I do!” protested the kid. “I use the sled going downhill and let him use it going uphill – half the time!”
Don’t try to be clever. You can call your decidophobia a disciplehood – but you are not deceiving me, you are deceiving only yourself. Be clear about it. Great clarity is needed in the search for truth.
The third question:
Osho,
Why do I have such a strong reaction to discipline? And an attraction and a voice saying, “You must!”
Is there a difference between obeying and surrender?
There is a great difference. Not only a difference: obeying and surrender are diametrically opposite. Listen well.
If you are surrendered then there is no question of obeying. Then my voice is your voice; you don’t obey it. Then I am no longer separate from you. If you are not surrendered, then you obey it, because my voice is separate from yours. You manage to obey; you enforce a certain discipline on yourself. There must be some greed behind it. You must be looking for some result. So you obey, but deep down you remain separate. Deep down the resistance goes on continuing. Deep down you are still fighting with me. In the very word obey there is resistance.
Obeying is ugly. Either surrender or be on your own. Obeying is a compromise: you don’t want to surrender, one thing; and you are not confident to remain on your own, another thing. So you compromise. You say: I will remain on my own, but obey. I will listen to you, whatsoever you say, and will find ways and means to obey it.
Surrender is a totally different thing. There is no duality in surrender. When a disciple surrenders to a master, they have become one; that moment the duality has disappeared. Now the master is no longer thought of as separate, so who is going to obey and who is going to obey whom?
“Why does so much reaction come against discipline?” Because the surrender has not yet happened. Otherwise, discipline is beautiful; there is nothing like discipline. If surrender has happened, then you don’t enforce discipline, it comes spontaneously. When I say something to you, and you are surrendered, you hear my voice as your own. In fact, you will see immediately that this is what you wanted to do, but you were not clear about it. You will be able to understand that I have told you something about which you were groping in the dark. You had a certain feel for it, but things were vague – I have made them clear for you. I have spoken for you. I have brought your own heart’s desire to you.
In surrender that is going to happen. Then what is the point of calling it “obeying”? It is not obedience. In obedience, a certain conflict is hidden.
I have heard an anecdote…
A man had been having trouble with his teenage son, so he sent him out to a cattle ranch operated by an old friend. After the youth had been working on the ranch a couple of months, the father asked about his progress.
“Well,” said the rancher friend, “he’s been working good. Already he speaks cow language.”
“Sounds alright.”
“But,” said the old cowman seriously, “he ain’t learnt yet to think like a cow.”
That’s the difference. Once you start thinking like a cow, then there is no question of any obedience or disobedience. Once you start thinking like me, then there is no question, then there is no problem, no conflict, no struggle, no effort. Then, in fact, you are not following me, you are following yourself. This happens in deep surrender.
Ordinarily, people have a very wrong notion about surrender, particularly in the West. Surrender is a deeply Eastern concept. People think that in surrender your individuality will be lost. Absolutely wrong, one hundred percent wrong. In surrender your personality is not lost. In fact in surrender your personality for the first time becomes clear; because if you surrender, you surrender the ego, not the personality, not the individuality. It is just the wrong notion that you are somebody - you drop that notion. Once that notion is dropped, you are at ease; you grow. Your individuality remains intact, in fact it grows bigger and bigger. Of course there will not be the feeling of “I,” but a tremendous growth will happen.
If surrender is not there, then millions of questions arise about how to obey.
I was called to a seminar; chancellors and vice-chancellors from many universities had gathered there. They were very worried about the lack of discipline in the schools, colleges and universities, and they were worried about the new generation’s disrespectful attitude toward the teachers.
I listened to their views and I told them, “I see that somewhere the very basis is missing. A teacher is one who is respected naturally, so a teacher cannot demand respect. If the teacher demands respect, he simply shows that he is not a teacher; he has chosen the wrong profession; that is not his vocation. The very definition of a teacher is one who is naturally respected; not that you have to respect him. If you have to respect him, what type of respect is this going to be? Notice: ‘have to respect’ – the whole beauty is lost, the respect is not alive. If it has to be done, then it is not there. When it is there, nobody thinks about it, nobody is self-conscious about it. It simply flows. Whenever a teacher is there it simply flows.”
So I asked the seminar: “Rather than asking students to respect the teachers, please decide again – you must be choosing the wrong teachers, people who are not teachers at all.”
Teachers are as much born as poets, it is a great art. Not everybody can be a teacher, but because of universal education millions of teachers are required. Just think of a society that thinks that poetry is to be taught by poets and everybody is to be taught poetry. Then millions of poets will be required. Of course, then there will be poets’ training colleges. Those poets will be bogus, and they will demand: Applaud us because we are poets! Why are you not respecting us? This has happened with teachers.
In the past there were very few teachers. People used to travel thousands of miles to find a teacher, to be with him. There was tremendous respect, but the respect depended on the quality of the teacher. It was not an expectation from the disciple or from the student or the pupil. It simply happened.
If you are surrendered, obedience simply happens without any self-consciousness. Not that you have to follow, you simply find yourself following. One day you simply recognize the fact that you have been following, and there has been no conflict, no struggle. The more you try to be obedient, the more resistance will grow.
I have heard…
A woman complained to her doctor: “You just don’t know how bad I feel! Why, I can’t even eat the things you told me not to!”
Once you say to somebody, “Don’t do this!” a deep desire arises to do it. “Don’t eat this!” a deep desire arises to eat it. The mind always functions negatively; the very function of the mind is to negate, to say no.
Notice how many times you say no in the day, and reduce that quota. Watch yourself, how many times you say yes and increase that quota. By and by you will see just a slight change in the degrees of yes and no, and your personality is basically changing. Watch how many times you say no where yes would have been easier; there was no need really to say no. How many times you could have said yes, but either you said no or you kept quiet.
Whenever you say yes, it goes against the ego. The ego cannot eat yes; it feeds itself on no’s. Say: No! No! No! And great ego arises within yourself.
When you go to the railway station, you may be alone at the window to purchase a ticket, but the clerk will start doing something; he will not look at you. He is trying to say no. He will at least make you wait. He will pretend that he is very busy; he will look into this register and this and that. He will force you to wait. That gives him a feeling of power, that he is no ordinary clerk – he can make anybody wait.
It happened just in the beginning days of Soviet Russia when Leon Trotsky was the War Minister there. He was very strict with rules, discipline, this and that. There was going to be a great meeting of the Communist Party, and he was in charge of issuing passes. He completely forgot that he also needed a pass to enter the hall. When he went there the policeman who was standing at the gate stopped him. He said, “Where is your pass?”
Leon Trotsky said, “Don’t you recognize me?”
He said, “I recognize you perfectly well. You are our War Minister. But where is your pass?”
Trotsky said, “Look at the other passes you are holding in your hands. They are signed by me.”
The policeman said, “Maybe, but this is the rule, that nobody can enter without a pass. So go back home and find a pass.”
Leon Trotsky wrote in his diary, “I could see how powerful he was feeling that day: saying no to the War Minister, making him feel tiny.”
People go on saying no. The child asks his mother: “Can I go outside and play?” And immediately, without thinking for a single moment, she says no. Politics! What is wrong with being outside, going outside and playing? The child is going to go; the child will insist, and he will throw a tantrum, and then mother will say, “Okay, you can go.” This could have been done in the first place, in the very beginning, but even a mother cannot lose an opportunity to say no.
The first thing that comes to your mind is no. Yes is more difficult. You say yes only when you feel absolutely helpless and you have to say it. Just notice! Make yourself a yea-sayer; drop no-saying because it is the poison of no on which the ego feeds itself, nourishes itself.
A religious man is one who has said yes to existence. Out of that yes, God is born. Yes is the father of God; that yes attitude is a religious attitude.
But remember: I don’t insist on obedience. Either be with me totally, or don’t be with me at all. Compromise is not good, compromise kills. Compromise will make you lukewarm, and nobody can evaporate from that state. Compromise comes out of fear. Take courage – either be with me or don’t be with me; but don’t be in limbo. Otherwise, one part of your mind will go on saying: I have to follow, I have to do this, and another part will go on saying: No, why should I do it? And this constant conflict within yourself dissipates energy, it is destructive. It will poison your whole being.
The fourth question:
Osho,
What if there are not any gaps?
Look within; it has never been so and you cannot be an exception. All seekers who have gone within have gone through the gaps. The gaps are there, but you have not looked and hence the question has an “if.” Please don’t ask “if” questions. I am not talking about theories, I am talking about facts.
It is as if somebody asks: What if there is no heart within? But the “if” is just speculative. Close your eyes and you will hear the heartbeat. If you are to ask the question, the heart is bound to be there.
If you are there to raise this question, the gaps are bound to be there. Without gaps, thinking cannot exist. Between two words the gap is a necessity; otherwise the two words will not be separate, they will overlap. Between two sentences there is a gap – necessarily so, otherwise there will be no division between the sentences, between two thoughts.
Just look within.
At the supper table one night a farmer was very angry.
“Where were you boys when I called for you to help me an hour ago?” he demanded.
“I was in the barn setting a hen,” said one.
“I was in the loft setting a saw,” said another.
“I was in grandpa’s room setting the clock,” said the third.
“And I was in the pantry setting a trap,” said the fourth son.
“A fine set you are!” exclaimed the farmer. “And where were you?” he asked, turning to the youngest son.
“I was on the doorstep setting still.”
So find a few moments when you can be just be “setting still”; immediately you will be in the gaps. Sitting silently, you will be in the gaps.
Thoughts are intruders; gaps are your real nature. Thoughts come and go. The emptiness within you always remains; it never comes, never goes. The emptiness is the background; thoughts are moving figures against it. Just as you write on a blackboard with white chalk – the blackboard is there, you write with white chalk – your inner emptiness functions as a blackboard, and on that blackboard thoughts appear.
Slow down! Slow down a little. Just sit silently, relaxed, not doing anything in particular. When you ask “if” questions, you are wasting time. In the same time and with the same energy, those gaps can be experienced and you can become immensely rich. And once you have tasted the gaps, then thoughts’ hold on you will disappear.
The last question:
Osho,
Who cares? Is this creative indifference, or sleep?
Please comment.
Creativity can never be indifferent. Creativity cares because creativity is love. Creativity is the function of loving and caring. Creativity cannot be indifferent. If you are indifferent, by and by all your creativity will disappear. Creativity needs passion, aliveness, energy. Creativity needs you to remain a flow, an intense, passionate flow.
If you look at a flower indifferently, the flower cannot be beautiful. Through indifference, everything becomes ordinary. Then one lives in a cold way, shrunken in upon oneself. This calamity has happened in the East because religion took a wrong turn and people started thinking that you have to be indifferent to life.
One Hindu sannyasin came to see me once. He looked around my garden, and there were many flowers, and I was working in the garden when he came to see me. He said, “Are you interested in the flowers and gardening?” On his face there was a look of condemnation. He said, “But I was thinking you must be indifferent to all these things.”
I am not indifferent. Indifference is negative, it is suicidal; it is escapist. Of course, if you become indifferent many things will not bother you; you will live surrounded by your indifference. You will not be distracted, you will not be disturbed. But just not to be distracted is not the point. You will never be happy and overflowing.
In the East, many people think that to be indifferent is the way of religion. They pull away from life, they become escapists. They have not created anything. They simply vegetate and they think they have attained something. They have not attained anything.
Attainment is always positive and attainment is always creative. God is creativity – how can you reach God by being indifferent? God is not indifferent. He cares about even small blades of grass, he cares about them also. He takes as much care to paint a butterfly as he takes to create a buddha.
The whole loves. And if you want to become one with the whole, you have to love. Indifference is a slow suicide. Be in deep love, so much so that you completely disappear in your love, that you become a pure creative energy. Only then do you participate with God, hand in hand you go with him.
To me creativity is prayer, creativity is meditation, creativity is life.
So don’t be afraid of life, and don’t close yourself in indifference. Indifference will desensitize you; you will lose all sensitivity; your body will become dull, your intelligence will become dull. You will live in a dark cell, afraid of the light and the sun, afraid of the wind and the clouds and the sea – afraid of everything. You will wrap a blanket of indifference all around you and you will start dying.
Move! Be dynamic! And whatsoever you do, do it so lovingly that the very act becomes creative and divine. I am not saying that you all should become painters and poets; that’s not possible. There is no need. You may be a housewife – your cooking can be creative. You may be a shoemaker – your shoemaking can be creative. Whatsoever you do, do it so totally, so lovingly, so intimately; get involved in it so that your act is not something outside. Move into your act and your act becomes a fulfillment. This I call religious. A religious person, a religious consciousness, is immensely creative.
Never use the phrase: Who cares? That attitude comes from the ego – who cares? No, if you really want to grow, care more. Let care be your whole style of life. Care about each and every thing. And don’t make any distinction between the great and the small. Very small things – just cleaning the floor – do it with deep care, as if it is the body of your beloved, and suddenly you will see that you are being born anew through your own creativity.
Each creative act becomes a rebirth for the creator, and each indifferent act becomes a suicide, a slow death. Be overflowing. Don’t be misers. Don’t try to hold – share! Let care be the very center of your life. And then there is no need to go to church, no need to go to temple, no need to kneel down before any god and pray. Your “butterfly life,” your way of life, is prayer. Whatsoever you touch will become sacred. I say whatsoever, unconditionally.
Love makes everything sacred. Carelessness makes everything ugly.
Enough for today.