The first question:
Osho,
How does it happen that I feel so at home and so lost in this buddhafield?
There is no contradiction in it; it is as it should be. To be lost, utterly lost, is to be at home. Man ordinarily lives as an ego, separate from the whole; like an island, with a definite identity – the name, the form. He is somebody. For the whole of our life we make every effort to go on defining ourselves – who we are – for the simple reason that we don’t know who we are. So we create an artificial, arbitrary identity. That’s what the ego is.
When you enter a love relationship with a master – that’s what entering a buddhafield is – you start losing your old identity. Your definition becomes blurred. It was arbitrary anyway. It starts melting and your limits start merging with the unlimited. You are no longer somebody; you start becoming a nobody, a nothingness.
Hence the feeling of being lost because you are missing your old games, trips. You are missing your old miseries, your so-called old pleasures. You are missing all that you had known before as part of your being. A new being is arising, a being which is not isolated from the whole, not encapsulated, but one with the whole – a wave which is part of the ocean. It is still a wave, but now a deep understanding is happening that “I am not separate”; that “I need not be worried about myself”; that “I have been before I was born and I will be after I am gone. This being a wave is only a phase, a momentary phenomenon. It is only a question of form. Deep down I am one with the formless ocean. I am oceanic.”
This is the experience that is happening to you; hence you will feel lost – lost if you compare it with your old identity. The comparison comes naturally because the old is well known. Maybe you have been decorating it for many lives, maintaining it, nourishing it, nurturing it. It is an ancient habit, almost perennial; you have forgotten when it began. It is as old as the creation itself. It has gone very deep – its roots have gone very deep. Now all that is changing. The old is dying and you are acquainted only with the old, hence you will feel like a death is happening.
But if you look to the new, which is very fresh, just like a breeze, a dewdrop, a newly opening bud of a rose, very fresh… You are not yet fully aware of it. It is so new, you will need a little time to be introduced to it, to become acquainted with it. But it is happening because both these processes happen simultaneously. The death of the old and the birth of the new are two sides of the same coin.
If you start looking at the new, you will feel at home. That too is happening. In a very, very vague way you are becoming aware of that too. Slowly, slowly the new will become settled. The old will become just a memory, a fading memory; a dream that you had dreamed while you were asleep; something that had not happened to you – maybe you had seen it in a movie or read it in a novel. It was somebody else’s story. Slowly, slowly it will go so far away from you that it will become difficult even to recollect it. Then the discontinuity has happened totally. Your umbilical cord is cut; you are really out of the womb of the past. You have started breathing on your own, in a new way, as a nobody.
It feels strange to be impersonal, but to be impersonal is the only way to be universal. Not to be is the only way of being. Shakespeare’s dilemma, “To be or not to be…” cannot be resolved by philosophy; it can only be resolved by meditation because in meditation, not to be prepares the way for you to be. There is no question of choosing. You need not choose between the two, there is no question of either/or – not to be is the way for you to be. If you choose not to be, you have chosen the other too; if you choose to be, you will have to pass through the process of nonbeing.
Meditation is a process of death, of nonbeing; of becoming nothing on your own accord; of disappearing into the whole, into the harmony of the whole. But it is a miracle, the greatest paradoxical experience of life. There is no contradiction in it, but there is a paradox. Seen from the intellectual standpoint, there is a paradox.
You ask: “How does it happen that I feel so at home and so lost in this buddhafield?” That’s how it happens, that’s the way it happens. That’s the way of the ultimate law – aes dhammo sanantano. If you had asked Buddha he would have said: “Suchness, tathata.” This is how the universal law functions. You disappear and you appear for the first time. But you appear in such a new way – not as a person, a name, a form, a separate identity, but just as a total oneness with the whole, in unison with the whole.
That’s what is happening here. Slowly, slowly the energies of the sannyasins are melting and merging and becoming one. Thousands of my sannyasins are functioning in a kind of deep orchestra; they are no longer solo players. They have drowned themselves in this buddhafield.
It needs guts, it needs courage; it needs intelligence, it needs awareness to move from the known into the unknown and to go into the uncharted sea.
You have left this shore. Your small boat is moving toward the unknown. Never look back. The old shore will call you back, it will try to seduce you and it will give you many promises, but remember, it has never fulfilled any promise. You have lived on this shore for so long; don’t forget the misery, the pain, the anguish, the nightmare it has been for you year after year. Now go on moving. Don’t look back, look ahead. Always look for the new, the fragile; that which is just arriving on the scene. You will need alertness to recognize it.

The second question:
Osho,
I have been a sannyasin for only three days and yet I have started to dislike the non-sannyasins. What is happening?
That’s how fanaticism is born. That’s how Christians, Mohammedans and Hindus have lived for centuries. That’s how the foolish mind functions – beware of it. Being a sannyasin does not mean that you have to dislike the non-sannyasins. Never look at anybody as a non-sannyasin; always look at the non-sannyasins as potential sannyasins. They are all potential sannyasins – three days ago you were a non-sannyasin! Love them more because your love you can help their potential to be actualized. If you dislike them, you will become a cause of preventing them from becoming sannyasins. Help them.
This is not the way, but this is how the mind functions. I can understand it. The mind is so ugly that it immediately starts creating new trips for the ego; even sannyas can become a trip for the ego. “Now I am a sannyasin, I am special. And the non-sannyasins? They are stupid people.” Only three days ago you were a non-sannyasin – just three days ago. But it does not matter whether it is three days or three years, it is the same. Even after three minutes the mind starts spinning and weaving. It starts walking in a different way, looking at others with condemnation and with that ancient saintly look of “holier than thou.”

Rastus was tired of being black. One day he came across an advertisement in the local paper which said: “Super Omo special skin-whitening cream – makes skin whiter than white.”
Very excited, he purchased a packet and went home. He took a bath and scrubbed himself with the product. When he was finished, he looked in the mirror and found that his skin looked like that of a white man’s.
Ecstatic, he ran out to show his wife who wasted no time in jumping into the bath herself. She too was very happy when she emerged looking like a white lady.
They found their young son and told him, “Hey, boy – this is your chance to become a white boy.”
“But I don’t want to be a white boy.” he exclaimed. “I’m happy the way I am – I’m happy to be black.”
Rastus turned to his wife and said, “You know, I have been white for only one hour and already these blacks are giving me shit.”

Beware of this mind. These are the ways of the mind. A sannyasin has to drop the mind. You have to be alert about the ways the ego takes grip of you. You are not to become holier than others. On the contrary, sannyas simply means an initiation into being ordinary.
The pope is addressed as Your Holiness; the shankaracharya is addressed as Your Divinity; the founder of the Hare Krishna Movement was addressed as His Divine Grace. You have to remember that I address you as Your Holy Ordinariness! There is nothing more beautiful than just being ordinary. The moment you are ready to be ordinary you become divine; that’s the only way to become divine.
The divine is very ordinary. If it were not ordinary it would not become the rocks, it would not become the trees; it would not become the animals, it would not become human beings. It would not descend to such lower states. But it is so ordinary and it is so happy to be a fish or even to be a cockroach or a beetle.
I have heard…

George Harrison was walking in the garden where he came across a beetle and said, “Hey, beetle, do you know? You must be happy that we have called our group The Beatles – we have called our group after your name.”
The beetle looked at Harrison and said, “Do you call your group Eric? My name is Eric. I am no ordinary beetle.”

Nobody is ordinary except a very few people – a Buddha, a Jesus, a Zarathustra. These people are ordinary people; they have the courage to be ordinary. In that very courage they reach the ultimate depth of being and existence.
My sannyasins have to gather that courage to be nobodies; that’s what I mean by being ordinary. Our whole effort here is to transform the mundane into the sacred. We don’t want to create a rift between the mundane and the sacred; that has been the way for centuries – the rift. That rift has created a schizophrenic humanity.
People are constantly in a tense state of affairs. The mundane pulls them to one side and the sacred to the very opposite. If they go with the mundane they feel guilty. If you enjoy eating and drinking and making merry you feel guilty – you are doing something wrong. If you stop eating, drinking, making merry and become an ascetic, you start feeling very anxious, very troubled, because you are going against nature. You start feeling, “What am I doing to myself? Is it right?” And you have to constantly repress. You have to avoid the world, you have to escape to a monastery or to the Himalayas. And each small thing creates a problem for you. Rather than solving your problems you have created a thousand and one problems.
Your so-called saints live only in problems; everything is a problem. Eating is such a problem, they make so much fuss about it. They will eat this and they will not eat that. The Jaina monk cannot eat the poor potatoes. Why? What is wrong with potatoes? They look so innocent; one has never heard anything wrong about them – they have never done any wrong to anybody. But a Jaina monk cannot eat potatoes. It is prohibited in his scriptures because they grow underground. They don’t grow in the sunlight, so something is wrong with them. They grow in darkness; eating them will create darkness in you, you know? You have to be a light unto yourself. So anything that grows underneath the earth is prohibited, carrots and all – anything that grows underneath the earth. They don’t believe in underground things.
I am a firm believer in underground things because they are very revolutionary! If you eat them they will help you to go underground. And finally everybody has to go underground, so why not prepare?

I was once traveling with a Hindu monk. He would not drink milk from buffaloes. Why? – because Hindu scriptures say that buffalo milk creates laziness. As if Indians can be more lazy! That Hindu saint was not doing anything, so I said to him, “I don’t see that there will be any trouble – you don’t do anything at all. The buffalo milk can’t harm you. You are already lazy, so why be worried about it?”
Not only that, he only used to drink milk from a white cow. I said, “What is the matter with black cows?”
“Black is an evil color.”
I said to the saint. “We should part our ways; we cannot travel together, not even for a single moment. You are the most stupid person I have come across because milk from a black cow is white, the milk does not become black. If the milk became black maybe there would have been some point in your idea.”
But he wouldn’t listen. He would only take warm milk straight from the cow, not heated on the stove or on a fire. The cow had to be milked just in front of him so that he could drink it warm from the cow itself. I said, “Why don’t you just do what the kids do? Just drink from the tits. That will be even warmer. Even with milking it and then bringing it to you… And it is not so hot that it remains really warm. Just drink directly from the cow’s tits.”
He said, “What are you saying?”
I said, “Yes, that will make you a far greater saint.”
But these fools are worshipped by people.
He would only eat food prepared by a virgin girl, otherwise not. How is the food affected? Whether it is prepared by a virgin girl or by a nonvirgin, how is the food affected? He said, “There are subtle vibrations.”
I said, “I can trust you only if… I will bring two, three thalis prepared for you: one by a virgin girl, another by a woman who is married and has children, the third by a prostitute. Just show me which one belongs to whom, just by their vibe. If you cannot judge then stop this nonsense. Don’t talk nonsense. What vibes are you talking about?”
You should drop this idea that only hippies talk about vibes; Indian saints have been talking about them for at least five thousand years.
Now he was at a loss; he could not discriminate. So I said, “Drop it – you don’t know what vibes are. You are just talking any stupid jargon. It may impress foolish people, but what vibes are you talking about?”

Hindu saints, Jaina saints and Buddhist monks are not allowed to sit in a place where a woman has just been sitting because that place goes on radiating sexual vibes from the woman. A certain time has to elapse; after that they can sit there. These people are utterly mad.
But these are the ways of the ego in order to make the demarcation that they are special, spiritual. They are not ordinary, mundane, worldly. Otherwise, how to make a discrimination? How to condemn ordinary people? You have to create something; anything will do.
Jaina monks pull out their hair; they can’t shave, they can’t use scissors. As if scissors were great technology! They avoid technology – as if a blade were great technology. They pull out their hair. Utterly stupid! But thousands of people gather to see them pulling out their hair because they are doing a great austerity. Do anything stupid, but do something which is unnatural and people will start worshipping you.
Christian monks used to beat themselves every morning. There were sects of Christian monks who would whip themselves every morning. Their bodies were continuously bleeding; their bodies had wounds all over them from head to foot. The man who would whip himself the most would be thought to be the greatest saint. People would gather to watch and count who was whipping himself more, who was bleeding more. Now these people who were whipping themselves were masochists and the people who had gathered to see them were sadists. They were both ill, pathological, but this pathology has persisted.
My whole work here is to drop this division between the mundane and the sacred. I want you to live a very ordinary life so that you don’t have to go on any ego trips.
Remember three days or three years or thirty years, it is all the same; time makes no difference. Be aware of the fact that the ego is very cunning and it will try to find out ways to puff you up. This is a very simple way: to dislike the non-sannyasins. Immediately you are special and they are ordinary people, they don’t understand and you understand.
They are all people with potential. Love them, help them, respect them. That is their decision whether to be a sannyasin or not to be a sannyasin; that is their freedom, it is your freedom. And freedom should be respected.

The third question:
Osho,
Can you give me a new Zen koan to meditate on because for all the old ones I can find the answers in the Zen scriptures.
Okay.

Just the other day a young German took sannyas. He was a man of deep feelings, a man of heart. He was sobbing with joy. I asked him, “How long are you going to stay?”
He said, “Osho, forever.”
I said to him, “When you come next time, stay a little longer.”

Now meditate over it. This is a Zen koan! You will not find the answer in any scriptures; even I don’t know the answer.

The fourth question:
Osho,
Why are you talking about tits so much?
I know that it is a touchy subject, but you know me – and that explains everything!

The fifth question:
Osho,
Are children really as intelligent as you always say they are?
They are far more intelligent than I say they are. Every child is born absolutely intelligent because there is nothing to distract his intelligence. He has no prejudices to make him unintelligent, he has no information to make him unintelligent – he has no knowledge yet. Even if he wants to he cannot function in a knowledgeable way. How can he be stupid?
Stupidity needs a few qualifications. You have to go to school, to college, to university. Stupidity needs a few degrees: you have to have MA’s, MSc’s, PhD’s, DLitt’s. Stupidity depends on knowledgeability. The more knowledgeable you are, the less intelligence is needed because knowledge starts functioning as a substitute. You can depend on knowledge. Why bother? – you can simply look into the memory and the answer is there.
But the child has no memory, he has no ready-made answer. Whenever there is a problem he has to face it, he has to encounter it. He has to respond, he cannot react. To be responsive is to be intelligent. He functions from a state of not-knowing. That’s why I say every child is born intelligent.
But almost everybody dies stupid because this whole life is structured in such a way that it is impossible to remain intelligent – almost impossible. The trap is such that only very few people have been able to escape from it. The trap gives you all kinds of comforts, conveniences. It is supported by the government, by religion, by society; it has all the supports.

The day I resigned my post of professor in a university, I burned all my certificates. A friend who used to live with me, said, “What are you doing? If you have resigned… I don’t agree that you have done the right thing, but burning your certificates is absolutely unnecessary. You may need them someday, keep them. What is wrong in keeping them? You have such a big library – they won’t take up much space, just a small file will be enough. If you cannot keep them, I will keep them; just give them to me. Someday you may need them.”
I said, “I am finished with all this stupidity. I want to burn all the bridges. I will never need them because I never look back and I never go back. I am finished with it. It was all nonsense and I have been in it long enough.”
But I had not compromised with any vested interest, that’s why I had to resign – because I was not teaching what I was supposed to teach. In fact, I was doing just the opposite. So many complaints against me reached the Vice-Chancellor that finally he gathered courage to call me. He never used to call me because to call me was an encounter. Finally he called me and said, “Just look at all these complaints here.”
I said to him, “There is no need to bother about the complaints – here is my resignation.”
He said, “What are you saying? I am not saying that you should resign!”
I said, “You are not saying it, but I am resigning because I can only do the things that I want to do. If there is any imposition put on me, if any kind of pressure is put on me, I am not going to be here even for a single moment. This is my resignation and I will never enter this building again.”
He could not believe it; I left his office and he came running after me. As I was getting into my car he said, “Wait. What is the hurry? Ponder over it!”
I said, “I never ponder over anything. I was doing the right thing. If there are complaints – and of course I know there are complaints. There must be, because I am not teaching what your stupid syllabus binds me to teach; I am teaching something else. I am not talking about philosophy, I am talking against philosophy, because to me the whole project of philosophy is a sheer stupid exercise in futility. It has not given a single conclusion to humanity. It has been a long, long unnecessary journey and wastage. It is time we drop the very subject completely.
“Either a person should be a scientist or he should be a mystic; there is no other way. A scientist experiments with objects and the mystic experiments with his subjectivity. Both are scientists in a way. One is of the outer, the other is of the inner. The philosopher is nowhere; he is in a limbo. He is neither man nor woman, he is neither here nor there. He is impotent, hence he has not been able to contribute anything. So I cannot teach philosophy – I will go on sabotaging it. I was just waiting. Whenever you decided to call me, I had to resign immediately.”
It was very difficult to get out of it because all my friends came to try to persuade me not to; the professors and all my relatives came and tried to persuade me not to: “What are you doing?”
Even the education minister phoned me: “Don’t do such a thing. I know that your ways are a little strange, but we will tolerate them. Continue. Don’t take any notice of the complaints. Complaints have been coming to me too, but I have not taken any notice of them. We don’t want to lose you.”
I said, “That is not the point. Once I have finished with something, I am finished with it. Now no pressure can bring me back.”

It was very difficult for me to be at school because I could see the stupidity of the teachers. They used to get angry. They used to think that I was trying to be mischievous. I was not trying to be mischievous, I was simply trying to show them that what they were teaching was all nonsense. It was not concerned with life.
My geography teacher used to talk about places. I said to him, “I am never going to visit these places so why should I remember them? Now, why should I be concerned with Constantinople or Timbuktu? Whether they exist or not is irrelevant. All that I want to know is where I am right now – tell me this.”
He was almost dumb. He said, “Where you are right now…? No student has ever asked me this and I have been teaching geography my whole life.”
I said, “Then you’ve never had a single student. I want to know where I am right now. My whole concern is now and here.”
My history teacher used to teach me about stupid kings and their names. I said, “I am not going to memorize them. Why? What have they done for me? They didn’t even know my name so why should I remember their names? It should be a give-and-take. Now Nadir Shah, Tamerlane and Genghis Khan, what have they done?”

But this is how we go on imposing stupid, unnecessary information. And the load becomes heavier. The person who carries the biggest load earns the biggest rewards. Naturally, when stupidity is rewarded you settle for it. Intelligence is punished.
I was punished so much – you cannot imagine how much I was punished. From my primary school up to university, I was continuously punished and nobody was ever able to tell me why they were punishing me. It was almost always the case that I would be standing outside the classroom. It was very rare for me to sit inside the classroom. But that exercise has helped me. I have done so much exercise walking outside a classroom that now I need not do anything. I have done enough.
Whenever my headmaster used to come on his rounds, I was the only person who was always walking in the corridor. Whenever he would not see me he would come to my class and say, “What is the matter? What are you doing inside?”
I said, “I don’t know. I myself am puzzled because just a single question and the teacher will say, ‘Go out! Unless you stop asking questions you cannot come in.’” It was a good excuse for me to be outside in the air. And that was so beautiful to be outside with the birds and with the trees. So whenever I wanted to go out, just a question, any question would do – any question that was unanswerable.
I was turned out of one college, expelled from this university and from that university. One university accepted me, but accepted me with the condition that I would not ask any questions…

I said, “I can accept that, but then you have to do one thing: I should not have to go to the classes, because if I am in class and the professor says something stupid, I will not be able to resist myself – the temptation will be too great – and there will be an argument. And I will forget all about the promise I have given to not ask questions. So you have to give me permission that I need not attend classes and that I will be able to appear in the examination without fulfilling the absolutely necessary requirement of being in class for at least seventy-five percent of the time.”
He said, “That is my promise.”
I was so happy. For two years I simply never turned up at the college, I came only when there was an examination.
The principal said, “You are a strange man. I was thinking that you may come only once in a while, but I have not seen you at all for two years.
I was even sending my fee by post because I said, “Something may happen even giving the fee or saying hello to the head clerk,. He may ask me, ‘How are you?’ and that’s enough. You know me! You just ask, ‘How are you?’ and I go on for ninety minutes – and that has been my usual practice.”

So I avoided all contact just to fulfill my promise, but it has been a boon, a blessing.
Children are certainly intelligent, very intelligent.

A little boy was overheard saying to another, “If I had known what trouble parents were, I would never have had any.”

“How did you like the new preacher, son?” asked the mother.
“Don’t like him much. He preached so long I couldn’t keep awake and he hollered so loud I couldn’t go to sleep!”

A little boy loses his mother in a big department store. A young man who was working there sees the boy crying and asks him, “What is the matter?”
“I’ve lost my mother,” the boy mumbles through his tears.
“What does she look like?” the man inquires.
“She looks like a woman without me.”

One six-year-old boy was reprimanded by his Sunday School teacher: “You’ve been nothing but trouble – you’re just a rotten kid.”
The little boy pulled himself up to his full three-foot height and answered, “That’s not true. I am such a good boy – God made me and he didn’t make me junk.”

“I had a funny dream last night, Mum.”
“Did you?”
“I dreamed I was awake, but when I woke up I found I was asleep!”

Two small boys were swinging on a gate together, passing the time of day. In the course of their conversation one asked the other, “How old are you?”
“I don’t know,” said the other.
“You mean you don’t know how old you are?”
“No.”
“Do women bother you?”
“No.”
“You’re four in that case,” observed his companion.

“Papa,” said little Johnny, “how do babies come into the world?”
“The stork brings them, son.”
“Hey, pa, don’t tell me you did it with a stork!”

A little boy comes home from school one day and says, “Hey, mommy, I just saw a flat cat.”
“Oh,” says his mother. “How did you know it was flat?”
“Because there was another cat pumping it up.”

The sixth question:
Osho,
It took you seven hundred years to get here. What happened?
Don’t you know Indian trains?

The seventh question:
Osho,
I'm going to tell the truth. I'm a British lady: my great-grandfather was governor of Delhi and my great-uncle was prime minister of Kashmir. I know there's very little hope for me, but is it not possible to defy the laws of nature and fall in tune with you in spite of this unfortunate heritage?
Don’t be worried – truth liberates! You have confessed the sin. That’s the beauty of confession. Now there is no worry.

Heinrich Heine was dying and these were his last words: “God will forgive me – it is his trait.”

So don’t be worried. Even if you are British, God is going to forgive you. All that is needed on your part is to confess. And don’t take my jokes seriously. The British are beautiful people – I love them.

The eighth question:
Osho,
I cannot control myself when insulted. What should I do?
Tit for tat – till you become enlightened. Do it quickly, because once you become enlightened it is very difficult to do anything. When somebody insults you, somebody insults you. You have simply to accept it: aes dhammo sanantano. So whatever you want to do, do it right now, finish it because here you will soon become enlightened; it is not very far away.
It is natural that when somebody insults you, you cannot control yourself. I have never been telling you to control yourself because control can’t help. If you control you repress; control is another name for repression. If you can watch, watch; otherwise if there is a choice between repression and indulging, prefer indulgence because indulgence will teach you a lesson. Repression won’t teach you anything. You are not a machine, you are a man.

Warning in the year 2000: due to robot shortage, some of our bartenders are human and will react unpredictably when insulted.

You are not a robot so it is natural. It is better to react truly. But remember one thing: you are free to do whatever you like, you need only face the consequences – because I am not saying that you won’t receive blows back. So first see who the other guy is, be a little careful. You are alive, you are not dead yet. Once you are enlightened you are almost dead – alive on the other shore, dead on this shore. So before that calamity happens, enjoy doing whatever you can manage to do.

Mulla Nasruddin was studying electricity. To show the class its practical uses, the teacher commanded that each pupil bring some electric tool to class the next day.
The following morning the class held a small exhibition: electric bulbs, irons, a hair drier, an oven…
When Mulla arrived he was sweating and carrying a big artificial lung on his back.
“Mulla,” said the teacher, “where did you get that electric lung?”
“I took it from grandpa, teacher.”
“And he didn’t mind?” she cried.
“I don’t think so, teacher. He just said, ‘Hrrr…’”

So before that happens don’t try to control, do something – there is nothing to be worried about. Accept your humanity; it is part of you. If somebody insults you he is challenging you to a fight, so give him a good fight. If you see that he is too big, then meditate – what else to do?

The ninth question:
Osho,
I am a mathematician. Can I also become a sannyasin?
I don’t see that there is any difficulty – you can be a sannyasin. Of course, you will have to learn something more than mathematics. You will have to learn a little poetry, a little music, a little dance. You will have to go beyond the calculative mind. You will have to take a little jump into the illogical, into the paradoxical. And of course habits die hard so I can understand your problem.
Mathematics is pure logic, it is nothing but logic. Sannyas is very illogical – or if you like big words, then it is supralogical. But that is only a word; the fact is, it is illogical. So if you are ready to go a little beyond the boundaries of logic, you are welcome. It is going to be a little difficult, but not impossible.
There are mathematicians here; there are scientists here whose whole life was devoted to some logical methodology, but now they have moved – moved beyond it. And they can move only if they have a deep longing to know whether there is something more than arithmetic, or if that is all. If you are really an explorer, if you have some adventure in your life, there is no problem.
I can understand your question. You may be too addicted to your mathematics – then there will be difficulty. All addictions create difficulties and these are deep addictions. If you are addicted to some drug, it is not so difficult. Within six weeks you can be hospitalized, treated, and can get out of it. But if you are addicted to logic, it may take a very long time. Unless you decide to come out of it with your total being, there may be no possibility of anybody else bringing you out of it.

A mathematician goes to the whorehouse. Very excited, he picks the prettiest girl and goes off into a room with her.
“They say you girls from the capital do very incredible things in bed.”
“Yes, we certainly do.” she replied.
“So, I want one of your specialties!”
“I have one that you are going to love – come here. Let’s do a sixty-nine.”
That appealed to the mathematician – sixty-nine. Immediately he understood the language – sixty-nine, that comes within his world. So they jump into bed and the woman does it very well. He loves it.
When they finish, he falls over onto his side, takes a deep breath and says, “This is too much. I think I am going to quit the other sixty-eight!”

But a mathematician is a mathematician – he is still calculating.
If you remain calculative… You can become a sannyasin and you may still remain calculative: “What is happening? What is not happening? How many days have I been meditating? How many hours have I meditated? What is the result? What is the outcome? Is it worth it?” All these things will have to be dropped.
Meditation is the world of lovers; not the world of calculation, but the world of love. If you have fallen in love with me, you are welcome.
You say: “I am a mathematician. Can I also become a sannyasin?” Yes. But my feeling is that the trouble will come from somewhere else – you are also an Indian. To be an Indian and to be my sannyasin, that is far more difficult than to be a mathematician and to be my sannyasin. The Indian has lived with an idea of sannyas for at least ten thousand years. I am putting things completely into a chaos; I am putting things topsy-turvy.
My sannyas is not the sannyas that you have always understood it to be. It is totally different. I call it sannyas only to confuse you. I could have given it a new name, but that is not my way. I thrive on your confusion, on your chaos. My whole effort is to sabotage all patterns, all patterned thinking. That’s why I chose the color orange – I could have chosen any color. In fact, the best color that would have fitted my idea of sannyas would have been a rainbow dress – all seven colors – because my sannyas is a rainbow phenomenon, multidimensional. That would have been absolutely in tune with my idea of sannyas, but I sacrificed it. I have to destroy this Hindu idea of sannyas. I have to create so many orange people that the old saints and sannyasins get lost – nobody knows who is who.
Your being Indian may create a little trouble. You have learned mathematics only in this life, but being Indian may be part of your collective heritage, may be part of your collective unconsciousness. So when Indians become sannyasins they come with a priori conclusions, expectations. When they don’t find those expectations here, they feel very disturbed.
I would like you to be alert from the very beginning that this is a totally new vision of sannyas. The old sannyas was renunciation, my sannyas is rejoicing. The old sannyas was otherworldly, my sannyas contains both worlds; it is not one-dimensional. It does not condemn this world, it makes this world the foundation for the other. The old sannyas was spiritualistic; my sannyas is not spiritualistic and against materialism; my sannyas is materialistic-spiritualistic. My sannyas is not anti-scientific, it contains science in it – it is vast enough to contain it. It goes far beyond it, but it is not against it.

An Arab, lost with his camel in the desert, felt very horny. Finally he grabbed the camel and tried to make love to it. But every time he tried, the camel moved aside and the Arab missed.
After a month of wandering in the desert, he came across a road which led to a town on the edge of the desert. There, sobbing, sat a sexy young lady next to her broken chariot.
Seeing him, the young lady begged him to fix her chariot, promising that he wouldn’t regret it if he helped her.
“Ah, my sweet savior,” she said as he finished, “come to me and I will reward you.”
“Thank you, lady,” replied the Arab. “Would you just hold this camel for me for a minute?”

The tenth question:
Osho,
Is there any such thing as a real marriage?
Never heard… Real marriage? There are real mirages, but no real marriage! If it is real there is no need for marriage. The very need for marriage arises because there is fear. If you love a person, you love a person; you can be together with the person. But there is constantly a fear that the other person may leave you, and the other person is also afraid that you may leave him or her. To make the future guaranteed, so that you cannot leave, so that the other cannot leave – easily at least – marriage was invented.
Marriage was invented only because love was missing. If love is missing, how can the marriage be real? There is no need for marriage. If love is there, marriage is an unnecessary phenomenon. In a better world, where people will be more mature, they will be together because they love. And they will keep each other free because one never knows, love may disappear. That does not mean that the love was unreal and that was why it disappeared. That too is a very wrong idea that has prevailed for centuries. We have been obsessed by wrong ideas and they are creating such trouble in our lives. Still, we can’t see their wrongness because they are so old and we have become so conditioned by them. If love disappears, we start thinking it was not real.
In fact, a real roseflower is bound to disappear by the evening; only the plastic roseflower does not disappear. The real roseflower blooms, opens up, dances in the wind, in the rain, in the sun, and by the evening is gone. That does not mean that it was unreal. In fact it was so real, that’s why it appeared and disappeared. The plastic flower is so unreal, it does not appear and does not disappear. It remains; it is far more permanent.
Marriage is like a plastic flower; love is a real rose. People are such cowards that they don’t want to live with real roses. They are hankering after security, safety, guarantees, permanency so much that they are not ready to risk the real roses and they purchase plastic flowers. Of course, those plastic flowers cannot satisfy you – you will remain miserable.
Just one month ago Sagarpriya wrote to me: “Osho, what has happened? I have been here for two and a half years – has something gone wrong because Bindu and I are still together?” I did not answer her question because I was afraid that if I answered it something would happen immediately. So I kept quiet – and it has happened. Now I can answer because now I will not be thought responsible for it. Now Bindu wants to escape, but Sagarpriya is not going to leave him so easily. He wants to go to America for a few weeks, just to escape from Sagarpriya. Now Sagarpriya is following him; she also wants to go with him.
We don’t allow each other freedom; we cling to the very end. We try every possible way. Even when everything disappears we go on clinging, we go on hoping against all hope. The more we cling, the more we destroy the possibility of love renewing itself again.
Now if Sagarpriya can allow Bindu to go and be there alone for a few weeks… He needs his own space – everybody needs it once in a while because love alone is not enough. Love is beautiful, but meditation is far more important. Meditation needs a deep aloneness; nobody should interfere. Only lovers can interfere in meditation because only lovers are so close. The marketplace does not interfere, the people who are not related to you cannot interfere, but the people who are very close, very intimate, can be a real disturbance. They don’t allow you any space, and if you want to be alone they immediately start feeling that they are being rejected. You simply want your own space – and everybody has a need, a tremendous need to have his own space.
But now Sagarpriya will follow him. If there is any possibility she will destroy even that. The best thing is to let him go, to say goodbye to him in a nice, beautiful, human way; with no grudge, with no complaint, with no quarreling. If you quarrel too much, if you make such a fuss, then people start compromising, but compromise cannot fulfill you.
Remember, men are so tortured in the outside world, in the office, in the factory, in the shop, everywhere, that at least at home they want peace. For their peace they compromise. Hence, almost all husbands become henpecked. The problem is, no wife can love a henpecked husband; every wife tries to henpeck her husband. This is how we create misery.
In the first place marriage is wrong. Marriage means clinging, legal clinging; you have legal support. You can force the person to the court, you can create so much financial trouble for him that he will think, “It is better to tolerate whatever is. And howsoever it is going I have become accustomed to it. Tolerate it.” It is only a question of a few hours at night and then he escapes in the morning and finds a thousand and one excuses: overtime at the office, a party somewhere, or something else. He becomes a Rotarian, he becomes a member of the Lions Club; he finds ways and means to avoid. He starts drinking, so that when he comes home he is so drunk he can’t hear what the wife is saying; he does not know what is being done to him. But how can you love such a person? You hate such a person, but this is how you create the person.
The man also clings. This is a very strange thing: in each couple, one always clings. This is my experience of thousands of couples. It seems that one of the couple has to cling – anyone of them will do, either the wife or the husband, but one has to cling. Whoever clings is miserable and the other is miserable because he has lost his freedom – and you cannot be happy with a person who has lost his freedom.
Love is a meeting of two free individuals; it is not a marriage. Love does not need marriage. If love disappears – which is far more possible than vice versa – that does not mean it was unreal. The more real it is, the quicker it will disappear. The more intense it is, the quicker it will disappear because it will give you such ecstasy. And those peaks cannot be reached every day; it is bound to disappear.
But man does not want peaks of joy; rather he wants a smooth, comfortable, convenient, bourgeois life, which is almost not life at all but just vegetating. So people are vegetating together – cabbages and cauliflowers vegetating together.
There is no real marriage, there is only real love. All marriages are unreal. But to live a real love needs a really courageous heart. It needs that you should live moment to moment and remain open for the tomorrow – whatever surprises it brings, it brings and you accept them. Even if your lover departs, you have to be courageous enough to give him a beautiful goodbye. As beautifully as you say hello you have to say goodbye too, because he has given you such moments of joy. You have to be grateful to him.

The eleventh question:
Osho,
What do you say about divorce?
Some great philosopher said about divorce – I forget the philosopher’s name… In fact, I forget what he said – but I say divorce is useless. You get married from lack of judgment; get divorced from lack of patience; you remarry for lack of memory.
In fact, marriage is wrong. Once marriage disappears from the world, divorce will disappear of its own accord. I am against divorce – I want divorce to disappear from the world absolutely; the only way to do it is to destroy marriage completely.

The last question:
Osho,
Laughing this morning was so pleasurable. I felt like a baby that is being played with and tickled. Please tickle some more.
The traveling salesman’s car broke down on a lonely country road just before nightfall. Being unable to repair it he trudged to the nearest farmhouse to beg shelter for the night.
The farmer said okay but as there was only one bed, the salesman would have to share it with the farmer and his pretty young wife.
In the middle of the night the salesman, feeling horny, began making love to the wife. She said, “Okay, but please see if my husband is asleep – pull a hair from his chest to check.”
The salesman did and the farmer slept on.
Some time later, feeling horny again, the same thing happened – another hair, more lovemaking. And then again a third time.
But this time the farmer exploded.
“Look,” he shouted, “it’s okay to fuck my wife, but quit keeping score on my chest!”

An Italian arriving in Australia for the first time gets a job on a farm. The first day the farmer’s wife complains that the new worker has been chasing her chickens around the yard. The farmer says he is new and to give him a chance.
But later she is even more outraged when she sees him drinking his own piss. The farmer tries to console her by saying he is a good worker and that this is probably normal in Italy.
But later on the farmer sees the Italian with his head right next to his prize bull’s arse while it’s having a shit. This is too much for the farmer. Racing up to the Italian he shouts, “What the hell are you doing? First you chase my chickens, then you drink your own piss and now what are you doing with my bull?”
The Italian says, “But my friends-a tell me that-a when I get-a to Australia I’m-a supposed to chase-a the chicks, drink-a plenty of piss, and-a listen to all-a the bullshit!”

Enough for today.

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