Walau....this past week was a tough week, missed the 4D 1st prize on Sunday ( car's # ) and Wednesday ( daughter's NRIC # ) plus for selling the 15 lots of STX PO too fast. If not....the lost for the previous week would be covered, and I can "cheong" again.
The whole week started on a wrong footing since last Sunday.
Then again...that is Life, win some lose some.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Fear of Death means a Partially-Lived Life - By Osho
Often the fear of death comes up, intense and strong, and the fear of having to leave all this beauty, this friendship and love. How is it possible to relax in this certainty of death?
First, it is possible to relax only when death is a certainty. Relaxing is difficult when things are uncertain. If you know that you are going to die today, all fear of death will disappear. What is the point of wasting time? You have one day to live: live as intensely as possible, live as totally as possible.
Death may not come. Death cannot come to people who live very intensely and very totally. And even if it comes, those people who have lived totally, welcome it because it is a great relief. They are tired of living, they lived so totally and so intensely, so death comes like a friend. Just as after the whole day’s hard work night comes as a great relaxation, as a beautiful sleep, so does death come after life. Death has nothing ugly about it; you cannot find anything cleaner.
If the fear of death comes in, that means there are a few loopholes that are not filled with living. So those fears of death are very indicative and helpful. They show you that your dance has to go a little faster, that you have to burn the torch of your life from both ends together.
Dance so fast that the dancer disappears and only the dance remains.
Then it is not possible for any fear of death to visit you.
“And the fear of having to leave all this beauty, this friendship and love.” If you are totally herenow, who cares about tomorrow? Tomorrow will take care of itself. Jesus is right when he prays to God, ‘Lord, give me my daily bread.’ He is not even asking for tomorrow, just today is enough unto itself.
You have to learn that each moment has a completion.
The fear of having to leave it all comes only because you are not completely living in the moment; otherwise there is no time, and there is no mind, and there is no space.
Once a merchant was asked, “How old are you?”
He said, “Three hundred and sixty years old.”
The man could not believe it. He said, “Please, repeat it. Perhaps I have not heard rightly.”
The merchant shouted and said, “Three hundred and sixty years old!”
The man said, “Forgive me but I cannot believe it. You don’t look more than sixty!”
The merchant said, “You are also right. As far as the calendar is concerned I am sixty. But as far as my life is concerned I have lived six times more than anybody else. In sixty years I have managed to live three hundred and sixty years.”
It depends on intensity.
There are two ways of living.
One is the way of the buffalo. It lives horizontally, in a single line.
The other way is of a buddha. He lives vertically, in height and in depth. Then each moment can become an eternity.
Don’t waste your time in trivia, but live, sing, dance, love as totally and overflowingly as you are capable of. No fears will interfere and you will not be worried what will happen tomorrow. Today is enough unto itself. Lived, it is so full; it leaves no space to think about anything else. Life unlived, worries come and fears come.
Just live, love, and make each moment a deep ecstasy. All fears may disappear.
The Golden Future
First, it is possible to relax only when death is a certainty. Relaxing is difficult when things are uncertain. If you know that you are going to die today, all fear of death will disappear. What is the point of wasting time? You have one day to live: live as intensely as possible, live as totally as possible.
Death may not come. Death cannot come to people who live very intensely and very totally. And even if it comes, those people who have lived totally, welcome it because it is a great relief. They are tired of living, they lived so totally and so intensely, so death comes like a friend. Just as after the whole day’s hard work night comes as a great relaxation, as a beautiful sleep, so does death come after life. Death has nothing ugly about it; you cannot find anything cleaner.
If the fear of death comes in, that means there are a few loopholes that are not filled with living. So those fears of death are very indicative and helpful. They show you that your dance has to go a little faster, that you have to burn the torch of your life from both ends together.
Dance so fast that the dancer disappears and only the dance remains.
Then it is not possible for any fear of death to visit you.
“And the fear of having to leave all this beauty, this friendship and love.” If you are totally herenow, who cares about tomorrow? Tomorrow will take care of itself. Jesus is right when he prays to God, ‘Lord, give me my daily bread.’ He is not even asking for tomorrow, just today is enough unto itself.
You have to learn that each moment has a completion.
The fear of having to leave it all comes only because you are not completely living in the moment; otherwise there is no time, and there is no mind, and there is no space.
Once a merchant was asked, “How old are you?”
He said, “Three hundred and sixty years old.”
The man could not believe it. He said, “Please, repeat it. Perhaps I have not heard rightly.”
The merchant shouted and said, “Three hundred and sixty years old!”
The man said, “Forgive me but I cannot believe it. You don’t look more than sixty!”
The merchant said, “You are also right. As far as the calendar is concerned I am sixty. But as far as my life is concerned I have lived six times more than anybody else. In sixty years I have managed to live three hundred and sixty years.”
It depends on intensity.
There are two ways of living.
One is the way of the buffalo. It lives horizontally, in a single line.
The other way is of a buddha. He lives vertically, in height and in depth. Then each moment can become an eternity.
Don’t waste your time in trivia, but live, sing, dance, love as totally and overflowingly as you are capable of. No fears will interfere and you will not be worried what will happen tomorrow. Today is enough unto itself. Lived, it is so full; it leaves no space to think about anything else. Life unlived, worries come and fears come.
Just live, love, and make each moment a deep ecstasy. All fears may disappear.
The Golden Future
THE FOOD OF LOVE - BY Osho
As life is.... I divide it in three parts: breakfast, lunch, supper. The childhood is the breakfast-time. And as it happens if you have not been given your breakfast today, you will feel very, very hungry, out of all proportion, at lunchtime. And if you have missed lunch also, then of course at supper you will be almost mad. Love is food — that’s why I divide life in three: breakfast, lunch, supper.
Love is food: food for the soul. When a child sucks at his mother’s breast for the first time, he is sucking two things, not only milk. Milk is going into his body and love is going into his soul. Love is invisible, just as soul is invisible; milk is visible just as body is visible. If you have eyes to see, you can see two things together dripping into the child’s being from the mother’s breast. Milk is just the visible part of love; love is the invisible part of milk — the warmth, the love, the compassion, the blessing.
If the child has missed at his breakfast, then when he is young he will be too needy for love...and that creates trouble. Then he will be too impatient for love...that creates trouble. Then he will be in such a hurry for love...that creates trouble because love grows very slowly, it needs patience. And the more in a hurry you are, the greater is the possibility that you will miss.
Have you watched it in yourself and in others? The people who are too much in need of love always suffer, because they always feel that nobody is going to fulfill them. In fact, nobody is going to be their mother again. In a mother-child relationship, nothing was expected from the child. What can a child do? He is helpless. He cannot return anything. At the most he can smile, that’s all, or follow with his eyes where the mother is going, that’s all. Small, beautiful gestures, but nothing else can he do. The mother has to give, the child has to receive.
If at breakfast-time you have missed this, then you will be looking for a woman who can be your mother. Now, a woman is looking for a lover, not for a son; trouble is bound to be there. Unless by chance, by accident, you can find some woman who is looking for a son. Then things will settle; then two illnesses will fit together.
It always happens: a pessimist always finds an optimist to fit; a sadist always finds a masochist to fit; a dominating person always finds one who is in need of being dominated, then they fit. You cannot find two masochists living together, never. I have watched thousands of couples: up to now I have not been able to come to a single couple in which both the partners are sadists or both the partners are masochists. It is impossible to live together; they have to fit. Only opposites fit, and people always fall in love with the opposite.
If you can meet a woman who is in search of a son...that too is ugly, that too is ill, because a woman naturally should be seeking a lover, not a child. And this is the problem, and the problem becomes more complicated: even if she is looking for a son, she is unaware of it; and even if you are looking for a mother, you are unaware of it. In fact, if a woman tries to mother you, you will feel hurt. You will say, “What are you doing? Am I a child?” And you are looking for a mother. Thousands, millions of people are looking for a mother.
That’s why man seems so much interested in women’s breasts; otherwise there is no need to be so interested in women’s breasts. The interest simply shows that in your childhood, at your breakfast-time, you have missed something. It continues, it hovers on your mind, it haunts you. Breasts are for breakfast time. Now why do you go on thinking and painting.
Watch deep down, because it is not your responsibility, it is nothing to do with you. You cannot change your mother now. It happened as it happened, but you can become conscious. You can become conscious of all these things inside. And by becoming conscious a miracle happens. If you become conscious of these things, they start dropping. They can cling to you only in deep unconsciousness. A profound consciousness begins to be a transforming force.
So just become conscious! If you have some childish attitudes towards love, become conscious, find out, search deep. And just by becoming conscious, they drop. So nothing else is needed. Not that first you have to become conscious and then you have to ask “What to do now?” The moment you become conscious they disappear, because by becoming conscious you are becoming adult.
A child is not conscious. A child lives in a deep unconsciousness. By becoming conscious you are becoming adult, mature, so all that was clinging in your unconsciousness will disappear. Just as you bring light in a room and the darkness disappears; bring consciousness deep in your heart.
Then there are people who miss their lunch also. Then in their old age they become what you call “dirty old men.” Then in their old age they continuously think of sex and nothing else. They may not talk about sex in a direct way — they may start talking against sex — but they will talk about sex. Their being against makes no difference.
You go and listen to the so-called saints in India, and you will always find them continuously talking against sex and praising brahmacharya. These people have even missed their lunch. Now suppertime has come...and they are mad. Now they know that death is coming any moment. And when death is approaching near, and time is disappearing from their hands, if they become neurotic it seems natural.
These neurotic people have stories in the old scriptures that when they meditate, apsaras — beautiful women from heaven — descend. Naked they dance around them. Why should they do such a thing? Who is bothered about an old man sitting in the Himalayas meditating. Who is bothered? He is almost dead — who is bothered? Those apsaras from heaven, they can find better people. In fact, so many people are chasing apsaras, how can they find time to chase rishis, these so-called saints? No, it has nothing to do with apsaras or with heaven or anything. It is just that these people have missed breakfast and lunch both. And by suppertime their imagination is playing tremendous games with them. It is their imagination, starved imagination.
You do one thing: you just go on a fast for three weeks, and then everywhere you will start seeing food...everywhere! Even you may see a full moon rushing into the sky and you will say it looks like bread, a chapatti. That’s how it will happen. You will start projecting, your imagination will be playing games with you.
If this happens, then compassion never arises. Move slowly, alert, watching, be loving. If you are sexual I don’t say drop sex: I say make it more alert, make it more prayerful, make it more profound, so that it can become love. If you are loving, then make it even more grateful; bring deeper gratitude, joy, celebration, prayer to it, meditation to it, so that it can become compassion.
Unless compassion has happened to you, don’t think that you have lived rightly or that you have lived at all. Compassion is the flowering. And when compassion happens to one person, millions are healed. Whosoever comes around him is healed. Compassion is therapeutic.
A Sudden Clash of Thunder
Love is food: food for the soul. When a child sucks at his mother’s breast for the first time, he is sucking two things, not only milk. Milk is going into his body and love is going into his soul. Love is invisible, just as soul is invisible; milk is visible just as body is visible. If you have eyes to see, you can see two things together dripping into the child’s being from the mother’s breast. Milk is just the visible part of love; love is the invisible part of milk — the warmth, the love, the compassion, the blessing.
If the child has missed at his breakfast, then when he is young he will be too needy for love...and that creates trouble. Then he will be too impatient for love...that creates trouble. Then he will be in such a hurry for love...that creates trouble because love grows very slowly, it needs patience. And the more in a hurry you are, the greater is the possibility that you will miss.
Have you watched it in yourself and in others? The people who are too much in need of love always suffer, because they always feel that nobody is going to fulfill them. In fact, nobody is going to be their mother again. In a mother-child relationship, nothing was expected from the child. What can a child do? He is helpless. He cannot return anything. At the most he can smile, that’s all, or follow with his eyes where the mother is going, that’s all. Small, beautiful gestures, but nothing else can he do. The mother has to give, the child has to receive.
If at breakfast-time you have missed this, then you will be looking for a woman who can be your mother. Now, a woman is looking for a lover, not for a son; trouble is bound to be there. Unless by chance, by accident, you can find some woman who is looking for a son. Then things will settle; then two illnesses will fit together.
It always happens: a pessimist always finds an optimist to fit; a sadist always finds a masochist to fit; a dominating person always finds one who is in need of being dominated, then they fit. You cannot find two masochists living together, never. I have watched thousands of couples: up to now I have not been able to come to a single couple in which both the partners are sadists or both the partners are masochists. It is impossible to live together; they have to fit. Only opposites fit, and people always fall in love with the opposite.
If you can meet a woman who is in search of a son...that too is ugly, that too is ill, because a woman naturally should be seeking a lover, not a child. And this is the problem, and the problem becomes more complicated: even if she is looking for a son, she is unaware of it; and even if you are looking for a mother, you are unaware of it. In fact, if a woman tries to mother you, you will feel hurt. You will say, “What are you doing? Am I a child?” And you are looking for a mother. Thousands, millions of people are looking for a mother.
That’s why man seems so much interested in women’s breasts; otherwise there is no need to be so interested in women’s breasts. The interest simply shows that in your childhood, at your breakfast-time, you have missed something. It continues, it hovers on your mind, it haunts you. Breasts are for breakfast time. Now why do you go on thinking and painting.
Watch deep down, because it is not your responsibility, it is nothing to do with you. You cannot change your mother now. It happened as it happened, but you can become conscious. You can become conscious of all these things inside. And by becoming conscious a miracle happens. If you become conscious of these things, they start dropping. They can cling to you only in deep unconsciousness. A profound consciousness begins to be a transforming force.
So just become conscious! If you have some childish attitudes towards love, become conscious, find out, search deep. And just by becoming conscious, they drop. So nothing else is needed. Not that first you have to become conscious and then you have to ask “What to do now?” The moment you become conscious they disappear, because by becoming conscious you are becoming adult.
A child is not conscious. A child lives in a deep unconsciousness. By becoming conscious you are becoming adult, mature, so all that was clinging in your unconsciousness will disappear. Just as you bring light in a room and the darkness disappears; bring consciousness deep in your heart.
Then there are people who miss their lunch also. Then in their old age they become what you call “dirty old men.” Then in their old age they continuously think of sex and nothing else. They may not talk about sex in a direct way — they may start talking against sex — but they will talk about sex. Their being against makes no difference.
You go and listen to the so-called saints in India, and you will always find them continuously talking against sex and praising brahmacharya. These people have even missed their lunch. Now suppertime has come...and they are mad. Now they know that death is coming any moment. And when death is approaching near, and time is disappearing from their hands, if they become neurotic it seems natural.
These neurotic people have stories in the old scriptures that when they meditate, apsaras — beautiful women from heaven — descend. Naked they dance around them. Why should they do such a thing? Who is bothered about an old man sitting in the Himalayas meditating. Who is bothered? He is almost dead — who is bothered? Those apsaras from heaven, they can find better people. In fact, so many people are chasing apsaras, how can they find time to chase rishis, these so-called saints? No, it has nothing to do with apsaras or with heaven or anything. It is just that these people have missed breakfast and lunch both. And by suppertime their imagination is playing tremendous games with them. It is their imagination, starved imagination.
You do one thing: you just go on a fast for three weeks, and then everywhere you will start seeing food...everywhere! Even you may see a full moon rushing into the sky and you will say it looks like bread, a chapatti. That’s how it will happen. You will start projecting, your imagination will be playing games with you.
If this happens, then compassion never arises. Move slowly, alert, watching, be loving. If you are sexual I don’t say drop sex: I say make it more alert, make it more prayerful, make it more profound, so that it can become love. If you are loving, then make it even more grateful; bring deeper gratitude, joy, celebration, prayer to it, meditation to it, so that it can become compassion.
Unless compassion has happened to you, don’t think that you have lived rightly or that you have lived at all. Compassion is the flowering. And when compassion happens to one person, millions are healed. Whosoever comes around him is healed. Compassion is therapeutic.
A Sudden Clash of Thunder
THE ART OF EATING - by Osho
Whenever you are half-hearted in anything, it lingers longer.
If you are sitting at your table and eating, and if you eat only half-heartedly and your hunger remains, then you will continue to think about food the whole day. You can try fasting and you will see: you will continuously think about food. But if you have eaten well — and when I say eaten well, I don’t mean only that you have stuffed your stomach. Then it is not necessarily so that you have eaten well. You could have stuffed yourself. But eating well is an art. It is not just stuffing. It is great art: to taste the food, to smell the food, to touch the food, to chew the food, to digest the food, and to digest it as divine. It is divine; it is a gift from the divine.
Hindus say, Anam Brahma food is divine. So with deep respect you eat, and while eating you forget everything, because it is a prayer. It is an existential prayer. You are eating the divine and the divine is going to give you nourishment. It is a gift to be accepted with deep love and gratitude. And you don’t stuff the body, because stuffing the body is being anti-body. It is the other pole. There are people who are obsessed with fasting, and there are people who are obsessed with stuffing themselves. Both are wrong because in both the ways the body loses balance.
A real lover of the body eats only to the point where body feels perfectly quiet, balanced, tranquil; where body feels to be neither leaning to the left nor to the right, but just in the middle. It is an art to understand the language of the body, to understand the language of your stomach, to understand what is needed, to give only that which is needed, and to give that in an artistic way, in an aesthetic way.
Animals eat, man eats. Then what is the difference? Man makes a great aesthetic experience out of eating. What is the point of having a beautiful dining table? What is the point of having candles burning there? What is the point of incense? What is the point of asking friends to come and participate? It is to make it an art, not just stuffing. But these are outward signs of the art; the inward signs are to understand the language of your body: to listen to it, to be sensitive to its needs. And then you eat, and then the whole day you will not remember food at all. Only when the body is hungry again will the remembrance come. Then it is natural.
The Beloved
If you are sitting at your table and eating, and if you eat only half-heartedly and your hunger remains, then you will continue to think about food the whole day. You can try fasting and you will see: you will continuously think about food. But if you have eaten well — and when I say eaten well, I don’t mean only that you have stuffed your stomach. Then it is not necessarily so that you have eaten well. You could have stuffed yourself. But eating well is an art. It is not just stuffing. It is great art: to taste the food, to smell the food, to touch the food, to chew the food, to digest the food, and to digest it as divine. It is divine; it is a gift from the divine.
Hindus say, Anam Brahma food is divine. So with deep respect you eat, and while eating you forget everything, because it is a prayer. It is an existential prayer. You are eating the divine and the divine is going to give you nourishment. It is a gift to be accepted with deep love and gratitude. And you don’t stuff the body, because stuffing the body is being anti-body. It is the other pole. There are people who are obsessed with fasting, and there are people who are obsessed with stuffing themselves. Both are wrong because in both the ways the body loses balance.
A real lover of the body eats only to the point where body feels perfectly quiet, balanced, tranquil; where body feels to be neither leaning to the left nor to the right, but just in the middle. It is an art to understand the language of the body, to understand the language of your stomach, to understand what is needed, to give only that which is needed, and to give that in an artistic way, in an aesthetic way.
Animals eat, man eats. Then what is the difference? Man makes a great aesthetic experience out of eating. What is the point of having a beautiful dining table? What is the point of having candles burning there? What is the point of incense? What is the point of asking friends to come and participate? It is to make it an art, not just stuffing. But these are outward signs of the art; the inward signs are to understand the language of your body: to listen to it, to be sensitive to its needs. And then you eat, and then the whole day you will not remember food at all. Only when the body is hungry again will the remembrance come. Then it is natural.
The Beloved
I feel like I am falling into an eternal black and bottomless abyss. What am I experiencing? - by Osho
"Evening has merged into night.
Some people have come. They say, "You teach nothingness. But the thought of nothingness terrifies us. Is there nothing we can hold on to?"
I tell them that courage is certainly essential for a leap into the void.
But those who leap in do not attain nothingness, they attain wholeness. And those who hold on to something achieve nothing. Can an imaginary handhold really help you?
It is only through emptiness that we can attain truth. And in emptiness, there can be nothing to cling on to. I tell them a story:
"One dark, moonless night, a traveller passing through unfamiliar mountains slipped and fell into a deep chasm. Catching hold of a bush, he hung in suspense. There was darkness all around. Below him was also impenetrable darkness and the dreadful abyss. For many hours he clung to the bush, and throughout this time he suffered the pangs of imminent death. It was a winter night and gradually his hands became cold and numb. Soon he would have to release his grip, and then he would fall into the abyss. No effort could save him, and already he saw himself in the jaws of death. He fell -- but nothing happened. There was no abyss at all. The moment he let go, he found himself standing on the ground."
This has been my experience also. Falling into emptiness, I discovered that emptiness itself was the ground. By dropping the support of the mind, we attain the support of the divine.
The courage to leap into the void is man's only true courage, and those who cannot summon up the strength to enter the void remain unfulfilled."
Osho, excerpted from: Seeds of Wisdom, Number 26
Some people have come. They say, "You teach nothingness. But the thought of nothingness terrifies us. Is there nothing we can hold on to?"
I tell them that courage is certainly essential for a leap into the void.
But those who leap in do not attain nothingness, they attain wholeness. And those who hold on to something achieve nothing. Can an imaginary handhold really help you?
It is only through emptiness that we can attain truth. And in emptiness, there can be nothing to cling on to. I tell them a story:
"One dark, moonless night, a traveller passing through unfamiliar mountains slipped and fell into a deep chasm. Catching hold of a bush, he hung in suspense. There was darkness all around. Below him was also impenetrable darkness and the dreadful abyss. For many hours he clung to the bush, and throughout this time he suffered the pangs of imminent death. It was a winter night and gradually his hands became cold and numb. Soon he would have to release his grip, and then he would fall into the abyss. No effort could save him, and already he saw himself in the jaws of death. He fell -- but nothing happened. There was no abyss at all. The moment he let go, he found himself standing on the ground."
This has been my experience also. Falling into emptiness, I discovered that emptiness itself was the ground. By dropping the support of the mind, we attain the support of the divine.
The courage to leap into the void is man's only true courage, and those who cannot summon up the strength to enter the void remain unfulfilled."
Osho, excerpted from: Seeds of Wisdom, Number 26
Is enlightenment only a human phenomenon or can trees and animals also be enlightened? - by Osho
"The spring of life is available to everybody; otherwise how can you live?
Your life is continuously being nourished by the spring of life. The trees are nourished by the spring of life, the flowers blossom ... but the juice comes from the spring of life. The whole existence is nothing but a manifestation of the springs of life.
But trees cannot become enlightened -- neither can mountains or oceans; neither can animals or birds. They all have the same source of life that you have. But man has a prerogative, a privilege, that he can become aware of his spring of life. This awareness is not possible in any other form in existence. It is man's grandeur, it is his dignity.
Existence has given him the most precious opportunity. If he can create awareness, consciousness, more alertness, then his spring of life explodes into a new dimension. The dimension of life becomes the dimension of light, of knowing -- knowing the deepest roots of our being in eternity. And the moment we know our roots are eternal, we know our flowers are also going to be eternal. Enlightenment is a flowering.
The springs of life are seeds; enlightenment is a flower. The seed has come to its ultimate expression -- there is no further to go. Springs of life are the lowest rung of the ladder, and enlightenment is the highest rung of the ladder, although the ladder is the same. The change comes slowly, as you become more aware of who you are, of what life is -- not intellectually, not by reading through scriptures, but by reading the only holy scripture: your own being, and bringing your potential to its realization. So that which was hidden in the seed becomes an explosion in the flower, in the fragrance.
That fragrance is enlightenment. It comes from the sources of life, but it is not synonymous with it. The seed is not synonymous with the flower, although the flower comes from the seed. The seed is the womb, but the flower -- although connected with the seed, with the womb -- is a totally new experience. Awareness ordinarily is objective. You know others, you know the world, you know the faraway stars.
The moment awareness turns inwards and starts knowing itself -- in other words, the moment awareness is the object of its own knowing -- enlightenment blossoms with all its beauty, with all its immortal glory.
Life is accepted by the scientist, but he is not yet capable of accepting the possibility of enlightenment. Life is accepted by the atheist, but he is also not capable of comprehending the ultimate explosion.
Just as for millennia we had no idea that matter is made of small atoms, which are not visible to the eyes ... they are so small that if you put one atom upon another atom, and then go on putting one on top of another, you will need one hundred thousand atoms, and then they will be as thick as a human hair. Such a small atom, one hundred thousand times thinner than a human hair, when it explodes, releases so much energy that a city like Hiroshima or Nagasaki disappears within seconds -- evaporates.
I have seen a picture sent by a friend from Japan ... just looking at the picture, one feels so sad about humanity, so hopeless. The picture is of a small girl, maybe nine years old. She is going from the ground floor to the first story with her bag and books -- perhaps to do her homework before she goes to sleep. She is just in the middle of the staircase when the atom bomb falls on Hiroshima.
Just a small atom exploding creates so much energy ... you can use it for destruction or you can use it for some creative purpose. Right now the scientists say we have come so far from Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- our new nuclear weapons are so great in their energy -- that the atom bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima look like children's toys. If matter, in its smallest particle, contains so much energy, can you conceive how much energy may be available in the living cell of human beings?
Enlightenment is the explosion of a living cell. Certainly it is not destructive at all, but it transforms the whole man. In that way, it is destructive. It destroys the old man, it destroys the night, it destroys all that was constituting your personality: your jealousy, your anger, your hate, your lust, your greed -- all that is simply finished in a single moment. And the same energy that was involved in jealousy, hate, greed, ambition, and a thousand and one desires, is changed into totally new forms of energy: love, silence, peace, compassion, wisdom -- all that is the basic search of life itself. Life in itself is dormant, it is fast asleep.
Enlightenment is absolutely awake. But it is the same energy that was asleep that becomes awake. So they are not synonymous, but they are two extremes of the same energy. But this, if taken as an intellectual understanding, is not going to help you in any way. It has to become your own experience. You have to see that light. You have to see that explosion within your own being. You have to see the darkness disappearing. You have to see the new dawn of a new life -- a life of grace and gratitude, a life of beauty and blessings."
Osho, excerpted from: The New Dawn, Chapter 16
Your life is continuously being nourished by the spring of life. The trees are nourished by the spring of life, the flowers blossom ... but the juice comes from the spring of life. The whole existence is nothing but a manifestation of the springs of life.
But trees cannot become enlightened -- neither can mountains or oceans; neither can animals or birds. They all have the same source of life that you have. But man has a prerogative, a privilege, that he can become aware of his spring of life. This awareness is not possible in any other form in existence. It is man's grandeur, it is his dignity.
Existence has given him the most precious opportunity. If he can create awareness, consciousness, more alertness, then his spring of life explodes into a new dimension. The dimension of life becomes the dimension of light, of knowing -- knowing the deepest roots of our being in eternity. And the moment we know our roots are eternal, we know our flowers are also going to be eternal. Enlightenment is a flowering.
The springs of life are seeds; enlightenment is a flower. The seed has come to its ultimate expression -- there is no further to go. Springs of life are the lowest rung of the ladder, and enlightenment is the highest rung of the ladder, although the ladder is the same. The change comes slowly, as you become more aware of who you are, of what life is -- not intellectually, not by reading through scriptures, but by reading the only holy scripture: your own being, and bringing your potential to its realization. So that which was hidden in the seed becomes an explosion in the flower, in the fragrance.
That fragrance is enlightenment. It comes from the sources of life, but it is not synonymous with it. The seed is not synonymous with the flower, although the flower comes from the seed. The seed is the womb, but the flower -- although connected with the seed, with the womb -- is a totally new experience. Awareness ordinarily is objective. You know others, you know the world, you know the faraway stars.
The moment awareness turns inwards and starts knowing itself -- in other words, the moment awareness is the object of its own knowing -- enlightenment blossoms with all its beauty, with all its immortal glory.
Life is accepted by the scientist, but he is not yet capable of accepting the possibility of enlightenment. Life is accepted by the atheist, but he is also not capable of comprehending the ultimate explosion.
Just as for millennia we had no idea that matter is made of small atoms, which are not visible to the eyes ... they are so small that if you put one atom upon another atom, and then go on putting one on top of another, you will need one hundred thousand atoms, and then they will be as thick as a human hair. Such a small atom, one hundred thousand times thinner than a human hair, when it explodes, releases so much energy that a city like Hiroshima or Nagasaki disappears within seconds -- evaporates.
I have seen a picture sent by a friend from Japan ... just looking at the picture, one feels so sad about humanity, so hopeless. The picture is of a small girl, maybe nine years old. She is going from the ground floor to the first story with her bag and books -- perhaps to do her homework before she goes to sleep. She is just in the middle of the staircase when the atom bomb falls on Hiroshima.
Just a small atom exploding creates so much energy ... you can use it for destruction or you can use it for some creative purpose. Right now the scientists say we have come so far from Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- our new nuclear weapons are so great in their energy -- that the atom bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima look like children's toys. If matter, in its smallest particle, contains so much energy, can you conceive how much energy may be available in the living cell of human beings?
Enlightenment is the explosion of a living cell. Certainly it is not destructive at all, but it transforms the whole man. In that way, it is destructive. It destroys the old man, it destroys the night, it destroys all that was constituting your personality: your jealousy, your anger, your hate, your lust, your greed -- all that is simply finished in a single moment. And the same energy that was involved in jealousy, hate, greed, ambition, and a thousand and one desires, is changed into totally new forms of energy: love, silence, peace, compassion, wisdom -- all that is the basic search of life itself. Life in itself is dormant, it is fast asleep.
Enlightenment is absolutely awake. But it is the same energy that was asleep that becomes awake. So they are not synonymous, but they are two extremes of the same energy. But this, if taken as an intellectual understanding, is not going to help you in any way. It has to become your own experience. You have to see that light. You have to see that explosion within your own being. You have to see the darkness disappearing. You have to see the new dawn of a new life -- a life of grace and gratitude, a life of beauty and blessings."
Osho, excerpted from: The New Dawn, Chapter 16
Why do I feel so much pain in letting go of the things that are causing me misery? - by Osho
"The things that are causing you misery must be giving you some pleasure too; otherwise the question does not arise. If they were pure misery you would have dropped them. But in life, nothing is pure; everything is mixed with its opposite. Everything carries its opposite in its womb.
What you call misery, analyze it, penetrate into it, and you will see that it has something which you would like to have. Maybe it is not yet real, maybe it is only a hope, maybe it is only a promise for tomorrow, but you will cling to the misery, you will cling to the pain, in the hope that tomorrow something that you have always desired and longed for is going to happen.
You suffer misery in the hope of pleasure. If it is pure misery it is impossible to cling to it. Just watch, be more alert about your misery. For example, you are feeling jealous. It creates misery. But look around -- there must be something positive in it. It also gives you some ego, some sense of your being separate from others, some sense of superiority. Your jealousy at least pretends to be love. If you don't feel jealous you will think maybe you don't love anymore. And you are clinging to jealousy because you would like to cling to your love -- at least your idea of love. If your woman or your man goes with somebody else and you don't feel jealous at all, you will immediately become conscious that you no longer love. Otherwise, for centuries you have been told that lovers are jealous. Jealousy has become an intrinsic part of your love: without jealousy your love dies; only with jealousy can your so-called love live. If you want your love you will have to accept your jealousy and the misery that is created by it.
And your mind is very cunning and very clever in finding rationalizations.
It will say, "It is natural to feel jealous." And it appears natural because everybody else is doing the same. Your mind will say, "It is natural to feel hurt when your lover leaves you. Because you have loved so much, how can you avoid the hurt, the wound, when your lover leaves you?"
In fact, you are enjoying your wound too, in a very subtle and unconscious way. Your wound is giving you an idea that you are a great lover, that you loved so much, that you loved so deeply, that your love was so profound, that you are shattered because your lover has left you. Even if you are not shattered you will pretend to be shattered -- you will believe in your own lie. You will behave as if you are in great misery, you will cry and weep, and your tears may not be true at all, but just to console yourself that you are a great lover, you have to cry and weep. Just watch every kind of misery: either it has some pleasure in it which you are not ready to lose, or it has some hope in it which goes on dangling in front of you like a carrot. And it looks so close, just by the corner, and you have travelled so long and now the goal is so close, why drop it? You will find some rationalization in it, some hypocrisy in it.
Just a few days ago a sannyasin wrote to me that her man has left her and she is not feeling miserable -- what is wrong with her? "Why am I not feeling miserable? Am I too hard, rocklike? I don't feel any misery," she wrote to me. And she is miserable because she is not feeling misery! She was expecting to be shattered. "On the contrary," she wrote, "I can confess that I am feeling happy -- and that makes me very sad. What kind of love is this?
I am feeling happy, unburdened; a great load has disappeared from my being."
She asked me, "Beloved Master, is it normal? Am I alright or is something basically wrong with me?"
Nothing is wrong with her, she is absolutely right. In fact, when lovers, after a long long togetherness and all the misery that is bound to happen when you are together, leave each other, it is a relief. But it is against the ego to confess it, that it is a relief. For a few days at least you will move with a long face, with tears flowing from your eyes -- phony, but this is the idea that has prevailed in the world.
If somebody dies and you don't feel sad you will start feeling that something is certainly wrong with you. How can you avoid sadness when somebody has died? -- because we have been told it is natural, it is normal, and everybody wants to be natural and normal. It is not normal, it is only average. It is not natural, it is only a long long cultivated habit; otherwise there is nothing to weep and cry about.
Death destroys nothing. The body is dust and falls into dust, and the consciousness has two possibilities: if it still has desires then it will move into another womb, or if all the desires have disappeared then it will move into the womb of God, into eternity. Nothing is destroyed. The body again becomes part of the earth, goes into rest, and the soul moves into the universal consciousness or moves into another body.
But you cry and weep and you carry your sadness for many days. It is just a formality, or if it is not a formality then there is every possibility that you never loved the man who has died and now you are feeling repentant; you never loved the man totally and now there is no more time. Now the man has disappeared, now he will never be available. Maybe you had quarreled with your husband and he died in the night in his sleep. Now you will say that you are crying because he has died, but really you are crying because you have not even been able to ask his forgiveness, you have not even been able to say a goodbye. The quarrel will hang over you like a cloud forever.
If a man lives moment to moment in totality, then there is never any repentance, no guilt. If you have loved totally, there is no question. One day if the lover leaves that simply means, "Now our ways are parting. We can say goodbye, we can be thankful to each other. We shared so much, we loved so much, we have enriched each other's lives so much -- what is there to cry and weep about and why be miserable?"
But people are so entangled in their rationality that they can't see beyond their rationalizations. And they always rationalize everything; even things which are obviously simple become very complicated.
"I am in love with my horse," said Andrew to the psychiatrist.
"That's nothing," replied the shrink. "A lot of people love animals. My wife and I have a dog that we love very much."
"Ah, but doctor, it is a physical attraction that I feel towards my horse!"
"Hmm!" said the analyst. "What kind of horse is it? Male or female?"
"Female, of course!" said Andrew. "What do you think I am -- queer?"
You ask me, Akal, "Why do I feel so much pain in letting go of the things that are causing me misery?"
You are not yet convinced that they are causing you misery. I am saying that they are causing you misery, you are not yet convinced. And it is not a question of MY saying it. The basic thing is: YOU will have to understand, "These are the things which are causing me misery," and you will have to see that there are investments in your misery. If you want those investments you will have to learn to live with the misery; if you want to drop the misery, you will have to drop those investments too.
Have you watched it, observed it? -- if you talk about your misery to people, they give great sympathy to you. Everybody is sympathetic to the miserable man. Now, if you love getting sympathy from people you cannot drop your misery; that is your investment.
The miserable husband comes home, the wife is loving, sympathetic. The more miserable he is, the more his children are considerate of him; the more miserable he is, the more his friends are friendly towards him. Everybody takes care of him. The moment he starts becoming happy they withdraw their sympathy, of course -- a happy person needs no sympathy. The more happy he is, the more he finds that nobody cares about him. It is as if everybody becomes suddenly hard, frozen. Now, how can you drop your misery?
You will have to drop this desire for attention, this desire for getting sympathy from people. In fact, it is very ugly to desire sympathy from people -- it makes you a beggar. And remember, sympathy is not love; they are obliging you, they are fulfilling a kind of duty -- it is not love. They may not like you, but still they will sympathize with you. This is etiquette, culture, civilization, formality -- but you are living on false things. Your misery is real and what you are getting in the bargain is false. Of course, if you become happy, if you drop your miseries, it will be a radical change in your life-style; things may start changing.
Once a woman came to me, the woman of one of the richest men in India, and she told me, "I want to meditate, but my husband is against it."
I asked her, "Why is your husband against meditation?"
She said, "He says, 'The way you are, I love you. I don't know what will happen after meditation. If you start meditating you are bound to change; then I don't know whether I will be able to love you or not, because you will be another person."
I said to the woman, "Your husband has a point there -- certainly things will be different. You will be more free, more independent. You will be more joyous, and your husband will have to learn to live with a new woman. He may not like you that way, he may start feeling inferior. Right now he is superior to you."
That's why down the ages man has not allowed women to meditate, to participate in deep religious experiences. Man has not allowed women to read the Vedas, the Upanishads, the great scriptures of the world. In many religions the women are not allowed to enter into the mosque or the synagogue. In Jainism it is said that you cannot be liberated from the body of a woman; first you will have to be born as a man, then only can you be liberated. From the body of a woman there is no way to God.
Why? Why this fear? The reason is very psychological: man has always been afraid of women becoming happier than him, more peaceful than him, more attuned, more integrated than him -- because once they are more integrated, more attuned to their beings and to the being of the whole, more in harmony with existence, more in accord.... And women can attain to harmony more easily than men, remember. For certain biological reasons, a woman is more capable of going into meditation than a man is. The male energy is aggressive, violent, outgoing, extrovert, and the female energy is introvert, passive, ingoing.
Hence what Jainism says is absolutely wrong -- not only absolutely wrong: just the opposite may be the truth. It is easier to enter into God through the body of a woman than through the body of a man. The woman's body is more harmonious, the man's body is not so harmonious. The woman's body is more balanced, more rounded; that's why she looks so beautiful. Her body is less tense, more relaxed.
Mothers become aware after a few months' pregnancy whether it is a male child or a female child in their womb, because the male child starts parading and doing things inside the womb, kicking... he cannot be at rest.
You can watch small girls -- they are perfectly happy sitting in a corner with their dolls. And the boys? -- they can't sit.
Just a few days ago a little boy took sannyas. I had to ask him, "Can you be silent for one minute so I can explain your name to your mother?" But he was not even able to be silent for one minute. Small girls come for sannyas; when I say to them, "Close your eyes and sit silently," they sit so beautifully; they can sit for hours. When small boys come and I say to them, "Close your eyes," they have to clench their eyes! They are afraid that if they don't do too much they will open. They are so curious about what is happening, what is going on outside.
When small girls take sannyas they look at me. And the boys? -- they look at Krishna Bharti and his camera! They are all over the place! I am putting a mala on them and they are looking at people to see what the response is.
"Are people laughing, enjoying, watching?" They are great performers! And a great curiosity keeps them constantly tense.
While on their honeymoon, Kit and Netty bought a talkative parrot and took it back to their hotel room. As they made love the bird kept up a running commentary. Finally Kit flung a bath towel over the cage and said, "If you don't shut up I am sending you to the zoo!"
Getting ready to leave the following morning, they could not close a bulging suitcase and decided one of them would stand on it while the other attempted to fasten it.
"Darling," said Kit, "you get on top and I will try."
That didn't work. So he said, "Now I will get on top and you try."
That didn't work either.
"Look," said Kit, "let us both get on top and try."
The parrot yanked away the towel and said, "Zoo or no zoo, this I've gotta see!"
The parrot must have been a male!
I told the woman, "Your husband is right: before you enter on the path of meditation you have to consider it, because there are dangers ahead."
She didn't listen to me; she started meditating. Now she is divorced. She came to see me after a few years and said, "You were right. The more silent I became, the more my husband became furious at me. He was never so violent -- something strange started happening," she told me. "The more silent and quiet I was becoming, the more aggressive he was becoming." His whole male chauvinist mind was at stake. He wanted to destroy the peace and the silence that was happening to the woman so he could still remain superior. And because it could not happen the way he wanted, he divorced the woman.
It is a very strange world! If you become peaceful your relationship with people will change, because you are a different person. If your relationship was because of your misery it may disappear.
I used to have a friend. He was a professor in the same university where I was a professor; he was a great social worker. In India, what to do with the widows is still a problem. Nobody wants to marry them, and widows are not in favor of marrying either; that seems like a sin. And this professor was determined to marry a widow. He was not concerned whether he was in love with the woman or not -- that was secondary, irrelevant -- his only interest was that she should be a widow. And he persuaded her slowly slowly, and she was ready.
I told the man, "Before you take the plunge, consider it for at least three days -- go into isolation. Are you in love with the woman, or is it just a great social service that you are doing?" Marrying a widow in India is thought to be something very revolutionary, something radical. "Are you just trying to prove that you are a revolutionary? If you are trying to prove that you are a revolutionary, then you are bound for trouble -- because the moment you are married she will no longer be a widow and your whole interest will be gone."
He didn't listen to me. He got married... and after six months he told me, "You were right." He cried. He said, "I could not see the point: I was in love with her widowhood, not with her for herself, and now certainly she is no longer a widow."
So I said, "You do one thing -- commit suicide! Make her a widow again and give somebody else a chance to be a revolutionary! What else can you do?"
Man's mind is so stupid, so unconscious. Buddha says it is in deep sleep, slumber, snoring. Akal, you cannot let go of things that are causing you misery because you have not yet seen the investments, you have not yet looked deeply into them.
You have not seen that there is some pleasure you are deriving out of your misery. You will have to drop both -- and then there is no problem. In fact, misery and pleasure can only be dropped together. And then arises bliss.
Bliss is not pleasure, bliss is not even happiness. Happiness is always bound together with unhappiness and pleasure is always bound together with pain. Dropping both.... You want to drop misery so that you can be happy -- that is an absolutely wrong approach. You will have to drop both. Seeing that they are together, one drops them; you cannot choose one part.
In life, everything has an organic unity. Pain and pleasure are not two things. Really, if we make a more scientific language, we will drop these words: pain and pleasure. We will make one word: painpleasure, happinessunhappiness, daynight, lifedeath. These are one word because they are NEVER separable.
And you want to choose one part: you want to have only the roses and not the thorns, you want only the day and not the night, you want only love and not hate. This is not going to happen -- this is not the way things are. You will have to drop both, and then arises a totally different world: the world of bliss.
Bliss is absolute peace, undisturbedness, neither disturbed by pain nor disturbed by pleasure.
To celebrate their fortieth anniversary, Seymour and Rose went back to the same second-floor hotel room where they had spent their honeymoon.
"Now," said Seymour, "just like that first night, let us undress, get in opposite corners of the room, turn off the lights, then run to each other and embrace."
They undressed, went to opposite corners, switched off the lights and ran towards each other. But their sense of direction was dulled by forty years, so Seymour missed Rose and he went right through the window. He landed on the lawn in a daze.
Seymour tapped on the lobby window to get the clerk's attention. "I fell down from upstairs," he said. "I am naked and I gotta get back to my room."
"It's okay," said the clerk. "Nobody will see you."
"Are you crazy? I gotta walk through the lobby and I am all naked!"
"Nobody can see you," repeated the clerk. "Everybody is upstairs trying to get some old lady off a doorknob!"
People are so foolish! Not only the younger ones -- the older you get, the more foolish you become. The more experienced you are, it seems the more stupidity you accumulate through life. It really rarely happens that a person starts watching, observing his own life and his own life patterns.
See what your misery is, what desires are causing it, and why you are clinging to those desires. And it is not for the first time that you are clinging to those desires; this has been the pattern of your whole life and you have not arrived anywhere. You go on in circles, you never come to any real growth. You remain childish, stupid. And you are born with the intelligence that can make you a buddha, but it is lost in unnecessary things.
A farmer who had only two impotent old bulls bought a new, young, vigorous bull.
Immediately the stud began mounting one cow after another in the pasture. After watching this for an hour, one of the ancient bulls started pawing the ground and snorting.
"What's the matter?" asked the other. "You getting young ideas?"
"No," said the first bull, "but I don't want that young fellow to think I am one of the cows."
So even in their old age people go on carrying their egos. They have to pretend, they have to pose, and their whole life is nothing but a long long story of misery. Still they defend it. Rather than being ready to change it, they are very defensive.
Akal, drop all defensiveness, drop all armors. Start watching how you live your day-to-day life, moment to moment. And whatsoever you are doing, go into its details. You need not go to a psychoanalyst, you can analyze each pattern of your life yourself -- it is such a simple process! Just watch and you will be able to see what is happening, what has been happening. You have been choosing -- and that has been the problem -- you have been choosing one part against the other, and they are both together.
Buddha says: Attain to choiceless awareness -- don't choose at all. Just watch and be aware without choosing, and you will attain to bliss, you will attain to the lotus paradise."
Osho, excerpted from: Dhampadda - The way of the Buddha, Vol 5, Chapter 2
What you call misery, analyze it, penetrate into it, and you will see that it has something which you would like to have. Maybe it is not yet real, maybe it is only a hope, maybe it is only a promise for tomorrow, but you will cling to the misery, you will cling to the pain, in the hope that tomorrow something that you have always desired and longed for is going to happen.
You suffer misery in the hope of pleasure. If it is pure misery it is impossible to cling to it. Just watch, be more alert about your misery. For example, you are feeling jealous. It creates misery. But look around -- there must be something positive in it. It also gives you some ego, some sense of your being separate from others, some sense of superiority. Your jealousy at least pretends to be love. If you don't feel jealous you will think maybe you don't love anymore. And you are clinging to jealousy because you would like to cling to your love -- at least your idea of love. If your woman or your man goes with somebody else and you don't feel jealous at all, you will immediately become conscious that you no longer love. Otherwise, for centuries you have been told that lovers are jealous. Jealousy has become an intrinsic part of your love: without jealousy your love dies; only with jealousy can your so-called love live. If you want your love you will have to accept your jealousy and the misery that is created by it.
And your mind is very cunning and very clever in finding rationalizations.
It will say, "It is natural to feel jealous." And it appears natural because everybody else is doing the same. Your mind will say, "It is natural to feel hurt when your lover leaves you. Because you have loved so much, how can you avoid the hurt, the wound, when your lover leaves you?"
In fact, you are enjoying your wound too, in a very subtle and unconscious way. Your wound is giving you an idea that you are a great lover, that you loved so much, that you loved so deeply, that your love was so profound, that you are shattered because your lover has left you. Even if you are not shattered you will pretend to be shattered -- you will believe in your own lie. You will behave as if you are in great misery, you will cry and weep, and your tears may not be true at all, but just to console yourself that you are a great lover, you have to cry and weep. Just watch every kind of misery: either it has some pleasure in it which you are not ready to lose, or it has some hope in it which goes on dangling in front of you like a carrot. And it looks so close, just by the corner, and you have travelled so long and now the goal is so close, why drop it? You will find some rationalization in it, some hypocrisy in it.
Just a few days ago a sannyasin wrote to me that her man has left her and she is not feeling miserable -- what is wrong with her? "Why am I not feeling miserable? Am I too hard, rocklike? I don't feel any misery," she wrote to me. And she is miserable because she is not feeling misery! She was expecting to be shattered. "On the contrary," she wrote, "I can confess that I am feeling happy -- and that makes me very sad. What kind of love is this?
I am feeling happy, unburdened; a great load has disappeared from my being."
She asked me, "Beloved Master, is it normal? Am I alright or is something basically wrong with me?"
Nothing is wrong with her, she is absolutely right. In fact, when lovers, after a long long togetherness and all the misery that is bound to happen when you are together, leave each other, it is a relief. But it is against the ego to confess it, that it is a relief. For a few days at least you will move with a long face, with tears flowing from your eyes -- phony, but this is the idea that has prevailed in the world.
If somebody dies and you don't feel sad you will start feeling that something is certainly wrong with you. How can you avoid sadness when somebody has died? -- because we have been told it is natural, it is normal, and everybody wants to be natural and normal. It is not normal, it is only average. It is not natural, it is only a long long cultivated habit; otherwise there is nothing to weep and cry about.
Death destroys nothing. The body is dust and falls into dust, and the consciousness has two possibilities: if it still has desires then it will move into another womb, or if all the desires have disappeared then it will move into the womb of God, into eternity. Nothing is destroyed. The body again becomes part of the earth, goes into rest, and the soul moves into the universal consciousness or moves into another body.
But you cry and weep and you carry your sadness for many days. It is just a formality, or if it is not a formality then there is every possibility that you never loved the man who has died and now you are feeling repentant; you never loved the man totally and now there is no more time. Now the man has disappeared, now he will never be available. Maybe you had quarreled with your husband and he died in the night in his sleep. Now you will say that you are crying because he has died, but really you are crying because you have not even been able to ask his forgiveness, you have not even been able to say a goodbye. The quarrel will hang over you like a cloud forever.
If a man lives moment to moment in totality, then there is never any repentance, no guilt. If you have loved totally, there is no question. One day if the lover leaves that simply means, "Now our ways are parting. We can say goodbye, we can be thankful to each other. We shared so much, we loved so much, we have enriched each other's lives so much -- what is there to cry and weep about and why be miserable?"
But people are so entangled in their rationality that they can't see beyond their rationalizations. And they always rationalize everything; even things which are obviously simple become very complicated.
"I am in love with my horse," said Andrew to the psychiatrist.
"That's nothing," replied the shrink. "A lot of people love animals. My wife and I have a dog that we love very much."
"Ah, but doctor, it is a physical attraction that I feel towards my horse!"
"Hmm!" said the analyst. "What kind of horse is it? Male or female?"
"Female, of course!" said Andrew. "What do you think I am -- queer?"
You ask me, Akal, "Why do I feel so much pain in letting go of the things that are causing me misery?"
You are not yet convinced that they are causing you misery. I am saying that they are causing you misery, you are not yet convinced. And it is not a question of MY saying it. The basic thing is: YOU will have to understand, "These are the things which are causing me misery," and you will have to see that there are investments in your misery. If you want those investments you will have to learn to live with the misery; if you want to drop the misery, you will have to drop those investments too.
Have you watched it, observed it? -- if you talk about your misery to people, they give great sympathy to you. Everybody is sympathetic to the miserable man. Now, if you love getting sympathy from people you cannot drop your misery; that is your investment.
The miserable husband comes home, the wife is loving, sympathetic. The more miserable he is, the more his children are considerate of him; the more miserable he is, the more his friends are friendly towards him. Everybody takes care of him. The moment he starts becoming happy they withdraw their sympathy, of course -- a happy person needs no sympathy. The more happy he is, the more he finds that nobody cares about him. It is as if everybody becomes suddenly hard, frozen. Now, how can you drop your misery?
You will have to drop this desire for attention, this desire for getting sympathy from people. In fact, it is very ugly to desire sympathy from people -- it makes you a beggar. And remember, sympathy is not love; they are obliging you, they are fulfilling a kind of duty -- it is not love. They may not like you, but still they will sympathize with you. This is etiquette, culture, civilization, formality -- but you are living on false things. Your misery is real and what you are getting in the bargain is false. Of course, if you become happy, if you drop your miseries, it will be a radical change in your life-style; things may start changing.
Once a woman came to me, the woman of one of the richest men in India, and she told me, "I want to meditate, but my husband is against it."
I asked her, "Why is your husband against meditation?"
She said, "He says, 'The way you are, I love you. I don't know what will happen after meditation. If you start meditating you are bound to change; then I don't know whether I will be able to love you or not, because you will be another person."
I said to the woman, "Your husband has a point there -- certainly things will be different. You will be more free, more independent. You will be more joyous, and your husband will have to learn to live with a new woman. He may not like you that way, he may start feeling inferior. Right now he is superior to you."
That's why down the ages man has not allowed women to meditate, to participate in deep religious experiences. Man has not allowed women to read the Vedas, the Upanishads, the great scriptures of the world. In many religions the women are not allowed to enter into the mosque or the synagogue. In Jainism it is said that you cannot be liberated from the body of a woman; first you will have to be born as a man, then only can you be liberated. From the body of a woman there is no way to God.
Why? Why this fear? The reason is very psychological: man has always been afraid of women becoming happier than him, more peaceful than him, more attuned, more integrated than him -- because once they are more integrated, more attuned to their beings and to the being of the whole, more in harmony with existence, more in accord.... And women can attain to harmony more easily than men, remember. For certain biological reasons, a woman is more capable of going into meditation than a man is. The male energy is aggressive, violent, outgoing, extrovert, and the female energy is introvert, passive, ingoing.
Hence what Jainism says is absolutely wrong -- not only absolutely wrong: just the opposite may be the truth. It is easier to enter into God through the body of a woman than through the body of a man. The woman's body is more harmonious, the man's body is not so harmonious. The woman's body is more balanced, more rounded; that's why she looks so beautiful. Her body is less tense, more relaxed.
Mothers become aware after a few months' pregnancy whether it is a male child or a female child in their womb, because the male child starts parading and doing things inside the womb, kicking... he cannot be at rest.
You can watch small girls -- they are perfectly happy sitting in a corner with their dolls. And the boys? -- they can't sit.
Just a few days ago a little boy took sannyas. I had to ask him, "Can you be silent for one minute so I can explain your name to your mother?" But he was not even able to be silent for one minute. Small girls come for sannyas; when I say to them, "Close your eyes and sit silently," they sit so beautifully; they can sit for hours. When small boys come and I say to them, "Close your eyes," they have to clench their eyes! They are afraid that if they don't do too much they will open. They are so curious about what is happening, what is going on outside.
When small girls take sannyas they look at me. And the boys? -- they look at Krishna Bharti and his camera! They are all over the place! I am putting a mala on them and they are looking at people to see what the response is.
"Are people laughing, enjoying, watching?" They are great performers! And a great curiosity keeps them constantly tense.
While on their honeymoon, Kit and Netty bought a talkative parrot and took it back to their hotel room. As they made love the bird kept up a running commentary. Finally Kit flung a bath towel over the cage and said, "If you don't shut up I am sending you to the zoo!"
Getting ready to leave the following morning, they could not close a bulging suitcase and decided one of them would stand on it while the other attempted to fasten it.
"Darling," said Kit, "you get on top and I will try."
That didn't work. So he said, "Now I will get on top and you try."
That didn't work either.
"Look," said Kit, "let us both get on top and try."
The parrot yanked away the towel and said, "Zoo or no zoo, this I've gotta see!"
The parrot must have been a male!
I told the woman, "Your husband is right: before you enter on the path of meditation you have to consider it, because there are dangers ahead."
She didn't listen to me; she started meditating. Now she is divorced. She came to see me after a few years and said, "You were right. The more silent I became, the more my husband became furious at me. He was never so violent -- something strange started happening," she told me. "The more silent and quiet I was becoming, the more aggressive he was becoming." His whole male chauvinist mind was at stake. He wanted to destroy the peace and the silence that was happening to the woman so he could still remain superior. And because it could not happen the way he wanted, he divorced the woman.
It is a very strange world! If you become peaceful your relationship with people will change, because you are a different person. If your relationship was because of your misery it may disappear.
I used to have a friend. He was a professor in the same university where I was a professor; he was a great social worker. In India, what to do with the widows is still a problem. Nobody wants to marry them, and widows are not in favor of marrying either; that seems like a sin. And this professor was determined to marry a widow. He was not concerned whether he was in love with the woman or not -- that was secondary, irrelevant -- his only interest was that she should be a widow. And he persuaded her slowly slowly, and she was ready.
I told the man, "Before you take the plunge, consider it for at least three days -- go into isolation. Are you in love with the woman, or is it just a great social service that you are doing?" Marrying a widow in India is thought to be something very revolutionary, something radical. "Are you just trying to prove that you are a revolutionary? If you are trying to prove that you are a revolutionary, then you are bound for trouble -- because the moment you are married she will no longer be a widow and your whole interest will be gone."
He didn't listen to me. He got married... and after six months he told me, "You were right." He cried. He said, "I could not see the point: I was in love with her widowhood, not with her for herself, and now certainly she is no longer a widow."
So I said, "You do one thing -- commit suicide! Make her a widow again and give somebody else a chance to be a revolutionary! What else can you do?"
Man's mind is so stupid, so unconscious. Buddha says it is in deep sleep, slumber, snoring. Akal, you cannot let go of things that are causing you misery because you have not yet seen the investments, you have not yet looked deeply into them.
You have not seen that there is some pleasure you are deriving out of your misery. You will have to drop both -- and then there is no problem. In fact, misery and pleasure can only be dropped together. And then arises bliss.
Bliss is not pleasure, bliss is not even happiness. Happiness is always bound together with unhappiness and pleasure is always bound together with pain. Dropping both.... You want to drop misery so that you can be happy -- that is an absolutely wrong approach. You will have to drop both. Seeing that they are together, one drops them; you cannot choose one part.
In life, everything has an organic unity. Pain and pleasure are not two things. Really, if we make a more scientific language, we will drop these words: pain and pleasure. We will make one word: painpleasure, happinessunhappiness, daynight, lifedeath. These are one word because they are NEVER separable.
And you want to choose one part: you want to have only the roses and not the thorns, you want only the day and not the night, you want only love and not hate. This is not going to happen -- this is not the way things are. You will have to drop both, and then arises a totally different world: the world of bliss.
Bliss is absolute peace, undisturbedness, neither disturbed by pain nor disturbed by pleasure.
To celebrate their fortieth anniversary, Seymour and Rose went back to the same second-floor hotel room where they had spent their honeymoon.
"Now," said Seymour, "just like that first night, let us undress, get in opposite corners of the room, turn off the lights, then run to each other and embrace."
They undressed, went to opposite corners, switched off the lights and ran towards each other. But their sense of direction was dulled by forty years, so Seymour missed Rose and he went right through the window. He landed on the lawn in a daze.
Seymour tapped on the lobby window to get the clerk's attention. "I fell down from upstairs," he said. "I am naked and I gotta get back to my room."
"It's okay," said the clerk. "Nobody will see you."
"Are you crazy? I gotta walk through the lobby and I am all naked!"
"Nobody can see you," repeated the clerk. "Everybody is upstairs trying to get some old lady off a doorknob!"
People are so foolish! Not only the younger ones -- the older you get, the more foolish you become. The more experienced you are, it seems the more stupidity you accumulate through life. It really rarely happens that a person starts watching, observing his own life and his own life patterns.
See what your misery is, what desires are causing it, and why you are clinging to those desires. And it is not for the first time that you are clinging to those desires; this has been the pattern of your whole life and you have not arrived anywhere. You go on in circles, you never come to any real growth. You remain childish, stupid. And you are born with the intelligence that can make you a buddha, but it is lost in unnecessary things.
A farmer who had only two impotent old bulls bought a new, young, vigorous bull.
Immediately the stud began mounting one cow after another in the pasture. After watching this for an hour, one of the ancient bulls started pawing the ground and snorting.
"What's the matter?" asked the other. "You getting young ideas?"
"No," said the first bull, "but I don't want that young fellow to think I am one of the cows."
So even in their old age people go on carrying their egos. They have to pretend, they have to pose, and their whole life is nothing but a long long story of misery. Still they defend it. Rather than being ready to change it, they are very defensive.
Akal, drop all defensiveness, drop all armors. Start watching how you live your day-to-day life, moment to moment. And whatsoever you are doing, go into its details. You need not go to a psychoanalyst, you can analyze each pattern of your life yourself -- it is such a simple process! Just watch and you will be able to see what is happening, what has been happening. You have been choosing -- and that has been the problem -- you have been choosing one part against the other, and they are both together.
Buddha says: Attain to choiceless awareness -- don't choose at all. Just watch and be aware without choosing, and you will attain to bliss, you will attain to the lotus paradise."
Osho, excerpted from: Dhampadda - The way of the Buddha, Vol 5, Chapter 2
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