Monthly Archives: March 2009

Osho – Be Altruistic only when your own self is fulfilled

Osho – Buddha says There are needy people all around. There are ill people, there are poor people, there are paralyzed people and blind and deaf and lame. If you start serving all these people you will forget the real work. That’s what has happened to the Christian missionary. He runs the school, the hospital, he serves the poor people, and of course he is very much respected for that, but he is neglecting the real work.
Buddha is not saying don’t serve anybody; he is saying don’t serve at the cost of your work. If you can serve people without disturbing your real work on yourself, it’s okay; by the side you can do it. But in fact it is not possible — you don’t have that much energy. First you have to pour your whole energy, total energy, into self-growth.
Once you have become a grown-up, mature, alert, aware, then you can serve people and only then — because then you will have something to share: love, compassion. Then you will have something to really help them: understanding, wisdom. Right now what can you do? Right now you yourself are in such a mess that if you serve somebody you are bound to create more mess for him.
And that’s what the missionaries have been doing to the world — they create more mischief, more mess. They think they are doing great work, holy work — it is not possible! Unless you are holy your work cannot be holy. Actions are not decided by actions themselves but by the source from where they arise.
Buddha says: NEVER NEGLECT YOUR WORK…. Buddha is saying exactly what I say to you. I say to you: First be selfish, utterly selfish. That is one of the criticisms of my work: people criticize me because I am making people selfish. I am telling them to meditate, to grow, and forget all about the world. And the world is in trouble: there are poor people and there are miserable people, and great public servants are needed. And I am teaching people just to sit silently and meditate, or dance and rejoice.
But that’s what Buddha was saying. That’s what the awakened people have always been saying to the world. First become enlightened, be full of light, then do whatsoever happens through that light. If service comes easy to you, good. If you want to teach people, good. If you want to help the ill, the old, good. But right now you yourself are blind, you yourself are in a dark night of the soul. What can you do with your service?
What are you going to give to people? You don’t have anything — you are empty, hollow.
NEVER NEGLECT YOUR WORK FOR ANOTHER’S, HOWEVER GREAT HIS NEED. Listen to Buddha’s words: However great his need, never neglect your own work. There is something very fundamental involved in it: you can help others only if you have helped yourself first.
Once I was sitting on the bank of a river and a man started drowning. He shouted for help. I ran, but by the time I reached close to the river to jump, another man who was closer, just near the bank, had already jumped. So I stopped myself; there was no need. But then the other man started drowning — I had to save both!
I asked the second man, “Why did you jump if you don’t know how to swim?”
He said, “I completely forgot! The moment I heard him shout, ‘Save me!’ — I completely forgot that I don’t know how to swim. I simply jumped, it was a mechanical response.”
This is not the way to help! I said, “If I had not been here, you both would have drowned! There was every possibility of the other person reaching the shore alone, without you…. Because you don’t know how to swim and you would have caught hold of the other person and you both would have depended on each other, there is more possibility that you both would have drowned. And you created unnecessary trouble for me — first I had to save you, because you were closer to the bank, and that man had to wait a little longer.”
But this is happening in life every day: you start helping others without ever becoming aware that you yourself are in need. Be altruistic only when your own self is fulfilled. Selfishness and unselfishness are not opposite to each other. A really selfish person is bound to become unselfish one day, because the really selfish person is one who comes to discover his inner self. A really selfish person cannot be interested in money, cannot be interested in power, cannot be interested in prestige. If he is really selfish, his first interest will be: “Who am I?” The people who are interested in money and power and prestige don’t know real selfishness.
I also teach you real, authentic selfishness, because my own observation is: out of it arises altruistic love. They are not opposite. When one is fulfilled, one starts overflowing with compassion.
Source: from Osho Book “Dhammapada Vol 5″

Osho on Reducing Weight, Why there is Obsession with Food

Question – BELOVED MASTER, I AM OBSESSED WITH FOOD. I EAT TOO MUCH AND HAVE GAINED ENORMOUS WEIGHT. CAN YOU HELP ME TO REDUCE MY WEIGHT?
Osho – Sangito, this is strange, coming to me from California just to reduce your weight. In California there are far more facilities available to reduce weight. I know it because I had to send Mulla Nasruddin to California. The problem was the same.

When Mulla Nasruddin reached California, he was directed by our sannyasins there to this ultimate weight-losing program. It took four days and was guaranteed to take off fifty pounds or your money would be refunded.

He entered the building and was told to enter the first door to his left and to undress there. He did so and then from a second door in the room entered a beautiful blonde woman, naked but for a sign around her neck. It read, “If you catch me, you can make love to me!”

Nasruddin felt the passion rise within him. The room was fairly small, but the lady was agile, and it took him twenty minutes to catch her. After his love-making, Nasruddin showered and left, eagerly awaiting the next day.

On the second day, he was directed to another room, a bit larger than the first. There a beautiful redhead, naked except for the sign, greeted him. The chase lasted for almost forty minutes.
On the third day, it was another, larger room, and a beautiful brunette! After almost an hour, he caught her too.

Throughout the three days, Nasruddin had kept an account of his weight loss — twenty-eight pounds to date. On the fourth day, he envisioned perhaps a bevy of beauties. He was directed to the top floor. He climbed the stairs, removed his clothes and waited. There was a click behind him as the door was locked, and out of his left eye he caught sight of a huge gorilla coming his way with a sign around its neck which read, “If I catch you I’m going to make love to you!”

Sangito, you need not come from California to Poona! But one thing is certain: people become obsessed with food only when they lose the capacity to love. It is an indication that you have forgotten the language of love. If you are in love you never become obsessed with food. Obsession with food is a symptom that you don’t know how to love. How it happens has to be understood.

The first acquaintance of the child with the world is the mother’s breast. That is his first introduction to the world, his entry into the world — his first relationship is with the breast of the mother. And the breast becomes the symbol for him of two things: food and love.

Whenever the mother is loving, the breast is available; and whenever the mother is unloving, the breast is not available. Food and love become associated; a deep conditioned reflex happens. It becomes so unconsciously rooted that you repeat it your whole life. If the child knows that the mother loves him he will not drink too much, because he KNOWS, he is secure; whenever he needs the mother her breast will be available.

If the child is insecure and feels that next time the mother may not be available, he will start drinking too much, eating too much. Now, you can see the point: whenever love is there, there is security and a kind of fulfillment, and the child never becomes obsessed with food. If love is not there, there is insecurity, fear, and a kind of emptiness, and the child stuffs that emptiness with food.

In the West, weight is becoming more and more of a problem for the simple reason that mothers are not ready to give their breasts to their children. Of course the breast loses its shape; and the fear that the breasts will lose their shape and make the woman look old has gripped the mind of women in the West so deeply that they are afraid to give their breasts to their children. And they are creating an obsession about food in the child unknowingly, unconsciously.

The child will become obsessed with food, he will eat too much. Eating will become his substitute for love. Sangito, you will have to learn love. There is no other way to reduce your weight. All other programs can help you a little bit, but sooner or later you will gain weight again because the basic root cause remains the same. You can diet, you can run, swim, exercise, but how long can you diet? Sooner or later you will be fed up with dieting and your mind will become more and more obsessed with eating. Now you will eat in your fantasy, in your dreams, and your mind will convince you that this is not the right way to live. You can’t eat this, you can’t eat that, and somehow if you ask the doctors, all the good things have to be avoided.

A child was talking to his mother, “You say God is very wise. I don’t believe it.”
The mother said, “But why don’t you believe it?”
He said, “If he was wise, he would have put more vitamins in ice cream. He puts vitamins in things which are uneatable, and things which are really worth eating are dangerous.”
How long will you avoid ice cream? The temptation will be such that it will be unavoidable. So you can lose weight for a few days and then you will eat too much, you will take revenge. And you may gain more weight than you had lost by dieting. This is the pattern of millions of people, particularly in the West.

In the East people are starving. You can see a few fat people in Bombay, in Delhi, in Calcutta, but that’s all. If you go to the real India, eighty percent of the people in India are starving. There is no question of gaining more weight, they don’t have enough weight. They are suffering from malnutrition. Yes, sometimes you will find villagers with big bellies and thin bodies, because they are eating food which is not nourishing, unbalanced, and they eat only when it is available. So when it is available they eat too much.

There are millions of people in India who eat only once a day because they can’t afford to eat twice. So to keep their bodies together for twenty-four hours they eat anything, whatsoever is available; sometimes they have to eat the roots of trees. So the problem is not in the East, the problem is in the West where enough food is available and people have completely forgotten that food grows on trees. Children know that food grows in the fridges. You go to the fridge any time and food is available.

I have heard about a woman who must have been suffering like Sangito. She went to her psychiatrist and asked him his advice — what to do? He pondered over the problem and gave her a picture, a picture of a naked woman, such an ugly fat woman, disgusting, nauseating, sickening — just to see it was enough to become afraid of food. And he told the woman, “Stick it inside your fridge so that whenever you open it you will see this picture — this will remind you of what is going to happen to you.”

So she sticks in the picture of the naked woman. The psychiatrist has also given her another picture of a beautiful young woman with a very proportionate body, a world beauty, and has told her, “Stick this in too, so you can compare. If you don’t eat too much you will be like this woman, if you eat too much you will be like that one.”

Immediately, from the next day, the woman starts losing weight. But a miracle happens: her husband starts gaining weight. The woman is puzzled. She says, “What is the matter?”
He says, “Since you have put that beautiful naked woman inside the fridge, I go again and again to see the picture. And when I see the picture I see the food too, and the flavor and the smell… and I say, ‘Why not take a cake or some ice cream or something?’ I am eating too much because of your pictures.”

In the West the child grows with the idea that food is somehow miraculously produced by the fridges and it is always available, twenty-four hours a day; any time he can go and eat. And mothers have taken their breasts away and mothers are not available much either. The Husbands go to work and the mothers go to so many committees — they belong to the liberation movement, and consciousness-raising committees — and they have so many charity shows going on and they have to sell tickets and collect the charity funds… they are not available. The father is gone, the mother is gone; the child is left with the fridge and with no love.

Sangito, just understand the root cause of it: love is missing somewhere in your life. I will not take your obsession with food as a real problem, it is a symptom. Love is the real problem — love more. And if you love more, you will be loved more. And it is not yet too late; you can find a woman. And all women are mothers, and all men are always like children.

So any woman will do, because she will function like a mother. And each man needs a mother his whole life, he needs mothering, and each woman needs children. Even the husband is only the oldest child, that’s all. And if you cannot find one, you can come to me — I always have many applications with me; women searching for men, men searching for women. And I fix anybody with anybody! I don’t believe in astrology, I believe only in accidents.

Mulla Nasruddin awoke one morning and looked at the clock. It was five minutes to five. Unable to go back to sleep, he went to the front door to get his newspaper. On the front page he saw the date: May 5th.
“Oh, fifth day, fifth month, five minutes before five,” he thought. “Today will be my lucky day!”
He decided to go to the horse races, so he got dressed and went to the corner to wait for the bus. Soon it came — it had the number five, and Nasruddin noticed when he boarded that there were three other passengers, the driver and himself — five in all. He arrived at the track and waited for the fifth race. He bet five hundred rupees on number five to win — his horse came in fifth!

Enough for today.

Source: from Osho Book “Dhammapada Vol 5″

Osho – If you remember death, life cannot deceive you anymore

Osho – Remember death, never forget it for a single moment! Because of this insistence, many people have thought Buddha is death-obsessed; he is not. You may be life-obsessed but he is not death-obsessed. He is simply bringing everything to a balance.
He says, as much as you are involved in life you have to remember death too, then there will be a balance, an equilibrium. He used to send his disciples, his sannyasins, to watch
whenever a dead body was being burned: “Just go, sit there, meditate and watch and remember this is going to happen to your body too.”
Death has to be meditated upon; otherwise life can go on giving you false hopes. If you remember death, life cannot deceive you anymore. Death will keep you alert. Buddha is not death-obsessed, but he has come to know one thing: that it is only by becoming aware of death that one gets rid of the obsession with the body, the obsession with food, the obsession with sex, the obsession with money, the obsession with the world.
You have to live in life, but let there be a consciousness, constantly, that this life is slipping out of your hands and death is coming closer every moment. That will not allow you to be a victim of false desires and false hopes.
Source: from Osho book “Dhammapada Vol 5″

Osho – things that are causing you Misery must be giving you some Pleasure too

Question – BELOVED MASTER, WHY DO I FEEL SO MUCH PAIN IN LETTING GO OF THE THINGS THAT ARE CAUSING ME MISERY?

Osho – Deva Akal, 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 traveled 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.
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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.

Source: from Osho Book “Dhammapada Vol 5″

Osho – To live without meditation is to be foolish, because whatsoever you do then is going to be wrong

Osho – If you look at your life, if you watch closely, you will see what a fool you are, what a jerk you are! To live without meditation is to be foolish, because whatsoever you do then is going to be wrong. You cannot do right without meditation because right only grows in the soil of meditation. In the soil of the mind ambitions, desires arise. And when there is ambition there is competition, and when there is competition you are not a friend to others. You are an enemy and others are your enemies. The competitive mind lives in an inimical way, lives in hatred, lives in jealousy; its whole function is out of jealousy. And because of this kind of life man suffers, he remains in misery.

Osho – God is not to be searched for; what is to be searched for is Consciousness

Osho – From birth to death you go on living, groping in darkness with no light — and you could have created the light. You cannot find it in the scriptures; nobody can hand it to you. It is not purchased or sold; it is nontransferable. But you can create it — you can put all your energies together. You can start living consciously from this very moment.
For example, you are listening to me. You can listen in a sleepy way… because you are here, and I am uttering a few words, and you have ears and your ears function, so those words strike your eardrums and some noise is made — and of course you hear. But this is not listening, it is only hearing. It is not listening.
Listening means you are alert, watchful, on your toes, drinking with no mind to distort; with no inner noise, with no chattering, utterly silent; not sleepy, very wakeful, very awake; as if your house is on fire, as if everything can be taken away any moment and this is no time to sleep. When your house is on fire you cannot sleep — or can you? When your house is on fire you cannot be sleepy; you will be alert, very alert.
The first statement that Buddha made after he left his palace was, “My house is on fire. Now I cannot live anymore in unconsciousness.” There was nobody except his charioteer. The old man looked at the palace; he didn’t see any flames there, the house was not on fire. He thought, “The prince has gone crazy!” He was an old man, an old servant, of the same age as Buddha’s father. He had seen Buddha from the first day he was born; Buddha used to respect the old man.
The old man said, “What nonsense you are talking! Al-though my eyes are becoming weak, I am becoming old, but I don’t see any flames. The house is perfectly okay, there is no fire!”
Buddha said, “Yes, I see — you may not see — my house is on fire, because each and every moment death is possible. Now I cannot remain in this sleepy state anymore.”
The old man shrugged his shoulders. He said, “You are saying just insane things!”
When he had to leave Buddha in the forest and they said goodbye, the old man was crying and he said, “Listen to me — I am just like your father. Where are you going? Have you gone nuts? Such a beautiful palace, such a beautiful wife, so much comfort, so much luxury! Where are you going?”
Buddha said, “I am going in search of consciousness.” He didn’t say, “I am going in search of God,” because how can you talk about God if you are not even conscious? The real seeker goes in search of consciousness, not in search of God. If you start your search for God, that is going to remain an unconscious search — because you have heard priests talking about God a greed has arisen in your mind for God.
The real seeker, the real sannyasin, has nothing to do with God. His whole effort, his single effort, his one-pointed effort, his concentrated effort, is to become more conscious — how to be so intensely conscious that you become full of light, that your whole mind is a flame of light burning bright, that the torch of your mind is burning from both the ends simultaneously. In that light one knows naturally that God is.
God is not to be searched for; what is to be searched for is consciousness. Unconscious people can believe in God, but their belief in God is just like their belief in money. They believe in notes, they believe in God, they believe in stone statues, they believe in dead scriptures. They can only believe, remember: only unconscious people believe.
The conscious person knows, feels, experiences. He does not believe in God: he lives in God, he breathes in God, his heart beats in God. It is not a question of belief. You don’t believe in the sun when you see the sun rise. You don’t ask people, “Do you believe in the sun?” If you ask, they will laugh at you. You don’t believe in the moon when the moon is full in the night; you never ask anybody. There are not believers in the moon and nonbelievers. It is your experience; there is no need to believe or disbelieve.
Exactly like that, in consciousness you have eyes to see God, you have eyes to see the truth of existence. Then it is no longer a question of belief — it is your experience, existential experience. A conscious person knows, an unconscious person believes.
Why are you a Hindu, why are you a Mohammedan, why are you a Jaina, and why are you a Christian? All beliefs! — and the priest lives on your unconsciousness. He goes on giving you more and more beliefs — moral beliefs, beliefs that if you do this you will be rewarded, if you do that you will be punished, belief in hell, belief in heaven. He goes on piling up more and more beliefs. You are drowning in beliefs! Your beliefs have become so heavy on you, like the Himalayas on your chest; they don’t allow you to live.
The first step towards consciousness is to discard all beliefs. Don’t be a Hindu, don’t be a Mohammedan, don’t be a Christian… because I tell you the way to become a christ! Why be a Christian? And I tell you the way to become a buddha — why be satisfied by being a Buddhist? Why be satisfied with plastic flowers when the real roses can be grown, when you can become a garden of roses? You purchase a few plastic flowers from the market and you go on worshipping those plastic flowers. What you call them — Christian, Mohammedan, Hindu — does not matter; if they are borrowed they are plastic. The real flower has to be grown within your being; it has to blossom there.
Those who have known, they say — and I vouch for them, I am a witness — that when your consciousness opens up in its totality it is a one-thousand-petaled lotus, a golden lotus, gold with perfume. It is the ultimate miracle. And unless that is attained, don’t rest. Each moment lost is a great loss.
Source: from Osho Book “Dhammapada Vol 4″

Osho – Don't throw your responsibility on others; that's what keeps you miserable

Osho – Don’t throw your responsibility on others; that’s what keeps you miserable. Take the responsibility on yourself. Remember always, “I am responsible for my life. Nobody else is responsible. So if I am miserable then I have to look into my own consciousness; something is wrong with me, hence I create misery around me.”

This is the beginning, a great beginning, the first seed of transformation. You are already becoming conscious if you take the responsibility on your own shoulders. You are already becoming conscious; the first ray has happened.

Osho – Your whole interest is exhibition: how to show that you are better than others

Osho – Not only do you go on moving in the same small circles, you repeat, you imitate other people and their stupidities. You are constantly repeating, you are constantly looking around at what is being done by whom. You don’t live a life from within; you are imitators.
Your whole interest is exhibition: how to show that you are better than others, how to show that you are richer than others, how to show that you are more intelligent than others. In fact, it is only the unintelligent person who ever compares himself with others. The really intelligent never compares, because each individual is unique and comparison is impossible.
Mrs. Zimmer hired an interior designer to have the house redecorated.
“Alright,” said the decorator, “how would you like it done? Modern?”
“Me, modern? No!” said Mrs. Zimmer.
“How about French?”
“French? Where would I come to a French house?”
“Perhaps Italian Provincial?”
“God forbid!”
“Well, madam, what period do you want?”
“What period? I want my friends to walk in, take one look, and drop dead, period!”
People are living just to impress. They must be really very poor inside, because only people suffering from inferiority complex want to impress others. A really superior person never compares himself with anybody else. He knows he is incomparable; not only that, he knows others are also as incomparable as he is. He is neither superior nor inferior.
This tremendous revolution is possible only by one secret key, and that is becoming more alert. The more alert you are, the less you repeat. The more alert you are, you find new ways of doing things, you find new styles of living your life. The more alert you are, the more creative you are, and only creative people know what happiness is. What you create is not the point — just being creative. It may be poetry, it may be music, it may be sculpture, it can be anything, but just the process of being creative brings you to the point where you meet God.

Source: from Osho Book “Dhammapada Vol 4″

Osho – Beloved Master, What Does it mean to be a Disciple

Question – Beloved Master, What Does it mean to be a Disciple?
Osho – Prem Samadhi, it is one of the most delicate mysteries. No definition is possible of a disciple, but a few hints can be given, just fingers pointing to the moon. Don’t cling to the fingers — look at the moon and forget the fingers.

A disciple is a rare phenomenon. It is very easy to be a student because the student is searching knowledge. The student can only meet the teacher, he can never meet the master. The reality of the master will remain hidden to the student. The student functions from the head. He functions logically, rationally. He gathers knowledge, he becomes more and more knowledgeable. Finally in his own turn he will become a teacher, but all that he knows is borrowed, nothing is really his own.

His existence is pseudo; it is a carbon-copy existence. He has not known his original face. He knows about God, but he does not know God himself. He knows about love, but he has never dared to love himself. He knows much about poetry, but he has not tasted the spirit of poetry itself. He may talk about beauty, he may write treatises on beauty, but he has no vision, no experience, no existential intimacy with beauty. He has never danced with a roseflower. The sunrise happens there outside, but nothing happens inside his heart. That darkness inside him remains the same as it was before.

He talks only about concepts, he knows nothing of truth — because truth cannot be known through words, scriptures. A student is interested only in words, scriptures, theories, systems of thought, philosophies, ideologies.

A disciple is a totally different phenomenon. A disciple is not a student; he is not interested in knowing about God, love, truth — he is interested in becoming God, in becoming truth, in becoming love. Remember the difference. Knowing about is one thing, becoming is totally different. The student is taking no risk; the disciple is going into the uncharted sea. The student is miserly, he is a hoarder; only then he can gather knowledge. He is greedy; he accumulates knowledge as the greedy person accumulates wealth — knowledge is his wealth. The disciple is not interested in hoarding; he wants to experience, he wants to taste, and for that he is ready to risk all.

The disciple will be able to find the master. The relationship between a student and a teacher is that of the head, and a relationship between a disciple and a master is that of the heart — it is a love relationship, mad in the eyes of the world, utterly mad. In fact, no love is so total as the love that happens between the master and the disciple. The love that happened between John and Jesus, the love that happened between Sariputta and Buddha, Gautama and Mahavira, Arjuna and Krishna, Chuang Tzu and Lao Tzu — these are the real love stories, the highest pinnacles of love.

The disciple starts melting into the master. The disciple destroys all distance between himself and the master; the disciple yields, the disciple surrenders, the disciple effaces himself. He becomes a nonentity, he becomes a nothingness. And in that nothingness his heart opens. In that absence his ego has disappeared and the master can penetrate into his being.

The disciple is receptive, vulnerable, unguarded; he drops all armor. He drops all defense measures. He is ready to die. If the master says, “Die!” he will not wait for a single moment. The master is his soul, his very being; his devotion is unconditional and absolute. And to know absolute devotion is to know God. To know absolute surrender is to know the secret-most mystery of life.

The word ‘disciple’ is also beautiful — it means one who is ready to learn. Hence the word ‘discipline’ — discipline means creating a space for learning. And disciple means being ready to learn. Who can be ready to learn? Only one who is ready to drop all his prejudices. If you come as a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan, you can’t be a disciple. If you simply come as a human being, with no a priori prejudice, with no belief, then only you can become a disciple.

A disciple is the rarest flowering of human consciousness, because beyond the disciple there is only one peak more — the master. And one who has been totally a disciple one day becomes a master. Disciplehood is a process of becoming a master. But one should not start with the idea of becoming a master; otherwise one is going to miss, because then it is again an ego trip. One should come simply to evaporate.

You have lived through the ego, and your life has been just a misery and nothing else. Enough is enough! One day the realization comes that, “I have wasted a great opportunity by constantly listening to my own ego. It has been driving me onto unnecessary paths which lead nowhere, and it has been creating a thousand and one miseries.” The day one realizes that “The ego is the root cause of my misery,” one starts searching for a place where the ego can be dropped. The master is an excuse to drop the ego.

You can drop your ego only if you come across a person who catches hold of your heart so tremendously that his being becomes more important than your own being, that you can sacrifice all that you have for him.

Just a few days ago, I received a letter from Gunakar from Germany. In German newspapers a statement of Teertha’s has been given too much importance and has been criticized — and it can be criticized, manipulated, because what has happened in Jonestown has become the talk of the world. Somebody, a journalist from Germany, has asked Teertha, “If your master asks you to shoot yourself, to kill yourself, what are you going to do?” And Teertha said, “There is no question of thinking at all. I will kill myself immediately.”

Now, this statement can be manipulated in such a way that the place that I am creating is going to be another Jonestown. Teertha has said it out of his heart; he has not been political, diplomatic; otherwise he would have avoided such a statement. He had simply said what a disciple is bound to say.

The disciple is ready. In fact to say that he is ready to die is something less than the truth. The disciple has already died into the master; it is not going to happen in the future, it has already happened. It has happened the day the disciple accepted the master as his master: since then he has been no more, only the master lives in him.

Slowly slowly, the presence of the master overfloods the disciple. And the presence of the master is not really the presence of the master himself: the master is overflooded with God. The master is only a vehicle, a passage, a messenger; it is God flowing through the master. When the disciple surrenders to the master totally he is really surrendering to God in the guise of the master. God he cannot see yet, but the master he can see, and in the master he can see something godly. The master becomes the first proof of God to him. Surrendering to the master is surrendering to the visible God.

And, slowly slowly, as the surrender deepens, the visible disappears into the invisible. The master disappears. When the disciple reaches into the innermost heart of the
master, he does not find the master there but God himself, life itself — indefinable, inexpressible.
Prem Samadhi, your question is significant. You ask, “What does it mean to be a disciple?”
It means death and it means resurrection. It means dying into the master and being reborn through the master.

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