Monthly Archives: June 2009

Question – It has been said that a disciple should have respectful manners and a Respectful attitude towards his Master, but often i feel like asking you Playful, Joking and Naughty questions. Does this indicate lack of Respect And ’Shraddha’, Trust?
Osho – It does not depend on the question, it depends on the questioner. The question is irrelevant. You can ask a playful, joking, naughty question with deep respect. There is no problem about it. In fact without deep respect how can you ask such a question? If you love the master and you love him so deeply, you respect him and you respect him so deeply, then you are free to ask anything.

It depends on the questioner, not on the question. If the questioner is in a deep love and trust with the master, then everything is allowed. He can ask any sort of question. But if the trust doesn’t exist in the questioner you can ask a very serious and respectful question but it is just formal respect – deep down there is no respect.

Try to understand the quality of the questioning heart. If there is trust, then whatsoever you ask is good; if there is no trust, then whatsoever you ask is no good. You can ask anything you feel like asking, but before you ask, just try to see within yourself why you are asking it. If there is trust, trust makes everything holy. In the East, trust has been such a deep-rooted phenomenon that disciples have asked questions which in the West you could not even imagine. Nobody can imagine asking such questions about Jesus as people in the East have asked about Buddha.

A Zen master, Mumon, asked his master: What do you say about the Buddha-nature in a dog? Is a dog also a Buddha? Is there any possibility of a dog being a Buddha ever? And what did the master do? You know? He started walking on all fours and he barked. This was his answer: Yes, a dog is also Buddha, the possibility is there always, howsoever far away from Buddha he is now someday he will also reach the goal.

You can ask any question, but before you ask it always find out from where it comes – from your love, trust? Then everything is good. You may be simply formal, serious, asking your question in a very soft and gentlemanly way, but if the heart is not there, it is dead. In fact, that is disrespect.

Source: from Osho Book “Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 2″

Question – Sometimes you call us ‘you Fools’ and sometimes you call us ‘you Buddhas’. Are fools and Buddhas the same to you?
Osho – They are not the same to me but they are both meeting in you right now, shaking hands within you. Your past is the fool, your future is the buddha, and at this moment they are both within you.

The buddha is your destiny, the fool is your reality; something is actual in you and something is potential. When I talk about your actuality I call you ’the fools’, when I talk about your potentiality I call you ’the buddhas’ – they are not the same but they can exist in the same person. In fact the fool is nothing but the buddha confused, and the buddha is nothing but the fool integrated, rooted, centered.

The fool can become the buddha – the possibility is there but a re-arrangement is needed; nothing is lacking, just a re-arrangement is needed. You have all that is needed within you but it is in a deeply disarranged state, a chaos; a crowd of noises exists. The harmony has not happened. The crowd of noises I call ’the fool’; but when the crowd of noises has disappeared and the notes, different and even opposite, have fallen into a deep pattern, the chaos becomes a cosmos, the disorder, an order, the crowd is no longer there, only one exists.

When the harmony has happened, you have become a buddha. The fool and the buddha are not the same, they are two phases of your growth. The fool is the lowest rung of the ladder and the buddha is the highest rung of the ladder. The ladder is the same, but the dimensions are totally different, and unless you become aware of the fool you will never become a buddha.

In India we have very parallel terms for both: the fool is called the BUDDHU and the enlightened man is called the BUDDHA. The word ’BUDDHA’ comes from Buddha himself, they have the same roots. A BUDDHU is an inverted buddha, standing on his head; a buddha is one who has come back home.

Sometimes I call you ’you fools’ to make you aware of your actuality, but immediately I contradict myself and I call you ’you buddhas’ so that you do not get identified – you might get identified with the actuality. No, you are a potential being, you have to grow, you have to become that which in the innermost core of your being you are already.

Your center is the buddha, your periphery is the fool, and I have to talk to both – the fool has to be persuaded to go, the buddha has to be persuaded to come. So when I call you ’fools’, don’t get hurt, and when I call you ’buddhas’, don’t get high. When I call you ’the fools’, remember that I also call you ’the buddhas’; and when I call you ’the buddhas’ never forget that I also call you ’the fools’. Between these two remembrances something will crystallize within you.

Source: from Osho Book “Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 2″

Osho – Try to understand why there is ambition within us. What is the reason for our running so madly? The reason is that the more a person is suffering from inferiority, the more ambitious he becomes. The more inferiority you experience, the more you feel that you are nothing, the more you will become ambitious. Why? Through ambition, you want to prove yourself in the eyes of the world and in your own eyes, so that nobody makes the mistake of considering you inferior.

I will tell you a small story to help you understand. You may have heard the name of Tamerlane – he fought and defeated a small country. The king of that country was Baijal; he was arrested and brought before Tamerlane, duly handcuffed. Defeated, Baijal stood in front of Tamerlane, who was sitting on a throne with his advisers and soldiers standing by.

Tamerlane began to laugh. It was natural that Baijal should get angry; Baijal, though defeated, was a king. He lifted his head proudly and told Tamerlane not to be foolish. ”He who laughs at others’ defeat has some day to shed tears at his own defeat.”

But Tamerlane said, ”I am not laughing at your defeat. I am not so foolish as to laugh over such a small victory. I am laughing at the fact that I am a lame man and you are a man with one eye. How strange God is, that he gives kingships to lame and one-eyed men!”

If I were present at that time I would have told Tamerlane that nobody else asks for kingships except for those who are lame and blind. No wise person would like to become a king. No wise person would like to become a politician. No wise person would want to sit on the chest of another person. No wise person would like to bring someone else down to his feet or be his owner. All these things are desired by the diseased and inferior man residing within us.

The mental states of inferiority and weaknesses within us – the lameness and blindness – want to be hidden. We are running to hide them and to prove that the whole world is wrong, that we are alright. We have proved our might, and we are trying to prove to others that we are not weak or wanting. This is the race of the inferior mind.

The education based on ambition is, at its root, based on violence. Ambition is not a dignity to the personality; it is an inferiority of the personality. Everybody in the world is afraid of being nobody. Everybody wants to have a name, to be a VIP. Everyone wants to have a position, a good reputation and a house of his own. Who is creating this madness? It is created by our education.

The education is right which can say that you are enough as you are; that you do not have to be anything else, you are enough as you are. Explore all your possibilities and experience the joy of it. Do not be in a race with anyone. It is not necessary; there is no reason for doing so. If Education can make every person aware that one is enough as one is, and can enable him to experience the bliss of it, if education can make facilities available for the full growth of what one has – facilities for growth, not for ambition; facilities for love, not for competition; facilities for self awakening and consciousness, not for conflict with others – then such education will be able to bring about a fundamental revolution in the world.

As long as education is not able to do this, it is not in the interest of man; on the contrary it is harmful to man, it poisons the human mind. Whatsoever we have is enough. What is lacking in anyone? If a person does not become ambitious, the world is not lacking in anything. If a person does not become diseased with the madness of ambition he has everything. But he is not able to see that.

How can he see? We only see what others have. One who is ambitious always sees what others have, he is not able to see what he has. It is interesting to note that if tomorrow he is able to get what others have, he will cease to see that too. Again, he will begin to see what others have. Just think and see if it is true or not. You have two eyes, two hands, two legs; you are breathing; you have a body – it is a great wealth with which you can create a great many things.

Source- from Osho Book “Revolution in Education”

Osho – A choiceless awareness simply means whatever happens to you is perfectly the right thing to have happened. You don’t have any judgment about it. It does not mean that you will stop doing things; you will continue doing things but your doing things will be more like a man flowing in the current of the river, not swimming, not swimming against the current.

The effort comes when you are against the current, so that existence wants you to move north and you want to move towards the south. There comes the struggle, there comes your effort, there comes your separate existence as an ego. But if you are simply flowing with the river wherever it is going, you don’t have a goal, because a man with a goal cannot be choiceless. You don’t have a destination, because a man with a destination cannot relax and cannot be choiceless. He has already chosen.

Osho – I have told you many times, but I love the incident so much, because in the contemporary world, and particularly in the West, nothing like it has ever happened …. In the East it has been happening to the Sufis, to the Zen monks, to the masters of meditation, but in the West this small incident stands unique – just like a burning torch in a dark night.

Gertrude Stein, a great poetess, is dying, she is breathing her last breaths. And she was loved by many people, she had many friends. She was a woman of tremendous creative qualities. Her poetry comes closest to the haikus of the Zen masters or to the poetry of Kabir, Nanak, Farid. Her poetry has something essentially of the East; she had some glimpses of the mystic experience.

At the last moment – it is evening and the sun has set and darkness is settling – she opens her eyes and asks, ”What is the answer?”

And those who have gathered to say good-bye to her are puzzled: ”Has she gone senile, insane? Perhaps death has shocked her and she has lost her rationality.” Certainly no man with a reasonable mind will ask, ”What is the answer?” because unless you have asked a question, asking, ”What is the answer?” is very irrational.

There was silence for a moment. Then one very close friend asked, ”But you have not asked the question. How can we answer?”
And Gertrude Stein had a faint smile and said, ”Okay, so tell me, what is the question?”

And then she died, so they had no time left to say, ”This question is as absurd as your first. First you asked for the answer without asking the question; now you are also asking the question from us! There are thousands and millions of questions. Who knows what question you want to be answered?”

In fact, Gertrude Stein was passing beyond mind when she asked, ”What is the answer?” She was passing beyond the heart when she asked, reluctantly, smilingly, ”Okay, what is the question?” And then she passed beyond.

It was one of the most beautiful deaths in the West. In the East we have known many beautiful deaths. It is very difficult for people to make a beautiful life. But there have been people who have lived beautifully and died even more beautifully! Because to them death comes as a culmination, as a climax of life, as if the whole life becomes a flame of fire – in a single moment, in total intensity – before disappearing into the universal.

She was not losing her mind in the sense that it is usually understood, but she was certainly going beyond mind and she was also going beyond the heart. Beyond these two diametrically opposite centers in you is a being which is utterly innocent of any questions or of any answers. It is so fulfilled in itself, so completely contented that there is nothing left to ask and there is nothing left to answer.

My own understanding is that Gertrude Stein died enlightened. The West has no understanding of enlightenment. They simply thought she was going crazy. But it was not craziness, it was a moment of great celebration. What she could not attain in her life, she attained in her death. And she gave the sure indications: no question, no answer and you have arrived home.

Source: from Osho Book “Sat Chit Anand”

Osho – Wherever you are, if you can accept it, immediately then and there you have become the watcher on the hills. Even in hell, if you accept it, the hell disappears, because the hell can remain only through your rejection. The hell disappears and heaven appears. Whatsoever you accept becomes heavenly, and whatsoever you reject becomes the hell.

It is said that a saint cannot be thrown into hell because he knows the alchemy to transform it. You have heard that sinners go to hell and saints to heaven – but you have heard the wrong thing. The case is just the other way around: wherever sinners go, they create hell and wherever saints go, there is heaven. Saints are not sent to heaven. There is nobody to send and manage all this – there is nobody. But wherever they go, this is the way they are: they create their heaven.

They carry their heaven with them, within them. And sinners? – you can send them to heaven; they will create hell. They cannot do otherwise. So what is the definition of a saint or a sinner? My definition is: a saint is one who has come to know the alchemical secret of transforming everything into heaven. And a sinner is one who does not know the secret of transforming things into beautiful existences. Rather, on the contrary, he goes on making things ugly. Whatsoever you are will be reflected around you.

So don’t try to be anything else. And don’t try to be some other place. That is the disease called man: always to become somebody, to be some other place, always rejecting that which is, and always hankering for that which is not. This is the disease called man. Be alert! Do you see it?! It is a simple fact to be seen. I am not theorizing about it; I am not a theoretician. I am simply indicating a bare, naked fact – that if you can live in this moment wherever you are and forget about the future, goals, the idea of becoming something else, immediately, the whole world around you is transformed; you have become a transforming force.

Acceptance a deep, total acceptance is what religion is all about. A wants to become B; B wants to become C. Then the fever of becoming is created. You are not a becoming; you are a being. You are already that which you can be, which you ever can be – you are already that. Nothing more can be done about you; you are a finished product.

This is the meaning I give to the story that God created the world: when the perfect creates, the creation is perfect. When God creates, how can you improve upon it? Just think of the whole absurdity; the whole idea is absurd. You are trying to improve upon God; you cannot improve. You can be miserable, that’s all. And you can suffer unnecessarily. And you will suffer diseases which are just in your imagination and nowhere else. God creating means: out of perfection comes perfection.

You are perfect! Nothing else is needed. Look right now, this very moment, within yourself. Have a direct insight. What is needed? Everything is simply perfect and beautiful. Not even a cloud I can see. Just look within yourself – not even a cloud in your inner space. Everything is full of light. But the mind will say, sooner or later, to be something else, to be somewhere else, to become. The mind doesn’t allow you to be. The mind is becoming, and your soul is being. That’s why Buddhas go on saying: ’Unless you drop all desiring you will not attain!’

Desiring means becoming. Desiring means to be something else. Desiring means not to accept the case as you are, not to be in a total ’yes’ mood – no matter what the situation. To say ’yes’ to life is to be religious; to say ’no’ to life is to be irreligious. And whenever you desire something you are saying ’no’. You are saying that something better is possible. The trees are happy and the birds are happy and the clouds are happy – because they have no becoming. They are simply whatsoever they are.

The rosebush is not trying to become a lotus, no. The rosebush is absolutely happy to be a rosebush. You cannot persuade the rosebush. Howsoever you advertise the lotus, you will not be able to corrupt the mind of the rosebush to become a lotus. The rosebush will simply laugh – because a rosebush is a rosebush is a rosebush. It is simply settled and centered in its being. That’s why the whole nature is without any fever: calm and quiet and tranquil. And settled!

Only human mind is in a chaos, because everybody is hankering to be somebody else. This is what you have been doing for a thousand and one lives. And if you don’t awaken now, when are you thinking to awaken? You are already ripe for awakening. Just start from this very moment to live and enjoy and delight. Drop desiring! Whatsoever you are, enjoy it. Delight in your being.

And then suddenly time disappears, because time exists only with desiring. Future exists because you desire. Then you will be like birds; listen to them. Then you will be like trees; look – the freshness, the greenery, the flowers. Please be where you are. I am not to create a new desire in you; I am simply here to make you aware of the whole absurdity of desiring. Desiring is SANSAR.

Understanding the futility of desire is to become enlightened. One who has found out that he is already that which he always wanted to be is a Buddha. And you are all Buddhas, howsoever fast asleep and snoring. That makes no difference. Let me be your alarm. Open your eyes. You have slept long enough. It is time to awaken. The morning is knocking at the door.

Source: from Osho Book “The True Sage”

Osho – In India, we have called philosophy, ’darshan’. It means the capacity to see. We don’t call it a love of thinking, as the word ’philosophy’ means. We call it: the capacity to see. Philosophy is not a right translation of darshan. The right translation of darshan would be PHILOSIa – ’a love to see’. Philosophy means love of thinking. SOPHIA means thinking and PHILO means love.

The Indian philosophy is not philosophy; it is PHILOSIA. SIA means to see. The whole emphasis is not on the object; the emphasis is on the subject. Subjectivity is religion. Objectivity is science. To pay attention to the object is to be scientific. To pay attention to the subject is to be religious.

You look at a flower. If you pay attention to the flower, then it is scientific. If you pay attention to the witness of the flower, it becomes religious. A scientist and a religious man may be standing side by side, looking at the same flower – but they are not looking in the same way. The scientist is looking at the flower and has forgotten himself completely. The religious man is witnessing the flower, and remembering himself. It is a change of gestalt. Try it sometimes. Look at a flower – then suddenly change the gestalt. Now look at the seer of the flower.

You are listening to me right now. You can pay attention to what I am saying – then it is a scientific listening. Or you can be aware of the one who is listening to me within you – then it becomes religious. The difference is very delicate and subtle. Try it right now. Listen to me. Forget yourself. Then it is scientific.

A scientist while working is absolutely concentrated. Science is concentration. Religion is meditation. And that is the difference between concentration and meditation. Concentration is not meditation. Meditation is not concentration. Concentration is focusing your eyes on the object; meditation is focusing yourself on your self. Meditation has no object in it; it is pure subjectivity.

Listen to me. Concentrate. Then you forget yourself. Then you don’t know who you are: You are simply a listener. Then change the focus. It is a knack. It cannot be taught how to change it. You simply change it. You just become aware that you are listening. Awareness becomes more important then what you are listening to. Immediately, a deep change has happened in your being. In that moment you become religious.

If you go on paying too much attention to the object you may come to know many secrets of nature, but you will never come across God on any of the paths that you will travel. It will never be a pilgrimage, a TEERTHYATRA. You will wander and wander into the wilderness of the world and matter. That’s why science cannot think that God is – it is impossible.

God is not an object. Your very approach is such that God is excluded from it. God is not an object! God is your withinness. It is not in the object of concentration. It is in the subjectivity of meditation. He is you.

I have heard one beautiful story. There was a man, a great devotee of Buddha. He had a beautiful statue of Buddha, a wooden statue, a piece of art – an antique, very valuable. He carried it like a great treasure.

One night it happened: he was staying in a cold hut. And the winter was really ice-cold and he was shivering. It seemed that he was going to die. There was no wood for his fire. At midnight, when he was shivering, it is said that Buddha appeared and said: ’Why don’t you burn me?’ The wooden statue was there. The man became afraid. This must be a devil. He said: ’What are you saying? Burn the statue of Buddha? – never!’

Buddha laughed and said: ’If you see me in the statue you will miss me. I am in you, not in the statue. I am not in the worshipped, the object; I am in the worshipper. And I am shivering within you! Burn this statue!’

God is your subjectivity. He is there within. When you focus outside, there are objects. When you become unfocused and look within, without any focus, He is there – absolutely alive, throbbing, ticking.

Source : from Osho Book “The True Sage”

Osho – The only difference between men and other animals is that of values. No animal lives according to values; he lives blindly, not knowing why. His life force is unconscious of itself. Many men also live in the same way. They only look like men, but they have not yet transcended the animal. The transcendence of the animal is indicated by the values.

But values can be of two types: one that is imposed upon you from the outside, thou shalt; and one that arises in your own being, I will.

The first kind of value is just a hypocrisy. It is a strategy to make you believe that you have transcended the animals; but in fact you have even fallen below the animals. The animals are at least natural; you are not even natural. Your values distort your nature, distort your simplicity, distort your innocence – but they give you a false notion that you are a man.

The second kind of values are the authentic values. But for them, you have to avoid any kind of imposition from the outside, and you have to allow your own inner being and its still, small voice. The beginning of man is in the trust that he shows in his own inner voice.

Question – Does a Buddha also need something as a Complementary? Who is complementary to a Buddha?

Osho – Buddha or Buddhahood is not any polarity. It is not opposite to anything. It is beyond the duality.

Night is against day. Life is against death. Love is against hate. Buddhahood is not against anything. It is to transcend the duality. When you are neither day nor night, you are a Buddha. When you are neither life nor death, you are a Buddha.

When you are neither this nor that, NETI NETI, you are a Buddha. Buddhahood simply means transcendence of duality. So Buddhahood is all and nothing. There is nothing as polar opposite to, and there is no complementary to it. Remember this: you would like to become a Buddha because you would like to be happy. But then you misunderstand.

Buddhahood is beyond happiness and unhappiness. That was the insistence in yesterday’s talk: it is beyond agony, and beyond ecstasy also. So the man who has really attained to ecstasy, you will not see any ecstasy in him. Agony has disappeared, ecstasy also. The world has disappeared, and the nirvana also. The body has disappeared, and the soul also – because those are all opposites. They are meaningful only when the other is present.

Have you observed? If you ask the scientists: ’What is matter?’ they say: ’Not mind.’ ’And what is mind?’ – they say: ’Not matter.’ Now look at the foolishness. When you want to define matter, you have to bring mind in. Mind itself is undefined yet. To define one thing, you bring another undefined thing. How can you define something by another undefined thing? ’What is matter?’ – you say: ’Not mind.’ And when it is asked: ’What is mind?’ you bring matter in – that it is not matter.

Dualities depend on each other. You cannot define love without bringing hate in. What type of love is this which needs hate to be defined? You cannot define life without bringing death in. This life cannot be much of a life. What type of life is this which needs death to define it?
There is a life beyond life and death, and there is a love beyond love and hate. That love, that life, is Buddhahood – transcending all the opposites.

So don’t choose. If you choose, you will be in the quagmire. Don’t choose! A choiceless awareness is the goal. Just remain aloof; don’t choose. The moment you choose, you have fallen into the trap of the world, or into the trap of the mind.

It is reported that Rinzai, a great Zen Master, was asked by a disciple: ’I have left the whole world, renounced all. Now why am I still to wait for nirvana? Why isn’t the enlightenment happening?’
Rinzai said: ’You have left the world, now leave enlightenment also. Otherwise, it will not happen.

Because whatsoever you call enlightenment is nothing but the opposite polarity of your world. In your idea of enlightenment, your world still exists. Maybe it exists as negated, but one still exists. Drop enlightenment also.’

It is said the disciple understood. He laughed. And the Master said: ’Finished. You attained.’
In a single moment it is possible. But if you cling to the duality, then for lives together you can go on and on and on. Try to see the point. It is only a question of vision and clarity. Try to see the point that you cannot choose one without choosing the opposite. If you choose love, you have already chosen hate.

Love is a love-hate relationship. If you choose love, you have already chosen hate. It will lurk just behind your love, and many times it will come up. And you will have to relax, because nobody can love for twenty-four hours.

Where will you relax? You will relax in hate; it is lurking just by the side. You will fight. After a fight, again you are ready to love. Now you are fed-up with hate. Again you fall in love. This way you go on moving: happy, unhappy; sad, ecstatic; in anguish, in bliss. But these opposites are two aspects of the same coin. When the head is up, the tail is hidden. When the tail is up, the head is hidden. Just close by, like a shadow, the opposite follows.

To understand this is to become a Buddha. Then you don’t desire, because every desire will be a choice. Then you don’t say: ’I would like love, and I don’t want hate.’ If you want love you have already wanted hate, you have already fallen into the trap. Once you understand the duality and the trap of it, you simply laugh, you don’t choose. You say: ’Enough. I understand now. I don’t choose.’

In that choicelessness a pillar of awareness arises in you, a flame. You are transformed. Choicelessness is the alchemy of transformation, of inner mutation. A new being is born who has nothing to do with the past, who is absolutely discontinuous with the past. He has no desire. And when there is no desire, for the first time you live.

Desire doesn’t allow you to live. It goes on forcing you towards the future. It doesn’t allow you to be here-now. It doesn’t allow you to let go. It doesn’t allow you to flow. It doesn’t allow you to move with the tide. The desire creates fight. The desire says: ’Fight for the goal. You have to reach somewhere.’ Life is not reaching anywhere. It is sheer delight I It is just here-now! The desiring mind is always somewhere else.

What Gurdjieff said about that man is true about many – you are never at home. You have made your abode in desires. Life is always here, and you are always somewhere else. Except here, you may be anywhere. But you are never here.

A choiceless consciousness is here-now. It lives. Only IT lives. Only IT can live. You only h
ope. You never live. You think to live; you plan – but you never live. Your whole life goes in planningthinking of the morrow, thinking how to enjoy tomorrow, and missing today. And there is no tomorrow.

Source: from Osho Book “The True Sage”