Osho,
The followers of the awakened awake and day and night they watch and meditate upon their
master. Forever wakeful, they mind the law. They know their brothers on the way. They
understand the mystery of the body. They find joy in all beings. They delight in
meditation. It is hard to live in the world and hard to live out of it. It is hard to be
one among many. And for the wanderer, how long is the road wandering through many lives!
Let him rest. Let him not suffer. Let him not fall into suffering. If he is a good man, a
man of faith, honored and prosperous, wherever he goes he is welcome. Like the Himalayas
good men shine from afar, but bad men move unseen like arrows in the night. Sit. Rest.
Work. Alone with yourself, never weary. On the edge of the forest live joyfully, without
desire.
Three reformed and very progressive rabbis were boasting about the advanced views of
their respective congregations.
"We are so modern," said the first, "we have installed ashtrays in every
pew so members can smoke while they pray."
"Ah!" snorted the second. "We now have a snack bar in the basement that
serves ham sandwiches after services."
"You boys," said the third, "are not even in the same class as my
congregation. We are so reformed, we close for the Jewish holidays."
That's what has happened to all the so-called followers -- Christians, Jews, Hindus,
Buddhists. They are not real followers; their being a follower is only a formality. It is
just by accident of birth that one is a Hindu and another is a Christian. It is not out of
your own choice, it is not your commitment. You have not chosen to be a Christian
or a Hindu or a Buddhist; hence it is absolutely meaningless, it carries no weight. It is
at the most a social phenomenon. It has nothing to do with religion, it has no sacredness
about it -- a social conformity, useful in its own ways.
But your church is nothing but a club. Just as there are Rotarians, so there are
Christians. You belong to a certain club and the club has a few privileges; belonging to
it, you also have the right to have those privileges. It is not the search for truth
because the search for truth does not make you a part of a tradition. It certainly makes
you a disciple, but not a part of a dead tradition, religion, organization. It certainly
brings you close to a Christ or a Buddha, but it has nothing to do with the scriptures.
A living master is bound to happen to the person who is in search of truth, who wants
to know the meaning of life, who wants to go to the innermost core of his being, who wants
to know the depth and the height of existence. He will have to hold hands with a master.
The master is one who has already known. The master is one who has been
to the other shore and has come to this shore to show you the path. But only a master can
show the path -- a living master, remember. A tradition is just a fossil, a corpse. Yes,
once there may have been a light, but the light has gone to the infinite long long ago.
Twenty-five centuries have passed since Buddha's flame became one with the universal
flame. Now you can go on worshipping Buddha, but you will not be, in the real sense, a
disciple -- you can't be. The buddha you worship is your own invention, your projection.
You will have to find a real buddha, a man who is alive, just as alive as you are, who is
in the body, whose flame can help your unlit candle to become lit, whose fire can consume
you.
But churches and temples and creeds and dogmas cannot consume you, they cannot make you
aflame. They have no fire left. Two thousand years have passed since Christ. You can go on
worshipping in the church, but now what you are doing is a kind of social duty. You are
not involved in it, your heart is not there. Superficially, on the periphery, you have a
label -- Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan -- but behind the labels you are all alike; there is
no difference at all.
The first sutra of Buddha says:
The followers of the awakened awake....
Those who are really followers of the awakened are awake. That's the only way to
be a follower of the awakened -- to be awake. It is not a question of worship, not a
question of respect. It is a question of inner transformation. It is going through inner
alchemy.
How can you go through inner alchemy if the master is not present? The gap of thousands
of years cannot be bridged. But there is no need to bridge it either because whenever
there is one who is awakened he is the same, the fire is the same. It does not make any
difference in what lamp the flame is alive. The lamp may be of this shape or that shape,
the lamp may be made of this metal or that metal, it is irrelevant. The flame has nothing
to do with the metal and the shape of the lamp; the flame is always the same. But you will
have to seek a lamp which can still show you the path.
The moment you see an enlightened person, if you allow yourself to see the
enlightened person, three things happen in your life. The first is, you become a student.
A student means one who becomes intellectually involved, who becomes intellectually
intrigued, who starts feeling that his questions are being answered for the first time,
his curiosities are dissolving for the first time. For the first time there is someone who
can answer him and his answers are not borrowed; his answers are on his own authority. His
answers are not coming from his memory; his answers are welling up from his very center.
And you can feel the difference, the difference is great. It is the difference between
a plastic rose and a real rose. You can see that his answers are fresh, young, breathing.
They have a heartbeat to them, they are not dead information. He has not collected
knowledge; he has known, he has seen, he has become. And you will feel his being. The
first step is to become a student; that's how the journey starts.
The second step is to be a disciple. When not only your head is in
communication with the master but your heart too, when not only does he look logical but a
great love arises in your being for him, then you become a disciple. A disciple knows how
to commune, the student knows how to communicate. The student lives on the verbal,
intellectual level; the disciple on the nonverbal, feeling level. His heart starts
opening. Just as the sun rises in the morning and the flowers start opening, the disciple
feels some opening is happening in him. He is no more the same person. The master has
touched his being; something has penetrated in. The disciple has become pregnant.
And the third step is to be a devotee. The student relates through the head, the
disciple through the heart, and the devotee through his totality. It is no more a question
of head or heart, body or mind or soul; his whole being becomes suffused. He becomes one
with the master. It is no more a dialogue of the head or of the heart. There are no more
two; the flames have become one.
This is the moment of real initiation, of real sannyas. Buddha is talking about it. He
says: the followers of the awakened awake....
They become just like the master. They have the same quality, the same fragrance, the
same aura. To understand a buddha, the only way is to become a buddha yourself; there is
no other way.
The disciple will know about the buddha; the devotee will know the
buddha. The disciple will feel the buddha. The disciple is just in between the student and
the devotee. He will remain a little vague, clouded; he will not have clarity. In that
sense, the student is clear -- intellectually clear. The devotee is totally clear. The
disciple is in the middle: something is clear and something is very unclear; something is
light and something is dark. The disciple is in a state of twilight, neither day nor
night.
Buddha is talking about the devotee when he uses the word "follower." He does
not mean a Christian, a Hindu, a Buddhist. He means someone who has the courage to take
the plunge into the very being of the master; he is a real follower. And in that plunge he
starts having the same quality -- the quality of being awake.
Ordinarily you are living in a kind of sleep; a metaphysical slumber surrounds you. And
even if sometimes there are possibilities, opportunities for you to be awakened, you
avoid, because you have invested so much in your sleep. You are afraid of being awake.
Deep down you know that if you become awake your dreams will be disturbed -- and you may
be having beautiful dreams, nice dreams, sweet dreams. And who wants to get disturbed when
there are so many beautiful dreams surrounding you? And when you are dreaming, you don't
think that you are dreaming; your dreams look real.
That is one of the strange things about dreams: they have such a deep impact on
you. They hypnotize you so deeply that many times you have known that they are
dreams when you wake up in the morning, but again every night you fall back into the same
hypnosis.
This is the case with you in so many lives. You have lived the same kind of life again
and again -- the same desire, the same greed, the same ambition -- and each time you were
frustrated, but again you are ready to become a victim. It is exactly like dreams.
This morning also when you woke up you remembered so many dreams from the night and you
laughed; it looked so ridiculous. But let the night come again and you will dream again,
and when you will be dreaming you will believe them. They are real deceivers! And when one
believes that this is real, why should one want to be awake and disturb it? You resist
awakening.
Even if you come across a buddha you will not look at him. You will look sideways; you
will not look into his eyes. The fear... his energy may start pulsating in you. Hence,
many times you have come across a Buddha, a Krishna, a Mahavira, a Christ, a Mohammed, but
you have missed again and again on your own accord. You were afraid to encounter them --
the encounter may prove too dangerous.
"Hello. This is long distance. I have a call for you from Palm Springs."
"Hello, Herman, this is Rube. Listen, I am stranded here and I need five hundred
dollars."
"I can't hear you. Something is wrong with the phone."
"I want five hundred dollars!"
"I still can't hear you."
"I can hear it okay," interrupted the operator.
"Then you give him the five hundred dollars!"
You listen only to that which fits with you; you avoid listening to that which can be a
disturbance. You become deaf, you become dumb, you become blind. You have chosen a
particular sleepy life and you have lived with that style for so long that it looks almost
natural. The unnatural has become the natural and the natural has been completely
forgotten.
To awake means to be natural again. To awake means to be awake in your
consciousness, in your deepest core of the heart, to become aware.
We go on reading the Bibles, the Korans, the Gitas. That is not a problem. The problem
comes when you come across a Mohammed. It is easy to read Ayatollah Khomeini; it is
difficult to come across Mohammed, because Mohammed is bound to be like an electric shock.
He will go like a deep tremor into your being. And these ayatollahs, these imams, they are
not to be afraid of. They talk such nonsense.
Just the other day I was reading.... These people write great treatises on the Koran,
and you will be surprised to know what they write in those treatises. Such stupid things!
-- for example: "You should not urinate towards Kaaba." Great metaphysics! Great
spirituality! You should remember continuously, otherwise be prepared for hell. But this
can be managed; Mohammedans manage it, they remember the direction of Kaaba. As if God is
only in Kaaba and nowhere else! As if Kaaba is the only direction which is divine and all
else is undivine!
I was reminded of a beautiful story in Nanak's life:
He went to Kaaba and he slept with his feet towards the sacred Kaaba stone. The imam of
Kaaba came and he was very angry. He said, "You pretend to be a holy man and you
don't even know the ordinary rules! Whether you are a Mohammedan or not, at least you can
be polite! This much courtesy you can show: you should not put your feet towards Kaaba.
Change the direction of your feet!"
Nanak laughed and he said, "You have come in the right time -- that's what was
puzzling me! Please, you do it. You turn my feet towards any direction... because I have
tried and I have to go to sleep. I have tried; half the night I have wasted already. You
try!"
In deep anger, rage, the imam turned Nanak's feet to the opposite direction. He was
shocked to see that Kaaba moved towards Nanak's feet! He turned in every direction and
Kaaba moved.
Whether it happened or not, that is not the point; but the story is beautiful. It
simply says that God is everywhere. Wherever you put your feet it is God's direction,
because nothing else exists. But these foolish scholars, they go on talking nonsense and
they write big treatises. But they are not dangerous to you.
For example, on a day when you are fasting, in the days of Ramadan when a Mohammedan
fasts, in desert countries a great problem has arisen: when you are moving in the desert
sometimes you may swallow dust. Now the problem is -- what a great problem! -- in the
desert on a fast day, if you swallow dust, is your fast broken or not? Now these
ayatollahs say your fast is broken if you swallow the dust voluntarily. But who will
swallow the dust voluntarily? For what? Dust is not food, dust is not nourishment! But if
it happens INvoluntarily, then the fast is not broken.
Then for centuries people go on discussing such stupid nonsense -- sheer nonsense! They
will miss a Mohammed, they will miss a Moses, they will miss a Lao Tzu; and then for
centuries they will discuss useless things. Useless things are not dangerous.
The real danger comes from people who are awake, because to be in their presence
it is possible that you may become infected. Awareness is contagious! But read the
Koran and the Bible -- it is just a game of words. And if you read every day your Bible
and Gita, then even words don't mean anything. You simply repeat like a parrot.
Every year dignitaries of the church come from Rome to Israel and a time-honored
ceremony is re-enacted. One of the chief rabbis hands a jewel-covered scroll to a visiting
priest who holds the scroll for a minute, shakes his head, and then returns it to the
rabbi until the next year.
This year, however, the rabbi and the priest involved in the ceremony grew curious
about the scroll and decided to open it. They removed the jeweled covering, then unrolled
yards and yards of yellowed parchment with long columns of numbers on it and blurred words
The rabbi put on his glasses and finally managed to read the ancient Hebrew letters. It
was the bill for the Last Supper!
For two thousand years they had been giving it to the other: "Please, you pay
it!" And nobody has bothered what is written in it, what exactly it is.
Scriptures are cheap and scriptures are manipulatable. You can manage very easily any
meaning out of them. You can invent, you can interpret, you can do a thousand things to
the scripture. You can bring it to your own level.
But you cannot bring a buddha to your own level. If you want to commune with a buddha
you have to go to his level, to his plane of being. And his plane of being
is awareness.
The followers of the awakened awake.... You are somnambulists! The only
possibility in your life of being awake is coming in contact with someone who is awake.
Only fire can ignite fire in you. And you are living in such a deep sleep that unless
somebody hits you hard enough your sleep may not be broken.
The advance proofs of a cookbook for hipsters recently came my way. The wildest recipe
is for a salad. "You cut up lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers and green peppers, then you
add a dash of marijuana and the salad tosses itself."
And that's the state you are in. For centuries the salad is tossing itself -- too much
marijuana! Everybody is spiritually in a state of deep slumber, dreaming great dreams, but
not an inch of evolution... because there are only two states: either you are asleep or
you are awake.
This whole idea of human consciousness evolving, the idea of progress, is nothing but a
strategy of the mind to keep you sleeping. It is a great trick of the mind. The mind goes
on telling you, "Humanity is progressing. Don't be worried -- everything has its own
time. When the spring comes, you will also become an evolved buddha. Wait! Nothing can be
done before its time. Wait for the right time and you will also be ripe." And you
have been waiting for centuries and you can go on waiting for centuries, the right time
will never come. This is not the way that it comes. You have to catch hold of it.
You are just in a deep lethargy. Buddhas happen and disappear, light descends from the
beyond, but you don't take any note of it. Yes, you do one thing: when a buddha is gone
you worship him. You make him a god, you create temples for him, you make statues of him
and you worship them. Statues are toys, they can't awaken you. And the real man? The real
man you avoid. And because you avoid the real man, a great guilt arises in you. To put
that guilt right you worship.
Worship is not religious; worship is just out of guilt. Because you never
listened to the buddha when he was alive, when he dies you start feeling guilty. Now what
to do? How to put your guilt and the burden of it aside? You worship. You compensate with
worship, but you remain the same.
And day and night they watch and meditate upon their master.
The devotee -- the real follower -- is constantly watching what he is doing, how he is
doing, why he is doing. Even in small matters he de-automatizes himself. Walking, he does
not just walk; he walks with meditative awareness. He knows that he is walking. Eating, he
knows he is eating.
You eat and you do a thousand and one other things. You go on swallowing food, you go
on throwing food in, you go on stuffing yourself... and the mind goes on planning, goes on
remembering, desiring, projecting. You are not there in the act; you are either in the
past or in the future. And the present is the only time, only the present is real. Past is
unreal, future is unreal; both are unreal -- and you are always living in the unreal.
This is sleep: you go on doing things.... You yourself sometimes say, "I did it in
spite of myself." What do you mean when you say "in spite of myself"? It
simply means that you were not conscious and you did it -- as if you are just an
automaton, a robot!
A very fat lady boarded a crowded bus and managed to wedge herself in. She had a long
way to go and feeling very uncomfortable reached down and unzipped the zipper in the back
of her skirt.
A few minutes later, feeling the draft, she reached back and zipped it up again.
Feeling more and more uncomfortable, she reached back and unzipped the zipper, but in a
few minutes she reached back and zipped herself up again.
This went on for nearly twenty minutes until finally the man standing behind her leaned
over and said, "Listen, lady. I don't know what's on your mind, but in the last half
hour you have unzipped my fly at least ten times!"
People are not conscious of what they are doing! They just go on doing things, half
asleep, half awake, in a kind of alcoholic state.
The pretty young thing came slamming into her apartment after a blind date and
announced to her roommate, "Boy, what a character! I had to slap his face three times
this evening!"
The roommate inquired eagerly, "What did he do?"
"Nothing!" muttered the girl. "I slapped him to see if he was
awake!"
People only appear to be awake; they are not. People only appear to be alive; they are
not. People only appear to be; they are not -- because if they are really there, then
there is no difference between them and the buddha. Then they will know all the secrets of
life, then they will know the significance of life. Then their life will be a celebration,
a constant celebration, a joy, a song, a dance. But people are living in hell, in misery.
Misery is symbolic of unawareness; bliss is symbolic of awareness.
Forever wakeful, they mind the law.
The devotees of a master, of an awakened one, are continuously wakeful and they are
continuously making every possible human effort to be in tune with the universe, not to
fall out of step with the universe -- because that is what misery is.
To be in tune, to be harmonious with the universe, is bliss, is joy, is music, is
poetry. You start blooming the moment you are in tune with the whole. Whenever you are not
in tune with the whole, something goes berserk in you. Then the whole no more nourishes
you; then you are no more rooted in the whole. Then you become an uprooted tree, then you
are undernourished. Then your green foliage starts disappearing. Then flowers can't happen
to you, because flowers are possible only when you are overflooded with joy, overflowing
with joy.
They know their brothers on the way.
The real devotees are so awake that they immediately, intuitively recognize anybody who
has the same quality -- the brothers on the way. A sannyasin, if really meditative,
will immediately know another sannyasin. This is not an intellectual understanding -- not
that he infers that this must be a sannyasin -- but a simple intuitive feeling. Something
strikes him deep down in his being. Something so similar is there present in the other
person that he knows without any mental effort and exercise. He knows through the heart
that the other is also on the way.
How do you recognize a man when he is awake? And how do you recognize a man when he is
asleep? Sleepers cannot recognize other sleepers and sleepers cannot recognize that
somebody is awake, that is true. But if you are awake you know who is asleep and who is
awake. Exactly in the same way, on a higher plane, it happens again: the people who have a
little bit of awareness immediately become aware of the brothers on the way.
That's how the commune arises, through this recognition. A commune is not a church. A
commune is not an organization. A commune is not based on a dogma, on a creed. The commune
grows out of this intuitive recognition that the other is also in tune with the whole. You
can hear the music! You can hear something which cannot be heard by the outer ears.
Something immediately rings a bell in your heart. It is a mysterious phenomenon.
Buddha says: they know their brothers on the way. Wherever you will find anybody
who is meditative, out of your meditation you will be able to recognize him.
Every commune has arisen in this way. Of course, every commune has fallen and become a
religion finally. That's the way of the world. Once the master is gone, the commune slowly
slowly, starts losing its quality of awareness, it becomes more and more formal. When the
first disciples have also disappeared it is no more a heart phenomenon, it becomes a head
phenomenon. When the second line of disciples has also disappeared, it is only because of
your birth that you are a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan. Then you are following a
dead path which leads nowhere.
They understand the mystery of the body.
Buddha calls the commune the body. The real devotees start feeling such
attunement, such at-onement with other brothers, that they become one body. Buddha used to
call it the sangha -- the commune, the one body, the family. If something happens
it immediately affects all the people, a wave surrounds all instantly.
When Buddha died he had thousands of disciples. They were spread all over the country.
The moment he died, all the disciples who were real disciples immediately were affected
wherever they were. Thousands of miles away from Buddha, immediately they felt, "The
master is no more."
This is a mysterious phenomenon, but now even science is going deep into this
phenomenon -- from a different route, of course. They have been experimenting on animals,
particularly the relationship between the mother and the child. And they are surprised,
utterly surprised, by a mysterious phenomenon. You take the child of any animal deep into
the sea, a mile deep or two miles deep into the sea, and you kill the child there. The
mother is on the shore; there are two miles of water in between, but the mother
immediately knows the child has been killed. She becomes sad, depressed; tears start
flowing.
In Soviet Russia particularly, they have worked hard on this phenomenon. They have
tried the distance of a thousand miles; and if the child is killed, the mother is
immediately affected. There seems to be a spiritual umbilical cord between the child and
the mother. It has become very confused in human beings, that's why they have to
experiment with animals. Animals are still simple, innocent; they have not yet become
educated, cultured, civilized. These misfortunes have not yet happened to them; hence they
are working with animals, but it happens in human beings also.
If there is a deep love relationship between the child and the mother, the death of the
child anywhere in the world will affect the mood of the mother immediately. Some
mysterious connection exists between the mother and the child.
But this is nothing compared to the mystery that happens between the master and the
disciple, because the mother/ child relationship is only physical and the master/disciple
relationship is spiritual. It is far more profound, far deeper.
Buddha says: they understand the mystery of the body.
They find joy in all beings.
You find only that in others which you have found in yourself first. If you are sad you
will find sadness all over the place. To a sad person even the full moon looks sad,
gloomy, depressed. To a joyous heart even the dark night is luminous. It all depends on
you; it all depends how you are, where you are. The whole world moves with your heart, it
becomes that which you are.
You have heard it said again and again that the person who is holy, who is meditative,
who is prayerful, goes to heaven. That is wrong; just the opposite is the case. To the
prayerful person, to the meditative person, heaven comes. Not that he goes to heaven --
heaven comes to him, to his heart. Wherever he is, he is in paradise. And the evil person,
wherever he is, he is in hell. There is no need to send him to hell, there is no need to
have a special place called hell. Nowhere is there any hell and nowhere any heaven.
If you are joyous you live in heaven, and your neighbor may be living in hell. And
sometimes it happens, one moment you are in heaven and the next moment you are in hell. It
all depends on your inner states. If you are soaring high, heaven opens up. If you are
drowning in darkness, in sadness, hell is ready to welcome you. They find joy in all
beings.
They delight in meditation.
This is a very significant sutra; remember it. Buddha says: they delight in
meditation. It is easy to meditate if you don't want to be blissful -- it is very easy
to meditate. If you want just to be blissful and you don't want to be in meditation, that
too is easy. The rarest combination is meditation plus bliss. Meditation minus bliss is
easy; bliss minus meditation is easy. But meditation minus bliss is not true meditation
and bliss minus meditation is not true bliss either. They are true only when they are
together.
Many people have tried to meditate without bliss because it is simple, less complex.
You have to take only one work upon yourself: that you have to still your mind. And you
can force your mind to be stilled, but you will become sad, you will have a long face.
That's why your saints -- so-called saints -- look sad. Sadness has become a necessary
quality for being a saint. They can't laugh, they can't dance, they can't sing, they can't
love, they can't rejoice. They talk about bliss but they only talk about it. You don't see
any bliss in their eyes, you don't see any bliss in their milieu, you don't see any bliss
radiating from their inner center. They look sad, dull, dead, unintelligent, for the
simple reason that they have chosen a shortcut and there is no shortcut. They have avoided
the complexity of spiritual transformation. They have chosen meditation, they have forced
their mind to be still. It is a negative state; their minds are only empty, not silent --
forcibly made still. But it is not a natural growth of silence, it is not the flowering of
silence. Their silence is like the cemetery, it is not the silence of a garden.
The silence of the garden is full of music: the bees humming and the birds singing and
a distant call of the cuckoo. They are all in it, essential parts of it. The garden has a
very living silence, full of song and joy. The cemetery is also silent, but it is only the
silence of death; because there is nobody, hence there is silence.
You can meditate, force yourself to be silent, but you will miss God, you will
miss nirvana. And you can also try to be blissful; that means you can pretend, you
can practice, you can rehearse bliss. You can always try to be blissful, smiling, at least
looking happy.
Slowly slowly, it becomes so practiced... like Jimmy Carter. Now his smile is
disappearing, but just remember two years before -- you could have counted his teeth! You
can practice it. I have heard that in the beginning days of his presidency his wife had to
close his mouth in the night! I don't know how far it is true, but it appears to be true
-- because if you practice the whole day, then in the night too your muscles become fixed.
Even in sleep you will go on smiling.
You can practice blissfulness too, but a practiced blissfulness is false. Anything
practiced is false, remember it -- never forget it. Things have to be spontaneous and
natural, not practiced, not cultivated. Cultivated blissfulness is only a mask. You are
smiling, but the smile is not in the heart. You are showing joy, but you are not joyous.
Your heart is a desert; only on the face you have put plastic flowers. They may deceive
others, but they can't deceive you and they can't deceive a master. Your smile, your joy,
is formal -- just good manners.
This too has happened. There have been many saints, very blissful, always singing and
dancing, but deep down just deserts. They both have chosen only the half, and the
half-truth is far more untrue than any untruth.
Truth has to be total, truth has to be whole. And the whole truth is: bliss PLUS
meditation. It is difficult of course, arduous, to manage both. Why? -- because they seem
to be polar opposites. Meditation means silence and bliss means dance. Meditation means
stillness and bliss means a song. Meditation means escaping from the world and bliss means
sharing with the world. Meditation you can do in a Himalayan cave, but to be blissful you
will have to come back to the world.
Bliss needs to be shared; it exists only in sharing. It can't exist when you are alone,
it disappears. It is a communion. Meditation can exist in aloneness and bliss can exist in
togetherness. But when both exist then you have to learn a totally new way of life.
Buddha will give you the sutra soon. He says:
It is hard to live in the world and hard to live out of it. It is hard to be one
among many.
He says: it is hard to live in the world.... Certainly, hence millions have
preferred to escape. He himself had escaped in the beginning -- but remember that he did
not become enlightened because of his escape. He became enlightened in spite of his
escape. He did not become enlightened because he renounced the world; he became
enlightened even though he renounced the world. It was in spite of it. It was not the
cause of his enlightenment, it did not cause it.
Enlightenment is not caused by anything.
So when he comes back after his enlightenment to the world, goes to the palace to see
his parents -- his old father, his old stepmother -- his wife, his son, the wife asks one
question; a very pertinent question she asks Gautam Buddha. She asks, "Tell me one
thing -- I have waited long just to ask you one thing. Whatsoever you have attained, was
it not possible to attain it here in this house? Was it necessary to escape from the
palace and from the world and from me and from your child? Was that absolutely necessary
to attain it?"
And that is the only time when Buddha looks downwards without saying anything. His
silence is eloquent. He accepts that yes, it was not necessary.
He escaped out of the world because it was hard to live in the world. It is hard.
"Son, I just know that you will do the right thing by this little girl," said
the preacher. "You just marry her and you will be at the end of your troubles."
So he did the right thing and he married the girl. And about six months later, when he
saw the preacher again, he tried to murder him.
"You miserable liar!" shouted the young man. "You told me if I married
her I would be at the end of my troubles. Well, I married her and she has made my life
miserable!"
"That may be true, son, but you can't blame me," replied the minister.
"I said you would be at the end of your troubles, but I never said which end."
To be in the world is hard, to live in the world is difficult, because it is
living with so many lunatics. You yourself are a lunatic and everybody else is a lunatic!
The world is in such a mess. It simply seems impossible how the good God could manage
within six days to make such a mess of the world! There was not time enough... and no
woman even to advise him! Still he managed.
Those who know, they say he created Eve only in the end simply so that she would not
give advice to him; otherwise in six days it would have been impossible to make the world.
She would have interfered in everything: "Do it this way. This is not right."
And since he created Eve he has not created anything else. That was too much! He called it
a day and he said, "Enough is enough!" Since then nothing has been heard about
him.
Shed a tear for the beatnik who committed suicide, leaving a note saying,
"Goodbye, cool world."
It is really icy-cold -- no warmth anywhere, no love anywhere, no compassion anywhere. It
is hard to live in the world and hard to live out of it. And it is not easy to live
out of it either; it is even harder to live out of it.
Man is in such a dilemma! It is difficult to live in the world, it is difficult
not to live in the world. Have you ever tried living in a Himalayan cave? Try for
one month, and the world will look so beautiful and so heavenly! A few experiences you
have had. It is difficult to live with the wife, but when she goes for a few days to her
mother's house, it is very difficult to live without her. When she is with you, you want
to be without her; when she is gone, you want her immediately back.
It is going to be so, because the ultimate question is neither to live in the world nor
out of it. The ultimate question is to live in a state of wakefulness. If you are living
in sleep in the world you will be in misery; if you live outside the world you will
be in far more misery.
I know both types of people, the worldly and the otherworldly. I know the people who
live in the marketplace, and I know the people who have renounced the marketplace, and
have moved to the monasteries. Both are in misery, deep misery, for the simple reason that
just changing the place, just changing your address from the marketplace to the monastery,
does not make any difference at all. You are the same person, your consciousness has not
changed. And change is needed there. Then you can become the center of the cyclone. Then
you can live in the cyclone and yet undisturbed.
But Buddha says that is very rare.
It is hard to be one among many. That happens only once in a while. Among
millions, only a single person manages to live joyfully wherever he is -- in the world or
outside the world. Who is that person who can manage to live joyfully? -- the one who
lives in awareness. That is Buddha's insistent message.
And for the wanderer, how long is the road wandering through many lives!
And how long have you been wandering! When are you going to decide to be awake? You
have slept long enough. It is time to wake up and to start a totally new kind of life
which is lived from inside. Light a flame inside of awareness, and then wherever you are
it is all joy.
Let him rest.... You need rest, you have wandered enough. You are tired, utterly
tired, weary, bored.
Let him rest.
Let him not suffer.
Let him not fall into suffering.
The time is right now. Don't suffer anymore. Don't fall again and again into suffering.
To fall into forgetfulness is suffering; to remember is to come out of suffering. And rest
is the most necessary step for remembering, for awareness. Relaxation is the whole art of
meditation and bliss both.
How can you rest with so many desires? They go on pulling you apart. You can rest only
if you learn the secret of desirelessness; if you learn to live moment to moment without
any future; if you learn to live without any hope for the future; if you live
concentratedly in the present, totally involved in the moment, neither worried by the past
nor worried by the future, relaxed, at rest. Then meditation and bliss both are easy,
spontaneous growths out of a restful heart, out of a relaxed being.
If he is a good man,
a man of faith, honored and prosperous,
wherever he goes he is welcome.
And don't be worried what will happen to you if you don't take care of your future, if
you don't plan, if you don't arrange beforehand what is going to happen to you. Don't be
worried.
Buddha says: if he is a good man, a man of faith... a man who trusts existence,
then don't be worried: wherever he goes he is welcome -- at least welcome by those
who know, at least welcome by those who understand... and only their welcome is of any
worth.
Like the Himalayas
good men shine from afar,
but bad men move unseen
like arrows in the night.
Don't be worried what will happen to you. You will become so luminous -- like the
Himalayas -- shining from thousands of miles away. You will become so radiant that
people will start moving towards you as if you are a great magnet. From far and wide, from
all corners of the earth, people will start moving towards you, pulled by an unknown
force, by a mysterious energy.
Don't be worried about the future, everything will be taken care of. Trust nature. Aes
dhammo sanantano: this is the inexhaustible, eternal law. Trust, and nature will
shower upon you millions of blessings.
Sit.... Don't rush, don't run. Don't continually be on the move for this and
that. sit. That's exactly the meaning of zazen. The word "zazen"
has come from this sutra.
Sit.
Rest.
Work.
Zazen means just sitting doing nothing. The first thing to do is learn sitting, a deep
restfulness. Become a pool of rest, not even ripples of desire, going nowhere, no ambition
-- not even for God, not even for nirvana.
sit... not only physically -- psychologically, spiritually too. Learn to sit;
that is zazen. And rest -- and fall into a deep rest, so the breathing becomes
natural, the body becomes cool, all the fever of constant desire and turmoil disappears,
evaporates.
And then, work. That work will have a totally different quality. It won't be out
of desire; it will be creativity. It will be because you have so much energy available
that you would like to share your energy with the world, that you would like to create
something, that you would like to make the world a little more beautiful, a little more
blissful, a little more human.
Alone with yourself,
Never weary.
And remember the difference between loneliness and aloneness. Never feel lonely. You
are never lonely. At the deepest core of your being, God resides; he is always with you.
And whenever you are alone, only then will you be able to hear his footsteps. Whenever you
are alone, only then will you be able to hear his music, his whisperings. He never shouts,
he only whispers. He comes very silently and goes very silently. Be in a deep rest and you
become the host; and he is the guest, God is the guest.
On the edge of the forest
Live joyfully....
The forest represents the unknown, the unknowable. On the edge of the forest live
joyfully.... Be always close to the unknown and the unknowable and don't be afraid. Live
joyfully... because the unknown, the unknowable, is also yours. You belong to it, it
belongs to you. Live joyfully....
Without desire.
Don't ask for anything. Jesus says: Ask, and it shall be given. Buddha says: Ask not,
and it shall be given. Jesus says: Seek, and ye shall find. Buddha says: Seek not, and ye
shall find. Jesus says: Knock, and the doors shall be opened unto you. Buddha says: There
is no need to knock; the doors are already open.
Why this difference between two enlightened persons? Both are awakened. The difference
is because of the audience. Jesus is speaking to very ordinary people; Buddha is speaking
to his commune -- that is the difference. He can speak the highest truth without any
compromise. Jesus cannot. Jesus has to compromise with the listeners.
Jesus lived without a commune. Yes, a few disciples he had, twelve disciples -- and
those twelve disciples are also not of much worth. Buddha had thousands of disciples and
of tremendous value -- because many of them became enlightened while Buddha was alive. In
his commune there were at least one thousand enlightened people, of the same status as he
himself was. He could talk in any possible way and it would be understood; there was no
worry on his part about being misunderstood. Jesus had to be constantly on guard, and even
then he was misunderstood and crucified.
Sit. Rest. Work. Let these three words sink deep in your heart. Learn to sit
silently, restfully, not fighting with yourself, relaxed. Not in a yoga posture, remember,
because the yoga posture is a constant effort. No yoga posture is needed. Sit in any way
that you find relaxed -- even a chair will do.
Buddha used to sit on the floor; that was easy in those days. You can sit in any
posture you like. You can use a pillow, a zen pillow, to sit upon; you can use a chair.
The question is not the posture; the question is inner rest.
Be at rest... and when energy accumulates in you, start being creative. Paint, sing,
dance, or do whatsoever you feel like doing to make this world a little more beautiful, a
little more warm.
We have to create a paradise on the earth.
Enough for today.
Osho: The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Volume 8,
Chapter 7