Osho - Weekly Meditation For The Here And Now
Weekly Meditation - Week 16. The Unplanned Life
April 16
The Unplanned Life
There is no planning in existence. An unplanned life has tremendous beauty, because there is always some surprise waiting in the future.
The future is not just going to be a repetition; something new is always happening, and one can never take it for granted. Secure people live a bourgeois life. A bourgeois life means getting up at seven-thirty, taking your breakfast at eight, at eight-thirty catching the train to the town, returning home at five-thirty, taking your tea, reading your newspaper, watching TV, having supper, making love to your partner without any love, and going to bed. Again the same thing starts the next day. Everything is settled, and there is no surprise: The future will be nothing but the past repeated again and again. Naturally there is no fear. You have done these things so many times that you have become skillful. You can do them again.
With the new comes fear, because one never knows whether one will be able to do it. One is doing always for the first time, so one is always shaky, uncertain about whether one is going to make it or not. But in that very thrill, in that adventure, is life-aliveness, let us say, rather than life, because life has also become a dull and dead wordaliveness, the flow.
April 17
Outlandish Love
Only fools know what love is, because love is a kind if madness.
Perhaps you have never reached the peaks of love, and you have a great longing for it. You have been in love, but it has never been outlandish, it has never been fantastic, it has never been far out. It has been Iukewarm. It was not like a fire that consumes. You were in it, but you were not destroyed by it; you managed yourself. You have been clever in it, you have not been a fool. And only fools know what love is, because love is a kind of madness.
If you are too clever, you can allow only so far and then you stop. Your whole mind says, "Now this is too much. Going beyond this point is dangerous." Love knows only one experience that is satisfying, and that is to go to the very peak, to the ultimate peak, even once. Then there is a great change in energy. To know love once at the climax is enough; then there is no need to go into it again and again. The experience simply changes your whole being. So be less clever. Forget about cleverness; be more muddle-headed!
April 18
Muddle-Headed
Lao Tzu says: I am a muddle-headed man. When everybody is clear, only I am unclear; when everybody seems to be intelligent, I am stupid.
What Lao Tzu means is that he does not calculate about his life - he lives it. He lives like any animal, like any tree, like any bird. He lives it simply, without figuring out what it is and where it is leading. Anywhere is good; even nowhere is good.
Put your mind aside. It will be difficult, but it can be done. This is one of the crucial problems for the modern mind-putting cleverness aside. You need to be a little more wild. That will bring great innocence to you; that will make you ready to jump into a great love. It need not be with anybody in particular, but it should be just a passionate love - for life, for existence, or for any human being. It could be for painting, poetry, dance, music, drama, anything - but a great, passionate love that becomes your whole life, in which you are so totally absorbed that nothing is left outside: so you and your love become one. That will be the transformation for you.
Fear is there, but don't choose fear. Those who choose fear destroy themselves. Let the fear be there; in spite of it, go into love.
April 19
Circle Of Limitation
If we believe we are limited, we function as limited human beings. Once we drop that foolish belief, we start functioning as unlimited beings.
You have drawn your own circle. It happens with gypsies. Gypsies are continually moving - they are wandering people. So when the older people go into a town, they draw circles around their children and tell them, "Sit here. You cannot leave. It is a magic circle." And the gypsy child cannot get out of it - it's impossible! Then he grows and grows and becomes an old man; and even then, if his father draws a circle, the old man cannot get out of it. Now he believes - and when you believe, it works.
Now you will say that this cannot be done to you. If somebody draws a circle, you will immediately jump out of it; nothing will happen. But from his very childhood, this old gypsy man has been conditioned for it. It functions for him, it is a reality for him, because reality is that which affects you. There is no other criterion for reality.
So limitation is a concept. People have wrong beliefs and then they function wrongly. When they function wrongly they search for a reason why. They come across the belief and go on emphasizing it: "I am functioning wrongly because of this." This becomes a vicious circle. Then they are more limited. Drop that idea completely. It is just a circle that you or others have helped you to draw around yourself.
April 20
Higher Than Sex
People have forgotten completely that sex is nothing compared to the merger that happens when you are simply lying together in deep love, in deep reverence, in prayer.
When physical energy is not sexually involved, it rises to higher altitudes. It can reach to the very ultimate, to samadhi, awakening. But people have forgotten completely. They think that sex is the end. But sex is only the beginning. Whenever you love someone, make it a point to first lie together in deep love, and you will reach to subtler and deeper orgasms. That's how, by and by, real celibacy arises. What we call in India brahmacbarya, real celibacy, is not against sex: It is higher than sex, it is deeper than sex: It is more than sex. Whatever sex can give, it gives, but it gives more also. So when you know how to use your energy on such a high level, who bothers about the lower spaces? Nobody!
I'm not saying to drop sex. I am saying sometimes to allow yourself pure, loving spaces where sex is not a concern. Otherwise you are pulled back to earth, and you can never fly into the sky.
April 21
The Thread
This is the work if the meditator: to find the thread.
The world is in a constant flux, it is riverlike. It flows, but behind all this flow, change, flux, there must be a thread running that keeps everything together. Change is not possible without something remaining absolutely unchanging. Change can exist only together with a nonchanging element, otherwise things will fall apart.
Life is like a garland: You don't see the thread that runs through the flowers. but it is there, holding them together. If the thread were not there, the flowers would fall apart; there would be a heap of flowers but no garland. And existence is not a heap, it is a very well - knit pattern. Things are changing, but some unchanging element keeps a cosmic law behind it all. That cosmic law is called sadashiva, the eternal God, the timeless God, the nonchanging God. And that is the work of the meditator: to find the thread.
There are only two types of people. One gets too enchanted by the flowers and forgets the thread. He lives a life that cannot have any lasting value or significance, because whatever he does will vanish. Today he will make it, tomorrow it will be gone. It will be making castles of sand or launching boats of paper. The second type of person searches for the thread and devotes his whole life to that which always abides; he is never a loser.
April 22
Knowledge
The most important thing to remember is that knowledge is not wisdom, and it cannot be; not only that, but it is anti wisdom, it is the barrier that prevents wisdom from arising.
Knowledge is the false coin, the pretender. It pretends to know. It knows nothing, but it can befool people-it is be fooling millions of people-and it is so subtle, that unless one is really intelligent one never becomes aware of this fact. And it is so deep-rooted, because from our childhoods we have been conditioned in it.
To know means to accumulate, to collect information, to collect data. It does not change you-you remain the same; just your collection of information becomes bigger and bigger. Wisdom transforms you. It is really information, not just "information" - it forms your inner being in a new way. It is transformation. It creates a new quality of seeing, knowing, being. So it is possible for a person to be not at all informed and yet be wise. It is also possible for a person to be very much informed and still be very unwise.
In fact, that's what has happened in the world: People have become more educated, more literate. Universal education is available, so everybody has become knowledgeable, and wisdom has been lost. Knowledge has become so easily available from paperbacks - who bothers about wisdom? Wisdom takes time, energy, devotion, dedication.
