Osho - Weekly Meditation For The Here And Now
Weekly Meditation - Week 39. Softness
September 23
Softness
The soft always overcomes the hard. The soft is alive; the hard is dead.
The soft is flowerlike, the hard is rocklike. The hard looks powerful but is impotent. The soft looks fragile but is alive. Whatever is alive is always fragile, and the higher the quality of life, the more fragile it is. So the deeper you go, the softer you become, or the softer you become, the deeper you go. The innermost core is absolutely soft.
That is the whole teaching of Lao Tzu, the teaching of Tao: Be soft, be like water; don't be like a rock. The water falls on the rock. Nobody can imagine that finally the water is going to win. It is impossible to believe that the water is going to win. The rock seems to be so strong, so aggressive, and the water seems to be so passive. How is the water going to win over the rock? But in due course the rock simply disappears. By and by the soft goes on penetrating the hard.
So let this be a continuous remembrance. Whenever you start feeling that you are becoming hard, immediately relax and become soft, whatever the consequence. Even if you are defeated and momentarily you see that there will be a loss, let it be a loss, but become soft - because in the long run, softness always wins.
September 24
Speed
We all have our own speeds. Life should move with our own speed, with that which is natural.
Once you find your right rhythm, you will be able to do much more. Your actions will not be hectic, they will run more smoothly, and you will be able to do much more. There are slow workers, but slowness has its own qualities. And in fact, those are better qualities. A fast worker can be quantitatively good. He or she can produce more quantitatively but qualitatively can never be very good. A slow worker is qualitatively more perfect. His whole energy moves into a qualitative dimension. The quantity may not be much, but quantity is not really the point.
If you can do a few things, but really beautiful things, almost perfect, you feel very happy and fulfilled. There is no need to do many things. If you can even do one thing that gives you total contentment, that is enough; your life is fulfilled. You can go on doing many things, with nothing fulfilling you. What is the point?
A few basic things have to be understood. There is no such thing as human nature. There are as many human natures as there are human beings, so there is no one criterion.
September 25
Allowing
The great secret of spiritual science is allowing something to happen without doing it. It needs great understanding and awareness to allow things to happen.
No doing is required on our part, because whatever we do, we do out of our confused minds. It can't be something really deep, because the mind itself is very shallow. Seeing this, understanding it, a new approach arises-the approach of letting go. The great secret of spiritual science is allowing something to happen without doing it. It needs great understanding and awareness to allow things to happen. The mind is constantly tempted to interfere.
It brings its desires in, it wants things to be according to it, and that is the whole problem. We are tiny parts of this vast existence To have some idea of one's own is to be idiotic. That is exactly the meaning of the word idiot - to have some idea of one's own.
It is like a wave in the ocean trying to do something on its own. It is just part of an immense ocean. It is neither independent nor dependent, because it is not separate at all. The wave exists not, it is only a manifestation of the ocean. So are we, and if we understand it, then all anxiety disappears. Then there is nowhere to go, there is no goal to be attained, and there is no possibility to fail or be frustrated. A great relaxation comes... this is the meaning of surrendering; of trusting. Then life takes a totally new color. It has not that tension that ordinarily is always there. One lives relaxedly, calm and quiet, at home.
September 26
Mind Tricks
This is the problem of all spiritual seekers: sooner or later the mind starts playing tricks.
Somebody will see lights, somebody will start hearing sounds, somebody will start experiencing something else. And the ego says, "This is something great-it's only happening to you. It is rare. You are special, that's why it's happening to you." And you start cooperating. Don't pay much attention to it-just neglect it! One has to become utterly empty. The only spiritual experience worth calling spiritual is the experience of nothingness, of emptiness, what Sufis call fana, the disappearance of the ego. That is the only spiritual experience - all else is just mind" games. And the mind can create many things. The mind can start hallucinating; it can have visions, can see Christ and Buddha.
The mind has the capacity to dream even with open eyes it can dream. When you see Jesus standing in front of you, how do you not believe? And there is no Jesus standing before you-it is your projection. That's why Zen masters say, "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!" They are absolutely right. It sounds sacrilegious, disrespectful to say if you meet Buddha you should kill him, but it is true. You will - meet Buddha on the way, or Jesus or Muhammed - that is not the point. You will come across anything that you had been conditioned for in your childhood. Great spiritual masters and Tibetan lamas will appear, and you will see that something great is happening. And you will find foolish people appreciating you. They will say, "Your status is going higher and higher every day; you are reaching higher stations." Don't listen.
September 27
Ignorance
Ignoring the inner, one remains ignorant. Not ignoring the inner is the beginning of wisdom.
I like this word ignorance. It means something has been ignored, something has been bypassed, you have not taken note of it. Something is there - it has always been there - but you have been negligent of it. Maybe because it is always there it can be ignored easily. We always ignore that which is always there; we always take note of the new, because the new brings change. The dog can go on sitting if nothing moves around him-he can rest, he can dream. Let anything move and he is immediately alert.
Even if a dead leaf moves, he will start barking. That's exactly the state of the mind; it takes note only when something changes, and then it falls asleep again. And our inner treasure has always been with us. It is very easy to ignore it; we learned to ignore it. That is the meaning of the word ignorance. Let your seeking be the beginning of not ignoring the inner, and the awakening comes by itself. And when love is awakened, life has a totally different taste. lt has the taste of nectar, of immortality, of deathlessness.
September 28
Old And Mean
The mind goes on shrinking-as you grow older, the mind becomes smaller and smaller and meaner and meaner. It is no accident that old people start being a little mean.
So many old people are always angry, irritated, annoyed for no particular reason. The reason is that they have missed the heart in their life. They have lived only by the mind, which knows no way to expand; it knows only how to shrink. The more you know, the smaller the mind you have.
The ignorant person has a bigger mind than the knowledgeable person, because the ignorant person has nothing in the mind. There is space. The knowledgeable person is too full of knowledge; there is no space. But the heart is another name for the inner space.
Just as there is outer space - the sky unbounded, there is no limit to it - exactly in the same way is the inner sky also unbounded. It has to be - if the outer is infinite, the inner cannot be finite. It has to balance the outer; it is the other pole of it. The inner sky is as big as the outer, exactly in the same proportion.
Meditation has not to happen in the head - it cannot happen there, so whatever happens there is only an imitation of meditation. Not true, not the real: The real always happens in the heart. So remember: When I talk of awakening I am talking about the heart's awakening. It has not to be understood only as a doctrine; it has to be experienced, it has to become your existential state.
September 29
Anger And Pain
Anger arises as a protection against pain. If somebody hurts you, you become angry as a protection of your being against pain. So every pain is suppressed by anger - layers and layers of anger on top of pain.
Continue working on anger, and suddenly any moment you will feel the anger has disappeared-that you are becoming sad, not angry. The climate will change from anger to sadness, and when it does you can be certain that now you are close to pain; then the pain will erupt.
It is just as if we dig a hole in the earth to make a well. First we have to remove the earth and many layers of stone, and then the water comes up. At first it is not clean water, it is muddy; then by and by cleaner sources become available. First anger will come and it has many layers, like earth. Then sadness will come like muddy water, and then pain - clean, pure pain - will be available. And pure pain is tremendously beautiful, because it will give you another birth immediately.
