Osho - Weekly Meditation For The Here And Now
Weekly Meditation - Week 7. Believe In Poetry
February 12
Believe In Poetry
Life is an inexhaustible treasure, but only the heart if the poet can know it.
Love is the only poetry there is. All other poetry is just a reflection of it. The poetry may be in sound, the poetry may be in stone, the poetry may be in the architecture, but basically these are all reflections of love caught in different mediums. But the soul of poetry is love, and those who live love are the real poets. They may never write poems, they may never compose any music-they may never do anything that people ordinarily think of as art-but those who live love, love utterly, totally, are the real poets. Religion is true if it creates the poet in you.
If it kills the poet and creates the so-called saint, it is not religion. It is pathology, a kind of neurosis garbed in religious terms. Real religion always releases poetry in you, and love and art and creativity; it makes you more sensitive. You throb more, your heart has a new beat to it. Your life is no longer a boring, stale phenomenon. It is constantly a surprise, and each moment opens new mysteries. Life is an inexhaustible treasure, but only the heart of the poet can know it. I don't believe in philosophy, I don't believe in theology, but I believe in poetry.
February 13
Self-Improvement
Self-improvement is the way to hell. All efforts to make something out if yourself - something if an ideal - are going to create more and more madness. Ideals are the base if all madness, and all of humanity is neurotic because if too many ideals.
Animals are not neurotic because they don't have any ideals. Trees are not neurotic because they don't have any' ideals. They are not trying to become somebody else. They are simply enjoying whatever they are.
You are you. But somewhere deep down you want to become a Buddha or a Jesus, and then you go around in a circle that will be unending. Just see the point of it - you are you. And the whole, or existence, wants you to be you. That's why existence has created you, otherwise it would have created a different model. It wanted you to be here at this moment. It did not want Jesus to be here in place of you.
And existence knows better. The whole always knows better than the part. So just accept yourself. If you can accept yourself, you have learned the greatest secret of life, and then everything comes on its own. Just be yourself. There is no need to pull yourself up; there is no need to be a different height from what you are already. There is no need to have another face. Simply be as you are, and in deep acceptance of it, and a flowering will happen and you will go on becoming more and more yourself.
Once you drop the idea of becoming somebody, there is no tension. Suddenly all tension disappears. You are here, luminous, in this moment. And there is nothing else to do but to celebrate and enjoy.
February 14
Home
Unless we find our real home we have to go on traveling, we have to go on journeying. And the most surprising thing is that the real home is not jar away.
We make many homes, and we never look at the real home. The homes that we make are all arbitrary; they are sandcastles or palaces made of playing cards: just toys to play with. They are not real homes, because death destroys them all.
The definition of the real home is that which is eternal. Only God is eternal; everything else is temporary. The body is temporary, the mind is temporary; money, power, prestige-all are temporary. Don't make your home in these things. I am not against these things. Use them, but remember that they are just a caravansary; they are good for an overnight stay, but in the morning we have to go.
We go on missing our real home because it is very close; it is not even close, it is within ourselves. Search for it within. Those that have gone in have always found it.
February 15
Confusion
Drop your fixed ideas. Then you will be able to enjoy contusion more.
And it will not be confusion-it will be creative chaos. We need a creative chaos in the heart to give birth to dancing stars. There is no other way. If you have fixed ideas, life is going to create much confusion for you, because life never believes your ideas. It goes on muddling things. It goes on meddling with people. It goes on playing tricks. It is not a drawing room in which you fix your furniture and it remains the same.
It is a very wild phenomenon. God is very chaotic. God is not an engineer or an architect, scientist or a mathematician. God is a dreamer, and in a world of dreams, everything is muddled. Your boyfriend suddenly becomes a horse... In a dream you never argue and never say, "What has happened? Just a moment before you were my boyfriend and now you have become a horse!" In a dream, you accept. Not even a suspicion about what is happening arises, because in a dream you don't carry your ideas.
But while you are awake it will be impossible for you to see that your boyfriend is turning into a horse, And boyfriends many times turn into horses! The face may remain the same but the energy becomes different. Then you feel confused.
I have never really come across any person who is confused. Rather I come across people who have fixed ideas. The more fixed the idea, the more confusion there will be. If you want to be unconfused, drop the idea-not that confusion will change, but it will not look like confusion at all. It is just life, alive.
February 16
Poverty
Sooner or later the outer poverty is going to disappear - We now have enough technology to make it disappear and the real problem is going to arise.
The really poor people are those who are missing love; and the whole earth is full of those poor people who are starved. Sooner or later the outer poverty is going to disappear - we now have enough technology to make it disappear-and the real problem is going to arise. The real problem will be inner poverty. No technology can help. We are capable of feeding people now-but who will feed the spirit, the soul? Science cannot do that. Something else is needed, and that is what I call religion. Then science has done its work; only then can true religion enter the world.
Up to now religion has been only a freak phenomenon - once in a while a Buddha, a Jesus, a Krishna appears. These are exceptional people; they don't represent humanity. They simply herald a possibility, a future. But that future is coming closer. Once science has released the potential powers of matter and human beings are physically satisfied - have shelter, have enough food, have enough education - then for the first time they will see that now a new food is needed. That food is love, and science cannot provide it. That can only be done by religion. Religion is the science of love.
February 17
Forgiving Your Parents
To forgive one's parents is one of the most difficult things, because they have given birth to you - how can you forgive them?
Unless you start loving yourself, unless you come to a state in which you are thrilled by your being-how can you thank your parents? It is impossible. You will be angry - they have given birth to you, and they didn't even ask you first. They have created this horrible person. Why should you suffer because they decided to give birth to a child? You were not a party to it. Why have you been dragged into the world?
Hence the rage. If you come to a point where you can love yourself, where you feel really ecstatic that you are, where your gratefulness knows no limitation, then suddenly you, feel great love arising for your parents. They have been the doors for you to enter into existence. Without them this ecstasy would not have been possible-they have made it possible.
If you can celebrate your being-and that is the whole purpose of my work, to help you to celebrate your being-then suddenly you can feel gratitude for your parents, for their compassion, their love. You can not only feel grateful, you also forgive them.
February 18
Failure
You cannot be a failure; life does not allow failure. And because there is no goal, you cannot be frustrated.
If you feel frustrated, it is because of the mental goal you have imposed on life. By the time you have reached your goal, life has left it; just a dead shell of the ideals and the goals remain, and you are frustrated again. The frustration is created by you.
Once you understand that life is never going to be confined to a goal, goal oriented, then you flow in all directions with no fear. Because there is no failure, there is no success either - and then there is no frustration. Then each moment becomes a moment in itself; not that it is leading somewhere, not that it has to be used as a means to some end - it has intrinsic value.
Each moment is a diamond, and you go from one diamond to another - but there is no finality to anything. Life remains alive... there is no death. Finality means death, perfection means death, reaching a goal means death. Life knows no death-it goes on changing its forms, shapes. It is an infinity, but to no purpose.
