Chapter 13. All words are lies - Osho

Osho – Dhammapada: The Way of The Buddha (Volume 8)

Chapter 13. All words are lies

The first question:

Beloved Master,

Are all words lies?

Peter Hendrickson, truth is an experience so profound that it is inexpressible, so vast that no word can contain it. Words are small things; they have a certain utility, but they have limitations. And truth has no limitations; it is vaster than the sky. Truth means the whole existence.

When you disappear into the whole you know it. Saying that you know it is not accurate; rather, you feel it. Or, to be even more accurate, you become it. When you have become the whole it is impossible to say it. And truths need to be said; they have an intrinsic quality that they have to be shared.

Hence words are only hypothetical; they can be used, but one should not believe in them. They should be used as stepping-stones. Ultimately they are all lies; at the most, approximate reflections, but a reflection is a lie. The moon in the sky and the moon reflected in the lake are not the same. The face in the mirror is not really your face; it is just an illusion. There is nothing in the mirror.

But small children become very much concerned about the face in the mirror - their own face. When for the first time a small child is put before a mirror he thinks he is seeing somebody sitting in front of him. He tries to catch hold of the child. If he cannot - and certainly he cannot catch hold - he tries to go behind the mirror. Maybe the child is hiding behind.

And this is the situation of people who believe in words. But in a way the mirror is useful. By saying that the reflection is a lie I am not saying that it is of no use. If you understand, it says something about the truth, not the truth itself; it indicates. A finger pointing to the moon is not the moon, but it has tremendous utility: it can point to the moon. If you become too obsessed with the finger, that is your fault, not the fault of the finger. If you forget the finger - and you have to forget it if you want to see the moon - then the finger has served its purpose.

Even lies can help you to reach to the truth; otherwise buddhas would not have spoken at all. Unless lies can help you in some way to reach to the truth, words would not have been used at all. No Bible, no Koran, no Gita, no Dhammapada, would have existed.

When Buddha became enlightened, for seven days he remained silent, thinking, "What is the use of saying things to people which cannot be said? - and even if you say them, which are bound to be misunderstood? Moreover, if somebody is capable of understanding your words, he is bound to be capable of finding truth on his own."

The story says, then the gods from heaven descended. They touched the feet of Buddha and they prayed to him that he should speak.

Buddha said, "For what? Ninety-nine percent of the people are not going to understand at all, and the one percent perhaps may be able to understand, but that one percent who can understand through words will be able to find the truth even if I don't say anything about it at all. So what is the point of saying it?"

The gods were puzzled. The logic was right, but still something was wrong, because in the ancient days other buddhas had spoken. Then they conferred together to find out how to argue with Buddha. And they found a way; and it is good that they could find a way; otherwise we would have missed these tremendously significant messages of Buddha.

They came back and they said, "You are right; the majority will never understand. And there are a few people who will reach to truth even if you don't say anything. But can't you imagine that there are a few who are in between these two groups, just on the boundary line? If you speak, that will give them a challenge, inspiration. If you don't speak they may be lost. Speak for those few who are just on the borderland, who can be lost without your words and who can find the light with the help of your words."

You are right, Hendrickson: all words are lies, because when you experience you cannot put it into words. How to put love into words? And love is not a very rare experience.

How to put beauty into words? Has any poet succeeded yet? Only the fools think that they have succeeded. The greater the poet, the more he is aware of his failure. Has any painter been able to paint the beauty that he experiences? No great painter is ever satisfied. A tremendous discontent follows him his whole life like a shadow. It haunts him. He goes on trying again and again and again; his whole life is a long failure, a tragedy. His great paintings are great for us, but he knows that he has failed. They are great for us because we don't know what beauty is. If these great paintings had not been there we would not have been aware of many things.

It is said that if all the paintings of the world disappear, you will not be able to see the beauty of a sunset. You will not be able to see the beauty of a roseflower. You will not be able to see the beauty of a bird on the wing. You have become able to see it because painters for centuries have been preparing the right context to see it. But ask the painters themselves. Ask a Van Gogh or a Rabindranath Tagore or Nandlal Bose, and they will say that they have failed. What they had seen was something totally different.

It was so alive, so pulsating! And the painting is dead; it is nothing but canvas and color. How can you put a sunset on the canvas? It will be a still life and the sunset - the real sunset - is dynamic, it is moving, it is moment to moment changing. Your painting will be just a framed phenomenon - and the sunset has no frame to it.

How can you sing a song that relates your experience of love? It is impossible; all words are inadequate. So first, when you try to express your experience, ninety percent of it is lost. And when somebody hears it, the remaining ten percent is distorted. Even if one percent reaches to the other person it is more than you can ask.

When I say something to you I know how much is already lost. When I see in your eyes I again know whatsoever was left in the words has been distorted by your mind. Your mind is continuously trying to allow only that which fits with it; it does not allow that which goes against it. It does not hear it at all, and it hears only that which is nothing but a reflection of its own past.

The analyst was concerned about the results of a Rorschach test he had just given for the patient, who associated every ink blot with some sort of sexual activity.

"I want to study the results of your test over the weekend and I would like to see you Monday," he said to the patient.

"Okay, Doc. I am going to a stag party tomorrow night. Any chance I might borrow those dirty pictures of yours?"

What he sees he believes is there; and what he sees is not there, it is his projection. What he hears may not be said at all, but one can hear it very clearly, so clearly that it is impossible not to believe in it. Your mind is coloring everything every moment.

Leonora went into a drugstore to buy film. When she came out she was ripping mad.

"Rodney, you go into that store and cut that man real good!" she said to her boyfriend.

"Why, honey," asked Rodney, "what happened?"

"I told him I wanted some film," she explained, "and he had the nerve to ask me what was the size of my Brownie!"

You can read something which is not written. You can hear something which is not told. You can see something which does not exist anywhere except in your own imagination. Then words become farther and farther and farther away from the truth.

Words are lies: lies in the sense that they are incapable of transferring the real, the existential. In the very transfer it dies.

One poet had gone to the sea early in the morning. It was a beautiful sunrise, and the waves dancing in the early sun, and the cool sand, and the salty air... He felt so alive, he experienced such exquisite joy, that he wanted to share it with his girlfriend who was in a hospital, who was ill and could not come to the seabeach.

So the poet brought a beautiful box, opened the box to the sunrays, to the wind, closed the box, sealed it from everywhere so nothing escaped out of it, brought the box to the hospital. Tremendously happy he was, and he said to his girlfriend, "I have brought something so beautiful you may not have ever seen. Such a beautiful sunrise, such beautiful waves, such fresh air, such coolness, such freshness!"

And he opened the box and there was nothing - no sun, no air, no coolness, no freshness.

You cannot catch hold of beauty in a box. You cannot catch hold of beauty, truth, love, in words. They are very poor. But nothing is wrong with them; they are useful in the ordinary world. When you move into the inner you are moving into the extraordinary.

If you are alert, they can be used and they can be used profitably. Yes, lies can become stepping-stones towards truth.

An American G.I. standing outside a cathedral in Paris saw a magnificent wedding procession enter. "Who is the bridegroom?" he asked a Frenchman standing next to him.

"Je ne sais pas," was the reply.

A few minutes later the soldier inspected the interior of the cathedral himself and saw a coffin being carried down the aisle. "Whose funeral?" he demanded of the attendant.

"Je ne sais pas," said the attendant.

"Holy mackerel!" exclaimed the soldier. "He certainly didn't last long!"

Words have to be understood; they have to be understood according to the person who has spoken them. You should not bring your own mind in. You should keep your mind a little out of the way. The more you become capable of keeping your mind out of the way, the more is the possibility that you can use words as stepping-stones. Otherwise words will create a jungle and you will be lost in it.

In Leipzig, where one third of all street names have been changed since the Russian occupation, trolley conductors are required to call out both old and new names to make it easier for visitors to find their way.

The other day, the conductor of a car passing through the center of the city made the required announcement: "Karl Marx Square, formerly Augustus Square."

A passenger about to alight shouted back, "Auf Wiedersehen, formerly Heil Hitler!"

The second question:

Beloved Master,

Would you please explain the difference between conditioning and discipline?

Prem Dharmendra, there is a great difference. They are totally different dimensions, and not only different but diametrically opposite too. Conditioning is something forced from the outside upon you against your will, against your consciousness. It is to destroy you, it is to manipulate you. It is to create a pseudo personality so that your essential man is lost.

The society is very much afraid of your reality. The church is afraid, the state is afraid, everybody is afraid of your essential person, your essential being, because the essential being is rebellious, intelligent. It cannot be easily reduced to slavery. It cannot be exploited. Nobody can use your essential being as a means; your essential being is an end unto itself.

Hence the whole society tries in every possible way to disconnect you from your essential core, and it creates a false, plastic personality around you and it forces you to become identified with it. That's what it calls education. It is not education; it is mis- education. It is destructive, it is violent.

This whole society, up to now, has been very violent with the individual. It does not believe in the individual; it is against the individual. It tries in every possible way to destroy you for its own purposes. It needs clerks, it needs stationmasters, deputy- collectors, policemen, magistrates, it needs soldiers. It does not need human beings.

We have failed, up to now, in creating a society which needs human beings, simple human beings.

The society is interested that you should be more skillful, more productive, and less creative. It wants you to function like a machine, efficiently, but it does not want you to become awakened. It does not want buddhas and christs - Socrates, Pythagoras, Lao Tzu. No, these people are not needed at all by the society. If sometimes they happen, they don't happen because of the society; they happen in spite of the society.

It is a miracle how a few people have been able sometimes to escape from this great prison. The prison is so great, it is so difficult to escape out of it. And even in escaping from one prison you will enter into another because the whole earth has become a prison. You can become a Mohammedan from a Hindu or you can become a Christian from a Mohammedan or you can become a Hindu from a Christian, but you are simply changing your prison. You can become a German from being an Indian or you can become a Chinese from being an Italian, but you are simply changing prisons - political, religious, social prisons. Maybe for a few days the new prison would look like freedom - only because of its newness; otherwise it is not freedom.

Free society is still an idea that has to be materialized.

This whole slavery of man depends on conditioning. And conditioning starts even when you are in your mother's womb. Now they have found ways to condition the child in the mother's womb. In Russia they have developed certain kinds of belts which the pregnant woman can wear. Those belts press certain points in the growing child's brain and that pressure will create a robot. He will be born like a machine. He will be always obedient, faithful to the state, faithful to communism, faithful to the communist holy trinity - or unholy trinity - Marx, Engels, Lenin. He will believe in DAS KAPITAL, just as others believe in the Bible. Nobody reads the Bible, nobody reads DAS KAPITAL.

I have met many communists; I have not seen a single communist who has read DAS KAPITAL from the beginning to the end. Everybody has a copy. Russian books are so cheap and they look so good, they are bound so beautifully, that you can decorate your drawing room with Russian books. But nobody reads them, just like no Hindu reads the Vedas. There is nothing much to read either.

But conditioning starts from the mother's womb or, at the most, the moment you are born. You are circumcised and you become a Jew. You are baptized and you become a Christian, and so on, so forth. You are taken to the church and to the temple and to the mosque, and you are being brought up in a certain atmosphere where you will find all are Mohammedans or all are Christians or all are Hindus. And naturally the child is bound to follow the people who are around him.

By the time he is twenty-five and comes back from the university he is utterly conditioned, and so deeply conditioned that he will not be even aware of the conditioning. Everything has been fed into his biocomputer. And the society punishes those who are reluctant, resistant to these conditionings. It rewards those, with gold medals, prizes, even Nobel Prizes; it rewards those who are very willing to be slaves, who are willing to serve the vested interests.

Holston was hired as a ranch hand in Texas. One day he approached Davis, the foreman. "What do you do for fun here on the prairie?"

"Well," replied the foreman, "we got a Mexican cook on the ranch and every Saturday night we dress him in women's clothes and six of us take him dancing."

"Not me!" declared Holston. "I don't go for that kind of stuff."

"Neither does the Mex," says Davis, "that's why it takes six of us."

And it is not only a question of sex. The whole society, millions of people around you, are conditioning you, knowingly, unknowingly. They have been conditioned. They may not be aware that they are destructive and violent. They may be thinking that they are being helpful to you. They may be thinking that they are doing all this great service to you out of compassion, because they love humanity. They have been conditioned so deeply that they are unaware what they are doing to their children.

The teachers, the lecturers, the professors, they are the instruments, subtle instruments of conditioning people. The priests, the psychoanalysts, they are very clever and very efficient people at conditioning; they know the whole strategy of it. They know how to manipulate, distort, how to give you a pseudo personality and take away your essential core.

Discipline is totally different. Discipline is out of your own choice; it is out of your own will. Discipline, the very word, comes from a root which means learning. Discipline means you start learning on your own, because nobody seems to teach you the truth.

People are interested in teaching you Hinduism, communism, Mohammedanism; nobody is interested in teaching you the truth. When you start seeking, searching, learning, on your own - knowing perfectly well that nobody is going to support you, you have to go alone - discipline begins.

Discipline is your protection against conditioning. Discipline is your effort to get rid of all conditioning. Discipline is your rebellion, your revolution.

To be a disciple simply means to be with a man who is not going to condition you. A master is one who unconditions you. That is the definition of a true master: one who unconditions you, simply unconditions you, and does not recondition you.

That is one of the objections against me raised in India and in other countries, too: that I am giving people so much freedom that they will misuse it. I know that freedom can be misused if it is not rooted in meditation, but freedom is such a supreme value that even if there is a risk of misuse, it has to be given. Slavery can never be misused by the slave because he is not his own master; then too, it is slavery and is continuously being misused by those who are in power. Slavery is a sin, and howsoever decorated, it is ugly. Freedom can be misused, but it is better to misuse freedom than to be a slave, because you cannot misuse freedom for long.

Freedom - its use and misuse both - gives insight. One learns only through mistakes.

That is the way of maturity. Maybe in the interim period, when for the first time you come out of the prison, you may misuse your freedom for a little while. You may drink too much, eat too much, but for how long?

And this freedom that a master gives is given through making you more conscious, more aware. And that is the safety valve: the more you are aware, the less is the possibility of misusing freedom - because misusing it will be suicidal.

Discipline is that which you accept on your own. You are not forced to be a sannyasin; a deep longing arises in you. Something hidden in you takes the challenge. Some seed sprouts... you hear some unheard music... you become attracted to some unknown, mysterious force. But the decision is always yours; it is not imposed on you. You decide that you would like to learn, that you would like to seek and search. Out of that longing for truth, discipline begins.

And you are always free to stop. You are always free to drop out of sannyas. You are always free not to be related to me anymore. The guards on the gate are for outsiders so that they cannot enter inside unless they are ready; the guards are not for the insiders to prevent them from leaving. That is the difference. In a jail the guards are for the insiders so that they cannot get out.

Here there are guards, but they are not for the insiders. If somebody wants to get out he gets out with all my blessings. It was his decision to be in; it is his decision to drop out of it. He is a free soul. It is nobody else's business to impose anything upon him.

Dharmendra, discipline comes out of your own inner feel, out of your own love. It is surrender but it is not a slavery. It is a surrender but not a slavery because You are doing it. If it is forced, then it is slavery, then it is conditioning.

Avoid all conditioning situations. Avoid people who condition you, even though they say it is for your own sake; even though they say it is for your own good, beware of all those poisoners. They have done enough harm to humanity. It is because of these people that real humanity has not yet been born.

My whole effort here is to bring a new human being on the earth: free, alert, conscious, responsible, doing things according to his own inner feelings, likings, leanings, not serving somebody else's purpose, living his life according to his own light.

The third question:

Beloved Master,

What is your opinion about communism?

Nagesh, I will not waste my time in giving you my opinion about communism. The whole thing is rubbish, but I will tell you five stories.

The first story:

"Who is your father?" a schoolboy was asked by Khrushchev when he was in charge of Soviet Russia.

"Nikita Khrushchev is my father," replied the lad.

"And who is your mother?"

"The Communist Party."

"Very good. Now tell me, what would you like to be when you grow up?"

"An orphan," replied the child.

The second:

At a Russian factory, workers were asked to choose a new workers' committee by secret ballot. Each man, upon approaching the ballot box, was handed a sealed envelope and told to deposit it through the slot at the top of a cardboard box.

Vasili slit open the envelope and began to examine the ballot.

"Hey," shouted a supervisor. "You can't do that."

"But I want to know who I'm voting for," explained the worker.

"You must be mad," claimed the supervisor. "Don't you realize that the ballot is secret in the Soviet Union?"

The third:

An amateur radio ham went delirious with excitement when he caught a newscast straight from Moscow on his set.

"Our great athlete, Ivan Ivanovitch," the announcer was saying, "has just smashed all existing records for the two-hundred-yard dash, the mile run, the five-mile run, and the one-hundred-mile run, overcoming a blizzard, a range of mountains, and complete lack of water. Unfortunately Ivanovitch's fantastic performance was in vain. He was captured and brought back to Russia."

The fourth:

When Stalin's body was removed from the Lenin mausoleum in Red Square and buried near the Kremlin walls, a small boy asked his grandmother, "What kind of man was Lenin?"

"Lenin was a very great man," she said.

"And what kind of man was Stalin?" asked the child.

"Sometimes he was a very evil man," said the old woman.

"Babushka, what kind of man is Leonid Brezhnev?"

"It is difficult to say, child," replied the grandmother. "When he dies, we will find out."

The fifth and the last:

At a Communist Party convention, one of the delegates kept yelling, "Long live Brezhnev!"

The chairman tried to hush him saying, "Remember you used to yell 'Long live Khrushchev!'" "Right," said the delegate. "And is he living?"

The fourth question:

Beloved Master,

I cannot believe that a man like jesus can commit mistakes. Listening to you say that, I was very much hurt.

Ronald, this is conditioning. You have been told - centuries of conditioning is behind it - that a man like Jesus cannot commit any mistake. Why? If you cannot believe it, you cannot believe that Jesus is human either. To err is human. Yes, he will not commit the same mistake again, that's true. To commit the same mistake again is stupid; it is not human, it is simply stupid. But to commit a mistake is the only way in life to learn.

Once it is perfectly okay to commit a mistake, and commit it with total awareness.

If it is a mistake you know it, and you know it so deeply and perfectly that you will never commit it again. But a man learns through committing mistakes. There is no other way of learning. If a man never commits a mistake he will never grow up. Jesus is a human being. Of course it is only through growing up that one day he becomes a divine flame. He was committing mistakes even to the very last.

My own understanding is that he became Christ only at the last moment on the cross.

Just before he became a christ, a buddha, he committed the final and the last mistake, but he learned immediately. He must have been so aware even on the cross.

The last mistake was that when he was crucified he shouted at God, "Have you forsaken me?" This is distrust, this is doubt, this is a mistake; one of the greatest that a man can commit - and a man like Jesus. But this is the last. "Why am I being tortured, what wrong have I committed?" He was complaining, he could not believe his own eyes that this was happening to him. He must have thought deep down - somewhere a little part of his being must have remained unconscious, and in that dark corner this longing must have remained like a seed - that "At the last moment God is going to save me. He will do a miracle and the whole world will know that I am the only begotten Son of God."

Some unconscious longing... but even if a small part of your being remains unconscious you are not yet a christ.

From where comes this complaint, "Why have you forsaken me?" A great doubt arises, overwhelms him, because this is the last moment: if the miracle is not going to happen he is finished. But he must have been a man of rare awareness. He recognized it immediately, he saw the dark point, he saw the unconscious point. He became relaxed and he said, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. Don't take any note of my complaint, I was foolish to say so. Whatsoever is your will is my will. There is no point in saying, 'Have you forsaken me?' If this is what you want, then this is what should happen. Then this is the miracle and I should not ask for anything else. I should not have a separate will of my own."

The moment he said, "Thy will be done," he dropped his separate will. Just a small part of his being must have remained, some hidden subtle ego must have remained lurking somewhere. With the disappearance of that ego he became a flame of light. He became a buddha.

You cannot believe that a man like Jesus can commit mistakes because you cannot believe that Jesus is a man like you. And unless you believe that Jesus is a man like you, you cannot believe the other part of the story, that you are as divine as Jesus.

Remember these are two sides of the same coin. If you can believe Jesus is a man just like you, then you can also believe that you have the same potential as Jesus. If he can become a christ you can become a christ too.

A little introduction for a joke. This is an Italian story, the story of Pinocchio.

A carpenter, named Gepetto, is feeling very lonely and wishes to have a child. With some sticks of wood he creates a puppet - with a red hat and a very pointed nose - and calls it Pinocchio. Hardly has he finished it when Pinocchio kicks him in the leg - and with this kick Gepetto realizes that this "son" will give him only trouble.

In fact, Pinocchio asks immediately for something to eat, and Gepetto, though very poor, manages to find some food for him and goes to bed himself without dinner.

Pinocchio, without even thanking him, goes out, and this way for years he tortures his creator. He goes on doing one mischief after another until finally he is swallowed by a whale in the ocean.

Now forget this introduction as if I have not told you at all; only then will you understand the joke. I had to tell it to you; without it you would not understand the joke - and that I have to tell you. Now forget all about it. I have not said any introduction to you.

Now the joke...

After forty years of hard work an old carpenter dies and goes to heaven. When he gets to the Pearly Gates he knocks on the door. Saint Peter opens it and says, "Yes?"

The old carpenter explains, "I am an old carpenter. I have worked hard for forty years, I never did any harm to anyone, and I am here for my reward."

Saint Peter replies, "I don't know about that. Wait here for a minute and I will go and get some information on you."

He goes inside and is about to talk to the boss, God, when he runs into Jesus. Jesus says, "Why are you all excited?" So Peter tells him the whole story: an old carpenter, worked hard for forty years, never did any harm to anyone.

Jesus listens to the story with mounting interest and asks, "Did he have white hair?"

Peter says, "Yes!"

"Little pixie eyeglasses with chromium frames?"

"Yes!"

"About so tall? Wearing a waistcoat, a little paunchy?"

"Yes, yes, yes!" says Peter.

Jesus runs to the Pearly Gates, throws open the door, takes a look at the little old man and cries at the top of his lungs, "Daddy!"

And the carpenter looks at him and joyously exclaims, "Pinocchio!"

The fifth question:

Beloved Master,

Is this a blessing? After being alone for a long time, I fell in love with three women at the same time, which was easy in the beginning. But as soon as I started to get into a deeper relationship with one, either I ran to the next one or she wanted to be with someone else. Of course the same happened again as soon as I got in tune with one of the other women. So joy and suffering are pretty close together, but I wonder - am I avoiding something?

Prem Aditya, don't you think three are more than enough? Do you think you are avoiding the fourth? One woman is enough to create hell, and you are asking me, "Is this a blessing?" It must be a curse in disguise.

"What has happened to Jack? I have not seen him for ages."

"Oh, he married the girl he rescued from drowning."

"And is he happy?"

"Rather! But he hates water now."

You must be a great soul - either so unconscious that even three women cannot create any trouble for you, or so enlightened that "Who cares?"

While riding home from work one evening, three commuters became friendly in the club car and, after the third round, they began to brag about the relative merits of their respective marital relationships. The first proudly proclaimed, "My wife meets my train every evening and we've been married for ten years."

"That's nothing," scoffed the second. "My wife meets me every evening, too, and we've been married for seventeen years."

"Well, I have got you both beat, fellows," said the third commuter, who was obviously the youngest in the group.

"How do you figure that?" the first fellow wanted to know.

"I suppose you have got a wife who meets you every evening, too!" sneered the second.

"That's right," said the third commuter, "and I'm not even married."

Three women, and you are not even married! They will make a football of you. And you are asking, "Is this a blessing?" - with a question mark of course. Be a little more careful. This is a dangerous place for people like you, Aditya. There are so many women here and if you go on like this soon nothing will be left of you, and I will lose unnecessarily a sannyasin. Think of me too.

Weinstein, a very wealthy businessman, had an unattractive daughter. He found a young man to marry her and after ten years they had two children.

Weinstein called his son-in-law into the office one day. "Listen," he said, "you have given me two beautiful grandchildren, you have made me very happy. I am gonna give you forty-nine percent of the business."

"Thank you, Pop!"

"Is there anything else I could do for you?"

"Yeah, buy me out!"

I am ready to buy you out whatsoever the price. You just inquire of the three women!

Love is significant, a good learning situation, but only a learning situation. One school is enough, three schools are too many. And with three women you will not be able to learn much, you will be in such a turmoil. It is better to be with one, so that you can be more totally one with her, so that you can understand her and your own longings more clearly, so you are less clouded, less in anguish, because love in the beginning is only an unconscious phenomenon; it is biological, it is nothing very precious. Only when you bring your awareness to it, when you become more and more meditative about it, it starts becoming precious, it starts soaring high.

Intimacy with one woman or one man is better than having many superficial relationships. Love is not a seasonal flower, it takes years to grow. And only when it grows does it go beyond biology, and start having something of the spiritual in it. Just being with many women or many men will keep you superficial - entertained maybe, but superficial; occupied certainly, but that occupation is not going to help in inward growth. But a one-to-one relationship, a sustained relationship so that you can understand each other more closely, is tremendously beneficial. Why is it so? And what is the need to understand the woman or the man?

The need is because every man has a feminine part in his being, and every woman has a masculine part in her being. The only way to understand it, the easiest way to understand it, the most natural way to understand it is to be in deep, intimate relationship with someone. If you are a man be in a deep, intimate relationship with a woman. Let trust grow so all barriers dissolve. Come so close to each other that you can look deep into the woman and the woman can look deep into you. Don't be dishonest with each other.

And if you are having so many relationships you will be dishonest, you will be lying continually. You will have to lie, you will have to be insincere, you will have to say things which you don't mean - and they all will suspect. It is very difficult to create trust with a woman if you are having some other relationship. It is easy to deceive a man because he lives through the intellect; it is very difficult, almost impossible to deceive a woman because she lives intuitively. You will not be able to look directly into her eyes; you will be afraid that she may start reading your soul, and so many deceptive things you are hiding, so many dishonesties.

So if you are having many relationships you will not be able to dive deep into the psyche of the woman. And that is the only thing that is needed: to know your own inner feminine part. Relationship becomes a mirror. The woman starts looking into you and starts finding her own masculine part; the man looks into the woman and starts discovering his own femininity. And the more you become aware of your feminine - the other pole - the more whole you can be, the more integrated you can be. When your inner man and your inner woman have disappeared into each other, have become dissolved into each other, when they are no longer separate, when they have become one integrated whole, you have become an individual.

Carl Gustav Jung calls it the process of individuation. He is right, he has chosen the right word for it. And the same happens to a woman. But playing with many people will keep you superficial, entertained, occupied, but not growing; and the only thing that matters ultimately is growth, growth of integration, individuality, growth of a center in you. And that growth needs that you should know your other part. The easiest approach is to know the woman on the outside first, so that you can know the woman inside.

Just like a mirror - the mirror reflects your face, it shows you your face - the woman becomes your mirror, the man becomes your mirror. The other reflects your face, but if you are having so many mirrors around you and running from one mirror to another and deceiving each mirror about the other you will be in a chaos, you will go nuts.

The sixth question:

Beloved Master,

What is wrong with knowing more and more about god? Can it not help the seeker?

Kamalesh, knowing and knowledge are different. I am all for knowing and I am all against knowledge. Knowing is your insight, it is your capacity to see, it is philosia.

Knowledge is philosophy. It is not your capacity to see, it is just your capacity to memorize what others have said. How is it going to help, knowing about God? A blind man can know about light; how is it going to help? A deaf man can know about music, he can read about music, he can even read music, but how it is going to help? It is not going to help at all. The danger is that the blind man may start thinking that he knows so much about light that he must be knowing light itself. And that's what happens to the knowledgeable people.

Knowing about God, they start thinking that they know God. To know love is one thing; to know about love is totally another. To know God is a transformation of your being; to know about God needs no transformation. You can just go to the library and collect information. You can go to the pundits and the scholars and accumulate information.

You ask me, "Can it not help the seeker?"

No, not at all. It will hinder. The seeker has to be empty, unprejudiced. The seeker has to be without any idea of what God is, or truth is. If he has some idea, the danger is he will project his idea on the existence and he will think that he has come to know the truth. Truth can be known only when you are utterly empty, when there is nothing to distort or project inside you; when you are so silent that you are only receptive, not projective. In total receptivity truth is known.

Meditation is nothing but an effort to cleanse your mind of knowledge. Knowledge is dust that has gathered on the mirror of your being; it has to be cleaned.

A naked girl is standing, speaking endlessly to a naked man kneeling and embracing her belly, later lying supine at her feet. She says, "My life is empty... it is a mockery... I am nothing - just a facade - a shell... a dead and useless thing! I am twenty-six years old... and I have never had a meaningful relationship... never had a truly meaningful relationship... I should not even admit that, I suppose. It is very humiliating! I have passed from one shallow sexual episode to another. That's the story of my entire life...

one tawdry, shallow, clutching incident after another. My relationships have no deep, lasting significance - if I could just once lie down and have something meaningful happen!"

The man replies, from the floor, "Have you ever tried talking less... and lying down sooner?"

People go on talking and talking about God. Better to be silent, better not to say anything but to sit. You don't know; it is better not to hide your ignorance in big words, in spiritual jargon. To know that "I don't know" is a great step towards real knowing. To know that "I know" without knowing is going astray, is going farther and farther away.

Truth asks only one thing: Be silent, so that you can listen, so that you can hear the still, small voice within.

The seventh question:

Beloved Master,

Why do I cry at the sutras and not laugh at the jokes? Is it because I am blocked or British? I know there is no question. The truth is that I want to come closer.

Sagaro, feel blessed if you are blocked, because if you are British there is no remedy. I have not heard of any therapy that can help. Blocked persons can be unblocked.

Encounter will do, Primal Therapy will do, Gestalt will do, and we have here at least ninety groups.

But if you are British, then I am helpless; then nothing can be done about it. To be British is like cancer: no remedy has been discovered yet. Then you will have to wait for the future. But I hope that you are not British; otherwise you would not have been here.

Sometimes British people come here... Anurag's mother has come, she is British. For weeks she has been here, and she has come only to one lecture, yesterday. And what was her response to it? Her response was that I confirmed her ideas.

Just being here and being a sannyasin is enough proof that you are not British. And don't be worried: if you can cry at the sutras, this is a good beginning. Sooner or later you will start laughing at the jokes - because a person who can cry, can laugh. The real problem is with those people who cannot cry; they cannot laugh either.

These are not two different things, they are the same. Crying and laughter are deeply related. Whenever you are overwhelmed by something, either you cry or you laugh.

Crying is not necessarily sad, laughter is not necessarily joyous. Sometimes crying is a joy, sometimes laughter is ugly and maybe just a device to hide your sadness.

Remember one thing: it is only man who can cry and laugh. No other animal can do it, because no other animal is conscious enough to feel overwhelmed. Only man has that much consciousness that he can feel overwhelmed, flooded with something so much that either he starts crying or he starts laughing - and both capacities are tremendously needed.

Crying will help you to relieve your tensions, laughter will help you to dance, to sing.

Both are interlinked. Crying prepares the way for laughter: your tears will cleanse your heart, and then laughter will arise. If the first process has started the second is not far away.

The eighth question:

Beloved Master,

The other day you said that the old people become cunning. What are your grounds for saying so?

Kumarel, I am a crazy person. I don't say things because there are grounds to say them.

I simply say something because I enjoy saying it. I cannot give you any proofs and I am never interested in proofs, but I can tell you a story. Those who understand, for them this will be a proof; and for those who don't understand, nothing can ever be a proof. I stated a simple phenomenon; no proofs are needed. Just watch, just watch yourself and others.

As you are growing older, if you don't start growing in awareness, you are bound to become cunning. These are the only two alternatives: either you become wise or you become cunning. If you don't become wise, you will have to become cunning. Cunning is a substitute for wisdom. Either become a buddha or you are bound to become cunning. And very few people become buddhas; others are out of necessity cunning.

Life teaches them to be more cunning than others because it is such a struggle for survival and only the cunning ones survive.

Charles Darwin says that the fittest survive. That is not my observation. Not the fittest but the most cunning survive - unless Darwin means by the fittest, the most cunning.

Man is the most cunning animal; he is not the fittest, certainly not. Try to fight with a monkey and you will know who is fittest. Try to run with a horse and you will know who is fittest. Try to fly like a bird and you will know who is fittest. Try to see in the night like an owl and you will know who is fittest. You just look around: you are not the fittest animal on the earth. In fact man is the most unfit animal, the weakest.

Look at the human child. Can the human child survive without the support of the society and the family? But animal children survive; they are born more perfect. It is only man's child who seems to be prematurely born, as if he needed at least nine months more in the womb. But the problem is that if he lives eighteen months in the womb then he cannot come out; it will be too late, he will be too big. So he comes out, but utterly helpless. The human child is helpless, weak; he has to be taught.

In fact he becomes of any worth only after twenty-five years - that is one third of his life. He needs preparation to be worthy enough to compete in the world. Then why has man survived and all other animals have either disappeared or are disappearing? They have all been defeated for the simple reason that man is the most cunning. Because of his cunningness he could invent; he does not have strength enough to fight with any animal but he could invent weapons. He has not the strength to tear an animal apart just with his bare hands, but he has invented swords. Swords are nothing but magnified nails. He cannot use his teeth to kill so he has invented many things to kill. He is the most cunning, and as the centuries have passed he has become more and more cunning.

A farmer bought a new rooster for his chicken coop. He already had a rooster, but he felt it was getting too old to service all his chickens, of which he had quite a few.

When the farmer introduced the new rooster to all his chickens, the old rooster came up to the newcomer and arranged a meeting for later that night after the farmer went to bed.

"Listen," exclaimed the old rooster at the meeting that night, "that farmer thinks I'm too old to service all his chickens, but that's not true. I've still got a few good years left and I don't want to become the family's Sunday dinner prematurely. So let's make a deal!"

The deal that the old rooster had in mind was that the two roosters would get into a make-believe fight which would end up with the young rooster chasing the old-timer around the coop pretending not to be able to catch him. The noise of this make-believe altercation would bring out the farmer who would see the old rooster running faster than the new one and thus spare the old stud from the knife for a few years at least.

For doing this, the young rooster would get to fuck all the pretty chickens. The deal was made.

The next day the action started, with all the chickens squawking and the roosters cock- a-doodaling. The farmer came out and spied the new rooster chasing the old one.

Picking up his rifle he shot the young rooster dead and exclaimed, "Goddamn! That is the third faggot rooster I've shot this week."

The last question:

Beloved Master,

Is repression always bad?

Prasado, absolutely bad, always bad, with no exceptions bad. Repression simply means you don't understand your life energies. Repression means you are forcing your life energies into the unconscious, throwing them into the basement of your being. There they will go on growing, there they will go on boiling, and sooner or later the explosion.

That's why so many people go mad.

Madness is the outcome of repression. That's why so many people are mentally ill - even if not mad, mentally disturbed - all over the world. In America they say that out of four, three persons are mentally disturbed. And don't think that is so only for America; the only difference between America and other countries is that America has the latest data, that's all. If you want to know about India you cannot know anything because there is no data available. And America is more honest: if you ask a person anything he will answer it more sincerely than an Indian.

The Indian may be sexually boiling within but from his outside he will always keep that holier-than-thou look. He will not be sincere. You cannot find real figures in India about anything. If you ask any woman, "Have you ever fancied any other man except your husband?" she will say, "No. Never. Not only in this life but in no other life either. And not only in the past, in the future also, I am going to cling to this man." Now this is patent nonsense.

Unless you are utterly a rock inside it is impossible not to fancy someone once in a while, not to be attracted. If you have sensibility, sensitivity, intelligence, it is natural to be attracted once in a while. That does not mean that you are committing a sin; that simply means that you understand what beauty is. That simply means that you are observing life all around you.

It is very difficult to find any data in India. America in that way is the most sincere country in the world. They will say whatsoever is the case. Three persons are mentally ill out of four, and in India my own observation is that four are mentally ill out of four - but they are blissfully unaware of it.

Repression of any kind is destructive to the body, to the mind, to the soul. Energies have to be transformed, not repressed. Energies are your potential wealth, raw; you have to polish them, then they can become great diamonds. These same energies, sexual energies, can become your spiritual liberation. Repressed you will be in a bondage.

I am not saying to become indulgent; that is going to the other extreme. Buddha will also not support your indulgence. He is absolutely for the middle way, the golden mean. Neither be repressive nor be indulgent. Be watchful, be alert; be friendly to your energies, sympathetic. They are your energies; don't create a rift, otherwise you will always be in conflict, and to fight with your own energies is an unnecessary dissipation.

Fighting with your own energies, you are fighting with yourself: you cannot win. You will be simply wasting the whole opportunity of life. Be aware, don't repress, don't indulge. Be aware, be natural. Let energies be accepted and absorbed, and then the same energies, crude energies, become so refined, passing through awareness, that great flowers bloom in your being - lotuses of enlightenment.

Unless that happens you will never feel at home in existence, you will never feel blissful, you will never feel what God is, you will never feel what nirvana is, what liberation is.

When a young nun comes to tell the mother superior that she has sinned with a man and wishes to do penance so she can be forgiven, the mother superior begins packing a suitcase.

"Oh, please don't put me out!" the young nun cries. "Where will I go? What will I do?"

"I'm not putting you out," says the mother superior grimly, "it's me that's leaving. For thirty years here it's been nothing but fucking and forgiving, fucking and forgiving.

Beginning now, I'm through doing the forgiving, and I'm going to get in on some of the fucking before it's too late."

Enough for today.

Unknown

Dhammapada Vol. 8

Thursday, August 17, 2017

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