Osho –
Dhammapada: The Way of The Buddha (Volume 5)
Chapter 2. The
heart has no questions
Question 1:
Beloved Master,
Do you really have to break my heart?
Yes, Somendra. It is a
thankless job, but it has to be done. Man exists on three planes: the head -
the world of thoughts, the thinking process - the most superficial plane.
Below it is the heart - the
world of feelings, emotions, sentiments - a little deeper than thought, but not
the deepest. And the third is the realm of being - no thought, no feeling - you
simply are.
My work starts by destroying
the thinking process first - obviously, because that is where you are. I have
to hammer your head mercilessly. Once your energy has moved from the head to
the heart, I start breaking your heart too. First I use your heart as a
temptation: I tell you to move from the head to the heart. It is just to give
you a goal which is not very far away, because a too distant goal cannot appeal
to you. If it is too far away it appears impossible; the goal has to be within
your grasp.
Rooted in the mind, the world
of being is very very far away; it looks almost nonexistential. Hence the heart
is a midway place, a resting place; it is not the goal. One day you have to be
ready to leave it too, but before that I use it as a temptation for you.
I talk about love and the
beauty and the ecstasy of feeling... it is only a device so that you can move
from the head to the heart. Once you have moved from the head to the heart,
then I start hammering on your heart too. Then I have to help you to get rid of
the feelings - because feelings are as stupid as thoughts.
Logic is stupid, love is not
less stupid - sometimes even more! Logic is a game, love too is a game, and you
have to be aware of all the games that you are capable of playing.
Logic deceives, love does too.
One has to rise to the heights or dive to the depths where logic and love both
disappear. They are two sides of the same coin: on the one side is your head,
on the other side is your heart.
The philosopher deals with the
head, the poet with the heart, but the mystic is beyond both. The mystic is
transcendental; he is pure being, just consciousness, neither thought nor
feeling.
Hence, Somendra, I have to
break your heart. I have destroyed your mind - the first step has been taken.
The second step is harder, because the heart is closer to being than the head.
It is very easy to see the rubbish of the head; it is very difficult to see the
rubbish of the heart. The head reflects nothing of the being; hence to
disidentify yourself from the head is not such a great problem. It is easy to
see that the thoughts are separate from you; it is very difficult to see that
the feelings are different from you.
They are so close and they
reflect something of your being. Feelings are more attuned with your being;
hence the possibility of being deceived by them.
The greater work starts when
you start disidentifying yourself from your heart. The heart is not your soul;
certainly it is better than the head. And why is it better? It is better only
because it is closer to the being, but even though it is closer there is still
a distance. Closeness is also a distance. You have to fall still deeper. You
have to come to a point, to a center, from where you can see thoughts and
feelings all separate from you, where you become just a mirror.
That moment is the moment of
enlightenment; you become a buddha. Less than that will not help, less than
that is not worthwhile.
Question 2:
Beloved Master,
If heaven and hell are on the same plane,
only divided by a tattered fence, why is the positive side of the mind supposed
to be better than the negative?
Saguna, it is the same question
put in a different way: mind is negative, heart is positive. The language of
the mind is rooted in no; the mind immensely enjoys saying no. The more you can
say no, the more you are thought to be a great thinker.
There is a beautiful story by
Turgenev, The Fool.
Once in a town there was a man
who was condemned by the whole crowd as the greatest idiot who had ever lived.
Obviously he was continuously in difficulty.
Whatsoever he would say, people
would start laughing, even if he was saying something beautiful, true. But
because it was known that he was an idiot, people would think that whatsoever he
did and said was idiotic. He might be quoting sages but still people would
laugh at him.
He went to a wise old man and
told him that he felt like committing suicide, that he could not live anymore.
"This constant condemnation is too much - I cannot bear it any longer.
Either help me out of it, or I am going to kill myself."
The old wise man laughed. He
said, "There is not much of a problem, don't be worried.
Do only one thing, and come
after seven days - start saying no to everything. Start questioning each and
everything. If somebody says, 'Look - look at the sunset, how beautiful it is!'
ask immediately, 'Where is there any beauty? I don't see any - prove it!
What is beauty? There is no
beauty in the world, it is all nonsense!' Insist on proofs; say, 'Prove where
beauty is. Let me see it, let me touch it! Give me a definition.' If somebody
says, 'The music is ecstatic,' immediately jump into it and ask, 'What is
ecstasy? What is music? Define your terms clearly. I don't believe in any
ecstasy. It is all foolishness, all illusion. And music is nothing but noise.'
"Do this with everything,
and after seven days come to me. Be negative, ask questions - questions which
cannot be answered: What is beauty? What is love? What is ecstasy?
What is life? What is death?
What is God?"
After seven days the idiot came
to the wise man - followed by many many people. He was garlanded and
beautifully dressed. The wise man asked, "What happened?"
And the idiot said, "It
was magic! Now the whole city thinks that I am the wisest man in the world.
Everybody thinks I am a great philosopher, a great thinker. And I have silenced
everybody, people have become afraid of me. In my presence they remain silent,
because whatsoever they say, I immediately turn it into a question and I become
absolutely negative. Your trick worked!"
And the wise man asked,
"Who are these people who are following you?"
He said, "These are my
disciples - they want to learn from me what wisdom is!"
This is how it is: the mind
lives in the no, it is a no-sayer; its nourishment comes from saying no to each
and everything. The mind is basically atheistic, negative. There is nothing
like a positive mind.
The heart is positive; just as
mind says no, the heart says yes. Of course, it is better to say yes than to
say no, because one cannot really live by saying no. The more you say no, the
more you become shrunken, closed. The more you say no, the less alive you are.
People may think you are a
great thinker, but you are shrinking and dying; slowly you are committing
suicide.
If you say no to love, you are
less than you were before; if you say no to beauty, you are less than you were
before. And if you go on saying no to each and everything, chunk by chunk you
are disappearing. Ultimately a very empty life is left - meaningless, with no
significance, with no joy, with no dance, with no celebration.
That's what has happened to the
modern mind, to the modern man. The modern man has said more no's than ever
before. Hence the question: What is the meaning of life?
Why are we alive at all? Why go
on living? We have said no to God, we have said no to the beyond, we have said
no to all for which man has lived down the ages. We have proved to our heart's
content that all the values man has lived for are worthless - but now we are in
difficulty, in deep anguish. Life has become more and more impossible for us.
We go on living only because we are cowards; otherwise we have destroyed all
the reasons to live. We go on living because we cannot commit suicide; we are
afraid of death, hence we go on living. We live out of fear, not out of love.
It is better to be positive,
because the more positive you are, the more you are moving towards the heart.
The heart knows no negative language. The heart never asks, "What is
beauty?" It enjoys it, and in enjoying it, it knows what it is. It cannot
define it, it cannot explain itself, because the experience is such that it is
inexplicable, inexpressible.
Language is not adequate
enough, no symbols help. The heart knows what love is, but don't ask. The mind
knows only questions and the heart knows only answers. The mind goes on asking
but it cannot answer.
Hence philosophy has no
answers... questions and questions and questions. Each question becomes, slowly
slowly, a thousand and one questions. The heart has no questions - it is one of
the mysteries of life - it has all the answers. But the mind will not listen to
the heart; there is no communion between the two, no communication, because the
heart knows only the language of silence. No other language is known by the
heart, no other language is understood by the heart - and the mind knows
nothing of silence. The mind is all noise: a tale told by an idiot, full of
fury and noise, signifying nothing.
The heart knows what
significance is. The heart knows the glory of life, the tremendous joy of sheer
existence. The heart is capable of celebrating, but it never asks. Hence the
mind thinks the heart is blind. The mind is full of doubts, the heart is full
of trust; they are polar opposites.
That's why it is said that it
is better to be positive than to be negative. But remember: the positive is
joined with the negative, two sides of the same phenomenon.
I am not here to teach you the
ways of the heart. Yes, I use them, but only as a device: to bring you out of
your mind I use the heart as a vehicle; to take you to the other shore I use
the heart as a boat. Once you have reached the other shore, the boat has to be
left behind; you are not expected to carry the boat on your head.
The goal is to go beyond
duality. The goal is to go beyond no and yes both, because your yes can have
meaning only in the context of no; it cannot be free of the no. If it is free
of the no, what meaning will it have? Your yes can exist only with the no,
remember; and your no can also exist only with the yes. They are polar
opposites, but they help each other in a subtle way. There is a conspiracy:
they are holding hands, they are supporting each other, because they cannot
exist separately. Yes has meaning only because of the no; no has meaning only
because of the yes. And you have to go beyond this conspiracy, you have to go
beyond this duality.
Saguna, it is the same question
as Somendra's only asked in a different way, from a different angle. But it is
not a new question, it is not a different question; it is the same question
verbalized differently.
I am not teaching you the
positive way of living, I am not teaching you the negative way of living: I am
teaching you the way of transcendence. All dualities have to be dropped: the
duality of mind and heart, the duality of matter and mind, the duality of
thinking and emotion, the duality of the positive and the negative, the duality
of male and female, yin and yang, the duality of day and night, summer and
winter, life and death... all dualities. Duality as such has to be dropped,
because you are beyond duality.
The moment you start moving
away from both yes and no, you will have your first glimpses of the ultimate.
Hence the ultimate remains absolutely inexpressible; you cannot say no, you
cannot say yes.
Gautama the Buddha never said
no to God, never said yes to God. He seems to be the only person in the whole
history of man who is neither an atheist nor a theist. This is unique,
something immensely valuable. He is a pioneer; he is breaking into a new
dimension, he is a breakthrough.
People were continuously
asking, as they have always asked, "Does God exist?" and they
expected a categorical answer, yes or no. They were very puzzled by Buddha,
because he would never answer clearly whether God exists or not. On the
contrary, he would divert the question into something else; he might start
talking about something else. And his impact and his magnetism were such that
you would forget all about what you had come to ask him; you would remember
only later on that he deceived you. You had asked about God and he didn't say a
single word about it.
Many thought, "He does not
believe in God and that's why he keeps silent about God, because he is afraid
that if he says no then religious people will leave him." Many thought,
"He knows God is, but he does not say so because he does not want the
atheists to leave him." And many thought, "Because he knows nothing,
he is utterly ignorant, that's why he remains silent about the most fundamental
question." But they were all wrong.
He was silent because God means
something which is transcendental; yes is irrelevant as much as no is
irrelevant. Nothing can be said about God; to be silent about him is the only
right answer. He was really answering. Very few, rare people understood him.
Once a man came. He touched
Buddha's feet and asked him, "Does God exist?" - the perennial
question.
Buddha said - that was always
his way, it will show you his method - he said, "When I was young I used
to love horses very much." Now, the man is asking about God, and he starts
talking about horses! But he was a sweet talker... the man became interested in
horses, and Buddha said, "I came across four kinds of horses. One is the
most stupid and stubborn kind: you beat the horse, still he would not budge.
Many people are like that. The second kind is: you beat him and he would move,
but he would move only if you beat him, if you whip him. Many people are like
that. And the third kind you need not beat - you simply show him the whip and
that's enough; if he knows you have the whip in your hand, that's enough. And I
have also come across very rare horses: even the whip is not needed - just the
shadow of the whip is enough."
And then he closed his eyes and
sat silently. The man also closed his eyes and sat in silence with Buddha.
Buddha's chief disciple,
Ananda, was present; he was watching the whole thing. He could see that the man
had asked about God, and Ananda was also curious about what Buddha was going to
say - and he started talking about horses! Ananda was not happy about it:
"This is no way, this is devious, this is cheating the person. He is
asking about God and you talk about horses!" He made it a point,
"When this man is gone I am going to ask. This is too much! If he talks
about God, at least you can talk about meditation, but not about horses! If you
don't want to talk about God, talk about meditation, talk about silence, but
something relevant. Talk about desirelessness, or at least you can say, 'God is
indefinable. Nothing can be said about God, but I can show you the way so you
can also experience it.' That would be right, compassionate. But what kind of a
joke is this - you talk about horses?"
But more than that, he was
puzzled when Buddha closed his eyes and the man also followed. And there was
such great silence, so solid, so substantial, almost tangible; you could have
touched it, you could have felt the texture of it. Ananda was not a very silent
man, but even he was moved by these two men facing each other sitting in such a
tremendous silence. He could see Buddha's face and he could see the face of the
man becoming transformed just before his eyes. A grace descended, a great peace
arose.
And then after an hour or so
the man opened his eyes, touched Buddha's feet in deep gratitude, thanked him
and went away.
Ananda asked Buddha, "It
is incomprehensible to me: he asks about God and you talk about horses. But I
know you, I have heard you doing this to many people - but more than that I am
puzzled about what transpired between the two of you. I know you, so it was not
a great puzzle for me that you closed your eyes and you became silent. I know
that it is more difficult for you to talk than to be in silence - silence is
natural to you, spontaneous to you - but what happened to the other man? I
could see that he was becoming silent and after a few minutes he was in such a
deep silence - as if he had lived with you for years. Even I have not known
such silence! And then what happened in that silence? What communion happened?
What communication happened? What transpired? For what was he grateful? Why did
he thank you so much?"
Buddha said, "There are
four kinds of horses - you are the first kind, Ananda, and he is the fourth!
Just the shadow of the whip is enough, he understood. And I was not talking
about horses, I was talking about God; but God cannot be talked about directly.
And I was not talking about horses, I was talking about meditation. But I knew
the man - he is also a lover of horses. When I saw him coming on his horse I
knew it immediately: he had such a rare kind of horse, only a lover of horses
could choose such a horse. That's why I talked about horses - that was the
language he could understand, and he understood it. And when I closed my eyes
he saw the shadow of the whip. He closed his eyes - he understood that the
ultimate cannot be talked about, but you can be silent about it, utterly silent
about it, and in silence it is known. It is a transcendental experience: it is
beyond mind and beyond heart, it is beyond yes and beyond no, it is beyond
negative, beyond positive."
But if you are going to choose
between the negative and the positive, then I will say: choose the positive -
because it is easier to slip out of the yes than to slip out of the no -
because no does not have much space in it; it is a dark dark prison cell. Yes
is wider; it is more open, more vulnerable. To move from no you will find it
very difficult: you don't have much space, you are enclosed in it from every
side, and all the doors and all the windows are closed. No is a closed space.
To live in the negative is the
most stupid thing a man can do, but millions are living in the negative. Modern
man particularly is living in the negative. He is repeating the story of Turgenev,
THE FOOL, because living in the negative he feels great, his ego feels very
satisfied. Ego is a prison cell created by the bricks of no's; negativity is
its food.
So if you have to choose,
Saguna, between the negative and the positive, choose the positive. At least
you will have a little wider scope; a few windows and doors will be open, the
wind and the sun and the rain will be available to you. You will have a few
glimpses of the open sky outside and the stars and the moon. And sometimes the
fragrance of flowers will start coming to you, and sometimes you will be
thrilled by the joy of just being alive. And it is easier to move from the yes
to the beyond.
From the no come to the yes,
and from the yes go to the beyond. The beyond is neither positive nor negative
- and the beyond is God, and the beyond is enlightenment.
Question 3:
Beloved Master,
Why do I feel so much pain in letting go of
the things that are causing me misery?
Deva Akal, the things that are
causing you misery must be giving you some pleasure too; otherwise the question
does not arise. If they were pure misery you would have dropped them. But in
life, nothing is pure; everything is mixed with its opposite.
Everything carries its opposite
in its womb.
What you call misery, analyze
it, penetrate into it, and you will see that it has something which you would
like to have. Maybe it is not yet real, maybe it is only a hope, maybe it is
only a promise for tomorrow, but you will cling to the misery, you will cling to
the pain, in the hope that tomorrow something that you have always desired and
longed for is going to happen.
You suffer misery in the hope
of pleasure. If it is pure misery it is impossible to cling to it. Just watch,
be more alert about your misery. For example, you are feeling jealous. It
creates misery. But look around - there must be something positive in it. It
also gives you some ego, some sense of your being separate from others, some
sense of superiority. Your jealousy at least pretends to be love. If you don't
feel jealous you will think maybe you don't love anymore. And you are clinging
to jealousy because you would like to cling to your love - at least your idea
of love. If your woman or your man goes with somebody else and you don't feel
jealous at all, you will immediately become conscious that you no longer love.
Otherwise, for centuries you have been told that lovers are jealous. Jealousy
has become an intrinsic part of your love: without jealousy your love dies;
only with jealousy can your so-called love live. If you want your love you will
have to accept your jealousy and the misery that is created by it.
And your mind is very cunning
and very clever in finding rationalizations. It will say, "It is natural
to feel jealous." And it appears natural because everybody else is doing
the same. Your mind will say, "It is natural to feel hurt when your lover
leaves you. Because you have loved so much, how can you avoid the hurt, the
wound, when your lover leaves you?"
In fact, you are enjoying your
wound too, in a very subtle and unconscious way. Your wound is giving you an
idea that you are a great lover, that you loved so much, that you loved so
deeply, that your love was so profound, that you are shattered because your
lover has left you. Even if you are not shattered you will pretend to be
shattered - you will believe in your own lie. You will behave as if you are in
great misery, you will cry and weep, and your tears may not be true at all, but
just to console yourself that you are a great lover, you have to cry and weep.
Just watch every kind of
misery: either it has some pleasure in it which you are not ready to lose, or
it has some hope in it which goes on dangling in front of you like a carrot.
And it looks so close, just by the corner, and you have traveled so long and
now the goal is so close, why drop it? You will find some rationalization in
it, some hypocrisy in it.
Just a few days ago a sannyasin
wrote to me that her man has left her and she is not feeling miserable - what
is wrong with her? "Why am I not feeling miserable? Am I too hard,
rocklike? I don't feel any misery," she wrote to me. And she is miserable
because she is not feeling misery! She was expecting to be shattered. "On
the contrary," she wrote, "I can confess that I am feeling happy -
and that makes me very sad. What kind of love is this? I am feeling happy,
unburdened; a great load has disappeared from my being." She asked me,
"Beloved Master, is it normal? Am I alright or is something basically
wrong with me?"
Nothing is wrong with her, she
is absolutely right. In fact, when lovers, after a long long togetherness and
all the misery that is bound to happen when you are together, leave each other,
it is a relief. But it is against the ego to confess it, that it is a relief.
For a few days at least you will move with a long face, with tears flowing from
your eyes - phony, but this is the idea that has prevailed in the world.
If somebody dies and you don't
feel sad you will start feeling that something is certainly wrong with you. How
can you avoid sadness when somebody has died? - because we have been told it is
natural, it is normal, and everybody wants to be natural and normal.
It is not normal, it is only
average. It is not natural, it is only a long long cultivated habit; otherwise
there is nothing to weep and cry about.
Death destroys nothing. The
body is dust and falls into dust, and the consciousness has two possibilities:
if it still has desires then it will move into another womb, or if all the
desires have disappeared then it will move into the womb of God, into eternity.
Nothing is destroyed. The body
again becomes part of the earth, goes into rest, and the soul moves into the
universal consciousness or moves into another body.
But you cry and weep and you
carry your sadness for many days. It is just a formality, or if it is not a
formality then there is every possibility that you never loved the man who has
died and now you are feeling repentant; you never loved the man totally and now
there is no more time. Now the man has disappeared, now he will never be
available. Maybe you had quarreled with your husband and he died in the night
in his sleep. Now you will say that you are crying because he has died, but
really you are crying because you have not even been able to ask his
forgiveness, you have not even been able to say a goodbye. The quarrel will
hang over you like a cloud forever.
If a man lives moment to moment
in totality, then there is never any repentance, no guilt. If you have loved
totally, there is no question. One day if the lover leaves that simply means,
"Now our ways are parting. We can say goodbye, we can be thankful to each
other. We shared so much, we loved so much, we have enriched each other's lives
so much - what is there to cry and weep about and why be miserable?"
But people are so entangled in
their rationality that they can't see beyond their rationalizations. And they
always rationalize everything; even things which are obviously simple become
very complicated.
"I am in love with my horse,"
said Andrew to the psychiatrist.
"That's nothing,"
replied the shrink. "A lot of people love animals. My wife and I have a
dog that we love very much."
"Ah, but doctor, it is a
physical attraction that I feel towards my horse!"
"Hmm!" said the analyst.
"What kind of horse is it? Male or female?"
"Female, of course!"
said Andrew. "What do you think I am - queer?"
You ask me, Akal, "Why do
I feel so much pain in letting go of the things that are causing me
misery?"
You are not yet convinced that they
are causing you misery. I am saying that they are causing you misery, you are
not yet convinced. And it is not a question of MY saying it.
The basic thing is: You will
have to understand, "These are the things which are causing me
misery," and you will have to see that there are investments in your
misery.
If you want those investments
you will have to learn to live with the misery; if you want to drop the misery,
you will have to drop those investments too.
Have you watched it, observed
it? - if you talk about your misery to people, they give great sympathy to you.
Everybody is sympathetic to the miserable man. Now, if you love getting
sympathy from people you cannot drop your misery; that is your investment.
The miserable husband comes
home, the wife is loving, sympathetic. The more miserable he is, the more his
children are considerate of him; the more miserable he is, the more his friends
are friendly towards him. Everybody takes care of him. The moment he starts
becoming happy they withdraw their sympathy, of course - a happy person needs
no sympathy. The more happy he is, the more he finds that nobody cares about
him. It is as if everybody becomes suddenly hard, frozen. Now, how can you drop
your misery?
You will have to drop this
desire for attention, this desire for getting sympathy from people. In fact, it
is very ugly to desire sympathy from people - it makes you a beggar.
And remember, sympathy is not
love; they are obliging you, they are fulfilling a kind of duty - it is not
love. They may not like you, but still they will sympathize with you.
This is etiquette, culture,
civilization, formality - but you are living on false things.
Your misery is real and what
you are getting in the bargain is false. Of course, if you become happy, if you
drop your miseries, it will be a radical change in your life-style; things may
start changing.
Once a woman came to me, the
woman of one of the richest men in India, and she told me, "I want to
meditate, but my husband is against it."
I asked her, "Why is your
husband against meditation?"
She said, "He says, 'The
way you are, I love you. I don't know what will happen after meditation. If you
start meditating you are bound to change; then I don't know whether I will be
able to love you or not, because you will be another person.'" I said to
the woman, "Your husband has a point there - certainly things will be
different. You will be more free, more independent. You will be more joyous,
and your husband will have to learn to live with a new woman. He may not like
you that way, he may start feeling inferior. Right now he is superior to
you."
That's why down the ages man
has not allowed women to meditate, to participate in deep religious
experiences. Man has not allowed women to read the Vedas, the Upanishads, the
great scriptures of the world. In many religions the women are not allowed to
enter into the mosque or the synagogue. In Jainism it is said that you cannot
be liberated from the body of a woman; first you will have to be born as a man,
then only can you be liberated. From the body of a woman there is no way to
God.
Why? Why this fear? The reason
is very psychological: man has always been afraid of women becoming happier
than him, more peaceful than him, more attuned, more integrated than him -
because once they are more integrated, more attuned to their beings and to the
being of the whole, more in harmony with existence, more in accord...
And women can attain to harmony
more easily than men, remember. For certain biological reasons, a woman is more
capable of going into meditation than a man is. The male energy is aggressive,
violent, outgoing, extrovert, and the female energy is introvert, passive,
ingoing.
Hence what Jainism says is
absolutely wrong - not only absolutely wrong: just the opposite may be the
truth. It is easier to enter into God through the body of a woman than through
the body of a man. The woman's body is more harmonious, the man's body is not
so harmonious. The woman's body is more balanced, more rounded; that's why she
looks so beautiful. Her body is less tense, more relaxed.
Mothers become aware after a
few months' pregnancy whether it is a male child or a female child in their
womb, because the male child starts parading and doing things inside the womb,
kicking... he cannot be at rest. You can watch small girls - they are perfectly
happy sitting in a corner with their dolls. And the boys? - they can't sit.
Just a few days ago a little
boy took sannyas. I had to ask him, "Can you be silent for one minute so I
can explain your name to your mother?" But he was not even able to be
silent for one minute. Small girls come for sannyas; when I say to them,
"Close your eyes and sit silently," they sit so beautifully; they can
sit for hours. When small boys come and I say to them, "Close your
eyes," they have to clench their eyes! They are afraid that if they don't
do too much they will open. They are so curious about what is happening, what
is going on outside.
When small girls take sannyas
they look at me. And the boys? - they look at Krishna Bharti and his camera!
They are all over the place! I am putting a mala on them and they are looking
at people to see what the response is. "Are people laughing, enjoying,
watching?" They are great performers! And a great curiosity keeps them
constantly tense.
While on their honeymoon, Kit
and Netty bought a talkative parrot and took it back to their hotel room. As
they made love the bird kept up a running commentary. Finally Kit flung a bath
towel over the cage and said, "If you don't shut up I am sending you to
the zoo!"
Getting ready to leave the
following morning, they could not close a bulging suitcase and decided one of
them would stand on it while the other attempted to fasten it.
"Darling," said Kit,
"you get on top and I will try."
That didn't work. So he said,
"Now I will get on top and you try."
That didn't work either.
"Look," said Kit,
"let us both get on top and try."
The parrot yanked away the
towel and said, "Zoo or no zoo, this I've gotta see!"
The parrot must have been a male!
I told the woman, "Your
husband is right: before you enter on the path of meditation you have to
consider it, because there are dangers ahead."
She didn't listen to me; she
started meditating. Now she is divorced. She came to see me after a few years and
said, "You were right. The more silent I became, the more my husband
became furious at me. He was never so violent - something strange started
happening," she told me. "The more silent and quiet I was becoming,
the more aggressive he was becoming." His whole male chauvinist mind was
at stake. He wanted to destroy the peace and the silence that was happening to
the woman so he could still remain superior. And because it could not happen
the way he wanted, he divorced the woman.
It is a very strange world! If
you become peaceful your relationship with people will change, because you are
a different person. If your relationship was because of your misery it may
disappear.
I used to have a friend. He was
a professor in the same university where I was a professor; he was a great
social worker. In India, what to do with the widows is still a problem. Nobody
wants to marry them, and widows are not in favor of marrying either; that seems
like a sin. And this professor was determined to marry a widow. He was not
concerned whether he was in love with the woman or not - that was secondary,
irrelevant - his only interest was that she should be a widow. And he persuaded
her slowly slowly, and she was ready.
I told the man, "Before
you take the plunge, consider it for at least three days - go into isolation.
Are you in love with the woman, or is it just a great social service that you
are doing?" Marrying a widow in India is thought to be something very
revolutionary, something radical. "Are you just trying to prove that you
are a revolutionary? If you are trying to prove that you are a revolutionary,
then you are bound for trouble - because the moment you are married she will no
longer be a widow and your whole interest will be gone."
He didn't listen to me. He got
married... and after six months he told me, "You were right." He
cried. He said, "I could not see the point: I was in love with her
widowhood, not with her for herself, and now certainly she is no longer a
widow."
So I said, "You do one
thing - commit suicide! Make her a widow again and give somebody else a chance
to be a revolutionary! What else can you do?"
Man's mind is so stupid, so
unconscious. Buddha says it is in deep sleep, slumber, snoring.
Akal, you cannot let go of
things that are causing you misery because you have not yet seen the
investments, you have not yet looked deeply into them. You have not seen that
there is some pleasure you are deriving out of your misery. You will have to
drop both - - and then there is no problem. In fact, misery and pleasure can
only be dropped together. And then arises bliss.
Bliss is not pleasure, bliss is
not even happiness. Happiness is always bound together with unhappiness and
pleasure is always bound together with pain. Dropping both...
You want to drop misery so that
you can be happy - that is an absolutely wrong approach. You will have to drop
both. Seeing that they are together, one drops them; you cannot choose one
part.
In life, everything has an
organic unity. Pain and pleasure are not two things. Really, if we make a more
scientific language, we will drop these words: pain and pleasure. We will make
one word: painpleasure, happinessunhappiness, daynight, lifedeath. These are
one word because they are never separable.
And you want to choose one
part: you want to have only the roses and not the thorns, you want only the day
and not the night, you want only love and not hate. This is not going to happen
- this is not the way things are. You will have to drop both, and then arises a
totally different world: the world of bliss.
Bliss is absolute peace,
undisturbedness, neither disturbed by pain nor disturbed by pleasure.
To celebrate their fortieth
anniversary, Seymour and Rose went back to the same second-floor hotel room
where they had spent their honeymoon.
"Now," said Seymour,
"just like that first night, let us undress, get in opposite corners of
the room, turn off the lights, then run to each other and embrace."
They undressed, went to
opposite corners, switched off the lights and ran towards each other. But their
sense of direction was dulled by forty years, so Seymour missed Rose and he
went right through the window. He landed on the lawn in a daze.
Seymour tapped on the lobby
window to get the clerk's attention. "I fell down from upstairs," he said.
"I am naked and I gotta get back to my room."
"It's okay," said the
clerk. "Nobody will see you."
"Are you crazy? I gotta
walk through the lobby and I am all naked!"
"Nobody can see you,"
repeated the clerk. "Everybody is upstairs trying to get some old lady off
a doorknob!"
People are so foolish! Not only
the younger ones - the older you get, the more foolish you become. The more
experienced you are, it seems the more stupidity you accumulate through life.
It really rarely happens that a person starts watching, observing his own life
and his own life patterns.
See what your misery is, what
desires are causing it, and why you are clinging to those desires. And it is
not for the first time that you are clinging to those desires; this has been
the pattern of your whole life and you have not arrived anywhere. You go on in
circles, you never come to any real growth. You remain childish, stupid. And
you are born with the intelligence that can make you a buddha, but it is lost
in unnecessary things.
A farmer who had only two
impotent old bulls bought a new, young, vigorous bull.
Immediately the stud began
mounting one cow after another in the pasture. After watching this for an hour,
one of the ancient bulls started pawing the ground and snorting.
"What's the matter?"
asked the other. "You getting young ideas?"
"No," said the first
bull, "but I don't want that young fellow to think I am one of the
cows."
So even in their old age people
go on carrying their egos. They have to pretend, they have to pose, and their
whole life is nothing but a long long story of misery. Still they defend it.
Rather than being ready to change it, they are very defensive.
Akal, drop all defensiveness,
drop all armors. Start watching how you live your day-to- day life, moment to
moment. And whatsoever you are doing, go into its details. You need not go to a
psychoanalyst, you can analyze each pattern of your life yourself - it is such
a simple process! Just watch and you will be able to see what is happening,
what has been happening. You have been choosing - and that has been the problem
- you have been choosing one part against the other, and they are both
together.
Buddha says: Attain to
choiceless awareness - don't choose at all. Just watch and be aware without
choosing, and you will attain to bliss, you will attain to the lotus paradise.
Question 4:
Beloved Master,
Who am I?
Narayano, it is a question to
be made a meditation. It is not a question to be asked, it is a question to be
contemplated - because nobody can answer it for you and nobody's answer can
become your answer. This is one of those questions which is not really a
question but a mystery.
Yes, you can go on asking the
scholars, and some stupid scholar will say, "You are God, you are soul,
you are this and you are that, you are eternal consciousness, immortal
being." But do you think those words are going to have any meaning for
you? They will be empty words. This is not a question to be asked, this is a
question to be entered into.
Raman Maharshi made it his only
meditation; that is the only meditation that he gave to his disciples - a very
potent method. Just sitting silently, first ask verbally, "Who am I?"
And then slowly slowly, let the
words disappear and only a feeling remain, "Who am I?" - just a
feeling. And finally let the feeling also disappear... a nonverbalized,
nonemotionalized question mark. Not that you are asking, "Who am I?"
but you have become the question mark itself. Sitting silently, remaining this
question mark, you will enter into your being, you will know.
Knowing does not happen through
scriptures, it cannot be taught. I know the answer, but my answer is my answer;
it cannot become your answer. You can repeat it like a parrot, you can believe
in it, but it will not transform you. No information ever brings any
transformation.
To ask this question is wrong:
to contemplate this question is right. I cannot answer who you are, but I can
say only this: start asking you own being, "Who am I?" and your mind
will start supplying you with many answers. If you are a Christian it will give
Christian answers, if you are a Hindu it will give Hindu answers, if you are a
Buddhist it will give Buddhist answers. All those answers are false. So go on
saying, "neti, neti - neither this
nor that." Go on saying, "This is not the answer." Whatever
answer is supplied by the mind is deceptive - beware!
When you have destroyed all the
answers given by the mind and the mind is empty and has no answers to give
anymore, the answer will arise in you. When the mind ceases, the answer arises.
It will not be in words, it will be an experience.
Don't ask me, Narayano, ask
yourself. Sit silently whenever you can find time.
But you must be asking others
this question. People go on, from one master to another master, asking the same
questions, receiving the same answers. The question remains in its place; the
answers make no difference. You must have asked this question of many people -
your search is long. You have been to all the ashrams and they have all
supplied you with answers, and still you are not satisfied. When are you going
to see the point, that no answer given by the outside can ever be satisfactory,
it cannot give you contentment?
Drop this question. Don't ask
it, because if you ask somebody, there are people who are going to answer.
There are people who live on your questions - the pundits, the priests, the
scholars, the professors - their whole business is to go on supplying answers
to your questions. And can't you see the point, that no answer ever becomes
your answer?
It is time, start asking
yourself. At least this question, "Who am I?" has to be asked in the
deepest recesses of your being. You have to resound with this question. It has
to vibrate in you, pulsate in your blood, in your cells. It has to become a
question mark in your very soul.
And when the mind is silent,
you will know. Not that some answer will be received by you in words, not that
you will be able to write it down in your notebook that "This is the
answer," not that you will be able to tell anybody that "This is the
answer." If you can tell anybody, it is not the answer. If you can write
it down in a notebook, it is not the answer. When the real answer happens, it
is so existential that it is inexpressible.
To ask others is stupid. To ask
oneself is wise.
The circus had finished its
final performance in the country town when one of its zebras took sick. The
local veterinarian suggested rest for the beast, so the circus owner made
arrangements to board it at a nearby farm.
The zebra took to the new life
by meeting all the animals of the barnyard. He came across a chicken and asked,
"I am a zebra, who are you?"
"I am a chicken,"
said the chicken.
"What do you do?"
asked the zebra.
"I scratch around and lay
eggs."
The zebra walked up to a cow.
"I am a zebra. Who are you?"
"I am a cow," said
the cow.
"What do you do?"
asked the zebra.
"I graze in the field and
give milk."
The zebra met a bull next.
"I am a zebra," he said. "Who are you?"
"I am a bull."
"And what do you do?"
asked the zebra.
"What do I do!"
snorted the bull. "Why, you silly looking ass - take off your pajamas and
I will show you!"
Enough for today.
