Chapter 6. Life, love, laughter - Osho

Osho – Dhammapada: The Way of The Buddha (Volume 12)

Chapter 6. Life, love, laughter

Question 1

Beloved Master,

Ramakrishna stayed in his body through showing interest in food. Now tell me the truth - is it the jokes that keep you here?

Anand Masta, yes, in a way it is true. Religion has for centuries lacked many things. One of the most important of them all is laughter; religion has been too serious. Seriousness is a kind of disease: it is the cancer of the soul. It is very destructive, it is suicidal. Hence, if you don't see religion flowering on the earth - although there are three hundred religions, millions of churches, temples, mosques, still the earth goes on missing religious consciousness - the simple reason is that seriousness has killed religion.

Seriousness tends to become sad. You cannot be serious without being sad; they are two sides of the same coin. And you can be serious and sad only if you have missed your roots in life and existence. Only the pathological people are serious; the healthy, the whole will never be serious, cannot be serious.

It was one of the most unfortunate accidents in human history that religion became associated with seriousness. That association has to be destroyed, mercilessly destroyed. Religion has to be freed from the imprisonment of seriousness. Only then will it be healthy, only then will it be able to sing and dance and rejoice. The serious religion has always been rooted in the idea that there is something wrong in life, something basically wrong in life, as if life is a punishment.

Life is a gift of God, not a punishment. And there is nothing wrong in life. If something is wrong it must be in you. You don't know the art of living, you are incapable of moving into the depth and into the mystery of life. You must be a coward; hence you cling to the shore, to the known, to the familiar. And life always goes on moving into the unknown. Life is adventurous and you are a coward, hence you soon part company. Life goes on its way of adventure and you cling to your security. Clinging to your security you become dead, and when you become dead, life seems to be a drag, a dull affair. In fact, you have lost contact with life.

It is as if you uproot a rosebush from the earth - soon it will start dying, it will lose its greenness, its roses will wither away. Nothing is wrong with the rosebush, nothing is wrong with the earth either, only you have disconnected them. The rosebush needs nourishment, then it can bloom in thousands of flowers, it can have all the green of the world and all the red and all the gold. Man also is a rosebush. He needs his own soil, he needs roots into existence.

When you are born you are born only with the potential to exist, to survive, not with the art of making life a joy, a bliss, a celebration. That art has to be learned. To me, religion is that very art, the supreme art: the art of transforming the lower into the higher. Religion to me is alchemy. It is the process of transforming the potential into the actual. Man has lived at the minimum; hence he looks so dull. Man can live at the maximum and then there will be great brilliance and great radiance and then there will be great flowering.

Laughter is as precious as prayer or even more precious than prayer, because the man who cannot laugh cannot pray either. A prayer that does not come out of a joyous heart is already dead. It cannot reach God, it cannot leave the earth, it has no wings. It is like a rock: it will fall back to the earth, it cannot fly into the sky.

Religion has lived without laughter, that's why religion has been a corpse. And you are worshipping corpses in your churches and in your temples and in your mosques, you have become worshippers of death. Rather than worshipping life you have been worshipping death.

My approach is totally different - I bring you a new vision. Religion is against laughter, is against love, is against rejoicing, is against celebration. The religious person, the so-called religious person, condemns everything of this world; he lives surrounded by a thousand and one condemnations. He lives in fear, in trembling. He does not live, he only vegetates.

Your so-called saints and mahatmas are not real people, they don't have the guts to be real, they are phony. But you have worshipped them for so long, and you still go on worshipping them. And the reason you worship them is because they are so dead, because they are so serious, because they are so ugly, because their whole approach towards life is so negative. They are anti-life, anti-love, anti-laughter - how can they be for God? It is only through love and laughter and a tremendous joy in life that you start feeling the presence of something that is beyond.

When life becomes an adventure, a dance of ecstasy, then only do you move beyond the confinement of the body and the mind and soar high towards the infinite.

Yes, Masta, you can say I live on your laughter. I rejoice seeing you dance, sing and laugh. I rejoice seeing you in deep love. I rejoice seeing you dropping the garbage of centuries, the rotten, stupid superstitions of centuries. I rejoice seeing you getting out of the old, being born anew.

All the religions were born thousands of years ago; everything has changed. Those religions don't fit anymore, they have no relevance, their context has disappeared. But they go on sitting on your head, heavy mountains, and they don't allow you to move. In fact, the older the religion, the more precious you think it is. It is not so: the older the religion, the more irrelevant it is.

Religion has to be as new as life itself. Religion has to be new every day, each moment. And that's how the religious person lives: he goes on dying to the past every moment, he is born anew every moment. He moves with life. He has no clinging to the Vedas and no clinging to the Bible and no clinging to the Koran. He can read them as beautiful literature, but he does not cling to them. Those who cling to them are being stupid because something may have been relevant two thousand years ago, but it has no meaning anymore. And you know it perfectly well, but you don't have courage enough to get out of the old fold.

All the vested interests are against you getting out of the old fold. All the vested interests want you to remain committed to the past because then you can be exploited more easily. If you are not committed to the past the priests will disappear, because they represent the past. Who will pay any attention to the pope or to the shankaracharya? They will become laughingstocks! In fact they are ridiculous, utterly ridiculous. All their ideas are so out-of-date that you go on tolerating them only because it is risky to say that they are out-of-date. It is risky because you may lose something in your business, in your investment. You may start falling apart from the society. You are afraid of being individuals, you want to remain part of the crowd.

And religion's whole purpose is to make you individuals. Religion loses all meaning when it starts making you, forcing you, in fact, to be part of the crowd. Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, Buddhist - these are crowds. You have not chosen to be a Christian; it is accidental that you are born a Christian or a Jew or a Hindu. How can religion be accidental? Is such an important phenomenon decided by the accident of birth? You have to be consciously alert to choose your path towards God. You have not chosen your path, you have not even chosen God. You have been forced to choose, and you have allowed all this to happen. It is a bondage! Your being a Christian is a bondage.

The people gathered around Christ were real Christians, were the only Christians, because they had chosen. They were going against the crowd, they were risking their lives, they were moving in danger. They were born as Jews. They would have been more comfortable, they would have lived more conveniently if they had not followed Jesus. Following Jesus was dangerous. It proved dangerous to Jesus himself; he was crucified. His disciples were victimized in every possible way. Those were real people, authentic people. To be a Christian now means nothing.

The people who were gathering around Gautama the Buddha were real Buddhists. They were religious people, because going against the whole crowd of the Hindus, against the whole pattern of the society and following a very rebellious man, being with him, was accepting the life of insecurity. They were genuine, authentic seekers. But the man who is born a Buddhist has not risked anything; it is just a coincidence that he is born a Buddhist.

If you had been adopted by a Mohammedan when you were a small child you would have been a Mohammedan; if you had been adopted by a Jew you would have been a Jew. And you would have never known who you were by your birth, because nobody is born as a Christian or a Buddhist or a Hindu - everybody is born free. God gives you freedom to choose.

But society does not want you to be free. Neither the state nor the church nor other vested interests want you to be free. They want to cripple you and paralyze you, they want to destroy your intelligence. They don't want you to be very happy either because happy people can be dangerous. Miserable people are good, miserable people are always controllable, miserable people are always ready to become enslaved. They are so miserable, they are always seeking somebody who can give them support, who can make their lives a little easier. The happy person becomes independent; the happier he is, the more independent.

A Jesus or a Buddha or a Krishna or a Confucius, these are the most blissful people the earth has known. They are utterly independent people. They don't care a bit about what others say; they don't bother about their opinions for the simple reason that they don't depend on anybody else. Their bliss is inner.

The society does not want you to be really blissful. It wants you to be sad and ill; it wants you to be pathological, neurotic. Only a neurotic society can be dominated by the priests and the politicians. Only people who have lost all intelligence can be led by idiots like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. People who have intelligence can't be led by such people. These people are insane! In a better world, there won't be any possibility of Adolf Hitlers. The moment there is somebody like that he will be put in a mental asylum: he has to be treated, he is mad. But right now these mad people have become very influential. Their very madness makes them powerful. They are so mad that the people who are not so mad start following them. They look like leaders.

And people are different only in degrees. Somebody is more mad than you and you are a little less mad than him; of course, one who is more mad than you is going to be your leader. He will be more stubborn, more dogmatic, he will appear more determined, he will appear to have more willpower, he will have a certain hypnotic influence, but that is possible only if you have lost all your intelligence.

My effort here is to give you back that which is really yours. I don't want you to become part of any religion. I simply want you to be religious - neither Christians nor Hindus, nor Mohammedans - just religious. That is enough! There is no need to choose a particular doctrine. Religion has nothing to do with doctrines, it is more existential.

And unless you love life you will not be able to love God either. If he is the creator you have to love his creation to love him. To hate his creation and to show love to the creator is absurd. To condemn the creation and to praise the creator is utterly stupid, illogical, unintelligent. If you love the music, only then do you love the musician, or vice versa. And this existence is so beautiful!

Except in man you will not find any sadness anywhere. The trees are not sad and the animals are not sad and the stars are not sad, even rocks are not sad, only man - because only man has been manipulated, exploited, distracted from his center.

Yes, Masta, when I see you laughing, loving, rejoicing, dancing, singing, I feel like lingering a little more in the body for you.

I have given you the name Anand Masta. Anand means bliss and masta means mad - madly blissful, utterly drunk in blissfulness. And very few sannyasins are so deeply fulfilling their names as you are doing. I am absolutely happy with you, all my blessings are for you. Get more and more drunk!

God is not far away. Just when you lose yourself in love he is as close as he can ever be. When you lose yourself in dance, when you abandon yourself in dance, when the ego disappears in your dance, he is just your partner in the dance - nobody else but him. Whoever the partner is, he is the partner. When your heart is throbbing with joy and ecstasy in singing, he is in your heart, at the very core of your being. And when you laugh, if the laugh is total, if every fiber of your being is laughing...

That's why I love jokes. Jokes are very religious, very spiritual! All jokes are spiritual because they suddenly trigger a process in you and you forget all your seriousness. For a moment you are again an innocent child, again full of wonder and awe. And the laughter overwhelms you, you are drowned in the laughter. The ego is not found when you are deep in laughter. And whenever ego disappears, God is.

Remember it as one of the most fundamental laws: whenever the 'I' is absent, God is present - they both cannot be present together. The relationship between the ego and God is just like the relationship between darkness and light. If light is present, darkness cannot be there, because darkness is nothing but the absence of light. How can there be presence and absence together? If darkness is there then light cannot be there.

There is an ancient parable:

After many many millions of years, Darkness approached God and told him, "This is too much! I have been patient enough, but for no reason at all your Sun goes on torturing me, chasing me every morning. I have not even taken enough rest and he is back and the chase begins. And I have to run and he goes on running after me. Now it is getting tiring. I have not done anything wrong to this Sun. Why is he so much after me? Why is he carrying such enmity for me?"

God also thought, "This is unfair!" And he called the Sun. The Sun came and said, "I don't know what you are talking about. Have you gone mad or something? What Darkness? I have never come across any Darkness. I have never seen her, I have never met her, so of course, why should I chase your Darkness? I don't even know her! Where is she? You bring her before me! And unless you bring her before me, how can I answer? Both parties have to be present in court. First I have to see who this Darkness is who has been complaining against me and with whom I am not even acquainted. All these millions of years since you have made me I have never seen her, I have never met her. I don't even know her whereabouts."

And God said, "That is right. I will call her."

And since then, millions of years have again passed and God has been trying. You have heard that God is omnipotent - he is not, because he has not been able to call both of them together yet. Yes, sometimes Darkness comes and complains and sometimes the Sun comes and says, "This is unfair - let us both be present." But even God is not capable of making that happen. So it is just pending, it is in the files. One day, just looking in the files I came across it, and I think it is going to remain forever in the files.

Darkness and light cannot be present together. The ego is just darkness; absence of consciousness is ego. When you become conscious, ego disappears. When consciousness is total, ego is not found at all. And the totality of consciousness is another name for the experience of God.

God is not a person, let me remind you again and again - God is only an experience of absolute awareness, of ultimate ecstasy. Hence I say laugh deeply, love deeply, live deeply. Risk everything for love, laughter, life. Let your life be a great exploration and go on always moving into the unknown and the unknowable.

Nobody else has used jokes in a spiritual way; hence sometimes people are shocked. When they come for the first time to listen to me, naturally they are shocked because they want to hear something very serious - as if they are not serious enough already! They want to hear something esoteric, something nonsensical, something which makes no sense to them; then they think there must be great meaning in it. When something is incomprehensible to them they think this is great philosophy! Whenever they come across something written in stupid jargon, esoteric, occult, spiritual, they become very much interested. They think they are going to find some treasure in it.

The treasure is not hidden in big words, the treasure is hidden in you. And it is to be discovered, not through big words, it is to be discovered through wordlessness, it is to be discovered through silence.

And haven't you felt after deep laughter that a sudden silence comes to you in the wake of it? - the silence after a storm. For a moment it is as if the mind stops functioning... you are utterly relaxed, in a deep rest.

Those are the moments, Masta, when you start feeling the presence of God. Those are the first glimpses that God is. There is no other proof.

Hence my commune is going to remain a shock to the traditional people. They have seen many spiritual communes, but they were all serious. Jesus will understand what I am saying, but not the pope of the Vatican, because these fools go on saying that Jesus never laughed. And I tell you, on my own authority, that he must have been one of the most hilarious persons. Who else can laugh so beautifully as Jesus? Who else has the right? He was not a deadly kind of saint; he lived, and lived very close to the earth. He lived with all kinds of ordinary people - with drunkards and gamblers and tax collectors and prostitutes - and he loved eating and drinking.

Indian spiritual phonies are very much against drinking. That's why they cannot believe that Jesus is enlightened. Many Jaina monks have asked me, "Why do you say that Jesus is enlightened, as Buddha and Mahavira are? He used to drink wine!" There is nothing wrong in it, one just has to learn the art of drinking wine. One should not drink too much; the golden mean has to be followed. Nobody has ever heard that Jesus was lying in the street! He must have known how much to drink and when to drink and when not to drink.

And moreover, wine is absolutely vegetarian; far more vegetarian than milk which Hindu, Jaina and Buddhist monks think is the purest food. It is animal food! It is closer to nonvegetarian food than to vegetarian food. It is part of the human body or the animal body. Wine has nothing wrong in it. And if one is foolish one can drink too much water and can get into trouble. So it is not a question of drinking.

And what is wrong with enjoying eating? He must have enjoyed eating because we have many references that every night with his disciples the gathering used to continue late into the night, eating, drinking... And do you think he was eating and drinking and they all were eating and drinking and everybody was sitting serious and somber and saintly? Is this the way to drink and eat and enjoy it? They must have been telling jokes and they must have been gossiping and they must have been talking like human beings.

He was very human in that sense, far more human than Buddha and Mahavira. They look more abstract, more in the sky and less on the earth. He was very earthly. He used to stay in the house of a prostitute, Mary Magdalene. Now, your Vatican pope will not have that much guts! Even though he is a Polack, that much guts I don't think he will have!

But when people come here, these people who think themselves spiritual, they come with their ideas, their prejudices - that there should be no laughter, no dancing, no singing. And when they see sannyasins hugging, then this is too much - as if there is something wrong in hugging! When they see people holding hands with deep love they are shocked. Spiritual people should be very anti-life, utterly life-negative; they should not affirm life in any way. And my whole effort here is to affirm life in all possible ways.

Masta, a few jokes for you:

Once there was a little girl who came across the word 'frugal' and asked her mother what it meant. She was told that it meant "to save." The next day the child was asked to write a story at school, and handed in the following:

"Once upon a time a princess was lost in the woods and as night fell she became frightened. She began to run, crying out, 'Frugal me! Frugal me!'

"A passing prince heard her pleas and ran to her rescue. He frugaled her and they lived happily ever after."

"Hey, Giulio, where did you get the black eye?"

"Aw, I was at my girl's house," explained the young lover, "and we was-a dancing together real-a tight-a when her father walked-a in!"

"So?"

"So," said the Italian, "the old-a guy's deaf-a. He couldn't-a hear the music-a!"

A Texas cowboy was walking down a Tijuana street. Suddenly young Pablo walked up to him and yanked on his sleeve.

"Hey, meester," said the boy, "you wanna make love to my seester?"

"Podnah," said the Texan, "Ah don't even drink the water here!"

Question 2

Beloved Master,

You said that for buddha freedom is the highest. But his "dhamma" means "the law," which inhibits freedom. How do freedom and law go together? Please comment.

Anand Maitreya, freedom for Gautama the Buddha is the very law of life. Hence there is no contradiction. Life itself is rooted in freedom. We are not machines, we are not preprogramed. We are utter freedom - now it is up to us what to make of it. All the alternatives are open, we can choose any alternative, that is our choice. We can become anybody, that is our choice.

It is as if you find a marble rock - now it depends on you what you want to make out of it. You can sculpt a Christ, you can also sculpt a Judas. The rock is totally available to you; now you have to decide, it is your decision, your conscious decision, what you want to make out of it.

Michelangelo was passing by a shop which used to sell marble. He saw a big marble rock outside the shop, he had seen it lying there for years. He asked the owner, "What's the matter? Can't you sell it?"

The man said, "I have dropped the idea. I can't sell it. Nobody is ready to purchase it, it is useless. I have thrown it out. But if you are interested you can take it free of charge so at least my place will be empty and I can put other rocks there."

Michelangelo took the rock with him, and after one year he invited the owner to see. The owner could not believe his eyes; he had never seen such a beautiful Jesus. He said, "How could you do it? You are really a magician! That rock was utterly useless; no other sculptor was ready to take it even free of charge."

And Michelangelo is reported to have said, "It has nothing to do with me. When I was passing, Jesus called out from the rock saying, 'I am imprisoned here! Help me to get out of this rock!' And I have just removed the unnecessary chunks, I have freed him."

But a Michelangelo is needed to hear it, to hear the Jesus inside the rock calling him to help him to be freed.

A rock is just a rock; it depends on you what you make out of it. That's what existentialists say: that man is born absolutely free. In the ancient days, philosophers used to think that man is born with an essence. Existentialists say man is born only as an existence, with no essence. He has to create the essence out of his own choice. And I perfectly agree with the existentialist approach.

Buddha is the first existentialist of the world and far more truly an existentialist than Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jaspers and others, because after all these existentialists are only thinkers - they think about existence. Buddha really transformed himself. He was not talking about the essence - he created it, he showed the world what man can make out of himself.

Gurdjieff used to say that man is not born with a soul. The meaning is the same. It looks very strange when you hear for the first time that man is not born with a soul. The soul has to be created, man is born empty. And millions die only as hollow emptinesses. Their souls are never born because they never make any effort. The old idea is that everybody is born with a soul; it frees you from the great responsibility of creating your own being, of creating yourself. When there is no responsibility to create, you go on living accidentally, like driftwood.

Buddha says freedom is the very law of life. What he means by it is that there is nothing higher than freedom. But by the word 'law', please don't misunderstand him. In fact for dhamma, the word 'law' is only approximately right. In the English language there is not exactly the right word for dhamma. In Chinese there is a word tao that exactly means dhamma. The closest word in English is logos, but that has gone out of use. Hence 'the law' is used, but 'law' has other associations: the ordinary law of the state, of governments, of societies. That is not the meaning of Buddha. Of course, these laws are inhibitions; they prohibit you, they hinder you from freedom.

Buddha is saying freedom is the only real law and anything that hinders your freedom is against the law of life. Be free. All those laws have to be broken, sabotaged. You have to take your life in your own hands and you are responsible for it. No fate is responsible, no destiny is responsible. You have to create yourself by your own effort.

You are just a tabula rasa. You can write beautiful poems on it, beautiful calligraphy, you can do beautiful paintings on it; or you can leave it as it is. Or you can simply throw colors on it, meaninglessly, in an insane way, like a small child. You can destroy the whole thing. And there is nobody else who is responsible except you; the total responsibility is yours.

That is the most emphatic thing that Buddha wants you to remember: don't shirk your responsibility. Whatsoever you are is your own work and whatsoever you want to be you can be. But you can be that only if freedom is the law of life. If everything is destined, if there is something like fate, if there is something which has been preprogramed in you, then you are not a man at all, then you are just a biocomputer. You are simply going to repeat the program, you are a gramophone record. You don't have any freedom, you can't change anything. You are just play-things in the hands of unknown forces.

Buddha says this is not true. Hence he even denies the existence of God for the simple reason that if God is there then there will be trouble; then he will be the suprememost being. His very presence will become an inhibition to you.

That's exactly the logic of Friedrich Nietzsche. He said: God is dead, therefore man is now free. But Nietzsche was only a philosopher. He could not contain that much freedom. He went mad.

Buddha is not a philosopher at all, he is a mystic. He used the freedom. He really became responsible for himself. He created his own being and he became the most beautiful person who has ever lived on the earth. He followed the law of freedom and achieved the ultimate joy, the ultimate truth.

You can do the same too. That is his message. He says, "Whatsoever has happened to me can happen to you. If it is not happening, nobody else is responsible except you." So take the total responsibility in your own hands, feel and be responsible, and use the law of freedom because it is available. Life has been given to you with no preprogram; now it is up to you what you want to make out of it. You can become an ugly monster - a Genghis Khan, a Tamerlane, a Nadirshah - or you can become a Gautam Buddha, a Jesus Christ, a Lao Tzu, a Zarathustra. It all depends on you, it is your freedom. Choose!

But you can choose only when you are conscious; you can choose only when you are aware, alert. The more aware you are, the more you are capable of choosing the course of your life. The more aware you are, the more you know, the more you can feel a sense of direction.

Freedom is the foundation of life and freedom is the ultimate goal too. Freedom is the source and freedom is the goal.

Use freedom to be free from all bondage.

Use freedom to become ultimately free.

Use freedom to become freedom itself.

Question 3

Beloved Master,

I-a never-a thought-a it would-a come-a to this-a, but-a I wish-a i-a were-a an-a Italian! Much-a love-a and-a pasta, bigga prema.

Bigga Prema, avoid such desires, because if you carry them too long they start becoming a reality. Then don't make me responsible for it! Be very careful what you desire, because the danger is that the desire may be fulfilled sooner or later.

I love Italians - as much as I love others - but naturally many people are feeling jealous of Italians, for the simple reason that I am telling so many jokes about Italians. But the reason is not that I love Italians more than the Dutch or the Australians; the reason is simply that my librarian happens to be Lalita, an Italian, so she goes on finding Italian jokes for me! So rather than you desiring to be an Italian, just desire that I may get one assistant for Lalita from every country. In the new commune, I am thinking Lalita must have at least a dozen assistants! But beware of having this desire.

Do you know why they hang salami at Italian weddings?

To keep the flies off the bride.

And do you know who fired the bullet into Mussolini's body?

One hundred top Italian marksmen.

Bianco, the barber, nicked his customer six times while shaving him. Finally the bleeding man asked if he could have a razor.

"Why?" asked the Italian. "You wanna shave-a yourself?"

"No," said the victim, "I want to defend myself!"

Collared by the cops after he roared up a one-way street and crashed his 1949 Ford into a store window, the Italian drunk wanted to know what the hell was going on.

"You went against the traffic, you dumb bastard," the angry cop said, "Didn't you see the arrows back there?"

"Holy Mother-a Jesus!" the boozed-up guinea said. "I didn't even see the Indians!"

And if you really want to change in your next life, in the next round when you come back, Bigga Prema, rather than being an Italian, be a Polack! Now you see, the Polack has become the pope - he has defeated all the Italians! Now if a Polack can become a pope, the next thing is that a woman is going to become a pope-a.

Why do Polack dogs have flat noses?

From chasing parked cars.

And why can't Polacks be pharmacists?

They can't fit the little brown bottles in their typewriters!

And do you know what is written on the bottom of Polish milk bottles?

"Open at other end."

Wojawicz walked into the department store with his mangy mutt. A floorwalker rushed over, pointed to the sign that read, no dogs allowed and said, "Hey, mister, can't you read?"

"So," said the Polack, "who's smoking?"

And just the other day all the orange Italians and all the orange Polacks gathered together to decide who is really the greatest. Of course, there was no question of intellectual discussion... it had to be something existential! So they decided to go to the football ground by the side of the railway station and play football - whoever wins...

For two hours everything happened - except football. Karate chops were flying and yoga was done and boxing and wrestling and Dynamic Meditation and Kundalini Meditation. And they had forgotten completely that they needed a few referees as well; there were no referees at all.

After two hours even the football lying by the side started laughing! "What is happening?" Then a train passed by and hearing the whistle of the train the Italians thought the game was over, so they left the ground, thinking, "We are equal and the game is over."

But the Polacks were bent upon winning, and now, because the sun was going down, the game became even more fierce. And finally after one hour's effort the Polacks were able to score one goal - without the Italians, but that doesn't matter!

So if you want to be something really great, it is better to be a Polack rather than an Italian. Why choose something second-rate?

Milewski was trying to light a match. He struck the first match, it didn't work, he threw it away. He struck a second match. That didn't work either and he threw it away. He struck a third one and it lit up.

"That be a good one," said the Polack, blowing it out. "I got to save it!"

A Polack and a Jew were walking in the desert. The Jew was carrying a watermelon, the Polack was carrying a car door.

After a while the Polack said, "Why are you carrying that watermelon?"

The Jew said, "So when it gets too hot I cut it open and eat a piece of it."

After a while, the Jew said, "And why are you carrying that car door?"

"So," said the Polack, "when it gets too hot I just roll down the window!"

Question 4

Beloved Master,

A while ago I wrote to you about being confused, and you said you were taking care. Now since then i have got even more confused! What are you doing to me?!

Prem Asang, taking care! That's my way of taking care! You get confused because you are carrying certain ideas and prejudices in the mind. If you don't carry any ideas, any prejudices in the mind, even I cannot confuse you; nobody in the whole world can confuse you. Confusion arises from your own inner causes.

For example, if you believe in a certain idea and I say something against it, then there is confusion. You cannot leave the old idea; it is so old, it has got so many roots in you and you have lived with it so long that it has become comfortable and cozy. You have believed in it so long, it has given you so many consolations, that now suddenly to drop it will mean moving in a state of insecurity; it has become your security and safety.

But listening to me you cannot cling to it anymore. You cannot drop it and you cannot cling to it, hence the confusion. You cannot cling to it anymore because what I am saying appeals to you, your heart understands it. Deep down something in your inner being says, "Yes, it is so." Between your heart and head a conflict ensues; that is confusion.

Confusion simply means that now you are unable to decide where to go: to go on clinging to the old, which will be impossible because now you have seen that that is not right, that you have been clinging only to a comfortable lie. It is not true, and your heart feels that it is not true... although it gives you consolation. Lies can give you consolation, they are very consoling; otherwise nobody would believe in lies. Everybody believes in lies for the simple reason that they are cheap and give you great consolation. You need not make any effort to realize them. They are handed over to you by others: by your parents, by your teachers, by the society, by the atmosphere. You simply go on gathering from everywhere, from every source.

You are living in a sandcastle; but everything goes well - unless somebody tells you that this is a sandcastle. Once you have heard that this is a sandcastle, the problem arises: you cannot live in it anymore, it is dangerous to live in it. And you cannot get out of it because you have become so accustomed to it. Hence the confusion. Confusion simply means you are unable to decide.

Unless you become decisive, Asang, the confusion will go on growing. My work consists in creating confusion in you, because without creating confusion I cannot pull you out of your sandcastles, I cannot pull you out of your paper boats, I cannot pull you out of your lies and dreams. And I know perfectly well that when you have put so much investment in a certain belief - maybe you have lived for thirty years, forty years in a certain belief - to see now that it was wrong, that it was utterly stupid, that it was ridiculous, creates a great problem for you. Your self-image of being intelligent is shattered. For forty years you have carried something ridiculous without seeing it. What kind of intelligence do you have? You become suspicious of your own intelligence and that doesn't feel good.

That's why to be with a master needs courage. To be with a master needs the courage to accept that "I don't know."

The moment you accept, Asang, that "I don't know," all confusion will disappear, evaporate, simply evaporate - just as dewdrops evaporate in the early morning sun leaving no trace behind them. The confusion is because you are clinging to a few things which in the past you thought were very valuable. You thought that they were ornaments, golden, studded with diamonds, and now I have made you aware that they are nothing but chains - maybe golden chains and maybe studded with diamonds, but what are diamonds? - they are also stones. And what is gold? The difference exists only in man's mind, otherwise gold and iron are the same. The evaluation is ours, the projection is ours. But chains are chains and the chains have to be broken. Now the things you have believed were ornaments, decorations, are being shown to you persistently as nothing but chains.

Either you will have to escape from me... but remember, escaping won't help you. Once you have been on my surgical table it is better to go through the whole operation! If you escape in the middle of the operation you will remain confused your whole life, because whatsoever you have understood from me is not going to leave you, it will haunt you. So there is no escape from me.

Once you are with me you have to learn the ways of transformation, you have to go through a radical change. You have to die to the past and be born anew. It is hard, it is painful. Every birth is painful, and spiritual birth particularly is very painful. There are no sedatives available. For spiritual birth one has to go through many pains, but those pains are worth it because you grow out of your imprisonments; you grow into freedom, you grow up.

And once you have tasted the joy of growing up, of becoming mature, then there is no problem. Then you know that all that you have left behind was worthless, was rubbish.

But, Asang, this moment has to be passed through. This critical moment has to come in every disciple's life when the disciple is in a kind of limbo, neither here nor there, half in the past and half moving with me, many times thinking to escape.

Just the other day Somendra asked a question: "But, Beloved Master, where is the exit?" There is no exit here! It is one-way traffic. You only come in... we don't have another door, only the entrance. Then you have to be reborn; that is the only exit. But the exit is not in escape, it is in "inscape." It is going inwards.

Asang, I am taking as much care as you can tolerate at this moment! I will take more... The medicine is bitter and it has to be given in small doses. And this is not homeopathic treatment, remember, this is pure allopathy - it is pure poison! It is crucifixion, because only then is there resurrection. But that too takes three days. Between the crucifixion and the resurrection... three days. Remember those three days; they are significant, very significant. Those three days are the most difficult days.

Just think of Jesus: three days in the cave, neither dead nor alive. He couldn't have been completely dead because once you are completely dead you are gone. He was not completely alive either; otherwise he would not have remained for three days in the cave, he would have escaped sooner. He must have been hanging between these two polarities of birth and death.

Those three days are significant, they are symbolic. Those three days represent body, mind, heart. You have to die in the body, in the mind, in the heart; then only can you be born as a soul. You have to pass through this dark night of the soul. This is the womb period, those nine months in the mother's womb. In exactly the same way, the disciple has to be in the womb of the master. This buddhafield is nothing but a womb. You are in the womb. It depends on you: if you go on clinging too long it will take a long time for you to come out.

In India we have many beautiful stories about Lucknow. Lucknow is the most mannerly city in India, very mannerly; too much in fact, so it is said. Once it happened, a woman got pregnant and she was carrying two children within her womb, and they wouldn't come out. Nine months passed, then nine years passed, then ninety years passed...

Finally the woman died and the doctors had to open the womb. Two small, ninety-year-old gentlemen were standing there and they were saying to each other, "Sir, you first!"

Don't take that much time - here you need not be that mannerly! Jump out of the womb as quickly as possible... because the spiritual womb has no natural time - nine months or nine years - it all depends on the individual. It can happen in a single moment or it may not happen in an eternity.

Asang, I am taking care of you, and as you become a little more available to me, a little more patient, a little more capable of absorbing my energy, I will take more care of you.

Just a few days ago I was going to call you one night as a guest medium, but Arup informed me that, "The first time you called Asang as a guest medium, for many days she was almost in a state of craziness, so please don't call her so soon." So I had to drop the idea.

If you are ready, you can come tonight! But then don't get too insane for many days. Try to absorb me. The more capable you become, the more I will confuse you till nothing is left to confuse, till the mind is completely gone and there is nobody to confuse.

That's what happens to my disciples who have been here long enough. Now, whatsoever I say, they listen joyously without making any comparison, without making any judgment, without any evaluation. They don't think of what I said yesterday, because if they think of that they start becoming confused. So they live in the moment with me. I live in the moment, and once you have understood how to live, you will also live in the moment with me. And then there is no confusion, then there is all clarity. And clarity is innocence and clarity is freedom.

Question 5

Beloved Master,

What is your dogma?

Peter, I believe you must be a tourist here; otherwise you cannot ask such a question. I don't have any dogma. In the first place I don't like dogs at all! And 'dogma' means mother of dogs! Neither do I like any sonofabitch, nor do I like any mother of dogs! There are Christian dogmas and Hindu dogmas and Mohammedan dogmas, and what do they do? They go on barking at each other! I don't have any dogma at all. Even my kids understand it here, my small sannyasins. You can ask them.

Upachara has informed me:

Just heard on the steps in front of the office. Five sannyasin kids are having a serious talk. One of them says, "Osho is not even a sannyasin!"

Enough for today.

John Nguyen

Dhammapada Vol. 12

Thursday, August 24, 2017

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