Tale 66 ~ 100 Tales For 10,000 Buddhas

By and by, people have started to understand us. My office people don’t give me any funny looks. Some have started reading Osho’s books and are coming to listen to His discourses also. The whole atmosphere has changed. My boss is no longer angry at me. On the contrary, he helps in whatever way possible.

Morning discourses are arranged in Patkar Hall for eighteen days from 8:30 to 10:00am. Osho is going to speak on Mahavira. My office starts at 9:00am and I have no leave to my credit. I feel desperate and go to see Osho. I tell Osho about my office timings and ask Him what to do. He is never in favor of resigning my job.

He asks me, “What is the name of your boss and how does he look?”

I tell Him the name and describe his personality. I don’t understand at all what Hi is up to. He closes His eyes for a couple of minutes and then tells me to inform my boss that I will be coming at 10:30 for eighteen days. I am surprised. It looks impossible. I tell Osho, “It won’t work. We have a time card punching system in the office. Only one minute late is allowed.” Listening to this, Osho again repeats the same message and asks me to do what Hi is saying.

I go to the office, working out how to put it to my boss. I know him as a very strict man of discipline in the office. My mind says, “He will think that I have lost my sanity, asking for such a concession.”

Somehow, I gather courage and go to see him. He greets me with a smile on his face, which is very unusual, and asks me what he can do for me. Hesitantly, I ask him if I can come one hour late in the morning and work one hour more in the evening for a few days. To my great astonishment, he says he has seen the advertisement in the paper and knows that Osho speaking from 8:30 to 10:00 every morning for eighteen days. Then he asks me, “How will you manage to reach by 10:00 in the office?” I tell him, “I will leave the discourse a little early and will manage to reach by taxi.”

He laughs and says, “There is no need to leave the discourse early. You can come by 10:30 and don’t punch your time card. I will take care of it and don’t sit late also.”

I can’t believe my ears! What a miracle! I am sure that Osho has done some telepathy with this man which I can’t conceive.

When I tell Osho about this, he laughs and does not comment on it. I think He is not in favor of making any gossip about His miraculous powers.

Osho Stories ~ Trust

"A man just got married and was returning home with his wife. They were crossing a lake in a boat when suddenly a great storm arose. The man was a warrior, but the woman became very much afraid because it seemed almost hopeless -- THE BOAT WAS SMALL AND THE STORM WAS REALLY HUGE, AND ANY MOMENT THEY WERE GOING TO BE DROWNED. But the man sat silently, calm and quiet, as if nothing was happening.

The woman was trembling and she said, "Are you not afraid? This may be our last moment of life! IT DOESN'T SEEM THAT WE WILL BE ABLE TO REACH THE OTHER SHORE. Only some miracle can save us, otherwise death is certain. Are you not afraid? Are you mad or something? Are you a stone or something?"

THE MAN LAUGHED AND TOOK THE SWORD OUT OF ITS SHEATH. The woman was even more puzzled -- what he is doing? Then he brought the naked sword close to the woman's neck -- so close that just a small gap was there, it was almost touching her neck.

He said, "ARE YOU AFRAID?"

She started to giggle and laugh and said, "WHY SHOULD I BE AFRAID? If the sword is in your hands, why should I be afraid? I know you love me."

He put the sword back and said, "This is my answer. I know God loves me, and the sword is in His hands, and the storm is in His hands -- so WHATSOEVER IS GOING TO HAPPEN IS GOING TO BE GOOD. If we survive, good; if we don't survive, good -- because EVERYTHING IS IN HIS HANDS, AND HE CANNOT DO ANYTHING WRONG."

This is the trust one needs to imbibe. SUCH TREMENDOUS TRUST IS CAPABLE OF TRANSFORMING YOUR WHOLE LIFE! And ONLY such tremendous trust is capable of transforming your life -- less than that won't do."

~ Osho

Osho – Just giving and giving and giving is insulting and humiliating

Osho – I have a friend in Jabalpur, who is the richest man in that state, and the biggest manufacturer of beedies in the whole world. He used to come here, he used to come to my camps, and then he became a minister. Then he started becoming afraid of me. All politicians are afraid of me — and I am not even going to touch them; they are untouchables to me! They are unnecessarily afraid.
But I can understand their fear. Anybody coming to me will lose his votes. The public, the crowd, is not going to support him if they see him entering the Gateless Gate. Since he became a minister he disappeared. Otherwise he used to travel with me ….
Once, traveling in an air-conditioned coach, he told me his heart, which was troubling him very much. He had been seeing me for years and he had never told me. People don’t want to share their misery, they hide it. They cover their wounds, and by covering the wounds they create cancers.
But sometimes it happens, particularly in railway trains or in airplanes, people become more intimate. Strange … even with strangers, you don’t know who the person is — the next station he will get down and perhaps you will never see him again — and you start telling him your most secret things you have not told even your wife, not even your mistress!
He told me, “I have been suffering from one thing, and I cannot find any solution. Perhaps you can be of some help.”
I said, “Open your heart, just let me see the wound. Tell me what the problem is.”
He said, “The problem is that I was born in a poor family, then I was adopted by a super-rich family because they had no son. I was a faraway relative, but seeing possibilities they adopted me, they educated me. Now they are dead, and I am the sole owner of a great empire. Because I have so much money, I have raised my old family also to be very rich, my brothers, my cousin-brothers, my friends. The people I knew I have helped as much as possible. Whatever they wanted … they all have beautiful cars, they all have beautiful houses, they have beautiful businesses, very prosperous, because I have so much.
“But one thing is strange: they are all against me. Even if I am sick, nobody comes to see me. It hurts me very much. I have done everything in my power to help them and they have all turned their backs on me.”
I said, “It is not a difficult problem. It is very simple. Have you ever received anything from them?”
He said, “No, I don’t need to.”
I said, “That is not the problem. By giving to them, you have insulted them. You don’t understand the subtle psychology. By giving to them — always giving, a one-way traffic — you have never allowed simple things. You could have asked one of your friends to whom you have given millions of rupees, `I was passing by the side of your house and I saw such beautiful roses. Can you bring a few to me? I will be so grateful.’ And immediately that man would have become your friend. He can also give something to you. He can be equal.
“When you were sick, you could have phoned anybody whom you have helped: `I am feeling very sick and I have been remembering you so much. You must be busy, but find just five minutes to come and sit by my side. One never knows whether I will survive or not ….’ That man would have come, putting everything aside, and would have felt immensely friendly towards you because you remembered him, you called him in your deepest moment of need — only him and nobody else. He would have felt so gratified.
“But you have never done that. Just giving and giving and giving is insulting and humiliating. Your ego, your pride — this is your unconsciousness. You thought you were doing great service to your friends and family and acquaintances, but why have they all become your enemies if the service was so great? They have seen in your eyes that you give, but you give from a very high superiority. They are all inferiors, receivers.”
He said, “I never thought about it.”
I said, “This is the state of the whole of humanity — the unconscious humanity. They never understand that receiving is far greater, it needs a far greater heart than giving. Anybody can give. For receiving you need such a consciousness that cannot be humiliated. You need such greatness of being that `Who can insult me?’”
Source – Osho Book “Christianity: The Deadliest Poison and Zen: The Antidote to All Poisons”

Osho – All that you put into the lives of others comes back into your own

Question – Beloved Osho, someone once told me the saying: “all that you put into the lives of others comes back into your own. “it has been with me ever since, and i feel it to be true. Can you please talk about this?
it keeps coming up a lot for me.
Osho – Prem Kendra, the saying is true. All that you put into the lives of others comes back into your own, for the simple reason that the other is not so “other” as you think. No man is an island; we are all joined together.
On the surface both my hands seem to be separate. But if I hit my right hand with the left hand, do you think the pain is going to be just confined to the right hand? The left hand is not separate. If the right hand suffers, sooner or later the left hand is going to suffer too. It is not possible to hurt someone and remain unhurt, because the other is not so other as he appears. Deep down in the roots we are one. So when you slap somebody’s face, you are slapping your
own face.
People like Jesus, when they say, “Love your enemy just as you love yourself,” are not just teaching ordinary morality. They are stating a very fundamental truth: the enemy is also part of you, as you are part of the enemy. Love the enemy as you love yourself.
Gautam Buddha used to say to his disciples, “After each meditation when you are feeling blissful, full of joy, peace, silence… shower and share your silence, your peace, your blissfulness with the whole of existence — with men, with women, with trees, with animals, with birds — with all that is, share it.
“It is not a question whether someone deserves it or not. The more you share it, the more you will get it. The farther your blessings reach, the more and more blessings will shower on you from all directions. Existence always gives you back more than you have given to it.”
One man who was a very great admirer of Gautam Buddha raised his hand and said, “There is one question. I can share my blessings, my joy, with the whole existence. Please just allow me one exception: I cannot share with my neighbor. He is so disgusting — the very idea of sharing my joy with him makes me sick.” And he said, “Just one exception I am asking. I am ready to share with all the animals, all the insects, all the birds, all the trees, everything — just that one neighbor who is so nasty. You don’t know about it; otherwise you yourself would have said, ‘You can have a few exceptions.’”
Buddha said to the man, “You don’t understand what I am saying. First you have to share your joy with your neighbor; only then you will be able to share your joy with the whole existence. If even your neighbor is not your neighbor, then how can the birds and the animals and the trees can be your friends and your neighbors? So you first practice just that exception — forget about the whole universe. If you can succeed in sharing your joy with your neighbor, there is no problem. You are already ready to share your joy with everybody else.
Perhaps in the same situation, Jesus may also have said, “Love your neighbor just as you love yourself.” It looks very strange that he makes these two statements: “Love your enemy just as yourself,” and “Love your neighbor just as yourself.” George Bernard Shaw joked about it and said, “It is because they are not two persons; they are the same person, the enemy and the neighbor. There is no need to make two statements. One statement will do, because they are not separate persons.”
Kendra, this is the essential of all religiousness: that we should be able to share unconditionally all that grows in our being, all the flowers and all the fragrance. To be miserly about it is dangerous. In the ordinary world, the economics is that if you give something to someone, that much less will be with you. And if you share everything with everybody, you will be a beggar. But in the higher economics of life, just the opposite law functions: if you hold things to yourself, you will destroy them. They are delicate. They need freedom. They need wings and they need to be allowed to go into the sky.
The more you give your love, your compassion, your blessing, your joy, your ecstasy, the more you will find that the whole existence has become so generous to you that streams of love and joy are running towards you from all directions. And once you have known the secret — that by giving you don’t lose, but you get more, a thousandfold more — your whole life structure goes through a transformation. But even in our so-called religious and spiritual life, people are as miserly as they are in the ordinary life. They don’t know that the laws of ordinary life are not applicable to the higher dimensions of being.
A famous story about a Zen nun is: She had a beautiful golden Buddha, a very artistic, aesthetic statue of Buddha, made of pure gold. And the nun used to carry the Buddha wherever she would go. Buddhist monks and nuns have to go on moving for eight months in the year, except the four months of rain. So from one temple, from one monastery to another…
She was staying in one of the temples of China — she had gone to travel to Chinese temples and monasteries and that temple has ten thousand statues of Buddha. It is a unique temple in the whole world. Ten thousand statues… almost the whole mountain has been cut into statues and made into a temple; perhaps it has taken centuries to build it. She was staying there.
And this had been her constant worry: Every morning when she worships her golden Buddha, she puts flowers, sweets, burns incense — but you cannot depend upon the wind, upon the breeze. The fragrance arising out of the burning incense may not reach the golden Buddha’s nose, it may move in any direction.
In that temple there were ten thousand other Buddhas, and the fragrance was going to other Buddhas’ noses. And this was intolerable; this was too much. She was feeling very hurt, that her own poor Buddha is not getting any incense, and all these vagabonds… “And my Buddha is golden and they are just stones. And after all my Buddha is MY Buddha.”
This is how the mind functions: it is so possessive, it cannot even see that they are all statues of the same man. Which nose is getting the incense does not matter — it is reaching the Buddha. But “MY Buddha” — the old possessive mind continues.
So she devised a small method: she brought a bamboo, a hollow bamboo, and cut it into a small piece. She will burn the incense, and put the bamboo on top of it. One side will take the incense smoke in, and the other side she will put on the nose of her golden Buddha — almost like making him smoke! But that created a problem: her Buddha’s nose became black. That disturbed her even more.
She asked the high priest of the temple, “What should I do? My poor Buddha’s nose has become black.”
He said, “But how did it happen?”
She said, “I feel very embarrassed to say, it is my own doing.” And then she explained the whole thing.
The priest laughed. He said, “All these are Buddhas here. One Buddha, ten thousand Buddhas — to whom it reaches does not matter. You should not be so miserly, so possessive. Buddha cannot be yours and cannot be mine. The nose of the Buddha has become black because of your possessiveness.”
And the priest said to her, “We are making each other’s faces black because of our possessiveness. If we could give without even thinking to whom it reaches… Because to whomever it reaches, is part of the same existence as we are part of — it reaches to us.”
Kendra, don’t go on thinking about it as a proverb that is true. You are saying, “It keeps coming up a lot for me.” It is not something to contemplate; it is something to do and to experience. Just make somebody joyful and see — your heart immediately becomes light. Let somebody laugh, and something of the laughter enters in you, becomes part of you. Let somebody be blissful… help somebody to enjoy life more totally, and immediate is the reward.
Existence is always cash. It does not depend on checks, drafts — it is always cash. Here, you do something and immediately comes the reward or the punishment. Rather than thinking about it, whether it is true or not, try it. It is one of the truest axioms for transforming your life.
In giving small things, people think of a thousand things. You just look at the beggars. If you are alone, moving on the road, the beggar will not ask you for anything, because he knows you are alone; your respectability is not at risk. He will catch hold of you in the marketplace, where you cannot refuse. If you refuse, everybody will say, “Don’t be so unkind, don’t be so cruel.”
Even the beggar knows the psychology: if the man is alone, he will give you a lesson, rather than giving you something: “You seem to be young, you seem to be healthy. You should be working — not begging.”
The same man in the society will immediately give, and give more. He will feel resentful, but he wants to impress the people around him that he is a very generous man, and the beggar knows. The beggar also knows that he has befooled you: you have not given to him or to his poverty, you have given to your respectability, to your generosity.
People say “We will give only to worthy people, to deserving people.” These are strategies for not giving. Otherwise who is unworthy? If existence accepts him, and the sun does not deny him light, and the moon does not deny him its beauty, and the roses do not deny him their fragrance… if the existence accepts him, who are you to think whether he is worthy or unworthy?
His being alive is enough proof that existence accepts him as he is. Any conditional giving is not a giving at all. Every giving has to be unconditional. And every giving has not to ask even gratitude in response. On the contrary, the giver should feel grateful that his gift has not been refused. Then giving becomes a tremendous ecstasy. This is how your heart grows, how your consciousness expands, how your darkness disappears, how you become more and more light, more and more close to the divine.
Anything that appeals to you, don’t let it remain in the mind; let it come into your actions. Only the action will give you the proof whether it is right or wrong. Arguments can prove what is wrong as right, what is right as wrong.
In Greece, before Socrates, there used to be a great school of thinkers called sophists. They were strange people. Their ideology was that there is nothing true, nothing untrue, nothing good, nothing bad — it all depends how sharp is your argument. Sophistry was the art of argumentation.
These sophists used to move from town to town in Greece to teach people the art of argumentation. And they were so certain, that they used to take half of their fee before, in advance, and half they would take when you won your first argument with someone.
Zeno, one the very sharpest minds the world has known, went to be a disciple in the school of sophists. He deposited half of the fee and said, “The other half I will never give.” The master said, “You will have to give the other half — because how are you going to find out whether you have become really argumentative or not?”
He said, “I am not going to argue with anybody. But that is not a question right now. First you teach me.”
Two years of teaching and the master could see that Zeno was a genius, far ahead of the master himself. His teaching was complete, and the master said, “Now you can go and argue with someone. Challenge anybody, and your victory is sure.”
But Zeno said, “I am not going to argue with anybody. Even if somebody says in the day that it is night, I will say, ‘Yes, it is night.’ I am not going to argue, because if I win in any argument, then I have to pay half the fee to you. That I am not going to do.”
Almost a year passed and he did not argue with anyone. The master even sent many people to provoke him to argumentation, but he would always be willing to accept whatever you said. You say, “God exists” and he says, “Yes, God exists.” You say, “God does not exist.” He will say, “God does not exist, I am in absolute agreement with you. The question of argument does not arise.”
Finally the master, who himself was a great arguer, thought of a strategy: he should bring him to the court, sue him, because he has not paid his half fee. His idea was, “If I win, he will have to pay the fee. If he wins, then outside the court I will say, ‘Now give me my fee; you have won your first argument.’”
But Zeno was also his disciple. He thought, “If he wins, I will tell the court that this was the agreement, that when I won my first argument, then I would pay him. Now I have lost my first argument: according to our agreement he has won the case, but I cannot give him the fee. “And if by chance I win, I know that outside the court he will ask, ‘Give me the fee.’ And I will say, ‘Come inside the court, because I cannot go against the law of the country. It will be a contempt of the court; the court has given me victory.’”
And the very thing happened. Zeno argued very well. And the master wanted him to win, so he argued in such a way that Zeno would win. The court decided that Zeno was victorious. Outside the court the master said, “Now give me my fee.”
Zeno said, “Then come inside the court: I will give you the fee if the judge says that I have failed in arguing. And I cannot go against the court — that will be a criminal act, a contempt of the court.” Zeno never paid the half fee.
Zeno himself became a great teacher in his own right, but he used to take the full fee in advance! He said, “I cannot commit the same mistake my master committed.”
Don’t make life a question of argumentation, or truth a question of arguments, or love a question of arguments, or joy a question of arguments. Live, experience, because that is the only way to know. Argument is not the way to know.
Knowing is only through experiencing.
A nun dies and goes to heaven. St. Peter says to her, “I’m sure you have led a virtuous life, Sister, but before I can let you into heaven, you must answer one question. The question is: what were Eve’s first words to Adam?”
“Boy,” says the nun, “that’s a hard one.”
“That’s right!” says St. Peter.
Don’t make life a question-answer game. Make it more authentic, and anything that feels right to you, try to experiment with it. There are millions of people who know what is right, millions of people who know what is good, millions of people who know what has to be done. But they just know, they never try to transform their knowing into action, into actuality. And unless your knowledge becomes your actual experience, it is simply a burden and not a freedom. It keeps you loaded with good thoughts, but good thoughts are useless. Unless they grow within you, they have roots in your heart, they are part of your being, they are simply wasting your time and your life.
Don’t be like the crowd that exists on the earth. They all have beautiful theories, beautiful dogmas, great philosophies, magnificent theologies, but all in their heads. They have not tasted anything, and they will die without actually knowing anything. Their whole lives will be simply a long desert where nothing grows, where nothing happens, where nothing is realized.
And I say unto you: Unless God is realized, your life has been a wastage. And that is your capacity, your potential — the realization of the divineness of existence. Just a little taste and your whole life will become full of such glory, such ecstasy, such splendor that you cannot even dream about it.
Source – Osho Book “The Hidden Splendor”

Osho – Life is a continuous evolution and you have to be constantly alert

Question – Osho, no passion, no jealousy, and so much loving. can it be true that this suffering is over?
Osho – Prem Turiya, THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST FUNDAMENTAL THINGS to be remembered, and you will have to be constantly aware: you cannot take it for granted that the suffering is over. If you take it for granted that the suffering is over, the suffering will be back by the back door. You have to be constantly alert and aware.
Yes, for the moment there is no jealousy, no passion, and yet so much loving — naturally. When there is no passion and no jealousy, all the energies move into the direction of love. It is the same energy that becomes passion, that becomes jealousy. When there is no jealousy, no passion, all the energy is available for the flowers of love to bloom. But don’t take it for granted. Don’t think that the suffering is over for ever.
Life is a continuous evolution and you have to be constantly alert, otherwise you can fall back into the old patterns very easily. And the old patterns have persisted so long, they have become so ingrained in your blood, in your bones, in your very marrow, that one moment of unconsciousness and you are back. You have to go on being aware.
Something beautiful is happening…much more is going to happen. One never knows how much more is possible. We are never aware of our potential unless it becomes actual. You have seen a beautiful space of non-jealous love. Passion is a kind of fever and it consumes much energy. Fever naturally consumes energy — and passion is fever. When passion disappears, compassion arises. And compassion is cool. Passion is hot, it burns you. Compassion is cool — not cold, remember. Hatred is cold, lust is hot. Exactly between the two is the golden mean, neither hot nor cold. Then you are in a state of cool warmth. Very paradoxical it seems — cool warmth. It is not hot, but it is warm; it is not cold, but it is cool.
And the real flower of love opens up only in that climate of warmth-coolness. A warm coolness is the right climate for the lotus of love to blossom. But don’t take it for granted. Never take anything for granted! Each moment you have to
conquer it again and again. Life is a continuous conquest. It is not that once and for all it is settled and then you can fall asleep and stay unconscious and there is no worry left. Again you will be back in the same rut.
Turiya, I am happy — I have been watching you. You are looking both warm and cool. It is a non-ending process. Be alert, be watchful. Don’t destroy this beautiful flower that is growing in you. When you have something precious you have to be more aware. When you have nothing to lose you can be unconscious, you can fall asleep; there is no problem. But when you have something to lose — and this is something precious — be more conscious, be more alert. You have discovered a treasure.
Source – Osho Book “Ah This”

Osho on Comparison and Misery – Comparison always brings misery

Question – Beloved Osho, everybody around is blissing out and this is the first time it is not happening to me. I want to feel you again and get lost. Right now, the connection is like a fragile, thin thread felt in some rare silent moments or shown by my tears. I’m still full of fear and also getting older. You gave me the name pravira — do i still have a chance this lifetime?
Osho – The chance to be transformed remains with you to the very last breath of your life. But the problem with you is that you are more concerned that others are being so blissful, that so much is happening to them, and you are comparing.
Comparison always brings misery, and misery becomes a great hindrance for anything to happen to you. So the first thing is: if it is happening to many people, drop the old habit of comparing and being jealous. On the contrary, make it a point that “If it is happening to so many people, it is going to happen to me also. Because they are just like me.”
We are all human beings. Nobody is superior and nobody is inferior. If it is not happening to you, you must be creating barriers so it cannot happen. The first barrier is comparison. The second barrier is… you say, “I want to feel you again…” The moment you start desiring something, desperately longing for something, your very desiring and longing becomes a barrier.
It is something to be understood by everybody: when people come to me for the first time, they don’t have any expectations, and things are very easy. Miracles are triggered in their being. But the next time they come to me, they come with expectations. Now the whole psychological set-up has changed: first they had come without any expectations, just available, just to see whether something happens or not. Now they come with a determined desire that it should happen. It has happened before, why is it not happening now?
It has happened before because you were in a totally different space. You were not desiring it; it happened in your innocence. Now you are no longer innocent — you are full of desire, full of wanting. And with desire and wanting there is comparison on the side, that “It is happening to others.” So you are creating misery around yourself. There is no need to compare, for one thing. You should rejoice that it is happening to so many people. They are also part of us. If it is happening to them, you should join the dance.
Rather than being in competition and hiding in a corner with tears because it is happening to everybody; everybody is dancing… who is preventing you? Join the dance! And if you want to cry, let the tears be of joy that so many people are happy — even if you are not happy, then too, it is something to be rejoiced. Rejoice for others. And drop the idea that it should happen to you again. The moment you drop the idea, it will start happening because you are again innocent.
It is something that perhaps almost everybody must have felt: There are times when you remember somebody’s name but you cannot say it. You say, “It is just on the tip of my tongue! I know him, I know his name. I know that I know…” But what is the problem? Then why don’t you say it? You say it is just on the tip of the tongue — just push it out a little! But the more you try, the more it becomes difficult. It can drive you crazy because you know… you know that you know, it is on the tip of the tongue and my god, what has happened?
But tired with the effort, you go into the garden, start watering the plants and suddenly it is there. When you were trying, it was not there. When you forget all about it and start doing something else, suddenly it is there. There is a deep psychological fact in it: When you are tense and trying hard to remember something, your consciousness becomes very narrow. And in that narrow space, the name that you want to remember… you feel it is there but it is being hindered by many other things, other memories. And the passage has become so narrow that it cannot get out of that passage.
You forget about it; you start doing something else. Your consciousness relaxes. It becomes wider, the narrowness is gone. And with a wide consciousness, the name can find a way out. With a narrow consciousness, it is very difficult — so many other memories, so many other names are hindering the way. The same happens with blissfulness, silence, peace, joy. You have known it, and because you have known it, you want to know it again. Now it has become a desire, and you are tense that it is not happening and everybody else is enjoying. So you are full of tears, you think something has gone wrong.
Nothing has gone wrong; you just have to understand. Drop the desire, so that you are again back in the same space in which it happened before — there was no desire — and join the dance, join the song.
Blissfulness is very contagious. If you join the people who are joyous, you will suddenly feel that your own joy, which was asleep, has awakened. And then tears are not wrong — you can dance, you can sing, and you can have tears of joy.
But tears of misery… and particularly in this place — you can go to any church. Whenever you want to be miserable, the churches are basically meant for that. Entering a church you suddenly become sad. You cannot laugh in the church, you cannot dance. And look at poor Jesus, hanging on the cross. Just seeing him and his long, British face… I have always wondered why he was born in Judea. England was the right place! I don’t think that he ever laughed in his life, he was so serious…
And naturally, you cannot expect a man to laugh when you are crucifying him. Even the sculptors and the painters cannot paint him laughing, otherwise it will look so absurd — “Is it a joke? Is it a real cross?” So he is, poor fellow, keeping his face very serious — in tune with the cross. The whole atmosphere in the church is created by Jesus and his crucifixion. So whenever you want to be miserable… once in a while, one enjoys being miserable, it feels good. Go to some Catholic church. Weep and cry — that is allowed. Just don’t laugh in between. Don’t even smile.
Because the American government is pressuring the Indian government that sannyasins from other countries should not reach me, I have told my sannyasins, “Use all the colors. It was only a device; it has worked. In five years we made the movement international. Now there is no need.”
But whenever you apply for a visa, be very serious. Be Catholic! You can even have Jesus Christ on the cross hanging around your neck — they will not suspect that you could be my sannyasin. But if you look joyous, smiling, happy, blissful — feeling great that you are going back to your master — they will prevent you. Just pretend a little bit.
You are saying, Pravira, “I am still full of fear, and also getting older.” In getting older, there is no problem — everybody gets older. Since the day you were born, you have been getting older. It is not a new problem.
Just understand one thing: getting older is a natural phenomenon. Let it happen — you cannot prevent it. Grow up. That is not natural; that needs your conscious effort to be silent, to be peaceful, to be joyful. Then getting older is one thing, and growing up is a different thing. Getting older is horizontal and growing up is vertical.
And I have given you the name “Pravira”. Pravira means one who is very courageous. And the greatest courage in life is to live totally, in spite of all the priests and all the people who want you not to be joyous, not to be living totally.
And as far as you are asking, “Do I still have a chance this lifetime?” I cannot say anything about this lifetime but I can say you have the chance just now. Why postpone it for the lifetime? Because the older you get, the less is the possibility of being dead. Have you ever thought about it? At the age of ninety, very few people die. At the age of a hundred, even less people die. At the age of a hundred and twenty, nobody dies. So getting older is not a problem. People die at seventy, seventy-five, and then the number starts getting less and less. By the time they have made the century, then they don’t die.
So don’t be worried about getting older. Just be concerned with this moment, and this space that is being made available to you. And I still say you are courageous enough to take the jump. Drop your desire, drop your competition. Start singing and dancing, and suddenly you will find the climate has changed. The spring has come to you.
But it always comes when you are not asking for it.
Existence gives you everything; just don’t ask.
It gives only to the emperors, not to the beggars.
There are three big game hunters in the jungle in Africa: an American, an Italian and a Polishman. Suddenly they are captured by cannibals and brought before the chief. The chief tells them, “By tribal custom, I am required to allow each of you a chance to escape. And I have to give you any weapon of your choice. However, I must warn you: If we catch you, we are going to skin you and make a canoe out of you.”
Before they even get a chance to get their breath, the chief points to the American and asks, “You are first. What do you want?”
The American says, “I want a gun.”
The chief hands him a gun and the American takes off into the jungle. Well, pretty soon the gun runs out of bullets and the natives catch up to him. They shoot him with poison darts and within five minutes they skin him and make a canoe out of him. The chief points to the Italian. “You are next. What do you want?”
The Italian says, “I want a horse.”
The chief looks at him and says, “Well, that’s not really a weapon but if you want a horse, I will give you a horse.” So the Italian rides off into the jungle. However, he is very quickly surrounded by a thousand natives on all sides. The natives shoot him with poison darts, skin him and make a canoe out of him.
Finally, the chief looks at the Polish guy. “What do you want?”
The Polish guy says, “I want a fork.”
“A fork?” asks the chief. “What do you want a fork for?”
“Look,” said the Polish guy, “you said I could have anything I wanted. Now give me a fork, alright?”
“Okay, okay,” says the chief, “here is a fork.”
Immediately the Polish guy takes the fork and starts stabbing himself all over.
The chief stares at him and exclaims, “What are you doing?”
The Polish guy laughs at him and says, “You are not going to make a canoe out of me!”
Just a little intelligence… and that much intelligence you can find even in a Polack. And I certainly believe that you are not a Polack. You must have more intelligence. Don’t destroy yourself unnecessarily because others are happy, because so much is happening to them and you are tense because something has happened to you before and you want it to happen again.
Something much more beautiful will happen to you if you can drop this tension and this desire and this competition.
Source – Osho Book “The Hidden Splendor”

Osho – Sometimes when I see you in lecture I just feel angry against you

[A sannyasin says: Sometimes when I see you in lecture I just feel angry against you.]
Osho – These things are natural. If you love me, you will sometimes be angry too. You cannot only love. When I accept your love I am also accepting your anger. You don’t have pure love, so how can you offer it to me? Your love is mixed with all kinds of ugly things. When I initiate you into sannyas, I initiate you with all these possibilities: that you will be angry, that you will hate me, that you will think against me, that you will do this and that – all possibilities.
To accept a disciple is not an easy task, because you are accepting a bundle of so many problems. A disciple is not all sweet. If he was all sweet, why should he be a disciple? He carries many bitternesses in him; he will impose and project those bitternesses on the master. The master will become a screen and you will project all kinds of things on him – good and bad both. Sometimes it will be a great experience and you will move into heights, and sometimes you will be falling into valleys of negativity. But this is natural; nothing to be condemned in it.
That time you went thinking to come back – this time you are going thinking not to come; both are perfect. Neither that remained forever nor is this going to remain forever. All passes. By the time you have reached home, you may start feeling love for me again. And this will happen many times – it is a wheel: many times you will come close and you will go far away, and come close and go far away. Slowly slowly you will see the whole absurdity of your mind; then one day you simply drop the whole mind. But that happens only later on.
When for the first time somebody becomes a sannyasin, he is enchanted he is enchanted by my presence. But he has forgotten his own personality. It is like falling in love with a man or a woman: when you fall in love you don’t think about your faults, your limitations. You simply see the beauty of the woman; you don’t think about yourself. But if you start living with the woman, all your faults and all your limitations and your anger and your hatred and jealousy and possessiveness are going to surface. Then you will be surprised – where has that love disappeared to? Where are those beautiful days of the honeymoon? They are all gone and there is only misery; and you had never thought about it.
When you fall in love with me, you are simply thinking of me; you have not thought about yourself. But sooner or later you will have to think about yourself. If you don’t, I will force you to think about yourself. I will have to throw you back to yourself, and when you see who you are, where you are, all these things are bound to arise and disturb.
But all is good – this too is perfectly good. So what? – this time you are going in a different mood. This time you are moving back in the night, that time you moved in the day. But the day is gone, so the night will go; the day will come again and the night will fall – unless you decide one day to drop all kinds of moods and just be with me without any mood between me and you, neither love nor hate. Then the disciple has really come to the master, when there is neither love nor hate. That is total surrender. Love cannot be total surrender, because love has to imply the hate in itself. It is a double-bind; hate is always intrinsic in it. When one day you come and you surrender all moods… and remember, good moods also have to be surrendered.
What do people go on doing? They go on doing one thing: the positive is good, it is so sweet, so they want to have it, and the negative is bitter and they don’t want to have it. But this is the whole problem of life. It is not only with a master; it is everywhere: you choose only half. Then who is going to have the other half? – and it comes in the same package. It cannot be divided; you have to choose that too. If you choose at all, you have to choose both, otherwise don’t choose. Then they both disappear. Either they are both together or they both disappear, but you cannot divide.
Slowly slowly you will see the point: in the beginning a disciple comes through love and then one day the wheel turns and he hates, he is angry, he protests and he resists. Finally, the awareness happens that you cannot relate through love, otherwise hate is bound to be there. Then the disciple leaves both. Then there is nothing between the disciple and the master – not even love, because even love is a disturbance. The disciple is simply there in the presence, with no expectation, with no desire. It has a great beauty in it.
That day real initiation happens, and after that day there is no change; one has come to the point of no return. That will also come if you can wait, if you can be patient. If you can’t wait, if you can’t be patient, you miss this opportunity. So don’t be worried.
And remember one thing more: never take any decision too early. Wait, just remember that this will pass, this will go away. The problem only arises when people take a decision when they are negative. Then they start thinking ’Leave sannyas, forget all about it.’ If you take a decision when you are negative, then you miss the opportunity, you close the door. Then it will become very very difficult for you to come back. Your ego will feel hurt. Now what to say and how to go back? And it happens every day…. There are a few sannyasins who leave sannyas when they are angry – they will throw the mala into the sea – but then the mood passes and they start repenting. Then it becomes very difficult for them to come because they feel guilty, and even if they come, the guilt lingers on. To ask for sannyas again looks as if you are asking too much; you have misbehaved. And then they have to find explanations.
One sannyasin just wrote a few days before…. He runs a centre and he called all the sannyasins of the area for a meeting. Some sannyasins criticised him very much saying that his way of running the centre was wrong, that through the way he was doing things Osho’s presence was not felt in the centre at all.
He became very angry. He went to the sea, and he heard an inner voice ’Throw the mala into the sea.’ So he threw the mala into the sea. Then he heard another voice ’Now throw yourself!’ That he didn’t do. (laughter) Now he writes to me that he could not do that. But then he should not have done the first either! If you are not courageous enough to follow the inner voice… if it is really the inner voice you should follow it. But to throw the mala is so easy – to throw yourself is risky.
So now he is worried, feeling guilty. Now he wants to come and is afraid that he has done something wrong. Wait. The negative moment comes – wait and watch and it will go. And finally one has to remain available for the ultimate, when both can be dropped. Then you are with me. Then it is no more a relationship and there is no possibility of its breaking because it is no more a relationship. It is communion – it is no more a communication.
Source – Osho Book “The Madman’s Guide to Enlightenment”

Osho on Jealousy – What I say will not become an experience for you unless YOU experience it

Question – You speak a lot about the ugliness of jealousy. yes, it is quite ugly, but any suggestions to us sufferers of the disease who aren’t enlightened on how to diminish it?
Osho – First, diminishing it is not going to help. You can diminish it to such proportions that it will almost become invisible, but that is not going to help. Diminishing simply means that you are throwing it into the unconscious and it goes into your basement of being more and more deeply. It becomes invisible. You may not be able to see it, but it will go on working from the back, it will go on pulling your strings from the back. It will become more subtle. Please don’t try to diminish it.
The first thing to remember: rather than diminish it, magnify it so you can see the whole of it. That is the whole process of all the groups going on around here — Gestalt, Encounter, Psychodrama. The whole process is that whatsoever the problem is, please don’t diminish it but magnify it. Bring it totally as it is — even exaggerate it so that you can see every detail of it.
Down the centuries in the past, jealousy, anger, sadness, this and that, all have been repressed. The effort was to diminish it. No, a seed is a diminished tree, but a seed is tremendously powerful. A seed can at any time again produce a tree. The right situation, the right season… and the tree will again sprout. You can diminish your jealousy, it can become just a seed, and you will not be able to see it the tree has disappeared, but it is there.
Diminishing is not the right process. That’s what you have been doing, that’s what you have done to your life: you have diminished everything. And one thing more. When you diminish jealousy, your love will be diminished alongside, because your love and jealousy are so much entangled with each other. If you diminish your sadness, your happiness will be diminished, because your happiness and sadness are so much together. If you diminish your hate, your love will disappear — that’s what has happened. You have been taught not to hate and the total result is that you have become incapable of love.
No, please don’t diminish anything. That is not the way. Rather, magnify, exaggerate, bring it to its total blossoming and then see it — every detail of it, every minute detail of it. In that very awareness, in that very seeing, you will become capable of transcending it and then there will be no need to do anything about it.
The second thing: you say ‘You speak a lot about the ugliness of jealousy. Yes, it is ugly…’. No, you don’t know. You are simply repeating what I have been saying. If you know it is quite ugly, in that very knowing it will disappear. You don’t know. You have listened to me, you have listened to Jesus, you have listened to Buddha and you have gathered opinions. You don’t know. It is not your own feel that jealousy is ugly. If it is your own feel, why should you carry it? It is not an easy thing, it takes a lot of investment. To be jealous is a very difficult thing: it needs a lot of effort on your part, a lot of involvement. It is so destructive of your own self that if it is ugly and you have known the ugliness of it, you cannot carry it for a single moment. But listening to me you become knowledgeable.
I have heard… ‘You can’t come in here’ the worried mother warned ‘my son is sick.’
‘I want to catch your son’s measles’ the man said ‘because if I kissed the nurse she’d get it. She would kiss the doctor and he’d get it. The doctor would kiss my wife and she’d get it. My wife would kiss the landlord and that’s the guy I’m after.’
It is a great investment, a great effort and a very complex phenomenon. And finally, it may destroy. It may not destroy others — it certainly destroys you; it is suicidal. Not only that it is ugly, it is poisonous; it is suicidal, it is killing yourself every day, slowly, slowly.
See the fact of it. Don’t just become knowledgeable. What I say will not become an experience for you unless YOU experience it. And what is the way to experience it? The way is to bring it in front of you. It is hiding behind you. Don’t just become knowledgeable. What I say will not become an experience for you unless YOU experience it. And what is the way to experience it? The way is to bring it in front of you. It is hiding behind you.
Don’t repress it, express it. Sit in your room, close the doors, bring your jealousy into focus. Watch it, see it, let it take as strong a flame as possible. Let it become a strong flame, burn into it and see what it is. And don’t from the very beginning say that this is ugly, because that very idea that this is ugly will repress it, will not allow it total expression. No opinions! Just try to see the existential effect of what jealousy is, the existential fact.
No interpretations, no ideologies! Forget Buddhas and work, forget me. Just let the jealousy be there. Look into it, look deeply into it and so do with anger, so do with sadness, hatred, possessiveness. And by and by you will see that just by seeing through things you start getting a transcendental feeling that you are Just a witness; the identity is broken. The identity is broken only when you encounter something within you.
Source – Osho Book “Tao: The Pathless Path, Vol 1″

Osho on jealousy – drop competition, drop jealousy

Question – Osho, What is jealousy? Does our jealousy show that we are very far from aloneness?
Osho – Society has exploited the individual in so many ways that it is almost impossible to believe. It has created devices so clever and cunning that it is almost impossible even to detect that they are devices. These devices are to exploit the individual, to destroy his integrity, to take away from him all that he has got – without even creating a suspicion in him, even a doubt about what is being done to him.
Jealousy is one of those tremendously powerful devices. From the very childhood every society, every culture, every religion teaches everybody comparison. And the child is bound to learn it. He is just a tabula rasa, a blank paper without any writing; so whatsoever the parents, the teachers, the priests write on him, he starts believing that is his destiny, it is his fate. Man comes into existence with all the doors open, all directions available; all the dimensions are for him to choose. But before he can choose, before he can be, before he can even feel his being, he is spoiled.
Jealousy is one of the greatest devices.
Look at it very closely: what does it mean?
Jealousy means to live in comparison.
Somebody is higher than you, somebody is lower than you. You are always somewhere on a middle rung of the ladder. Perhaps the ladder is a circle because nobody finds the end of the ladder. Everybody is stuck somewhere in the middle, everybody is in the middle. The ladder seems to be a round wheel.
Somebody is above you – that hurts. That keeps you fighting, struggling, moving by any means possible, because if you succeed nobody cares whether you have succeeded rightly or wrongly. Success proves you are right; failure proves that you are wrong. All that matters is success, so any means will do. The end proves the means right. So you need not bother about means – and nobody does bother. The whole question is how to climb on up the ladder. But you never come to the end of it. And whosoever is above you is creating jealousy in you, that he has succeeded and you have failed.
One would think that spending your whole life passing from one ladder to another ladder, always finding that somebody is still ahead of you – can’t you simply jump off the ladder? No, you cannot jump. The society is very cunning, very clever. It has polished, refined its methods over thousands of years. Why can’t you get out of the circle? – because somebody is below you and that gives you tremendous satisfaction.
Certainly, if you go on in this way – being jealous and competitive of everybody around you – how can you come to yourself? The world is too big, and there are so many people and you are in competition with everybody… and you are. Somebody has a beautiful face, somebody has beautiful hair, somebody has a beautiful, proportionate body, somebody has a great intellect, somebody is a painter, somebody is a poet…. How are you going to manage? All this, and you alone to compete? You will drive yourself nuts – and that is what all of humanity has done.
Drop competition, drop jealousy.
It is absolutely pointless.
It is absolutely a cunning device created by the priests so that you can never be yourself – because that is the only thing all the old religions are afraid of. If you are yourself you have found contentment, fulfillment, ecstasy.
source – osho book “from personality to individuality”

Osho on Jealousy in Relationship – if you drop jealousy, he may drop going with women

[A middle-aged sannyasin couple are present. The woman says she is jealous of her husband’s contact with other women.]
Osho – It is time now to drop it! It is good for children, not good for you now. Children can be forgiven – that much foolishness is acceptable in children, but not in you. It is pointless. The whole idea of possessiveness is pointless. Who can possess whom? And for what? It is such a small life; why create trouble? Jealousy will create trouble for you, why create trouble? Jealousy will create trouble for you, will create trouble for him, and it will make things very very tense.
Drop jealousy, you start by dropping it. It is a good situation. If [he] starts fooling around a little it is a great opportunity. Be thankful to him: he is giving you a chance! If he doesn’t fool around you will not know your jealousy and this jealousy will remain with you when you die, you will take it with you. It is better to be finished with it and be finished fast, because soon he will be becoming intelligent enough not to fool around – then?
And remember: if there is no situation about which to feel jealous, you may not feel it but it is there. And that is bad because it remains in your unconscious and goes on deciding your future lives. Jealousy is one of the diseases, canceric, it is cancer of the soul. So just be thankful to him, be grateful to him and go on telling him ’Fool around a little because if you don’t do that… I am lost’.
If he is being foolish, use it! Why should you be worried about it? And I am going to make him able to drop all that nonsense soon. It is time for him too! But you start. And there are surprises: if you drop jealousy, he may drop going with women; things are so interrelated. Because if you are not jealous then why bother? He may be simply going because it makes him feel powerful, powerful over you. Otherwise it is time for him too to see the futility of it all.
But my feeling is that you start. Drop it this very moment – don’t zigzag. If you zigzag time is wasted. Simply drop it. Seeing the futility and seeing the misery if it, just drop it, with no condition, unconditionally. Because dropping it is so blissful, carrying it is such a misery. So simply drop it and never take it up again. Old habits may sometimes catch hold of you but forget about it.
And you will be surprised – it will bring [him] also to his senses. Seeing that [you are] going so high in spirituality, he will forget all about those small things that he goes on doing. And he is doing nothing much – just talking to a woman or just chit-chatting, that’s all, but that will also disappear. When he sees that you are going so far ahead and he is lagging behind, he will start feeling jealous of you.
But you start – my feeling is that you can start it. And you are on that point from where you can drop it because you have suffered enough for it. I can immediately make him not do those things but that will not help – you will remain the same. This fire is good. Use it.
Source – Osho Book “Let Go!”

Osho on Anger and Creativity, Shift from anger to creativity

[A sannyasin says he never knows what to do with his anger. He has done many groups, but it still comes up.]
Osho – And do you think it is always anger or does something else hide behind it?…
It is not really anger. Only on the surface does it look like anger. Deep in your being you are so full of energy that you don’t know what to do with it; that’s why it takes the form of anger. You have great creative potential. It is creative energy which is not being rightly used; it becomes sour.
So you cannot change it by doing anything with anger. You can do Encounter and you can go into anger and you may enjoy it a little bit, a little release will come, but within days it will be gone and you will be the same again. If it were just anger then Encounter would have helped you immensely. It appears like anger; it is not. Anger is a negative energy and you are suffering with positive energy.
When you don’t know what to do with it you become angry; then you find excuses, any excuse will do. Those excuses are not very important either but you have to find an excuse: that you are angry because of this. You find a rationale for your anger, because without a reason for the anger you will not be able to forgive yourself; you will think you are going crazy. And really you are sitting on a great energy which can become a great ecstasy.
Put your energies into creativity. Forget about anger as a problem, ignore it. Channelise your energy towards more creativity. Pour yourself into something that you love. Rather than making anger your problem, let creativity be your object of meditation. Shift from anger to creativity and immediately you will see a great change arising in you. And tomorrow the same things will not feel like excuses for being angry because now energy is moving, is channelised, is being sublimated, is enjoying itself, its dance. Who cares about small things?
Out of one hundred people suffering from anger, near about fifty percent suffer from too much creative energy which they have not been able to put into use. Their problem is not anger, but they will go on thinking for their whole life that their problem is anger. Once a problem is diagnosed rightly, half of it is already solved.
So jump into work here, now put your whole energies into work and do at least one meditation: either Music in the night or Kundalini. And for two, three months simply watch; enjoy your work, don’t avoid any work.
Whatsoever comes on the way, pour your whole energy into it as much as you can, don’t withhold. Within three months you will see that anger has simply shrunk. Sometimes there may be flare-ups but that is not a problem. Right now it is a constant thing there, and it is just boiling energy. So this is your home now, you have come home. Put yourself into work: the problem will be gone.
Source – Osho Book “Believing the Impossible Before Breakfast”

Osho on Criticism – Your meditation should help you, not to criticize but to appreciate

Question – Beloved Osho, Why do I like so much to criticize people and complain against life?
Osho – Everybody likes it. To criticize people, to complain against people, gives you a good feeling. Criticizing others, you feel you are higher; complaining about others, you feel you are better. It is very ego fulfilling. And I am saying almost everybody does it. A few people do it out loud, a few people do it just within themselves, but the enjoyment is the same.
Only rarely are there people who don’t criticize, who don’t complain; those are the people who have dropped their egos. Then there is no point — why should you bother about it? It is none of your business, it no longer pays you. The ego was helped, nourished.
Hence my emphasis is: drop the ego. With the dropping of the ego, you will find almost a whole world disappearing. The whole world that was knit around the ego falls away completely, and you start seeing people in a new light. Perhaps the same person that you might have criticized in the same situation… instead of criticizing him you feel a great compassion for him, a great love, a deep desire to help. The same person and the same situation you would have complained against, now your eyes are different; you see things differently. Perhaps you will see that in his place in this situation you would have behaved in the same way, there is nothing to complain about.
Your outlook will become more human, more friendly… a deep acceptance of people as they are. You know only some part of them; you don’t know their whole life. And it is not good to decide from a small fragment about the whole person. That small fragment may be absolutely fitting and right in the whole context. But the situation is this: it is very easy to criticize. It does not need much intelligence.
I have often told a story of Turgenev’s, THE FOOL. In a village, a young man is very much disturbed because the whole village thinks he is an idiot. A wise man is passing through the village and the young man goes to him and says, “Help me! For twenty-four hours a day I am criticized; whatever I do I am criticized. If I don’t do anything I am criticized. If I speak I am criticized, if I don’t speak I am criticized. I don’t know any way out.”
The wise man said, “Don’t be worried….” He whispered the secret in his ear, and told him, “After one month I will come back. Meet me then and tell me how things are going.”
The young man went to the marketplace and started working on the formula given by the wise man.
Somebody said, “What a beautiful sunset!”
And he said, “What is beautiful in it? Prove what is beautiful in it!”
The man who had said it was a beautiful sunset was shocked. It was a beautiful sunset, but what was the proof? Is there any evidence? Do you know what beauty is? Everybody knows, but nobody can prove it.
The man remained silent. Everybody started laughing. And everybody said, “Strange, we used to think this man was an idiot. He is a great intellectual.”
This was the formula given by the old man: criticize anything; just roam about the village watching and when anybody says anything, does anything, criticize it. And particularly criticize things which are taken for granted and nobody questions. Somebody uses the word `God’ — immediately catch hold of him: “Where is God? What nonsense are you talking about?” Somebody talks about love — catch hold of him: “What is love? Where is love? Put it here in front of everybody!”
Somebody would say, “Love is in the heart.”
And he would say, “No, there is nothing in the heart. You can go and ask any surgeon — in the heart there is nothing like love. There is only a blood-circulating system which just pumps blood and purifies it. What does it have to do with love?”
After one month the old man came back. By that time the idiot had become a wise man. He touched the old man’s feet and he said, “You are great! That trick worked; now the whole village thinks I am a wise man.”
The old man said, “Just remember one thing: don’t assert anything from your side, so nobody can criticize you. Let them assert things; you just criticize and complain. And always be aggressive, never be defensive. Don’t take a defensive attitude. Attack, be aggressive, criticize each and everybody, and they will all worship you.”
And the idiot becomes the wise man. It does not need much intelligence to criticize or to complain. And cheaply you become wise; cheaply you become very intelligent.
One of my professors… He used to teach me logic. Within a few days I found out that even if I mentioned the name of a book which did not exist, a fictitious writer, he would immediately criticize it: “I have read that book, and there is nothing in it.”
I went to the vice-chancellor and I told him the whole thing. I said, “This is sheer dishonesty, because first he criticized those who have really written books. And seeing his attitude — that he criticizes everybody, I suspected that he had not read them but was just trying to show that he is so well-read, so wise, so intelligent. So I tried a few fictitious names and he criticized them also. He said: `There is nothing in those books. Those writers know nothing.’” And I said, “Those writers don’t exist. Those books don’t exist!”
The vice-chancellor said, “This is strange. I used to think that man was a responsible man.”
I said, “Call him in sometime, and I will drop in casually, by the way.” I wrote down three or four names of books which don’t exist, have never existed and will never exist, with writers who are just fictitious. I gave those names to the vice-chancellor and I told him, “I will come when he is here and we will talk, and just by the way you bring up these names and see what his reaction is.”
And he brought up those names and the professor immediately said, “Don’t waste time. Those are all ordinary, mediocre writers, and the books they have written have nothing original in them.”
The vice-chancellor could not believe his eyes. He said, “Do you know that these four books do not exist at all? Neither have these four men ever existed. Why are you criticizing them?”
And before the vice-chancellor, he became afraid. He said, “Never existed? How did I get the idea that….”
I said, “Don’t try to befool anybody, because I have been asking you about other books which have not existed. This was only a proof. I wanted to show the vice-chancellor that a professor should at least be sincere enough to acknowledge that he has not read a particular book.”
I said to the vice-chancellor, “What kind of respect does this man want from us? My feeling is that he has not read anything; he has simply read Turgenev’s story, THE FOOL.”
I had brought the book, and I read the story to the vice-chancellor. And I said, “This man is the idiot from this story. You should make him alert that if it happens again in the class, we are going to boycott him completely. Either he will have to find the book and prove…. He never even goes to the library!”
I had looked into all the records before I went to the vice-chancellor. The professor had never been to the library. Under his name — and he had been in the university for ten years — not a single book was issued. And this man was ready to criticize anybody.
I said, “A wise man, an intelligent man is always humble.”
Your question about why we are so ready to criticize, to complain is very simple. The psychology behind it is that this is the simplest way, the cheapest way to prove that you are somebody special, that you know more. But in fact you are simply proving that you are the idiot of Turgenev and nobody else.
Be humble in the world of wisdom. Before criticizing anybody, look into the fact from all directions, from all angles, from all possible viewpoints, and you will be surprised: there is very little that can be criticized or complained about. And if you pay that much attention, then whatever you criticize will be accepted, and accepted with gratitude because it is not to fulfill your ego; it is just to help the other person on the path. But you have to do so much work.
One of my professors had written his doctoral thesis on Shankara and Bradley. I told him, “I have read the thesis, and now I am studying everything possible about Shankara and Bradley before I say anything about your thesis.”
He said, “You are strange, because I have given my thesis to many professors and they have all given their opinions.”
I said, “I cannot give you my opinion in such a cheap way. I will look at all the sources you have looked into; I will look into other sources that you have not looked into.” And it took me almost six months to study Shankara and Bradley.
When I gave my opinion to him he said, “My God, it is good that you were not one of my examiners; otherwise, I would never have been able to get the doctorate. I worked on it for six years, and in six months you have gone through all the sources that I have referred to. You have even gone to other sources which I have not even heard of….”
I said, “Your treatise is juvenile, it is written by an amateur. Shankara and Bradley are very mature philosophers of the East and West. You have not paid enough respect to these two geniuses. You have done a clerical job. You have looked at a few books of Shankara, a few books of Bradley, taken a few pieces from here, from there, and your thesis was ready. Your thesis does not contribute a single original point. And unless a thesis contributes an original point, it does not deserve a doctorate; it is at the most a beautiful essay. You can publish it as a book, but not for a doctorate.” But he was a humble man; he accepted it.
He said, “You are right. I myself was feeling that I had not done them justice. Six years were not enough to cover Bradley’s whole life and Shankara’s whole life. These two are the very highest peaks of genius; six years are not enough. But nobody pointed it out to me, not even my examiners. The examiners will not point it out because to do that they would have had to read it, they would have had to go through the whole thing. Who bothers? In fact, perhaps some of their students gave me the marks and the examiners have not even looked at the thesis.”
Nobody is interested in praising anybody, in finding those qualities which everybody has… Nobody is ready to help those qualities grow; everybody is afraid — if all are growing, what about him? His whole concern is that his ego should go on becoming bigger, and the easier way is to criticize everybody, to complain against everything: Be negative, make negativity your very approach. And for this you don’t need intelligence, any idiot can do it.
But to be really critical, one has to be very compassionate, very loving. And one has to be ready to devote time and energy and intelligence. Then it is not criticism, then it is not inimical, it is not antagonistic; it is a friendly suggestion, a sympathetic approach. Everyone here should learn to be sympathetic. Your meditation should help you, not to criticize but to appreciate. And if you are intelligent enough, you can appreciate in such a way that whatever you wanted to criticize will be understood without being said.
Source – Osho Book “Beyond Enlightenment”

Osho on Jealousy – Is Jealousy yet another form of Cowardice?

Question – Beloved Osho, Is Jealousy yet another form of Cowardice?
Osho – Jealousy is very complicated. It has many ingredients in it. Cowardice also is one of them; egoistic attitudes is another; monopolistic desire — not an experience of love but only of possessiveness; a tendency to be competitive; a deep-rooted fear of being inferior…. So many things are involved in jealousy.
You love a person — at least you think you love a person…. If you really love, then jealousy is impossible. If you find the person loving somebody else, you will be happy: you love the person, and he is happy with somebody else; and all that you want is to make him happy. You will not feel jealous; on the contrary you will feel grateful to the person who has made your lover happy. You will feel a great friendliness.
But this is about true love, which is a rare variety. What exists in the name of love is just an idea. You “love” a person means you possess a person. You “love” a person means he cannot love anybody else. If he loves anybody else he is insulting you; he is proving that you are inferior, that there are better people, more lovable people than you are. It hurts the ego, it hurts your possessiveness, it hurts your monopolistic idea.
And basically it is cowardice, because you are not trying to face the facts about your love in a straightforward manner. It is not a question of your lover loving somebody else; the question is, do you love the person? And you are not brave enough to face that question. And that is the real question to be asked.
If I love the person then nothing matters.
Love allows freedom.
Love allows that whatever he feels like doing, he can do.
Whatever he feels to be blissful, it is his choice.
If you love the person, then you don’t interfere in his privacy. You leave that person’s privacy uninterfered with. You don’t try to trespass his inner being. You don’t want that he should say where he has been, why he is late in the night. That is not right at all.
It is his life: where he goes, and whether he comes late or not…. You have loved the person as he is — and this is the way he is. And you never try to interfere in his privacy. You don’t open his letters; you don’t look into his pockets, into his diary and note the phone numbers. You don’t try to find out some clue. That is all ugly.
You have to face it yourself.
If you don’t face it, that is cowardice.
And to hide it, you make so much of a tantrum of jealousy that you completely forget that it is only your cowardice. What was needed was to be very clear whether it is an idea that you love the man, or it is a reality. Reality has no problems; only ideas bring trouble because they are just superficial. Underneath there is so much rubbish that those ideas cannot help you. Any small thing and immediately trouble starts.
I cannot conceive that if two persons really love each other they will ever have any fight for any reason, that they will try to impose any idea on the other for any reason, that they will try to inhibit the other person from any action.
Love’s basic requirement is: “I accept the other person as he is.” And love never tries to change the person according to one’s own idea of them. You do not try to cut the person here and there and bring him to size — which is being done everywhere all over the world.
People who think they are lovers — they are continually harassing each other, trying to create the image that they want. They want the other person just as a puppet — and the strings should be in their hands. And the same is being done by the other person: he wants you to be a puppet, and the strings have to be in his hands. Now there is going to be continual conflict, misery, pain.
And one starts feeling a great wonder: why have poets been writing so many beautiful things about love? — because nothing seems to happen! It is only in the poetries. The reality is that most of the poets have never loved. They are in love with the idea of love, so they make beautiful poems, beautiful novels. Or perhaps they have loved, but failed so utterly that just to console themselves they create the polar opposite in their poetry.
For example, Leo Tolstoy was tortured by his wife for his whole life, even to the very end. The last day, she harassed him so much that he left the house at night and went to the station and died there on a bench. He was a count, and he had immense property and immense land and everything — but he lived like a poor man. The wife had control of everything.
She would not allow him even to have a friend, a male friend. She was so jealous that she would not allow him to read or write in front of her. He had to go out in the garden or in the fields to write; all his writing was done outside. Her jealousy was such that…, “When I am present you are more interested in your novel. This is an insult to me!”
And this man has written such beautiful books and such beautiful things about love, that if you didn’t know his life, you could not believe how it is possible. It is a compensation. In life he is missing it; he is putting it in the novels: in the novels he is creating the fantasy he would have liked his life to be, just to forget his life, its ugliness.
So either the poets have never loved and known, have never known the agony of it; or, if they have loved, they have known the agony of it and they wanted to know the ecstasy. So in their poetry you will find the ecstasy of love. But the truth is that the whole world is tortured unnecessarily.
Yes, it is cowardice that keeps you in torture. Just face the facts, whether you love a man or not. If you love, then there are no conditions to be put. If you don’t love, then who are you to put conditions?
Either way it is clear. If you love then there is no question of conditions: you love him as he is. If you don’t love, then too there is no problem: he is nobody to you; there is no question of putting conditions. He can do whatsoever he wants to do.
But one has to face one’s feelings in a very sincere and honest way. And that straightforward encounter of one’s feelings immediately shows you the path. Life is not difficult — we are making it so because we are cowards: we don’t see a thing which we know is there.
I had a friend; we were traveling together and the ticket checker came. I gave him my ticket, and my friend was looking in this pocket and that pocket, and was getting in great trouble.
I asked him, “Why don’t you look in this pocket — on the right side?”
He said, “That is my only hope! If it is not there, then the ticket is lost! So I am afraid to look in that pocket — first I look everywhere else. That will be the last.”
And that is the situation in life: we are not looking because we know that perhaps to face it will be a difficult task. But I know that it’s not difficult. It is always simple to face reality. And it makes you innocent; and unnecessary complexities don’t arise. Otherwise one goes on living in imagination, that one loves, that one can die for the other person.
You cannot even see the other person being happy with someone for a minute — and you think you can die for the other person! Just try to see what actually is in you for the other person — and jealousy will disappear. In most of the cases with jealousy, your love will also disappear. But it is good, because what is the point of having a love which is full of jealousy, which is not love?
If jealousy disappears and love still remains, then you have something solid in your life which is worth having.

Source – from Osho Book “Light on the Path”

Osho on Jealousy – Jealousy becomes destructive, Jealousy becomes violence

Osho – Jealousy is jealousy…. If you cannot have all, at least you can stop anybody else having it. Jealousy becomes destructive, jealousy becomes violence. And jealousy is the shadow of desire. Desire always compares and, because of comparison there is suffering. People waste their lives in desiring, in being jealous, in comparing, and the precious time is simply lost. Even if God gives you three wishes, you will do the same as Goldstein — because the Jew exists in everybody. Only a buddha is not a Jew; otherwise everybody else is.
The nature of desire is Jewish. It wants more, it is mad for more. And those who live in desire are bound to be victims of death. Only the person who understands the foolishness of desiring, of greed, of constantly longing for more, of jealousy, of comparison, one who becomes aware of all this nonsense and drops it, goes beyond death. He becomes unseen.

Osho on Nature of Desire and Jealousy, The nature of desire is Jewish

Osho -If you can become desireless, then death cannot have any sway over you. It is the desiring mind that is caught in the net of death, and we are all full of desires: desire for money, for power, for prestige, respectability — a thousand and one desires. Desires create greed, and greed creates competition, and competition creates jealousy. One thing leads to another, and we go on falling into the mess, into the turmoil of the world. It is a mad mad world, but the root cause of madness is desire.
Once you sow the seeds of desire…desire means to have more. You have a certain quantity of money, you would like to have double that. Desire means the longing for more. And nobody thinks twice that any quantitative change is not going to satisfy you. If you cannot be satisfied by ten thousand rupees, how can you be satisfied by twenty thousand rupees?
The rupees will be doubled. But if ten thousand rupees cannot give you any satisfaction, your satisfaction cannot be doubled; there has been no satisfaction in the first place. In fact, when you have ten thousand rupees you have a certain quantity of anxiety, fear — those anxieties will be doubled when you have twenty thousand rupees, trebled when you have thirty thousand rupees, and so on and so forth. You can go on multiplying….
And whatsoever you have, somebody will always be having more than that — it is a big world. Hence jealousy, and jealousy is the fever of the soul. Except meditation, there is no medicine for it. The physician can help you if your body is suffering from a fever, but only a master can help you, a buddha can help you, if you are suffering from the fever of the soul. Very few people are suffering from the physical fever, and almost everybody is suffering from the spiritual fever — jealousy.
Jealousy means somebody else has more than you have. And it is impossible to be the first in everything. You may have the largest amount of money in the world, but you may not have a beautiful face. And a beggar may make you jealous — his body, his face, his eyes, and you are jealous. A beggar can make an emperor jealous.
Napoleon was not very tall — he was only five feet five inches. I don’t see anything wrong in it; it’s perfectly alright — I am five feet five inches and I have never suffered because of it, because whether you are six feet or five feet your feet reach to the earth all the same! So where is the problem? If the five-foot person was hanging one foot above the earth, then there would have been a problem! But Napoleon suffered very much. He was continuously conscious of the fact that he was not tall. And, of course, he was amongst very tall people. The soldiers, the generals, they were all tall people and he was very short.
He used to stand on something higher…. Exactly the same was the case with the first prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru. He was also five-five — this five-five is something! And the last viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten, was very tall — Lady Mountbatten even taller. Now, when Lord Mountbatten gave him the oath of the first prime minister…you can see in the picture, those pictures are available everywhere: Nehru is standing on a step and Mountbatten is standing on the floor, just to look at least equal, if not taller than Mountbatten. Then too, he is not taller than Mountbatten, even standing on a step…a deep sense of inferiority.
Napoleon was continuously self-conscious. One day he was fixing a clock and his hand could not reach it. The clock was high on the wall. His bodyguard — and bodyguards are bound to be taller people, strong people — his bodyguard said, “Wait, I am higher than you, I will fix it.”
Napoleon was very angry and he said, “Stupid! Apologize! You are not higher than me, you are simply taller. Change your word. Higher? What do you mean?” He was very much offended. And the poor bodyguard was not meaning anything insulting to him — he was not even aware that saying “higher” is offensive. Now, Napoleon had everything, but the height was the problem.
It is very difficult to have everything of the world and be the first in everything. It is impossible! Then the jealousy persists, it continues. Somebody has more money than you, somebody has more health than you, somebody has more beauty than you, somebody has more intelligence than you…and you are constantly comparing. The desiring mind continues to compare.
Goldstein and Weinberg were in business together and having a bad time. One day Goldstein, while taking a stroll through the woods, was all of a sudden surprised by a real fairy godmother who said to him, “I will grant you three wishes, but remember, whatever you wish for, Weinberg will get double.”
On his way back Goldstein pondered, “I would not mind a spacious mansion.” And before he realized what was happening, there it was — his mansion. But at the same time he saw Weinberg across the road proudly viewing his two villas. Goldstein repressed his jealousy and went in to see his new home. As he walked into the bedroom, a second desire struck him: “I would not mind a woman like Sophia Loren.” And sure enough, there she was — a gorgeous piece looking just like Sophia Loren. But as he looked out of the bedroom window, he saw Weinberg on his balcony with two gorgeous women.
“Well,” he sighed as he thought of the fairy godmother, “you can cut off one of my balls!”
Jealousy is jealousy…. If you cannot have all, at least you can stop anybody else having it. Jealousy becomes destructive, jealousy becomes violence. And jealousy is the shadow of desire. Desire always compares and, because of comparison there is suffering. People waste their lives in desiring, in being jealous, in comparing, and the precious time is simply lost. Even if God gives you three wishes, you will do the same as Goldstein — because the Jew exists in everybody. Only a buddha is not a Jew; otherwise everybody else is.
The nature of desire is Jewish. It wants more, it is mad for more. And those who live in desire are bound to be victims of death. Only the person who understands the foolishness of desiring, of greed, of constantly longing for more, of jealousy, of comparison, one who becomes aware of all this nonsense and drops it, goes beyond death. He becomes unseen. Buddha uses a beautiful word. He says: AND
THEN, UNSEEN, ESCAPE THE KING OF DEATH.
Death can only see a person who lives in the garments of desire. Death can only see desire. If desire is dropped, you become invisible to death; death cannot touch you, because without desire you are simply pure consciousness and nothing else. You are no longer identified with the body or the mind. You simply know one thing, that you are a witness. Death cannot see you — you can see death.
Ordinarily, death can see you, you cannot see death — because desire is gross, can be seen by death. Consciousness is invisible, it is not matter — it is pure energy, it is light. YOU can see death, but death cannot see you. And to see death is again a great experience, a hilarious experience. One starts laughing when one sees death — death is so impotent.
Its power is not its own, its power is in your desiring mind. YOU give power to it. The more you desire, the more you are afraid of death. The more greedy you are, the more afraid you are. The more you have, naturally the more anxious you are — death will be coming and everything will be taken away.
Source: from Osho Book “Dhammapada Volume 2″

Osho – Jealousy Possessiveness – are all part of unrootedness

[A sannyasin, who is leaving says he’s feeling that, has always been separate from his body and that now he is getting more in touch. He goes up and down a lot – first feeling possessive and jealous and angry and then quite calm.... ]

Osho – Everything will change – just continue to meditate. The first basic thing is coming back to the body. If we are not in contact with our bodies we are not in contact with the earth. We are uprooted, we don’t have any roots, and without being rooted in the body nothing can be done, nothing at all. Once you get rooted in the body everything becomes possible.

These problems – jealousy, possessiveness – are all part of unrootedness. Because we are not rooted we are always afraid; because of that fear we become possessive, because of that fear we cannot trust anybody, so jealousy comes. In fact we cannot trust ourselves – that is the problem – and how can you trust yourself when you don’t have any roots in the earth? The trust comes when you have deep roots in the earth. Then, come whatsoever, you know that you will be able to stand it and you will be able to face it. Then you don’t cling to others – there is no need; you are enough alone.

So the first basic thing: don’t bring in other problems right now. The basic thing is that you start getting more and more rooted in the body. Feel the body more, enjoy action, go running in the morning and enjoy the body and the feel of running energy. Go swimming: enjoy the body and the river and the touch of water. Jog and dance and jump in the air and in the sun and let the body again start trembling with joy.

This has to be done first… and take as many deep breaths as possible. Once you get into the body, once you again become alive in the body, nine problems out of ten will disappear, and the remaining one we can tackle; that’s not a problem. This is one of the tricks how the society has made people alienated with themselves. It has cut your body, so you are just like a ghost in a machine. You are in the body and not yet in the body – just hovering around. You take the hand of your friend in your hand but it is just a dead hand in a dead hand – no feel, no poetry, no joy. You eat but you go on stuffing; the taste is lost.

You see but you don’t see the psychedelic existence as it is; you see dull colours, grey, dusty. You listen to music but just sound goes on falling; the music is missed. So for a few months enjoy anything that is concerned with the body: running, jogging, playing, jumping, dancing, singing, shouting in the mountains. Bring back your childhood! And you will start feeling that you are being born again. You will have the feel, exactly the same feel as the caterpillar has when it becomes a butterfly…. It is going to happen!

Source: from Osho Book “This is It”

Osho discourse on Jealousy, ugliness of jealousy

Question : You speak a lot about the ugliness of Jealousy. Yes, it is quite ugly, but any suggestions to us sufferers of the disease who aren’t Enlightened on how to diminish it?

Osho : First, diminishing it is not going to help. You can diminish it to such proportions that it will almost become invisible, but that is not going to help. Diminishing simply means that you are throwing it into the unconscious and it goes into your basement of being more and more deeply. It becomes invisible. You may not be able to see it, but it will go on working from the back, it will go on pulling your strings from the back. It will become more subtle.
Please don’t try to diminish it. The first thing to remember: rather than diminish it, magnify it so you can see the whole of it. That is the whole process of all the groups going on around here — Gestalt, Encounter, Psychodrama. The whole process is that whatsoever the problem is, please don’t diminish it but magnify it. Bring it totally as it is — even exaggerate it so that you can see every detail of it. Down the centuries in the past, jealousy, anger, sadness, this and that, all have been repressed. The effort was to diminish it.
No, a seed is a diminished tree, but a seed is tremendously powerful. A seed can at any time again produce a tree. The right situation, the right season… and the tree will again sprout. You can diminish your jealousy, it can become just a seed, and you will not be able to see it the tree has disappeared, but it is there.
Diminishing is not the right process. That’s what you have been doing, that’s what you have done to your life: you have diminished everything. And one thing more. When you diminish jealousy, your love will be diminished alongside, because your love and jealousy are so much entangled with each other. If you diminish your sadness, your happiness will be diminished, because your happiness and sadness are so much together. If you diminish your hate, your love will disappear — that’s what has happened. You have been taught not to hate and the total result is that you have become incapable of love.
No, please don’t diminish anything. That is not the way. Rather, magnify, exaggerate, bring it to its total blossoming and then see it — every detail of it, every minute detail of it. In that very awareness, in that very seeing, you will become capable of transcending it and then there will be no need to do anything about it.
The second thing: you say ‘You speak a lot about the ugliness of jealousy. Yes, it is ugly…’. No, you don’t know. You are simply repeating what I have been saying. If you know it is quite ugly, in that very knowing it will disappear. You don’t know. You have listened to me, you have listened to Jesus, you have listened to Buddha and you have gathered opinions.
You don’t know. It is not your own feel that jealousy is ugly. If it is your own feel, why should you carry it? It is not an easy thing, it takes a lot of investment. To be jealous is a very difficult thing: it needs a lot of effort on your part, a lot of involvement. It is so destructive of your own self that if it is ugly and you have known the ugliness of it, you cannot carry it for a single moment. But listening to me you become knowledgeable.
I have heard…
‘You can’t come in here’ the worried mother warned ‘my son is sick.’
‘I want to catch your son’s measles’ the man said ‘because if I kissed the nurse she’d get it. She would kiss the doctor and he’d get it. The doctor would kiss my wife and she’d get it. My wife would kiss the landlord and that’s the guy I’m after.’
It is a great investment, a great effort and a very complex phenomenon. And finally, it may destroy. It may not destroy others — it certainly destroys you; it is suicidal. Not only that it is ugly, it is poisonous; it is suicidal, it is killing yourself every day, slowly, slowly. See the fact of it. Don’t just become knowledgeable. What I say will not become an experience for you unless YOU experience it. And what is the way to experience it? The way is to bring it in front of you. It is hiding behind you.
Don’t just become knowledgeable. What I say will not become an experience for you unless YOU experience it. And what is the way to experience it? The way is to bring it in front of you. It is hiding behind you.
Don’t repress it, express it. Sit in your room, close the doors, bring your jealousy into focus. Watch it, see it, let it take as strong a flame as possible. Let it become a strong flame, burn into it and see what it is. And don’t from the very beginning say that this is ugly, because that very idea that this is ugly will repress it, will not allow it total expression.
Just try to see the existential effect of what jealousy is, the existential fact. No interpretations, no ideologies! Forget Buddhas and work, forget me. Just let the jealousy be there. Look into it, look deeply into it and so do with anger, so do with sadness, hatred, possessiveness. And by and by you will see that just by seeing through things you start getting a transcendental feeling that you are JUst a witness; the identity is broken. The identity is broken only when you encounter something within you.