BELOVED OSHO, I DON KNOW WHY I AM HERE

Nobody knows - and there is no way to know it, and there is no need to know it.
This constant questioning - why am I here? why am I doing this? - this constant hankering for the why, is a disease of the mind. answer is going to satisfy you, because the why can be asked again. If I say something -you are here because of this - the why will be pushed back a little, that's all. You will again ask: Why? The why is non ending.

Once you understand it, you drop it. The why is ridiculous. Rather than asking: Why am I here? it is better to use the opportunity, it is better to flower, it is better to exist authentically. And this is the beauty of it, that once you start existing authentically, truly, once you stop all nonsense thinking and you start delighting in life, once you are no more a philosopher, the why is answered. But it is not answered by anyone from the outside - it is answered by your own life energy.

What is the meaning of life

Life is basically insecure

‘What is the meaning of life’ As if meaning is there somewhere sold in the market. As if meaning is a commodity. Meaning has to be CREATED. There is no meaning in life. Meaning is not a given thing, it has to be created. It has to become your inner work. Then there is meaning — and there IS GREAT meaning. Love and meditate and you will attain to meaning. And you will attain to life, and abundant life.

PEOPLE GO ON LOOKING AT EACH OTHER, nobody looks at himself.

PEOPLE GO ON LOOKING AT EACH OTHER, nobody looks at himself. The moment you start looking at yourself, you have become a sannyasin.

I was reading:

Mrs. Cantor suspected her husband of playing around with the maid. Having to spend a few days with her sick mother, she told her small son, Harvey, to keep an eye on Poppa and the maid.

As soon as she returned she asked: "Harvey, did anything happen?"

TO BE IN CONTACT WITH SOMEONE WHO IS ALREADY AWAKE, IS A MUST

WHY I INSIST SO MUCH FOR SANNYAS. ALONE, YOU DON'T STAND A CHANCE. Together, much more the possibility.Tantra says man can become awake only through group methods, through schools.

IT IS AS IF TEN PERSONS ARE LOST IN A DESERT, and it is very dangerous in the night: the enemies can kill them, the wild animals can kill them, the robbers can come, the murderers can come -- it is very difficult. NOW THEY DECIDE ON A GROUP METHOD. They say: "Each one will be awake for one hour." TO THINK THAT EACH ONE WILL BE CAPABLE OF REMAINING AWAKE for eight hours in the night is to ask too much from an unconscious man. But each one will remain awake for one hour. And before he starts falling asleep, he should make somebody else awake. Then there is more possibility that at least one of the group will be awake the whole night.

I WILL NOT HAVE SUCCESSORS

Beloved Osho,

You have often said you will have no successors. But won't all those who love you be your successors in that we carry you in our blood and bones and so you are part of us forever?

Maneesha,

The concept of the successor is bureaucratic. The very idea of succession is not the right idea in the world of consciousness. That's why I have said I WILL NOT HAVE SUCCESSORS. But you are right in saying that YOU WILL CARRY IN YOUR BONES AND IN YOUR BLOOD MY LOVE, MY INSIGHT. But don't use the word 'successor', rather use the words 'YOU WILL BE ME'.

Why be so far away, a successor, when you can be me? Be so empty that I can make a home in you, that your emptiness can absorb my emptiness, that your heart can have the same dance as my heart. IT IS NOT SUCCESSION, IT IS TRANSMISSION.

THE VERY IDEA OF SUCCESSION IS POLITICAL. Only one person can be a successor, so there is bound to be competition, ambition. There is bound to be a subtle struggle to be closer to the Master, to force others away. It may not be on the surface but, underneath, the problem will remain in the disciples: "Who is going to be the successor?"

I destroy the whole conception. Every disciple who has loved has become one with the Master. THERE IS NO NEED OF ANY COMPETITION, NOR ONE SUCCESSOR. It is for everybody who has offered himself in deep gratitude, who has become one in a certain sense with the Master's presence. There is no need of any competition: thousands can have the same experience, millions can have the same experience.

Beloved Osho, I’m afraid that the world is going to end before I get enlightened. What can I Do?

You seem to be very much in a hurry. If you understand me, there is no problem — right now you can become enlightened. At least right now the world has not ended. There are thousands of people in the world trying for enlightenment, but their very trying is the barrier. It postpones enlightenment.

For ninety years J. Krishnamurti has been working, first upon himself, then upon others. And now he is getting immensely frustrated. Nobody is to be blamed, he himself has made it a difficult job. He is obsessed with reading detective novels; he has made the search for enlightenment a very sensational, puzzling, difficult detective story. My Krishnamurti Lake is doing far better: just the other day somebody became enlightened there.

You are asking me, “The world is going to end, what am I supposed to do?” Have I to answer you? Can’t you understand? Krishnamurti Lake is not far away.

MASTER YOUR THOUGHTS

Any thought goes on inside your mind. Watch for a few minutes and you will be surprised: the mind seems to be crazy! It jumps from one thought to another thought for no reason at all. Just a dog starts barking in the neighborhood and your mind takes the clue from it... and you remember the dog that you used to have in your childhood, and the dog died... and you start feeling sad. And because of the death of the dog you start thinking about death, and the death of your mother and the death of your father. And you become angry because you were never at ease with your mother; there was always conflict. The dog is still barking, completely unaware what he has done. And you have traveled so far!

Anything can trigger a process in you. This is a kind of slavery: you are at the mercy of accidents. This is not mastery. And a sannyasin, a seeker, should be a master. He thinks only if he wants to; if he does not want to think he simply puts his mind off. He knows how to put it on and how to put it off.

You don't know how to put it on, you don't know how to put it off; it goes on and on. It starts working in the childhood and goes on working till you die. Seventy years, eighty years, continuously working -- so much work, and then you cannot expect anything great out of it because it is utterly tired. It has not much energy left; it is leaking from everywhere. If you can put it off... that's what meditation is all about: putting the mind off, the art of putting the mind off. If you can put it off, it will gather energy.

If for a few hours every day you are without the mind, you will gather so much energy that that energy will keep you young, fresh, creative. That energy will allow you to see reality, the beauty of the existence, the joy of life, the celebration. But for that you need energy, and your mind has only very little energy. Just somehow you manage your life. You live a poor life for the sheer reason that you don't know how to accumulate your mind energy, how to make a reservoir of your inner being. It goes on and on leaking and you don't know how to stop those leakages.

NEVER ALLOW YOUR BODY TO DO HARM.
Three things, Buddha says: Be careful about words, be master of your thoughts, NEVER ALLOW YOUR BODY TO DO HARM. Because the body comes from the animals, the body IS animal. It enjoys harming, it is violent. Be conscious of it. Don't allow it to go into violence. Don't allow it to harm anybody, because if you harm others the harm will come back to you sooner or later. That's the whole theory of karma: whatsoever you do to others will be done to you. So do to others only that which you would like to be done to you.

Loving and Love in Marriage

Question : If love becomes destroyed in Marriage, how are we to Live if we wish to share love and thoughts on a day-today Basis, and also raise Children with both a Mother And a Father?

Osho : I have never said that love is destroyed by marriage. How can marriage destroy love? Yes, it is destroyed in marriage, but it is destroyed by you, not by marriage. It is destroyed by the partners. How can marriage destroy love? It is you who destroy it, because you don't know what love is. You simply pretend to know, you simply hope that you know, you dream that you know, but you don't know what love is. Love has to be learned; it is the greatest art there is. If people are dancing and somebody asks you, 'Come and dance,' you say, 'I don't know.'

You don't just jump up and start dancing and have everybody think that you are a great dancer. You will just prove yourself to be a buffoon. You will not prove yourself to be a dancer. It has to be learned -- the grace of it, the movement of it. You have to train the body for it. You don't just go and start painting just because the canvas is available and the brush is there and the colour is there. You don't start painting. You say, 'All requirements are here, so I can paint. You can paint -- but you will not be a painter that way.

You meet a woman -- the canvas is there. You immediately become a lover -- you start painting. And she starts painting on you. Of course you both prove to be foolish -- painted fools -- and sooner or later you understand what is happening. But you never thought that love is an art. You are not born with the art, it is nothing to do with your birth. You have to learn it. It is the most subtle art. You are born only with a capacity. Of course, you are born with a body; you can be a dancer because you have the body.

You can move your body and you can be a dancer -- but dancing has to be learned. Much effort is needed to learn dancing. And dancing is not so difficult because you alone are involved in it. Love is much more difficult. It is dancing with somebody else. The other is also needed to know what dancing is. To fit with somebody, it is a great art. To create a harmony between two persons... two persons mean two different worlds. When two worlds come close, clash is bound to be there if you don't know how to harmonise.

Love is harmony. And happiness, health, harmony, all happen out of love. Learn to love. Don't be in a hurry for marriage, learn to love. First become a great lover. And what is the requirement? The requirement is that a great lover is always ready to give love and is not bothered whether it is returned or not. It is always returned, it is inthe very nature of things. It is just as if you go to the mountains and you sing a song, and the valleys respond. Have you seen an echo point in the mountains, in the hills?

You shout and the valleys shout, or you sing and the valleys sing. Each heart is a valley. If you pour love into it, it will respond. The first lesson of love is not to ask for love, but just to give. Become a giver. And people are doing just the opposite. Even when they give, they give only with the idea that love should come back. It is a bargain. They don't share, they don't share freely. They share with a condition. They go on watching out of the corner of their eye whether it is coming back or not. Very poor people... they don't know the natural functioning of love.

You simply pour, it will come. And if it is not coming, nothing to be worried about -- because a lover knows that to love is to be happy. If it comes, good; then the happiness is multiplied. But even if it never comes back, in the very act of loving you become so happy, so ecstatic, who bothers whether it comes or not? Love has its own intrinsic happiness. It happens when you love. There is no need to wait for the result. Just start loving. By and by you will see much more love is coming back to you. One loves and comes to know what love is only by loving.

As one learns swimming by swimming, by loving one loves. And people are very miserly. They are waiting for some great beloved to happen, then they will love. They remain closed, they remain withdrawn. They just wait. From somewhere some Cleopatra will come and then they will open their heart, but by that time they have completely forgotten how to open it. Don't miss any opportunity of love. Even passing in a street, you can be loving. Even to the beggar you can be loving. There is no need that you have to give him something; you can smile at least. It costs nothing -- but your very smile opens your heart, makes your heart more alive.

Hold somebody's hand -- a friend or a stranger. Don't wait that you will only love when the right person happens. Then the right person will never happen. Go on loving. The more you love, the more is the possibility for the right person to happen, because your heart starts flowering. And a flowering heart attracts many bees, many lovers.You have been trained in a very wrong way. First, everybody lives under a wrong impression that everybody is already a lover. Just being born, you think you are a lover. It's not so easy.

Yes, there is a potentiality, but the potentiality has to be trained, disciplined. A seed exists, but it has to come to flower. You can go on carrying your seed; no bee will be coming. Have you ever seen bees coming to the seeds? Don't they know that seeds can become flowers? But they come when they become flowers. Become a flower, don't remain a seed. Two people, separately unhappy, create more unhappiness for each other when they come together. That's mathematical.

You were unhappy, your wife was unhappy and you both are hoping that being together you both will become happy? This is... this is such ordinary arithmetic -- like two plus two makes four. It is that simple. It is not part of any higher mathematics; it is very ordinary, you can count it on your fingers. You both will become unhappy.

You don't love me any more?' asked Mulla Nasrudin's wife. 'You never say anything nice to me any more like you used to when we were courting.' She wiped a tear from her eye with the corner of her apron. 'I love you, I love you,' retorted Mulla Nasrudin. 'Now will you please shut up and let me drink my beer in peace?'

Courting is one thing. Don't depend on courting. In fact before you get married, get rid of courting. My suggestion is that marriage should happen after the honeymoon, never before it. Only if everything goes right, only then marriage should happen. Honeymoon after marriage is very dangerous. As far as I know, ninety-nine percent of marriages are finished by the time the honeymoon is finished. But then you are caught, then you have no way to escape. Then the whole society, the law, the court -- everybody is against you if you leave the wife, or the wife leaves you. Then the whole morality, the religion, the priest, everybody is against you.

In fact society should create all barriers possible for marriage and no barrier for divorce. Society should not allow people to marry so easily. The court should create barriers -- live with the woman for two years at least, then the court can allow you to get married. Right now they are doing just the reverse. If you want to get married, nobody asks whether you are ready or whether it is just a whim, just because you like the nose of the woman. What foolishness! One cannot live by just a long nose. After two days the nose will be forgotten.

Who looks at one's own wife's nose? I have heard:A certain ward was staffed completely by nurses who looked as though they were finalists in the Miss World Contest, but every time one of the patients saw them, he stared intently and said, 'Rubbish! 'The man in the next bed could not understand it at all. 'Gorgeous nurses like these to look after you and all you can say is "Rubbish". Why?'

'I was not thinking of the nurses,' said the other sadly, 'I was thinking of my wife.'  The wife never looks beautiful, the husband never looks beautiful. Once you are aquainted, beauty disappears. 

Two persons should be allowed to live together long enough to become aquainted, familiar with each other. And even if they want to get married, they should not be allowed. Then divorces will disappear from the world. The divorces exist because marriages are wrong and forced. The divorces exist because marriages are done in a romantic mood. A romantic mood is good if you are a poet -- and poets are not known to be good husbands or good wives. In fact poets are almost always bachelors.

They fool around but they never get caught, and hence their romance remains alive. They go on writing poetry, beautiful poetry. One should not get married to a woman or to a man in a poetic mood. Let the prose mood come, then settle. Because the day-to-day life is more like prose than like poetry. One should become mature enough. Maturity means that one is no more a romantic fool. One understands life, one understands the responsibility of life, one understands the problems of being together with a person.

One accepts all those difficulties and yet decides to live with the person. One is not hoping that there is only going to be heaven, all roses. One is not hoping nonsense; one knows reality is tough. It is rough. There are roses, but far and few in between; there are many thorns. When you have become alert to all of these problems and still you decide that it is worthwhile to risk and be with a person rather than to be alone, then get married. Then marriages will never kill love, because this love is realistic. Marriage can kill only romantic love.

And romantic love is what people call 'puppy love'. One should not depend on it. One should not think about it as nourishment. It may be just like ice-cream. You can eat it sometimes, but don't depend on it. Life has to be more realistic, more prose. And marriage itself never destroys anything. Marriage simply brings out whatsoever ishidden in you -- it brings it out. If love is hidden behind you, inside you, marriage brings it out. If love was just a pretension, just a bait, then sooner or later it has to disappear.

And then your reality, your ugly personality comes up. Marriage simply is an opportunity, so whatsoever you had to bring out will come out. I am not saying that love is destroyed by marriage. Love is destroyed by people who don't know how to love. Love is destroyed because in the first place love is not. You have been living in a dream. Reality destroys that dream. Otherwise love is something eternal, part of eternity. If you grow, if you know the art, and you accept the realities of love-life, then it goes on growing every day.

Marriage becomes a tremendous opportunity to grow into love. Nothing can destroy love. If it is there, it goes on growing. But my feeling is, it is not there in the first place. You misunderstood yourself; something else was there. Maybe sex was there, sex appeal was there. Then it is going to be destroyed, because once you have loved a woman, then the sex appeal disappears -- because the sex appeal is only with the unknown. Once you have tasted the body of the woman or the man, then the sex appeal disappears.

If your love was only sex appeal then it is bound to disappear. So never misunderstand love for something else. If love is really love.... What do I mean when I say 'really love'? I mean that just being in the presence of the other you feel suddenly happy, just being together you feel ecstatic, just the very presence of the other fulfills something deep in your heart... something starts singing in your heart, you fall into harmony. Just the very presence of the other helps you to be together; you become more individual, more centered, more grounded. Then it is love.

Love is not a passion, love is not an emotion. Love is a very deep understanding that somebody somehow completes you. Somebody makes you a full circle. The presence of the other enhances your presence. Love gives freedom to be yourself; it is not possessiveness. So, watch. Never think of sex as love, otherwise you will be deceived.

Be alert, and when you start feeling with someone that just the presence, the pure presence -- nothing else, nothing else is needed; you don't ask anything -- just the presence, just that the other is, is enough to make you happy... something starts flowering within you, a thousand and one  lotuses bloom... then you are in love, and then you can pass through all the difficulties that reality creates. Many anguishes, many anxieties -- you will be able to pass all of them, and your love will be flowering more and more, because all those situations will become challenges. And your love, by overcoming them, will become more and more strong.

Love is eternity. If it is there, then it goes on growing and growing. Love knows the beginning but does not know the end.

Enlightenment is a very simple understanding.

There is a beautiful story in Gautam Buddha's life. Again and again he has told it.... In one of his past lives he met an enlightened being. Out of respect he touched his feet. But he was surprised -- in return the enlightened man touched his feet. Buddha could not believe his eyes. He said, "What are you doing? I am an unenlightened man, ignorant. I have not experienced truth. I have not yet been able to love, to be compassionate. My laughter is still phony, my heart is full of discontent. Why have you touched my feet?" And the enlightened being laughed. He said, "Don't be worried. As far as I am concerned, you are as enlightened as I am." From your side, that is your problem -- I don't see any of you here as unenlightened, it is impossible. Enlightenment is your very center, your very being. But you have been conditioned, programmed to remain unenlightened.

All your religions are responsible for it. They don't want you to become enlightened, because an enlightened man cannot be a Christian, a Hindu, a Mohammedan. From his state of consciousness, all these theologies, religions, are sheer nonsense -- fictions created by ignorant people for other ignorant people. Never ask how to be enlightened. You can ask how to remain unenlightened, that is relevant. If you want to be enlightened, you are this very moment. Nobody is preventing you except yourself. And you are making so much hard, arduous effort to become enlightened. That is one of the ways to remain unenlightened. The very effort keeps you troubled; and each effort is going to fail, because what you are already you cannot become. Just see the difference between these two simple words: being and becoming. Enlightenment is being -- you cannot become it. Becoming is a process somewhere in the future after long journeys, doing all kinds of stupid things -- yoga postures, Christian prayers, fasts, remaining celibate, entering into a monastery forever, you will not come out of it....

There are monasteries where you enter but unless you are thrown out you cannot get out; only your dead body comes out some day. I have heard about such a monastery. It was famous for two things: one, for one thousand years no woman had entered into the monastery -- it was prohibited. Even a six-month-old baby girl was not allowed. When I heard about it I thought, were monks living in the monastery, or monsters? A six-month-old baby is not allowed in! You can conceive the mind of those people who are living inside. And second, it was famous in that silence was the rule. Only after seven years -- once, after seven years -- if you wanted to say something to the abbot, you could say it, and then for seven years again silence. One man became a monk. For seven years he suffered, because the mattress was missing, he was sleeping on a bare floor. It was hard, it was cold, but he had to wait for seven years to say, "I need a mattress." Seven years, by and by, passed -- they must have looked to that man almost like seven centuries. And he was so happy when he went to the abbot and said, "Master, I have a complaint to make. In the room you have allotted me, there is no mattress. And for seven years I have been prohibited from speaking." The abbot said, "Okay, a mattress will be provided immediately. You go back." A mattress was provided. But the cell in which the monk was living was very small, and the door was very small, and the mattress was big. So while they were bringing the mattress in, the door fell out and the window's glass was broken. Somehow they forced that big mattress into the small room. For seven years the poor man again suffered -- from rain, wind, snow, because there was no door and the window was broken. In fact, he started thinking that the first seven years were far more beautiful: "I was an idiot to make that complaint!" Again after seven years he went to the abbot. And the abbot said, "Again?" The man said, "I have to say something, I am compelled to say it: the mattress that was provided was bigger than my cell, and the people, the other monks who brought it, somehow forced it in. I could not say no -- I could not speak. They broke the door, they broke the window, and you can conceive -- for seven years I have been living in wind, in rain, in snow. I was not thinking that I would be able to survive, but somehow by God's grace I am here again. Please put the door back and mend the window." This was too much. The abbot became angry, and he said, "In all these fourteen years you have done nothing but complain, complain, complain! This is not a way to be religious. You simply get lost!" Enlightenment is not something to be achieved. It is not an achievement; it is not a goal far away that you have to journey to. It is not a pilgrimage at all. The more you seek and search for enlightenment, the more you will miss it, and the more miserable you will be. Enlightenment is a very simple understanding. So once you stop all efforts to be enlightened and just remain at ease with yourself, totally accepting yourself as you are.... That's how existence meant you to be. Don't try to improve upon existence, you cannot do that. Relax, be existential, not religious. And suddenly you are amazed, "My God! I have always been enlightened." 

Osho

THE GOLDEN MEAN -OSHO

Question-OSHO What are you doing and why? how is it different from what we are doing and why? 

OSHO-I am not doing anything at all. I am not interested in any goal, in any plan, in any future. I am simply living moment to moment, spontaneously. Just as the flowers are there in the garden, doing nothing, just being there, or as the stars are in the sky, doing nothing, just being there, I am here. But there is no why and no what, simply because I don't even think of the coming moment. Whatever happens I allow it to happen.

You think I am speaking to you. As far as I am concerned, whatever comes to me I allow it to be spoken. I am just a mirror - a mirror does nothing. In language it seems as if a mirror also is doing something - it reflects. Linguistically, reflection is an action - but the mirror is not doing anything.

When you are in front of the mirror, it reflects you. When you have moved, the reflection disappears. The mirror is simply there, whatever comes in front of it is reflected in it.  That's why it is alost impossible for me to speak to you unless you ask a question - because I don't have anything to say.

Your question becomes a provocation to my consciousness. It is reflected, echoed, and goes back to you, but it is not my doing. What you are doing and why you are doing - how can I manage to know? That is your business, your problem. I can say about myself, and perhaps this is the difference: I know about myself, and you don't know about yourself.

You are doing things and you don't know why you are doing them, what you are doing....

You are living in darkness, in ignorance, in blindness. I know exactly that I am not doing anything. On my own I am just an empty mirror. If you want something to be echoed, you come in front of me, you ask a question. If some answer arises it is a simple happening - not a doing.

Just as water flows downwards, the sun rises, the birds start singing and the flowers start opening. The sun is not doing anything. It is not knocking on each bird's nest - "Get up and start singing..." Just the presence of the sun - and something happens all over existence. Life starts awakening, responding. I am simply a presence. You can draw as much as you want.

It all depends on your questions, your quest, your inquiry. I have to drop a few of your questions just because I don't want anybody to look silly asking a question which is stupid.

For example, one woman has been asking for three days continuously, "I love my ego, what should I do?" What is there to be done? If you love your ego, love is good, at least you love something. It is better than nothing! And you love your ego - then why are you worried about doing something?

Is not love enough? Do you want to do something more? Certainly you are worried that loving your own ego is taking you into a dangerous stage - it is going to become your hell. You know it, otherwise the question of what to do would not have arisen.

Every day I have read the question, and every day it has reminded me of a story.... An old woman died. She was very much afraid - afraid because in her whole life she had done nothing that she could think of as ever getting her into paradise. But strangely enough, a carrot appeared. And the carrot said, "You have forgotten. I am your only act which was virtuous and good. You once gave me to a beggar. I was rotten, and you were going to throw me away, and by a coincidence the beggar came before you were going to throw me, and you gave me to him. But even that much giving is rewarded by existence. I have been sent by God - just hold onto me and I will take you upwards to paradise."

The woman was thrilled, and holding the carrot she started rising. People had gathered, because they heard that she had died. And when they saw this carrot and the woman rising with the carrot... somebody jumped and took hold of the legs of the woman. And then it became a long line, so long that you could not see from one end to the other end.... But the woman was very angry: "So many people are going into paradise" - and the carrot was hers!

Just at the gate of paradise she shouted downwards to the long line that stretched towards earth, "You all get lost. It was my carrot!" And in saying this, she forgot. Speaking to the people and gesturing that "this was my carrot" - the carrot was lost. The carrot entered into paradise and the whole line of people fell back. Falling from paradise to the earth, none of them remained alive....

But just the idea of my carrot is enough to take you back from the very gates of paradise.

You are not at the gates of paradise, you are in love with the ego. So love it as deeply as possible so that soon it creates a hell for you. Only that hell will open your eyes - not my answer. I was dropping that question every day, because I don't want anybody to look stupid before so many people. It is insulting, and I don't want to insult anybody.

Just today another person has asked, "Do enlightened people overeat?" I wonder sometimes what goes on in people's minds - how they can manage such questions. How many enlightened people have you seen? Yes, there are people who overeat, but they are not the people who are enlightened - they are addicted to food, they cannot stop eating.

I was in America... There are thirty million people dying of starvation, and exactly thirty million people are dying of overeating - and man thinks he is a conscious being, intelligent, alert... Now this is a simple thing.

Those thirty million people should not overeat because they are killing themselves. And whatever is saved from them will save the thirty million people who are dying because they have nothing to eat. Sixty million people can be saved without doing anything, just a little understanding.

The enlightened person never goes to the extreme in any way. Neither does he fast and torture his body, nor does he overeat and torture his body in another way. Both are ways of torturing your body. You can torture it by not eating; you can torture it by overeating.

The enlightened person follows the golden mean: he is always in the middle, never at the extreme. In Gautam Buddha's life there is a beautiful story.... He was passing through Shravasti - a very rich and famous city of those days - and the king of Shravasti was one of the most egoistic persons in every way. He was an extremist about everything.

He lived in extreme luxury. The whole day he was sleeping, and the whole night was a night of dining and wining and dancing and gambling - his whole life was upside down.

He had a beautiful palace. Even on the steps he had not made a railing. On each step there were naked young women standing to function as a railing so he could go on putting his hand from one naked young woman to another. This man heard of Buddha because so many people told him, "At least once you should listen to this man. There is some beauty, there is some truth, and there is some magnetic force in the man.

What he says is not theoretical, what he says seems to be coming from the very innermost being, his own experience. He does not quote authorities, he is not a scholar. He says what he has known, and he says it with such authority that it is impossible not to be touched by it."

So many said this to him, that finally he managed one day to get up early in the morning and go to listen to Gautam Buddha. Whatever the people had said was no exaggeration. In fact, the man was much more than the people had said about him. He had a certain gravitation that pulled you towards him. Shron stood up - that was the name of the king of Shravasti - touched Buddha's feet and said, "Please initiate me, I want to become a monk."

It was a surprise. Nobody had ever thought that this man would become a monk. Even Gautam Buddha told him, "You have heard me only once, you should take some time to think it over; there is no hurry." But that was not the type of Shron's personality. He said, "When I said, 'I want to be a monk,' I want to be a monk - and right now!"

He was an extremist. He became a monk. He renounced the kingdom.

Buddhist monks don't live naked, but Shron started living naked. People reported to Buddha that he seemed to be really a great ascetic. Buddha said, "You have not understood the man. He is simply an extremist." Buddhist monks eat one time a day. Shron would eat only once every two days. He defeated all the monks. He defeated even Gautam Buddha. When they were traveling, every monk would travel on the road, but Shron would always go by the side of the road. In the thorns, the rough stones, his feet would be bleeding. And people started respecting him immensely.

Even the other monks thought they were not so great in renunciation as Shron was. Even a few started thinking that they should be followers of Shron rather than Buddha.

After six months, Shron became black - he had been a beautiful man - because he was always standing naked in the hot sun. He destroyed his body by not eating, he destroyed his feet by walking over rough stones, thorns, bushes when there was a road available.

Within six months he was badly sick, and Gautam Buddha himself went to see him. It was a rare occasion because it was not reported that Gautam Buddha had ever gone to see any other sick monk before or after. The news went like wildfire amongst all the monks that certainly Shron was a great ascetic, otherwise Buddha would not have gone to see him just because he was sick.

But Buddha had gone for some other purpose. He did not ask Shron about his sickness. He said to him, "I have heard that when you were a king you used to play the sitar and you were a master artist. There was not anyone else in the whole country comparable to you - is that right?" Shron said, "Yes. I love to play the sitar, and I had devoted my whole life to the sitar. I had come to such a mastery that there was no competitor to me." Buddha said, "I have come to ask a few questions. One: when the wires of the sitar are too tight, will it give birth to great music?" Shron said, "To great music? It will not give birth to any music. Too tight wires will simply break." Buddha said, "And if the wires are too loose, will it give great music?" Shron said, "You are asking strange questions. When the wires are too loose they don't have tension enough to create music."

Then Buddha said, "What is the position in which the wires should be so that great music can be produced?" And Shron said, "They have to be in exactly the middle position where you can say they are not loose and they are not tight. And it is one of the secrets of the art to adjust the wires to the exact middle." Buddha said, "I don't have anything more to ask you. I have just come to remind you that life is also like playing on the sitar: if you are too loose you are lost, if you are too tight you are lost. Each extreme is a death, and to find the exact middle is the whole art. You were too loose living in utter luxury. Now you are too tight living in an unnecessarily ascetic way. Come into the middle, listen to me, for the wise have always followed the middle path, they are never at the extremes. Only fools are at the extremes."

So whatever the situation, the enlightened person will always be found exactly balanced in the middle. That's why it is difficult even to recognize the enlightened man. You can see the extremist very easily: he is fasting, he is standing naked in the hot sun, in the cold... you can recognize him. He is standing on his head, or he is standing on his feet for years and he does not sit down, does not lie down. And naturally you will recognize him because he is doing something which is unnatural.

The enlightened person will be absolutely natural - but this is to be understood that he will be very much unrecognizable. You will need immense insight and understanding. You will need some taste of meditation to experience the enlightened man, otherwise you will not understand him.

For example, Hindus denied Gautam Buddha while he was alive... they did not recognize that he was enlightened because their incarnations of God - Rama, Parasurama, Krishna, Shiva - none of them had renounced the world, none of them had renounced anything. They lived in immense luxury. They lived in marble palaces, moved in golden chariots... That seemed to be fitting for a god. But Gautam Buddha with a begging bowl, barefooted, moving on the street, not even using a vehicle - Hindus could not conceive what kind of a god he was, what kind of enlightenment he had attained. Krishna never did this, Rama never did this. They had no comparison in their own history. Naturally, they denied him.

Jainas also denied that Gautam Buddha was enlightened for the simple reason that Jainas are on the other extreme. Mahavira lived naked. He was a contemporary of Gautam Buddha; he lived naked. He did not carry even a begging bowl - that is also a possession.

Gautam Buddha had three pieces of clothing and one begging bowl - at least four things. For Mahavira that was too much possessiveness - he had nothing. He would beg with his hands.

He would make his hands the begging bowl. And the Jainas had a long history of twenty-four tirthankaras... the same ascetic ways, the same way of fasting for months at a time. In twelve years, Mahavira ate for only one year - not solidly for one year, but two months he would fast, two or three days he would eat, a few months he would fast, a week he would eat... In twelve years he ate only on three hundred and sixty-five days. He was fasting for eleven years.

Now Jainas cannot accept Gautam Buddha as enlightened, because he was eating every day. One meal every day - it was too much luxury.

I want you to understand that to understand the enlightened man is one of the most difficult things in the world, for the simple reason that he is in the middle. He is absolutely normal. The extremist is recognizable. The person who has asked the question may have seen Hindu monks with big bellies...

I have seen monks like Nityananda. It is difficult to say that Nityananda had a belly, it is better to say that the belly had Nityananda. The belly was bigger than Nityananda. The belly was all. The head and legs were joined to it, but they seemed to be secondary, not important. When he lay down the belly looked like Gourishankar - even Edmund Hillary would find it difficult to climb!

But this happens to Hindu monks for the simple reason that for centuries it had been thought a great virtue to serve the monks, to feed the monks, to bring as much delicious food as possible. So people would bring food, fruits, sweets - all kinds of things - and the monk...

This is to be understood - it is one of the secrets of human life that if you are repressing sex you will start eating more. If you have completely denied yourself love, then food will become your only love affair. And the reason is that the child, when he is born, comes in contact with the mother's breast. Simultaneously he feels the love of the mother and the mother's milk - the food. Food and love become associated from the first day.

That's why every businessman knows to give a good dinner to the party when you are doing business. Then the business can be done easily; negotiations can be made easily and will be more favorable. First feed the person, then he is in a loving mood, unconsciously. This is the psychology: with food, love is joined.

Take love away from the man and you will immediately see that he starts eating more, because he substitutes food for love. It happens that unmarried girls are never so fat, but when they become married, settled in life, a husband... Now there is no question of any competition, particularly in this part of the world, and they start becoming fat. They quarrel with the husband, they fight with the husband, they nag the husband. And you will be surprised that they nag the husband exactly when he is eating - unconsciously.

That is the most vulnerable time because that is the time he wants love and that is the time he is given hate. You can't torture in a better way. And the same man every day, and the same quarrel, the same fight... slowly, slowly you forget what love is. Then people start eating more and more. Women are more fat than men in the East, because women cannot move freely in the society and have love affairs, but men can have love affairs outside marriage.

In the West it is equal, but in the East women are more fat than men.

It shows that the men have a freedom which the woman has not. But with food she is free and the whole day she is in the kitchen. I am reminded of an anecdote....

One man's wife was getting so fat that it was becoming embarrassing for the husband to take her anywhere. Wherever he would go with the wife, she would immediately become the target of everybody's comment: "What kind of woman is this?" And particularly in the West, slim is thought to be beautiful. A fat woman may do in the East, but in the West - impossible!

In the East monks are fasting; in the West women are fasting. Everybody is on a diet. Why? - because the thinner you are, the younger you look, the better you look. The man asked the psychologist, "What to do? The wife does not listen." The psychologist said, "You do one thing." He gave him a naked picture of a very beautiful woman with a very proportionate body and told him, "Hang it inside the refrigerator so whenever your wife opens it, suddenly she will recognize what she is doing to herself. She should be like this woman.

Perhaps it will help - continuous remembrance again and again. Anything that she goes to the refrigerator for, she will see the naked woman, so beautiful..." After six months the psychologist met the man. He could not recognize him. What had happened?

The man had become so fat. The psychologist asked, "What happened? You were talking about your wife that she is so fat - that something has to done. And within six months you have managed a feat which people could not manage in six years." The husband said, "It is all your doing, because of this beautiful picture." The psychologist said, "I don't understand." And the man said, "It is so simple to understand: it did not work on my wife, it worked on me. I started to go to the fridge to see the picture. And when one is so close to ice cream and this and that, one naturally takes something. My wife is the same, now I am her equal. But this is your doing - that stupid picture! I thought you were a psychologist."

An enlightened man is so full of love, is so full of compassion, that it is impossible for him to overeat. And he is not only compassionate to you, he is compassionate to his own body too. He cannot torture it by fasting, he cannot torture it by overeating. He will always remain in the middle. And in the middle is all the wisdom, all the truth, all the beauty of existence.



OSHO~The Sword and the Lotus-The golden mean

NATURE OF VIOLENCE

Violence is a thing given to man by nature but it is not the nature of man. It is animal’s nature, it is the nature of beasts. Man has passed-travelled-through this nature and so has carried all the experiences – impressions of that animal life with him. Violence is like this: suppose a man is passing on a road and is covered with particles of dust and when he enters a palace, he refuses to remove those particles of dust saying they have come with me, they are a part of me. Those dust-particles are those things which have stuck on man’s soul while passing through an animal life.

They have become fixed but they are not the nature of man. Violence is natural far beasts, it is their nature because they have no choice in this matter. Violence is not natural for man because he has a choice in this matter. In fact, manhood to be human – begins with this choice. Manhood begins with this decision. Manhood begins with this resolve. Man is standing at the cross roads. All beasts are on a unidimensional road. They can therefore have no choice.

Man can become violent or nonviolent as he wishes. This is man’s freedom. Beasts haven’t got it. It is the helplessness of a beast. That is why there is no difference between the nature of beasts and the fact of being beasts. There is no distance between the future and the past of a beast. There is no difference in being a beast and in the possibility of what it can be. The beast is what it can be. That which is possible, is actual. There is no distinction between the actuality and possibility of beasts. The whole matter is different in the case of man. 

Man can be different from what he is The actuality of man is not his possibility. He can be something else tomorrow from what he is really today. So we can’t tell any dog that you are something less of a dog, but we can tell a man, you appear to be something less of a man. To tell any dog that you are something less of a dog is completely an absurd statement. It doesn’t have any meaning. All dogs are complete dogs. There may be weak dogs, there may be strong ones also but there is no difference in their doghood. But there is a difference of degrees in manhood. We cannot tell any Krishna that there is no difference in manhood – gentlemanliness – between you and Hitler. We cannot tell any Buddha that there is no difference between you and Ravana. It so happens at times, That we have to say about someone, there is hardly any gentlemanliness in him, and we have to say about some other person that there is not much of humanity in him that he can be called divine-god. 

Whenever we use the word God for some person, it means that there is so much humanity in them that it is found insufficient to call him man. What a man is, is not everything; much more can happen to him. There is a very great potentiality in him. His past is linked with his journey – through beasthood, that condition is that of

violence. And what he can be is his nonviolence.

The nature of man is that which it will be when it will evolve itself fully. The reality about man is what he has accumulated in his journey uptil now. That is why I say violence is acquired, nonviolence is the nature. So violence can be given up; but nonviolence can only be achieved, it cannot be given up. It is very necessary to understand this difference.

Every sinner has a future and every sinner has an opportunity to be a saint in future. We can tell every sinner honestly that he is a saint of the future. Every saint has a past and in every saint’s past is the past of a sinner. We can tell every saint honestly that you were a sinner in the past, but then the saint has no further future. The saint means one who has achieved his entire nature, he has now become what he could have become. The flower has bloomed fully. A bud has a future. If a bud wishes to be a flower, it can become a flower. So when we tell a bud that it is your nature to be a flower, it doesn’t mean we are talking of a fact, we simply talk of potentiality. When we tell a bud it is your nature to be a flower, it means, if you wish to be a flower, you can be a flower. Thus if man says violence is my nature, he is talking like the mistaken bud, which thinks that it can be a bud for ever. Violence is not the nature of man; it is the acquisition of his past, it is the impression of

his past. Violence is man’s conditioning which was unavoidable through the process of his evolution from beastly life. Beast is to be pardoned because violence is unavoidable in its life. Man cannot be pardoned, because violence is his choice; it is not inevitable when he chooses violence. 

Violence is inevitable for beasts, it is a responsibility for man. It is a fact for beasts, for man it is merely a historical memory. It is the present for beasts, it is past for man. We have the choice in front of us. Man can take a decision to be nonviolent; he can take a decision to be violent also.

That is why when a certain person takes a decision to be violent, no beast can compete with him. Really, no beast can be as violent as a man can be, because a beast is violent by nature while man becomes violent by planning. So, even after a through search among beasts, we cannot get such violent beasts as Chengez Khan, or Taimur, or Nadir, or Hitler. If we consult the history of beasts and ask them if they had parallel examples they would reply, ’We are very poor in that, we do not have any memory – any record – in this matter.’ It is very interesting to know that no animal except man becomes atrocious towards its own fellow-members. No animal kills another animal of its class, does not commit violence towards it. This distinguishing feature is also there in the violence of animals.

Man is the only animal who kills other men. It is interesting to know that if an Indian wolf is left near a Pakistani wolf, it will not harm the other, but to keep an Indian near a Pakistani is full of danger. Language experts say this is perhaps due to difference in language. The opinion of the linguists seems to be true. They say, as both the wolves do not speak any language, the Pakistani wolf does not speak Urdu and the Indian wolf does not speak Hindi, so they do not know they are foreigners.

But man from one province becomes a foreigner in another province. Gujaratis are foreigners in Marathi province, the Hindi speaking people are foreigners to those speaking Tamil. If what the linguists say is correct and I feel there is truth in it, we shall be compelled one day to make man speechless – silent – so as to make him a human being. Perhaps it would be difficult to create humanity without being speechless in the world.

Man is rational only in the sense that he rationalizes his follies, he is not rational in any other sense. Aristotle definitely said Man is a rational animal but the history of man uptil now does not prove it. History has disproved Aristotle. Man seems intelligent only in one thing and it is this, he is trying to rationalize his follies. Even when he kills someone he rationalizes his action. He says I shall have to kill him because he is a Mohammedan; he is a Hindu, he is not an Indian, he is a Pakistani etc. As if it is a sufficient cause for being killed to be a Pakistani or enough to kill a person if he is a Mohammedan.

Man finds out a cause to kill, such as this man is rich, he should be killed, this man is a communist, he should be killed. When old causes become worthless, new ones are being found out. New causes prove that old ones have become useless, they are not to be used now. Let us find out new ones. Uptil now we have killed many Hindus and Muslims, let us now make Hindus and Jains quarrel. If we do not succeed in Hindu-Jain quarrels, let us start dividing them into the rich and the poor. Let us have a class-war. Thus when man wants to commit violence, to kill, he conveniently finds out causes.

Animals never kill without a cause. I am telling you this that if we understand violence of man we shall see that man becomes violent without any cause. So violence is his choice and that is why no animal can become as cruel and violent as man can be. To be violent is simply the nature of animals, it is not its choice, that is why there can be a Nadirshah and there can be a Mahavira among mankind. Nonviolence is not the choice of animals. But man has to make a choice of nonviolence.

OSHO, LOVE,