Tale 57 ~ 100 Tales For 10,000 Buddhas

As I come out of the room, I see Chaitanya Bharti standing there with his camera. I ask him if he will take a picture of me with Osho after discourse. He agrees to it. I tell him that after discourse I will go near Osho, where he should be available.

I sit down on the floor in the audience near the podium and close my eyes. I am in an “Aha” space. I have no clue of what is going on. There are about 400 to 500 people sitting in pin drop silence waiting to receive their master. In a couple of minutes I feel Osho’s presence near me and I open my eyes. He is right in front of me, standing with His folded hands, greeting His friends. I look upwards to see His face one more time to quench my unending thirst. He speaks nearly two hours, answering all kinds of questions.

After discourse, I walk towards Him and say, “Osho, I want to have a picture with you.” He immediately agrees to it and I stand next to Him on His right side, and Chaitanya Bharti clicks his camera in seconds. This picture is my real treasure. When I receive it in the mail from Delhi, I take it to show to Osho.

Osho gazes at the picture for a minute and signs it with the message; “One who lets go of everything is a real Sannyasin.”

Osho on money – Richness is condemned. Money is condemned

Question - Beloved Osho, Can you talk about money? What are all these feelings which are around money? What makes it so powerful that people sacrifice their lives for it?
Osho This is a very significant question. All the religions have been against wealth because wealth can give you all that can be purchased in life. And almost everything can be purchased except those spiritual values — love, compassion, enlightenment, freedom. But these few things are exceptions, and exceptions always prove the rule.

Everything else you can purchase with money. Because all the religions have been against life, they were bound to be against money. That is a natural corollary. Life needs money because life needs comforts, life needs good food, life needs good clothes, good houses. Life needs beautiful literature, music, art, poetry. Life is vast!

And a man who cannot understand classical music is poor. He is deaf. He may hear — his eyes, his ears, his nose, all his senses will be perfectly right medically — but metaphysically…. Can you see the beauty of great literature, like THE BOOK OF MIRDAD? If you cannot see it, you are blind.

I have come across people who have not even heard the name of THE BOOK OF MIRDAD. If I am to make a list of the great books, that will be the first. But to see the beauty of it you will need a tremendous discipline.

To understand classical music is possible only if you learn — and it is a long learning. It is not like jazz music, for which no learning is needed. Even monkeys can understand jazz — in fact, only monkeys understand it. It is not music, just a few crackpots making all kinds of noises, and you think it is music.

You will find better music in a waterfall, or when the wind blows through the pine trees, or simply when you walk in the forest in autumn on dry leaves, and sounds are created. But to understand that, you will need to be free from hunger, free from poverty, free from all kinds of prejudices.

For example, Mohammedans have prohibited music; now they have deprived man of a tremendous experience. It happened in New Delhi… one of the most powerful Mohammedan emperors, Aurangzeb, was on the throne. And he was not only powerful, he was really terrible.

Up to his time Mohammedan emperors were saying only that music was against Islam, but that was all; Delhi was full of musicians. But Aurangzeb was not a gentleman, he was really a Mohammedan. He declared that if any music was heard in Delhi, the musician would be immediately beheaded. And Delhi was the center, naturally, because it was the capital for thousands of years. So it was the place where all kinds of geniuses were living.

When this declaration was made, all the musicians gathered together, and they said, “Something has to be done, this is too much! They used to say it is against Islam — that was okay. But this man is dangerous, he will start killing.” So as a protest, all the musicians — of which there were thousands — went to Aurangzeb’s palace.

He came on the balcony and asked the people, “Who has died?” — because what they had done… they were carrying a corpse the way it is carried in India. There was no corpse inside, just pillows, but they had managed to make it look like a corpse. Aurangzeb asked, “Who has died?”

And they answered, “Music. And you are the murderer of it.” Aurangzeb said, “Good that it has died. Now please be kind enough to me — dig as deep a grave as possible, so that it can never come out from the grave again.” Those thousands of musicians and their tears had no effect on Aurangzeb: he was doing something `sacred’.

Music is denied by Mohammedans. Why? — because music was basically played in the East by beautiful women. In the East and in the West the meaning of the word `prostitute’ differs. In the West the prostitute is selling her body. In the East, in the past, the prostitute was not selling her body; she was selling her genius, her dance, her music, her art.

You will be surprised that every Indian king used to send his sons who were going to become his successors to live with great prostitutes for a few years, to learn etiquette, to learn gentleness, to learn music, to learn the delicacies of dance — because a king should be really rich about everything. He should understand beauty, he should understand logic, he should understand manners. That has been the old Indian tradition.

Mohammedans disrupted it. Music was against their religion. Why? — because to learn music you had to enter a prostitute’s house. Mohammedans are very much against any rejoicing, and the house of the prostitute was full of laughter, songs, music, dance. They simply prohibited it: no Mohammedan can enter a place of music; to hear music is a sin.

And the same has been done by different religions — for different reasons, but they have all been cutting man’s richness. And the most basic teaching is that you should renounce money. You can see the logic. If you don’t have money, you can’t have anything else. Rather than cutting branches, they were cutting the very roots.

A man without money is hungry, is a beggar, has no clothes. You cannot expect him to understand Dostoevsky, Nijinsky, Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, no; that is impossible. All the religions together have made man as poor as possible. They have condemned money so much, and praised poverty so much that as far as I am concerned, they are the greatest criminals the world has known.

Look what Jesus says: A camel can pass through the eye of a needle, but a rich man cannot pass through the gates of heaven. Do you think this man is sane? He is ready to allow a camel to pass through the eye of a needle — which is absolutely impossible, but even that impossibility he accepts may be made possible. But a rich man entering into paradise? That is a far bigger impossibility; there is no way to make it possible.

Wealth is condemned. Richness is condemned. Money is condemned. The world is left in two camps. Ninety-eight percent of the people live in poverty, but with a great consolation, that where rich people will not be able to enter, they will be received with angels playing on their harps, “Alleluia… Welcome!” And the two percent who are rich are living with tremendous guilt that they are rich.

They cannot enjoy their richness because of the guilt. And they are deep down afraid: perhaps they may not be allowed to enter into paradise. So they are in a dilemma. Riches are creating guilt in them — they will not be consoled because they are not mourning: they will not be allowed in paradise because they are having so many things on the earth. They will be thrown into hell.

Because of this situation, the rich man lives in a very fearful state. Even if he enjoys, or tries to enjoy things, his guilt poisons it. He may be making love to a beautiful woman, but it is only the body that is making love. He is thinking of paradise where camels are entering, and he is standing outside and there is no way to go in. Now can this man make love? He may be eating the best food possible, but he cannot enjoy it. He knows this life is short, and after that is just darkness and hellfire. He lives in a paranoia.

The poor man is already living in hell, but he lives with a consolation. You will be surprised to know that in poor countries people are more contented than in rich countries. I have seen the poorest people in India with no dissatisfaction at all. And Americans are going around the world to find some spiritual guidance — naturally, because they don’t want to be defeated by camels; they want to enter into the gates of heaven.

They want to find some way, some yoga, some exercises, as a compensation. This whole world has been turned against itself. Perhaps I am the first person who is respectful of money, of wealth, because it can make you multi-dimensionally rich.

A poor man cannot understand Mozart. A hungry man cannot understand Michelangelo. A beggar will not even look at the paintings of Vincent van Gogh. And these people who are suffering from hunger don’t have enough energy to make them intelligent. Intelligence comes only when you have superfluous energy in you. They are exhausted just in earning bread and butter. They don’t have intelligence. They cannot understand THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, they can only listen to some stupid priest in a church.

Neither the priest understands what he is talking about, nor the audience. Most of them are fast asleep, tired after six days of work. And the priest finds it more comfortable that everybody is asleep, so he need not prepare a new sermon. He can go on using the old sermon. Everybody is asleep, nobody will figure out that he is just cheating them.

Wealth is as significant as beautiful music, as great literature, as masterpieces of art. There are people who have a born capacity to be a musician. Mozart started playing beautiful music at the age of eight. When he was eight, other great masters of music were not anywhere near him. Now, this man is born with that creativity.

Vincent van Gogh was born of a poor father who worked in a coal mine. He never got educated, he never knew any art school, but he became one of the greatest painters of the world. But in his whole life he could not sell a single painting. Now each painting… There are only two hundred of Vincent van Gogh’s paintings available; he painted thousands but he gave them away just for a packet of cigarettes, or a meal, or a cup of tea. Now each of his paintings is worth a million dollars or more.

What happened? Why couldn’t people understand his paintings? His paintings need tremendous intelligence to be understood. Just a few days ago I saw a picture of one of his paintings. For that painting he was laughed at by all painters, what to say about others? — because he had painted stars in a way nobody had seen stars: like nebulae, every star in movement, like a wheel turning continuously. Who had seen stars like that?

Even other painters said, “You are going mad — these are not stars!” And moreover, the trees that he painted underneath the stars are going higher than the stars. Stars are left far behind, trees have reached far ahead. Now who has seen such trees? This is just madness!

But a few days ago I saw a picture of this type. Physicists have now discovered that van Gogh is right: stars are not as they look, they are exactly the way van Gogh has painted them. Poor van Gogh! What eyes that man must have had, to see what physicists took one hundred years to find out, with all their big labs and big technology.

And Vincent van Gogh, strangely enough, just with bare eyes figured out the exact shape of the stars. They are whirling, they are whirling dervishes; they are not static the way you see them. And when he was asked about his trees, that “Where have you found these trees which go above the stars?” he said, “These are the trees I have found, sitting by their side listening to their ambitions. I have heard the trees say to me that they are the ambitions of the earth to reach to the stars.”

Perhaps a few more centuries may be needed for scientists to discover that certainly the trees are the ambitions of the earth. One thing is certain, that trees are moving against gravitation. The earth is allowing them to move against gravitation — supporting, helping them. Perhaps the earth wants some communication with the stars. The earth is alive, and life always wants to go higher and higher and higher. There is no limit to its aspirations.

How are the poor people going to understand? They don’t have the intelligence. Just as there are born poets, born painters, I would like you to remember there are born wealth-creators. They have never been appreciated. Everybody is not a Henry Ford, and cannot be.

Henry Ford was born poor, and became the richest man in the world. He must have had some talent, some genius for creating money, for creating wealth. And that is far more difficult than to create a painting, or music, or poetry. To create wealth is not an easy job. Henry Ford should be praised just as any master musician, novelist, poet. In fact, he should be praised more, because with his money all the poetry and all the music and all the sculptures of the world can be purchased.

I respect money. Money is one of the greatest inventions of man. It is just a means. Only idiots have been condemning it; perhaps they were jealous that others have money and they don’t. Their jealousy became their condemnation.
Money is nothing but a scientific way of exchanging things. Before there was money, people were in real difficulty. All over the world there was a barter system. You have a cow and you want to purchase a horse. Now it is going to be your whole lifelong task…. You have to find a man who wants to sell a horse and wants to purchase a cow. It is so difficult a job! You may find people who have horses but they are not interested in buying cows. You may find people who are interested in buying cows but they don’t have horses.
That was the situation before money came into existence. Naturally, people were bound to be poor: they could not sell things, they could not buy things. It was such a difficult job. Money made it so simple. The man who wants to sell the cow need not search for the man who wants to sell his horse. He can simply sell the cow, take the money and find the man who wants to sell the horse, but is not interested in a cow.
Money became the medium of exchange; the barter system disappeared from the world. Money did a great service to humanity. And because people became capable of purchasing, selling, naturally they became more and more rich.
This has to be understood. The more money moves, the more money you have. For example, if I have one dollar with me…. It is just for example, I don’t have one; I don’t have even a cent with me. I don’t even have pockets! Sometimes I get worried that if I get a dollar, where am I going to keep it?
For example, if I have a dollar and I go on keeping it to myself, then in this mandir there is only one dollar. But if I purchase something and the dollar moves to somebody else, I get the worth of the dollar — which I will enjoy. You cannot eat the dollar. How can you enjoy it just by keeping it? You can enjoy it only by spending it. I enjoy; the dollar reaches to somebody else, Now if he keeps it, then there are only two dollars — one I have enjoyed already, and one is with that miser who is keeping it.
But if nobody is a clinger, and everybody is moving the dollar as fast as possible — if there are three thousand people, three thousand dollars have been used, enjoyed. That is one single round. Just give more rounds and there will be more dollars. Nothing is coming in; there is, in fact, only one dollar, but by movement it goes on multiplying itself.
That’s why money is called currency. It should be a current. That’s my meaning. I don’t know about others’ meanings. One should not keep it. The moment you get it, spend it. Don’t waste time, because that much time you are preventing the dollar from growing, from becoming more and more.
Money is a tremendous invention. It makes people richer, it makes people capable of having things that they don’t have. But all the religions have been against it. They don’t want humanity to be rich, and they don’t want humanity to be intelligent, because if people are intelligent, who is going to read the Bible?
Just the other day, I received the information that one atheist group in America has published a Bible with pictures. That Bible will be condemned by all the Christians, by the government, because it is pornographic. It is more pornographic than anything else, because in the Bible there is so much pornography….
Just by reading it you are not aware. Now, when I was talking to you about Sodom… in this new Bible they have made pictures of men making love to animals, women making love to animals. There is adultery, there is homosexuality, there is sodomy, there is rape. You name it and it is in the Bible!
I have said that we should immediately order it. My people should start reading the real Bible! And order it immediately, because there is every possibility it will be prohibited. Never in the world has any book been so pornographic as this Bible.
And they are not doing anything which is not in the Bible — they are just making pictures of it. You can understand pictures better. Just reading the word `rape’ is nothing, but when you see a series of rapes pictured, then you become suddenly aware — this is a holy Bible.
Religions never wanted man to be intelligent, never wanted man to be rich, never wanted man to rejoice, because people who are in suffering, poor, unintelligent — they are the clients of churches, synagogues, temples, mosques.
I have never gone to any religious place. Why should I go? If the religious place wants to have some taste of religion it should come to me. I am not going to Mecca, Mecca has to come to me! Otherwise I don’t care. I am not going to Jerusalem, I am not mad — just a little bit crazy, but not mad. And when we can create a place of joy and laughter and love here, what is there in Israel? We have created the new Israel.
Drop all ideas that have been imposed upon you about money. Be respectful to it. Create wealth, because only after creating wealth do many other dimensions open for you. For the poor man all doors are closed.
I want my sannyasins to be as rich as possible, as comfortable as possible. This is the first commune in the whole history of man where every house is centrally air-conditioned. Never before has any commune happened with air-conditioning.
This is the only commune where, while I am talking to you, you can laugh, you can enjoy, you can dance, you can do anything — because your laughter connects you to me more than your sitting there sad, with a long face.
You cannot laugh in a church the way you are doing here. Just looking at Jesus Christ hanging on the cross all laughter will die. In fact, for the first time we are giving religion its true color, its music, its dance, its love, its laughter.

Osho on difference in chaotic music and the shake or rock music of the west

Question – In reference to the meditation techniques based on sounds, please explain the difference between the chaotic music played in your dynamic meditation and the shake or rock music of the west.
Osho – Your mind is in chaos. That chaos has to be brought out, acted out. Chaotic music can be helpful, so if you are meditating and chaotic music is played or chaotic dancing is there around you, it will help to bring out your chaos. You will flow in it, you will become unafraid of expression. And this chaotic music will hit your chaotic mind within and will bring it out. It helps.
Rock, jazz, or other music which is chaotic in a way also help something to come out, and that something is repressed sexuality. I am concerned with all your repressions. Modern music is more concerned just with your repressed sex, but there is a similarity. However, I am not concerned only with your repressed sex, I am concerned with all your repressions – sexual or not sexual.
Rock music, or other music like that, is so influential in the West because of Christianity. Christianity has been repressing sex for twenty centuries. They have forced sex to go so deep down inside that every man has become a pervert deep down. So the West has to relieve itself of the sin that Christianity has done with man, with his mind, through music, through dance, through chaotic painting, chaotic poetry – in every dimension.
In the West mind has to be completely freed somehow from the whole centuries-long past of repression. In every way they are doing it. All that is influential today is chaotic. But sex is not the only thing, there are many other things also. Sex is the basic thing, it is very important, but there are other things also. Your anger is repressed, your sadness is repressed, even your happiness is repressed.
Man as he is is a repressed being. He is not allowed to do anything, he has just to follow rules. He is not a free agent but just a kept slave, and the whole society is a big prison. The walls are very subtle: they are glass walls, transparent. You cannot see them, but they are, and everywhere. Your morality, your culture, your religion, they are all walls. They are transparent, you cannot see them, but whenever you want to cross them you are thrown back.
This state of mind is neurotic. The whole society is ill. That is why I so much insist on chaotic meditation. Relieve yourself, act out whatsoever society has forced on you, whatsoever situations have forced on you. Act them out, relieve yourself of them, go through a catharsis. The music helps. Once you can throw out everything that has been repressed in you, you will become natural again, you will be a child again. And with that child many possibilities open. With you everything is closed. When you become again a child, then only can your energies be transformed. Then you are pure, innocent, and with that innocence and purity transformation is possible.
Perverted energies cannot be transformed. Natural, spontaneous energy is needed. That is why I insist so much on acting out things: so that you can throw the society out. The society has entered you very deeply. It has not left YOU anywhere; it has entered from everywhere. You are a citadel, and the society has entered from everywhere. Its police, its priests, they have done much to make you a slave. You are not free, and man can attain to bliss only when he becomes a total freedom.
For you to be made a total freedom the whole society has to be thrown out of you, but that doesn’t mean that you are going to become anti-social. Once you throw the society out, once you become aware of your pure freedom inside, you can live with the society; there is no need to be anti. But then the society cannot enter into you. You can move in it, you can act in it, but then the whole thing becomes just a psychodrama – you are acting. Now the society cannot kill you, cannot make a slave of you; you are acting knowingly.
Those who become anti-social simply show that they are still bound to the same society. All the anti-social movements in the West are reactionary, not revolutionary. You are reacting to the same society, you are related to the same society in a reverse manner. You are standing on your head, that is all. You are doing SHIRSHASANA – the headstand posture – but you are the same person. Whatsoever the society is insisting upon, you are doing quite the contrary – but you are still following the society. This will not help.
If you are anti you will never be beyond the society, you will always be part of it. If the society dies, you will die. Think of what in the West they now call the establishment – the society that is established – and the alternate societies of hippies, yippies, or others. They exist as a part of this establishment. If the establishment is dissolved, they will be nowhere. They cannot exist by themselves; they are just a reaction.
You cannot create a society of hippies by itself. Hippies can exist only as an alternate society WITH an establishment – just as a reaction. They cannot exist independently. So howsoever much they may think they are independent, they are not independent. The establishment is their source, their life. Once the establishment is not there, they will be at a loss where to move and what to do. Whatsoever they are doing is dictated by the establishment. They go against it, but the directions, the instructions are given by the establishment.
If the establishment says short hair, you can be long-haired. But if there is no establishment, then what to do? If the establishment says cleanliness, you can be dirty. But if there is no establishment and no fuss about cleanliness, you are nowhere. If the establishment says this, you can do that – quite the reverse – but you follow the establishment. So anti-socials are not revolutionaries. They are reactionaries, a part and a product of the same society – those who have moved against it in bitterness.
A meditator, a sannyasin, is not anti-society, he is beyond society. He is not against the establishment, neither is he for it – but he takes it non-seriously. He knows it is just a play; he moves in it like an actor. And if you can move in the society like an actor on the stage, it never touches you; you remain beyond it. So do not be for it, do not be against it.
But how can you do it? You can do it only when you have thrown the society out of you. If it is there, then there are two paths open to you: follow it or go against it. But you are bound to it; you are in bondage. First one has to clean oneself of society, then for the first time you become an individual. Right now you are not, you are just a social unit.
When the society is thrown out, when its entire presence is thrown out, you are again back to your childhood: you have become innocent. And this innocence is deeper than that which any child can have, because you know the fall as well and now you have risen. It is a resurrection. You have experienced, you have known the whole nonsense. Now you are again pure. This purity becomes the temple for the divine.
Once you can throw the society out of you, without any bitterness, without going against it or being involved in any reaction… if you can simply throw society out of you, the divine can enter into you. With society in, the divine will remain out; with society out, the divine can enter – because the divine means existence. Society is a human, local phenomenon. Existence is greater, infinite. It is not concerned with man, morals, traditions, it is concerned with the very roots of being. One has to be beyond society, not against it, remember. And this chaotic method helps you. It is a
catharsis.
Source – Osho Book “Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1″

Osho – People have more leisure — that is another thing. But what do they do with their leisure?

Question – As a child, sundays have been something very special to me. Now, since a few days, i wake up every morning and go out, see the sun shining through the trees, hear the birds singing and get this feeling, ‘ah, another sunday.’ I put on my best clothes and have sunday for the whole day. what is happening to me?
Osho – Don’t make a problem out of it. The mind is constantly searching for something to pounce upon — even happiness. It makes a problem out of happiness also. If you are feeling happy, you ask, ‘Why?’ That question is dangerous.
If you are suffering it is good to ask ‘why?’ because the suffering has to be dissolved, transcended; ways and means have to be found to get out of it — so the ‘why?’ is relevant. But when you are happy, then to ask ‘why?’ is to disturb it. There is no need to ask any questions. When happiness surrounds you accept it totally without any questioning. If you are ill, diagnosis is needed, analysis is needed, because the disease has to be found. But if you are healthy you don’t go to the doctor to ask, ‘Why am I healthy? Diagnose my health. What is happening to me?’ You don’t go.
It is a habit of the mind because it has been always living in misery, unhappiness, and always the ‘why?’ has been relevant. So when clouds disappear for the first time and the sun shines in your life, the old question goes on persisting — ‘Why?’ Learn to accept happiness, learn to enjoy it without any questioning, learn to trust happiness, don’t doubt it, because the very doubt will be a poisoning. Happiness rarely happens. Those moments are very few and far between. When they come, welcome them, open your door, receive them with your full heart, don’t withhold anything. Even a question will become a very, very strong wall between you and your happiness.
Every day is a Sunday. It should be so. Every day is a holiday. It should be so. Because all days belong to him. Each moment is holy. Once you understand it, you will stop asking questions like this. Don’t think that any particular day is needed for you to be happy — only a particular mind. It has nothing to do with time; everything depends on the attitude, how you look at life. There are people for whom even a Sunday is not a Sunday. There is no light, no sun rising — even on a Sunday. They are clouded in their own darkness, shrouded in their own misery. They carry their hell around them. Even if you force them into heaven, they will go on carrying their hell. They will live in their hell. Nobody can force them out of their hell unless they decide to drop it. It is your decision to be happy or to be unhappy.
I have heard about a Sufi mystic who was always happy, always and always. Nobody had ever seen him unhappy. It was as if he did not know that language, as if the only way he knew how to be was happy.
He became very old and one day a man asked him, ‘Will you please tell me your secret? How you remain so happy? How you remain so unperturbed? How each moment you can be so blissful? It is impossible. It is unbelievable. What is your secret?’
The old man laughed and he said, ‘Long before, I found one simple thing: that each morning, when I opened my eyes, there are two alternatives to choose for that day — either to be happy or to be unhappy. And I always chose to be happy. Simple is my secret: each day gives me only two alternatives to choose — to be happy or to be unhappy. And I always choose to be happy, that’s all. There is nothing more to it.’
But you will not believe in this. You will say this old man is deceiving. He must have some other secret. But I also tell you this is the secret. All great truths are simple truths, very simple. Try tomorrow morning. Before you open your eyes have a clear-cut vision of two alternatives: being in hell or in heaven. Visualise misery on one hand, visualise blissfulness on another hand. See deeply into both. Don’t be in a hurry. Look into both as deeply as possible and wait — then decide. If you want to be unhappy then decide, let it be your decision — and then be truly unhappy the whole day. Be committed to your decision and don’t try to escape from it. Whatsoever happens, you remain miserable. And if you decide to be happy, then stick to it and soon you will realise that your life is your decision.
You are suffering because you go on deciding in that way; you are suffering because you go on clinging to your suffering. You have made a habit out of it. It is just mechanical. Good, you should feel grateful that it is happening to you — that every day is becoming a holiday. Holidays are disappearing from the world. In the legal sense people have more holidays. Workdays are being reduced all over the world, from six to five, from five to four, and soon even that will not be so — in the very highly developed technological societies, one day of the week will do and for six days people can have holidays. But ‘holiday’ is disappearing — that quality of sacredness, that quality of holiness is disappearing.
I have heard about a very reformed temple. Of course it is in Southern California because everything in California is a little far-out, even religion. There is a reformed temple in Beverley Hills that is so reformed that on the holiest of the days, Yom Kippur, there is a sign on the door saying: Closed for the Jewish Holidays.
That quality, that consciousness is disappearing from the world. People have more leisure — that is another thing. But what do they do with their leisure? They create more misery for themselves or for others. Finding nothing to do, they do harm to themselves or to others. More accidents happen on the holidays — more car accidents, more murders, more suicides. And after the holiday people are so tired that they need a whole week’s rest to recuperate, to recover. They do a thousand and one things on holidays just to keep busy, because not to be busy is to be with oneself and that has become almost impossible.
To be with oneself and to be happy with oneself — that dimension is completely lost. That’s what a holiday is, or should be. One is so full of God, so full of being, that there is no need to do anything, there is no need to be occupied. Occupation is just an escape. It is a good way to avoid encountering yourself, encountering life. Holidays are disappearing. It is good that every day a feeling arises in you that this is a holiday. It is. If it was not so before, then you were missing something. Now it has started happening, don’t make it a question.
I used to know a man who was an atheist. Once I heard that he had become a theist. I could not believe it. So when I came across him I asked him, ‘How come you decided to become a theist?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I used to be an atheist but I gave it up.’
‘Why?’ I enquired.
He said, ‘No holidays.’
If you are an atheist then there are no holidays, then there is no God, then there are no Sundays. The Christian parable says that God created the world in six days and on the seventh day, Sunday, he rested. That rest was very beautiful, it was out of great creation. He was feeling fulfilled. He had created the whole world and, on the sixth day, he looked and he said, ‘Good, very good.’ And he rested. He was happy, like a small child who has made something and looks from every side and says, ‘Good. I have done it.’ He rested on the seventh day. That rest-day was a fulfillment-day.
The parable has much significance. It says that you can have a rest-day only after creation. If you don’t create anything, your life will be restless; you will not be able to have a holiday. Create something — only then you can rest. Rest is a by-product. You cannot directly rest — first you have to be so creative, you have to feel so good about yourself, so happy with yourself, so worthy, that you can allow rest for yourself, that you can allow a day just for fun.
Ordinarily people can’t allow a day of rest for themselves because they feel so condemnatory about themselves, they feel so unworthy because they have not done anything worthwhile, that they have not experienced any fulfillment, nothing has happened, they have not blossomed. Hence continuous occupation, continuous activity is needed.
Many people go on working and working and working and one day they die…because their work is not creative. When is the work creative? The work is creative when you love it, the work is creative when you feel in tune with it, the work is creative when you enjoy it, the work is creative when you choose it, when it fits with your being and there is a great harmony between you and your work.
Once that happens, whatsoever you do is creative. And when after each creative moment you can relax, that relaxation is earned. Yes, God earned relaxation for the seventh day. For six days he worked hard, he created the whole world; on the seventh day he had earned relaxation, he was worthy of it. That’s the meaning of the parable.
If you are creative only then can you have holidays, not otherwise. If you want to have holidays become more and more creative. I am not saying be creative in the eyes of others — that is irrelevant — just be creative in your own eyes, whatsoever you do. If you love it then do it, otherwise don’t do it — choose some other way. Life is vast. Says Jesus, ‘There are many mansions in my God’s house.’ There are many dimensions in life. There is enough opportunity to choose.
If you are not feeling fulfilled in something that you are doing, then don’t do it, because this will be a sheer wastage and you will not have earned holidays. A man who has lived according to his being, who has done his own thing, earns death. Then he dies, but the death is a Sunday; then he dies, but he dies fulfilled. He has no complaints. He lived the way he wanted to live.
If I am going to die and God asks me, ‘If I send you back, how would you like to live?’ I will say, ‘The same. I loved it. I enjoyed it. I would like to live the same way.’ Just think about you. If you die and God asks you, ‘If you are sent back to the world what changes would you like to make in your life?’ Will you be able to say that you would like to live the same way, absolutely the same way? If not, then you are doing something wrong with your life. Then you are dragging your life, then you are not living it. Then you are simply killing time — as they say. Then you are simply wasting your energies, they are simply dissipated. They will not become an integral force and there is not going to be any blossoming — your tree is going to remain without any fruits and flowers. Then how can you be happy and how can you enjoy?
Time as holy opportunity, that is the meaning of holiday — a holy day, a day which is not profane, a day which is not ordinary. And once you know how to be creative, each moment becomes holy. Whenever you create something you participate with the creator — you have become a small creator in your own right. If you write a small poem or you sing a song, maybe nobody likes it, nobody applauds it, but that is irrelevant. You enjoyed it. Singing, you were happy, you participated in that moment with God, you helped him to create a song, you became instrumental. In fact, whatsoever is created is created by him — you allowed him to create a small song through you. Then you feel tremendously good, good about yourself.
And that is one of the basic qualities of a religious man: he always feels good about himself. He is not in any way guilty, guilt does not exist in him — because he lived life as he wanted to live it; he loved his life the way it happened; it was the only life he wanted to live. Then there is no guilt. Remember, a guilty person is not a religious person. A guilty person is ill, a guilty person is neurotic, a guilty person needs psychiatric help. A religious person feels tremendously good about himself; whatsoever he is doing, he is doing something intrinsically valuable. This should be insisted upon as much as possible: worth in life arises only when you do something intrinsically valuable.
There are two types of values in life. One is intrinsic value. You sing a song — it has an intrinsic value, it is the means and it is the end also. Or you sing a song in the marketplace to earn a little money. That money is not intrinsic to the song, that money is an outside value. And if you are singing your song only for the money, the activity is no longer holy, it is profane. If you are singing your song for the happiness that it brings to you…. Maybe as a by-product it brings money also, but that is irrelevant. If it brings, it is good, if it does not bring, that too is good — but your activity has an inner glow to it, it is intrinsically valuable in itself. If you are happy that you could sing, you are happy that you had an opportunity to sing, then every day will become meditative, holy.
If you are doing the meditations here correctly, this is going to happen to everybody. That’s my whole effort here: to help you enjoy each moment as it comes.
Source – Osho Book “Dang Dang Doko Dang”