Fear of Death Means a Partially-lived Life

Often the fear of death comes up, intense and strong, and the fear of having to leave all this beauty, this friendship and love. How is it possible to relax in this certainty of death?

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First, it is possible to relax only when death is a certainty. Relaxing is difficult when things are uncertain. If you know that you are going to die today, all fear of death will disappear. What is the point of wasting time? You have one day to live: live as intensely as possible, live as totally as possible.

Death may not come. Death cannot come to people who live very intensely and very totally. And even if it comes, those people who have lived totally, welcome it because it is a great relief. They are tired of living, they lived so totally and so intensely, so death comes like a friend. Just as after the whole day’s hard work night comes as a great relaxation, as a beautiful sleep, so does death come after life. Death has nothing ugly about it; you cannot find anything cleaner.

If the fear of death comes in, that means there are a few loopholes that are not filled with living. So those fears of death are very indicative and helpful. They show you that your dance has to go a little faster, that you have to burn the torch of your life from both ends together.

Dance so fast that the dancer disappears and only the dance remains.

Then it is not possible for any fear of death to visit you.

“And the fear of having to leave all this beauty, this friendship and love.”

If you are totally herenow, who cares about tomorrow? Tomorrow will take care of itself. Jesus is right when he prays to God, ‘Lord, give me my daily bread.’ He is not even asking for tomorrow, just today is enough unto itself. And you have to learn that each moment has a completion.

The fear of having to leave it all comes only because you are not completely living in the moment; otherwise there is no time, and there is no mind, and there is no space.

Once a merchant was asked, “How old are you?”

He said, “Three hundred and sixty years old.”

The man could not believe it. He said, “Please, repeat it. Perhaps I have not heard rightly.”

The merchant shouted and said, “Three hundred and sixty years old!”

The man said, “Forgive me but I cannot believe it. You don’t look more than sixty!”

The merchant said, “You are also right. As far as the calendar is concerned I am sixty. But as far as my life is concerned I have lived six times more than anybody else. In sixty years I have managed to live three hundred and sixty years.”

It depends on intensity.

There are two ways of living.

One is the way of the buffalo. It lives horizontally, in a single line. The other way is of a buddha. He lives vertically, in height and in depth. Then each moment can become an eternity.

Don’t waste your time in trivia, but live, sing, dance, love as totally and overflowingly as you are capable of. No fears will interfere and you will not be worried what will happen tomorrow. Today is enough unto itself. Lived, it is so full; it leaves no space to think about anything else. Life unlived, worries come and fears come.

Just live, love, and make each moment a deep ecstasy. All fears may disappear.

 

 

The food of love

As life is.... I divide it in three parts: breakfast, lunch, supper. The childhood is the breakfast-time. And as it happens if you have not been given your breakfast today, you will feel very, very hungry, out of all proportion, at lunchtime. And if you have missed lunch also, then of course at supper you will be almost mad. Love is food — that’s why I divide life in three: breakfast, lunch, supper.

Love is food: food for the soul. When a child sucks at his mother’s breast for the first time, he is sucking two things, not only milk. Milk is going into his body and love is going into his soul. Love is invisible, just as soul is invisible; milk is visible just as body is visible. If you have eyes to see, you can see two things together dripping into the child’s being from the mother’s breast. Milk is just the visible part of love; love is the invisible part of milk — the warmth, the love, the compassion, the blessing.

If the child has missed at his breakfast, then when he is young he will be too needy for love – and that creates trouble. Then he will be too impatient for love – that creates trouble. Then he will be in such a hurry for love – that creates trouble because love grows very slowly, it needs patience. And the more in a hurry you are, the greater is the possibility that you will miss.

Have you watched it in yourself and in others? The people who are too much in need of love always suffer, because they always feel that nobody is going to fulfill them. In fact, nobody is going to be their mother again. In a mother-child relationship, nothing was expected from the child. What can a child do? He is helpless. He cannot return anything. At the most he can smile, that’s all, or follow with his eyes where the mother is going, that’s all. Small, beautiful gestures, but nothing else can he do. The mother has to give, the child has to receive.

If at breakfast-time you have missed this, then you will be looking for a woman who can be your mother. Now, a woman is looking for a lover, not for a son; trouble is bound to be there. Unless by chance, by accident, you can find some woman who is looking for a son. Then things will settle; then two illnesses will fit together.

It always happens: a pessimist always finds an optimist to fit; a sadist always finds a masochist to fit; a dominating person always finds one who is in need of being dominated, then they fit. You cannot find two masochists living together, never. I have watched thousands of couples: up to now I have not been able to come to a single couple in which both the partners are sadists or both the partners are masochists. It is impossible to live together; they have to fit. Only opposites fit, and people always fall in love with the opposite.

If you can meet a woman who is in search of a son – that too is ugly, that too is ill, because a woman naturally should be seeking a lover, not a child. And this is the problem, and the problem becomes more complicated: even if she is looking for a son, she is unaware of it; and even if you are looking for a mother, you are unaware of it. In fact, if a woman tries to mother you, you will feel hurt. You will say, “What are you doing? Am I a child?” And you are looking for a mother. Thousands, millions of people are looking for a mother.

That’s why man seems so much interested in women’s breasts – otherwise there is no need to be so interested in women’s breasts. The interest simply shows that in your childhood, at your breakfast-time, you have missed something. It continues, it hovers on your mind, it haunts you. Breasts are for breakfast time. Now why do you go on thinking and painting.

Watch deep down, because it is not your responsibility, it is nothing to do with you. You cannot change your mother now. It happened as it happened, but you can become conscious – you can become conscious of all these things inside. And by becoming conscious a miracle happens. If you become conscious of these things, they start dropping. They can cling to you only in deep unconsciousness. A profound consciousness begins to be a transforming force.

So just become conscious! If you have some childish attitudes towards love, become conscious, find out, search deep. And just by becoming conscious, they drop. So nothing else is needed. Not that first you have to become conscious and then you have to ask “What to do now?” The moment you become conscious they disappear, because by becoming conscious you are becoming adult.

A child is not conscious. A child lives in a deep unconsciousness. By becoming conscious you are becoming adult, mature, so all that was clinging in your unconsciousness will disappear. Just as you bring light in a room and the darkness disappears; bring consciousness deep in your heart.

Then there are people who miss their lunch also. Then in their old age they become what you call “dirty old people.” Then in their old age they continuously think of sex and nothing else. They may not talk about sex in a direct way — they may start talking against sex — but they will talk about sex. Their being against makes no difference.

You go and listen to the so-called saints in India, and you will always find them continuously talking against sex and praising brahmacharya. These people have even missed their lunch. Now suppertime has come – and they are mad. Now they know that death is coming any moment. And when death is approaching near, and time is disappearing from their hands, if they become neurotic it seems natural.

These neurotic people have stories in the old scriptures that when they meditate, apsaras — beautiful women from heaven — descend. Naked they dance around them. Why should they do such a thing? Who is bothered about an old man sitting in the Himalayas meditating. Who is bothered? He is almost dead — who is bothered? Those apsaras from heaven, they can find better people. In fact, so many people are chasing apsaras, how can they find time to chase rishis, these so-called saints? No, it has nothing to do with apsaras or with heaven or anything.

It is just that these people have missed breakfast and lunch both. And by suppertime their imagination is playing tremendous games with them. It is their imagination, starved imagination.

Do one thing: you just go on a fast for three weeks, and then everywhere you will start seeing food – everywhere! Even you may see a full moon rushing into the sky and you will say it looks like bread, a chapati. That’s how it will happen. You will start projecting, your imagination will be playing games with you.

If this happens, then compassion never arises. Move slowly, alert, watching, be loving. If you are sexual I don’t say: Drop sex. I say make it more alert, make it more prayerful, make it more profound, so that it can become love. If you are loving, then make it even more grateful; bring deeper gratitude, joy, celebration, prayer to it, meditation to it, so that it can become compassion.

Unless compassion has happened to you, don’t think that you have lived rightly or that you have lived at all. Compassion is the flowering. And when compassion happens to one person, millions are healed. Whosoever comes around him is healed. Compassion is therapeutic.

 I have no home; Autumn deepens.  Santoka

Just visualize a homeless wanderer — that’s what a seeker is, a homeless wanderer — in search of the home. He has not reached yet. But a homeless wanderer has no attachment, has no possession, has no burden, has no tension, has no anxiety. The homeless wanderer slowly slowly relaxes in a deep let-go.

Sitting under a tree, perhaps, near a river or a mountain, he says, “I have no home/autumn deepens — but it does not matter. The autumn is so beautiful, and it is deepening every moment. I have no possessions, no home, no barriers, no blindfold on my eyes. I can see the autumn is deepening. I am so clean and clear...that autumn deepens.”


Osho, Christianity: The Deadliest Poison and Zen: The Antidote to All Poisons

Do Not Fight with Desire

If a desire arises within you, Tantra doesn't say to fight it. That is futile. No one can fight a desire. It is foolish also, because whenever you start fighting with something within you, you are fighting with yourself, you will become schizophrenic, your personality will be split. And all these so-called religions have helped humanity to by and by become schizophrenic. Everybody is split, everybody is divided and fighting with himself because so-called religions have told you, "This is bad. Don't do this." If the desire comes, what to do? You go on fighting with the desire. Tantra says don't fight the desire. But that doesn't mean that you become a victim of it. That doesn't mean that you indulge in it.

Tantra gives you a very subtle technique. When desire arises, be alert just at the beginning with your entirety. Look at it with your entirety. Become the look. Don't leave the looker behind. Bring your total consciousness to this arising desire. This is a very subtle method, but wonderful. Miraculous are its effects.

With the entire being the look is so fiery that the seed is burned, with no struggle, with no conflict, with no antagonism. Just a deep look with the entire being and the arriving desire disappears completely. And when a desire disappears without a fight, it leaves you so powerful, with such immense energy, with such tremendous awareness, you cannot imagine it.

Life is Not a Philosophy Class!

To solve your problems means to give you an answer that intellectually satisfies you; and to dissolve your problem is to give you a method that makes you yourself aware that there is no problem at all: problems are all our own creations and there is no need for any answer.

The enlightened consciousness has no answer.

Its beauty is that it has no questions.

All its questions have been dissolved, have disappeared. People think otherwise: they think that the enlightened man must have the answer for everything. The reality is he has no answer at all. He has no questions. Without questions how can he have any answer?

Gertrude Stein, a great poet, was dying surrounded by her friends when suddenly she opened her eyes and asked, “What is the answer?”

Somebody said, “But we don’t know the question, so how can we know the answer?”

She opened her eyes a last time and she said, “Okay, so what is the question?” and she died. A strange last statement.

It is very beautiful to find out the last statements of poets, painters, dancers, singers. They have something tremendously meaningful in them.

First she asked, “What is the answer?”...as if the question cannot be different for different human beings. The question must be the same; there is no need to articulate it. And she was in a hurry, so rather than going through the proper channel — asking the question and then listening to the answer — she simply asked, “What is the answer?”

But people don’t understand that every human being is in the same position: the same question is everybody’s question. So some stupid person asked, “But how can we answer if we don’t know the question?”

It looks logical, it is not: it is simply stupid — and to a dying person.... But the poor woman opened her eyes once more. She said, “Okay, what is the question?” And then there was silence.

Nobody knows the question, nobody knows the answer. In fact there is no question and there is no answer; there is only a way of living in confusion, in the mind. Then there are millions of questions and millions of answers, and each answer brings hundreds more questions in, and there is no end to it.

But there is another way of life: living in consciousness — and there is no answer and no question.

If I was present as Gertrude Stein was dying I would have said to her, “This is not the moment to bother about questions and answers. Remember that there is no question and there is no answer: existence is absolutely silent about questions and answers. It is not a philosophy class. Die without any question and without any answer; simply die silently, consciously, peacefully.”

Would you like to discover another Osho Meditation?

Imagine Spirit Within and Without

First you must understand what imagination is. It is condemned very much nowadays. The moment you hear the word "imagine' you will say this is useless, we want something real, not imaginary. But imagination is a reality, it is a capacity, it is a potentiality within you. You can imagine. That shows that your being is capable of imagination. This capacity is a reality. Through this imagination you can destroy or you can create yourself. That depends on you. Imagination is very powerful. It is potential power.

What is imagination? It is getting into an attitude so deeply that the very attitude becomes reality.

Sit in a lonely place: if the surrounding is natural, it is good, if not, then a room can also do. Then close your eyes and imagine a spiritual force is felt within and without. Within you a river of consciousness is flowing and it is going all over the room, overflowing. Within and without, around you, everywhere, spirit is present, energy is present. And don't only imagine it only in the mind, start feeling within the body ― your body will start vibrating. When you feel that the body has started vibrating, it shows that the imagination has started functioning. Feel that the whole universe by and by is spiritualized ― everything, the walls of the room, the trees around you, everything has become non-material, it has become spiritual. Matter is no more.

Through imagination you are reaching to a point where, by your conscious effort, you are destroying the structures of the intellect, the patterns of the intellect. You feel that there is no matter, only energy, only spirit, within and without. Soon you will feel that within and without have disappeared. When your body becomes spiritual and you feel it is energy, then there is no distinction between the within and the without. The boundaries are lost. Now there is only a flow, an ocean, vibrating. This is the real also ― you are reaching to the real through imagination.

Remember one basic thing: unless the pattern of your mind is thrown away, unless you are "de-patterned", unless your conditioning is thrown away and you are de-conditioned, you will not know what reality is ― you will know only interpretations. Those interpretations are the workings of your own mind.

Un-patterned reality is the only reality. And this technique is to help you to un-pattern, to de-condition, to dissolve from the mind the words that have gathered there. You cannot look because of them. Whatsoever looks real to you let it be dissolved.

TEETHING TROUBLES

I have a suspicion that wherever anger is suppressed too much, people have teeth trouble. Their teeth go wrong because there is too much energy and it is never released. And anybody who suppresses anger will eat more; angry people will always eat more because the teeth need some exercise. Angry people will smoke more. Angry people will talk more; they can become obsessive talkers because, somehow, the jaw needs exercise so that the energy is released a little bit. Angry people’s hands will become knotted, ugly. If the energy was released they could have become beautiful hands.

If you suppress anything, in the body there is some part, some corresponding part to the emotion. If you don’t want to cry, your eyes will lose the luster because tears are needed; they are a very alive phenomenon. When once in a while you weep and cry, really you go into it — you become it — and tears start flowing down your eyes; your eyes are cleansed, your eyes again become fresh, young, and virgin.

That’s why women have more beautiful eyes, because they can still cry. Man has lost his eyes because they have a wrong notion that men should not cry. If somebody, a small boy cries, even the parents, others, say, “What are you doing? Are you being a sissy?” What nonsense, because God has given you — man, woman — the same tear glands. If man was not to weep, there would have been no tear glands. Simple mathematics. Why do the tear glands exist in man in the same proportion as they exist in woman? Eyes need weeping and crying, and it is really beautiful if you can cry and weep wholeheartedly.

Remember, if you cannot cry and weep wholeheartedly, you cannot laugh also, because that is the other polarity. People who can laugh can also cry; people who cannot cry cannot laugh. And you may have observed sometimes in children: if they laugh loudly and long they start crying...because they are joined. In the villages I have heard mothers saying to their children, “Don’t laugh too much; otherwise you will start crying.” Really true, because the phenomena are not different — just the same energy moves to the opposite poles....

painting credit: Austin Couillard

The Therapy called Compassion

I heard you once say “Only compassion is therapeutic.” Please talk about compassion.Yes, only compassion is therapeutic — because all that is ill in man is because of lack of love. All that is wrong with man is somewhere associated with love. He has not been able to love, or he has not been able to receive love. He has not been able to share his being. That’s the misery. That creates all sorts of complexes inside.

Those wounds inside can surface in many ways: they can become physical illness, they can become mental illness — but deep down man suffers from lack of love. Just as food is needed for the body, love is needed for the soul. The body cannot survive without food, and the soul cannot survive without love. In fact, without love the soul is never born — there is no question of its survival.

You simply think that you have a soul; you believe that you have a soul because of your fear of death. But you have not known unless you have loved. Only in love does one come to feel that one is more than the body, more than the mind.

That’s why I say compassion is therapeutic. What is compassion? Compassion is the purest form of love. Sex is the lowest form of love, compassion the highest form of love. In sex the contact is basically physical; in compassion the contact is basically spiritual. In love, compassion and sex are both mixed, the physical and the spiritual are both mixed. Love is midway between sex and compassion.

You can also call compassion prayer. You can also call compassion meditation. The highest form of energy is compassion. The word compassion is beautiful: half of it is passion — somehow passion has become so refined that it is no longer like passion. It has become compassion.

In sex, you use the other, you reduce the other to a means, you reduce the other to a thing. That’s why in a sexual relationship you feel guilty. That guilt has nothing to do with religious teachings; that guilt is deeper than religious teachings. In a sexual relationship as such you feel guilty. You feel guilty because you are reducing a human being to a thing, to a commodity to be used and thrown away.

That’s why in sex you also feel a sort of bondage; you are also being reduced to a thing. And when you are a thing your freedom disappears, because your freedom exists only when you are a person. The more you are a person, the more free; the more you are a thing, the less free. The furniture in your room is not free. If you leave the room locked and you come after many years, the furniture will be in the same place, in the same way; it will not arrange itself in a new way. It has no freedom. But if you leave a man in the room, you will not find him the same — not even the next day, not even the next moment. You cannot find the same man again.

Old Heraclitus says: You cannot step in the same river twice. You cannot come across the same man again. It is impossible to meet the same man twice, because man is a river, continuously flowing. You never know what is going to happen. The future remains open. For a thing, future is closed. A rock will remain a rock, will remain a rock. It has no potentiality for growth. It cannot change, it cannot evolve. A man never remains the same. May fall back, may go ahead; may go into hell or into heaven but he never remains the same. Goes on moving, this way or that.

When you have a sexual relationship with somebody, you have reduced that somebody to a thing. And in reducing him you have reduced yourself also to a thing, because it is a mutual compromise that “I allow you to reduce me to a thing, you allow me to reduce you to a thing. I allow you to use me, you allow me to use you. We use each other. We both have become things.”

That’s why...watch two lovers: when they have not yet settled. the romance is still alive, the honeymoon has not ended and you will see two persons throbbing with life, ready to explode — ready to explode the unknown. And then watch a married couple, the husband and the wife, and you will see two dead things, two graveyards, side by side — helping each other to remain dead, forcing each other to remain dead. That is the constant conflict of the marriage. Nobody wants to be reduced to a thing!

Sex is the lowest form of that energy “X.” If you are religious, call it “God”; if you are scientific, call it “X.” This energy, X, can become love. When it becomes love, then you start respecting the other person. Yes. sometimes you use the other person, but you feel thankful for it. You never say thank-you to a thing. When you are in love with a woman and you make love to her, you say thank-you.

When you make love to your wife, have you ever said thank you? No, you take it for granted. Has your wife said thank you to you ever? Maybe, many years before, you can remember some time when you were just undecided, were just trying, courting, seducing each other — maybe. But once you were settled, has she said thank-you to you for anything? You have been doing so many things for her, she has been doing so many things for you, you are both living for each other but gratitude has disappeared.

In love, there is gratitude, there is a deep gratefulness. You know that the other is not a thing. You know that the other has a grandeur, a personality, a soul, an individuality. In love you give total freedom to the other. Of course, you give and you take; it is a give-and-take relationship...but with respect.

In sex,it is a give-and-take relationship with no respect. In compassion, you simply give. There is no idea anywhere in your mind to get anything back; you simply share. Not that nothing comes! millionfold it is returned, but that is just by the way, just a natural consequence. There is no hankering for it.

In love, if you give something, deep down you go on expecting that it should be returned. If it is not returned, you feel complaining. You may not say so, but in a thousand and one ways it can be inferred that you are grumbling, that you are feeling that you have been cheated. Love seems to be a subtle bargain.

In compassion you simply give. In love, you are thankful because the other has given something to you. In compassion, you are thankful because the other has taken something from you; you are thankful because the other has not rejected you. You had come with energy to give, you had come with many flowers to share, and the other allowed you, the other was receptive. You are thankful because the other was receptive.

Compassion is the highest form of love. Much comes back — a millionfold, I say — but that is not the point, you don’t hanker for it. If it is not coming there is no complaint about it. If it is coming you are simply surprised! If it is coming, it is unbelievable. If it is not coming there is no problem — you had never given your heart to somebody for any bargain. You simply shower because you have. You have so much that if you don’t shower you will become burdened. Just like a cloud full of rainwater has to shower. And next time when a cloud is showering watch silently, and you will always hear, when the cloud has showered and the earth has absorbed, you will always hear the cloud saying to the earth “Thank-you.” The earth helped the cloud to unburden.

When a flower has bloomed, it has to share its fragrance to the winds. It is natural! It is not a bargain, it is not a business; it is simply natural! The flower is full of fragrance — what to do? If the flower keeps the fragrance to itself then the flower will feel very, very tense, in deep anguish. The greatest anguish in life is when you cannot express, when you cannot communicate, when you cannot share. The poorest man is he who has nothing to share, or who has something to share but has lost the capacity, the art, of how to share it; then a man is poor.

The sexual man is very poor. The loving man is richer comparatively. The man of compassion is the richest; he is at the top of the world. He has no confinement, no limitation. He simply gives and goes on his way. He does not even wait for you to say a thank-you. With tremendous love he shares his energy. This is what I call therapeutic.

Buddha used to say to his disciples, “After each meditation, be compassionate — immediately — because when you meditate, love grows, the heart becomes full. After each meditation, feel compassion for the whole world so that you share your love and you release the energy into the atmosphere and that energy can be used by others.”

I would also like to say that to you: After each meditation, when you are celebrating, have compassion. Just feel that your energy should go and help people in whatsoever ways they need it. Just release it! You will be unburdened, you will feel very relaxed, you will feel very calm and quiet, and the vibrations that you have released will help many. End your meditations always with compassion.

And compassion is unconditional. You cannot have compassion only for those who are friendly towards you, only for those who are related to you. Compassion is all-inclusive...intrinsically all-inclusive. So if you cannot feel compassion for your neighbor, then forget all about meditation, because it has nothing to do with somebody in particular. It has something to do with your inner state. Be compassion! unconditionally, undirected, unaddressed. Then you become a healing force into this world of misery.

Photo credit: Jan Tribe

The Psychology of Anger

The psychology of anger is that you wanted something, and somebody prevented you from getting it. Somebody came as a block, as an obstacle. Your whole energy was going to get something and somebody blocked the energy. You could not get what you wanted.

Now this frustrated energy becomes anger...anger against the person who has destroyed the possibility of fulfilling your desire.

You cannot prevent anger because anger is a by-product, but you can do something else so that the by-product does not happen at all.

In life, remember one thing: never desire anything so intensely as if it is a question of life and death. Be a little playful.

I am not saying, don’t desire — because that will become a repression in you. I am saying, desire but let your desire be playful. If you can get it, good. If you cannot get it, perhaps it was not the right time; we will see next time. Learn something of the art of the player.

We become so identified with the desire, then when it is blocked or prevented our own energy becomes fire; it burns you. And in that state of almost insanity you can do anything, for which you are going to repent. It can create a series of events that your whole life may get entangled with. Because of this, for thousands of years, they have been saying, “Become desireless.” Now that is asking something inhuman. Even the people who have said, “Become desireless” have also given you a motive, a desire: if you become desireless you will attain to the ultimate freedom of moksha, nirvana. That too is a desire.

You can repress desire for some bigger desire, and you may even forget that you are still the same person. You have only changed the target. Certainly, there are not many people who are trying to get moksha, so you will not have any great competition. In fact, people will be very happy that you have started going towards moksha — one competitor less in life. But as far as you are concerned nothing has changed. And if anything can be created which disturbs your desire for moksha, again the anger will flare up. And this time it will be far bigger, because now the desire is far bigger. Anger is always proportionate to desire.

I have heard....

There were three monasteries, Christian monasteries, very close together in the forest. One day three monks met at the crossroads. They were coming from the villages back to their monasteries; each belonged to a different monastery. They were tired. They sat down under the trees and started talking about something to pass the time.

One man said, “One thing you will have to accept is that as far as scholarship is concerned, learning is concerned, our monastery is the best.”

The other monk said, “I agree, it is true. Your people are far more scholarly, but as far as austerities are concerned, discipline is concerned, spiritual training is concerned, you don’t come anywhere near to our monastery. And remember, scholarship will not be able to help you realize the truth. It is only spiritual discipline, and we are the best as far as spiritual discipline is concerned.”

The third monk said, “You are both right. The first monastery is best in learning, scholarship. The second monastery is best in spiritual discipline, austerities, fasting. But as far as humbleness, egolessness is concerned, we are the tops.” Humbleness, egolessness...but the man seemed to be absolutely unaware of what he was saying: “As far as humbleness, egolessness is concerned, we are the tops.”

Even humbleness can become an ego trip. Egolessness can become an ego trip. One has to be very aware. You should not try to stop anger. You should not, in any way, keep the anger controlled, otherwise it will burn you, it will destroy you. What I am saying is: you have to go to the roots. The root is always some desire which has been blocked, and the frustration has created the anger. Don’t take desires very seriously. Don’t take anything seriously.

It is unfortunate that no religion in the world has accepted the sense of humor as one of the basic qualities for the religious man. I want you to understand that a sense of humor, playfulness, should be the fundamental qualities. You should not take things so seriously, then anger does not arise. You can simply laugh at the whole thing. You can start laughing at yourself. You can start laughing at situations in which you would have been angry and mad.

Use playfulness, a sense of humor, laughter. It is a big world, and there are millions of people. Everybody is trying to get to something. It is very natural that sometimes people may get into each other’s ways — not that they want to, it is just the situation, it is accidental.

I have heard about one Sufi mystic, Junnaid, who every day in the evening prayer used to thank existence for its compassion, for its love, for its care.

Once it happened that for three days they were traveling and they came across villages where people were very antagonistic against Junnaid, because they thought his teachings were not exactly the teachings of Mohammed. His teaching seemed to be his own, and, “He is corrupting people.”

So from three villages they had not got any food, not even water. On the third day they were really in bad shape. His disciples were thinking, “Now let us see what happens in the prayer. How can he now say to existence, ‘You are compassionate to us; your love is there. You care about us, and we are grateful to you.’ ?”

But when the prayer time came, Junnaid prayed the same way. After the prayer the followers said, “This is too much. For three days we have suffered hunger, thirst. We are tired, we have not slept, and still you are saying to existence, ‘You are compassionate, your love towards us is great, and you take so much care that we are grateful to you.’ ”

Junnaid said, “My prayer does not depend on any condition; those things are ordinary. Whether I get food or not I don’t want to bother existence about it — such a small thing in such a big universe. If I don’t get water...even if I die, it does not matter, my prayer will remain the same. Because this vast universe...it makes no difference whether Junnaid is alive or dead.”

This is what I mean when I say, don’t take anything seriously...not even yourself. And then you will see anger simply has not happened. There is no possibility of anger. And anger is certainly one of the great leakages of your spiritual energy. If you can manage to be playful about your desires, and still be the same whether you succeed or you fail.

Just start thinking about yourself at ease...nothing special; not that you are meant to be victorious, not that you have to succeed always in every situation. This is a big world and we are small people.

Once this settles in your being then everything is acceptable. Anger disappears, and the disappearance will bring you a new surprise, because when anger disappears it leaves behind it tremendous energy of compassion, of love, of friendship.

Good and bad are all manmade, sinners and saints are all manmade. And they are not different at all; the difference is only superficial, very superficial, not even skin-deep. Scratch a little, and in your saint you will find the sinner.

photo credit:VVVenus

Life is its own purpose; it is not a means to some end, it is an end unto itself. The bird on the wing, the rose in the wind, the sun rising in the morning, the stars in the night, a man falling in love with a woman, a child playing on the street...there is no purpose. Life simply enjoying itself, delighting in itself. Energy overflowing, dancing, for no purpose at all.

How do I love myself

Love has three stages. First you have to learn to love yourself, because only if you love yourself can you love the other. You have to love yourself so much that love starts overflowing. Perhaps that is where you are; you need the other. That is the second stage of love.

Loving the other is a difficult job. Loving oneself is simple. Because the other need not fit with you, need not fulfill your expectations; the other may start power trips, ego trips, all kinds of numbers. And you will need love enough not to be dominated, not to be destroyed by the other; otherwise, the other always destroys it.

Jean-Paul Sartre is not absolutely wrong when he says the other is hell. Alone you can be silent, peaceful. With the other everything becomes difficult, everything becomes a conflict. The very presence of the other makes demands on you. You have to be very compassionate, very kind, not to get caught into an intimate enmity; otherwise the other is going to become a hell to you.

You have to be so loving that your love transforms the other, to such an extent that you can say the other is not hell. You have to be very articulate, very understanding. It is one of the greatest experiments in life. There is no other experiment which is bigger. You have to love in such a way that slowly, slowly it changes the other person, and the other person starts dropping the effort to dominate, the effort to manipulate. It all depends on your love.

In each case you should remember that you have taken the step. It is your experiment, and you have to be grateful to the other that he is participating in your experiment. If you want your experiment to be successful, then you have to go on loving in spite of the other, not bothering about small things.

Only when you can love the other person to such an extent that it becomes a transformation in him or in her does the third stage of love arrive. Then it is not a question of two persons loving each other; then it is love which engulfs two persons and the two persons become, in a certain deeper sense, one whole.

In India we have the statue of Aradhanishwar, half man, half woman. That is the third stage of love: when the man and the woman are no more two persons, they have become half and half into one whole. This third stage of love is, automatically, meditation. One who can reach this stage need not do anything else for meditation; this will be his mysticism. This was the whole approach of tantra, to reach to the third stage of love; then no other religion, no other methods are needed. Love itself becomes your god, your ultimate experience.

But the second stage is really difficult; otherwise, for thousands of years people would not have escaped into monasteries. What was the fear? Why were they trying to hide in monasteries?

The second step is really difficult, and because of the difficulty all religions have chosen to escape from life. But escaping from life is not the answer, it is simply cowardice.

Life has to be changed through understanding. And if you love, love has an alchemy of its own. If love cannot change the other person, it only means you don’t know what love is; you must be misunderstanding something else for love, because love is absolutely capable of changing people. In fact, it is the only way to change.

There is no place where love is being taught. There is no place where love is being nourished. That is one of the functions of the mystery school: to make your love pure, pure of ego and power and domination — just a sheer gift of joy, a delight in the being of the other person, just a sharing of all that you have, holding nothing back.

Love is the greatest magic.

Don’t be afraid of the other; let the other enter your life. I don’t teach escapism. I teach you to go into the world, to transform the world, because only in that transformation will you be transformed. By escaping to the hills and to the monasteries you will miss transformation yourself. You will shrink, you will not expand. And if you cannot love a single person, how are you going to love the whole universe? And that’s what prayer is — loving the whole universe.

People feel that it is easier to love the whole universe, because there seems to be no problem — the universe, the trees, the stars, the moon, the sun… they don’t create any problem.

The other creates trouble because your love is not enough. If your love is overflowing, the other will be showered by it, cleansed by it. And instead of creating trouble for you, the other can become a tremendous help, a complementary part in the organic unity of your being, and can lead you to the third stage.

It all depends on how much you can love.

And I don’t think that one should be miserly about love. It costs nothing. And it is not a quantity, that you have loved one kilo, so now there is one kilo less. It is not a quantity.

The more you love, the more you have it.

The more you give, the more the universe goes on pouring into you from all sides. There are hidden springs, just as in a well.

Love has an underground way of filling you, invisible.

The only way to know is just give it and see — you are always full.

Find Your Own Rhythm

 If the body can be in rest, then you can regulate your breathing You are moving deeper, because breath is the bridge from the body to the soul, from the body to the mind. If you can regulate breathing — that is pranayam — you have power over your mind.
Have you ever watched that whenever the mind changes, the rhythm of the breath immediately changes? If you do the opposite — if you change that rhythm of the breath — the mind has to change immediately. When you are angry you cannot breathe silently; otherwise the anger will disappear. Try.
When you are feeling angry your breath becomes chaotic. It becomes irregular; loses all rhythm, becomes noisy, restless. It is no longer a harmony. A discord starts being there; the accord is lost.
Try one thing: whenever you are getting angry just relax and let the breath be in rhythm. Suddenly you will feel the anger has disappeared. The anger cannot exist without a particular type of breathing in your body.
When you are making love the breath changes, becomes very violent. When you are very filled with sexuality, the breath changes, becomes very violent. Sex has a little violence in it. Lovers are known to bite each other and sometimes harm each other. If you see two people making love, you will see that some sort of fighting is going on. There is a little violence in it. Both are breathing chaotically; their breathings are not in rhythm, not in unison.
In Tantra, where much has been done on sex and the transformation of sex…they have worked very much on the rhythm of the breath. If two lovers, while making love, can remain in a rhythmic breathing, in unison, if they have the same rhythm, there will be no ejaculation. They can make love for hours, because ejaculation is possible only when the breath is not in rhythm; only then can the body throw off the energy. If the breath is in rhythm, the body absorbs the energy; it never throws it out.
Tantra developed many techniques of changing the rhythm of breath. Then you can make love for hours and you don’t lose energy. Rather, on the contrary, you gain, because if a woman loves a man and a man loves a woman, they help each other to be recharged because they are opposite energies. When opposite energies meet and spark, they charge each other; otherwise energy is lost and, after the lovemaking, you feel a little cheated, deceived — so much promise and nothing in the hand. The hands remain empty.
After asan comes breath regulation, pranayam.
Watch for a few days and just take notes. When you become angry, what is the rhythm of your breathing? Note whether exhalation is long or inhalation is long or they are the same? Or is inhalation very small and exhalation very long? Or exhalation very small and inhalation very long? Just watch the proportion of inhalation and exhalation. When you are sexually aroused, watch, take a note.
When sometimes sitting silently and looking at the sky in the night, everything is quiet around you. just take note of how your breath is going. When you are feeling filled with compassion, watch, note down. When you are in a fighting mood, watch, note down. Just make a chart of your own breathing. and then you know much.
Pranayam is not something which can be taught to you. You have to discover it because everybody has a different rhythm to his breathing. Everybody’s breathing and its rhythm is as much different as thumbprints. Breathing is an individual phenomenon, that’s why I never teach it. You have to discover your own rhythm. Your rhythm may not be a rhythm for somebody else, or may be harmful for somebody else. Your rhythm — you have to find it.
That is not difficult. There is no need to ask any expert. Just keep a chart for one month of all your moods and states. Then you know which is the rhythm where you feel most restful, relaxed, in a deep let-go; which is the rhythm where you feel quiet, calm, collected, cool; which is the rhythm when, suddenly, you feel blissful, filled with something unknown, overflowing. You have so much in that moment, you can give to the whole world and it will not be exhausted. Feel and watch the moment when you feel that you are one with the universe, when you feel the separateness is there no more, a bridge.
When you feel one with the trees and the birds. and the rivers and the rocks, and the ocean and the sand — watch. You will find that there are many rhythms of your breath, a great spectrum: from the most violent, ugly, miserable hell-type, to the most silent heaven-type.
Then when you have discovered your rhythm, practice it; make it a part of your life. By and by it becomes unconscious; then you only breathe in that rhythm. With that rhythm your life will be a life of a yogi: you will not be angry, you will not feel so sexual, you will not feel so filled with hatred. Suddenly you will feel a transmutation is happening to you.
Pranayam is one of the greatest discoveries that has even happened to human consciousness. Compared to pranayam, going to the moon is nothing. It looks very exciting, but it is nothing, because even if you reach to the moon, what will you do there? Even if you reach to the moon you will remain the same. You will do the same nonsense that you are doing here.
Pranayam is an inner journey. Pranayam is the fourth — and there are only eight steps. Half the journey is completed on pranayam. A man who has learned pranayam, not by a teacher — because that is a false thing; I don’t approve of it — but by his own discovery and alertness, a man who has learned his rhythm of being, has achieved half the goal already. Pranayam is one of the most significant discoveries.

The Dance Called Love

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 learnt; it is the greatest art there is. If people are dancing and somebody asks you, “Come and dance,” you say, “I don’t know how to.” 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 learnt — 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 color is there. You don’t start painting. You don’t say, “All the 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 learnt. 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 is a great art. To create a harmony between two people...two people mean two different worlds. When two worlds come close, clash is bound to be there if you don’t know how to harmonize. 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 in the 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. 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. 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, as 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. 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 should marriage happen. The 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? The wife never looks beautiful, the husband never looks beautiful. Once you are acquainted, beauty disappears. Two people should be allowed to live together long enough to become acquainted, 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. Marriage itself never destroys anything. Marriage simply brings out whatsoever is hidden 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.           Painting credit: Dorina

The Human Condition–ing

You spoke on the no-problem, the non-existence of our problems. I was brought up in a repressive Catholic family and spent twenty-one years in an equally crazy education system. Are you saying that all the coats of armor, all the conditionings and repressions do not exist and can be dropped immediately? What about the imprints left on the brain and on the musculature of the body?


This is a very significant question. The question is significant because it shows two different approaches concerning the inner reality of man.

The Western approach is to think about the problem, to find the causes of the problem, to go into the history of the problem, into the past of the problem, to uproot the problem from the very beginning, to uncondition the mind, or to recondition the mind, to recondition the body, to take out all those imprints that have been left on the brain. This is the Western approach. Psychoanalysis goes into the memory; it works there. It goes into your childhood, into your past; it moves backwards. It finds out from where the problem has arisen. Maybe fifty years ago, when you were a child, the problem arose in your relationship with your mother; then psychoanalysis will go back.

Fifty years of history! It is a very long, dragging affair. And even then it doesn’t help much because there are millions of problems. It is not only a question of one problem. You can go into one problem’s history; you can look into your autobiography and find the causes and maybe you can eliminate one problem, but there are millions of problems. If you start going into each problem to solve one life’s problems you will need millions of lives. This is absurd!

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Beyond the Hit-and-Run Mentality

There is a fear about the girl I am with. I am afraid to lose her and that won’t allow me to have a deep relationship. Maybe I’m afraid to be alone, something like that.
 
No, don’t be afraid, move deeper. It will happen because the more you become centred, the more relaxed you become, the more possibility there is to enter into a relationship deeply.
In fact it is you who goes into a relationship. If you are not there, tense, crippled, worried and fragmented, who is going to go deep?

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The Law Of Magic

I will tell you one of the deepest laws of life. You may not have thought about it at all. You have heard — the whole of science depends on it — that cause and effect is the base. You create the cause and the effect follows. Life is a causal link. You put the seed in the soil and it will sprout. If the cause is there, then the tree will follow. The fire is there: you put your hand in it and it will burn. The cause is there and the effect will follow. You take poison and you will die. You arrange for the cause and then the effect follows.

This is one of the most basic scientific laws....

 

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Unworthy of love

Once you accept the idea of unworthiness, you naturally close.

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