Nobody can say anything about you. Whatsoever people say is about themselves. But you become very shaky, because you are still clinging to a false center. That false center depends on others, so you are always looking to what people are saying about you. And you are always following other people, you are always trying to satisfy them. You are always trying to be respectable, you are always trying to decorate your ego. This is suicidal. Rather than being disturbed by what others say, you should start looking inside yourself. To know the real self is not so cheap. But people are always hankering for cheap things.

It happened:
When the pain in Mulla Nasruddin's back became unbearable, he reluctantly went to a specialist to diagnose his problem. "Well," said the doctor, "your problem can be cured by an operation, two weeks in the hospital and six months totally horizontal." "Doctor, I can't afford the cost of all that!" shouted
Nasruddin. "Well then, for twenty-five dollars I can retouch the X ray," suggested the doctor. This is cheap! ---retouch the X ray--- but it is not going to make you healthy. That's what we are doing, continuously retouching the X ray and thinking that somehow the miracle will happen. When you are decorating your ego you are retouching the X ray. That is not going to help in any way, it is not going to help you become healthy. It is cheaper ---no operation is needed, no expense is involved. But what is the point? Your misery remains. You become respectable and your misery remains. You be-come highly praised by the society--- your misery remains. You are decorated with gold medals but your misery remains. These gold medals are not going to destroy your misery; they are like retouch-ing the X ray. All decoration on the ego, for the ego, is nothing but deceiving yourself. And you go on becoming weaker and weaker and weaker because the ego goes on becoming weaker every day. Your body will become weaker, your mind will become weaker, and by and by the ego that you have created out of the body and mind combination will become weaker. Fear will become greater and greater; you will be sitting on a volcano that can any day explode. It will not allow you rest. It will not allow you relax-ation, it will not allow you any moments of peace. Once you understand it then the whole energy is put into another direction. One has to know oneself. One has not to be
worried about what others say about you.

 

 

You carry your wound. With the ego, your whole being is a wound. And you carry it around. Nobody is interested in hurting you, nobody is positively waiting to hurt you; everybody is engaged in safeguarding his own wound. Who has got the energy? But still it happens, because you are so ready to be wounded, so ready, just waiting on the brink for anything.

You cannot touch a man of Tao. Why? - because there is no one to be touched. There is no wound. He is healthy, healed, whole. This word whole is beautiful. The word heal comes from the whole, and the word holy also comes from the whole. He is whole, healed, holy.

Be aware of your wound. Don't help it to grow, let it be healed; and it will be healed only when you move to the roots. The less the head, the more the wound will heal; with no head there is no wound. Live a headless life. Move as a total being, and accept things.

Just for twenty-four hours, try it - total acceptance, whatsoever happens. Someone insults you, accept it; don't react, and see what happens. Suddenly you will feel an energy flowing in you that you have not felt before.

Osho The Empty Boat Chapter 10

Commentary:
It is a time when the deeply buried wounds of the past are coming to the surface, ready and available to be healed.

The figure in this card is naked, vulnerable, open to the loving touch of existence. The aura around his body is full of light, and the quality of relaxation, caring and love that surrounds him is dissolving his struggle and suffering. Lotuses of light appear on his physical body, and around the subtle energy bodies that healers say surround each of us. In each of these subtle layers appears a healing crystal or pattern.

When we are under the healing influence of the King of Water we are no longer hiding from ourselves or others. In this attitude of openness and acceptance we can be healed, and help others also to be healthy and whole.

Hypnosis: A Powerful Way to Liberate You from Addictions
    
 Very soon hypnosis is going to be one of the most important sciences to be developed, because man’s mind is in such a tension, in so much misery, in so much anguish that he has to use alcohol, marijuana, hashish, opium and all kinds of drugs just to forget, just to get rid of all the anxieties although he knows it is only temporary. Tomorrow when he wakes up all those anxieties will be waiting at the door; they have not gone anywhere. Hypnosis can transform you very easily without any drugs.
There are people who are suffering from smoking — they don’t want to smoke but they are addicted. They go through a torture. They know perfectly well that it is harmful, they are killing themselves, but no wise counseling can be of any help. They know all that you are saying: that it will destroy your health, your lungs may go wrong, you may get tuberculosis, you may even get cancer, and certainly you will die at least two or three years earlier. Everybody knows it, but still the addiction is there.
Hypnosis is so simple. In three weeks’ time, just a three-week course, one hour every day — and your smoking disappears. Just for three weeks, one hour a day, you have to be told, “You don’t need cigarettes, and you don’t need smoking.”
There is no need for somebody to tell you, you can just keep a tape recorder by your side. Just record the first session with a hypnotist — and a hypnotist is not a magician, he is a scientist, and what he is doing is a simple method. So just record the first session, and then every time you want, every day, you simply use the recorded session. And within three weeks you will be free of all addiction to smoking or alcohol or anything else.
Hypnosis has not yet been used. It is a tremendously powerful instrument to improve man — his consciousness, his body — in every possible way.

LOVE YOURSELF AND WATCH
    
 
Can you say something about these beautiful words of Buddha:
“Love yourself and watch — today, tomorrow, always”?
Love Yourself”...
Love is the nourishment for the soul. Just as food is to the body, so love is to the soul. Without food the body is weak, without love the soul is weak. And no state, no church and no vested interest has ever wanted people to have strong souls, because a person with spiritual energy is bound to be rebellious.
Love makes you rebellious, revolutionary. Love gives you wings to soar high. Love gives you insight into things, so that nobody can deceive you, exploit you, oppress you. And the priests and the politicians survive only on your blood — they survive only on exploitation. They are parasites, all the priests and all the politicians.
To make you spiritually weak they have found a sure method, one hundred percent guaranteed, and that is to teach you not to love yourself — because if a man cannot love himself he cannot love anybody else either. The teaching is very tricky. They say: Love others — because they know if you cannot love yourself you cannot love at all. But they go on saying: Love others, love humanity, love God, love nature, love your wife, your husband, your children and your parents, but don’t love yourself, because to love oneself is selfish according to them.
They condemn self-love as they condemn nothing else — and they have made their teaching look very logical. They say: If you love yourself you will become an egoist, if you love yourself you will become narcissistic. It is not true. A man who loves himself finds that there is no ego in him. It is in loving others without loving yourself, in trying to love others that the ego arises.
Love knows nothing of duty. Duty is a burden, a formality. Love is a joy, a sharing; love is informal. The lover never feels that he has done enough; the lover always feels that more was possible. The lover never feels, ‘I have obliged the other.’ On the contrary, he feels, ‘Because my love has been received, I am obliged. The other has obliged me by receiving my gift, by not rejecting it.’ The man of duty thinks, ‘I am higher, spiritual, extraordinary. Look how I serve people!’
A man who loves himself respects himself, and a man who loves himself and respects himself respects others too, because he knows, ‘Just as I am, so are others. Just as I enjoy love, respect, dignity, so do others.’ He becomes aware that we are not different; as far as the fundamentals are concerned, we are one. We are under the same law: Es dhammo sanantano
The man who loves himself enjoys the love so much, becomes so blissful, that the love starts overflowing, it starts reaching others. It has to reach! If you live love, you have to share it. You cannot go on loving yourself forever because one thing will become absolutely clear to you: that if loving one person, yourself, is so tremendously ecstatic and beautiful, how much more ecstasy is waiting for you if you start sharing your love with many many people!
Slowly the ripples start reaching farther and farther. You love other people; then you start loving animals, birds, trees, rocks. You can fill the whole universe with your love. A single person is enough to fill the whole universe with love, just as a single pebble can fill the whole lake with ripples — a small pebble.
Man has to become godly. Unless man becomes godly there is going to be no fulfillment, no contentment. But how can you become godly? Your priests say that you are a sinner. Your priests say that you are doomed, that you are bound to go to hell. And they make you very much afraid of loving yourself.
That’s why people are such great fault-finders. They find fault with themselves — how can they avoid finding the same faults in others? In fact, they will find them and they will magnify them, they will make them as big as possible. That seems to be the only saving device; somehow, to save face, you have to do it. That’s why there is so much criticism and such a lack of love.
I say this is one of the most profound sutras of Buddha, and only an awakened person can give you such an insight.
A person who loves himself can easily become meditative, because meditation means being with yourself.
If you hate yourself — as you do, as you have been told to do, and you have been following it religiously — if you hate yourself, how can you be with yourself? Meditation is nothing but enjoying your beautiful aloneness and celebrating yourself. That’s what meditation is all about. Meditation is not a relationship. The other is not needed at all; one is enough unto oneself. One is bathed in one’s own glory, bathed in one’s own light. One is simply joyous because one is alive, because one is.
The greatest miracle in the world is that you are and that I am. To be is the greatest miracle, and meditation opens the doors of this great miracle. But only a man who loves himself can meditate; otherwise you are always escaping from yourself, avoiding yourself. Who wants to look at an ugly face and who wants to penetrate an ugly being? Who wants to go deep into one’s own mud, into one’s own darkness? Who wants to enter the hell that they think they are? You want to keep this whole thing covered up with beautiful flowers and you want always to escape from yourself.
Hence people are seeking company continuously. They can’t be with themselves; they want to be with others. People are seeking any type of company; if they can avoid the company of themselves anything will do. They will sit in a movie house for three hours seeing something utterly stupid. They will read a detective novel for hours, wasting their time. They will read the same newspaper again and again just to keep themselves engaged. They will play cards and chess just to kill time...as if they have too much time!
Love begins with you yourself, then it can go on spreading. It goes on spreading of its own accord; you need not do anything to spread it.
“Love yourself..." says Buddha. And then immediately he adds: "... and watch." That is meditation, that is Buddha’s name for meditation. But the first requirement is to love yourself, and then watch. If you don’t love yourself and start watching, you may feel like committing suicide.
Many Buddhists feel like committing suicide because they don’t pay attention to the first part of the sutra, they immediately jump to the second: watch yourself. In fact, I have never come across a single commentary on The Dhammapada, these sutras of the Buddha, which has paid any attention to the first part: Love yourself.
Socrates says: Know thyself, Buddha says: Love thyself. And Buddha is far truer, because unless you love yourself you will never know yourself — knowing comes only later on, love prepares the ground. Love is the possibility of knowing oneself. Love is the right way to know oneself.
“Love yourself and watch...today, tomorrow, always.”
Create loving energy around yourself. Love your body and love your mind. Love your whole mechanism, your whole organism. By love is meant: accept it as it is, don’t try to repress. We repress only when we hate something, we repress only when we are against something. Don’t repress, because if you repress how are you going to watch? We cannot look the enemy eye to eye; we can look only in the eyes of our beloved. If you are not a lover of yourself you will not be able to look into your own eyes, into your own face, into your own reality.
Watching is meditation, Buddha’s name for meditation. Watch is Buddha’s watchword. He says: Be aware, be alert, don’t be unconscious. Don’t behave in a sleepy way. Don’t go on functioning like a machine, like a robot. That’s how people are functioning.
Watch — just watch. Buddha does not say what has to be watched — everything! Walking, watch your walking. Eating, watch your eating. Taking a shower, watch the water, the cold water falling on you, the touch of the water, the coldness, the shiver that goes through your spine — watch everything, “today, tomorrow, always.”
A moment finally comes when you can watch even your sleep. That is the ultimate in watching. The body goes to sleep and there is still a watcher awake, silently watching the body fast asleep. That is the ultimate in watching. Right now just the opposite is the case: your body is awake but you are asleep. Then you will be awake and your body will be asleep. The body needs rest but your consciousness needs no sleep. Your consciousness is consciousness; it is alertness, that is its very nature.
As you become more watchful you start having wings — then the whole sky is yours. Man is a meeting of the earth and the sky, of body and soul.

Joy is Light
 
A Question: I am so full of joy — and yet full of fear.

Give all your energy to joy, and fear will disappear. Ignore fear, don’t pay any attention to fear, because the more attention you pay to it, the longer it will linger on. Pour yourself totally in the direction from where joy is arising, and fear will disappear just as darkness disappears when you bring light in.
Joy is light. And joy is the beginning of a great pilgrimage that ends in finding godliness. So go on — without any fear, because existence always protects those who trust it. Relax, give yourself to existence and allow the joy to overwhelm you. Let it become your wings, so that you can reach to the stars.
A joyful heart is very close to the stars.
It is only the sad and the sorrowful and the miserable who are going towards hell. They are creating their hell. The joyful and the singing and the dancing and the celebrating are creating their paradise by each of their songs, by each of their dances.
It is in your hands whether to create paradise or to fall into a darkness, into hellfire. These are not outside you; these both are within you. It all depends what you choose to be.
Choose to be divine, choose to be more and more a celebrant, choose to be festive, so more and more flowers can blossom in your being, and more and more fragrance can become available to you.
And this way will not only help you, it will help all those with whom you come in contact. Joy is as infectious as any disease. When you see a few people dancing, suddenly you feel your feet are ready. You may try to control them, because control has been taught to you, but your body wants to join the dance. Whenever you have an opportunity to laugh, join; whenever you have an opportunity to dance, join; whenever you have an opportunity to sing, sing — and one day you will find you have created your paradise.
It is not that one goes to paradise; paradise is not somewhere in the sky — it is something that one creates around himself.
It is a good beginning. With all my blessings, go deeper, in spite of any fear. Never listen to negative things, because if you listen to them they can poison you, they can destroy your joy — keep it pure, unpolluted. And here are people who will dance with you, who will celebrate, because you have taken the first step towards existence.
And I want to remind you that the first step is almost half the journey.

Laughter brings strength. Now, even medical science says that laughter is one of the most deep-going medicines nature has provided man with. If you can laugh when you are ill you will get your health back sooner. If you cannot laugh, even if you are healthy, sooner or later you will lose your health and you will become ill.

Laughter brings some energy from your inner source to your surface. Energ...y starts flowing, follows laughter like a shadow. Have you watched it? When you really laugh, for those few moments you are in a deep meditative state. Thinking stops. It is impossible to laugh and think together. They are diametrically opposite: either you can laugh or you can think. If you really laugh, thinking stops. If you are still thinking, laughter will be just so-so, it will be just so-so, lagging behind. It will be a crippled laughter.

When you really laugh, suddenly mind disappears. And the whole Zen methodology is how to get into no-mind -- laughter is one of the beautiful doors to get to it. As far as I know, dancing and laughter are the best, natural, easily approachable doors. If you really dance, thinking stops. You go on and on, you whirl and whirl, and you become a whirlpool -- all boundaries, all divisions are lost. You don't even know where your body ends and where the existence begins. You melt into existence and the existence melts into you; there is an overlapping of boundaries. And if you are really dancing -- not managing it but allowing it to manage you, allowing it to possess you -- if you are possessed by dance, thinking stops.

The same happens with laughter. If you are possessed by laughter, thinking stops. And if you know a few moments of no-mind, those glimpses will promise you many more rewards that are going to come. You just have to become more and more of the sort, of the quality, of no-mind. More and more, thinking has to be dropped.

 

 

We celebrate everything. Celebration is our way to receive all the gifts from God. Life is his gift, death is his gift; the body is his gift, the soul is his gift. We celebrate everything. We love the body, we love the soul. We are materialist spiritualists. Nothing like this has ever happened in the world. This is a new experiment, a new beginning, and it has a great future.