Бхагаван Раджниш (Ошо) - Послания любви. 365 писем Ошо
Be in a state of perfectly quiet passivity –
then you are in harmony with the world.
The thought-forms dissolve automatically
because they cannot exist with total passivity:
they are forms of an activity-addicted mind,
and with them dissolves the ego –
because it cannot exist without thought-forms.
The ego is nothing but a whirlpool center
of constantly revolving thought-forms.
Remain in passivity,
that is, in the state of absolute doing-nothingness,
and meditation deepens to the depths where there is no meditator.
And remember that only when there is no meditator
has meditation really come into being.
If you are then there is no meditation,
and when there is meditation you are not.
201. Love.
It is tragic but true that few people ever
possess their souls.
They possess everything except themselves,
and then naturally they just become a thing
among their other things.
The possessor becomes the possessed.
Nothing is more rare in any man, says Emerson,
than an act of his own.
But this is just what can be expected
because no one is their own,
no one is themselves.
Most people are other people.
They are not living
but only acting roles given to them by others.
Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions
and their faces are just masks.
They are faceless.
They have no authentic being at all.
Their lives, a mimicry –
and their passions, a quotation.
Break this vicious circle otherwise you will never be.
Break this through meditation –
and it cannot be broken by anything else
because through mind it cannot be broken,
and except for meditation, all else is mind.
Mind is the prison,
meditation, the door.
And the only door.
202. Love.
Only God is –
that is why it is so difficult to find him.
And God is everywhere –
that is why he seems to be nowhere.
And the seeker is the sought –
that is why all seeking is so futile.
Stop and see.
But the mind is running constantly.
Do not be, and see.
But the mind is trying to be continuously.
Says Auden:
For the garden is the only place there is, but you will not find it,
until you have looked for it everywhere
and found nowhere that is not a desert.
The miracle is the only thing that happens,
but to you it will not be apparent,
until all events have been studied
and nothing happens that you cannot explain.
And life is the destiny you are bound to refuse
until you have consented to die.
Stop and see.
Do not be, and see.
203. Love.
Live in the body intimately and deeply.
Feel the body more and let the body feel more.
It is astonishing how many people
are almost completely unaware of themselves physically.
The body is suppressed and denied life too much,
that is why it is just a dead weight and not a living joy.
That is why I insist: go back into the body
and regain the wonderful joy in its movements,
sheer movements.
Make it a meditation and you will be enriched
beyond comprehension.
204. Love.
John Burroughs remembers:
One day my boy killed what an old hunter told him
was a mock duck.
It looked like a duck,
it acted like a duck,
but when it was placed on the table –
it mocked us!
Remember to make a clear-cut distinction
between your self and your mock-selves – the masks,
otherwise in the end they will all mock you!
205. Love.
Man is strange, very strange,
because he begins by deceiving others
and ends with deceiving himself.
A fakir was walking down the village street
deep in thought
when some urchins began to throw stones at him.
He was taken by surprise,
and besides he was not a big man.
Don’t do that, he said, and I will tell you
something of interest to you.
All right, what is it? But no philosophy.
The king is giving a free banquet to all comers –
he simply lied to them.
The children ran off towards the king’s palace
as the fakir warmed to his theme –
the delicacies and delights of the entertainment…
He looked up and saw them
disappearing into the distance,
and then suddenly he tucked up his robes
and started to sprint after them.
I had better go and see, he panted to himself,
because it might be true after all.
206. Love.
To be religious is to be a yea-sayer:
yes to everything –
yes to life and yes to death,
yes to light and yes to darkness.
Total acceptance is religion.
Says Nicolas De Cusa: Yes God! Yes God!
Yes, yes and always yes.
Say yes – and feel it,
and you have entered the temple of the divine.
Say no and you yourself have closed the doors –
or closed yourself to the divine.
No is suicidal, no is poisonous –
know this and be a yea-sayer.
Let your heart say yes with every beat.
Breathe yes in and out
and you will feel the divine all around you
within and without.
He is always present but he cannot enter through a no sign.
He cannot trespass on you.
With a no you are an ego
but with a yes you are just egolessness.
Ego is a Leibnizian monad without any doors or windows,
and egolessness is the gate.
Be a gate – the divine is waiting to enter you from eternity.
207. Love.
Begin to live positively – that is,
with positive emotions.
To be negative is to be self-destructive
and ultimately suicidal.
But ordinarily the mind works that way
because it is only an instrument for safety and security;
it detects only death and not life.
So to be completely positive is to transcend mind.
Some fakir was asked to talk to a group
about the negative nature of the mind.
He tacked up on the wall a large sheet of
perfectly white paper.
He made a black spot in the paper with a pencil.
Then he asked each man to say what he saw.
Each man replied: A black spot.
The fakir then said: Yes, there is a little black spot.
But not one of you saw the big expanse of white paper –
and that is the point of my speech.
208. Love.
The forms of existence are finite – all forms.
Really, to have a form means to be finite.
But existence is infinite
because only the formless can be infinite,
and existence is formlessness,
that is why it can take all forms.
But to take form in any way is to allow death in
because form is a death sentence,
whilst existence itself is eternal life.
Do not be identified with the form:
this identification creates the fear of death
– in fact, all fear.
Remember the formless
and you will know immortality
because you will be that – then.
209. Love.
One’s attitude is everything.
Negative attitudes negate life –
they are good for dying but not good for living.
Life needs positive attitudes;
life feeds on them
because they make you
not only happy but creative also.
Once there lived an old woman,
but the older she became the younger she felt –
because youthfulness has nothing to do with age,
it is an attitude,
and with age and its richness
one can really be younger than the young.
The old woman was so cheerful and creative
that everyone wondered at her.
But you must have some clouds in your life,
said a visitor.
Clouds? she replied. Why, of course:
if there were no clouds
where would the blessed showers come from?
In the presence of trouble –
and there are troubles in life –
the positive mind grows wings
but others buy crutches.
Grow wings, and do not buy crutches.
210. Love.
There is no security in life
because life cannot exist except as insecurity –
that is why the more secure one is
the less alive one becomes.
Death is complete security.
So never be in search of security
because you are searching for death.
To live totally and in ecstasy never demands security.
Accept insecurity blissfully
and when you accept it
then you will know that it has a beauty of its own.
Mulla Nasruddin’s tomb
was fronted by an immense wooden door,
barred and padlocked.
Nobody could get into it – at least through the door.
As his last joke
the Mulla decreed that the tomb
should have no walls around it…
What the Mulla did with his tomb
everybody is doing with his life –
and unknowingly!
If you also want to do it –
at least do it knowingly,
because I know that you cannot do it knowingly!
Not only you cannot, but no one can do it,
because no one can knowingly be stupid.
211. Love.
The universe cares for little but play.
But man in his life does hardly anything but work,
and because of this everything has become upside down.
Hence the agony.
The law, the tao of the universe, is play – leela –
and the law of human reason is work
because reason cannot think beyond utility.
But existence exists beyond utility.
Meditate on this gap and you will find the bridge –
and the bridge is necessary
because you cannot exist without work,
and to exist only for work is unbearable and unlivable.
The meditative man works
so that he can play more intensely –
the reason for his work is play.
And the unmeditative man plays so that he can work more efficiently –
the reason for his play is work.
212. Love.
Life does not need comfort when it can be offered meaning
nor pleasure when it can be shown purpose,
because in the total intensity of intentional living
is the fruition of the seed of consciousness.
And consciousness without the self is the goal.
Consciousness without the center –
and you have reached.
Consciousness without ego is nirvana:
or you may call it God or whatsoever you like.
Know that everyone is seeking this state of being,
but unless the seeker is lost, this state of being cannot be found –
and the seeker can only be lost
in the fire of total intensity of living.
So live totally.
And live in the moment
and moment to moment,
because there is no other way to live totally,
and no other way to dissolve the center, the self, the ego.
213. Love.
The secret of meditation is the art of unlearning.
Mind is learning;
meditation is unlearning.
That is – die constantly to your experience.
Don’t let it imprison you.
Experience becomes a dead weight
in the living and flowing, riverlike consciousness.
Live in the moment unburdened of the past,
flow in the moment unblocked by the mind,
and you will be in meditation.
Know well that it is innocence that is full
and experience that is empty –
although the surface appearance is quite the contrary.
It is innocence that knows
and experience that knows not –
though innocence never claims
and experience is nothing but claims and claims and claims!
And that is why I say:
innocence is meditation because it opens the doors of the unknown.
So learn how to unlearn.
So learn how to be beyond the mind.
Do not cling to the known
and the master key will be in your hands.
Be open and vulnerable,
always living and flowing into the unknown,
and you will be in meditation –
you will be meditation.
214. Love.
Three men made their way to the circle of a Sufi
seeking admission to his teachings.
Almost at once one of them
detached himself from the group,
angered by the erratic behavior of the master.
On the master’s instructions
the second was told by a disciple
that the sage was a fraud.
He withdrew soon afterwards.
The third was allowed to talk
but was offered no teaching for so
long that he lost patience and left the circle.
When they had all gone away
the teacher instructed his circle thus:
The first man was an illustration of the principle:
Do not judge fundamental things through seeing.
The second was an illustration of the injunction,
Do not judge things of deep importance through hearing.
The third was an example of the dictum:
Never judge by speech or the lack of it.
When asked by a disciple
why the applicants could not have been
instructed in this matter
the master retorted: I am here to give real knowledge,
not to teach what people pretend
that they have already learned at their mother’s knees.
215. Love.
Always remember the golden rule: One step at a time.
A good natured woman was often asked for food by tramps.
She finally decided to refuse them;
it was becoming too burdensome.
But shortly after she made her resolution
one young man stopped
and asked her for a little piece of thread.
She noticed that his pants were badly ripped,
that he had a needle,
and she realized he could not get work
with his pants in their present condition,
so she gave him the thread.
The fellow took the thread,
went down the road and sat under a tree
for a few minutes,
then came back to the house.
He told the woman he could not repair the pants
unless he had a piece of cloth for a patch.
She gave him a small piece of material.
About an hour later the young fellow
came again to the house
and said: Madam, these pants are beyond repair.
It would be very good of you
if you could give me a pair of your husband’s old pants.
So she gave him a pair of old pants
and smiled at his cleverness.
The young man went behind the barn
and changed into the pants given to him.
Then he returned to the house and told the woman
that the pants were sort of big around the waist,
but if she could give him some food
he was sure they would fit perfectly.