Chapter #5 Eighty Four Thousand Poems #5

Date: 1980-04-07 (pm)
Place: Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Osho's Commentary

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been copy-typed on to the computer. It is for reference purposes only.]

Prayer, grace and mercy are three dimensions
Of a really religious life.
A religious life begins in prayer and ends in mercy.
A religious life means a deep "Yes" to god --
That is prayer:
A total yes to god, not holding yourself back,
A whole-hearted "Yes".
And once that "Yes" has happened
Your life becomes full of grace.
It attains to a beauty that is not of this world
That belongs to the beyond
That starts showering on you.
And not only you feel it
Even others start feeling it.
It surrounds you.
It is like an aroma, an aura, a fragrance.
It is true beauty.
And when grace has started descending in your life
All your energy becomes compassion, mercy.
It transform your energy.
It makes your life full of love.
There is nothing else to do.
All desires disappear and you are so full of energy
That you start sharing your life, your love,
Whatsoever you have.
That sharing is compassion.

These are the three dimensions.
Between these three is born
The religious consciousness.
Your name contains the whole art of religion.

Matthias was one of the disciples of Jesus
One of the twelve apostles.
He is symbolically represented by a young angel
To signify Jesus Christ's humanity.
He was the most human disciple
Out of all the disciples of Jesus.

Once you become interested in god
You start becoming more and more super-human.
It happens naturally:
You start transcending humanity
You start surpassing humanity.
Matthias remained utterly a human being
And became a representative of Jesus' humanity.
All the twelve disciples represent something.
They are twelve aspects of Jesus.
Nobody represents Jesus in his wholeness
He is so vast
But each disciple can represent him at least
In a single aspect.
Matthias represents his humanity
And that is of great significance
Because in the East
Buddha is thought to be absolutely super-human.

All the stories that we have written about Buddha
Have taken away everything human from him.
He is just an abstraction
He is almost intangible.
He looks more like a myth than like a reality.
And so is the case with Krishna and Mahavira:
Everything human has been taken away.
It is not that they were not human,
They were human, very human,
But the idea was that a ,am of god
Has to go beyond humanity.

For example
Mahavira is said not to have perspired
Because that is too human.
Now, in India not to perspire...
It is a super-human feat!
It is easier to walk on water
Than not to perspire in India!
And he lived in the hottest part of the country,
In Bihar, and he lived naked
And he walked bare-footed on muddy paths
In dirt and dust and in the burning sun.
But the stories say that he never perspired
Never urinated, never defecated.
These are human things too human!
The followers of Mahavira, cannot conceive
Him urinating.
That looks below Mahavira, too below:
He is a god!
You can always think of him sitting
In deep meditation.
That's the only activity left for him.

In that way Jesus is far more human.
He enjoys eating and drinking
And mixing with people and laughing and joking.
He enjoyed company, and the company of all kinds
Of people -- gamblers, drunkards, prostitutes.
He is really human!
And Matthias is the most human of all
His disciples, he represents his humanity.

My effort here
Is to make religion as human as possible.
It should not be airy-fairy!
We have to bring it down to earth.
And I allow my sannyasins to perspire!
There is nothing wrong in it, no sin is committed.
Even a sauna bath is perfectly virtuous!
Perspire as much as you can.

Remember that religion has not to be unearthly.
It has to be rooted in the earth
Only then is it alive.
When it becomes too cloudy, uprooted
It looses all greenness, it looses all aliveness.
It becomes just an abstract philosophy.
That's what has happened in the East.
Hence Jainas cannot believe in Jesus,
Neither can Buddhists believe in Jesus
Because he is too human.
But I am all for Jesus
Simply because he is so human!

We want a religion which is human.
Of course one has not to end with humanity
One has to go beyond it, one has to transcend it
But one should remain rooted.
A tree is rooted in the earth
Yet it goes above the earth.
It reaches into the sky
It whispers with the clouds
It has a dialogue with the winds.
It blooms, but it remains rooted in the earth.

A truly religious person will have wings
And will also have roots
Roots in the earth and wings in the sky.
That is the true synthesis.
And then religion is complete, total, whole.

God loves playfulness.
This whole existence is out of his playfulness.
He loves celebration.
This whole existence
Is in a continuous celebration.
He loves songs and dances.

But our so-called religious people are very sad
Very serious -- pathologically serious.
And I know why they cannot find god:
God avoids them!
Who would like their company?
The moment god gets any news
That they are coming close, he escapes!
He abhors saints like people abhor death.
Even sinners are far better company than saints
For the simple reason that
At least the sinners can sing and dance
And laugh and love.
Saints can't do anything.
They can only remain serious, dead, cold.
God is utterly afraid of your saints!

My sannyasins
Are not to become so-called saints.
They have to become singers and dancers.
I believe in a god who is a dancer
Who is a singer, who is a musician.
His existence is not a business project.
It is out of fun that he creates.

And when you also start living life as fun
You start growing.
When life becomes a non-serious affair
Then you have no limits
Then the whole sky is yours.

That we are beloveds of god
Is something to be constantly remembered.
Man has forgotten it completely, hence
There is so much a feeling of being outsiders
As if we don't belong to the existence
As if the existence does not care
As if the existence is indifferent
As if we are just accidental, not essential.

The whole world
Is dominated ba a dark cloud of alienation.
And the reason is that we have forgotten
A simple truth: God loves us, hence we are.
We are his love-products.
His love is the very base of our life.
We can't breathe without his love
Our hearts will stop beating without his love
His love is our existence.
But because it is so close tu us
It is easy to forget about it.
There is no distance between it and us
Hence we can't see it and we become oblivious
Of anything we can't see.
It has to be consciously remembered, and as
The remembrance deepens all alienation disappears.
The dark cloud is found no more and the world
Is full of sunshine. It is a joy to be
Because this is our home and we are not accidental
We are absolutely essential, we are needed.
We are serving some grater purpose, something
Greater than we are, something bigger than we are.

Man unaware of himself is a beggar.
Man aware of himself
Is the greatest emperor possible
Because the moment you become aware of yourself
The whole kingdom of god is yours.
It has already been given to you
It is just that you are asleep.
It is there, but you are not looking at it.
Your eyes are focussed on the outside.

The whole effort here is
To help your eyes turn inwards.

Sannyas is an inner pilgrimage.

We are born with a great treasure
So vast, so great that it is inexhaustible.
But we live in utter poverty
Because we never dig within our own being.
We go on looking everywhere else.
This is the most strange thing about man
That he searches and seeks everywhere.
He is ready to go to Everest
He is ready to go to the moon
But he is not ready to go within.

The moment you say "Go within"
It falls on deaf ears.
And it is there the treasure is.
So we go on carrying the treasure with us
And still remain beggars.

Sannyas means a radical change
From this stupid approach
From this idiotic behavior;
Your reality is within
And you go on seeking and searching without.
The first enquiry should be made within.
If you don't find it there, then of course
You can go on exploring the whole world.
But that has never happened.
Those who have gone within have always found it.

Meditation is a simple process
Of watching your own mind.
Not fighting with the mind
Not trying to control it either
Just remaining there, a choiceless witness.
Whatsoever passes you simply take note of it
With no prejudice for or against.
You don't call it names
That this should not come to my mind
That this is an ugly thought and
This is a very beautiful and virtuous thought.
You should not judge
You should remain non-judgmental
Because the moment you judge, you lose meditation.
You become identified.
Either you become a friend or you become a foe.
You create relationships.
Meditation means
Remaining unrelated with your thought process
Utterly unrelated, cool, calm
Watching whatsoever is passing.
And then a miracle happens:
Slowly slowly one becomes aware
That less and less thoughts are passing.
The more alert you are, the less thoughts pass
The less alert you are, the more thoughts pass.
It is as if traffic depends on your awareness.
When you are perfectly aware
Even for a single moment, all thinking stops.
Immediately, there is a sudden stop
And the road is empty, there is no traffic.
That moment is meditation.

Slowly slowly those moments come more and more
Those empty spaces come again and again
And stay longer.
And you become capable of moving easily
Into those empty spaces with no effort.
So whenever you want you can move
Into those empty spaces with no effort.
They are refreshing, rejuvenating
And they make you aware of who you are.
Freed from the mind you are freed
From all ideas about yourself.
Now you can see who you are without any prejudice.
And to know oneself
Is to know all that is worth knowing.
And to miss self-knowledge is to miss all.
A man my know everything in the world
But if he does not know himself
He is utterly ignorant
He is just a walking Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Freedom without awareness is only an empty idea.
It contains nothing.
One cannot be really free without being aware
Because your unconscious goes on dominating you
Your unconscious goes on pulling your strings.
You may think, you may believe that you are free
But you are not free, you are just a victim
Of natural forces, blind forces.

So there are two types of people. The majority
Follows the tradition, the society, the state.
The orthodox people, the conventional
The conformists -- they follow the crowd
They are not free.
And then there are a few rebellious spirits
Drop-outs, bohemians, artists
Painters, musicians, poets;
They think they are living in freedom
But they only think. Just by rebellion
Against the tradition you don't become free.
You are still under the rule of natural instincts.
You are possessed by lust, by greed, by ambitions.
And you are not a master of these things
You are a slave. Hence I say
Freedom is only possible through awareness.
Unless one transforms ones unconsciousness
Into consciousness there is no freedom.

And that is where only very few people
Have succeeded -- a Jesus, a Lao Tzu
A Zarathustra, a Buddha
Just a few people
Who can be counted on one's fingers.
They have really lived in freedom
Because they lived out of awareness.

That has to be the work for every sannyasin:
To create more and more awareness.
Then freedom comes of its own accord.
Freedom is the fragrance of the flower of awareness.

Decisiveness is a very essential quality.
There are many people who are incapable
Of deciding, who go on thinking.
They waste their whole life in thinking
Whether to do this or not to do,
To be or not to be.
And they are always hesitating, they can't act
And without action life is futile.
They can't decide, and without decision
There is no possibility of your growth.
Yes, one should look
At all the possible alternatives
But not for too long.
It should not become a habit.
One should look at all the alternatives
And then one should be able to decide.
One should not wait for a perfect decision
Remember, because in life
There can never be any perfect decision.

I have heard about a man
Who was searching for a perfect wife.
He died unmarried obviously.
When he was dying somebody asked
'You travelled all over the world
You searched for a perfect wife.
Couldn't you find a single woman who was perfect?'
He said,'Yes, I came across a few
But they were searching for perfect husbands!.

If one is a perfectionist
One is doomed to fail.
Perfectionists are indecisive people.
Nothing satisfies them, everything falls short.
Their ideal is too high.
Everything seems to be unsatisfactory.

Decisiveness means knowing
That life is imperfect and life is short
Knowing that we have limitations
Yet we have to decide.
Alternatives are limited, we cannot wait forever.
One you decide then you go wholeheartedly into it
You risk all.
One has to be a gambler
Then only something is possible:
Growth is possible
A new birth is possible, a new being is possible.
Otherwise nothing is possible.
Decisiveness is absolutely necessary.

And it is good that you have decided t
To be a sannyasin.
Now go into it totally, wholeheartedly.
Let it be a commitment, a deep involvement.
Don't remain on the periphery
Move towards the very centre of it.
Only then some revolution
Some transformation can be hoped for.

God has no form, neither do we have any form.
The form belongs to the body.
It is as if you look out of your window
And the sky seems to be framed be the frame
Of the window, although the sky has no frame.
If you come away from the window
You will be surprised:
There is no frame around the sky.

Hence a few modern painters have dropped
Framing their paintings, for the simple reason
That the frame is arbitrary.
If you paint a sunset there is no frame
But when you paint a painting you put
A frame on it; it begins somewhere
And ends somewhere.
But the real sunset does not begin anywhere
And does not end anywhere. It is infinite.

Our body and our mind give us a certain form
But that is not our truth. We are formless.
One has to know it; unless one knows it
One is not aware of god
One cannot be aware of god.

God is not somebody sitting there
In the seventh heaven, directing, guiding...
A super-boss or something like that.
God is within you!
If you look in and if you can find
Something which is formless, you have found god.
And then you will come across him everywhere.
In the trees, in the mountains, in the people
You will be able to see the formless.

All forms are arbitrary: reality is formless.
And when one is formless one is oceanic.
That vastness gives so much ecstasy
It brings such blessing, such benediction
That one cannot imagine it.
Unless it has happened.

The sky is not really blue, it has no colour
But because it is infinite it appears blue.
The blue is only an appearance.
Whenever the river is deep it will appear blue
Although the water has no colour.
Depth gives it an appearance of blueness.
That's why in India you will come across
Krishna painted as if he were blue.
Now, nobody is born blue.
There are black people and there are white
People and there are red people and yellow
People.
But nobody is born blue
Except a few blue children who die
Who cannot survive.
But Krishna is painted as if he were blue.
The very word 'krishna' means the blue one.
He is painted blue for the simple reason that
Blueness represents depth, infinity, vastness.

Remember it, the body is not our reality.
It is just a caravanserai, an overnights's stay.
Nor is the mind our reality.
We are as vast as the sky.
Once you know this vastness as your real being
You are freed from all small identities.
From all mediocre, mundane confinements.
You are freed from all prisons.
And that freedom is sannyas.