Renunciation of prescribed action is not proper।
To abandon it through delusion is proclaimed tamasic।। 7।।
That action which one abandons, saying “It is painful,” because of bodily hardship—
such rajasic renunciation gains no fruit of renunciation।। 8।।
As duty alone, that prescribed act which is performed, O Arjuna,
casting off attachment and the fruit as well—such renunciation is deemed sattvic।। 9।।
Geeta Darshan #3
Available in:
Read in Original Hindi (मूल हिन्दी)
Sutra (Original)
नियतस्य तु संन्यासः कर्मणो नोपपद्यते।
मोहात्तस्य परित्यागस्तामसः परिकीर्तितः।। 7।।
दुःखमित्येव यत्कर्म कायक्लेशमयात्त्यजेत्।
स कृत्वा राजसं त्यागं नैव त्यागफलं लभेत्।। 8।।
कार्यमित्येव यत्कर्म नियतं क्रियतेऽर्जुन।
सङ्गं त्यक्त्वा फलं चैव स त्यागः सात्त्विको मतः।। 9।।
मोहात्तस्य परित्यागस्तामसः परिकीर्तितः।। 7।।
दुःखमित्येव यत्कर्म कायक्लेशमयात्त्यजेत्।
स कृत्वा राजसं त्यागं नैव त्यागफलं लभेत्।। 8।।
कार्यमित्येव यत्कर्म नियतं क्रियतेऽर्जुन।
सङ्गं त्यक्त्वा फलं चैव स त्यागः सात्त्विको मतः।। 9।।
Transliteration:
niyatasya tu saṃnyāsaḥ karmaṇo nopapadyate|
mohāttasya parityāgastāmasaḥ parikīrtitaḥ|| 7||
duḥkhamityeva yatkarma kāyakleśamayāttyajet|
sa kṛtvā rājasaṃ tyāgaṃ naiva tyāgaphalaṃ labhet|| 8||
kāryamityeva yatkarma niyataṃ kriyate'rjuna|
saṅgaṃ tyaktvā phalaṃ caiva sa tyāgaḥ sāttviko mataḥ|| 9||
niyatasya tu saṃnyāsaḥ karmaṇo nopapadyate|
mohāttasya parityāgastāmasaḥ parikīrtitaḥ|| 7||
duḥkhamityeva yatkarma kāyakleśamayāttyajet|
sa kṛtvā rājasaṃ tyāgaṃ naiva tyāgaphalaṃ labhet|| 8||
kāryamityeva yatkarma niyataṃ kriyate'rjuna|
saṅgaṃ tyaktvā phalaṃ caiva sa tyāgaḥ sāttviko mataḥ|| 9||
Translation (Meaning)
Questions in this Discourse
First question: Osho, what is the secret of celebrating the full moon of Ashadha as Guru Purnima?
Religion is a poetic way of looking at life. There is a mathematical way to look at life, and there is a poetic way. The journey of mathematics leads to science. And if one goes on walking the way of poetry, the ultimate poetry reaches the divine.
But the language of poetry is a little difficult to grasp, because the language of your whole life is the language of mathematics. You are familiar with mathematics; you are unfamiliar with the language of poetry.
Two mistakes are possible. The first is that you may take the language of poetry to be merely a poem, just imagination—that is the first mistake. The second mistake is to take the language of poetry as though it were mathematical truth, as fact—that too is a mistake. Whoever can avoid both will be able to understand why the full moon of Ashadha is Guru Purnima.
The language of poetry is not about facts; it is about mysteries. When a lover says to his beloved, “Your face is like the moon,” it does not literally mean that her face is like the moon. Yet the statement is not useless either. How can a face be like the moon?
Einstein has a famous joke. The young woman he married, Frau Einstein, wrote a little poetry. Einstein said to her, “I just can’t understand it.” Einstein himself was mathematics incarnate, mathematics personified—perhaps no greater mathematician has ever lived on this earth, and it is doubtful that one ever will. He said, “I can’t understand these poems at all. People say, ‘The beloved’s face is like the moon!’ The moon is not even beautiful...”
When men went to the moon, the astronauts found Einstein right and all the poets wrong. There are ravines and craters; no greenery, no rippling lakes; no flowers blooming, no birds singing—just a desert. So dead a desert that nothing at all lives there. What talk of beauty can there be in such a cremation ground?
And to call a woman’s face the face of the moon! Einstein said, “Even the proportions don’t fit—how huge the moon, how small a face!”
He is right—if you take the language of poetry as the language of fact, this is what happens.
On the other hand, there are those who have tried to prove the language of poetry as the language of fact—for example, Christians saying that Jesus was born of a virgin mother. That is poetry. No one is born of a virgin mother. It is not a fact; it is not history. Yet it is full of meaning—more meaningful than history. If it were an historical occurrence, it would be worth two pennies. Those who knew tried to express something that cannot fit into ordinary language. They were saying that only a virgin mother could give birth to one like Jesus. For such purity as Jesus’, we can conceive no other source than virginity itself.
So those who said Jesus was born of a virgin mother spoke something very deep, very meaningful—but the language is poetic, not factual. They are saying, “Seeing Jesus, we are ready to trust even this impossibility—that he must have been born of a virgin.”
There is no need to prove it, and no need to disprove it. Both are foolishness. It needs to be understood. Poetry asks for sympathy, for resonance.
Those who love Mahavira say that sweat did not flow from his body, there was no odor; he did not defecate or urinate. This is absolutely untrue as fact—otherwise Mahavira could not have survived. Imagine the state of constipation—such as no one has ever had! If he did not excrete at all, can you understand the torment? Forget bliss—hell would be created.
No, he certainly excreted. But we cannot imagine that filth could be produced in so pure a person. He certainly sweated—the sun pardons no one, its laws change for no one. If there was sun, then sweat must have flowed from this naked mendicant Mahavira—more than from you; for he had no hut, no house, naked under blazing sun or pouring rain, beneath the open sky. That is why he was called Digambara—one whose only garment is the sky. He must have sweated plentifully.
Yet those who say what they say are also utterly right. They are saying, “How can the stench of sweat arise from such purity? If ever we thought we sensed a bad odor from Mahavira’s body, the error must have been in our own nostrils; it could not have been from Mahavira.”
All this is poetry. Understand it as poetry and it has a unique sweetness; then dive into it, and you will bring back great diamonds, you will gather great pearls.
But two kinds of people sit on the shore and never dive. One keeps proving, “This is not factual; it is false.” He is foolish. The other keeps proving, “It is fact; it is not false.” He too is foolish. For both stand on the same ground: both assume that the language of poetry is the language of fact. Their mistake is one and the same. They only appear to be opposed; they are not.
All religion is a great epic. If this occurs to you, the full moon of Ashadha becomes very meaningful. Otherwise, Ashadha is monsoon—you may not even see the full moon. Clouds gather, the sky is not open, moonlight does not fully reach the earth. And there are lovelier full moons—the autumn full moon, Sharad Purnima—why not choose that? It would seem more fitting.
No—the choosers had a certain sense, an indication. The indication is: the guru is like the full moon; the disciple is like Ashadha. The moon of Sharad is beautiful because the sky is empty—there the disciple is absent; the guru is alone. To be beautiful in Ashadha, that is something—to shine when the guru is encircled by clouds of disciples.
Disciples have come carrying all the darknesses of many births. They are the dark clouds; they are the season of Ashadha. If even there the guru can shine like the moon, if he can create light in that atmosphere wrapped in darkness, then he is a guru. Hence the full moon of Ashadha! It points toward the guru and toward the disciple; and, naturally, meaning lies where both meet.
Remember, if you understand the poetic symbol, you will see: you are like Ashadha, dark clouds. Who knows how much water of desires and cravings you are filled with; who knows how many samskaras of countless births you carry—you are burdened, heavy. You have to be split open; you have to be pierced. Into your heart shrouded in darkness, light must enter. Therefore, the full moon!
When the moon is full, it has a coolness. We chose the moon for the guru. We could have chosen the sun; that would have been more factual. Because the moon has no light of its own—understand this a little. All the moon’s light is borrowed. The sun has its own light. The moon merely reflects the sun’s light—like a lamp placed before a mirror; the mirror too begins to shine, but it is reflected light, returning light. The moon is only a mirror; the light is the sun’s.
Had we called the guru the sun, it would have been more factual. And the sun’s light is great, vast. The moon’s light is not great; it is limited—reaching only to this earth.
But we have thought much, for centuries, and then we chose the moon for two reasons. First: the guru’s light is not his own; it is God’s. He is only a reflection. What he gives is not his—he is merely an instrument, a mirror.
You cannot look at God directly—just as it is hard to look straight at the sun. Try, and you will understand the impediment: instead of light, your eyes will be filled with darkness. To look directly at the divine is impossible; your eyes will be destroyed, you will be blind. The light is too much, unbearably much; you cannot contain it. You will be shattered, broken; you will not be able to grow.
Therefore we left the sun aside. It is too much; altogether beyond the disciple’s capacity. So we placed the guru in between.
The guru is a mirror: he receives the sun’s light and gives it to you. But in the giving, the light becomes gentle. In the giving, its rush and fierceness dissolve. In reflecting off the mirror, the very quality of light changes. The sun is so blazing; the moon is so gentle!
Hence Kabir has said, “Guru Govind dou khade, kake lagu pay?”—Guru and God both stand before me; whose feet should I touch? And Kabir touched the guru’s feet: “Balihari guru aapki, jo Govind diyo batay”—Blessed is the guru who showed me Govind. To look directly was not possible; the guru became a mirror. What was almost impossible, the guru made possible; what was light of the far sky, he brought down to earth. The guru is the medium. That is why we chose the moon.
The guru has nothing of his own. Kabir says, “Mera mujh mein kuch nahin”—Nothing of ‘me’ remains in me. A guru is precisely one who has become like emptiness. If he still has something of his own, even the reflection of God would be distorted, impure.
The moon has no light of its own to mix in and adulterate. The moon is empty; it has no light. It receives from the sun and gives to you. He stands only in the middle—and gives birth to gentleness.
To call the guru the sun would be more factual, but less meaningful. Therefore we say “moon.”
And the sun is always the sun; it does not wax and wane. The guru too was once a disciple; he was not always as he is now. Even a Buddha, before becoming a Buddha, was as full of darkness and inertia as you are. The sun is always the same.
So that symbol does not fit. The guru too once searched, wandered—on the same paths where you wander and seek. He made the same mistakes you make—only then can he support you. One who has never erred cannot support anyone; he will not even understand error. Only one who has passed through the same dark lanes where you stray, who has knocked at the same wrong doors where you knock, who has gone through taverns and brothels, who has seen life’s deformed and monstrous faces, who has also consorted with the devil—only he can understand your real inner state.
No, the sun cannot understand you; the moon can. The moon has passed through darkness; for fifteen days, half its life, it is drowned in darkness. The new moon it has known; it has not always been full. It has known terrible darkness; it has been familiar with the devil; it has not always known God. The moon is a traveler. The sun is not a traveler; it remains as it is. Like the moon, the guru has come from incompleteness to completeness—first day, second day, third day—growing slowly, step by step. And the day came when he became full.
The guru is on the very path you are on—ahead of you, but the path is the same. Hence he can help you. God cannot help you.
It may be a little hard to hear: God cannot help you, because he has never wandered in the journey in which you wander. He will not be able to understand you; he is too far. The distance between you and him is infinite; no bridge can be built.
Between you and the guru, bridges can be built. However great the distance between the new moon night and the full moon night, there is still a bridge: the new moon night too belonged to the moon, only it was a night drowned in the moon’s darkness. The moon was then, and the moon is now. Transformations have happened, revolutions have happened—but there is a continuum.
So the guru can understand you. And I tell you: know as your guru only one who can forgive your every mistake. If he cannot forgive, understand that he has not lived life rightly—perhaps he is “complete,” which I doubt. How can one become the full moon who has never even been the second day’s moon? It would be a deception.
Therefore the great masters, the supreme gurus, are always ready to forgive all your mistakes, because they know it is natural—every human being will err. They themselves have erred; why blame another, why condemn? Their hearts will be full of compassion.
Recognize the guru by this: how much compassion is there? If you get angry and the guru starts threatening you with hell, know that there is no compassion. If you stray, if you fall from the path, if lust surrounds you, and the guru cannot forgive you, know that he is not the full moon. He will have put on the appearance of the full moon—a fake moon, like the one on a cinema screen, not the real moon.
The true moon has passed through the whole journey; he carries every experience. Whatever can happen in a human life has happened in his life. He is the one who has lived out humanity in its innumerable forms—the auspicious and the inauspicious, the bad and the good, the unholy and the holy, the beautiful and the ugly—who has known hell and life’s heaven, who has known sorrow and joy—who has become the most mature. And after gathering all that wealth of experience, who has become complete, who has become the moon.
That is why we do not call the guru the sun; we call him the moon. The moon is cool. There is light in it, but it is cool. The sun has light, but it burns. The sun’s light is piercing, like an arrow. The moon’s light is like a shower of flowers—it does not even touch, and it descends.
The guru is the moon, the full moon. However dark your night may be, however far away you may be, it makes no difference—you are on the very path the guru once trod.
Therefore, without a guru, to seek God is impossible. A direct encounter with God will burn you to ashes. Do not lift your eyes straight to the sun. First make a relationship with the moon. First be reconciled with the moon. Then the moon itself will point you toward the sun. “Balihari guru aapki, jo Govind diyo batay.”
This is why the full moon of Ashadha is Guru Purnima. But these are poetic symbols. Do not hunt for them in the Puranas. Do not go seeking scriptural proofs. I am telling you as I have seen.
But the language of poetry is a little difficult to grasp, because the language of your whole life is the language of mathematics. You are familiar with mathematics; you are unfamiliar with the language of poetry.
Two mistakes are possible. The first is that you may take the language of poetry to be merely a poem, just imagination—that is the first mistake. The second mistake is to take the language of poetry as though it were mathematical truth, as fact—that too is a mistake. Whoever can avoid both will be able to understand why the full moon of Ashadha is Guru Purnima.
The language of poetry is not about facts; it is about mysteries. When a lover says to his beloved, “Your face is like the moon,” it does not literally mean that her face is like the moon. Yet the statement is not useless either. How can a face be like the moon?
Einstein has a famous joke. The young woman he married, Frau Einstein, wrote a little poetry. Einstein said to her, “I just can’t understand it.” Einstein himself was mathematics incarnate, mathematics personified—perhaps no greater mathematician has ever lived on this earth, and it is doubtful that one ever will. He said, “I can’t understand these poems at all. People say, ‘The beloved’s face is like the moon!’ The moon is not even beautiful...”
When men went to the moon, the astronauts found Einstein right and all the poets wrong. There are ravines and craters; no greenery, no rippling lakes; no flowers blooming, no birds singing—just a desert. So dead a desert that nothing at all lives there. What talk of beauty can there be in such a cremation ground?
And to call a woman’s face the face of the moon! Einstein said, “Even the proportions don’t fit—how huge the moon, how small a face!”
He is right—if you take the language of poetry as the language of fact, this is what happens.
On the other hand, there are those who have tried to prove the language of poetry as the language of fact—for example, Christians saying that Jesus was born of a virgin mother. That is poetry. No one is born of a virgin mother. It is not a fact; it is not history. Yet it is full of meaning—more meaningful than history. If it were an historical occurrence, it would be worth two pennies. Those who knew tried to express something that cannot fit into ordinary language. They were saying that only a virgin mother could give birth to one like Jesus. For such purity as Jesus’, we can conceive no other source than virginity itself.
So those who said Jesus was born of a virgin mother spoke something very deep, very meaningful—but the language is poetic, not factual. They are saying, “Seeing Jesus, we are ready to trust even this impossibility—that he must have been born of a virgin.”
There is no need to prove it, and no need to disprove it. Both are foolishness. It needs to be understood. Poetry asks for sympathy, for resonance.
Those who love Mahavira say that sweat did not flow from his body, there was no odor; he did not defecate or urinate. This is absolutely untrue as fact—otherwise Mahavira could not have survived. Imagine the state of constipation—such as no one has ever had! If he did not excrete at all, can you understand the torment? Forget bliss—hell would be created.
No, he certainly excreted. But we cannot imagine that filth could be produced in so pure a person. He certainly sweated—the sun pardons no one, its laws change for no one. If there was sun, then sweat must have flowed from this naked mendicant Mahavira—more than from you; for he had no hut, no house, naked under blazing sun or pouring rain, beneath the open sky. That is why he was called Digambara—one whose only garment is the sky. He must have sweated plentifully.
Yet those who say what they say are also utterly right. They are saying, “How can the stench of sweat arise from such purity? If ever we thought we sensed a bad odor from Mahavira’s body, the error must have been in our own nostrils; it could not have been from Mahavira.”
All this is poetry. Understand it as poetry and it has a unique sweetness; then dive into it, and you will bring back great diamonds, you will gather great pearls.
But two kinds of people sit on the shore and never dive. One keeps proving, “This is not factual; it is false.” He is foolish. The other keeps proving, “It is fact; it is not false.” He too is foolish. For both stand on the same ground: both assume that the language of poetry is the language of fact. Their mistake is one and the same. They only appear to be opposed; they are not.
All religion is a great epic. If this occurs to you, the full moon of Ashadha becomes very meaningful. Otherwise, Ashadha is monsoon—you may not even see the full moon. Clouds gather, the sky is not open, moonlight does not fully reach the earth. And there are lovelier full moons—the autumn full moon, Sharad Purnima—why not choose that? It would seem more fitting.
No—the choosers had a certain sense, an indication. The indication is: the guru is like the full moon; the disciple is like Ashadha. The moon of Sharad is beautiful because the sky is empty—there the disciple is absent; the guru is alone. To be beautiful in Ashadha, that is something—to shine when the guru is encircled by clouds of disciples.
Disciples have come carrying all the darknesses of many births. They are the dark clouds; they are the season of Ashadha. If even there the guru can shine like the moon, if he can create light in that atmosphere wrapped in darkness, then he is a guru. Hence the full moon of Ashadha! It points toward the guru and toward the disciple; and, naturally, meaning lies where both meet.
Remember, if you understand the poetic symbol, you will see: you are like Ashadha, dark clouds. Who knows how much water of desires and cravings you are filled with; who knows how many samskaras of countless births you carry—you are burdened, heavy. You have to be split open; you have to be pierced. Into your heart shrouded in darkness, light must enter. Therefore, the full moon!
When the moon is full, it has a coolness. We chose the moon for the guru. We could have chosen the sun; that would have been more factual. Because the moon has no light of its own—understand this a little. All the moon’s light is borrowed. The sun has its own light. The moon merely reflects the sun’s light—like a lamp placed before a mirror; the mirror too begins to shine, but it is reflected light, returning light. The moon is only a mirror; the light is the sun’s.
Had we called the guru the sun, it would have been more factual. And the sun’s light is great, vast. The moon’s light is not great; it is limited—reaching only to this earth.
But we have thought much, for centuries, and then we chose the moon for two reasons. First: the guru’s light is not his own; it is God’s. He is only a reflection. What he gives is not his—he is merely an instrument, a mirror.
You cannot look at God directly—just as it is hard to look straight at the sun. Try, and you will understand the impediment: instead of light, your eyes will be filled with darkness. To look directly at the divine is impossible; your eyes will be destroyed, you will be blind. The light is too much, unbearably much; you cannot contain it. You will be shattered, broken; you will not be able to grow.
Therefore we left the sun aside. It is too much; altogether beyond the disciple’s capacity. So we placed the guru in between.
The guru is a mirror: he receives the sun’s light and gives it to you. But in the giving, the light becomes gentle. In the giving, its rush and fierceness dissolve. In reflecting off the mirror, the very quality of light changes. The sun is so blazing; the moon is so gentle!
Hence Kabir has said, “Guru Govind dou khade, kake lagu pay?”—Guru and God both stand before me; whose feet should I touch? And Kabir touched the guru’s feet: “Balihari guru aapki, jo Govind diyo batay”—Blessed is the guru who showed me Govind. To look directly was not possible; the guru became a mirror. What was almost impossible, the guru made possible; what was light of the far sky, he brought down to earth. The guru is the medium. That is why we chose the moon.
The guru has nothing of his own. Kabir says, “Mera mujh mein kuch nahin”—Nothing of ‘me’ remains in me. A guru is precisely one who has become like emptiness. If he still has something of his own, even the reflection of God would be distorted, impure.
The moon has no light of its own to mix in and adulterate. The moon is empty; it has no light. It receives from the sun and gives to you. He stands only in the middle—and gives birth to gentleness.
To call the guru the sun would be more factual, but less meaningful. Therefore we say “moon.”
And the sun is always the sun; it does not wax and wane. The guru too was once a disciple; he was not always as he is now. Even a Buddha, before becoming a Buddha, was as full of darkness and inertia as you are. The sun is always the same.
So that symbol does not fit. The guru too once searched, wandered—on the same paths where you wander and seek. He made the same mistakes you make—only then can he support you. One who has never erred cannot support anyone; he will not even understand error. Only one who has passed through the same dark lanes where you stray, who has knocked at the same wrong doors where you knock, who has gone through taverns and brothels, who has seen life’s deformed and monstrous faces, who has also consorted with the devil—only he can understand your real inner state.
No, the sun cannot understand you; the moon can. The moon has passed through darkness; for fifteen days, half its life, it is drowned in darkness. The new moon it has known; it has not always been full. It has known terrible darkness; it has been familiar with the devil; it has not always known God. The moon is a traveler. The sun is not a traveler; it remains as it is. Like the moon, the guru has come from incompleteness to completeness—first day, second day, third day—growing slowly, step by step. And the day came when he became full.
The guru is on the very path you are on—ahead of you, but the path is the same. Hence he can help you. God cannot help you.
It may be a little hard to hear: God cannot help you, because he has never wandered in the journey in which you wander. He will not be able to understand you; he is too far. The distance between you and him is infinite; no bridge can be built.
Between you and the guru, bridges can be built. However great the distance between the new moon night and the full moon night, there is still a bridge: the new moon night too belonged to the moon, only it was a night drowned in the moon’s darkness. The moon was then, and the moon is now. Transformations have happened, revolutions have happened—but there is a continuum.
So the guru can understand you. And I tell you: know as your guru only one who can forgive your every mistake. If he cannot forgive, understand that he has not lived life rightly—perhaps he is “complete,” which I doubt. How can one become the full moon who has never even been the second day’s moon? It would be a deception.
Therefore the great masters, the supreme gurus, are always ready to forgive all your mistakes, because they know it is natural—every human being will err. They themselves have erred; why blame another, why condemn? Their hearts will be full of compassion.
Recognize the guru by this: how much compassion is there? If you get angry and the guru starts threatening you with hell, know that there is no compassion. If you stray, if you fall from the path, if lust surrounds you, and the guru cannot forgive you, know that he is not the full moon. He will have put on the appearance of the full moon—a fake moon, like the one on a cinema screen, not the real moon.
The true moon has passed through the whole journey; he carries every experience. Whatever can happen in a human life has happened in his life. He is the one who has lived out humanity in its innumerable forms—the auspicious and the inauspicious, the bad and the good, the unholy and the holy, the beautiful and the ugly—who has known hell and life’s heaven, who has known sorrow and joy—who has become the most mature. And after gathering all that wealth of experience, who has become complete, who has become the moon.
That is why we do not call the guru the sun; we call him the moon. The moon is cool. There is light in it, but it is cool. The sun has light, but it burns. The sun’s light is piercing, like an arrow. The moon’s light is like a shower of flowers—it does not even touch, and it descends.
The guru is the moon, the full moon. However dark your night may be, however far away you may be, it makes no difference—you are on the very path the guru once trod.
Therefore, without a guru, to seek God is impossible. A direct encounter with God will burn you to ashes. Do not lift your eyes straight to the sun. First make a relationship with the moon. First be reconciled with the moon. Then the moon itself will point you toward the sun. “Balihari guru aapki, jo Govind diyo batay.”
This is why the full moon of Ashadha is Guru Purnima. But these are poetic symbols. Do not hunt for them in the Puranas. Do not go seeking scriptural proofs. I am telling you as I have seen.
Second question: Osho, by our asking questions day after day, will a dialogue someday happen? And will that dialogue someday become understanding?
Dialogue will not happen because you keep asking every day; it will happen by listening, day after day, to what I am saying to you. Not by asking. You can go on asking for endless lifetimes; you have been asking—and you have not listened. Often it happens that the more the mind is filled with questions, the less capable it becomes of listening. Your question keeps echoing in your mind. There is no leisure, no space to listen. You are so full of your question—where can anything enter? Where can what I am saying to you find a place?
No; you may go on asking for lifetimes—nothing will come of it. Questioning is a disease; it is not a state of health. I am not saying, “Do not ask,” because you are ill, so you will have to ask. Do not think that by not asking you are no longer sick. No one becomes healthy by running away from the hospital; nor is anyone healthy merely because he has never asked a doctor about his illness.
Yes, you will have to ask. You are sick. In illness, questions arise. Your condition is almost deranged. Things keep echoing in the mind; waking or sleeping, your maladies pursue you. Even your dreams are born out of your illness. Day and night, twenty-four hours, incessantly, the current of your disease keeps flowing.
You will have to ask; do not be afraid of asking. But asking alone is not enough. Ask—and then be silent, so that you can also listen. You asked in order to be able to listen. You asked to make a path for dialogue. If you can listen, dialogue will happen. From my side it is always happening; it is from your side that it has to happen.
I go on giving answers to your questions only in the hope that, slowly, you will learn to listen. But the opposite can also happen. Many of you are incurable patients. The more they ask, the more their asking grows. Give them the answer to one question, and the next day they arrive with ten questions extracted from that very answer.
It seems as if questioning is their occupation—as if they are asking just for the sake of asking; as if not asking would be some great loss! There appears to be no concern for listening. For if you can truly hear even one of my answers, all your questions will be answered—because the silence that descends upon you in the moment of listening is the answer.
What I am giving is hardly answers; it is only a pretext to make you quiet, to bring you to silence. If even for the sake of listening you become silent—if you grow silent to hear what I am saying—then the peace that arises in that silence, the sweet note that begins to sound within, the veena that starts to be played—that is the answer.
I am not giving answers; the answer is hidden within you. I am only teaching you a little how to be quiet, so that you can hear your own answer.
The question is yours—how can the answer be mine? The one who has the question has to find his own answer. Where the question has arisen, there the answer must be sought. In the same depth from which the question arose, the answer has to be found. Where the pain has appeared, the remedy must be sought there.
Then what am I doing? I go on giving answers to your questions. They are not answers; they are toys put into your hands in the name of answers. Perhaps you will get engrossed in those toys for a little while and fall silent. Perhaps, while listening to me, meditation may happen.
It happens so. Those of the first caliber, for whom a mere hint is enough, it happens to them that way. Listening, they slip into meditation. They even forget what I am saying; they begin to see what I am. They forget my words; they begin to sense that which is present behind the words. With me, as you listen to the talk, the talk becomes secondary; satsang begins. The talk is forgotten—that was only a pretext. Without it perhaps you could not sit silently; it would be difficult for you to be quiet.
I am giving a few toys to your mind so that the mind gets occupied there and your consciousness becomes still. As we do with small children: they are making a fuss, creating a racket, we hand them a toy. For a little while they sit in a corner absorbed in the toy, and the household gets a little respite.
If what I am saying were answers, you could memorize them and the matter would be finished. But they are not answers. No one has ever given answers. The enlightened ones only erase your questions; they do not give answers. They cleanse your questions so that the mind becomes empty.
The questions are within you; if now you also start hoarding my answers, the crowd will only grow. You were already quite troubled—harassed by questions; now you will be harassed by answers. Your trouble will continue.
No—listen. And when I say listen, I mean listen in totality. Not only should your ears hear—let every pore of your body listen. Not only should your mind understand—let your heart, your bones, flesh, and marrow also understand. Listen in your wholeness. Become so absorbed in listening that you are no longer there—only listening remains.
Such a moment comes. And when such a moment comes, all questions are resolved. We have called this moment satsang. Satsang means to be in the presence of one in whose life such a moment has happened. Simply by being near him, some day such a moment can happen in your life too.
But to be near means: do not raise walls in between. Your questions can also be walls. Your information can be a wall. Your words can be walls. Remove them.
No; you may go on asking for lifetimes—nothing will come of it. Questioning is a disease; it is not a state of health. I am not saying, “Do not ask,” because you are ill, so you will have to ask. Do not think that by not asking you are no longer sick. No one becomes healthy by running away from the hospital; nor is anyone healthy merely because he has never asked a doctor about his illness.
Yes, you will have to ask. You are sick. In illness, questions arise. Your condition is almost deranged. Things keep echoing in the mind; waking or sleeping, your maladies pursue you. Even your dreams are born out of your illness. Day and night, twenty-four hours, incessantly, the current of your disease keeps flowing.
You will have to ask; do not be afraid of asking. But asking alone is not enough. Ask—and then be silent, so that you can also listen. You asked in order to be able to listen. You asked to make a path for dialogue. If you can listen, dialogue will happen. From my side it is always happening; it is from your side that it has to happen.
I go on giving answers to your questions only in the hope that, slowly, you will learn to listen. But the opposite can also happen. Many of you are incurable patients. The more they ask, the more their asking grows. Give them the answer to one question, and the next day they arrive with ten questions extracted from that very answer.
It seems as if questioning is their occupation—as if they are asking just for the sake of asking; as if not asking would be some great loss! There appears to be no concern for listening. For if you can truly hear even one of my answers, all your questions will be answered—because the silence that descends upon you in the moment of listening is the answer.
What I am giving is hardly answers; it is only a pretext to make you quiet, to bring you to silence. If even for the sake of listening you become silent—if you grow silent to hear what I am saying—then the peace that arises in that silence, the sweet note that begins to sound within, the veena that starts to be played—that is the answer.
I am not giving answers; the answer is hidden within you. I am only teaching you a little how to be quiet, so that you can hear your own answer.
The question is yours—how can the answer be mine? The one who has the question has to find his own answer. Where the question has arisen, there the answer must be sought. In the same depth from which the question arose, the answer has to be found. Where the pain has appeared, the remedy must be sought there.
Then what am I doing? I go on giving answers to your questions. They are not answers; they are toys put into your hands in the name of answers. Perhaps you will get engrossed in those toys for a little while and fall silent. Perhaps, while listening to me, meditation may happen.
It happens so. Those of the first caliber, for whom a mere hint is enough, it happens to them that way. Listening, they slip into meditation. They even forget what I am saying; they begin to see what I am. They forget my words; they begin to sense that which is present behind the words. With me, as you listen to the talk, the talk becomes secondary; satsang begins. The talk is forgotten—that was only a pretext. Without it perhaps you could not sit silently; it would be difficult for you to be quiet.
I am giving a few toys to your mind so that the mind gets occupied there and your consciousness becomes still. As we do with small children: they are making a fuss, creating a racket, we hand them a toy. For a little while they sit in a corner absorbed in the toy, and the household gets a little respite.
If what I am saying were answers, you could memorize them and the matter would be finished. But they are not answers. No one has ever given answers. The enlightened ones only erase your questions; they do not give answers. They cleanse your questions so that the mind becomes empty.
The questions are within you; if now you also start hoarding my answers, the crowd will only grow. You were already quite troubled—harassed by questions; now you will be harassed by answers. Your trouble will continue.
No—listen. And when I say listen, I mean listen in totality. Not only should your ears hear—let every pore of your body listen. Not only should your mind understand—let your heart, your bones, flesh, and marrow also understand. Listen in your wholeness. Become so absorbed in listening that you are no longer there—only listening remains.
Such a moment comes. And when such a moment comes, all questions are resolved. We have called this moment satsang. Satsang means to be in the presence of one in whose life such a moment has happened. Simply by being near him, some day such a moment can happen in your life too.
But to be near means: do not raise walls in between. Your questions can also be walls. Your information can be a wall. Your words can be walls. Remove them.
Third question:
Osho, you said that Krishna is a harmony between the world and renunciation. And you said that your sannyas is like Krishna’s sannyas. But I wonder: sages like Buddha, Mahavira, and Shankaracharya initiated thousands into sannyas and instructed them to depend on society for food and other necessities. If, in your view, a sannyasin’s dependence on society is wrong, then what did those supremely enlightened ones have in mind when they forbade their sannyasins to earn a livelihood?
Osho, you said that Krishna is a harmony between the world and renunciation. And you said that your sannyas is like Krishna’s sannyas. But I wonder: sages like Buddha, Mahavira, and Shankaracharya initiated thousands into sannyas and instructed them to depend on society for food and other necessities. If, in your view, a sannyasin’s dependence on society is wrong, then what did those supremely enlightened ones have in mind when they forbade their sannyasins to earn a livelihood?
Many things have to be understood.
First, those were different days, a different time. In the days of Mahavira and Buddha, a household had twenty people; one man earned, the remaining nineteen sat idle. It was enough. People’s needs were small and the earth’s wealth abundant. Aspirations were limited to needs. No one was mad enough to pluck flowers from the sky. If the stomach was filled, the body covered, and there was a roof to rest under—that was enough. Not everyone was crazy to become an Alexander; a few were, but very few. In those days religion was vast in life; politics was a small thing—a little corner. Religion was immense; politics just a nook.
Now the situation is exactly the reverse. Now politics is everything; even in the corners religion cannot breathe—its life is being squeezed out there too; it won’t survive there either. Ambition has grown powerful. There are not one or two Alexanders now; everyone is an Alexander.
Numbers have multiplied, the earth has become burdened, and its resources diminished. Everyone is mad after impossible desires that, even if attained, yield nothing; if they don’t, life goes the same; if they do, life goes the same.
So in those days, when there were twenty people in a house and one could work while the rest lived comfortably, there was no problem if Buddha or Mahavira did not ask their sannyasins to earn. There was simply no need; society would not have allowed it anyway. It was pleasant for a village to have two, four, five people renounce. The family from which even one person took sannyas considered itself blessed. The family in which no sannyasin was born, where all were worldly, considered itself poor.
First, there was no need.
Second, people were not tamasic; they were largely sattvic. Only those moved toward sannyas in whose life the possibility of sannyas had arisen. A tamasic person did not even have the thought of sannyas. Sannyas was the ultimate peak of life. Having known, lived, and experienced everything, people set out on the journey of renunciation.
Now the situation is exactly the reverse. Now the inactive—the ones who can’t do anything—the lazy, the indolent, become eager for sannyas. Because by taking sannyas they can sit on the chest of society like claimants: “You must feed us.”
Today sannyasins are a burden; then they were not. Then the sannyasin lightened life, made it weightless; now he makes it heavier. Now the wrong kind of person becomes eager for sannyas. The right kind thinks a thousand times whether to go in this direction or not; the wrong kind is always ready.
So you will see strange sorts of sannyasins across the land. Go to the Kumbh Mela—you will see them. Are these the sannyasins Mahavira, Buddha, and Shankaracharya envisioned? Among them you will find all kinds of libertines, utterly third-rate people, who have mistaken idleness for non-action.
Non-action is a rare and wondrous phenomenon; it happens once in centuries—that while doing, no one is doing; like the lotus in water yet untouched by it. But inaction—sloth—is very simple. Anyone wants to sit idle. And if by sitting idle society gives you respect, then what to say!
All over the world, the people who would be in jails are sannyasins in India. Among prison criminals you may find better people than these; among them you won’t find many good—wicked, lazy, filled with highly distorted states of mind. If Mahavira, Buddha, and Shankaracharya returned, they would beat their chests and weep: “What have we done!”
But this is natural. There is a mathematics behind it, an economics. Understand it.
Mahavira and Buddha sang the glory of sannyas; a currency of sannyas was minted. Whenever a genuine coin appears, soon counterfeit coins enter the market. This is straightforward economics. Because the real coin proved so precious and was honored so much—emperors bowed at its feet!—seeing the honor of the real coin, countless egoistic, tamasic, useless people felt, “This is a great business; none better.” They too rushed into the field.
And know this small law of economics: whenever counterfeit coins enter the market, the genuine coins stop circulating; the counterfeits circulate. If you have one counterfeit and one genuine coin in your pocket, you try to pass the counterfeit first. Everyone tries! The real coins get locked in safes; the counterfeits move in the bazaar.
That is what happened. The genuine began to fear taking sannyas. They became afraid of entering it because the style of sannyasins they saw was ridiculous, unseemly. There was no sannyas there; the crippled, the maimed, the blind, the leprous—those for whom there was no need or use in life, the rejected—gathered there. Sannyas became not sannyas but Shankarji’s wedding procession!
Naturally, the real coin withdrew. The real said, “Hide; it’s not right to go in this crowd.” The counterfeit kept circulating; the real kept receding.
It had to be so. It always happens. Whenever a good thing catches on, soon a bad thing enters the market. Natural—because the dishonest, the thieves, the devilish are waiting on just such paths; they take advantage for a while.
If any medicine does well in the market, you will immediately find fake medicines of the same name. The label will be the same; inside will be water. Even the water is suspect—who knows where it was filled!
The same happened with sannyas. It happens with everything in the world.
Therefore I want to give sannyas a different dimension now. If Mahavira returned, he would agree with me. Mahavira’s sannyasins won’t agree—they wouldn’t even agree with Mahavira, how would they agree with me! Mahavira and Shankaracharya would agree with me—there is no room for doubt. They would see: the thing is clear.
Now we must create such a sannyas that is not a burden on the world. In it, a tamasic person won’t even be interested. Because he will have to run a shop, go to the market, and, wearing ochre, be abused and laughed at.
The tamasic won’t take this hassle; he will say, “Who wants such trouble! If we become sannyasins, we will sit; you touch our feet; bring food, offer bhog.” But what is this—that we go buy vegetables, keep accounts of salt, oil, firewood—and on top of it, because of these clothes, more hassles arise!
Just now a sannyasin came and said, “A big difficulty has arisen. I have the old habit of smoking. Now if I smoke anywhere in these ochre clothes, people stare as if I am committing a crime!”
Another sannyasin told me, “I have the habit of going to the cinema. One day I was standing in the queue; people looked at me so intently—as if I were committing a sin! I also ran away, thinking it is not proper to stand outside a cinema hall in a queue wearing this ochre.”
So my sannyas will create obstacles for you; it cannot attract the tamasic. Only those who are very sattvic can become interested. Because you gain nothing from it; there can be loss.
The greedy too cannot be interested, because there will be loss, not gain. From the customer from whom you used to take two paisa extra, you will have to take two paisa less. Your way of being will become one of compassion, meditation, love. You won’t be able to steal easily. Even if you act dishonestly, the pain will be greater; a thorn will prick—“What are you doing!” An inner conscience will be born. The voice within will slowly become intense and deep; it will pull you, restrain you, become a rein.
So in this sannyas the tamasic can have no taste at all. The greedy can have no taste. Because I am not asking you to change the outer arrangements of your life; I am saying, you yourself change.
From this there will only be obstacles for you. You will find that in society you have become out of place. In this, only those can join my sannyas who have courage—so much courage that people may laugh and they can bear that laughter calmly, with balance, with graciousness; those who can even laugh at themselves.
People say to me, “If you say so, we will take it—but it will become a joke.”
It happened. A young man in Bombay took sannyas. Five or seven days later he came and said, “Please give sannyas to my wife too; a great hassle has arisen!”
“What happened?”
He said, “When I go anywhere with my wife, people look in such a way that…! One man asked, ‘Whose woman are you taking, and where?’ She is my own wife, but because of these clothes I couldn’t even answer—what to do! Does a sannyasin have a wife?”
Well, I gave sannyas to his wife. A week later he came with his little son: “Give it to him too.”
“What happened?”
“We were sitting in the train; two men said, ‘It seems they are eloping with this little boy.’”
Now the whole family is sannyasin!
Times change, the streams of life change; the streams of religion must change too. What was true once is not always true. What is true today may not remain true tomorrow. But why worry about tomorrow? Today! You are here today; you have to live today—take care of that.
Mahavira, Buddha, and Shankara said what they said thoughtfully, for their age. They did not take a contract for all ages. What I am saying, I am saying to you; I am not taking a contract for all ages either, so that a thousand years later you say, “That so-and-so said this.”
It may happen that my word spreads so much that sannyasins become many and householders few—then trouble will arise. Then a thousand, two thousand years later someone will have to say, “Stop all this! Leave home and hearth! The true sannyasin is the one who goes to the Himalayas.” Someone will have to say it. Because if sannyas grows that much, it will lose its meaning.
If sannyasins increase and householders decrease, the sannyasin will stop caring; he will also steal and be dishonest. Slowly the ochre robes will be accepted; then they will produce no sting, no pain, no awakening of conscience. Then someone will have to stand up and say, “Now that everyone is doing all this anyway, please at least drop the ochre—why spoil it?”
Life is a circle; it changes every day. And those who do not change with it get crushed.
Do not worry about the past or the future; care for this moment, which is present between you and me right now. Make use of it.
First, those were different days, a different time. In the days of Mahavira and Buddha, a household had twenty people; one man earned, the remaining nineteen sat idle. It was enough. People’s needs were small and the earth’s wealth abundant. Aspirations were limited to needs. No one was mad enough to pluck flowers from the sky. If the stomach was filled, the body covered, and there was a roof to rest under—that was enough. Not everyone was crazy to become an Alexander; a few were, but very few. In those days religion was vast in life; politics was a small thing—a little corner. Religion was immense; politics just a nook.
Now the situation is exactly the reverse. Now politics is everything; even in the corners religion cannot breathe—its life is being squeezed out there too; it won’t survive there either. Ambition has grown powerful. There are not one or two Alexanders now; everyone is an Alexander.
Numbers have multiplied, the earth has become burdened, and its resources diminished. Everyone is mad after impossible desires that, even if attained, yield nothing; if they don’t, life goes the same; if they do, life goes the same.
So in those days, when there were twenty people in a house and one could work while the rest lived comfortably, there was no problem if Buddha or Mahavira did not ask their sannyasins to earn. There was simply no need; society would not have allowed it anyway. It was pleasant for a village to have two, four, five people renounce. The family from which even one person took sannyas considered itself blessed. The family in which no sannyasin was born, where all were worldly, considered itself poor.
First, there was no need.
Second, people were not tamasic; they were largely sattvic. Only those moved toward sannyas in whose life the possibility of sannyas had arisen. A tamasic person did not even have the thought of sannyas. Sannyas was the ultimate peak of life. Having known, lived, and experienced everything, people set out on the journey of renunciation.
Now the situation is exactly the reverse. Now the inactive—the ones who can’t do anything—the lazy, the indolent, become eager for sannyas. Because by taking sannyas they can sit on the chest of society like claimants: “You must feed us.”
Today sannyasins are a burden; then they were not. Then the sannyasin lightened life, made it weightless; now he makes it heavier. Now the wrong kind of person becomes eager for sannyas. The right kind thinks a thousand times whether to go in this direction or not; the wrong kind is always ready.
So you will see strange sorts of sannyasins across the land. Go to the Kumbh Mela—you will see them. Are these the sannyasins Mahavira, Buddha, and Shankaracharya envisioned? Among them you will find all kinds of libertines, utterly third-rate people, who have mistaken idleness for non-action.
Non-action is a rare and wondrous phenomenon; it happens once in centuries—that while doing, no one is doing; like the lotus in water yet untouched by it. But inaction—sloth—is very simple. Anyone wants to sit idle. And if by sitting idle society gives you respect, then what to say!
All over the world, the people who would be in jails are sannyasins in India. Among prison criminals you may find better people than these; among them you won’t find many good—wicked, lazy, filled with highly distorted states of mind. If Mahavira, Buddha, and Shankaracharya returned, they would beat their chests and weep: “What have we done!”
But this is natural. There is a mathematics behind it, an economics. Understand it.
Mahavira and Buddha sang the glory of sannyas; a currency of sannyas was minted. Whenever a genuine coin appears, soon counterfeit coins enter the market. This is straightforward economics. Because the real coin proved so precious and was honored so much—emperors bowed at its feet!—seeing the honor of the real coin, countless egoistic, tamasic, useless people felt, “This is a great business; none better.” They too rushed into the field.
And know this small law of economics: whenever counterfeit coins enter the market, the genuine coins stop circulating; the counterfeits circulate. If you have one counterfeit and one genuine coin in your pocket, you try to pass the counterfeit first. Everyone tries! The real coins get locked in safes; the counterfeits move in the bazaar.
That is what happened. The genuine began to fear taking sannyas. They became afraid of entering it because the style of sannyasins they saw was ridiculous, unseemly. There was no sannyas there; the crippled, the maimed, the blind, the leprous—those for whom there was no need or use in life, the rejected—gathered there. Sannyas became not sannyas but Shankarji’s wedding procession!
Naturally, the real coin withdrew. The real said, “Hide; it’s not right to go in this crowd.” The counterfeit kept circulating; the real kept receding.
It had to be so. It always happens. Whenever a good thing catches on, soon a bad thing enters the market. Natural—because the dishonest, the thieves, the devilish are waiting on just such paths; they take advantage for a while.
If any medicine does well in the market, you will immediately find fake medicines of the same name. The label will be the same; inside will be water. Even the water is suspect—who knows where it was filled!
The same happened with sannyas. It happens with everything in the world.
Therefore I want to give sannyas a different dimension now. If Mahavira returned, he would agree with me. Mahavira’s sannyasins won’t agree—they wouldn’t even agree with Mahavira, how would they agree with me! Mahavira and Shankaracharya would agree with me—there is no room for doubt. They would see: the thing is clear.
Now we must create such a sannyas that is not a burden on the world. In it, a tamasic person won’t even be interested. Because he will have to run a shop, go to the market, and, wearing ochre, be abused and laughed at.
The tamasic won’t take this hassle; he will say, “Who wants such trouble! If we become sannyasins, we will sit; you touch our feet; bring food, offer bhog.” But what is this—that we go buy vegetables, keep accounts of salt, oil, firewood—and on top of it, because of these clothes, more hassles arise!
Just now a sannyasin came and said, “A big difficulty has arisen. I have the old habit of smoking. Now if I smoke anywhere in these ochre clothes, people stare as if I am committing a crime!”
Another sannyasin told me, “I have the habit of going to the cinema. One day I was standing in the queue; people looked at me so intently—as if I were committing a sin! I also ran away, thinking it is not proper to stand outside a cinema hall in a queue wearing this ochre.”
So my sannyas will create obstacles for you; it cannot attract the tamasic. Only those who are very sattvic can become interested. Because you gain nothing from it; there can be loss.
The greedy too cannot be interested, because there will be loss, not gain. From the customer from whom you used to take two paisa extra, you will have to take two paisa less. Your way of being will become one of compassion, meditation, love. You won’t be able to steal easily. Even if you act dishonestly, the pain will be greater; a thorn will prick—“What are you doing!” An inner conscience will be born. The voice within will slowly become intense and deep; it will pull you, restrain you, become a rein.
So in this sannyas the tamasic can have no taste at all. The greedy can have no taste. Because I am not asking you to change the outer arrangements of your life; I am saying, you yourself change.
From this there will only be obstacles for you. You will find that in society you have become out of place. In this, only those can join my sannyas who have courage—so much courage that people may laugh and they can bear that laughter calmly, with balance, with graciousness; those who can even laugh at themselves.
People say to me, “If you say so, we will take it—but it will become a joke.”
It happened. A young man in Bombay took sannyas. Five or seven days later he came and said, “Please give sannyas to my wife too; a great hassle has arisen!”
“What happened?”
He said, “When I go anywhere with my wife, people look in such a way that…! One man asked, ‘Whose woman are you taking, and where?’ She is my own wife, but because of these clothes I couldn’t even answer—what to do! Does a sannyasin have a wife?”
Well, I gave sannyas to his wife. A week later he came with his little son: “Give it to him too.”
“What happened?”
“We were sitting in the train; two men said, ‘It seems they are eloping with this little boy.’”
Now the whole family is sannyasin!
Times change, the streams of life change; the streams of religion must change too. What was true once is not always true. What is true today may not remain true tomorrow. But why worry about tomorrow? Today! You are here today; you have to live today—take care of that.
Mahavira, Buddha, and Shankara said what they said thoughtfully, for their age. They did not take a contract for all ages. What I am saying, I am saying to you; I am not taking a contract for all ages either, so that a thousand years later you say, “That so-and-so said this.”
It may happen that my word spreads so much that sannyasins become many and householders few—then trouble will arise. Then a thousand, two thousand years later someone will have to say, “Stop all this! Leave home and hearth! The true sannyasin is the one who goes to the Himalayas.” Someone will have to say it. Because if sannyas grows that much, it will lose its meaning.
If sannyasins increase and householders decrease, the sannyasin will stop caring; he will also steal and be dishonest. Slowly the ochre robes will be accepted; then they will produce no sting, no pain, no awakening of conscience. Then someone will have to stand up and say, “Now that everyone is doing all this anyway, please at least drop the ochre—why spoil it?”
Life is a circle; it changes every day. And those who do not change with it get crushed.
Do not worry about the past or the future; care for this moment, which is present between you and me right now. Make use of it.
Fourth question:
Osho, Krishna had one Arjuna, so the Gita could end. But you are giving birth to new Arjunas every day; how will your Gita ever end?
Osho, Krishna had one Arjuna, so the Gita could end. But you are giving birth to new Arjunas every day; how will your Gita ever end?
It shouldn’t end either.
And even Krishna’s Gita ended only for Arjuna; it has not ended for anyone else. Has Krishna’s Gita ended for you? It will end only when you too arrive at the place where Arjuna arrived, and he said, “O mighty-armed, you have freed me from doubt; all my delusions have withered away; I have attained the vision of truth.”
The eighteenth chapter arrived for Arjuna, not for you. You still have a long journey to make before your eighteenth chapter comes—because it is an inner journey.
And certainly, how can the Gita ever end? The singers change; the song has no end. What Krishna sang, I am singing; someone else will sing. The listeners change, the singers change; the Gita goes on. Because the song is of the eternal. If it were Krishna’s personal song, it would have ended. It is the song of existence; that is why we call it the Srimad Bhagavad Gita—we call it the song of God, not of Krishna.
Krishna is a form, Arjuna is a form. Through these two forms, the same One spoke, and the same One listened. Such forms will keep changing. The listeners will change, the singers will change; but the existence within both is one. The song continues. The song is eternal.
And even Krishna’s Gita ended only for Arjuna; it has not ended for anyone else. Has Krishna’s Gita ended for you? It will end only when you too arrive at the place where Arjuna arrived, and he said, “O mighty-armed, you have freed me from doubt; all my delusions have withered away; I have attained the vision of truth.”
The eighteenth chapter arrived for Arjuna, not for you. You still have a long journey to make before your eighteenth chapter comes—because it is an inner journey.
And certainly, how can the Gita ever end? The singers change; the song has no end. What Krishna sang, I am singing; someone else will sing. The listeners change, the singers change; the Gita goes on. Because the song is of the eternal. If it were Krishna’s personal song, it would have ended. It is the song of existence; that is why we call it the Srimad Bhagavad Gita—we call it the song of God, not of Krishna.
Krishna is a form, Arjuna is a form. Through these two forms, the same One spoke, and the same One listened. Such forms will keep changing. The listeners will change, the singers will change; but the existence within both is one. The song continues. The song is eternal.
Osho's Commentary
“And O Arjuna, the abandonment of enjoined action is not proper; therefore renunciation of it through delusion is called tamasic renunciation.”
Niyata karma means the action enjoined by the scriptures. Shastras are the utterances of those who have known. Those who have known we call shasta; what they have said out of knowing we call shastra; and walking in accord with it we call discipline.
Shastra is the speech of the knowers of the past. There is great essence in it. If you have eyes to see, there is great essence hidden in the shastras—everything is concealed there. If you have no eyes to see, the shastra becomes a burden. Then you go on carrying the Gita on your head.
I told you earlier that when Schopenhauer, the German thinker, first read the Gita, he put it on his head and danced. Have you ever danced with the Gita on your head?
No; the Gita does not tie ankle-bells to your feet, it does not bring dance. The Gita does not set any song resounding in your heart. The Gita is a burden you somehow keep up with—a weight, a duty; not love.
Schopenhauer danced. He read the Gita. He looked beyond the words of the Gita, peered into the wordless; the clouds parted, the open sky appeared! He crossed the word and realization happened in the void! Then the Gita became alive again.
Remove the husk of the word and you will always find the living hidden.
Krishna says there is no need to abandon what the shastra has enjoined.
The urge to abandon will arise, because the tamasic mind is at work. It does not want to do anything; it wants to escape every duty.
Many people listen to Krishnamurti. When one of them comes to me, he says, You are speaking on the Gita! And Krishnamurti says all scriptures are useless. I tell him, all the scriptures have said exactly that. The essence of the scriptures is precisely that all scriptures are useless. I tell him: you are quoting Krishnamurti—this itself has become shastra. Whether you quote Krishna or Krishnamurti, what difference does it make? Krishna said it to Arjuna; Krishnamurti has said it to you. You come and tell me; you are reporting a scripture.
And then, had you ever held the scripture? If you never held it, how will you drop it?
Krishnamurti says, drop the scriptures. He is absolutely right; he speaks from his experience. In childhood Annie Besant and Leadbeater stuffed him full of scriptures. They stuffed him so much that he is still dropping them!
A little too much. It became overfeeding. It caused vomiting. It became excessive. It happened out of excessive compassion, because Annie Besant and Leadbeater wished that Krishnamurti should manifest as a world-teacher. The Maitreya of whom Buddha spoke—that in future ages the Maitreya-Buddha will be born—Annie Besant and Leadbeater made an effort that this Krishnamurti become that Maitreya.
But it was a very difficult effort, for can anyone make someone else a Maitreya? And they used great means. They taught so much, trained so much, made him meditate so much that Krishnamurti became frightened by it, as all small children become frightened. Because he was young—the trouble started when he was nine years old. He was made to get up by rule, to sit by rule, sleep by rule, eat by rule—every single thing was watched so that no mistake should occur in this person’s attainment of Buddhahood.
And indeed none did; this man did become a Buddha. But a scratch remained, which was not upon the Buddha, but is upon Krishnamurti. For no one had tried to force the Buddha; events had happened in the ease of a long journey. What takes years to happen Annie Besant and Leadbeater tried to make happen in days; what unfolds over lifetimes they tried to compress into years.
There was benefit in it. Whatever Krishnamurti is today, he is the tree grown from that seed. But there was harm too. The harm was what happens to all small children. Tell them, don’t do this, and in the child’s ego a feeling rises: I’ll do it and show you. His ego is hurt. It pains him that everyone is suppressing me; so he opposes at every opportunity.
Krishnamurti’s ego is gone; he has become an awakened man. But the imprints that remained upon the mind—just as if someone had struck a mark on your hand with a knife, even if you become a Buddha the mark would remain on your hand—such marks remained upon the mind. He did become a Buddha, but the instrument of the mind became scratched. All the things that had been forced upon him are precisely those he has been speaking against for forty years. That scratch does not go. Nor will it go. The scratch is this: nothing will happen through meditation. Surely this child was made to get up at four or three in the morning to meditate!
My grandfather used to wake me at three in the night. All my life he spoiled for me the joy of three in the morning. I was small; I didn’t want to get up; just then the sleep would deepen, and he would be pulling me. And he would get me up, and a bath in cold water, and at four he would take me for a walk! My eyes were still drooping, my limbs would not move, and he would be running ahead. He walked very fast.
The day he died, I did not feel sorrow at his death. That day I said, O God, now I won’t have to get up at three. Later I even repented: what kind of thing was that! He loved me so much; he died, and all that came to my mind was that now I won’t have to get up at three, now I can sleep!
Krishnamurti hasn’t been able to shake it off: “Nothing will happen through meditation!” Too much meditation was made to be done; indigestion happened. “Nothing will come of the scriptures!” The scriptures became a burden. “No guru can take you anywhere!” The guru gave excessive pushes. That scratch remained.
Krishna says, “niyata karma”…
What the scriptures have said, at least fulfill that—because it has been said by those who know. And if you must choose between the knowers and your own intellect, choose the knowers; do you trust your intellect? Yes, when you become a buddha, then rely on your own intelligence. But for now!
And those who are buddhas have a different way altogether. We shall try to understand that.
So around Krishnamurti those who are tamasic, lazy, egoistic have gathered. Because there they found a rationalization, a logical arrangement, that there is no point in meditation. They had never meditated anyway. Without ever meditating, hearing “there is no point in meditation” gave them a release: free of the bother of meditation. “Nothing will happen from a guru,” so now there is no need to bow at anyone’s feet. They did not want to bow; bowing was painful; now they have a rational reason. “Nothing comes of following scripture.” They did not want to follow anyway, because if you follow the shastra you will have to bring discipline into life; then a life of anarchy cannot go on, licentiousness cannot go on. And the great surprise is this: the more anarchic a life is, the more dependent it becomes; and the more disciplined a life is, the more free it becomes.
Thus the wrong kind of people have collected around Krishnamurti. And they have found valid bases for their wrongness.
Krishnamurti is a very thought-provoking phenomenon in the spiritual world, because in this way no one had ever before been forced toward Buddhahood. Theosophy conducted a unique experiment. It brought benefit, and it brought ill-effects.
A person should be allowed to go quietly by his own journey, with his own steps, in his own way; pushing is not right. Krishnamurti’s experiment has shown that never, even by mistake, push anyone toward Buddhahood. Otherwise, even if he attains Buddhahood, a scratch will remain. And the scratch will cause great harm.
Krishna says, what is enjoined in the shastras is not the speech of the blind; only after great knowing did they say it. When you become a buddha, when your consciousness awakens, when you become wise, when your inner light is lit, then walk by your own decision, by your own light. For now you do not have your own light. Rather than walking in darkness, it is better that you walk by borrowed light.
An old blind man has no eyes of his own, so even a blind man of sixty or seventy places his hand on the shoulder of a little child and walks. Instead of trusting his own blind eyes—though he is experienced, sixty or seventy years old—he walks with his hand on a child’s shoulder who has no experience.
The words of the shastras are the words of the experienced. Rather than heed the counsel of your blind eye, walk by their counsel. And the day you awaken, that day, if you wish, you can drop it. Although buddhas have generally not dropped it. Sometimes they have; and they have dropped it only when a shastra has become out of tune with the times—otherwise not. Because then the buddha has to see that if a shastra is now contrary to the time, anyone who follows it will fall into a ditch. If the shastra is not out of tune with the time, then to follow it is proper.
On the night Jesus took leave of his disciples, he washed all their feet. One disciple asked, What are you doing? He said, Tonight I am departing. I want to tell you that while I was among you, I used to touch your feet. I want to tell you: never become egotistical, and if needed even touch the feet of your own disciples. Because I fear that as soon as I am gone you will become conceited that you are the ones closest to Jesus! Your ego will become thick.
Sariputra attained knowledge, but he did not cease to touch the feet of the Buddha. Someone asked, Sariputra, now you yourself have become a buddha, why do you still touch the Buddha’s feet? Sariputra said, thinking of the other buddhas-to-be. If they see me not bowing, they will stop bowing. It will do me no harm, but it will do them great harm.
So the enlightened one will decide after seeing whether the shastra, if in harmony with the times and in your interest, should still be honored. He will not abandon the rule.
Mahavira attained supreme knowledge, but he did not abandon the rules. The rules that were there in the time of the seeker, he continued even in the state of the siddha. The sole reason was this. He could have dropped them; he could have left them; nothing hindered him. What was to be attained had been attained; now there was no need for a rule to bind him.
But for others! Because many will learn from Mahavira. Mahavira had attained, so there was no danger for him. If he did not get up at five in the morning and got up at ten, his liberation would not be lost.
Do you think that if after becoming a siddha Mahavira began to rise at ten in the morning instead of early, his moksha would be lost? Or do you think that after attaining moksha if Mahavira had begun to smoke, his moksha would be lost? It seems absurd to imagine Mahavira smoking; but even if he did, would moksha be lost? Then moksha is worth two pennies if it can be lost by smoking—a thing cheaper than a cigarette!
No. But Mahavira did not smoke—not because moksha would be lost. He did not sleep till ten—not because sleeping till ten is contrary to moksha—but for all those who are still walking in darkness and for whom Mahavira’s life will be a lighthouse. For them he quietly continued the rules, though for Mahavira those rules now had no meaning.
Krishna knows this perfectly well: for Krishna himself the enjoined actions have no value. But for Arjuna! For the future Arjunas! For centuries his statement will remain meaningful.
So he says: O Arjuna, the abandonment of enjoined action is not proper. What the shastra has said must be done. Renouncing it is called tamasic renunciation.
If you drop it, it will mean you are dropping it out of laziness, out of tamas, out of stupor. However much you may talk of knowledge, those talks have no value.
“And if, considering all action as sorrowful, a man gives up action because of fear of bodily discomfort, then that man, having adopted rajasic renunciation, does not obtain the fruit of renunciation.”
And it can also happen that someone thinks that everything in life is suffering. As Buddha said: everything is suffering. Suffering is the essential truth; suffering is the first noble truth. Thinking thus, if someone abandons life and runs away, Krishna says he too is not acting rightly. This does not mean Krishna says Buddha did wrong.
Krishna is saying that Buddha is an exception; never take the exception to be the rule. What Buddha did, he could not have done otherwise. What Buddha did, that is what was to happen. In Buddha’s life there is its own consistency.
And Buddha did not consult anyone. He had a tremendous realization: in life, suffering everywhere! He left and went. If you, thinking thus, also leave life and run away, then that renunciation is fear-full; you have become afraid of suffering. Buddha was not afraid of suffering; he awakened through suffering.
The acts may be the same, but the meanings can be different. Keep this in mind.
Buddha awakened to the truth that life is suffering; therefore he renounced. But you, thinking “life is suffering,” may become scared: here is only suffering, there is no meaning, there is fear, death is coming, we will fall into hell. If, gathering all such fears, you run away, that fear is not awakening.
One who renounces thinking thus—Krishna says—his renunciation is rajasic. He had energy, the power to run, to renounce; he used it. But the use was not with awakening.
“And, O Arjuna, that obligatory action which is enjoined by scripture, when done with the understanding that ‘it is my duty,’ abandoning attachment and the fruits, that alone is regarded as sattvic renunciation.”
When you know “It is to be done; it is my duty,” whatever you do, you become free of it. Whatever is done in the knowing that “It is to be done; it is my duty” leaves no trace on you—as if you did not do it at all—God got it done. It was his will; it happened. You do not bring yourself in between. At most you become a character in a play.
But our situation is the reverse. Even in the role of a character we forget and begin to feel our life is at stake. Actors in a drama too sometimes forget that they are merely acting; it starts to seem real; the delusion thickens.
Perhaps you too have had such an experience; at least try acting something sometime.
In the West there is a new psychological experiment; they call it psychodrama. Suppose a man says, I suffer a lot from anger. The therapist says, Sit in this chair; put this cushion in front of you. At whom do you get angry? He says, At my wife. The psychologist says, Take this cushion to be your wife.
Now it’s only a play. Is a cushion a wife? If the wife heard she has been taken to be a cushion, she would ask for a divorce. A cushion as a wife!
But the man accepts that this is a play. He sits down and takes the cushion as his wife. At first he laughs: How will anger come like this! He even says so: How will anger come like this! The psychologist says, Start. Start speaking. Then when anger starts coming, begin to beat the cushion.
It takes one, two, three minutes and gradually the man becomes possessed; he starts hitting, starts throwing. And when he is hitting, throwing the cushion, then no difference remains; the mind is completely gripped. The act has happened: what was acting has become real.
Even in acting we project reality. And Krishna is saying: in reality become an actor. It has to be done—because it is written in the acts of the play, therefore it has to be completed. You need not come in between. But you want to come in even in a dream.
I have heard that Mulla Nasruddin one night dreamt that he was standing by the frying pan and frying dung-cakes. He himself got frightened: What is this! In the fright his sleep broke. Early in the morning he ran to an astrologer who interpreted dreams. He said, I had a very bad dream. I have never even heard of such a dream coming to anyone; my mind is filled with shame. The dream is that I am frying dung-cakes. The sleep broke; I felt so much distress. What is the meaning of it?
The astrologer said, It will cost one rupee; I’ll tell you the meaning. Nasruddin said, Fool, if I had a rupee would I be frying dung-cakes? Wouldn’t I have bought fish?
People take the dream to be real! If he had a rupee he would have bought fish!
One who has understood life rightly has understood that neither are you born by your own cause, nor do you live by your own cause, nor will you die by your own cause. That great cause, the God hidden within your whole life, is the doer. “It is my duty; it has to be done”—just go on doing so. Leave everything to him.
Krishna’s essential sutra is surrender. In this state of surrender, desire for fruits becomes zero; the question of fruit does not arise; let him take care of the fruit.
A Sufi fakir was going on the pilgrimage to the Hajj. There were thousands of passengers on the ship. On the very second day a terrible storm arose. The ship’s life trembled. Great noise, commotion, cries of “Save us!” It seemed—now we’re gone, now we’re gone, we won’t be saved! The sea looked absolutely mad! Such towering waves were rising that they would drown the ship! The ship seemed small, like a little canoe; the waves were so terrible!
The captain was shouting on the loudspeaker, giving orders! To save lives, boats were being lowered; the sailors were alert. Everyone was trembling. Women were weeping and wailing. Children were screaming. Dogs were barking. There was running and chaos. Utter madness! It was the hour of death! Only that one Sufi fakir was standing here and there looking on with great enjoyment. Not only looking, he seemed very delighted, as if there was an inner joy!
An old man, watching him, filled with anger. He said, Listen! Are you in your senses? So many people’s lives are at stake here, and you are watching some drama? Do you understand what is happening?
The Sufi said, Sir, why are you getting so excited? Is the ship your father’s? If it sinks, it sinks!
There is such a state. If it sinks, it’s his; if it doesn’t, it’s his; if I am saved, it is his; if not, it is his; and a man removes himself from the middle. Then no sorrow can give you sorrow, and no happiness can drive you mad. Then a supreme peace is established in your life. Then a stream begins to flow, which we call bliss.
“And, O Arjuna, that obligatory action which is enjoined by scripture, when done with the understanding that ‘it is my duty,’ abandoning attachment and the fruits, that alone is regarded as sattvic renunciation.”
Sattvic renunciation means the renunciation of the fruit. Sattvic renunciation does not mean the renunciation of action. Action must be done. Action is life. And God has given life—who are you to run away? And God has sent you—who are you to renounce? From the vastness out of which you have come, leave your worries to that vastness. The ship is not yours. His will! And become wholly consenting in his will.
Then you will act, and yet the line of action will not be imprinted upon you. Then you will be like a lotus in water. And for one who becomes a lotus in water, supreme blessedness manifests in life.
Enough for today.