Jyun Macchali Bin Neer #2
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Read in Original Hindi (मूल हिन्दी)
Questions in this Discourse
First question:
Osho, while refuting Adi Guru Shankaracharya’s aphorism “the world is illusory, Brahman alone is true,” you said the world is true and Brahman is true. But the definition of truth is: that which is not perishable. Since the world is perishable, how can it be true? It must be illusory. Brahman is imperishable, therefore true. I request you to define truth and shed light on this aspect.
Osho, while refuting Adi Guru Shankaracharya’s aphorism “the world is illusory, Brahman alone is true,” you said the world is true and Brahman is true. But the definition of truth is: that which is not perishable. Since the world is perishable, how can it be true? It must be illusory. Brahman is imperishable, therefore true. I request you to define truth and shed light on this aspect.
Pandit Brahmaprakash! How fortunate that you too have entered this tavern! Generally, coming to a tavern isn’t considered good—and now that you are here, to leave without drinking wouldn’t be good either. The goblet is ready. Drink to your heart’s content and go fulfilled.
You ask, “What is the definition of truth?”
Truth has no definition—nor can it have one. The moment you define truth, it becomes untruth. Truth is inexpressible. How will you define the indefinable? How will you explain the inexplicable? Truth won’t fit into words; it keeps slipping through. It is beyond words, beyond mind. Truth is an experience—and one available only when the mind is transcended: in thoughtlessness, in emptiness, in samadhi. Definitions are the mind’s work, and the mind never experiences truth. The experience happens beyond mind. So one “entity” experiences and another tries to define—of course the statement will be wrong. The one who has seen does not speak, and the one who speaks has not seen. The eyed one sees; the blind one defines.
Assume even that a blind man was standing beside a man with eyes when the sun rose. The eyed man saw. Still, can the blind man define what was seen? How? And the one who saw is struck dumb. The experience is so vast that the one who experiences dissolves in it. Like a drop falling into the ocean—how on earth will the drop define the ocean? The drop is no more. Who will define, and what?
But those who live in scriptures and words drag truth down into words as well. For them even “truth” is a word. And once truth becomes a word, it becomes untruth.
Lao Tzu’s famous dictum: “The truth that can be spoken is already untrue.”
So don’t ask for a definition. I can indicate how to experience truth, but I cannot define it. Shankaracharya defines—and that alone reveals a certain scholarly entanglement. There is no fire in the word “fire,” no love in the word “love,” and no truth in the word “truth.” Yet we are reared on words. Education is about words; the net is woven of words. We forget that life has nothing to do with words. Words have a built-in limitation: they divide, cut, fragment. They must; their scope is limited while experience is limitless. What can a poor word do? It is helpless—compelled to cut, analyze, break apart.
Night and day are two faces of one coin; darkness and light are two faces of one coin. But in words they become two.
Ask science what darkness is. It says darkness is simply less light, and light is simply less darkness. No qualitative difference—only a matter of density or dilution. “Cold” and “hot” are separate words; and of course cold tea and hot tea differ. But in reality cold and heat are measured on the same thermometer—so the difference is not qualitative, but quantitative.
Understand it like this. Place one hand on a block of ice and warm the other over a brazier. Both are your hands: one grows hot, the other very cold. Now immerse both in a bucket of water. Tell me—is the water hot or cold? You’ll be in trouble, for one hand will say hot, the other cold. The hand chilled by ice will report the water is hot; the heated hand will report it is cold. Now, whether the water is hot or cold, whichever you say will be wrong—one hand will contradict you. Either the water is both, or neither. Which hand will you believe—left or right? Will you be leftist or rightist? And both hands are yours, both report to you. Which report is true? In a sense both are true—each is reporting its own experience.
This is the trouble with words: words split life into two. Words are dualistic; experience is non-dual. I do not consider Shankaracharya a non-dualist. Despite all his proclamations, he is a dualist. I am a non-dualist; therefore I call Shankara a dualist, because he splits reality into maya and Brahman—one he calls true, the other false. I don’t split. I say they are two faces of the same coin—one manifest, one unmanifest; one expressed, one unexpressed. And the expressed is a part of the unexpressed; the unexpressed is joined to the expressed—never separated, not even for a moment, not by a particle.
Shankara calls maya “false.” Granted that the world is momentary—but understand what “momentary” means: it means changeful. Have you seen anything in the world ever vanish into non-being? You’ve heard it called perishable—but have you actually seen anything perish? Can you annihilate anything? I give you a grain of sand—can you destroy it? You say “perishable”; show me. Science has surrendered: nothing in this universe can be destroyed, and nothing can be added. You cannot destroy even a grain of sand. Grind it and it becomes many particles—still it is. Burn it to ash—its form has changed, its being remains. Throw it into the ocean—the waves carry the particles far; you no longer see them, but wherever they go, they are. Even if unseen, they are.
Water heats and becomes vapor; you don’t see it. But do you think it has perished? Then how do clouds form and rain fall? It did not perish; it became invisible—beyond the eye’s range. The eye’s range is small. Below it there is much; above it there is much. Steam is beyond your sight; bring cold, seed the clouds with ice, and steam appears again and pours as rain. You cannot annihilate.
You say “perishable”—borrowed talk. You read in scripture that the world is perishable. Did you ever consider whether anything has ever truly vanished? Or did you just repeat hearsay, the stock phrase: “the world is perishable”? The world has always been and has never ceased; it will always be. “Perishable” only means: forms change, but being does not. Youth turns old—being remains. Child becomes young—being remains. Now science has found ways—woman may become man, man may become woman; being remains. Even when you die, nothing dies; death is not. Only form changes. You move from one house to another—that isn’t annihilation. You leave one town and settle in another. You leave one body and take another. Even if you turn vagabond and settle under trees—today this inn, tomorrow that hotel—what difference does it make? You are.
Nothing has ever been annihilated, nor will be. How then do you call it “perishable”? If you only mean transformation—then know that within change, the changeless is threaded through. Like the string through the beads of a mala. The string is unseen, but it holds the mala together. The beads seem separate; within, a single thread links them.
All things change on the surface, but in the depth of existence there is a unifying thread—I call that Brahman; I call that truth.
Change and eternity are the two faces of one coin. Eternity is like the string in the garland; changefulness is like the beads. They are not enemies. Both are true. But words trip you up. If you define that truth is that which never changes, which is imperishable—then by your definition, what changes must be false—by your definition only! What is your definition worth? Why should existence care for your definition?
Call a rose “rose,” or give it another name—there are thousands of languages, so the rose has thousands of names. Does the rose care? Call it beautiful or ugly—does it change the rose? Fashions change daily. A hundred years ago, who would imagine you would place a cactus in your drawing room, that a cactus would be called beautiful? Tell a villager today that a cactus is beautiful—he will stare: “What nonsense!” He plants cactus as a fence to keep animals and thieves out. He cannot imagine putting it in his house. He’ll say, “Am I mad?”
Roses were beautiful—but now to insist “the rose is beautiful” sounds old-fashioned. The modern, cultivated people keep cactus. New poetry sings of cacti; new painters paint them. The rose has become passé. Nobility is out; the cactus is the proletariat. This is the age of socialism. To praise roses—aren’t you ashamed? Kings are gone; with them roses and lotuses. Now we worship cactus. Thorns are beautiful now—the poor thorn, never praised by Kalidasa, Bhavabhuti, Shakespeare, Milton; all of them sang of courts and kings—courtiers all. The rose’s days are done; the cactus’s time has come. But neither cactus nor rose cares. The rose is the rose; the cactus is the cactus. Your praise or blame changes nothing.
You defined truth as the eternal. Do you know truth? You defined without knowing—and got trapped by the definition. Now, because of it, you must call the world maya. Shankara got caught in this net. Once he declared Brahman the eternal, unchanging, imperishable, he was compelled to declare the world false—by the logic of his definition. Existence itself is not in question; only your definition is.
Buddha did not define like that. Buddha said: the world is changeful. In Greece, the great mystic thinker Heraclitus said: the world is constant flux. Like a river flowing. “You cannot step into the same river twice,” he said—the current is that fast. This is true.
Because Heraclitus and Buddha took change as truth, for them God/Brahman became untrue. It’s a matter of what you take as truth. They said: the world we see is changeful; our direct experience is that all is flow. That flow is truth. Therefore the eternal Brahman you talk about is untrue—by definition. And who will decide the definition? It’s in your hands.
Rajjab says: “As it was, so it was made to stand”—entering the unchanging, where no movement is; that is his definition.
Buddha says: “Charaiveti, charaiveti—Go on, go on!” Do not stop—for the moment you stop, you are in untruth. Motion is truth; non-motion is untruth.
Science agrees with Buddha. Hence, in the West where science is influential, Shankara has little impact; Buddha does. Science finds the world changeful. Buddha embraced change so deeply that he said: we should remove nouns from language, because they deceive; we should keep only verbs.
You say “the river is.” Don’t say that; no river ever “is” even for a moment. A river is always flowing: a flow, not a stand; motion, not position. Say: the river is rivering. Do not say “is”; “is” carries falsity. You say “the tree is.” Even as you say it, new leaves are sprouting, old ones falling, new roots growing, trunk rising, buds opening, fruit ripening—and you say “is”! “Is” suggests stasis.
Buddha says: the tree is treeing. A verb, not a noun. You are “being”—the child is youth-ing; youth is aging; the old is passing through the door of death. Every moment all changes. Because Buddha defined truth as flow, what is not in flow is untrue; thus he did not accept God or Brahman.
Heraclitus also did not accept God; he accepted the dynamism of existence.
But both speak half-truths. Shankara spoke of the eternal; Buddha of change. My experience is: both are telling halves. Whenever you speak a half, the other half must be denied. If you say the world is hot, then cold must be false—so even if you sweat, you must deny it. Experience heat yet call it false.
I embrace life in its totality. Paradox does not trouble me, for I see truth as intrinsically paradoxical.
You asked, Pandit Brahmaprakash: “While refuting Shankara’s ‘the world is illusory, Brahman is true,’ you said both world and Brahman are true.”
If the world is untrue, what “beginning” or “end”? If the world is untrue, Shankara never existed. In an unreal world, how would you be born? How would you write scriptures? For scriptures to exist, the world must be true. Shankara colored paper with ink—ink untrue, paper untrue, Shankara untrue! And for whom did he write? For those who are untrue? Are you mad? This is like a madman conversing with someone who isn’t there. Why do we call him mad? Because he believes what is not, and speaks to it.
A madman sat with his ear to the asylum wall for two hours. The superintendent passed by a few times; the fellow kept listening. Curiosity arose. “What are you hearing?” he asked. “Hush,” the man said. The superintendent put his ear to the wall. After fifteen minutes, hearing nothing, he said, “I can’t hear anything.” The madman replied, “It’s been two hours for me too—I don’t hear anything either. And you say that in fifteen minutes!”
You’ll call him mad—he listens where nothing is. He speaks to what is not.
Then Shankara must be utterly mad. If the world is untrue, whom is he explaining to? Whom is he refuting or defending? For whom are scriptures written? He himself would not be.
Shankara says: “Mine and thine—both false.” Let me tell you a story that shows “mine and thine” were not false. Shankara debated Mandana Mishra—a great, famous scholar—for six months. Shankara’s logic was indeed sharper; he defeated Mandana. The judge was Mandana’s wife, Bharati—no one else was as qualified to preside. She was honest: she declared Shankara the winner and her own husband the loser.
But whom was Shankara defeating—those who aren’t? Who is winning—who isn’t?
Then Bharati put him in a fix. She said, “Remember, scriptures say the wife is the husband’s half. You have defeated only half of Mandana; the other half is me. Until you defeat me, your victory is incomplete. Don’t go beating drums about your victory.”
Shankara had to agree; scripture said so. He hadn’t imagined such a tangle. Women can create tangles! Shankara was celibate; he had kept clear of women—and here he got entangled. If not his own wife, another’s wife created the knot. He could not refuse; scripture backed her. He bowed and accepted the challenge.
But a woman thinks differently. She did not discuss Brahman; she discussed Vatsyayana’s Kama Sutra—not Badarayana’s Brahma Sutra. She put the celibate in deeper trouble. He was about thirty; he knew nothing of woman. If he were my sannyasi, there would be no problem. He was of the old kind—what could he say on Kama Sutra? He requested six months’ leave to study the subject, then resume debate. Bharati agreed.
The story says Shankara left his body, had his disciples guard it in a cave, and entered the corpse of a dead king to experience sexuality. Shankara’s followers boast of this miracle—leaving one’s body and entering another: parakaya pravesh. I ask: what kind of “mine and thine” is this? Body is maya—then what is “my body, your body”? If he needed the experience, why not use his own body? Entering another’s body is sheer dishonesty. It doubled the dishonesty: he deceived the king’s wife, who believed her husband had revived and had relations with him as such. First, deception—adultery, even rape through fraud. And for what? Because “my body is a brahmachari’s body”! As if bodies have celibacy! Celibacy pertains to consciousness, not to body.
Those who preach “the world is maya; the body is clay,” don’t really mean it. Even among clods of clay, there is “mine” and “yours.” Corrupt his clay; save mine! He left his “clay” with disciples for safekeeping—“Guard it from worms; don’t let it rot”—while he entered another’s “clay”! Even clay is divided into “mine” and “yours.” Then all this talk of maya and Brahman is nonsense. This world seems very true—even its clay.
And his followers maintain his celibacy remained unbroken. Had he used “his” body, it would be broken; by using another’s body, it wasn’t! So celibacy has become a bodily matter? Then why the word “brahma” in brahmacharya? It means “living as Brahman lives.” This was ignorance, not miracle. In truth, the story was likely invented to safeguard his reputation for celibacy. The act happened with his own body—because the doer is the same. And if someone says, “He enjoyed as a witness,” then he could have done so in his own body. Why the other’s body, why deceive another’s wife? A basic honesty should be the foundation of religion.
Another incident: one dawn, after bathing in the Ganges at Kashi, Shankara was climbing the steps, God’s name on his lips, when a shudra brushed against him. He flared up: “Blind fool! Have you no shame? A shudra touching a brahmin!”
The world is maya—but the shudra is true! Don’t say, “World is maya, Brahman is true.” Say, “World is maya; the shudra is true!” Where is Brahman now? Shankara said, “I must bathe again; you’ve polluted me.” Clay touched clay—one clay shudra, one clay brahmin! Is clay brahmin or shudra? It seems the shudra was wiser. He said, “Revered one, answer a few questions. Did my body touch your body? Is body brahmin or shudra? I too have bathed; so have you. Does the Ganges purify only brahmins, not shudras? You remember God, I do too—does remembrance purify you but not me? Does such partiality prevail in God’s world? Is the Ganges biased? If I touched you, and I am not defiled, how are you defiled? If you say it is not a matter of body but of soul, I did not touch your soul. The soul cannot be touched; in truth, the soul alone is untouchable—beyond touch. And if you still say the soul can be defiled by touch—can the soul ever be defiled? The soul is inherently pure; it is Brahman itself.”
And yet Shankara spread brahminism as no one else did. The net result of his thought is a brood of the arrogant. If the world is false, ego alone remains true. “My body”—where there is “my,” there is ego. “I am a brahmin; you are a shudra; you have defiled me.” What brahminhood is this? If you were truly a brahmin, your touch would purify the shudra—how do you get defiled instead? Is brahminhood so impotent? The shudra appears the stronger!
But we parrot such things.
Pandit Brahmaprakash, you say, “The definition of truth is: that which is not perishable.”
Where did you get this? Have you known truth? I say I have, and I find truth is both perishable and imperishable. Truth is the world and truth is Brahman. Truth is body and truth is soul. Two faces—no contradiction. There is deep harmony, profound non-duality. There is a musical, rhythmic accord.
Look within: what harmony between your body and your soul! When the body is joyous, the soul sings; when the soul rejoices, the body glows. As within you between body and soul, so between Brahman and its body—this vast universe—there is harmony. Man is a small edition of the whole. The entire saga of existence is written within man. Understand one man wholly, and you have understood all existence. Man is a symbol.
What a choreography between your body and your being! Just so is the dance between Brahman and its manifestation.
Shankara fell into trouble—definitions lead to trouble. He was asked again and again—and across a thousand years his followers have no answer: If Brahman is true and maya false, whence this maya? Everything arises from Brahman, the sole source. Then maya must also arise from Brahman—whence else? There is nothing other than Brahman; it is all-pervading, the only existence.
Brahman means the vast, the all-expanding, the all-pervading. Not an inch is without it. Whence then maya?
So patchwork is needed—useless patchwork that convinces no one except those eager to be deceived. The question is straight; it admits no answer. If maya comes from Brahman, a problem: how can the false arise from the true? If it comes from somewhere else, we must accept another source besides Brahman. Then there are two realities; then which is greater? Clearly, the second seems stronger, for it holds most people; Brahman touches seldom a rare one in millions. The “second Brahman” seems to win the elections!
So you cannot accept another source. Only one option remains: maya from Brahman. Then how can false bloom on the tree of truth? True roots, true branches, false flowers—impossible. From truth only truth can arise.
Shankara, tangled in his definition, invited blows; and he has been pummeled for a thousand years—inevitably. He is responsible.
I hold that this world expands from Brahman; it is Brahman’s expression, its play, its celebration. These colors are his, these flowers his. These personalities are his, these forms and names are his. He is in the mountains, in rivers, in waterfalls, in humans, animals, birds. Within all this diversity, he alone is. I cannot call this diversity false—because then I must either call Brahman false too (for false begets false), or accept both as true.
There have been those, like Nagarjuna, who called both false. His logic is sharper than Shankara’s; Shankara cannot stand before him. Nagarjuna said: if the world is false, so is Brahman. Just where I grip Shankara, Nagarjuna grips him too—but he extends Shankara’s logic further: “If the flower is false, how can the tree be true?” His argument is like mine, though he takes it to another dimension which I do not accept, for he gets entangled there. When asked, “If all is false, whom are you teaching? The world is false, you are false,”—at least Shankara preserved a true self. Nagarjuna says: “If the seen is false, how can the seer be true? The seer too is false. All is false.”
But then: if all is false, whom are you addressing? There is no snake—and you thrash with a stick; but there is no stick either, and no thrasher.
I too grip the logic there, but take it to another dimension: the world is true and Brahman is true. This is not a mere logical conclusion; it is my experience. I hold my body to be as true as my soul.
Therefore I tell my sannyasins: do not renounce the world. People may or may not understand me—because they carry tired, secondhand notions—but I say it with a foundation. Do not leave the world, for the world is a form of the divine, his song. The singer is hidden; the song is audible. As when a cuckoo calls in the distance—you may not see the bird hidden in the mango grove, but the cooing reaches you; you know there must be a cuckoo because there is a song. The song is proof.
The world is God’s cooing. God is hidden in a deep grove—unmanifest—hidden in you, in me. The same sleeps in the stone and wakes in the Buddha. We did well to sculpt Buddhas in stone; we indicated that the same dwells in stone that awakens in the Buddha. We broke the false divide: look, we fashion the Buddha’s image in stone.
The first great images in the world were of Buddha—so in Urdu, “but” (idol) is derived from “Buddha.” But-parasti means Buddha-parasti. We made images in stone to point: what sleeps in stone awakens in Buddha—one and the same. It sleeps, it wakes; it strays, it returns home. It is all his play.
Do not flee the world. Do not take it with heavy seriousness either; but do not renounce. Escape is cowardice.
I tell my sannyasin: live—live to the full! Drink—drink to the full! And be a witness at every moment. The seen is true; the seer is true. Know both. Let your experience expand into both the seen and the seer. Then truth will descend into your life in its wholeness.
Until now, renunciation was half and crippled; the worldly way too was half and crippled. My sannyasin is neither the old renunciate nor the old worldly man. In my sannyas, world and renunciation have dropped their quarrel and their duality; they have attained non-duality. My sannyasin lives in the world meditatively, as a witness—abiding in Brahman yet not fleeing the world. For both are true, two faces of one truth.
Listen to Kabir:
Where nectar drips and lakes brim full, there words arise sky-born;
A stream swells up and drinks the sea—no tongue can tell that morn.
No moon, no sun, no stars are there; no night, no break of day.
Sitars and flutes and humming tones—soft voices dance and play.
A million lamps flash everywhere; without a drop, rains pour.
Ten avatars reign one night there—spontaneous praises soar.
Kabir reveals the secret word—rare is the one who knows.
This is the secret. And what is the secret? “No tongue can tell.” It cannot be said, but it can be lived. “Where nectar drips”—where it is known, ambrosia flows. Truth tastes like nectar. “Not drizzles but lakes brim within”—a Manasarovar forms within.
“Words arise sky-born”—scripture is born within: Upanishads, Quran, Bible speak. The word is not ours—it is of the vast. Our logic lags far behind; we ourselves fall behind. The sound that rises is bigger than us; we become a resonance in it.
“And a stream swells and drinks the sea”—this is why I say truth is paradoxical. How can a little river drink the ocean? Yet that is the experience: the vast fits within you—like the ocean in a drop. Each awakened being has drunk Brahman whole, left nothing. Astonishing: we are so small and yet we drink the infinite! This can only be known by happening; explanations won’t do. Until it happens to you, my saying “world is true, Brahman is true” won’t quite settle; your old biases will ring-fence you.
“No moon, no sun, no stars; no night, no dawn.” “Sitars and flutes sound”—the experience is exuberant—music, dance, festival.
“A million lamps flicker everywhere”—as if ten million lamps are lit. Not only does your inner lamp light, you begin to see the lamps in all. They themselves don’t see them—but you do. Buddha said: when I became enlightened, I knew the whole world became enlightened with me. Not that I alone attained—existence attained with me.
“Without water, rains pour”—no clouds are seen, no water seen—yet it rains; torrents pour, drenching you with grace. “Where nectar drips and lakes brim full.”
“Ten avatars reign one night”—all forms of the divine appear together: Krishna’s flute, Buddha’s samadhi, Mahavira’s kevalya—everything at once. Whom to praise? Speech is lost; the experiencer is struck dumb.
Pandit Brahmaprakash, if you want to know—enter meditation. Don’t ask for definitions. Enter samadhi; abandon hair-splitting. I have no problem with logic; for me it’s a game. If someone delights in debate, I can play. But nothing is solved by logic; it’s like playing cards. Kings and queens appear on the cards—but they are only on the cards. Chess pieces—a king, a rook, a vizier—but none are real. Such is the web of logic—a chess game.
I’m not one of those who balk at argument—I can sharpen logic to its edge. But remember: logic will not resolve it. Resolution comes through samadhi. Don’t ask for definitions. You have already come here; this is a tavern—drink! By happy mistake you arrived—great grace! Pandits don’t come this way; if they do, they get into trouble. If you can set your scholarship aside, this wine invites you too.
Let me repeat: It isn’t good to come to such a place—and if you do, it isn’t good to leave without drinking.
A song by Yog Preetam, my sannyasin who weaves my sayings into song, hints at this:
May I be so fated that I keep on drinking, and yet remain thirsty still;
Let the heart sway in ecstasy, and clear-eyed joy be steady still.
Let all the traces of “I” be gone, yet let me be wholly here;
Let me behold his pageant so—both world and renouncing here.
Let life’s long journey pass like this—some sun, some shade along;
Let the fun of walking never fade, with a felt sense of goal along.
Though veiled a thousand times he be, his splendor keep gleaming through;
In this hide-and-seek of love divine, a little far—and near—be true.
Let some of my God-love fall to hush, some to the idols speak;
Let earth live in these eyes of mine, and open sky be sweet.
Let silence sing with secret song, music in quiet drown;
Let weeping walk with smiling steps, and tear-streaked laughter crown.
Let stillness sometimes storm within, and quiet winds pass by;
Like midstream feel the shore at hand—oar in hand, with trust held high.
If this be possible in the world, what joy of living then!
Let Master be and man be too; let Gita flow—and Vyasa sing again.
May I be so fated that I keep on drinking, and yet remain thirsty still;
Let the heart sway in ecstasy, and clear-eyed joy be steady still.
Let all the traces of “I” be gone, yet let me be wholly here;
Let me behold his pageant so—both renouncing and the world be here.
I do not ask you to choose. I ask you to live wholly. To live in totality is dharma; to live in halves is adharma.
You ask, “What is the definition of truth?”
Truth has no definition—nor can it have one. The moment you define truth, it becomes untruth. Truth is inexpressible. How will you define the indefinable? How will you explain the inexplicable? Truth won’t fit into words; it keeps slipping through. It is beyond words, beyond mind. Truth is an experience—and one available only when the mind is transcended: in thoughtlessness, in emptiness, in samadhi. Definitions are the mind’s work, and the mind never experiences truth. The experience happens beyond mind. So one “entity” experiences and another tries to define—of course the statement will be wrong. The one who has seen does not speak, and the one who speaks has not seen. The eyed one sees; the blind one defines.
Assume even that a blind man was standing beside a man with eyes when the sun rose. The eyed man saw. Still, can the blind man define what was seen? How? And the one who saw is struck dumb. The experience is so vast that the one who experiences dissolves in it. Like a drop falling into the ocean—how on earth will the drop define the ocean? The drop is no more. Who will define, and what?
But those who live in scriptures and words drag truth down into words as well. For them even “truth” is a word. And once truth becomes a word, it becomes untruth.
Lao Tzu’s famous dictum: “The truth that can be spoken is already untrue.”
So don’t ask for a definition. I can indicate how to experience truth, but I cannot define it. Shankaracharya defines—and that alone reveals a certain scholarly entanglement. There is no fire in the word “fire,” no love in the word “love,” and no truth in the word “truth.” Yet we are reared on words. Education is about words; the net is woven of words. We forget that life has nothing to do with words. Words have a built-in limitation: they divide, cut, fragment. They must; their scope is limited while experience is limitless. What can a poor word do? It is helpless—compelled to cut, analyze, break apart.
Night and day are two faces of one coin; darkness and light are two faces of one coin. But in words they become two.
Ask science what darkness is. It says darkness is simply less light, and light is simply less darkness. No qualitative difference—only a matter of density or dilution. “Cold” and “hot” are separate words; and of course cold tea and hot tea differ. But in reality cold and heat are measured on the same thermometer—so the difference is not qualitative, but quantitative.
Understand it like this. Place one hand on a block of ice and warm the other over a brazier. Both are your hands: one grows hot, the other very cold. Now immerse both in a bucket of water. Tell me—is the water hot or cold? You’ll be in trouble, for one hand will say hot, the other cold. The hand chilled by ice will report the water is hot; the heated hand will report it is cold. Now, whether the water is hot or cold, whichever you say will be wrong—one hand will contradict you. Either the water is both, or neither. Which hand will you believe—left or right? Will you be leftist or rightist? And both hands are yours, both report to you. Which report is true? In a sense both are true—each is reporting its own experience.
This is the trouble with words: words split life into two. Words are dualistic; experience is non-dual. I do not consider Shankaracharya a non-dualist. Despite all his proclamations, he is a dualist. I am a non-dualist; therefore I call Shankara a dualist, because he splits reality into maya and Brahman—one he calls true, the other false. I don’t split. I say they are two faces of the same coin—one manifest, one unmanifest; one expressed, one unexpressed. And the expressed is a part of the unexpressed; the unexpressed is joined to the expressed—never separated, not even for a moment, not by a particle.
Shankara calls maya “false.” Granted that the world is momentary—but understand what “momentary” means: it means changeful. Have you seen anything in the world ever vanish into non-being? You’ve heard it called perishable—but have you actually seen anything perish? Can you annihilate anything? I give you a grain of sand—can you destroy it? You say “perishable”; show me. Science has surrendered: nothing in this universe can be destroyed, and nothing can be added. You cannot destroy even a grain of sand. Grind it and it becomes many particles—still it is. Burn it to ash—its form has changed, its being remains. Throw it into the ocean—the waves carry the particles far; you no longer see them, but wherever they go, they are. Even if unseen, they are.
Water heats and becomes vapor; you don’t see it. But do you think it has perished? Then how do clouds form and rain fall? It did not perish; it became invisible—beyond the eye’s range. The eye’s range is small. Below it there is much; above it there is much. Steam is beyond your sight; bring cold, seed the clouds with ice, and steam appears again and pours as rain. You cannot annihilate.
You say “perishable”—borrowed talk. You read in scripture that the world is perishable. Did you ever consider whether anything has ever truly vanished? Or did you just repeat hearsay, the stock phrase: “the world is perishable”? The world has always been and has never ceased; it will always be. “Perishable” only means: forms change, but being does not. Youth turns old—being remains. Child becomes young—being remains. Now science has found ways—woman may become man, man may become woman; being remains. Even when you die, nothing dies; death is not. Only form changes. You move from one house to another—that isn’t annihilation. You leave one town and settle in another. You leave one body and take another. Even if you turn vagabond and settle under trees—today this inn, tomorrow that hotel—what difference does it make? You are.
Nothing has ever been annihilated, nor will be. How then do you call it “perishable”? If you only mean transformation—then know that within change, the changeless is threaded through. Like the string through the beads of a mala. The string is unseen, but it holds the mala together. The beads seem separate; within, a single thread links them.
All things change on the surface, but in the depth of existence there is a unifying thread—I call that Brahman; I call that truth.
Change and eternity are the two faces of one coin. Eternity is like the string in the garland; changefulness is like the beads. They are not enemies. Both are true. But words trip you up. If you define that truth is that which never changes, which is imperishable—then by your definition, what changes must be false—by your definition only! What is your definition worth? Why should existence care for your definition?
Call a rose “rose,” or give it another name—there are thousands of languages, so the rose has thousands of names. Does the rose care? Call it beautiful or ugly—does it change the rose? Fashions change daily. A hundred years ago, who would imagine you would place a cactus in your drawing room, that a cactus would be called beautiful? Tell a villager today that a cactus is beautiful—he will stare: “What nonsense!” He plants cactus as a fence to keep animals and thieves out. He cannot imagine putting it in his house. He’ll say, “Am I mad?”
Roses were beautiful—but now to insist “the rose is beautiful” sounds old-fashioned. The modern, cultivated people keep cactus. New poetry sings of cacti; new painters paint them. The rose has become passé. Nobility is out; the cactus is the proletariat. This is the age of socialism. To praise roses—aren’t you ashamed? Kings are gone; with them roses and lotuses. Now we worship cactus. Thorns are beautiful now—the poor thorn, never praised by Kalidasa, Bhavabhuti, Shakespeare, Milton; all of them sang of courts and kings—courtiers all. The rose’s days are done; the cactus’s time has come. But neither cactus nor rose cares. The rose is the rose; the cactus is the cactus. Your praise or blame changes nothing.
You defined truth as the eternal. Do you know truth? You defined without knowing—and got trapped by the definition. Now, because of it, you must call the world maya. Shankara got caught in this net. Once he declared Brahman the eternal, unchanging, imperishable, he was compelled to declare the world false—by the logic of his definition. Existence itself is not in question; only your definition is.
Buddha did not define like that. Buddha said: the world is changeful. In Greece, the great mystic thinker Heraclitus said: the world is constant flux. Like a river flowing. “You cannot step into the same river twice,” he said—the current is that fast. This is true.
Because Heraclitus and Buddha took change as truth, for them God/Brahman became untrue. It’s a matter of what you take as truth. They said: the world we see is changeful; our direct experience is that all is flow. That flow is truth. Therefore the eternal Brahman you talk about is untrue—by definition. And who will decide the definition? It’s in your hands.
Rajjab says: “As it was, so it was made to stand”—entering the unchanging, where no movement is; that is his definition.
Buddha says: “Charaiveti, charaiveti—Go on, go on!” Do not stop—for the moment you stop, you are in untruth. Motion is truth; non-motion is untruth.
Science agrees with Buddha. Hence, in the West where science is influential, Shankara has little impact; Buddha does. Science finds the world changeful. Buddha embraced change so deeply that he said: we should remove nouns from language, because they deceive; we should keep only verbs.
You say “the river is.” Don’t say that; no river ever “is” even for a moment. A river is always flowing: a flow, not a stand; motion, not position. Say: the river is rivering. Do not say “is”; “is” carries falsity. You say “the tree is.” Even as you say it, new leaves are sprouting, old ones falling, new roots growing, trunk rising, buds opening, fruit ripening—and you say “is”! “Is” suggests stasis.
Buddha says: the tree is treeing. A verb, not a noun. You are “being”—the child is youth-ing; youth is aging; the old is passing through the door of death. Every moment all changes. Because Buddha defined truth as flow, what is not in flow is untrue; thus he did not accept God or Brahman.
Heraclitus also did not accept God; he accepted the dynamism of existence.
But both speak half-truths. Shankara spoke of the eternal; Buddha of change. My experience is: both are telling halves. Whenever you speak a half, the other half must be denied. If you say the world is hot, then cold must be false—so even if you sweat, you must deny it. Experience heat yet call it false.
I embrace life in its totality. Paradox does not trouble me, for I see truth as intrinsically paradoxical.
You asked, Pandit Brahmaprakash: “While refuting Shankara’s ‘the world is illusory, Brahman is true,’ you said both world and Brahman are true.”
If the world is untrue, what “beginning” or “end”? If the world is untrue, Shankara never existed. In an unreal world, how would you be born? How would you write scriptures? For scriptures to exist, the world must be true. Shankara colored paper with ink—ink untrue, paper untrue, Shankara untrue! And for whom did he write? For those who are untrue? Are you mad? This is like a madman conversing with someone who isn’t there. Why do we call him mad? Because he believes what is not, and speaks to it.
A madman sat with his ear to the asylum wall for two hours. The superintendent passed by a few times; the fellow kept listening. Curiosity arose. “What are you hearing?” he asked. “Hush,” the man said. The superintendent put his ear to the wall. After fifteen minutes, hearing nothing, he said, “I can’t hear anything.” The madman replied, “It’s been two hours for me too—I don’t hear anything either. And you say that in fifteen minutes!”
You’ll call him mad—he listens where nothing is. He speaks to what is not.
Then Shankara must be utterly mad. If the world is untrue, whom is he explaining to? Whom is he refuting or defending? For whom are scriptures written? He himself would not be.
Shankara says: “Mine and thine—both false.” Let me tell you a story that shows “mine and thine” were not false. Shankara debated Mandana Mishra—a great, famous scholar—for six months. Shankara’s logic was indeed sharper; he defeated Mandana. The judge was Mandana’s wife, Bharati—no one else was as qualified to preside. She was honest: she declared Shankara the winner and her own husband the loser.
But whom was Shankara defeating—those who aren’t? Who is winning—who isn’t?
Then Bharati put him in a fix. She said, “Remember, scriptures say the wife is the husband’s half. You have defeated only half of Mandana; the other half is me. Until you defeat me, your victory is incomplete. Don’t go beating drums about your victory.”
Shankara had to agree; scripture said so. He hadn’t imagined such a tangle. Women can create tangles! Shankara was celibate; he had kept clear of women—and here he got entangled. If not his own wife, another’s wife created the knot. He could not refuse; scripture backed her. He bowed and accepted the challenge.
But a woman thinks differently. She did not discuss Brahman; she discussed Vatsyayana’s Kama Sutra—not Badarayana’s Brahma Sutra. She put the celibate in deeper trouble. He was about thirty; he knew nothing of woman. If he were my sannyasi, there would be no problem. He was of the old kind—what could he say on Kama Sutra? He requested six months’ leave to study the subject, then resume debate. Bharati agreed.
The story says Shankara left his body, had his disciples guard it in a cave, and entered the corpse of a dead king to experience sexuality. Shankara’s followers boast of this miracle—leaving one’s body and entering another: parakaya pravesh. I ask: what kind of “mine and thine” is this? Body is maya—then what is “my body, your body”? If he needed the experience, why not use his own body? Entering another’s body is sheer dishonesty. It doubled the dishonesty: he deceived the king’s wife, who believed her husband had revived and had relations with him as such. First, deception—adultery, even rape through fraud. And for what? Because “my body is a brahmachari’s body”! As if bodies have celibacy! Celibacy pertains to consciousness, not to body.
Those who preach “the world is maya; the body is clay,” don’t really mean it. Even among clods of clay, there is “mine” and “yours.” Corrupt his clay; save mine! He left his “clay” with disciples for safekeeping—“Guard it from worms; don’t let it rot”—while he entered another’s “clay”! Even clay is divided into “mine” and “yours.” Then all this talk of maya and Brahman is nonsense. This world seems very true—even its clay.
And his followers maintain his celibacy remained unbroken. Had he used “his” body, it would be broken; by using another’s body, it wasn’t! So celibacy has become a bodily matter? Then why the word “brahma” in brahmacharya? It means “living as Brahman lives.” This was ignorance, not miracle. In truth, the story was likely invented to safeguard his reputation for celibacy. The act happened with his own body—because the doer is the same. And if someone says, “He enjoyed as a witness,” then he could have done so in his own body. Why the other’s body, why deceive another’s wife? A basic honesty should be the foundation of religion.
Another incident: one dawn, after bathing in the Ganges at Kashi, Shankara was climbing the steps, God’s name on his lips, when a shudra brushed against him. He flared up: “Blind fool! Have you no shame? A shudra touching a brahmin!”
The world is maya—but the shudra is true! Don’t say, “World is maya, Brahman is true.” Say, “World is maya; the shudra is true!” Where is Brahman now? Shankara said, “I must bathe again; you’ve polluted me.” Clay touched clay—one clay shudra, one clay brahmin! Is clay brahmin or shudra? It seems the shudra was wiser. He said, “Revered one, answer a few questions. Did my body touch your body? Is body brahmin or shudra? I too have bathed; so have you. Does the Ganges purify only brahmins, not shudras? You remember God, I do too—does remembrance purify you but not me? Does such partiality prevail in God’s world? Is the Ganges biased? If I touched you, and I am not defiled, how are you defiled? If you say it is not a matter of body but of soul, I did not touch your soul. The soul cannot be touched; in truth, the soul alone is untouchable—beyond touch. And if you still say the soul can be defiled by touch—can the soul ever be defiled? The soul is inherently pure; it is Brahman itself.”
And yet Shankara spread brahminism as no one else did. The net result of his thought is a brood of the arrogant. If the world is false, ego alone remains true. “My body”—where there is “my,” there is ego. “I am a brahmin; you are a shudra; you have defiled me.” What brahminhood is this? If you were truly a brahmin, your touch would purify the shudra—how do you get defiled instead? Is brahminhood so impotent? The shudra appears the stronger!
But we parrot such things.
Pandit Brahmaprakash, you say, “The definition of truth is: that which is not perishable.”
Where did you get this? Have you known truth? I say I have, and I find truth is both perishable and imperishable. Truth is the world and truth is Brahman. Truth is body and truth is soul. Two faces—no contradiction. There is deep harmony, profound non-duality. There is a musical, rhythmic accord.
Look within: what harmony between your body and your soul! When the body is joyous, the soul sings; when the soul rejoices, the body glows. As within you between body and soul, so between Brahman and its body—this vast universe—there is harmony. Man is a small edition of the whole. The entire saga of existence is written within man. Understand one man wholly, and you have understood all existence. Man is a symbol.
What a choreography between your body and your being! Just so is the dance between Brahman and its manifestation.
Shankara fell into trouble—definitions lead to trouble. He was asked again and again—and across a thousand years his followers have no answer: If Brahman is true and maya false, whence this maya? Everything arises from Brahman, the sole source. Then maya must also arise from Brahman—whence else? There is nothing other than Brahman; it is all-pervading, the only existence.
Brahman means the vast, the all-expanding, the all-pervading. Not an inch is without it. Whence then maya?
So patchwork is needed—useless patchwork that convinces no one except those eager to be deceived. The question is straight; it admits no answer. If maya comes from Brahman, a problem: how can the false arise from the true? If it comes from somewhere else, we must accept another source besides Brahman. Then there are two realities; then which is greater? Clearly, the second seems stronger, for it holds most people; Brahman touches seldom a rare one in millions. The “second Brahman” seems to win the elections!
So you cannot accept another source. Only one option remains: maya from Brahman. Then how can false bloom on the tree of truth? True roots, true branches, false flowers—impossible. From truth only truth can arise.
Shankara, tangled in his definition, invited blows; and he has been pummeled for a thousand years—inevitably. He is responsible.
I hold that this world expands from Brahman; it is Brahman’s expression, its play, its celebration. These colors are his, these flowers his. These personalities are his, these forms and names are his. He is in the mountains, in rivers, in waterfalls, in humans, animals, birds. Within all this diversity, he alone is. I cannot call this diversity false—because then I must either call Brahman false too (for false begets false), or accept both as true.
There have been those, like Nagarjuna, who called both false. His logic is sharper than Shankara’s; Shankara cannot stand before him. Nagarjuna said: if the world is false, so is Brahman. Just where I grip Shankara, Nagarjuna grips him too—but he extends Shankara’s logic further: “If the flower is false, how can the tree be true?” His argument is like mine, though he takes it to another dimension which I do not accept, for he gets entangled there. When asked, “If all is false, whom are you teaching? The world is false, you are false,”—at least Shankara preserved a true self. Nagarjuna says: “If the seen is false, how can the seer be true? The seer too is false. All is false.”
But then: if all is false, whom are you addressing? There is no snake—and you thrash with a stick; but there is no stick either, and no thrasher.
I too grip the logic there, but take it to another dimension: the world is true and Brahman is true. This is not a mere logical conclusion; it is my experience. I hold my body to be as true as my soul.
Therefore I tell my sannyasins: do not renounce the world. People may or may not understand me—because they carry tired, secondhand notions—but I say it with a foundation. Do not leave the world, for the world is a form of the divine, his song. The singer is hidden; the song is audible. As when a cuckoo calls in the distance—you may not see the bird hidden in the mango grove, but the cooing reaches you; you know there must be a cuckoo because there is a song. The song is proof.
The world is God’s cooing. God is hidden in a deep grove—unmanifest—hidden in you, in me. The same sleeps in the stone and wakes in the Buddha. We did well to sculpt Buddhas in stone; we indicated that the same dwells in stone that awakens in the Buddha. We broke the false divide: look, we fashion the Buddha’s image in stone.
The first great images in the world were of Buddha—so in Urdu, “but” (idol) is derived from “Buddha.” But-parasti means Buddha-parasti. We made images in stone to point: what sleeps in stone awakens in Buddha—one and the same. It sleeps, it wakes; it strays, it returns home. It is all his play.
Do not flee the world. Do not take it with heavy seriousness either; but do not renounce. Escape is cowardice.
I tell my sannyasin: live—live to the full! Drink—drink to the full! And be a witness at every moment. The seen is true; the seer is true. Know both. Let your experience expand into both the seen and the seer. Then truth will descend into your life in its wholeness.
Until now, renunciation was half and crippled; the worldly way too was half and crippled. My sannyasin is neither the old renunciate nor the old worldly man. In my sannyas, world and renunciation have dropped their quarrel and their duality; they have attained non-duality. My sannyasin lives in the world meditatively, as a witness—abiding in Brahman yet not fleeing the world. For both are true, two faces of one truth.
Listen to Kabir:
Where nectar drips and lakes brim full, there words arise sky-born;
A stream swells up and drinks the sea—no tongue can tell that morn.
No moon, no sun, no stars are there; no night, no break of day.
Sitars and flutes and humming tones—soft voices dance and play.
A million lamps flash everywhere; without a drop, rains pour.
Ten avatars reign one night there—spontaneous praises soar.
Kabir reveals the secret word—rare is the one who knows.
This is the secret. And what is the secret? “No tongue can tell.” It cannot be said, but it can be lived. “Where nectar drips”—where it is known, ambrosia flows. Truth tastes like nectar. “Not drizzles but lakes brim within”—a Manasarovar forms within.
“Words arise sky-born”—scripture is born within: Upanishads, Quran, Bible speak. The word is not ours—it is of the vast. Our logic lags far behind; we ourselves fall behind. The sound that rises is bigger than us; we become a resonance in it.
“And a stream swells and drinks the sea”—this is why I say truth is paradoxical. How can a little river drink the ocean? Yet that is the experience: the vast fits within you—like the ocean in a drop. Each awakened being has drunk Brahman whole, left nothing. Astonishing: we are so small and yet we drink the infinite! This can only be known by happening; explanations won’t do. Until it happens to you, my saying “world is true, Brahman is true” won’t quite settle; your old biases will ring-fence you.
“No moon, no sun, no stars; no night, no dawn.” “Sitars and flutes sound”—the experience is exuberant—music, dance, festival.
“A million lamps flicker everywhere”—as if ten million lamps are lit. Not only does your inner lamp light, you begin to see the lamps in all. They themselves don’t see them—but you do. Buddha said: when I became enlightened, I knew the whole world became enlightened with me. Not that I alone attained—existence attained with me.
“Without water, rains pour”—no clouds are seen, no water seen—yet it rains; torrents pour, drenching you with grace. “Where nectar drips and lakes brim full.”
“Ten avatars reign one night”—all forms of the divine appear together: Krishna’s flute, Buddha’s samadhi, Mahavira’s kevalya—everything at once. Whom to praise? Speech is lost; the experiencer is struck dumb.
Pandit Brahmaprakash, if you want to know—enter meditation. Don’t ask for definitions. Enter samadhi; abandon hair-splitting. I have no problem with logic; for me it’s a game. If someone delights in debate, I can play. But nothing is solved by logic; it’s like playing cards. Kings and queens appear on the cards—but they are only on the cards. Chess pieces—a king, a rook, a vizier—but none are real. Such is the web of logic—a chess game.
I’m not one of those who balk at argument—I can sharpen logic to its edge. But remember: logic will not resolve it. Resolution comes through samadhi. Don’t ask for definitions. You have already come here; this is a tavern—drink! By happy mistake you arrived—great grace! Pandits don’t come this way; if they do, they get into trouble. If you can set your scholarship aside, this wine invites you too.
Let me repeat: It isn’t good to come to such a place—and if you do, it isn’t good to leave without drinking.
A song by Yog Preetam, my sannyasin who weaves my sayings into song, hints at this:
May I be so fated that I keep on drinking, and yet remain thirsty still;
Let the heart sway in ecstasy, and clear-eyed joy be steady still.
Let all the traces of “I” be gone, yet let me be wholly here;
Let me behold his pageant so—both world and renouncing here.
Let life’s long journey pass like this—some sun, some shade along;
Let the fun of walking never fade, with a felt sense of goal along.
Though veiled a thousand times he be, his splendor keep gleaming through;
In this hide-and-seek of love divine, a little far—and near—be true.
Let some of my God-love fall to hush, some to the idols speak;
Let earth live in these eyes of mine, and open sky be sweet.
Let silence sing with secret song, music in quiet drown;
Let weeping walk with smiling steps, and tear-streaked laughter crown.
Let stillness sometimes storm within, and quiet winds pass by;
Like midstream feel the shore at hand—oar in hand, with trust held high.
If this be possible in the world, what joy of living then!
Let Master be and man be too; let Gita flow—and Vyasa sing again.
May I be so fated that I keep on drinking, and yet remain thirsty still;
Let the heart sway in ecstasy, and clear-eyed joy be steady still.
Let all the traces of “I” be gone, yet let me be wholly here;
Let me behold his pageant so—both renouncing and the world be here.
I do not ask you to choose. I ask you to live wholly. To live in totality is dharma; to live in halves is adharma.
Second question:
Osho, is it impossible to attain godliness without sannyas, or is sannyas only the gateway to Truth? Please explain.
Osho, is it impossible to attain godliness without sannyas, or is sannyas only the gateway to Truth? Please explain.
Harsh Kumar! What on earth can I explain? And even if I do, will you understand? Your very question is sheer non-understanding. Do you think godliness and Truth are two different things? Just reconsider your question.
You ask: “Is it impossible to attain godliness without sannyas, or is sannyas only the gateway to Truth?”
Call it the gateway to Truth or to godliness—same thing. Truth and godliness are one. In your eyes it seems godliness is something far beyond, very lofty—and sannyas is merely the door to Truth! What remains after Truth? Godliness is contained in Truth. And you ask as if, if it’s “only a door,” then perhaps we can manage without sannyas. But how will you enter without a door?
You ask: “Or is it only a door?”
Then do you intend to walk through the wall? By your name you don’t seem like a Sardar—Harsh Kumar! But maybe you live in Punjab and the company has rubbed off.
I’ve heard there was a language competition at Chandigarh University. The theme: which language can express more in fewer words? The sample sentence was, “May I come in?” Teachers of Hindi, English, Marathi, Punjabi, and Gujarati participated.
The English teacher went first: “May I come in, sir?”
The Hindi teacher said: “Shriman, main andar aaun?”
The Marathi teacher: “Mee aat yeu ka?”
The Gujarati teacher: “Hu andar aavi shaku chu?”
And finally, saying “Wahe Guruji ka Khalsa!” Sardar Bichittar Singh stood up, raised his hand, drew his kirpan, pushed the door, and barked, “Shall I barge in?” Kirpan in hand! Naturally the judges sprang to their feet: “Please, please—do come in, sit!” Sardar Bichittar Singh won. He asked, “Shall I barge in?”—but with a kirpan!
You want to go even further than Bichittar Singh—planning to barge in through the wall? You will have to go through the door. And if you find the door, you’ve found everything; what is left? If the door opens, all opens; what is left?
Sannyas is the door—whether you call it the door to Truth or to godliness. What does sannyas mean? Simply this: let your life be dyed in the hue of samadhi. Let spring arrive. These ochre robes are the color of spring, the color of spring blossoms, the color of exuberance. Your life is autumnal; it needs spring, it needs blossom-time, the honeyed month.
Sannyas doesn’t mean renouncing, dropping, or running away—it means awakening. And then enjoying—consciously. Until now you have enjoyed half-asleep; now enjoy awake—that’s the only difference. Everything else remains; nothing needs to change outwardly. The outer will go on as it is—perhaps more beautifully, because in sleep mistakes are bound to happen; awake, even mistakes become almost impossible. One who lives with awareness has a joy without end.
Sannyas is the art of living—but much that is wrong has gone under its name. It has spread fear; the very word “sannyas” scares people. In the name of sannyas, great abuses were committed. How many women became widows while their husbands still lived; how many children became orphans while their fathers still lived. If anyone were to calculate it, you would see that because of the old notion of sannyas humanity has suffered more than from anything else. Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadir Shah will all pale before it. They may have killed a few thousand, but sannyas—as it was—has killed the lives of countless people. To kill outright can be a kind of mercy; to leave someone half-dead is worse. That’s exactly what sannyas did: those who ran away became half-dead, and those they left behind were made half-dead too. When a husband runs away, he himself becomes half-dead and leaves his wife and children half-dead. How many wives had to beg; how many children had to beg! How many wives turned to prostitution because of your sannyasins! How much suffering they must have endured! How many children withered before they could blossom! If we could tally five thousand years of your so-called sannyasins, we might find that no greater epidemic has ever plagued the earth.
My effort is to free sannyas from this sickness; to make it healthy, to give it dignity, to re-sanctify it. That’s why I’m changing its definition, its color, its form. Naturally, Hindus are upset, Muslims are upset, Christians, Jains, Buddhists are upset. They will be—because I’m turning their whole notion of sannyas to ashes. I have my own new vision of sannyas. And I declare: the sannyas I am speaking of is the one that can become a blessing for humanity. The sannyas of the past proved a curse.
Sannyas means the art of living. Nothing less, nothing more—the art of living.
Now you ask, Harsh Kumar, “Is it impossible to attain godliness without sannyas?”
If you don’t even have the courage for sannyas, will you be able to digest God? Can this little stream drink the ocean? If you lack the courage for sannyas yet intend to attain God—without the guts even to live—how will you bear God? Where is the beggar’s bowl for that? Where is the life-force for that? Sannyas is precisely the preparation so that, if the Supreme Guest comes, he doesn’t turn back from your door because it’s closed. Or that, though your door is open, there is no festive toran hanging. Or that the door is there, it’s open, the toran is up, but you are lying unconscious. Or that you are not unconscious, yet your eyes are closed.
Sannyas is the preparation to make yourself worthy of that Supreme Guest—so that when he comes, he finds you ready. And he does come—every day, every moment, knocking at the door. But either you are asleep or you are elsewhere; you are never at home, because you are always somewhere else. You are never where you are.
Note it well: wherever you are, you are not there—you are always elsewhere—lost in memories of the past, lost in imaginations of the future. Never where you actually are, always somewhere else.
A woman used to visit a sadhu, distressed by her husband’s irreligiousness. She considered herself religious. The so-called religious always consider others irreligious—that’s their only fun, their only pride, the one relish of their ego. They gained nothing else, but at least they can enjoy: “We are religious!”
Women often go to sadhus and saints, because men have blocked them from the races of worldly life. They are not allowed to be painters, sculptors, poets, musicians—men have closed those doors out of constant fear. If they become musicians, they will sit with musicians, make some maestro their teacher—and who can trust these loafers! So no musicians. No dancers either—these singing-dancing types aren’t respectable; who knows when they’ll run off with your wife? You can’t trust them. Painters—how to trust them? They paint nude women. Poets—forever humming love songs; at the sight of a beautiful woman their saliva starts dripping, they grow faint, start sighing.
Sardar Bichittar Singh was in a bus queue. In front of him stood a Punjabi girl in very tight clothes—so tight one wondered how she got in or out of them; only girls can do such miracles. The heat was intense; he was sweating. Curiosity finally got him: “Sister!” (Though his heart was saying something else, the tongue had to say “Sister!”) “In such heat, these tight clothes—don’t you feel hot?”
She said, “No. With flirts like you around, how could I feel hot? The cool sighs you people keep heaving—like fans running all around! And the tighter the clothes, the more fans start up. That’s why tight clothes in the heat.”
How to trust poets—forever sighing! Poetry anytime, and poetry means love! So men closed all other doors to women, trusting only the sadhus: “These are virtuous, saintly men; let the women go to them.” With everything else blocked, the poor women sit in temples listening to Satyanarayan katha, the Ramayana, cursing their fate. What else to do? With no other avenue left, they pour themselves into this—and take their revenge by harrying their husbands: “You are irreligious; you’ll rot in hell!”
This woman, too, kept at her husband day and night. It’s revenge—nothing else. What men have done has consequences; until women are given freedom, men will have to bear this. This is the penalty for depriving women of freedom.
One day she told the holy man, “What shall I do? My husband neither prays nor worships. I’m exhausted, defeated. I’ve never seen such a man. Nothing penetrates his skull. Now you must do something.”
The holy man said, “Fine, I’ll come in the morning.” He arrived at Brahma muhurta. Seeing him approach, the wife got up even earlier, set up the worship room, lit lamps and incense, started ringing bells and made quite a din. The husband awoke; he would never get up at that hour, but the racket—Jai Jagdish Hare!—was such that he couldn’t sleep. Finally he thought, “No use lying here,” and went to stroll in the garden. The holy man arrived; the bhajan was going full blast. He was pleased: “Ah, the lady is really advanced!” He met the husband in the garden and asked, “I have come for you. Where is your wife?” The husband replied, “My wife has gone to the market to buy vegetables.”
“Vegetables! At Brahma muhurta! The market isn’t even open—are you in your senses?”
“Believe me, she’s gone to buy bhindi—okra. You’re coming, so she’s going to cook okra. And she’s arguing over the price; she’s grabbed the greengrocer woman by the throat.”
The wife heard all this while chanting Jai Jagdish Hare and ringing bells. Finally she stopped the bells and came out: “What lies! I’m doing puja. Aren’t you ashamed to lie even to the holy man? Why are you standing there—prostrate at his feet!”
The holy man said, “Indeed, that’s what I was thinking: the sound of bhajan and bells is there, but who knows—maybe someone else is doing the worship! Now your wife stands here; aren’t you ashamed to lie? She’s right to say your mind is gone. What’s this talk of okra and markets?”
But the husband said, “I request my wife to speak truthfully for once—swear by the holy man and say honestly that you did not go to the market, did not buy okra, and did not grab the greengrocer by the throat.”
She could not swear. It struck her—the husband was right. She was saying Jai Jagdish Hare outwardly, but thinking, “What to cook today? Okra. Finish the puja quickly and rush to the market.” In imagination she had gone to the market, and already had a fight over the price. Anger rose: “The holy man is coming and this greengrocer has no sense, demanding double!” She had indeed grabbed the woman’s throat—in imagination.
She said, “Forgive me, my husband is right. Jai Jagdish Hare was only on the surface. I had gone to the market—in my thoughts. But how did he know?”
The holy man was astonished too. “How did you know?”
“How did I know! One thing’s certain—people are never where they are. So I was sure my wife wasn’t in the shrine. A bit of simple math: she loves okra. If you’re coming, she’ll make okra. She has nearly killed me with okra. I consider suicide when I see it, but I say nothing—who knows, maybe okra is spiritual! Maybe some yogic secret—some rasa that makes one religious. So I keep quiet and eat. I was certain she’d buy okra; and now would be the time—this is her chance. Jai Jagdish Hare goes on outside while inside she plans the day. I guessed she’d be buying okra now. If it hit the mark, good; if not, it was a shot in the dark. And I know wherever she goes, a quarrel is inevitable. My lifetime’s experience: the moment I enter the house—quarrel! Speak and there’s trouble; don’t speak and there’s trouble. Whatever I say, she finds a way to twist it. Once I swore I’d say nothing; I came and sat silent. She even turned that into a quarrel: ‘Why are you sitting silent? Am I dead that you’re silent? When I die, sit silent—now speak! Say something!’ She found a way even out of my silence. She’s always on my neck; so I figured she’d be on the greengrocer’s neck. It was imagination backed by experience. That’s all.”
This is your condition. You are never where you are. And the divine will come where you are. How is he to know you’ve gone to the market, buying okra, throttling the greengrocer? How far should he chase you! He will come where you are—and you are never there.
Sannyas means just this: a discipline to be where you are, a discipline to live in the present. The past has no value—it’s gone, gone. The future has no value—it hasn’t come, hasn’t come. What has come, what stands before you, what is immediate—live in that. Don’t try to peer beyond it. One who lives in this tiny moment of the present is a sannyasin. One who lives moment-to-moment is a sannyasin.
You ask: “Is it impossible to attain godliness without sannyas, or is sannyas only the gateway to Truth?”
Your question could only be asked by either a Sardar or a politician. You’re not a Sardar—your name says so. Perhaps you’re in politics. In politics the intellect is entirely lost. In fact, if one has intelligence, one doesn’t enter politics at all.
A friend asked a leader, “How is sister-in-law? She was expecting—what happened?”
The leader, taking a thoughtful pose, said, “My wife has given birth to twins. I think one is a boy and one a girl. But it’s possible I’m wrong—and it’s a girl and a boy.”
What kind of question are you asking!
Once at a famous leader’s rally there was a big commotion. He snarled, “It seems all the donkeys of the city have gathered here. Wouldn’t it be better if we spoke one at a time?”
A man said, “Fine, then why don’t you begin.”
I’ve heard a newly elected leader reached Delhi and was a guest at another leader’s home. As they sat, the newcomer looked out the window and saw a long line of donkeys go by—so many he’d never seen. Maybe they had taken out a march to meet the Prime Minister—what else do donkeys have to do! And donkeys do a lot of politics. He asked, “So many donkeys—are they all Delhi donkeys?” The other leader said, “No, some are elected and come from outside. Not all are from Delhi.”
Are you in politics, Harsh Kumar, to ask such a question?
You say, “Please explain.”
What on earth can I explain? Even if I wished to be gracious—how? You’ve taken godliness and Truth as two things. Just now you heard Pandit Brahmaprakash; at least he sees a duality between the world and Brahman. For the sake of argument that can be admitted, as a hypothesis. But you have outdone even Pandit Brahmaprakash—floored him on all fours! You are making a distinction between godliness and Truth—as if Truth were maya and godliness were Truth. And Truth—maya!
So you are asking, “Is sannyas only the door to Truth?”
Only! You have no idea what you’re saying; you aren’t even conscious of the words you use.
At every step people cast themselves in new molds.
Before your eyes they change and change.
Why search for some lost paradise
when clay toys suffice to amuse people?
How simple-hearted they still are—hearing a little tinkle,
heedless of pros and cons, they rush out of the house.
Heads bowed beside their own shadows, soft of step,
who knows toward what destination people now go?
Like a lamp, indifferent to the gathering,
people often burn quietly in their own fire.
Poet, you still boast of their friendship—
they say that stumbling makes people mend their ways.
They don’t. They say people mend—but they don’t. A man may stumble a thousand times, yet he stumbles at the same spots. He becomes habituated to those very stumblings.
Think a little before you ask—does the question even stand? And when no real question can be formed, how can an answer be possible? Your question is full of derangement.
Sannyas is the door to Truth; sannyas is the door to godliness. And without sannyas there is no door. But when I speak of sannyas, I mean my sannyas; I have nothing to do with other notions of sannyas. Those are their concern.
You ask: “Is it impossible to attain godliness without sannyas, or is sannyas only the gateway to Truth?”
Call it the gateway to Truth or to godliness—same thing. Truth and godliness are one. In your eyes it seems godliness is something far beyond, very lofty—and sannyas is merely the door to Truth! What remains after Truth? Godliness is contained in Truth. And you ask as if, if it’s “only a door,” then perhaps we can manage without sannyas. But how will you enter without a door?
You ask: “Or is it only a door?”
Then do you intend to walk through the wall? By your name you don’t seem like a Sardar—Harsh Kumar! But maybe you live in Punjab and the company has rubbed off.
I’ve heard there was a language competition at Chandigarh University. The theme: which language can express more in fewer words? The sample sentence was, “May I come in?” Teachers of Hindi, English, Marathi, Punjabi, and Gujarati participated.
The English teacher went first: “May I come in, sir?”
The Hindi teacher said: “Shriman, main andar aaun?”
The Marathi teacher: “Mee aat yeu ka?”
The Gujarati teacher: “Hu andar aavi shaku chu?”
And finally, saying “Wahe Guruji ka Khalsa!” Sardar Bichittar Singh stood up, raised his hand, drew his kirpan, pushed the door, and barked, “Shall I barge in?” Kirpan in hand! Naturally the judges sprang to their feet: “Please, please—do come in, sit!” Sardar Bichittar Singh won. He asked, “Shall I barge in?”—but with a kirpan!
You want to go even further than Bichittar Singh—planning to barge in through the wall? You will have to go through the door. And if you find the door, you’ve found everything; what is left? If the door opens, all opens; what is left?
Sannyas is the door—whether you call it the door to Truth or to godliness. What does sannyas mean? Simply this: let your life be dyed in the hue of samadhi. Let spring arrive. These ochre robes are the color of spring, the color of spring blossoms, the color of exuberance. Your life is autumnal; it needs spring, it needs blossom-time, the honeyed month.
Sannyas doesn’t mean renouncing, dropping, or running away—it means awakening. And then enjoying—consciously. Until now you have enjoyed half-asleep; now enjoy awake—that’s the only difference. Everything else remains; nothing needs to change outwardly. The outer will go on as it is—perhaps more beautifully, because in sleep mistakes are bound to happen; awake, even mistakes become almost impossible. One who lives with awareness has a joy without end.
Sannyas is the art of living—but much that is wrong has gone under its name. It has spread fear; the very word “sannyas” scares people. In the name of sannyas, great abuses were committed. How many women became widows while their husbands still lived; how many children became orphans while their fathers still lived. If anyone were to calculate it, you would see that because of the old notion of sannyas humanity has suffered more than from anything else. Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadir Shah will all pale before it. They may have killed a few thousand, but sannyas—as it was—has killed the lives of countless people. To kill outright can be a kind of mercy; to leave someone half-dead is worse. That’s exactly what sannyas did: those who ran away became half-dead, and those they left behind were made half-dead too. When a husband runs away, he himself becomes half-dead and leaves his wife and children half-dead. How many wives had to beg; how many children had to beg! How many wives turned to prostitution because of your sannyasins! How much suffering they must have endured! How many children withered before they could blossom! If we could tally five thousand years of your so-called sannyasins, we might find that no greater epidemic has ever plagued the earth.
My effort is to free sannyas from this sickness; to make it healthy, to give it dignity, to re-sanctify it. That’s why I’m changing its definition, its color, its form. Naturally, Hindus are upset, Muslims are upset, Christians, Jains, Buddhists are upset. They will be—because I’m turning their whole notion of sannyas to ashes. I have my own new vision of sannyas. And I declare: the sannyas I am speaking of is the one that can become a blessing for humanity. The sannyas of the past proved a curse.
Sannyas means the art of living. Nothing less, nothing more—the art of living.
Now you ask, Harsh Kumar, “Is it impossible to attain godliness without sannyas?”
If you don’t even have the courage for sannyas, will you be able to digest God? Can this little stream drink the ocean? If you lack the courage for sannyas yet intend to attain God—without the guts even to live—how will you bear God? Where is the beggar’s bowl for that? Where is the life-force for that? Sannyas is precisely the preparation so that, if the Supreme Guest comes, he doesn’t turn back from your door because it’s closed. Or that, though your door is open, there is no festive toran hanging. Or that the door is there, it’s open, the toran is up, but you are lying unconscious. Or that you are not unconscious, yet your eyes are closed.
Sannyas is the preparation to make yourself worthy of that Supreme Guest—so that when he comes, he finds you ready. And he does come—every day, every moment, knocking at the door. But either you are asleep or you are elsewhere; you are never at home, because you are always somewhere else. You are never where you are.
Note it well: wherever you are, you are not there—you are always elsewhere—lost in memories of the past, lost in imaginations of the future. Never where you actually are, always somewhere else.
A woman used to visit a sadhu, distressed by her husband’s irreligiousness. She considered herself religious. The so-called religious always consider others irreligious—that’s their only fun, their only pride, the one relish of their ego. They gained nothing else, but at least they can enjoy: “We are religious!”
Women often go to sadhus and saints, because men have blocked them from the races of worldly life. They are not allowed to be painters, sculptors, poets, musicians—men have closed those doors out of constant fear. If they become musicians, they will sit with musicians, make some maestro their teacher—and who can trust these loafers! So no musicians. No dancers either—these singing-dancing types aren’t respectable; who knows when they’ll run off with your wife? You can’t trust them. Painters—how to trust them? They paint nude women. Poets—forever humming love songs; at the sight of a beautiful woman their saliva starts dripping, they grow faint, start sighing.
Sardar Bichittar Singh was in a bus queue. In front of him stood a Punjabi girl in very tight clothes—so tight one wondered how she got in or out of them; only girls can do such miracles. The heat was intense; he was sweating. Curiosity finally got him: “Sister!” (Though his heart was saying something else, the tongue had to say “Sister!”) “In such heat, these tight clothes—don’t you feel hot?”
She said, “No. With flirts like you around, how could I feel hot? The cool sighs you people keep heaving—like fans running all around! And the tighter the clothes, the more fans start up. That’s why tight clothes in the heat.”
How to trust poets—forever sighing! Poetry anytime, and poetry means love! So men closed all other doors to women, trusting only the sadhus: “These are virtuous, saintly men; let the women go to them.” With everything else blocked, the poor women sit in temples listening to Satyanarayan katha, the Ramayana, cursing their fate. What else to do? With no other avenue left, they pour themselves into this—and take their revenge by harrying their husbands: “You are irreligious; you’ll rot in hell!”
This woman, too, kept at her husband day and night. It’s revenge—nothing else. What men have done has consequences; until women are given freedom, men will have to bear this. This is the penalty for depriving women of freedom.
One day she told the holy man, “What shall I do? My husband neither prays nor worships. I’m exhausted, defeated. I’ve never seen such a man. Nothing penetrates his skull. Now you must do something.”
The holy man said, “Fine, I’ll come in the morning.” He arrived at Brahma muhurta. Seeing him approach, the wife got up even earlier, set up the worship room, lit lamps and incense, started ringing bells and made quite a din. The husband awoke; he would never get up at that hour, but the racket—Jai Jagdish Hare!—was such that he couldn’t sleep. Finally he thought, “No use lying here,” and went to stroll in the garden. The holy man arrived; the bhajan was going full blast. He was pleased: “Ah, the lady is really advanced!” He met the husband in the garden and asked, “I have come for you. Where is your wife?” The husband replied, “My wife has gone to the market to buy vegetables.”
“Vegetables! At Brahma muhurta! The market isn’t even open—are you in your senses?”
“Believe me, she’s gone to buy bhindi—okra. You’re coming, so she’s going to cook okra. And she’s arguing over the price; she’s grabbed the greengrocer woman by the throat.”
The wife heard all this while chanting Jai Jagdish Hare and ringing bells. Finally she stopped the bells and came out: “What lies! I’m doing puja. Aren’t you ashamed to lie even to the holy man? Why are you standing there—prostrate at his feet!”
The holy man said, “Indeed, that’s what I was thinking: the sound of bhajan and bells is there, but who knows—maybe someone else is doing the worship! Now your wife stands here; aren’t you ashamed to lie? She’s right to say your mind is gone. What’s this talk of okra and markets?”
But the husband said, “I request my wife to speak truthfully for once—swear by the holy man and say honestly that you did not go to the market, did not buy okra, and did not grab the greengrocer by the throat.”
She could not swear. It struck her—the husband was right. She was saying Jai Jagdish Hare outwardly, but thinking, “What to cook today? Okra. Finish the puja quickly and rush to the market.” In imagination she had gone to the market, and already had a fight over the price. Anger rose: “The holy man is coming and this greengrocer has no sense, demanding double!” She had indeed grabbed the woman’s throat—in imagination.
She said, “Forgive me, my husband is right. Jai Jagdish Hare was only on the surface. I had gone to the market—in my thoughts. But how did he know?”
The holy man was astonished too. “How did you know?”
“How did I know! One thing’s certain—people are never where they are. So I was sure my wife wasn’t in the shrine. A bit of simple math: she loves okra. If you’re coming, she’ll make okra. She has nearly killed me with okra. I consider suicide when I see it, but I say nothing—who knows, maybe okra is spiritual! Maybe some yogic secret—some rasa that makes one religious. So I keep quiet and eat. I was certain she’d buy okra; and now would be the time—this is her chance. Jai Jagdish Hare goes on outside while inside she plans the day. I guessed she’d be buying okra now. If it hit the mark, good; if not, it was a shot in the dark. And I know wherever she goes, a quarrel is inevitable. My lifetime’s experience: the moment I enter the house—quarrel! Speak and there’s trouble; don’t speak and there’s trouble. Whatever I say, she finds a way to twist it. Once I swore I’d say nothing; I came and sat silent. She even turned that into a quarrel: ‘Why are you sitting silent? Am I dead that you’re silent? When I die, sit silent—now speak! Say something!’ She found a way even out of my silence. She’s always on my neck; so I figured she’d be on the greengrocer’s neck. It was imagination backed by experience. That’s all.”
This is your condition. You are never where you are. And the divine will come where you are. How is he to know you’ve gone to the market, buying okra, throttling the greengrocer? How far should he chase you! He will come where you are—and you are never there.
Sannyas means just this: a discipline to be where you are, a discipline to live in the present. The past has no value—it’s gone, gone. The future has no value—it hasn’t come, hasn’t come. What has come, what stands before you, what is immediate—live in that. Don’t try to peer beyond it. One who lives in this tiny moment of the present is a sannyasin. One who lives moment-to-moment is a sannyasin.
You ask: “Is it impossible to attain godliness without sannyas, or is sannyas only the gateway to Truth?”
Your question could only be asked by either a Sardar or a politician. You’re not a Sardar—your name says so. Perhaps you’re in politics. In politics the intellect is entirely lost. In fact, if one has intelligence, one doesn’t enter politics at all.
A friend asked a leader, “How is sister-in-law? She was expecting—what happened?”
The leader, taking a thoughtful pose, said, “My wife has given birth to twins. I think one is a boy and one a girl. But it’s possible I’m wrong—and it’s a girl and a boy.”
What kind of question are you asking!
Once at a famous leader’s rally there was a big commotion. He snarled, “It seems all the donkeys of the city have gathered here. Wouldn’t it be better if we spoke one at a time?”
A man said, “Fine, then why don’t you begin.”
I’ve heard a newly elected leader reached Delhi and was a guest at another leader’s home. As they sat, the newcomer looked out the window and saw a long line of donkeys go by—so many he’d never seen. Maybe they had taken out a march to meet the Prime Minister—what else do donkeys have to do! And donkeys do a lot of politics. He asked, “So many donkeys—are they all Delhi donkeys?” The other leader said, “No, some are elected and come from outside. Not all are from Delhi.”
Are you in politics, Harsh Kumar, to ask such a question?
You say, “Please explain.”
What on earth can I explain? Even if I wished to be gracious—how? You’ve taken godliness and Truth as two things. Just now you heard Pandit Brahmaprakash; at least he sees a duality between the world and Brahman. For the sake of argument that can be admitted, as a hypothesis. But you have outdone even Pandit Brahmaprakash—floored him on all fours! You are making a distinction between godliness and Truth—as if Truth were maya and godliness were Truth. And Truth—maya!
So you are asking, “Is sannyas only the door to Truth?”
Only! You have no idea what you’re saying; you aren’t even conscious of the words you use.
At every step people cast themselves in new molds.
Before your eyes they change and change.
Why search for some lost paradise
when clay toys suffice to amuse people?
How simple-hearted they still are—hearing a little tinkle,
heedless of pros and cons, they rush out of the house.
Heads bowed beside their own shadows, soft of step,
who knows toward what destination people now go?
Like a lamp, indifferent to the gathering,
people often burn quietly in their own fire.
Poet, you still boast of their friendship—
they say that stumbling makes people mend their ways.
They don’t. They say people mend—but they don’t. A man may stumble a thousand times, yet he stumbles at the same spots. He becomes habituated to those very stumblings.
Think a little before you ask—does the question even stand? And when no real question can be formed, how can an answer be possible? Your question is full of derangement.
Sannyas is the door to Truth; sannyas is the door to godliness. And without sannyas there is no door. But when I speak of sannyas, I mean my sannyas; I have nothing to do with other notions of sannyas. Those are their concern.
Last question:
Osho, you neither come nor go; you don’t even leave your chamber. Then how is it that people from faraway lands are drawn to you and keep coming? What is the secret?
Osho, you neither come nor go; you don’t even leave your chamber. Then how is it that people from faraway lands are drawn to you and keep coming? What is the secret?
Swaroopananda! There is no secret at all. It is as clear as two and two make four. When a lamp is lit, the moths come on their own. Who knows how the news reaches them! Who knows what longing is awakened in the very life of the moths! They set out from far-off realms of darkness. Let a lamp be lit, and the moths come. And even if the lamp is lit in a solitary room, it makes no difference. The moths find a way—through the windows, through the door, through the cracks. If there is no place, no doorway for entry, they will flutter on the windowpanes. But they come.
There is no secret. It is simple. In the morning the sun rises—who goes to tell the birds to sing? The sun tells no one to sing. Songs burst forth, inevitably, from the throats of the birds; even if they wished to stop, they could not—songs begin to flow. The trees awaken. The flowers open their petals, fragrance begins to ride the sky. What happens? How does it happen? What is the secret? There is none. Everything is as straightforward as arithmetic. The sun will rise, the birds will sing, the flowers will bloom, the trees will awaken. People’s sleep will break. The lamp will be lit, the moths will come.
For a long time I said nothing to anyone. I wanted to hide it. But there is something that does not stay hidden. I wanted to hide, because I thought, why get into a hassle? But people began to get the news. Somehow a sense began to arise in them. Then when I saw that people were hearing anyway and were coming anyway, hiding was pointless. It was right to become manifest, so that whoever has to come may come.
I go nowhere, nor will I. Coming and going does not interest me. When inwardly the comings and goings have ended, what point is there in outward coming and going! But those who have to come will come. Those who want to bring their own comings and goings to an end will come.
If I remain silent, the heart bursts with grief;
If I lament, I fear disgrace.
This is said about ordinary love. But when the love-event happens between a person and the Divine—that vast love—then even reckoning becomes difficult, impossible!
If I remain silent, the heart bursts with grief;
If I lament, I fear disgrace.
I never told anyone your tale—
Who knows how the world got the news!
I have heard you do not go to others’ gatherings;
Say the word, and today I shall adorn this poor abode.
Hereafter it may be that something about you, too, will arise;
If you so command, I will stop the tale right here.
The straws are so finely arranged that now I fear
Lest the evil eye fall upon my little nest.
I prayed for spring; so many flowers bloomed
There was no space left for my little dwelling.
I never told anyone your tale—
Who knows how the world got the news!
I myself had told no one. I had wanted to remain silent. Who wants to take on a hassle! Who wants to enter needless disturbance! But the word began to spread. Slowly, slowly people started coming. Then when I saw that I had to get into the hassle anyway, I thought: why get into a small hassle! I have no taste for small things. My interest is very simple: I relish only the very best. And if I must get entangled, then let it be total. So I said, if I must speak, why speak to one or two? Let all the moths come! Let them come from the whole earth, from faraway lands. Of course, it brings difficulties.
Remaining silent was very difficult too, because seeing people falling all around—how can you stay silent when you know you can say, “There is a pit—don’t fall in”? How can you stay silent watching people crash into walls when you know where the door is? How can you stay silent, seeing people’s sadness, their restlessness, their troubles, their derangement—when you know that a revolution can happen in their lives, can happen this very moment? When you know the key, how can you remain silent watching people bang their heads against the locks?
If I remain silent, the heart bursts with grief...
If I remain silent, the heart bursts with grief.
A compassion begins to arise.
If I lament, I fear disgrace—
And if I call out loudly, there is the risk of defamation. Then I said, let there be defamation. The thing must now be said. It must be said loudly. So you see: those who had to hear have heard; those who had to come have come; and whatever slander was to happen is happening too.
If I remain silent, the heart bursts with grief;
If I lament, I fear disgrace.
I never told anyone your tale—
Who knows how the world got the news!
I have heard you do not go to others’ gatherings;
Say the word, and today I shall adorn this poor abode.
Hereafter it may be that something about you, too, will arise;
If you so command, I will stop the tale right here.
The straws are so finely arranged that now I fear
Lest the evil eye fall upon my little nest.
I prayed for spring; so many flowers bloomed
There was no space left for my little dwelling.
I never told anyone your tale—
Who knows how the world got the news!
That’s all for today.
There is no secret. It is simple. In the morning the sun rises—who goes to tell the birds to sing? The sun tells no one to sing. Songs burst forth, inevitably, from the throats of the birds; even if they wished to stop, they could not—songs begin to flow. The trees awaken. The flowers open their petals, fragrance begins to ride the sky. What happens? How does it happen? What is the secret? There is none. Everything is as straightforward as arithmetic. The sun will rise, the birds will sing, the flowers will bloom, the trees will awaken. People’s sleep will break. The lamp will be lit, the moths will come.
For a long time I said nothing to anyone. I wanted to hide it. But there is something that does not stay hidden. I wanted to hide, because I thought, why get into a hassle? But people began to get the news. Somehow a sense began to arise in them. Then when I saw that people were hearing anyway and were coming anyway, hiding was pointless. It was right to become manifest, so that whoever has to come may come.
I go nowhere, nor will I. Coming and going does not interest me. When inwardly the comings and goings have ended, what point is there in outward coming and going! But those who have to come will come. Those who want to bring their own comings and goings to an end will come.
If I remain silent, the heart bursts with grief;
If I lament, I fear disgrace.
This is said about ordinary love. But when the love-event happens between a person and the Divine—that vast love—then even reckoning becomes difficult, impossible!
If I remain silent, the heart bursts with grief;
If I lament, I fear disgrace.
I never told anyone your tale—
Who knows how the world got the news!
I have heard you do not go to others’ gatherings;
Say the word, and today I shall adorn this poor abode.
Hereafter it may be that something about you, too, will arise;
If you so command, I will stop the tale right here.
The straws are so finely arranged that now I fear
Lest the evil eye fall upon my little nest.
I prayed for spring; so many flowers bloomed
There was no space left for my little dwelling.
I never told anyone your tale—
Who knows how the world got the news!
I myself had told no one. I had wanted to remain silent. Who wants to take on a hassle! Who wants to enter needless disturbance! But the word began to spread. Slowly, slowly people started coming. Then when I saw that I had to get into the hassle anyway, I thought: why get into a small hassle! I have no taste for small things. My interest is very simple: I relish only the very best. And if I must get entangled, then let it be total. So I said, if I must speak, why speak to one or two? Let all the moths come! Let them come from the whole earth, from faraway lands. Of course, it brings difficulties.
Remaining silent was very difficult too, because seeing people falling all around—how can you stay silent when you know you can say, “There is a pit—don’t fall in”? How can you stay silent watching people crash into walls when you know where the door is? How can you stay silent, seeing people’s sadness, their restlessness, their troubles, their derangement—when you know that a revolution can happen in their lives, can happen this very moment? When you know the key, how can you remain silent watching people bang their heads against the locks?
If I remain silent, the heart bursts with grief...
If I remain silent, the heart bursts with grief.
A compassion begins to arise.
If I lament, I fear disgrace—
And if I call out loudly, there is the risk of defamation. Then I said, let there be defamation. The thing must now be said. It must be said loudly. So you see: those who had to hear have heard; those who had to come have come; and whatever slander was to happen is happening too.
If I remain silent, the heart bursts with grief;
If I lament, I fear disgrace.
I never told anyone your tale—
Who knows how the world got the news!
I have heard you do not go to others’ gatherings;
Say the word, and today I shall adorn this poor abode.
Hereafter it may be that something about you, too, will arise;
If you so command, I will stop the tale right here.
The straws are so finely arranged that now I fear
Lest the evil eye fall upon my little nest.
I prayed for spring; so many flowers bloomed
There was no space left for my little dwelling.
I never told anyone your tale—
Who knows how the world got the news!
That’s all for today.