Prem Rang Ras Audh Chadariya #2
Available in:
Read in Original Hindi (मूल हिन्दी)
Questions in this Discourse
First question:
Osho, whenever I look up at the sky, I am awestruck by the billions of stars—and it goes on for hours. I wonder: these billions of stars, many larger than our sun—how did all this happen, for what purpose? Are we earthlings alone in the universe? Please explain.
Osho, whenever I look up at the sky, I am awestruck by the billions of stars—and it goes on for hours. I wonder: these billions of stars, many larger than our sun—how did all this happen, for what purpose? Are we earthlings alone in the universe? Please explain.
Shamoon Ali! When wonder awakens, do not, even by mistake, hoist it on the cross of a question. When the mind is spellbound with amazement, do not let worry come anywhere near. Worry is poison. If wonder dies, religion dies; and worry murders wonder.
When your consciousness is suffused with wonder, when your eyes brim with tears, the body thrills, the heart overflows, and you feel like dancing—then dance under those thousands, millions, billions of stars! Dancing is far more meaningful than making a question. If the heart of a lover is near and you wish to converse with the stars, say a word or two, sing a song, offer a prayer. Bow your head before the sky’s unique presence, fall to the earth, make a full prostration; but do not make a question. Do not ask, why! The moment you ask why, you miss. A great miss! After that, the arrow will never strike the mark.
As soon as we ask why, that wonder which stirs the heart will no longer reach the heart. It will get caught in the net of why, entangled in the brain. The thorn of why will pin it in the mind. Then reflection will begin, thought will churn, philosophy will be born—but the experience of religion will not happen. And only through experience do the doors of truth open. Thinking and thought are incapable of opening those doors. The keys of thought are utterly impotent before the lock on truth’s gate.
Even if you think—what will you think? How will you think about what you do not know? Thinking is a process of rumination. You’ve seen the buffalo: it grazes, then sits, bringing it back up and chewing the cud. You can ruminate only what you have grazed. What you have not grazed cannot be ruminated. Thought is rumination. You read it in books, you heard it from people; then you sit and chew it over.
Thought is never original, and truth is always original. Therefore the paths of thought and truth never cross. Whoever gets entangled in thought misses truth. One who wishes to know truth must be wary of thought. The moment you see thought raising its head, become alert, aware. Wonder is lovable; thought is lethal.
It is right, Shamoon Ali, that when you see billions of stars, wonder arises; suddenly you are speechless, your eyes stand transfixed, for a moment the heart seems to stop, the breath seems arrested. This is auspicious. But the moment you ask: why, what is all this for, who did it, what is the cause behind it—you miss, you stumble, you fall from the steps, your companionship with religion slips away. Now your reflection will be philosophical. And philosophical reflection inevitably turns into scientific thinking.
Therefore wherever philosophical thinking took root, religion perished and science was born. This is what happened in the West. People asked: why, what for, what is the cause, where is the first cause? The search for cause quickly becomes science. And science means life begins to be lived in the trivial, the superficial, the shallow.
The depths of life cannot be bound by questions. The deeper the ocean, the less it can be held in a fist. Billions of stars, the nectar-light pouring from them... do not raise questions; sing a song! And if you can sing, from within you, from your own innermost core, without asking, an answer will arise. And not a verbal answer that you can call an answer, but an answer in which you are soaked and drenched, which transforms you; not merely intellectual, but becoming your very inner being.
You ask: Are we earthlings alone in the universe?
Even if you knew, what would it change? Suppose there are people on infinite earths—so what? You cannot love even your neighbor. Shamoon Ali, the Muslim cannot love the Hindu, the Jain cannot love the Muslim. Indians cannot love the Chinese. We cannot love the neighbor. If there are people settled on distant stars, what will you do? Our bond with the neighbor is not even formed yet. The husband cannot love the wife, the wife cannot love the husband. In the name of love, so many kinds of politics are going on! In the name of love, there is only an attempt to possess each other. Brother is the enemy of brother; humans are engaged in killing humans. Wars have not ended on this earth; hatred has not ended. Brotherhood, love, the sun of friendship has not yet risen here. Even if there are people on some planets and satellites near the moon and stars, what will you do? Suppose they are there—then what? Or suppose they are not...
Do not waste time entangling yourself in such hypothetical questions. The same time and energy can become prayer. Why existence is, no answer can ever be given. Because whatever answer is given, the same question can be asked of it again. If someone says, God created it, you can ask, why? If someone says, God created it out of his joy, you can ask, before creating it was he without joy, unhappy? If someone says he is playing a divine play, then he is alone—before whom is the play enacted? Is he some little child who has lost his way, whistling in the dark night to comfort himself?
Why did God create the world? The question will remain as it is. And even if an answer is found, the question will arise: why is there God? Who created God? What purpose would he have? There is no end to these questions. One question drags along a thousand more.
A religious person must understand deeply that when questions drop, prayer is born. If questions remain, prayer can never be born.
I keep going!
I know not the beginning of this path,
nor do I accept its end;
I recognize only a hint of its direction.
I do not know whether I am deceiving the path,
or being deceived by the path.
I keep going!
I have no concern for life and death,
no knowledge of the searing particle or the body;
I know only one thing—the burning!
I do not know whether today the desert burns in me,
or I am burning in the desert.
I keep going!
I do not know whether I am at the shore or midstream,
whether I am groundless or grounded.
Only this seems so: I am formless.
I do not know whether the void is pouring into me,
or I am being poured into the void.
I keep going!
Nothing is known, nor will anything ever be finally known. This is the fundamental difference between religion and science. Science says existence can be divided into two parts: the known and the unknown. What was unknown yesterday becomes known today; what is unknown today will be known tomorrow. Science says two categories suffice: the known and the unknown—and ultimately only the known will remain, as all unknowns gradually become known.
If this is true, if the scientific notion is correct, soon the unfortunate hour will arrive when wonder will no longer be born. And the day there is no wonder, man will commit spiritual suicide; he will not be able to live even a moment. Life will become futile. Meaning exists because of wonder, because of the unknown, because of mystery.
Religion divides existence into three: the known, the unknown, and the unknowable. What is unknown will become known; what is known was once unknown. But there is another category: the unknowable—never known and never to be known, whose very nature is unknowability; it is unknown and will remain unknown. Its unknowability is not accidental; it is its destiny. We can know what makes up a rose—soil, water, air, sun—we can certainly know. The unknown can become known. We will recognize the sun’s rays, the earth’s soil, the air, the water. But there is something else in the rose: beauty. That is unknowable, and will remain so. It is not made of the sun, nor of earth, nor of air or water. It does not submit to our grasp; it slips from the hand. It is like mercury: the more you try to hold it, the more it scatters.
We will know the causes of sexual desire in a human being—almost we have begun to know. We will identify the hormones of man and woman. We will recognize the attraction in them, even that it is magnetic. Yet the story of love is unknowable and will remain so. It is unknowable; there is no way for it to be known. By understanding hormones, love will not be understood. Love is something that does not yield to our grasp; it does not enter, by its very nature, the perimeter of our knowledge; the more we chase it, the farther it recedes.
Love, beauty, truth, meditation, the divine, nirvana—all these are unknowable, and will remain so. And when, within you, at some touch of nature a wave of mystery arises, do not hastily make it into a question; otherwise you had reached the temple door and went astray; the veil was about to be lifted—and you missed!
I have been searching for so long
for my ray of light!
On the shore of darkness is inscribed
the endless script of destiny.
The Giver I have not yet
been able to see;
but for a moment I have seen joy,
and then for a moment I have seen sorrow;
Whose radiance do the sun, the moon,
and the winged ones scatter from the sky?
What darkness do the black clouds
gather and bring?
That painter I have not yet
been able to see;
but I have seen the pictures
be formed, and formed, and be erased!
Rising again, falling again,
hope—and there the very same despair;
Is the beginning and end of the world-process
nothing but longing upon longing?
To come from an unknown land,
to go to an unknown land—
Unknown! Ah, is this all
the definition of us all?
For a moment the groves are familiar,
every particle of the world is familiar,
and in an instant the same becomes unfamiliar—
you and I, joy, beauty, life.
Is there a secret in becoming?
What truth is there in dissolving?
Show me my light—
my forgotten belonging!
Questions arise. It is natural that they arise. But if you remain alert, you can escape the net of questions. Look at the pictures, look, intoxicated with their flavor. Look at the gifts being given, how much prasad is falling into your bag from those hands—see the prasad. Be grateful for it. But remember—
The Giver I have not yet
been able to see;
that painter I have not yet
been able to see;
but I have seen the pictures
be formed, and formed, and be erased!
Clouds rise and scatter. The moon and stars are formed and pass away. People come and take leave. Unknown is the arrival, unknown the being, unknown the departure. Why the wave rises, why it is, why it subsides—all is unfamiliar. And it is beautiful that it is unfamiliar. It is auspicious that it remain so. For it is in this unfamiliarity that prayer arises. We cannot fathom this mystery; that is why the urge to bow the head is born. Because this mystery remains unfathomed, our eyes grow wet with joy.
This birdsong, the trees standing silently in meditative poise, the rays of the sun, the coolness falling from the sky—all this touches us, comes into experience; yet no theory can explain it. All theories fall short; all words prove petty. This is what makes it possible for temples to rise, for mosques to rise, for the Gita to awaken, for the Quran to be sung. Under the impact of this very mystery the lotus of our heart blossoms.
Shamoon Ali, trust wonder, awaken in wonder. Let the eyes remain wide, the gaze transfixed. But do not raise questions, because every question will lead to futile answers. And when a person gets tired of asking, he comes to accept any answers. He has to—if he does not, restlessness arises, the question torments. So people accept some answer or other. One accepts the Quran, another the Vedas, another the Gita, another the Dhammapada—someone accepts some answer. For how long can you go on asking? The thorn of questioning pricks, makes a wound; so accept some answer. But all your answers are adopted, and if you turn them over even a little, you will find the questions alive beneath them, as embers remain alive beneath the ash.
Your answers are like ash; behind every answer a live ember remains—your question remains alive. Questions never die. Yes—but they can be transcended. That transcendence is what I call religion. The transcendence of questions is the essence of religion. Let questions arise—let them; but do not fall into their web. Slip past, save yourself, and move on. If you can do this, namaz will arise, Shamoon Ali! For the first time you will find your head bowing before the unknown, the infinite unknown. You will have placed your head upon its threshold—and then there is incomparable peace, incomparable bliss.
What will you do with answers? Ask for bliss! What will you do with answers—you are not going to sit exams in some school; ask for life! What will you do with answers? Ask for experience! Experience that bathes you, that refines you, that gives you a new birth!
This is possible. Therefore I am not giving answers to your questions here; I am simply showing you how to learn the art of avoiding questions. My answers are not answers to your questions. My answers are efforts to awaken in you more and more wonder, to stir up more and more mysteries. I want to fill your heart with such mystery that you begin to feel: I know nothing, I am ignorant. The day you know, I am ignorant—utterly ignorant—on that day the sky of knowing will break upon you! There will be a great rain of flowers, as it fell upon Buddha, upon Socrates, upon Mahavira. You too are worthy of it. Everyone is worthy of it.
When your consciousness is suffused with wonder, when your eyes brim with tears, the body thrills, the heart overflows, and you feel like dancing—then dance under those thousands, millions, billions of stars! Dancing is far more meaningful than making a question. If the heart of a lover is near and you wish to converse with the stars, say a word or two, sing a song, offer a prayer. Bow your head before the sky’s unique presence, fall to the earth, make a full prostration; but do not make a question. Do not ask, why! The moment you ask why, you miss. A great miss! After that, the arrow will never strike the mark.
As soon as we ask why, that wonder which stirs the heart will no longer reach the heart. It will get caught in the net of why, entangled in the brain. The thorn of why will pin it in the mind. Then reflection will begin, thought will churn, philosophy will be born—but the experience of religion will not happen. And only through experience do the doors of truth open. Thinking and thought are incapable of opening those doors. The keys of thought are utterly impotent before the lock on truth’s gate.
Even if you think—what will you think? How will you think about what you do not know? Thinking is a process of rumination. You’ve seen the buffalo: it grazes, then sits, bringing it back up and chewing the cud. You can ruminate only what you have grazed. What you have not grazed cannot be ruminated. Thought is rumination. You read it in books, you heard it from people; then you sit and chew it over.
Thought is never original, and truth is always original. Therefore the paths of thought and truth never cross. Whoever gets entangled in thought misses truth. One who wishes to know truth must be wary of thought. The moment you see thought raising its head, become alert, aware. Wonder is lovable; thought is lethal.
It is right, Shamoon Ali, that when you see billions of stars, wonder arises; suddenly you are speechless, your eyes stand transfixed, for a moment the heart seems to stop, the breath seems arrested. This is auspicious. But the moment you ask: why, what is all this for, who did it, what is the cause behind it—you miss, you stumble, you fall from the steps, your companionship with religion slips away. Now your reflection will be philosophical. And philosophical reflection inevitably turns into scientific thinking.
Therefore wherever philosophical thinking took root, religion perished and science was born. This is what happened in the West. People asked: why, what for, what is the cause, where is the first cause? The search for cause quickly becomes science. And science means life begins to be lived in the trivial, the superficial, the shallow.
The depths of life cannot be bound by questions. The deeper the ocean, the less it can be held in a fist. Billions of stars, the nectar-light pouring from them... do not raise questions; sing a song! And if you can sing, from within you, from your own innermost core, without asking, an answer will arise. And not a verbal answer that you can call an answer, but an answer in which you are soaked and drenched, which transforms you; not merely intellectual, but becoming your very inner being.
You ask: Are we earthlings alone in the universe?
Even if you knew, what would it change? Suppose there are people on infinite earths—so what? You cannot love even your neighbor. Shamoon Ali, the Muslim cannot love the Hindu, the Jain cannot love the Muslim. Indians cannot love the Chinese. We cannot love the neighbor. If there are people settled on distant stars, what will you do? Our bond with the neighbor is not even formed yet. The husband cannot love the wife, the wife cannot love the husband. In the name of love, so many kinds of politics are going on! In the name of love, there is only an attempt to possess each other. Brother is the enemy of brother; humans are engaged in killing humans. Wars have not ended on this earth; hatred has not ended. Brotherhood, love, the sun of friendship has not yet risen here. Even if there are people on some planets and satellites near the moon and stars, what will you do? Suppose they are there—then what? Or suppose they are not...
Do not waste time entangling yourself in such hypothetical questions. The same time and energy can become prayer. Why existence is, no answer can ever be given. Because whatever answer is given, the same question can be asked of it again. If someone says, God created it, you can ask, why? If someone says, God created it out of his joy, you can ask, before creating it was he without joy, unhappy? If someone says he is playing a divine play, then he is alone—before whom is the play enacted? Is he some little child who has lost his way, whistling in the dark night to comfort himself?
Why did God create the world? The question will remain as it is. And even if an answer is found, the question will arise: why is there God? Who created God? What purpose would he have? There is no end to these questions. One question drags along a thousand more.
A religious person must understand deeply that when questions drop, prayer is born. If questions remain, prayer can never be born.
I keep going!
I know not the beginning of this path,
nor do I accept its end;
I recognize only a hint of its direction.
I do not know whether I am deceiving the path,
or being deceived by the path.
I keep going!
I have no concern for life and death,
no knowledge of the searing particle or the body;
I know only one thing—the burning!
I do not know whether today the desert burns in me,
or I am burning in the desert.
I keep going!
I do not know whether I am at the shore or midstream,
whether I am groundless or grounded.
Only this seems so: I am formless.
I do not know whether the void is pouring into me,
or I am being poured into the void.
I keep going!
Nothing is known, nor will anything ever be finally known. This is the fundamental difference between religion and science. Science says existence can be divided into two parts: the known and the unknown. What was unknown yesterday becomes known today; what is unknown today will be known tomorrow. Science says two categories suffice: the known and the unknown—and ultimately only the known will remain, as all unknowns gradually become known.
If this is true, if the scientific notion is correct, soon the unfortunate hour will arrive when wonder will no longer be born. And the day there is no wonder, man will commit spiritual suicide; he will not be able to live even a moment. Life will become futile. Meaning exists because of wonder, because of the unknown, because of mystery.
Religion divides existence into three: the known, the unknown, and the unknowable. What is unknown will become known; what is known was once unknown. But there is another category: the unknowable—never known and never to be known, whose very nature is unknowability; it is unknown and will remain unknown. Its unknowability is not accidental; it is its destiny. We can know what makes up a rose—soil, water, air, sun—we can certainly know. The unknown can become known. We will recognize the sun’s rays, the earth’s soil, the air, the water. But there is something else in the rose: beauty. That is unknowable, and will remain so. It is not made of the sun, nor of earth, nor of air or water. It does not submit to our grasp; it slips from the hand. It is like mercury: the more you try to hold it, the more it scatters.
We will know the causes of sexual desire in a human being—almost we have begun to know. We will identify the hormones of man and woman. We will recognize the attraction in them, even that it is magnetic. Yet the story of love is unknowable and will remain so. It is unknowable; there is no way for it to be known. By understanding hormones, love will not be understood. Love is something that does not yield to our grasp; it does not enter, by its very nature, the perimeter of our knowledge; the more we chase it, the farther it recedes.
Love, beauty, truth, meditation, the divine, nirvana—all these are unknowable, and will remain so. And when, within you, at some touch of nature a wave of mystery arises, do not hastily make it into a question; otherwise you had reached the temple door and went astray; the veil was about to be lifted—and you missed!
I have been searching for so long
for my ray of light!
On the shore of darkness is inscribed
the endless script of destiny.
The Giver I have not yet
been able to see;
but for a moment I have seen joy,
and then for a moment I have seen sorrow;
Whose radiance do the sun, the moon,
and the winged ones scatter from the sky?
What darkness do the black clouds
gather and bring?
That painter I have not yet
been able to see;
but I have seen the pictures
be formed, and formed, and be erased!
Rising again, falling again,
hope—and there the very same despair;
Is the beginning and end of the world-process
nothing but longing upon longing?
To come from an unknown land,
to go to an unknown land—
Unknown! Ah, is this all
the definition of us all?
For a moment the groves are familiar,
every particle of the world is familiar,
and in an instant the same becomes unfamiliar—
you and I, joy, beauty, life.
Is there a secret in becoming?
What truth is there in dissolving?
Show me my light—
my forgotten belonging!
Questions arise. It is natural that they arise. But if you remain alert, you can escape the net of questions. Look at the pictures, look, intoxicated with their flavor. Look at the gifts being given, how much prasad is falling into your bag from those hands—see the prasad. Be grateful for it. But remember—
The Giver I have not yet
been able to see;
that painter I have not yet
been able to see;
but I have seen the pictures
be formed, and formed, and be erased!
Clouds rise and scatter. The moon and stars are formed and pass away. People come and take leave. Unknown is the arrival, unknown the being, unknown the departure. Why the wave rises, why it is, why it subsides—all is unfamiliar. And it is beautiful that it is unfamiliar. It is auspicious that it remain so. For it is in this unfamiliarity that prayer arises. We cannot fathom this mystery; that is why the urge to bow the head is born. Because this mystery remains unfathomed, our eyes grow wet with joy.
This birdsong, the trees standing silently in meditative poise, the rays of the sun, the coolness falling from the sky—all this touches us, comes into experience; yet no theory can explain it. All theories fall short; all words prove petty. This is what makes it possible for temples to rise, for mosques to rise, for the Gita to awaken, for the Quran to be sung. Under the impact of this very mystery the lotus of our heart blossoms.
Shamoon Ali, trust wonder, awaken in wonder. Let the eyes remain wide, the gaze transfixed. But do not raise questions, because every question will lead to futile answers. And when a person gets tired of asking, he comes to accept any answers. He has to—if he does not, restlessness arises, the question torments. So people accept some answer or other. One accepts the Quran, another the Vedas, another the Gita, another the Dhammapada—someone accepts some answer. For how long can you go on asking? The thorn of questioning pricks, makes a wound; so accept some answer. But all your answers are adopted, and if you turn them over even a little, you will find the questions alive beneath them, as embers remain alive beneath the ash.
Your answers are like ash; behind every answer a live ember remains—your question remains alive. Questions never die. Yes—but they can be transcended. That transcendence is what I call religion. The transcendence of questions is the essence of religion. Let questions arise—let them; but do not fall into their web. Slip past, save yourself, and move on. If you can do this, namaz will arise, Shamoon Ali! For the first time you will find your head bowing before the unknown, the infinite unknown. You will have placed your head upon its threshold—and then there is incomparable peace, incomparable bliss.
What will you do with answers? Ask for bliss! What will you do with answers—you are not going to sit exams in some school; ask for life! What will you do with answers? Ask for experience! Experience that bathes you, that refines you, that gives you a new birth!
This is possible. Therefore I am not giving answers to your questions here; I am simply showing you how to learn the art of avoiding questions. My answers are not answers to your questions. My answers are efforts to awaken in you more and more wonder, to stir up more and more mysteries. I want to fill your heart with such mystery that you begin to feel: I know nothing, I am ignorant. The day you know, I am ignorant—utterly ignorant—on that day the sky of knowing will break upon you! There will be a great rain of flowers, as it fell upon Buddha, upon Socrates, upon Mahavira. You too are worthy of it. Everyone is worthy of it.
Second question:
Lord, how shall I win you over? I cannot dance like Meera, I have not found a throat like the cuckoo’s, I have not meditated like Jambu; with this inert tongue how can I praise your glory? Lord, how shall I win you over?
Lord, how shall I win you over? I cannot dance like Meera, I have not found a throat like the cuckoo’s, I have not meditated like Jambu; with this inert tongue how can I praise your glory? Lord, how shall I win you over?
Anekant! There is no question of winning him over—the Divine is already won over by you. Had he not been, you would not even be. He is enamored; that is why you are. By creating you he has already announced that he is delighted with you.
When a flautist plays, he plays because he is charmed by the song—otherwise why lift the flute at all? And when a dancer ties the bells to his ankles and begins to dance, it is clear he is enchanted; he cannot help but dance. God is dancing you, God is singing you. Anekant, there is no question of seducing the Divine; the Divine is already seduced by you. If only you could grasp this truth, the darkness would break from your life this very moment! What more does one need upon whom God has already smiled? If God has put kohl in your eyes, colored your lips, shaped your every limb—what more do you need? If every hair of your body bears God’s signature—what more do you need? The whole universe is bringing news that he is pleased.
If God were not enamored of existence, existence would have ended long ago. Who would then breathe? Why would new leaves sprout? Why would new children be born? Why would new stars arise? Drop this worry about how to woo God.
And drop it also because God is not wooed by any special talent. Do you think Meera was the greatest dancer in the land, and therefore she won God’s favor? Ask those who know the science of dance; they will tell you there were many great dancers—was Meera such a great dancer? Perhaps she didn’t even know how to dance “properly.” Have such mad lovers ever danced properly? When one is so intoxicated, who keeps track of where the feet are falling? Would Meera be mindful of whether her steps matched the drumbeat? She herself says, “I lost all regard for public opinion”—she danced having lost every social inhibition! She who forgot even her garments—would she remember meter, mode, measure, beat, and rhythm?
No, Meera was not some great classical dancer. There were many dancers then. It was the age of kings and courts—every court had famed dancers. Music had its own prestige. And do you think Meera had a uniquely sweet voice and thus enchanted God? Don’t fall into such errors. God does not get enticed by Meera’s dance or song—God is already enticed. Meera simply understood this truth, that the Divine is already in love; understanding this, she danced—she danced to her heart’s content, in ecstasy. Her throat burst open into thousands of songs. The songs are unpolished, the dance too is unpolished. But the feeling—that God considered me worthy enough to create me—is enough for gratitude.
Meera danced in gratitude. Her dance arose from grace. And if her connection with God happened, it was not because of any quality, any special talent, but solely because of the innocence and transparency of her feeling. Kabir’s connection happened—not because he is a great epic poet, but because of feeling, not because of poetry.
Hold this deep in your heart: you will not reach God on the strength of any quality. The very desire to reach through qualities belongs to the ego—“I am accomplished, talented; look, I have a Nobel Prize, now God should be pleased with me!” Have you ever heard of God being won over by someone’s Nobel Prize? He was enamored of Kabir, of Raidas, of Farid; of Mansoor, of Nanak; enamored of the mad ones. They were not great scholars or pundits. Kabir has said, “I never touched ink or paper.” If God were to ask, “How many scriptures do you know? How many Vedas?”—what would Kabir do? He had no Vedas with him. In their place, God might well be startled to find him standing there with a stick in his hand! For Kabir has said: “Kabir stands in the marketplace with a staff in hand—whoever is ready to burn down his own house, come, walk with me!”
God is enamored of the fakirs, the free spirits. What is needed is that fakir-like quality—purity and clarity of feeling, devotion. Not Ph.D.s, not D.Litts., not university degrees, not Mahavir Chakras, not Padma Shris, not Bharat Ratnas. None of these things builds any bridge to God. He is enamored of leaves, of flowers, of butterflies, of stones—will he not be enamored of you? He is already in love. Just gather a little courage. Open your eyes. Dare to see that God is already delighted with you—and the connection will be instantaneous.
Anekant, don’t ask:
“Lord, how shall I woo you?
I cannot dance like Meera...”
Good that you cannot—otherwise there would be one more counterfeit Meera. And Anekant, a fake Meera would not suit you—you would look a bit out of joint.
“I have not found a throat like the cuckoo’s...”
Great mercy! To be a human being and yet have a cuckoo’s throat—you’d be in trouble wherever you went. A cuckoo’s throat is right for a cuckoo.
“I have not meditated like Jambu;
With this inert speech how can I praise your glory?”
Your feeling is understood. Speech is inert and cannot convey the Conscious. But it isn’t only speech you have—you also have silence! Let your silence hum; let the sound of your silence arise. And if you think of Meera, it will turn into imitation. Think of Mahavira—it will be imitation. Think of Mohammed—it will be imitation.
And in this world imitation has become a great hindrance—the place is crowded with counterfeiters. All the Jain monks are trying to be Mahavira. Even if they became Mahavira, God would not grant admission at the gate—one Mahavira is enough. What would he do with such a crowd of Mahaviras? And they would all be fake and hollow, superficial; for the genuine never imitates another.
God has given you such dignity, such grandeur; he has given you a soul—and you will imitate? What does “soul” mean? That which cannot be imitated. It is uniquely yours—and only yours; it has never belonged to anyone else, nor will it ever belong to anyone else. You are unrepeatable—that is your soul. If you start walking, rising, sitting like Mahavira, all will turn shallow and false. And falsehood is always merely formal.
Some days ago three Jain nuns came here to listen. Jain nuns carry a picchhi—a whisk made of wool. Wherever they sit, they first sweep the place—so that even an ant is not harmed. At the gate the guards said, “Please leave your belongings here; you can’t take them inside.” But a Jain nun cannot go anywhere without her picchhi. A big problem! They wanted to come, yet a Jain nun should not walk without the whisk—it would be against the rule. They wanted to go in, and they did not want to leave it. So the legalistic mind found a way: they left the whisk, but took the handle with them—only the stick! The whisk stayed at the gate, and they tucked the stick under their arm. All right, half-and-half—fifty-fifty!
Where there is imitation, there will be compromises, because nothing comes from the inner being. The picchhi serves no inner purpose; it is imposed from the outside. But there is also fear—what if the householders find out they left the whisk! At least they can say, legally, “We did leave the whisk—but we kept the handle in hand. Half was with us.” Let half the punishment be reduced—that’s enough!
Whenever people imitate and become merely formal, compromises creep in. Formality can never be inner, never deep.
I was once a guest in a home. Evening had fallen; it was dark. A Jain family—one should not eat after dark. Yet they were hungry, the very people with whom I was staying. They said to me, “Please, quickly—let’s go outside the room. We’ll eat out there.”
I said, “What difference does outside or inside make? The time is the same. Whether we eat in here or out there...”
They said, “Outside there is a little light. Not much, the sun has set, but still a little light remains outdoors. The time is the same inside and out, but outside there is a bit of light. It will be some small consolation to the mind that it isn’t completely dark.”
So I said, “Why not turn on the electric light here? There will be more light.”
They said, “But electricity—there is no provision for that in the scriptures.”
“Of course not,” I said. “In Mahavira’s time there was no electricity. Had it been, perhaps he would have included it, because his whole intent was this: in the darkness of night if you eat, some insect might fall in, some mosquito, some harm might be done. With electricity, this could easily be prevented. Whether the light is from the sun or from electricity—what difference does it make? Light is light.” But those who are sticklers for the line run into such difficulties. Times change; the old lines remain, and they keep beating those lines—they are always behind the times, their condition becomes pitiably threadbare. They become like the dead.
I am not telling you to be like Meera. Meera was beautiful as she was, lovely as she was. But you, Anekant, must be Anekant—not Meera. You don’t need a cuckoo’s throat. And there are even dangers: whenever you impose something from the outside, one thing is certain—the inner current of feeling will be missing. It may happen that someone sings Meera’s song better than Meera; even then he will not become dear to God.
A little golden bird has chirped in the courtyard—
An auspicious omen: the Beloved will come.
The pain of waiting will find its end;
Sweet sugar has melted into bitter neem.
Pleasant flashes light up all bygone days and nights,
Eyes brim over with the thrill of joy,
Layer upon layer of memory unfolds—
Sweet sugar has melted into bitter neem.
The kachnar and the shevanti burst forth and scatter,
The fragrant dust of the Beloved’s land rises,
Dew-drops roll upon the petal—
Sweet sugar has melted into bitter neem.
Breaths like the wounded, hair in tangles,
Only tears are left in the eyes to give—
She rifled through all the coffers of the poor one,
A little golden bird has chirped in the courtyard.
Whatever you have—what is truly yours—let it be tears if need be; you don’t need Meera’s songs or Meera’s throat, you don’t need a cuckoo’s voice, you don’t need Buddha’s meditation or Chaitanya’s dancing. What you have, what is your own—be it good or bad, beautiful or ugly, valuable or valueless—if it is authentically yours, place just that at God’s feet. Your offering will surely be accepted. You are already accepted—you just don’t know it yet.
When a flautist plays, he plays because he is charmed by the song—otherwise why lift the flute at all? And when a dancer ties the bells to his ankles and begins to dance, it is clear he is enchanted; he cannot help but dance. God is dancing you, God is singing you. Anekant, there is no question of seducing the Divine; the Divine is already seduced by you. If only you could grasp this truth, the darkness would break from your life this very moment! What more does one need upon whom God has already smiled? If God has put kohl in your eyes, colored your lips, shaped your every limb—what more do you need? If every hair of your body bears God’s signature—what more do you need? The whole universe is bringing news that he is pleased.
If God were not enamored of existence, existence would have ended long ago. Who would then breathe? Why would new leaves sprout? Why would new children be born? Why would new stars arise? Drop this worry about how to woo God.
And drop it also because God is not wooed by any special talent. Do you think Meera was the greatest dancer in the land, and therefore she won God’s favor? Ask those who know the science of dance; they will tell you there were many great dancers—was Meera such a great dancer? Perhaps she didn’t even know how to dance “properly.” Have such mad lovers ever danced properly? When one is so intoxicated, who keeps track of where the feet are falling? Would Meera be mindful of whether her steps matched the drumbeat? She herself says, “I lost all regard for public opinion”—she danced having lost every social inhibition! She who forgot even her garments—would she remember meter, mode, measure, beat, and rhythm?
No, Meera was not some great classical dancer. There were many dancers then. It was the age of kings and courts—every court had famed dancers. Music had its own prestige. And do you think Meera had a uniquely sweet voice and thus enchanted God? Don’t fall into such errors. God does not get enticed by Meera’s dance or song—God is already enticed. Meera simply understood this truth, that the Divine is already in love; understanding this, she danced—she danced to her heart’s content, in ecstasy. Her throat burst open into thousands of songs. The songs are unpolished, the dance too is unpolished. But the feeling—that God considered me worthy enough to create me—is enough for gratitude.
Meera danced in gratitude. Her dance arose from grace. And if her connection with God happened, it was not because of any quality, any special talent, but solely because of the innocence and transparency of her feeling. Kabir’s connection happened—not because he is a great epic poet, but because of feeling, not because of poetry.
Hold this deep in your heart: you will not reach God on the strength of any quality. The very desire to reach through qualities belongs to the ego—“I am accomplished, talented; look, I have a Nobel Prize, now God should be pleased with me!” Have you ever heard of God being won over by someone’s Nobel Prize? He was enamored of Kabir, of Raidas, of Farid; of Mansoor, of Nanak; enamored of the mad ones. They were not great scholars or pundits. Kabir has said, “I never touched ink or paper.” If God were to ask, “How many scriptures do you know? How many Vedas?”—what would Kabir do? He had no Vedas with him. In their place, God might well be startled to find him standing there with a stick in his hand! For Kabir has said: “Kabir stands in the marketplace with a staff in hand—whoever is ready to burn down his own house, come, walk with me!”
God is enamored of the fakirs, the free spirits. What is needed is that fakir-like quality—purity and clarity of feeling, devotion. Not Ph.D.s, not D.Litts., not university degrees, not Mahavir Chakras, not Padma Shris, not Bharat Ratnas. None of these things builds any bridge to God. He is enamored of leaves, of flowers, of butterflies, of stones—will he not be enamored of you? He is already in love. Just gather a little courage. Open your eyes. Dare to see that God is already delighted with you—and the connection will be instantaneous.
Anekant, don’t ask:
“Lord, how shall I woo you?
I cannot dance like Meera...”
Good that you cannot—otherwise there would be one more counterfeit Meera. And Anekant, a fake Meera would not suit you—you would look a bit out of joint.
“I have not found a throat like the cuckoo’s...”
Great mercy! To be a human being and yet have a cuckoo’s throat—you’d be in trouble wherever you went. A cuckoo’s throat is right for a cuckoo.
“I have not meditated like Jambu;
With this inert speech how can I praise your glory?”
Your feeling is understood. Speech is inert and cannot convey the Conscious. But it isn’t only speech you have—you also have silence! Let your silence hum; let the sound of your silence arise. And if you think of Meera, it will turn into imitation. Think of Mahavira—it will be imitation. Think of Mohammed—it will be imitation.
And in this world imitation has become a great hindrance—the place is crowded with counterfeiters. All the Jain monks are trying to be Mahavira. Even if they became Mahavira, God would not grant admission at the gate—one Mahavira is enough. What would he do with such a crowd of Mahaviras? And they would all be fake and hollow, superficial; for the genuine never imitates another.
God has given you such dignity, such grandeur; he has given you a soul—and you will imitate? What does “soul” mean? That which cannot be imitated. It is uniquely yours—and only yours; it has never belonged to anyone else, nor will it ever belong to anyone else. You are unrepeatable—that is your soul. If you start walking, rising, sitting like Mahavira, all will turn shallow and false. And falsehood is always merely formal.
Some days ago three Jain nuns came here to listen. Jain nuns carry a picchhi—a whisk made of wool. Wherever they sit, they first sweep the place—so that even an ant is not harmed. At the gate the guards said, “Please leave your belongings here; you can’t take them inside.” But a Jain nun cannot go anywhere without her picchhi. A big problem! They wanted to come, yet a Jain nun should not walk without the whisk—it would be against the rule. They wanted to go in, and they did not want to leave it. So the legalistic mind found a way: they left the whisk, but took the handle with them—only the stick! The whisk stayed at the gate, and they tucked the stick under their arm. All right, half-and-half—fifty-fifty!
Where there is imitation, there will be compromises, because nothing comes from the inner being. The picchhi serves no inner purpose; it is imposed from the outside. But there is also fear—what if the householders find out they left the whisk! At least they can say, legally, “We did leave the whisk—but we kept the handle in hand. Half was with us.” Let half the punishment be reduced—that’s enough!
Whenever people imitate and become merely formal, compromises creep in. Formality can never be inner, never deep.
I was once a guest in a home. Evening had fallen; it was dark. A Jain family—one should not eat after dark. Yet they were hungry, the very people with whom I was staying. They said to me, “Please, quickly—let’s go outside the room. We’ll eat out there.”
I said, “What difference does outside or inside make? The time is the same. Whether we eat in here or out there...”
They said, “Outside there is a little light. Not much, the sun has set, but still a little light remains outdoors. The time is the same inside and out, but outside there is a bit of light. It will be some small consolation to the mind that it isn’t completely dark.”
So I said, “Why not turn on the electric light here? There will be more light.”
They said, “But electricity—there is no provision for that in the scriptures.”
“Of course not,” I said. “In Mahavira’s time there was no electricity. Had it been, perhaps he would have included it, because his whole intent was this: in the darkness of night if you eat, some insect might fall in, some mosquito, some harm might be done. With electricity, this could easily be prevented. Whether the light is from the sun or from electricity—what difference does it make? Light is light.” But those who are sticklers for the line run into such difficulties. Times change; the old lines remain, and they keep beating those lines—they are always behind the times, their condition becomes pitiably threadbare. They become like the dead.
I am not telling you to be like Meera. Meera was beautiful as she was, lovely as she was. But you, Anekant, must be Anekant—not Meera. You don’t need a cuckoo’s throat. And there are even dangers: whenever you impose something from the outside, one thing is certain—the inner current of feeling will be missing. It may happen that someone sings Meera’s song better than Meera; even then he will not become dear to God.
A little golden bird has chirped in the courtyard—
An auspicious omen: the Beloved will come.
The pain of waiting will find its end;
Sweet sugar has melted into bitter neem.
Pleasant flashes light up all bygone days and nights,
Eyes brim over with the thrill of joy,
Layer upon layer of memory unfolds—
Sweet sugar has melted into bitter neem.
The kachnar and the shevanti burst forth and scatter,
The fragrant dust of the Beloved’s land rises,
Dew-drops roll upon the petal—
Sweet sugar has melted into bitter neem.
Breaths like the wounded, hair in tangles,
Only tears are left in the eyes to give—
She rifled through all the coffers of the poor one,
A little golden bird has chirped in the courtyard.
Whatever you have—what is truly yours—let it be tears if need be; you don’t need Meera’s songs or Meera’s throat, you don’t need a cuckoo’s voice, you don’t need Buddha’s meditation or Chaitanya’s dancing. What you have, what is your own—be it good or bad, beautiful or ugly, valuable or valueless—if it is authentically yours, place just that at God’s feet. Your offering will surely be accepted. You are already accepted—you just don’t know it yet.
The third question: Osho,
In a heart gone out the lamp will not burn—what should we do? You tell us now, O faithful beloved, what should we do?
In a heart gone out the lamp will not burn—what should we do? You tell us now, O faithful beloved, what should we do?
Krishnatirth! The lamp of the heart never really goes out. However much ash may have gathered, if you gently stir it you will find a live ember. The heart’s lamp never goes out—this is an eternal truth. It cannot go out, because it is no ordinary lamp—wickless and oilless! It has neither wick nor oil. If there were oil, it would be used up and the lamp would die. If there were a wick, it would burn out and the lamp would die. And that which burns within you without wick and without oil cannot be touched by any wind. No gusts, no whirlwinds reach there. No ripples reach the innermost center of your being; there, all is unrippled.
And this lamp of the heart is simply another name for your life itself. If it had gone out, Krishnatirth, who would be there to ask the question? If it were extinguished, how would you even be here? The heart’s lamp has never gone out and never does. But I understand the meaning of your question. Many times it feels as if it has gone dim. Again and again it seems there is no luster, no flame. Time and again it feels as if there is no meaning, no purpose. Why am I going on living? There is no zest. It appears again and again that there is no ray of love anywhere, no ray of prayer either. What kind of heart-lamp is this, with no wellspring of nectar flowing? No flowers bloom, no fragrance rises. What kind of heart-lamp is mine? If this is life, then what is so bad about death? If I am only to keep stumbling like this—getting up every morning, sleeping every evening, wandering in futile distraction—and then one day die anyway, what harm is there in dying today?
I have understood your question. You are saying: Why is there no meaning in life? You are saying: Why is there no purpose in life? Why does life seem like an accident? Why is life not a celebration? Why am I not dancing? Why am I not singing? Why is there no awe and gratitude within me? I have understood—this is your question, this is your drift.
“Bujhe dil mein diya jalta nahin, hum kya karein?
Tumhi keh do ki ab ai jaane‑wafa, hum kya karein?”
“In a heart gone out the lamp will not burn—what should we do?
You tell us now, O faithful beloved, what should we do?”
Nothing will come from your doing. Perhaps it is precisely because of what you are doing that you fail to recognize the heart’s lamp. Your sense of doership is what keeps you unfamiliar with consciousness. You can be either the doer or the witness. Didn’t you understand Doolandas’s words yesterday? You can be only one of the two—either witness or doer. If you are the doer, you will forget the witness; if you are the witness, the doer will be forgotten.
Have you seen that picture in children’s books? There’s a drawing of an old woman. And hidden in the very same lines is a young woman. In the same strokes! But there is a delicious fact about that picture: if you see the old woman, you cannot see the young one. However much you try, as long as the old one is apparent, the young one won’t appear. The very lines that form the old woman must rearrange themselves to form the young one, and while they are locked into making the old one, they’re not free to make the young. If you keep looking closely and steadily, a moment comes when the old woman vanishes and the young one appears. That too happens by an inner law: our eyes cannot remain fixed on the same gestalt for too long; they crave change. When we hold to something, we tire of it and want to shift. So if you keep seeing the old woman, keep seeing and seeing, after a while you’ll feel restless, uneasy; your eyes will want to dart away, escape. In that very escape, suddenly the young woman appears. And then you are astonished to find that once the young woman appears, the old one disappears—because now those same lines have begun composing the young.
In the West a whole psychology stands on this foundation—Gestalt psychology. The old woman is one gestalt, one pattern of those lines. The young woman is a second pattern—of the same lines. But you cannot see two gestalts at once. At one time only one gestalt, one pattern, can be seen.
Exactly the same is true within. There is a pattern of the doer and a pattern of the witness. If you are locked into the doer, the witness won’t be visible. And only when the witness appears does the lamp of the heart seem to be burning. Witness-consciousness is the inner flame; the doer is the darkness, the smoke. You have lost yourself in the doer, as most people have.
And still you ask: “You tell us now, O faithful beloved, what should we do?”
Even now the doer asks, “What else should I do?” But as long as you go on doing, you cannot be a witness. That is why the wise say: Don’t do anything; be a witness. For a little while, sit in non-doing. The technical name for that non-doing is meditation. For one hour out of the twenty-four, just close your eyes and remain—do nothing. Don’t do at all! Cut all connection with acts. No thought, no desire, no deed, not even the shadow of doing—just be.
In the beginning there will be difficulty, because for lifetimes you have been addicted to being the doer; people keep on doing something or other. They cannot sit idle. If there is nothing to do, they start doing what ought not be done—but they do. If it’s a holiday they longed for all week in the office—Sunday is coming, Sunday is coming—then when Sunday arrives they are in a fix: What to do now! Wives fear their husbands on Sundays: the clock that was running perfectly is taken apart—to fix it, though it was running fine! The car is taken apart—though it was fine! Scissors in hand, they start hacking at the garden shrubs! Something they will do. They cannot be without doing. So mad is the habit!
Therefore when you first sit to meditate, the old habit will return and attack. Don’t worry! For three to six months the attacks come. If for three to six months you have the courage to bear them and you sit every day, saying, “No harm; if nothing happens, still no harm; what is there to lose? Even by doing, what have I gained?”—if for six months you keep your resolve to sit one hour, and not be bothered by whatever happens—then one day you will find that suddenly a new fragrance has begun to rise within you. A fragrance unknown to you. Your nostrils will fill with an unprecedented perfume! All flowers will seem pale. Within you a ray will begin to dawn, before which the sun looks small, and within you a sky of peace will spread, before which this vast sky is but a tiny courtyard.
And the day this unique revolution starts descending within you, for the first time you know who you are. You are Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, Christ! That day you discover what a great treasure you owned, while you went about begging with a bowl for no reason. Let the doer go.
We do relish the doer, because the doer holds the roots of our ego. If I am the doer, then I am. If I am not the doer, “I” also is gone. That is why people boast and exaggerate. They do a little and tell a lot. They climb a small mound and claim: I have scaled Everest. There isn’t much difference between the small and the grown.
A little boy, flustered, ran in and told his mother: “Ma! A lion is coming and it roared and chased me!” The mother said, “On the main market street, M. G. Road—what lion! Stop lying! Stop exaggerating. I’ve told you a crore times: don’t exaggerate!”
A crore times! The child isn’t even old enough for her to have said it a crore times, for him to have exaggerated a crore times. “I’ve told you a crore times not to exaggerate—but you don’t listen. Go to your room upstairs and pray to God, and ask forgiveness that you won’t lie or exaggerate again.”
The boy went up. After a while he came back. The mother asked, “Did you pray, ask forgiveness?”
He said, “Yes, I prayed and asked forgiveness. But God said: Don’t worry; when I first saw it I too thought it was a lion—though it is a dog. You weren’t the only one deceived; I was deceived too.”
Do you think the elders’ proclamations are different from this child who announces a dog as a lion? The same exaggeration goes on. Why such exaggeration? In some way we want to puff up our ego. The child is saying: A lion was after me and couldn’t harm a hair. You too say the same. Look at your own declarations, your statements. How you enlarge little things! And behind it all is the single game: in this way the ego swells. It gives the feeling that I am someone special.
There is no need for this feeling. You are special—already! To declare it is utterly futile. Nor are you the only special one—every person here is special. God makes only special beings; he makes no non-special ones.
Break the mind! Break the ego
Do not stand alone upon the peak
Flow too in the open fields
Every vow of pride
Taken in a blind moment—break it
Do not inscribe songs to sunflowers
Let your consciousness grieve with the grieving
It isn’t necessary to write poetry—
If the pen is stifled, break it
Life has congealed like a bound lake
Like a sickly lantern
For the sake of human welfare
Break all merciless rules
The finest creation of creation—
Do not forbid that love in vain
For healthy renewals
Break the rituals of dead tradition
A dream is that which walks on foot
Face smeared with burning dust
Life is not only silk
Break the rainbow illusion
There is but one illusion in this world—the source of all illusions—one rainbow illusion: the ego!
Break the mind! Break the ego
Break every oath of pride
And then you will find: the lamp had neither gone out nor can it ever go out. Just lift the veil of ego and the lamp is burning!
There was a Zen fakir, Bokuju. It was a cold night and a guest monk was staying at Bokuju’s place. The brazier was burning, but slowly it began to die. Ash gathered. The cold increased. Bokuju said to the guest monk: “Brother, look in the brazier—see if any ember remains.” The guest had no idea of Bokuju’s ways. Bokuju was not speaking about the outer brazier at all. He was talking about the inner brazier. He was saying, “Brother, look within—does any ember remain, or is it all ash now?” He must have been watching the guest for long: layer upon layer, ash upon ash. But naturally the guest thought the outer brazier was meant. He picked up a stick and stirred the coals and said, “No, there is no ember—only ash.”
Bokuju laughed. He said, “No, no—there is an ember. The ember never dies.” Now the matter became even more puzzling. The guest said, “The ember never dies—what are you saying!” Bokuju rose, took the stick, probed the brazier, searched well, and surely a small ember lay buried somewhere under ash; he brought it out, blew on it, and said, “See? If even the outer ember has not died, how would the inner one die? However much ash there is—mounds of ash, mountains, piles—yet the inner ember neither dies nor can die. The inner ember is the ember of eternal life. Just remove the ego—that is the only ash.”
Krishnatirth, there is nothing else to do. One has to learn non-doing. One has to learn witnessing. You must be feeling bored with life, because without this inner witness-consciousness life certainly becomes boredom—great boredom. Everything tastes stale, insipid—like food after a long fever; so life tastes. And this fever is very old—lifetimes old.
Boredom of morning, suffocation of noon, and sadness of evening
For many days this has been the state
Is this the Lord’s will?
Only the formality remains
Where is the savor left in relationships?
Just to live out a lifetime
Dying in installments, again and again
What a sharp jest is this, life so‑called
For many days this has been the state
Is this the Lord’s will?
In contests for the body’s pleasures
The mind seems fallen ill
As though before the preface
One must write the epilogue
What kind of beginning is this, where the talk is of full stops?
For many days this has been the state
Is this the Lord’s will?
Worry, that acid in which
This existence keeps dissolving
We are asked to read surrender, but
The last page keeps opening
What welcome is this, where the sound is of the final salutation?
For many days this has been the state
Is this the Lord’s will?
Krishnatirth! The more thoughtful and reflective a person is, the more he feels boredom. Only buffaloes do not get bored. Only donkeys do not feel meaninglessness. Among humans, only those who live blindly, stupefied, not yet freed from the animal realm—only they don’t have boredom filling their lives. In their lives you will see much hustle, much heat. You will see much excitement. They are on the run—towards Delhi! Their life has a destination: to reach Delhi! Someone wants to be President, someone Prime Minister, someone something else.
Have you noticed? Politicians don’t look bored. They seem exuberant. To get bored you also need a certain intelligence, a capacity to think and reflect! Someone in the race for wealth doesn’t get bored; someone in the race for position doesn’t get bored. But those who reflect a little on life, who pause and look within, to them boredom will seem natural. They will feel: What is the point? Even if I become President, then what?
Alexander asked Diogenes: “Why are you so joyous? You have nothing!” And Diogenes said, “I ask you: Why are you so miserable? You have everything!” Alexander said, “I am miserable because I am not yet emperor of the whole world. But I will be.”
Diogenes said, “Suppose you become so—then what will you do?” It’s a wondrous question: Suppose you become so—then what will you do? Alexander stood still for a moment; he had no answer. No one had ever asked him: Suppose you achieve it, then what? He had never considered it. So he faltered, then said, “Then what will I do? Then, like you, I will rest.”
Diogenes said, “What prevents you from resting now? I am resting—rest now. Why this commotion?”
But Alexander said, “No, not now. Now I am on a campaign. I have to show the world.”
Those who have to show something to the world—you won’t find them bored. You’ll find in them a kind of constant urgency. Their feet are ever ready to run. They are competitors. In their lives you will always find a kind of delusion that keeps their juice flowing. But the slightly thoughtful—like Diogenes, who asks, “Suppose I gain the world’s kingdom—then what will I do?”—in their lives boredom comes, sadness comes, meaninglessness comes.
That is why meaninglessness rises strongly in the West—not in the East—because the East is still mired in such poverty that just to somehow survive is much. We don’t have the leisure to sit and ask what life means. There is no bread, no clothes, no roof. When bread, clothing, shelter are there, then one sits and reflects on life’s meaning. Until there is bread, the questions of life’s meaning—whether anything is or isn’t—don’t arise. In the West these questions arise powerfully because bread is solved, housing is solved, work is solved. Now what? What is the purpose of life now?
Krishnatirth, it is a good sign that such a question has arisen in your mind.
Boredom of morning, suffocation of noon, and sadness of evening
For many days this has been the state
Is this the Lord’s will?
Only the formality remains
Where is the savor left in relationships?
Just to live out a lifetime
Dying in installments, again and again
What a sharp jest is this, life so‑called
For many days this has been the state
Is this the Lord’s will?
But from this boredom two outcomes are possible. One: self‑destruction—one feels life is so futile, why live at all? Why not end it? In Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, a character says to God: “Here, take your ticket back—I don’t want to live. Your life is futile. Keep it! I am neither indebted nor do I see any cause for grace. Just let me step out. Great kindness if you let me step out of life.”
Sartre, Camus, other modern Western thinkers are filled with the thought that life is boredom—how to get rid of it? In the West the number of suicides keeps rising.
So one way: end yourself—life is useless; why run? And the second way: self‑revolution. This life is useless—as the life of the doer is useless. A life centered on doership is useless. There is another life that is meaningful, fragrant, filled with light—the life centered on the witness. Move into that life—the life of the Buddhas.
In my view, the hour of suicide and the hour of sannyas come together; they are two faces of the same moment. When life seems so empty that either end it or change it—no third option remains—only then does something happen in a human life. Buddha too one day felt it was all futile—but he did not commit suicide.
The East has known for centuries that there is another way of living that is meaningful, fragrant, radiant. This way we know is not the only way; there is another way of living: as a doer—one; as a witness—another. Whoever lives as the doer, today or tomorrow he will feel boredom—if he has a little intelligence, he surely will. If he has none, he won’t feel boredom—but that is an even worse state: to have so little intelligence that you don’t even sense life’s boredom is a very bad condition—below the human.
A human is one who reflects. The word manushya (man) comes from manana—reflection. He thinks, inquires, discerns. And when you inquire, the question will arise: What is the essence? Why live? Why take another breath; if I must live as I have lived thus far, then why live—why live tomorrow? To go on living then is mere cowardice.
Generally you think those who commit suicide are cowards; but the partisans of suicide say something else: those who don’t commit suicide are cowards! They are afraid of dying, so they go on living. They cannot muster the courage to die; therefore they continue.
Mulla Nasruddin once arranged to commit suicide. A sensible man—he thought things through. He saw: there is no meaning in life. Being canny, he made all the arrangements: if one fails, another won’t. He took along a pistol, a rope, a barrel of kerosene, a box of matches; everything—and went to the riverbank. He climbed a mound, tied the rope to a shrub-for hanging. He put his neck in the noose, poured the oil, lit the fire, fired the gun. Next day when I met him I asked, “Nasruddin, what happened?” He smacked his forehead: “Bad luck! I made so many arrangements, and all went waste.”
I said, “Tell me the whole story.” He said, “I tied the rope, put the noose on my neck, poured the oil—everything seemed fine so far. Then when I fired the gun—meant for the head—it didn’t hit my head; it hit the rope. The rope snapped. I fell into the river, the fire went out. And if I hadn’t known how to swim, yesterday would have been my last day. Thank God I can swim—I came home safe and sound.”
The philosophers who favor suicide say people live out of cowardice. There is a little force in their argument; for where there is no meaning and all is futile, why does man go on living? I agree with them—but only halfway: people do drag life like the oil‑mill bullock, out of cowardice. But I don’t agree with their second point that people should commit suicide. Nothing will come of it. Here you will kill yourself, there you’ll enter another womb. The same journey will start again. That is no way to escape.
To escape the futile race of life we have discovered a wondrous way: then there is neither birth nor death again. The process of that revolution is called sannyas, meditation, religion. And the transformation to be made is to awaken the witness and forget the doer. Right now the doer sits on the chest of the witness. Let the doer climb down. And Krishnatirth, you will suddenly find—the lamp is indeed burning. The lamp has never been extinguished.
You have nothing to do; it’s only that the doer has filmed your eyes—made them blind. The dust of doership has settled on your eyes; wipe it off, and the inner light will be available to you. Its availability is absolutely certain. It is a promise. Whoever has even a little awakened within and sought the witness has always found the supreme source of life.
And this lamp of the heart is simply another name for your life itself. If it had gone out, Krishnatirth, who would be there to ask the question? If it were extinguished, how would you even be here? The heart’s lamp has never gone out and never does. But I understand the meaning of your question. Many times it feels as if it has gone dim. Again and again it seems there is no luster, no flame. Time and again it feels as if there is no meaning, no purpose. Why am I going on living? There is no zest. It appears again and again that there is no ray of love anywhere, no ray of prayer either. What kind of heart-lamp is this, with no wellspring of nectar flowing? No flowers bloom, no fragrance rises. What kind of heart-lamp is mine? If this is life, then what is so bad about death? If I am only to keep stumbling like this—getting up every morning, sleeping every evening, wandering in futile distraction—and then one day die anyway, what harm is there in dying today?
I have understood your question. You are saying: Why is there no meaning in life? You are saying: Why is there no purpose in life? Why does life seem like an accident? Why is life not a celebration? Why am I not dancing? Why am I not singing? Why is there no awe and gratitude within me? I have understood—this is your question, this is your drift.
“Bujhe dil mein diya jalta nahin, hum kya karein?
Tumhi keh do ki ab ai jaane‑wafa, hum kya karein?”
“In a heart gone out the lamp will not burn—what should we do?
You tell us now, O faithful beloved, what should we do?”
Nothing will come from your doing. Perhaps it is precisely because of what you are doing that you fail to recognize the heart’s lamp. Your sense of doership is what keeps you unfamiliar with consciousness. You can be either the doer or the witness. Didn’t you understand Doolandas’s words yesterday? You can be only one of the two—either witness or doer. If you are the doer, you will forget the witness; if you are the witness, the doer will be forgotten.
Have you seen that picture in children’s books? There’s a drawing of an old woman. And hidden in the very same lines is a young woman. In the same strokes! But there is a delicious fact about that picture: if you see the old woman, you cannot see the young one. However much you try, as long as the old one is apparent, the young one won’t appear. The very lines that form the old woman must rearrange themselves to form the young one, and while they are locked into making the old one, they’re not free to make the young. If you keep looking closely and steadily, a moment comes when the old woman vanishes and the young one appears. That too happens by an inner law: our eyes cannot remain fixed on the same gestalt for too long; they crave change. When we hold to something, we tire of it and want to shift. So if you keep seeing the old woman, keep seeing and seeing, after a while you’ll feel restless, uneasy; your eyes will want to dart away, escape. In that very escape, suddenly the young woman appears. And then you are astonished to find that once the young woman appears, the old one disappears—because now those same lines have begun composing the young.
In the West a whole psychology stands on this foundation—Gestalt psychology. The old woman is one gestalt, one pattern of those lines. The young woman is a second pattern—of the same lines. But you cannot see two gestalts at once. At one time only one gestalt, one pattern, can be seen.
Exactly the same is true within. There is a pattern of the doer and a pattern of the witness. If you are locked into the doer, the witness won’t be visible. And only when the witness appears does the lamp of the heart seem to be burning. Witness-consciousness is the inner flame; the doer is the darkness, the smoke. You have lost yourself in the doer, as most people have.
And still you ask: “You tell us now, O faithful beloved, what should we do?”
Even now the doer asks, “What else should I do?” But as long as you go on doing, you cannot be a witness. That is why the wise say: Don’t do anything; be a witness. For a little while, sit in non-doing. The technical name for that non-doing is meditation. For one hour out of the twenty-four, just close your eyes and remain—do nothing. Don’t do at all! Cut all connection with acts. No thought, no desire, no deed, not even the shadow of doing—just be.
In the beginning there will be difficulty, because for lifetimes you have been addicted to being the doer; people keep on doing something or other. They cannot sit idle. If there is nothing to do, they start doing what ought not be done—but they do. If it’s a holiday they longed for all week in the office—Sunday is coming, Sunday is coming—then when Sunday arrives they are in a fix: What to do now! Wives fear their husbands on Sundays: the clock that was running perfectly is taken apart—to fix it, though it was running fine! The car is taken apart—though it was fine! Scissors in hand, they start hacking at the garden shrubs! Something they will do. They cannot be without doing. So mad is the habit!
Therefore when you first sit to meditate, the old habit will return and attack. Don’t worry! For three to six months the attacks come. If for three to six months you have the courage to bear them and you sit every day, saying, “No harm; if nothing happens, still no harm; what is there to lose? Even by doing, what have I gained?”—if for six months you keep your resolve to sit one hour, and not be bothered by whatever happens—then one day you will find that suddenly a new fragrance has begun to rise within you. A fragrance unknown to you. Your nostrils will fill with an unprecedented perfume! All flowers will seem pale. Within you a ray will begin to dawn, before which the sun looks small, and within you a sky of peace will spread, before which this vast sky is but a tiny courtyard.
And the day this unique revolution starts descending within you, for the first time you know who you are. You are Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, Christ! That day you discover what a great treasure you owned, while you went about begging with a bowl for no reason. Let the doer go.
We do relish the doer, because the doer holds the roots of our ego. If I am the doer, then I am. If I am not the doer, “I” also is gone. That is why people boast and exaggerate. They do a little and tell a lot. They climb a small mound and claim: I have scaled Everest. There isn’t much difference between the small and the grown.
A little boy, flustered, ran in and told his mother: “Ma! A lion is coming and it roared and chased me!” The mother said, “On the main market street, M. G. Road—what lion! Stop lying! Stop exaggerating. I’ve told you a crore times: don’t exaggerate!”
A crore times! The child isn’t even old enough for her to have said it a crore times, for him to have exaggerated a crore times. “I’ve told you a crore times not to exaggerate—but you don’t listen. Go to your room upstairs and pray to God, and ask forgiveness that you won’t lie or exaggerate again.”
The boy went up. After a while he came back. The mother asked, “Did you pray, ask forgiveness?”
He said, “Yes, I prayed and asked forgiveness. But God said: Don’t worry; when I first saw it I too thought it was a lion—though it is a dog. You weren’t the only one deceived; I was deceived too.”
Do you think the elders’ proclamations are different from this child who announces a dog as a lion? The same exaggeration goes on. Why such exaggeration? In some way we want to puff up our ego. The child is saying: A lion was after me and couldn’t harm a hair. You too say the same. Look at your own declarations, your statements. How you enlarge little things! And behind it all is the single game: in this way the ego swells. It gives the feeling that I am someone special.
There is no need for this feeling. You are special—already! To declare it is utterly futile. Nor are you the only special one—every person here is special. God makes only special beings; he makes no non-special ones.
Break the mind! Break the ego
Do not stand alone upon the peak
Flow too in the open fields
Every vow of pride
Taken in a blind moment—break it
Do not inscribe songs to sunflowers
Let your consciousness grieve with the grieving
It isn’t necessary to write poetry—
If the pen is stifled, break it
Life has congealed like a bound lake
Like a sickly lantern
For the sake of human welfare
Break all merciless rules
The finest creation of creation—
Do not forbid that love in vain
For healthy renewals
Break the rituals of dead tradition
A dream is that which walks on foot
Face smeared with burning dust
Life is not only silk
Break the rainbow illusion
There is but one illusion in this world—the source of all illusions—one rainbow illusion: the ego!
Break the mind! Break the ego
Break every oath of pride
And then you will find: the lamp had neither gone out nor can it ever go out. Just lift the veil of ego and the lamp is burning!
There was a Zen fakir, Bokuju. It was a cold night and a guest monk was staying at Bokuju’s place. The brazier was burning, but slowly it began to die. Ash gathered. The cold increased. Bokuju said to the guest monk: “Brother, look in the brazier—see if any ember remains.” The guest had no idea of Bokuju’s ways. Bokuju was not speaking about the outer brazier at all. He was talking about the inner brazier. He was saying, “Brother, look within—does any ember remain, or is it all ash now?” He must have been watching the guest for long: layer upon layer, ash upon ash. But naturally the guest thought the outer brazier was meant. He picked up a stick and stirred the coals and said, “No, there is no ember—only ash.”
Bokuju laughed. He said, “No, no—there is an ember. The ember never dies.” Now the matter became even more puzzling. The guest said, “The ember never dies—what are you saying!” Bokuju rose, took the stick, probed the brazier, searched well, and surely a small ember lay buried somewhere under ash; he brought it out, blew on it, and said, “See? If even the outer ember has not died, how would the inner one die? However much ash there is—mounds of ash, mountains, piles—yet the inner ember neither dies nor can die. The inner ember is the ember of eternal life. Just remove the ego—that is the only ash.”
Krishnatirth, there is nothing else to do. One has to learn non-doing. One has to learn witnessing. You must be feeling bored with life, because without this inner witness-consciousness life certainly becomes boredom—great boredom. Everything tastes stale, insipid—like food after a long fever; so life tastes. And this fever is very old—lifetimes old.
Boredom of morning, suffocation of noon, and sadness of evening
For many days this has been the state
Is this the Lord’s will?
Only the formality remains
Where is the savor left in relationships?
Just to live out a lifetime
Dying in installments, again and again
What a sharp jest is this, life so‑called
For many days this has been the state
Is this the Lord’s will?
In contests for the body’s pleasures
The mind seems fallen ill
As though before the preface
One must write the epilogue
What kind of beginning is this, where the talk is of full stops?
For many days this has been the state
Is this the Lord’s will?
Worry, that acid in which
This existence keeps dissolving
We are asked to read surrender, but
The last page keeps opening
What welcome is this, where the sound is of the final salutation?
For many days this has been the state
Is this the Lord’s will?
Krishnatirth! The more thoughtful and reflective a person is, the more he feels boredom. Only buffaloes do not get bored. Only donkeys do not feel meaninglessness. Among humans, only those who live blindly, stupefied, not yet freed from the animal realm—only they don’t have boredom filling their lives. In their lives you will see much hustle, much heat. You will see much excitement. They are on the run—towards Delhi! Their life has a destination: to reach Delhi! Someone wants to be President, someone Prime Minister, someone something else.
Have you noticed? Politicians don’t look bored. They seem exuberant. To get bored you also need a certain intelligence, a capacity to think and reflect! Someone in the race for wealth doesn’t get bored; someone in the race for position doesn’t get bored. But those who reflect a little on life, who pause and look within, to them boredom will seem natural. They will feel: What is the point? Even if I become President, then what?
Alexander asked Diogenes: “Why are you so joyous? You have nothing!” And Diogenes said, “I ask you: Why are you so miserable? You have everything!” Alexander said, “I am miserable because I am not yet emperor of the whole world. But I will be.”
Diogenes said, “Suppose you become so—then what will you do?” It’s a wondrous question: Suppose you become so—then what will you do? Alexander stood still for a moment; he had no answer. No one had ever asked him: Suppose you achieve it, then what? He had never considered it. So he faltered, then said, “Then what will I do? Then, like you, I will rest.”
Diogenes said, “What prevents you from resting now? I am resting—rest now. Why this commotion?”
But Alexander said, “No, not now. Now I am on a campaign. I have to show the world.”
Those who have to show something to the world—you won’t find them bored. You’ll find in them a kind of constant urgency. Their feet are ever ready to run. They are competitors. In their lives you will always find a kind of delusion that keeps their juice flowing. But the slightly thoughtful—like Diogenes, who asks, “Suppose I gain the world’s kingdom—then what will I do?”—in their lives boredom comes, sadness comes, meaninglessness comes.
That is why meaninglessness rises strongly in the West—not in the East—because the East is still mired in such poverty that just to somehow survive is much. We don’t have the leisure to sit and ask what life means. There is no bread, no clothes, no roof. When bread, clothing, shelter are there, then one sits and reflects on life’s meaning. Until there is bread, the questions of life’s meaning—whether anything is or isn’t—don’t arise. In the West these questions arise powerfully because bread is solved, housing is solved, work is solved. Now what? What is the purpose of life now?
Krishnatirth, it is a good sign that such a question has arisen in your mind.
Boredom of morning, suffocation of noon, and sadness of evening
For many days this has been the state
Is this the Lord’s will?
Only the formality remains
Where is the savor left in relationships?
Just to live out a lifetime
Dying in installments, again and again
What a sharp jest is this, life so‑called
For many days this has been the state
Is this the Lord’s will?
But from this boredom two outcomes are possible. One: self‑destruction—one feels life is so futile, why live at all? Why not end it? In Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, a character says to God: “Here, take your ticket back—I don’t want to live. Your life is futile. Keep it! I am neither indebted nor do I see any cause for grace. Just let me step out. Great kindness if you let me step out of life.”
Sartre, Camus, other modern Western thinkers are filled with the thought that life is boredom—how to get rid of it? In the West the number of suicides keeps rising.
So one way: end yourself—life is useless; why run? And the second way: self‑revolution. This life is useless—as the life of the doer is useless. A life centered on doership is useless. There is another life that is meaningful, fragrant, filled with light—the life centered on the witness. Move into that life—the life of the Buddhas.
In my view, the hour of suicide and the hour of sannyas come together; they are two faces of the same moment. When life seems so empty that either end it or change it—no third option remains—only then does something happen in a human life. Buddha too one day felt it was all futile—but he did not commit suicide.
The East has known for centuries that there is another way of living that is meaningful, fragrant, radiant. This way we know is not the only way; there is another way of living: as a doer—one; as a witness—another. Whoever lives as the doer, today or tomorrow he will feel boredom—if he has a little intelligence, he surely will. If he has none, he won’t feel boredom—but that is an even worse state: to have so little intelligence that you don’t even sense life’s boredom is a very bad condition—below the human.
A human is one who reflects. The word manushya (man) comes from manana—reflection. He thinks, inquires, discerns. And when you inquire, the question will arise: What is the essence? Why live? Why take another breath; if I must live as I have lived thus far, then why live—why live tomorrow? To go on living then is mere cowardice.
Generally you think those who commit suicide are cowards; but the partisans of suicide say something else: those who don’t commit suicide are cowards! They are afraid of dying, so they go on living. They cannot muster the courage to die; therefore they continue.
Mulla Nasruddin once arranged to commit suicide. A sensible man—he thought things through. He saw: there is no meaning in life. Being canny, he made all the arrangements: if one fails, another won’t. He took along a pistol, a rope, a barrel of kerosene, a box of matches; everything—and went to the riverbank. He climbed a mound, tied the rope to a shrub-for hanging. He put his neck in the noose, poured the oil, lit the fire, fired the gun. Next day when I met him I asked, “Nasruddin, what happened?” He smacked his forehead: “Bad luck! I made so many arrangements, and all went waste.”
I said, “Tell me the whole story.” He said, “I tied the rope, put the noose on my neck, poured the oil—everything seemed fine so far. Then when I fired the gun—meant for the head—it didn’t hit my head; it hit the rope. The rope snapped. I fell into the river, the fire went out. And if I hadn’t known how to swim, yesterday would have been my last day. Thank God I can swim—I came home safe and sound.”
The philosophers who favor suicide say people live out of cowardice. There is a little force in their argument; for where there is no meaning and all is futile, why does man go on living? I agree with them—but only halfway: people do drag life like the oil‑mill bullock, out of cowardice. But I don’t agree with their second point that people should commit suicide. Nothing will come of it. Here you will kill yourself, there you’ll enter another womb. The same journey will start again. That is no way to escape.
To escape the futile race of life we have discovered a wondrous way: then there is neither birth nor death again. The process of that revolution is called sannyas, meditation, religion. And the transformation to be made is to awaken the witness and forget the doer. Right now the doer sits on the chest of the witness. Let the doer climb down. And Krishnatirth, you will suddenly find—the lamp is indeed burning. The lamp has never been extinguished.
You have nothing to do; it’s only that the doer has filmed your eyes—made them blind. The dust of doership has settled on your eyes; wipe it off, and the inner light will be available to you. Its availability is absolutely certain. It is a promise. Whoever has even a little awakened within and sought the witness has always found the supreme source of life.
Fourth question:
Osho, what is the difference between bhajan, prayer, and meditation?
Osho, what is the difference between bhajan, prayer, and meditation?
Dharmrakshita! Meditation is the passive state of bhajan, and bhajan is the active state of meditation. When bhajan happens in silence, it is meditation; when meditation finds a voice, it is bhajan.
Like the Nile flowing for miles underground—while it flows beneath the earth, that is meditation; when it emerges and runs above the ground, that is bhajan.
Bhajan is the expression of meditation. Bhajan is the expression of feeling.
Like the child who stays in the mother’s womb for nine months—hidden, veiled, invisible—that is meditation. Then one day the child is born: the first cry, the advent of a new guest into the world—that is bhajan.
Meditation is pure soul; bhajan is when the soul takes on a body. Meditation is formless; bhajan is the formless manifesting in form, in shape, in color. Both are wondrous. The seed is meditation; the flower is bhajan. The flower is hidden in the seed—you won’t find it by breaking the seed. Yet the very purpose of the seed is to become a flower. And when the flower comes, the seed is gone. Fragrance flies into the sky. Colors take to the air. Butterflies are filled with envy. The seed has reached its destination.
Meditation and bhajan are two halts on the same journey. And since there are two kinds of people in the world, there is the possibility that some will be fulfilled through meditation and some through bhajan.
This entire existence is divided into two polarities. The difference of woman and man is not merely biological; it runs through all the planes of existence. In electricity there is negative and positive; in magnetism too, negative and positive. On every level there is the polarity of feminine and masculine.
Man is meditation; woman is bhajan. Buddha is the symbol of the purest meditation; Meera of the purest bhajan. Do not conclude that men cannot do bhajan, for Chaitanya reaches the same place as Meera. But Chaitanya’s nature is also like Meera’s—feminine, full of sweetness and grace, tender, soft, delicate. And there have been women who arrived through meditation: Lalla of Kashmir, or the Sufi fakir Rabia. But their personality is like Buddha and Mahavira—masculine: not so fluid, not so delicate; their resolve intense and deep.
So I am not speaking of “man” and “woman” in the biological sense. Many men will arrive through bhajan; many women will arrive through meditation. But the difference of energies is clear.
Bhajan is expression, resonance, the humming of song, a voiced outpouring. Meditation is quiet, stillness, silence.
And remember one thing: wherever there is bhajan, behind it hidden there is always meditation—otherwise, from where would bhajan get its life? Without silence, from where would the voice arise? If within there is no void, how will songs that express the void be born? Without the seed there can be no flower. Without meditation there can be no bhajan. And the reverse is also true: wherever there is meditation, there lies the possibility of bhajan. Whether it manifests or not is another matter, but the possibility is there. It could have been that Buddha also sang. It could have been. That it did not happen is another matter—or it happened so invisibly that our straightforward grasp could not catch it. There is a rhythmicness in Buddha’s walking. What is in Meera’s dance is in Buddha’s gait. You cannot call it dance, but there is music. In Buddha’s rising and sitting there is a grace, a poetry. In the blinking and opening of his eyes there is a beat, a scale. Not as overt as Meera. Subtle, hidden. Very quiet. There is no proclamation. Even the sound of his footsteps is not heard.
Meera is like someone who climbs onto rooftops and calls out, gives the azan. Buddha is like two lovers sitting close, whispering—no one else can hear a thing. And even for them, it is of no use that they hear each other; the delight is not in saying something. Merely bringing the lips near the ear is enough. What do lovers have to say, after all! In English they say: “sweet nothings!” There is nothing to say—sweet, sweet non-things. It is not a question of saying something, of speaking into the ear. The lips reach the ear—that is enough, whether words appear or not.
Dharmrakshita, your question is important.
Let there be another kind of ache—let me write a new song.
And let the life-breath be a little restless—let me write a new song.
Let this sobbing breath first be given notes,
Let the tears find a tongue—let me write a new song.
Let dormant feeling wake, let sensitivity shiver,
Let a swell rise in the heart—let me write a new song.
This voice is that somewhere a heart has broken,
A crane was felled by fate—let me write a new song.
Let this long night of doubts be cut through,
Let discernment have its dawn again—let me write a new song.
Beauty remains thus a little ailing, a little sad,
Do not pull taut the bow of desire—let me write a new song.
If reality should take imagination as its bride,
Let truth become the cure for dream—let me write a new song.
In the references of my creation, always and forever,
Let the human being remain central—let me write a new song.
Give me but a single shloka of the Gita—
Give me even one ayat of the Quran—so I may write a new song.
Bhajan is the sudden bursting forth of a new song. And wherever there is bhajan, there God is expressed. Wherever four lovers sit and sing bhajans, they pull the Divine down to earth; they bring the sky down to the ground!
Give me but a single shloka of the Gita—
Give me even one ayat of the Quran—so I may write a new song.
And if within you a single verse of the Gita arises—your own, conceived in your very life-breath—or a single ayat of the Quran is born within you, that is enough. In that one link, in that one garland-thread, the whole of life will be blessed.
But bhajan can arise only when there is some taste of meditation. The seed is needed—without it, no flowers. A drop is needed—without it, how will the ocean be made? Feeling is needed—without it, from where will expression come?
Dive into witnessing. If you have the heart of a gentle poet, then with the very first dip in witnessing, diamonds will land in your hands and songs will be born. A link of the Gita will come into your hands, an ayat of the Quran will arrive. Diving into your own witnessing, if within you there is even a little of the tender feminine poet’s heart—or the painter’s, the musician’s, the dancer’s—then bhajan arises of itself. Bhajans are not learned. The moment a connection with witnessing is made, bhajans are born—just as flowers appear on trees. And around the one in whom bhajans blossom, the presence of God begins to be felt.
The moon rose—
Night-blooming jasmine perfumed the doorway,
again and again.
Though thorns kept watch or leaves kept it locked,
the bud could not restrain the scent of youth.
Unseen by the eye,
beyond the ramparts, it diffused its fragrance,
again and again.
Tide rose in the ocean; beauty upon the limbs—
who can stop it when the sun climbs?
Limb by limb,
moonlight burnished, and fragrance spread,
again and again.
Having drunk its thirst it will cry out—do not soften the voice.
Who does not compose the metres of surrender?
Shy with blush,
calling to the Beloved, the fragrance spread,
again and again.
The moon rose—
Night-blooming jasmine perfumed the doorway,
again and again.
Let the feeling of witnessing rise within you. Let the moon of witnessing rise a little! And—
Night-blooming jasmine perfumed the doorway,
again and again.
Beyond the ramparts it diffused its fragrance,
again and again.
Moonlight burnished, and fragrance spread,
again and again.
Calling to the Beloved,
again and again.
Inside you and outside you the call of the Beloved will begin to rise. Not that you will arrange for it. Without any arrangement, without method or device, it happens on its own. And when bhajan is born of itself, its beauty is boundless, its glory unparalleled. Then it is no longer of this world. Then within you the gandharvas sing it; within you the sky hums it.
Yet it will depend on the very structure of your personality. Meera sang, Chaitanya sang, Kabir sang. But there have also been those who, going into witnessing, grew silent—utterly silent; no word broke, no word arose—only stillness remained! That too is an expression—the expression of meditation. It is very different. To understand it, a meditative mind is needed, the capacity to catch the language of emptiness.
In bhajan, the word manifests; in meditation, the void manifests. Bhajan speaks—you can hear it. Meditation does not speak; it simply is—you can only imbibe it.
But remember—do not drape anything upon yourself. If meditation arises, let it be meditation; if bhajan arises, let it be bhajan. Do not contrive. By contrivance everything becomes artificial. Let the Divine have you do whatever He wills. If He would make you a rose, be a rose; a lotus, a lotus; a marigold, a marigold; champa, champa; a wildflower of the grass, then that. Leave yourself in God’s hands. Do not bring yourself in between. Say to Him: As You will! And if you can say, As You will, then God is the wild, prodigal Giver.
When displeased, he took the body’s very privacy; when pleased, he gave the heart’s own love.
If offended, he asked for breath; if delighted, he gave the world.
So miserly that without love
a whole life passed, unspeaking.
That wild giver—before him
the beggar’s pouch falls short.
If he turns against you, he gathers every drop; if he smiles, he gives the boundless.
When I tried taking, he took the unit; when he gives, he gives by thousands.
As far as acquaintance extends,
he deemed you beyond even that.
The more I knew you,
the less I recognized you.
Silent, he snatched away even compassion; speaking, he bestowed adornment.
Weeping, he even dries the monsoon; singing, he gives Malhar.
There is no average point in you;
whatever you are, you are only a peak—
Cool, and you are like the moon;
if you blaze, you are the fierce sun.
Asleep, you gathered in the memories; awake, you gave life’s great tide.
If I turned stubborn and would not leave the oleander, when he gave he gave kachnar.
Just leave it to Him—leave it entirely to Him! As He wills! And you will be astonished: your pouch will fill—abundantly! And it will fill exactly as it should: for some with emptiness, for some with music; for some with words, for some with wordlessness; within some, a heap of bhajans; within others, such silence that it has no shore.
When displeased, he took the body’s very privacy; when pleased, he gave the heart’s own love.
If offended, he asked for breath; if delighted, he gave the world.
If he turns against you, he gathers every drop; if he smiles, he gives the boundless.
When I tried taking, he took the unit; when he gives, he gives by thousands.
Silent, he snatched away even compassion; speaking, he bestowed adornment.
Weeping, he even dries the monsoon; singing, he gives Malhar.
Asleep, you gathered in the memories; awake, you gave life’s great tide.
If I turned stubborn and would not leave the oleander, when he gave he gave kachnar.
That’s all for today.
Like the Nile flowing for miles underground—while it flows beneath the earth, that is meditation; when it emerges and runs above the ground, that is bhajan.
Bhajan is the expression of meditation. Bhajan is the expression of feeling.
Like the child who stays in the mother’s womb for nine months—hidden, veiled, invisible—that is meditation. Then one day the child is born: the first cry, the advent of a new guest into the world—that is bhajan.
Meditation is pure soul; bhajan is when the soul takes on a body. Meditation is formless; bhajan is the formless manifesting in form, in shape, in color. Both are wondrous. The seed is meditation; the flower is bhajan. The flower is hidden in the seed—you won’t find it by breaking the seed. Yet the very purpose of the seed is to become a flower. And when the flower comes, the seed is gone. Fragrance flies into the sky. Colors take to the air. Butterflies are filled with envy. The seed has reached its destination.
Meditation and bhajan are two halts on the same journey. And since there are two kinds of people in the world, there is the possibility that some will be fulfilled through meditation and some through bhajan.
This entire existence is divided into two polarities. The difference of woman and man is not merely biological; it runs through all the planes of existence. In electricity there is negative and positive; in magnetism too, negative and positive. On every level there is the polarity of feminine and masculine.
Man is meditation; woman is bhajan. Buddha is the symbol of the purest meditation; Meera of the purest bhajan. Do not conclude that men cannot do bhajan, for Chaitanya reaches the same place as Meera. But Chaitanya’s nature is also like Meera’s—feminine, full of sweetness and grace, tender, soft, delicate. And there have been women who arrived through meditation: Lalla of Kashmir, or the Sufi fakir Rabia. But their personality is like Buddha and Mahavira—masculine: not so fluid, not so delicate; their resolve intense and deep.
So I am not speaking of “man” and “woman” in the biological sense. Many men will arrive through bhajan; many women will arrive through meditation. But the difference of energies is clear.
Bhajan is expression, resonance, the humming of song, a voiced outpouring. Meditation is quiet, stillness, silence.
And remember one thing: wherever there is bhajan, behind it hidden there is always meditation—otherwise, from where would bhajan get its life? Without silence, from where would the voice arise? If within there is no void, how will songs that express the void be born? Without the seed there can be no flower. Without meditation there can be no bhajan. And the reverse is also true: wherever there is meditation, there lies the possibility of bhajan. Whether it manifests or not is another matter, but the possibility is there. It could have been that Buddha also sang. It could have been. That it did not happen is another matter—or it happened so invisibly that our straightforward grasp could not catch it. There is a rhythmicness in Buddha’s walking. What is in Meera’s dance is in Buddha’s gait. You cannot call it dance, but there is music. In Buddha’s rising and sitting there is a grace, a poetry. In the blinking and opening of his eyes there is a beat, a scale. Not as overt as Meera. Subtle, hidden. Very quiet. There is no proclamation. Even the sound of his footsteps is not heard.
Meera is like someone who climbs onto rooftops and calls out, gives the azan. Buddha is like two lovers sitting close, whispering—no one else can hear a thing. And even for them, it is of no use that they hear each other; the delight is not in saying something. Merely bringing the lips near the ear is enough. What do lovers have to say, after all! In English they say: “sweet nothings!” There is nothing to say—sweet, sweet non-things. It is not a question of saying something, of speaking into the ear. The lips reach the ear—that is enough, whether words appear or not.
Dharmrakshita, your question is important.
Let there be another kind of ache—let me write a new song.
And let the life-breath be a little restless—let me write a new song.
Let this sobbing breath first be given notes,
Let the tears find a tongue—let me write a new song.
Let dormant feeling wake, let sensitivity shiver,
Let a swell rise in the heart—let me write a new song.
This voice is that somewhere a heart has broken,
A crane was felled by fate—let me write a new song.
Let this long night of doubts be cut through,
Let discernment have its dawn again—let me write a new song.
Beauty remains thus a little ailing, a little sad,
Do not pull taut the bow of desire—let me write a new song.
If reality should take imagination as its bride,
Let truth become the cure for dream—let me write a new song.
In the references of my creation, always and forever,
Let the human being remain central—let me write a new song.
Give me but a single shloka of the Gita—
Give me even one ayat of the Quran—so I may write a new song.
Bhajan is the sudden bursting forth of a new song. And wherever there is bhajan, there God is expressed. Wherever four lovers sit and sing bhajans, they pull the Divine down to earth; they bring the sky down to the ground!
Give me but a single shloka of the Gita—
Give me even one ayat of the Quran—so I may write a new song.
And if within you a single verse of the Gita arises—your own, conceived in your very life-breath—or a single ayat of the Quran is born within you, that is enough. In that one link, in that one garland-thread, the whole of life will be blessed.
But bhajan can arise only when there is some taste of meditation. The seed is needed—without it, no flowers. A drop is needed—without it, how will the ocean be made? Feeling is needed—without it, from where will expression come?
Dive into witnessing. If you have the heart of a gentle poet, then with the very first dip in witnessing, diamonds will land in your hands and songs will be born. A link of the Gita will come into your hands, an ayat of the Quran will arrive. Diving into your own witnessing, if within you there is even a little of the tender feminine poet’s heart—or the painter’s, the musician’s, the dancer’s—then bhajan arises of itself. Bhajans are not learned. The moment a connection with witnessing is made, bhajans are born—just as flowers appear on trees. And around the one in whom bhajans blossom, the presence of God begins to be felt.
The moon rose—
Night-blooming jasmine perfumed the doorway,
again and again.
Though thorns kept watch or leaves kept it locked,
the bud could not restrain the scent of youth.
Unseen by the eye,
beyond the ramparts, it diffused its fragrance,
again and again.
Tide rose in the ocean; beauty upon the limbs—
who can stop it when the sun climbs?
Limb by limb,
moonlight burnished, and fragrance spread,
again and again.
Having drunk its thirst it will cry out—do not soften the voice.
Who does not compose the metres of surrender?
Shy with blush,
calling to the Beloved, the fragrance spread,
again and again.
The moon rose—
Night-blooming jasmine perfumed the doorway,
again and again.
Let the feeling of witnessing rise within you. Let the moon of witnessing rise a little! And—
Night-blooming jasmine perfumed the doorway,
again and again.
Beyond the ramparts it diffused its fragrance,
again and again.
Moonlight burnished, and fragrance spread,
again and again.
Calling to the Beloved,
again and again.
Inside you and outside you the call of the Beloved will begin to rise. Not that you will arrange for it. Without any arrangement, without method or device, it happens on its own. And when bhajan is born of itself, its beauty is boundless, its glory unparalleled. Then it is no longer of this world. Then within you the gandharvas sing it; within you the sky hums it.
Yet it will depend on the very structure of your personality. Meera sang, Chaitanya sang, Kabir sang. But there have also been those who, going into witnessing, grew silent—utterly silent; no word broke, no word arose—only stillness remained! That too is an expression—the expression of meditation. It is very different. To understand it, a meditative mind is needed, the capacity to catch the language of emptiness.
In bhajan, the word manifests; in meditation, the void manifests. Bhajan speaks—you can hear it. Meditation does not speak; it simply is—you can only imbibe it.
But remember—do not drape anything upon yourself. If meditation arises, let it be meditation; if bhajan arises, let it be bhajan. Do not contrive. By contrivance everything becomes artificial. Let the Divine have you do whatever He wills. If He would make you a rose, be a rose; a lotus, a lotus; a marigold, a marigold; champa, champa; a wildflower of the grass, then that. Leave yourself in God’s hands. Do not bring yourself in between. Say to Him: As You will! And if you can say, As You will, then God is the wild, prodigal Giver.
When displeased, he took the body’s very privacy; when pleased, he gave the heart’s own love.
If offended, he asked for breath; if delighted, he gave the world.
So miserly that without love
a whole life passed, unspeaking.
That wild giver—before him
the beggar’s pouch falls short.
If he turns against you, he gathers every drop; if he smiles, he gives the boundless.
When I tried taking, he took the unit; when he gives, he gives by thousands.
As far as acquaintance extends,
he deemed you beyond even that.
The more I knew you,
the less I recognized you.
Silent, he snatched away even compassion; speaking, he bestowed adornment.
Weeping, he even dries the monsoon; singing, he gives Malhar.
There is no average point in you;
whatever you are, you are only a peak—
Cool, and you are like the moon;
if you blaze, you are the fierce sun.
Asleep, you gathered in the memories; awake, you gave life’s great tide.
If I turned stubborn and would not leave the oleander, when he gave he gave kachnar.
Just leave it to Him—leave it entirely to Him! As He wills! And you will be astonished: your pouch will fill—abundantly! And it will fill exactly as it should: for some with emptiness, for some with music; for some with words, for some with wordlessness; within some, a heap of bhajans; within others, such silence that it has no shore.
When displeased, he took the body’s very privacy; when pleased, he gave the heart’s own love.
If offended, he asked for breath; if delighted, he gave the world.
If he turns against you, he gathers every drop; if he smiles, he gives the boundless.
When I tried taking, he took the unit; when he gives, he gives by thousands.
Silent, he snatched away even compassion; speaking, he bestowed adornment.
Weeping, he even dries the monsoon; singing, he gives Malhar.
Asleep, you gathered in the memories; awake, you gave life’s great tide.
If I turned stubborn and would not leave the oleander, when he gave he gave kachnar.
That’s all for today.