Birthday

Osho, when should a person celebrate joy? When is celebration appropriate?

The emperor couldn’t make sense of what to do next. Chuang Tzu had said something astounding: with whom he had seen the colors of life—joys and sorrows, ups and downs—who had been like his shadow every moment, should he not even be able to bid her farewell with a song? That would be ungrateful. This is my gratitude, my “ah!”—I am only expressing my thankfulness. If you seek occasions for joy, you will never find them. If you know how to be joyful, every occasion is an occasion; every season a season. Every moment you will discover some device. What a marvelous man Chuang Tzu must have been—at such a moment he found a reason to play the tambourine! One should be such a person. So I say to you: celebrate every moment. “When is celebration appropriate?” Every moment is appropriate. Because only when you are in celebration are you…

You are at the peak of consciousness, you can celebrate, you are celebrating. But how can the ordinary person share with you in celebration?

Somewhere, Bertrand Russell has written that when for the first time he visited a primitive community of aboriginals living deep in some hills, he felt jealous, very, very jealous. He felt that the way they danced... it was as if everybody were an emperor. They had no crowns, but they had made crowns with leaves and with flowers. Every woman was a queen. They didn't have kohinoors, but whatsoever they had was too much, was enough. They danced the whole night and then they fell asleep, there on the dancing-ground. By the morning they were again back to work. They worked the whole day, and again by the evening they were ready to celebrate, to dance. Russell says, 'That day, I felt really jealous. I cannot do this.' Something has gone wrong. Something frustrates within you; you cannot dance, you cannot sing, something withholds. You live a crippled life. It…

Someone asked a Zen monk, “Before your awakening had dawned, before you became a Buddha, what was your daily routine?” He said, “At the master’s ashram I used to cut wood in the forest and bring it back, and draw water from the well.” The questioner asked, “Now that you have attained Buddhahood, what is your routine?” He said, “I cut wood in the forest and I draw water from the well.” The questioner was astonished. If you had been the questioner, Ram Swarup, you too would have been astonished. You would say: What is special about it? It’s exactly the same! Before you cut wood and drew water; n

In Zen monasteries there is a separate tea-temple where people go to drink tea. It is a temple. Shoes are left outside. One bathes before going. One becomes silent before entering. Then inside they sit as one would sit in a mosque or in a temple—with great respect, with great peace. Tea is being prepared. You would be quite surprised and ask, “What’s special going on here?” Ram Swarup, you would say, “What is all this about? Nothing special is happening—tea is being made.” But people sit, listening to the sound of the tea in the samovar. For that sound too is the anahat nad—the unstruck sound. Look a little, understand a little! The sound rising in the kettle, the soft hiss, the bubbling of the water, the tea leaves singing—they sit quietly and listen. For it is his sound, whether it passes through trees, bursts from the bubbles of…

Modern psychology has not yet been able to understand meditation. That's why this wrong idea has persisted for fifty years continuously, for half a century. Psychology says you can be aware only if there are thoughts; if there is nothing to be aware of you cannot be aware. You cannot be simply aware, you need something to be aware of. But they can be logically proved wrong. Existentially, of course, they are wrong. I say through my own experience that thoughts disappear and I am still aware. But psychologists will not understand somebody's experience, they will understand only logic. And logically also they are wrong for the simple reason that you can be asleep and thoughts are there, so thoughts are not necessarily part of awareness. You fall asleep, you become unconscious, but thoughts continue as dreams, your mind continues to be active.