Bodhisattva

Osho, you would like us all to become bodhisattvas. That means one has to make that firm decision to help others to the other shore. However, I do not feel able to make that decision. Sometimes I feel love towards others, sometimes I am just busy with myself. So should I wait or is the decision not such a thing as a statement but rather like a fruit that ripens by itself. And why then is buddha a buddha and not a bodhisattva?

First, these three things have to be understood. One, the ordinary state of human mind -- when you cling to the world, to this shore, and the other shore seems to be fictitious. You cannot trust the other shore. You cling so much to this shore that the only problem is how to help you to uncling from it. Right now, Sandeha, this is not going to help if you start thinking of being a bodhisattva. This is not going to help, this will be dangerous. This will only be a strategy to cling to this shore. You are not yet freed of this shore. This will be a new way to cling to the world again. And this is very tricky -- now it will be in the name of religion, compassion, love for people, service. Now it will have great ideology in it -- "I am here to…

What is all this stuff about bodhisattvas? I don't believe a word of it. There is no such thing.

Yes, Somendra, it is all nonsense. But you will have to understand the word nonsense. It is beyond sense. You need not believe it, you cannot believe it -- you can only experience it. It is a nonsense experience. But it is true, it is absolutely true. It happens. Till it happens there is no way to believe in it, and there is no need either. Buddha is never in favor of any kind of belief. Whatsoever he says, it is experience, it is existential. It is something beyond the mind. Ordinarily we use the word nonsense for that which is below mind. But there is something beyond mind too -- that too is nonsense. The mind cannot make any sense out of it. Unless your mind disappears you will not be able to see what this bodhi-being is. It is not a thing, true. It is an experiencing. You…

Homage to the perfection of wisdom, the lovely, the holy! Avalokita, the holy lord and bodhisattva, was moving in the deep course of the wisdom which has gone beyond. He looked down from on high, he beheld but five heaps, and he saw that in their own being

Remember, you have to stop only when there is no answer coming, not before it. If some answer is coming that, "You are this, you are this," then know well that some center is providing you with an answer. When all the six centers have been crossed and all their answers canceled, you go on asking, "Who am I?" and no answer comes from anywhere, it is utter silence. Your question resounds in yourself: "Who am I?" and there is silence, no answer arises from anywhere, from any corner. You are absolutely present, absolutely silent, and there is not even a vibration. "Who am I?" -- and only silence. Then a miracle happens: you cannot even formulate the question. Answers have become absurd; then finally the question also becomes absurd. First answers disappear, then the question also disappears -- because they can live only together. They are like two sides…

Osho, what is the relationship between meditation and patience?

If you sit to meditate to remove mental restlessness, you will keep looking back again and again: “Has it gone yet?” And the irony is that when you begin to meditate, restlessness will increase. Because what has been repressed will start surfacing; catharsis will begin. The rubbish you have kept hidden within and never allowed to express—meditation will break open those doors too. It will clean the house. Dust piled up for years, for births, will rise again; there will be gusts and storms. For a while even the little peace you had will be lost. Then you will panic: “I came for peace, and even what I had is gone.” Without patience, you could even become unhinged, because meditation brings such a great storm. The disease is not from a day or two; it’s from lifetimes. Meditation will break through all the layers to reach your innermost core. In…