Heedlessness

Osho, I feel that heedlessness weighs heavily on me. What should I do to be light of it?

Awareness of heedlessness! By doing, heedlessness will not go; it can only hide. A lazy man is sitting. Ordinarily, what do we tell him so that his laziness breaks? We say, “Do something.” Remember, laziness is tamas; you can put him to work—that is rajas. So to turn a tamasic person into a rajasic one is not very difficult. He is sitting inactive; he can be pushed into activity. But the real question is not becoming rajasic from tamasic. The real question, whether you are rajasic or tamasic, is to become sattvic. And there is only one way to become sattvic: be aware. Whatever the state, be aware of it. A lazy man is sitting; we would tell him, “Become alert to your laziness. From within, know it, recognize it, watch it. Don’t hide laziness. Don’t cover it with devices and excuses. Don’t look for arguments. See laziness in its…

Osho, you say that if there is awareness, then how are the two to be brought into harmony?

That is precisely the practice of active meditation: awareness. Awareness is the very means of going into emptiness in relation to all actions, to the movements of the mind as well. For example, if you lie there for half an hour—what will you do? In that half hour, whatever thoughts are moving in your mind, you are to be simply aware of them. Simply a witness—what else will you do? Just become a witness. Keep silently watching; let them move. But obstacles arise in our seeing. We become absorbed. We fail to remain a witness. We don’t even notice when we have become one with those very thoughts. That sense of awareness fades; a kind of stupor, a moorchha, comes in. A thought comes, a memory arises, and we stop being the watcher. We become part of that thought and of its flow. That is moorchha. And the opposite is…

Osho, in the context of the practice of heedfulness (apramad), please explain the similarities and differences among the practices of witnessing, awareness, and tathata.

One more thought on tathata. A Zen fakir wrote a small song: “The geese fly across the sky. They have no desire that their reflections be formed in the still lake below. Yet the reflections form. The blue lake has no desire to catch the reflections of the geese. Yet the reflections are caught. Then the geese fly on and the reflections also fly away. The geese do not know they were caught in the lake; the lake does not know that the reflections aroused any curiosity, any stir, any disturbance in its bosom.” Tathata means such a being. Things happen. He is ready for all—wants to do nothing and has no complaint. That is why one of Buddha’s names is Tathagata. He loved that name. Even speaking of himself he would say, “The Tathagata passed through a certain village.” Tathagata means one who has attained tathata—thus come, thus gone.…

Wakefulness is the way to life. The fool sleeps as if he were already dead, but the master is awake and he lives forever.

HE WATCHES. HE IS CLEAR. HOW HAPPY HE IS! FOR HE SEES THAT WAKEFULNESS IS LIFE. HOW HAPPY HE IS, FOLLOWING THE PATH OF THE AWAKENED. WITH GREAT PERSEVERANCE HE MEDITATES, SEEKING FREEDOM AND HAPPINESS. SO AWAKE, REFLECT, WATCH. WORK WITH CARE AND ATTENTION. LIVE IN THE WAY AND THE LIGHT WILL GROW IN YOU. BY WATCHING AND WORKING THE MASTER MAKES FOR HIMSELF AN ISLAND WHICH THE FLOOD CANNOT OVERWHELM. The rabbi shrugged his shoulders and said, "In America? It would have been impossible. Where can you find a virgin, firstly? And secondly, where will you find three wise men?" And without a virgin mother and three wise men, how can Jesus be born? I have heard: In a church, the priest asked the audience, "Please stand up, all the women who are virgins!" Just one woman with a small baby girl stood up. Certainly she was a mother,…