Hollow Bamboo

Osho, what is the difference between surrender and blind imitation?

So be careful: the freedom you allow yourself, allow the other too. You have no right to judge another as blindly credulous or as a surrendered being. Drop that concern. You cannot judge anyway—how will you enter another’s heart? How will you know? Think only about yourself. See within whether, up to now, you have lived by blind belief or by surrender. Decide only there; leave worrying about others. Otherwise, all your judgments will be wrong. Jesus said: Judge not; do not set yourself up as a judge in relation to another. To the friend who has asked: if you are asking for yourself, good. Drop worrying about others. Look within and see: whatever I have been clinging to till now—have I ever staked my life to hold it? Have I meditated for it? Have I loved for it? Or am I just clutching what culture, society, civilization handed me?…

I am often able to achieve the state -- or what seems like the state -- which you call 'being a hollow bamboo' -- silent, watching, empty. The only problem is that there is no bliss in that emptiness: it is just nothing. Can I expect something to fill it one of these days?

Mariel Strauss, it is because of this idea that you are missing the whole beauty of nothingness: this desire to fill it. You are not-really a hollow bamboo, because in this hollow bamboo this desire is there, and this desire is enough to fill the hollow bamboo, to block its emptiness. This desire to fill it one day, this expectation that "Some day, God will come and fill my emptiness"' this very idea is preventing you from really becoming a hollow bamboo. Drop this desire. Forget all about filling your hollow bamboo -- then you are a hollow bamboo. And when you are a hollow bamboo, it is immediately full of God. But not that you have to desire it; if you desire it you will go on missing it. This is one of the basic paradoxes to be understood about religious inquiry. Understand it as deeply as possible, let…

This state of bliss which ordinarily we come to know only in deep sleep, has to be known in full consciousness. So either in great deep sleep one comes to it, or in great awakening -- in buddhahood, enlightenment, one comes to know it. So there are only two possibilities of being blissful: either blessed are the ignorant -- or the awakened. You are blissful either when you fall back into deep unconsciousness.... Then you become part of the cosmos -- your ego cannot exist there. When you cannot dream, how can your ego exist? -- because the ego is a dream. Then your desires are not there, because all desires are your dream. And with that whole bundle of desires disappearing, you have disappeared -- because you are nothing but a bundle of desire -- so you are part of the cosmos.

The song continues:

DO NOUGHT WITH THE BODY BUT RELAX; SHUT FIRM THE MOUTH AND SILENT REMAIN; EMPTY YOUR MIND AND THINK OF NOUGHT. LIKE A HOLLOW BAMBOO REST AT EASE WITH YOUR BODY. GIVING NOT NOR TAKING, PUT YOUR MIND AT REST. MAHAMUDRA IS LIKE A MIND THAT CLINGS TO NOUGHT. THUS PRACTICING, IN TIME YOU WILL REACH BUDDHAHOOD. A lunatic is a person whose whole world is confined in himself. He is the talker and he is the listener; he is the actor and he is the spectator -- he is all, his whole world is confined in himself. He has divided himself in many parts and everything has become fragmentary. That's why people are afraid of silence -- they know they may crack up. And if you are afraid of silence that means you have an obsessive, feverish, diseased mind inside, which is continuously asking to be active. Activity is…