Motherhood

What is the difference between waiting for godot and waiting for god?

It is as if the sun has risen in the morning and you are sitting in your room with closed doors and windows, in darkness. Open the doors, you become available to the sun. The sun was already available -- just the meeting happens. You cannot wait for God. All waiting is for Godot. Godot means the one who never comes, who CANNOT come, whose arrival is impossible. And the only impossible thing is that which has already happened -- how can it happen again? You are alive, and you are waiting for life, Now, this is ridiculous. The real man of religion does not think in terms of God. He thinks in terms of life or, even better, of living -- because life can again become an abstract idea. Living, moment-to-moment living. In that very living, one knows what God is, because one knows who one is. Your idea…

This crazy, sweet, totally demanding and physically exhausting, delightful marathon called motherhood.... Since this fireball came to us -- almost two years now -- not one uninterrupted night's sleep, not one day of rest. And feeling nothing so important as simply being present for him -- and so very often inadequate and tense and tired in that. Where is laughter in this? Help! Help! Yuck, yuck, yuck.

PUNITA, JUST TO GIVE BIRTH TO A CHILD IS ONE THING -- to be a mother is totally different. Any woman can give birth to a child; that's a very simple phenomenon. But to be a mother needs great art, needs great under-standing. You are creating a human being -- that is the greatest creation! A painter paints a picture; we call it great art. Picasso -- we call him a great artist. But what about the mother who created Picasso? A poet writes beautiful poems, but what about the mother who created Shakespeare? We don't think about mothers as the greatest creative people on the earth. That is one of the reasons why women are not great painters and great poets -- they need not be: they can be great mothers. Why does man try to become a great scientist, poet, painter, this and that? -- he is jealous…

You have told many times why you call your male sannyasins "swami." can you explain why the women sannyasins are called "ma"?

The path of the masculine is that of awareness, and awareness brings you to a point where you become master of your own being. That is the meaning of SWAMI. The feminine path is that of love, and love brings you to an ultimate point where you can mother the whole existence. And that is the meaning of MA. A woman in her ultimate flowering becomes a mothering energy... she can mother the whole existence. She feels blessed, and she can bless the whole existence. When a man arrives at the ultimate point he does not become a father, he does not become a mother, he simply becomes a master: master of his own being. Love and awareness -- these are two paths. And when I say masculine I don't mean that all males are masculine, and when I say feminine I don't mean that all females are feminine. There…

Osho, when I went to Rajneeshpuram in July, in your discourses you said that in India no children should be born for many years. I repeated this to many people when I came back to Hindustan. Different people had different reactions, but most women said, “The maternal feeling in a woman—how is she to satisfy it?” Some said, “A woman does not attain fulfillment until she becomes a mother.” Please say something about this, Osho.

Second, it is true that a woman’s fulfillment is in her becoming a mother. That is why, when I began giving sannyas, the traditional name for a male renunciate was “Swami.” There was no name for a woman—because in India, for thousands of years, woman has been suppressed and erased so badly that she was never given the chance to be initiated into sannyas. There wasn’t even a name. After much search I accepted “Ma” as that name, because in “Ma” lies her fulfillment. But this fulfillment as mother is proof that your love has risen so high that the whole world becomes, for you, as if they are your children—even your husband. This is the blessing of the rishis of the Upanishads. Whenever a couple came to a rishi for a blessing, there was a very unique blessing, found in no other scripture in the world. The rishi would…