Normalcy

Please can I be simply normal?

NORMAL IS OKAY, but what is SIMPLY normal? Again you are making a condition; you are making it complex. Simply normal? Is being normal not enough? What more is added by putting 'simply' in front of 'normal'? The mind is such that it cannot be happy with the natural, the normal. It always makes conditions and through those conditions it falsifies everything. Normal is possible, but simply normal is not possible. That 'simple' will be something brought in from the outside. Man has become so accustomed to the artificial that even when sometimes the desire to be natural arises in him, what he thinks about as nature is not nature, it is again his IDEA of nature. What he says is natural is again his idea of the natural -- not the natural, because the natural needs no idea. You need not become natural, you ARE natural; just stop being…

Osho, have I learned correctly that simplicity is a state of effortlessness, and that wherever there is effort there is no simplicity?

Only the person who has not made efforts for simplicity can be simple in the true sense. But what does this mean? Does it mean we should do nothing for simplicity? No, it does not mean that. I am saying: do not make effort—but you will have to be aware. And being aware is not effort, because in awareness we are not suppressing anything. In awareness we are not repressing anything. In awareness, the light of our consciousness, which lies asleep in dark corners, we lift it up; we awaken it. A man is asleep; we wake him. We are not making him repress anything; we are only breaking his sleep. Our consciousness within is asleep—deeply asleep in many ways. We are awakening it. This awakening may look like a kind of effort, but it is not effort in that sense. Therefore the Zen masters call it effortless effort—actionless action,…

Is reality different from this?

It has no meaning; it means nothing. But it is part of human nature that one can be unnatural. When one is unnatural, one suffers. Suffering means: the fruit of being unnatural. When one is natural, one is happy. Happiness means: the fruit of being natural. But don’t try to be natural—otherwise that too will be unnatural. Simply understand your unnaturalness; the matter will be finished, and slowly your naturalness will arrive. Things are as they are. If this insight dawns, a great possibility for meditation opens.

But we have condensed ourselves into a solid “I am.” This insistence makes us unnatural; it does not allow us to accept the simplicity of life. There was a fakir, Nanin, in Japan a thousand years ago. The emperor went to meet him. Nanin was digging holes in his garden. The emperor had imagined a great sage with a halo around his head—sages always have such halos; photographers are told in advance to add them. In ancient days, painters did the same. He expected a luminous face. He asked the man digging outside: I wish to meet the great Master Nanin. The man said: No great Master lives here—only a man named Nanin. The emperor thought him rude. Where is he? The man replied: I know nothing of any great Master; I know Nanin. Shall I call him? Where is he? He said: I am he. The emperor was bewildered.