Послания любви. 365 писем Ошо - Бхагаван Раджниш (Ошо)

he was sure they would fit perfectly.

This time the woman burst out laughing

and gave him a big dinner.

And all because he took one step at a time.

216. Love.

Knowledge is accumulation,

that is why knowledge is always dead,

while learning is moment to moment

because learning is not accumulation but movement.

So do not be dead with knowledge

but move with learning,

only then will you be alive.

Do not be tethered to experience –

experience is slavery.

Always transcend that which has been

so that you are ready to receive the new.

Ecstasy is always with the new,

with the fresh, with the young,

with the discontinuous –

and to be always in the discontinuous

is to be in the divine.

217. Love.

If one is aware of the present moment

then one also becomes aware of the fact that

there is no me inside.

The me is my past,

the me is the dead past.

The me is not my life because it is not living.

The ego can exist only in the past

or in the future –

which is nothing but a projection of the past.

That is why awareness, moment to moment awareness,

leads to egolessness –

because the ego cannot exist in the present

and because awareness cannot exist except

in the present.

So they cannot exist simultaneously.

Ego is unawareness

and awareness is egolessness.

218. Love.

I live without planning,

and I also feel that this is the only way to be alive at all.

In fact I live a wild life,

absolutely unplanned,

not knowing anything about the future –

not even about the next moment.

Today is enough for me –

really more than enough!

The moment that is present is the only living moment –

the past is dead in the sense that it is no more

and the future is also dead

in the sense that it is not yet born.

And so to be concerned with the past is to be dead

and to be concerned with the future is also to be dead.

The only way to be alive is to be here and now –

in the moment and totally in it.

Living moment to moment I have found that ecstasy and bliss

which is not of this world at all.

The single moment lived totally transcends time itself.

It becomes the gap between two moments of time,

and if one can be in this gap

then one is beyond death

because time is death

and timelessness is life.

Life is not something fixed and finished,

life is living what is,

a process, just riverlike,

flowing always into the unknown,

from the shores of the known to the shores

of the unknown.

219. Love.

Anger, violence, greed or envy

cannot be overcome by the cultivation of their opposites,

because anger itself will cultivate its opposite

and violence will be present in its cultivated non-violence.

So always be aware

of the hypnotic spell of the opposite:

it never solves any problem

because it is beating around the bush.

Do not fall into the trap of the opposite

but understand anger, violence or greed

or anything else

directly.

To seek the opposite is a way of escape.

To seek the opposite is cowardice.

Live with your mind as it is.

Do not try to change it.

Be brave and face it and understand it.

When the light of awareness falls on anger or

greed or envy

there is change.

Awareness acts as a catalytic agent –

and then anger does not change into its opposite,

it is not that violence becomes non-violence,

but there is no-anger,

there is no-violence.

And when there is no-violence there is no-mind,

and an altogether different dimension opens its door:

the dimension of the spontaneous,

the dimension of the divine.

220. Love.

Moment to moment life passes into death,

because it is death.

Covered, it appears as life,

uncovered it is death.

Always remember this fact.

This is silent meditation.

And when this remembering even penetrates

your dreams

you will have a new door opened unto you.

In fact through it you will be altogether new,

and ultimately reborn.

Remembering death gives a new dimension

to consciousness

because to remember death is not natural.

On the contrary nature has arranged

that one should not be aware of it

because the moment one transcends death

one transcends nature also.

And one cannot transcend death

unless one is totally aware of the fact.

So be totally aware of death.

And it is happening each moment within and without.

It is present everywhere.

And because it is so obvious one becomes absent to it.

Remember – and deepen the consciousness,

because as the awareness of death goes deeper

one becomes capable of feeling that which is deathless.

Really, death is the door –

the opening to the deathless.

But be conscious of it.

Be conscious and transcend.

Be conscious and know that which is before birth and after death.

And – you are that.

221. Love.

Be a stranger to yourself.

See life as a river flowing through time.

Stand on the bank, neither curious nor concerned.

Glance or gaze at the driftwood of your past

floating in your memory –

just like the incidents one reads about in the paper.

Detached and indifferent remember that nothing matters.

Only exist –

and the explosion.

222. Love.

Always be positive, in each and every situation –

that helps meditative awareness very much.

Negative attitudes negate the whole effort.

Diogenes was looking for an honest man in New Delhi.

Any luck? asked a wayfarer.

Oh, pretty fair, sir, replied Diogenes.

I still have my lantern.

223. Love.

Philosophy cannot cure you of questions –

on the contrary, it can give you more.

I heard this at a chemist’s shop:

Did the patent medicine you purchased cure your aunt?

Good heavens, no.

On reading the wrapper around the bottle

she got two more diseases.

224. Love.

Mulla Nasruddin was carrying home some liver

which he had just bought.

In the other hand he held a recipe for liver pie

which a friend had given him.

Suddenly a buzzard swooped down and carried off the liver.

You fool! shouted Nasruddin.

Having the meat is all very well,

but what will you do without the recipe?

225. Love.

Man can only know what God is not.

To know what God is, is impossible

because that’s where the realm of being begins.

You cannot know God but you can be,

and in that dimension is the only knowing.

But that knowing

is altogether different from all our other knowing

because in that knowing there is no knower

and no known,

but only knowing.

That is why in that dimension knowing and being

are the same.

There is even no knowledge.

because knowledge is dead and therefore a thing.

Moreover, knowledge is always of the past,

and God is never in the past

or in the future.

God is now, always now;

and here, and always here.

Close your eyes and see.

Then open your eyes and see.

Then neither close your eyes nor open your eyes and see.

226. Love.

There was once a man

who was obsessed with the idea

that there was a secret knower in those

who achieved success.

To discover this secret

he devoted years to study and research:

ancient masonry, philosophy, astrology, psychology,

salesmanship, religious beliefs,

the various cults that have had their rise and fall.

All these he studied long and diligently,

but no conclusion was visible.

He struggled and struggled

but still there was no conclusion.

And then instead of success in his search

for the secret of success

came death – and as death approached him

he realized the goal of his whole life’s efforts,

and finally he gave his conclusion to those

who were near him.

It came in two short words: I will.

227. Love.

Do not believe in thinking

because that is the greatest of all superstitions –

but well hidden

because it pretends to be anti-superstitious!

Thinking is nothing but dust in a blind mind

because you cannot think that which is not known –

and you need not think that which is already known.

The encounter is always with the unknown.

The unknown is everywhere,

within and without,

and thinking is always in the known and of the known.

You can never be in contact with the unknown through the known

so throw the known and be in contact with the unknown.

And this is what I call meditation.

228. Love.

Man goes on dreaming and desiring

but basically remains where he is,

and in the end

nothing but the ashes of his dreams and desires

are in his hands –

and of course there are tears in his eyes.

Panchatantra has a beautiful story:

In a certain town lived a Brahmin named Seedy

who got some barley meal by begging,

ate a portion,

and filled a jar with the remainder.

This jar he hung on a peg one night,

placed his cot beneath it

and fixing his gaze on the jar

fell into a hypnotic reverie.

Well, here is a jar of barley meal, he thought.

Now if a famine comes

I will get a hundred rupees for it.

With that sum I will get two she-goats:

every six months they will bear two more she-goats.

After goats, cows.

When the cows calve I will sell the calves.

After cows, buffaloes.

After buffaloes, mares.

From the mares I shall get plenty of horses.

The sale of these will mean plenty of gold.

The gold will buy a great house with an inner court.

Then someone will come to my house

and offer his lovely daughter with a dowry.

She will bear a son whom I shall call Moonlord.

When he is old enough to ride on my knee I will take a book,

sit on the stable roof and think.

Just then Moonlord will see me,

will jump from his mother’s lap

in his eagerness to ride on my knee

and will go too near the horses.

Then I shall get angry and tell my wife to take the boy

but she will be too busy with her chores

and will not pay attention to what I say.

Then I will get up and kick her!

Being sunk in his hypnotic dream

he let fly such a kick that he smashed the jar

and the barley meal it contained made him white all over.

229. Love.

Go on discarding: not this, not this (neti, neti),

and ultimately when nothing remains to be discarded –

then the explosion happens.

Do not cling to anything, to any thought.

Go on and on until the nothingness.

I have heard about a little boy, Toyo, and his meditations.

He was only twelve years old

but he wanted to be given something to ponder on,

to meditate on,

so one evening he went to Mokurai, the Zen master,

struck the gong softly to announce his presence,

and sat before the master in respectful silence.

Finally the master said: Toyo, show me the sound of two hands.

Toyo clapped his hands.

Good, said the master.

Now show me the sound of one hand clapping.

Toyo was silent.

Finally he bowed and left to meditate on the problem.

The next night he returned and struck the gong

with one palm.

That is not right, said the master.

The next night Toyo returned and played geisha music with one hand.

That is not right, said the master.

Again and again Toyo returned with some answer

but the master said again and again, That is not right.

For nights Toyo tried new sounds

but each and every answer was rejected.

The question itself was absurd so no answer could be right.

When Toyo came on the eleventh night,

before he said anything the master said:

That is still not right!

– then he stopped coming to the master.

For a year he thought of every possible sound

and discarded them all,

and when there was nothing left to be discarded any more

he exploded into enlightenment.

When he was no more, he returned to the master

and without striking the gong he sat down and bowed.

He was not saying anything

and there was silence.

Then the master said: So you have heard the sound without sound!

230. Love.

Thought is divisive,

it divides ad infinitum,

so thought can never come to the total, to the whole.

And the whole is while the parts are not –

or they are only for the mind –

and if there is no mind then there are no parts.

With the mind and because of the mind

the one becomes many – or appears so;

and with the mind and through the mind,

to conceive the one is impossible.

Of course it can think about the one,

but that one is nothing but a putting together of all the parts,

and that one is quite different from the one which is.

The one which is conceptualized by the mind

is just a mathematical construct:

it is not a living whole,

it is not organic,

and unless one experiences the cosmos as

an organic whole

one has not known anything at all.

This is not possible with thought,

but this is possible with no-thought.

231. Love.

Emptiness is all –

and to get hold of emptiness is to attain all and be all.

But it is very arduous to get hold of emptiness –

because it is emptiness! And it hurts much –

though it is emptiness, it still hurts much!

Because to make way for it the ego has to die.

But I am happy that you are dying