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

326. Love.

We settle down where no settling is possible.

We make homes

whilst homelessness is the very nature

of our consciousness.

We go on doing things which are impossible

and then suffer!

But no one else is responsible.

We fight with the void and are then defeated –

not because the void is stronger than us

but because it is not.

Now stand up

and fight with the empty space of the room

so that you can know and taste

the whole stupidity of the human mind.

And then sit down and laugh at yourself,

and as the laughter dies down

be silent and search within,

and then you will come to know a deep mystery:

the mystery that the void is not only without

but within also!

327. Love.

Death is everywhere

but everyone deceives himself that it is not for him.

This is the greatest

and the deepest deception the human mind is capable of,

and unless one is constantly aware of this fact

one is bound to be a victim of this deception –

because the mind goes on giving

very beautiful and logical rationalizations

up to the very end.

I have heard about a ninety-year-old man

who got into a bitter argument with his shoemaker

as to how a pair of shoes should be made.

See here, said the shoemaker,

What’s the idea of doing so much yapping?

You are past ninety

and there is little chance of your living long enough

to wear these shoes out.

The old fellow looked sternly at the shoemaker

and said: Apparently you are not aware

that statistics prove that very few people

die after ninety years of age!

328. Love.

Information is not knowledge

because information is not transformation

and can never be –

and knowledge comes only through transformation.

Information is adding something to the same old mind.

It is quantitative;

there is no qualitative change

because the mind behind it remains the same.

That is why all that is called education

just proves to be superficial.

Mind must go through a qualitative change,

otherwise there is no wisdom;

and to go on adding information to ignorance is fatal.

I call meditation

the method for mind’s total mutation.

First let there be a transformation

of the very quality of the mind

and only then education can be educative.

In ancient times

the king of a certain country was concerned

because his son was something of a fool.

The king’s counselors urged that the son be sent away

to a great university in another land

in the hope that the boy

would acquire learning and wisdom.

The king agreed.

The son studied hard for several years

then wrote to his father that he had learned

just about everything possible

and pleaded to be allowed to return home.

The king assented.

When the son arrived at the palace

the king was overjoyed.

A great feast was prepared

and all the great men of the kingdom were invited.

At the end of the festivities

one of the sages present asked the son

what he had learned.

The young man ticked off the university’s curriculum

that he had gone through. While the lad was talking

the sage slipped a ring off his finger,

closed his hand over it,

held up his hand and asked: What do I hold in my hand?

The son thought for a moment and said:

It is a round object with a hole in the center.

The sage was astonished at such wisdom.

Maybe the lad had become a great mind.

Will you now name the object? asked the sage.

The king’s son pondered for a few moments, then said:

The sciences that I studied do not help me

in answering your question,

but my own commonsense tells me that it is a cartwheel.

The sage concluded to himself

that you can educate a fool

but you cannot make him think.

329. Love.

Yes, there is a way,

but in many the will is lacking to find it.

And it is not far away,

it is just by the corner, so to speak.

Knowingly or unknowingly all men long for it.

Really, the whole of life is a longing for it

because without it

there is no reaching, no flowering, no fulfillment.

But few men seek it

and still fewer seek it rightly

and still fewer find it –

and all of those who find it do not enter.

Only a few enter

and still fewer progressively follow it.

But those who follow it with their total being

realize that the way is the goal itself!

330. Love.

Mind and meditation are two names

of the same substance,

or the same energy.

Mind is energy flowing in dualisms,

in conflict and dis-ease;

and meditation is non-dual energy,

one with itself and at ease.

Thinking is impossible without dualisms,

that is why meditation asks you to go beyond thinking.

The moment there is no thinking –

or a single ripple of thought –

the energy becomes integrated

and there is a qualitative change.

The no-thinking energy

opens the door of the dimensionless dimension.

So refrain from seeking even

Enlightenment or Buddhahood

because with any seeking whatsoever

the mechanism of thought

begins to operate and create dualisms.

331. Love.

Do not forget the search for the divine

for even a single moment

because the time is always short and the task is great,

and besides, the mind is wavering.

In fact the mind is the wavering.

Remember this, and remain aware of this fact

as much as you can

because the moment one is aware, the wavering stops,

and in the intervals are the glimpses:

glimpses of oneself, glimpses of no-mind.

One has to absolutely transcend the wavering of the mind before one comes to the doors of the beloved.

No-mindedness is the door.

And the door is not far off.

But the seeker is asleep.

Mind is the sleep.

That is why you will have to be attentive and alert

to everything that passes before your consciousness –

even be attentive to the inattentive moments.

Through constant awareness

the spiritual sleep will be broken

and you will he transformed.

This is your potentiality,

this is everyone’s potentiality,

and for you the time is ripe.

But the seed can remain a seed and die.

The opportunity can be lost.

You are free to be that which you are meant to be

or to be that which you are not meant to be.

Man is free to be or not to be –

this is the glory and this is the burden.

Freedom means responsibility,

so be careful.

If you can be that which is your potentiality,

if you can flower in your fullness

then there is bliss

then there is ecstasy, otherwise

ashes are in the hands

and anguish in the heart.

And ultimately everything depends on you:

heaven or hell –

and you and only you will be responsible for it.

So be careful.

My blessings are always with you.

332. Love.

Metaphysics is born out of childish curiosity,

so however sublime, it remains juvenile.

And all the ultimate answers are foolish in a way

because the ultimate is not only unknown,

it is unknowable.

A mature mind is one

who understands the impossibility

of knowing the ultimate,

and with this understanding

there is a new dimension:

the dimension of being.

Knowing is not possible, but being is.

Or in other words:

in relation to the ultimate, only being is knowing.

This dimension is the religious dimension,

and unless one is religious in this sense

one goes on asking absurd questions

and accumulating even more absurd answers.

In a little backwoods school

the teacher was at the blackboard explaining

arithmetic problems.

She was delighted to see her dullest pupil

paying fixed attention,

which was unusual for him.

Her happy thought was that at last

the lanky lad was beginning to understand.

When she finished she said to him:

You were so interested, Cicero,

that I am sure you want to ask some questions.

Yes’m, drawled Cicero, I got one to ask.

Where do those figures go when you rub them off?

333. Love.

Do not cling to anything,

to any idea,

because clinging is the bondage.

Even if one is clinging to the idea of liberation –

moksha or nirvana –

one will be in bondage.

With clinging meditation is impossible

because clinging is mind, the bondage;

and no-clinging is meditation –

the freedom.

In the Book of Amu Daria there is an old Sufi tale:

Once upon a time there was a monkey

who was very fond of cherries.

One day he saw a delicious looking cherry

and came down from his tree to get it,

but the fruit turned out to be in a clear glass bottle,

so he had to put his hand into the bottle to get it out.

As soon as he had done so

he closed his hand over the cherry

but then he found that he could not

withdraw his fist holding the cherry

because it was larger than the bottle’s neck.

Now all this was deliberate

because the cherry in the bottle was a trap laid

by a monkey hunter

who knew how monkeys think.

The hunter, hearing

the monkey’s whimperings, came along.

The monkey tried to run away,

but because his hand was, as he thought,

stuck in the bottle,

he could not move fast enough to escape.

But as he thought he still had hold of the cherry,

he consoled himself.

The hunter picked him up

and tapped the monkey sharply on the elbow

making him suddenly relax his hold on the fruit.

The monkey was now free –

but he was captured.

The hunter had used the cherry and the bottle

and he still had them.

This monkey-way of thinking is the mind-way also!

And in the end when death, the hunter, comes,

everyone is found caught in his own bottle.

Remember, before the hunter comes

make sure your hand is out of the bottle!

334. Love.

A life without meditation

is like a winter landscape with the sun hidden,

the flowers frozen and the wind whispering

through the withered leaves.

And everyone knows it

because everyone lives it that way,

though no one needs to live it that way.

But why is this so?

This is so because life’s needs require an occupied mind

and meditation means being unoccupied.

We train ourselves to be occupied

and then forget that one needs to be unoccupied sometimes

to know the ecstasy of sheer existence.

One is to be totally vacant inside

because only then is one a host to the divine guest.

335. Love.

Meditation is beyond knowledge.

You can be it but you cannot know it.

All knowledge is superficial.

It is never anything else

but an acquaintance from outside.

It is always about

but never the thing itself;

When the Chinese emperor Wu

came to meet Bodhidharma

he asked the master:

What is the holy, ultimate truth?

Bodhidharma laughed and replied:

Nothing holy, sir,

and it is emptiness itself.

Of course Wu was taken aback, but he asked again:

Then who is the one who at present

stands confronting me?

Bodhidharma simply said:

I don’t know.

Do you see the beauty of it?

And the truth?

And the innocence?

And the holiness?

And the fullness?

And how absolutely ultimate it is?

336. Love.

It is very easy to progress from one illusion to another

because no foundational transformation is needed.

There is no shaking of the foundations

because you remain the same.

So the real problem is not to change the objects of desire

from the worldly to the other-worldly

but to transform oneself;

not to change the seeking

but to change the seeker –

otherwise the problem remains as it is,

it just takes new shapes.

But how to change the seeker?

First find out where it is and what it is,

and then you will come to know a hidden secret:

the seeker exists only while it is not sought,

and when someone goes out to search for it –

it is never found.

It exists only in ignorance and in darkness;

in awareness it is not.

This realization of no-self is the jump.

Jump into the unknown.

Jump into the truth.

337. Love.

Whatever I say is nothing new,

nor is it anything old.

Or it is both –

the oldest and the newest.

And to know it you need not listen to me.

Listen to the birds in the morning

or to the flowers and grass blades in the sun

and you will hear it,

and if you do not know how to listen to them

then you will not know from me either.

So the real thing is not what you listen to

but how you listen,

because the message is everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.

Now I will tell you the art of listening:

walk about until exhausted or dance or

do vigorous breathing

and then, dropping to the ground, listen;

or repeat your own name loudly until exhausted

and then suddenly stop and listen;

or at the point of sleep

when sleep has not yet come

and external wakefulness vanishes,

suddenly be alert and listen.

And then you will hear me.

338. Love.

That which is never lost cannot be found,

and to search for it is absurd.

But the moment this absurdity is understood

all seeking stops by itself

and that which is never lost is found!

That is why I say:

Seek and you will not find,

because the very seeking is the barrier.

The search itself is the hindrance

because it creates the seeker, the ego,

the illusion that I am.

And I am not.

Do not seek and you will find it:

the I-am-not-ness.