A Questionless Silence
You have always stressed that there is so much misery in the world because we have been trained to look at the darker side of things. Either one can feel happy, seeing that there is a day full of light between two dark nights, or one can be miserable, seeing that a small day is surrounded by darkness.
Osho, in looking for the brighter side of things for the last ten years, I have not succeeded much. My eyes go to the darker side first. How can I change and improve my outlook?
I have never said that there is no dark side of things. In existence, everything is balanced – the dark side and the light side. They both are there.
The only thing that you can do is, either to choose the thorns in a rosebush and condemn the whole world, and condemn yourself, and think that it is nothing but hell so many thorns, and if there is only one rose flower amidst so many thorns, what is the point? What is the significance of one rose flower? Because you insist on counting the thorns, you may also harm yourself. And certainly you will not be able to experience the beauty of the rose.
What I have been saying to you is that if thorns exist in the rosebush, the thorns and the rose flowers are not enemies. The thorns are almost like bodyguards to the beautiful rose flower, they protect the rose flower. They both get their life juice from the same roots – the same plant provides nourishment to the thorns that provides nourishment to the flower. For the rosebush there is no difference; the rose flower is not higher in any sense than the rose thorns. They are all needed, they fulfill a certain necessity.
If you want to enjoy life, if you want to see the meaning of life, if you want to understand its greatness, its blissfulness, then you will first have to look at the rose – to see its beauty, its fragrance – and then to see the thorns, that they are not enemies of the rose. They are part of the same rosebush, and they play a certain protective part. They are friends to the beautiful flower.
In existence nothing is unnecessary. The day is good, so is the night. Just think of a long day without any night – you will be utterly tired and exhausted. Life will become absolutely dry – a desert. Just miss a few nights’ sleep, and you will see what great despair and anguish it creates. The day is beautiful in its own way.
I’m not saying choose the day and ignore the night. I’m saying: see the harmony of the opposites, see the complementariness of the contradictories. See the beautiful unity between yes and no, between life and death. Try to understand that existence consists of polar opposites. If you choose one side, your life will remain only half; and a half-life is a miserable life.
Hence all the great mystics of the world have been teaching one thing, without any exception, and that is choiceless awareness. Don’t choose the day or the night. Remain choiceless and alert, so that you can see the great harmony between the opposites. They look opposite to you; they are not opposite in reality.
Excerpted From The Rebel CH: 24
