It once happened to a man who was travelling by rail: he noticed that another man who was his sole companion in the compartment was behaving in an unusual way. For some time he seemed to be chuckling to himself very happily, and then a serious look would come over his face and he would make a gesture of impatience before resuming his chuckles again. After a while, the first man could not stand it any longer and said,’Excuse my asking, sir, but what is it that amuses you so much?’
‘Funny stories, of course,’ he promptly replied,’I am telling myself funny stories.’
‘How very interesting,’ murmured the first man soothingly, and then added,’but every now and then you look very serious. Why is that?’
‘That is when it is a story I have heard before.’
This is how things go on. If you yourself are telling the story, how can you tell the new story? All stories are heard before; you can just repeat. Your life cannot be a life of newness, of freshness, of morning. Your life is bound to be stale, stuffed with just repetitions; at the most an efficient mechanism, but no consciousness.
So whenever you are ready to take the journey for the unknown, the pilgrimage towards the divine, fear will arise — fear of losing that which you have never had, fear of losing life. Life you have never had — just a mechanical thing: the fear of losing a repetitive efficiency, the fear of losing your old pattern. It may be comfortable and convenient, but it is not alive. There is nothing like death, because death is the most comfortable state of being, convenient. In a grave you will be perfectly comfortable and convenient, and there is no trouble. Life always creates new troubles. Those troubles are not really troubles. If you look rightly, they are challenges to grow
Stupidity Is Repetition
What the story convey to us:
Stupidity is repetition, repeating others. It is cheap, cheap because you need not learn. Learning is arduous. It needs guts to learn. Learning means one has to be humble. Learning means one has to be ready to drop the old, one has to be constantly ready to accept new.
How we can remain fresh all the time?
The first thing be like a child I mean always remain learning, never become knowledgeable. Go on learning; learning is totally different. Knowledge is a dead phenomenon, learning is an alive process. And the learner has to remember this: he cannot function from the standpoint of knowledge. Be like a child mean be total.
The second thing is remain a learner, function from the state of not-knowing. That’s what innocence is: to function from not-knowing is innocence.
The third thing, and the last: a child has a natural quality of trust, otherwise he cannot survive. When the child is born he trusts the mother, trusts the milk, trusts that the milk will be nourishing him, trusts that everything is okay. His trust is absolute, there is no doubt about anything. He’s not afraid of anything. His trust is so much that the mother is afraid because the child can go and start playing with a snake. His trust is so much that a child can go and poke his hand into the fire. His trust is so much; he knows no fear, he knows no doubting. That is the third quality.
Learning from the story: Be Learner.
Experience Learning
How we can become learner – just by watcher. The key to be learner is be watcher.
Let me share you how Osho learned bicycle, in his own words.
I have also learned, but I did not fall while learning, because first I watched the learners and why they fall. They fall because they don’t have confidence. To be on two wheels you need tremendous balance, and if you hesitate…it is just like walking on a tightrope. If you hesitate just for a moment those two wheels cannot keep you on your seat. Those two wheels can keep you in balance only at a certain speed, and the learner is bound to move slowly. Obviously — it seems to be rational — if you are a learner, you should not go with great speed.
I watched all my friends learning to bicycle, and they always said to me: “Why don’t you learn?”
I said: “I am watching first. I am watching why you fall, and why after a few days you stop falling.” And once I got the point, the very first time I went as fast as possible!
All my friends were puzzled. They said: “We have never seen a learner go that fast. A learner is bound to fall a few times, then he learns how to balance.”
I said: “I have been watching, and I got the clue. The clue is you are not confident, not alert that a certain speed is needed to keep the bicycle moving. You cannot stop it and sit on top of it without falling, a certain momentum is needed, so you have to go on pedaling.”
Now it was difficult for me to know how to stop; if I stopped, the cycle was going to fall. So I had to go to a place where there was a huge bodhi tree near the railway station, almost three miles from my house. Three miles I rushed so fast that people gave way, stood aside. They said: “This is absolute madness!”
But my madness had a method in it. I was going directly to that tree, because I knew the tree had become hollow. I rode my bicycle into the hollow tree so the front wheel was inside the tree. Then I could stop, there was no problem about falling.
Once you know that a certain balance is needed between the negative and the positive, then you have your roots in existence.
If you want to have your roots in existence then Be Watcher – which is the stepping stone to Be Learner.
