Question was asked to Osho – I MOVE IN MEDITATION AND WORK AND LOVE BUT KEEP FEELING IT IS NOT ENOUGH. OSHO, I WANT YOU TO DESTROY ME ONCE AND FOR ALL.
Osho replied – This is from Anand Bodhisattva. Any experience, any experience whatsoever, is not going to be enough. The experience of work, the experience of love, even the experience of meditation, or call it the experience of God; no experience is going to be enough because all experiences are outside you. You remain hidden behind the experience. You are the witness. Experience is happening to you, but you are not it. So whatsoever the experience, no experience will ever be total because the experiencer, the one who is experiencing, is always greater than the experience.
And the difference between the experience and the experiencer always remains – the gap – and that gap goes on saying, “Yes, something is happening but not enough, More is needed.”
That is the misery of the human mind. That’s why the mind goes on asking for more, more, more. You earn money and the mind says, “More.” You make a house: the mind says, “Make bigger.” You create a kingdom and the mind says, “A bigger kingdom is needed.” Then you start meditating and the mind says, “Not enough. There are many more peaks to be attained.” And this will remain so because it is something in the very nature of the experience that the experience can never be total.
Then what can be total? Then what can be fulfilling? Remain a witness; don’t be lost in the experience. Don’t be lost. Just remain alert. Know that this is a passing mood: it will pass. Good or bad, beautiful or ugly, happy or unhappy – a cloud passing by: you remain silent watching it. Don’t get identified with it. Otherwise love will not fulfill, neither meditation, because in fact what is meditation?
Meditation is not an experience: it is to become aware of the witness. Just look.
Just watch, and remain centered in the watcher, and then anything is total.
Otherwise nothing is total. Then everything and anything is fulfilling: otherwise nothing is fulfilling.
If you remain a witness, just taking a bath, a shower, is so fulfilling that you cannot expect more. Just taking your breakfast is so fulfilling. Just sipping tea is such a tremendous delight, you cannot think, you cannot imagine, that more is possible. Then each moment becomes a diamond unto itself, and each experience becomes a flowering – but you remain alert. You are not lost in the experience: you don’t get identified with it.
I can understand Bodhisattva. You are trying hard. You are working, meditating. You are doing whatsoever a man can do. More you cannot do. Even if you can do more, that is not going to help. Now the point has come to understand: Be the witness. Let experiences pass. Let them come and go. Don’t be distracted by them. Don’t be pulled in by them. Remain alert, unconcerned – just watching the traffic, watching the clouds in the sky. Be a watcher and suddenly you will see small things have become deep fulfillments – just a small bird singing, or just a small flower opening.
There is a haiku of Baso. In Japan there are very small flowers, nazuna. It is so small and so common and so ordinary and so poor that nobody talks about it.
Poets talk about roses. Who talks about a nazuna? It is a gross flower. In many languages there is no name for it because who bothers to name it? People pass by; nobody looks at it. The day Baso attained his first satori he came out of his cottage and he saw a nazuna flowering. And he says in his haiku, “For the first time I saw the beauty of a nazuna. It is tremendous. All paradises put together are nothing.”
How did a nazuna become so beautiful? And Baso says, “It was always there, and I had passed it millions of times, but I had not seen it before” – because Baso was not there. The mind sees only that which can be fulfilling to the ego. Who bothers about a nazuna? It is in no way fulfilling. A lotus is okay, a rose will do, but a nazuna, an ordinary gross flower, so poor, so beggarly, needs nobody’s attention, attracts nobody, calls nobody…. But that day, that morning, the sun was rising, and Baso saw a nazuna; he says, “For the first time I encountered the reality of a nazuna” – but that happened only because he had encountered his own reality.
The moment you have become a witness – that’s what satori is, samadhi is – the moment you have become a witness everything takes a different color. Then ordinary green is no longer ordinary green; it becomes extraordinarily green.
Then nothing is ordinary. When you are a witness everything becomes extraordinary, superb.
Jesus says to his disciples, “Look at the lily in the field.” An ordinary lily flower – it is not ordinary for Jesus, because Jesus is in a totally different space. The disciples must have wondered why he is talking about the lily, what is there to talk about. But Jesus said, “Even Solomon in all his glory was nothing, in all his splendor was nothing before this flower lily.” Even Solomon. Solomon is the richest, the greatest emperor of Jewish myth – even he was nothing. Before this ordinary lily? Jesus must have seen something which we are missing.
What has he seen? If you become a witness, the world opens all its mysteries to you. Then I say everything is fulfilling.
Somebody asked a great Zen Master, “After you have attained your satori, what have you been doing?” He said, “Chopping wood, carrying water. Eating when hungry, sleeping when tired.” Everything is beautiful. Chopping wood, carrying water from the well….
Just think. Just contemplate a little.
Nikos Kazantzakis in his novel on St. Francis has St. Francis talk to an almond tree. St. Francis comes, the almond tree is there, and St. Francis says, “Sister, sing me something about God.” And the almond tree blossomed. That’s the way the almond tree sings about God. It blossoms in your garden also, but you are not there to say to it, “Sister, sing of God. Say something about God.” A St. Francis is needed. The almond tree is also blossoming in our garden. A thousand and one flowers blossom in your life, but you are not there.
Come back home, become a witness, and then everything work, love, meditation – everything is a fulfillment. Everything is so total, so infinitely total, that the idea of more simply disappears; and when your mind is not concerned about the more, then you start living, never before it.
I understand your anxiety – “I want you to destroy me, Osho, once and for all.” If I can do it, I would have done it already. If it is only up to me, then I will not wait for you. I will not even ask your permission. But it is not up to me. You have to cooperate. In fact, I am just an excuse – you have to do it.
And don’t be in a hurry: don’t be impatient. Great patience is needed. But in the West impatience has become part of the mind. People have forgotten the beauty of patience.
I was reading an anecdote: The doctor was explaining the new recovery technique to his patient.
“You should begin walking as soon as possible after the operation. On the first day you must walk around for five minutes, the second day for ten minutes, and on the third day you must walk for a full hour. Do you understand?” “Yes, doctor,” said the apprehensive patient, “but is it alright if I lie down during the operation?”
Become a little more patient. You are on the operation table. Please rest and cooperate with me because this is not an operation which can be done in your unconsciousness. This is not an operation where anesthesia can be given to you.
The whole operation has to be done when you are conscious. In fact the more conscious you are, the more easily it can be done – because the whole surgery is of consciousness. I cannot do it against you: I cannot do it without your cooperation. I cannot do it unless you are totally with me.
In fact you yourself do it by being totally with me: I am just an excuse. The day it will happen, you will understand that I have not done it, you have done it yourself. I have only given you a little confidence to do it. I have only given you a promise that it is possible. I have only given you an assurance that you are not going astray, that you are on the right path, that’s all.
In this operation, the patient is the surgeon also. The surgeon stands by the side.
Just his presence is helpful – you don’t feel afraid, you don’t feel alone.
And it is good that nobody else can do it to you because if somebody else can make you free, your freedom will not be real freedom. If somebody else can make you free, then somebody else can make you a slave again. Nobody can make you free. Freedom is your choice. That’s why it is ultimate, then nobody can take it away from you. If it can be given then it can be taken away. Because it cannot be given, it cannot be taken away.
I cannot really help you. If you want you can take all the help that is possible through me. Let me explain it to you.
I cannot help because I cannot be positively aggressive towards you. – l cannot kill you, but through me you can commit suicide. You get it? Through me you can commit suicide: I cannot kill you. I am available. You can help yourself through me. And the day it will happen you will understand, only then, that you could have done it even alone, but right now it is almost impossible to do it alone. Even with me it is so difficult to do it.
Don’t be impatient, wait, and get more and more in tune with your witnessing self.
It is very easy when there is pain, suffering, not to get identified, but the real problem arises when you are deep in love, happy, blissful, deep in meditation, ecstatic. Then it is very difficult not to get identified, but there hangs the whole thing. That is the very core. Remember it, when you feel blissful: then too remain alert that this too is a mood; it comes and goes. The cloud has come: it will pass.
It is a beautiful cloud. Thank it, thank God, but let it remain separate. Don’t rush and don’t become one with it. In that identification the idea of more arises.
If you can remain aloof, a watcher on the hill, unconcerned, the idea of more does not arise. Why? Because when the watcher becomes identified with the experience it becomes mind, and mind is a desire for more. When the watcher remains just a watcher and the experience there, just outside passing like a cloud, there is no mind. Between the two there is a space; no bridge. In that unbridged state there is no desire for more – there is no desire at all. One remains fulfilled.
One remains absolutely content.
It is on the way, Bodhisattva. Don’t be in a hurry and don’t be impatient.
Tags: Diamond Unto Itself
