Gesture Of Life

Question to Osho – TWO, THREE MONTHS BACK, DURING THE LECTURE I USED TO WEEP A LOT.

NOW EVEN IF YOU ARE NOT SAYING ANYTHING FUNNY, IN THE MOMENTS WHEN I FEEL CLOSER TO YOU, I JUST WANT TO LAUGH AND LAUGH AND LAUGH.

WHY IS IT SO?

But why “why?” Laugh. Why make it a question and a problem?

This is from Krishna Radha. First she used to ask, “Why am I crying?” Now, somehow, by some miracle, she is not crying but laughing; but the problem continues.

Why do we cling to problems? Even if you feel happy, suddenly the mind says, “Why?”

As if happiness is also a disease. Explanation is needed, rational explanation is needed; otherwise even happiness will not be worth it.

This goes on and on. I see people come to me, they are miserable; they ask, “Why?” I can understand, when you are feeling miserable, I can understand that one asks, “Why?” But I know their “why” is deeper than their misery. Soon they start feeling happy also, and again they are there – very miserable because they are happy. Now the misery is “Why?”

Let me tell you one anecdote.

A man walks into a psychiatrist’s office and says, “Doc, I am going out of my mind. I keep thinking I am a zebra. Every time I look at myself in the mirror my entire body is covered with black stripes.”

The psychiatrist tries to calm him down. “Steady, steady,” he says. “Now just calm down, go home and take these pills, get a good night’s sleep, and I am sure the black stripes will completely disappear.”

So the poor man goes home and returns two days later. He says, “Doc, I feel great. Got anything for the white stripes?”

But the problem continues.

Once it happened, somebody brought a mad young man to me. The young man had a crazy idea that flies had entered into his body, through his nose or mouth, in his sleep, and that they, go on whirling inside. So of course he was in much trouble. He would turn this way and that; he could not even sit rightly because of those whirling dervishes inside; he could not sleep. A continuous agony. What to do with this man? So I told him, “You lie down on the bed, have a good ten minutes’ rest, and we will do whatsoever can be done.”

I covered him with a sheet so he could not see what was happening, and I ran over the whole house to catch a few flies. It was difficult because I had never done that before, but my experience of catching people helped. Somehow I could get three flies. I put them in a bottle, brought them to the man, made some hocus-pocus passes over him, then told him to open his eyes; and I showed him the bottle.

He looked at the bottle. He said, “Yes, you have got some, but only the smaller ones. The big ones are still there – and they are so big.” Now it is difficult. From where to get such big flies? He said, “I am very, very grateful to you. At least you got rid of the smaller ones; but the big ones are really very big.”

People go on. If you help them from one side, they will bring the same problem from another side – as if there is a certain deep necessity. Try to understand it. To live without a problem is very difficult, almost humanly impossible. Why? Because a problem gives you a distraction. A problem gives you an occupation. A problem gives you a busyness without any business. A problem engages you. If there is no problem, you will not be able to cling to the periphery of your being. You will be sucked by the center.

And the center of your being is empty. It is just like the hub of a wheel. The whole wheel moves on the empty hub. Your innermost core is empty, nothing, nothingness, shunyam, void, abyss-like. You are afraid of that emptiness, so you go on clinging to the rim of the wheel or, at the most, if you are a little daring, then you go on clinging to the spokes; but you never move towards the hub. One starts feeling afraid, shaky.

Problems help you. Some problem to solve; how can you go within? People come to me and they say, “We want to go within, but there are problems.” They think because of the problems they are not going within. The real case is just the opposite: because they don’t want to go within, they are creating problems.

Let this understanding become as deep in you as possible: your problems are all bogus.

I go on answering your problems just to be polite. They are all bogus, basically meaningless, but they help you to avoid yourself. They distract you. It seems, how can one go in? There are so many problems, first to be solved. But one problem is solved, immediately another bubbles up. And if you look, watch, you will see the other problem has the same quality as the first. Try to solve it; a third one comes up, immediately substituted.

Let me tell you one anecdote.

Psychiatrist: “You teenage kids are a menace. You have no sense of responsibility. Forget about the material things and think of other things like science, mathematics and the like. How are you in maths?”

Patient: “Not very good.”

“I will give you a test for your factual information. Now give me a number.”

“Royal 3447. That is the store where my girl works.”

“I don’t want a phone number, just an ordinary number.”

“All right. Thirty-seven.”

“That’s better. Now another number, please.”

“Twenty-two.”

“And again.”

“Thirty-seven.”

“Fine, fine. See, you can get your mind working in other directions if you want to.”

“Correct. 37-22-37! Boy, what a figure.”

Again back to the girlfriend. If not through the phone number, then through the figure.

This goes on and on, ad infinitum.

Look at the essential thing. Why do you want to create problems in the first place? Are there really problems? Have you asked the most essential question to yourself: Are there really problems, or are you creating them and you have become habituated to creating them and you keep their company and it feels lonely if there are no problems? You would even like to be miserable, but you would not like to be empty. People even cling to their miseries but are not ready to become empty.

I see it every day. A couple comes. Both have been fighting for years; they say fifteen years they have been fighting. Married for fifteen years, and continuously fighting and creating hell for each other. Then why don’t you separate? Why are you clinging to misery? Either change or separate. What is the point of wasting your whole life? But I can see what is happening. They are not ready to be alone. At least misery gives them company. And they don’t know now, if they separate, how they are going to manage their lives. They have become adjusted to a particular pattern of continuous conflict, anger, nagging, fight, violence. They have learned the trick of it. Now they don’t know how to be in another situation with somebody else with a different personality. How to be with somebody else? They don’t know anything else. They have learned a particular language of misery.

Now they feel skill, efficiency in it. To move with a new person again will be starting things from ABC. After fifteen years of remaining in a certain business one starts feeling afraid to move in another.

I have heard about a great film star who went to a psychiatrist and said, “I have no talent for music, no talent for acting. I am not a beautiful, handsome person. My face is ugly, my personality is very poor. What should I do?” And he is a famous actor.

So the psychiatrist said, “But why don’t you get out of acting? If you feel you don’t have any talent, no genius, and this is not the work you are meant to do, why don’t you get out of the work?”

He said, “What? After twenty years working in it; and I have almost become a famous star?”

You invest in your miseries also. Watch. When one problem drops just see, the real problem will shift immediately to something else. It is as if the snake goes on slipping out of the old skin but the snake remains. The “Why?” is the snake. It was concerning when you were crying. Now crying has stopped; you are laughing. The snake has slipped out of the old skin. Now the problem is “Why?”

Can’t you think of a life without any “Why?” Why do you make life a problem?

A man was talking to a Jew, and the man was feeling very annoyed by the Jewish habit of answering questions with other questions. Annoyed, the man finally said, “Why do you Jews go on answering questions with questions?”

Said the Jew, “Why not?”

People go on moving in a circle. “Why not?” Again a question.

Just look into it. If you are laughing, beautiful. In fact, if you ask me, even crying was beautiful; nothing was wrong in it. If you really ask me, then I will say accept whatsoever is. Accept the real, and then crying is also beautiful and there is no need to go into the inquiry of “Why?” Because that inquiry distracts you from the factual. Then crying is not important – why you are crying. Asking for the cause, then the real disappears and you go on chasing the cause, where it is. Where can you find the cause? How can you find the cause? You will have to go to the very beginning of the world, and there has never been any beginning.

Just see. To answer “Why?” ultimately you will have to go to the very beginning of the world. And there has never been any beginning. The world has been always and always and always.

No question is needed to live. And don’t wait for answers; start dropping questions. Live, live with the facts. Crying, cry. Enjoy it. It is a beautiful phenomenon, relaxing, cleansing, and purifying. Laughter is beautiful. Laugh. Let laughter take possession of you. Laugh, so your whole body throbs and pulsates with it. It will be purifying, it will be vitalizing, it will rejuvenate you.

But remain with the fact. Don’t move into causes. Remain with the existential. Don’t be bothered why it is so, because it cannot be answered. Buddha has said many times to his disciples, “Don’t ask questions, and at least not metaphysical ones, because they are foolish.” Just remain with the facticity.

Life is so tremendously beautiful, why not live it right now? Crying, it is a gesture of life.

Laughing is also a gesture of life. Sometimes you are sad. It is a gesture of life, a mood.

Beautiful. Sometimes you are happy and bubbling with joy and dancing. That too is good and beautiful. Whatsoever happens, accept it, welcome it, and remain with it; and you will see by and by you have dropped the habit of asking questions and creating problems out of life.

And when you don’t create problems, life opens all its mysteries. It never opens before a person who goes on asking questions. Life is ready to reveal itself to you if you don’t make a problem. If you make a problem, your very creation of the problem closes your eyes. You become aggressive to life.

That’s the difference between scientific effort and religious effort. The scientist is like an aggressive man, trying to snatch away truths from life, forcing life to deliver truths – almost with a gun, violently. A religious man is not with a gun standing before life and asking questions. A religious man simply relaxes with life, floats with it; and life reveals many things to the religious man that it is not ever going to reveal to the scientist. The scientist will always be gathering crumbs fallen from the table. The scientist is never going to be invited as a guest. Those who live life, welcome, accept it joyfully, with no question but with trust, they become the guests.