Buddha used to send his disciples to the cemetery, to stay there overnight – just to become more aware. Because when you are alone in a cemetery, you cannot fall asleep.
In fact there is no need to make any effort to be aware. Awareness comes easy. It is really beautiful; you should try it sometimes.
The clarity has to come to you in your inner quality of consciousness. “How? Why? What for? – Nothing is clear.” Absolutely beautiful. That’s how it should be.
And let me tell you one thing more, life exists for itself. It has no extrinsic value to it; it is intrinsic. Never ask the purpose of life, because you ask a wrong question, you ask an irrelevant question. Life is the ultimate; beyond it there is nothing. Life lives for itself. A rose is a rose is a rose – life lives for more life, more life lives for still more life. But there is no extrinsic value; you cannot answer why.
And you can see the point: if you can answer the “why” then again the question will arise.
If you say, “Life exists for God” – then why does God exist? What is the purpose of his being? And when the query has to stop somewhere, why start it in the first place? You say, “God created life”? – Then who created God? No, I don’t say that. I say God is life.
He has not created life; he is life.
So if you are an atheist there is no problem with me. Hmm?… you can drop the word “God.” It is only a linguistic question. If you like the word “God,” good. If you don’t like it, it’s very good. “Life” will do. Because I am not worried about words. I don’t argue about words. Who bothers about what you call that ultimate truth? Life, God, Allah, Ram, Krishna – or whatsoever catches your fancy – Jehovah, Tao; all these are words, indicating something so subtle that it is impossible to express it.
But if you ask me, “life” seems to be very, very beautiful. With “God” somehow you feel the smell of the church – and it is a bad odor; it is not good. With “life” suddenly the flowers, the trees, the birds…. Have you ever watched the reaction, the response in your mind? I say “God” – cathedrals arise, man-made things – priests, popes. Of course very dramatic, but a little ridiculous too – in their long, pretentious robes, crowns, hypocrisies.
I say “life” – no cathedral arises in your consciousness, no temple. Rivers flowing, flowers flowering, birds singing, the sun shining, children laughing and running, people making love, the sky, the earth. “Life” is really more beautiful, less corrupted. It has not fallen in the hands of priests; they have not been able to corrupt and destroy its beauty.
They have not been able to cut it into a shape – it has not yet been tailored. Life remains wild.
But I tell you, that’s what God is: absolutely wild.
Never ask why life is, because who is going to answer? There is nobody else other than life.
And don’t think that you have to live only when there is a purpose, otherwise how can you live. I don’t see the point. Flowers flower; they don’t know any “why.” And they flower beautifully. And I cannot conceive how if they are taught, “There is a purpose in your flowering,” they will flower better; I can’t see it. They will just flower the same way.
They have been doing their utter-most. Can you think cuckoos will be singing better if they are told what the purpose of singing is?
I always think that animals must be laughing at man. There must be many jokes about man prevalent among animals. Man must be a very odd, ridiculous phenomenon on the earth.
A flower goes on flowering – needs no purpose to flower – but you need a purpose. You can love somebody, but what is the purpose? Love needs any purpose? Then you will miss the whole thing. There are people who also love purposefully.
Life is not economics. It is intrinsically valuable. And once you understand this, a great, immense mutation happens to you. Then you simply breathe and breathing is so beautiful, so peaceful, so graceful. Then each moment becomes its own meaning; the meaning is not outgoing. Then you live this moment for itself. You sing because you love singing. You dance because it is so beautiful to dance. You love because there is nothing like love. If you ask the purpose, then you have a prostitute’s mind. The prostitute can love, but there is a purpose in it.
People who are always asking, “What is the purpose of life?” have a prostitute’s mind.
They cannot accept life as it is. They need something else to make it meaningful.
Just try to understand: each moment is enough unto itself; and each act is total unto itself; and whatsoever you do, the doing itself has a grandeur. Nothing else is needed.
And then suddenly you become free. Because a man who is purpose-oriented can never be free. Purpose is always in the future. You live today for something which is going to happen tomorrow. Who knows? You may die. Then you will live an unfulfilled life; and tomorrow again you will live for a future tomorrow because each tomorrow comes as a today and you have learned the wrong way, of sacrificing today for tomorrow.
If you have become addicted to the question of purpose, you will go on asking – whatsoever happens you will ask “What is the purpose of it?” People go to Osho and they say, “You tell us to meditate, but what is the purpose of it?” What purpose is needed to meditate? Meditation is so silent, so overflowing with bliss, no other purpose is needed. It is not a means to something else. It is an end unto itself.
“Hence what I am eating, what I am doing, what is happening all around – nothing seems to bother me.” You are becoming insensitive and dull. Don’t think this is religion. This is just slow suicide. You are poisoning your being. Become more alert, become more aware, become more sensitive. Because if you are not sensitive, life will go on passing you by and you will not be able to live it. You will remain untouched. Life will go on showering on you, and you will remain closed, you will not be open for it. God will go on giving to you, but you will not receive. Become more sensitive, more responsive. Be like a string of a veena. Hmm?… somebody just touches it, and what response. The string is alive. Don’t be loose, otherwise there will be no response. Of course don’t be too tight, otherwise you will be broken.
This is the whole art of religion: how to be balanced; how not to become lopsided. The strings of a veena have to remain in a perfect poise, in a perfect equanimity, in perfect balance – neither this way or nor that – just in the middle, exactly in the middle. You touch it – you have not even touched it – and it responds.
They say that if a veena has been fixed correctly, rightly by a master, and you put the veena in the corner of the room and you play on another veena, the veena in the corner will start responding to the other veena’s music. It responds because the throbbing, the vibration, the pulsation reaches to it also. When one veena starts a tremendously beautiful vibration, it reaches, it fills the whole room; and the other veena is waiting there, perfectly ready – neither too loose nor too tight – just in the middle; immediately those subtle vibrations hit it, without even being touched by a human hand it starts responding, it becomes alive. That’s the way to live.
Meditation is just to make you balanced, in the middle, tranquil, silent, happy; so when life comes to you…. And it is coming every moment. Millions are its gifts; you go on missing them because you are not ready. You are like a deaf person who is sitting and somebody is playing on the veena. You go on missing it.
I have heard about a great musician who had heard of Tansen, another great musician, that when Tansen used to play on his veena, animals would gather together to listen to him. He wanted to know the facticity of it. He went to the forest, and he started playing on his veena; by and by, animals started coming. A great crowd gathered – the elephant, the zebra, the tiger, the leopard, the foxes, the wolves – all sorts of animals, small and big; and they were enchanted, hypnotized. And then suddenly a crocodile came and jumped on the musician and gulped him in one bite. All the animals were very angry; they said “What is this nonsense?” The crocodile cupped his ear and said, “What? What are you saying?”
The crocodile was deaf. Don’t be deaf, don’t be blind. Be alive, responsive.
God is knocking on your door every moment. If you become insensitive you will not hear the knock. Jesus says, “Knock, and the door shall be opened unto you.” I say to you there is no need for you to knock – God is knocking on the door. Listen. In fact God is seeking you from everywhere. The search is not one sided, that only you are searching; he is also seeking you. But you have to become available.
And this is no way to become available.
Osho shared – “Since my very childhood, whenever I saw a dead body, always the thought flashed to me that if death is to come then what is the sense in living.” That’s why there is sense in living – because death is to come. If there was going to be no death and you were going to be here forever, forever, and forever, just think what will happen. You will be bored to death. You will start praying for death.
There is a beautiful story about Alexander the Great. When he came to India, he came for many reasons – to conquer India, to meet the wise men of India; and to find a certain well about which he had heard that if you drink the water of it, you become immortal. I don’t know how far the story is true, I cannot vouch for it, but it is beautiful. And a story has to be beautiful to be true; there is no other truth except beauty. He travelled and he asked many wise men, and finally he found the well. But he was surprised because the people who guided him were not much interested in it. That was something unbelievable.
And the last man, who took him exactly to the well, was not even interested to wait there.
Alexander asked, “Are you not interested in eternal life? Don’t you want to be immortal?”
The man laughed; he said, “I have learned much about life. The desire arises in childish minds. But fulfill it.”
There was a staircase going into the well. He went inside. He was just going to drink the water when a crow who was sitting there said, “Wait! Listen a minute. Don’t do that foolishness. I have done it. Now I am suffering because I cannot die. I have lived for many thousands of years. Now the only prayer in my heart is: God, help me to die. And I have been seeking wise men and asking them, ‘Is there some well which can function as an antidote to this foolishness?’ I am a foolish crow, so I committed this thing. Please, think again: you will never be able to die then.”
It is said Alexander thought it over and escaped from the well immediately because there was every possibility that he may get tempted. He didn’t drink.
Just think if there was no death. Life will lose much. Without the polarity, everything becomes dull, hopeless. It is as if there is just the day and there is no night to rest – and the day, and the day, and the day… and scorching heat, and nowhere to hide, nowhere to dissolve into the darkness, nowhere to forget oneself into oblivion. It will be difficult, it will be very arduous, and pointless. Rest is needed. Death is rest.
So if you have seen dead bodies being taken to the cemetery or off to the funeral ground, you have not seen much. And if you thought that now life is meaningless, then you have missed the point. Seeing a dead body, remember, death is coming. Use this opportunity to be alive as intensely as possible. Then there is rest. Earn the rest!
And this is one of the things I would like to tell you: if you don’t live well, you will not die well. Your death will also be just dull. It will not have any flame in it, it will not be beautiful. If you live intensely, you die intensely. If you live happily, you die happily.
The taste of your life is carried to the peak by your death. Death is a culmination, crescendo. If you have been singing a beautiful song, then death is the crescendo, the highest peak.
Death is not against life. Death is a background. It makes life richer. It makes life more alive. It gives contrast.
“Since those very days of my childhood, a sort of non interest has surrounded my whole pattern of life, and probably that might be the reason why I got interested in religion and could reach you.” Maybe. That may be the reason why you could reach me, but now that will be the reason you will not be able to understand me. It has brought you to my door, but it will not bring you to my heart.
Now please drop that, because here I am teaching life. Of course I am teaching death also, but my death is a beautiful truth and your life is an ugly fact. I am teaching you an alchemical magic: how to transform even death into a beautiful experience. Of course life will become more beautiful when even death has become beautiful. How to transmute the baser metals into gold, that’s what I am teaching here.
Maybe you have come here because of these ideas of yours, but now drop them; otherwise they will be barriers between me and you.
Tags: Life Remains Wild Patanjali
