Sadhana Is A Deep Understanding

We will have a few questions from Yoga Sutra 45.

Question to Osho – I WAS DOING SADHANA UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF SOME OTHER TEACHER. AT THAT TIME I HAD NO PROBLEM OF SEX. BUT TENSIONS EXISTED THERE IN MY MIND.

AFTER COMING TO YOUR SHELTER TENSIONS HAVE DISAPPEARED BUT A NEW PROBLEM OF SEX HAS ARISEN. DUE TO SEX A NEW TENSION HAS STARTED.

WHAT TO DO IN THIS STATE? PLEASE GUIDE ME.

Once you take anything as a problem, it becomes impossible to solve it. No problem as such can be solved. If you see deeply in any problem – without accepting it as a problem – the solution surfaces itself. So the first thing to be learned is to drop the old habit of looking at things as if they are problems. You make them problems.

For example, sex. It is not a problem at all. If it is a problem, then you can turn anything into a problem. You can turn breathing into a problem. Once you look at breathing as a problem, you will start asking how to get rid of it. You will become afraid of breathing.

Sex is not a problem. Sex is a simple, pure energy. But living with some teacher you have been conditioned because almost ninety-nine percent of teachers take sex as a problem.

They are not teachers in fact. They have not solved anything in their own life. They are as much in trouble as you are. They have as much neurosis as you have.

A man of insight has no problems; and a man of insight never helps anybody else to have a problem.

I cannot solve your problem if you have the mechanism to create it, but I can give you my insight to see through and through, to see more transparently, with more clarity and perception.

So the first thing to be considered: why you call sex a problem. What is problematic in it?

If sex is a problem, then why isn’t food a problem? If sex is a problem, then why isn’t breathing a problem? If sex is a problem, then why, anything can be converted into a problem. You just need to look that way, and it becomes a problem.

In different cultures, different societies, different things are thought to be problematic. If you have been brought up under the influence of Freud, then sex is not a problem at all.

Then not being sexual will become a problem. That has become a problem to many Westerners.

One woman came to me, must be about sixty-five, and she said, “Osho, my sex desire is disappearing. Help me.” Because if you have been influenced by Freud too much, then sex is almost equivalent to life. If the sex desire is disappearing, you are dying, then death is very dose by. So to the very end, on the death bed also, you have to remain sexual beings, you have to force yourself to be sexual beings.

This is altogether a new problem – particularly for Indians, who cannot think of it as a problem. If it happens to them, they will go to the temple and thank God. Even when they are young, if the sex desire disappears, they will be very, very happy, tremendously happy. God has been very helpful; the problem is solved. But the problem may not be solved; they may be simply getting impotent.

The problem arises because of a certain outlook. The problem is not a problem in itself; it depends on your outlook. If you are a Westerner, then drinking alcoholic beverages is not a problem. Simple, like any drink – Coca-Cola or Fanta. If you are a German, beer is simply water. No problem in it. But if you are an Indian, then the difficulty arises. Even COCA-COLA is a problem. Gandhi will not allow you to drink COCA-COLA. He had prohibited tea in his ashram. Tea! It became a problem to him because it has some quantity of caffeine in it. For Buddhists tea has never been a problem. It has been almost a religious ritual in Japan, in China.

A Buddhist monk starts his life with tea. In the early morning, before he goes to meditate, he takes tea. After he has meditated he takes tea, and takes it in such a religious way, with such grace and dignity. It has never been thought of as a problem; in fact Buddhists discovered it. Legendarily it is connected with Bodhidharma.

Bodhidharma is thought to have discovered tea. He used to live on a hillside. The mountain’s name was Ta, and because the tea was first discovered there, that’s why it is called ta, tea, cha, chai – they are all derivations from Ta. And why did Bodhidharma discover it, and how did he discover it?

He was trying to attain a point of absolute awareness. It is difficult. You can live without food for many days, but without sleep? – And he was trying not to allow any sleep. After a period – seven, eight days – suddenly he felt sleep coming. He tore away his eyelids and threw them, so there would be no problem anymore. It is said those eyelids fell into the ground, sprouted as tea. That’s why tea helps awareness; if you drink too much tea in the night you will not be able to sleep. And because the whole Buddhist mind is how to attain to a point where sleep does not interfere and you can remain perfectly aware, of course tea became almost a sacred thing, the holiest of the holies.

In Japan they have small houses in the monasteries – teahouses. When they go to a tea-house, they go as if somebody is going to church or to the temple. They take a bath; they wear new fresh clothes; they leave their shoes outside; they move in silence, in grace; they sit…. And it is a long ritual. It is not just that you go and take a cup of tea and drink and you are gone, not in such a hurry. Gods have to be treated well, and tea is a god, god of awareness. So they will sit silently, and the kettle will go on singing its song, and first they will listen to it. Now they are preparing. They will meditate on the singing kettle.

Then the cups and saucers will be given to them. They will touch the cups and saucers, look at them, because they are pieces of art. And nobody likes to use cups and saucers purchased from the market. Every monastery makes its own. Rich people make their own. Poor people, if they cannot afford to make their own, purchase them from the market, break them, reglue them; they become perfectly unique then.

Then the tea is poured. And everybody is in a deep, receptive, meditative mood, breathing slow and deep. And then the tea is drunk, as if something divine is descending in you.

Now Mahatma Gandhi cannot think of this. In his ashram tea was not allowed; tea was on the blacklist. It depends on your attitude.

What I would like to tell you is that it is up to you how many problems you want to create. Drop as many as possible. The fewer problems you have, the better, because then, if you cannot drop those few, if they are not really because of your attitude but are intrinsic to life; then they can be solved.

I have heard, one man went to his psychiatrist:

The poor man had big bags under his eyes; he looked very tired. “I dream every single night, doctor,” he told his physician. “Last night it was terrible! I was in a big plane, I had my parachute on, we were climbing up to forty thousand feet from where I was going to jump to establish a new altitude record. We got to forty thousand feet – I opened the door – I took one step forward – I pulled the ripcord – what do you think happened?”

The doctor said, “I have no idea.”

The man said, “My pajamas fell down!”

Now is this a problem? When you are forty thousand feet above the earth, is this a problem? The whole life is at stake? And that too in a dream!

And one is feeling tired. I heard, on a park bench, two beggars were sitting and talking. I was just passing by. One beggar said, “I dreamt that I got a good job.” The other said, “Yes, you look tired.”

Drop nonsense. Sex is not a problem. Sex is your life energy. Accept it. If you accept, it can be transformed. If you reject, you will be in a mess. If you fight with it, with whom are you fighting? Just think: with yourself – half/half, divided. You are fighting with yourself; of course you will be more and more crippled. Never fight with yourself.

Sadhana is not a conflict, it is not a struggle. Sadhana is a deep understanding, a transformation, an awareness, in which you start loving, accepting yourself, and getting higher and higher – through understanding. Nothing is to be excluded from your being.

Everything is as it should be. It has to be used for a higher harmony, that’s all. The veena is not to be thrown. If you cannot play it, learn how to play. Nothing is wrong with the veena. If you cannot play and you do play on the veena, of course you create mad noise.

The neighbors will go and report you to the police station. Your wife will immediately give you a divorce. Your children will become nervous. And you yourself will be in a mess because if you don’t know how to play a veena, how to play on a musical instrument, hmm? You will get more and more discordant in yourself. But nothing is wrong with the veena, remember. You don’t know how to play it.

Sex energy is a tremendous energy. You don’t know how to play with it. And you have been taught for centuries to be against it. Just see what your religious people have done to the world. They have been teaching against sex and sex becomes more and more important because of their teachings. The whole world is almost neurotically sexual. A few are indulging in it as if there is nothing else in life, and a few are escaping from it as if there is nothing else in life. A few are just escaping and a few are just fighting. Both are wasting their lives.

This is some great energy, a gift of God. Many treasures are hidden in it. It has to be learned, the book has to be opened, one has to go into it, it has to be studied deeply, understood deeply. The key to infinite life is there.

Now that you have come to me, I go on insisting for understanding. A certain intellectual understanding arises. But the old conditioning goes on and on. It is not that only in this life you have been conditioned; for centuries, for many lives, you have been conditioned.

That conditioning has become almost second nature to you. The very word “sex,” and something gets restless within you. The very word creates a reaction inside you. It is difficult to talk about it without any passion. Difficult to talk about it objectively.

Difficult to talk about it scientifically. Either this way or that you become passionately involved in it.

Drop all ideas, prejudices. Just look at the facticity; of it. You are born of sex energy.

Your mother and father were not praying when you were born. They were making love.

And they were not in a church or in a temple. You never think about it; people avoid such things. It will be difficult for you to conceive that your father and mother were making love. Impossible. It is other people – dirty people – who make love. Your father and mother? Never. That’s why so many stories have been prevalent all over the world. A child is born, and other children ask, “From where?” You have to give them false answers – the stork, or the bush, or gods have dropped it from the kitchen chimney.

I have heard, the mother was pregnant and the grandmother was worried about the little child because sooner or later he would ask. So she wanted to prepare him. She took him aside and told him, “Do you know, your mother is going to be presented again with a great gift from God. It will come in a bundle and it will be dropped from the chimney hole in the night when everybody will be asleep.”

The boy said, “It’s okay, but let me tell you one thing. Don’t let God drop the bundle too loudly because my mother is pregnant. She may be disturbed in the night too much. Let it be with the least noise possible.”

Stories have been invented to avoid sex. It is difficult to talk to children about how a child is born, and this is the beginning of falsity, the beginning of hypocrisy. Sooner or later the child will discover it, and then he will also discover that the mother and the father have been telling lies. For what? Why have they been hiding such a vital fact? And if they are untrue about such a vital fact, what about other things? Once the doubt arises in the mind of a small child, that he has been deceived, he loses the capacity to trust.

And then you go on telling him to trust in God the Father who has made us all, who is there in heaven – and he cannot believe in the real father who is in the house, who is a deceiver. How can he believe in the Father, God the Father? Impossible?

No, here listening to me you will have to come to an understanding of life as it is. I am not theorizing about it. I am not interested in any speculative business. I am simply giving you facts. And those are simple because you can listen to them.