Category Archives: Osho on Zorba the Buddha/The New Man

May 3, 2013 · 3:01 pm

Buddha and the Beast – Osho

What exactly is man?

Man is a mere perhaps, a possibility, a potential, a becoming, a longing. Man is not yet. Man has to be. That’s the agony of man, and the ecstasy too. The beast is – there is no growth possible. It is a finished product. There is no possibility to seek and search and be. Hence, there is no freedom. The beast is in absolute bondage. The beast lives and dies without knowing that he lives and dies. The beast is, but knows not that he is.

Man is and KNOWS that he is, but knows not WHO he is. Man is a constant process. Something is always happening, is always on the verge of happening. Man is an excitement, an adventure, a pilgrimage.

No beast can ever miss its destiny. It is always predetermined. The beast has an absolute fate.

Nothing is going to be otherwise. The beast is pre-programmed. Man has no pre-programme but is just an opening. A thousand and one things are possible. Hence the anxiety: “To be this or to be that? To go to the east or to the west? To live this way or to live that way? And what is right? And what is going to fulfill me?”

Each moment man has to decide. And, obviously, when you decide, there is trembling. You can always go wrong. In fact, the possibilities to go wrong are more. Out of one thousand and one ways, only one will be right. Hence great trepidation, anguish: “Am I going to make it? Am I going to succeed in being myself? Or is it just going to be a long futile effort, and in the end frustration and failure? Will I be able to know life abundant? Will THIS life become a foundation for a greater life to come? Or is there nothing but death? Is there only the grave in the end, or something more?”

Man is an open being. EVERYTHING is possible, but NOTHING is certain. The beast is absolutely certain. It has a definition. Man has no definition. So when you ask me: What exactly is man? You ask me a wrong question. Man is nothing exactly. He is just a vague longing, a very, very vague dream of things to be, of things which may be possible, may not be possible. Man is a hesitation. Each moment man is gripped by hesitation, because any single step gone wrong will destroy your whole life. Man can lose. No beast can ever lose. But because man can lose, man can gain too. They both come together. Man can grow – man is growth. The mere perhaps can become actual. The potential can be transformed into reality. The seed can become a flowering. That which is just unmanifest can be manifested, and then there will be great splendor, great benediction.

The Buddha is, knows that he is, and also knows who he is. These are the three states of growth: the beast, the man, the Buddha. The beast has only one dimension – he IS, he exists, utterly unaware that he exists. Hence he cannot think of death.

Death is not a problem for the beast. Death can only become a problem when you know that you are. With that very knowing the fear arises that someday you may not be – because there was a time when you were not, there will again be a time when you will not be. Your existence is momentary. You can disappear any moment. You will disappear someday. Death is bound to happen. It is only man who knows about death.

That’s why man creates religion. Religion is man’s response to the possibility of death. It’s man’s effort to conquer death. No animal is religious, cannot be. Without the awareness of death religion has no possibility. But before you can become aware of death, you will have to become aware that you are. That’s a basic requirement.

So man knows he is – and also becomes aware and apprehensive that any moment he will not be. Time is short. For the beast time is non-existential, time is not. The beast lives in a timeless world. Each moment. Neither thinking of the past, nor imagining about the future.

Man cannot live in the present. He thinks of the past and all the nostalgia, days that were golden and are no more and thinks, imagines, fantasizes about the future – days as they should be.

Man lives in the past and in the future. The beasts live only in the present. But they are not aware that this is the present. They cannot be aware of the present. Only one who is aware of past and future can be aware of the present, because the present is sandwiched between past and future.

The animals have no anxiety. The memory does not disturb them, and imaginations don’t stir their hearts. They are simple. Existence has no complexity for them. When they live, they live; when they die, they die. They are innocent. Time has not entered to corrupt their being.

But man lives in time, is aware that he is, but is not aware who he is. And that becomes a great problem: Who am l? This is the fundamental question that any man can ask. Out of this fundamental question is all philosophy, all religion, all poetry, all art – different ways of raising the question: Who am l? different ways of answering it. But the question is one: Who am l?

If you try to understand man’s life, you will see this single question persisting. Yes, the man who is mad after money is also trying to answer the question: Who am l? By having money, he thinks that he will know who he is – he will know he is a rich man. He will have a certain identity. The man who is searching for power is basically trying to answer the question: Who am I? By becoming a prime minister of a country he will know: I am the prime minister.

But these answers are superficial and are not going to satisfy really. They can satisfy only the mediocre. They cannot satisfy the really intelligent person. Even when you have become very rich, your intelligence will go on persisting, asking, “Who are you? Yes, you have money, but who are you? You are not the money – you cannot be that which you possess. Who is this possessor? Yes, you have become the prime minister of a country, but that is just a function, that is not your being. Who are you? Who is this person who was not a prime minister and is now a prime minister, and tomorrow may not be again? This prime-ministership is just an episode – in whose life?”

The question persists. It can’t be answered by these superficial efforts and endeavors. But basically man is trim to do that. He becomes a husband, he becomes a mother, father, this and that… but the basic urge is somehow to have a certain identity: “I am the wife, I am the husband, I am the father, I am the mother.” Still you have not answered the question. Your being a mother or your being a father is just accidental, on the surface. Your innermost core remains untouched.

This is not real identity. This is a pseudo identity. The child will die – then who are you? Then you are not the mother. The husband may leave – then who are you? Then you are no more a wife.

These identities are very fragile, and man lives constantly in the crisis of identity. He tries hard to fix some definition around himself, but they go on slipping out of his hands.

Only the religious person really asks the question, and asks in the right direction.

The Buddha exists just like the beast. The Buddha knows just like man that he is. But a third dimension has opened: he knows who he is – he has come to see his innermost being. He has not searched for the identity in the outside world, because there can’t be any identity. How can it be in the outside world? You ARE your inferiority, you ARE your inwardness, you ARE your subjectivity – how can you know it through objects?

You may have a beautiful house, but it is outside. You may have beautiful art, paintings, antique art works, but they are outside! They can’t define you. You remain undefined by them. One day the house is on fire and all your identity is burnt, and. you are standing on the road, again puzzled: “Who am I?”

That’s why people commit suicide. If their money is gone, if they become bankrupt, they commit suicide. Why do they commit suicide? One wonders – why? Money can be earned again…. Look deep into them – that was their identity. They had believed long that “This is me.” Now all that bank balance is gone. Again the problem arises: Who am l? And they wasted their whole life in creating that bank balance. Now they are not ready to go into that effort again. It is too much. They have utterly failed.

In fact, by being bankrupt the suicide has already happened! Their identity is gone. They no longer know now who they are. Their face has disappeared. How can they live without a face? Your woman dies whom you had loved… and you commit suicide, or you start thinking of committing suicide! Because that woman was your identity. Now you are left alone, empty. And to start from the very beginning, from scratch, seems to be too much. It is better to finish this whole thing.

These are the three stages. And when I say the beast, there are many men who are like the beast. They are – they are not even aware that they are. They live mechanically. There are many people who are men – they know they are, but they don’t know who they are. And there are only few and far between, those rare people, who know who they are. They become three dimensional.

Man is a bridge between the beast and the Buddha. Remember, man is a bridge. Don’t make your house on the bridge; the bridge is not meant for that. The bridge has to be crossed. Don’t remain a man, otherwise you will remain in anxiety and anguish – because man is not a place to stay and abide. It is a passage to be passed. It is a ladder! You cannot stay on the ladder. It is only a link from one point to another point.

The beast is, and is in a certain state of contentment. No anxiety, no fear, no death, no ambition, no longing; utterly calm and quiet, but unaware, unconscious. The Buddha is again contented, utterly at peace, at home; has arrived, the journey is finished. There is nowhere to go, he has attained. Between these two is man: half-beast, half-Buddha. Hence the tension: one part moving backwards, one part moving forwards.

Man is torn apart.

Let me repeat: Man is not a being yet. Man has lost one kind of being – the being of a beast. And man has not yet attained another kind of being – the being of a Buddha. And man is constantly moving between these two beings, between these two banks.

You cannot go back, because in existence there is no backward movement. You cannot go back in time; time has only one dimension: it flows forward. You can go only forward. Don’t waste your time in thinking that you can also be a beast and can live like a beast: eat, drink and be merry. It is not possible for a human being. He will have to think, he will have to contemplate. He cannot afford non-thinking. And it is very risky to do that, because then you will be stuck and you will become a pool of dirty water. Your freshness, your aliveness is possible only if you go on flowing and flowing till you reach the ocean. That ocean I am calling the Buddha – the Buddha state of consciousness.

Man HAS to become a Buddha. Create that intense desire, that intense longing, to become a

Buddha. Be in a passionate search for it. Put ALL the energy that you have! Become aflame with that longing… and you can become a Buddha. And the day you become a Buddha, you have become a being again – and a being on a higher level, on the highest Level. There is nothing higher than that.

You ask me: What exactly is man?

As man, man is nothing exact – just a vague phenomenon, cloudy, foggy. Man is not exact because he is a crowd. Man is many men; hence he is foggy. The unity is missing. You don’t have the center – the center arises only through consciousness. Man simply lives like a driftwood.

That’s why I say man is a mere perhaps, a bewildering paradox, an absurd being. He is and he is not. He is an in-between. He is the only animal that can make a fool of himself. No animals can make fools of themselves – only man, because man has the capacity to become wise.

If you don’t grow into wisdom, you will behave like a fool. That’s what the majority of the people in the world ARE doing. If you watch from a detached viewpoint, you will be surprised how people are living… in such a mess, in such confusion, in such madness. How are they moving? They are not moving at all – they are jogging on the same place.

And if you watch man, you will be surprised: it is very rare to come across a wise man. Fools and fools… fools abound. But remember: no other animal can behave like a fool. Have you seen a dog behaving like a fool? Never. Because they cannot be wise they cannot be took. Both the possibilities arise simultaneously.

Watch yourself. Watch your foolishnesses. Be constantly alert about what you are doing with your life. It is a precious life. It is of such value that you cannot measure, you cannot evaluate it. But because it is given to you as a gift, you don’t appreciate its value. Because it has been just a blessing from God, you have taken it for granted. This is foolish! Don’t take it for granted. This is an opportunity to grow.

And you have to answer to God for what you did with your life. Have you come the same as you had gone? Or even worse? Think of this, that man is answerable. And unless you are a Buddha you will not be able to answer. Because to be a Buddha is to be a God – and that is your intrinsic possibility. And unless you are a God, you will not feel contented.

And only then will you know what exactly you are. Right now, you are nothing, a mere perhaps.

-Osho

From The Perfect Master, Vol. 1, Chapter Ten

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available online from Amazon.com and in the U.S. from OshoStore-Sedona and Osho Here and Now.

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August 21, 2012 · 2:11 pm

The Door of Enlightenment – Osho

Enlightenment is only the beginning; there is infinity to go for.

Enlightenment is only a door, and then there is an unending existence, an unending evolution, expansion.

The people who are unconscious, for them enlightenment is the goal; they are not aware of the fact that enlightenment is only a door. Once you have reached it, then a new kind of pilgrimage starts. Up to this door, you were an entity. Beyond this door, you will not be an entity. You will be just pure consciousness without a body, without a mind; you will be just a fragrance which will go on spreading all over existence.

And the fragrance is luminous. It is full of awareness. It knows itself and it knows the whole existence around it — not as separate, but part, a kind of at-onement. It is the universe, and the universe is it; there is no division, no duality.

Now the observer becomes the observed; the seer becomes the seen. He is both. It is difficult to explain to people who have not even thought about the door, whose lives go on like sleepwalkers, somnambulists. They live, but at the very minimum level without any intensity, without any totality.

And this calamity has happened because of a few vested interests; the priest, the politician, all those who have been in power. They never wanted man to be awake, because if humanity consists of awakened individuals, there is not going to be any Christianity. There is not going to be any Hinduism. There is not going to be any American, and Russian, any German. There is not going to be the white man and the black man; there is not going to be man the superior and woman the inferior. All these stupidities will disappear.

For the awakened man, the whole existence is one. Not only this earth, but now he is joined with the stars, too. And in his vision the smallest blade of grass is as significant and important to existence as the biggest star millions of light years away.

The priest does not want people to be awake because they can be exploited only when they are asleep. The politician does not want people to be awake; otherwise, they will not be democrats, republicans, socialists and communists.

They will be individuals intelligent and conscious enough to decide for themselves. They will not need parties and religions and cults and all their struggles and squabbles.

The vested interests have kept man almost drugged. I don’t agree with Karl Marx on any other point, but on one point I absolutely agree with him — religion is the opium of the people. On that point also I have my reservations.

First, he was only aware of Western religions: Judaism — he was a Jew; Christianity — which is an offshoot of Judaism; and a little bit of Islam — that, too, is an offshoot of Judaism. He had no knowledge about the Eastern religions: Buddhism, Jainism, Tao, Zen. They were unknown dimensions to him.

Secondly, he was not aware he could not be aware, of me and my people – we were not yet there — and a totally new quality of religion which I call religiousness. Not religion, but religiousness; no God, but godliness. I change every noun, every pronoun into a verb because existence is a verb, it is not a noun. It is continuously growing, flowing, expanding.

Now physicists say that the stars you see in the night are continuously running farther away from the center. We don’t know where the center is; we don’t know where they are going, and the speed is immense — 186,000 miles per second. With that speed, although the stars are going farther and farther away, this continuous growth needs not static things but growing things.

That’s why you will find so many contradictions in me. I have never stopped anywhere. I have been going in absolute tune with existence, wherever it leads. And if it contradicts my yesterdays, it is perfectly okay. They are dead anyway.

I am happy that I am in tune in the present moment. I am happy that I know the secret of being in the present, because time has no other tense. It is always now. And once you know the secret of being in the now, you have known the greatest mystery of existence.

But the people who are in power would like human beings to remain involved and occupied with very stupid things — communism, socialism, this party, that party, Christianity, Hinduism. The people are burdened with their own problems. They, too, are mostly created.

For example, marriage is a problem created by the priests. It is unnatural, it has not happened naturally. Now the man is being nagged by the wife; the wife is being continuously put down by the man. Then there are children. And the Pope and Mother Teresa go on telling people that these children are sent by God, so don’t use any birth control methods — that’s sin.

So people have dozens of children, thousands of worries. How to bring them up? How to educate them? We have made a world for human beings so difficult, and on top of it there is hell. If you just slip a little bit, you fall into eternal hell, for small things. And there is paradise luring you with all those things every religion condemns here on earth. And the saints are enjoying all those things there.

I have heard a story of a Zen Master. He was always teaching his disciples that celibacy is categorical. Without it, you cannot enter into nirvana, the kingdom of God. The poor disciples were trying hard to be celibate. It is really doing something unnatural, almost impossible. They were all feeling guilty. And then the Master died. His last words were, “Remember celibacy is the foundation of religion.”

After a few days, one of the disciples died, and the moment he entered paradise he was so full of joy that now he would be meeting his Master. He had been with the Master for thirty, forty years.

He saw the Master sitting by the bank of a beautiful river under the shadow of a very huge and ancient tree, with a beautiful naked woman sitting in his lap. The disciple could not believe his eyes. Still just out of old habit, he fell in the Master’s feet and asked, “What is happening? What happened to celibacy?” The Master said, “You will always remain an idiot! This is the reward for all my celibacy. Now I can enjoy as many women as I want, and here no woman grows old, no woman perspires, no woman has menstrual periods. You cannot improve upon the women that are available here. Their very body is fragrant; they don’t use French perfumes.” But the poor disciple was at a loss. It was such a shock.

This is the situation of all the religions. All the things that they deny to people here, they will give a million times more as a reward in paradise. Naturally, the poor human being is pulled: To be, or not to be? To enjoy a woman here or to wait just a few years more and enjoy as many women as you want for eternity. No marriage happens in heaven; all marriages happen in the churches. And they say that marriage is made in heaven, but in heaven there are no couples, only individuals.

The poor man is pulled apart. His fear of hell represses him; his greed for heaven represses him. With so many problems of day to day living he has no time to think of enlightenment. He has no time to think that there is anything more than this miserable world.

And this is a created situation, because only in such a situation can you keep them enslaved. You can send them to Vietnam to kill innocent people without any hate. You can send your pilots to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki within seconds without any feeling. You have turned people into robots. Millions of people around the earth are in the armies, just functioning like robots. And those who are not in the armies are also imprisoned in some kind of social, political, religious ideology. It is so difficult to find an individual who is clean, completely clean.

And that’s my whole effort: to create a complete clean human being, unburdened of the past, unburdened of any guilt, unburdened of fear and greed, unburdened of politicians and priests. Just clean, so clean that he becomes a mirror. And in that mirror, you see for the first time where the door is. In that mirror, the door reflects.

Just as our eyes are mirrors in which things reflect — we find where the table is and where the chair is because our two eyes are mirroring things around us — when a man is completely clean, silent, serene, his inner being becomes a mirror and the inward door that was always there is reflected in it. And the magnetism of the door is such that once one has seen it, there is no way to escape from it.

You start moving toward that door the way a moth moves toward a flame knowing perfectly that coming closer to the flame he is going to be burned, he is going to die. But some strange attraction, the moth is ready to die.

The same is the situation when you see the door of enlightenment for the first time. You become the moth and the door becomes the flame. You know you are going to die; but at the same time you know that you are going to be reborn on the other side.

This is resurrection.

-Osho

Excerpt from The Last Testament, Vol. 1, Chapter 20

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available online from Amazon.com and in the U.S. from OshoStore-Sedona and Osho Here and Now.

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July 9, 2012 · 5:09 pm

Go Beyond Through Experiencing – Osho

Is the quality and expression of one’s enlightenment richer, deeper and more creative if one allows oneself to complete one’s worldly trips, rather than dropping them in the name of spirituality?

Certainly! How can you drop if you have not lived your life totally? If you have not known sex, how can you drop it? It will linger, it will surround you in subtle ways; it will become an undercurrent in your unconscious. How can you drop anger if you have not lived it?

Nothing can be dropped without experiencing it in totality. Only total experience helps you to go beyond.

The spirituality that comes without experiencing life is impotent. That is the difference that I want to bring to your consciousness. That kind of spirituality has existed on the earth down the ages… and that’s why man is so ugly. It is because of that kind of spirituality. It has made you repressed; it has not transformed you. It was against this, against that – against everything! It was against life, it was anti-life. It has not allowed you to live your life joyously – to see, to feel, to experience, and to go beyond through experiencing.

Knowledge liberates – not the knowledge that you gather from scriptures, but the knowledge that comes through experience. You become angry again and again and again… and you start feeling the foolishness of it, the utter ridiculousness of it, the poisonousness of it, the destructiveness of it. One day the fruit is ripe – not that you decide: ”I will never be angry” – but just the fruit is ripe and it falls of its own accord. And anger disappears as if it had never existed in you; it simply evaporates.

Live your life. Live a life of variety, a multi-dimensional life, and you will be richer. And, naturally, when a man has lived in all the dimensions of his life and comes to enlightenment, his experience is going to be richer. At least his expression is going to be richer.

And finally: you can only come to enlightenment when you have lived truly. Those who think that they have come to enlightenment without living life are only deceiving themselves and nobody else. They are carrying the whole world in them – unlived, it remains there. Seeds they are carrying.

Patanjali divides samadhi, enlightenment, into two types: samadhi with seed and samadhi without seed. What he calls sabeej samadhi – samadhi with seed – is when you have not lived and subtle desires are still hankering to be fulfilled. You have repressed the seed but it is there, and it will assert itself when the right season arrives. When the spring comes, it may start sprouting again.

You can repress your sex for your whole life, but even at the moment of death it may assert itself.

Repression is not revolution. Revolution is through experience. Maturity is through experience.

Enlightenment is ultimate maturity, beyond which there is none else. How can you find a shortcut to it? – there is none. You have to go through the whole life… tasting its sweetness and its bitterness, feeling its agonies and its ecstasies, watching its ups and downs, the sunlit peaks and the dark nights in the valley, the sadness and the joy of it – all has to be lived.

You have to be a sinner and a saint! One who is only a saint is a poor saint, and one who is only a sinner is a poor sinner – you have to be saintsinner or sinnersaint. You have to live all that God makes available to you. You have to live it unconditionally. And then one day… the quantum leap, the enlightenment.

-Osho

Excerpt from Walk Without Feet, Fly Without Wings and Think Without Mind, Chapter Four  

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

An audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available online from Amazon.com and in the U.S. from OshoStore-Sedona and Osho Here and Now.

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June 9, 2012 · 3:31 pm

Last Breath of the Old – Osho

There seems to be a resurgence of conservatism, not only in politics but in people’s search for inner strength, for truth, peace. Groups such as the Moral Majority appear to be gaining ground, strengthening their influence. What is the driving force behind this resurgence?

How does it conflict or differ from your teachings?

It always happens, whenever society comes to a point of revolution, the conservative forces have resurgence; for the simple reason — to prevent the revolution that is oncoming. It is a defense measure. But in fact, it is an acceptance of defeat.

Conservative forces either in politics or in religion remain silent when they are certain that nothing is going to overthrow them. But when they see the danger, they collect all their energies to prevent any rebellion, any change, any transformation; so it is a good sign. It is just like at the time of death it happens always that the person simply becomes perfectly healthy. All diseases disappear. It is the last effort of his life energy. He risks everything because death is so close. Now he cannot be moderate. Before a candle dies, the flame of the candle burns the brightest. It is a natural phenomenon.

You are asking me, “Why it is happening?” It is happening because man is at the very door where either he has to die or to transform. You will see this resurgence all over the world. But this is a resurgence that certifies the victory of the revolution. The old society is at the point of death. Before dying it will make its last effort to survive. But a last effort is a last effort. It cannot survive.

And you are asking me how I see it in reference to my ideology. I rejoice, because I can see the death, and I can see the conservative forces resurging with great energy. To me, it is a rejoicing, a moment of celebration. The new is going to happen very soon; the old is having its last breath.

-Osho

Excerpt from The Last Testament, Vol. 5, Chapter 21

An interview with Kathy Gannon, Foto Press, January 14, 1986, Kathmandu, Nepal.

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Many of Osho’s books are available online from Amazon.com and in the U.S. from OshoStore-Sedona and Osho Here and Now.

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January 24, 2012 · 4:24 pm

How Can I Become The New Man – Osho

How can I become the New Man that you speak about?

Bhagwato, Jesus says: Unless you are born again you will not enter into my kingdom of God. Exactly that’s what I say to you: Unless you are born again….

There are two births. One is given to you by your parents; that is a physical birth. That is only an opportunity for the second birth. If you think that the first birth is all, you have missed the whole point. The first birth is only a seed. It is of immense value if the second happens; it is of no value at all if you miss the second birth. You have to be twice-born. That’s how we have defined the buddhas in the East.

The second birth has to happen within you; it is of consciousness. It is not of your body, it is not even of your mind; it is of awareness.

Ordinarily, the first birth makes you only a machine. You start living in a very superficial way; you don’t have any depth, you don’t have any soul yet. You eat, you drink, you work, you sleep, but all like a robot. You don’t see the beauty of existence — you can’t see it. You don’t see the godliness of every moment; it is impossible for you to experience it. It needs a transformation of your whole interiority. It needs a new subjectivity, a new vision, a new perspective.

You see in a certain sense, you hear only in a certain sense. Yes, you hear the words, but the meaning is missed. You read the Bible, the Koran, the Vedas, but just like a parrot. Even parrots are far more intelligent than your so-called pundits, than your so-called knowledgeable people. You go on repeating like a gramophone record. And you are so egoistic that you can’t accept, you can’t say, “I don’t know.”

Jascha Heifetz, the distinguished violinist, was in London where he was scheduled to give a concert. A few hours before curtain time, he noticed that a violin string had broken, so he hurried to a music supply shop for a replacement. He was waited on by a girl who was new to the business.

“I would like to have an ‘E’ string for my violin,” said Heifetz.

“A what?” asked the uncomprehending girl.

“An ‘E’ string.”

“Sorry, luv,” she replied apologetically, “but ye will have to pick it out yourself. I can’t tell the he’s from the she’s!”

People are very reluctant to accept the fact that they don’t know. They try in every possible way to manage a facade that they know. This is the greatest mistake in life. You are not yet born, but if you think you are already born, if you think you have already attained to life, then this whole opportunity is going to be lost. It will go down the drain.

And you can learn great words; they are available. You can learn them so much so that if you meet Jesus you may repeat his words better than he can do it himself because you have been repeating them for so long. You may defeat him; in a competition he may not be able to survive at all. Some stupid priest may win the competition because he will be just repeating exactly, word for word. Jesus cannot do that; that is impossible. He has to be spontaneous. He will respond to the situation. He may say some new things — because twenty centuries have passed. How can he go on saying the same old things? Impossible.

That’s why the people who believe that they know are the most ignorant in the world. To be ignorant is not that bad, but to believe that you know, without knowing, is very dangerous.

It seems that talking parrots had become quite fashionable. Understandably, Mulla Nasruddin’s wife decided she must have one for herself. However, every store she went to had sold out of parrots. Finally she found a shop that had one left.

“But,” the owner cautioned, “this bird was previously owned by a madam in a whorehouse and its language may be quite salty. Perhaps if you keep him covered for a week, he will forget what he has seen and heard.”

Mrs. Nasruddin purchased the bird and did as the shopkeeper bid. At long last the week was over and the bird was finally uncovered. He first blinked his eyes and then after adjusting to the light looked around and said, “Hmm… pretty new house. Hmm… pretty new madam. Hmm… pretty new girls too.”

Just then Mulla Nasruddin walked in. The bird took one look at him and said, “Ah, shit! Same old customers. Hi, Mulla!”

Yes, even parrots are more spontaneous than your pundits. You go on repeating. Your parents believed that they lived and their parents believed that they lived, and they have given you the idea that you are alive. You are not alive, you are only vegetating. To be alive means to be awakened.

Bhagwato, when I say the new man, I mean the conscious man. Humanity cannot be saved if the conscious man does not arrive. In the past it was not so necessary, but now it is absolutely necessary, it is a must. If the new man does not arrive on the earth, if more and more people are not going to become conscious, alert, awake, then this earth is doomed. Its fate is in the hand of the stupid politicians, and now they have immense power of destruction, such as they never had before. That is something new.

Just five years ago they had so much power that they could have killed every single human being seven times — although you don’t need to kill any human being seven times, once is enough. We had five years ago so much atomic energy — atom bombs, hydrogen bombs — that we could have destroyed this earth seven times. And within five years we have really progressed — now it is seven hundred times! We can destroy seven hundred earths like this earth, and we go on piling up…. And any moment, any mad politician can trigger the process of self-destruction.

The coming twenty years are going to be the most dangerous in the whole history of humanity; it has never been so dangerous — we are sitting on a volcano. Only more consciousness, more alertness can save it; there is no other way. We have to de-automatize man. The society automatizes you. It creates efficient machines, not human beings.

My effort here is to de-automatize you. I am doing something absolutely antisocial. The society makes you a machine and my effort is to undo it. I would like this fire to spread and reach to all the nooks and corners of the earth, to help as many people as possible to be conscious. If in a great quantity consciousness grows on the earth, there is a possibility, a hope, we can save humanity yet. All is not lost, but time is running short. Everything is being controlled by politicians and by computers, and both are dangerous. Politicians are mad. It is impossible to be a politician if you are not mad enough. You have to be absolutely insane, because only insane people are power-obsessed.

A sane person lives life joyously; he is not power-obsessed. He may be interested in music, in singing, in dancing, but he is not interested in dominating anybody. He may be interested in becoming a master of himself, but he is not interested in becoming a master of others.

Politicians are insane people. History is enough proof. And now computers are dominating.

You know the saying: To err is human…. That is true, but if you really want to create a great mess, human beings are not enough — you need computers. Now machines and mad people are dominating the whole world. We have to change the very foundation. That’s what I mean by a new man.

A new man means more conscious, more loving, more creative. This whole process is possible through being more meditative. Become more meditative, silent, still. Experience yourself deeply. In that experience, a fragrance will be released through you. And if many, many people become meditators, the earth can be full of a new perfume.

-Osho

From Dhammapada, The Way of the Buddha, Volume 10, chapter 11

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December 19, 2011 · 1:27 pm

Zorba The Buddha – Osho

Sometimes when you speak, I get the vision of living a kind of Zorba the Greek life – eat, drink and be merry – lusty and passionate, and I think this is the way. Other times I feel you are saying that the way is to sit silently, watchful and unmoving, like a monk. So who are we to be – Zorbas or monks – and how can a blend of them be possible? I sense that you have managed to integrate the contradictions, but can we be both Zorbas, moved by passion and desire, and Buddhas, dispassionate, cool and calm?

THAT IS THE ULTIMATE SYNTHESIS – when Zorba becomes a Buddha. I am trying to create here not Zorba the Greek but Zorba the Buddha. Zorba is beautiful, but something is missing. The earth is his, but the heaven is missing. He is earthly, rooted, like a giant cedar, but he has no wings. He cannot fly into the sky. He has roots but no wings.

Eat, drink and be merry is perfectly good in itself: nothing is wrong in it. But it is not enough. Soon you will get tired of it. One cannot just go on eating, drinking and marrying. Soon the merry-go-round turns into a sorry-go-round – because it is repetitive. Only a very mediocre mind can go on being happy with it. If you have a little intelligence, sooner or later you will find the utter futility of it all. How long can you go on eating, drinking and marrying? Sooner or later the question is bound to arise – what is the point of it all? Why? It is impossible to avoid the question for long. And if you are very intelligent, it is always there, persistently there, hammering on your heart for the answer: Give me the answer! – Why?

And one thing to be remembered: it is not that the people, who are poor, starving, become frustrated with life – no. They cannot become frustrated. They have not lived yet – how can they be frustrated?

They have hopes. A poor man always has hopes. A poor man always desires that something is going to happen, hopes that something is going to happen. If not today then tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow. If not in this life then in the next life.

What do you think? Who are these people who have depicted heaven as a Playboy Club – who are these people? Starved, poor, who have missed their life. They are projecting their desires in heaven. In heaven there are rivers of wine. Who are these people who are imagining rivers of wine? They must have missed here. And there are kalpavrakshas – wish-fulfilling trees. You sit underneath them, desire, and the moment you desire, immediately it is fulfilled. Not even a single moment passes by between the desire and its fulfillment, no shadow between the desire and the fulfillment. It is immediate, instant!

Who are these people? Starved, have not been able to live their life. How can they be frustrated with life? They have not experienced – it is only through experience that one comes to know the utter futility of it all. Only Zorbas come to know the utter futility of it all.

Buddha himself was a Zorba. He had all the beautiful women available in his country. His father had arranged for all the beautiful girls to be around him. He had the most beautiful palaces – different places for different seasons. He had ALL the luxury that is possible, or that was possible in those days. He lived the life of a Zorba the Greek – hence; when he was only twenty-nine he became utterly frustrated. He was a very intelligent man. If he had been a mediocre man, then he would have lived in it. But soon he saw the point: it is repetitive, it is the same. Every day you eat, every day you make love to a woman… and he had new women every day to make love to. But how long…?! Soon he was fed up.

The experience of life is very bitter. It is sweet only in imagination. In its reality it is very bitter. He escaped from the palace and the woman and the riches and the luxury and everything….

So, I am not against Zorba the Greek because Zorba the Greek is the very foundation of Zorba the Buddha. Buddha arises out of that experience. So I am all for this world, because I know the other world can only be experienced through this world. So I don’t say escape from it, Prabhu Maya; I will not say to you become a monk. A monk is one who has moved against the Zorba; he is an escapist, a coward; he has done something in a hurry, out of unintelligence. He is not a mature person. A monk is immature, greedy – greedy for the other world, and wants it too early, and the season has not come, and he is not ripe yet.

Live in this world because this world gives a ripening, maturity, integrity. The challenges of this world give you a centering, an awareness. And that awareness becomes the ladder. Then you can move from Zorba to Buddha.

But let me repeat again: only Zorbas become Buddhas – and Buddha was never a monk. A monk is one who has never been a Zorba and has become enchanted by the words of Buddhas. A monk is an imitator, he is false, pseudo. He imitates Buddhas. He may be Christian, he may be Buddhist, he may be a Jain – that doesn’t make much difference – but he imitates Buddhas.

When a monk goes away from the world, he goes fighting with it. It is not a relaxed going. His whole being is pulled towards the world. He struggles against it. He becomes divided. Half of his being is for the world and half has become greedy for the other. He is torn apart. A monk is a schizophrenic basically, the split person, divided into the lower and the higher. And the lower goes on pulling him, and the lower becomes more and more attractive the more it is repressed. And because he has not lived the lower, he cannot get into the higher.

You can get into the higher only when you have lived through the lower. You can earn the higher only by going through all the agony and the ecstasy of the lower. Before a lotus becomes a lotus it has to move through the mud – that mud is the world. The monk has escaped from the mud; he will never become a lotus. It is as if a lotus seed is afraid of falling into mud – maybe out of ego that “I am a lotus seed! And I cannot fall into the mud. ” But then it is going to remain a seed; it will never bloom as a lotus. If it wants to bloom like a lotus, it has to fall into the mud; it has to live this contradiction. Without this contradiction of living in the mud there is no going beyond.

You ask me, Maya: Sometimes when you speak, I get the vision of living a kind of Zorba the Greek life – eat, drink and be merry – lusty and passionate, and I think this is the way. Other times I feel you are saying that the way is to sit silently, watchful and unmoving, like a monk.

No. I will be the last person to make a monk out of you – otherwise, why are the monks and nuns so much against me? I would like you to become rooted into the earth. I am perfectly in agreement with Friedrich Nietzsche who says: “I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth and do not believe in those who speak of other- worldly hopes!” Learn your first lesson of trust by trusting the earth. It is your home right now!

Don’t hanker for the other world. Live this world, and live it with intensity, with passion. Live it with totality, with your whole being. And out of that whole trust, out of that life of passion, love and joy, you will become able to go beyond.

The other world is hidden in this world. The Buddha is asleep in the Zorba. It has to be awakened. And nobody can awaken you except life itself.

I am here to help you to be total WHEREVER you are, in whatsoever state you are – live that state totally. It is only living a thing totally that one transcends it.

First become a Zorba, a flower of this earth, and earn the capacity through it to become a Buddha – the flower of the other world. The other world is not away from this world; the other world is not against this world: the other world is hidden in this. THIS is only a manifestation of the other, and the other is the unmanifest part of it.

-Osho

From The Perfect Master, Volume 1, Chapter Four

The Perfect Master, Volume 1

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

An audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

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