What does the phrase “existence takes care” mean?
Nirada, we are part of existence, we are not separate. Even if we want to be separate, we cannot be. Our life is part of being together with existence. And the more you are together with existence, the more alive you are. That’s why I insist continually to live totally, to live intensely, because the deeper your living is, the more you are in contact with existence. You are born of it; every moment you are renewed, rejuvenated, resurrected by each of your breaths, by each of your heartbeats — existence is taking care of you.
But we are not aware of our own being, we are not aware of our own breathing. Gautam the Buddha gave to the world a tremendously simple, but immensely valuable, meditation — vipassana. The word vipassana simply means watching your breath — the coming of the breath in, and the going of the breath out.
People used to ask Buddha,” What will happen by this?” He was not a theoretician. He would say to them, “Just do it and see. Experiment and report to me what happens. Don’t ask me.”
Just as you start watching your breathing, you start seeing a great phenomenon – that through your breath, you are continuously connected with existence, uninterruptedly — there is no holiday. Whether you are awake or asleep, existence goes on pouring life into you, and taking out all that is dead.
Carbon dioxide is dead, and if it accumulates in you, you will be dead. Oxygen is life, and you need continuously that the carbon dioxide be replaced by fresh oxygen. Who is taking care? Certainly you are not taking care! If you were taking care, you would have been dead long ago; you would not have been here to ask the question. You would have forgotten sometimes to breathe, or sometimes the heart would forget to beat, sometimes the blood would forget to circulate inside you — anything could go wrong. There are a thousand and one things in you which could go wrong. But they are all functioning in deep harmony. Is this harmony dependent on you?
So when I say, “existence takes care,” I am not talking philosophy. Philosophy is mostly nonsense. I am simply talking an actual fact. And if you become consciously aware of it, this creates a great trust in you. My saying to you, “existence takes care,” is to trigger a consciousness that can bring the beauty of trusting in existence.
I don’t ask you to believe in a hypothetical God, and I don’t ask you to have faith in a messiah, in a savior; these are all childish desires to have some father figure who takes care of you. But they are all hypothetical.
There has not been any savior in the world.
Existence is enough unto itself.
I want you to inquire into your relationship with existence, and out of that inquiry, arises trust — not belief, not faith. Trust has a beauty because it is your experience. Trust will help you to relax because the whole existence is taking care — there is no need to be worried and to be concerned. There is no need to have any anxiety, no need of any anguish, no need of what the existentialists call angst.
Trust helps you to relax, it helps you to let go, and the let-go prepares the ground for witnessing to come in. They are related phenomena.
Three gray-haired mothers, Mrs. Fletcher, Mrs. Cornfield, and Mrs. Baum, were sitting in a Catskill hotel bragging about their children.
“My son is a doctor,” said Mrs. Fletcher, “and he’s an internist, a surgeon and a specialist.
He makes so much money, he owns an apartment building on Park Avenue in New York.”
“That’s nice,” said Mrs. Cornfield. “My son is a lawyer. He handles divorces, accidents, tax cases, insurance. He is so successful; he owns two apartment buildings on Fifth Avenue.”
“Ladies,” announced Mrs. Baum, “you should both be proud to have such successful sons. My boy, I have to tell you the truth, is a homosexual.”
“That’s a shame,” said Mrs. Cornfield. “And what does he do for a living?”
“Nothing,” said Mrs. Baum. “He has two friends: one is a doctor who owns an apartment building on Park Avenue, and the other is a lawyer who owns two apartment buildings.”
Existence takes care.
-Osho
From The Golden Future, Discourse #18
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