The other day I had narrated an event, and yesterday you replied in your own way. The event, the question and answer, is known to you and me only. Now I can understand what must have transpired between Bhagwan Buddha and the disciple Mahakashyap. Beloved beautiful Osho, it’s not the language but the silence that has and had asked, that has answered and had answered. Words are not spoken, but I have listened. There was a flower between Bhagwan Buddha and the disciple Mahakashyap. Between you and me there was something else. You know and I know what it was – Something that you brought and gave, and something that I received. Everybody has seen it, and yet no one knows it. The disciple Mahakashyap laughed, and I shed tears. My beloved, beautiful lord, my heart bows down to you full of gratitude and thankfulness, and eyes full of tears of joy and happiness. The event is repeated again on September the twenty-second, nineteen eighty-six. Let this be recorded. Osho, would you like to comment?
Govind Siddharth, the laughter of Mahakashyap and the tears of yours do not mean different things. Perhaps you laughed more deeply than Mahakashyap. When laughter is abysmal, it can only come out into tears – tears of joy, tears of gratitude, tears of blissfulness.
Yes, something has transpired between me and you. And the date that you are giving is absolutely accurate; it will be on record.
The master can give only something which cannot be seen by the ordinary eyes.
Even though Gautam Buddha had given the flower to Mahakashyap it was not the flower that made him laugh, it was something else. The flower was just an excuse. Everybody saw the flower. Only a few – those who had eyes to see the invisible and to hear the unsaid – were able to understand that the flower was not the real thing, it was a cover-up.
And for twenty-five centuries, mystics have been discussing what was really transmitted. It cannot be just the flower; the flower can be given to anybody. Something else was given. But Buddha was very kind, even to those who are blind. If he had not given the flower and just transmitted the wordless message, Mahakashyap would have laughed all the same. But the people who could not see the invisible would have thought either that Mahakashyap was mad, or would have felt ashamed that they could not see what had transpired between the master and the greatest disciple.
After twenty-five centuries, man has come of age; and I hope that I can transfer the unseeable without hiding it behind an excuse. Neither has Govind Siddharth to feel ashamed for his tears nor do the others have to feel that he must be mad because they can’t see anything happening – and particularly in this temple of the mystery school. Only those few people are present who will understand at least the possibility of something mysterious, miraculous happening. You are here only for that miracle; you are not here to listen to a talk, to listen to words, theories, philosophies.
You are here to taste something of the beyond.
And that day, Govind Siddharth tasted something of the beyond. He experienced the flowering. I have not given a flower to him, but he has experienced the flowering of his inner lotus.
Every one of you, sooner or later, is going to taste, to experience the same mystery.
He is what Gautam Buddha used to call “become an elder.”
He has arrived to the point which we call enlightenment.
And you should rejoice in it because one of you becoming enlightened makes it easier for you to become enlightened, makes it possible, brings it within your reach.
It is not an impossibility. You don’t have to be special, unique – a savior, a prophet. In your very ordinariness, in your very simplicity, in your very humanity you have the potential.
Govind Siddharth becomes a proof for your potential.
You should rejoice as if you have become enlightened. His becoming enlightened is your becoming enlightened; it is only a question of time. But he is enough of a proof and a guarantee.
Enlightenment is not something that comes from above. It is something that grows in you, the seed everyone is carrying for lives together.
Jesus used to say, “You can throw the seeds: some may fall on the rocks and will never grow. Some may fall on the footpath: they will grow but will be crushed by people continually passing on the footpath. Some will fall into the right soil and will grow and realize their ultimate flowering, will dance in the wind, in the sun, in the rain – expressing their gratitude to existence.”
This is a garden. Whatever I am saying to you is just providing you with a right soil. Slowly, slowly, a few seeds will start sprouting. Each seed sprouting should fill you with great celebration because it reflects you. It reflects your future, it indicates all the possibilities that are hidden in you.
The day I had given sannyas to Govind Siddharth… I remember it. Why had I given him the name Siddharth? Siddharth is Gautam Buddha’s original name – when he became enlightened, people slowly, slowly forgot Siddharth. ’Buddha’ means the enlightened one; Gautama is his family name.
He was Gautam Siddharth, now he had become Gautam Buddha. Siddharth was the seed, his buddhahood was the flowering.
Siddharth is a beautiful name. It was given to him by a very strange man; nobody knows his name. He had come the day Gautam Buddha was born. He was an old, very old, almost ancient saint living in the Himalayas. He rushed, because his death was very close. His disciples asked, “Where are you going? At this age don’t go for any travel, it can prove dangerous.”
But the old man said, “It doesn’t matter. I will have to go, because if I don’t reach in time I will never be able to see a child who is going to become an awakened being. I have been doing everything to become awakened – I have failed. Perhaps whatever I was doing was wrong, perhaps whatever I was doing was not intense enough, was not total enough, although it may have been right. But a child is born, and I want to see him.
And he reached, down the hills… Gautam Buddha was born just near the Himalayas on the boundary line of Nepal and India. As he reached…. The king Shuddhodhana, Gautam Buddha’s father, had never seen such an old man. He touched his feet, asked him why he had come – he could have called on him, since he was too old to travel.
He said, “There was no time. I want to see the child that has been born to your wife.” The child was brought. The old man touched the feet of the child.
The king could not believe it. He said, “What are you doing? You are a great, respected saint and you are touching the feet of a child?”
That old man said, “I am old, I am respected as a saint, but I am not yet awakened. My spiritual sleep still continues. But this child is going to become an awakened soul. This is his last life. I give him the name Siddhartha.”
The father said, “But what is the meaning of this name Siddhartha? It is not common” – it was at least not common in those days. The old man explained the meaning of Siddharth: it means one who is going to achieve the meaning of life.
When I gave sannyas to Govind Siddharth I thought for a moment for his name, and I felt so definitely that he was going to achieve the meaning that I gave him the same name, Siddhartha. And he has fulfilled my feeling of that moment. He has fulfilled a promise that he had not given to me.
It is not only his enlightenment; it is yours, too. Participate in it, celebrate it. That should be the way of every disciple. Anyone coming home, a part of you has also come home with him – recognize it.
And Govind Siddhartha is doubly blessed: my blessings are with him, and now Gautam Buddha’s blessings are also with him.
And you should accept this celebration as a challenge too. It opens a door. Forget all the nonsense that has been imposed on you for centuries – that Krishna becomes enlightened because he is already born as an incarnation of God. In fact, if he is born as an incarnation of God then his enlightenment is not much to be celebrated. He is already God, he cannot be more than what he is: he is dead.
If Jesus is enlightened because he is the only begotten son of God, that is not something to be proud of – because to be the only begotten son… Now, enlightenment cannot be an addition to your being in any way. You have all that a man can be. And because of these people, millions of human beings have shrunk back from the journey thinking that it is only for those towards whom God is especially favorable – “It is not for us ordinary human beings.”
And to make these people special, the priests have done everything in their power. Jesus is not born like any other human being: he is born out of a virgin mother – just to make him special; otherwise, it is absolute nonsense. Nobody can be born out of a virgin mother. Yes, there are unfertilized eggs but nothing is born out of them. They are born out of virgin mothers but they are pure vegetables, there is nothing alive in them.
If Jesus was an unfertilized egg… But then these priests cannot be forgiven – to make him an unfertilized egg, and then crucifying the poor egg! First he is dead, no life, no possibility of life, and then putting him on the cross… the whole story is so fictitious.
Life is possible only with the meeting of man and woman. The woman alone is not capable of giving birth, neither is man capable of giving birth alone. Life is a harmony between the man and the woman, between two polarities a meeting. But just to make him special…
Gautam Buddha is born, the mother is standing. Now, no woman gives birth to a child standing. But perhaps she was practicing some yoga discipline and was able to stand up while giving birth. Even up to this point, it can be accepted rationally – but then Gautam Buddha is born, also standing. The first thing he does is, he walks seven feet. And the second thing he does is to declare that “I am the most awakened being who has ever walked on the earth.” Not even seven minutes old!
But to make them special, these fictitious stories are created around Krishna, around Mahavira, around everybody. These stories are, in a subtle way, to prevent you from becoming enlightened. These are to create a distance between you and those who have become awakened, and the distance is so vast, so unbridgeable that it is better not to try because you are going to fail. There is no possibility of succeeding.
My basic standpoint is that all these people were as ordinary as you are. Yes, they became extraordinary, but so can you become. That extraordinariness is the flowering of your seed, of your potentiality.
What has happened to Govind Siddharth, I hope and bless you all that nobody should be left behind.
You all have to claim your birthright.
-Osho
From The Osho Upanishad, Discourse #36
A few days later Govind Siddharth asked this question:
I have no words to express your love and compassion showering on me. My gratitude and thankfulness cannot be expressed in any word or any language. Please forgive me for my shortcomings. Also, please forgive me, my dearest lord Osho, that you had to bend down to take my head into your hands. I know how painful your back is. It was so painful for me that because of me you had to bend down. On the day of my sannyas, you had taken by hand in your hands. Yesterday you had taken my head in your hands. I hope, pray, and beg everyone’s blessings that I can become worthy of it. My beloved Master, please tell and explain to all that the journey has only begun. I am not yet worthy of their respect. Instead of respect, let all give me their blessings so that one day I can become worthy of really touching your feet. I am requesting and pleading with folded hands to you to tell all to save me from embarrassment, giving respects to me which I do not deserve yet.
Govind Siddharth, the laws of spiritual life are diametrically opposite to those of the ordinary mundane existence.
In the world, one wants to be respected whether one deserves it or not. In fact the less people deserve, the more they want. In the spiritual realm, the more you deserve the less you want.
I am happy to know that you feel embarrassed by people respecting you. That is a sign of real humbleness. And to say that you do not deserve it makes you worthy enough to be respected.
In the world, people declare themselves ‘the great’. When Alexander the Great met Diogenes, he introduced himself: “I am Alexander the Great.”
And Diogenes laughed and he said, “If you were really great, you would not have used that word for yourself. You should be ashamed. The true greatness does not assert itself, the true greatness radiates itself. It needs no language, it needs no expression, it needs no words – its presence is enough.”
And I know the difficulty. When for the first time suddenly people start looking at you with respect, a humble person, a person who deserves it, feels embarrassed. Because it is the ego that demands respect, begs for prestige, power, respectability. True greatness is simply oblivious to it. The moment you respect such a person, he feels embarrassed – “What are you doing?” – Because he is not expecting it, it is so unexpected.
And the humbleness, the simplicity, the innocence does not make anyone holier-than-thou. It makes you stand last in the queue, because you are so certain of your integrity, you need not go shouting about it, you don’t need any recognition from anybody. Your own feeling is so absolute that even if the whole world rejects it, it makes no difference.
Recognition from others is sought only by people who are suffering from inferiority. A real superior man is not aware of his superiority, is not in any need of recognition from others. His superiority is just his nature.
Govind Siddharth, don’t feel embarrassed if people respect you. You will have to learn, and to see people’s respect in a new light; when people respect you, they are respecting their own potential. They are respecting one of their brothers who has arrived. They are recognizing you not as you; you have become a mirror and they can see their possibilities opening. They are thankful to you because you have made them feel, for the first time, not inferior to anybody; you have given them their humanity, their respectability. You have become an argument, a proof for their own possible fulfillment.
So when they respect you, accept it with love, with respect, realizing the fact that they are seeing themselves in you. You have been of tremendous help to them because you come from them, you have been a fellow traveler.
As far as you are concerned it is certainly a beginning, but it is also an ending; it is a death and a resurrection. One chapter is closed, another has opened. One life that you have been living is now just a memory and another life is opening its doors – which you have dreamed about in thousands of ways, in thousands of lives, and for the first time the dream is becoming real. It is a beginning.
And remember it; it is always a beginning.
Changes will be coming, old chapters will be disappearing, new doors will be opening. And a moment comes when your sensitivity is such that each moment you die and each moment you are born. You die to the past and you are born for the future.
But it is tremendously beautiful on your part to feel that you don’t deserve it. That is felt only by people who deserve it.
That’s what I meant when I said that in the spiritual life, laws are diametrically opposite to what they are in the ordinary mundane world. Here you have to try to be somebody, because you go on feeling that you are nobody; you feel so empty, so meaningless, so faceless, that you are begging everybody – “Give me a face, a name, an identity.” And people give it to you but those faces are just masks, those identities are just false. They make you hypocrites. They make you believe what you are not. And you have wasted many of your lives in believing in things which you are not and you have never been.
In such a moment of transformation as Govind Siddharth has passed through, one for the first time drops all the masks, all the old identities. One accepts oneself as nameless, as a nobody. And this is the tremendous miracle: that the moment you accept yourself as nobody, for the first time you have become somebody. For the first time you have attained to your original face.
And if people see it happening… it is good for people, because it will become a remembrance to them. Something that they had forgotten, your presence may make them remember. And you cannot take away their right to thank you. That’s what ‘respect’ means.
The word ‘respect’ is beautiful. It does not mean honor; that is a dictionary meaning. Existentially it means re-spect, a desire to see again. Somebody looks at you, remembers something, wants to remember more, wants to look at you deeper, wants to be closer to you, wants to look into your eyes, wants to hold your hands. It has nothing to do with honor, it is simply an effort to remember his own forgotten treasure.
-Osho
From The Osho Upanishad, Discourse #40
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 in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.
