Haiku of the Month

Basho wrote:

THERE IS NOTHING YOU SEE THAT IS NOT A FLOWER;
THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN THINK OF WHICH IS NOT THE MOON.

Great statements, so condensed...
THERE IS NOTHING YOU SEE THAT IS NOT A FLOWER -- it may be in the seed, it may be not yet manifest, but there is nothing that has not the potential to blossom.
THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN THINK OF WHICH IS NOT THE MOON.The moon has become symbolic in Zen because of Gautam Buddha. Gautam Buddha was born on a full-moon night, he became enlightened on a full-moon night, and he died on a full-moon night. Because of this coincidence the moon has become a symbol of Buddha.Wherever you are, whoever you are, you are the moon, the buddha.

- Turning In, Chapter #2

Osho on Women's Liberation

BELOVED MASTER,
WOULD YOU PLEASE TALK ABOUT WOMEN'S LIBERATION IN THE CONTEXT OF YOUR VISION OF A COMMUNE?

They are not two things. Women's liberation will also be men's liberation. It may sound strange, but if you go into the sources it will be very easy to understand.
One fundamental thing: you cannot make anybody a slave unless you are ready to become enslaved by your slave. Slavery is always two-sided.

Sometimes it happens that the master is a bigger slave than the slave. The master becomes dependent on the slave for everything. And the second thing: when you make somebody a slave, you are creating trouble for yourself, because the person will always hate you. He may show love, he may show reverence, but that is superficial. Deep inside he is boiling with hate and fire.
Man has made woman a slave, but you can see what I am saying to you, the truth of it. Have you seen any husband who is not henpecked? Strange...

In a small school a teacher was asking students puzzles. And he asked, "Have you seen somebody who when he goes out of the house is one thing and when he comes back to the house he is something else?"
One child immediately started waving his hand frantically. The teacher said, "What is the matter? Do you know?"

He said, "Everybody knows it, but is not courageous enough to say. I can say it. It is my father. When he goes out of the house he looks like a lion, and when he comes back into the house he looks like a rat. And all these boys know it, but they are afraid to say it. I do not bother, because my father and mother are so constantly in a fight that they don't have any time for me. I am completely free to do anything, to go anywhere."

What has made the woman bitchy? It is not a natural quality. What has made the woman continuously nag the husband? It is not natural.
It is a revenge, the feminine way of revenge. You have reduced her into a slave. You have taken away all her freedom, you have made her just a possession.
My sister was being married and I told my father, "If the word kanyadan, donation of the daughter, is being used, I will never come back to this family again. Then you can think I am dead."
He said, "But this is strange. That word has been used for centuries."
I said, "I don't care about the centuries, I care about the meaning of the word. You can donate things, you can donate money -- you cannot donate people! And I will not allow it, even if the marriage party goes back. Let them go to hell!"

He said, "I was worried that you might create some trouble, but I had not thought about this kind of trouble. The marriage party is coming -- you can hear the band, and the people are coming closer -- and you ask me not to use the word `kanyadan'...! But what about the brahmin priest who will say, `Where is the father? He has to come and do kanyadan.'"
I said, "I have made arrangements with the priest before I talked to you."
The priest used to live just behind my house. There used to be a big neem tree in the middle -- and it was a very narrow street -- and I had spread the gossip around the town that the tree was full of ghosts. And the brahmin was very much afraid, because he had to pass through that street. He was the only person who lived behind our house, the only person who had to go through that street. And he used to ask me, "Is it true?"

I said, "Do you want to experience? I have some acquaintance with those people because I live in the house..."
And one day I managed to give him some experience....
He used to almost run in the street. From the main street he would start running saying, "Hare Krishna, Hare Rama, Hare Krishna, Hare Rama..." just to avoid the ghosts which were there. And he had just begun with, "Hare Krishna, Hare Rama..." when I gave him the experience.
I had just done a simple thing. As he was coming from his work in the town -- some worship, some marriage or whatever -- it must have been ten o'clock in the night, it was a dark night... I had a drum with me and a big blanket. As he came under the tree, I threw the blanket over him so he could not see what was happening, and I just banged the drum and threw the drum also over him. He got so confused at what was happening, he ran away, back down the street. And by chance, the drum fell over his head. I had not thought that it would go that way -- that his head was completely covered by the drum, and underneath the drum was the blanket covering his whole body. So by the time he reached the road, people started running, thinking that the ghost had come onto the road!
He had to shout and struggle, "I am the brahmin who lives behind! I am not the ghost! It is the work of the ghost that I am in such a situation." But there was no other way. So he was always very polite and respectful of me after the experience. Whatever I said he always said, "Yes, I will do it."
I told him, "My sister is going to be married. You are not to use the word `kanyadan', because no person can be donated. It is not a gift -- a human being given as a donation? If you use `kanyadan', then remember, from this day you will never be able to reach your home... EVERY day those ghosts will trouble you."

He said, "I will do everything, but please no more blankets, no more drums."
So I told my father, "He is willing."

From the very beginning we try to create the woman to be a slave in life. Naturally, she goes on gathering anger, and in her husband's house millions of women -- because almost half of humanity are women... Half of humanity is simply wasting its life in kitchens, routine work, looking after children -- terrible jobs, and the whole day waiting for the husband to say something soothing, something beautiful.

But the husband has his own problems: his boss in the office; his files gathering on the table; everybody is after him to "finish it." He is working hard, but he comes home with a lot of files. And the moment the woman sees him coming with all the files, that means the office is coming home. She bursts forth, she explodes... her life is simply ruined. The whole day cooking, taking care of the children. And in the end she was thinking that the husband would be back and they would have a few moments of loving communication, and he is coming with the whole office. Naturally, she gets mad and she throws those files. And while he is eating she goes on nagging him for this, for that... she does not allow him to eat well.

One man saw on a restaurant a sign saying, "Come at least one time and you will find everything just like your home."
He came in and sat at a table. A waitress came by and she asked, "What would you like?"
He said, "First bring me a cup of cold tea."
And she said, "Cold tea? If you like I will bring it."
"Then bring my food -- burned chapati, vegetables so hot with so much spice that tears come out of my eyes... that is the proof. And thirdly, sit in front of me and nag me!"
The woman said, "But this is a restaurant."
He said, "Look at your sign! Only then will I feel at home."

This is the "home" where everybody is living. And you call this life?
The man is harassed in the office, the woman is harassed the whole day by children and neighbors -- and then the husband comes.... Both are not in a normal state; they start quarreling about everything, arguing about everything, and soon dishes are being thrown. The woman is hitting him with the pillows; he is shouting and trying to keep her cool because what will the neighbors say? Children may wake up.... But how long can one keep cool?

Man's liberation is possible only if the woman is liberated. The woman should be educated, should have financial independence, should be an earning member of the family, should not be dependent on the husband. The woman should have as free movement in society as man has. The woman should have time to be creative, to play music, to paint, to read, to write. And you will be surprised -- all her nagging will disappear, all her bitchiness will go, because that is the energy that has become creative now.

You cannot condemn the woman, because if you want to have an experience, then just take her job for twenty-four hours. First cook the food -- then you will know! At least I know that I cannot even make a cup of tea. It is a miracle for me how a chapati is made.
Then taking care of the children, who are the real devils -- either you will kill them or you will kill yourself. Just twenty-four hours! And children have their own ways: the whole day they sleep, and in the night they make every effort to wake everybody.

Sometimes they say they want to go to the bathroom, and somehow you drag them to the bathroom. And just a few minutes afterwards they are waking you up again -- they need water... They have been sleeping the whole day and now they are awake. And you want to force them to sleep; sleep is not something that you can enforce.

And if the child goes on waking you up again and again, you are going to hold him by the neck and tell him, "For the last time: either you or me -- decide! We both cannot exist in the same bed!"
It is very natural that the woman has become nagging and bitchy and fighting. And you can see she doesn't mean it. When she throws the pillow at you, you can see it -- it never hits you. It is not that she cannot hit you, she does not want to hit you. It is simply anger somehow being expressed. She never throws heavy things at you that you may go blind or your nose may fall off or your head may get broken... she never does. Even if a pillow hits you, it is not much of a hit.

And if you watch carefully, she always throws those plates which are worthless -- she wanted to get rid of them! Either they were broken or chipped or something. They are not the real ones; they were useless plates. She is careful; she knows -- because whom is she going to hurt?
But the anger is there and it needs some expression. Unless you give it a creative dimension... and the only possible way is that man and woman should both be liberated from each other.
The liberation movement should not be only women's liberation, it should be men's and women's liberation -- together, because they both are in slavery. It is interdependent. One cannot become free; they both can become free or they both will remain slaves. The women's liberation movement has not understood it yet and it needs a whole psychological change of atmosphere.

Marriage should be dissolved. People should not live according to the law, they should live only according to love. The only problem has always been children. And my solution is that every small village should become a commune. Bigger villages should become two or three communes, big cities should divide into dozens of communes, and the children are the responsibility of the commune.

Every member of the commune should donate to the commune for the health of the children, for the education of the children, for the care of the children. The children can come to the home -- the father and mother can meet the children -- but the children basically live in commune hostels and do not belong to private parties, to families. Then there is no problem. If two persons find that their love has disappeared, then there is no need to remain together: it is ugly, disgusting.

The moment you see that the love has disappeared, you have to say goodbye to each other with gratefulness, with friendliness, with thankfulness for all those moments that you lived together. You will always relish those beautiful moments. But what can you do? -- it is beyond you. Love comes like a season and goes like a season. As long as it remains, good; it is immensely beautiful. But when it has gone, then to go on hanging onto something dead is going to make you also dead.
It was because of children that the old societies decided that you should remain together -- because you have to take care of the children; otherwise what will happen to the children?

A simple solution is that every commune of one thousand people, two thousand people -- that means two thousand couples, four thousand people -- gives the whole responsibility for the children to the commune. And the commune can take care of the children more responsibly, more carefully. More educated nurses can be put to take care; doctors can be there to take care; teachers can be there to teach. And children will not be spoiled the way they are spoiled now.
They will have a wider vision than our children have. Our children have a very small vision because they are attached to a family. Five persons, seven persons -- that is their whole world.

It happened....
By the side of my house there was a temple, and between the temple and my house there was some land which technically my father could win a case in the court and take. But actually, the land belonged to the temple. It was a legal and technical matter.
I told my father, "If you go against the temple -- I have nothing to do with the temple, but if you go against the temple then I am going to be a witness against you, because you are taking advantage of a technical mistake. The land does not belong to you and you know it. And not only am I going to be against you, I have convinced your father, my grandfather. He is going with me because they may not take any note of me. I am so small" -- I must have been ten years old -- "they may not take any note of me, so I have convinced my grandfather. He is going with me. So two generations on each side against you. You have to decide."

He said, "You have talked with my father?"
I said, "Certainly. Because it is a simple matter. The land does not belong to us. Just in the papers of the temple, technically it is not written that it belongs to them. But don't take advantage of a technical mistake."
He said, "But I have never heard of anybody's son being a witness against his own father."
I said, "My loyalty is not to the family. My loyalty is towards truth. If you are on the side of truth I will be with you, but in this case I cannot be with you."

Children living in a family are bound to become loyal to the family. Then they don't care whether they are fair, just, or not, they just fight. People go on fighting for generations.

One of the families in front of my house was the enemy of my family for generations. I was the first to enter into their house....
The man was shocked. He said, "Where are you going?"
I said, "I am coming to your family with a message of friendship. I don't know who the people were who fought. I don't know even the names of the people who fought. I know my grandfather and I know my grandfather's name, his father's name. Beyond that I have no knowledge. And this has been going on for ten generations. How many generations do you remember? Can you tell me all the names? Can you tell me who began all this nonsense? And we have not been on talking terms. I have come with friendship. I am inviting myself for dinner today in your house."
He said, "This is strange, but perhaps you are right. You are welcome, but have you asked your father?"

I said, "I don't need to. Whatever I want to do, I do it and then I inform him. Then he can express his opinion. It does not make any difference, I have done what I wanted to do. I know he will ask, `Why did you not ask me?' But that is my problem, you don't be worried."
And they were very happy. The children were very happy, because it was such a strange thing. They were just living in front, and we saw each other, but we could not talk to their children; they could not talk to us. We were going to the same school, but we were not talking to each other, we were enemies. And you don't have any idea why. The children were happy; it was a celebration.
My father came home and he was informed that I had gone inside that house and I had not come out for almost two hours. He said, "This is unbelievable. For ten generations we have not talked to each other. Now he has gone beyond the boundaries, let him come."

When I came back home he was really angry and he said, "Why did you not ask me?"
I said, "It is simple, because I wanted to do it. And now you are free to express your opinion. I knew that you would say no, so what is the point of asking? And I have not done anything wrong. I have made a beautiful friendship, I have opened the door for you too. I have invited the man and his children for dinner tomorrow in this house."
He said, "What?"

I said, "Yes. I have eaten there -- I invited myself into their house. Now, in return what do you want? I should at least be this much courteous."
He said, "My God, then I have to go out of this house tomorrow."
I said, "You have not to go anywhere. You have to be here and you have to receive them, because this is foolish -- ten generations ago, and who knows who was right and who was wrong? Those idiots are dead. Why should we go on clinging to the dead, just because we belong to their family?"

The family creates a very small commitment to a very small number of people. A commune frees you from commitment. And psychologists say that if children can be freed from the family then ninety percent of mental diseases will be simply finished. You will be surprised to know that these two things are related.

Ninety percent of psychological diseases will disappear if children are no longer part of the family, because it is the family that creates all kinds of trouble. It makes the children Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, Buddhist; it makes the children communist, socialist; it gives the children all kinds of beliefs which divide people. And most basically, every boy carries an image of the mother in his heart, and every girl carries the image of the father. And for her whole life the girl will look to the husband for her image of her father to be fulfilled -- which is not possible. And the boy will look to his wife for his image of his mother to be fulfilled.

His mother is the most perfect woman he has known. His wife should be as perfect. Now the wife has not come there to be your mother, nor are you there to be her father. But these ideas can be destroyed only if children are living together -- not in the family, but under the supervision of the whole commune. They will not have any image and then they won't be expecting their wife to be this way, their husband to behave this way... and thousands of conflicts will disappear.
The future of the family is gone. The commune has the future, and only the commune can make you so free that marriage becomes non-essential. Two persons decide to live together -- they live together. They decide to separate -- they separate.

The law does not come into it; the government has nothing to do with it, nor has society anything to do with it. It is two persons' personal affair! And they are contributing to the commune for the care of their children. Even those who don't have children -- they are also contributing to the commune, because all the children are their children. A feeling of vastness... every child is loved by the whole commune.... Every person of the age of his father becomes his uncle; every woman of the age of his mother becomes his aunt. We are giving him a bigger, richer experience. And with this richer experience he will be a man of multidimensional capacities.
Man's liberation is absolutely necessary just as is woman's liberation. And they both should be together to figure out how they can be free. There is no need to fight, because anything that comes out of fighting has some ugliness in it.

The liberation should come out of understanding. All intelligent men and women should get together, and try to understand the problems all over the world and how they can be solved. And I don't see that there are many problems. There are very few problems -- which can easily be solved.

- The Sword and the Lotus, Chapter #22

Osho on Bringing up Children

BELOVED OSHO,
WHAT ARE THE MAJOR MISTAKES IN BRINGING UP CHILDREN?

The major mistakes in bringing up children are many, but I will talk only about the most important. First: the idea that they belong to you. They come through you; you have been a passage, but they don't belong to you. They are not your possessions. Out of this idea of possessiveness many mistakes arise.

Once you start thinking that they are your possessions, you have reduced them into things, because only things can be possessed, not human beings. It is the ugliest act you can do. And those poor children are so helpless, so dependent on you, they cannot rebel. They accept whatever your idea is. And to protect your possessiveness you make them Christians the moment they are born. You make them Hindus, you make them Mohammedans, you make them Buddhists, you make them Jews -- you can't wait! And can't you see the absolute absurdity of it?

In politics, the person will be adult and capable of voting when he is twenty-one. Is religion something of lesser quality than politics?
But the child cannot even understand language and he is circumcised; he is told that he is a Jew. He is baptized, with no consent from his side -- for the simple reason that you don't need any consent from your furniture, where to put it, to keep it or throw it. You are behaving with your children in the same way, like things.

If the parents are really alert, conscious, they will wait for the child to grow up so that he can choose. If he feels like becoming a Christian, he is free. If he feels like becoming a Buddhist, he is free. But he should choose only when he decides.

My feeling is that if twenty-one is the minimum age for politics, then for religion forty-two should be the minimum age when people can decide. And in fact that is the time when religion becomes important. You have lived life; you have seen all the seasons of life -- forty-two is a very important turning point. You have to decide whether you will continue the same routine life, or you will bring some new dimension to it. And that new dimension is religion.

If the person chooses to be religious -- simply religious, not belonging to any organization, not belonging to any church -- that's perfectly good. He has chosen freedom. But it is personal, intimate, absolutely his own affair; nobody can interfere in it. But parents start interfering from the very beginning. Why the hurry? The hurry is that later on the child will argue, later on he will ask why he is a Jew -- because he was not born a Jew; no child is born a Jew or a Christian or a Hindu. All children are born as a tabula rasa: a clean slate. Nothing is written on them... pure innocence.
The first thing to remember is, don't reduce the child into a thing, by any of your efforts. Give him individuality; don't impose personality on him. Individuality he brings with himself; personality is imposed by the parents, by the society, by the educational system, by the church. If you understand, you will not impose anything on the child, you will help the child to be himself.

Certainly it is difficult. That's why all the societies of all the ages have chosen the simple path: it is simpler to impose something on the child. Then he is obedient; then he is not rebellious. He does not give you any trouble, he is not a nuisance. But if you give him total freedom and help him to be free and individual, he is going to give you trouble about many things. People have chosen to destroy the child rather than accept the troubles.

If you are so much afraid of troubles, it is better not to give birth to a child. But to give birth to a living being, and then to destroy it just for your peace of mind, is very inhuman. Children are the most enslaved class of people in human society, the most exploited -- and exploited "for their own sake."
The child, if he is free, is going to ask questions which you don't know the answers to. And your ego does not allow you to say, "I don't know" -- it is better to force the child to keep his mouth shut. Every parent is continually telling the children, "Shut up. Sit silently. When you grow old you will know the answer."

My grandfather used to tell me the same thing in my childhood. Year after year I continued to ask the same questions, and I asked him, "I am growing, but your answer remains the same: Shut up... when you grow up. Can you please tell me at what age I will know the answer?"
The day I asked him, I was fifteen. I said, "I have been hearing this for ten years. In ten years nothing has changed, and I suspect that even in a hundred years nothing is going to change. My question will remain a question and there is not going to be any answer. And you cannot look directly into my eyes. You also don't know the answer, but you don't have the guts to accept it."
He was taken aback, shocked, but he thought that it would be better to say something, because it was going to happen again and again. He said, "You are right; I am sorry. I don't know the answer, I was just postponing it. I thought you would forget all about it. And that's how it has been all along. I had also asked the same question and I was told, `When you grow up you will know.' And now I am seventy-five, just on the verge of death, and I have not got the answer. Just by growing old, you cannot get the answer. I was hoping that you will also grow old, you will have your children asking you the same question, and you will say to them, `Grow old and you will get it.' This is how it has been done for centuries."

An individual child is troublesome because he is alive, because he is intelligent, because he can expose your ignorance. And you are ignorant in almost all the basic points of life. Do you really know God? Do you really know that Jesus Christ was the only begotten son of God? Do you know that there is a hell and a heaven beyond this life?
What do you know? Do you know yourself, who you are? -- except the name, which is a label glued to you after you were born, except your profession, that you are a doctor, that you are an engineer, that you are a scientist, that you are a professor. But this is not your being, this is your profession. What do you know about yourself?

The whole society has been living in utter ignorance -- and perpetuating it by not allowing children to be individual seekers, because it is through individual seeking that one comes to know who he is, and whether there is any God or just a fiction. One comes to know whether his life is eternal or just confined to seventy years. Only experience... but experience needs enquiry, search. But all of that is being stopped by the parents, by the teachers, by the priests.
Either they say that you will get it when you are old enough, or they give a fictitious answer, which the innocent child cannot argue against. They say that God created the world. Every child asks, "Who created the world?" Every child is being told, "God created the world." Do you really know? Were you a witness when God was creating the world? Was there any witness at the time of creation? If there is no witness, then what are the grounds on which you are basing your fact? And stupidity knows no limits....

Christians say God created the world four thousand and four years before Jesus Christ's birth. They exactly know the time -- four thousand and four years before Christ was born. Certainly it must have been January first, Monday. That can be easily inferred. But the whole answer is nonsense, because we have excavated ancient cities in China, in India, of civilizations which are seven thousand years old. Ruins of great civilizations -- they must have remained in existence for a few thousand years. We have found skeletons of animals fifty thousand years old. And according to Christianity, it is only six thousand years old -- the whole of creation!
But the child cannot ask. If he is too inquisitive, he is punished for it. If he is obedient, if whatever you say he accepts without any argument, he is praised. That's your story of Adam and Eve. Why were they expelled from the Garden of Eden? Because they disobeyed. There begins the wrong upbringing of children. They were the first children, mythologically.

And what kind of father was this God, who told them not to eat from the tree of knowledge and not to eat the fruit from the tree of eternal life? Two trees are prohibited....
The story is significant. It shows what perhaps every father is doing: preventing the child from becoming wise, keeping him ignorant. But it is the natural curiosity of every child -- if you prevent him, if you tell him not to eat the fruit of this tree... In the Garden of Eden there must have been millions of trees. If God had not pointed them out, I don't think we would be sitting here; we would be still wandering in the Garden of Eden. It would have been almost impossible to find those trees.
The whole civilization, the whole evolution of man goes back to the disobedience of Adam and Eve. They ate from the tree of knowledge.

And you can see the antithesis that I was talking about just before: God says, "Don't eat from that tree," and the devil comes in the shape of a snake and says, "Eat it -- because if you eat it you will be wise, and if you eat from the other tree also, you will be as eternal as God, as wise as God. And that old guy is really jealous; he does not want you to be equal to him."

Now this is conspiracy! On the one side prevention, on the other side provocation. And what can you expect of innocent Adam and Eve? They ate from the tree of knowledge. They loved it -- for the first time they became alert, alert of their nakedness, alert of their animalness. But before they could reach to the other tree, they were expelled. They were caught red-handed and expelled from the Garden of Eden, and since then man has been searching and searching for the other tree.
The whole scientific endeavor is nothing but a search for eternal life, and the whole religious endeavor is also nothing but a search for eternal life. The other tree we have missed. And the first tree has been so helpful to make us human beings -- now we know we can be equal to gods. All enquiries are basically to find some source so that life can be eternal... or perhaps it is eternal and we have to discover it.

What God did to his children, every father is doing to his children. It is perfectly right to say, "God, the father" -- they have a similarity. Every father should be called "Father, the God."
Obedience has become the basis of bringing up children, and that is the wrong basis. Intelligence, rebelliousness should be the basis. The child should say yes only when his intelligence says yes; otherwise he should say no. And his yes or his no has to be respected. He is a stranger from an unknown world, a visitor, a guest to your family. Behave with him as a friend, as a guest. He has every right to say no or yes, and you have to make it completely clear that whatever he says will be respected; otherwise we create yes-sayers. That is spiritual slavery.

In offices they are saying yes to the boss, in the home they are saying yes to the wife. They have forgotten completely that the word `no' exists. And it strange that `no' defines you, gives you a clear-cut personality; `yes' dissolves you.
One should first learn to say no.
Your yes is meaningful only when you are also capable of saying no. If you are incapable of saying no, your `yes' is a robot `yes'. It is meaningless.

Children should be treated with great respect. All the societies have done just the opposite: they have been teaching children to respect the parents, respect the elders, the grandparents.
It was a continuous problem for me because in India the families are joined. In my family there were almost sixty people; everybody was an elder, and there was a continual exercise to touch their feet. Finally I said to my father, "Enough is enough. I don't see any point in it. I don't have any respect for these people; I don't see anything worth respecting in them. Why should I touch their feet?" I refused. My father said, "That is going to be a trouble."

I said, "That is your problem, that is not my problem. I have solved my problem. I will certainly touch the feet of somebody whom I feel respect for, whom I feel some deep love for. But why should I go on doing this exercise to every person for whom I don't have any feeling?"
But this is the way the children are being brought up: respect the old people. Why? Just because they are old? Has oldness something respectable?

And this is the same logic: respect the people who are dead, because they are even older. Respect the people who have been dead for thousands of years, because nobody can beat them. You are making the living respect the dead. You are making the fresh, the newly sprouting leaf respect the dead leaves which have fallen on the ground, or are just going to fall down.
In a right upbringing of children, children should be respected, because the old people are soon going to disappear, but children have a long life to live.

And respect has an alchemical effect. If children are respected, the very respect will prevent them from doing many things -- it goes against their respectability. It will make them do many things which they would not have ever cared to do, but now they are so much respected, they feel like being worthy of that respect. But right now the whole thing is upside down.
The children need to be taken care of, they need your help, but they don't need to be made dependent on you. Your real help will be to make them independent; your real help will be such that your help is no longer needed.

They are strangers in the world. You can keep an eye on them so that they cannot fall into a ditch, but there is no need to enslave them just to save them from the ditch. If these are the only two alternatives, I prefer the ditch. At least by falling in the ditch they will learn something. They will learn what ditches are; they will learn not to fall again into any other ditch. But slavery for their whole life, protection for their whole life, makes them incapable of learning.

When you send them to school, a basic education should be given to all children. By basic education I mean: one international language to create one world, their mother tongue, the three R's: reading, arithmetic, writing. You can see it: people's handwriting is so ugly for the simple reason that nobody pays any attention to their writing. And writing is their signature; it shows their whole personality, whether there is a rhythm, an art. Their writing should be a painting, an art.
This should be the basic education. And after the basic education, the teachers, psychoanalysts, psychologists should be continuously learning about the children and what are their potentials. Tests can be developed which can give more evidence that the person can become a great musician or a painter or a poet or a scientist. Right now the whole world is in a chaos: the painter is making shoes, the man who was meant to make shoes is painting. Naturally, if you see the painting it looks crazy -- it is no wonder! Everybody is somewhere where he is not supposed to be. It is such a mess!

I am reminded of a great surgeon. He was the greatest surgeon in his country, very much respected, a Nobel prize winner -- and he was retiring. He was almost seventy-five, but still no young man was capable of doing such artful surgical work as he was capable of. Even at the age of seventy-five, his fingers were not trembling. He was a brain surgeon. In your small skull there are seven million nerves -- you can think how small they will be -- and when somebody is operating on the brain to remove some nerves, the danger is he may cut other nerves which are so close together, so the hand has not to shake at all.

At the age of seventy-five he was still a perfect surgeon, and all the doctors and the surgeons had given him a party because he was retiring. They were dancing, singing, but he was sitting in a corner, sad, with tears in his eyes. One of his old friends came by and he said, "What is the matter? Everybody is so happy and you are looking so sad -- I even see tears in your eyes." He said, "Yes, there is a reason. In the first place I wanted to become a dancer, I never wanted to become a surgeon. My parents forced me. Although I became the most famous surgeon, it was not my heart's desire. I would have been far happier just with a guitar on the street as a beggar -- a singer, a dancer.

"All this fame has meant nothing to me. All these awards have meant nothing to me. Each award has only reminded me of one thing, that I am losing my life and I am not where I am supposed to be. And now my whole life is finished. These tears are... I am crying because... why could I not rebel against my parents, and just do whatever I wanted to do?"

The world is so miserable. Ninety percent of its misery and anguish comes from the fact that everybody is doing somebody else's work. Naturally he is not happy; he cannot put his whole soul into it.
So the parents should not decide where their children are going, in what direction. It should be decided by psychoanalysts, psychologists, teachers who have watched those children for four years during their basic education. The children should be given tests so everything is clear, where they will feel a fulfillment.

Now parents decide for a better job; their reasons for deciding are different. They are not deciding for the child and his potential, they are deciding for financial reasons, for respectability. If he becomes a great engineer or a surgeon he will have a good life, a comfortable life; he will have a respectable life. Their intention is not bad, but the path to hell is paved with good intentions. The question is not their good intention, the question is what is hidden in the child that needs a flowering.

And that is possible now. We can find out what is hidden in a child and let him move in that direction. Perhaps he may not have a very comfortable life, but he will have very contented life -- and what is comfort in comparison to contentment?

Perhaps he may not become world famous, but who cares? How many people know him does not make any difference. But dancing or singing or painting, he will have a fulfillment, a flowering.
His life will be juicy.
His aura will be of joy.

This whole world can be a paradise; we just have to put everybody in his own place. Right now everybody is in the wrong place: nobody is happy, nobody is blissful, nobody is contented. And the whole responsibility is on how we start bringing up children.

- Socrates Poisoned Again After 25 Centuries, Chapter #2

Osho on Child and his freedom

BELOVED OSHO,
HAVING HEARD YOU TALK ABOUT COMPETITION AND OUR CHILDHOOD THE OTHER MORNING, IT SET ME THINKING OF MY OWN EDUCATION. I REALIZED THAT FOR TWENTY-ONE YEARS SOLIDLY, EVERY SINGLE EVENT AT SCHOOL -- FROM PLAYING IN THE GARDEN, THROUGH OFFICIAL SPORTS, TO LATIN GRAMMAR -- WAS BASICALLY AN EXERCISE IN HOW TO BEAT THE NEXT PERSON. IT SEEMS AS IF IT WAS THE SINGLE MOST DAMAGING EXPERIENCE OF MY LIFE. I CAN'T THINK OF A MORE PERFECT SYSTEM TO DESTROY CHILDREN AND MAKE US COMPLETELY INHARMONIOUS WITH THE WORLD AROUND US. HOW CAN WE HELP CHILDREN TO GROW TO THEIR FULL POTENTIAL, WITHOUT ENCOURAGING THIS COMPETITIVE SPIRIT?

The moment you start thinking how to help children to grow without any competitive spirit you are already on the wrong track, because whatever you are going to do is going to give the children a certain program. It may be different from the one that you received, but you are conditioning the children -- with all the best intentions in the world.

The trees go on growing without anybody teaching them how to grow. The animals, the birds, the whole existence, needs no programming. The very idea of programming is basically creating slavery -- and man has been creating slaves for thousands of years in different names. When people become fed up with one name, another name immediately replaces it. A few modified programs, a few changes here and there in the conditioning, but the fundamental thing remains the same -- that the parents, the older generation, want their children to be in a certain way. That's why you are asking "How?".

According to me, the function of the parents is not how to help the children grow -- they will grow without you. Your function is to support, to nourish, to help what is already growing. Don't give directions and don't give ideals. Don't tell them what is right and what is wrong: let them find it by their own experience.
Only one thing you can do, and that is share your own life. Tell them that you have been conditioned by your parents, that you have lived within certain limits, according to certain ideals, and because of these limits and ideals you have missed life completely, and you don't want to destroy your children's life. You want them to be totally free -- free of you, because to them you represent the whole past.

It needs guts and it needs immense love in a father, in a mother, to tell the children, "You need to be free of us. Don't obey us -- depend on your own intelligence. Even if you go astray it is far better than to remain a slave and always remain right. It is better to commit mistakes on your own and learn from them, rather than follow somebody else and not commit mistakes. But then you are never going to learn anything except following -- and that is poison, pure poison."
It is very easy if you love. Don't ask "how", because "how" means you are asking for a method, a methodology, a technique -- and love is not a technique.

Love your children, enjoy their freedom. Let them commit mistakes, help them to see where they have committed a mistake. Tell them, "To commit mistakes is not wrong -- commit as many mistakes as possible, because that is the way you will be learning more. But don't commit the same mistake again and again, because that makes you stupid."

So it is not going to be a simple answer from me. You will have to figure it out living with your children moment to moment, allowing them every possible freedom in small things.
For example, in my childhood... and it has been the same for centuries, the children are being taught, "Go to bed early, and get up early in the morning. That makes you wise."
I told my father, "It seems to be strange: when I am not feeling sleepy, you force me to sleep early in the evening." And in Jaina houses early in the evening is really early, because supper is at five o'clock, at the most six. And then there is nothing else to do -- the children should go to sleep.
I said to him, "When my energy is not ready to go to sleep, you force me to go to sleep. And when, in the morning, I am feeling sleepy, you drag me out of the bed. This seems to be a strange way of making me wise! And I don't see the connection -- how am I going to become wise by being forced to sleep when I am not feeling sleepy? And for hours I lie down in the bed, in the darkness... time which would have in some way been used, would have been creative, and you force me to sleep. But sleep is not something in your hands. You cannot just close your eyes and go to sleep. Sleep comes when it comes; it does not follow your order or my order, so for hours I am wasting my time.
"And then in the morning when I am really feeling sleepy, you force me to wake up -- five o'clock, early in the morning -- and you drag me out for a morning walk towards the forest. I am feeling sleepy and you are dragging me. And I don't see how all this is going to make me wise. You please explain it to me!

"And how many people have become wise through this process? You just show me a few wise people -- I don't see anybody around. And I have been talking to my grandfather, and he said that it is all nonsense. Of the whole household, that old man is the only sincere man. He does not care what others will say, but he has told me that it is all nonsense: `Wisdom does not come by going early to bed. I have been going early to bed my whole life -- seventy years -- and wisdom has not come yet, and I don't think it is going to come! Now it is time for death to come, not for wisdom. So don't be befooled by these proverbs.'"

I told my father, "You think it over, and please be authentic and true. Give me this much freedom -- that I can go to sleep when I feel sleep is coming, and I can get up when I feel that it is time, and sleep is no longer there."

He thought for one day, and the next day he said, "Okay, perhaps you are right. You do it according to yourself. Listen to your body rather than listening to me."
This should be the principle: children should be helped to listen to their bodies, to listen to their own needs. The basic thing for parents is to guard the children from falling into a ditch. The function of their discipline is negative.

Remember the word "negative"... no positive programming but only a negative guarding -- because children are children, and they can get into something which will harm them, cripple them. Then too don't order them not to go, but explain to them. Don't make it a point of obedience; still let them choose. You simply explain the whole situation.

Children are very receptive, and if you are respectful towards them they are ready to listen, ready to understand; then leave them with their understanding. And it is a question only of a few years in the beginning; soon they will be getting settled in their intelligence, and your guarding will not be needed at all. Soon they will be able to move on their own.
I can understand the fear of the parents that the children may go in a direction which they don't like -- but that is your problem. Your children are not born for your likings and your dislikings. They have to live their life, and you should rejoice that they are living their life -- whatever it is. They may become a poor musician....

I used to know a very rich man in the town who wanted his son, after matriculation, to become a doctor. But the son was interested only in music. He was already no longer an amateur; he was well known in the area, and wherever there was any function, he was playing the sitar and was becoming more and more famous.

He wanted to go to a university which is basically devoted to music. Perhaps it is the only university in the world which is devoted completely to music, and has all the different departments -- dance, different instruments -- but the whole world of the university is musical.
The father was absolutely against it. He called me -- because I was very close to his son -- and he said, "He will be a beggar all his life," because musicians in India cannot earn much. "At the most he can become a music teacher in a school. What will he be earning? That much we pay to many servants in our house. And he will be associating with the wrong people," because in India, music has remained very deeply connected with the prostitutes.

The Indian prostitute is different from any prostitute in the rest of the world. The word "prostitute" does not do justice to the Indian counterpart, because the Indian prostitute is really well versed in music, in dance -- and India has so much variety. If you really want to learn the deeper layers of music, of singing, of dancing, you have to be with some famous prostitute.

There are famous families -- they are called gharanas. Gharana means family. It is nothing to do with the ordinary family; it is the family of the master-disciple. So there are famous gharanas which have a certain way of their own. Presenting the same instrument, the same dance, different gharanas will produce it in different ways, with subtle nuances. So, if someone really wants to get into the world of music, he has to become part of some gharana -- and that is not good company. According to a rich man it is certainly not a good company.

But the son was not interested in the company. Not following his father, he went to the music university. And his father disowned him -- he was so angry. And because his father disowned him, and because he had no other ways -- because the university was in a very remote mountaineous area where you cannot find any job or anything -- he came back and had to become exactly what his father was predicting, just a school teacher.

His father called me and told me, "Look, it is just as I have said. My other sons -- somebody is an engineer, somebody is a professor, but this idiot did not listen to me. I have disowned him; he will not inherit a single cent from me. And now he will remain in just the poorest profession -- a school master."

But my friend himself was immensely happy... not worried that he had been abandoned by his family, that he was going to live a poor man's life, that he would not be receiving any inheritance. These things did not bother him; he was happy, "It is good they have done all this -- now I can become part of some gharana. I was worried about them, that they would feel humiliated. But now they have abandoned me, and I am no longer part of them, I can become part of some gharana."
Teaching in a school, he became part of a gharana, and is now one of the best musicians in India. It is not a question of his being one of the best musicians; what is important is that he became what he felt was his potential. And whenever you follow your potential, you always become the best. Whenever you go astray from the potential, you remain mediocre.

The whole society consists of mediocre people for the simple reason that nobody is what he was destined to be -- he is something else. And whatever he will do, he cannot be the best, and he cannot feel a fulfillment; he cannot rejoice.

So the work of the parents is very delicate, and it is precious, because the whole life of the child depends on it. Don't give any positive program -- help him in every possible way that he wants.
For example, I used to climb trees. Now, there are a few trees which are safe to climb; their branches are strong, their trunk is strong. You can go even to the very top, and still there is no need to be afraid that a branch will break. But there are a few trees which are very soft. Because I used to climb on the trees to get mangoes, jamuns -- another beautiful fruit -- my family was very much worried, and they would always send somebody to prevent me.

I told my father, "Rather than preventing me, please explain to me which trees are dangerous -- so that I can avoid them -- and which trees are not dangerous, so that I can climb them.
"But if you try to prevent me from climbing, there is a danger: I may climb a wrong tree, and the responsibility will be yours. Climbing I am not going to stop, I love it." It is really one of the most beautiful experiences to be on the top of the tree in the sun with the high wind, and the whole tree is dancing -- a very nourishing experience.

I said, "I am not going to stop it. Your work is to tell me exactly which trees I should not climb -- because I can fall from them, can have fractures, can damage my body. But don't give me a blank order: `Stop climbing.' That I am not going to do." And he had to come with me and go around the town to show me which trees are dangerous. Then I asked him the second question, "Do you know any good climber in the city who can teach me even to climb the dangerous trees?"
He said, "You are too much! Now this is going too far. You had told me, I understood it..."
I said, "I will follow it, because I have myself proposed it. But the trees that you are saying are dangerous are irresistible, because JAMUN" -- an Indian fruit -- "grows on them. It is really delicious, and when it is ripe I may not be able to resist the temptation. You are my father, it is your duty... you must know somebody who can help me."

He said, "If I had known that to be a father was going to be so difficult, I would have never been a father -- at least of you! Yes, I know one man" -- and he introduced me to an old man who was a rare climber, the best.

He was a woodcutter, and he was so old that you could not believe that he could do woodcutting. He did only rare jobs, which nobody else was ready to do... big trees which were spreading on the houses -- he would cut off the branches. He was just an expert, and he did it without damaging their roots or the houses. First he would tie the branches to other branches with ropes. Then he would cut these branches and then with the ropes pull the other branches away from the house and let them fall on the ground.

And he was so old! But whenever there was some situation like that, when no other woodcutter was ready, he was ready. So my father told him, "Teach him something, particularly about trees which are dangerous, which can break." Branches can break... and I had fallen already two, three times -- I still carry the marks on my legs.

That old man looked at me and he said, "Nobody has ever come, particularly a father bringing a boy...! It is a dangerous thing, but if he loves it, I would love to teach him." And he was teaching me how to manage to climb trees which were dangerous. He showed me all kinds of strategies of how to protect yourself: If you want to go high up the tree and you don't want to fall onto the ground, then first tie yourself with a rope to a point where you feel the tree is strong enough, and then go up. If you fall, you will be hanging from the rope, but you will not fall to the ground. And that really helped me; since then I have not fallen!

The function of a father or a mother is great, because they are bringing a new guest into the world -- who knows nothing, but who brings some potential in him. And unless his potential grows, he will remain unhappy.
No parents like to think of their children remaining unhappy; they want them to be happy. It is just that their thinking is wrong. They think if they become doctors, if they become professors, engineers, scientists, then they will be happy. They don't know! They can only be happy if they become what they have come to become. They can only become the seed that they are carrying within themselves.

So help in every possible way to give freedom, to give opportunities. Ordinarily, if a child asks a mother anything, without even listening to the child, to what he is asking, the mother simply says no. "No" is an authoritative word; "yes" is not. So neither father nor mother or anybody else who is in authority wants to say yes -- to any ordinary thing.

The child wants to play outside the house: "No!" The child wants to go out while it is raining and wants to dance in the rain: "No! You will get a cold." A cold is not a cancer, but a child who has been prevented from dancing in the rain, and has never been able again to dance, has missed something great, something really beautiful. A cold would have been worthwhile -- and it is not that he will necessarily have a cold. In fact the more you protect him, the more he becomes vulnerable. The more you allow him, the more he becomes immune.

Parents have to learn to say yes. In ninety-nine times when they ordinarily say no, it is for no other reason than simply to show authority. Everybody cannot become the president of the country, cannot have authority over millions of people. But everybody can become a husband, can have authority over his wife; every wife can become a mother, can have authority over the child; every child can have a teddy bear, and have authority over the teddy bear... kick him from this corner to the other corner, give him good slaps, slaps that he really wanted to give to the mother or to father. And the poor teddy bear has nobody below him.
This is an authoritarian society.

What I am saying is in creating children who have freedom, who have heard "yes" and have rarely heard "no", the authoritarian society will disappear. We will have a more human society.
So it is not only a question of the children. Those children are going to become tomorrow's society: the child is the father of man.

- Beyond Psychology, Chapter #23

Osho On Enlightenment

BELOVED OSHO,
WHY DOES EVERYBODY THINK ENLIGHTENMENT IS A JOKE?

Sarito, it is! But only a child can ask such a beautiful question -- Sarito is only twelve years of age. Enlightenment is a joke because it is not something that you have to achieve, yet you have to make all possible efforts to achieve it. It is already the case: you are born enlightened.

The word "enlightenment" is beautiful. We come from the source, the ultimate source of light. We are small rays of that sun, and howsoever far away we may have gone, our nature remains the same. Nobody can go against his real nature: you can forget about it, but you cannot lose it. Hence attaining it is not the right expression; it is not attained, it is only remembered. That's why Buddha called his method SAMMASATI.

Sammasati means right remembrance of that which is already there. Nanak, Kabir, Raidas, they have all called it SURATI. Surati means remembering the forgotten, but not the lost. Whether you remember or not, it is there -- it is there exactly the same. You can keep your eyes closed to it -- it is there. You can open your eyes -- it is there. You can keep it behind your back -- it is there. You can take a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn and see it -- it is there. It is the same.

George Gurdjieff used to call his method self-remembering. Nothing has to be achieved, nothing at all, but only to be discovered. And the discovery is needed because we go on gathering dust on our mirrors. The mirror is there covered by the dust. Remove the dust, and the mirror starts reflecting the stars, the beyond. Krishnamurti calls it awareness, alertness, attentiveness. These are different expressions for the same phenomenon. They are to remind you that you are not to go anywhere, not to be somebody else. You just have to find out who you are, and the finding is not difficult because it is your nature -- just a little reshuffling inside, a little cleaning.

It is said that when Bodhidharma attained enlightenment, he laughed for seven days continuously. His friends, his disciples, thought he had gone mad. They asked him, "Have you gone mad?"
He said, "I WAS mad, now I have become sane. I have gone sane!"
"Then why are you laughing?" they asked.
He said, "I am laughing because I have been searching for thousands of lives for something which was already within me! The seeker was the sought, and I was looking everywhere else -- I was looking everywhere except inside."

The famous Sufi woman, Rabiya al-Adabiya, one evening when the sun was setting, was found searching for something just in front of her door on the road. A few people gathered and they said, "Rabiya, what have you lost? We can help you."
She was an old woman and loved by the people, loved because she was beautifully crazy. Rabiya said, "I have lost my needle. I was sewing and I lost my needle. I am searching for it, and there is not much time because the sun is setting. If you want to help me, help quickly, because once the sun has set and darkness has descended, it will be impossible to find the needle."

So they all started a hectic search for the needle. One of them suddenly thought, "The needle is such a small thing and the road is so big, and the sun is going down every moment, the light is disappearing -- unless we know the exact spot where it has fallen it will be impossible to find it." So he asked Rabiya, "Will you please tell us where the needle has fallen exactly? Then it will be possible to find it. Otherwise soon there will be darkness, and the road is very big and the needle is very small."

Rabiya started laughing. She said, "Please don't ask that, because I feel embarrassed by the question!"

They all stopped searching. They said, "What is the matter? Why should you feel embarrassed?"
She said, "I feel embarrassed because I lost the needle INSIDE the house, but because there is no light there, how can I find it? Outside on the road there is just a little light from the setting sun."
They all said, "Now you have gone completely crazy! We had always suspected that you were not sane, but this is an absolute proof!"

Rabiya said, "You think me insane, yet you have been doing the same for lives together -- and YOU are sane? Where have you lost yourself, and where are you trying to find it? Where have you lost your bliss, and where are you trying to find it? It is lost in your inner world, and you are searching on the outside!"

Everywhere people are running with great speed. Time is short, the sun is setting; any moment the darkness can descend. Run as fast as you can! Man has been inventing faster and faster ways to reach, but if you ask him, "Where do you want to reach?" he feels embarrassed; he is not really clear where he wants to reach. One thing he is clear about is that he wants to reach there quickly, because life is short and much has to be found. The soul, God, bliss, truth, freedom...so many things have to be found, and his hands are absolutely empty.

Sarito, in that sense enlightenment is certainly a joke. If you understand it, there is no need to seek and search; you can just close your eyes and find it. But this question coming from a small child is beautiful. The grown-up person will not be able to ask such a sane question. The grown-up person will ask, "What is enlightenment? How has it to be found? What are the right methods, ways and means? How should one live? What virtues should be cultivated? What prayers should be said?" And all those questions look very relevant.

Sarito, your question does not look very relevant, but it IS relevant, more relevant than any grown-up person can ever ask. Grown-up people ask questions which look good in the asking, but they are not really interested in asking an authentic question -- they are AFRAID of asking the authentic question.

In an old Scottish mansion the resident ghost is floating through the living room. Everybody seems to be scared to death except a little boy who is watching the spectacle with a curious look on his face.
"Hey, Mister Ghost," he says, "have you lost your handkerchief?"
"No," replied the ghost, "that's not a handkerchief, that's my son!"

But only a small boy could have asked, "Hey, Mister Ghost...." All the grown-ups were very much scared; they must have been trembling, avoiding, pretending that they had not seen anything.

One little boy asked the other, "Did that play you saw last night have a happy ending?"
The other one said, "I'll say. Everybody was happy when it was over."

The Christian priest was telling the little boy, "Herb, I want you to remember that we are here to help others."
Herb said, "Sure, but what are the others here for?"

"I never slept with a man until I married your father!" she declared emphatically to her unconventional teenage daughter. "Will you be able to say the same thing to your daughter?"
"Yes, Mother," replied the girl, "but not with such a straight face!"

Mummy and Daddy are talking about the Millers who live next door. "Well, the stork is going to pay them a visit for the fourth time soon," says Daddy.
Their little son laments, "They get one baby after another. And you -- what are you doing? Hanging around doing nothing!"

Children are very perceptive! You cannot deceive them.

They were discussing the attraction older men have for young girls.
"My grandfather was like that. Young girls were crazy about him."
"Was he crazy about them too?"
"He certainly was. He used to cut a notch on his cane after every conquest. And that's what killed him."
"How?"
"Well, one day he made the mistake of leaning on his cane!"

Sarito, you must have heard this comment amongst the small sannyasins in the ashram: "Why does everybody think enlightenment is a joke?" This must be coming from the small boys and girls; they must be thinking, "Enlightenment must be a joke. What is the need for enlightenment?" You need a teddy bear -- you can understand that. You need a tricycle -- that you can understand. You need a toy gun -- that you can understand.

Just a few days ago a new visitor was seen carrying a big gun. The guards became a little bit concerned; he was continuously carrying it and even trying to hide it, but it was too big to hide. Then one woman sannyasin saw him also carrying the gun in the marketplace. The visitor was asked, "Why do you carry this gun?"

He said, "I feel so embarrassed, but what to do? I have brought my little son with me and he loves the gun! Without the gun he goes nowhere, and the gun is so big he cannot carry it himself, so I have to carry it; otherwise he won't go anywhere, and I cannot leave him alone! His mother has not come; I was not aware that I would have to do this thing. Everywhere people are asking me, `Why are you carrying this gun?' And this is only a toy gun! I feel embarrassed, I try to hide it, but the more I try to hide it the more people become curious -- `Why?'"

Children have their own interests and they must be wondering, "Why? What is this enlightenment? And why are so many people interested in it? It must be some kind of joke!"
In fact, it is a cosmic joke. It is God seeking himself. It is a game of hide-and-seek: God hides himself and then tries to find himself! Being alone, what else to do?

When I used to travel in India -- for twenty years continuously -- many times it happened that I would be in a train compartment with only one passenger. And because I was not interested in talking to the passenger, he would start playing patience -- a game of cards you can play alone, you need not have any partner. They would feel a little embarrassed, but I would not pay any attention to them so they would start playing cards.

One day one man said, "You must think that I am crazy playing cards alone."
I said, "I don't think you are crazy. This is my business too!"
He said, "What do you mean? You also play patience?"
I said, "No, but enlightenment is like patience!"

Enlightenment is a dialogue with yourself, it is a monologue. You have to ask the question and you have to give the answer. When you see the futility, you become silent. That's how Buddha became silent! Then one sits under the tree "doing nothing, and the spring comes and the grass grows by itself." And what to do? -- when the grass grows you have to cut it and AGAIN sit silently, and AGAIN the grass grows so you cut it again. Again and again...!

Just the other day I was talking about Gunakar. This is the third time he has become enlightened, and he will become enlightened many more times. Now he is feeling very sad -- after each enlightenment he feels very sad. He is doing something impossible; nobody has done it before. After enlightenment people never feel sad again, but after each enlightenment he feels very sad. In fact, one enlightenment has always proved enough, more than enough! Three times he become enlightened; then he becomes unenlightened again -- and then the great sadness.

But he cannot control himself. The urge to become enlightened is so irrestible that within three or four months he will again forget and will become enlightened. To be enlightened may be a joke, but to become unenlightened is not a joke, it is a really serious affair!

So when he came for blessing the other night he could not even look at me. I tried in every way, but he went on looking down, up, here, there, but he wouldn't look at me. I forced his third eye very much, but what can you do? -- Germans don't have any third eye! You can go on pushing and pushing, and nothing happens!

- Come, Come, Yet Again Come, Chapter #14

Osho on Youth and Sports

OSHO, CAN YOU PLEASE TALK ABOUT YOUTH AND SPORTS, WHICH TODAY HAS A STRONG IMPACT ON YOUNG PEOPLE'S LIVES.

Sports are perfectly right, and the teenagers should be encouraged not just to be observers of other people playing, but to be participants. What is happening is that thousands of people are just watching, and only a few people, professionals, are playing. This is not a good situation.

Every teenager should be a participant, because it is going to give him physical health, it is going to give him a certain agility, it is going to give him a certain intelligence, and it is perfectly youthful.But just to be an observer -- and to be that before a television set -- is not right. Five or six hours glued in your chair before a television set just seeing others playing football, or any other sport, is not right. It does not give you any growth.

On the contrary, it makes you only an outsider in everything, never a participant, when it is deeply needed to be a participant, involved, committed.It is good once in a while to see experts playing, to learn -- but just to learn; otherwise, everybody should be on the playgrounds. I don't see what the problem is. Young people should play; even elderly people, if they can find time, should play. Even people who have retired, who want to live a little more, should play. We should find games for every age group so that all people, their whole life, are players -- according to their age, according to their strength.

But life should be a sport.Sport has one very beautiful thing which I would like you to remember: it teaches you that it does not matter whether you are defeated or you are victorious. What matters it that you play well, that you play totally, that you play intensely, that you put your all in without holding back. That is sportsmanship. The others can be victorious, there is no jealousy; you can congratulate them and you can celebrate their victory.

All that is needed is that you are not holding back, you are putting all your energies into it.Your whole life should be a playfulness.So there is nothing wrong in teenagers being interested in sports. The person who is asking seems to be interested that they should be all in the schools learning geography, history, and all kinds of nonsense which is of no use in life. Sports are far more significant, far healthier, far livelier.

- Socrates Poisoned Again After 25 Centuries, Chapter #23

Osho on Women

OSHO,
I SIMPLY CANNOT UNDERSTAND YOUR GENERALIZATIONS ABOUT MALE AND FEMALE TYPE. SOMETIMES YOU ACKNOWLEDGE MALE AND FEMALE PRINCIPLES REGARDLESS OF GENDER. BUT MOST OF THE TIME YOU TALK OF WOMAN BEING THE "PRIMITIVE" ONE, FINDING THE "WOLF" IN THE MAN. WHAT OF THE WOMAN WHO FINDS HERSELF NATURALLY THE INITIATOR OR SEES THE CAT, NOT THE WOLF, IN HER MAN? SOME MEN ARE REALLY LONGING TO BE PASSIVE. SOME WOMEN MAY NEED TO ASSERT THEMSELVES TO GROW. HOW CAN IT BE SIMPLY A MATTER OF WOMEN'S LIB MAKING WOMEN "SOPHISTICATED" AND OVER-RATIONAL?


My statement that women are more primitive than men is not to condemn them, it is to condemn men. By "primitive" I mean more natural, more in tune with existence. Civilization is a falsification, civilization is going astray from nature. The more man becomes civilized, the more he is hung up in the head. He loses contact with his heart.

The heart is still primitive. And it is good that the universities have not yet found a way to teach the heart and make it civilized. That is the only hope for humanity to survive. The woman is the only hope for humanity to survive. Up to now, man has been dominant, and man has been dominant for a very strange reason. The reason is that deep down man feels inferior. Out of inferiority, just to compensate for it, he started dominating the woman.

Only in one sense is he stronger than the woman, and that is in muscular strength. In every other way the woman is far stronger than the man. The woman lives longer than the man, five to seven years longer. The woman suffers less through diseases, illnesses, than the man.

One hundred and ten boys are born to every hundred girls. But by the time they reach sexual maturity the number is equalled -- ten boys have disappeared down the drain.
The woman has more resistance to illnesses and diseases of all kinds. More men go mad, the number is almost double. And more men commit suicide; again the number is double.
In every possible way except the muscular, the woman is far superior. But to have muscular strength is not really something very superior; it is animalistic. In that sense a wolf is far superior, a tiger even more, a lion still more.

Man must have become aware of his inferiority millions of years ago. And this is one of the psychological mechanisms: whenever you become aware of a certain inferiority, you have to compensate for it. The ugly person tries to look beautiful, pretends to be beautiful in every possible way. He will try with clothes, with cosmetics, he will go to beauticians, to plastic surgeons. It is over-compensation; somehow he knows that he is not beautiful and he has to be beautiful. The inferior person tries to be superior. And because of muscular strength, the man could prove to be the master, and he has dominated the woman down the ages.

But the time has come now for a great change. The future belongs to women, not to men, because what man has done, down through these ages, has been so ugly. Wars and wars and wars -- that is his whole history. All the great that man has created is... Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadirshah, Alexander, Napoleon, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong -- people like these.

Yes, there have been a few men like Gautam Buddha, Jesus Christ, Krishna -- but have you noted one point? They all look feminine. In fact that was one of Friedrich Nietzsche's criticisms of Buddha and Jesus Christ, that they look feminine, that they are womanish. Buddha certainly looks feminine. Whenever a man moves into the heart, something in him goes feminine. He becomes more round, more soft, more vulnerable.

Yes, there have been a few buddhas. But if you look closely at them you will find they are more feminine than masculine. All the great artists of the world slowly slowly start growing a quality of feminineness, grace, elegance, exquisiteness. A certain flavor of softness, relaxedness, calmness and quietness surrounds them. They are no longer feverish. What I am teaching here is really to turn the whole world feminine.

I make no distinctions between men and women; both have suffered. In fact suffering always comes like that, it is a double-edged sword. If you make somebody suffer, you have to suffer. If you make somebody a slave, you have to become a slave too; it is mutual.

The day women are liberated will be a great day of liberation for men too. But don't make the whole thing ugly. Otherwise there is every possibility -- I fear that the possibility is there, and it is a great possibility that in fighting with men, women may lose something which is valuable. Something which has not yet been crushed and destroyed by men may be destroyed by women themselves in fighting with men. If you fight ferociously you will lose the beauty of femininity; you yourself will become as ugly as men.

It has not to be decided by fighting, it has to be decided by understanding. Spread more and more understanding. Drop these ideas of being men and women! We are all human beings. To be a man or a woman is just a very superficial thing. Don't make much fuss about it, it is not anything very important; don't make it a big deal.

I am not talking about the biological distinction between man and woman, I am talking about the psychological one. Yes, there are men who are far more feminine than any woman, and there are women who are far more masculine than any man. But this is not a beautiful state; this is ugly, because this is creating a duality in you. If you have the body of a man and the mind of a woman, there will be a conflict, a social struggle in you, a civil war in you. You will be continuously in a tug of war, fighting, tense.

If you are a woman physiologically, and you have the mind of a man, your life will dissipate much energy in unnecessary conflict. It is far better to be in tune. If a man in the body, then a man in the mind; if a woman in the body, then a woman in the mind. And the Women's Lib movement is creating unnecessary trouble. It is turning women into wolves, it is teaching them how to fight. Man is the enemy; how can you love the enemy? How can you be in an intimate relationship with the enemy?

The man is not the enemy. The woman, to be really a woman, has to be more and more feminine, has to touch the heights of softness and vulnerability. And the man, to be really a man, has to move into his masculinity as deeply as possible. When a real man comes in contact with a real woman, they are polar opposites, extremes. But only extremes can fall in love, and only extremes can enjoy intimacy. Only extremes attract each other.

What is happening now is a kind of uni-sex: men becoming more and more feminine, women becoming more and more masculine. Sooner or later, all distinctions will be lost. It will be a very colorless society, it will be boring.

I would like the woman to become as feminine as possible, only then can she flower. And the man needs to be as masculine as possible, only then can he flower. When they are polar opposites, a great attraction, a great magnetism, arises between them. And when they come close, when they meet in intimacy, they bring two different worlds, two different dimensions, two different richnesses, and the meeting is a tremendous blessing, a benediction.

- The Book of Wisdom, Chapter #7

Osho on Festivity

We have a few festive days. Once a year we observe Holi, the festival of colours, painting ourselves and each other with bright colors. Once a year we celebrate Diwali, the festival of lights, and light many lamps in the darkness. But our life is dry and dull; and it is just because this is so that man has had to create festivals. The birds, the beasts, the plants, the rivers, the waterfalls -- they have neither Holi nor Diwali. It is because man is sick that he is satisfied with just one Diwali. One Diwali is just a consolation. So on that day the new clothes, the firecrackers, the lighted lamps -- and then we return to the same gloominess, the same prison, the same misery, the same anxiety.

When Holi comes, and we sing and dance, breaking all bounds and throwing off our normal codes of conduct. On that day we throw all our morality, rules and etiquette to the winds; for one day our river flows, breaking all disciplines. But do you think that a river that flows for one day of the year is going to reach the ocean? And even this one day is only an apology for the real flowing; it is just a mockery of our real selves!

Look at nature: there is Existence enjoying Holi every day, and celebrating Diwali daily. In nature the colors flow afresh every day, new flowers open each morning. Even before the old leaves fall, the new buds are bursting out and the new shoots are springing up. The festival does not stop even for a moment -- it is non-stop, every moment is Diwali. Such will be the life of a religious person. He will be festive each moment -- he is grateful that he is. His every breath is an expression of gratitude and benediction.

And this is a by product of witnessing. In witnessing there is to be no frugality with the fuel; you are not to be de-energized. And neither is the lid to be weighted down -- you are not to be turned insane either. It is not intended that you should explode into madness, be broken into chaotic pieces. Witnessing means seeing from a distance whatever is happening. This burning fuel is very beautiful; these rising flames have a magnificence, and this life which is manifesting itself like a fire, has a deep attractiveness. These songs of boiling water -- the humming, the bubbles, the foam, the rising steam -- it is all so beautiful! All this is accepted.

Remove the lid, let the steam. Let the fire burn and the steam fly free and you see all this from a distance, and an extraordinary truth reveals itself: that you are watching all this happen in the body. This fuel, this water, this steam, all are happening in the body. You are surrounded by it but you are beyond it.

The day you begin to see that you are beyond all that which is surrounding you each moment, you have transcended. From that day on you will no longer be disturbed by anger, you will not be troubled by sex. From that day, even if you enter into sex you will be standing at a distance, and now you will know that you are flowing with the supreme energy of existence. If existence wills that you should enter into sex, okay! Let it be done! And even if you are angry, after this day has come, then anger will be a playing, a game, an act. If it is necessary you will allow it; but not for a single moment will you be identified with it. You and the passion will remain separate.

To be in the world, but not of the world; to be in the body, but to not belong to the body; to pass through the river, but without getting wet -- this is the essence of witnessing.

- Nowhere To Go But In, Chapter #3

Anecdote of the Month

An elderly Irishman checked out of a hotel room and was half way to the bus depot when he realized he had left his umbrella behind. By the time he got back to the room, a newly wed couple had already checked in. Hating to interrupt anything, the Irishman got down on his knees and listened in at the keyhole.

"Whose lovely eyes are those, my darling?" he heard the man's voice ask.

"Yours, my love," the woman answered.

"And whose precious nose is this?" the man went on inside the room.

"Only yours," the woman replied.

"And whose beautiful lips are these?" the man continued."Yours!" panted the woman.

"And whose...?" but the Irishman could not stand it any more.Putting his mouth to the keyhole, he shouted, "When you get to a yellow plaid umbrella, folks, it is mine!"

- A Sudden Clash of Thunder, Chapter #3

Osho on Love & Relationship

BELOVED OSHO,
IS RELATIONSHIP THERE BECAUSE LOVE IS NOT?

yes. Love is not a relationship. Love relates, but it is not a relationship. A relationship is something finished. A relationship is a noun; the full stop has come, the honeymoon is over. Now there is no joy, no enthusiasm, now all is finished.
You can carry it on, just to keep your promises. You can carry it on because it is comfortable, convenient, cozy. You can carry it on because there is nothing else to do. You can carry it on because if you disrupt it, it is going to create much trouble for you.
Relationship means something complete, finished, closed. Love is never a relationship; love is relating. It is always a river, flowing, unending. Love knows no full stop; the honeymoon begins but never ends. It is not like a novel that starts at a certain point and ends at a certain point. It is an ongoing phenomenon. Lovers end, love continues. It is a continuum. It is a verb, not a noun. And why do we reduce the beauty of relating to relationship? Why are we in such a hurry? -- because to relate is insecure, and relationship is a security, relationship has a certainty. Relating is just a meeting of two strangers, maybe just an overnight stay and in the morning we say goodbye. Who knows what is going to happen tomorrow? And we are so afraid that we want to make it certain, we want to make it predictable. We would like tomorrow to be according to our ideas; we don't allow it freedom to have its own say. So we immediately reduce every verb to a noun.
You are in love with a woman or a man and immediately you start thinking of getting married. Make it a legal contract. Why? How does the law come into love? The law comes into love because love is not there. It is only a fantasy, and you know the fantasy will disappear. Before it disappears settle down, before it disappears do something so it becomes impossible to separate.
In a better world, with more meditative people, with a little more enlightenment spread over the earth, people will love, love immensely, but their love will remain a relating, not a relationship. And I am not saying that their love will be only momentary. There is every possibility their love may go deeper than your love, may have a higher quality of intimacy, may have something more of poetry and more of God in it. And there is every possibility their love may last longer than your so-called relationship ever lasts. But it will not be guaranteed by the law, by the court, by the policeman.
The guarantee will be inner. It will be a commitment from the heart, it will be a silent communion. If you enjoy being with somebody, you would like to enjoy it more and more. If you enjoy the intimacy, you would like to explore the intimacy more and more.
And there are a few flowers of love which bloom only after long intimacies. There are seasonal flowers too; within six weeks they are there in the sun, but within six weeks again they are gone forever. There are flowers which take years to come, and there are flowers which take many years to come. The longer it takes, the deeper it goes.
But it has to be a commitment from one heart to another heart. It has not even to be verbalized, because to verbalize it is to profane it. It has to be a silent commitment; eye to eye, heart to heart, being to being. It has to be understood, not said.
It is so ugly seeing people going to the church or the court to get married. It is so ugly, so inhuman. It simply shows they can't trust themselves, they trust the policeman more than they trust their own inner voice. It shows they can't trust their love, they trust the law.
Gandha, forget relationships and learn how to relate. Once you are in a relationship you start taking each other for granted. That's what destroys all love affairs. The woman thinks she knows the man, the man thinks he knows the woman. Nobody knows either. It is impossible to know the other, the other remains a mystery. And to take the other for granted is insulting, disrespectful.
To think that you know your wife is very very ungrateful. How can you know the woman? How can you know the man? They are processes, they are not things. The woman that you knew yesterday is not there today. So much water has gone down the Ganges; she is somebody else, totally different. Relate again, start again, don't take it for granted.
And the man that you slept with last night, look at his face again in the morning. He is no more the same person, so much has changed. So much, incalculably much, has changed. That is the difference between a thing and a person. The furniture in the room is the same, but the man and the woman, they are no more the same. Explore again, start again. That's what I mean by relating.
Relating means you are always starting, you are continuously trying to become acquainted. Again and again, you are introducing yourself to each other. You are trying to see the many facets of the other's personality. You are trying to penetrate deeper and deeper into his realm of inner feelings, into the deep recesses of his being. You are trying to unravel a mystery which cannot be unraveled.
That is the joy of love: the exploration of consciousness. And if you relate, and don't reduce it to a relationship, then the other will become a mirror to you. Exploring him, unawares you will be exploring yourself too. Getting deeper into the other, knowing his feelings, his thoughts, his deeper stirrings, you will be knowing your own deeper stirrings too. Lovers become mirrors to each other, and then love becomes a meditation. Relationship is ugly, relating is beautiful.
In relationship both persons become blind to each other. Just think, how long has it been since you saw your wife eye to eye? How long has it been since you looked at your husband? Maybe years. Who looks at one's own wife? You have already taken it for granted that you know her. What more is there to look at? You are more interested in strangers than in the people you know -- you know the whole topography of their bodies, you know how they respond, you know everything that has happened is going to happen again and again. It is a repetitive circle.
It is not so, it is not really so. Nothing ever repeats; everything is new every day. Just your eyes become old, your assumptions become old, your mirror gathers dust and you become incapable of reflecting the other.
Hence I say relate. By saying relate, I mean remain continuously on a honeymoon. Go on searching and seeking each other, finding new ways of loving each other, finding new ways of being with each other. And each person is such an infinite mystery, inexhaustible, unfathomable, that it is not possible that you can ever say, "I have known her," or, "I have known him." At the most you can say, "I have tried my best, but the mystery remains a mystery."
In fact the more you know, the more mysterious the other becomes. Then love is a constant adventure.