Taoblog

Men of tao are so contented in themselves, so utterly happy with themselves that nobody can pressure them or dominate them. They can do anything that they want to do.

And the scientific methodology is simple. For objective exploration science needs billions of dollars, but for inner exploration you don't need even a single dollar. So there is no problem at all. Meditation is individual, and does not depend on anybody's support.

Doubt all the dogmas, because doubt is just like a sharp sword. Cut all the ideologies from the very roots. Use doubt for clearing the ground, and then use any method of meditation. You can choose from one hundred and twelve methods.

Buddha had one method, Mahavira had one method, Lao Tzu had one method, Patanjali had one method.

Those single methods were enough for self-realization, but if you move through different methods, you will come across different spaces, different wonders, different experiences, different flavors, fragrances.

But perhaps you may not be able to do all the methods. Then look into the methods and choose ones that you feel have a certain attraction for you. Even if you can manage ten methods, you will be ten times richer than Gautam Buddha!

And each path had its own richness, its own music, its own poetry, its own colors.

Try as many methods as possible. But whenever you do a method, go to the very end. Don't start changing from one method to another unless you have reached to the very end.

And it is something to be remembered, that if you can manage to reach your inner self through one method, the other one hundred and eleven methods will become very easy to you, because now you know exactly where you are going. And now you can go with a deep trust -- which was missing in the first method. Now you can avoid all the mistakes that you made in the first method. You can avoid all the pitfalls which prevented you, delayed you in reaching your own self.

Once you have done at least three methods, then you can move easily in all the remaining methods. You will be surprised -- no mistake, no pitfall, no disturbance, just... like a click! Any method you start and you are at the end. You have passed through the whole scene with jet-speed.

Yes, science has to be religious.

If it is not going to be religious, then it is going to be in the service of politics, in the service of war, in the service of death.

If science becomes religious, then it will be in the service of life, in the service of love, in the service of rejoicings.

We are alive and yet we do not know what life is. It is because of our lack of knowledge about life that we think death happens. Death is a kind of ignorance. And ignorance about life inevitably results in death. If we could only know the life within us! A single ray of the knowledge of out inner life would remove our everlasting ignorance about death forever. It would dispel our blind belief that we can die, that we have died before, that we will die again. But we do not know the light that we are, the light that is our selves, and we are afraid of the darkness, afraid of something that is totally alien to us. We never encounter the light that is us, that is our very being, our soul, our life, our power -- and yet we fear the darkness that is not within us at all.

Man is not death; man is the nectar of the gods. But we do not even lift our eyes to see the cup that is held out to us. We never probe into life, never take a single step towards uncovering its meaning. We remain strangers to life and approach death in terror.

The major question is not one of life and death, it is one of life alone. To speak on life and death is impossible. There is only life. Death does not exist. If one understands life then there is only life. But if life remains unknown there is only death. Life and death never exist together, like two aspects of a problem. We either know that we are life and then death does not exist, or we do not know that we are life and then only death exists. They cannot exist together. But we are all afraid of death. And this clearly shows we have not understood the meaning of life. Fear of death only betrays one's ignorance of life.

What flows in and out of us every moment, through every pore, through every breath, is completely unknown to us. And this means that man is in a deep slumber, because it is only when one is fast asleep, that it is possible to forget one's self. This means man is in a deep coma. It boils down to the fact that the full power of man's spirit is not awake, but lost in some kind of faint. When he is asleep man is not aware of anything. He does not know who he is, what he is, where he has come from. In the darkness of sleep everything is lost. Man even forgets his own existence. It is only when he has awakened that he knows he has been asleep.

Some kind of hypnotic sleep of the spirit seems to have paralyzed man and has made it impossible for him to grasp the true meaning of life. But we refuse to accept this as a fact. We will even question the sanity of such a theory and will insist that we do know life because we are alive, because we move about, because we stand, sit sleep. But look, a drunkard also moves about, breaths, sleeps, opens and closes his eyes, speaks. And so does a madman. Both the drunkard and the madman are alive yet you cannot say that the drunkard is in his right senses or that the madman is conscious.

The attorney-general in Madhya Pradesh came running to Osho one day and he said, "You are immediately needed. My father had a heart attack and he loves you so much." His father was an all-India figure, Dada Dharmadhikari, a very intelligent person who had been in deep contact for almost forty years with J. Krishnamurti.

Whenever he used to come to visit his son he would always come to Osho, and Osho was telling him, "All your J. Krishnamurti jargon is only intellectual. It won't help you at the right time."

He said, "No, in forty years it has reached to my bones, to my blood, to my marrow. There is no question that it can be shaken by anything."

Osho went to his home; they had arranged for him to relax in a dark room. Osho entered without making any noise because he heard somebody saying, "Hare Krishna, Hare Rama."

Osho said, "Dada Dharmadhikari cannot say that -- and there is nobody else." As his eyes became accustomed to the dark room Osho went close, without making any noise. Very silently he was whispering, "Hare Krishna, Hare Rama."

Osho shook him and he said, "Dada, what are you doing? This goes against your J. Krishnamurti completely. Have you joined the Hare Krishna, Hare Rama movement so suddenly? I had seen you yesterday and you were a Krishnamurti-ite."

He said, "Don't harass me at this moment. I know there is no God and I know this Hare Krishna, Hare Rama is just foolish. But just in case... who knows if God exists? And what is the harm? I'm lying down and just repeating my childhood mantra that has been given to me by my traditional guru who said, `In any difficulty, repeat it and you will be helped.' I'm dying; this is not the moment to discuss."

Osho said, "This is the moment to discuss, because I have been telling you for almost twenty years that all your Krishnamurti jargon is intellectual. At the right moment it will disappear. Now this is the moment: now say to me, There is no God!'"

He said, "At this moment I cannot say that, it is too risky. You just leave me alone, because only a few minutes are left and perhaps maybe not even a few minutes. Let me repeat my mantra. If he is, I will tell him, `I repeated the mantra. Forgive me for all my stupidity when I used to tell people that there is no God and things like that.' If he is not, there is no problem -- but I can't take a chance."

But he did not die; it was only the first heart attack. People die almost always when the heart attack comes for the third time. He survived, and after four or five days Osho went to see him. He was sitting in the garden, in the sun.

Osho said, "What about Hare Krishna, Hare Rama?"

He said, "All that is nonsense."

Osho said, "Have you forgotten?"

He said, "No, I have not forgotten, but in weakness, in helplessness one starts looking for some help from the beyond."

Osho said, "Then all your intellectual, philosophical argumentation is only superficial. If it can't help you in your helplessness then it is of no use."

THE BUDDHA SAID:

"THOSE WHO ARE FOLLOWING THE WAY SHOULD BEHAVE LIKE A PIECE OF TIMBER WHICH IS DRIFTING ALONG A STREAM. IF THE LOG IS NEITHER HELD BY THE BANKS, NOR SEIZED BY MEN, NOR OBSTRUCTED BY THE GODS, NOR KEPT IN THE WHIRLPOOL, NOR ITSELF GOES TO DECAY, I ASSURE YOU THAT THIS LOG WILL FINALLY REACH THE OCEAN.

Buddha says these things have to be remembered. If these things are remembered, and you are not caught by anything, just surrender to the stream and the stream will take you to the ocean.

"IF MONKS WALKING ON THE WAY ARE NEITHER TEMPTED BY THE PASSIONS, NOR LED ASTRAY BY SOME EVIL INFLUENCES, BUT STEADILY PURSUE THEIR COURSE FOR NIRVANA, I ASSURE YOU THAT THESE MONKS WILL FINALLY ATTAIN ENLIGHTENMENT."

IF MONKS WALKING ON THE WAY ARE NEITHER TEMPTED BY THE PASSIONS..." because the passions are of the body, the passions are of the senses. They are very stupid!

Food is needed, but food is not the goal. You need food to exist, but there are many people who exist only to eat more and more and more.

Somebody is continuously obsessed with sex. Nothing is wrong with sex, but obsession is always wrong. With what you are obsessed is not the question -- obsession is wrong, because then it starts draining your energy. Then you are continuously moving in a whirlpool of your own making, and you go on round and round and round, and you waste your energy.

And one day suddenly you find death has come and you have not lived at all, you have not known even what life is. You have been alive and yet you have not known what life is. You have been here and yet you don't know who you are. What a wastage! And what a disrespectful way of living! I call it sacrilege against Tao.

It is good to eat, it is good to love, but if you are eating twenty-four hours a day you are mad. There is a balance. When the balance is lost then you are falling below human standards.

"IF MONKS WALKING ON THE WAY ARE NEITHER TEMPTED BY THE PASSIONS..."

Temptation is there -- and it will be greater when you start walking on the path. Ordinarily it may not be so, but when you start walking on the path, the body will struggle. That's how it happens.

People who have come to meditate, they were never aware that they were obsessed with food. Meditating, suddenly one day, a great obsession arises about food. They feel continuously hungry; they are surprised because it has never been so. What has happened? Out of meditation? Yes, it can happen out of meditation, because when you are moving in meditation the body starts feeling you are going distant, you are going away. The body starts tempting you. The body will not allow you to become a master.

The body has remained master for many, many lives; you have been a slave. Now, suddenly you are trying to change the whole state: you are trying to make the slave the master, and the master the slave. You are trying to stand on your head -- to the body it looks exactly like that, that you are turning things upside down. The body revolts, the body fights, the body resists. The body says, "I will not allow you so easily."

The mind starts fighting! When the body starts fighting you will feel a great obsession for food arising in you. And when the mind starts fighting, you will feel a great obsession with sex arising in you. Sex and food, these two are going to be the problems. These are the two basic passions.

A soldier just returning from three years overseas arrived at a camp near his home town. He was naturally very anxious to see his wife, but try as he would he could not possibly wrangle more than two hours' leave.

After six hours' absence he came back to the camp. "Why the hell are you four hours AWOL?" barked the sergeant.

"Well, you see," said the soldier, "when I got home I found my wife in the bathtub, and it took me four hours to dry out my uniform!"

When you live an unconscious life you live in a different way.

When Tom, the rising young insurance executive, appeared at his friend Ed's home in the early morning hours, asking to be put up for the night, Ed was concerned by his friend's hollow-eyed appearance. "What happened, Tom? You and your wife had a fight?"

"Yeah, when I got home last night I was really beat, tired as hell, so when she asked me for fifty dollars for a new dress...."

"Yeah?"

"Well, I guess I must have been half asleep or something, because I said, 'Alright, but let us finish this dictation first.'"

Are you all British, or what? Can't you get such a simple joke? Living an unconscious life you are even bound to miss jokes!

The moment you change from mind to meditation your whole life is going to be affected. It is natural. If it is not affected, that will be something unnatural. Your relationships are bound to change.

For example, a man may believe that he loves his wife. The moment he starts meditating it will become clear and transparent whether he loves her or not. He may never have loved her. He may simply be using her as a sex object, or he may be using her as a mother substitute. He may be using her because he is unable to be alone, but he may never have loved her. He may be dependent on her; she may have great utility.