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Osho - The Empty Boat
Chapter 9. Means and Ends
The purpose of a fish trap
Is to catch fish,
And when the fish are caught
The trap is forgotten.
The purpose of words
Is to convey ideas.
When the ideas are grasped
The words are forgotten.
Where can I find a man
Who has forgotten words?
He is the one
I would like to talk to.
It is difficult to forget words. They cling to the mind. It is difficult to throw away the net because not only are fish caught in it, the fisher is also caught. This is one of the greatest problems. Working with words is playing with fire, because words become so important that the meaning loses meaning.
The symbol becomes so heavy that the content is completely lost; the surface hypnotizes you and you forget the center.
This has happened all over the world. Christ is the content, Christianity is just a word; Buddha is the content, DHAMMAPADA is just a word; Krishna is the content, the Gita is nothing but a trap. But the Gita is remembered and Krishna is forgotten - or if you remember Krishna, you remember him only because of the Gita. If you talk about Christ it is because of the churches, the theology, The Bible, the words. People carry the net for many lives without realizing that it is just a net, a trap.
Buddha used to tell a story:
A few men were crossing a river. The river was dangerous, in flood - it must have been the rainy season - and the boat saved their lives. They must have been very, very intelligent because they thought, "This boat saved us, how can we leave it now? This is our savior and it will be ungrateful to leave it!" So they carried the boat on their heads into the town.
Somebody asked them, "What are you doing? We have never seen anybody carrying a boat."
They said, "Now we will have to carry this boat for the rest of our lives, because this boat saved us and we cannot be ungrateful."
Those intelligent-looking people must have been stupid. Thank the boat but leave it there. Don't carry it. You have been carrying many types of boats in your head - maybe not on your head, but in your head. Look within. Ladders, boats, paths, words - this is the content of your head, of your mind.
The container becomes much too important, the vehicle becomes much too important, the body becomes much too important - and then you become a blind man. The vehicle was just to give you the message - receive the message and forget the vehicle. The messenger was just to give you the message - receive the message and forget the messenger. Thank him, but don't carry him in your head.
Mohammed insisted again and again, almost every day of his life, "I am just a messenger, a PAIGAMBER. Don't worship me, I have only carried a message from the divine. Don't look at me, look at the divine who has sent the message to you." But Mohammedans have forgotten the source.
Mohammed has become important, the vehicle.
Says Chuang Tzu:
Where can I find a man
Who has forgotten words?
He is the one
I would like to talk to.
A man who has forgotten words, he is worth talking to, because he has the innermost reality, the center of being within him. He has the message. His silence is pregnant. Your talking is impotent.
What are you doing when you talk? You are not saying anything in particular. You have got no message, nothing is to be delivered. Your words are empty, they don't contain anything, they don't carry anything. They are just symbols. And when you are talking you are simply throwing out your rubbish. It may be a good catharsis for you, but it can be dangerous for the other. And how can you talk with a person who is filled with words? Impossible. The words don't leave room. The words don't give a door, an opening. The words are too much, you cannot penetrate.
To talk with a man who is filled with words is almost impossible. He cannot listen, because for listening one should be silent, for listening one should be receptive. Words don't allow that - words are aggressive, they are never receptive. You can talk but you cannot listen, and if you cannot listen, your talk is the talk of a madman. You are talking not knowing why, you are talking not knowing what.
You go on talking because it gives you a sort of release.
You feel good after having a good chitchat. You feel good because you are relieved: your talking is part of your tensions. It is not coming from you, it is just a disturbance; it is not a song, it has no beauty of its own. That is why whenever you talk you simply bore the other. But why is he listening?
He is not listening, he is just waiting to bore you, just waiting for the right moment when he can take the reins in his hands.
I have heard, it happened once that a great politician, a leader, was speaking, and he spoke and spoke and it was getting near midnight. By and by the audience left until only one person was left in the hall. The leader thanked him and said, "You seem to be the only lover of truth, the only authentic follower. I feel grateful. When everyone else has left, you are still here."
The man said, "Don't be deceived, I am the next speaker."
When you listen, you are listening because you are the next speaker. You can tolerate the man - this is a bargain. If you want to bore others you have to allow them to bore you. Really, when you say that a certain person is a bore, you mean that the person will not give you any opportunity to be the next speaker. He goes on and on and you cannot find a gap from where you can enter to start boring. That person looks like a bore to you, but every mind filled with words is a bore.
When will you realize this? Why is a person bored? - because there are only words, no fish in them, only traps...useless, meaningless, there is no content. It is like a rattling of something, a noise; no meaning is carried. Whenever there is meaning it is beautiful; whenever there is meaning you grow through it; whenever there is meaning, when you encounter a man who has meaning, it gives you a new upsurge of energy. It is not a wastage, it is a learning, it is an experience. Rare and difficult it is to find a man who is silent.
If you can find a man who is silent and persuade him to talk to you, you will gain much - because when the mind is not filled with words, the heart speaks to the heart. When everything comes out of silence, when a word is born out of silence, it is beautiful, it is alive, it shares something with you.
When a word comes only out of the crowd of words, it is mad, it can madden you.
A small boy of five was asked by his teacher, "Has your younger sister learned to talk yet?"
The boy said, "Yes, she has learned to talk - and now we are teaching her to be quiet."
This is the misery. You have to teach words, it is part of life, and then you have to learn how to be silent, and how to be wordless. Universities, parents, teachers, they teach you words, and then you have to find a master who can teach you how to keep quiet.
A German scholar came to Ramana Maharshi and said, "I have come from very far away to learn something from you."
Ramana laughed and said, "Then you have come to the wrong place. Go to some university, some scholar, some great pundit; there you will be able to learn. If you come to me then be aware that learning is not possible here, we teach only unlearning. I can teach you how to unlearn, how to throw words away, to create space within you. And that space is divine, that space is God."
Where are you seeking? In words, in scriptures? Then one day or other you will become an atheist.
A pundit, a scholar, cannot remain a theist for long. Remember, howsoever he knows, whatsoever he knows about The Bible and the Gita and the Koran, a scholar is bound to become an atheist one day because that is the logical consequence of gathering words. Sooner or later he will ask: Where is God? No Bible can reply, no Gita can supply the answer. Rather, Bibles and Gitas and Korans, when they are too much on your mind, will make you miss the divine because the whole of your mind space is filled...there is too much furniture in you. God cannot move. God may not be able to make any contact with you if the mind is too wordy. Then it is impossible to listen, and if you cannot listen, how can you pray? It is impossible to wait, words are too impatient, they are knocking from within to get out.
I have heard:
Once it happened that at three o'clock one morning Mulla Nasruddin phoned the bartender and said, "What time is the bar going to open?"
The bartender said, "This is no time to inquire such a thing. You are a regular customer, Nasruddin, and you know that we don't open before nine in the morning. Go back to sleep and wait until nine."
But ten minutes later he phoned again and said, "This is urgent. Tell me when the bar is going to open."
Now the bartender felt annoyed. He said, "What do you think you are doing? I told you not a single minute before nine. And don't keep phoning me."
But ten minutes later he phoned again. The bartender said, "Have you gone mad? You will have to wait until nine.
Nasruddin said, "You don't understand. I am locked in the saloon and I want to get out!"
If your mind is too burdened with words, theories, scriptures, they will keep knocking: Give way, we want to get out! And when the mind wants to get out, God cannot enter in you. When the mind wants to get out, it is not open for anything that is incoming. It is closed, it is a one-way traffic - double traffic is not possible.
When you are aggressive through words going out, nothing can penetrate you, neither love, nor meditation, nor God. And all that is beautiful happens as an ingoing process. When you are silent, no words knocking within to get out, when you are waiting - in that moment of waiting beauty happens, love happens, prayer happens, God happens. But if a man is too addicted to words, he will miss it all. In the end he will have a long collection of words and theories, logic, everything - but nothing is worthwhile because the content is missing.
You have the net, the trap, but no fish are there. If you had really caught the fish you would have thrown away the net immediately. Who bothers? If you have really used the ladder, you forget it.
Who thinks about it? You have transcended it, it has been used.
So whenever a man really comes to know, knowledge is forgotten. That is what we call wisdom.
A wise man is one who has been able to unlearn the knowledge. He simply drops all that is nonessential.
Says Chuang Tzu:
Where can I find a man
Who has forgotten words?
He is the one i would like to talk to.
He is worth talking to. It may not be so easy to persuade him to talk, but just to be near him, just to sit by his side will be a communion, will be a communication, the deepest that is possible. Two hearts will melt into each other.
But why this addiction to words? - because the symbol appears to be the real. And if it is repeated again and again, through repetition you become autohypnotized. Repeat anything, and by and by you will forget that you don't know. The repetition will give you the feeling that you know.
If you go to the temple for the first time, you go in ignorance. It is hypothetical whether this temple really contains anything, whether God is there or not. But go every day, again and again, and go on repeating the ritual, the prayers; and whatsoever the priest says, go on doing it day after day, year after year. You will forget the hypothetical state of mind that was there in the beginning. With continuous repetitions the thing goes into the mind and you start feeling that this is the temple, God lives here, this is the abode of God. Now you have moved into the world of appearance.
That is why every religion insists on teaching children as young as possible, because once you miss childhood it is very difficult to convert people to foolish things, very difficult. Psychologists say that everybody should be caught before the age of seven. The child can be conditioned to be a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian or anything, a communist, theist or atheist, it doesn't make any difference - but grab the child before seven. Up to the age of seven the child learns almost fifty percent of all he will ever learn in his whole life.
And this fifty percent is very meaningful because it becomes the base. He will learn many things, he will create a great structure of knowledge, but all that structure will be based on the knowledge that he received when he was a child. And at this time, before the age of seven, the child has got no logic, no argumentativeness. He is trusting, exploring; he is believing. He cannot disbelieve, because he does not know what belief, what disbelief, is.
When the child is born, he has no mind to argue. He does not know what argument is. Whatsoever you say appears true to him, and if you repeat it the child is hypnotized. That is how all the religions have exploited humanity. The child has to be forced to conform to a pattern, and once the pattern is deeply rooted, nothing can be done. Even if later on the child changes his religion, nothing much will change. On the contrary, his Christianity will be just like Hinduism, because of the base.
It happened, there was once a tribe of cannibals near the Amazon. By and by, they killed most of their own members until only two hundred or so remained. They had killed and eaten each other. A missionary went there to work. The chief of the tribe spoke to him in perfect English. The missionary was surprised and said, "What! You speak such perfect English, and with a perfect Oxford accent, but you are still a cannibal?"
The man said, "Yes, I have been to Oxford, and I have learned much. Yes, we are still cannibals, but now I use a knife and fork. I have learned that at Oxford."
This much change happens - nothing much. Convert a Hindu to Christianity and his Christianity will be just like Hinduism. Convert a Christian to Hinduism; he will remain a Christian deep down, because you cannot change the base. You cannot make him a child again, you cannot make him innocent. That moment is lost.
If this earth is ever going to be really religious then we will not teach Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Buddhism: that is one of the greatest crimes committed. We will teach prayer, we will teach meditation, but not sects. We will not teach words and beliefs, we will teach a way of life, we will teach happiness, we will teach ecstasy. We will teach how to look at the trees, how to dance with the trees, how to be more sensitive, how to be more alive and how to enjoy the blessings that God has given...but not words, not beliefs, not philosophies, not theologies. No, we will not lead them to a church or to a temple or to a mosque, because these places are the sources of corruption.
They have corrupted the mind. We will leave the children to nature; that is the temple, the real church.
We will teach children to look at the floating clouds, at the rising sun, at the moon at night. We will teach them how to love, and we will teach them not to create barriers against love, meditation, prayer; we will teach them to be open and vulnerable, we will not close their minds. And we will of course teach words but simultaneously we will teach silence, because once words get into the base, silence becomes difficult.
You come to me, your problem is this: at the base there are words and now you are trying to meditate and be silent - and the base is always there. Whenever you are silent the base starts functioning.
So you become aware of too much thinking when you meditate - even more than you feel ordinarily.
Why? What is happening? When you are silent you go inwards and you become more sensitive to the inner nonsense that goes on and on. When you are not in meditation you are outward-going, extrovert; you are involved with the world and you cannot listen to the inner noise that goes on. Your mind is not there.
The noise is continuously there but you cannot hear it, you are occupied. But whenever you close your eyes and look within, the madhouse opens. You can see and feel and hear, and then you become afraid and scared. What is happening? And you thought that through meditation you would become more silent! And this is happening - just the opposite!
In the beginning it is bound to happen because a wrong base has been given to you. The whole society, your parents, your teachers, your universities, your culture, have given you a wrong base.
You have already been corrupted, your source is poisoned. That is the problem - how to depoison you. It takes time, and one of the most difficult things is to get rid of all that you have known, to unlearn.
Says Chuang Tzu:
Where can I find a man
Who has forgotten words?
He is the one
I would like to talk to.
Only a sage is worth talking to. Only a sage is worth listening to. Only a sage is worth living with.
What is a sage? An empty boat - no words inside, the empty sky without the clouds. No sound, no noise, nobody mad, no chaos within, a continuous harmony, equilibrium, balance. He lives as if he is not. He is as if he is absent. He moves, but nothing moves within him. He talks, but the inner silence is there. It is never disturbed; he uses words, but those words are only vehicles - through those words he is sending you something which is beyond words. And if you catch and grab the words, you will miss.
When you listen to a sage, don't listen to his words; they are secondary, they are superficial, they are only peripheral. Listen to him, don't listen to his words. When the words reach you, just put them aside, as the traveler will do who has crossed the sea - he leaves the boat there and goes on.
Leave the boat there and go on. If you carry the boat, you are mad. Then your whole life will become a burden, you are burdened by the boat. A boat is not to be carried on the head. Feel grateful, that is okay, but carrying the boat on your head is too much.
How many boats are you carrying on your head? Your whole life has become static because of the weight. You cannot fly, you cannot float, because you are carrying such a dead burden, not only from one life, this life, but from many lives. You go on collecting all that is useless, futile. Why does this happen? There must be some deep reason, otherwise everybody would not be doing it.
Why does it happen? In the first place, you think the word is the reality - the word god is God, the word love is love - the word is real. The word is NOT the real. You have to make a distinction, a clear-cut distinction, that the word is not the real. The word only symbolizes, indicates; it is not the real. Once you are trapped into believing that the word is the real, then when someone says, "I love you," you will be frustrated. Because he says he loves you, you believe he loves you - for you the word is the real.
If you cannot see the wordless reality you will be frustrated in all your paths in life, everywhere you will be frustrated because you will take the word for reality.
Many people come to me and say, "This girl loved me, she said it herself." "This man loved me and now the love has disappeared." They were both deceived by words.
Dale Carnegie suggests that even if you have been married for twenty years, don't forget to keep using the same words you used when you were courting your wife - continue. Every morning say the same as you did when you were courting. Don't drop those words. Every day say, "Nobody exists like you. You are the most beautiful person in the world, and I will die without you." Dale Carnegie says that even if you don't feel it, go on saying it, because words are realities. And the wife will be deceived and the husband will be deceived, because we live by words alone.
You don't know anything else, you don't know anything real. How can you be in contact with reality?
When someone says, "I love you" - finished! When someone says, "I hate you" - finished! Put aside the words and look at the person. When someone says, "I love you," don't get entangled with the words, put them aside. Look at the person, at his or her totality. Then nobody can deceive you. Love is such a fire you will be able to see it, you will be able to touch it, you will be able to know whether it is there or not.
Love cannot be hidden. If it is there, really, words are not needed. When somebody really loves you, he will not say, "I love you." It is not needed. Love is enough unto itself - it needs no salesmanship.
It doesn't need anybody to persuade, to convince; it is enough, it is a fire. Nothing is more fiery than love, it is a flame. And when there is a flame in the dark you need not say anything about it. It is there. No advertisement is needed, no propaganda is needed.
Try to separate words from reality. In your day-to-day life when someone says, "I hate you," don't believe the word. This may be just a momentary thing, it may be just a phase. Don't go for the word, otherwise you will make an enemy for life. As you have made friends because of words so you have made enemies because of words. Don't go for the words, look into the person, look into the eyes, feel the whole - it may be just a momentary reaction. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred it will be just a momentary thing. He feels hurt by something, he reacts and says, "I hate you." Wait, don't decide, don't say, "This is an enemy." If you say that, you are not only deceived by others' words, you are also deceived by your own. If you say, "This is an enemy," now this word will cling. And even if he changes tomorrow, you will not be so ready or so willing to change, you will carry it within you.
And then through your insistence you will create an enemy. Your enemies are false, your friends are false, because words are not reality.
Words can do only one thing: if you go on repeating them they give you the appearance of reality.
Says Adolf Hitler in his autobiography, Mein Kampf: I know only one difference between the truth and the lie - that is, a lie repeated many times becomes true. And he knows by experience, he says that he did it - he continuously repeated lies, and went on and on repeating them.
In the beginning they looked foolish. He started saying that it was because of the Jews that Germany was defeated in the first world war. It was absolutely absurd.
Once he was speaking at a meeting and he asked, "Who is responsible for the defeat of Germany?"
One man stood up and said, "The bicycle riders."
Hitler was surprised. He said, "What? Why?"
The man said, "Then why the Jews?" He was a Jew. Why Jews?
Even when Hitler was dying and again Germany had been defeated and completely destroyed, he didn't believe that it was because of Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt. He didn't believe that he was defeated because his enemies were superior, more powerful than him. His last verdict was still the same: that it was a Jewish conspiracy, that the Jews were in the background working and because of them the Germans had been defeated. And the whole of Germany believed him - one of the most intelligent peoples on the earth!
But intelligent people can be stupid because intelligent people always believe in words. That is the problem. The Germans, highly intelligent, highly scholarly people, have produced the greatest professors, philosophers; the whole country is intelligent. How could such a stupid man as Adolf Hitler persuade them that his arguments were logical?
But this COULD happen there because a land of professors, intelligentsia, so-called intellectuals, is always word-addicted. If you go on repeating a word again and again and again, hammering and hammering, people listening again and again start feeling that this is true. Truth can be created out of lies if you go on repeating them. Repeti-tion is the method to convert a lie into a truth. But can you convert a lie into a truth? Just in appearance you can. Try it. Go on repeating something and you will start believing it. It may be that you are not as miserable as you look. Because you have been repeating, "I am in misery, I am in misery, I am in misery," and you have repeated it so often, now you look miserable.
Just look into your misery. Are you really miserable? Are you really in such hell as you show by your face? Have a second thought. Immed-iately you will not feel so miserable because nobody can be as miserable as you look. It is impossible. God doesn't allow it! It is repetition, it is autohypnosis.
A French psychologist, Emile Coue, used to treat people. His method was simply repetition, suggestion, autohypnosis. You could go to him and say, "I have a headache, a constant headache, and no medicine helps. I have tried all the 'pathies,' even naturopathy, and nothing helps."
He would say that there was no need of treatment because there was no headache. You have simply believed in it. And in going to this doctor and that, all have helped you to believe that yes, a headache is there - because if they don't believe in your headache they cannot live. Doctors cannot say that you don't have a headache. When you go to a doctor, even if you have nothing wrong he will find something. A doctor exists by it.
Talking with Coue would help you immediately, almost fifty percent of the headache would disappear just by talking to him - without any medicine. And he would feel the relaxation coming over your face and then he would know that the trick had worked. Then he would give you a formula that you had to repeat continuously day and night, whenever you remembered - that there was no headache.
Every morning when you got up you had to repeat: "I am getting better and better every day." And within two or three weeks the headache would disappear.
A real headache cannot disappear that way. In the first place the headache was created by words; in the first place, you hypnotized yourself that you had a headache, and then you dehypnotized yourself. A real illness cannot disappear. But your illnesses - ninety percent of them - are unreal.
Through words you have created them. Coue helped thousands, Mesmer helped thousands, just by creating the feeling that you are not ill. It doesn't show that autohypnosis cures illness; it only shows that you are such great autohypnotists already that you CREATE illnesses! You believe in them.
And doctors cannot say that your diseases are mental. You don't feel good if someone says that your disease is mental, you feel very bad, and you immediately change your doctor. Whenever a doctor says that you have a very great disease, very serious, you feel very good - because a man like you, so great, a somebody, he MUST have a big disease! Small diseases are for small people, ordinary diseases for ordinary people. When you have cancer, tb, or something dangerous, you feel superior, you are somebody. At least as far as illness is concerned you are not ordinary.
A doctor who had just graduated from college, returned to his home. His father was also a doctor - very tired from working and working, so he went on a holiday. He said, "I need at least three weeks' rest and I am going to the hills, so you can take over my work."
When the father came back three weeks later the son said, "I have a surprise for you. The lady you have been treating for years and couldn't cure, I cured her in three days."
The father beat him on the head and said, "You fool, that lady was paying for your education and I was hoping that through her all my children would get through college. Her stomachache was not real. And I was worried when I was in the hills because I forgot to tell you not to touch her. She is rich and she needs a stomachache, and I have been helping her. For years she has been the source of our income."
Ninety percent of all diseases are psychological. They can be cured by mantra, they can be cured by suggestion, they can be cured by Satya Sai Baba, because in the first place you have already performed the real miracle in creating them. Now anyone can cure them.
Continuously repeating a word creates the reality, but this reality is hallucinatory. It is illusion, and you cannot come to reality until all words have disappeared from the mind. Even a single word may create illusion. Words are great forces. If even a single word is in the mind, your mind is not empty.
Whatsoever you are seeing, feeling, is through the word, and that word will change the reality.
You have to be completely wordless, thoughtless. You have to be just consciousness.
When you are just consciousness then the boat is empty and reality is revealed to you. Because you are not repeating anything or you are not imagining anything, you are not autohypnotizing yourself.
Only then the real appears, revealed.
Chuang Tzu is right. He says:
Where can I find the man
Who has forgotten words?
He is the one
I would like to talk to.
The purpose of a fish trap
Is to catch fish...
You have forgotten the purpose completely. You have gathered so many fish traps and are so constantly worried about them - that somebody might steal them, that they might get broken or go rotten - that you have completely forgotten the fish!
The purpose of a fish trap
Is to catch fish,
And when the fish are caught
The trap is forgotten.
If you cannot forget the trap it means that the fish is not yet caught. Remember, if you are continuously obsessed with the trap, it shows that the fishes are not yet caught. You have forgotten completely about them and become so entangled with the fish traps that you have fallen in love with them!
Once I had a neighbor, a professor, a man of words. He purchased a car. Every morning he worked on cleaning it. It always stayed in showroom condition, and he never took it on the road. For years I watched. Every morning he would take much trouble, cleaning, polishing it.
Once we were traveling in the same railway compartment, so I asked, "Is something wrong with the car? You never bring it out. It is always in your drive."
He said, "No, I have fallen in love with it. I love it so much that I am always afraid that if I take it out something may go wrong - an accident, a scratch, anything can go wrong. And it is unbearable even to think of it."
A car, a word, a trap, they are means not ends. You can fall in love with them and then you never use them.
I used to stay in a house. The lady of the house had three hundred sarees but she always used two - she was preserving the others for some special occasion. When will that special occasion come?
As far as I know, and I have known her for fifteen years, that special occasion has not come yet. It is not going to come, because she is growing older every day; sooner or later she will die and those three hundred sarees will live on.
What happened? Fallen in love with sarees? You CAN fall in love with things. It is difficult to fall in love with persons, it is very easy to fall in love with things because things are dead, you can manipulate them. Sarees will never say, "Wear us! We would like to go out and have a look around."
The car will never say, "Drive me, I am getting bored."
With persons it is difficult. They will demand, they will ask, they would like to go out, they have their own desires to be fulfilled. When you fall in love with a person there is always conflict, so those who are clever never fall in love with persons, they always fall in love with things: a house, a car, clothes.
They are always easy, manageable, and you always remain the master and the other never creates trouble. Or, if you fall in love with a person, you immediately try to convert him into a thing, a dead thing. A wife is a dead thing, a husband is a dead thing, and they torture each other. Why do they torture each other? What is the point of it? Through torture they make the other dead so the other becomes a thing, manipulatable. Then they are not worried.
Two matrons were looking at a bookshop window. One said to the other, "Look, there is a book entitled How to Torture Your Husband."
But the other was not interested. She didn't even look at the book - she said, "I don't need it, I have a system of my own."
Everybody has his own system of torturing the other, because only through torture and destruction can a person be changed into a thing.
It happened once that Mulla Nasruddin walked into the coffee house looking very angry, very aggressive and dangerous, and he said, "I hear that someone has called my wife an ugly old hag.
Who is this guy?"
A man stood up, a very tall, strong, giantlike man. He said, "I said that about your wife, and what about it?"
Looking at the person, Nasruddin immediately calmed down; he was dangerous. He went up to him and said, "Thank you, this is my feeling too, but I couldn't gather the courage to say so. You have done it, you are a brave man."
What happens in a relationship? Why does it always turn ugly? Why is it so impossible to love?
Why does everything become poisoned? ...Because the mind is always happy to manipulate things, because things never rebel: they are always obedient, they never disobey. A person is alive, you cannot predict what he is going to do. And you cannot manipulate...the other's freedom becomes the problem.
Love is such a problem because you cannot allow the other the freedom to be. And remember this:
if you really love, real love is possible only when you allow the other total freedom to be himself or herself. But then you cannot possess, then you cannot predict, then you cannot be secure, then everything has to move moment to moment. And mind wants to plan, to be secure and safe.
Mind wants life to run along a track because mind is the most dead thing in you. It is as if you are a river and a part of the river is an iceberg. Your mind is just like the iceberg, it is the frozen part of you, and it wants to make you completely frozen so that then there will be no fear. Whenever there is the new, there is fear - with the old there is no fear. Mind is always happy with the old.
That is why mind is always orthodox, never revolutionary. There has never been a mind which can be called revolutionary. Mind cannot be revolutionary. Buddha is revolutionary, Chuang Tzu is revolutionary - because they have no minds. Lenin is not revolutionary, Stalin absolutely not. They cannot be. With minds, how can you be revolutionary? Mind is always orthodox, mind is always conforming, because mind is the dead part in you. This has to be understood.
There are many dead parts in you for the body to throw out. Your hair is dead, that is why you can cut it easily and there is no pain. Your nails are dead, that is why you can cut them easily and there is no pain, no hurt. The body goes on throwing them off. Consciousness also has to throw off many things, otherwise they will accumulate. Mind is the dead part like the hair. And this is symbolic.
Buddha told his disciples to shave their heads just as a symbol: as you shave your hair completely, so you shave the inner consciousness also, you shave it completely of the mind.
Both hair and mind are dead, don't carry them. It is beautiful! Don't allow the dead part to accumulate. What is mind? Your past experiences, your learning, all that has been. Mind is never present - how can it be? Here and now, mind cannot be.
If you simply look at me, where is the mind? If you simply sit here and listen to me, where is the mind? If you start arguing, the mind comes in; if you start judging, the mind comes in. But how do you judge? You bring the past to the present, the past becomes the judge of the present. How do you argue? You bring up the past as an argument, and when you bring up the past, the mind comes in.
Mind is the dead part of you, it is the excreta. And just as there are constipated people who suffer very much, so there is mind constipation, accumulated excreta. You never throw it out. In your mind, things only go in; you never throw out.
Meditation is throwing the mind out, unburdening yourself. The excreta must not be carried, otherwise you will become duller and duller. That is why a child has a fresh mind - because it has no accumulation. So sometimes children can say things that your philosophers cannot say.
Sometimes they look and penetrate into realities that your man of knowledge misses. Children are very, very penetrating. They have a clarity, their look is fresh, their eyes are not filled. A sage is again a child. He has emptied his boat, he has emptied himself of all the cargo. The excreta has been thrown out, he is not constipated. His consciousness is a flow, it has no frozen parts.
The purpose of a fish trap
Is to catch fish,
And when the fish are caught
The trap is forgotten.
The purpose of words
Is to convey ideas.
When the ideas are grasped
The words are forgotten.
If you really understand me, you will not be able to remember what I said. You will catch the fish but you will drop the trap. You will be what I said but you will not remember what I said. You will be transformed through it but you will not become a more learned man through it. You will be more empty through it, less filled; you will go away from me refreshed, not burdened.
Don't try to gather what I say because whatsoever you gather will be wrong. Gathering is wrong:
don't accumulate, don't fill your treasure chest from my words. Words are excreta, they are not worth anything. Throw them out, then the meaning will be there, and meaning does not have to be remembered; it never becomes part of the memory, it becomes part of your wholeness. You have to remember a thing only when it is part of the memory, just of the intellect. You never need to remember a real thing that has happened to you. If it happens to you, it is there - what is the need to remember? Don't repeat, because repetition will give you a false notion.
Listen, but not to the words - just by the side of the words the wordless is being given to you. Don't be too focused on the words, just look a little sideways also because the real thing is being given there. Don't listen to what I say, listen to me! I am also here, not only the words. And once you listen to me, then all words will be forgotten.
Buddha died, and the bhikkhus, the disciples, were very disturbed because none of his sayings had been collected while he was alive. They completely forgot to record his words and did not think that he would die so soon, so suddenly. Disciples never think of that - that the master may disappear suddenly.
Then suddenly one day Buddha said, "I am going." There was no time left and he had been speaking for forty years. When he was dead, how could his words be collected? A treasure would be lost, but what was there to do?
And it is beautiful that Mahakashyapa could not repeat Buddha's words. He said, "I heard him, but I don't remember what he said. I was so much in it, it never became part of my memory, I don't know."
And he had become enlightened!
Sariputta, Moggalyan, all these who had become enlightened, shrugged their shoulders and said, "It is difficult, he has said so much, but we do not remember it." And these were the disciples who had reached.
Then Ananda was approached. He had not become enlightened while Buddha was alive; when Buddha died, then he became enlightened. He had remembered everything. He dictated word by word the contents of the forty years he was with Buddha. He dictated word by word - a man who was not enlightened! It looks like a paradox. Those who had reached should have remembered, not this man who had not yet reached the other shore. But when the other shore is reached, this shore is forgotten, and when one has oneself become a buddha, who cares to remember what Buddha said?
The purpose of a fish trap
Is to catch fish,
And when the fish are caught
The trap is forgotten.
The words of the Buddha were traps, Mahakashyapa caught the fish. Who bothers about the trap now? Where the boat has gone, who bothers? He has crossed the stream. Mahakashyapa said, "I don't know what this fellow said. And you cannot rely on me, because with me it is difficult to separate what he said and what I say."
Of course it will be so. When Mahakashyapa has become a buddha himself, how can they be separate? The two are not two. But Ananda said, "I will relate his words," and very authentically he related. Humanity is in great debt to this fellow Ananda who was still ignorant. He had not caught the fish so he remembered the trap. He was still thinking about catching the fish so he had to carry the trap.
The purpose of words
Is to convey ideas.
When the ideas are grasped
The words are forgotten.
Remember this as a basic law of life - that the useless, the meaningless, the peripheral, looks so significant because you are not aware of the center. This world looks so significant because you are not aware of God. When the God is known, the world is forgotten. And it is never otherwise.
People have tried to forget the world so that they can know God - it has never happened and it will never happen. You can go on trying and trying to forget the world, but you cannot. Your every effort to forget will become a continuous remembering. Only when God is known is the world forgotten.
You can go on struggling to drop thinking, but you cannot drop thinking unless consciousness is achieved. Thinking is a substitute. How can you drop the trap when the fish is not yet caught? The mind will say, "Don't be foolish. Where is the fish?"
How can you drop the words when you have not realized the meaning? Don't fight with the words, try to reach to the meaning. Don't try to fight with thoughts. That is why I insist again and again that if thoughts disturb you, don't create any struggle with them, don't wrestle with them. If they come, let them come. If they go, let them go. Don't do anything, just be indifferent, just be a watcher, an onlooker, not concerned. That is all that you can do right now - not be concerned.
Don't say, "Don't come." Don't invite, don't reject, don't condemn and don't appreciate. Simply remain indifferent. Look at them, they come as clouds float in the sky - then they go, as clouds disappear.
Let them come and go, don't come in their way, don't pay attention to them. If you are against them then you start paying them attention, and then immediately you are disturbed: "My meditation is lost." Nothing is lost. Meditation is your intrinsic nature. Nothing is lost. Is the sky lost when clouds come? Nothing is lost.
Be indifferent, don't be bothered by thoughts, this way or that. And sooner or later you will feel and you will realize that their coming and going has become slower. Sooner or later you will come to see that now they come, but not so much; sometimes the traffic stops, the road is vacant. One thought has passed, another has not come yet; there is an interval. In that interval you will know your inner sky in its absolute glory. But if a thought enters, let it enter; don't get disturbed.
You can do this much, and only this much can be done; nothing else is possible. Be inattentive, indifferent, not caring. Just remain a witness, watching, not interfering, and the mind will go, because nothing can be retained inside if you are indifferent.
Indifference is cutting the roots, the very roots. Don't feel antagonistic because that is again feeding.
If you have to remember friends, you have to remember enemies even more so. Friends you can forget, how can you forget enemies? You have to constantly remember them because you are afraid.
People are disturbed by thoughts, ordinary people. Religious people are disturbed more because they are constantly fighting. But through fighting you pay attention - and attention is food. Everything grows if you pay attention, grows fast, becomes more vital. You just be indifferent.
Buddha used the word UPEKSHA; it means absolute indifference, neither this nor that - just in the middle - neither friendly nor inimical, neither for nor against, just in the middle, looking as if you are not concerned, as if these thoughts don't belong to you, as if they are part of the great world. Let them be there. Then one day suddenly, when the indifference is total, the consciousness shifts from the periphery to the center.
But it cannot be predicted and cannot be planned: one has to go on working and waiting. Whenever it happens, you can laugh: those thoughts were there because you wanted them to be there, those thoughts were there because you were feeding them continuously, and those thoughts were there because the fish was not yet caught. How could you throw away the trap? You had to carry it.
I remember that once it happened in Mulla Nasruddin's country that the king was in search of a wise man. His old wise man had died saying, "When you replace me, find the man who is the most humble in the kingdom, because ego is anti-wisdom. Humility is wisdom, so find the most humble man."
Secret agents were sent all over the kingdom to spy out the most humble man. Finally they reached Nasruddin's village. He had heard the news that the wise man was dead, so he thought hard about what might be the indication of a wise man. He had read, and he knew the ancient lore that the humblest is the most wise. So he logically inferred, concluded, that the old man must have said to find the humblest man.
Then came the king's men in search. Mulla Nasruddin was very rich, but when they saw him, the richest man in the town, he was carrying a fishing net, coming from the river. Fishing was the humblest job in the town. So they thought, "This man seems to be very humble," and they asked Nasruddin, "Why do you carry this fishing net? You are so rich, you need not go on fishing."
Nasruddin said, "I became this rich through fishing. I started my life as a fisherman. I have become rich, but just to pay respect to the original profession that gave me so much, I always carry this net on my shoulder."
A really humble man. Generally, if a poor man becomes rich he starts wiping his whole past clean so that nobody knows that he was ever a poor man. He drops all contacts which show that once he was a poor man. He doesn't want to see his relatives, he doesn't want to be reminded of the past. He simply drops the past completely. He creates a new past as if he is a born aristocrat. But this man was humble. So the messengers informed the king that Mulla Nasruddin was the humblest man they had ever seen and he was appointed the wise man.
The day he was appointed, he threw away the net. The men who had recommended him asked, "Nasruddin, where is your net now?"
He said, "When the fish is caught, the net is thrown away."
But you cannot throw it away before - it is impossible, you have to carry it. But carry it indifferently.
Don't get attached, don't fall in love with it, because one day it has to be thrown away. If you fall in love with it then you may never catch the fish, you will be just afraid that if you catch the fish you will have to throw away the net.
Don't fall in love with the mind. It has to be used and it is there because you don't know the no-mind yet, you don't know the innermost core of your being. The periphery is there and you have to carry it but carry it indifferently. Don't become a victim of it.
One story more:
There was a man who used to go to the race course every year on his birthday. The whole year he accumulated the money just for one stake on his birthday. And he lost and lost for many years. But hope always revives again and again! Each time he went he decided never to go again...but one year is such a long time! For a few days he would remember and then again hope returned. He thought, "Who knows, this year I may become rich so why not one more try?"
By the time his birthday came round he was again ready to go to the race course. And it was his fiftieth birthday, so he thought, "I should try wholeheartedly."
So he sold all his possessions, gathered a small fortune, all that he had earned in his whole life, all that he had, and he said, "Now I have to decide this way or that. Either I am to become a beggar or an emperor; no more in the middle, enough!"
He went there, to the windows, and looked at the names of the horses and saw a horse named Adolf Hitler. He thought, "It will do well. Such a great man, such a victorious man, he threatened the whole world. This horse must be ferocious and strong." So he staked all, and he lost - as all those who stake on Hitlers will lose. Now he had nowhere to go, even his house was lost. So there was nothing left to do but commit suicide.
So he went to a cliff, just to jump and finish it all. When he was about to jump he suddenly heard a voice, and he couldn't tell whether it came from the outside or from the inside. It said, "Stop! Next time I will give you the name of the winner - one more try. Don't kill yourself."
Hope revived, he came back. He worked hard that year, because it was going to be the victory for which he had been waiting all his life. The dream had to be fulfilled. He worked hard day and night, he earned much. Then with a trembling heart he reached the window and waited. The voice said, "Okay, choose this horse Churchill." Without any argument, without thinking about it, without his mind coming in, he staked all and won. Churchill came first.
He went back to the window, and waited. The voice said, "Now back Stalin." He staked all. Stalin came in first. Now he had a big treasure.
The third time he waited, and the voice said, "No more."
But he said, "Keep quiet, I am winning, my stars are high and nobody can defeat me now." So he chose Nixon and Nixon came last.
All his treasure lost, he was again a beggar. Standing there, he muttered to himself, "Now what shall I do?"
Said the inner voice, "Now you can go to the cliff and jump!"
In moments when you are going to die, the mind stops because there is nothing for it to work on.
The mind is part of life, it is not part of death. When there is no more life ahead, mind stops; there is no work, it is unemployed immediately. And when mind stops, the inner voice comes in. It is always there, but the mind is creating so much noise that a still small voice cannot be heard.
The voice had not come from beyond, there is nobody beyond, everything is within. The God is not in the skies, it is in you. He was going to die - the last decision taken by the mind. But when the mind retired, because there was now no more work, suddenly he heard the voice. This voice came from his innermost core, and the voice that comes from the innermost core is always right.
Then what happened? Twice the voice worked, but then the mind entered again and the mind said, "Don't listen to such nonsense, the stars are high and we are winning."
Remember this: whenever you win, you win because of the inner voice. But the mind always comes in and takes charge. Whenever you feel happiness it is always from the inner. Then mind immediately jumps in and takes control and says, "It is because of me." When you are in love, love becomes like death, you feel blissful. Then immediately mind comes in and says, "Okay, this is me, this is because of me."
Whenever you meditate, there are glimpses. Then the mind comes in and says, "Be happy! Look, I have done it." And immediately the contact is lost.
Remember this: with mind you will always be a loser. Even if you are victorious, your victories will be just defeats. With mind there is no victory; with no-mind there is no defeat.
You have to shift your whole consciousness from mind to no-mind. Once no-mind is there, everything is victorious. Once the no-mind is there, nothing goes wrong, nothing CAN go wrong. With no-mind everything is absolutely as it should be. One is content, not a single fragment of discontent remains, one is absolutely at home. You are an outsider because of the mind.
This shift is possible only if you become indifferent; otherwise this shift will never be possible. Even if you have glimpses, those glimpses will be lost. You have had glimpses before - it is not only in prayer and meditation that glimpses happen. Glimpses happen in ordinary life too. Making love to a woman, the mind stops. That is why sex is so appealing: it is a natural ecstasy. For a single moment suddenly mind is not there, you feel blissful and content - but only for a single moment. Immediately the mind comes in and starts working on how to get more, how to stay longer. Planning, controlling, manipulating comes in, and you have missed.
Sometimes, without any reason or rhyme, you are walking down the street under the trees and suddenly a sunray comes and falls on you, a breeze touches your face. Suddenly it is as if the whole world has changed and for a single moment you are ecstatic. What was happening? You were walking, unworried, not going somewhere, just having a walk, a morning or evening walk. In that relaxed moment, suddenly, without your knowing, consciousness shifted from the mind to the no-mind. Immediately there is beatitude. But the mind comes in and says, "I must get more and more moments like this." Then you can stand there for years, for lives, but it will never happen again.
It never happened because of the mind.
In ordinary day-to-day life, not only in temples, in shops and offices also, the moments come - the consciousness shifts from the periphery to the center. But the mind controls again immediately.
Mind is the great controller. You may be the master but he is the manager, and the manager has absorbed so much control and power that the manager thinks he is the master. And the master is completely forgotten.
Be indifferent to mind. Whenever moments come which are wordless, silent, if the mind comes in, don't help and don't cooperate with it. Just look. Let it say whatsoever it says, don't pay much attention. It will withdraw.
In meditation, moments happen every day to you. Many come to me and say, "It happened on the first day but since then it has not been happening."
Why did it happen on the first day? You are more prepared now, on the first day you were not so prepared. Why did it happen on the first day? It happened on the first day because the manager was unaware of what was going to happen. He couldn't plan. The next day the manager knows well what is to be done: breathing fast, then crying, screaming, then Hoo, Hoo. Now the manager knows, and the manager does it. Then the moment will not happen, the manager has taken charge.
Remember this: whenever a blissful moment happens, don't ask for it again. Don't ask for it to be repeated, because all repetition is of mind. Don't ask for it again. If you ask, then the mind will say, "I know the trick. I will do it for you."
When it happens, feel happy and grateful and forget. The fish is caught, forget the trap. The meaning is caught, forget the word.
And the last thing: whenever meditation is complete, you will forget meditation. And only then, when you forget meditation, will it have come to a fulfillment, will the climax have been reached. Now you are meditative for twenty-four hours a day. It is nothing to be done; it is there, it is you, it is your being.
If you can do this, then meditation becomes a continuous flow, not an effort on your part - because all effort is of the mind.
If meditation becomes your natural life, your spontaneous life, your Tao, then I tell you, some day Chuang Tzu will catch hold of you. Because he asks:
Where can I find a man
Who has forgotten words?
He is the one
I would like to talk to.
He is searching. I have seen him here many times wandering around you, just waiting, waiting.
If you forget the words he will talk to you. And not only Chuang Tzu - Krishna, Christ, Lao Tzu, Buddha, they are all in search of you; all the enlightened people are in search of the ignorant. But they cannot talk because they know a language which is of silence, and you know a language which is of madness. They cannot lead anywhere. They are in search. All the buddhas that have ever existed are in search. Whenever you are silent you will feel that they have always been all around you.
It is said that whenever the disciple is ready the master appears. Whenever you are ready the truth will be delivered to you. There is not even a single moment's gap. Whenever you are ready, it happens immediately. There is no time gap.
Remember Chuang Tzu. Any moment he may start talking to you, but before he starts talking, your talking must go.
Enough for today.
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