Osho - The
Empty Boat
Chapter 5. Three
in the Morning
What is this three in the morning?
It is about a monkey trainer
Who went to his monkeys and told them:
"As regards your chestnuts,
You are going to have three measures in the morning,
And four in the afternoon."
On hearing this all the monkeys became angry.
So the keeper said:
"All right then,
I will change it
To four measures in the morning,
And three in the afternoon."
The animals were satisfied with this arrangement.
The two arrangements were the same -
The number of chestnuts did not change,
But in one case the monkeys were displeased,
And in the other case they were satisfied.
The keeper was willing
To change his personal arrangement
In order to meet objective conditions.
He lost nothing by it.
The truly wise man,
Considering both sides of the question
Without partiality,
Sees them both in the light of tao.
This is called following two courses at once.
The law of the three in the
morning. Chuang Tzu loved this story very much. He often repeated it.
It is beautiful, with many
layers of meaning. Obviously very simple but still very deeply indicative of
the human mind.
The first thing to be
understood is that the human mind is monkeyish. It was not Darwin who
discovered that man comes from monkeys. It has been a long-standing observation
that the human mind behaves in the same patterns as the mind of the monkey.
Only rarely does it happen that you transcend your monkeyishness. When mind
becomes still, when mind becomes silent, when there is really no mind at all,
you transcend the monkeyish pattern.
What is the monkeyish pattern?
For one thing, the mind is never still. And unless you are still, you cannot
see the truth. You are wavering, trembling so much that nothing can be seen.
Clear perception is impossible. While meditating what are you doing? You are
putting the monkey in a position of stillness, hence all the difficulties of
meditation. The more you try to make the mind still, the more it revolts, the
more it starts getting into turmoil, the more restless it becomes.
Have you ever seen a monkey
sitting silently and still? Impossible! The monkey is always eating something,
doing something, swinging, chattering. This is what you are doing. Man has
invented many things. If there is nothing to do he will chew gum; if there is
nothing to do he will smoke! These are just foolish occupations, monkeyish
occupations. Something has to be done continuously so that you remain occupied.
You are so restless that your
restlessness needs to be busy somehow or other. That is why, whatsoever is said
against smoking, it cannot be stopped. Only in a meditative world can smoking
stop - otherwise not. Even if there is danger of death, of cancer, of
tuberculosis, it cannot be stopped, because it is not a question of just
smoking, it is a question of how to release the restlessness.
People who chant mantras can
stop smoking because they have found a substitute. You can keep chanting Ram,
Ram, Ram, and this becomes a sort of smoking. Your lips are working, your mouth
is moving, your restlessness is being released. So JAPA can become a sort of
smoking, a better sort, with less harm to the health.
But basically it is the same
thing - your mind cannot be left at rest. Your mind has to do something, not
only while you are awake but even when you are asleep. One day watch your wife
or your husband sleeping, just sit for two or three hours silently and watch
the face. You will see the monkey not the man. Even in sleep much goes on. The
person is occupied. This sleep cannot be deep, it cannot be really relaxing,
because work is going on. The day is continued, there is no discontinuity; the
mind keeps functioning in the same way. There is constant inner chatter, an
inner monologue, and it is no wonder you get bored. You are boring yourself.
Everybody looks bored.
Mulla Nasruddin was telling a
story to his disciples, and suddenly the rain started - it must have been a day
like this. So a passer-by, just to protect himself, came under the shelter of
the shed where Nasruddin was talking to his disciples. He was just waiting for
the rain to stop but he couldn't help listening.
Nasruddin was telling tall
stories. Many times the man found it almost impossible to resist interrupting,
because he was saying such absurd things. But he thought again and again and
said to himself, "It is none of my business. I am only here because of the
rain, as soon as it stops I will go. I need not interfere." But at a point
the man couldn't help it, he couldn't contain himself any longer. He interrupted
saying, "Enough is enough. Excuse me, this is none of my business, but now
you have overdone it!"
I must first tell you the story
and the point where the man could not contain himself...
Nasruddin was saying,
"Once in my young days I was traveling in the forests of Africa, the dark
continent. Suddenly one day a lion jumped out just fifteen feet away from me. I
was without any arms or protection, alone in the forest. The lion stared at me
and started walking towards me."
The disciples became very
excited. Nasruddin stopped for a moment and looked at their faces. One disciple
said, "Don't keep us waiting, what happened?"
Nasruddin said, "The lion
came nearer and nearer until it was just five feet away."
Another disciple said, "No
more waiting. Tell us what happened."
Nasruddin said, "It is so
simple, so logical, work it out for yourself. The lion jumped, killed me and
ate me!"
At this point it was too much
for the stranger! He said, "Are you saying that the lion killed and ate
you, and you are sitting here alive?"
Nasruddin looked straight at
the man and said, "Ha ha, do you call this being alive?"
Look at people's faces and you
will understand what he meant. Do you call this being alive? So bored to death,
dragging?
Once a man said to
Nasruddin,"I am very poor. Survival is impossible now, should we commit
suicide? I have six children and a wife, my widowed sister and old father and
mother. And it is getting more and more difficult. Can you suggest
something?"
Nasruddin said, "You can
do two things and both will be helpful. One, start baking bread, because people
have to live and they have to eat, you will always have business."
The man asked, "And the
other?"
Nasruddin said, "Start
making shrouds for the dead, because when people are alive, they will die.
And this is also a good
business. These two businesses are good - bread, and shrouds for the
dead."
After a month the man came
back. He looked even more desperate, very sad, and he said, "Nothing seems
to work. I have put everything I have got into the business, as you suggested,
but everything seems to be against me."
Nasruddin said, "How can
that happen? People have to eat bread while they are alive, and when they die
their relatives have to buy shrouds."
The man said, "But you
don't understand. In this village no one is alive and no one ever dies. They
are simply dragging along."
People are just dragging. You
don't need to look at others' faces, just look in the mirror and you will find
out what dragging means - neither alive nor dead. Life is so beautiful, death
is also beautiful - dragging is ugly.
But why do you look so
burdened? The constant chattering of the mind dissipates energy. Constant
chattering of the mind is a constant leakage in your being. Energy is
dissipated. You never have enough energy to make you feel alive, young, fresh,
and if you are not young and fresh and alive your death is also going to be a
very dull affair.
One who lives intensely, dies
intensely, and when death is intense, it has a beauty of its own. One who lives
totally, dies totally, and wherever totality is there is beauty. Death is ugly,
not because of death but because you have never lived rightly. If you have
never been alive, you have not earned a beautiful death. It has to be earned.
One has to live in such a way, so total and so whole, that he can die totally,
not in fragments. You live in fragments, so you die in fragments. One part
dies, then another, then another, and you take many years to die. Then the
whole thing becomes ugly. Death would be beautiful if people were alive. This
inner monkey doesn't allow you to be alive, and this inner monkey will not
allow you to die beautifully either. This constant chattering has to be
stopped.
And what is the chattering,
what is the subject matter? The subject matter is the three in the morning that
goes on in the mind. What are you doing inside the mind? Continuously making
arrangements:
to do this, not to do that, to
build this house, to destroy that house; to move from this business to another
because there will be more profit; to change this wife, this husband. What are
you doing?
Just changing arrangements.
Chuang Tzu says that finally,
ultimately, if you can look at the total, the total is always the same. It is
seven. Whether you are given three measures of chestnuts in the morning and
four measures in the evening, or the other way around - four measures in the
morning and three measures in the evening - the total is seven. This is one of
the most secret laws - the total is always the same.
You may not be able to
comprehend it, but when a beggar or an emperor dies, their total is the same.
The beggar lived on the
streets, the emperor lived in the palaces, but the total is the same. A rich
man, a poor man, a successful man and a failure, the total is the same. If you
can look at the total of life, then you will come to know what Chuang Tzu means
by the three in the morning.
What happens? Life is not
impartial, life is not partial, life is absolutely indifferent to your
arrangements - it doesn't bother about the arrangements you make. Life is a
gift. If you change the arrangement, the total is not changed.
A rich man has found better
food, but the hunger is lost; he cannot really feel the intensity of being
hungry. The proportion is always the same. He has found a beautiful bed, but
with the bed comes insomnia. He has made better arrangements for sleeping. He
should be falling asleep into SUSHUPTI - what Hindus call unconscious samadhi -
but that is not happening. He cannot fall asleep. He has just changed the
arrangement.
A beggar is asleep just outside
there in the street. Traffic is passing and the beggar is asleep. He has no
bed. The place where he is sleeping is uneven, hard and uncomfortable, but he
is asleep.
The beggar cannot get good
food, it is impossible, because he has to beg. But he has a good appetite. The
total result is the same. The total result is seven.
A successful man is not only
successful, for with success comes all sorts of calamities. A failure is not
just a failure, for with failure comes many sorts of blessings. The total is
always the same, but the total has to be penetrated and looked at, a clear
perspective is needed. Eyes are needed to look at the total because mind can
look only at the fragment. If the mind looks at the morning, it cannot look at
the evening; if it looks at the evening, the morning is forgotten. Mind cannot
look at the total day, mind is fragmentary.
Only a meditative consciousness
can look at the whole, from birth to death - and then the total is always
seven. That is why wise men never try to change the arrangement. That is why in
the East no revolution has ever happened - because revolution means changing
the arrangement.
Look what happened in Soviet
Russia. In 1917 the greatest revolution happened on earth. The arrangement was
changed. I don't think Lenin, Stalin or Trotsky ever heard the story of three
in the morning. They could have learned much from Chuang Tzu. But then there
would have been no revolution. What happened? The capitalists disappeared, now
nobody was rich, nobody was poor.
The old classes were no more.
But only names changed. New classes came into being. Before, it was the rich
man and the poor man, the capitalist and the proletariat - now it was the
manager and the managed. But the distinction, the gap, remains the same. Nothing
has changed. Only now you call the capitalist the manager!
Those who have studied the
Russian revolution say that this is not a socialist revolution, it is a
managerial revolution. The same gap, the same distance, remains between the two
classes, and a classless society has not come into being.
Chuang Tzu would have laughed.
He would have told this story. What have you done? The manager has become
powerful, the managed have remained powerless.
Hindus say that some people
will always be managers and some people will always be managed.
There are SUDRAS and
KSHATRIYAS; and these are not just labels, these are types of people.
Hindus have divided society
into four classes and they say that society can never be classless. It is not a
question of social arrangement - four types of people exist. Unless you change
the type, no revolution is of much help.
They say there is a type which
is a laborer, sudra, who will always be managed. If nobody manages him, he will
be at a loss, he will not be happy. He needs somebody to order him, he needs
somebody whom he can obey, he needs somebody who can take all the
responsibility. He is not ready to take the responsibility on his own. That is
a type. If the manager is around only then will that type of person work. If
the manager is not there, he will simply sit.
The manager can be a subtle
phenomenon, even invisible. For example, in a capitalist society the profit
motive manages. A sudra works not because he loves working, not because work is
his hobby, not because he is creative, but because he has to feed himself and
his family. If he does not work, who will feed him? It is the profit motive,
hunger, body, the stomach, that manages.
In a communist country this
motive is not the manager. There they have to put visible managers.
It is said that in Stalin's
Russia there was one policeman for each citizen; otherwise it is difficult to
manage because the profit motive is not there any longer. One has to force, one
has to order, one has to nag constantly, only then will the sudra work.
There is always a businessman
type who enjoys money, wealth, accumulation. He will do that - it makes no
difference how he does it. If money is available, he will collect money; if
money is not available, then he will collect postage stamps. But he will do it,
he will collect. If postage stamps are not available he will collect followers
- but he will collect! He has to do something with numbers. He will have ten
thousand, twenty thousand followers, one million followers. That is just the
same as saying that he has got one million rupees!
Go to your sadhus - the greater
the number of followers, the greater they are. So followers are just nothing
but bank balances. If nobody follows you, you are nobody - then you are a poor
guru. If many people follow you then you are a rich guru. Whatsoever happens,
the businessman will collect.
He will count. The material is
immaterial.
There is a warrior who will
fight - any excuse will do. He will fight, fighting is in his blood, in his
bones. Because of his type the world cannot live in peace. It is impossible.
Once every ten years there is bound to be a big war. And if you want to avoid
big wars, then have many small wars, but the total will remain the same.
Because of the atomic and hydrogen bombs, now a great war has become almost
impossible. That is why there are so many small wars all over the world: in
Vietnam, Kashmir, Bangladesh, Israel, many small wars, but the total will be
the same. In five thousand years man has fought fifteen thousand wars, three
wars per year.
A type exists who has to fight.
You can change this type, but the change will be superficial. If this warrior
is not allowed to fight in war, he will fight in other ways. He will fight an
election, or he may be-come a sportsman - he may fight in cricket or football.
But he will fight, he will compete, he needs somebody to challenge. Somewhere
or other fighting has to be done to satisfy him. That is why, as civilization
develops, people have to be supplied with more and more games. If games are not
given to the warrior type, what will he do?
Go and watch when a cricket,
football, or hockey match is on - people go mad, as if something very serious
is going on, as if a real war is happening! The players are serious, and the
fans around them go mad. Fights break out, riots happen. The playing field is
always dangerous, because the type that gathers there is the warrior type. Any
moment anything can go wrong.
There is a brahmin type, who
always lives in words, in scriptures. In the West there is no such type as the
brahmin; the name is not important, but the brahmin exists everywhere. Your
scientists, your professors, the universities are filled with them. They keep
on working with words, symbols, creating theories, defending, arguing. They
keep on doing it sometimes in the name of science, sometimes in the name of
religion, sometimes in the name of literature. The names change, but the
brahmin goes on.
There are these four types. You
cannot create a classless society. These four will persist and the total
arrangement will be the same. Fragments can change. In the morning you can do
one thing, in the evening something different, but the total day will remain
the same.
I have heard about a young
scientist whose father was against his scientific research. The father always
thought it useless. He told his son, "Don't waste your time. It is better
to become a doctor, that will be more practical and helpful to people. Just
theories, abstract theories of physics, are of no help." Finally he
persuaded his son and he became a doctor.
The first man who came to him
was suffering from severe pneumonia. The doctor consulted his books - because
he was an abstract thinker, a brahmin. He tried and tried. The patient became
more impatient, he said, "How long do I have to wait?"
The scientist who was now a
doctor said, "I don't think that there is any hope. You will have to die.
There is no treatment for this
illness, it has gone beyond cure." The patient was a tailor, he went home.
Two weeks later the doctor was
passing and he saw the tailor working, healthy and full of energy.
So he said, "What, are you
still alive? You should have been dead long ago. I have consulted the books and
this is impossible. How do you manage to be alive?"
The tailor said, "You told
me that within a week I would have to die, so I thought: Then why not live?
Just a week left... And potato
pancakes are my weakness, so I left your surgery, went straight to the cafe,
ate thirty-two potato pancakes and immediately I felt a great surge of energy.
And now I am absolutely okay!"
Right away the doctor noted
down in his diary that thirty-two potato pancakes is a sure cure for severe
cases of pneumonia.
The next patient by chance also
had pneumonia. He was a shoemaker. The doctor said, "Don't worry. Now the
cure has been discovered. Immediately go and eat thirty-two potato pancakes,
not less than thirty-two, and you will be okay; otherwise, you will die within
a week."
After a week, the doctor
knocked at the shoemaker's door. It was locked. The neighbor said, "He is
dead. Your potato pancakes killed him." Immediately he noted in his diary:
Thirty-two potato pancakes help tailors, kill shoemakers.
This is the abstract mind. He
cannot be practical, the brahmin.
You can change surfaces, you
can paint faces, but the inner type remains the same. Hence the East has not
troubled itself with revolutions. The East is waiting; and those in the East
who are wise, they look at the West, and they know that you are playing with
toys. All your revolutions are toys. Sooner or later you will come to realize
the law of three in the morning.
What is this three in the
morning? A disciple must have asked Chuang Tzu, because whenever somebody
mentioned revolution or change, Chuang Tzu would laugh and say, "The law
of the three in the morning." So a disciple must have asked, "What is
this three in the morning you are always talking about?"
Said Chuang Tzu:
It is about a monkey trainer
Who went to his monkeys and told them:
"As regards your chestnuts,
You are going to have three measures in the morning,
And four in the afternoon."
On hearing this all the monkeys became angry..."
Because in the past they had
been getting four measures in the morning and three in the evening.
Obviously they got angry!
"What do you mean? We always used to get four measures of chestnuts in the
morning and now you say three. We cannot tolerate this."
SO THE KEEPER SAID:
"All right then,
I will change it
To four measures in the morning,
And three in the afternoon."
The animals were satisfied with this arrangement.
The total remained the same... but
monkeys cannot look at the total. It was morning, so they could only see the
morning. Every morning it was routine to get four measures and they expected
four measures, and now this man says, "Three measures in the
morning." He is cutting down by one measure. It cannot be tolerated. They
became angry, they revolted.
But this monkey trainer must
have been a wise man. If you are not, it is difficult to become a monkey
trainer. I know it from my own experience. I am a monkey trainer.
The monkey trainer said,
"Okay, then don't get disturbed. I will follow the old pattern. You will
get four measures in the morning and three in the evening." The monkeys
were happy. Poor monkeys! - they can be happy or unhappy without any reason for
either. But this man had a bigger perspective.
He could see, he could add four
plus three. It was still the same - seven measures were to be given to them.
How they had it and in what arrangement didn't matter. The two arrangements
were the same, the number of chestnuts didn't change, but in one case the monkeys
were displeased and in the other case they were satisfied.
This is how your mind works:
you just keep changing the arrangement. With one arrangement you feel
satisfied, with another you feel dissatisfied - and the total remains the same.
But you never look at the total. The mind cannot see the total. Only meditation
can see the total. Mind looks at the fragment, it is near-sighted, very
near-sighted. That is why whenever you feel pleasure, you immediately jump into
it, you never look at the evening. Whenever there is pleasure there is pain
hidden in it. This has been your experience but you have not become aware of
it. The pain will come in the evening but the pleasure is here in the morning.
You never look into that which
is hidden, into that which is invisible, into that which is latent. You just
look at the surface and you go mad. You do this all your life. A fragment
catches you. Many people come to me and say, "In the beginning when I
married this woman, everything was very beautiful.
But within days everything was
lost. Now it has all become ugly, now it is misery."
Once there was a car accident.
The car overturned in a ditch by the side of the road. The man was lying on the
ground completely crippled, almost unconscious. A policeman came along and started
to fill in his notebook. He asked the man, "Are you married?"
The man said, "I am not
married. This is the biggest mess I have ever been in."
It is said that those who know
will never marry. But how can you know what happens in marriage without getting
married? You look at a person, at the fragment, and sometimes the fragment will
look very foolish when you think about it in the end.
The color of the eyes - what
foolishness! How can your life depend on the color of your or somebody else's
eyes? How can your life be beautiful just because of the color of the eyes? - a
small pigment, three or four pennies' worth. But you get romantic: Oh, the eyes,
the color of the eyes. Then you go mad and you think, "If I am not married
to this woman life is lost, I will commit suicide."
But you don't see what you are
doing. One cannot live by the color of the eyes forever. Within two days you
will become acquainted with those eyes and you will forget them. Then there is
the whole of life in front of you, the totality of it. Then starts misery.
Before the honeymoon is finished, misery begins; the total person was never
taken into account - the mind cannot see the total. It just looks at the
surface, at the figure, the face, the hair, the color of the eyes, the way the
woman walks, the way she talks, the sound of her voice. These are the parts,
but where is the total person?
The mind cannot see the total.
The mind looks at fragments, and with fragments it gets hooked.
Once it is hooked, the total
comes in - the total is not far away. Eyes don't exist as separate phenomena,
they are part of a whole person. If you are hooked by the eyes, you are hooked
with the whole person. And when this whole emerges, everything becomes ugly.
So who is responsible? You
should have taken account of the whole. But when it is morning the mind looks
at the morning and forgets the evening completely. Remember well - in every
morning the evening is hidden. The morning is constantly turning into evening
and nothing can be done about it, you cannot stop it.
Says Chuang Tzu:
The two arrangements were the same -
The number of chestnuts did not change,
But in one case the monkeys were displeased,
And in the other case they were satisfied.
Monkeys are your minds; they
cannot penetrate the whole. This is the misery. You always miss, you always
miss because of the fragment. If you can see the whole and then act, your life
will never be a hell. And then you will not be bothered about superficial
arrangements, about morning and evening, because then you can count - and it is
always seven. Whether you get four or three in the morning makes no difference
- the total is seven.
I have heard that a small boy came
home from school very puzzled. His mother asked, "Why do you look so
puzzled?"
The boy said, "I am in a
muddle. I think my teacher has gone crazy. Yesterday she said that four plus
one make five and today she told me three plus two make five. She must have
gone mad, because when four plus one is already five, how can three plus two be
five?"
The child cannot see that five
can come out of many arrangements - there is not only one arrangement which
will total five. There can be millions of arrangements in which the total will
be five.
Howsoever you arrange your life
the religious man will always look to the total and the worldly man will always
look to the fragment. That is the difference. The worldly will look to whatever
is near, and not see the far hidden there. The distant is not really very far
away, it will become the near, it will happen soon. The evening is coming.
Can you have a perspective in
which the total life is seen? It is believed, and I think it is true also, that
if a man is drowning, suddenly his whole life, the total, is remembered. You
are dying, drowning in a river, with no time left, and suddenly in your mind's
eye your whole life is revealed from beginning to end. It is as if the whole
film passes across the screen of the mind. But what use is it now that you are
dying?
A religious man looks at the
total every moment. The whole of life is there, and then he acts out of that
perspective of the whole. He will never regret as you always do. It is
inevitable that whatsoever you do, you will regret it.
One day the king went to visit
a madhouse. The superintendent of the madhouse escorted him to every cell. The
king was very interested in the phenomenon of madness, he was studying it.
Everybody should be interested
because it is everybody's problem. And you need not go to a madhouse: go
anywhere and study people's faces. You are studying in a madhouse!
One man was weeping and crying,
hitting his head against the bars. His anguish was so deep, his suffering so
penetrating, that the king asked to be told the whole story of how this man
went mad.
The superintendent said,
"This man loved a woman and couldn't get her, so he went mad."
Then they passed to another
cell. In it there was a man spitting on a picture of a woman. The king asked,
"And what is the story of this man? He also seems to be involved with a
woman."
The superintendent said,
"It is the same woman. This man fell in love with her too, and he got her.
That is why he went mad."
If you get what you want you go
mad; if you don't get what you want you go mad. The total remains the same.
Whatsoever you do, you will regret it. A fragment can never be fulfilling. The
whole is so big and the fragment is so small that you cannot deduce the whole
from the fragment. And if you depend on the fragment and decide your life
accordingly, you will always miss. Your whole life will be wasted.
So what should we do? What does
Chuang Tzu want us to do? He wants us not to be fragmentary - he wants us to be
total. But remember, you can look at the total only when YOU are total, because
only the similar can know the similar. If you are fragmentary, you cannot know
the total. How can you know the total if you are fragmentary? If you are
divided in parts the total cannot be reflected in you. When I speak of meditation
I mean a mind which is no longer divided, in which all fragments have
disappeared. The mind is undivided, whole, one.
This one mind looks deeply to
the very end. It looks from death to birth, it looks from birth to death.
Both the polarities are before
it. And out of this look, out of this penetrating vision, the action is born.
If you ask me what sin is, I
will say: Action out of the fragmentary mind is sin. If you ask me what virtue
is, I will tell you: Action out of the total mind is virtue. That is why a
sinner always has to repent.
Remember your own life, observe
it. Whatsoever you do, whatsoever you choose, this or that, everything goes
wrong. Whether you get the woman or lose her, in either case you go mad.
Whatsoever you choose, you choose misery. Hence Krishnamurti constantly insists
on choicelessness.
Try to understand this. You are
here listening to me. This is a choice, because you must have left some job
undone, some work incomplete. You have to go to the office, to the shop, to the
family, to the market and you are here listening to me. This morning you must
have decided what to do.
Whether to go and listen to
this man or go to your work, to the office, to the market. Then you made the
choice to come here.
You made the choice to come
here. You will regret your choice... because even while here, you cannot be
totally here: half of the mind is there, and you are simply waiting until I
finish so you can go. But do you think that if you had chosen otherwise, gone
to the shop or to the office, would you have been totally there? No, because
that again was a choice. So you will be there and your mind will be here. And
you will regret: What am I missing? Who knows what is being done there, what is
being talked about? Who knows what secret key is to be transferred this
morning?
So whatsoever you choose,
whether you come or whether you decide not to come, if it is a choice it means
half of the heart, or a little more, has chosen. It is a democratic decision,
parliamentary. With the majority of the mind you have decided, but the minority
is still there. And no minority is a fixed thing, no majority is a fixed thing.
Nobody knows its size, party members keep changing sides.
When you came here you decided.
Fifty-one percent of your mind wanted to come and forty-nine wanted to go to
the office. But by the time you arrive here the arrangement has changed. The
very decision to come and listen creates a disturbance.
The minority may have become
the majority by the time you arrive here. If it has not yet become a majority,
by the time you leave it will have, and you will think, "Two hours wasted?
Now, how will I make them up? It would have been better not to come - spiritual
things can be postponed, but this world cannot be postponed. Life is long
enough, we can meditate later on."
In India people say that
meditation is only for the old. Once they are on the verge of death then they
can meditate, it is not for young people. Meditation is the last thing on the
list; do it when you have done everything else. But remember that the time
never comes when you have done everything, when you are too old to do anything
else, when all your energy has been wasted, when it is time to meditate.
When you are incapable of doing
anything how can you meditate? Meditation needs energy, the purest, most vital
- meditation needs energy overflowing. A child can meditate but how can an old
man meditate? A child is easily meditative, an old man - no, he is wasted.
There is no movement of energy in him, his river cannot flow, he is frozen.
Many parts of his life are already dead.
If you choose to come to the
temple, you suffer, you regret. If you go to the office or the market, you
suffer and regret.
It happened once that a monk
died. He was a very famous monk, known all over the country. Many people
worshipped him and thought he was enlightened. And on the same day a prostitute
died.
She lived just in front of the
monk's temple. She was also a very famous prostitute, as famous as the monk.
They were two polarities living next to each other and they died on the same
day.
The angel of death came and
took the monk to heaven; other angels of death came and took the prostitute to
hell. When the angels reached heaven the doors were closed and the man in
charge said, "You have confused them. This monk has to go to hell and the
prostitute has to come to heaven."
The angels said, "What do
you mean? This man was a very famous ascetic, continuously meditating and
praying. That is why we never inquired, we simply went and fetched him. And the
prostitute must already be in hell because the other group of angels took her
there. We never thought of asking, it seemed so obvious."
Said the man who was in charge
at the gate: "You are confused because you have looked only at the
surface. This monk used to meditate for the benefit of others, but for himself
he was always thinking, 'I am missing life. What a beautiful woman that
prostitute is, and available. Any moment I cross the street, she is available.
What I am doing is a lot of nonsense - praying, sitting in a buddha posture and
attaining nothing.' But because of his reputation he didn't dare do it."
Many people are virtuous
because they are cowards like him. He was virtuous because he was a coward - he
could not cross the street. So many people knew him, how could he go to the
prostitute?
What would people say?
Cowards are always afraid of
the opinion of others. So he remained an ascetic, fasting, but his mind was
always with the prostitute. When there was singing and dancing, he would
listen. He sat before the statue of Buddha, but Buddha was not there. He was
not worshipping; he would dream he was listening to the sounds of festivities,
and in his fantasy he would make love to the prostitute.
And what about the prostitute?
She was always repenting, repenting and repenting, She knew she had wasted her
life, she had wasted a golden opportunity. And for what? Just for money,
selling her body and soul. She always used to look towards the monk's temple,
so jealous of the silent life there. What meditative phenomenon was happening
there?
She longed for God to give her
one chance to go inside the temple. But she thought, "I am a prostitute,
unholy, and I should not enter the temple." So she used to walk around the
temple from the outside, just to look at it from the street. What beauty, what
silence, what blessing inside! And when there was KIRTAN and BHAJAN, singing
and dancing, she used to wail and cry and scream, imagining what she was
missing.
So the man in charge of the
gates said, "Bring the prostitute to heaven and take this monk to hell.
Their outer life was different
and their inner life was different, but like everybody else they both had
regrets."
We in India have invented a
word which does not exist in any other language in the world. Heaven and hell
are found everywhere; all languages everywhere have words for heaven and hell.
We have a different word: it is MOKSHA or nirvana or KAIVALYA - the absolute
freedom which is neither hell nor heaven.
If your outer life is hell and
you repent of it, you will reach heaven, like the prostitute who constantly
desired the world of meditation and prayer. And if your outer life is heaven
and your inner life is hell, like the monk who desired the prostitute, you will
go to hell. But if you make no choice, have no regrets, if you are choiceless,
then you will reach moksha.
Choiceless awareness is moksha,
absolute freedom. Hell is a bondage, heaven is also a bondage.
Heaven may be a beautiful
prison, hell may be an ugly prison - but both are prisons. Neither Christians
nor Mohammedans can follow this point, because to them heaven is the ultimate.
If you ask them where Jesus is, their answer is wrong. They say: In heaven with
God. This is absolutely wrong. If Jesus is in heaven, then he is not
enlightened. Heaven may be golden, but it is still a prison. It may be good, it
may be pleasant, but it is still a choice, the choice against hell. The virtue
which has been chosen against sin is a decision of the majority, but the
minority is just behind waiting for its chance to decide.
Jesus is in moksha, that is
what I say. He is not in heaven, he is not in hell. He is totally free of all
imprisonments: good/bad, sin/virtue, morality/immorality. He did not choose. He
lived a choiceless life. And that is what I keep on telling you: Live a
choiceless life.
But how is a choiceless life
possible? It is possible only if you can see the total, the seven; otherwise,
you will choose. You will say this should happen in the morning, that in the
evening, and you think that just by changing the arrangement you are changing
the total. The total cannot be changed. The total remains the same -
everybody's total remains the same.
Hence I say there is no
difference between a beggar and an emperor. In the morning you are an emperor,
in the evening you will be a beggar; in the morning you are a beggar, in the
evening you will be an emperor. And the total remains the same. Look at the total,
BE total, and then all choice drops.
That monkey trainer simply
looked at the total and said, "Okay, you foolish monkeys, if you are happy
with it, let this arrangement be as it is." But if he had also been a
monkey, like the others, then there would have been a fight. Then he would have
insisted, "This is going to be the arrangement. Who gives the orders, who
makes the decisions? Who do you think is the master? You or me?"
Ego always chooses, decides and
forces. The monkeys were rebelling, and if this man had also been a monkey they
would have driven him mad. He would have had to put them in their place, back
where they belonged. He would have insisted, "No more four in the morning.
I decide."
It was the sixtieth birthday of
a man. He came home that night after a long married life of almost forty years,
full of quarrels and conflict. But he was surprised when he came home to find
his wife waiting for him with two beautiful ties as a present. He never
expected it from his wife. It was almost impossible that she would wait for him
with two ties as a present. He felt so happy, he said, "Don't cook the
dinner, I will get ready in a couple of minutes and we will go to the best
restaurant in town."
He had a bath, got ready, and
put on one of the ties she had given him. His wife stared and said, "What?
Do you mean you don't like the other tie? So isn't the other tie good
enough?" A man can only wear one tie at one time but whichever tie he had
chosen, the same would have happened: "So what do you mean? The other one
isn't good enough?"
It is the old habit of
quarreling, fighting. It was said about the same woman that every day she would
find something to fight about. And she would always succeed, because when you
search, you will find. Remember this: whatsoever you are looking for you will
find. The world is so vast, and existence is so rich, that if you are really
keen to find something, you will find it.
Sometimes she found hair on her
husband's coat, and then she would fight about him going with some other woman.
But once it happened that for seven days she could not find anything wrong.
She tried and tried and there
was no excuse to pick a fight. So on the seventh day, when her husband came
home, she started screaming and beating her chest. He said, "Now what are
you doing? What is the matter, what happened?"
So she said, "You rascal,
you have finished with other women and now you are going around with bald
women!"
The mind is always looking for
trouble. And don't laugh, because this is about YOUR mind. By laughing you may
be simply deceiving yourself. You may think it is about somebody else - it is
about you. And whatsoever I say, it is always about you.
Mind chooses and always chooses
trouble, because with choice comes trouble. You cannot choose God. If you choose,
there will be trouble. You cannot choose sannyas. If you choose, there will be
trouble. You cannot choose freedom. If you choose, it will not be freedom.
Then how does it happen? How
does God happen, sannyas happen, freedom happen, moksha happen? It happens when
you understand the foolishness of choice. It is not a new choice, it is simply
the dropping of all choosing. Just looking at the whole thing you start
laughing. There is nothing to choose. The total remains the same. In the end,
by the evening, the total will be the same. Then you won't be bothered whether
in the morning you are an emperor or a beggar. You are happy, because by
evening everything has come to the same, everything has been leveled.
Death equalizes. In death
nobody is an emperor and nobody is a beggar. Death reveals the total; it is
always seven.
The two arrangements were the
same. Remember, the amount of chestnuts didn't change. But in one case the
monkeys were displeased and in the other case they were satisfied.
The keeper was willing
To change his personal arrangement
In order to meet objective conditions.
He lost nothing by it.
A man of understanding always
looks at objective conditions, never at his subjective feelings. When the
monkeys said no, if you had been the monkey trainer you would have felt
offended. These monkeys were trying to rebel, they were being disobedient, this
could not be toler-ated. It would have hurt you inside.
You get angry even at dead
things. If you are trying to open the door and it resists, you get mad. If you
are trying to write a letter and the pen is not functioning well, smoothly, you
get angry. You feel hurt, as if the pen is doing it knowingly, as if there is
someone in the boat. You even feel somebody is there in the pen trying to
disturb you.
And this is not only the logic
of small children, this is your logic also. If a child bumps into a table, he
will hit it just to right the wrong, and he will always be an enemy of that
table. But you are the same - with dead things, with objects, you also get
angry, you get mad!
This is subjective, and a wise
man is never subjective. A wise man always looks at the objective conditions.
He will look at the door, and if it is not open, then he will try to open it.
But he cannot get angry with it because the boat is empty. There is nobody
there trying to shut the door, resisting your efforts.
In order to meet objective
conditions the trainer changed his personal arrangement. He looked at the
monkeys and their minds, he didn't feel offended - he was a monkey trainer, not
a monkey. He looked and he must have laughed within, because he knew the total.
And he yielded. Only a wise man yields. A foolish man always resists. Foolish
people say it is better to die than to bend, better to break than to bend.
Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu always
say: When there is a strong wind the foolish egoistic trees resist and die, and
the wise grass bends. The storm goes by and again the grass stands straight,
laughing and enjoying. The grass is objective, the big tree is subjective. The big
tree thinks so much of himself: "I am somebody, who can bend me? Who can
force me to yield?" The big tree will fight with a storm. It is foolish to
fight with the storm, because the storm has not come for you. It is nothing
special, the storm is simply passing and you are there, it is coincidental.
Monkeys are animals and think
themselves very superior animals! They are not offending the monkey trainer.
Monkeys are just monkeys. That is the way they are. They cannot look at the
total, they cannot add up. They can look only at the near, not at the far - the
far is too far for them.
It is impossible for them to
conceive of the evening, they only know about the morning.
So monkeys are monkeys, storms
are storms. Why get offended? They are not fighting you. They are only
following their own ways, their own habits. So the monkey trainer was not
offended. He was a wise man, he yielded, he was just like the grass. Remember
this when-ever you start feeling subjective. If somebody says something,
immediately you feel hurt, as if it has been said to you.
You are in the boat too much.
It may not have been said to you at all. The other may be expressing his or her
subjectivity.
When somebody says, "You
have insulted me," what is really meant is something else. If he had been
a little more intelligent he would have said it the other way around. He would
be saying, "I feel insulted. You may not have insulted me, but whatsoever
you have said, I feel insul-ted." This is a subjective feeling.
But nobody realizes their
subjectivity and everyone goes on projecting subjectivity onto objective
conditions. The other always says, "You have insulted me." And when
you hear it you are also subjective. Both boats are filled, much too crowded.
There is bound to be a clash, enmity, violence.
If you are wise, when the other
says, "You have insulted me," you will look at the matter objectively
and you will think, "Why is the other feeling insulted?" You will try
to understand the other's feelings, and if you can put things right you will
yield. Monkeys are monkeys. Why get angry, why feel offended?
It is said of Mulla Nasruddin
that when he was old he was made an honorary magistrate. The first case to come
before him was a man who had been robbed. Nasruddin heard his story and said,
"Yes, you are in the right." But he hadn't yet heard the other story!
The clerk of the court
whispered in his ear, "You are new, Nasruddin. You don't know what you are
doing. You have to listen to the other side before you give judgment."
So Nasruddin said,
"Okay."
The other man, the robber, told
his story. Nasruddin listened and said, "You are right."
The clerk of the court felt
confused: "This new magistrate is not only inexperienced, he is
crazy."
Again he whispered in his ear,
"What are you doing? Both cannot be right."
Nasruddin said, "Yes, you
are right."
This is the wise man who looks
at the objective conditions. He will yield. He is always yielding, he is always
saying yes - because if you say no, then your boat is not empty. No always
comes from the ego. So if a wise man has to say no, he will still use the
terminology of yes. He will not say no outright, he will use the terminology of
yes. If a foolish man wants to say yes, he will feel the difficulty of not
saying no. He will use the terminology of no, and if he has to yield, he will
yield grudgingly.
He will yield offended,
resisting. The monkey trainer yielded.
The keeper was willing
To change his personal arrangements
In order to meet objective conditions.
He lost nothing by it.
No wise man has ever lost
anything by saying yes to foolish people. No wise man can ever lose anything by
yielding. He gains everything. There is no ego, so there cannot be any loss.
The loss is always felt by the ego: I am losing. Why do you feel you are
losing? - because you never wanted to lose. Why do you feel you are a failure?
- because you always wanted to be a success. Why do you feel you are a beggar?
- because you always desired to be an emperor.
A wise man simply takes
whatever is. He accepts the total. He knows - beggar in the morning, emperor in
the evening; and emperor in the morning, beggar in the evening. Which is the
better arrangement?
If a wise man is forced to
arrange he would like to be beggar in the morning and emperor in the evening. A
wise man never chooses, but if you insist, he will say that it is better to be
beggar in the morning and emperor in the evening. Why? - because to be emperor
first, in the morning, then to be beggar in the evening, will be very
difficult. But this is the choice.
A wise man will choose pain in
the beginning and pleasure in the end, because pain in the beginning will give
you the background, and against it the pleasure will be more pleasing than
ever. Pleasure in the beginning will give you a soft background and then the
pain will be too much, unbearable.
East and West have made
different arrangements. In the East, for the first twenty-five years of life
every child had to go through hardship. That was the principle followed for
thousands of years until the West came and began dominating the East.
A child had to go to the
master's house in the jungle, he had to live through every possible hardship.
Like a beggar he would sleep on
a mat on the floor - there were no comforts. He would eat like a beggar; he
would have to go to town and beg for the master, chop wood, take the animals to
the river to drink, to the forest to feed.
For twenty-five years he led
the most simple, austere life whether he was born a king or a beggar - there
was no difference. Even the emperor's son had to follow the same routine, there
was no distinction. And then when he came to know life in the world, life was
so blissful.
If the East was so content,
this was the trick, the arrangement, because whatsoever life gives it is always
more than you started with. The child comes to live in a hut. To him it is a
palace compared with lying on the ground without any shelter, crowded. He has
an ordinary bed, and it is heavenly.
Ordinary food, bread, butter
and salt is paradise enough, because there was no butter at the master's house.
He is happy with whatsoever life gives.
Now, the Western pattern is the
opposite. When you are a student every comfort is given to you.
Hostels, beautiful
universities, beautiful rooms, classrooms, teachers - every arrangement is made
for your medical facilities, food, hygiene, everything is taken care of. And
after twenty-five years of this you are thrown into the struggle of life. You
have become a hot-house plant! - you don't know what struggle is. Then you
become a clerk in an office, a master in a primary school: life is hell.
Then all your life you will be
grunting, your whole life will be a long grump, complaining, complaining,
everything is wrong. It is going to be so.
The monkey trainer said,
"Three helpings in the morning and four in the evening."
But the monkeys insisted: "Four
in the morning and three in the evening."
Four in the morning and three
in the evening... then the evening is going to be cloudy. You will compare it
with the past, with the morning. Emperor in the morning and a beggar in the
evening... then the evening is going to be miserable. The evening should be the
climax, not miserable.
The monkeys are not choosing a
wise arrangement. In the first place a wise man never chooses, he lives
choicelessly because he knows that whatever happens the total is going to be
the same. In the second place, if he has to choose because of objective
conditions, he will choose three courses in the morning and four in the
evening. But the monkeys said, "No. We will choose. We will have four in
the morning." That trainer, the keeper, was willing to comply in order to
meet objective conditions.
He lost nothing by it. But what
happened to the monkeys? They lost something.
So whenever you are near a wise
man let him make the arrangements, don't insist on your own. To choose in the
first place is wrong, and in the second place, whatsoever choice you monkeys
make, it will be wrong. The monkey mind only looks for immediate, instant
happiness. The monkey is not worried about what happens later on. He doesn't
know, he has no perspective of the whole. So let the wise man choose.
But the whole arrangement has
changed. In the East the wise men decided. In the West there is democracy: the
monkeys vote and choose. And now they have converted the whole East to
democracy - democracy means that the monkeys vote and choose.
Aristocracy means that the wise
men will choose the arrangement and the monkeys will yield and follow. Nothing
can work like aristocracy if aristocracy is run properly. Democracy is bound to
be a chaos. The monkeys feel very happy because they are choosing the
arrangement, but the world was happier when the choice was with wise men.
Remember, kings always used to
go to ask the wise men to make the final decision on important matters. The
wise men were not kings because they couldn't be bothered with it, they were
beggars, living in their huts in the forest. Whenever there was a problem the
king did not run to the constituency to ask the people, "What is to be
done?" He ran to the forest to ask those who had renounced all - because
they have a perspective of the whole, no attachment, no obsessions, nothing, by
their own choice. They are choiceless; they see the whole and decide.
The truly wise man,
Considering both sides of the question
Without partiality,
Sees them both in the light of tao.
This is called following two courses at once.
To look at the total means to
follow two courses at once. Then it is not a question of four in the morning,
three in the evening. It is a question of seven in the whole life.
Arrangement is immaterial. Arrangements
can be made according to objective conditions, but there will be seven in all,
two courses together. The wise man looks at the whole of everything. Sex gives
you pleasure, but he looks also at the pain that comes out of it. Wealth gives
you pleasure, but he looks at the nightmare that comes with it. Success makes
you happy, but he knows the abyss that follows the peak, the failure that will
become intense, unbearable pain.
The wise man looks at the
whole. And when you look at the whole you have no choice. Then you are having
two courses at the same time. Morning and evening are together now - four plus
three are together now. Now nothing is in fragments, everything has become a
whole. And to follow this whole is Tao. To follow this whole is to be religious.
To follow this whole is Yoga.
Enough for today.
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