Osho - The
Empty Boat
Chapter 7. Three
Friends
There were three friends discussing life.
One said:
"Can men live together and know nothing of it,
Work together and produce nothing?
Can they fly around in space
And forget to exist, world without end?"
The three friends looked at each other
And burst out laughing.
They had no explanation,
Thus they were better friends than before. Then one friend died.
Confucius sent a disciple
To help the other two chant his obsequies.
The disciple found
That one friend had composed a song
While the other played the lute.
They sang:
"Hey, Sung Hu, where'd you go?
Hey, Sung Hu, where'd you go?
You have gone where you really were,
And we are here - damn it, we are here!"
Then the disciple of Confucius
Burst in on them and exclaimed:
"May I inquire where you found this
In the rubrics for obsequies,
This frivolous caroling
In the presence of the departed?"
The two friends looked at each other
And laughed:
"Poor fellow,
He doesn't know the new liturgy!"
The first thing about life is
that it has no explanation. It is there in its absolute glory, but it has no
explanation. It is there as a mystery and if you try to explain it you will
miss it. It will not be explained, but you will become blind through your
explanations.
Philosophy is the enemy of
life. The most inimical thing that can happen to a man is to get fixed and
obsessed with explanations. The moment you think you have the explanation life
has left you, you are already dead.
This seems to be a paradox.
Death may be explained, but life cannot be explained - because death is
something finished, complete, and life is always an ongoing affair; life is
always on the journey, death has arrived already. When something has reached
and is finished, you can explain it, you can define it. When something is still
ongoing, it means that the unknown is still to be traveled.
You can know the past but you
cannot know the future. You can put the past into a theory, but how can you put
the future into a theory? The future is always an opening, an infinite opening,
and it goes on opening and opening. So when you explain, the explanation always
indicates that which is dead.
Philosophy has explanations so
it cannot be very alive, and you cannot find people who are more dead than
philosophers. Life has ebbed out, life has oozed out of them. They are shrunken
heads, like dead stones. They make much noise but there is no music of life.
They have many explanations, but they have completely forgotten that they have
only explanations in their hands, Explanation is like a closed fist. Life is
like an open hand. They are totally different. And when the fist is completely
closed there is no sky in it, no air in it, no space to breathe. You cannot
grab the sky in your closed fist. The fist will miss it. The sky is there, the
hand is open, it is available. Explanation is grabbing, closing, defining -
life oozes out.
Even a laugh is greater than
any philosophy, and when someone laughs about life he understands it. So all
those who have really known have laughed. And their laughter can be heard even
after centuries. Seeing Buddha holding a flower in his hand, Mahakashyapa
laughed. His laughter can be heard even now. Those who have ears to hear, they
will hear his laughter, just like a river flowing down through the centuries
continuously.
In Zen monasteries in Japan,
disciples still ask the master, "Tell us, Master, why did Mahakashyapa
laugh?" And those who are more alert say, "Tell us, Master, why is
Mahakashyapa still laughing?"
They use the present, not the
past tense. And it is said that the master will reply only when he feels that
you can hear the laughter of Mahakashyapa. If you cannot hear it, nothing can
be said to you about it.
Buddhas have always been
laughing. You may not have heard them because your doors are closed.
You may have looked at a buddha
and you may have felt that he is serious, but this seriousness is projected. It
is your own seriousness - you have used the buddha as a screen. Hence,
Christians say Jesus never laughed. This seems absolutely foolish. Jesus must
have laughed and he must have laughed so totally that his whole being must have
become laughter - but the disciples couldn't hear it, that is true. They must
have remained closed, their own seriousness projected.
They could see Jesus on the
cross because you all live in such suffering that you can only see suffering.
If they had heard Jesus laughing, they would have omitted it. It is so
contradictory to their life, it doesn't fit in. A Jesus laughing doesn't fit in
with you, he becomes a stranger.
But in the East it has been
different, and in Zen, in Tao, the laughter reached its peak. It became the
polar opposite of philosophy.
A philosopher is serious
because he thinks life is a riddle and a solution can be found. He works on
life with his mind, and he gets more and more serious. The more he misses life,
the more he gets serious and dead.
Taoists, Lao Tzu and Chuang
Tzu, say that if you can laugh, if you can feel belly laughter that comes from
the very core of your being, that is not just painted on the surface, if you
can feel laughter that comes from the deepest center of your being, spreads all
over you, overflows to the universe, that laughter will give you the first
glimpse of what life is. It is a mystery.
In Chuang Tzu such laughter is
prayerful, because now you accept life, you don't hanker for the explanation.
How can one find the explanation? We are part of it. How can the part find the
explanation for the whole? How can the part look at the whole? How can the part
dissect, divide the whole? How can the part go before the whole?
Explanation means that you must
transcend that which you are trying to explain - you must be there before it
existed, you must be there when it has ceased to exist. You must move around it
so you can define it, and you must dissect so you can reach the heart. A
surgeon can find the explanation, not for life, but for a dead body. All
medical definitions of life are foolish because the surgeon dissects, and when
he makes a conclusion life is there no longer, it is only a corpse. All
explanations are postmortems, life is not there.
Now even scientists have become
aware of the phenomenon that when you examine human blood, the blood cannot be
the same as it was when it was moving in the veins of the living person. Then
it was alive, it had a different quality; now when it is in the test tube, it
is dead. It is not the same blood, because the basic quality - life - is no
longer in it. All explanations are of that type.
A flower on the tree is
different because life, the shape of life, is flowing in it. When you cut it
from the tree, take it to the lab, examine it, it is a different flower. Don't
be deceived by the appearance of it. Now life is no longer flowing in it. You
may come to know the chemical composition of the flower, but that is not the
explanation.
A poet has a different
approach, not through dissection, but through love, not through uprooting the
flower from the tree but rather through merging with the flower, being with it
in deep love, in a participation mystique. He participates with it, then he
comes to know something, and that is not an explanation. Poetry cannot be an
explanation, but it has a glimpse of the truth. It is truer than any science.
Watch: when you are in love with
someone your heart beats differently. Your lover, your beloved, will listen to
your heart: it beats differently. Your lover will take your hand...the warmth
is different. The blood moves in a different dance, it pulsates differently.
When the doctor takes your hand
in his hand, the pulsation is not the same. He can hear the heart beating but
this beat is different. When the heart was beating for a lover it had a song of
its own, but only a lover can know the beat, only the lover can know the
pulsation, the blood, the warmth of life.
The doctor cannot know.
What has changed? The doctor
has become the observer and you are the observed - you are not one. The doctor
treats you like an object. He looks at you as if he is looking at a thing -
that makes the difference. A lover doesn't look at you as an object - he
becomes one with you, he merges and melts. He comes to know the deeper core of
your being, but he has no explanation. He feels it, but feeling is different.
He cannot think about it.
Anything that can be thought
will not be alive. Thought deals with death, it always deals with dead objects;
that is why in science there is no place for feeling. Feeling gives a different
dimension to existence, the dimension of the alive.
This beautiful story has many
things to say to you. Move step by step into it, and if you reach a conclusion,
then understand that you have missed it. If you reach laughter, then you have
understood.
There were three friends discussing life.
Chuang Tzu is very telegraphic.
As always, those who know will not utter a single word unnecessarily. They live
with the essential.
There were three friends discussing life.
The first thing to be
understood is that only friends can discuss life. Whenever a discussion becomes
antagonistic, whenever a discussion becomes a debate, the dialogue is broken.
Life cannot be discussed that way. Only friends can discuss, because then
discussion is not a debate, it is a dialogue.
And what is the difference
between a debate and a dialogue? In debate you are not ready to listen to the
other; even if you are listening, your listening is false. You are not really
listening, you are simply preparing your argument. While the other is speaking
you are getting ready to contradict.
While the other is talking, you
are simply waiting for your opportunity to argue back. You have a prejudice
already there in you, you have a theory. You are not in search, you are not
ignorant, you are not innocent; you are already filled, your boat is not empty.
You carry certain theories with you and you are trying to prove them true.
A seeker of truth carries no
theories with him. He is always open, vulnerable. He can listen. A Hindu cannot
listen, a Mohammedan cannot listen. How can a Hindu listen? He already knows
the truth, there is no need to listen. You try to make him listen but he
cannot; his mind is already so filled that nothing can penetrate. A Christian
cannot listen, he already knows the truth. He has closed his doors to new
breezes, he has closed his eyes for the new sun to rise, he has reached, he has
arrived.
All those who feel that they
have arrived can debate, but they cannot move in a dialogue. They can only
clash. Then conflict arises and they oppose each other. In such a discussion
you may prove something, but nothing is proved. You may silence the other, but
the other is never converted. You cannot convince, because this is a sort of
war, a civilized war - you are not fighting with weapons, you are fighting with
words.
Chuang Tzu says: Three friends
were discussing life - that is why they could reach laughter; otherwise there
would have been a conclusion. One theory might have defeated other theories,
one philosophy might have silenced other philosophies, then there would have
been a conclusion - and conclusion is dead.
Life has no conclusion. Life
has no foolish thought to it. It goes on and on endlessly; it is always,
eternally, an onward affair. How can you conclude anything about it? The moment
you conclude you have stepped out of it. Life goes on and you have stepped out
of the way. You may cling to your conclusion but life will not wait for you.
Friends can discuss. Why? You
can love a person, you cannot love a philosophy. Philosophers cannot be
friends. You can be either their disciple or their enemy but you cannot be
their friend.
Either you are convinced by
them or not convinced, either you follow them or don't follow them, but you
cannot be friends. A friendship is possible only between two empty boats. Then
you are open to the other, inviting to the other, then you are constantly an
invitation, come to me, enter me, be with me.
You can throw away theories and
philosophies but you cannot throw away friendship. And when you are in
friendship a dialogue becomes possible. In dialogue you listen, and if you have
to speak, you speak not to contradict the other, you speak just to seek, to
inquire. You speak, not with a conclusion already reached, but with an inquiry,
an ongoing inquiry. You are not trying to prove something: you speak from
innocence, not from philosophy. Philosophy is never innocent, it is always
cunning, it is a device of the mind.
Three friends were discussing
life - because between friends a dialogue is possible. So in the East it has
been the tradition that unless you find friendship, love, reverence, trust, no
inquiry is possible.
If you go to a master and your
boat is filled with your ideas, there can be no contact, there can be no
dialogue. First you have to be empty so that friendship becomes possible, so
that you can look without any ideas floating across your eyes, so that you can
look without conclusions. And whenever you can look without conclusions, your
perspective is vast, it is not confined.
A Hindu can read The Bible, but
he never understands it. Really, he never reads it, he cannot listen to it. A
Christian can read the Gita, but he remains the outsider. He never penetrates
its innermost being, he never reaches the inner realm, he moves round and round
it. He already knows that only Christ is true, he already knows that only through
Christ is salvation; he already knows that only Christ is the son of God. How
can he listen to Krishna? Only Christ is truth. Krishna is bound to be untrue,
at the most, a beautiful untruth, but never true. Or if he concedes much, then
he will say, approximately true.
But what do you mean when you
say approximately true? It is untrue! Truth is either there or not.
Nothing can be approximately
true. Truth is, or truth is not. It is always total. You cannot divide it.
You cannot say it is true to
some degree. No, truth knows no degree. Either it is or it is not.
So when the mind contains the
conclusion that Christ is the only truth, then it is impossible to listen to
Krishna. Even if you come across him on the path you will not be able to listen
to him. Even if you meet Buddha you will not meet him.
And the whole world is filled
with conclusions. Someone is a Chris-tian, someone is a Hindu, someone is a
Jaina, someone is a Buddhist - that is why truth is missing! A religious person
cannot be a Christian, a Hindu, or a Buddhist, a religious person can only be a
sincere inquirer. He inquires and he remains open without any conclusions. His
boat is empty.
Three friends discussing life...
Only friends can discuss because then it becomes a dialogue, then the relationship
is of I and thou. When you are debating, the relationship is of I and it. The
other is a thing to be converted, convinced, the other is not a thou; the other
has no significance, the other is just a number.
In friendship the other is
significant, the other has intrinsic value, the other is an end in himself, you
are not trying to convert him. How can you convert a person? What foolishness!
The very effort to convert a person is foolish. A person is not a thing. A
person is so big and so vast that no theory can be more important than a
person. No Bible is more important than a person, no Gita is more important
than a person. A person means the very glory of life. You can love a person but
you can never convert a person. If you try to convert, you are trying to
manipulate. Then the person has become a means and you are exploiting.
Dialogue is possible when your
I says thou, when the other is loved, when there is no ideology behind it. The
other is simply loved, and whether he is a Christian or Hindu doesn't matter.
This is what friendship means - and friends can discuss life because dialogue
is possible.
One said:
"can men live together and know nothing of it,
Work together and produce nothing?
Can they fly around in space
And forget to exist, world without end?"
He is not proposing a theory,
he is simply raising a question. And remember, you can raise a question in two
ways. Sometimes you raise a question only because you have to supply an answer
and the answer is already there - you raise the question just to answer it.
Then the question is not real, it is false. The answer is already there. The
question is just a trick, rhetorical; it is not real, authentic.
The question is authentic when
there is no answer in you, when you question but you don't question from an
answer, when you question simply to look; the question leaves you empty, just
open, inviting, inquiring.
One said:
"Can men live together and know nothing of it...?"
We live together and we never
know anything of what togetherness is. You can live together for years without
knowing what togetherness is. Look all over the world - people are living
together, nobody lives alone: husbands with wives, wives with husbands,
children with parents, parents with friends; everybody is living together. Life
exists in togetherness, but do you know what togetherness is?
Living with a wife for forty
years, you may not have lived with her for a single moment. Even while making
love to her you may have been thinking of other things. Then you were not
there, the lovemaking was just mechanical.
I have heard that once Mulla
Nasruddin went to a film with his wife. They had been married for at least
twenty years. The film was one of those torrid foreign films! As they were
leaving the cinema his wife said, "Nasruddin, you never love me like those
actors were doing in the film. Why?"
Nasruddin said, "Are you
crazy? Do you know how much they are paid for doing such things?"
People go on living with each
other without any love because you love only when it pays. And how can you love
if you love only when it pays? Then love has also become a commodity in the
market:
then it is not a relationship,
it is not a togetherness, it is not a celebration. You are not happy being with
the other, at the most you just tolerate the other.
Mulla Nasruddin's wife was on
her deathbed and the doctor said, "Nasruddin, I must be frank with you; in
such moments it is better to be truthful. Your wife cannot be saved. The
disease has gone beyond us, and you must prepare yourself. Don't allow yourself
to suffer, accept it, it is your fate.
Your wife is going to
die."
Nasruddin said, "Don't
worry. If I could suffer with her for so many years, I can suffer for a few
hours more!"
At the most we tolerate. And
whenever you think in terms of toleration, you are suffering, your togetherness
is suffering. That is why Jean-Paul Sartre says, "The other is
hell"...because with the other you simply suffer, the other becomes the
bondage, the other becomes the domination. The other starts creating trouble,
and your freedom is lost, your happiness is lost. Then it becomes a routine, a
tolerance. If you are tolerating the other how can you know the beauty of
togetherness?
Really, it has never happened.
Marriage almost always never
happens, because marriage means the celebration of togetherness.
It is not a license. No
registry office can give you marriage; no priest can give it to you as a gift.
It is a tremendous revolution
in the being, it is a great transformation in your very style of life, and it
can happen only when you celebrate togetherness, when the other is no longer
felt as the other, when you no longer feel yourself as I. When the two are not
really two, a bridge has happened, they have become one in a certain sense.
Physically they remain two, but as far as the innermost being is concerned,
they have become one. They may be two poles of one existence but they are not
two.
A bridge exists. That bridge
gives you glimpses of togetherness.
It is one of the rarest things
to come across a marriage. People live together because they cannot live alone.
Remember this: because they cannot live alone, that is why they live together.
To live alone is uncomfortable, to live alone is uneconomical, to live alone is
difficult, that is why they live together. The reasons are negative.
A man was going to get married
and somebody asked him, "You have always been against marriage, why have
you suddenly changed your mind?"
He said, "Winter is coming
on and people say that it is going to be very cold. Central heating is beyond
me and a wife is cheaper!"
This is the logic. You live
with someone because it is comfortable, convenient, economical, cheaper.
To live alone is really
difficult: a wife is so many things, the housekeeper, the cook, the servant,
the nurse - so many things. She is the cheapest labor in the world, doing so
many things without being paid at all. It is an exploitation.
Marriage exists as an
institution of exploitation, it is not togetherness. That is why no happiness
comes out of it as a flowering. It cannot. Out of the roots of exploitation how
can ecstasy be born?
There are your so-called saints
who keep saying that you are miserable because you live in a family, because
you live in the world. They say, "Leave everything, renounce!" And
their logic appears to be right, not because it IS right, but because you have
missed togetherness. Otherwise, all those saints would seem absolutely wrong.
One who has known togetherness has known the divine; one who is really married
has known the divine, because love is the greatest door.
But togetherness is not there
and you live together without knowing what togetherness is; you live that way
for seventy, eighty years without knowing what life is. You drift without any
roots in life. You just move from one moment to another without tasting what
life gives you. And it is not given to you at birth. It is not hereditary to
know life.
Life comes through birth but
the wisdom, the experience, the ecs-tasy, has to be learnt. Hence the meaning
of meditation. You have to earn it, you have to grow towards it, you have to
attain a certain maturity; only then will you be able to know it.
Life can open to you only in a
certain moment of maturity. But people live and die childishly. They never
really grow, they never attain to maturity.
What is maturity? Just becoming
sexually mature does not mean you are mature. Ask the psychologists: they say
that the average adult mental age remains nearabout thirteen or fourteen.
Your physical body goes on
growing but your mind stops at about the age of thirteen. It is no wonder you
behave so foolishly, why your life becomes a continuous foolishness! A mind
which has not grown up is bound to do something wrong every moment.
And the immature mind always
throws responsibility onto the other. You feel unhappy and think that it is
because everybody else is creating hell for you. "The other is hell."
I say this assertion of Sartre is very immature. If you are mature, the other
can also become heaven. The other is whatsoever you are because the other is
just a mirror, he reflects you.
When I say maturity, I mean an
inner integrity. And this inner integrity comes only when you stop making
others responsible, when you stop saying that the other is creating your
suffering, when you start realizing that you are the creator of your suffering.
This is the first step towards maturity: I am responsible. Whatsoever is
happening, it is my doing.
You feel sad. Is this your
doing? You will feel very much disturbed, but if you can remain with this
feeling, sooner or later you will be able to stop doing many things. This is
what the theory of karma is all about. You are responsible. Don't say society
is responsible, don't say that parents are responsible, don't say the economic
conditions are responsible, don't throw the responsibility onto anybody. YOU
are responsible.
In the beginning, this will
look like a burden because now you cannot throw the responsibility on anyone
else. But take it...
Someone asked Mulla Nasruddin,
"Why do you look so sad?"
He said, "My wife has
insisted that I stop gambling, smoking, drinking, playing cards. I have stopped
all of them."
So the man said, "Your wife
must be very happy now."
Nasruddin said, "That is
the problem. Now she cannot find anything to complain about, so she is very
unhappy. She starts talking, but she cannot find anything to complain about.
Now she cannot make me responsible for anything and I have never seen her so
unhappy. I thought that when I gave up all these things she would cheer up, but
she has become more unhappy than ever."
If you go on throwing
responsibility onto others and they all do whatsoever you tell them to do, you
will end up committing suicide. Eventually there will be nowhere left to throw
your responsibilities.
So it is good to have a few
faults; it helps others to be happy. If there is a really perfect husband, the
wife will leave him. How can you dominate a perfect man? So even if you don't
want to, go on doing something wrong so the wife can dominate you and feel
happy!
Where there is a perfect
husband there is bound to be divorce. Find a perfect man and you will all be
against him, because you cannot condemn, you cannot say anything wrong about
him. Our minds love to throw responsibility onto somebody else. Our minds want
to com-plain. It makes us feel good, because then we are not responsible, we
are unburdened. But this unburdening is very costly. You are not really unburdened,
you are getting more and more burdened. Only you are not alert.
People have lived for seventy
years, and for many many lives, without knowing what life is. They were not
mature, they were not integrated, they were not centered. They lived on the
periphery.
If your periphery meets the
other's periphery a clash happens, and if you go on being concerned that the
other person is wrong, you remain on the periphery. Once you realize, "I
am responsible for my being; whatsoever has happened, I am the cause, I have
done it," suddenly your consciousness shifts from the periphery to the
center. Now you become, for the first time, the center of your world.
Now much can be done...because
whatsoever you don't like, you can drop; whatsoever you like, you can adopt;
whatsoever you feel is true, you can follow, and whatsoever you feel is untrue,
you need not follow, because you are now centered and rooted in yourself.
One friend asked:
"Can men live together and know nothing of it,
Work together and produce nothing?
Can they fly around in space
And forget to exist, world without end?"
The three friends looked at each other...
Only friends look at each
other. When there is someone to whom you feel antagonistic, you never look at
him. You avoid his eyes. Even if you have to look at him, your look is vacant,
you don't allow your eyes to absorb him; he is something foreign, rejected.
The eyes are the doors. You
need only look towards a person and you can absorb him, let him melt in you.
The three friends looked at each other...
One friend made the inquiry,
the other two were not in any hurry to answer. They waited, they were patient.
If there had been any conclusion in their mind, they would have spoken
immediately. But they looked at each other. They felt the situation, the
inquiry, the heart of the inquiry, the meaning of the question, the depth of
the question. Remember, if you can feel the depth of a question, the answer is
almost found. But nobody has the patience, nobody is ready to go deep into a
question.
You ask, but you never really
go into the inquiry. You ask for the answer immediately.
The three friends looked at each other
And burst out laughing.
The fact, the question, the
penetration of it, the depth, the reality, the fact of it, showed plainly that
no answer was needed. Any answer would have been foolish, any answer would have
been superficial.
It is said about Buddha that
millions of times people used to ask him questions and he would not answer. If
the question demanded a superficial answer, he would not answer; if somebody
asked, "Is there a God?" he remained silent. And people are foolish.
They began to think that he didn't believe in God, otherwise he would say yes;
or they thought he was ignorant, he didn't know, otherwise he would say either
yes or no!
When you ask a question such
as, "Does God exist?" you don't know what you are asking. Do you
think this is a question to be answered? Then you are stupid. Can such vital
questions be answered? Then you don't know the depth of it; then this is
curiosity, not inquiry.
If the man who was asking
Buddha was an authentic seeker, then he would have remained with Buddha's silence
- because the silence was the answer. In that silence he would have felt the
question, in that silence the question would have asserted itself strongly.
Against the background of the silence it would have become clearer. A clarity
would have come to him.
Whenever you ask a deep
question, no answer is required. All that is required is to remain with the
question. Don't move here and there, remain with the question and wait. The
very question will become the answer. The question, if you go deep into it,
will lead to the very source from where the answer also flows. It is in you.
Buddha has not answered any
real question - and remember that about me also. I go on answering your
questions, but I also cannot answer your real questions - and you have not asked
yet.
Whenever you ask the real
question, I am not going to answer, because no real question can be answered,
it is not an intellectual thing. Only from heart to heart the transmission
happens, not from head to head.
The three friends looked at each other...
What happened in that look?
They were not heads in that look, they became hearts. They looked at each
other, they felt, they tasted the question - and it was so real that there was
no answer to it.
Yes, we live without knowing
what life is. Yes, we live together without knowing what togetherness is. Yes,
we live, forgetting completely that we exist. We have been flying round and
round in the sky without knowing where we are going or why.
The question was so real that
if any answer had been given, that answer would be foolish. Only a fool would
answer such a question. They looked at each other, they really looked into each
other, and burst out laughing. Why burst out laughing? The whole situation is
so absurd. Really, we live without knowing what life is; we exist without
becoming aware of existence, we journey and journey without knowing from where
or to what or why.
Life is a mystery. Whenever you
confront a mystery laughter will arise, for how can you answer a mystery?
What is the most mysterious thing
in you? Laughter is the most mysterious thing in you. No animal can laugh, only
man. It is the suprememost glory of man. No animal laughs, no trees laugh -
only man laughs. Laughter is the most mysterious element in man.
Aristotle defined man as the rational
being. It is not a good definition because reason exists in other animals also.
The difference is only of degree, and it is not much. Man can only be defined
as the laughing and weeping animal, no other definition will do, because no
other animal can weep, no other animal can laugh. This polarity exists only in
humanity. This is something mysterious, most mysterious, in man.
Anger exists all over, it is
nothing. Sex exists all over, it is nothing, it is not so mysterious. If you
want to understand sex, you can understand animal sex, and all that is
applicable to animal sex will be applicable to man. In that way man is nothing
more.
Anger, violence, aggression,
possessiveness, jealousy, everything exists and exists more purely and simply
in animals than in you. Everything is confused in you. That is why
psychologists have to study rats just to study man. They are simple, clear,
less confused, and whatsoever they conclude about rats is also true of you. All
the psychology laboratories are filled with rats. It has become the most
important animal for psychologists because it is like the human in so many
ways.
The rat is the only animal
which follows humanity wherever it goes. It is universal. If you find a man in
Siberia, there will be a rat somewhere nearby. Wherever he goes, the rat
follows - I suspect that rats have already reached the moon. No other animal
can exist everywhere like the rat. And its behavior is absolutely human.
Understand the behavior of the rat and you have understood humanity.
But the rat cannot laugh, the
rat cannot weep. Laughter and weeping are two aspects of something which exists
only in man. If you want to understand laughter and weeping you have to study
humanity; there is no other way it can be studied. That is why I call it the
most distinctive quality of the human mind.
Whenever you feel mystery you
have two alternatives: either you weep or you laugh. It depends on your
personality, your type. It is possible, if they had been different types of
personality, that the three friends would have wept. When such a mystery
surrounds you, when you encounter such an unknowable mystery that no
explanation is possible, what can you do? How can you respond?
But laughter is better than
weeping because weeping comes when the mystery of death surrounds you. Then you
weep. And the question was about life so it was relevant to laugh. Whenever you
encounter the mystery of death you weep, you feel the relevance whenever death
is there.
The question was about life,
not about death. So it seems relevant that they should look into each other,
into the life that was in each - the life pulsating, the life dancing all
around and with no explanation, with no secret book to reveal the keys; life in
its total mystery, in its total unknowability.
What was there to do? They were
not philosophers, they were truthful men, mystics. They laughed, they had no
explanation.
Thus they were better friends than before.
This is beautiful! Whenever
there is an explanation enmity arises, whenever you believe in something you
are divided. Belief creates conflict. The whole world is divided because of
belief.
You are a Hindu and someone is
a Mohammedan, and you are enemies. Why are you enemies? - because of your
belief. Belief creates the conflict; foolish explanations, ideologies, create
conflict, war.
Look at this: if there is no
explanation, who is a Hindu and who is a Mohammedan? And how can you fight? For
what? Men have always been fighting over philosophies, shedding blood,
murdering each other, just for foolish beliefs. And if you DO look into
beliefs, you can see the foolishness - not of your beliefs, but of others'
beliefs! Your belief is something sacred, but everyone else's belief looks
foolish!
All beliefs are foolish. You
cannot see your own because it is so near. Really, explanations are foolish,
stupid.
I have heard that a flock of
birds was flying south for the winter. One bird at the rear asked another,
"How come we always follow this idiot leader?"
The other said, "In the
first place, all leaders are idiots..." otherwise who wants to lead? Only
the foolish are always ready to lead. A wise man hesitates. Life is so
mysterious - it is not a readymade path. How can you lead? A wise man hesitates
and an idiot is always ready to lead.
"...And in the second
place, he has got the map, so every year we have to follow him."
Life has no map and there is no
possibility of making a map. It is a pathless path. Without explanations how
can you be divided? If there is no explanation, the world will be one. But
there are millions of explanations, millions of fragments.
Chuang Tzu says a really very
penetrating thing:
They had no explanation,
Thus they were better friends than before.
Now there was nothing to be
enemies about, nothing to fight over. They laughed, and the laughter made them
one. They laughed, and the laughter led them into a togetherness. Explain and
you are divided, become philosophical and you are separated from others, become
a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Buddhist, then all others are enemies.
Look at the mystery and laugh,
and humanity is one. And then there is no need to say that Christians are
brothers of Hindus, Hindus are brothers of Mohammedans. First divide them, make
them ill with be-liefs, and then supply this medicine: you are all brothers.
And have you seen brothers? They fight more than enemies! So what is the use of
making them brothers?
Man fights for his
explanations. All fights are foolish. Man fights for his flags, and look at the
flags!
What type of foolishness, what
type of madness exists in the world? For flags, for symbols, for beliefs, for
ideologies?
Says Chuang Tzu: they had no explanation... they laughed.
In that mysterious moment they became one, better friends than before.
If you really want to be a
friend, have no explanations and no conclusions, don't believe in anything.
And then you are not divided,
then humanity is one, then there is no barrier.
And love exists not through
mind, it exists through feeling.
They laughed. Laughter comes
from the heart, laughter comes from the belly, laughter comes from the total
being. When three people laugh, they become friends. When three people weep,
they become friends. When three people debate, they become enemies.
Then one friend died.
Confucius sent a disciple
To help the other two chant his obsequies.
Confucius is the man of manners
par excellence. Nobody can transcend him. So he is always the butt of Chuang
Tzu and Lao Tzu. They bring Confucius into their stories just to laugh at his
foolishness.
What was his foolishness? He
lived by a system, he lived by a form-ula, by theories and beliefs. He was the
perfectly civilized man, the most perfect gentleman the world has ever known.
He moves, and he moves according to the rule. He looks, and he looks according
to the rule. He laughs, and he laughs according to the rule. He never moves
beyond the boundary, he lives in a constant bondage of his own making. So he is
the butt of their laughter, and Chuang Tzu and Lao Tzu very much enjoy bringing
him into their stories.
Then one friend died.
Confucius sent a disciple
To help the other two chant his obsequies.
Neither life nor death is a
mystery to him. It is something with a place in a system, and some formality
had to be followed. So he sent his disciples to see whether the dead man had
been disposed of according to the rules, with the right prayer, the right chanting
- as written in the books. The dead should be respected.
This is the difference. A man
who lives through manners is always thinking of respect, never of love.
And what is respect in
comparison to love? Love is something alive; respect is absolutely dead.
The disciple found
That one friend had composed a song
While the other played the lute.
This was unbelievable! This was
disrespectful to a person who is dead! The dead body was lying there, and one
friend had composed a song. They loved the other man, and when you love a man
you want to give him the last farewell through your love, not through books,
not through a readymade song which so many have chanted, so many have used,
something already rotten and rubbish. They made up a song of their own, fresh,
young. Of course, it was homemade, not produced in a factory, not
mass-produced. Just homemade, not very polished of course, because they were
not poets, they were friends, and they didn't know how poetry was created. The
meter may have been wrong and the grammar incorrect, but love doesn't care
about grammar, love doesn't care about meter, love doesn't care about rhythm,
because love has such a vital rhythm of its own, it need not care.
When there is no love,
everything has to be taken care of because you have to substitute care for
love.
One was playing the lute - and
I know that he was not a lute player either. But how do you say goodbye to a
friend? It must come from your heart, it must be spontaneous, it cannot be
readymade.
That is the point.
They sang:
"Hey Sung Hu, where'd you go?"
The mystery! They did not say,
"You are going to heaven." They don't know. Otherwise, when someone
dies you say, "He has gone to heaven." Then who will go to hell? No
one seems to go to hell.
In India, the word for a dead
person is SWARGIYA. It means, one who has gone to heaven. Then who is going to
hell? They didn't know, so what was the point of uttering a falsehood? Who
knows where this man had gone, this Sung Hu - to hell or heaven? Who knows
whether hell and heaven exist? Nobody knows; it is a mystery, and one should
not defile a mystery, one should not make it profane, one should not assert
falsehoods. It is such a sacred thing, one should not say anything which is not
known directly.
"Hey Sung Hu, where'd you go?"
- it was a question mark.
"Hey Sung Hu, where'd you go?"
You have gone where you really were,
And we are here - damn it, we are here!"
They say, "You have gone
to the place from where you came." This is a secret law: the ultimate can
only be the beginning. The circle goes round and becomes perfect, complete, and
it reaches the same point it started from. The end cannot be anything else but
the beginning, the death cannot be anything else but the birth. The final
should be the source, the original. One is born out of nothingness and then one
dies and moves into nothingness. The boat was empty when you were born and when
you die the boat will be empty again. Just a flash of lightning. For a few
moments you are in the body and then you disappear. Nobody knows from where you
came and where you go.
They don't claim any knowledge.
They say, "This much we feel: Sung Hu, you have gone to the place from
where you came, and damn it, we are still here." So they are not sorry for
Hu, they are sorry for themselves, that they are hanging in the middle and his
circle is perfect.
Whenever somebody dies, have
you felt this? Are you sorry for the person who is dead or sorry for yourself?
Really, when someone dies, are you sad for him or her, or for yourself?
Everybody is sorry for himself because every death brings the news that you are
going to die. But a person who can laugh at the mystery of life knows what it
is, because only knowledge, real wisdom, can laugh.
Where you really were you have
gone...
"And we are here - damn it, we are here!"
And we are still in the middle.
Our journey is incomplete, but your circle has become perfect. So they are
sorry for themselves, and if they weep, they are weeping for themselves. For
the friend who has departed they have nothing but a song, nothing but a
celebration of the heart. If they are sorry, they are sorry for themselves.
This is something to be
understood very deeply. If you understand life, if you can laugh at it, then
death is the completion, then it is not the end. Remember, death is not the end
of life, it is the completion, it is the climax, the crescendo, the peak from
where the wave returns to the original source.
They are sorry for themselves,
that their wave is hanging in the middle. They have not reached the crescendo,
the peak, and their friend has reached where he was before. He has reached
home.
Those who understand life, only
they can understand death, because life and death are not two.
Death is the peak, the
ultimate, the final flowering, the fragrance of life.
Death looks ugly to you because
you have never known life, and death creates fear in you because you are afraid
of life. Remember, whatsoever your attitude towards life, your attitude towards
death will be the same. If you are scared of death you are scared of life; if
you love life, you will love death, because death is nothing but the highest
peak, the completion. The song reaches its end, the river falls into the ocean.
The river came from the ocean in the first place. Now the circle is complete,
the river has arrived at the whole.
Then the disciple of confucius
Burst in on them and exclaimed:
"May I inquire where you found this
In the rubrics for obsequies,
This frivolous caroling
In the presence of the departed?"
The disciple of Confucius
cannot understand them. To him they look frivolous, disrespectful. What type of
song is this? Where did you get it? It is not authorized, it is not from the
Vedas. May I inquire where you found
this...?
Everything should be done
according to the books, according to The Bible, to the Vedas. But life cannot
be according to the books - life always transcends books, it always goes
beyond; life always throws books aside, moves ahead.
Where have you found this, this
frivolous caroling in the presence of the departed? You should be respectful.
Someone has departed, someone is dead and what are you doing? This is profane!
The two friends looked at each other
And laughed:
"Poor fellow, he doesn't know the new liturgy!"
He doesn't know the new
scripture, he doesn't know the new religion. And that is what is happening here
every day - the new liturgy.
A man was here just a few days
ago, a professor of history, and he asked me, "To what tradition do you
belong?"
I said, "To no
tradition."
He had come here from America
to make a film of the meditation techniques, of the camp, of what I say, of
what is happening here. The moment he heard that I don't belong to any
tradition, he simply disappeared. Then I don't belong to history, it is
obvious.
Poor fellow, he does not know
the new liturgy!
Enough for today.
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