by Osho
Just a little bit of understanding can bring a tremendous revolution in your life. All seeds are small—the trees may grow high, almost touching the stars, but the seeds are very small. This is just a seed that has fallen into your heart; now allow it to grow. Give nourishment to it, support it, remove all hindrances in its path, and a small seed, which seems to be nothing special in this moment, may bring thousands of flowers.
Ace of Water: Going with the Flow
Trust means you are not fighting; surrender means you don’t think of life as the enemy but as the friend. Once you trust the river, suddenly you start enjoying.
You swim in water—you go to the river and swim. What do you do? You trust the water. A good swimmer trusts so much that he almost becomes one with the river. He is not fighting, he does not grab the water, he is not stiff and tense.
If you are stiff and tense you will be drowned; if you are relaxed, the river takes care. That’s why whenever somebody dies, the dead body floats on the water. This is a miracle, amazing! The alive person died and was drowned by the river, and the dead person simply floats on the surface. What has happened? The dead person knows some secret about the river that the alive person did not know. The alive person was fighting. The river was the enemy, he was afraid, he could not trust. But the dead person, not being there, how can he fight? The dead person is totally relaxed with no tension—suddenly the body surfaces. The river takes care. No river can drown a dead person.
Trust means you are not fighting; surrender means you don’t think of life as the enemy but as the friend. Once you trust the river, suddenly you start enjoying. Tremendous delight arises: splashing, swimming or just floating, or diving deep. But you are not separate from the river; you merge, you become one.
Surrender means to live the same way in life as a good swimmer swims in the river. Life is a river. Either you can fight or you can float; either you can push the river and try to go against the current, or you can float with the river and go wherever the river leads you.
The water is non-aggressive, it never fights—it makes its way without fighting. It is from water that the Chinese and Japanese learned the secret art of judo or jujitsu. Winning without fighting, conquering through surrendering—wei-wu-wei.
Learn one thing from the water: it comes across great stone walls, granite walls; it does not fight. It goes on flowing silently. If a stone is too big, it finds another way; it bypasses it. But slowly the stone is dissolved into the water, becomes sand. Ask the sands of the oceans from where they have come. They have come from the mountains. They will tell you a great secret: “Water wins finally. And we were hard, and we thought, ‘How can the water win?’ So we were very complacent. We could not believe that this poor water, so soft, harmless, unhurting, non-violent … how could it destroy us? But it destroyed us.”
That is the beauty of the feminine energy. Don’t be like a rock! Be like water—soft, feminine.
2 of Water: Friendliness
Rather than creating friendship, create friendliness.
Let it become a quality of your being, a climate that surrounds you, so you are friendly with whomsoever you come in contact.
Do you know what friendship is? It is the highest form of love. In love, some lust is bound to be there; in friendship, all lust disappears. In friendship nothing gross remains; it becomes absolutely subtle.
It is not a question of using the other, it is not even a question of needing the other; it is a question of sharing. You have too much and you would like to share. And whoever is ready to share your joy with you, your dance, your song, you will be grateful to them, you will feel obliged. Not that the other is obliged to you. Not that he should feel thankful to you because you have given so much to him. A friend never thinks in that way. A friend always feels grateful to those people who allow him to love them, to give them whatever he has.
Love is greed. You will be surprised to know that the English word love comes from a Sanskrit word lobh; lobh means greed. How lobh became love is strange. In Sanskrit it is greed; the original root means greed. And love as we know it is really nothing but greed masquerading as love—it is hidden greed.
Making friendships with the idea of using people is taking a wrong step from the very beginning. Friendship has to be a sharing. If you have something, share it—and whosoever is ready to share with you is a friend. It is not a question of need. It is not a question that when you are in danger the friend has to come to your aid. That is irrelevant—he may come, he may not come, but if he does not come you don’t have any complaint. If he comes you are grateful but if he does not come, it’s perfectly okay. It is his decision to come or not to come. You don’t want to manipulate him; you don’t want to make him feel guilty. You will not have any grudge. You will not say, “When I was in need you didn’t turn up—what kind of friend are you?”
Friendship is not something of the marketplace. Friendship is one of those rare things that belong to the temple and not to the shop. But if you are not aware of that kind of friendship, you will have to learn it.
Friendship is a great art.
And friendship need not be addressed to anyone in particular; that is also a rotten idea, that you have to be friends with a certain person. Just be friendly. Rather than creating friendship, create friendliness. Let it become a quality of your being, a climate that surrounds you, so you are friendly with whomever you come in contact.
This whole existence has to be befriended! And if you can befriend existence, existence will befriend you a thousandfold. It returns to you in the same coin but multiplied. It echoes you. If you throw stones at existence you will be getting back many more stones. If you throw flowers, flowers will be coming back.
Life is a mirror, it reflects your face. Be friendly, and all of life will reflect friendliness.
You can be friendly to many people and there is no question of jealousy. It does not matter that you are friendly to five persons or ten persons or ten thousand persons; nobody will feel deprived because you love so many people and his share is going to be less and less. On the contrary, as you are able to love more people, your quality of love becomes mountainous. So whomever you love gets more love if your love is shared with many people. It dies if it is narrowed. It becomes livelier if it is spread over a vast area—the bigger the area, the deeper are its roots.
Consciousness gives everything a transformation. Your love is no longer addressed to anybody in particular. It does not mean that you stop loving. It simply means you become love, you are love, your very being is love. Your breathing is love, your heartbeats are love. Awake you are love, asleep you are love.
And the same is true about everything else—your understanding, your intelligence, everything goes through the same change. You become the center of the whole existence, the center of the cyclone, and everything radiates from you and reaches anybody who is able to receive it.
It is not a question of loving someone for certain reasons; it is love simply out of abundance—you have so much that you have to share it, you have to radiate it. And whoever receives it, you are grateful to the person.
3 of Water: Celebration
Celebration is a thankfulness; it is prayer out of gratitude.
It is recognition of the gift that has been given to us …
It is such an immense gift to be alive, but people are very ungrateful; they have forgotten how to give thanks. They never feel the awe of existence, they never feel so grateful that they need to bow down to the earth. They are utterly stonelike, unfeeling, unseeing. And because of these people—and they are the majority—the whole of life has become ugly. It is because of these people that life has lost its joys, celebrations.
Remember: animals can play but only man can celebrate. It is man’s privilege and prerogative; no other animal can celebrate. Yes, they can play, but play is one thing and celebration is totally another. Celebration is a thankfulness; it is prayer that comes out of gratitude. It is recognition of the gift that has been
given to us … it is understanding. It is overflowing love for the existence that has done so much for us. Just to be alive is so festive. Even for a single moment to feel the rain and to see the sun and to be on the beach, even for a single moment to see the stars, is enough for a person to become religious.
There is no need to postpone celebration. Immediately, right this moment, you can celebrate. Nothing else is needed. To celebrate, life is needed—and life you have. To celebrate, being is needed—and being you have. To celebrate, trees and birds and stars are needed, and they are there. What else do you need? If you are crowned and caged in a golden palace, then will you celebrate? In fact, then it will become more impossible. Have you ever seen an emperor laughing and dancing and singing in the street? No, he is caged, imprisoned by manners, etiquette …
Somewhere, Bertrand Russell has written that when for the first time he visited a primitive community of aboriginals living deep in some hills, he felt jealous, very jealous. He felt that the way they danced … it was as if everybody were an emperor. They had no crowns, but they had made crowns with leaves and with flowers. Every woman was a queen. They didn’t have Kohinoors, but whatsoever they had was so much, it was enough. They danced the whole night and then they fell asleep, there on the dancing ground. By the morning they were again back to work. They worked the whole day, and again by the evening they were ready to celebrate, to dance. Russell says, “That day, I felt really jealous. I cannot do this.”
Something has gone wrong. Something is frustrated within you; you cannot dance, you cannot sing, something is withheld. You live a crippled life. It was never meant for you to be crippled, but you live a crippled life, you live a paralyzed life. And you go on thinking that being ordinary, how can you celebrate? There is nothing special in you.
But who told you that to celebrate something special is needed? In fact, the more you are after the special, the more and more it will become difficult for you to dance.
Be ordinary. Nothing is wrong with ordinariness, because in your very ordinariness you are extraordinary. Don’t bother about what conditions will decide when you can celebrate. If you bother about fulfilling certain conditions, do you think that then you will celebrate? You will never celebrate, you will die a beggar. Why not right now? What are you lacking?
This is my observation: if you can start right now, suddenly the energy is flowing. And the more you dance, the more it is flowing, the more capable you become. The ego needs conditions to be fulfilled, not life. Birds can sing and dance, ordinary birds. Have you ever seen any extraordinary birds singing and dancing? Do they ask that they first have to be a Ravi Shankar or a Yehudi Menuhin? Do they ask that first they have to be great singers and go to colleges of music to learn, and then they will sing? They simply dance and simply sing; no training is needed.
Man is born with the capacity to celebrate. When even birds can celebrate, why not you? But you create unnecessary barriers, you create a hurdle race. There are no barriers. You put them there and then you say, “Unless we cross them and jump over them, how can we dance?” You stand divided against yourself, you are an enemy to yourself.
All the preachers in the world go on saying that you are ordinary, so how can you dare to celebrate? You have to wait. First be a Buddha, first be a Jesus, a Mohammed, and then you can. But just the opposite is the case. If you can dance, you are already the Buddha; if you can celebrate, you are already a Mohammed; if you can be blissful, you are already a Jesus. The contrary is not true; the contrary is a false logic. It says first be a Buddha, then you can celebrate. But how will you be a Buddha without celebrating?
Celebrate, forget all buddhas. In your very celebration you will find that you have yourself become a buddha. And when I say celebrate, I mean become more and more sensitive to everything. In life, dance should not be just a part. The whole of life should become a dance; it should be a dance. You can go for a walk and dance …
Allow life to enter into you. Become more open and vulnerable, feel more, sense more. Small things filled with such wonders are lying all around. Watch a small child; leave him in the garden and just watch. That should be your way also; so wonderful, wonder-filled. Running to catch this butterfly, running to catch that flower, playing with mud, rolling in the sand. From everywhere the divine is touching the child.
If you can live in wonder you will be capable of celebration. Don’t live in knowledge, live in wonder. You don’t know anything. Life is surprising; everywhere it is a continuous surprise. Live it as a surprise, an unpredictable phenomenon; every moment is new. Just try, give it a try! You will not lose anything if you give it a try, and you may gain everything.
4 of Water: Turning In
Meditation is the whole art of transforming the gestalt. The consciousness that goes outward starts turning in.
And then one becomes aware of millions of gifts; then small things, very small and ordinary things have tremendous significance.
Meditation means a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. Ordinarily we are focused on the outside; in meditation we change the focus. We are focused on ourselves. Meditation means the experience of your own interiority; it is an inward journey.
And once you have tasted even a single drop of the nectar, then the misery, the anguish, the whole “problematic” life dissolves. Now you know the right direction to go; now you know the right door at which to knock … .
Jesus says, “Knock and the door shall be opened unto you.” But the question is on what door, where to knock? Knocking on just any door is not going to help. Unless you start knocking on the inner door nothing is going to happen. Jesus says, “Ask and it shall be given.” But whom to ask? People have been asking the sky, the heavens, God the Father, somewhere above there in the clouds. For centuries they have been asking and nothing has been answered. One has to ask one’s own inner core.
Jesus says, “Seek and ye shall find.” But where to seek? People have been seeking in every sacred place; they are going to Jerusalem or to Mecca or to Kashi or to Tibet. That is not going to help. Wherever you go, you are wasting your time. One has to go within. The kingdom of God is within you.
Meditation is the whole art of transforming the gestalt. The consciousness that goes outward starts turning in. And then one becomes aware of millions of gifts; then small things, very small and ordinary things, have tremendous significance. Just a dewdrop slipping from the lotus leaf into the lake is enough to fill one with wonder and awe. It is poetry, pure poetry! It is music, it is dance, it is a finger pointing to the moon.
Turning in is not a turning at all. Going in is not a going at all. Turning inward simply means that you have been running after this desire and that, and you have been running and running and you have been coming again and again to frustration that each desire brings misery, that there is no fulfillment through desire … . That you never reach anywhere, that contentment is impossible. Seeing this truth, that running after desires takes you nowhere, you stop. Not that you make any effort to stop! If you make any effort to stop, it is again running, in a subtle way. You are still desiring—maybe now it is desirelessness that you desire.
If you are making an effort to go in, you are still going out. Any effort can only take you out, outwards. All journeys are outward journeys, there is no inward journey. How can you journey inward? You are already there, there is no point in going. When going stops, journeying disappears. When desiring is no longer clouding your mind, you are in. This is called turning in. But it is not a turning at all, it is simply not going out.
But in language it is always a problem to express these things.
Once the energy is not moving anywhere … . Remember, I repeat again, turning in is not moving in. When the energy is not moving at all, when there is no movement, when everything is still, when all has stopped—because seeing the futility of desire you cannot move anywhere, there is nowhere to go—stillness descends. The world stops. That’s what is meant by turning in. Suddenly you are in. You have always bee
n there, now you are awake. The night is over, the morning has come, you are awake. This is what is meant by buddhahood—to become aware, awake, of that which is already the case.
Remember the Zen master Hakuin’s saying: From the very beginning all beings are buddhas. From the very beginning to the very end—in the beginning, in the middle, in the end, all are buddhas. Not for a single moment have you been anybody else.
5 of Water: Clinging to the Past
A person who lives in the present—neither bothering about the past nor bothering about the future—is fresh, young; he is neither a child nor an old man.
And one can remain young to the very last breath.
One thing that has to be remembered is that the past is no more, and clinging to the past is clinging to the dead. It is very dangerous, because it hampers and hinders your life in the present, and for the future. One should always go on freeing oneself of the dead past. That is one of the fundamentals of life, to go on renewing yourself every moment, to die to the past and be born anew. That which is gone is gone—don’t even look back. Looking back is not a good sign.
Small children never look back; they always look ahead. They don’t have anything in the past to look back on—there is no past, they have only the future. Old men never look at the future, because in the future there is only death, and they want to avoid it, they don’t want to talk about it. They always look back. They decorate their memories; they make them look very beautiful. All that they have is a collection of memories, and they go on improving on those memories. When they were actually living them, they did not enjoy them, but now the future is darkness; one needs some consolation. They can find consolation only in the past.