by Osho
The lowest consciousness of man remains ignorant and unconscious, unaware, fast asleep—because it is continuously being given the poison of believing, of faith, of never doubting, of never saying no. And a man who cannot say no has lost his dignity. A man who cannot say no … his yes does not mean anything. Do you see the implication? The yes is meaningful only after you are capable of saying no. If you are incapable of saying no, your yes is impotent; it means nothing.
Hence, the camel has to change into a beautiful lion, ready to die but not ready to be enslaved. You cannot make a lion a beast of burden. A lion has a dignity that no other animal can claim; he has no treasures, no kingdoms; his dignity is just in his style of being—fearless, unafraid of the unknown, ready to say no even at the risk of death.
This readiness to say no, this rebelliousness, cleans him of all the dirt that the camel has left—all the traces and the footprints that the camel has left. And only after the lion—after the great no—the sacred yes of a child is possible.
The child says yes not because he is afraid. He says yes because he loves, because he trusts. He says yes because he is innocent; he cannot conceive that he can be deceived. His yes is a tremendous trust. It is not out of fear, it is out of deep innocence. Only this yes can lead him to the ultimate peak of consciousness; what I call godliness.
The child is the highest peak of evolution as far as consciousness is concerned. But the child is only a symbol; it does not mean that children are the highest state of being. A child is used symbolically because it is not knowledgeable. It is innocent, and because it is innocent it is full of wonder, and because its eyes are full of wonder, its soul longs for the mysterious. A child is a beginning, a sport; and life should be always a beginning and always a playfulness; always a laughter and never seriousness.
A sacred yes is needed, but the sacred yes can come only after a sacred no. The camel also says yes but it is the yes of a slave. He cannot say no. His yes is meaningless.
The lion says no! But he cannot say yes. It is against his very nature. It reminds him of the camel. Somehow he has freed himself from the camel and to say yes naturally reminds him again—the yes of the camel and the slavery. No, the animal in the camel is incapable of saying no. In the lion, it is capable of saying no but is incapable of saying yes.
The child knows nothing of the camel, knows nothing of the lion. That’s why Zarathustra says: “A child is innocence and forgetfulness … .” His yes is pure and he has every potential to say no. If he does not say it, it is because he trusts, not because he is afraid; not out of fear, but out of trust. And when yes comes out of trust, it is the greatest metamorphosis, the greatest transformation that one can hope for.
THE SUIT OF RAINBOWS (DISKS, PENTACLES)
Reality—Ordinariness—Earth & Sky
A tree is more alive than any temple, than any church; a river is more alive than any mosque. The stone idols in your temples are dead; a tree is more alive. You may be superstitious, but the person who is worshipping a tree is not. He may not be aware of what he is doing, but a deep reverence for life in all its forms is there, a deep respect.
Wherever you feel that life is growing, celebrate it, love it, welcome it, and a great transformation will happen to you. If life is revered in all its forms, you become more alive.
Reality
Ordinarily, whatsoever we have become accustomed to know is just a mind game, because we look at that which is with loaded eyes. Our mirrors are covered with much dust; they have become incapable of reflecting the real. The real is not far away, the real surrounds you. You are part of it, it is part of you. You are not separate from it, you have never been separate from it. You cannot be separate from it—there is no way to be separate from it, it is impossible to be separate from it. But still, the dust-covered mirror is incapable of reflecting it. Once the dust disappears, you will be surprised that all that you have been seeking need not be sought at all, because you have it already.
The spiritual search is as illusory as any other search. The search itself is illusory because it has taken one thing for granted: that something is missing. And nothing is missing! Once you take it for granted that something is missing you start looking for it; then you go on looking for it in all directions. And the more you search the more you will miss it, because the more you search the more dust-covered the mirror becomes. The more you travel to seek it, the farther and farther you go in search of it, the more and more frustrated you become. Slowly, slowly you start thinking that it is so far away … . “That’s why I am not reaching it.”
The reality is just the opposite: you are not reaching it because you are it. It is not far away, it is so close by that even to call it “close” is not right, because even closeness is a kind of distance. It is not distant at all, it breathes in you. It is not there, it is here. It is not then, it is now. It has always been with you. From the very beginning everyone is a buddha, everyone is a mirror capable of reflecting.
This is the basic message of Zen—and the greatest message that has ever been delivered to humanity, the most liberating force that has ever been brought to the earth. But you will have to look in a totally new way. All that is needed is not a search but a new way of looking at things. The common, the ordinary, the usual way has to be dropped.
Ordinariness
Zen is just Zen. There is nothing comparable to it. It is unique—unique in the sense that it is the most ordinary and yet the most extraordinary phenomenon that has happened to human consciousness. It is the most ordinary because it does not believe in knowledge, it does not believe in mind. It is not a philosophy, not a religion either. It is the acceptance of the ordinary existence with a total heart, with one’s total being, not desiring some other world, supra-mundane, supra-mental. It has no interest in any esoteric nonsense, no interest in metaphysics at all. It does not hanker for the other shore; this shore is more than enough. Its acceptance of this shore is so tremendous that through that very acceptance it transforms this shore—and this very shore becomes the other shore:
This very body the buddha;
This very earth the lotus paradise.
Hence it is ordinary. It does not want you to create a certain kind of spirituality, a certain kind of holiness. All that it asks is that you live your life with immediacy, spontaneity. And then the mundane becomes the sacred.
The great miracle of Zen is in the transformation of the mundane into the sacred. And it is tremendously extraordinary because this way life has never been approached before; this way life has never been respected before.
Zen goes beyond Buddha and beyond Lao Tzu. It is a culmination, a transcendence, both of the Indian genius and of the Chinese genius. The Indian genius reached its highest peak in Gautam the Buddha and the Chinese genius reached its highest peak in Lao Tzu. And the essence of Buddha’s teaching and the essence of Lao Tzu’s teaching merged into one stream so deeply that no separation is possible now. Even to make a distinction between what belongs to Buddha and what to Lao Tzu is impossible, the merger has been so total. It is not only a synthesis, it is an integration. Out of this meeting Zen was born. Zen is neither Buddhist nor Taoist and yet both.
To call Zen “Zen Buddhism” is not right because it is far more. Buddha is not so earthly as Zen is. Lao Tzu is tremendously earthly, but Zen is not only earthly: its vision transforms the earth into heaven. Lao Tzu is earthly, Buddha is unearthly, Zen is both—and in being both it has become the most extraordinary phenomenon.
Earth & Sky
The future of humanity will go closer and closer to the approach of Zen, because the meeting of the East and West is possible only through something which is earthly and yet unearthly. The West is very earthly, the East is very unearthly. Who is going to become the bridge? Buddha cannot be the bridge; he is so essentially Eastern, the very flavor of the East, the very fragrance of the East, uncompromising. Lao Tzu cannot be the bridge; he is too earthly. China has always been very earthly. China is more part of the
Western psyche than of the Eastern psyche.
It is not an accident that China was the first country in the East to turn communist, to become materialist, to believe in a godless philosophy, to believe that man is only matter and nothing else. This is not just accidental. China has been earthly for almost five thousand years; it is very Western. Hence Lao Tzu cannot become the bridge; he is more like Zorba the Greek. Buddha is so unearthly you cannot even catch hold of him—how can he become the bridge?
When I look all around, Zen seems to be the only possibility, because in Zen, Buddha and Lao Tzu have become one. The meeting has already happened. The seed is there, the seed of that great bridge that can make East and West one. Zen is going to be the meeting point. It has a great future—a great past and a great future.
And the miracle is that Zen is neither interested in the past nor in the future. Its total interest is in the present. Maybe that’s why the miracle is possible, because the past and the future are bridged by the present.
The present is not part of time. Have you ever thought about it? How long is the present? The past has a duration, the future has a duration. What is the duration of the present? How long does it last? Between the past and the future, can you measure the present? It is immeasurable; it is almost not. It is not time at all: it is the penetration of eternity into time.
And Zen lives in the present. The whole teaching is how to be in the present—how to get out of the past which is no more, and how not to get involved in the future which is not yet, and just to be rooted, centered, in that which is.
The whole approach of Zen is of immediacy, but because of that it can bridge the past and the future. It can bridge many things: it can bridge the past and the future, it can bridge the East and the West, it can bridge body and soul. It can bridge the unbridgeable worlds: this world and that, the mundane and the sacred.
King of Rainbows: Abundance
One thing is certain: Existence is overflowing. With everything it is luxurious. It is not a poor existence, no. Poverty is man’s creation.
Life means abundance, richness, in every possible dimension. Just look at existence. Do you think it is poor? Look at the millions of flowers, their fragrance; look at the millions of stars. Man has not been able yet to count them, and I don’t think he is ever going to be able to count them. With your bare, naked eye you only see, at the most, three thousand stars—and that’s nothing. And these stars are expanding. Just as a flower opens up and the petals start going away from the center, the universe is continuously flowering, blossoming, opening—and with a tremendous speed. The stars are going farther away from the center. We don’t know exactly where the center is; but one thing is certain, that the whole universe is running fast, moving, alive.
Most people don’t know what life is for. They have never lived. Yes, they have been born; but just to be born is not enough to be alive. They will vegetate and think they are living. And one day they will die, without ever having lived at all. These are the miracles that go on happening all around the world; people who have never lived, die—such an impossibility! But it happens every day. And many have recognized it at the moment of death, and have said it is so: “It is strange; for the first time I am realizing that I missed life.”
If you live, for what? To love, to enjoy, to be ecstatic—otherwise why live at all?
And what is richness? Just making life more and more enjoyable, more and more lovable, more and more comfortable, more and more luxurious.
The man who knows nothing of the great world of music is poor; he is missing one of the greatest luxuries of life. The man who does not know how to enjoy Picasso, van Gogh, does not know anything about the colors. If he cannot enjoy Leonardo da Vinci, how can he enjoy a sunrise, a sunset? Millions of people go on living, never recognizing a sunrise, never stopping for a moment to look at a sunset and all the colors that the sunset leaves behind in the sky. Millions of people never raise their eyes towards the sky and the splendor of it.
Living can only mean one thing: living life multi-dimensionally—the music, the poetry, the painting, the sculpture … but it is all luxury.
Queen of Rainbows: Flowering
This world needs only one experience: a purity, uncontaminated, unpolluted even by the presence of anybody else. A pure presence of your own being—to me, that is the liberation. To me, that is the ultimate flowering of your being.
The moment spring comes all the trees rejoice, they welcome the spring with their flowers, with their perfume. In the East, orange is the color of spring. Its Hindi name is vasanti; it is from vasant—spring. It is the color of the flowers.
There are wildflowers that explode in the springtime and the whole forest seems to be afire. It suddenly becomes covered with flowers and flowers; you cannot even see the leaves.
Bliss also functions in the same way for your inner flowering, for the flowers of your consciousness. So don’t be serious. Seriousness is a disease that has to be avoided. You are not to be sad; you have to be cheerful, enjoying small things of life, not bothering about whether these things are worth enjoying or not. The real thing is to enjoy; what you are enjoying is immaterial.
If you can enjoy even ordinary things of life, of course you will become capable of enjoying the extraordinary. And the person who cannot enjoy the ordinary lacks the capacity to enjoy anything.
Omar Khayyam was a Sufi master who has been very much misunderstood because Fitzgerald, who translated him for the first time into English, could not understand the Sufi message. His translation is the best possible, and as a poet he has done something superb—many translations have been done of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam but nothing has gone beyond the translation of Fitzgerald—but he was not a mystic, just a poet. So he understood the language, the beauty of the language, he translated it very sincerely, but still he missed the point and created a misunderstanding around the world about Omar Khayyam.
People started thinking that Omar Khayyam was just a drunkard—talking about wine, song, and dance—that he was just a materialist, that “Eat, drink, and be merry” was his message. This is a great misunderstanding and very unjust to Omar Khayyam.
Wine, song, and dance are symbols. What he means by using them is that one should enjoy even small things—eating, drinking—just the small things of life, things of no spiritual quality. But the spiritual quality comes from your enjoyment, not from the things. One can eat just ordinary food with such joy, with such gratitude, with such prayer, that it becomes a meditation. It starts having the quality of the sacred.
In one of his poems Omar Khayyam says, “I want to warn the so-called saints that if they don’t enjoy this life they will become incapable of enjoying the other.” And he is perfectly right, because enjoying something is an art and this life is an opportunity to learn the art.
If you cannot enjoy flowers here how will you be able to enjoy flowers in paradise?
Those flowers may be of gold, studded with diamonds—everlasting, eternal—but if you cannot enjoy the momentary, not even the momentary, how will you enjoy the eternal? The momentary gives you an opportunity to learn the art—that’s the whole function of life.
So you have to enjoy everything possible. Go on finding ways to enjoy even things which seem on the surface unenjoyable. If you search you will find some way to enjoy even the unenjoyable things. And that’s the whole process of inner transformation. A moment comes when you can enjoy everything. That is the moment when light descends, when existence penetrates you—you are ready, your heart is ready.
Knight of Rainbows: Slowing Down
Slow down all the processes that you do. If you are walking, walk slowly—there is no hurry. If you are eating, eat slowly. If you are talking, talk slowly.
Slow down all the processes, and you will see that you can become silent very easily.
Hurry is killing many people. People are hurrying for no reason at all, there is nowhere to go, but they are hurrying. They go on becoming more and more speedy. N
obody is bothered about where you are going and why you are going at such a speed. Speed seems to be, in itself, the goal. If somebody comes with any idea that the speed can be increased, people are ready to take it immediately.
There is a very old story, a Taoist story. A man had invented some machine to draw water from the well. He came into a garden to see an old man—very old, ancient—with his young boy. Both were pulling the water out, and it was hard and the old man was perspiring.
The man said, “Have not you heard about mechanical devices? Now there is no need!”
The old man said, “Keep quiet! When my boy is gone then I will talk to you.”
When the boy had gone to eat, the old man said, “Don’t talk nonsense here. If he hears this, he is yet too young, and he may be corrupted by it.”
The man said, “What are you saying? Are you in your senses? I am saying that you can save much labor.”
But the old man said, “What is one going to do with that labor then? For what? I am one hundred years old and I am still alive enough to do all my work. If I had depended on mechanical devices, I would be dead by now. My young boy is very young—please don’t say such things before him, otherwise he may get your ideas, may become interested. Young people are foolish!”