Osho: Joy Has No Cause

WHEN CONFUCIUS WAS ROAMING ON MOUNT T’AI, HE SAW JUNG CH’I CH’I WALKING ON THE MOORS OF CH’ANG IN A ROUGH FUR COAT WITH A ROPE ROUND HIS WAIST, SINGING AS HE STRUMMED A LUTE.

’MASTER, WHAT IS THE REASON FOR YOUR JOY?’ ASKED CONFUCIUS.

’I HAVE MANY JOYS. OF THE MYRIAD THINGS WHICH HEAVEN BEGOT, MANKIND IS THE MOST NOBLE – AND I HAVE THE LUCK TO BE HUMAN. THIS IS MY FIRST JOY. PEOPLE ARE BORN WHO DO NOT LIVE A DAY OR A MONTH, WHO NEVER GET OUT OF THEIR SWADDLING CLOTHES, BUT I HAVE ALREADY LIVED TO NINETY. THIS IS MY JOY. FOR ALL MEN, POVERTY IS THE NORM AND DEATH IS THE END. ABIDING BY THE NORM, AWAITING MY END, WHAT IS THERE TO BE CONCERNED ABOUT?’

’GOOD!’ SAID CONFUCIUS ’HERE IS A MAN WHO KNOWS HOW TO CONSOLE HIMSELF.’

THIS IS a beautiful parable, and not only beautiful but very subtle. If you look only on the surface, you will miss the meaning. Taoist parables are not on the surface. They are very deep, and they have to be penetrated and looked and meditated upon, then only will you know the real meaning. On the surface, this parable seems as if it is in favour of Confucius; on the surface; it seems that the parable is saying that Confucius is wise. The reality is just the opposite.

There is a great diametrical opposition between the Taoist attitude and the Confucian attitude;Confucius is as far away from the Taoist vision as possible. Confucius believes in law, Confucius believes in tradition, Confucius believes in discipline. Confucius believes in character, morality,culture, society, education. Tao believes in spontaneity, individuality, freedom. Tao is rebellious;Confucius is very conformist.

Taoism is the profoundest non-conformism that has ever been evolved anywhere in the world, at any time in history; essentially it is rebellion. So there has been a rebellion and the Taoist mystics, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu and Lieh Tzu, go on ridiculing the Confucian attitude. This is a parable of ridicule.

You will understand it when I explain it to you. Their ridicule is also very subtle, not gross. First let us understand the surface meaning.

WHEN CONFUCIUS WAS ROAMING ON MOUNT T’AI, HE SAW JUNG CH’I CH’I WALKING ON THE MOORS OF CH’ANG IN A ROUGH FUR COAT WITH A ROPE ROUND HIS WAIST, SINGING AS HE STRUMMED A LUTE.

Singing, music, dancing, are the language of joy, of happiness. They are an expression that the person is not miserable. But it may be just an appearance, it may be just projected, it may be just cultivated; deep down the situation may be just the opposite. Sometimes it happens that you laugh because you don’t want to cry. Sometimes it happens that you smile because tears are coming and, if you don’t smile, they will start rolling down your cheeks. Sometimes you maintain an attitude, a cultivated face, a mask, that you are happy, because what is the point of showing your unhappiness to the world? That’s why people look so happy. Everybody thinks he is the unhappiest person in the world. because he knows his reality and he knows only the faces of others the cultivated faces. So everybody deep down thinks: ’I am the most miserable person, and why am I the most miserable person when everybody is so happy?’

Singing, dancing, are certainly a language of joy, but you can learn the language without knowing what joy is. That’s what humanity has done: people have learned gestures – empty gestures.

But Confucius is deceived. He says

’MASTER, WHAT IS THE REASON FOR YOUR JOY?’

 The mask has deceived Confucius; the man may be joyful, may not be joyful. The man has to be looked into directly – through his nature, not through his expression. The expression can be false: people have learned expression. Sometimes... do you watch? Somebody is smiling – on the lips there is a beautiful smile – and look into the eyes, and the eyes say something just the opposite.

Somebody says something to you, ’I love you’; and look at the face, and at the eyes, and the very vibe of the person, and it seems that he hates you. But just to be polite he is saying ’I love you’.

Confucius looked only at the appearance: that is the first thing to be remembered; and he was deceived – deceived so much that he called the man ’Master’.

He says

 ’MASTER, WHAT IS THE REASON FOR YOUR JOY?’

Now again, joy has no reason, joy cannot have a reason to it. If joy has any reason, it is not joy at all: joy can only be without any reason, uncaused. A disease has a reason, but health? Health is natural. If you go and ask the doctor ’Why am I healthy?’ he cannot answer you. If you go to the doctor and you say ’Why am I ill?’ he can answer you, because illness has a cause. He can diagnose your case, and he can find the reason why you are ill; but nobody has yet been able to find a reason why man is healthy. Health is natural, health is as it should be. Illness is as it should notbe, illness means something has gone wrong. When everything is going well, one is healthy. When everything is in tune, one is healthy. When one is harmonious with the whole, one is healthy. There is no reason for it.

But Confucius asked

’MASTER, WHAT IS THE REASON FOR OUR JOY?’

Again Lieh Tzu is joking about Confucius, that’s how they are very subtle people. He is saying that the whole Confucian wrong attitude is there in the very question: Confucius thinks there are REASONS for joy. There cannot be any reasons for joy. Joy simply is – unexplained, unexplainable.

When it is, it is; when it is not, it is not. When it is not, you can find the reasons why it is not; but when it is, you cannot find any reasons why it is. And if you can show the reasons why it is, then your joy is cultivated, not real, not true, not authentic. It is not flowing from your innermost core; it is just that you are managing it, you are manipulating it, you are pretending it. When a joy is a pretended joy, you can find out the reason. But when the joy is truly there, it is so mysterious, it is so primal, that you cannot find any reason in it.

If you ask a Buddha ’Why are you happy?’ he will shrug his shoulders. If you ask Lao Tzu ’Why are you blissful?’ he will say ’Don’t ask it. Rather than asking why I am blissful, enquire why you are not.’

It is like a small spring in the mountains: when there is no hindrance, the spring flows; when there are rocks on the way, it cannot flow. When the rocks are removed.... You don’t create the spring – you only remove the negative, you only remove the obstacle. The spring was there, but because of the rock it was not able to flow. When you remove the rock you are not creating the spring – the spring was already there. By removing the rock you have removed the negative, the obstacle, and the spring flows. Now if somebody asks ’Why does the spring flow?’ – because the spring is there, that’s why it flows. If it is not flowing, then there is a cause to it. Let this sink deep in you because it is your problem too.

Never ask why you are happy, never ask why one is blissful, otherwise you have asked a wrong question. Never ask why there is a God. If you ask, you have asked a wrong question; and all the answers that can be given are bound to be wrong, because a wrong question provokes wrong answers. ’Why is God?’ – that is irrelevant; it is simply the case.

Confucius is asking something, and by asking that, he is showing his presuppositions: Confucius believes that everything has a cause. If everything has a cause, then only science can exist.

Then there is no possibility for religion, because science is the enquiry into the cause-and-effect relationship, an enquiry into causation, an enquiry into causality. That is the whole scientific attitude: they say that if something is there, there must be a cause to it you may know, you may not know but the cause is bound to be there. ’If we don’t know today, we will know tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, but the cause is bound to be known, because the cause must be there.’ This is the scientific attitude: everything can be reduced to its cause. And what is the religious attitude? Religion says that nothing can really be reduced to its cause.

That which can be reduced is not essential. The essential simply is – it exists without any cause; it is mysterious. This is the meaning of mystery: there is no cause to it.

Confucius is asking a question according to his presuppositions, according to his philosophy, ’MASTER, WHAT IS THE REASON FOR YOUR JOY?’

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Bhagwan: Knowledge is Not Power

From [HERE] You can go on thinking, accumulating information — but those are paper boats, they won't help in an ocean voyage. If you remain on the shore and go on talking about them, it is okay — paper boats are as good as real boats if you never go for the voyage; but if you go on the voyage with paper boats, then you will drown. And words are nothing but paper boats — not even that substantial. 

No original mind 

And when we accumulate knowledge, what do we do? Nothing changes inside. The being remains absolutely unaffected. Just like dust, information gathers around you — just like dust settling on a mirror: the mirror remains the same, only it loses its reflective quality. What you know through the mind makes no difference — your consciousness remains the same. In fact it becomes worse, because accumulated knowledge is just like dust around your consciousness; the consciousness reflects less and less and less.

The more you know, the less aware you become. When you are completely filled with scholarship, borrowed knowledge, you are already dead. Then nothing comes to you as your own. Everything is borrowed and parrot-like. 

Mind is a parrot. Mind is a computer, a bio-computer. It accumulates. It is never original, it cannot be. Whatsoever it has is borrowed, taken from others.  

Ideas are borrowed

You become original only when you transcend mind. When the mind is dropped, and consciousness faces existence directly, immediately, moment to moment in contact with existence, you become original. Then for the first time you are authentically your own. Otherwise all ideas are borrowed. You may quote scriptures, you may know by heart all the Vedas, the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, but that makes no difference — they are not your own. And knowledge that is not your own is dangerous, more dangerous than ignorance, because it is a hidden ignorance, and you will not be able to see that you are deceiving yourself. You are carrying false coins and thinking that you are a rich man. Sooner or later your poverty will be revealed. Then you will be shocked. 

This happens when death comes near, when you die. In the shock that death gives to you, suddenly you become aware that you have not gained anything — because only that is gained which is gained in being. 

How not to follow

You have accumulated fragments of knowledge from here and there, you may have become a great encyclopaedia, but...knowledge has to be transcended.

When there is no knowledge, knowing happens, because knowing is your quality — the quality of consciousness. It is just like a mirror: the mirror reflects whatsoever is there; consciousness reflects the truth that is always in front of you.

But the mind is in between — and it goes on chattering.... And you go with the mind. You miss. 

First: knowledge is borrowed, realise this. The very realisation becomes a dropping of it.... Learning means being responsive to whatsoever is around you.... This is a great learning, but not knowledge.

Become the truth

There is no way to find truth — except through finding it. There is simply no way unless you are without any mind within you — because mind is like a breeze, continuously flowing, and the flame goes on wavering. When mind is not there, the breeze stops, and the flame becomes unmoving. When your consciousness is an unmoving flame, you know the truth. You have to learn how not to follow the mind.

Nobody can give you the truth, nobody, not even a Buddha, a Jesus, a Krishna.... It is beautiful that truth is not transferable in any way. Unless you reach it, you cannot reach. Unless you become it, you never have it.

Dr. Blynd: The Definition of Comparison

From "FUNKTIONARY, THE KEY HOLDERS ENPSYCHLOPEDIA" Copyright 2016 Chocolate City Press. Resonated & Orchestrated by Dr. Blynd, Ph.F.

comparison - a disease of the mind due to the ignorance of uniqueness. Each individual is unique and beyond the scope of comparison. Those who fall victim to comparison will either become egoistic or bitter. You don't belong to any hierarchy - nobody is lower or higher than what "you" imagine yourself and "others" to be. Comparison creates differences or distinctions only when there is not uniformity. Comparison limits the possibility of living in the moment. (See: Judgment, Problems, Moment, Running Man, Surrender, Value, Exchange Value, Uniqueness, Awareness & Compassion). 

Bhagwan - Wake the Fuck Up!

From [HERE] One of the most important things to be understood about man is that man is asleep. Even while he thinks he is awake, he is not. His wakefulness is very fragile; his wakefulness is so tiny it doesnt matter at all. His wakefulness is only a beautiful name but utterly empty. 

You sleep in the night, you sleep in the day - from birth to death you go on changing your patterns of sleep, but you never really awaken. Just by opening the eyes dont befool yourself that you are awake. Unless the inner eyes open - unless your inside becomes full of light, unless you can see yourself, who you are - dont think that you are awake. That is the greatest illusion man lives in. And once you accept that you are already awake, then there is no question of making any effort to be awake. 

The first thing to sink deep in your heart is that you are asleep, utterly asleep. You are dreaming, day in, day out. You are dreaming sometimes with open eyes and sometimes with closed eyes, but you are dreaming - you are a dream. You are not yet a reality. 

Of course in a dream whatsoever you do is meaningless. Whatsoever you think is pointless, whatsoever you project remains part of your dreams and never allows you to see that which is. Hence all the buddhas have insisted on only one thing: Awaken! Continuously, for centuries, their whole teaching can be contained in a single phrase: Be awake. And they have been devising methods, strategies; they have been creating contexts and spaces and energy fields in which you can be shocked into awareness. 

Yes, unless you are shocked, shaken to your very foundations, you will not awaken. The sleep has been so long that it has reached to the very core of your being; you are soaked in it. Each cell of your body and each fiber of your mind have become full of sleep. It is not a small phenomenon. Hence great effort is needed to be alert, to be attentive, to be watchful, to become a witness. If all the buddhas of the world agree on any one single theme, this is it - that man as he is, is asleep, and man as he should be, should be awake. Wakefulness is the goal and wakefulness is the taste of all  their teachings. Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Jesus, Buddha, Bahauddin, Kabir, Nanak - all the awakened ones have been teaching one single theme - in different languages, in different metaphors, but their song is the same. Just as the sea tastes of salt - whether the sea is tasted from the north or from the east or from the west, the sea always tastes of salt - the taste of buddhahood is wakefulness. 

But you will not make any effort if you go on believing that you are already awake. Then there is no question of making any effort - why bother? 

And you have created religions, gods, prayers, rituals, out of your dreams - your gods are as much part of your dreams as anything else. Your politics is part of your dreams, your religions are part of your dreams, your poetry, your painting, your art - whatsoever you do, because you are asleep, you do things according to your own state of mind. 

Your gods cannot be different from you. Who will create them? Who will give them shape and color and form? You create them, you sculpt them; they have eyes like you, noses like you - and minds like you! The Old Testament God says, "I am a very jealous God!" Now who has created this God who is jealous? God cannot be jealous, and if God is jealous then what is wrong in being jealous? If even God is jealous, why should you be thought to be doing something wrong when you are jealous? Jealousy is divine! 

The Old Testament God says, "I am a very angry God! If you dont follow my 

commandments, I will destroy you. You will be thrown into hellfire for eternity. And because I am very jealous," God says, "dont worship anybody else. I cannot tolerate it." Who created such a God? It must be out of our own jealousy, out of our own anger, that you have created this image. It is your projection, it is your shadow. It echoes you and nobody else. And the same is the case with all gods of all religions. 

It is because of this that Buddha never talked about God. He said, "What is the point of talking about God to people who are asleep? They will listen in their sleep. They will dream about whatsoever is said to them, and they will create their own gods - which will be utterly false, utterly impotent, utterly meaningless. It is better not to have such gods." 

Thats why Buddha is not interested in talking about gods. His whole interest 

is in waking you up. 

It is said about a Buddhist enlightened master who was sitting by the side of the river one evening, enjoying the sound of the water, the sound of the wind passing through the trees.... A man came and asked him, "Can you tell me in a single word the essence of your religion?" 

The master remained silent, utterly silent, as if he had not heard the question. The questioner said, "Are you deaf or something?" 

The master said, "I have heard your question, and I have answered it too! 

Silence is the answer. I remained silent - that pause, that interval, was my answer." 

The man said, "I cannot understand such a mysterious answer. Cant you be a little more clear?" 

So the master wrote on the sand "meditation," in small letters with his finger. The man said, "I can read now. It is a little better than at first. At least I have got a word to ponder over. But cant you make it a little more clear?" The master wrote again, "MEDITATION." Of course this time he wrote in bigger letters. The man was feeling a little embarrassed, puzzled, offended, angry. He said, "Again you write meditation? Cant you be a little clear for me?" 

And the master wrote in very big letters, capital letters, "M E D I T A T I O N." 

The man said, "You seem to be mad!" 

The master said, "I have already come down very much. The first answer was the right answer, the second was not so right, the third even more wrong, the fourth has gone very wrong" - because when you write "MEDITATION" with capital letters you have made a god out of it. 

Thats why the word God is written with capital G. Whenever you want to make something supreme, ultimate, you write it with a capital letter. The master said, "I have already committed a sin." He erased all those words he had written and he said, "Please listen to my first answer - only then I am true." 

Silence is the space in which one awakens, and the noisy mind is the space in which one remains asleep. If your mind continues chattering, you are asleep. Sitting silently, if the mind disappears and you can hear the chattering birds and no mind inside, a silence...this whistle of the bird, the chirping, and no mind functioning in your head, utter silence...then awareness wells up in you. It does not come from the outside, it arises in you, it grows in you. Otherwise remember: you are asleep.

Bhagwan: First Meditation, then Politics

From [Sat Sangha Salon] In spite of dreadful political catastrophes, political action seems to be the only means to fight against injustice in the world. Does the search you are inspiring exclude political action?

Jean-Francois Held, I am in love with life in its totality. My love excludes nothing; it includes all. Yes, political action too is included in it. That’s the worst thing to include, but I can’t help it! But everything that is included in my vision of life is included with a difference.

In the past, man has lived without awareness in all the aspects of life. He has loved without awareness and failed in it, and love has brought only misery and nothing else. He has done all kinds of things in the past, but everything has proved a hell. So has been the case with political action.

Each revolution turns into anti-revolution. It is time we should understand how this happens, why this happens at all — that each revolution, each struggle against injustice, finally turns into injustice itself, becomes anti-revolutionary.

In this century it has happened again and again — I am not talking about a faraway past. It happened in Russia, it happened in China. It is going to happen if we continue to function in the same old way. Unawareness cannot bring more than that.

When you are powerless, it is easy to fight against injustice; the moment you become powerful, you forget all about injustice. Then repressed desires to dominate assert themselves. Then your unconscious takes over, and you start doing the same things that were done before by the enemies against whom you had been struggling. You had staked your very life for it!

Lord Acton says that power corrupts. It is true only in a sense, and in another sense it is absolutely untrue. It is true if you look at the surface of things: power certainly corrupts, whosoever becomes powerful becomes corrupted. Factually it is true, but if you dive deep into the phenomenon then it is not true.

Power does not corrupt: it is the corrupted people who become attracted towards power. It is the people who would like to do things which they cannot do while they are not in power. The moment they are in power, their whole repressed mind asserts itself. Now there is nothing to bar them, nothing to prevent them; they have the power. Power does not corrupt them; it only brings their corruption to the surface. Corruption was there as a seed; now it has sprouted. The power has proved only the right season for it to sprout. Power is only the spring for the poisonous flowers of corruption and injustice in their being.

Power is not the cause of corruption, but only the opportunity for its expression. Hence I say: basically, fundamentally, Lord Acton is wrong.

Who becomes interested in politics? Yes, with beautiful slogans people go into it, but what happens to those people? Joseph Stalin was fighting against the injustice of the czar. What happened? He himself became the greatest czar the world has ever known, worse than Ivan the Terrible! Hitler used to talk about socialism. He had named his party the Nationalist Socialist Party. What happened to socialism when he came into power? All that disappeared.

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