Question 5

OSHO, I WANT TO TAKE SANNYAS, AND I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR IT FOR YEARS. BUT I AM AFRAID I MAY GET INTO SOME TROUBLE BECAUSE OF IT. WHAT SHOULD I DO?

I can only promise that you will get into troubles. I cannot say that you will not get into troubles. It is a device to create chaos in your life.

But there are two kinds of troubles: destructive troubles and creative troubles. Avoid destructive troubles, because they simply destroy. There are creative troubles which create, which bring you to a higher plane of consciousness.

Troubles you have enough already. Certainly I am not going to add any more troubles of that kind.

It happened...

There was a woman in a railway carriage who was joined by a man who had with him a crowd of dirty and ill-behaved kids. Before they had gone very far, he gave one of his kids a fearful belting.

'Look here' said the woman 'you stop beating that child or I'll get you into trouble.'

'You'll do what?'

'I said: I'll get you into trouble!' the woman shouted.

'Listen, lady, my wife has run off with a black man, taking every penny I've got; I'm on my way to leave these kids with a relative who drinks; the girl in the corner is fifteen and eight months pregnant, that kid over there has messed his pants, the baby has thrown the flask out of the window, and the one I've just beaten has swallowed our tickets. For being off work, I've had the sack! Did you say you were going to get me into trouble  -- what more trouble?'

No, I am not going to put you into more trouble of the same kind you have been living in your whole life. I will introduce new kinds of troubles into your life. Be courageous. And you have waited long. You say you have been thinking about it for years?

There was this football match between the mice and the insects. At half-time the score was six all, and at the end, it was eleven-ten to the mice. So the insects went to the centipede's cave and said 'Why haven't you been at the match?'

'I've been putting my boots on' said the centipede.