Desiderata

GUIDA SPIRITUALE

Chapter 14: The Only Miracle

Question 4

 

 

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The fourth question

Question 4

OSHO, THE OTHER DAY THERE SUDDENLY AROSE IN ME A DEEP DESIRE TO TAKE YOUR SANNYAS. IT WAS JUST A FEELING. I THOUGHT THAT THERE WAS NO ONE REASON FOR DOING IT -- NOT REALLY ONE REASON, AND SO, WHY? MAYBE AS A GIFT FOR MYSELF?

Laura,

SANNYAS IS NOT TAKEN for any reason. The person who takes sannyas for any reason at all is taking it for a wrong reason. Any reason is a wrong reason! Sannyas is taken out of sheer joy. Yes, it is a feeling; it is not logic. It is a love affair! You don't fall in love for certain reasons. If you fall in love for certain reasons soon you will fall out, because no reason can remain there forever.

Reasons are like shifting sands. Today it seems rational, tomorrow it may seem irrational. Reasons go on changing like the climate. Mind is never the same even for two consecutive moments, and mind supplies the reason. And sannyas is not taken by the mind. How can mind take sannyas? Sannyas means dropping the mind! Mind cannot take sannyas because that will be suicidal to the mind.

Sannyas is something that arises in the heart. That's why it is like a feeling, a love affair, for no reason at all. A desire arises in you, a longing of the heart.

That is the difference between ambition and longing: ambition is goal-oriented, longing is source-oriented. Ambition means there is something to achieve THERE. It depends on a goal, there is a motive, hence you can be rational about it. You can figure it out, whether it is worth achieving or not. You can be rational about it. It is not a question of feeling; it has to be calculated. You have to move in a certain direction cautiously, because the world is very cunning and everybody is trying to achieve the same goal -- maybe power, money, prestige -- but millions of people are running, rushing towards the same goal. There is competition. You have to be very clever and very cunning. You have to be very cautious. You have to be very political, diplomatic.

Longing has no goal, but it has a source. The heart is the source.

Vincent van Gogh, one of the greatest painters ever, one of the great masters, was absolutely misunderstood in his day. Not even a single painting was sold, because people could not understand what he was doing, what his paintings were all about. They looked absurd. For example, he would always paint his trees so big that they would go BEYOND the stars. The stars would be small, the sun and moon would be small, and the trees would be so huge...

Somebody asked him, "Are you mad or something? Who has ever seen such trees? Such trees don't exist! Why do you go on painting such big trees? And why do you paint the stars so small? Even the sun is so small, and the tree goes beyond it! The sun is so far away that even for light to travel to the earth it takes almost ten minutes. And light travels really fast: it travels in one second one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles -- in ONE second. Sixty times more in one minute and ten times more than that in ten minutes. And it is not possible for any tree to transcend the sun. And what to say about the stars? The closest star is four light years away; it takes four years for the light to reach the earth. And the farthest star is millions and millions of light years away -- and your trees go on transcending the stars! What nonsense is this?"

And Van Gogh would laugh and he would say, "I know! But I know something more too of which you are not aware: trees are longings of the earth to transcend the stars. I am painting the longing, not the trees. I am more concerned with the source, not with the goal. It is irrelevant whether they reach the stars or not. And I belong to the earth, I have no obligation to the stars. I am part of THIS earth and I understand the longing of the earth. This is the longing of the earth: trees go on reaching for the stars."

Longings are irrational, and I agree with Van Gogh. Only the longing can think of God, not ambition, because for ambition God will look absolutely impossible. But for a longing everything is possible, nothing is impossible, because there iS no question of reaching anywhere -- it is enjoying the source of longing itself.

If your love has any motivation it is a false love. When your love has no motivation at all it is true, it is authentic.

Laura, you say: THE OTHER DAY THERE SUDDENLY AROSE IN ME A DEEP DESIRE TO TAKE YOUR SANNYAS.

Yes, this longing arises suddenly and it comes from nowhere. It simply possesses you. And if you start looking for reasons you will miss, because looking for reasons is looking in a wrong place, not from where the longing has arisen.

Look deep into your heart. Listen to the still small voice within. And remember one thing: life is fulfilled only through longings, never through ambitions. Life becomes blissful only through the heart, never through the mind. Mind creates science, the heart creates religion. Mind can give you better technology, better gadgets. The heart gives you the real, ultimate values: love, bliss, truth, freedom, awareness, God. And a life without these values is valueless.

That's why millions of people feel meaningless. Millions of people feel as if they are just accidental, they are not needed. But the DESIDERATA says you ARE needed: you are fulfilling some immense need of the existence.

Respect your longings. To respect your longings is to respect the voice of God within you. And remember, if you start thinking it was just a feeling, there is already condemnation: "It was just a feeling." As if there is something wrong! As if when something is just a feeling it is not enough; there has to be a reason.

If you go on doing only rational things in your life you will miss the real mystery of life. You will miss the treasure, you will miss the kingdom of God. You will live comfortably, but you will live meaninglessly. You may have many possessions, but you will be worthless. You won't have any worth, you won't have any sense of worth.

Listen to the heart if you really want to grow. Don't call it "just a feeling," because a feeling is a higher thing than knowing. There is something still higher -- that is being.

These are the three planes. The lowest is knowing, the highest is being, and between the two is feeling. Feeling functions as a bridge. It functions as a link between knowing and being, between this shore and the further shore. It is a bridge. Remember, the bridge is not a place to make a house on: you have to pass it, but you have to pass through it. You cannot avoid it. If you avoid it you will remain clinging to this shore; you will never go to the other shore. You will remain on the outside; you will never go into the interiority of your existence. And there is real beauty. Jesus says: The kingdom of God is within you.

And the heart is always calling you forth, but the head is very noisy and the head never allows you to listen to the heart. It is fortunate that at least you listened. At least you heard something arising in you: A DEEP DESIRE TO TAKE SANNYAS.

But then the mind immediately interfered. It said, "It is just a feeling." But a feeling is a higher phenomenon than knowing. Love is higher than logic. Nobody can live only logically, and if he does his life will be useless. Only love opens the windows towards the beyond.

Please, Laura, don't condemn anything as just a feeling.

And you say: I THOUGHT THAT THERE WAS NO ONE REASON FOR DOING IT.

There is none! That's the beauty of it. It is a jump out of reasoning, so how can there be a reason for it? The mind cannot support you, the mind can only hinder you. The mind cannot nourish your longings; it has its own projections, ambitions. It wants you to put your total energy into the ambitions. It wants you to go ahead with all your dreams; they have to be fulfilled. Of course they are never fulfilled. All dreams are bound to be broken, they are doomed to fail, but the mind is immensely inventive. One dream fails, it creates another. In fact, even before the other has failed it has already created a few more dreams. It keeps them ready in case there is a gap and in the gap you start hearing the heart. It never gives you a gap. It keeps you running faster and faster. It goes on telling you, "This dream has failed -- that does not mean that all dreams are bound to fail. If not today, then tomorrow you will succeed. You have failed because you did not put your totality into it."

And nobody can put himself totally into a dream. A dream is a very small thing. How can you enter into a dream totally? One can enter more intensely, more passionately into a feeling; even then one is not total. Totality happens only when you enter into being, but feeling is closer to being. Feeling is like a door of the temple. The moment you stand at the door, both are the possibilities: you can run out, you can run in.

And this is my observation: that the poet and the mystic both stand at the same door, because both are in the world of feeling. Neither does the mystic think nor does the poet think. The poet and mystic stand at the same door, but there is a great difference. The poet still goes on looking outwards. The door is the same, the space is the same, but the mystic looks towards the inner world, towards the shrine, inside the temple, and the poet looks outside. So sooner or later the poet is lost in the outside world. He again and again comes to the door and again and again loses the door, because he never looks in. If he takes a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn, then only will he be able to run in.

And the moment you run in... the miracle, the only miracle there is. The moment you know who you are....

Sannyas is not motivated by any reason; there is no "why" to it. That's why the worldly will call it mad. But they also call Jesus mad; even today, after two thousand years, psychoanalysts think that he was insane.

Buddha was thought to be mad -- of course, it is so obvious: he was going to be the king and he dropped out, he escaped into the jungles to meditate. He went out of the boundaries of his father's kingdom because he knew that his father would start searching for him and he would be caught, so he escaped as fast as possible to the neighboring kingdom.

But he was wrong in thinking that there he could not be caught. The neighboring king was a friend of his father. His father informed him that "My son has escaped, my only son, and maybe he is hiding somewhere in your kingdom because I have searched my kingdom -- he is nowhere. So look...."

And the friend searched for him and found him. And the king came and told him, "It's perfectly okay: if you are not happy with your father, forget all about it. I have a bigger kingdom than your father and I have no son, only a daughter. So get married to my daughter and this kingdom is yours! Forget all about it! And of course, finally your father's kingdom is going to be yours, so you will have both the kingdoms. Your father is old, seventy, he is sick, any day he will die."

What a beautiful offer! And Buddha laughed. He said, "So I have to escape from your kingdom too! I was thinking that here I would be safe. It is not a question of any quarrel. I have not quarreled with my father, I have no quarrel," he said. "I have simply seen that the way I was living was absurd. I am in search of a deeper way of life. I want to live, but authentically, sincerely. I don't want to exist as a hypocrite. And unless I have found the truth I am not going back. Yes, I will go back when I have found the truth. I will go, and if my father is alive I will share my joy with him. I respect him and love him, but he has lived in misery and I don't want to repeat the same story again. I know my wife will be suffering, my child will be suffering, but they were suffering anyway. They were suffering with me, they will suffer alone.

"There is a possibility that I may find the truth. Then I can go and share it with my wife, with my child."

And after twelve years he went back. His wife was of course angry, very angry, enraged. She started shouting. Twelve years of accumulated anger -- you cannot blame her, neither did Buddha. He stood there silently, allowed her to cathart. She cried and screamed and wept...

Finally Buddha said, "Please look at me. I am not the same man who had left you. I am a new being! Just wipe your tears and look at me. I have come to share. Forgive me, but the moment you know what I have brought for you you will not blame me; you will be happy that I did it."

His wife looked, and, of course, this was a totally new man -- so radiant, so graceful, so blissful. The fragrance was unmistakable. Something of godliness surrounded him, some aura of the unknown. She bowed down to him. And she brought her son who was now twelve years of age, and she told the son, "Ask your father for your heritage."

And Buddha initiated, immediately, first the son, just a twelve-year-old boy, Rahul was his name -- he initiated him into sannyas. He gave him his begging bowl and said, "Now you are a sannyasin and I will teach you meditation." Then he initiated his wife, then his father. They all felt... when their anger was spent, thrown out, Buddha did not react to it at all. He simply stood there like a mid-wife, helping them to go through the pains. And then he shared his joy.

Sannyas had happened to Buddha himself by seeing the utter stupidity of the way we are living. A desire, a deep longing came to him: "This is not what life should be -- something is missing." And this can be felt only by the heart, that something is missing, because the heart is a more sensitive part of you than the mind. Mind is always thick; even the best mind is thick. The heart feels first, and then there is no reason.

Laura, you say: MAYBE AS A GIFT FOR MYSELF?

That is far better. Yes, take it as a gift. Rejoice with me, celebrate with me. Participate in this great happening, in this ecstasy, and forget all reasoning, and you will for the first time touch something deeper in yourself. And then there is a possibility: if you stand at the door of feeling, you can move into the temple.

The temple does not exist on the outside; they are all false temples -- Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Jaina -- they are all false temples. The true temple exists in you and the true God is waiting there for you. This is his voice that you have heard. Follow from where it is coming, move towards that source, and immense will be your experience. You may never have tasted anything like it -- it is pure nectar.

 

Next: Chapter 14: The Only Miracle, Question 5

 

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Chapter 14

 

 

 

 
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