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GAIN ENERGY APPRENTICE
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THE ENERGY BLOCKAGE REMOVAL
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ZEN: THE PATH OF PARADOX
VOL. 2
Chapter 2: Selling Water by the River
Question 3
Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Zen Paradox, Vol. 2
Question 3
OSHO, I AM A NEWCOMER HERE, AND I WAS SHOCKED WHEN I HEARD YOU USING WORDS LIKE 'BASTARD' ETCETERA. I CANNOT BELIEVE A SAINT USING SUCH WORDS. CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT IT?
I am not a saint. Drop that nonsense about me -- I am not a saint! And I am happy that I am not. And beware: Never become a saint. Just to be plain ordinary human is enough.
The human mind is such, it lives in hierarchies. It has not only divided man into higher and lower, it has even divided words into higher and lower -- BRAHMIN words and SUDRA words, good words and bad words, respectable words and disrespectable words. This is sheer foolishness. All words are alike. The function of the word is to express something. All words that express something are good -- only words that don't express anything are meaningless. And sometimes it happens, the words that you would not like are most expressive, because they come from the common man. And the common man is more expressive, down-to-earth. He does not know abstractions.
Now, 'bastard' goes directly, hits directly. Yes, I can move in a little more roundabout way -- listen to this:
And today's story has a vicar alone on the first tee. He sees a fellow standing there and suggests they play together. After a couple of holes, the stranger tells the minister what he's doing wrong. As they play along, the vicar gets more advice -- all of it good. The man of the cloth finishes the round, six strokes under his usual score. He thanks his golf partner, and the fellow says, 'That will be twenty-five dollars. I'm the pro here.' The vicar argues but to no avail. So he tells the pro to drop over to the rectory that evening to collect his fee. 'And when you come,' suggests the vicar, 'bring your mother and father. I'll marry them at the same time.'
Now, this is very roundabout -- religious, but very round-about. I don't like that way. It has to be direct.
It happened, Aldous Huxley relates...
'At the time of the great Irish potato famine a century ago, a special prayer was composed for the recitation in all the churches of Ireland. The purpose of this prayer was to entreat the Almighty to check the ravages of the blight which was destroying the Irish potato crop. But from the outset the word "potato" presented a difficulty. Quite obviously, in the eyes of the Divine, it was too low, common and proletarian to be pronounced in a sacred place, and in front of God..."potato". The horribly vulgar part of potatoes had to be concealed in the decent obscurities of paraphrases, and consequently God was requested to do something about an abstraction, sonorously called the "succulent tuber". 'The sublime has soared up into the empyrean of the ludicrous.'
They could not use the word 'potato' in the church -- it is so vulgar, common, proletarian, SUDRA, untouchable.
In similar circumstances, says Aldous Huxley, a Zen master might also have avoided the word 'potato' -- not because it was too low, but because it was too conventional and respectable. Not 'succulent tuber' but plain monosyllabic 'spud' would have been his idea of a suitable alternative.
I trust Zen. My approach is Zen. I love all kinds of words which are expressive. And I don't make a hierarchy.
You will be surprised: The lower the word in the hierarchy. the better -- because it hits directly. The common people are not roundabout; they don't deal in abstractions. They say what they want to say, they don't go into theories.
Now what nonsense! If there is some God he must have laughed. Succulent tuber? Can you eat a succulent tuber? What will you do with a succulent tuber? A potato is perfect. And a potato is so innocent.
But this has been the case. That's why, for centuries, people have been praying in languages they don't understand. In India people pray in Sanskrit, which is a dead language. Even the person who is praying does not understand what he is saying. For centuries in the West, people were praying in Greek and Latin, or Hebrew, Aramaic -- languages which have disappeared. And this is still happening. Jainas go on praying in Prakrit, and Buddhists go on praying in Pali. Those languages no more exist, they are no more living languages. Nobody understands them -- even the person who is using them does not understand them.
What kind of prayer is this? But there is a point in it: Because those languages have disappeared, they have become very far away, unearthly, abstract -- you can deal easily with them. They don't look common, they look special. If you are talking to God in the language you understand, it looks too common. It looks too ordinary, irreligious. This is the language you use with other human beings -- how can you use the same language with God? It is difficult; then you pull God down to your own level. But what is wrong in that?
God has to be pulled down -- only then can there be a communication. Either he has to pull you up, or you have to pull him down -- but communication is possible only when you both exist on the same plane.
This continues because a subtle ego is involved in it. You need not get shocked. And if you love being shocked, wait a little more. I will be giving you more shocks.
You say, I AM A NEWCOMER... obviously... AND I WAS SHOCKED WHEN I HEARD YOU USING WORDS LIKE 'BASTARD' ETCETERA. Good. That shows that you are alive: you can be shocked. There are a few people who cannot even be shocked, they are so dead. Then something is possible; then something can be stirred in you. Then at least while I am talking you remain alert, you don't fall asleep.
... AND I CANNOT BELIEVE A SAINT USING SUCH WORDS. You must be having a certain idea about what a saint is. If you have any kind of ideas about a saint, they are going to be destroyed. Here, at least, you will not be allowed to carry those ideas. I am an iconoclast. My whole effort here is to destroy ideals, ideas, ideologies.
And that is the whole Zen standpoint. Why? Because these ideas are the barriers. If you have a certain idea how a saint should be, then you don't know that a saint is unpredictable and you cannot have any ideas about him. All ideas will become a confinement -- and a saint worth the name would not like to be confined in any idea. He is freedom. Nobody can draw a line around him -- 'This is the place you should be, and don't go out of it.' If somebody allows that -- allows that you draw a line around him and make a definition and he will remain there -- then he is not a saint at all. Beware of him: he is there to deceive you. If he follows your ideas he is going to deceive you.
Look for a saint who will not bother what your opinion is about him. Find out somebody who does not care what your definition of a saint is, and you will be benefitted. A saint who follows you and your ideas is worthless. He is your follower. No saint -- no Christ, no Buddha, no Mahavira -- has ever been according to you. That's why they got into trouble. Jesus would not have been crucified if he was according to you. Neither would Mahavir have been stoned, thrown out of villages, whipped, beaten, if he was just following your idea of a saint. No, he was not following you.
No saint can follow your ideas. The moment somebody starts following your ideas, he is not a saint. He does not know freedom -- he has not stumbled upon his inner freedom, he does not know who he is. He gets his ego from you and your ideas. This is the criterion to judge: if you see a man who goes on following a certain kind of ideology in his behaviour.... There is a Jaina monk, he follows the ideas of the Jainas. And there is a Catholic monk, he follows the ideas of Catholic Christians, he behaves accordingly. These are slaves, these are not real men.
A real man cannot be confined, cannot be imprisoned. I am not a saint in that way, that you can have some ideas about me. Forget about sainthood. Just look into me, just be here and have a taste of me. Don't carry any ideas -- I am not going to be bothered by them. If you are shocked, that is your problem.
And I am not in any way in any need to get any identity from you. So what you say does not matter. If you are here to learn something, learn it. And meanwhile you will have to go through many shocks. Those shocks are really processes of understanding; those shocks are processes of learning.
If you are courageous, only then can you be here. Otherwise go and find some dummy-saint somewhere.
And why have a few words become condemned? Words in themselves are just sounds -- how have certain words become condemned? what will be the reason? The reason is that you have certain ideas about certain things. For example, if you are against sex, then all words connected with sex will be condemned. If you are against anything, then all words connected with it will be condemned. Words are not really condemned -- the condemnation shows that you are condemning something else. If you are against sex, then even the word 'sex' is shocking. Then you cannot use that word -- then you have to use euphemisms, you have to go roundabout.
For centuries man has not talked about sex. This is the first century in human history when people have become courageous enough to talk about it directly -- to think about it, to research into it, to explore the idea. And thousands of things have been explored in these twenty, thirty years which were never known -- because nobody would even dare to think about it. The man who would like to go into it scientifically would be thought mad, would have been killed, Lynched, murdered.
That's why one of the most potential energies has remained unexplored. We know much more about the moon than we know about sex. We know much more about electrons than we know about sex. This seems to be stupid -- because sex is our energy. We are born out of it. You happened through it, your children will happen through it -- the whole existence is sexual and sensuous.
If you miss understanding this energy called sex, you will miss understanding life itself. And how can you understand God if you miss understanding life itself? But man does not know much. Don't think that because you have three children you know much about sex -- having children is nothing. Having children has nothing to do with knowing about sex. Even animals have children -- they don't know anything about sex.
In Africa, for centuries a tribe has believed that the birth of a child has nothing to do with intercourse; the birth of a child is a gift of God. And the reason was that they cannot calculate much ahead and they cannot count much; they don't have any arithmetic. So to count nine months was so much. Because the child will come after nine months -- and not always; sometimes it will come and sometimes it will not come. So how to connect that the child has something to do with intercourse? Each intercourse is not followed by a child -- so how to connect? And there is a gap of nine months; it is a long gap. For a primitive society which has no arithmetic, to count nine months is impossible. How to count it? And who will keep the count? They had no idea. And they have been giving birth to children -- but they had no idea.
To give birth to a child is mechanical. It does not presuppose any knowledge of sex, it NEED not presuppose any knowledge. The energy called sex is still mysterious -- we know more about electricity than about sexuality. This is foolish, because electricity is not such an important phenomenon as sexuality. We are more close to sexuality, more involved in it. We can live without electricity but we cannot live without sexuality. But why did the very word become condemned? Because the idea was a sin.
I have heard...
Bride-to-be: 'And when we're married, I'm going to cook for him, sew for him, shine his shoes, darn his socks -- what more could any man want?'
Mother: 'Nothing -- unless he's evil-minded.'
Sex is thought to be something evil-minded. Such a natural phenomenon, such an innocent phenomenon, is thought evil-minded. Then all words connected with sex will become disrespectable -- they cannot be pronounced in a civilized world, in a cultured society. We dropped the whole idea of sex, so with it disappeared all words connected with it. Exactly the same is the case with death too -- we don't talk about death much. Even to talk about death looks a little obscene. Looks a little embarrassing -- people don't talk about it.
Just a few days before, one English publisher -- Sheldon Press -- offered to publish one of my books, UNTIL YOU DIE. They wrote a letter: 'The book is beautiful, but we cannot have the title, because the very idea of death -- UNTIL YOU DIE -- will put people off. We will have to change the title,' they said.
The very title! Such a beautiful title -- UNTIL YOU DIE. A part of a saying of Jesus! And in a Christian country! They think the title is not right, the title has to be changed -- 'the very idea puts people off.'
Nobody wants to think about death, nobody wants to look into death. So words connected with death will fall out of circulation.
To me, the whole of life is holy. All that exists is holy, unconditionally holy. I don't have any condemnation for anything. Then suddenly the whole language becomes available to me.
Next: Chapter 2: Selling Water by the River, Question 4
Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Zen Paradox, Vol. 2
| ENERGY
|
GAIN ENERGY APPRENTICE
LEVEL1
|
THE ENERGY BLOCKAGE REMOVAL
PROCESS
|
THE KARMA CLEARING
PROCESS APPRENTICE LEVEL3
|
MASTERY
OF RELATIONSHIPS TANTRA APPRENTICE LEVEL4
|
|
ENERGY ENHANCEMENT TESTIMONIALS EE LEVEL1 EE LEVEL2 EE LEVEL3 EE LEVEL4 EE FAQS |
