Question 6

ONE BEAUTIFUL DAY WHEN LOVE WAS HUMMING IN THE AIR, EVEN WINNIE THE POOH FORGOT HIS CONSTANT FRUITLESS SEARCH FOR A POT OF BONEY AND JUST SAT DOWN. WHEN HIS EYES OPENED HE WAS BOWLED OVER TO SEE ALL AROUND HIM HUGE POTS OVERFLOWING WITH MORE HONEY THAN HE COULD EVER EAT.

WHEN HE ROLLED INTO EEYORE'S LATER THAT NIGHT, ALL STICKY AND CONTENT AND FULL OF HIS DISCOVERY, EEYORE LOOKED WISE AND SAID, "HONEY IS ALWAYS THERE -- BUT YOU CAN ONLY FIND IT WHEN YOU ARE NOT LOOKING. "

POOH BEAR THOUGHT HE UNDERSTOOD, BUT FOR DAYS AFTER WHEN HE MADE SUDDEN SURREPTITIOUS GLANCES OUT OF THE CORNER OF HIS EYE -- NO HONEY! HE EVEN TRIED SITTING DOWN AGAIN AND SAYING VERY LOUDLY,'I AM NOT LOOKING FOR HONEY!" BUT WHEN HE OPENED HIS EYES, THE HONEY STILL WAS NOT THERE.

DEAR EEYORE, HOW CAN I DROP MY GREED AND MY EXPECTATIONS, AND JUST BE?

The question is from Deva Anando.

Yes, it is one of the most fundamental questions. When you are not looking, the honey is everywhere. When you start looking for it, suddenly it disappears. This is a great truth. The moment you start looking for it, you become tense. The moment you start looking for it, you become very, very concentrated, you become closed and narrow. And the honey is possible only when you are open, not closed, not narrow. The honey overflows all around you when you are also overflowing, in every direction.

To look means to be directed in one direction. Not to look, not to seek, then you are available to all directions -- you are available to every direction possible, you are available to the whole existence.

But the difficulty is that if I tell you not to look you say, "Okay, we will not try," but an unconscious effort goes on. You even try not to look, but that too becomes just an effort to look.

The question is very fundamental. Buddha says, "If you are desireless, all desires will be fulfilled." Now, one monk asked one day, "Since you have said that all desires will be fulfilled if you become desireless, I have got only one desire: to be desireless. Now what to do about it?" But the desire to be desireless is still a desire; it is on the same plane. Whether you desire money or you desire power, prestige, or you desire desirelessness, it makes no difference at all: only the object of desire changes; the desire remains the same. And the desire is the problem, not the object.

If you desire money, people will call you very worldly, materialistic. If you desire God, people will call you spiritual, other worldly, religious. But those who know, for them, there is no difference at all: you are still worldly. It is not that a few desires are worldly and a few desires are otherworldly! Desire, as such, is worldly. There can be no otherworldly desire.

So God cannot be desired. If you desire, you miss. If you seek, you will not find. The more you seek, the more miserable you will become. Don't seek, and find. Just be -- in an attitude of nonseeking. Not that deep down you still go on thinking "Now he must be coming because I am not seeking"; then you are in the same trap again.

The question is what should be done: "How can I drop my greed...?" But why do you want to drop you greed? Why in the first place do you want to drop your greed? There must be some greed behind it -- to attain to God, to nirvana, to enlightenment, to this and that, all sorts of rubbish things, all nonsense.

Enlightenment HAPPENS. You cannot desire it. When one day suddenly you find all desires have disappeared, enlightenment is there. It has always been there; just because of desires you could not see it. The desire becomes a curtain on your eyes. You lose clarity, you cannot see what is. How can you see what is when you want something to be there? When you expect something, the expectation does not allow you to see that which is. With the expectation you have already moved into the future.

You want a beautiful woman, and you have a fantasy. Because of that fantasy, you will miss your woman, who is just in front of you, but because of the fantasy you cannot see her. The fantasy goes on driving you away.

You ask, "How can I drop my greed?" I would like to ask why in the first place you want to drop greed. And suddenly you will find some greed hidden behind. Greed behind greed behind greed. This is not going to help.

So I will not tell you how to drop it. I will tell you how to understand it. In understanding, it drops on its own accord. Not that you drop it. You cannot. You are greed; how can you drop greed? You are desire; how can you drop desire? You are the search; how can you drop seeking and searching? This YOU is the center of all your madnesses. You ask how to drop greed. Who is asking? The "I". Now the"I" wants even God to be possessed. The "I" wants enlightenment to be possessed. The "I" does not only want the world, it wants the other world too. The "I" is getting more insane.

Just understand. There is no need to drop anything. Man cannot drop anything. Just try to understand. Try to understand the ways of greed. Try to understand how greed functions. Try to understand how greed brings more and more misery, more and more frustration, how greed goes on creating new hells for you, ahead of you, goes on creating new hells so when you are there, they are ready. Just look into the very phenomenon of greed -- with no idea of dropping it, because if you want to drop it, a part of greed will remain unobserved. The part that wants to drop greed will remain unobserved, will remain in the dark.

There is no need to think in these terms. Simply try to understand. That is what Socrates means when he ways, "Know thyself." It does not mean that you sit silently and repeat "I am soul,'? "I am God"; it doesn't mean that. "Know thyself" means whatsoever is the case, go into it deeply, layer by layer. Expose it to your understanding. Go to the very bottom of it, to the very root of it. Look through and through.

And the day you have looked through all the layers.... The layers are just like an onion. You go on peeling an onion. So peel your being like an onion, go on peeling. Fresher layers you will find; go on peeling, go on peeling.... One day suddenly you have peeled through and through and nothing but emptiness is left in your hand. In that emptiness greed has disappeared, and in that emptiness enlightenment has happened. In that emptiness God is. That emptiness is God.

So rather than asking how to drop greed, ask how to understand greed. The whole thing hangs on one thing: understanding. When the understanding of anything is perfect, it liberates. That's what Jesus means when he says, "Truth liberates." When you know the truth of greed you are liberated. When you know the truth of sexuality you are liberated. When you know the truth of anything whatsoever you are liberated from it. To know is to be free; not to know is to be in bondage.

So don't ask how to drop. There is no hurry. In fact, go deep into it, watch it deeply before it drops; otherwise you will always miss that understanding. If it drops before understanding, something will remain missing. That's why it never drops, it clings to you. It clings up to the last moment, when you understand it, when you have looked into it so deeply that nothing is unrevealed, you have seen the ways of greed, the subtle ways of greed.

Now, this question is a subtle way of greed: how to drop it? That was the problem of Pooh; he thought he understood: "... but for days after when he made sudden surreptitious glances out of the corner of his eye -- no honey!" You will also make surreptitious glances from the corner -- unless you understand greed totally.

"He even tried sitting down again and saying very loudly,'I am not looking for honey!"' And you will say the same too. You have said it already many times, that "I am not looking for God and I am not looking for enlightenment. Osho says nirvana is the last nightmare. I am not looking for it" -- and then surreptitiously, from the corner of the eye, you are looking for it. You are waiting and you say, "What is the matter? And Osho has said,'When you drop all desire it happens,' and it has not happened yet." You have not dropped the desire yet.

But you CANNOT drop the desire! I insist on it! My emphasis is absolute on it. There have been other teachers who say, "Drop it!" I don't say drop it, because I know you cannot drop it. Nobody has ever dropped it. Not even a Buddha was able to drop it. It dropped on its own accord one day -- when Buddha understood it.

If you drop something, the ego now feels very enhanced"I have dropped it" -- and the ego is the root cause. It will create a new greed; it will find new ways. It is very inventive. Because of this inventive ego, you cannot discover that which is. Because of too much inventiveness, the reality is being missed. It will find some other way; from the back door it will come back. So don't ask how to drop it. I am not here to help you to drop it. I am here to help you to understand it. If it is still there, it simply shows one thing: that you have not understood it. You have not done your homework yet. Do the homework. Don't be in a hurry to drop it. Just look, watch.

Watch in small things of life. You are walking on the road; a car passes by. Just look into yourself: some greed has arisen. The moment you say the car is beautiful, a subtle greed has arisen to possess it. A beautiful woman passes by, or a man, and suddenly a desire to possess.

I have heard:

A woman sat in her doctor's waiting room alongside of a mother and her child of five. The child sat very quietly while the woman and his mother exchanged pleasantries. The woman was very much impressed by the child's good behavior....

He was really graceful, sitting silently like a small Buddha.

... "I wish," she said, "I had a little boy like you."

"Well," countered the child -- the little Buddha, "why don't you get pregnant?"

The moment you see something -- a beautiful child -- and a deep desire arises: you should have a child like this. And the child is saying, "Why don't you get pregnant?" And he is right. In fact, if you look deeply in your desire, you will find that the desire to become pregnant has arisen in you. On the deepest layer it is there. On the surface you simply say, "How beautiful a child. I wish I had a little boy like this." On the surface it is very simple, as if you have simply complimented the child, but deep down many things have happened.

In small things of life.... You are eating, you know your appetite is gone, and you continue to eat. Watch. Greed is there. Now you are not eating out of hunger; you are eating out of greed. One day in meditation something beautiful happens -- a breeze comes into your being, suddenly there is light, suddenly there is fragrance, and you sway with that fragrance -- and then it is gone. Now you want every day in every meditation that that has to happen now. Now you are frustrated; and the more you are frustrated, the less is the possibility. Now that window will never open again. And when it doesn't open, you hanker for it too much; then you become very miserable -- "Why is it not happening?"

I have been observing so many meditators, thousands. When for the first time meditation really goes deep, immediately, for months, that glimpse disappears. And then they come to me, saying, "What is happening? I had seen something, and it was tremendously beautiful. Why has it disappeared? What wrong have I done?" You have not done anything wrong: you became greedy. When it happened for the first time, you were not greedy, because you had not ever known it. How could you have been greedy about it? It was unknown; it came from out of the blue. It simply came; you were caught unaware. Now watch. It came when you were not asking for it -- you had not known it, so you could not have asked for it. It came on its own. Now you are asking for it. Now you are asking for something which had come without your asking. You are creating the whole trouble -- the greed has entered.

Sometimes it has happened that a man has come very close to satori, very close, and then he went astray because of the greed.

So watch. Eating, watch. In the morning, you know that the sleep is over, but you still want to turn over and have a little nap. Now it is greed. If your body is fresh and you are feeling good and the tiredness is gone, then watch. It is everywhere. Eating, sleeping, meditating -- it is everywhere.

One day you make love to your woman or to your man, and it is ecstatic. Now you hanker, now you start repeating, but that ecstasy never happens again. You are miserable. You don't know what has happened, what has gone wrong"Why am I not attaining that peak.?" You will never attain it again, because you are looking for it. The first time it happened, you were not looking for it.

This is a fundamental law. Things happen and they happen on their own accord; you cannot manage them to happen. Great things cannot be managed by you; they are beyond you. You can, at the most, allow them to happen. At the most, you can keep your doors open so that they can happen, but you cannot force them to happen.

If you force, then nothing happens. Then you can go on making love to the woman and nothing will happen; in fact, you will start feeling nauseous about the whole thing. You will start hating the woman, you will start hating the man; you will think that the other is cheating you. And you will start looking for another woman, for another man, somewhere else to go -- "It is not happening here anymore." And you will become suspicious as to whether it had ever happened or you had imagined. How can it happen with this woman? It is not happening now. So you will become doubtful even about the experience that had happened.

People come to me and they say, "Now for months nothing is happening in the meditation," and they say they have become doubtful. Had they imagined the first time? They had not imagined; it had happened. Now they want it to happen and they are imagining and they are creating an idea around themselves.

So what is to be done? You have to watch all the ways of the mind. Greed, desire, ambition, jealousy, possessiveness, domination -- you have to watch everything. And they are all interconnected, remember. If greed disappears, then anger will disappear. If anger disappears, jealousy will disappear. If jealousy disappears, violence will disappear. If violence disappears, possessiveness will disappear. They are all intertwined. In fact, they are spokes of the same wheel, and the hub that supports them all is the ego. So watch the ways of the ego.