Blessing in disguise
Judgment
The fortunes and misfortunes of a villager
This osho discourse is related to this card.
Until You Die : chapter 2
＊ ＊ ＊
Until You Die
chapter 2
Judge Ye Not
A YOUNG MAN CAME TO DHUN-NUN AND SAID THAT THE SUFIS WERE WRONG, AND MANY ANOTHER THING BESIDES.
THE EGYPTIAN REMOVED A RING FROM HIS FINGER AND HANDED IT TO HIM.
‘TAKE THIS TO THE MARKET STALLHOLDERS OVER THERE AND SEE WHETHER YOU CAN GET A GOLD PIECE FOR IT,’ HE SAID.
NOBODY AMONG THE MARKET PEOPLE OFFERED MORE THAN A SINGLE SILVER PIECE FOR THE RING.
THE YOUNG MAN BROUGHT THE RING BACK.
‘NOW,’
SAID DHUN-NUN,
‘TAKE THE RING TO THE REAL JEWELLER AND SEE WHAT HE WILL PAY.’
THE JEWELLER OFFERED A THOUSAND GOLD PIECES FOR THE GEM.
THE YOUTH WAS AMAZED.
‘NOW,’
SAID DHUN-NUN,
‘YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE SUFIS IS AS GREAT AS THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE STALLHOLDERS IS OF JEWELLERY.
IF YOU WISH TO VALUE GEMS, BECOME A JEWELLER.’
JESUS SAYS:
‘Judge ye not,’
and this is one of the greatest sayings ever uttered by any man on the earth.
It is one of the most impossible things for the mind.
The mind judges immediately;
without any grounds the mind makes a judgment.
You have made many judgments without ever looking whether grounds existed for them or not.
And if you look deep,
you will find Jesus is right.
Every judgment is wrong
because the whole world is so deeply interconnected that unless you know the whole you cannot know the part.
One thing leads to another
because it is interlinked.
The present moment is interlinked with all the past;
the present moment is interlinked with all the future.
In this moment culminates all eternity.
All that has happened is there;
all that is happening is there;
all that will ever happen is there.
How can you judge?
The world is not divided.
If it was divided then a fragment could be known, but the world is a totality.
All judgments are false
because they will be partial – and they will claim as if they are the whole.
Yes, Jesus is absolutely right,
‘Judge ye not,’
because the very judgment will close you.
It will be a deadness within.
Your sensitivity will be lost, and with it your possibility for growth.
The moment you judge, you shrink;
the moment you judge, you stop;
the moment you judge, you are no longer flowering.
So the greatest thing is to be courageous enough not to judge.
In fact, to suspend judgment is the greatest courage, because the mind is so eager to judge, to say good or bad, right or wrong.
The mind is juvenile,
it jumps from one judgment to another.
If you ever want to get out of the mind – and without it there is no possibility of your inner growth – then, ‘Judge ye not.’
I will tell you a small story.
It happened in the days of Lao Tzu in China,
and Lao Tzu loved it very much.
For generations the followers of Lao Tzu have been repeating the story and always finding more and more meaning in it.
The story has grown; it has become a live factor.
The story is simple:
There was an old man in a village, very poor, but even kings were jealous of him because he had a beautiful white horse.
Such a horse had never been seen before – the beauty, the very grandeur, the strength.
Kings asked for the horse and they offered fabulous prices, but the old man would say,
‘This horse is not a horse to me, he is a person, and how can you sell a person?
He is a friend, he is not a possession. How can you sell a friend? No, it is not possible.’
The man was poor, there was every temptation, but he never sold the horse.
One morning, he suddenly found that the horse was not in the stable.
The whole village gathered and they said,
‘You foolish old man.
We knew it beforehand, that some day the horse would be stolen.
And you are so poor – how can you protect such a precious thing?
It would have been better to sell it.
You could have fetched any price you asked, any fancy price was possible.
Now the horse is gone.
It is a curse, a misfortune.’
The old man said,
‘Don’t go too far – simply say that the horse is not in the stable.
This is the fact;
everything else is a judgment.
Whether it is a misfortune or not,
how do you know?
How do you judge?’
The people said,
‘Don’t try to befool us. We may not be great philosophers, but no philosophy is needed.
It is a simple fact that a treasure has been lost, and it is a misfortune.’
The old man said,
‘I will stick to the fact that the stable is empty and the horse is gone.
Anything else I don’t know
– whether it is a misfortune or a blessing –
because this is just a fragment.
Who knows what is going to follow it?’
People laughed.
They thought the old man had gone mad.
They always knew it, that he was a little crazy; otherwise he would have sold this horse and lived in riches.
But he was living like a woodcutter, and he was very old and still cutting wood and bringing the wood from the forest and selling it.
He was living hand to mouth, in misery and poverty.
Now it was completely certain that this man was crazy.
After fifteen days, suddenly one night, the horse returned.
He had not been stolen: he had escaped to the wilderness.
And not only did he come back, he brought a dozen wild horses with him.
Again the people gathered and they said,
‘Old man, you were right and we were wrong.
It was not a misfortune, it proved to be a blessing.
We are sorry that we insisted.’
The old man said,
‘Again you are going too far.
Just say that the horse is back, and say that twelve horses have come with the horse –
but don’t judge.
Who knows whether it is a blessing or not?
It is only a fragment.
Unless you know the whole story, how can you judge?
You read one page of a book,
how can you judge the whole book?
You read a sentence in a page –
how can you judge the whole page?
You read a single word in a sentence –
how can you judge the whole sentence?
And even a single word is not in the hand – life is so vast – a fragment of a word and you have judged the whole!
Don’t say that this is a blessing,
nobody knows.
And I am happy in my no-judgment;
don’t disturb me.’
This time the people could not say much;
maybe the old man was again right.
So they kept silent,
but inside they knew well that he was wrong.
Twelve beautiful horses had come with the horse. A little training and they could all be sold and they would fetch much money.
The old man had a young son, only one son.
The young son started to train the wild horses; just a week later he fell from a wild horse and his legs were broken.
The people gathered again – and people are people everywhere, like you everywhere – again they judged.
Judgment comes so soon!
They said,
‘You were right, again you proved right.
It was not a blessing, it was again a misfortune.
Your only son has lost his legs, and in your old age he was your only support.
Now you are poorer than ever.’
The old man said,
‘You are obsessed with judgment.
Don’t go that far.
Say only that my son has broken his legs.
Who knows whether this is a misfortune or a blessing? – nobody knows.
Again a fragment, and more is never given to you.
Life comes in fragments, and judgment is about the total.’
It happened that after a few weeks the country went to war with a neighbouring country, and all the young men of the town were forcibly taken for the military.
Only the old man’s son was left because he was crippled.
The people gathered, crying and weeping, because from every house young people were forcibly taken away.
And there was no possibility of their coming back, because the country that had attacked was a big country and the fight was a losing fight.
They were not going to come back.
The whole town was crying and weeping, and they came to the old man and they said,
‘You were right, old man!
God knows, you were right – this proved a blessing.
Maybe your son is crippled, but still he is with you.
Our sons are gone for ever.
At least he is alive and with you, and, by and by, he will start walking.
Maybe a little limp will be left, but he will be okay.’
The old man again said,
‘It is impossible to talk to you people,
you go on and on and on – you go on judging.
Nobody knows!
Only say this: that your sons have been forced to enter into the military, into the army, and my son has not been forced.
But nobody knows whether it is a blessing or a misfortune.
Nobody will ever be able to know it.
Only God knows.’
And when we say only God knows,
it means only the Total knows.
Judge ye not,
otherwise you will never be able to become one with the Total.
With fragments you will be obsessed,
with small things you will jump to conclusions.
And Sufis are very insistent on this:
that you never bother that there are things which are completely beyond you, but even about them you make judgments.
Your consciousness is on a very low rung of the ladder.
You live in the dark valley of misery, anguish, and from your darkest valleys of miseries you judge even a Buddha.
Even a Buddha is not left without your judgment.
Even a Jesus is judged by you – not only judged but crucified; judged and found guilty; judged and punished.
You live in the valley, dark and damp;
you have not seen the peaks even in your dreams.
You cannot even imagine them, because even imagination needs a base in experience.
You cannot dream about something which is absolutely unknown, because even dreaming comes out of your knowledge.
You cannot dream about God,
you cannot imagine God;
you cannot imagine the peaks and the life that exists in a buddha.
But you judge.
You say,
‘Yes, this man is a buddha, and this man is not a buddha;
this man is enlightened and this man is not.’
The enlightened person is not harmed by you because he cannot be harmed in any way,
but you are harmed by your judgment.
Once you judge you have stopped growing.
Judgment means a stale state of mind.
Now the movement has stopped,
the effort to know more has stopped,
the effort to grow has stopped.
You have already made the judgment and it is finished.
And the mind always wants to be in a judgment because movement is troublesome.
To be in a process is always hazardous.
To come to a conclusion means you have reached the goal; now there is no journey.
A man who wants to journey to the ultimate should make it a basic point not to judge.
Very difficult, almost impossible – because before you know it, the mind judges.
Before you have even become aware of it, the mind has judged.
But if you try, by and by, a subtle awareness arises.
And then you can suspend judgment.
If you suspend judgment you have become religious.
Then you don’t know what is right and what is wrong.
But, ordinarily, the people you call religious are the people who know everything – what is right and what is wrong, what to do and what not to do.
They have all the commandments with them.
That’s why religious people become pig-headed, thick-skinned.
Their journey has stopped.
They are not growing at all.
The river is not moving; it has become stale.
If you want movement, growth – and infinite movement and growth are possible, because God is not a static point; God is the total movement of life, of existence – if you want to walk with God, then you have to move continuously.
You have to be continuously on the journey.
In fact, the journey never ends.
One path ends, another opens;
one door closes, another opens.
A higher peak is always there.
You reach to a peak, and you were just going to rest thinking everything is achieved – suddenly a higher peak is still there.
From peak to peak, it never comes to an end; it is an endless journey.
God is an endless journey.
That’s why only those who are very, very courageous – so courageous that they don’t bother about the goal but are content with the journey, just to move with life, to float with the river, just to live the moment and grow into it – only those are able to walk with God.
Goal oriented people are mediocre.
All your achievers are mediocre.
What can you achieve?
Can you achieve the Supreme?
If you can achieve the Supreme, just by your achievement it will not be Supreme.
If you could achieve it,
how can it be Supreme?
Can you reach to the goal? You?
Then the goal will be less than you.
No, the goal cannot be reached.
In fact there is no goal, and it is good that there is no goal.
That’s why life is deathless, because every goal will be a death.
Then you are no longer needed.
A man who judges too much is stopping his growth from everywhere.
And once judgments settle inside, you become incapable of seeing the new.
The judgment won’t allow it because the judgment will be disturbed by the new.
Then you will live with closed eyes.
You are not blind, nobody is blind, but every body behaves like a blind man – has to: judgments are there.
If you open your eyes the fear is that you may have to see something, something may be encountered, and you may have to change the judgment.
And judgment is so cozy.
You have settled in a house and forgotten the road, and the journey, and the effort, and the continuous movement, and the danger, and the hazards.
You have forgotten the adventure.
You have closed yourself in a small house, cozy, comfortable.
Now you are afraid to look out of the window; you keep it shut.
Now you are afraid to open the door.
Who knows? – some strange fact may enter from there and disturb all your comfort and all your coziness and your security.
That’s why you behave like a blind man.
You are not blind – you are cunning.
Through your cunningness you have become blind.
And the mind immediately makes judgments.
That is how to avoid the journey.
It is an escape.
People come to me, many sorts of people, but they can be divided basically into two types:
those who are ready to open their eyes,
and
those who are not ready to open their eyes.
For one who is ready to open his eyes,
much is possible for him.
For one who is not ready to open his eyes,
nothing is possible.
He is already in the grave,
he is no more alive.
He does not allow new winds to pass through his being,
he does not allow new flowers to open into his being.
He does not allow anything unknown.
He is afraid,
he moves on a settled path, and
he moves in a circle,
because nothing is more settled than a circle.
He comes upon the same things again and again and again.
He lives like a gramophone record: again and again and again the same.
And then you say that you are bored!
Nobody else is responsible.
A bored person is a person who has remained with closed eyes.
Boredom is a part of it.
A man who lives with open eyes is never bored.
Life is so enchanting,
life is so magical,
life is such a miracle!
Every moment millions of miracles are happening all around you –
but you live with closed eyes,
with your judgments.
You pass a flower, and if somebody says, ‘Beautiful!’ you look, but you don’t look.
You say,
‘Yes, a rose-flower, very beautiful,’
but you are repeating something from the past – a gramophone record.
You have said this same thing many times, too many times.
To each flower you have said that. It has become a rubbish with no significance. You simply utter it because silence will be awkward.
Somebody says,
‘Beautiful flower,’
and If you remain silent it may be awkward, embarrassing.
So you utter something,
‘Yes, the flower is beautiful,’
but you neither see the flower nor the beauty.
It is a cliche.
And then you say you are bored?
You love a woman, and even hours have not passed, the honeymoon is not yet over, and already dust has started collecting around your woman. She is no more as beautiful as she used to be just a few hours before. She is no more as significant as she used to be.
What has happened?
You think that you have come to know her – you have judged her.
You feel that now she is no more a stranger – you know her.
How do you know a person?
A person is an infinite process.
You can never know a person.
In the morning the flower is different – because the morning is different!
And the sun is rising,
and the birds are singing,
and the flower is part of the whole.
On the petals of the flower you can sing the song of the birds in the morning, you can see the new rays penetrating it, new life throbbing in it.
In the afternoon it is a different flower.
The whole climate has changed.
The sun is no more the same,
the birds are not singing.
It is already dying.
The sun has started setting already,
the evening is reaching.
The flower is becoming sadder and sadder – it is a new mood.
It is not the same flower you saw in the morning.
In the evening the flower is going to die;
it is sad, to the very heart.
Even if it sings a song, it is a sad song.
You can see your own death in the flower if you are alert.
You can see in the flower dying life and death meeting together, life transforming itself into death.
It is totally a different mood.
You cannot know even a flower in its totality because of its millions of moods.
How can you know a person?
A person is a flowering consciousness, the greatest flower that has become possible through millennia of evolution.
How can you know your wife?
The moment you think you have known you are finished, you have made a judgment – you are already seeking another woman now.
No, a wife remains a stranger if your eyes are clean.
And you will come across many climates, many moods, many faces in the being of your wife, in the being of your husband, in the being of your child, in the being of your friend, and in the being of your enemy.
Nobody ever comes to know anything.
But mind is cunning.
Mind wants knowledge,
because only with knowledge are you secure.
With a stranger there is insecurity.
With the unknown surrounding you everywhere you feel afraid, you don’t know where you are.
When you don’t know the situation – the people, the flowers, the trees, that which surrounds you – when you don’t know that, you don’t know who you are, your own identity is lost.
Feeling certain that you know your wife, your child, your friends, your society, this and that, and you know the history and the geography – with all this knowledge that is surrounding you, suddenly you feel who you are: the knower.
The ego arises, strengthens.
Knowledge is food for the ego.
Ignorance is death for the ego.
And death of the ego is life for you.
And life of the ego is death for you.
Don’t settle.
This is the meaning of the homeless sannyasin.
In India we have tried it.
One becomes a wanderer, homeless, uprooted, roots nowhere, so no identity.
One lives with the unknown, moment to moment – everything surprises.
To you nothing surprises.
You know everything, how can anything surprise you?
Nothing amazes.
Everything surprises when you live in ignorance.
When you live in not-knowing, everything is new – there is nothing to compare it with, there is nothing to relate it to the past, there is nothing to relate it to the future – everything is unique. It has never been before, it will never be again.
If you miss it this moment,
you will miss it for ever.
There is no going back.
Every moment is a new mood in existence.
Either you enjoy it, live it, or you miss it.
Through knowledge you miss it,
because you say, ‘I know.’
If I tell you,
‘Come out of your house – the sun has arisen, it is beautiful,’
you say,
‘I know. Many times, many mornings, I have arisen earlier and I have seen it. I know – don’t disturb me.’
But this day’s sun has never been there before, and this day’s you has never been there before, and this day’s me calling you to come out has never been before.
Everything is absolutely new,
absolutely original.
Just your mind is old.
Through knowledge mind becomes old.
When you are old everything looks dusty, used, secondhand.
Then you get bored.
Boredom shows that you don’t know how to live in ignorance.
A child is never bored.
Everything surprises, amazes.
He lives continuously in wonder, and this is the quality of a religious mind: to live continuously in wonder, constantly in wonder; to make wonder your very style of being.
Then suddenly you see the whole world is totally different; it is not the world you used to know.
Because you are not the same, the world cannot be the same.
Don’t judge,
and don’t make an imprisonment out of your knowledge.
Remain free, uprooted, homeless.
These are symbols.
A homeless sannyasin means uprooted from the past; he has no roots in the past.
Not that he simply wanders like a vagabond; his vagabondry is deeper: spiritually he is a vagabond.
Just going from one country to another won’t help much; sooner or later you will settle somewhere, you will make a home.
Even hippies sooner or later will settle. You don’t see very old hippies – a phase. One moves from here and there, outwardly; then one gets fed up with it; then one settles. And remember, when a hippie settles, nobody settles like him.
An ordinary, straight person always feels the call to become a vagabond; an innermost call is always there. He may be settled with a wife and children and a good job, but the call goes on haunting him in dreams, in day dreams, in imagination. It continuously calls him to become a vagabond. But when a hippie settles, he settles absolutely. He has known what it is to be a vagabond; he is finished with it.
Again knowledge: he has known.
When we say, or when I say, become homeless, I don’t mean it literally.
I mean inside, live a homeless life – unsettled, uprooted, with no past; just this moment, this moment as the total, as if this moment is the all.
Then suddenly you become aware: aware of the hidden, aware of the invisible, aware of the unknown surrounding you from everywhere.
It is a vast ocean of absolutely new facts arising and disappearing.
Life has never been old.
Life has never been secondhand.
It is original – it is the nature of it to be original and new.
Only your mind grows old;
then you miss it.
And to live continuously in the new, you have to stop judging – then the highest consciousness will explode in you.
Judgment is a barrier.
And it is not only ordinary things that you judge; judging becomes such a habit that you cannot help it.
The moment something is there, you immediately judge – not a single moment is lost.
And when you come to a person like Buddha, or Dhun-Nun the Sufi Master, you are near the original source of a consciousness constantly renewed.
Nothing is old.
Nothing comes out of the past.
The mind comes out of the past;
the consciousness is never out of the past – the consciousness comes out of this moment.
The mind is time,
and
consciousness is eternity.
The mind moves from one moment to another on a horizontal plane.
It is like a railway train: many compartments joined together, past and future like a train; many compartments joined together on a horizontal plane.
Consciousness is vertical;
it doesn’t come from the past,
it doesn’t go into the future.
This moment it falls vertically in the depth, or it rises vertically into the height.
This is the meaning of Christ on the cross –
and Christians have missed the meaning completely.
The cross is nothing but a representation,
a symbol, of two lines meeting:
the vertical and the horizontal.
Christ’s hands are spread on the horizontal.
His whole being, except the hands, is on the vertical.
What is the meaning?
The meaning is:
action is in time;
being is beyond time.
The hands symbolize action.
Jesus is crucified with his hands on the horizontal, in time.
Action is in time.
Thinking is an act:
it is action of mind.
That, too, is in time.
It will be good to know that hands are the outermost part of the brain.
They are one, the mind and the hand;
the head is joined with the hands.
Your head has two hemispheres:
the right hemisphere is joined with the left hand,
and
the left hemisphere is joined with the right hand.
Your hands are the reaches of the mind into the world, the reaches of the mind into matter – because mind is also a subtle matter.
All action, physical or mental, is in time.
Your being is vertical.
It goes in depth; it goes in height – not sideways.
When you judge you become more and more identified with the horizontal,
because how will you judge?
For judgment, past will be needed.
Can you judge something without bringing the past in?
How will you judge?
From where will you get the criterion?
You say this face is beautiful.
How do you judge?
Do you know what beauty is?
How do you judge this face to be beautiful?
You have known many faces; you have heard many people talking about beautiful faces.
You have read about it in novels,
you have seen it in the movies –
you have accumulated a notion, in the past, of what beauty is.
It is a very vague notion, you cannot define it.
If somebody insists, you will feel puzzled and confused.
It is a very vague notion, like a cloud.
Then you say,
‘This face is beautiful.’
How do you know?
You are bringing your past experience in, comparing this face with that vague notion of beauty that you have accumulated through experience.
If you don’t bring the past in, then a totally different quality of beauty will happen.
It will not be your judgment,
it will not come from your mind,
it will not be imposed,
it will not be an interpretation.
It will simply be a participation with this face here and now, a deep participation with this mystery, with this person here and now.
In that moment the person is neither beautiful nor ugly;
all judgments have disappeared.
An unknown mystery is there, unnamed, unjudged – and only in that unjudged moment does love flower.
Love is not possible with the mind.
With the mind sex is possible;
with the mind action is possible, and sexuality is an act.
Love is not an act;
it is a state of being – it is vertical.
When you look at a person and participate with no judgment – of either beautiful or ugly, or of good and bad, sinner or saint – when you don’t judge, but simply look into the eyes with no judgment, suddenly a meeting is there, a merging of energies.
And this merging is beautiful.
And this beauty is totally different from all the beauties that you have known.
You have known the beauty of the form – this is the beauty of the formless.
You have known the beauty of the body – this is the beauty of the soul.
You have known the beauty of the periphery – this is the beauty of the center.
This is everlasting.
And if this happens with a person, the same becomes more and more possible, by and by, with things also.
You look at a flower, with no judgment, and suddenly the heart of the flower is open for you; there is an invitation.
When you don’t judge there is invitation.
When you judge the flower also closes, because in the judgment is the enemy.
In the judgment is the critic, not the lover.
In the judgment there is logic, not love.
In the judgment there is superficiality, not depth.
The flower simply closes.
And when I say it simply closes, it is not a metaphor – it happens exactly as I say it happens.
You go near a tree; you touch the tree.
If you touch with judgment, the tree is not available there.
If you touch it without any judgment, just feel it with no mind at all, embrace it and sit by the side of it – suddenly a very ordinary tree has become the Bodhi Tree; infinite compassion is flowing from the tree towards you. You will be enveloped.
The tree will share many secrets with you.
This is how even rocks can be penetrated to their very heart.
When a Buddha touches a rock, it is no more a rock – it is alive, it has a heart throbbing in it.
When you touch a person, it is a rock, already dead.
Your touch dulls everything, because in the touch is the judgment, the enemy, not the friend.
If this is so with ordinary things, how much more will it be so when you come across higher stages of being and consciousness?
Don’t judge.
Millions have missed Buddha,
millions have missed Jesus,
millions have missed Zarathustra –
just by judging.
Don’t repeat that stupid pattern.
Whenever you go to a man of even a little higher consciousness than you,
don’t judge, remain open.
Much help will be possible.
If you go with a judgment, you don’t go at all.
If you go with a judgment, you have already missed.
Put aside the mind!
Now, enter this story.
Dhun-Nun was an Egyptian Sufi mystic, one of the greatest who has ever walked on the earth.
He has a great insight, insight into human stupidity – and he can be helpful.
But, as Sufis always do, they create a situation because they know that intellectually you may understand – but that understanding is not enough.
Intellectually you may be convinced, but that conviction will not transform you.
They create a situation and in the situation they reveal something.
They don’t say – they show.
How did it come to happen to Dhun-Nun?
It is said that when he was a seeker himself, and not a master, one day he was approaching a small village.
He was coming from a long journey, from the desert – hungry, tired, thirsty, seeking a shelter – and he saw a woman on the roof of a house.
She must have been working on the roof; the rains were soon to come and she must have been arranging the roof.
He came nearer and nearer.
When he reached near the woman, just near the house she was on top of, the woman laughed.
Dhun-Nun was puzzled,
‘What is the matter?
Why are you laughing?
Why have you greeted me with such a mad laughter?’
The woman said,
‘When I saw you just entering the village, I thought you seemed to be a Sufi mystic – because I couldn’t see you, just your robe.
Then as you came closer, I saw that you were not a mystic, not a master, but still a disciple – because I could see a little of your face.
But you were still far away and I couldn’t peek into your eyes. Then you reached closer, and I could see your eyes, and I saw that you are not even a disciple, not even on the Path.
And now that you have reached, and I can see you completely, I see that you are not even a seeker – you have never heard about the Path at all!
That’s why I laughed.
Outwardly you look like a mystic, but your face doesn’t cooperate with your dress, your Sufi robe.’
The very word ‘Sufi’ comes from a certain type of robe.
‘Suf’ means wool, and ‘Sufi’ means a man who is robed in a woollen shirt, a woollen robe.
In a desert it is very difficult – hot, burning everywhere – and Sufis have chosen a woollen robe; and they have existed in deserts, the hottest parts of the world.
Why?
Because they say that when you are cool inside, nothing matters.
When you are cool inside, nothing matters.
On the periphery – heat; in the deepest center – coolness.
And this is a method, a device, to turn you from the periphery to the center.
When the body is hot, and burning hot, you move to the center.
You will have to move, because for the body, on the periphery, it is fire.
What do you do when you pass on a road and it is burning hot and the sun is fiery?
You seek the shade, a tree, and you sit there, relaxed.
When the body is burning hot, Sufis have used it as a device.
What will you do, continuously under a woollen rug, hidden under it, perspiring?
What will you do in a desert?
You will have to seek some inner point where no heat ever penetrates.
You will have to seek shade.
The woman said,
‘Outwardly you look like a Sufi, a master, but when I saw your face, your face didn’t cooperate with your robe; the face says something else.
When I looked into your eyes, I saw that they say something else again; they don’t even cooperate with your face.
And when I saw you in your totality, I saw that are not a seeker at all.’
It is said that Dhun-Nun threw his robe, entered into the desert, and for many years nothing was heard about him or what happened to him.
For twenty years nobody knew where he was and what he was doing.
After twenty years... a sudden explosion.
Dhun-Nun exploded over the whole of the Egyptian land.
Thousands of seekers from every Sufi country started travelling.
While Dhun-Nun was alive he became a Mecca; people were moving towards Dhun-Nun not towards Mecca.
People used to ask him,
‘What happened in these twenty years after the encounter with that woman?
What did you do?
What were you practicing?’
And he would say,
‘Nothing, I simply sat in the desert – because whatsoever I do will be part of me, part of my ego. Whatsoever I do cannot be greater than me; it will always be less than me. And if I am wrong, how can I do anything right?
So I simply stopped doing anything!
For twenty years I practiced nothing, or, only nothing I practiced.
I did nothing, or I only did nothing – I simply remained with my being. I was not a doer.’
What will happen if for twenty years you sit without being a doer?
The horizontal will disappear, only the vertical will remain – not doing anything, just being.
But that needs patience; otherwise no method is needed.
Because you are impatient, I have to give you methods.
Because you are in a hurry, I have to give you methods.
If you were not in a hurry and you could say,
‘I can wait, I can wait for eternity,’
no method would be needed.
Then you simply sit; even while you are doing things, inside you remain a non-doer.
Of course, many things you will have to do. You will have to take a bath, and you will have to eat food, and you will have to go to sleep and prepare your bed. You will have to do certain things, but always remain a non-doer. This much is enough.
Remaining silently with yourself, without doing anything, the ego disappears.
Not even trying to improve upon yourself, the ego disappears.
Not trying to transform yourself, the ego disappears – just by accepting yourself as you are, whatsoever you are.
I see your only trouble is that you cannot accept yourself.
You want to be somebody else – and that is the trouble.
Otherwise, nothing is lacking; otherwise, everything is available.
Non-doing for twenty years, Dhun-Nun became one of the most perfect masters.
Now this story:
A YOUNG MAN CAME TO DHUN NUN AND SAID THAT THE SUFIS WERE WRONG, AND MANY ANOTHER THING BESIDES.
How can you know that Sufis are wrong without being a Sufi?
And has anyone who has been a Sufi ever said that anything is wrong with the Sufis?
It has never happened.
Those who have been Sufis have never said that anything is wrong with it, and those who say that something is wrong have never been Sufis.
How can you say?
Just the other day somebody was saying that all these meditative methods that I am teaching are wrong because Patanjali never mentions them in his YOGA SUTRAS.
And the man said,
‘We have never heard of such methods before.
What is your authority?
From where do you create these methods?
They are neither Hatha nor Raja nor Bhakti.’
I asked the man,
‘Have you ever meditated?’
And he said,
‘No.’
I asked the man,
‘Do you know what meditation is?’
He said,
‘No.’
When you don’t know what meditation is, how can you say what is wrong with a meditative method?
You don’t know what meditation is, how can you know what is not meditation?
You don’t know what good is, and you go on condemning: ‘This is bad.’
You don’t know what morality is, and you go on condemning: ‘This is immoral.’
Do you know what Sufism is?
But you can condemn easily.
Condemnation comes easily to the mind.
It is the easiest thing in the world to say that something is wrong.
To say no is the easiest thing for the mind.
Yes is the hardest thing.
Watch your mind,
how many times it says no.
Even sometimes if it has to say yes, it says it grudgingly.
With no, it is very happy.
The moment you say no to somebody you feel very powerful.
You enjoy saying no because no helps the ego – yes dissolves it.
And it is easy to say no.
It is very, very difficult to say yes,
because with the yes a door opens – with the no a door closes.
When you say no,
watch what happens in your innermost being – suddenly all doors close.
When you say no, you are closed.
The no simply cuts all possibilities of bridging yourself to the other.
All possibilities of love, prayer, surrender, all possibilities of meditation, are cut immediately, the moment you say – no!
No makes you an island, and no man is an island.
And to feel that you are an island is the greatest illusion – you are part of the whole.
When you say no, you are cut, you have broken all the bridges.
And the ego always wants, enjoys, to say no, it relishes it.
Unless it is absolutely necessary, never say no!
Even dropping the word will make you more and more alert.
Even if you have to say no, say it in such a way that it becomes positive, takes the form of yes.
Just by dropping the no you will feel many new things happening within you, because this is a very, very potential word.
These two words are very potential:
yes and no.
They change your total being, because they are not ordinary words.
They are not words, they are gestures –
that’s your way, your very style of life.
A man who goes on saying no will become more and more sad, depressed; life will not knock on his door any more.
If you continuously say no, how can life go on knocking at your door?
Winds will not flow towards him;
flowers will not be flowering on his path.
He is sowing thorns by saying no.
The no-sayer is the only atheist.
To say no to God is just the culmination of your total trend of saying no.
To say yes to life is what theism means to me – to say yes to life, to open doors, to relate, to be available.
Say yes and suddenly you feel windows opening inside.
Just sit silently under a tree and say loudly, ‘Yes!’ and feel the change.
Then say no and feel the change.
You create a different climate; different vibrations come with the no.
With yes you create an opening, as if you have thrown a pebble in a lake, and ripples arise, and they go on and on and on, spreading and spreading; they will reach to the very opposite bank.
When you say yes you throw a stone of acceptance, of love, of prayer, of your being ready, of surrender – and then the ripples go on and on and on, and they reach to the very infinity.
A yes-sayer is bound to become a theist some day, because yes ultimately culminates into the divine.
Yes becomes the God.
No becomes, finally, godlessness.
A YOUNG MAN CAME TO DHUN-NUN AND SAID THAT THE SUFIS WERE WRONG, AND MANY ANOTHER THING BESIDES.
How foolish!
but it happens.
I know it; it happens with me every day.
People, not knowing anything, even come to advise me that this should be done this way, that this should not be done this way.
Man’s stupidity has no bounds to it.
Only two things are infinite:
man’s stupidity
and
God’s compassion.
Otherwise, how does man exist?
This is a miracle... so stupid, so adamant!
But God’s compassion is infinite.
Existence goes on giving – it does not bother about your stupidity.
Some day or other you will come back home and you will understand.
What foolishness to come to a man like Dhun-Nun and say that Sufis were wrong.
THE EGYPTIAN REMOVED A RING FROM HIS FINGER AND HANDED IT TO HIM.
This Egyptian, Dhun-Nun, was right.
It was useless to talk to such a stupid person – he won’t understand.
And even if he understands intellectually, that won’t be a real understanding.
Dhun- Nun started creating a situation.
He handed his ring to him and said:
‘TAKE THIS TO THE MARKET STALLHOLDERS OVER THERE AND SEE WHETHER YOU CAN GET A GOLD PIECE FOR IT.’
NOBODY AMONG THE MARKET PEOPLE OFFERED MORE THAN A SINGLE SILVER PIECE FOR THE RING.
THE YOUNG MAN BROUGHT THE RING BACK.
‘NOW,’ SAID DHUN-NUN, ‘TAKE THE RING TO A REAL JEWELLER AND SEE WHAT HE WILL PAY.’
THE JEWELLER OFFERED A THOUSAND GOLD COINS FOR THE GEM.
THE YOUTH WAS AMAZED.
‘NOW,’ SAID DHUN NUN, ‘YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE SUFIS IS AS GREAT AS THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE STALLHOLDERS IS OF *JEWELLERY. IF YOU WISH TO VALUE GEMS, BECOME A JEWELLER.’
What exactly was he pointing out?
That Sufism is not a system of knowledge.
You cannot read about it.
Scriptures won’t be of any help, teachers won’t be of any help – because they can explain, but explanation cannot become experience.
And it is almost always that just the opposite is the case: that explanations become barriers to experience.
Through explanations you start explaining things away.
They don’t lead you into experience; rather, they become substitutes.
That’s how pundits, scholars are born.
Sufism is not a knowledge:
you cannot gather it from anywhere, from somebody; you cannot borrow it.
It is not information.
No teacher can teach it.
Truth cannot be taught – it is an experience.
It is not knowledge: it is being.
It is not something that you learn: it is something that you become.
Who can give it to you?
Only you.
Only you can give it to yourself.
Only you can bring yourself to a point when you know what Sufism is – not by knowledge, but by knowing.
Always remember the difference between knowledge and knowing:
knowledge is a dead,
accumulated thing;
knowing is a constant movement.
Knowing is alive;
knowledge is dead.
Knowing is part of your being;
knowledge is never part of your being.
Knowledge is just part of your memory, and memory is nothing but a biological computer.
Sooner or later man will devise small computers which you can carry in your pockets.
They will carry all the knowledge of all the libraries in the world.
It will not be necessary to teach it to you:
you can simply push a button and the computer can supply you the knowledge –
so why waste twenty five years of a man’s life in universities with foolish teachers and foolish examinations, just training his memory?
That can be done easily with a computer.
And the computer is more efficient than any memory system can be, because a computer is completely dead – and knowledge is dead.
A computer carries it more efficiently than your mind.
Your mind is not so reliable: it is somehow attached to an alive being, and the life also goes on flowing through it – that life disturbs it.
Knowledge is part of the memory system,
not of your being.
Knowing is part of your being.
So knowing means to be that which you want to know.
If you want to know God, God is not hiding somewhere so that you have to reach him....
I have heard that when Soviet sputniks reached near the moon, they delivered a message to Soviet television: ‘Up to now we have not found any God or gods.’
It is not somewhere up there! God is not a thing, God is not a person hidden somewhere.
God is your innermost flowering.
You come and ask,
‘Show us God! Where is God?’
It cannot be shown because it is hidden in you.
It is your ultimate destiny.
Your God is still not there.
Your God is still growing.
Your God is still a potentiality, a possibility, not yet actual.
And I cannot show my God to you – your eyes will not be capable of seeing it.
And your God is still a potentiality; you have to work for it.
It is still a seed: you have to water it, and find a soil for it, and help it to grow.
I cannot show my God to you because you don’t have the right equipment yet to see it.
And the right equipment will be available only when you have fulfilled your godliness – but then there will be no need to see my God: you will be able to see yours; you will be able to see everyone else’s.
Even those who are still potentialities you will be able to see.
I can see your God – underneath the ground, still struggling like a seed trying to break the ground.
The ground is hard.
Sometimes there are stones and rocks also.
Trying to break the hard ground, I can see your God, which will be some day, who is not yet.
If you can see your own God, you can see God everywhere, because now you have the eyes to see.
I don’t see you as you are.
Yes, that too I see, but that is just a passing phase.
A cloud has arisen in the sky, but I see the sky.
The cloud will go.
I see you as you will be.
I see you as you can be.
I see you as, right now, if you are courageous enough,
you can suddenly burst forth.
‘NOW,’ SAID DHUN.NUN, ‘YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE SUFIS IS AS GREAT AS THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE STALLHOLDERS IS OF *JEWELLERY.’
They cannot appreciate a diamond.
They don’t know what a diamond is.
They may have thought that this beautiful stone will be good for the children to play with; or they can make measurements out of it – but the diamond is hidden for them.
It is just a shiny stone, colourful, maybe good for the children to play with.
Have you ever heard the story of the greatest diamond, Kohinoor?
I would like to tell you:
It belonged to a villager in Golconda in India.
He had found it on his farm.
A river flowed on his farm, and there he had found it. It looked good, and he thought it would be good for the children – they could play with it. So he brought it home.
The children played with it, and as children are, they got fed up with it.
So they put it on the window sill and everybody forgot all about it.
A visiting monk, a vagabond sannyasin, was passing through the town and he wanted a shelter for the night.
So this villager invited him.
The sannyasin took food, and then they gossiped, and the sannyasin was a vagabond so he had lots of news about the world and what was happening where.
The villager listened, and just in talking about these things, the sannyasin said,
‘What are you doing here?
I know a place where diamonds are found on a river bank. With a little effort you can become the richest man, and here, working with this hard soil, you will always remain poor. Your whole life will be wasted.’
The next morning the sannyasin left – but he left a seed, a desire, an ambition in that poor villager’s mind. He became obsessed. He didn’t know where that river was, but he became so obsessed that he sold his farm and went in search.
He told his wife and children,
‘Five years at least you will have to wait; then I will return.’
He worked hard in many places, but after five years he still had not found any place where diamonds were so plentiful that they could be picked up easily.
But in these five years he learnt one thing: what a diamond is.
He came back home. When he approached his hut he couldn’t believe his eyes:
the greatest diamond that he had ever thought of, or seen in the market, was lying there on the window sill.
Then he remembered that the river flowed on his own farm and now he had sold it – and he had found the greatest diamond!
That part of the farm became the greatest source of all the diamonds in the world, Golconda.
And all the greatest diamonds have come from Golconda, from that farmer’s land.
And this diamond which the children played with and got fed up with, and which was Lying there uncared for and neglected, became the greatest diamond in the world.
And this is how it is on the inward journey also.
Don’t sell the farm!
The greatest diamond is waiting there for you.
But learn to become a jeweller – and the only learning is how to die, because if you die as you are you will be reborn as you should be.
Right is the Sufi saying:
‘I cannot give you anything until you die.’
from osho talks
from osho transformation tarot
Until You Die
Discourses on the Sufi Way
Talks given from 11/04/75 am to 20/04/75 am
English Discourse series
Chapter 2
Chapter title: Judge Ye Not
12 April 1975 am in Buddha Hall
The free downloading of all chapters of this osho discourse, please click here.
＊ ＊ ＊
beloved osho
”The last word of Buddha was, sammasati.
Remember that you are a buddha – sammasati.”
sammasati
It means right remembrance.
meditation & love
osho samadhi
