|
 From the Books
Foreward :
One of the most important things to be understood
about man is that man is asleep. Even while he thinks he is awake,
he is not. His wakefulness is very fragile; his wakefulness is so
tiny it doesn’t matter at all. His wakefulness is only a beautiful
name but utterly empty.
You sleep in the night, you sleep in
the day - from birth to death you go on changing your patterns of
sleep, but you never really awaken. Just by opening the eyes don’t
befool yourself that you are awake. Unless the inner eyes open -
unless your inside becomes full of light, unless you can see
yourself, who you are - don’t think that you are awake. That is the
greatest illusion man lives in. And once you accept that you are
already awake, then there is no question of making any effort to be
awake.
The first thing to sink deep in your heart is that you
are asleep, utterly asleep. You are dreaming, day in, day out. You
are dreaming sometimes with open eyes and sometimes with closed
eyes, but you are dreaming - you are a dream. You are not yet a
reality.
Of course in a dream whatsoever you do is
meaningless. Whatsoever you think is pointless, whatsoever you
project remains part of your dreams and never allows you to see that
which is. Hence all the buddhas have insisted on only one thing:
Awaken! Continuously, for centuries, their whole teaching can be
contained in a single phrase: Be awake. And they have been devising
methods, strategies; they have been creating contexts and spaces and
energy fields in which you can be shocked into
awareness.
Yes, unless you are shocked, shaken to your very
foundations, you will not awaken. The sleep has been so long that it
has reached to the very core of your being; you are soaked in it.
Each cell of your body and each fiber of your mind have become full
of sleep. It is not a small phenomenon. Hence great effort is needed
to be alert, to be attentive, to be watchful, to become a witness.
If all the buddhas of the world agree on any one single theme, this
is it - that man as he is, is asleep, and man as he should be,
should be awake. Wakefulness is the goal and wakefulness is the
taste of all their teachings. Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Jesus, Buddha,
Bahauddin, Kabir, Nanak - all the awakened ones have been teaching
one single theme… in different languages, in different metaphors,
but their song is the same. Just as the sea tastes of salt - whether
the sea is tasted from the north or from the east or from the west,
the sea always tastes of salt - the taste of buddhahood is
wakefulness.
But you will not make any effort if you go on
believing that you are already awake. Then there is no question of
making any effort - why bother?
And you have created
religions, gods, prayers, rituals, out of your dreams - your gods
are as much part of your dreams as anything else. Your politics is
part of your dreams, your religions are part of your dreams, your
poetry, your painting, your art - whatsoever you do, because you are
asleep, you do things according to your own state of
mind.
Your gods cannot be different from you. Who will create
them? Who will give them shape and color and form? You create them,
you sculpt them; they have eyes like you, noses like you - and minds
like you! The Old Testament God says, "I am a very jealous God!" Now
who has created this God who is jealous? God cannot be jealous, and
if God is jealous then what is wrong in being jealous? If even God
is jealous, why should you be thought to be doing something wrong
when you are jealous? Jealousy is divine!
The Old Testament
God says, "I am a very angry God! If you don’t follow my
commandments, I will destroy you. You will be thrown into hellfire
for eternity. And because I am very jealous," God says, "don’t
worship anybody else. I cannot tolerate it." Who created such a God?
It must be out of our own jealousy, out of our own anger, that you
have created this image. It is your projection, it is your shadow.
It echoes you and nobody else. And the same is the case with all
gods of all religions.
It is because of this that Buddha
never talked about God. He said, "What is the point of talking about
God to people who are asleep? They will listen in their sleep. They
will dream about whatsoever is said to them, and they will create
their own gods - which will be utterly false, utterly impotent,
utterly meaningless. It is better not to have such
gods."
That’s why Buddha is not interested in talking about
gods. His whole interest is in waking you up.
It is said
about a Buddhist enlightened master who was sitting by the side of
the river one evening, enjoying the sound of the water, the sound of
the wind passing through the trees.... A man came and asked him,
"Can you tell me in a single word the essence of your
religion?"
The master remained silent, utterly silent, as if
he had not heard the question. The questioner said, "Are you deaf or
something?"
The master said, "I have heard your question, and
I have answered it too! Silence is the answer. I remained silent -
that pause, that interval, was my answer."
The man said, "I
cannot understand such a mysterious answer. Can’t you be a little
more clear?"
So the master wrote on the sand "meditation," in
small letters with his finger. The man said, "I can read now. It is
a little better than at first. At least I have got a word to ponder
over. But can’t you make it a little more clear?" The master wrote
again, "MEDITATION." Of course this time he wrote in bigger letters.
The man was feeling a little embarrassed, puzzled, offended, angry.
He said, "Again you write meditation? Can’t you be a little clear
for me?"
And the master wrote in very big letters, capital
letters,
"M E D I T A T I O N."
The man said, "You seem
to be mad!"
The master said, "I have already come down very
much. The first answer was the right answer, the second was not so
right, the third even more wrong, the fourth has gone very wrong" -
because when you write "MEDITATION" with capital letters you have
made a god out of it.
That’s why the word God is written with
capital ’G’. Whenever you want to make something supreme, ultimate,
you write it with a capital letter. The master said, "I have already
committed a sin." He erased all those words he had written and he
said, "Please listen to my first answer - only then I am
true."
Silence is the space in which one awakens, and the
noisy mind is the space in which one remains asleep. If your mind
continues chattering, you are asleep. Sitting silently, if the mind
disappears and you can hear the chattering birds and no mind inside,
a silence...this whistle of the bird, the chirping, and no mind
functioning in your head, utter silence...then awareness wells up in
you. It does not come from the outside, it arises in you, it grows
in you. Otherwise remember: you are asleep. 
Reprinted by Permission of Osho
International |
