Послания любви. 365 писем Ошо
Шрифт:
But his companion said:
Yes, it may be ignorant of the damage it has suffered,
but it will know in due time.
Hearing this the Sufi laughed and said:
Meanwhile you cannot reason with it.
This reverence is the state of man.
This ignorance is the state of man –
and meanwhile you cannot reason with him!
Or can you?
But this is irrelevant.
If you can reason with yourself that is more than enough!
302. Love.
In life everything is whole, and organically whole.
You cannot divide it
or take it in parts.
Love is like that
and meditation is also like that.
Even death is like that.
That is why I say:
Death is not dead but organically one with life.
You cannot die partially!
– either you die or you do not die.
Nor can you die gradually.
Please remember this always
when you are in meditation or in prayer or in worship.
A very valuable dachshund
owned by a wealthy woman was run over.
The policeman sent a man
to tell the woman of her misfortune.
But break the news gently, he said.
She thinks a lot of this dog.
The man rapped on the mansion door
and when the woman appeared, he said: Sorry, lady,
but part of your dog has been run over.
303. Love.
Artificial and outward discipline have no use –
the inner and natural discipline is enough.
But what is the inner discipline?
In one word: acceptance –
total acceptance.
And acceptance can be only total
because partial acceptance
is just a contradiction in terms.
If you live – live!
If you die – die!
If you suffer – suffer!
And then there is no problem
and no anxiety
and no anguish –
and what freedom!
A Zen master was once asked:
It is terribly hot, how shall we escape it?
Why not go, answered the master,
to the place where it is neither –
neither hot nor cold?
Where is that place?
And then the master laughed and said:
In summer we sweat and in winter we shiver.
304. Love.
How can a man learn to know himself? inquires Goethe,
and then answers:
Never by reflection but only by action.
John Burroughs doubts this.
He says:
Is not this a half-truth? –
because one can only learn his powers of action by action
and his powers of thought by thinking.
But I say that
man is always more than all his actions and
all his thoughts,
and unless that more is known no one knows himself.
That more can be known neither
by action nor by reflection
because they both belong to the periphery
and that more is eternally the center.
It can only be known through witnessing action
and thought both:
not by them but by witnessing them.
And witnessing is meditation.
305. Love.
There is no answer to man’s ultimate questions
because the questions are absurd,
and moreover there is no one to answer them.
Existence is silent and has always been so,
so do not ask
but be silent and live it and know it,
because there is no knowing except living.
The search for answers is meaningless.
A patient in a mental hospital
placed his ear to the wall of his room, listening intently.
Quiet! he whispered to an orderly and pointed
to the wall.
The attendant pressed his ear against the wall, listened, and then
said: I don’t hear anything.
No, replied the patient.
It’s awful, it’s always been this way!
306. Love.
The mind lives in a logical somnambulism,
and it feeds on arguments and words.
You cannot come out of it gradually
or logically or rationally.
Rather, take the jump,
illogical and irrational —
and the jump can be nothing else than that.
It cannot be calculated
or conceptualized or predetermined
because it is going into the unknown
and the unchartered
and the unpredictable,
and ultimately not only into the unknown
but into the unknowable also.
307. Love.
Meditation cannot be taught directly
because it is not a mechanical technique,
but a living art.
Dogo had a disciple called Soshin.
Soshin waited long with his master
to be taught the art of meditation.
He expected lessons the way a schoolboy
is taught at school,
but there no special lessons were forthcoming,
and this bewildered and disappointed the disciple.
One day he said to the master:
It is a long time since I came here