Osho - Weekly Meditation For The Here And Now
Weekly Meditation - Week 40. Disillusionment
September 30
Disillusionment
To understand that whatever you have called love up to now was not love is one of the most meaningful insights.
When it happens, much becomes possible. People go on thinking that they love, and that becomes their greatest illusion - and the sooner they are disillusioned the better. Love is such a rare thing that it cannot be so easily available to all. It is not; it is as rare as Buddhahood, not less than that.
The insight that you do not know love is good, but it will make you sad, even give you a certain gloom. But don't be worried, because out of a dark night the morning is born. When the night is darkest the morning is closest. You will be very morose, because whatever - you were thinking was love was not, and you have lived in dreams and have been missing reality. When this insight dawns on you, you become very sad, almost dead. Don't try to escape from this state. Relax into it, let yourself be drowned in this sadness, and soon you will come out of it completely new.
The human tendency is not to allow it, to escape from it - to go to the restaurant, to the cinema hall, to find friends - anything so that you can escape from this state. But if you escape, you again miss something that was going to happen. So relax into it.
October 1
The False And The True
The first time that mind becomes meditative, love seems like a bondage. And in a way it is true, because a mind that is not meditative cannot really be in love. That love is false, illusory, more an infatuation than love.
You have nothing to compare false love to unless the real happens, so when meditation starts, the illusory love by and by dissipates, disappears. Don't be disheartened, and don't make disappointment a permanent attitude.
If somebody is a creator and meditates, all creativity will disappear for the time being. If you are a painter, suddenly you will not find yourself in it. You can continue, but by and by you will have no energy and no enthusiasm.
If you are a poet, poetry will stop. If you have been in love, that energy will simply disappear. If you try to force yourself to move into a relationship, to be your old self, that enforcement will be very dangerous. Then you are doing a contradictory thing: On one hand you are trying to go in, on the other you are trying to go out. It is as if you are driving a car, pressing the accelerator and at the same time pressing the brake. It can be a disaster, because you are doing two opposite things at the same time.
Meditation is only against false love. The false will disappear, and that's a basic condition for the real to appear. The false must go, the false must vacate you completely; only then are you available for the real. Many people think that love is against meditation, and meditation is against love-that's not true. Meditation is against false love, but is totally for true love.
October 2
Helplessness
The world is vast, and human beings are helpless. It is difficult, very difficult, but once you accept basic human suffering you will become absolutely calm.
It is easier to accept one's own misery than to accept another's. It is even possible to accept another's suffering, but the misery of a child - innocent, helpless, suffering for no reason at all, he cannot retaliate, cannot even protest or defend himself - it seems so unjust, so ugly, horrible, that it is difficult to accept.
But remember that not only is the child helpless; you are too. Once you understand your own helplessness, acceptance will follow as a shadow. What can you do? You are also helpless. I am not saying become hard like a stone. Feel, but know that you are helpless. The world is vast, and human beings are helpless. At the most we can feel compassion. And even if we do something, there is no certainty that our doing is going to help-it may cause even more misery.
So I am not saying to lose your compassion. Only lose your judgment that human suffering is wrong. And drop the idea that you have to do something about it, because once the doer comes in, the witness is lost. Compassion is good, and helplessness is good. Cry, there is nothing wrong in it. Let tears come, but allow them knowing that you are also helpless; that is why you are crying. The very idea that we can make any change is very egoistic, and the ego goes on disturbing things. So drop that ego and just watch.
October 3
Unchanging
Always remember that you are not the momentary but the eternal, not the changing but the unchanging.
In a flower there are two constituents: one that is constantly changing the body part, the form-and then, hidden behind the form, the formless, which is unchanging. Flowers come and go, but their beauty remains.
Sometimes it is manifested in a form, sometimes it dissolves back into the formless. Again there will be flowers, and beauty will assert itself. Then the flowers will fade and the beauty will move into the unmanifest.
And the same is happening with human beings, with birds, with animals, with everything. We have two dimensions: the day part when we become manifested, and the night part when we become unmanifested - but we are eternal. We have been always, and we will be always. Being is beyond time and beyond change.
In the beginning just remember it "as if:' then you will start feeling the reality of it.
October 4
Change
We want to change if there is no risk, and that's impossible. That condition that there be no risk - makes it impossible to change, because everything has to be at stake, only then is change possible.
Change cannot be partial. Either it is or it is not - it can only be total. So the decision is between to be or not to be. It is a jump, not a gradual process. If you are really fed up with the life that you have lived, if you are really fed up with your old patterns, then there is no trouble. It is easy, very easy to change if you understand that you have been living a life that was not worth much, that has not brought anything, that has never allowed you to flower.
It is not a question of worldly recognition. People may think that you have succeeded, that you have all the qualities they would like themselves, but that's not the point. Deep down you feel a stagnancy, a frozenness, a shrunkenness, as if you are already dead, as if something has closed. The flavor of life, the poetry and flow, the song has disappeared; the fragrance is there no more. You go on because you have to. What can you do? You seem almost a victim of circumstance, chance - like a puppet-not knowing what you are doing, where you are going, from where you have come, who you are.
If you really think that this has been so, then change is very easy. It is so spontaneous a phenomenon that in fact nothing is needed to be done about it; just the very understanding brings change.
Understanding is radical revolution, and there is no other revolution.
October 5
Nonattachment
I am not for renunciation. Enjoy everything that life gives, but always remain free. If times change, if things disappear, it makes no difference to you. You can live in a palace, you can live in a hut... you can live as blissfully under the sky.
The constant awareness that one should not start clinging to anything makes life blissful. One enjoys tremendously whatever is available. It is always more than one can enjoy, and it is always available. But the mind is too attached to things-we become blind to the celebration that is always available.
There is a story of a Zen monk who was a master. One night a thief entered his hut, but there was nothing there to steal. The master became very worried about what the thief would think. He had come at least four or five miles out of the town, and on such a dark night...
The monk had only one blanket that he was using - that was his clothing and bedcover and everything. He put the blanket in the corner, but the thief could not see in the dark, so the master had to tell him to take the blanket, begged him to take it as a gift saying that he should not return empty-handed. The thief was much puzzled; he felt so awkward that he simply escaped with the blanket.
The master wrote a poem saying that if he had been able, he would have given the man the moon. Sitting under the moon that night, naked, he enjoyed the moon more than ever before. Life is always available. It is always more than you can enjoy; you always have more than you can give.
October 6
Glimpses
It always starts with glimpses, and it is good that it does; a sudden opening if the sky will be too much, unbearable. One can go mad if a realization happens too suddenly.
Sometimes you can be foolish enough to go into some realization too suddenly, which can be dangerous, because it will be too much for you; you will not be able to absorb it. The question is not of realization itself, but how to digest it by and by, so that it is not an experience but becomes your being. If it is an experience it will come and go; it will remain a glimpse. No experience can remain permanent - only your being can be permanent.
And don't be greedy about inner matters. It is bad even in outward matters, and very bad in inward matters. It is not so dangerous when you are greedy about money and power and prestige. Because those things are just futile, and whether you are greedy or not does not make much difference. But greed inside, when you move on the inward path, can be very dangerous. Many people have gone almost mad. It can be too dazzling to their eyes, and they can go blind.
It is always good to come and go. Let it be a constant rhythm so that you are never out - of the world and never in the world. By and by you will realize that you transcend it. This process has to be so gradual - just as a flower opens so gradually that you cannot see when the opening really happened.