Chapter #17

one thing very significant to be remembered is that contentment does not mean satisfaction satisfaction is pseudo contentment deep down there is discontentment satisfaction is only a cover-up, it is a mind trick otherwise life would become impossible

if the wound of discontentment is continuously there one cannot live

so humanity has created a cover-up for it that is satisfaction it is a very thin layer hence scratch a little bit and the discontent starts oozing out like pus

contentment is a totally different phenomenon it is the healing of the wound contentment comes through understanding the nature of desire the nature of desire is unfulfillable there is no way to fulfil it whatsoever you do, the distance between you and your desire will remain the same the desire is just like the horizon it looks just a few miles ahead one feels that one can reach it, it is not so far away but as you move towards it, it goes on moving away the distance remains constantly the same because the horizon in fact does not exist there is no place where the earth and the sky meet it is an optical illusion – so is desire

if you desire something and you feel the moment you attain it there will be joy you can go on hoping till you attain it the moment you attain it you will see there is no joy in it the desire and the hope has moved again farther away the same illusion, the same hope

and one goes on living one’s whole life running after shadows

to understand the nature of desire that it is basically unfulfillable is the foundation of contentment the moment you see that the desire is unfulfillable desiring as such disappears and when there is no desire in the heart then one is contented and certainly contentment is the greatest song there cannot be any song superior to contentment of course it is not a song which can be expressed through words it is a song that is only felt it is just like the heartbeat: one feels it it is so deep that it is beyond words, immeasurable but it certainly is a song, it has its own music but totally different from all the music that you have heard before we have a special word for it in the east we call it anahat nad

the Sound of one hand Clapping

you cannot make a sound by one hand clapping but that’s actually what it is because there is no other, only you are there

when all the desires have disappeared all others have also disappeared the others were nothing but your objects of desire when the desire is no more the others are no more the moment desire disappears the whole world disappears then there is absolute silence, absolute aloneness but it Is not loneliness – you are with yourself you are not lonely in fact for the first time you enjoy your very being it is silence but not the silence of a cemetery it is very alive, it is full of joy it is the silence of the opening of a flower there is fragrance in it, life in it, colour in it it is a dance, it is a celebration

the only glory possible in life is that of absolute contentment to desire is to remain a beggar even though one may be an emperor but because he desires he remains a beggar

there is a famous story of a sufi mystic, farid the great moghul emperor, akbar used to come to visit him he lived in a small village near delhi the people of the village once asked farid the emperor comes to see you

and we don’t even have a small school for our children in the village you can just mention it and we can have the school do us a favour, you can tell the emperor it is impossible that he will not fulfil what you ask for

farid said i will do it but because i have to ask then i will have to go to the emperor he went to see the emperor one day in the early morning he was immediately received, welcomed, taken in the emperor was praying, his morning prayer mohammedans pray five times a day he was doing his first prayer, farid stood behind listened to what the emperor was praying when he had finished the prayer the emperor raised his hands towards the sky and asked god, give me more power more wealth, greater kingdom listening to this farid laughed, turned back at his laughter, his turning back, the emperor looked he rushed over, fell at his feet and said why have you come? and why you are going back and why did you laugh? farid said, i used to think that you are an emperor but you are not, you are still a beggar and i am going back because i had come to ask for a school for my village children but to ask from a beggar does not look right so cannot ask

because to make a school in the village you will become a little bit poorer you are already poor and moreover if i have to ask then why should i ask you i can ask god himself why have a mediator between?

desire makes everybody a beggar hence there can be no glory when one is full of desires the moment desires are dropped and the contentment settles in the innermost core of your being there is immense glory it is the release of the hidden splendour

the experience of contentment is the only real spiritual experience

a contented heart is the right climate for meditation to grow hence meditation cannot be a desire you cannot desire it when all the desires are dropped only then meditation can start growing in you meditation is not a means to any end it is the end itself, the end unto itself

hence the people who try to meditate for some purpose are missing the whole point of it

meditation is non-purposive even to desire god will hinder your meditation hence the religions that have really developed meditation have dropped the idea of god jainism and buddhism, two religions which have developed the art of meditation to its ultimate peak both have dropped the idea of god not that god does not exist but they have dropped the idea for the simple reason that if god is talked about then naturally one will desire to attain to god’s experience

buddha dropped all ideas about heaven, paradise, moksha for the simple reason that if these ideas are there then you are giving objects for people’s desire and meditation cannot grow in the climate of desiring its basic requirement is that there should be no desire in you the moment there is no desire mind can be easily put aside because mind is a mechanism

to fulfil your desires when you don!t want to go anywhere you can put your car aside, there is no point you can give it to a friend, you can dispose of it its whole function is if you want to go somewhere mind’s function is to help you fulfil your desires

mind is a mechanism, a device so that you can attain whatsoever you dream, desire, expect, hope and meditation is a state of no-mind you can put the mind aside only when there is nothing to be desired when you don’t want to go anywhere when you are utterly happy, now, here this very moment then meditation grows spontaneously, effortlessly then your silence goes on deepening and as your silence deepens you become more and more existential less and less an individual, separate from existence more and more universal, one with the existence and that oneness is really what religions have called god it is a name for an experience

god is not a person but the ultimate experience of oneness with the whole

knowledge is not wisdom knowledge is acquired so that you can fulfil your desires lord acton is right when he says knowledge is power

certainly knowledge gives you power power to attain your ambitions power to achieve your desires power to be somebody important but knowledge is all borrowed from the schools to the universities what goes on happening in the name of education is nothing but stuffing people’s minds with borrowed knowledge the whole educational system exists as an agent of the past in the service of the vested interests so that you can become useful so that you can be productive so that you can be reduced into a commodity society uses knowledge to be powerful over you you use knowledge to be powerful over others

wisdom is a totally different dimension it has nothing to do with power it has nothing to do with achieving any ambition wisdom happens only when one has dropped the whole stupidity of ambitiousness it is stupidity

because even if you become alexander the great so what? – he died in utter frustration he conquered almost the whole world at least the world that was known in his days and he was only thirty-three when he died he did a tremendous job of conquering the world he spent his whole energy, his whole life in conquering the world

and at the age of thirty-three he died the day he died he wanted to live one day more just one day more to see his mother because that was the distance he had to travel twenty-four hours were needed for him to reach back to his capital he was going back from india and he had promised his mother that when he had conquered the world he would come and offer the whole world to her only twenty-four hours he wanted he asked his physicians they said we cannot do anything you cannot live more than a few minutes he said i am ready to give everything you can take half of my kingdom they said even if you give your whole kingdom we cannot save you – it is impossible

at that moment he understood the futility of his whole effort

with his whole kingdom he could not even buy twenty-four hours he had wasted thirty-three years for conquering something which was not even capable of purchasing twenty-four hours thirty-three years wasted, his life spent in attaining something which is absolutely meaningless he died in utter frustration all ambitious people die in frustration they live in frustration, they die in frustration

contentment is simply the understanding that the ambitious attitude towards life is unintelligent and the moment you see the unintelligence of it desires simply evaporate from your life then you don’t want to be somebody then you are perfectly happy in being nobody and in that state wisdom blossoms

wisdom does not come from the outside it is the explosion of your inner consciousness it is not knowledge, it is an insight into the innermost mysteries of existence and that insight makes you immensely ecstatic because that insight gives you an authentic glimpse of your own immortality you have been here before birth and you will be here after death birth and death are small episodes in the eternity of life and to know life eternal is to know god, another name for god

it is possible to be contented right now it need not wait for tomorrow desire has to wait for tomorrow because it will take time to arrange, manage, reach

desire needs future

without future desire has no way to exist in fact it is desire that creates future otherwise there is no future time consists only of now – the past is no more the future is not yet – they are both non-existential only the now is existential then what is past? past is only memory and what is future~ future is only desire they are dimensions of your mind not dimensions of time past is the dust that the mind has gathered and future is the hopes, the desires, the ambitions that the mind wants to reach some goals

contentment is possible in fact, is only possible right now you cannot postpone it if you postpone it you have turned it into a desire if somebody says i would like to be contented he is talking nonsense because he is talking in terms of desire, and desire is just the polar opposite of contentment

one has simply to see that desire takes you into the non-existential future contentment is to live this moment in its totality, passionately without diverting your mind

anywhere else from the moment if one can live each moment with totality, intensity then contentment follows you like a shadow it is always with you and to be contented is the whole of religion one need not be a christian nor a hindu or a mohammedan one needs only to be contented to be religious

only a contented heart can love that’s why you see in the world everybody wants to love and to be loved but it does not happen, it cannot happen because the basic requirement is missing

without a background of deep contentment one is not capable of sharing love love is the fragrance of the flower of contentment and if the flower is not there, you can pretend at the most you can deceive others and yourself but it is not going to fulfil pretensions can’t help, one remains frustrated

everybody is trying to give love but in fact what people give to each other is only misery, not love lovers become imprisonments to each other they don’t become freedom

and love makes the other absolutely free but because love is not there the pseudo love simply tries to possess the other and the moment you possess the other you are insulting the other because you are trying to make a property of the other this is the greatest insult hence lovers continuously quarrel for the simple reason that both are trying to possess each other both are desiring the other both are trying to use the other as a means for their own ends this is not love this is something very unloving it may be even hatred masquerading as love it is violence – but the label is beautiful but labels are labels when you taste the content then it is poison so the honeymoon is over the moment you have gone beyond the label when you have opened the container the honeymoon is over and the misery begins

all so-called love creates suffering in the world for the simple reason that we have not prepared the ground for it in my observation only a contented heart can share love

because he has so much joy to share he is not a beggar so he is not asking give me love he simply gives because he has so much he is like a raincloud so full of rainwater he has to shower he does not make the other feel obliged to him either in fact he feels obliged that the other accepted his gift he could have rejected

when love comes out of your abundance not out of an empty heart which wants somehow to stuff itself with something when it comes as an overflowing joy then only it gives freedom then only it creates a paradise around itself wherever a man of contentment is, there is paradise

it has been said in the past that the contented people enter paradise i say that is not right the contented people don’t enter paradise the contented people, wherever they are create paradise you can throw them in hell and they will create paradise there

one cannot desire truth, god, liberation, nirvana if you desire you have not understood at all desire is the barrier not the bridge desire is the wall that prevents you from the ultimate union with existence the moment you drop desiring immediately, instantly a melting, a merging starts happening it is desire that creates a boundary around you it makes a fence around you and keeps you separate

it makes you like an island and to be separated from existence is the only misery, the only anguish because we are waves in the ocean of the infinite we are not separate the very idea of being separate is false but we can live in that false idea and to live in the false is to suffer to live in the real is to celebrate

we have to disappear into the ocean like a dewdrop slipping from the lotus leaf only a contented heart is capable of disappearing into the ocean of the whole but one does not lose anything, one gains of course one disappears as a dewdrop but one becomes the ocean it is not a loss, it is immense gain of course before you have entered the ocean there is fear that you will be losing your identity even the dewdrops must be trembling, afraid trying to cling to the lotus leaf and that is the fear of all human beings we are clinging to our egos e are clinging to our boundaries we are clinging even to our chains because we think they are our identity our name, our form, they are all invented things we come in the world without any name and no form is ours

just watch the whole process of a child growing in the mother’s womb from the first moment to the time when the body is taken to the grave how many forms come and go no form is yours, millions of forms

the moment your mother became pregnant if that small, atomic cell is shown to you or a picture of it is shown to you you will not believe that this is me but this was your form one day in fact it will be so small you will not be able to see it with your bare eyes you will need a microscope you will need something to magnify it only then will you be able to see it and you will not recognise your face there will be no face, no hands, no legs nothing at all – this is you? you cannot believe

a woman was showing her small child the album of their family and they came across a picture of a beautiful young man with long hair, black hair and the child was interested and he asked who is this, mum? and the mother said this is your papa and the child said this is my papa?

then who is this guy who lives with us? i was always thinking that he is our papa

forms go on changing continuously you don’t have any form you don’t bring any name with you to understand it, to see it, to realise it helps immensely then it is not very difficult to allow oneself the quantum leap from the individual to the whole to me, to become one with the whole is the only holiness there is

contentment is a beautiful flower of immense beauty, of great fragrance being with a contented man you can immediately feel a cool breeze, a fresh breeze if you have eyes you can even see if you have ears you can hear

the Sound of one hand Clapping

jesus says again and again to his disciples if you have eyes, see; if you have ears, hear

he is not talking to blind people or deaf people he is talking to people just like you who have eyes but their eyes are so clouded they cannot see their noses are so blocked they cannot smell their ears at the most can hear but cannot listen

a psychotherapist was talking to a child whose mother had brought the child to the psychotherapist and the mother talked and talked for one hour the child was sitting there as if utterly deaf finally the psychotherapist asked the child do you have any trouble with hearing? the child said no, i have no trouble with hearing but i have trouble with listening

and the child is making an immensely beautiful distinction between hearing and listening and the psychotherapist could understand the mother is talking too much anybody would have difficulty in listening hearing is okay, hearing is a physiological thing just your eardrums have to be right and you will hear but listening means not only your ears are functioning but your ears are also joined with your attention you are paying attention you are fully aware of what is happening

when awareness joins with your ears then listening happens when awareness joins with your eyes then seeing happens when awareness joins with your hands then touching happens otherwise one can touch mechanically

contentment is something invisible the person who has it experiences it but a few others who are sensitive they can also feel it the very presence of it is almost tangible to the alert, to the attentive that’s how for thousands of years disciples have been finding the masters there is no other way, no other criterion it is not a question of logic not a question of intellect it is a question of feeling when the disciple feels the contentment when the disciple can smell the fragrance of contentment then he knows that he has come home that this is the place where he belongs that this is the man to be with that this is the light i have been seeking and searching no visible criterion is possible it is certainly invisible, a transmission beyond words

but if awareness is there then it is not something you have to imagine it is very tangible, you can touch it you can hold it in your hand your heart starts beating with a new rhythm in the east we have called it one-thousand-petalled lotus – sahasrar when one becomes really contented then in the lake of one’s consciousness a one-thousand-petalled lotus opens up that is the ultimate peak of life to die without knowing it is to have lived in vain and it is, remember, everybody’s birthright just one has to claim it it is there as a potential, it can be actualised

only a commitment, an involvement, a decisiveness to make it a realisation is needed that’s what sannyas is all about a commitment that i am going to work in every possible way i am going to put my whole energy into transforming my being into a beautiful flower and the very decisiveness and the flower starts opening

the moment your heart is totally involved with it a miracle happens something suddenly starts moving within your being a new energy which has remained dormant for long becomes dynamic

when one is contented within one becomes detached from a thousand and one things one remains in life, one does not escape from life but one lives in a totally new way in the world and yet not of the world that is detachment one is in the world but the world is not within oneself that is detachment

i am against all escapist attitudes i don’t support the idea of people escaping to the mountains, to the deserts, to the caves to the monasteries no, not at all it is because of this escapist attitude in the past that humanity has suffered much

religion should be a way of life not a way of renouncing life it should be the art of living life it should not be cowardly in fact all the religions in the past have been teaching cowardliness all their monks and nuns were nothing but hippies i mean literally they had shown their hips to the world they were real hippies, they escaped from the world

my sannyasins have to live in the world

but live in a totally new way to live in the world as a lotus flower lives in the lake the lotus flower is the symbol of sannyas the lotus flower has a tremendous quality about it it lives in the water but untouched by the water it is so velvety that the water cannot touch it even in the early morning when dewdrops gather on its leaves and on its petals it remains dry, it does not become wet those dewdrops are there but they are not touching the lotus leaf or the lotus petals that’s how a sannyasin should live utterly contented, utterly silent in the world and yet not of the world

[!info] Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)