posted December 11, 2007 08:37 PM         

When you really know something, you are not a fanatic at all. A man of knowing,
one who has come to know even glimpses of God. glimpses of his being, becomes
very, very soft, sensitive, fragile. He is not fanatic. He becomes feminine. He is not
aggressive. He becomes deeply compassionate. And, by knowing, he becomes
very understanding of others. He can understand even the diametrically opposite
standpoint.
I have heard about a Hasid rabbi.
He was saying, 'Life is like a river.
A disciple asked, 'Why?'
The Rabbi said, 'How can I know? Am I a philosopher?'
Another day the rabbi was saying, 'Life is like a river.'
Another disciple asked, 'Why?'
And the rabbi said, 'Right you are. Why should it be?'
This is tremendous understanding. No fanaticism. A man of knowing attains to a
sense of humour. Let this always be remembered. If you see someone who has no
sense of humour, know well that that man has not known at all. If you come
across a serious man, then you can be certain that he is a pretender. Knowing
brings sincerity but all seriousness disappears. Knowing brings a playfulness;
knowing brings a sense of humour. The sense of humour is a must.
If you find a saint who has no sense of humour, then he is not a saint at all.
Impossible. His very seriousness says that he has not achieved. Once you have
some inner experiences of your own you become very playful, you become very
innocent, childlike.
The man of knowledge is very serious. The man of knowledge always carries a
serious, gloomy atmosphere around him. Not only does he carry a serious
atmosphere, he makes anybody he comes into contact with, serious. He forces
seriousness on them. In fact, deep down, he is worried that he does not know
anything. He cannot relax. His seriousness is a tension. He is anguished. He knows
that he knows only for its name's sake, he knows that his knowledge is all fake --
so he cannot laugh at it.
Now listen to it.
The rabbi said, 'Life is like a river
And a disciple asked, 'Why?'
And the rabbi said, 'How can I know? Am I a philosopher?'
And another day the rabbi said again, 'Life is like a river.'
Another disciple asked, 'Why?'
And the rabbi said, 'Right you are. Why should it be?'
You see the non-seriousness? You see the tremendous sense of humour?
Hasidism has created a few of the greatest saints of the world. And my respect
towards them is immense because they are not serious people. They can joke and
they can laugh -- and they can laugh not only at others, they can laugh at
themselves. That's the beauty. If you go on collecting knowledge, you can have a
great amount of knowledge but it is not going to be of any help when the need
arises. You can go on throwing it around and showing and exhibiting it, but
whenever the need arises and the house is on fire you will suddenly see you have
forgotten all that you knew -- because you never knew in the first place. It was
just in your memory.

posted December 16, 2007 01:11 AM         

It happened that Moses was passing and he came across a man who was praying. But he was doing such an absurd prayer (not only absurd, but insulting to God) that Moses stopped. It was absolutely unlawful. It is better not to pray than to pray in such a way, because the man was saying things which are impossible to believe. The man was saying, "Let me come close to you my God. my Lord, and I promise that I will clean your body when it is dirty. Even if lice are there, I will take them away.... And I am a good shoe-maker, I will make you perfect shoes. You are moving in such ancient shoes -- dirty, gone completely dirty.... And nobody looks after you, my Lord. I will look after you. When you are ill, I will serve and give you medicine. And I am a good cook also!"
This type of prayer he was doing! So Moses said, "Stop! Stop your nonsense! What are you saying? To whom are. you talking -- to God? And He has lice on His body? And His clothes are dirty and you will clean them? And nobody is there to look after Him, and you will be His cook? From whom have you learned this prayer?"
The man said, "I have not learned it from anywhere. I am a very poor and uneducated man, and I don't know how to pray. I have made it up myself and these are the things that I know. Lice trouble me very much, so He must be in trouble. And sometimes the food is not good -- my wife is not a good cook -- and my stomach aches. He must be also suffering. This is just my own experience that has become my prayer. But if you know the right prayer, you teach me."
So Moses taught him the right prayer. The man bowed down to Moses, thanked him, tears of deep gratitude flowing, and he went away. Moses was very happy. He thought that he had done a good deed. He looked at the sky to see what God thought about it.
And God was very angry! He said, "I have sent you there to bring people closer to me, but you have thrown away one of my greatest lovers. Now he will be doing the right prayer, but it won't be a prayer at all -- because prayer has nothing to do with the law. It is LOVE. Love is a law unto itself; it needs no other law."

posted December 17, 2007 12:00 AM         

A man died. He had seventeen camels and three sons and he left a will in which, when it was opened and read, it was said that one half of the camels should go to the first son, one third to the second and one ninth to the third.
The sons were nonplussed -- what to do? Seventeen camels: one half is to go to the first son -- is one to cut one camel in two? And that too won't solve much because then one third has to go to the second. That too won't solve much: one ninth has to go to the third. Almost all the camels would be killed.
Of course, they went to the man of the town who was most knowledgeable: the Mulla -- the pundit, the scholar, the mathematician. He thought hard, he tried hard, but he couldn't find any solution because mathematics is mathematics. He said, "I have never divided camels in my life, this whole thing seems to be foolish. But you will have to cut them. If the will is to be followed exactly then the camels have to be cut, they have to be divided."
The sons were not ready to cut the camels. So what to do? Then somebody suggested, "It is better that you go to someone who knows something about camels, not about mathematics." So they went to the sheikh of the town who was
an old man, uneducated but wise through experience. They told him their problem.
The old man laughed. He said, "Don't be worried. It is simple." He loaned one of his own camels to them -- now there were eighteen camels -- and then he divided. Nine camels were given to the first and he was satisfied, perfectly satisfied. Six camels were given to the second, one third; he was also perfectly satisfied. And two camels were given to the third, one ninth; he was also satisfied. One camel was left. That was loaned. He took his camel back and said, "You can go."

posted December 17, 2007 12:13 AM         

There is a story I would like to tell you about a Sufi mystic, Sheikh Farid. He was going towards the river one day to take his morning bath. A seeker followed him and asked him, "Please, just wait for one minute. You look so filled with the divine, but I don't even feel a desire for it. You look so mad and just watching you I have come to feel that there must be something in it. You are so happy and blissful and I am so miserable, but even the desire to seek the divine is not there. So what to do? How to create the desire? "
Farid looked at the man and said, "You come with me. I am going to take my morning bath. You also take a bath with me in the river and maybe, right while
you are taking a bath, the answer can be given. Otherwise we will see after the bath. You come with me."
The man became a little puzzled. This Sheikh Farid looked a little mad: while taking a bath how was he going to answer? But nobody knows the ways of the mystics, so the man followed.
They both went into the river and when the man was taking a dip, Farid jumped on him and pressed him down in the river. The man started feeling restless. What type of answer was this? At first he thought Farid was joking, but then it became dangerous. He was not going to leave him! He struggled hard.
Farid was a very heavy, strong man and the seeker was very thin -- as seekers are. But when your life is at stake.... Even that thin-looking man threw Farid off, jumped on him and said, "Are you a murderer? What are you doing? I am a poor man. I have just come to ask you how the desire can arise in one's heart to seek the divine and you were going to kill me!"
Farid said, "Wait. A few questions first. When I was pressing you down in the river and you were suffocating, how many thoughts were in your mind?"
The man said, "How many? Only one thought -- how to get back to the air to take a breath."
Farid asked, "How long did that one thought stay?"
The man said, "That, too, did not stay long because my life was at stake. You can afford thinking when nothing is at stake. Life was in danger -- even that thought disappeared. Then to come out of the river was not a thought; it was my whole being."
Farid said, "You have understood. This is the answer. If you are feeling suffocated in this world, pressed from all sides, and if you feel nothing is going to happen in this world except death, then the desire to seek truth or God, or whatsoever you name it, will arise. And that, too, will not last long. By and by that desire is no more a desire, it becomes your being. The very thirst becomes your being.
"I have shown you the path," said Farid. "Now you can go."
Just try to understand the whole situation in the world. If it is already destroying you, jump out of it. The real question is not how to seek God; the real question is how to understand that where you are thinking life is, there is no life but only death.

posted December 17, 2007 09:21 PM         

quote:

---

Zarasthura: Do not build home on bridges

One of the great emperors of India, Akbar, had a great dream which remained unfulfilled. But it is
good to have great dreams, even if they remain unfulfilled. In fact, only small dreams can be fulfilled;
the greater the dream, the lesser is the possibility of its fulfillment.
He wanted to create a new capital for India, the most beautiful city in the world, unique in every
manner. The whole city was to be a piece of art; not just one palace, but a whole city of palaces.
He started working on it when he was very young. Thousands of workers, architects, stonecutters,
continued to work for fifty years to make the city.
It is still there, incomplete; it’s name is Fateh-pur Sikri. It is a ghost city – nobody has ever lived there
because it was never complete. Akbar died and his successors thought it too costly a dream. Akbar
almost emptied his whole treasury and they were not interested.
You enter the city through a bridge which passes over a beautiful river, and Akbar wanted some
beautiful sentence welcoming people who would be entering the city. There was only one entrance.
He asked his people to look into books, into scriptures of all the religions and finally they found in
Zarathustra the sentence:” Man is only a bridge; one should not make his home on it; it is something
to be passed over”. In Fateh-pur Sikri, this is the first sentence that welcomes you.

-- Osho talks

---

My comments on Zarasthura:

Man is not Happy
Man is happiness
Man is not Wise
Man is wisdom
Man is not confused
Man is confusion
Man is not stressed
Man is process of stress
Man is not disturbed
Man is disturbance

bravo bravo...Man is also movement of conscious energy. Focus your senses in a positive direction and transcend the notion of man and become a superman. Lovely. You were a worm before and now you are a man. What's next? You go on evolving in to newer beings. If you chose negative experience you go back down the chain of life you came.

God is not outthere, he is there herenow with you. In you. Waiting for you to return to him. Trying to get the best in you. Experimenting in you. Witnessing you. Motivating you silently. Guiding you. Providing the necessary grace to you.