Osho on Greek Philosopher Epicurus
Born in 341 BC, Epicurus, was an ancient Greek philosopher and sage who founded Epicureanism, a highly influential school of philosophy. He was born on the Greek island of Samos to Athenian parents. He had his own school established known as “the Garden”, in Athens. Epicurus and his followers were known for eating simple meals and discussing a wide range of philosophical subjects.
Epicurus is said to have originally written over 300 works on various subjects, but the vast majority of these writings have been lost. Only three letters written by him—the letters to Pythocles, and Herodotus—and two collections of quotes—the Principal Doctrines and the Vatican Sayings—have survived intact, along with a few fragments of his other writings.
For Epicurus, the purpose of philosophy was to help people attain a happy (eudemonic), tranquil life characterized by ataraxica (peace and freedom from fear) and apnoea (the absence of pain). He advocated that people were best able to pursue philosophy by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends. He taught that the root of all human neurosis is death denial and the tendency for human beings to assume that death will be horrific and painful, which he claimed causes unnecessary anxiety, selfish self-protective behaviours, and hypocrisy. According to Epicurus, death is the end of both the body and the soul and therefore should not be feared. Epicurus taught that although the gods exist, they have no involvement in human affairs. He taught that people should behave ethically not because the gods punish or reward people for their actions, but because amoral behavior will burden them with guilt and prevent them from attaining ataraxia.
Epicureanism reached the height of its popularity during the late years of the Roman Republic. Epicurus’s teachings gradually became more widely known in the fifteenth century with the rediscovery of important texts, but his ideas did not become acceptable until the seventeenth century, when the French Catholic priest Pierre Gassendi revived a modified version of them, which was promoted by other writers, including Robert Boyle. His influence grew considerably during and after the Enlightenment, profoundly impacting the ideas of major thinkers, including John Locke, Jeremy Bentham, and Karl Marx.
Osho, when he talks about Epicurus, says, “I feel deep affinity with a man who was born two thousand years ago in Greece. His name was Epicurus. Nobody thinks of him as religious. People think that he was the most atheistic man ever born, the most materialistic ever born; he was just the opposite of the religious man. But that is not my understanding. Epicurus was a naturally religious man. Remember the words ‘naturally religious’; religion happens to him. That’s why people overlooked him, because he never sought. The proverb: Eat, drink and be merry, comes from Epicurus. And this has become the attitude of the materialist. Epicurus in fact lived one of the most austere of lives. He lived as simply as anybody has ever lived. Even a Mahavir or a Buddha were not so simple and austere as Epicurus, because their simplicity was cultivated; they had worked for it, it had been a practice.”
Osho Says….
WHY SHOULD ONE SEARCH FOR GOD?
IS NOT LIFE ENOUGH?
LIFE IS GOD! GOD IS LIFE! those two words are synonymous, synonyms. Forget about God! Search for life — it is the same search. Using the word ‘God’ does not change anything. But I know why the question has arisen. The question has arisen because the priests have been telling you that life and God are not only separate but opposite. They have been telling you that if you want to search and seek God, you will have to renounce life — hence the question. They have been telling you that God is very angry at you because you are living, God is very angry at you because you are loving, God is very angry at you that you are happy here on this earth. Be sad! be miserable! and pray and ask for the other world. Feel yourself a stranger here; feel as if you have been thrown into a prison. This is a kind of punishment, this life. That’s what your priests have been telling you down the ages. They have created the idea, a very false idea and a very irreligious idea, that God and life are not only separate but antagonistic. If you search for life, you will be against God. If you want to search for God, you have to be against life. Now this is utter stupidity!
God is life, God is the very centre of life. Life is the circumference of God’s centre. Life is the cyclone and God is the centre of the cyclone. Searching for God you will come to know the deepest meaning of life. Searching for life you will start falling into God unawares. If you go deep into life, you will find God. If you go deep into God, you will find life abundant. But the religious people have destroyed a beautiful word — -‘God’ is a beautiful word, but it has been used by wrong people. It has become associated with wrong meanings. When I use the word ‘God’, I mean the innermost core of life — not that you have to renounce life, but that you have to love life, that you have to dive deep into life. Why do I use the word ‘God’? Why can’t drop it and simply use ‘life’? The problem is that with life you have the idea that life finishes in the mundane — the market, the money, the power, the prestige, the politics, the family, and the rut and the routine. You think this is life. This is just the very periphery of life. You are standing in the porch and you think this is the palace. It is part of the palace, but it is just the entrance. There are great treasures in the palace. That’s why I don’t use just the word ‘life’, because that will give you again a wrong notion. So I have to go on using both the words: life and God — and go on insisting that they are synonyms. Search for the centre of life and you will be searching for God.
Jesus has said: Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, then all else shall be added unto you. Life comes on its own — all else shall be added unto you. If you seek the centre, then the periphery follows, the circumference follows. When you are standing at the centre, the whole life is available to you. But it is not so if you are standing on the circumference. You may not be even aware of the centre. From the centre, the circumference remains available; but from the circumference you may not even become alert, you may not be even conscious that there is a centre also.
I have heard a beautiful story:
Once Haroun-Al Rashid, the Caliph of Baghdad, was celebrating a royal occasion. He ordered a grand display of all manner of jewellery and artwork for the occasion, and invited not only courtiers and nobles but many commoners also. At the height of the celebrations, the Sultan developed a magnanimous mood and all of a sudden he ordered every person present to touch any article they liked, and that article, no matter how precious, would belong to that person. No sooner was the royal command given than a rush was made to possess the costliest thing within reach.
A beautiful slave girl, remaining composed and serene by the side of the throne asked the Sultan to reaffirm his command. On receiving affirmation, the slave girl immediately touched the Caliph himself on the arm saying, “Why should I run after those things when the master of them all is here?”
The Sultan, in admiration of the insight shown by the girl, complimented her and said, “Now that you possess me, the whole of my kingdom is yours.”
Life is the circumference: God is the centre. If you touch God, all is yours; if you have arrived at the centre, then the whole belongs to you.
You ask: WHY SHOULD ONE SEARCH FOR GOD? IS NOT LIFE ENOUGH?
You will know life only when you have touched God. By being divine, life will be revealed to you in all its dimensions. It has multi-facets to it, it is multi-dimensional. Just eating, drinking and merrying is not all. And I am not against it, remember! It is perfectly good as it is. It is beautiful as it is, but it is not all. I am a spiritual hedonist. I am a synthesis of Buddha and Epicurus. Nobody has tried that yet. There have been people who are absolutely concerned with eating, drinking and merrying, and they don’t bother a bit about God and all that nonsense. There are people who are absolutely concerned with God and don’t bother about eating, drinking and merrying and all that nonsense. I love both. I am totally in love with both. And I don’t see any contradiction between the two. Eating, drinking, merrying, is the circumference. It is good! God IS there too, but very dilute. When you start moving towards the centre, God becomes more concentrated.
When you drink, you attain to a forgetfulness which is momentary. When you drink out of God, you attain to a forgetfulness which is eternal. When you fall in love with somebody’s body, it is going to be a very temporary affair. When you fall in love with somebody’s spirit, it is going to be an eternal phenomenon. Loving the body is good, but nothing compared with the love of the soul. Loving the visible is good, but don’t get caught there — there is more to it. Hiding behind it is the invisible. Eating is joyful, but when you start eating consciousness… that is what meditation is. When you start nourishing consciousness, then you know what real eating is. That’s what Jesus said to his disciples when he was departing: Eat me, drink me — -let me be your food. Each disciple has to become a cannibal because he has to eat the Master. And each Master is already a skilled cannibal — he goes on eating his disciples.
There are things on the periphery, and there are things at the centre. The circumference cannot exist without the centre and the centre cannot exist without the circumference. That’s why I say they both are together, they are part of each other. Epicurus lives on the circumference. Buddha lives at the centre. I live together in both the spaces. And that is my message to you: Be available to the circumference as much as to the centre; and go on moving in and out. Fall in love and meditate! Be in the body and be the soul! Be the visible and be the invisible! And you will be the richest sannyasins that have ever existed on this earth.
Epicurus’ followers were rich — they knew how to eat and drink and be merry; but they were a little poor in the sense that they didn’t know how to meditate. They knew how to love, how to relate, but they were not aware at all that there exists something like meditation. And they were beautiful people! Their dance was something of the eternal, but they were not awake of the eternal. Their joy was a reflection of something very deep, but they were not aware of the depth. They lived on the waves — -although the waves were living on the ocean, in the ocean, but they lived on the waves. They sailed in small boats, and they were happy with the sun and the sea, and their joy was great, and I am ALL for it — but there are deeper treasures also. There are pearls which can only be found by diving. Buddha’s followers dived deep into the sea and forgot all about the sun and the waves and the joy and surfing — they forgot all about that. They were rich; they attained to the centre — but they were poor also.
My own approach is that there is no need to choose — be choicelessly available to all. Sometimes it is good to be on the waves, in the sun, and sometimes it is good to go to the depth, to the pacific depth of life, to those dark silences where the sun has never penetrated.
To be available to both the world and God, life and God, is freedom. To me, the Epicureans are not free because they cannot go into the depth; and Buddhists are not free either because they cannot go back to the surface. Their freedom has limitations. I give you absolute freedom without any limitations; I make available to you all that God has made available to you. You are the most courageous experiment on the earth hitherto! It needs guts to be available to these two places together — it needs guts to be in love and still be in meditation, to meditate and yet to love. It is very easy, comfortable, to be in love and forget about meditation; it is simple, it has no complexity in it — because when you love, you forget yourself, you remember the other, you become other-oriented. It is a simple process to forget yourself and to become other-oriented. To love and to meditate is difficult, complex, because to meditate means to forget the other and become self-oriented. Now you will be moving between polarities — you will have to become a swinger. But out of complexity is richness.
Source:
Listen to the complete Audio Discourse at link below…
Discourse Series: Walk Without Feet, Fly Without Wings and Think Without Mind – Chapter #9
Chapter title: This Very Ancientmost New Commune
9 January 1978 am in Buddha Hall
References:
Osho has spoken on famous writers and philosophers like Albert Camus, Aristotle, Berkeley, Byron, Bukharin, Confucius, Descartes, Feuerbach, Fyodor Dostoevsky, D.H. Lawrence, H.G. Wells, Hegel, Huxley, John Milton, Kahlil Gibran, Kalidas, Kant, Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain, Nietzsche, Rabindranath Tagore, Schiller, Shakespeare, Socrates, Voltaire, Wittgenstein and many more in His discourses. Some of these can be referred to in the following books/discourses:
- Come Come Yet Again Come
- Beyond Psychology
- The Dhammapada: the way of the Buddha Vol.1,3,7,9,10,12
- The Transmission of The Lamp
- I am That
- The Perfect Master
- The Golden Future
- Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind
- The Invitation
- The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here
- The Last Testament, Vol 5
- God is Dead, Now Zen is the Only Living Truth
- Zen: The Path of Paradox, Vol 3
