Birthday of Ancient Indian Saint Valmiki

October 31^st will be celebrated as Valmiki Jayanti in India to commemorate the birth of the ancient poet and philosopher Valmiki. Believed to have lived in the 5^th century, Valmiki is revered as Adi Kavi (the first poet). He is credited for creating the epic Sanskrit poem Ramayana (story of the life of Lord Rama). Comprising 480,002 words, the Ramayana is one of the longest poems ever composed and is four times the size of the Iliad. Osho has spoken on Saint Valmiki in His discourses.

Osho says a sinner can reach the truth more easily than a scholar, because a sinner feels guilty deep down; he repents in his unconscious. He wants to undo the wrongs to bring balance in his life. Scholars on the other hand have theories and philosophies; they are egoistic. Often a sinner has taken the jump in a moment and become a saint. It happened to Valmiki; he was a robber and a murderer, and in a single moment the transformation happened. It has never happened that a scholar in a single moment took a jump, exploded, was broken from the past and became totally new.

If you feel you are a moralist, a puritan; if you think you are a knower, you will create a subtle ego. Remember – there is no sin except the ego, so don’t accumulate it. And ego is accumulated through false things, because real things shatter it. Let this be the criterion to judge whether what you are doing is good or wrong – judge it by the ego. If ego is strengthened, then it is wrong: drop it immediately! Do only that which doesn’t strengthen your ego, and sooner or later you will become enlightened, because when the ego is not, if even for a single moment it leaves you — suddenly the eyes open and you have seen it. Once seen, it is never forgotten. Once glimpsed, it becomes such a powerful magnet in your life that it goes on drawing you nearer and nearer to the center of the world. Sooner or later you will be merged into it.

Watch… the basic thing to be remembered is whether you have an appetite. If you don’t have, why bother? It is not for you. Let these people talk about God; it is not for you. You don’t go to a musical concert if you don’t have an ear for music, and you don’t get bothered about it. You don’t go to listen to some musician, you don’t go to see a dancer, you don’t go to visit an art gallery to look at paintings if you don’t have any sense, artistic sense; you don’t go there. But this is one of the problems about religion: people who don’t have any sense of religiousness, they also become greedy about religion. And now he is getting old, and death is approaching. Now he wants to achieve something which he can carry beyond death. He is simply afraid. He has not lived his life — and unless you have lived your life, you cannot move into religion.

Only one who lives his life truly, one day comes to the point where a new desire for life beyond arises. See the difference between the two. You can be afraid of death; then your desire will be false. If you have lived life and loved life, and loved it so much that you would now like to know the unknown life also — it is not out of fear of death, it is out of love for life — then, you will recognize immediately whenever you come across an enlightened person. It is impossible to miss. You will recognize immediately. This recognition needs no knowledge. It will simply happen. How do you recognize when a beautiful woman passes by? Have you any criterion? But if you have desire, suddenly you recognize that the woman is beautiful. If somebody asks you and tries to force you to confess to what exactly beauty is, you will be in trouble. You will not be able to define. Nobody has yet been able to define. Centuries and centuries of philosophers have been working on it, trying to define what beauty is, and ultimately they decide that it is indefinable. But still you feel beauty.

If you talk to a small child whose desire has not yet ripened, and you say, “This woman is beautiful,” he will look at you surprised, shrug his shoulders, and go on his way — “Gone mad. All women are alike.” For a small child, it makes no difference. He cannot see why one woman should be thought beautiful and another not. In fact, he knows only one woman who is beautiful: she is his mother — and that too, for some other reasons, not for beauty. She is his nourishment, his life, so she is beautiful. But one day when his desire arises and his love ripens, he will start looking with different eyes. Then all women are not alike. Then certainly there are women who are beautiful; then certainly there are men who are tremendously appealing and magnetic. But one day again, when one becomes very alert, understanding, again all men and women are alike. Then again beauty or ugliness don’t matter. Then again duality is transcended.

When you come across an enlightened man, if you don’t have desire, nothing will happen. You will just shrug your shoulders — “Why are people so attracted to this man?” You can’t see anything; there is nothing. He is as ordinary as you, or maybe even more ordinary than you. You can’t see why people are mad. But if the desire is there, if the search has started, if you have lived this life rightly and deeply, then you have earned that desire for another life. Then immediately, when you come across such a one, you will start feeling. It is said, a beautiful myth about Mahavir, that people who had desire would become aware of Mahavir from a very faraway distance, twenty-four miles. The area of twenty-four miles around Mahavir was so filled with his being that people who would come into that area, if they had some desire, would be pulled by Mahavir, against themselves. They might have been going somewhere else, but they would not be able to go. They would be pulled. They would have to come; they would find this man in some unknown way. And he would be sitting under some tree or hiding in a cave, and they would find him. And there were people who would pass just in front of him and would be thinking that he was mad — not only mad, but like a criminal, standing there naked. Either he was a criminal or he was a fool, and they would beat him, they would throw him out of their town, they would force him to leave their place. And both were people: one sort of person throws him away, beats him; the other sort of person is pulled. It depends on you…

Half the battle about religion starts with you. If you have the desire, that is half the battle — and the other half is very easy. Then you have the eyes. But if you don’t have an appetite, then it is almost impossible to recognize: you are blind, you cannot see. If a blind man comes and asks, “When I come across light, how am I to recognize it?” what to say to him? How can he recognize? — he will need eyes. You always find that which you REALLY desire; it never happens otherwise. In fact, let me tell you: whatsoever you have found is that which you had desired passionately — maybe it is hell, but you desired it — and whatsoever you have not found, you have not desired passionately…You always find that which you really want to find. Whatsoever you desire happens. If it is not happening, look inside; somewhere you must be missing in your desire.

There is a beautiful story in Hindu annals about a great saint, Valmiki. He was a robber, a murderer. He has written the story of Rama, one of the most beautiful epics in the world. He became converted. His conversion happened in such a way that it is almost unbelievable. He was a great sinner, but he went to a great teacher and asked him how he could purify himself of his sins. “Chant Rama a thousand times a day,” advised the great teacher. The sinner went to a solitary mountain and chanted and chanted, but in spite of his good will, he made a mistake and chanted Mara instead of Rama.

It happens that if you chant Rama Rama Rama fast, you can get messed up; it can become Mara Mara Mara. That’s how it happened: he was chanting so fast, and he had never heard this name. It was almost an unknown language to him. He tried hard to remember, but somehow, he forgot, and for years he chanted Mara, Mara, Mara. After years of chanting he went back to the great teacher who immediately realized that the man was now pure — not only pure, he was enlightened. “Did you sing the sacred name?” the teacher asked. “Yes, great one,” the ex-sinner answered, “for ten years every single day, thousands of times I have chanted Mara, Mara, Mara.” The teacher burst into a laughter that shook the mountains. As his laughter, like a pebble in the lake, vibrated farther and wider into the cosmos, the great teacher took the ex-sinner into his arms. “Your will to good, to do good, has saved you,” he said, “even though you chanted Mara, Mara, Mara, millions of times: the name of the devil.”

Rama is the name of God; Mara is the name of the devil — but if the desire is there, the thirst is there, then everything is okay. Even the name of the devil will do. Just his intention, just his tremendous passion for God, to purify himself, for ten years, day in and day out, thousands of times he was continuously chanting Mara, Mara, Mara. Even a wrong technique will help if the desire is intense, and even a right technique will not be of much help if the desire is impotent. Remember it: if you can’t recognize enlightened people when you come across them, don’t throw the responsibility on them. Watch inside — are you ready yet? It has happened that people who were not enlightened have sometimes helped people to become enlightened. If the desire of the seeker is tremendous, then even an unenlightened Master is enough.

Source:

Listen to complete discourse at mentioned below link.

Discourse Series: The Beloved, Vol 1 Chapter #4

Chapter title: The only criterion is your thirst

24 June 1976 am in Buddha Hall

References:

Osho has spoken on Mystics like Sai Baba, Dadu, Farid, Gurdjieff, J. Krishnamurti, Kabir, Nanak, Patanjali, Rumi, Sahajo, Saraha, Socrates, Tilopa, Valmiki, Zarathustra and many more in His discourses. Some of these can be referred to in the following books/discourses:

1. Sermons in Stones
2. Come Come Yet Again Come
3. The Hidden Splendour
4. Beyond Enlightenment
5. The New Dawn
6. The Sword and The Lotus
7. The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty
8. Socrates Poisoned Again After 25 Centuries
9. Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 1
10. The Path of Love
11. The Book of Wisdom