the-diamond-sutra-04/

The first question:
Osho,
What has gone wrong? Why is it that people meet everything new rather reluctantly, and with fear, rather than with eager joy?
The new does not arise out of you, it comes from the beyond. It is not part of you. Your whole past is at stake. The new is discontinuous with you, hence the fear. You have lived in one way, you have thought in one way, you have made a comfortable life out of your beliefs. Then something new knocks on the door. Now your whole past pattern is going to be disturbed. If you allow the new to enter you will never be the same again, the new will transform you.
It is risky. One never knows where you will end with the new. The old is known, familiar; you have lived with it for long, you are acquainted with it. The new is unfamiliar. It may be the friend, it may be the enemy, who knows. And there is no way to know. The only way to know is to allow it; hence the apprehension, the fear.
And you cannot remain rejecting it either, because the old has not given you yet what you seek. The old has been promising, but the promises have not been fulfilled. The old is familiar but miserable. The new is maybe going to be uncomfortable, but there is a possibility – it may bring bliss to you. So you cannot reject it either and you cannot accept it; hence you waver, you tremble, great anguish arises in your being. It is natural, nothing has gone wrong. This is how it has always been, this is how it will always be.
Try to understand the appearance of the new. Everybody in the world wants to become new, because nobody is satisfied with the old. Nobody can ever be satisfied with the old because whatsoever it is, you have known it. Once known it has become repetitive; once known it has become boring, monotonous. You want to get rid of it. You want to explore, you want to adventure. You want to become new, and yet when the new knocks on the door you shrink back, you withdraw, you hide in the old. This is the dilemma.
How do we become new? – and everybody wants to become new. Courage is needed, and not ordinary courage; extraordinary courage is needed. And the world is full of cowards, hence people have stopped growing. How can you grow if you are a coward? With each new opportunity you shrink back, you close your eyes. How can you grow? How can you be? You only pretend to be.
And because you cannot grow you have to find substitute growths. You cannot grow but your bank balance can grow, that’s a substitute. It needs no courage, it is perfectly adjusted with your cowardliness. Your bank balance goes on growing and you start thinking that you are growing. You become more respectable. Your name and fame go on growing and you think you are growing? You are simply deceiving yourself. Your name is not you, neither is your fame you. Your bank balance is not your being. But think of the being and you start shaking, because if you want to grow there then you have to drop all cowardice.
How do we become new? We do not become new of ourselves. Newness comes from the beyond, say from God. Newness comes from existence. Mind is always old. Mind is never new, it is the accumulation of the past. Newness comes from the beyond; it is a gift from the divine. It is from the beyond and it is of the beyond.
The unknown and the unknowable, the beyond, has ingress into you. It has ingress into you because you are never sealed and set apart; you are not an island. You may have forgotten the beyond but the beyond has not forgotten you. The child may have forgotten the mother, the mother has not forgotten the child. The part may have started thinking, “I am separate,” but the whole knows that you are not separate. The whole has ingress in you. It is still in contact with you. That’s why the new goes on coming although you don’t welcome it. It comes every morning, it comes every evening. It comes in a thousand and one ways. If you have eyes to see, you will see it continuously coming to you.
Existence goes on showering on you, but you are enclosed in your past. You are almost in a kind of grave. You have become insensitive. Because of your cowardliness you have lost your sensitivity. To be sensitive means the new will be felt – and the thrill of the new, and the passion for the new and the adventure will arise and you will start moving into the unknown, not knowing where you are going.
Mind thinks it is mad. Mind thinks it is not rational to leave the old. But the divine is always the new. That’s why we cannot use past tense or future tense for God. We cannot say, “God was,” we cannot say, “God will be.” We can only use the present, “God is.” It is always fresh, virgin. And it has ingress in you.
Remember, anything new coming in your life is a message from the divine. If you accept it you are religious. If you reject it you are irreligious. Man needs just to relax a little more to accept the new, to open up a little more to let the new in. Give way to the divine entering you.
That is the whole meaning of prayer or meditation – you open up, you say yes, you say, “Come in.” You say, “I have been waiting and waiting and I am thankful that you have come.” Always receive the new with great joy. Even if sometimes the new leads you into inconvenience, still it is worth it. Even if sometimes the new leads you into some ditch, still it is worth it because only through errors one learns, and only through difficulties one grows. The new will bring difficulties. That’s why you choose the old – it does not bring any difficulties. It is a consolation, it is a shelter.
And only the new, accepted deeply and totally, can transform you. You cannot bring the new in your life; the new comes. You can either accept it or reject it. If you reject it you remain a stone, closed and dead. If you receive it you become a flower, you start opening…and in that opening is celebration.
Only the entry of the new can transform you, there is no other way of transformation. But remember, it has nothing to do with you and your efforts. But to do nothing is not to cease to act; it is to act without will or direction or impulse from your past. The search for the new cannot be an ordinary search, because it is for the new. How can you search for it? You don’t know it, you have never met it. The search for the new is going to be just an open exploration. One knows not. One has to start in a state of not-knowing, and one has to move innocently like a child, thrilled with the possibilities – and infinite are the possibilities.
You cannot do anything to create the new, because whatsoever you do will be of the old, will be from the past. But that does not mean that you have to cease to act; it is to act without will or direction or impulse from your past. Act without any will or direction or impulse from the past – and that is to act meditatively. Act spontaneously. Let the moment be decisive.
You don’t impose your decision, because the decision will be from the past and it will destroy the new. You just act in the moment like a child. Utterly abandon yourself to the moment – and you will find every day new openings, new light, new insight. And those new insights will go on changing you. One day, suddenly you will see you are each moment new. The old no more lingers, the old no more hangs around you like a cloud. You are like a dewdrop, fresh and young.
Remember, a buddha lives moment to moment. It is as if a wave rises in the ocean, a majestic wave. With great joy and dance it comes up, with hope and dreams, to touch the stars. Then the play for the moment, and then the wave disappears. It will come again, it will have another day. It will again dance and again it will be gone. So is the divine…comes, disappears, comes again, disappears. So is a buddha-consciousness. Each moment it comes, acts, responds, and is gone. Again it comes and is gone. It is atomic.
Between two moments there is a gap; in that gap buddha disappears. I say a word to you, then I disappear. Then I say another word and I am there, and I disappear again. I respond to you and then I am no more. Then the response is again there and I am no more. Those intervals, those emptinesses keep one utterly fresh, because only death can keep you absolutely alive.
You die once, after seventy years. Naturally you accumulate seventy years’ garbage. A buddha dies every moment – no garbage is accumulated, nothing is accumulated, nothing is ever possessed. That’s why Buddha said the other day that to possess marks is to be a fraud, because possession is of the past. Not to possess marks is to be a buddha.
Just think of it – each moment arising, just like a breath. You breathe in, you breathe out. You breathe in again, you breathe out again. Each breath coming in is life and each breath going out is death. You are born with each incoming breath, you die with each outgoing breath. Let each moment be a birth and a death. Then you will be new.
But this new has nothing to do with your past, your will, your direction, your impulse. It is to act spontaneously. It is not reaction but response. All that is done out of the past is old, so that one can of oneself do nothing new. To see this is to be done with the old and with the past and with yourself. That is all we can do. But it is everything, it is all. Upon the ending of the old, the new may follow, it may not. It does not matter. The very wish for the new is an old wish. Then one is utterly open. Even to ask for the new is an old wish.
A buddha is not even asking for the new. There is no desire for anything, that “It should be like this.” If there is desire you will manage it like that, you will impose yourself upon it. See life desirelessly. See life without any conditions. See life as it is – yatha bhutam – and you will be continuously renewed, rejuvenated.
That is the real meaning of resurrection. If you understand this you will be free from memory, psychological memory that is. Memory is a dead thing. Memory is not truth and cannot ever be, because truth is always alive, truth is life; memory is persistence of that which is no more. It is living in a ghost world, but it contains us, it is our prison. In fact, it is us. Memory creates the knot, the complex called “I,” the ego. And naturally this false entity called “I” is continuously afraid of death. That’s why you are afraid of the new.
This “I” is afraid, not really you. The being has no fear, but the ego has fear because the ego is very very afraid of dying. It is artificial, it is arbitrary, it is put together. It can fall apart any moment. And when the new enters there is fear. The ego is afraid, it may fall apart. Somehow it has been managing to keep itself together, to keep itself in one piece, and now something new comes – it will be a shattering thing. That’s why you don’t accept the new with joy. The ego cannot accept its own death with joy – how can it accept its own death with joy?
Unless you have understood that you are not the ego, you will not be able to receive the new. Once you have seen that the ego is your past memory and nothing else, that you are not your memory, that memory is just like a biocomputer, that it is a machine, a mechanism, utilitarian, but you are beyond it…. You are consciousness, not memory. Memory is a content in consciousness, you are consciousness itself.
For example, you see somebody walking on the road. You remember the face but you can’t remember the name. If you are the memory you should remember the name too. But you say, “I recognize the face but I don’t remember the name.” Then you start looking in your memory, you go inside your memory, you look to this side, to that side, and suddenly the name bubbles up and you say, “Yes, this is his name.” Memory is your record. You are the one who is looking into the record, you are not the memory itself.
And it happens many times that if you become too tense about remembering something it becomes difficult to remember it, because the very tension, the very strain upon your being does not allow the memory to release its information to you. You try and try to remember somebody’s name and it doesn’t come, even though you say it is just on the tip of the tongue. You know that you know, but still the name is not coming.
Now this is strange. If you are memory, then who is preventing you and how is it not coming? And who is this who says, “I know, but still it is not coming”? And then you try hard, and the harder you try the more difficult it becomes. Then, fed up with the whole thing, you go into the garden for a walk and suddenly, looking at the rosebush, it is there, it has surfaced.
Your memory is not you. You are consciousness, memory is content. But memory is the whole life-energy of the ego. Memory is of course old, and it is afraid of the new. The new may be disturbing, the new may be such that it may not be digestible. The new may bring some trouble. You will have to shift and reshift yourself. You will have to readjust yourself. That seems arduous.
To be new one needs to become disidentified with the ego. Once you are disidentified with the ego you don’t care whether it dies or lives. In fact you know that whether it lives or dies it is already dead. It is a mechanism. Use it, but don’t be used by it. The ego is continuously afraid of death because it is arbitrary. Hence the fear. It does not arise out of being, it cannot arise out of being, because being is life. How can life be afraid of death? Life knows nothing of death.
It arises out of the arbitrary, the artificial, the somehow put together, the false, the pseudo. And yet…and yet…it is just such letting-go, just that death that makes a man alive. To die in the ego is to be born into being, into the divine.
The new is a messenger from existence, the new is a message from existence. It is a gospel. Listen to the new, go with the new. I know you are afraid. In spite of your fear go with the new, and your life will become richer and richer and you will be able one day to release the imprisoned splendor.

The second question:
Osho,
What do you mean by saying that life is perfect?
I mean exactly that. Life is perfect. But I understand why the question has arisen. The question has arisen because you have some ideas about perfection and life does not fit with your ideas, hence you call it imperfect.
When I call life perfect, I don’t mean that it fits with my idea of perfection – I have none. When I call life perfect, I simply mean there is nothing else to compare it with, there is no ideal. This is all there is; it has to be perfect.
Your perfection is always comparison; my perfection is just a simple statement of fact, it is not a comparison. You compare, you say, “Yes, this is perfect, that is not perfect,” and you have a criterion of what is perfect.

I have heard about a Sufi master who was talking to a few people in the coffee house and he said an old Sufi saying: “Life is perfect, everything is perfect, everybody is perfect.”
A hunchback was listening, he stood up and he said, “Look at me! I am the proof that life is not perfect. Look at me! Is this not enough to disprove your idea that life is perfect? Look at me – how ugly I am, and in how much difficulty. I am a hunchback.”
The Sufi looked and said, “But you are the most perfect hunchback that I have ever seen.” The most perfect hunchback….

Once you start seeing life as it is, and you have no idea how it should be, everything is perfect. Even imperfection is perfect. What I mean when I say life is perfect is a simple thing: I mean don’t bring your ideals to it, otherwise you make life imperfect: because once you bring the ideal then you are creating the imperfection.
If you say man has to be seven feet tall and he is not, there is difficulty. Or if you have the idea that man has to be only four feet tall and he is not, then there is difficulty. Life simply is. Somebody is seven feet tall and somebody is four feet tall. One tree grows to the clouds, another remains small. But all is perfectly well, all is as it should be, because there is no “should” in my mind. I simply listen and see life as it is. I have no idea how it should be. That’s why I say it is as it should be, there is no other life.
The message is: drop comparing, drop judging, otherwise you will remain miserable – and just because of your judgments and comparisons. Look at life without being a judge. Who are you to judge? What do you know about life? What do you know even about yourself? Who are you to judge? Judgment comes from the idea that you know; judgment is knowledgeability.
Look at life with a state of not-knowing, through a state of not-knowing. Look at life through wonder – and suddenly all is perfect. Yes, sometimes it is cloudy, but it is perfect. And sometimes it is sunny and it is perfect. And sometimes it rains and sometimes it doesn’t rain, but it is perfect. As it is, it is a blessing. To be in tune with this blessing is to be prayerful.

The third question:
Osho,
You sometimes say about people that they have missed again or lived in vain. That sounds like there is a goal or a point which can either be missed or attained. And then again you say there is no goal, everything just is, so how can I possibly miss?
You missed again! The moment you ask how, you miss. There is a point, not to be realized but only to be recognized. And there is no “how” to it because it is already there; you have just to look, you have just to be in a silent space so that you can look. You have to be just in a moment when you are not doing anything, not going anywhere, not trying to improve upon things – relaxed. In that pause, in that relaxation, it is there. It is a recognition; not a realization but a recognition, because deep down you are already that and you have always been that.
Ask how, and you miss again, because how means something has to be done about it. No method is needed, no path is needed, no technique is needed. All techniques and all paths and all methods have to be dropped. You have to be in a state of utter silence so that you can hear the still small voice within you. It has been there all along, but you are so noisy with your desires that you cannot listen to your own music.
Don’t ask how, and drop all the methods that you have accumulated through asking how. Just fall into a silent space. It is a knack, not a technique. Looking at the morning sun rising, just sit silently and look; what is there to be done? The moon is in the sky, just lie down on the grass and be there with the moon; and the white clouds floating…just be with them. And the birds are singing and the children playing…and you don’t do anything.
Be passive. In your passivity, the divine comes. Be feminine. In your femininity, the divine comes. Have you not watched it? Buddha looks very feminine, Krishna looks very feminine. Why? – because it is simply a metaphor. They have been depicted as feminine, graceful, to show that that is their inner quality – receptivity.
When you are doing something you are being aggressive. When you are not doing anything you are non-aggressive. And the ultimate cannot be conquered; you can only allow him to conquer you.

The fourth question:
Osho,
What is respect to a master? How do we respect you? Are rituals needed in honor of you? Can we joke with you? In Sufi dancing we were told to think of something to make us giggle. I thought of you slipping, just like slipping on a banana peel. Is it disrespect or is it just okay?
With me it is perfect. But you have been disrespectful to the banana peel.
And remember, bananas are not buddhas – they will never forgive you.

The fifth question:
Osho,
Can meditation be passionate?
Yes, that is the only way for meditation to exist. Passion is energy, passion is fire, passion is life.
If you are doing meditation just so-so, without any passion, without intensity, without fire, nothing will happen. If you are praying just as a formality and it is not love that has arisen in your heart, it is meaningless, it is absurd.
If you are praying to God without passion there will be no connection between you and God. Only passion can become the bridge, the thirst, the hunger. The more thirsty you are, the more is the possibility. If you are utterly thirsty, if you have become just a thirst, your whole being is consumed by your passion, then only something happens – in that intensity, in that moment of hundred-degree passion.
Don’t be lukewarm. People live a lukewarm life. They are neither this nor that, hence they remain mediocre. If you want to get beyond mediocrity, create a life of great passion. Whatsoever you do, do it passionately. If you sing, then sing passionately. If you love, then love passionately. If you paint, then paint passionately. If you talk, then talk passionately. If you listen, then listen passionately. If you meditate, then meditate passionately.
And from everywhere you will start having contact with the ultimate – wherever passion is. If you are painting with utter passion, your painting is meditation. There is no need for any other meditation. If you are dancing with absolute passion so that the dancer disappears and only the dance remains, it is meditation – no other need, nowhere to go, no yoga postures…. This is the yoga posture: the dancer has disappeared and the dance is there. It is pure energy – energy vibrating.
In that state you contact. Why in that state do you contact? – because when the passion is great, the ego dies. The ego can exist only in mediocre minds; only mediocre people are egoistic. The really great are not egoistic, they cannot be. But their life has a totally different direction, a different dimension – the dimension of passion.
Have you observed these two words – passion and compassion? Passion becomes transformed into compassion. There is a quantum leap from passion into compassion – but the quantum leap happens only when you are boiling at one hundred degrees, then the water becomes vapor. It is the same energy that exists as passion and one day becomes compassion. Compassion is not antagonistic to passion; it is passion come of age, it is passion bloomed. It is the spring season for passion. I am all for passion. Do whatsoever you do but be lost into it, abandon yourself into it, dissolve yourself into it. And dissolution becomes salvation.

The sixth question:
Osho,
This morning, sitting by your stage after lecture, I felt as if I was sitting at your feet and you were sharing a beautiful story of waterfalls and trees and happiness. You were smiling and there was so much joy and yet when you left only minutes earlier there was a stunned feeling of having been hit over the head with a very big stick, hard. Osho, what are you doing to us? Are you telling us beautiful stories or hitting us over the head or what?
Those stories are just a preparation for the hit. I am doing both. First I have to tell stories to you – beautiful stories of trees and mountains and clouds, beautiful stories about the other shore, beautiful stories of buddhahood and bodhisattvahood. And when I see that now you are lost in the stories and I can hit and you will not be angry, then I hit. The stories only just prepare the ground, but the basic work is a hammer on your head. I have to destroy you.
Naturally the work is such that first I have to persuade. First I have to seduce you to come closer and closer and closer; only then the hammer can descend on you. Otherwise you will escape. Those stories don’t allow you to escape, they keep you close to me. Those beautiful stories function like a glue between me and you, and when I see the right time has come I hit – and when I hit, I hit passionately.

The seventh question:
Osho,
You would like us all to become bodhisattvas. That means one has to make that firm decision to help others to the other shore. However, I do not feel able to make that decision. Sometimes I feel love towards others, sometimes I am just busy with myself. So should I wait or is the decision not such a thing as a statement but rather like a fruit that ripens by itself? And why then is Buddha a buddha and not a bodhisattva?
First, these three things have to be understood. One, the ordinary state of human mind – when you cling to the world, to this shore, and the other shore seems to be fictitious. You cannot trust the other shore. You cling so much to this shore that the only problem is how to help you to uncling from it.
Right now, this is not going to help if you start thinking of being a bodhisattva. This is not going to help, this will be dangerous. This will only be a strategy to cling to this shore. You are not yet freed of this shore. This will be a new way to cling to the world again. And this is very tricky – now it will be in the name of religion, compassion, love for people, service. Now it will have great ideology in it: “I am here to help people, that’s why I am not going to the other shore.” And you don’t want to go to the other shore, and you don’t know that the other shore exists, and you don’t even believe that the other shore is. Now you are falling into a very subtle trap.
This is the first stage of the ordinary mind: it clings with the world, it goes on finding more and more new reasons to cling. It is very difficult to uncling. The second stage is of a bodhisattva, one who has come to that unclinging state where he is ready to fly to the other shore, he has no longer any roots in this world. In the first stage it is difficult to uncling, in the second stage it is very difficult to cling.
The Diamond Sutra is for the second stage people, not for the first stage people. First you have to uncling, first you have to destroy all your roots in this world. When you have destroyed all your roots, then only can you be of help to others, otherwise you cannot be of any help. You don’t have anything to share. You can go on believing “I love people,” but you don’t have love yet. Still you desire people to love you. You are still a beggar, you are not yet in that position to share your love for no reason at all, just for the sheer joy of sharing.
First reach to the second stage. First let yourself be utterly egoless. Destroy all your roots in this world, don’t be possessive. Only then will what Buddha is saying be relevant to you: then the problem will arise. First the problem is how to uncling, then the problem arises how to cling a little more.
Buddha says, when you have no roots then you are needed here. Then you have something to share. Then you have diamonds to share. Then before leaving, share, and remain here as long as you can. This is the second stage. The third stage is of a buddha who has reached to the other shore.
Now you ask: “And why then is Buddha a buddha and not a bodhisattva?” The third stage is more difficult. To be on the other shore and yet be on this shore is the most difficult thing. To be on the other shore and still go on helping people is the most difficult thing. So these are the three difficulties. First, to uncling from this shore. Second, when the unclinging has happened, to remain on this shore. And third, when you cannot remain on this shore…because a moment comes when it becomes impossible.
Every bodhisattva has to become a buddha. You cannot cling to this shore, that is illegal. A point comes when you have to leave. A little is possible; at the most one life, not more than that. Then you will have to leave. One life you can cling, because all the roots are destroyed but you have the body, so you can remain in the body. One life you can cling at the most, then you have to leave.
Then comes the third stage – the buddha. Buddha is one who has left and yet goes on helping people. But remember, if you have been a bodhisattva, only then will you be able in the third stage to help people, otherwise not.
There are two words to be understood. One is arhat, another is bodhisattva. Arhat is one…it is the same state – the world is destroyed, he has no more attachment, the ego is gone – but immediately he moves to the other shore. He is called arhat. He does not bother about others, he simply goes to the other shore when he is ready. The arhat will not be able to help from the other shore because he will not know how to help, he has never been trained for help. A bodhisattva is also in the same state as an arhat. He has known, he has seen, he has become truth, but he stays on this shore a little longer and goes on helping people in whatsoever way he can. He learns the way to help.
If you have been a bodhisattva and then you go to the other shore, on the other shore the arhat will also become a buddha and the bodhisattva will also become a buddha – the other shore is the shore of buddhahood – but the one who has been a bodhisattva on this shore will be able to help from the other shore too. He will find ways and means. And the buddha goes on helping down the centuries.
Even now, if you are open to Buddha, the help will be coming to you. Even now, if you are passionately in love with Buddha, the help will be coming to you. He is still shouting from the other shore, but the shout from the other shore is very far away. You will have to listen very attentively, more attentively than you are listening to me, because the voice will be coming from the other shore.
Sooner or later I will be gone. If you learn how to listen to me attentively, many of you will be able to listen to me from the other shore too.
Buddhahood is the ultimate state of consciousness. But if you pass through bodhisattvahood you will remain available to the world, you will be a window to God forever. If you don’t pass through bodhisattvahood you will disappear into the infinite, but nobody will be helped by you.

The last question:
Osho,
Whenever you talk about realizing one’s buddhahood, you say it is sudden, like lightning, not a process, but what I can see happening in me is a very slow process of becoming more contented, less in the grip of the ego. Can you clarify the difference between that process and the “sudden flash” that happened to you? Is there any danger in becoming too contented with the slow process?
No, there is no danger. The enlightenment is always like lightning. It is in a flash, it is a sudden explosion. It cannot come gradually because it cannot be divided; you cannot have it in bits.
Then what is happening to Deepta? She feels she is becoming slowly slowly contented. This is not enlightenment, this is the ground in which enlightenment happens. The ground can be prepared gradually, in fact has to be prepared gradually. You cannot prepare the ground like lightning, in a flash. Sometimes it takes lives to prepare the ground.
The preparation for buddhahood is gradual, but the actual happening of buddhahood is a sudden explosion in you. So don’t be afraid, this is good. You are moving on the right track. Become more and more contented.
The day you are utterly contented, the flash.
Enough for today.