Brownnose

 

 

In monkeys there exists a hierarchy. Perhaps the same mind and the same hierarchy are carried by man too; it is the same mind. If you see monkeys sitting in a tree you can know who’s the chief: he will be at the top of the tree. Then there will be a big group of ladies, his harem – the most beautiful, the youngest. After that will be a third group.

 

I was thinking about this third group for many days, but I had no word for it. In India we call that group the chamchas. Chamcha means a spoon, and these people are suckers. Just the way you take, with a spoon, things out of a bottle, they go on taking things – power, money – from those who have. Of course, they have to buttress these people, they have to praise these people.

 

But my doctor has sent by coincidence today the right word – because chamcha cannot be exactly translated; “spoon” loses all meaning. He has sent me a word that is Californian: the brownnose. And he sent me the Webster’s dictionary also because I might not understand what a brownnose is – and certainly I would not have understood what a brownnose is.

 

He sent a note also, thinking perhaps that even the dictionary may not be helpful because Webster writes it in such a way that it does not look in any way obscene, dirty. So he sent me a note also: “In England we call these people ‘arse-kissers’.”

 

That’s exactly the meaning of chamchas.

 

The chief on the top, then the harem of the ladies whom he controls, then the brownnoses! And then you come down to lower categories of the hierarchy. On the lowest branches are the poorest monkeys, without girlfriends, boyfriends – servants. But perhaps from this very group humanity has grown.

 

Even in this group there may have been a few people who were so weak that they could not even manage to stay on the lowest branches. They were pushed, pulled, thrown, and somehow they found themselves fallen onto the earth. That is the original fall.

 

Monkeys still go on laughing at man. Certainly if you think from the monkey’s side, a monkey walking on two legs ... if you are a monkey and you think from its side, seeing a monkey walking on two legs, you will think, “Has he joined a circus or something? And what happened to the poor guy? He just lives on the ground; he never comes to the trees, the wild freedom of the trees, the higher status of the trees. This is really the fallen one, the downtrodden.”

 

-Osho, “From Darkness to Light, #1, Q1”