Character

 

 

Live, and allow all that is possible. Sing, dance, cry, weep, laugh, love, meditate, relate, be alone. Be in the marketplace, and sometimes be in the mountains.

 

Life is short. Live it as richly as possible, and don’t try to be consistent. The consistent man is a very poor man. Of course the society respects the consistent man, because the consistent man is predictable. You know what he is going to do tomorrow, you know how he is going to react. He is manageable, he can be easily manipulated. You know what buttons to push and how he will act. He is a machine; he is not truly a man. You can put him on and off and he will behave according to you; he is in your hands.

 

The society respects the consistent man; the society calls consistency “character.” And the real man has no character. A real man is characterless, or beyond character. A real man cannot afford character, because character can be afforded only at the cost of life. If you renounce life, you can have character. If you don’t renounce life, you will have many characters, but you will not have character. If you don’t renounce life, how can you have a character? Each moment life is new, and so are you.

 

Society will not respect you; you will not be a respectable citizen – but who cares? Only mediocre people care about the respect of the society. The real person cares about only one thing: Whether I am living my life or not, whether I am living it according to my own vision or not, it is my life, and I am responsible to myself.

 

The most important responsibility is not to the nation or to the church or to anybody else. The real responsibility is to yourself. And it is that you have to live your life according to your own light and you have to move wherever life leads, without any compromise.

 

The man of character compromises. His character is nothing but an effort to guarantee the society, “I am not dangerous,” and to declare to the society, “I will follow the rules of the game; I am utterly at your disposal.”

 

The saint has character, hence he is respected. The sage has no character, hence it is very difficult to recognize him. Socrates is a sage, Jesus is a sage, Lao Tzu is a sage but they are very difficult to recognize, almost impossible, because they don't leave any trace behind them. They don't fit into any mold, they are pure freedom. They are like birds flying in the sky, they don't leave any footprints.

 

It is only for a very few sensitive souls to find a sage as a master, because the mediocre follow the saint. Only very very intelligent people attune themselves to a sage, because the sage has no character and he cannot fulfill any of your expectations. He is bound to offend you, he is bound to disappoint you, he is bound to shake you and shatter you in many many ways.

 

Slowly slowly, he will make you as free as he himself is.

 

-Osho, “The Book of Wisdom, #13“