Fads 

 

 

I am against all fads. Irrespective of what the fad is, I am against all fads, because fads attract obsessive people. Fads become hiding-places for insane people. People who are abnormal, they hide themselves behind fads, and they create systems, theories, dogmas, to rationalize.

 

I used to live with a woman. She was a very lovely woman, but almost crazy about cleanliness. The whole day she was cleaning the house, the whole day she was decorating -- for no purpose, because she never allowed anybody in the house. If guests would come she would meet them on the lawn.

 

I asked her, 'You continuously go on decorating and cleaning your house, but I see that nobody is ever allowed in.' She said, 'Those people, they may make everything dirty.' 'Then what is the purpose of it?'

 

She said, 'Cleanliness is next to god.'

 

Now, this woman is mad. Cleanliness has become just a hiding-place. It has become a ritual. Now, cleaning the whole day, she remains occupied. Cleaning the whole day has become her whole life -- it is a sheer wastage. But you cannot say that cleanliness is bad; cleanliness is good. So she has a reason. She is mad with a perfect rationality.

 

Even her husband was not allowed to come into the drawing-room. And she never allowed herself to have any children, because children are dirty and they would create trouble and they would make things messy. Her whole life was sacrificed at the altar of cleanliness.

 

I said, 'Of course, you have proved that cleanliness is second to god. You have made it an altar of god and you are sacrificing your whole life to it.'

 

But she would say, 'Am I wrong?'..

 

You cannot say she is wrong. Cleanliness is good, hygenic -- but there is a limit to it. The faddist always goes beyond the limit. He is deep down very troubled. I told the woman, 'You do one thing: for three days you don't clean the house. If you can remain sane for three days without cleaning the house, I will also join you and I will also clean your house the whole day.'

 

She said, 'Three days without cleaning? That is impossible. I will go mad.' She is already mad.

 

So whenever there is someone who is hiding behind a fad, whatsoever the fad is -- it may be macrobiotics or something else -- I am against it. I am against the attitude of obsessiveness.

 

Let me tell you one anecdote:

 

"A man came home from the match. His wife looked up from the paper and said, 'Look here, Fred, there's a report in the paper about a man who's just given his wife to a friend in return for a football season-ticket. You're a keen fan but you wouldn't do a thing like that, would you?'

 

Fred said, 'Of course I wouldn't. It is ridiculous and criminal -- the season is half over!"'

 

This is the mind of a fan, of a faddist. But these people can go on hiding behind beautiful reasons.

 

Mahatma Gandhi was continuously concerned about his bowel movements. He was almost obsessive about it. Sometimes when your stomach is disturbed, one can think about it, but continuously pondering and meditating and brooding over it is nonsense. But he was continuously brooding -- as if that was the greatest subject in the world to think about.

 

He would do his prayer, or he was going to see the viceroy, or he was going to take part in the round-table conference which was going to decide the fate of India and its freedom, but first he would take an enema. You would be surprised: in his diary, enema is as much referred to as god. Enema seems to be a second god.

 

But if you argued with him, he would look perfectly clear about it: the stomach has to be completely clean, because without a clean stomach the whole body gets toxins, this and that, and only with a clean stomach can the mind be clean. How can the mind be healthy without a healthy body? Then he would go on and on, arguing about it, thinking about it. But in fact, it is a fad and a sort of illness. And it doesn't show a healthy mind; it shows an unhealthy mind.

 

This type of attitude I am against. I have said to many sannyasins... because they come to me with their fads. One young man came and he said he had come to me to learn how to live only on water! I told him, 'You will make me a criminal. If I tell you how to live on water, you will die!'

 

He was lean and thin, almost on the verge of collapse, but he had a fad that purity is possible only through water. Only water is pure and everything else is impure. His eyes were getting yellow, ill. He was not eating well, his body was starved, and by and by his brain would start being feverish. And the more feverish he would become, the more he would make efforts to purify himself. I have to tell such people that they are moving in a very very dangerous direction. [....]

 

I am against fads. I am against a disciplined life. I am not against discipline; I am against disciplined life.

 

Discipline should come moment to moment from your inner being. It should be an inner light, not imposed from the outside. One should move in deep response to life. One should not follow any doctrine.

 

Because if you follow a doctrine then you already have a conclusion with you. You live through that conclusion. You live from a center which is already fixed. Then you are not free. You cannot be flexible. Your principle, your idea, your center, your conclusion, will not allow you to be flexible. You will react according to your conclusion.

 

But if you are free and each moment decides its own conclusion, it is not carried over from the past, then it is perfectly okay. Then you have a discipline -- real discipline -- but you don't have a disciplined life.

 

Any man who is really alive has no character, cannot have a character. Character is always dead -- a dead structure around you, carried over from the past, the past experience. If you act out of your character, you don't act at all; you simply react. You don't respond. Response is immediate. Life creates a situation, a challenge, and you respond. You respond out of your being, with no center, with no conclusion. Not through the past; herenow comes the response -- pure, virgin.

 

That discipline I appreciate. That discipline I love. But any other discipline that you force yourself in, that you practise, is dangerous. That is going to kill you. That's how many people are already dead. Their discipline has killed them.

 

-Osho, “Nirvana: The Last Nightmare, #10, Q3”