Graveyards 

 

 

We don’t talk about death; it is not good manners. We don’t talk about it, we avoid it. Death happens every day, everywhere it is happening, but we avoid it. The moment a man dies we are in a hurry to be finished with him. We make our graveyards out of the town so nobody goes there. And there also we make graves with marble and write beautiful lines on them. We go and put flowers on the grave. What are you doing? You are trying to decorate it a little.

 

In the West, how to hide death has become a profession. There are professionals who help you to avoid it, to make the dead body beautiful, as if it is still alive. What are you doing? – can this help in any way? Death is there. You are headed towards the graveyard; wherever you put it makes no difference – you will reach there. You are already on the way, you are standing in the queue waiting for the moment, just waiting in the queue to die. Where can you escape to from death?

 

-Osho, "The Hidden Harmony, #1“

 

⯎

 

It is always difficult to choose the new, but only those live who choose the new. To choose the old is to choose death, not life. To choose the familiar is to remain in the prison of the familiar, to choose the known is to avoid really the unknown that is knocking on the door. To choose the known is to reject God, because God is always unknown -- not only unknown, but unknowable.

 

God is always fresh, as fresh as the dewdrops. God is always utterly new, unfamiliar, unmapped, unscheduled, uncalculated. God comes only as the unknown. And if you become afraid, if you shrink back, then you have to live in your so-called dark hole.

 

What is your past that you cling to? What is there to cling to, except that it is familiar? It is all misery, it is all tragedy. But people even cling to miseries if they are familiar, if they look friendly. Even if health is knocking on your door, you don't listen to the knock, you cling to your tuberculosis, to your cancer, because it is familiar; you have lived with it so long. It looks almost like a betrayal to leave it and become healthy.

 

That is why people are clinging to miseries. Even when opportunities arise when miseries can be dropped and the celebration can start, they continue to cling to the misery. They persist in it, they insist on it. Even if it drops they catch hold of it again and again. If one misery disappears, they create a similar misery immediately. They don't even give a little interval for joy to enter in their being.

 

But Remember, only those live who choose the new. Life means readiness to go into the uncalculated, unscheduled. Life means to be ready always to listen to the challenge that comes from the unknown source. It is dangerous, but to live is dangerous. The most secure and safe place in the world is the grave -- there, nothing ever happens.

 

In a small village where Mulla Nasrudin lives, the Municipal Committee was thinking of creating a wall around the graveyard. Mulla Nasrudin was also a member of the Committee. He stood up, and he said, 'There is no need.'

 

The whole Committee looked puzzled, because everybody was in favour of making a wall around the graveyard. People don't want to see graves and people don't want to see death. People don't want to become aware that death is. That's why graveyards are made outside the town, far away. When you have to go there, only then do you go there; otherwise it is better to avoid.

 

The village had grown bigger and the graveyard that used to be outside the town was no longer outside the town -- the town had grown and spread. So the whole Committee was agreeing. But Mulla said, 'There is no need.'

 

And the president asked, 'Why do you say that there is no need?'

 

He said, 'For two reasons. One: those who are outside -- they don't want to go in so they don't need any wall to prevent them. And, two: those who are inside -- they cannot come out. So what is the point of making a wall? The wall is needed only to prevent either those who are in from coming out or to prevent those who are out from coming in. Those who are out, they don't want to go in; they go only in utter helplessness. When they have to go, when they have to be carried by four persons, then they go. And once they are in they cannot come out -- nobody has ever heard of anybody coming out. It is pointless!'

 

The grave is the most safe and secure place in the world, because nothing new will ever happen there.

 

Remember it: don't become a grave.

 

-Osho, "The Secret of Secrets, Vol 1, #8, Q5“