Hearing

 

 

Question 4

So much grace with a talk on graceless mindfulness. i wonder if the buddha's listeners benefited similarly.

 

 

It depends on the listeners. It has nothing to do with Buddha or with me. It depends on the listeners. If you are en rapport with me, then you feel grace; if you are en rapport with Buddha, then you feel grace. If you are en rapport, that is the thing.

 

You can listen to me with a very logical mind, then you may be even annoyed. You can listen with your accumulated knowledge, then you may even feel disturbed -- because if I am contradicting whatsoever you know, you will be disturbed. Or, you can listen with argumentativeness: then here I am speaking and there you are also speaking inside your mind -- contradicting, saying yes, no, arguing. Then there will be no grace.

 

If you are just listening... the knowledge has been put aside and you are listening to me as one listens to a musical instrument, to a melody; as one listens to wind passing through the trees; as one listens to dead leaves falling on the ground, whispering to the ground... if you are listening to me en rapport, in tune with me, grace will arise. It depends on the listener.

 

And it also depends on the listener what you hear. It is not so important what I am saying, the more important thing is what you are hearing. It is not necessarily the same thing. I may be saying something else, you may be hearing something else.

 

I have heard:

 

Two men were walking along a crowded sidewalk in a downtown business area. Suddenly one exclaimed, 'Listen to the lovely sound of that cricket!' But the other could not hear. He asked his companion how he could detect the sound of a cricket amidst the din of people and traffic. The first man, who was a zoologist, had trained himself to listen to the voices of nature, but he did not explain. He simply took a coin out of his pocket and dropped it on the sidewalk, whereupon a dozen people began to look about them.

 

'We hear,' he said, 'what we listen for.'

 

There are people who can listen only to the sound of a falling rupee on the ground -- that's their only music. Poor people. They think they are rich, but they are poor people, whose whole music consists only in the sound of a rupee falling on the ground. Very poor people... starving. They don't know what life consists of. They don't know the infinite possibilities, they don't know the infinite melodies surrounding you -- the multidimensional richness. You hear only that which you listen for.

 

If you listen en rapport, in a deep merger with me, then grace will happen. The same grace has been happening always to all those who, whenever a Buddha, a Jesus, a Krishna was walking on the earth, were courageous enough to walk with these people. If you walk with me, if you sit with me en rapport, then you will be fulfilled. I am pouring something in you, but if you don't open your heart I cannot fulfill you, I cannot fill you. But if you open your heart soon you will be overflowing and that overflowing will make you a lotus out of the mud.

 

The lotus is nothing but an overflowing energy. Hence in the East we have respected the flower of lotus like nothing else. It has become the ultimate symbol of growth. We call the last center in your being, sahasrar -- one thousand-petalled lotus. Sex is the lowest center, sahasrar the highest. By sex you become joined with nature, by sahasrar you are in tune with god, or with the whole. Move from the mud, transcend the mud, and hope and pray and wait for the lotus to open and flower in you.

 

It is possible. These moments that you are here with me are of tremendous import -- but you can hear only that which you listen for.

 

-Osho, "The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol 1, #4, Q4“