Trust

 

 

Question 5

Osho,

I cannot trust anybody. why?

 

 

I will just tell you a story. Meditate over it.

 

The hired boy gets the youngest girl in the farmer's family to go out into the hayloft with him. She comes back and tells her sister, "Say, the hired boy sure knows some good tricks!"

 

The sister goes out to the hayloft too, and comes back saying the same, followed by the mother, and finally the farmer himself who has heard his wife's remark that, "The hired boy certainly knows some tricks."

 

When the boy sees the farmer coming, he thinks fast and begins doing cartwheels and acrobatic tricks all over the walls of the barn. The farmer watches him and then goes back and tells his assembled wife and daughters, "Guess you are right. That boy sure knows some fancy tricks."

 

"God almighty!" cry the wife and daughters. "Did he fuck you too?"

 

Sargam, meditate over it. If you can't trust anybody that means you must be deceiving others. It is not a question of others, it is a question of you. You must be deceiving, and if you are deceiving, how can you trust? You can trust only if you allow others to trust you.

 

It is better to be deceived than to deceive, because if you deceive, you lose the greatest treasure of your life: you lose the capacity to trust. And let me repeat: the capacity to trust is the greatest treasure of life, because without it neither love is possible, nor prayer is possible, nor God is possible.

 

-Osho, "The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 4, #2, Q5“