Non-Possessiveness

 

 

To understand the second great virtue, aparigrah or non-possessiveness, it is essential to understand parigrah, or possessiveness. There are great misconceptions about possessiveness. Possessiveness is not about having things, it refers to the feeling of ownership over things. Parigrah means possessiveness. It has nothing to do with how many things you have. It all depends on the attitude with which you relate to those things, in what way you are connected to them. And we are not only possessive about things, we are also possessive about people.

 

Yesterday I said a few things to you about violence. Possessiveness is nothing but another dimension of violence. Only a violent person is possessive. As soon as I claim ownership of someone or something, I have immediately moved into deep violence. Without being violent, it is impossible to be an owner. Ownership is violence. Ownership of things is widespread, but we even hold ownership over human beings.

 

Pati, the husband, is the owner of the wife. The very meaning of the word pati is owner. In India the husband is also called swami and that word too means owner. Possessiveness means a desire for ownership. A father may be the owner of his son, a teacher may be the owner of his disciple – but wherever there is ownership there is possessiveness, and wherever there is possessiveness the relationship becomes violent. Without being violent toward someone, one cannot be his owner; without making someone a slave, one cannot be his owner. Without imposing slavery, it is impossible to be possessive.

 

Why is there such a desire in man’s heart to possess? Why is there such a desire to possess someone? Why is there such interest in being the owner of someone? It is an interesting phenomenon – it is because we are not masters of ourselves. In someone who becomes his own master, this idea of ownership disappears. But we are not our own masters, and throughout life we compensate for this lack by possessing others.

 

Even if one becomes the owner of the whole earth, this lack cannot be compensated for because the bliss which comes with being the master of oneself is altogether unique, and becoming a master of others brings nothing but misery. To be the master of oneself is bliss, to be the master of others is always suffering. Hence, the greater the ownership, the greater the misery. In becoming the possessors and owners of others, we spend our whole lives trying to compensate for that one lack: not being our own masters, not being emperors to our own selves.

 

It is like someone trying to quench his thirst with fire; the thirst goes on increasing. Thirst cannot be quenched with fire. Likewise, mastery of oneself cannot be attained by becoming a master of others. Rather – and the interesting point is – the more we become a master of others, the more we become a slave of the enslaved.

 

Ownership is actually a double slavery. The one whose master we become certainly becomes our slave but we also become his slave. The master is also the slave of his slave. However much the husband becomes the master over his wife, he becomes her slave too. And however great an empire the emperor might own, he becomes a complete slave to it. He also becomes a slave to fear, because those we make dependent upon us become afraid, and then opposition and rebellion against us begin. They also want to make us dependent. [....]

 

This is the only difference between master and slave – one’s slavery is visible and the other’s slavery is invisible. Other than that, there is no difference. The one we enslave makes us a slave too. The possessor becomes the possessed. Non-possessiveness arises by searching with the question, “How do I become my own master?” [....]

 

People who are under the illusion that others are emperors are only slaves themselves. The really poor are those who want to destroy their inner poverty with external wealth. And the really dependent are those who, by making others dependent, remain lost in the illusion of their own independence. No one can be independent after making another dependent. Possessiveness is the name of this illusion.

 

I want to be independent so I think, “Let me make someone dependent on me, then I will become independent.” But the dependence is two-sided, the chains tighten on both sides. Prisoners in jail are not the only ones imprisoned. The sentry standing outside the jail is just as much a prisoner. One is imprisoned outside the wall, the other is imprisoned inside the wall. Neither can the one inside the wall escape, nor can the one outside the wall escape. And the strangest thing is that the one inside the wall may even attempt to escape, but the one outside will not even try. He thinks he is independent. [....]

 

It is one of life’s extraordinary secrets that whoever we imprison, imprisons us too. In order to imprison someone, we will also have to be imprisoned. There is a great depth to possessiveness. It is important to understand its subtle aspects, so that the enormity of it can also be understood from the outside.

 

The possessive person first tries to forget the idea that he is dependent, to forget that he is limited, that he is not his own master. But it cannot be forgotten. If I am not the master then I do not exist, and however much distraction I create to forget this, even in the distraction, deep inside me I know that I am not the master.

 

Alexander knew that he was not the master; Hitler also knew it. And the more one knows that one is not the master, the more one continues to expand and strengthen external possessiveness. But however strong the external possessiveness becomes… Perhaps one forgets for a while but again and again the memory returns that one is not the master. So why are we not the master inside? We don’t even know what is inside, so being the master of it is quite impossible.

 

Swami Ramateertha went to America and the American president went to meet him. The president found Rama’s words very strange. The language was different. The language had to be different: the language that Ramateertha speaks is the language of another world. He always used to call himself “Emperor Rama.”

 

The American president said, “I don’t understand, what do you mean by ‘Emperor Rama,’ what is the meaning of that? You seem to have nothing. You don’t have anything except this loincloth. How can you be an emperor?”

 

So Rama said, “Actually this loincloth is something of a hindrance to my being an emperor. That’s why I make the declaration a little softly. I am not bound to anything, just this loincloth remains. But I am an emperor because I have no needs, I have no requirements, I have no desires. There is just this loincloth which binds me a little. And why does it bind me? I have bound it myself; that’s why we are both bound. The loincloth has become bound to me, and I have become bound to the loincloth.”

 

Certainly, Mahavira can call himself an emperor. Mahavira’s elder brother must have wondered why his younger brother had forsaken the kingdom and gone away. He must have thought, “What a lunatic! He doesn’t understand anything.” Mahavira handed over the entire kingdom, all the wealth, into the hands of his elder brother and became naked and destitute. But very few people were able to understand that Mahavira became an emperor, and the elder brother remained a slave.

 

Being an emperor begins with this: “What I am is sufficient; it is enough to be myself. I don’t need anything, I don’t have to complete anything. There is no deprivation making me empty; nothing is lacking.” Being an emperor is an inner fulfillment. Everything just is; hence there is no lack. But an outside emperor has nothing. He has much outside that is visible in all directions, but he is not inside with himself. Inside, there is emptiness, a vacuum.

 

Inside, we are all empty. We fill this emptiness with furniture, we fill it with a house, we fill it with wealth. We fill it with fame, position, and prestige. Then when all the position and prestige has been gathered, when the whole pile of wealth has been collected, we find that the inner emptiness is still there. But it was not as visible before as it is now; now there is a contrast – outside there are piles of wealth, but inside the emptiness appears even clearer. A poor man is unable to see his inner poverty as clearly as a wealthy man.

 

In my view, this is the one and only benefit of wealth, that inner poverty becomes more visible. That’s why I am always in favor of wealth because without it, inner poverty never becomes visible. Like white lines which emerge and become visible on a blackboard, inner poverty becomes visible and distinct against the wealth gathered outside. Everything happens outside and nothing at all happens inside. Possessiveness exists just to fill the emptiness which is inside.

 

Someone may be thinking, “If I forsake these external things, will the inner emptiness disappear?” This is the real question – but if the inner emptiness has not disappeared before, when these external possessions existed, then how can it disappear when they are not there, when they have been dropped?

 

But the heart of man remains surrounded by some fundamental misconceptions. First he thinks that he can fill the void by collecting things. Then when he sees that external possessions have been accumulated, but fulfillment has not happened, he thinks, “I will fill the void by forsaking the outer world.” But he is crazy. If it could not be filled with objects, then how will it be filled by removing them?

 

So understand that non-possessiveness does not mean forsaking external things, it means attaining inner fulfillment. And when there is inner fulfillment, the race to possess things externally just goes away.

 

That’s why I said that the meaning of possessiveness is not the things themselves, it is the possessive attitude. Janak, the enlightened king, could live in a palace, but he was not possessive. He had many possessions, but he was not possessive. A sannyasin may appear to own nothing but he can be possessive – it often happens. He has made the second mistake; he has made the mistake of discarding possessions.

 

What will happen by dropping possessions? The inner emptiness can become invisible, but it remains the same. Nothing is left on the outside so the outer is empty; the inside is also empty but the contrast is no longer there, and everything ceases to be visible. But inner emptiness cannot disappear through external emptiness. Internal fulfillment is required, a positive birth of self-realization is required internally. Only then will the external hold on things disappear; otherwise it cannot go away. [....]

 

This self-possession is a positive achievement. If it happens, then the external hold drops. The external hold is only there because there is no grasp of the inner. We keep holding on to the outer, and we start destroying whoever we hold on to on the outside.

 

The violence of possessiveness is just that: if you hold on to someone you begin to destroy them. Without destroying them you cannot possess them, so you will have to destroy them. If a master holds on to a disciple he will start destroying him. A disciple cannot be made a disciple while alive, it is necessary to destroy him. So he will be destroyed by discipline, rules, limits. His independence will be destroyed. When he becomes a corpse, then he can become a disciple. A husband will start destroying his wife; a wife will destroy her husband. A friend will start destroying another friend, because only when he has been completely destroyed can he be sure that the other will not run away, will not become independent.

 

But internally there is a great problem with that. When we destroy someone and become their master, the pleasure of being the master disappears. This is the contradiction. Without destroying, one cannot be the master, and as soon as the other is destroyed, the pleasure is gone. There is no pleasure in being a master of the dead.

 

Hence the heart moves from one wife to the second; from the second it moves to the third; from one house to the second, from the second to the third. And from one master to the second; from one disciple to the second. Whoever you have become the owner of becomes insignificant. Because as soon as you become the owner, they become lifeless and there is no great pleasure in owning something lifeless. There is no pleasure in it at all. One needs to be the owner of someone who is alive.

 

There is another paradox in ownership. The paradox is that ownership kills, and after the killing comes misery. Happiness is lost. A wife does not give as much happiness as a lover, but there is an immediate desire to make the beloved a wife. Ownership of a beloved is uncertain; ownership of a wife is very clear. But on becoming a wife, she dies instantly, and as soon as she dies she becomes insignificant.

 

So whoever we possess becomes insignificant. We forget them, they cease to mean anything anymore. People who go on collecting and destroying others slowly get bored with them. They have to work to destroy them – then after all the work, there is no reward.

 

Possessive people who are also clever or shrewd, abandon people and build collections of objects instead. They don’t have to take the trouble to destroy them, they are already dead. Hence people who have become fed up with others become engrossed in accumulating wealth and status. It is more convenient.

 

If you bring a chair into a house, it arrives already dead. You have absolute control over where it should be kept. If you want to keep it or you don’t want to keep it, you are the absolute owner. There is no responsibility, no difficulty over destroying it. And when you bring a person into the house, you want to make him into a chair too. Until he becomes a chair, you are anxious. Then when he becomes a chair, the anxiety begins again.

 

That’s why clever, possessive people work hard collecting objects, and those who are not so clever work hard collecting people – but both are ignorant. We can neither fill ourselves with people, nor can we fill ourselves with objects. Our hands remain empty. There is only one place to fill, and we can fill it only with ourselves. There is no other fulfillment. There is just no other fulfillment in this world, there never has been. We can fill only with ourselves – but we don’t know anything about ourselves.

 

How to find out about this self? And how will an attitude of non-possessiveness be helpful in knowing this self? I would like to ask you to look deeply into it whatever you possess. Have you been fulfilled by it a little, even just a fraction? Has whatever you possess fulfilled you even an inch?

 

Everyone has something or other. If this something has fulfilled you even a little, you become engrossed in expanding it. If it has fulfilled you a little, then it will be able to fulfill you more, and even more, and more. But if it has not fulfilled you at all, you will come to understand that however much this “something” increases, it will not be able to fulfill you. Our past experience is that possession could not fulfill us. But the wish for the future is always there, that maybe we will get something more and be fulfilled.

 

I have heard that in a village, a man’s third wife died and he married for the fourth time. The people of the village wanted to give him a gift, but they were tired of giving him gifts. He had married three times, and each time the gifts were smaller. When he married for the fourth time, he was much older and the people were fed up with choosing gifts for him. So, they gave him a board on which was written: “The triumph of hope over experience.” Even the experience of three wives was not able to deter him from a fourth. The whole village knew that as long as his wife was alive, he would moan about her in the village. Then, when his wife would die, he would cry over her death.

 

Hope always wins over experience. The mind of a possessive man is always tied to hope. You will only attain to a non-possessive attitude when experience wins over hope. Your past, your experience is enough to tell you that even after attaining everything, nothing has been gained. People become presidents, and sitting on their chairs suddenly discover that they have reached high office but nothing has been attained.

 

What you need to attain is the dimension of being, and what you live in is the dimension of having. What you acquire are things, but what you truly have to attain is the soul. Things can never become your soul. And this deluded race goes on, not only for one lifetime but endlessly, for lives and lives.

 

Actually we keep on forgetting our past experiences. Not only have we forgotten our past life experiences, we have even forgotten or ignored the realities of this life. We forever deny our experiences, and imagine that something different from what has happened so far can happen in the future. But even the experience of many lifetimes does not keep us from the idea that we will bring fulfillment to our soul by possessing more things. Having cannot become being – it is impossible.

 

Sometimes it happens that even wishing the impossible can be pleasurable. You want to do what cannot be done. Many times you get this urge simply because it cannot be done. Now the excitement of landing on the moon is gone, but for thousands of years man longed for it. The ambition to reach the moon was very attractive because it seemed impossible. It seemed so impossible that those who dreamed of reaching the moon were considered crazy.

 

In English the word for a mad person, lunatic, means moonstruck. It comes from luna. A man in whose brain the moon reigns, who wants to reach the moon, is called a lunatic. In Hindi too, the word for a crazy person, chandmara, means moonstruck, someone who is assailed by the moon, who is stricken by the impossible.

 

But we are all moonstruck, we are all lunatics in the sense that we all go on wishing for the impossible. What is the greatest impossibility in this world, the most impossible? Now we can reach the moon, so it is not right to call those longing to reach the moon lunatics. The matter is finished; this word should be changed. Moonstruck is no longer a synonym for crazy. Now intelligent people have reached the moon, they might reach Mars, and after that maybe they will reach a star. All that is difficult but not impossible.

 

According to me, there is just one impossibility in this world: that objects can become the soul, that having can become being. This is an impossibility and will certainly remain so.

 

That’s why Mahavira, Buddha, and Jesus call the people who are obsessed with possessions mad. They are engrossed in tasks that just cannot be done. The only attraction might be in attempting the impossible. But untruths do not become truths just by attraction. The truth about possession is that it is, in itself, impossible.

 

I have heard…

 

Diogenes once told Alexander the Great, “Have you ever thought about what you will do when you have conquered the world?”

 

It is said that Alexander became sad on hearing this, and said, “I didn’t think of it, but you are right. There is no other world. If I conquer this one, then what will I do? I will be totally unemployed.”

 

Seeing that there was no second world, Alexander became very sad. Why? Because if he conquered the whole world, where would he be? At least for the moment it was just a dream, so it was okay.

 

Have you ever thought about what would happen if all your desires were fulfilled? If someday an arrangement could be made that heaven existed in this world, as it does in fairy tales? If ever we could make a wishing tree so that every man would become a Mahavira, and under the wishing tree whatever he desired would become instantly available? Of course, then the whole world would become non-possessive. There would be no more possessiveness. You would be surprised: the moment you get something, it becomes worthless. You are standing again in the same place you were before fulfilling your desire. That same attention is directed toward something else. You are a hunger, an emptiness, a void. Man is like a horizon; after each desire is fulfilled, again something else comes in front of him.

 

The earth appears to touch the sky: “Keep walking, it seems as if it is just near – maybe ten miles further, maybe twenty miles. We will reach it sooner or later.” We arrive and find that the sky has moved twenty miles away. It could not move if it was there. There is no connection between your walking and the sky moving. The sky never touches the earth, it only appears to touch. The earth is round and that’s why the sky appears to touch it – but it doesn’t touch the earth anywhere.

 

Man’s desires move in a circle. So it looks as if a hope will become a fulfillment, but that never happens. Man’s desires are spherical like the earth. The sky of hope stretches in all four directions, so it seems as if it is just ten miles away. We expect to arrive very soon, and our hope will become fulfillment – so whatever we have desired will be achieved and we will be fulfilled. But after walking ten miles, we see that the horizon has moved away. The sky has moved forward; it is now touching the earth further ahead. We move forward again. All our life – and for many lives – we keep moving forward.

 

The joke is that we don’t even realize that the sky that appeared to touch the earth ten miles back, and again appears to touch it ten miles ahead. Is it possible that the sky never touches the earth at all? Or is the sky scared of us, running ahead and changing where it touches the earth? That cannot be possible.

 

Another even bigger joke is that those who are ten miles ahead of us are also running. The people who are located just where we think the sky touches the earth are also running further ahead. And those who are even ahead of them, where they feel that the sky touches the earth, are running too. When the whole earth is running, it should not be difficult for those with the slightest perception to figure out that the sky does not touch the earth anywhere. It is just an appearance; the sky just seems to touch the earth. Hope doesn’t reach fulfillment anywhere. Desire is not fulfilled anywhere, lust is not satisfied anywhere; it only seems to reach, seems to happen. And man keeps on running.

 

So as far as possessiveness is concerned, it is important to have a thorough look at our past experience. But we are adept at deceiving ourselves. We are not as good at deceiving others as we are at deceiving ourselves. It is very difficult to deceive another because the other is present. But self-deception is very easy; we go on deceiving ourselves constantly.

 

I think that if I get one rupee, I will be happy… A rupee comes into my hand but I’m not at all happy. I think that if I get another rupee… But it does not occur to me that the second rupee is a copy of the first one. I get the second rupee, I get the third. The third rupee is also a copy of the second; it has the same face on it. I get the fourth, too. I go on getting them, and getting them. One day I realize that I’m lost – just rupees and more rupees. But millions of rupees later the sky seems to be touching in the same way as with that first rupee. The distance is the same as it was with the desire for one rupee; million of rupees later the same hope remains.

 

That’s why we are sometimes astonished when a millionaire goes crazy over even one rupee! A millionaire is as crazy about one rupee as someone who does not even have one, because the distance for both stays the same forever. The distance between hope and fulfillment is the same. How much we have makes no difference. That which is ahead of us and is not ours keeps us running.

 

A millionaire is often even more miserable because his experience tells him that even after a million rupees have been collected, he will not be fulfilled. His whole life has been wasted. Now he might hold on to each rupee as tightly as possible – because life is wasting away, life is passing by. When he had one rupee, he was also alive. The energy was there, the strength was there; but now even that is finished. Now he has a million rupees but his life energy has become weak. So a man becomes more possessive as he ages; he starts clutching his possessions more tightly because there is very little life left. The more that can be grasped and the faster it can be done, the sooner the journey can be completed. [....]

 

Actually, we want to forget sorrow and we do forget. We forget the sorrows and we carefully hold on to whatever joys were there. We go on making the sorrows smaller and slowly go on making the joys grow in our hearts. That’s why an old man can say, “There was so much happiness in my childhood.”

 

No child ever says this. A child says, “How soon can I grow up? Adults seem to be very happy.” No child is happy, but all old people say, “My childhood was very happy.” But children want to grow up very quickly. All children are troubled because they have thousands of sorrows. In a world of adults, to be a child is very saddening. There are adults everywhere and he is a small child. The adults are having somber conversations and he is not allowed to play. And to that small child, their somber conversations appear to be absolutely stupid; play is important. There is pressure everywhere, there are commandments everywhere – don’t do this, don’t do that. The child wants to grow up very quickly so that he can say the same to others. But all old people say that their childhood was joyous. They have forgotten all the pains of childhood.

 

It is a very strange thing. You will say, “No, if a man’s death has come ten times, then he cannot forget.” You were born. Do you remember your birth? One thing is certain: you have left previous lives behind and you were born this time. But do you have any memory of your birth? Birth is such a painful process that the mind does not create a memory of it. The pain a mother bears at the time of giving birth is nothing compared to what the infant bears. The mother will be free of the pains of childbirth very quickly, but the pain that the child bears is so severe that he erases it from his memory.

 

Our memory is constantly choosing what has to be saved and what has to be erased. If there was no one to tell you that you were born, you would not even know of it. But at the time of birth you were there, your birth happened to you. You have passed through the birth process, but where’s the memory of it? The memory is not there because it was a very painful event. You came from the darkness of your mother’s womb, from the utmost state of rest, where even no effort to breathe was needed, where nothing had to be done to live. You were simply alive.

 

Psychiatrists say that on the basis of thousands of observations, man’s vision of ultimate freedom is derived from his memory of the womb. There is so much peace in the womb, so much silence, total silence – and no effort. There is nothing to do; there is just being. From that world of being, all of a sudden, he comes into this world where to remain alive, he will have to breath, eat food, cry, scream, where life will pass through many difficulties. From such a peaceful and happy existence he enters into such a painful experience. The child forgets.

 

But in deep hypnosis you can be made to remember your birth experience. In a deep hypnotic state or in deep meditation, you can remember the experience in your mother’s womb too. If your mother fell during pregnancy, the knowledge of the event and of the injury which was sustained would have reached you. It is still a part of your memory, but you have forgotten.

 

In exactly the same way, we have died many times, just like the emperor whose story I was relating. Death came ten times but he kept on forgetting. He said, “I don’t recognize you at all. I think you are coming for the first time. If I can have a little more time I will fulfill my hopes.”

 

But Death said, “No, it is enough now. If you could not learn from the experience of a thousand years, then you will not learn after a million years either.”

 

For someone who wants to learn, one experience is enough. Someone who doesn’t want to learn will not even learn from infinite experiences. We have all stopped learning. People like Mahavira, or Krishna, or Buddha learn from their life experience, but we just don’t learn. We keep our eyes deliberately shut and do not learn. We go on doing what we were doing, and we go on enjoying what we were enjoying – with the same hopes, the same frustrations, the same repetitions, the same cycle.

 

There is a Sanskrit word, sansar, which means wheel, in which the same spokes return, in which the same axis keeps spinning again and again. You might not have realized that this wheel is used in the Indian flag – but the politicians don’t seem to know why. For them it is a symbol of the emperor Ashoka and they chose it because it was carved on a pillar built by him. But how will a politician understand that this wheel is a religious symbol? No one turns as many times as a politician. He is in a whirlwind; he is clutching the spokes and sitting there, spinning all the time. Other politicians are trying to release him, and even then he does not break free. After releasing him, the others just hold on to his spokes themselves. They never realize that just as they are trying to release him, others will try to free them too, once they have managed to clutch the wheel. This is going on all the time.

 

This world, this sansar, is a wheel, in which we go on doing the same things; we keep on repeating the same things. Only yesterday you were angry, and yesterday you repented too, and yesterday you also swore that you wouldn’t be angry again. Today you will get angry again, today you will repent again, today you will swear yet again that you will not get angry. This will happen tomorrow too, and it will happen again the day after. Are we humans or machines? If a machine keeps spinning, it makes sense. If a man goes on spinning, there is doubt whether he is human or a machine.

 

People say that man is a rational animal, but man does not show any evidence of it. Looking at man, one cannot tell at all that he is intelligent. It is very difficult to find a creature more unintelligent than man; he doesn’t learn at all. The most important thing that can be learned in life is that possessiveness is futile. I am not saying that things are useless; I am not saying that a chair in your house is useless. How can a chair be useless? A chair is useful for sitting on, it can be used. I am not saying that your house is useless. A house can be useful for living, it is useful, and it should be useful. I am not saying that things are useless; they have their own significance. What I am saying is that we can fill our lives with things, but that in itself has no significance. There is no way that things can become the soul.

 

If we open our eyes even a little toward possessiveness, then we will immediately find ourselves entering a world where its hold on us breaks, is lost and disappears. The day we let go of it, we are simply alone. Neither the wife is there, nor friends, nor brothers, nor our houses.

 

They are all there in their places, but they are part of a big game. And this game is exactly like playing chess. In chess, one piece is an elephant, or rook, another piece is a horse, or knight, but no one has ever been deluded into riding on the horse. Within the game and the rules of chess, the horse is very significant: it has its own function, it has its own movement, it has its own victory and defeat. But sometimes people get crazy about chess too. [....]

 

We have played a lot, we have all played; we are all playing. But a chess horse still does not appear to be a chess horse to us; it still appears to be a real horse. All relationships in life are like a game of chess. There are rules and you have to obey them. If you see life as a game, you will find it very easy to obey the rules; there is no problem. Then all the seriousness goes out of it, there is no substance to it. If life is a game you cannot be serious about it.

 

But some people turn the game into real life; then they become serious even while playing it. Then even in a game, swords are pulled. Among chess players, swords have been pulled many times. If the chess horses and elephants were able to understand anything at all, they would laugh at the players: “What are they doing? They are pulling out swords to threaten wooden horses and elephants!”

 

In our approach to life, the whole arrangement is appropriate in its place: things are things, having is having, wealth is wealth, position is position – but none of this belongs to the soul at all. So remember that freedom from possessiveness is not about forsaking possessions and running away. That is why the traditional sannyasins of India are upside-down possessors; they are possessive, but doing a headstand. They are merely standing upside down, they are just like you. They are the same as you. In fact, in some respects, they are even more serious than you.

 

I cannot even imagine it – a sannyasin and serious? It should be impossible. If a sannyasin is serious, it means he is just a worldly person standing on his head. Seriousness means seeing the material world as very significant, seeing the whole web of life’s stupidities as very important. We can attach importance to it in two ways – either by entering into it, drowning in it, clutching it to our chest, or by being afraid and running away from it.

 

I meet sannyasins who tell me that such doubts often arise in their hearts: “Could it be that we made a mistake?” Doubts will arise. It is natural for such a thought to arise in the heart of a sannyasin: “Could it be that I made a mistake in forsaking everything and running away? Could it be that the people who are running after things are happy?” But the people who run after things are very troubled; they go on touching the feet of sannyasins, saying, “We are in such misery.” And they go on thinking that sannyasins must be very happy.

 

So the illusion continues and our faces, our masks keep the deception alive. In his aloneness the sannyasin becomes full of doubts, but he is self-assured in the crowd. When people touch his feet, he is convinced that they cannot be happy, otherwise they would not come to touch his feet. In aloneness, when the crowd is gone, his doubts arise. So the crowd is needed to sustain his phony sannyas; otherwise it would be very difficult. In aloneness, the sannyasin becomes doubtful: “You never know, maybe the people of the town are having fun.”

 

So, all sannyasins come into town eventually. There are double benefits there. First, there are people around. Secondly, the people touch their feet and give them respect, so the sannyasins are assured: “No, if they were happy they would not come near us. They are coming to a renouncer.”

 

But the sannyasins do not know that these are their moments of doubt. They are also filled with doubts: “You never know; it could be that the sannyasins are having fun.” In fact, this idea that other people are having fun is always in our minds – because we only know the facade of other people, while we know our own reality to the very core. We are familiar with our own misery, but we are only familiar with the mask of the other.

 

No, things are neither worth holding on to, nor are they worth giving up. Therefore, to be non-possessive does not mean to be indifferent to the world. It does not mean to be dispassionate; it is not non-attachment, it is not renunciation.

 

Take this last point that I have said about non-possessiveness to heart. It should not make you a renouncer. It should not be that you leave the material world and start running away. It should not be that you give up your house and set off for the forest. No, a man who understands possessiveness will not talk of renouncing even by mistake, because only that which has been possessed can be given up. A man who understands possessiveness will find that nothing can be possessed, so there is nothing to renounce. How can one renounce? There is no way to do it. The other is the other, things are things, a house is a house; they cannot be renounced.

 

Non-possessiveness means that you can be inside the house or outside it, but without any sense of ownership. You have stopped seeking ownership in the outer world. That does not mean that you have to give up the external world and run away. Where will you run? Wherever you go, it is the outer world. And if you leave home and sit under a tree, and tomorrow another sannyasin comes and says, “Move from here, we want to chant under this tree,” you will say, “Stop your nonsense. This tree is mine! I have taken possession of it. I was here first. Don’t you see the flag on top of the tree? This temple is mine; this ashram is mine!”

 

A man who escapes from possessiveness will only recreate it – because if he escapes from possessiveness, he has not understood what it is. He will create it again. Yes, people will stop him; his followers will stop him. They will make every attempt to prevent it. They will say, “Don’t build a house, don’t build a temple, don’t build an ashram.” They will say, “Don’t build this, don’t build that.” They will try to stop it in every way. But the sannyasin will find very subtle ways.

 

When it becomes difficult to possess money, he will seek subtle ways. He will start collecting followers. He will get the same pleasure from counting followers that others get from standing in front of the safe and counting money. He will go on counting – seven hundred, one thousand, ten thousand, one million, two million. How many followers are there? How many disciples are there? He will start whispering into people’s ears, distributing mantras and collecting numbers. There is pleasure in numbers; money or followers makes no difference.

 

Life cannot be understood by escaping. Whoever runs away does so out of stupidity. Life has to be understood just how it is. And when it is understood, you will suddenly find that possessions disappear instantly – but they do not have to be renounced. Suddenly you will find that husband and wife are still there but the attachment is gone; the ownership has disappeared. Now the husband is not a husband; just a friend remains. Now the wife is not a wife, not a slave; just a friend remains. The relationship between them is suddenly gone.

 

To be non-possessive means to transform the relationship between us and others, between us and objects. Ownership drops. Non-possessiveness has blossomed if the feeling of ownership between ourselves and another has been dropped. So it is more difficult than renunciation. Renunciation is a very simple matter because it is the opposite extreme, and the pendulum of the mind can move to the other extreme very quickly. For someone who overeats, it is always easy to fast. For the man who is crazy for women, it is very easy to take a vow of celibacy. If you are very ill-tempered, it is very easy to discipline yourself not to get angry.

 

Understand that an ill-tempered man can vow not to get angry, and he can readily keep his promise. If he were less ill-tempered, he might think a little before taking a vow. If he were even less ill-tempered, he might not keep it at all because in order to keep the promise one has to feel it.

 

Now by keeping the oath, the bad-tempered one will become angry with himself, whereas beforehand he was angry with others. There is no difference. Before, he was squeezing other people’s throats. Now he will squeeze his own throat to avoid getting angry: “Where is the bad temper now?” Now he will clutch at his own neck. From one extreme to the other is always easy. Only those who stop in the middle attain religiousness.

 

Confucius went to a village. The people of the village told him, “In our village there is a very intelligent man. You have to meet him.”

 

Confucius said, “Why do you call him intelligent?”

 

They said, “He is very thoughtful.”

 

Confucius said, “I hope he is not too thoughtful.”

 

They said, “He is really very, very thoughtful. He thinks three times before he does anything.”

 

So Confucius said, “Save me from this man. I will not go there.”

 

But they said, “How can you say that? Isn’t that intelligent?”

 

Confucius said, “He has become a little too intelligent, a little too unbalanced. The man who thinks once is at one extreme; the one who thinks three times has gone to the other extreme. Twice is enough.”

 

Confucius means that it is enough to stop in the middle – the golden mean, stopping in the middle – neither renunciation, nor excess. Non-possessiveness blossoms where there is neither possession nor renunciation. It happens in the middle.

 

With the things that I have said, don’t start worrying about non-possessiveness: be concerned with understanding possessiveness. Don’t worry a bit about renouncing your possessions, worry about understanding why you are possessive. What is possessiveness, what need does it fulfill?

 

Three things have to become clear. First, it is impossible for the possession of things to bring fulfillment to your soul – to fill the emptiness, the void in your soul. Second, you become bound by whatever you are clinging to, you become a slave to it. And third, that your entire past experience tells you that even if you acquire everything, nothing is gained. You remain just as empty. If this remembrance becomes total, you will suddenly find that rays of non-possessiveness begin to descend into your life.

 

Tomorrow we will talk about non-theft. It is an even subtler journey into non-possessiveness.

 

I am grateful that you listened to me with such love and silence. Now to end, I bow down to the godliness that dwells in you all. Please accept my pranam, my offering of respect.

 

-Osho, "The Art of Living, #2"