Rules

 

 

Question

Osho,

In place of the Ten Commandments, with which I was brought up, I have given myself a new set of rules: be alert, be patient, be spontaneous, accept myself.

 

 

All questions are mind questions – no question comes out of no-mind – and all answers are no-mind answers. So questions and answers never meet. You ask a question and I give you an answer. They never meet, they cannot meet, because your question runs on the track of the mind and my answer runs on the track of no-mind. They may run parallel but they never meet. Either I should drop my no-mind – then there can be a meeting – or you should drop the mind: then too there can be a meeting. And remember, I am not going to drop my no-mind. It cannot be dropped because how can you drop a no-thing? You can drop a thing, but you cannot drop a no-thing. So you have to drop the mind. Then the answer will be heard, understood. Then it will penetrate you.

 

The mind is a deep source of new questions, new puzzles, new riddles. So you can change the Ten Commandments – you can create another ten. That will not do because if they are created by the mind nothing changes. Now the Ten Commandments have become very old, out-of-date. They speak in the language of the past. At that time that language was relevant, but now they don’t look relevant. You can change, you can make new commandments, but those new commandments – if they are put together by the mind – will not be of any use. Your mind can think and put them together and they may look beautiful, but they will be false. You can make let-go a commandment, total acceptance a commandment, but if they are created by the mind they are meaningless. Why? – because the mind cannot allow itself to be in a total let-go. It can pretend, but it cannot really allow itself to let go. The mind cannot accept because the mind exists through rejection; that is why mind always likes to say no rather than yes.

 

Whenever you say no you feel the ego; whenever you say yes you don’t feel the ego. That’s why people go on saying no more than yes. They say yes only when it becomes absolutely necessary; otherwise they say no. Whenever something is asked, the first thing that arises in your mind is no – because when you reject, you are; when you accept, you are not. Yes-saying will create a no-mind. A theist is a yes-sayer, and an atheist is a no-sayer – he says no. When you say there is no God, then you feel a tremendous energy in the ego: then you are.

 

Nietzsche has said, “If God is, then I won’t want to be. And if I am, then I won’t allow God to be because both cannot exist.” He is right. How can both exist, you and God together? If you are there, then you are God; God cannot exist. If he exists, then how can you exist? The ultimate no comes to the mind: no God. The mind rejects, cannot accept.

 

So you can change, you can think about it, you can change the old Ten Commandments and create a new ten, but if they come out of the mind they are useless. And if they do not come out of the mind, what is the need? If the no-mind has happened and you feel it, what is the need of commandments? Commandments are for the mind. They are from the mind, and for the mind. Rules exist for the mind, because the mind cannot exist without rules. This is one of the most basic things. Rules exist for the false, not for the real. The real can exist without rules, but the false cannot exist; it has to be propped, helped, supported by the rules.

 

You play a game, you play cards – can you play cards without rules? There can be no possibility. If you say, “I will follow my rules and you follow your rules and we will play the game,” there will be no game. We have to follow the rules – and we both know that rules are just rules, nothing is real in them. We have agreed on the rules: that’s why they exist.

 

A game cannot continue if rules are not followed, but life will continue without rules. What rules are these trees following? What rules does the sun follow? What rules does the sky follow? The human mind is such that it thinks they are also following rules, moving according to rules. The sun moves, it follows a rule, so there is a ruler – the God who controls everything. He is like a great super-manager: he goes on spying on everybody – who is following, who is not following. This is a mind creation. Life exists without rules; games cannot exist without rules. So, real religion is always without rules. Only false religion has rules because false religion is a game.

 

All the commandments are, “Bang! Drop dead!” For real life there is no commandment. Flow in it without any rules, be in it without any rules. Simply be. Why follow rules? Everything will happen out of your being. These things you say will happen if you are simply there without any rules. Then acceptance will come, let-go will come; then the mind will drop. So these rules cannot be made rules; they are consequences of being spontaneous and total. If somebody follows them, and he has made a commandment that he has to accept everything and then accepts, it is false because in accepting he has already rejected. If you have to accept something because of the commandment, you have already rejected. Your mind says, “Accept!” Why accept? Before it has said, “Reject.” Then rejection has come before the acceptance. But if there is no rejection, how will you be aware of acceptance? You will simply accept and flow.

 

Become river-like. Become a white cloud floating in the sky, and let the winds take you wheresoever they take. Don’t, don’t follow any rules. This is what I mean when I say: be a sannyasin. Just be. Your ochre robes, your mala – these are rules. This is a game. This is not what I mean by real sannyas. But you are so accustomed to games that before I lead you to a rule-less life, in the transitory period, you will need rules. Moving from this world of rules, of games, to that world without rules and games, a bridge has to be passed. Your orange clothes, your mala, are just for that transitory period. You cannot drop rules immediately, so I give you new rules.

 

But be fully alert that your robes are not your sannyas, your mala is not your sannyas, your new name is not your sannyas. Sannyas will be there when there is no name; you become nameless. Then there will be no rules. When you will be so ordinary, you will not be recognized. Only then…

 

But don’t think that now it is okay, so no need to take sannyas and no need to wear an orange robe. That is again a trick. You have to pass through this, you have to go through this – you cannot bypass it. If you try to bypass, you will never reach the other shore.

 

Rules of the world, then rules of sannyas, and then comes a no-rule state. No commandments are needed. Don’t change the old commandments – they are okay as they are. Be, simply be, and follow and flow into the being.

 

-Osho, "A Bird on the Wing, #9“