Suchness

 

 

Try to understand the word 'suchness'. Buddha depends on that word very much. In Buddha's own language it is TATHATA -- suchness. The whole Buddhist meditation consists of living in this word, living with this word, so deeply that the word disappears and you become the suchness.

 

For example, you are ill. The attitude of suchness is: accept it -- and say to yourself, "Such is the way of the body," or, "Such are things." Don't create a fight, don't start struggling. You have a headache -- accept it. Such is the nature of things. Suddenly there is a change, because when this attitude comes in a change follows just like a shadow. If you can accept your headache, the headache disappears.

 

You try it. If you accept an illness it starts dispersing. Why does it happen? It happens because whenever you are fighting, your energy is divided: half the energy moving into illness, the headache, and half the energy fighting the headache -- a rift, a gap and the fight. Really THIS fight is a deeper headache.

 

Once you accept, once you don't complain, once you don't fight, the energy has become one within. The rift is bridged. And so much energy is released because now there is no conflict -- the release of energy itself becomes a healing force. Healing doesn't come from outside. All that medicines can do is to help the body to bring its own healing force into action. All that a doctor can do is just to help you to find your own healing power. Health cannot be forced from outside, it is your energy flowering.

 

This word 'suchness' can work so deeply that with physical illness, with mental illness and finally with spiritual illness -- this is a secret method -- they all dissolve. But start from the body, because that is the lowest layer. If you succeed there, then higher levels can be tried. If you fail there, then it will be difficult for you to move higher.

 

Something is wrong in the body: relax and accept it, and simply say inside -- not only in words but feel it deeply -- that such is the nature of things. A body is a compound, so many things combined in it. The body is born, it is prone to death. And it is a mechanism, and complex; there is every possibility of something or other going wrong.

 

Accept it, and don't be identified. When you accept you remain above, you remain beyond. When you fight you come to the same level. Acceptance is transcendence. When you accept, you are on a hill, the body is left behind. You say, "Yes, such is the nature. Things born will have to die.

 

And if things born have to die they will be ill sometimes. Nothing to be worried about too much" -- as if it is not happening to you, just happening in the world of the things.

 

This is the beauty: that when you are not fighting, you transcend. You are no more on the same level. And this transcendence becomes a healing force. Suddenly the body starts changing. And the same happens to mental worries, tensions, anxieties, anguish. You are worried about a certain thing. What is the worry? You cannot accept the fact, that's the worry. You would like it in some way different from how it is happening. You are worried because you have some ideas to enforce on nature.

 

For example, you are getting old. You are worried. You would like to remain young forever -- this is the worry. You love a wife, you depend on her and she is thinking to leave, or of moving with another man, and you are worried -- worried because what will happen to you? You depend on her so much, you feel so much security with her. When she is gone there will be no security.

 

She has not only been a wife to you, she has been also a mother, a shelter; you can come and hide against the whole world. You can rely on her, she will be there. Even if the whole world is against you, she will not be against you, she is a consolation. Now she is leaving, what will happen to you? Suddenly you are in a panic, worried.

 

What are you saying? What are you saying by your worry? You are saying you cannot accept this happening, this should not be so. You expected it just the otherwise, just the contrary; you wanted this wife to be yours forever and ever, and now she is leaving. But what can you do?

 

When love disappears what can you do? There is no way; you cannot force love, you cannot force this wife to remain with you. Yes, you can force -- that's what everybody is doing -- you can force. The dead body will be there, but the living spirit will have left. Then that will be a tension on you.

 

Against nature nothing can be done. Love was a flowering, now the flower has faded. The breeze has come into your house, now it has moved into another. Such is the way of things, they go on moving and changing.

 

The world of things is a flux, nothing is permanent there. Don't expect! If you expect permanency in the world where everything is impermanent, you will create worry. You would like this love to be forever. Nothing can be forever in this world -- all that belongs to this world is momentary. This is the nature of things, suchness, TATHATA.

 

So you know now the love has disappeared. It gives you sadness -- okay, accept sadness. You feel trembling -- accept trembling, don't suppress it. You feel like crying, cry. Accept it! Don't force it, don't make a face, don't pretend that you are not worried, because that won't help. If you are worried you are worried; if the wife is leaving she is leaving; if the love is no more it is no more. You cannot fight the facticity, you have to accept it.

 

And if you accept it gradually, then you will be continuously in pain and suffering. If you accept it without any complaint, not in helplessness but in understanding, it becomes suchness. Then you are no more worried, then there is no problem -- because the problem was arising not because of the fact, but because you couldn't accept it the way it was happening. You wanted it to follow you.

 

REMEMBER, life is not going to follow you, you have to follow life. Grudgingly, happily -- that's your choice. If you follow grudgingly you will be in suffering. If you follow happily you become a Buddha, your life becomes an ecstasy.

 

Buddha has also to die -- things won't change -- but he dies in a different way. He dies so happily, as if there is no death. He simply disappears, because he says a thing which is born is going to die. Birth implies death, so it is okay, nothing can be done about it.

 

You can be miserable and die. Then you miss the point, the beauty that death can give to you, the grace that happens in the last moment, the illumination that happens when body and soul part. You will miss that because you are so much worried, and you are so much clinging to the past and to the body that your eyes ate closed. You cannot see what is happening because you cannot accept it, so you close your eyes, you close your whole being. You die -- you will die many times, and you will go on missing the point of it.

 

Death is beautiful if you can accept, if you can open the door with a welcoming heart, a warm reception: "yes, because if I am born I am to die. So the day has come, the circle becomes complete." You receive death as a guest, a welcome guest, and the quality of the phenomenon changes immediately.

 

Suddenly you are deathless: the body is dying, you are not dying. You can see now: only the clothes are dropping, not you; only the cover, the container, not the content. The consciousness remains in its illumination -- more so because in life many were the covers on it, in death it is naked. And when consciousness is in total nakedness it has a splendor of its own; it is the MOST beautiful thing in the world.

 

But for that an attitude of suchness has to be imbibed. When I say imbibed, I mean imbibed -- not just a mental thought, not the philosophy of suchness, but your whole way of life becomes suchness. You even don't think about it, it simply becomes natural.

 

You eat in suchness, you sleep in suchness, you breathe in suchness, you love in suchness, you weep in suchness. It becomes your very style; you need not bother about it, you need not think about it, it is the way you are. That is what I mean by the word 'imbibe'. You imbibe it, you digest it, it flows in your blood, it goes deep in your bones, it reaches to the very beat of your heart. You accept.

 

Remember, the word 'accept' is not very good. It is loaded -- because of you, not because of the word -- because you accept only when you feel helpless. You accept grudgingly, you accept half heartedly. You accept only when you cannot do anything, but deep down you still wish; you would have been happy if it had been otherwise. You accept like a beggar, not like a king -- and the difference is great.

 

If the wife leaves or the husband leaves, finally you come to accept it. What can be done? You weep and cry and many nights you brood and worry, and many nightmares around you and suffering... and then what to do? Time heals, not understanding. Time -- and remember, time is needed only because you are not understanding, otherwise INSTANT healing happens.

 

Time is needed because you are not understanding. So by and by -- six months, eight months, a year -- things become dim, in the memory they are lost, covered with much dust. And a gap comes of one year; by and by you forget.

 

Still, sometimes the wound hurts. Sometimes a woman passes on the road and suddenly you remember. Some similarity, the way she walks, and the wife is remembered -- and the wound. Then you fall in love with someone, then more dust gathers, then you remember less. But even with a new woman, sometimes the way she looks... and your wife. The way she sings in the bathroom... and the memory. And the wound is there, green.

 

It hurts because you carry the past. You carry everything, that's why you are so much burdened. You carry everything! You were a child; the child is still there, you are carrying it. You were a young man; the young man is still there with all his wounds, experiences, stupidities -- he is there. You CARRY your whole past, layers upon layers -- everything is there. That's why you sometimes regress.

 

If something happens and you feel helpless, you start crying like a child. You have regressed in time, the child has taken over. The child is more efficient in weeping than you, so the child comes in and takes over, you start crying and weeping. You can even start kicking, just like a child in a tantrum. But everything is there.

 

Why is so much load carried? Because you never really accepted anything. Listen: if you accept anything it simply never becomes a load, then the wound is not carried. You accepted the phenomenon; there is nothing to carry from it, you are out of it. Through acceptance you are out of it. Through half -- helpless acceptance it is carried.

 

Remember one thing: anything incomplete is carried by the mind forever and forever, anything complete, it is dropped. Because mind has a tendency to carry the incomplete things just in a hope that someday there may be an opportunity to complete them. You are still waiting for the wife to come, or for the husband, or for the days that have gone you are still waiting. You have not transcended the past.

 

And because of a too much loaded past, you cannot live in the present. Your present is a mess because of the past, and your future is also going to be the same -- because the past will become more and more heavy. Every day it is becoming heavier and heavier.

 

When you really accept, in that attitude of suchness there is no grudge, you are not helpless. Simply you under stand that this is the nature of things. For example, if I want to go out of this room I will go out through the door, not through the wall, because to enter the wall will be just hitting my head against it, it is simply foolish. This is the nature of the wall, to hinder, so you don't try to pass through it! This is the nature of the door, that you pass through it -- because the door is empty you can pass through it.

 

When a Buddha accepts, he accepts things like wall and door. He passes through the door, he says that is the only way. First you try to pass through the wall, and you wound yourself in many millions of ways. And when you cannot get out -- crushed, defeated, depressed, fallen -- then you crawl towards the door. You could have gone through the door in the first place. Why did you try and start fighting with the wall?

 

If you can look at things with a clarity, you simply don't do things like this, trying to make a door out of a wall. If love disappears, it has disappeared! Now there is a wall -- don't try to go through it. Now the door is no more there, the heart is no more there, the heart has opened to somebody else. And you are not alone here; there are others also.

 

The door is no more for you, it has become a wall. Don't try, and don't knock your head on it. You will be wounded unnecessarily. And wounded, defeated, even the door will not be such a beautiful thing to pass through.

 

Simply look at things. If something is natural, don't try to force any unnatural thing on it. Choose the door -- be out of it. You are doing every day the foolishness of passing through the wall. Then you become tense, and then you feel continuous confusion. Anguish becomes your very life, the core of it -- and then you ask for a meditation.

 

But why in the first place? Why not look at the facts as they are? Why can't you look at the facts? Because your wishes are too much there. You GO on hoping against all hope. That's why you have become so hopeless a case.

 

Just look: whenever there is a situation, don't desire anything, because desire will lead you astray. Don't wish and don't imagine. Simply look at the fact with your total consciousness available and suddenly a door opens and you never move through the wall, you move through the door, unscratched. Then you remain unloaded.

 

Remember, suchness is an understanding, not a helpless fate. So that's the difference. People ARE there who believe in fate, destiny. They say, "What can you do? God has willed it such a way. My young child has died, so it is God's will and this is my fate. It was written, it was going to happen" But deep down there is rejection. These are just tricks to polish the rejection. Do you know God? Do you know fate? Do you know it was written? No, these are rationalizations -- how you console yourself.

 

The attitude of suchness is not a fatalist attitude. It does not bring in a God, or a fate, or a destiny -- nothing. It says simply look at things. Simply look at the facticity of things, understand, and there is a door, there is always a door. You transcend.

 

Suchness means acceptance with a total welcoming heart, not in helplessness.

 

-Osho, "Hsin Hsin Ming: The Book of Nothing, #9"