Wonder

 

 

Wonder is the taste of that serenity. The modern mind has lost all capacity to wonder. It has lost all capacity to look into the mysterious, into the miraculous, because of knowledge, because it thinks it knows. The moment you think you know, wonder stops arising. The moment you start again becoming less knowledgeable, wonder enters back, starts penetrating you. Watch it. If you think you know this tree then you are no more in any wonder about it.

 

That's why your own wife and her beauty does not fill your eyes with wonder. You think you know her. Had she been somebody else's wife you would certainly have been attracted. But now you think you know her, now you think you are acquainted with her. And you are not -- because each person is such a unique mystery there is no way to know. You cannot know a woman by becoming her husband and you cannot know a man by becoming a wife.

 

You may have lived for thirty years together but you don't know. You remain strangers. Because we are all mysteries there is no way to get acquainted, and each moment the unpredictable is possible.

 

Sometimes you come across it. You have lived for ten years with a woman and suddenly one day she is angry and you had never thought that she would be so angry. For ten years you have watched her and she has been always so tender, so loving, so compassionate, and suddenly one day she is so angry that she would like to kill you. Unpredictable. And you were getting settled and you had started taking her for granted and you were thinking that you knew her. Nobody knows anybody. Neither she knows you nor you know her.

 

Yes, you may have given birth to a child. The child has remained nine months in your womb, but you don't know it. When the child comes he is as unpredictable as anybody else's child. Don't for a single moment think that you know anybody. We are strangers.

 

So is this whole existence. These trees surround you here.... You see them every day and by and by you have stopped seeing them because you think that now you know -- what is the point? Please listen to me. Have a look again and you will be surprised. Nothing is ever known. Knowledge happens not. Knowledge is just sheer ignorance. Life remains mysterious. Yes, we can enjoy it, we can dance with it, we can sing with it, we can celebrate -- that's possible. But we cannot know it.

 

All the great Masters of the world have said that knowledge is not possible. It is not in the nature of things. And whatsoever you think you know is just so-so -- your make-believe. Because of that make-believe you become so burdened that you stop wondering.

 

A child wonders because he does not know. Once he starts getting acquainted -- he reads geography and history and all kinds of nonsense -- then he thinks he knows. Then the flower does not smell the way it used to any more. Then the butterfly does not attract him any more as it used to. Then he will not collect seashells on the seashore. He has become a grown-up.

 

In fact, he has stopped growing. In fact, he has died. The day you think you know, your death has happened -- because now there will be no wonder and no joy and no surprise. Now you will live a dead life. You can enter into your grave, you will not be losing anything. Because you are not going to be surprised by anything what is the point of going on living? Commit suicide. In fact, that's what you are actually doing. We commit suicide. The day you think you know, you have committed suicide.

 

With this MO CHAO, with this serene reflection, again you will become a child, again you will attain to those beautiful eyes of childhood -- innocent, unknowing, yet penetrating.

 

So remember, sereneness or silence is not calmness, is not quietitude. It implies transcendency over all words or thoughts denoting a state of beyond, of pervasive peace. It is not a still mind, it is stillness itself. It is not a disciplined thing out of your effort. It is nothing to be practised, it is something to be understood, to be loved. You have to play with it rather than work it out. It is absence of mentation. Yes, that is what meditation is all about -- absence of mentation. The mind is no longer thinking, the mind is silent.

 

It has no savour of mental activity, it is clear awareness in the tranquillity of nothingness. The Japanese have a beautiful word for it: they call it KOKORO. KOKORO means absolute nothingness; KOKORO means a tremendous absence; KOKORO means blankness -- but not negative. Nothingness gives the sense of something being negated. No. All that is rubbish is negated, certainly, obviously, but once you negate all that is rubbish your own innermost nature asserts. It is very positive.

 

When the ripples have disappeared from the lake you can say that now nothing exists on the surface of the lake. Absolute nothingness resides, floats. But this is not a negative state. In fact, now the lake asserts itself in its total silence. Its nature is visible on the surface; those waves and ripples were hiding it. Now it is there, just present. Not noisy, very silent. Not declaring that 'I am here' -- there is no 'I' any more.

 

'I' is nothing but all your noise together, put together. When noise disappears, when the mind is no more, when mentation is no more there, suddenly you are for the first time -- and yet you are not. You are not in the old way; you have died and you are reborn. This is the second childhood. [....]

 

And when you are in this nothingness everything is possible. This nothingness is so potent, this nothingness is so positive, this nothingness is God. The Buddhists don't use the word God because God seems to be confining. They use nothingness -- KOKORO, SHUNYATA. In this nothingness you will see that God is omnipresent. This nothingness is filling the whole existence.

 

These are the words of John Donne: 'God is so omnipresent that God is an angel in an angel and a stone in a stone and a straw in a straw.'

 

In this nothingness you will have penetrated into the very nature of things. This penetration into the nature of things is the goal. And that is possible only when you 'devise no word'. Then things are.

 

Listen to these words of Wordsworth:

 

THE COCK IS CROWING,

 

THE STREAM IS FLOWING,

 

THE SMALL BIRDS TWITTER,

 

THE LAKE DOTH GLITTER,

 

THE GREEN FIELDS SLEEP IN THE SUN.

 

Then everything is as it is. The cock is crowing and the green fields sleep in the sun. 'God is so omnipresent that God is an angel in an angel and a stone in a stone and a straw in a straw.' Then God disappears. There is only godliness. Then there is no deity, there is only divineness, pure liquid divineness, overfilling all the space.

The moment you think you know, wonder stops arising.at things which are to be found among us, the being of nothingness is the greatest.' KOKORO.

 

That being of nothingness comes through no word, no language, no concept, no mind, no mentation -- MO CHAO.

 

-Osho, "Zen - The Path of Paradox, Vol 1, #3"