Crying and Tears

 

 

Remember, there is no deeper way to relate your gratitude than tears, there is no higher way to pray than tears. Just a few days ago Geet Govind had come from Esalen. He could not say a single word to me -- tears and tears. And he started feeling a little embarrassed. He wanted to say something, but nothing was coming.

 

Those tears were beautiful. And since then he has been crying here. For all these two or three weeks that he has been here he has been crying, and he has been writing to me: "Osho, what to do? How to stop these tears? They go on and on." The impact.... He has made contact with me, hence the tears. He has seen me, hence the tears. His eyes are showing gratitude, hence the tears. The eyes are fulfilled, hence the tears.

 

Never be afraid of tears. The so-called civilization has made you very afraid of tears. It has created a kind of guilt in you. When tears come you start feeling embarrassed. You start feeling, "What will others think? And I am a man and I am crying! It looks so feminine and childish. It should not be so." You stop those tears -- and you kill something which was growing in you.

 

Tears are far more beautiful than anything that you have with you, because tears come from the overflow of your being. And tears are not necessarily of sadness; sometimes they come out of great joy and sometimes they come out of great peace and sometimes they come out of ecstasy and love. in fact they have nothing to do with sadness or happiness. Anything that stirs your heart too much, anything that takes possession of you, anything that is too much, that you cannot contain and it starts overflowing -- that brings tears.

 

Accept them with great joy, relish them, nourish them, welcome them, and through tears you will know how to pray. Through tears you will know how to see. Tear-filled eyes are capable of seeing truth. Tear-filled eyes are capable of seeing the beauty of life and the benediction of it.

 

-Osho, "The Diamond Sutra Talk #9"

 

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Ordinarily man has been brought up with the idea that crying is only for women, not for men, although nature has made tear glands of equal size behind the eyes of men and women, both. It is absolutely certain that nature intends men also to cry and weep and have tears. You may not have cried in your whole life. Crying was such a new experience to you, so relaxing, creating a kind of let-go, that everything around you which was disgusting just a few moments before became beautiful.

 

Crying is certainly one of the most important things for everybody to learn. There may be millions of people who have never cried. They don't know the joy of it, how it relaxes, how it cleanses your eyes -- not only the outer eyes but your inner vision -- and how it makes trees look more green, the sound of words more clear. The noises in a marketplace certainly start changing into a harmony because you are in a harmony.

 

You dropped the hope, you cried over it, you became innocent like a child. You should learn something from that experience. The platform of Varanasi station turned, for you, into a religious experience.

 

-Osho, "The Golden Future, #40"

 

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Beloved Osho,

The other day during discourse you helped us listen to the silence. During darshan, there were many moments of exquisite silence, almost tangible. On both days I felt as though my heart was bursting and I cried. Yet I also laughed, clapped, and celebrated as never before. Beloved Master, please speak about the space between the laughter and the tears, the space where the pendulum stops.

 

There is no space between.... The tears, when they come with the laughter, rejoicing, celebrating, those tears have a totally different quality. They are not tears of sadness, sorrow, misery. They are tears of joy -- you are so over-full.

You have felt something: your hands start clapping.

You have felt something: you would love to dance.

You have seen something: your eyes are showering tears of joy.

There is no space between the laughter and the tears. To ordinary people you will look mad, crying and laughing together, because ordinarily it is thought that laughter and tears are poles apart: tears are for misery and laughter is for joy. But people have known only one quality of tears.

Tears can join themselves with sadness. If it is too much, then it overflows through your tears.

Tears help you to wash away the sadness.

Tears always do something good to you.

It is because of tears that men are more miserable than women, because from the very childhood they have been told, "Crying and weeping is for girls, not for you. Be manly."

You have stopped a source of immense significance. The man cannot openly -- without feeling that he is doing something unmanly -- allow tears to come from his eyes. He goes on repressing them. By repressing them he is repressing his sadness too, because the tears would have taken it away.

The woman always looks fresher after she has wept, and more beautiful, healthier.

Man unnecessarily has lost something given by nature.

My sannyasins should understand it clearly, that if tears are only for women, then nature would not have given tear glands to men. It is such a simple fact. Why should men be given tear glands if they are not to be used?

My sannyasins have to allow tears -- in pain, in misery, in suffering -- without feeling embarrassed. In fact, everybody around the person should help him to cry. The tears help take away the sadness, the darkness, and leave a more silent space behind.

A greater problem is that, because you have repressed your tears of sadness, misery, pain -- when you are joyful, rejoicing, then too your old repression continues; you go on holding your tears. You don't allow your eyes to participate in your joy.

And do you know, your eyes are eighty percent of your energy? Your other four senses only have twenty percent. Not allowing your eyes also to take part in the dance of joy is keeping eighty percent of your energy out of it; this is unfortunate. But you will have to start from sadness, sorrow, which are common experiences: cry heartfully, let the tears flow.

It will unburden you, it will clean you, and it will break the repressive structure. Then you will be able, while laughter is there and dance is there and joy is there and love is there -- tears will also participate. Eyes are of immense value; they are eighty percent energy. That's why those who have attained to the ultimate truth, we call seers.

Why have you chosen the word "seer"? Why have you chosen the eye to represent the ultimate experience? Why not the ears? Why not the nose? Because they are poor people; the nose, the ear, the mouth, they are poor people.

The richest part of your being is your eyes. That's why when you see a blind man you feel more compassion than when you see a deaf man or a man who cannot smell anything -- you don't feel any compassion at all for them. Perhaps you may feel even jealous, that it is good that he cannot smell anything; it is perfectly good in this stinking world.

But a man without eyes immediately creates compassion in you. The reason is because without the eyes the man is only twenty percent alive, eighty percent dead. He does not know any color, he does not know the sunrise, he does not know the clouds. He cannot see a bird on the wing. He cannot see a beautiful face. All that is of immense importance, all that poetry -- he is completely blind to it. He lives only twenty percent of life.

So don't prevent your tears.

And there is no space. The idea of space has arisen because in your mind tears are associated with sadness; and laughter and joy? -- they are just the polar opposites of sadness, so how come tears are flowing from your eyes? Allow them.

You say your heart was bursting in those silent moments; tears started flowing from your eyes, and there was laughter too. So you must have got puzzled later on, thinking, Am I going mad or something? No, you have been mad; now you are coming back to sanity.

 

-Osho, "From Death to Deathlessness, #36, Q5"