Question 1 :

What do you do when somebody hates you?

 

 

Whether somebody hates you or somebody loves you should not make any difference in you. If you are, you remain the same. If you are not, then you are immediately changed. If you are not, then anybody can pull you, push you; then anybody can push your buttons and change you. Then you are a slave, then you are not a master. Your mastery begins when whatsoever happens outside does not change you; your inner climate remains the same.

 

A psychoanalyst was attending a convention. At one of the lectures one ugly woman sitting next to him began to pinch him. Annoyed, he was about to give her an angry retort, when he changed his mind: “Why should I get angry,” he decided. “After all, it is her problem.”

 

Whether somebody loves you or hates you, it is his or her problem. If you are, if you have understood your being, you remain in tune with yourself. Nobody can disturb your inner harmony. If somebody loves, good; if somebody hates, good. Both remain somewhere outside you. This is what we call mastery. This is what we call crystallization — becoming free of impressions, influences.

 

You ask me, “What do you do when somebody hates you?”

 

What can I do? It is that person’s problem; it has nothing to do with me. If I was not here he would have hated somebody else. He would have hated. If there were nobody and he were alone, he would have hated himself. Hatred is his problem. It has nothing to do with me, not in the least. Basically it does not even refer to me; I am just an excuse. Somebody else would have done as well, would have functioned as an excuse for him.

 

Have you not watched it? that when you are angry, you are simply angry. It is not that your anger is addressed to somebody. That ‘somebody’ is nothing but an excuse. Angry, you come home from the office; you jump on your wife. Angry, you go from your home; you are angry in the office with the peon, with the clerk, with this and that. If you analyze your states of mind, you will come to see that they belong to you. You live in your own world, but you go on projecting it on others.

 

When you are angry, YOU are angry — not at me. When you are full of hate, you are full of hate — not at me. When you are full of love, you are full of love — not at me. Once you understand it, you remain like a lotus leaf in the world. You remain in the water but the water does not touch; it touches you not. You remain in the world and yet aloof, not of it. Then nobody can disturb your silence, and nobody can distract you. Your compassion goes on flowing. If you love me, you receive my compassion. If you hate me, you will not receive my compassion — not because I will not give to you. I will be continuously giving to you, as much as I give to those who love me, but you will be closed and you will not receive it.

 

Once being is attained, one is compassion, unconditional compassion. Not that in some moments he becomes compassionate and some moments he is not compassionate. Compassion then is his natural climate, compassion is his permanent mood, compassion is his integrated being. Then whatsoever you do, his compassion goes on showering on you. But there are moments when you will receive it, when you will be open, and there are moments when you will not receive it because you will be closed.

 

So in hate you will not receive that, in love you will receive that. And you may even feel the difference — because one who loves me will start growing, one who hates me will start shrinking. Both will become so totally different that you may start thinking that I must be giving more to the one I Love, or one who loves me, and I’m not giving to one who hates me or is angry at me or is closed towards me. But I am not doing that. The clouds are there and they are showering: if your pot is not broken it will be filled. Or even if your pot is not broken, but is upside-down, then you will miss. Hate is a state of upside-downness. Then rains can go on showering but you will remain empty, because your opening is not there. Once you are put rightside-up, that’s what love is. Love is nothing but an opening, a receptivity, a welcome, an invitation, that “I am ready; come, please.”

 

The Bauls go on singing, “Come Beloved, come.” They go on sending their invitations. Love is inviting, hate is repelling. If you love me you will receive much — not because I am giving you more especially; but if you hate me you will not receive at all — not because I am not giving you, but because you are closed. But I remain myself.

 

I am not identified with my body, I am not identified with my mind. I have come home. If you are identified with your body and somebody hurts your body, you will be angry; he is hurting YOU. If you are identified with your mind and somebody insults you, you will be angry, because he is hurting your mind. Once you are identified with your being nobody can hurt, because nobody has yet invented any way to hurt being.

 

The body can be hurt, can be killed. The mind can be hurt…but the being cannot be touched. There is no way to hurt it, there is no way to create pain. It’s VERY nature is blissfulness. You can hurt my body; simple. If I am identified with the body I will be angry because I will think you have hurt me. If you insult me then the hurt goes into the mind. If I am identified with the mind, again you are my enemy. But I am neither identified with the body nor with the mind. I am the witness. So whatsoever you do never reaches to my witnessing center. It goes on witnessing it; it remains utterly unaffected. Once false identifications fall, you are unperturbed. Then you become the center of the cyclone, and storms can go on raging all around you, but deep inside you remain at the still, small center of your being, completely transcendental to whatsoever is happening.

 

I have heard…. A philosopher, a barber and a bald-headed fool were travelling together. Losing their way they were forced to sleep in the open air, and to avoid danger it was agreed to watch by turns. The first lot fell on the barber, who for amusement shaved the philosopher’s head while he was sleeping. He then awoke him, and the philosopher, raising his hand to scratch his head, exclaimed, “Here is a pretty mistake! You have awakened the old bald-headed fool instead of me.”

 

Your identification is the BASIC problem. If you are identified with the body, then you are going to remain in constant trouble. Because body is continuously changing, your identity will never be at a point where you can settle and relax. One day the body is young, another day it is old. One day it is healthy, another day it is ill. One day you are so radiant with youth, another day just a dilapidated structure, a ruin. Continuously, body is in a flux.

 

That’s why people who are identified with the body will remain constantly puzzled, confused, not knowing who they are. You are identifying with something which is not reliable. One day it is born, another day it dies. It is continuously dying and continuously changing. How can you rest with it?

 

If you are identified with the mind then there will be even more trouble. Because the body at least has a certain structure: it changes, but changes very slowly. You never feel the change. It changes very silently, and it takes years really, to feel a certain change happening. A child does not become a young man overnight, and a young man does not become an old man overnight. It takes years, and very slow is the change; and such minute, minor changes happen that one is never aware. But with the mind you are constantly in turmoil; every single moment there is change. One moment you are happy, another moment you are sad. One moment you were at the top of the world, feeling so fortunate, another moment you are in hell, thinking to commit suicide. How can you identify with the mind?

 

Being is that which remains always the same, eternally the same. It has no form so it cannot change, and it has no content so it cannot change. The being is contentless, formless. It has no name, no form — what in the East we call NAMARUPA. These two things change: the name and the form. It is neither. It is simple, sheer existence, empty of all content and all form Once you have entered this emptiness nothing can disturb you, because there is nothing to be disturbed. Nothing can hit you, because there is nobody inside to be hit.

 

Then if you hate me, your arrow will pass through me. It cannot strike because there is nobody. You cannot make a target of me. Whether you love me or hate me, you cannot make a target of me. So it makes no difference. And I don’t do anything, I just remain myself.

 

One day Mulla Nasrudin was saying to me, “Yes, I used to be in politics myself. I was a dog-catcher in my town for two years, but finally lost the job.”

 

“What was the matter?” I asked him. “Change of mayors, or something else?”

 

He said, “No, I finally caught the dog.”

 

And that’s what I would like to say to you: I finally caught the dog. Now there is no work left for me. I am jobless. I’m not doing anything: all desires have gone, all doing has left. I’m just here. I’m just being to you. If you love, you will receive me with great welcome, and you will be tremendously benefitted. If you hate you will miss, and the responsibility will be yours. Now it is for you to choose. But I don’t do anything.

 

- Osho,  “The Beloved, Vol 2, #8, Q1”