Question 3
Beloved Osho,
The religion is dead. then is there any need of meditation?
My God! It seems it is the same idiot who is asking all these questions.
Because the religion is dead, now only meditation is left. I had to destroy everything nonessential, so you don't get lost in nonessentials as all other people in the world have. They have got lost in nonessentials, and completely forgotten the essential.
The essential is very simple; the nonessentials you can go on increasing. Buddhism has thirty-three thousand rules for the Buddhist monk. Now, I don't think any Buddhist monk can even remember them. I don't think even Gautam Buddha can repeat them again. Thirty-three thousand rules! And if people start following these rules, who is going to meditate? There is no time left. Strange kinds of rules all the religions have!
I have not given you a single rule -- just to keep you focused on the essential, the only thing that can transform you. And you are asking me, "Now that the religion is dead, is there any need of meditation?"
Then what the hell are you doing here? The religion is dead, meditation is no longer needed, so what the hell are you doing? Get lost! Go to the county road which goes directly to hell! You will have some taste on the county road of what it means to go towards hell. The county road has been made such a great thing, to give an experience to people of how the road to hell goes.
Can't you see a simple thing?
I used to live in a place, and in front of my house there lived a man.... Followers of Jainism have this idea that women are impure. I don't know what they mean, because they have the same blood, the same bones. And, in fact, man is born from the woman's womb. From the father he has got only a small injection of a male sperm, so minute that you cannot see it with bare eyes. That is his father's contribution. The father's contribution is almost nil, any syringe can do it far better. There is no need for so many gymnastics to do it.
But everything else comes from the mother -- your blood, your bones, your flesh, everything comes from the woman. And Jainism has the idea that women are impure. I cannot see the logic. Then what happens to men? Men must be more impure; nine months living in a woman's womb, growing with her blood -- everything that you have has come from your mother, except one sperm from your father. But nobody asks about men.
This man who lived in front of my house was a very orthodox Jaina. And he was in real trouble. The trouble was that he was a poor man, he had no running water inside his house. So he would go outside on the street, to the public water place where everybody was getting water, as early as possible. But if he saw a woman pass by, then that water that he had in his pot had become impure. He would throw away the water, wash his pot again. Sometimes it would be ten times, sometimes twenty times, sometimes it would be almost the whole morning that he was doing that.
And who can prevent them? Half of the people are women, half are men, and it is a road. I told him, "You waste so much time, you are bound to be poor; you are responsible for your poverty. If you washed people's pots and carried so much water to people's houses, you would have enough money for yourself. And what nonsense you go on doing!"
One day it was too much, because I told one woman, "Whatsoever happens -- I am going to give you five rupees -- you continue walking down the street the whole day. And I have to see this man and his religion."
The whole day he was throwing away water and washing his pots, and getting angrier and angrier. And finally, by the time the sun was setting... he had been doing that since sunrise, now it was too much. He was hungry, he had not eaten; he had not gone to work -- he hit the woman with his pot!
I reached there at that moment, and I told him, "This is absolutely wrong. The pot has become impure for its whole life. Now you cannot wash it clean, it has touched a woman. And what happened to your nonviolence, your compassion?"
He said, "This woman is very bitchy. I want to kill her!"
I said, "That is not allowed in your religion. You have forgotten completely, just cleaning your pot, that murder is not allowed by your religion. But suicide is allowed by Jainism, so if you are fed up, you can commit suicide."
He said, "You are strange! You always give me strange ideas. And I am puzzled why this woman goes on walking up and down the road."
I said, "I have arranged it with her. And from tomorrow she is going to walk up and down, because I am going to pay her five rupees per day until you stop this nonsense."
It is easy to see other religions and their stupidities. It is very difficult to see your own conditioning, the religion in which you have been brought up. But if you are a little aloof — and that’s what meditation is: being aloof, detached, watching your mind — you will be surprised what kinds of things you have been thinking are religious.
No Christian thinks that drinking alcohol is irreligious. In fact, on every holy occasion alcohol is an absolute essential. Now, Jainas or Buddhists cannot think of a religious person drinking alcohol. To them, all Christians are irreligious, antireligious.
Mohammedans, Christians, Jews — all are meat-eaters. It does not occur to you that killing living animals just for your taste… and what taste? Just a few tastebuds on your tongue can be removed by any plastic surgeon very easily, and you will not taste anything.Just f or your tastebuds you are killing living beings — and still you think you are religious? And if Charles Darwin is right, then you are killing your forefathers. This is not good, it is not even nice — what to say about it being Christian? Mohammedans think that God has created all the animals for man to eat. Their religious scripture says it, so there is no question about it: animals have been specifically created for man to eat. They don’t see the implication of it. It means God is also a cannibal, life-destructive; he is not a creator, he is a destroyer.
A meditator — who is neither a Christian, nor a Hindu, nor a Mohammedan, nor a Jaina, nor a Buddhist, but simply an inquirer into his subjectivity: “Who am I? What is this life?” — the moment he comes to know this life, he also comes to know all life, because it is the same. Then he sees life not only in other human beings, he sees life in animals, he sees life in trees, he sees life all around. The whole existence is alive; we are not living in a dead existence. Out of a dead existence, life cannot arise.
And when you come to your center, you also know the ultimate peak of consciousness, the very Everest of consciousness. From that height you can see that there are people who have the same potential, but are not aware of it, are too much engaged in the outside world. Even if they become religious, then too they are engaged in outside rules, regulations, disciplines. But they have the same Everest of consciousness.
Not only man, animals have the same possibility. The trees have the same possibility. They have tremendous sensitivity. Even in plucking a flower, you are hurting the tree. A man of meditation cannot do it — not because it is prohibited in his scripture: he cannot do many things simply because now his consciousness gives him the clarity to see what is right, what is good, what is wrong, what is bad. And to attain to this clarity is enough.
The moment you know of your own accord what is right and what is wrong, you cannot do the wrong. It is impossible. When you know what is good and what is bad, you cannot do the bad. The evil, the bad, the ugly is possible only in sleep.
The real religiousness is essentially very simple. I call it meditation. You can give it another name, awareness; or another name, consciousness. But whatever you call it, it has nothing to do with any organization, any holy scripture, any leader. Yes, a friend who has seen that luminous, that ecstatic world, who has touched the farthest star in his being, can help you as a guide.
I am not your leader -- leaders happen in politics. I am not your priest -- because I cannot do anything on your behalf. I am simply a friend whose own experience has made him so full of love that he wants to share it with anybody who is willing to share. And to a guide you don't owe anything. Just a thank-you perhaps will be more than enough. So you don't owe anything to me.
But the death of religion makes meditation absolutely important. Now you don't have anything left with which to deceive yourself. I have taken everything away that could have distracted you, and left you alone with meditation.
And you are asking me, "Should we stop meditating too?"
Why don't you ask, "Should we stop living too? Because religion is dead, should we be also dead?"
No, meditation you want to stop -- and what are you going to do then? Eat, drink and be merry, because the religion is dead? I am not against "Eat, drink and be merry," but a meditator really eats. He knows really the taste. While you are eating, you are doing a thousand and one things in your head; you are not there.
A meditator just drinking a cup of tea enjoys each sip as if he has found a treasure. He tastes everything -- the beauty of a rose, or a bird on the wing, a white floating cloud in the sky, a night full of stars. Existence is so full of splendor that a meditator -- because he is silent, available, present to the moment -- enjoys everything to its fullest.
I am not against your eating, drinking and merrying. I would like it to happen more deeply, more profoundly. But to give it that intensity, that totality, that profundity, that depth... except meditation, there is no other way.
Life without meditation is simply vegetating. You can be different vegetables. Somebody is a cabbage, somebody is a cauliflower.... A cauliflower is only a cabbage with college degrees, not much difference.
But to live truly, you have to know yourself.
"Know thyself," says Socrates, but his statement is incomplete. I would like to say to you, "Know thyself so that you can be yourself."
And in being yourself, you are fulfilled. You have come home, the wandering is finished. Now there is nowhere to go, you have arrived. You have known the eternal life, its beauty, its bliss. All that you can do now is share it -- which comes automatically. When you see people stumbling in the dark, you start helping them, trying to move them in the right direction. It is a joy. When the gardener sees his rosebush full of flowers one morning, his heart also blossoms with the flowers.
And that's what happens to a man who has known himself, who has become himself. He starts sharing his joy, his bliss, his love, in different ways with different people -- whoever is available. And whenever he sees somebody moving in the right direction, he is immensely gratified, satisfied. Existence has given him so much, and he has nothing else to give to existence to show his gratitude. This is his gratitude. And when he sees others also reaching home, he feels that he has not been ungrateful -- and that is a tremendous experience.
When I see you moving, growing, this is my gratitude towards existence. It has given me so much, there is no way to pay anything back; there is no word even to express gratitude. The only way is that my every breath should be used in helping people to reach to the same Everest of consciousness.
- Osho, "From Bondage to Freedom, #19, Q3"