Osho on Buddhist alchemy

 

 

Atisha Sutra :

Begin the development of taking with yourself. When evil fills the inanimate and animate universes change bad conditions to the bodhi path.

 

 

This is the Buddhist alchemy: all evil can be transformed into the bodhi path, the path to become a buddha. Evil is not against you, you just don't know how to use it. Poison is not your enemy, you just don't know how to make medicine out of it. In wise hands poison becomes medicinal, in foolish hands medicine can become poison. It all depends on you, on your artfulness.

 

Have you ever looked at the word evil? Read backwards, it is live. Life can become evil, evil can become life; it all depends on how you read it. There are three things to be understood about this sutra, to change bad conditions to the bodhi path so that you can attain to bodhichitta, the mind or no-mind of a buddha. The first is: do not resist evil.

 

That is a saying of Jesus; there is every possibility that Jesus got it from Buddhist sources. He traveled in India; he had lived in India before he started his mission in Israel.

 

That's why in The Bible there is almost no account of his life. Only once is he mentioned as having gone with his parents to the great temple and that he argued with the rabbis there. He must have been nearabout twelve at that time. After that incident there is no life story in The Bible. For eighteen years he simply disappears from Israel, and then suddenly when he is thirty he appears again. His ministry lasted only for three years; by the age of thirty-three he was crucified. Where had he been for eighteen years? It is a long period. And why does The Bible mention nothing about it?

 

In Tibet there are still books available which relate everything about those eighteen years. He had been in the East. In fact that was one of the reasons why he could not be accepted by the Jews, because he brought something very alien and strange. Although he was quoting the prophets from the Old Testament, he was giving to those old ancient statements new meanings that had never been heard before. He was bringing something foreign into the Jewish world.

 

For example, this statement: Do not resist evil. Now this is very un-Jewish. The Jewish God is very much against evil; he is so much against it that there are stories that he destroyed whole cities like Sodom and Gomorrah. He destroyed whole cities because those cities had fallen into evil. There were good people there too, but to destroy the evil people even the good people were destroyed.

 

The Jewish God says, "I am a very jealous God; if you don't obey me you will be destroyed." He is very dictatorial. And the Old Testament says evil has to be punished, an eye for an eye. Jesus says again and again, "You have been told that if somebody throws a brick at you, throw a stone or a rock at him. But I say unto you, if somebody hits you on one cheek, give him the other also."

 

This is alien, strange, to Jewish thinking. But this is not alien to Buddhist thinking, this is pure Buddhism. Do not resist evil. That is the first thing if you want to absorb evil in your heart and transform it. If you resist it, how can you transform it? Accept it.

 

Jesus says, "Love your enemies." The Jewish God cannot love his enemies, so why should man? If God is incapable of loving his enemies, how can you expect poor man to? "And love your enemies," Jesus says, "as you love yourself." Again, he got it from some strange sources that the Jews were not aware of. This is a Buddhist approach, this is the contribution of Buddha to the world -- one of the greatest contributions ever, because this is the inner alchemy. Accept evil. Don't resist it, don't fight with it, don't be angry with it; absorb it, because it can be transformed into good.

 

The art of transforming suffering, pain, evil, into something good is the art of seeing the necessity of the opposite. Light can exist only if darkness exists. Then why hate darkness? Without darkness there will be no light, so those who love light and hate darkness are in a dilemma; they don't know what they are doing.

 

Life cannot exist without death. Then why hate death? Because it is death that creates the space for life to exist. This is a great insight, that death is the contrast, the background, the blackboard on which life is written with white chalk. Death is the darkness of night on which life starts twinkling like stars. If you destroy the darkness of the night the stars will disappear. That's what happens in the day. The stars are still there -- do you think they have disappeared? They are still there, but because there is too much light you cannot see them. They can be seen only in contrast.

 

The saint is possible only because of the sinner. Hence, Buddha says don't hate the sinner, he makes it possible for the saint to exist. They are two aspects of the same coin. Seeing this, one is neither attached to good nor detached from bad. One accepts both as part and parcel of life. In that acceptance you can transform things. Only through that acceptance is transformation possible.

 

And before you can transform suffering you will have to become a witness; that is the third point. First: do not resist evil. Second: know that opposites are not opposites but complementaries, inevitably joined together, so there is no choice -- remain choiceless. And the third is: be a witness, because if you are a witness to your suffering you will be able to absorb it. If you become identified with it you cannot absorb it.

 

The moment you become identified with your suffering you want to discard it, you want to get rid of it, it is so painful. But if you are a witness then suffering loses all thorns, all stings. Then there is suffering, and you are a witness to it. You are just a mirror; it has nothing to do with you. Happiness comes and goes, unhappiness comes and goes, it is a passing show; you are just there, a mirror reflecting it. Life comes and goes, death comes and goes; the mirror is not affected by either. The mirror reflects but remains unaffected; the mirror is not imprinted by either.

 

A great distance arises when you witness. And only in that witnessing can you become able to transform the baser metal into gold. Only in that witnessing do you become a scientist of the inner, a detached observer. Now you know the opposites are not opposites, so they can be changed into each other. Then it is not a question of destroying evil in the world, but of transforming evil into something beneficial; transforming poison into nectar.

 

-Osho, "The Book of Wisdom, #5"