Question 1

How can i feel life fresh day by day? please explain.

 

LIFE is fresh but you are stale, and you become stale because you go on carrying the yesterdays. The past functions as a barrier between you and life.

Die every moment to the past and then life can be felt and lived as fresh as it is.

Life is never old; each moment it renews itself, rejuvenates itself, reorients itself. It is eternally fresh. But the mind cannot be fresh. The very mechanism of the mind does not allow it to be fresh. It has to bee old, it has to be dead.

The moment you know something, it is already past. Knowledge is already dead. A bird sings in the tree. The moment your mind says 'beautiful', it is already old. It is no more in the present; it has already passed. The moment you say to someone 'I love you', it is already past. The moment the mind catches anything, it immediately dies.

To be fresh means to be without mind. Listen to the birds without the mind interfering. see the trees without the mind interfering. You will have to learn how to remain without verbalization. There is the root of all disease.

You see a rose and immediately the mind starts spinning...'A beautiful rose; I have never seen such a beautiful rose before.' You are no more seeing this rose now. You have moved into the past. You are comparing with other roses. And when you are comparing with other roses, you have completely forgotten this rose.

Those other roses are just in the memory -- past impressions. And the most amazing thing is that when those other roses were alive, you must have been comparing them with some other roses which were dead. Again this amazing thing will happen. Some other day, seeing another rose, you may compare with this rose which you are not seeing at all.

Look at life and don't allow words to interfere. Look without words. Look without thinking -- and suddenly everything is fresh, suddenly everything is as new as it can be.

This has to be learned. Every child knows it. It is a capacity which comes with your birth; it is something inborn. But then the society takes over and starts teaching, forces the child to learn. What the society is trying is nothing but creating a pattern of verbalization inside. And by and by, layer upon layer will gather there and the child will miss life.

Psychologists say that up to the age of four the child remains absolutely fresh and absolutely intelligent. Every child is intelligent up to the age of four. There is no stupid child; it doesn't happen. Every healthy child is intelligent, and up to the age of four, a child learn the most. Fifty percent of his whole life's learning is finished by the age of four.

By the age of eight, the child is no more a child. He has become part of society, he has learned tricks, gimmicks. Now he is no more a person; he is a mechanism. And by the age of eight, learning stops.

Then accumulation continues -- he goes on accumulating knowledge -- but learn stops, freshness disappears.

Watch small children below the age of four, and you will find them bubbling with fresh energy. Just watch them, look at their response to things, and you will always find them original, open, fresh, unique. Each child is a genius, but the society cannot allow so many geniuses, and the society cannot allow so many open people. They will create chaos.

An original man is a danger. Only rarely somebody escapes from the imprisonment of the society. A little quota of original people the society can tolerate. Somewhere here and there a buddha, an einstein, can be tolerated. But a very small quantity of genuine intelligence... and sometimes even that becomes too much. Then a jesus has to be crucified, a socrates has to be poisoned.

These people remain children. They remain fresh, they remain young. They remain original. They remain unique and open.

Look! Don't call adults people; they are not. They are machines. Only small children are people. Adults are already dead. Adults have utility.

As I have been watching, if some adult comes to me, either he is a doctor or a professor or an engineer, but not a man or a woman. He has some utility, some function in the society. He is not a person any more.

When small children come, they are simply people. Nobody is a doctor, nobody is an engineer, nobody is a scientist -- they are simply people... open-ended, fresh, with no accumulation.

Look into the eyes of children -- such infinite silence, and yet not dead; vibrant with life. Look at children -- so resilient, so flexible, so responsive. As they grow, they start taking a mode, a fixed mode, a fixed structure. Then they function only through that structure.

When somebody comes and says, 'I am a doctor,' I immediately understand it to mean that I cannot meet the person, I can only meet the doctor. The doctor will be in between. When somebody comes and says that he is a professor, then I know well that I can shake hands, but I will not find the hands; they are hidden under the gloves -- the gloves of a professor, the gloves of a doctor. The man is not available; he is hiding behind a utility.

What does being a doctor mean? -- that he is functioning in a certain way in the society. He is of certain utility to the society. To become a utility is to become a commodity. To become a utility is to become a thing.

Children cannot be used; they are purposeless -- hence they are people. If you shake hands with a child, you shake hands with him. There are no gloves; they are nude and naked. But by the age of eight, almost always something closes in. The windows and doors close. And then for your whole life you will go on missing life, and whatsoever you do will be a duty, a drudgery, a drag. One has to do it somehow. It will not be a celebration.

I have heard:

"Two friends met on a street. They had not seen each other for a long time. One asked the other, Who are you working for nowadays?'

'The same company,' said the other, the wife and the six kids."'

Even for your wife, for your children, you are not functioning out of love... a duty, a responsibility, a burden. They too are a company you are working for.

You would like to escape, but sanity does not allow you. You would like to escape, but you know -- where would you go? You would like to escape, but you have lost the energy to escape. You would like to escape, but now you have become too habituated to the pattern. It would be difficult for you to live without this company.

But life is slipping from your hands.

It happened once:

'Two seedy individuals stopped on the street to watch a funeral procession pass. It was done in elaborate style, from the long, gleaming hearse, through the cars packed with flowers, to the impressive line of automobiles following.

Said one of the individuals, 'It's a rich guy. I've watched funerals like that before. There's a solid mahogany casket, polished so you can see your face in it, with satin lining and gold carved handles. They put it in a big mausoleum, with stone doors, statues, flowers, praying and singing.'

'Wow,' said the other, eyes shining, 'now that's what I call living."'

By and by your life becomes so deathlike that even death locks like living -- if it is luxurious, comfortable, costly. Then even death can create a jealousy in you.

Your life is almost insignificant. You have not lived at all. You have learned a few tricks and you go on doing those tricks. And you know you are missing your life, but still you go on clinging with those tricks because those tricks have become your securities; you are afraid to lose them. You are afraid to lose the comfort that comes through dead habits.

You ask me how to live life fresh. Just become a child again -- unlearn whatsoever you have learned. Drop verbalization. Listen to these birds with no word arising in you. Suddenly a wave of freshness passes through you; an energy arises in you which is not old.

 

This bird has never been there before and this bird is completely unaware of the past. He has never sung like that before. Today is absolutely fresh. He is absolutely and totally herenow. If you can listen without words, suddenly, as if a knife penetrates your being, the freshness of life will penetrate your accumulated dust – as if a ray of light penetrates darkness.

 

All around you, except for human beings, everything is fresh. Touch the tree, have a little talk with the river, look at the sky, watch the stars, lie down on the earth, relax, go to the sea, watch the waves infinitely coming and coming and coming… without any business, without any utility, for no purpose, simply a delight in energy… and by and by you will become aware that the dust is disappearing; your mind – mirror is getting cleaned.

 

Language and addiction with language is the root cause. Words and words and words – and your being is hiding behind. The more words gather, the farther away you are from yourself, and the more difficult it becomes to come back home – because there is a forest, a wild forest of words. It is almost like a maze, a chaos.

 

Life is fresh. Mind can never be fresh. If you understand this, then look at life without the mind. Put the mind aside. I am not saying throw the mind completely. It is useful. Use it. It is a biocomputer. Use it – but don’t be used by it. When it is needed, use it.

 

There are many, many situations where it is needed. You have to calculate; it will be needed. You have to remember the way to go to the station; you will need it. You have to remember many things and you will need it. So whenever it is needed, use it. Whenever it is not needed, put it aside, let it rest.

 

And if the mind is allowed to rest, two things will happen to you: life will become fresh and mind will become very very powerful. Your mind is simply tired. Twenty-four hours in use…. Even a mechanism needs to relax. Even a car needs to be put to rest. Even a machine gets tired. Ask scientists. The latest research says that even a machine gets tired, even metal gets tired. It needs rest.

 

And your mind goes on working and working, day and night. Awake or asleep, the mind goes on working. It gets tired, so it cannot function well. It is a constant grinding machine; it goes on grinding. If there is nothing to grind, then too it goes on grinding. It goes on chewing old stuff again and again and again.

 

Learn how to give rest to the mind. You will have a more powerful mind. You will have a more powerful memory. You will have more powerful logic and reason. And if you can put it aside, you will always be available to fresh life and the fresh life will be available to you.

 

When you come home, put the mind away. It is needed in the office; it is not needed with your children. Play with them. No need to be an adult. Become a person. No need to be a doctor with your wife. With a patient it is perfectly okay, but she is your wife; you need not be a doctor. With a friend you need not be an engineer, you need not be a businessman. You need not be anybody. You can simply be yourself… again a child playing on the shore, collecting seashells for no purpose at all.

 

These purposeless moments will allow you to be fresh.

 

- Osho, “Nirvana: The Last Nightmare, #8, Q1”