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Joy:
The Happiness that comes from Within EMPTY HANDS
by OSHO
We
come with empty hands and we will go with empty hands, so what is the
point of claiming so much in the meantime? But this is what we know, what
the world tells us: Possess, dominate, have more than others have. It
may be money or it may be virtue; it does not matter in what kind of coins
you deal they may be worldly, they may be otherworldly. But be very
clever, otherwise you will be exploited. Exploit and dont be exploited
that is the subtle message given to you with your mothers milk.
And every school, college, university, is rooted in the idea of competition.
A real education will not teach you to compete; it will teach you to cooperate.
It will not teach you to fight and come first. It will teach you to be
creative, to be loving, to be blissful, without comparing yourself to
others. It will not teach you that you can be happy only when you are
the first that is sheer nonsense. You cant be happy just by
being first, and in trying to be first you go through such misery that
by the time you become the first you are habituated to misery.
By the time you become the president or the prime minister of a country
you have gone through such misery that now misery is your second nature.
You dont know now any other way to exist; you remain miserable.
Tension has become ingrained; anxiety has become your way of life. You
dont know any other way; this is your very lifestyle. So even though
you have become the first, you remain cautious, anxious, afraid. It does
not change your inner quality at all.
A real education will not teach you to be the first. It will tell you
to enjoy whatever you are doing, not for the result, but for the act itself.
Just like a painter or a dancer or a musician
You can paint in two ways. You can paint to compete with other painters;
you want to be the greatest painter in the world, you want to be a Picasso
or a Van Gogh. Then your painting will be second-rate, because your mind
is not interested in painting itself; it is interested in being the first,
the greatest painter in the world. You are not going deep into the art
of painting. You are not enjoying it, you are only using it as a stepping-stone.
You are on an ego trip, and the problem is that to really be a painter,
you have to drop the ego completely. To really be a painter, the ego has
to be put aside. Only then can existence flow through you. Only then can
your hands and your fingers and your brush be used as vehicles. Only then
can something of superb beauty be born.
Real beauty is never created by you but only through you. Existence flows;
you become only a passage. You allow it to happen, thats all; you
dont hinder it.
But if you are too interested in the result, the ultimate result
that you have to become famous, that you have to be the best painter in
the world, that you have to defeat all other painters hitherto then
your interest is not in painting; painting is secondary. And of course,
with a secondary interest in painting you cant paint something original;
it will be ordinary.
Ego cannot bring anything extraordinary into the world; the extraordinary
comes only through egolessness. And so is the case with the musician and
the dancer. So is the case with everybody.
In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says: Dont think of the result at
all. It is a message of tremendous beauty and significance and truth.
Dont think of the result at all. Just do what you are doing with
your totality. Get lost in it, lose the doer in the doing. Dont
"be" let your creative energies flow unhindered. Thats
why he said to Arjuna: "Dont escape from the war
because
I can see this escape is just an ego trip. The way you are talking simply
shows that you are calculating, you are thinking that by escaping from
the war you will become a great saint. Rather than surrendering to the
whole, you are taking yourself too seriously as if there will be
no war if you are not there."
Krishna says to Arjuna, "Just be in a state of let-go. Say to existence,
Use me in whatever way you want to use me. I am available, unconditionally
available. Then whatsoever happens through you will have a great
authenticity about it. It will have intensity, it will have depth. It
will have the impact of the eternal on it."
Jesus says: Remember, those who are first in this world will be the last
in the kingdom of God, and those who are the last will be the first. He
has given you the fundamental law he has given you the inexhaustible,
eternal law: Stop trying to be the first. But remember one thing, which
is very much possible, because the mind is so cunning it can distort every
truth. You can start trying to be the last but then you miss the
whole point. Then another competition starts: "I have to be the last"
and if somebody else says, "I am the last," then the struggle,
the conflict, begins again.
I have heard a Sufi parable:
A great emperor, Nadirshah, was praying. It was early morning; the sun
had not yet risen, it was still dark. Nadirshah was about to start the
conquest of a new country, and of course he was praying to God for his
blessings, to be victorious. He was saying to God, "I am nobody.
I am just a servant a servant of your servants. Bless me. I am going
on your behalf, this is your victory. But I am a nobody, remember. I am
just a servant of your servants."
A priest was also by his side, helping him in prayer, functioning as a
mediator between him and God. And then suddenly they heard another voice
in the darkness. A beggar of the town was also praying, and he was saying
to God, "I am nobody, a servant of your servants."
The king said, "Look at this beggar! He is a beggar and saying to
God that he is nobody! Stop this nonsense! Who are you to say your are
nobody? I am nobody, and nobody else can claim this. I am the servant
of Gods servants who are you to say that you are the servant
of his servants?"
Now you see? The competition is still there, the same competition, the
same stupidity. Nothing has changed. The same calculation: "I have
to be the last. Nobody else can be allowed to be the last." The mind
can go on playing such games on you if you are not very understanding,
if you are not very intelligent.
Never try to be happy at the expense of another mans happiness.
That is ugly, inhuman. That is violence in the true sense. If you think
you become a saint by condemning others as sinners, your saintliness is
nothing but a new ego trip. If you think you are holy because you are
trying to prove others unholy
Thats what your holy people
are doing. They go on bragging about their holiness, saintliness. Go to
your so-called saints and look into their eyes. They have such condemnation
for you! They are saying that you are all bound for hell; they go on condemning
everybody. Listen to their sermons; all their sermons are condemnatory.
And of course you listen silently to their condemnations because you know
that you have made many mistakes in your life, errors in your life. And
they have condemned everything so it is impossible to feel that
you can be good. You love food, you are a sinner. You dont get up
early in the morning, you are a sinner; you dont go to bed early
in the evening, you are a sinner. They have arranged everything in such
a way that it is very difficult not to be a sinner.
Yes, they are not sinners. They go early to bed and they get up early
in the morning
in fact, they have nothing else to do! They never
commit any mistakes because they never do anything. They are just sitting
there almost dead. But if you do something, of course, how can you be
holy? Hence for centuries the holy man has been renouncing the world and
escaping from the world, because to be in the world and be holy seems
to be impossible.
My whole approach is that unless you are in the world, your holiness is
of no value at all. Be in the world and be holy! We have to define holiness
in a totally different way. Dont live at the expense of others
pleasures that is holiness. Dont destroy others happiness,
help others to be happy that is holiness. Create the climate in
which everybody can have a little joy.
The preceding was excerpted with permission from Oshos new book,
Joy, The Happiness That Comes From Within, from St. Martins
Press, New York. © Osho International Foundation, 2004. www.osho.com
This book is from a complete series, "OSHO INSIGHTS FOR A NEW
WAY OF LIVING" , published by St. Martin's Press. Other available
titles include:
COURAGE: The Joy of Living Dangerously
CREATIVITY: Unleashing The
Forces Within
MATURITY: The Responsibility of
Being Oneself
AWARENESS: Te key To Living
in Balance
INTIMACY: Trusting Oneself and
The Other
INTUITION: Knowing Beyond Logic
INTELLIGENCE: The Creative Response To Now (June 2004)
FREEDOM: The Courage To be Yourself (June 2004)
For more information about Osho or his various other books, tapes, videos
or international commune in Pune, India, see www.osho.com
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