---
section: Library
booktitle: "The Buddha Disease"
booktype: "Diaries"
bookcode: "DISEAS"
dategiven: "16 January 1977 pm"
place: " in Chuang Tzu Auditorium"
chapternum: "Chapter #16"
chaptertitle: "Dance is the basic language of religion"
acode: "7701165"
shorttitle: "DISEAS16"
audio: "No"
video: "No"
esttime: ""
displaytitle: "The Buddha Disease: Chapter #16"
---

```style
.sutra {
  font-style: italic;
  white-space: pre-wrap !important;
}
```
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Prem means love and gayan means singing; love singing. Two things to be remembered about it: one, that love is always in sharing, in singing, in expression. You cannot hoard it. Hoard it and it is gone. Hold it, hoard it, and you kill it. Love is only when it is flowing... it is river-like.


Once the river is not flowing, then it is something else; it is no more a river. River means rivering. Then it has become a big tank, a lake, but it is no more a river. And that alive quality is no more there -- it is a dead thing. A lake is not alive in the sense that the river is alive. A lake is stagnant... not going anywhere... unrelated. There is no dialogue in a lake. The other is missing... there is no love. It is not moving towards some goal. It is not reaching out -- it is just in itself. It is a kind of suicide.


The river is reaching towards the ocean. Maybe it is very far, maybe it is very difficult for the river even to have a concept of it, of what it is, but in an unconscious way the river is moving towards the infinite... seeking its way towards that which is unknown.


Love is river-like, hence many people miss it -- because they don't understand its quality. People are hoarders -- they hoard. They want to be loved but they don't allow their own love being to flow, their own love energy to flow. Or, even if they allow it they allow only so far, with so many conditions attached to it. It becomes almost a bargain -- 'you do this for me and I will do this for you' -- but then it is no more love.


Love knows no conditions. It is simply happy in sharing. Love is a luxury -- it is not a need. Love is spendthrift -- it is not miserly. It is extravagant, overflowing. That's the delight of it.


So the first thing to remember is that love is in singing it. Don't hold, don't keep the song tO yourself -- let it be sung!


And the second thing to remember: gayan means singing, not song. Again, I make the same distinction. A song is something complete. Singing is always incomplete. A song is dead -- singing is alive. A song is like a lake, and singing is like a river again. Singing is still trying to reach -- still striving to flower. The song has flowered -- and the moment something becomes complete, it starts dying.


Either you are achieving more and more life or you start dying -- there is no other way. You cannot rest in between the two. Either you become more and more alive or you become more and more dead. There is no other alternative, these are the only alternatives possible. So once something is complete, it starts dying -- deterioration sets in. It is a corpse... it is memory.


A song is a memory -- singing is an on-going process. A song is complete -- maybe even perfect... but I am not a perfectionist at all. I am all against perfection, because perfection means death. And I say that god cannot be perfect, because he is so alive. God cannot be perfect, because he is still creative. And I don't think of imperfection as a disqualification. That is the very quality of life.


Just think -- a flower has become perfect... now what else is left? The only thing left is that the petals will start falling to the earth, and the flower will die. When it was still imperfect there was some way to go, to be.
God is a flower who goes on flowering and who is never going to be perfect.


Only neurotic people are perfectionists. Perfectionism is neurotic. So I love singing rather than song. Mm? a song already is a corpse, a memory -- it has happened;-it is no more happening. The full stop has come. The sentence is complete. Now there is no more pulsation... it is no more breathing.


Singing is still breathing -- it is incomplete and imperfect, and there is still effort to be made. It can be polished... it can grow. It has still some hope and future. And that's the beauty of it: with hope, there is throbbing, the heart beats. So these two things... prem gayan.


Deva means divine, nartan means dance.... Life is a dance... in many meanings life is a dance. First -- life is not constituted of matter but of energy. And energy is never static -- it is always dancing. Now the physicists also say that there is no rest in the world -- nothing like rest exists. Everything is moving, dancing. A tremendous dance is on. The electrons are dancing, the neutrons are dancing, and from those invisible electrons up to the greatest star, there is continuous dance. Only man has forgotten how to dance. Trees are dancing in the breeze, the birds and the animals are dancing. Only man has forgotten how to dance -- and by forgetting the language of dance, man has forgotten the language of religion. Dance is the basic language of religion.


But the so-called religious people are almost dead people... far, far away from dancing. If you start dancing in a church they will think you are mad! One has to be serious in a church. One has to go into church with a long face. To laugh loudly in a church will look like a sacrilege.


Man has created pathological religion. Rather than religion making man healthy, man has created pathological religions just like himself. So I want to bring the dimension of dance back.


Here, this is going to be your very focus: dance as much as you can... sing! And don't take things seriously -- take it easy. It is fun to be alive and it is fun to pray and it is fun to meditate.


So concentrate on the word 'fun', and remember, the more that you can enjoy life, the closer you are to god. If you can celebrate this moment you are in god!


Through celebration one reaches into the very innermost core of existence. It happens in dance more easily than anything else. In dancing there is more possibility that you will be lost. When you are lost, god is. When you are, god disappears. Both cannot exist together.


The relationship is almost like darkness and light. The room is dark -- you bring light in. The moment you bring light in, the darkness is no more there.


I was reading an old sufi story -- a parable -- about a very ancient cave. The cave had never known any light -- it was so dark, and it was hidden so deep in a mountain. The sun started feeling very sorry for the cave. He would come every morning and would knock -- but the cave wouldn't listen.


One day he knocked unusually loud and he said to the cave, 'What are you doing there for centuries and centuries? I come every day and I bring such tremendous beauty and colour and light and love and life and warmth -- and you continue hiding there! What are you doing there? Come out! Just for once, just for a change, come out and see what is happening outside. It is no more night. There is no need to hide!'


The cave could not believe it. She had never heard anything about light, colour, warmth, love, life. She had always been there deep in the darkness. She laughed and she said, 'I don't trust. Whosoever you are, don't try to befool me'


But the sun insisted. And just to see whether it was true  -- very unbelievingly, in great doubt, in a tremendously sceptical mood -- the cave came out. It was true, and it was really wonderful -- and she had been missing for centuries and centuries!


She was very thankful and she said, 'Now, I listened to you -- you listen to me. Come in. You see my deep darkness too -- you may not have ever seen it. I cannot offer you anything else. I know only one thing and that is darkness. Come in and have a taste of it as I have tasted. As I accepted your invitation, accept mine.'


The sun came in... and there was no darkness. The cave could not believe it. She said, 'What has happened? It was there -- it cannot disappear. It has always been here, for centuries and centuries. What has happened?'


The sun laughed and he said, 'When I am there, the darkness cannot be -- we both cannot exist together. Darkness is my absence.'


Man is the absence of god. Man never meets god, remember! When the meeting happens, man is no more there -- only god is there. It happens with the death of man, with the disappearance of man.


And this possibility.... I have looked into all possibilities. This possibility of disappearance is more in dance than in any other activity that man can become engaged in. It is the simplest and the most spontaneous door to the divine. So pay more attention to dancing, mm? Good!
			

> [!info]
> Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
>