---
section: Library
booktitle: "This Very Body the Buddha"
booktype: "Discourses"
bookcode: "BODY"
dategiven: "17 December 1977 am"
place: " in Buddha Hall"
chapternum: "Chapter #7"
chaptertitle: "Headlong to the Very End"
acode: "7712170"
shorttitle: "BODY07"
audio: "Yes"
video: "No"
esttime: "78mins"
displaytitle: "This Very Body the Buddha: Chapter #7"
---

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```
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The first question:
<p class="question">DOES THERE EVER COME A MOMENT WHEN ONE KNOWS WHY THINGS ARE THIS WAY AND NOT THAT WAY?</p>


NO, THAT MOMENT NEVER COMES. That moment cannot come, knowledge is impossible. Life is a mystery -- the more you know about it, the more mysterious it becomes. You cannot reduce it to a formula, you cannot reduce it to theories. It never becomes a doctrine. The deeper you go, the deeper you feel ignorant. But that ignorance is blissful. That not-knowing is utterly beautiful, it is a benediction, because in that not-knowing your ego dies. That not-knowing becomes the grave for your ego. And wonder arises: OH! And a great joy.


Knowledge is a kill-joy. Knowledgeable people are not joyous people, knowledgeable people become serious. They are burdened, their heart dances no more, only their head goes on growing out of all proportion. It becomes like a canceric growth -- their whole body disappears, all their limbs shrink, and there is only the head. They become head-heavy.


When knowledge disappears you are utterly at peace with life and existence. Knowledge divides. Let me repeat it: Knowledge divides you from existence. Because the knower cannot be the known, the knower is separate from the known. And because of that separation there is continuous anguish, anxiety; something is continuously missing. Only a not-knower can become one with life. So not-knowing unites, knowledge divides.


In a state of not-knowing, you start melting with the trees and mountains and stars. You don't know where you end and where they begin, you don't know anything. You are again a child collecting seashells on the beach. Again a child collecting flowers, wild flowers. Again a child, your eyes are full of wonder. Through that wonder you start feeling what existence is -- not knowing but feeling. You start loving that which is -- not knowing but loving. And through feeling and loving, you start living for the first time. Who cares, who bothers, about knowledge?


You ask, 'Does that moment ever come where one knows why things are the way they are, and not in any other way?'


No, things are the way they are, there is no other way. This is the only way. And there is no why to it, otherwise you could have come to know. There is no cause to it, otherwise you would have decoded it. There is no reason for existence. It is utterly absurd, it should not exist, there is no reason for it. Why should there be trees and stars and men and women -- why? There is no reason why there should be love, why there should be consciousness. Why at all? The why starts slipping from you. The more you become silent, the more you attain to the state of not-knowing, the why starts slipping. One day suddenly you are not searching for causes and reasons and whys. You simply start dancing. You cannot answer why you are dancing, there is no answer to it. And all answers that have been given are false.


Why do you love? Why does music thrill YOU? Why, seeing a flower in the morning, are you suddenly pulled by it like a magnet? Why in the night are you so attracted to the moon? Why? A child giggling, and you stop for a moment to see the child and you feel happy. Why is there happiness? Why is there celebration? Why is there LIFE? Why does existence exist? There is no reason. And if you find any reason, the question will again be relevant to ask -- why?


If you say God created the world then the question comes, why did He create the world? It doesn't solve anything, it simply pushes the question a little deeper -- why did God create the world?


Just the other day I was reading a theologian's kook. and he says, 'What was God doing when He had not created the world?' Now one question has not been solved by the answer, and a very strange question arises: what was God doing? -- because He must have existed for eternity before He created the world. And the Christians believe that He created the world only a few thousand years before -- four thousand and four years before Jesus Christ. So what was He doing before that? He must have been feeling utterly bored. He must have gone mad or may have committed suicide. What was He doing? Or He was just asleep, dreaming dreams. And what has He been doing since then? Since He created the world, where has He disappeared? And what will He do when He has destroyed this world? Again He will be bored with Himself. He must be really lonely.


Now these unnecessary questions, because you answered one question. Mm? You were feeling uneasy with the world so you said God created the world. You wanted some convenience, some comfort -- that it is not just an accident, that there is a God-father who looks after it, that you are not alone. You wanted some kind of security. And now that one question has not been answered, and a thousand and one questions have arisen out of it. Why did He create in the first place? Did He need it? If He needed it then He's as needy as man -- then He's not perfect, something was missing.


Was He greedy? Was He an expansionist? Why? And why THIS world? With so much misery and so much suffering and so much illness and disease and death -- why THIS world? If He created it He could have created a better world. He doesn't seem to be a great creator.


I have heard: A man went to a tailor, a famous tailor, and he said that his suit had to be ready as soon as possible, he was going for a world tour. And the tailor said, 'Look, it will take at least six weeks -- not before that, I am too busy. And I am a perfectionist; when I do a thing I do it perfectly. You will have to wait at least six weeks, before that it is not possible.'


The man said, 'Six weeks? Don't you remember God created the whole world in six days?' And the tailor said, 'I know. And look at the world, how He messed it. That's what happens if you do things in six days. I cannot do that, it will take six weeks.'


Why did God create this ugly miserable world? Why did He create this hell? Doesn't seem to be a master-creator, seems to be a very poor artisan. And there are a thousand and one mistakes in it.


You don't solve by answering the why. Buddha is far more true, he says nobody has ever created it. In that way he disposes of your question. He says it has always been there and will always be there -- for no reason at all, for no cause at all. It exists without cause. That is difficult for the rational mind, because we always look for the cause. Once the cause is given we feel at ease. It is a hankering for the reason; once we know the explanation and the cause and the reason, we feel good that we know. But what do you know?


All the theology down the ages has not supplied a single answer. The whole philosophy of five thousand years has proved absolutely futile.


If you understand me, then I would like to say that there never comes a moment of knowledge when you have known why the world is the way it is and why it is not in any other way. The more deeply you go into your being, less and less questions arise. One day all questions disappear. I am not saying that you get any answer, only questions disappear. The man we call enlightened is not the man who knows the answer, but is the man whose questions have disappeared. He no more has any questions. In that state of non-questioning there is great silence, utter silence, absolute silence. And a beautiful not-knowing.


That not-knowing comes, that not-knowing is enlightenment. Buddha has not known a single thing. All that he has come to is, his questions have disappeared. Now there is no more any question buzzing in his mind; all that noise has gone. He is left alone in silence. He is no more a knower, he has no claim that he knows this or that. He knows only nothing. That's what Buddha calls 'nirvana' -- to know nothing, or to know ONLY nothing.
To be in a state of not-knowing is samadhi.

The second question:
<p class="question">I READ THE SONG OF MEDITATION BY HAKUIN MANY YEARS BEFORE BUT I DON'T REMEMBER TO HAVE GOT THE MEANING THAT YOU HAVE GIVEN TO IT.</p>


That's natural. My meaning is my meaning, your meaning will be your meaning. How can they be the same? They cannot be. Your interpretation will come out of you, it will grow out of you. It has nothing to do with Hakuin's song. When you read the Bible you don't read Jesus, you read yourself there. When you read the Gita you don't read Krishna, you read yourself there. Your interpretation is not there in the book, your. interpretation is projected onto the book the book is just an excuse. It is natural.


Here, you have gathered around me. If there are a thousand sannyasins here, there are a thousand meanings that they give to each of my statements. And it is very rare that you get to the meaning that I want you to get from it. The moment you get THAT meaning, you start participating in my being. In that moment you disappear, your mind disappears. In that moment you melt into me and you allow me to melt into you.


Hakuin's song you may have read, but it was your own song that you must have got out of it. Unless you come to a point of not-knowing, you will not know the meaning of Hakuin as HAKUIN wanted it to be. If you want to understand what I am saying to you, you will have to come to this awareness, to this not-knowing, to this no-mind, that I am. Only then. To know Buddha one has to become a Buddha, to know Christ one has to become a Christ. There is no other way to know; you cannot remain yourself and know them. To know them is risky. You will have to risk all that you have got, you will have to risk all your knowledge.


That's why many people don't even try -- it seems to be demanding too much out of them. Yes, they are ready to go a little way with Buddha, Christ, with me -- a little way. And they go only up to that point where they feel I am agreeing with them. The moment they see that I am moving in a direction with which they don't agree, they stop immediately. And unless you go with me headlong to the very end, you will not know what the message was.


Remember it: When you are listening to me put your whole mind aside. Just listen for the sheer joy of listening. As you listen to a bird calling, as you listen to the wind passing through the trees, just listen that way. There is no need to be worried what its meaning is. And then you will come closer to the real meaning.


An Italian immigrant was being examined on his fitness for naturalization.
'Who is the boss of the city?' was the first question.
'Da Mayor,' he replied.
'Correct. And who is the boss of the State?'
'Da Governor.'
'Correct. And of the whole country?'
'Da President of-a da United-a-States.'
'Correct. Would it be possible for you to be the President?'
'Er...excusa, please, Judge, but I very busy worka in da shop.'

Your meaning is your meaning.


Her husband charged mental cruelty, infidelity and incompatibility, while her attorney was charging that he had deserted her -- or to phrase it in legal terms: 'Left her bed and board.'


The judge looked down at the young man, then turned his appreciative glance over the well-proportioned blonde. 'Young man,' he asked, 'is it true you left this beautiful young lady's bed and board?'
'Yes, Your Honour.'
'That's a darn lie!' exclaimed the voluptuous blonde. No man ever left my bed bored!'


When the words reach you they start taking a shape, a form, a color, that was not there in them originally. They change. The moment they enter you, the moment they enter your climate, they become soaked with it. Hakuin's song is not a song, not an ordinary statement -- one of the most extraordinary statements ever. Such a small song, of few lines, but so penetrating that if all the scriptures of the world are burnt and only Hakuin's song is saved, nothing will be burned. That will do. A very condensed statement of Buddhahood.


To know Hakuin's song of samadhi, of meditation, you will have to enter into meditation. The more you know what meditation is -- not intellectually but existentially -- the more you feel what meditation is, the better you will enter into Hakuin's song. Then one day it will explode in your being -- the meaning of it. The meaning is not given in the dictionaries, the meaning is not that of words. That is one of the most basic difficulties in understanding people like Hakuin. What they are saying comes from the beyond. What they are putting into language does not belong to language, what they are trying is almost impossible. They are bringing the whole sky into a small box, or the whole ocean into a small cup. Even maybe that is possible, but to bring your meditativeness into words is more impossible. They are doing a miracle.


But you will catch hold of the words and you will go astray. Listen to the silence in the words. Words are not important, but the silence that they contain. Listen to the gaps between the words and read between the lines. But to read between the lines you will have to become thoughtless, you will have to become empty. Only an empty heart can read between the lines, because otherwise there is nothing, there is only emptiness. Only emptiness can have a rapport with emptiness.


Hakuin is an empty man. Whose ego exists no more, who has no self, who is just silence. To have any communion with Hakuin you will have to become that silence. Then only, the meaning will start arising. And it will not arise just like a meaning -- it will burst. As if spring has come to you and everywhere there is greenery and flowers blooming and fragrance and birds. It will be a spring. You will have a totally different feeling of your being. You will be transformed through it.

The third question:
<p class="question">IS THE ONLY PURPOSE IN LIFE SELF-REALIZATION?</p>


No sir, not even that. Even self-realization is not the purpose. Somehow, you cannot live without purpose. You have an obsession with purpose, some purpose HAS to be there. Now if there is no other purpose, let it be self-realization. And you will feel good, you will feel very good -- at least there is some purpose: self-realization. Again you have settled, again you have started thinking in terms of means and ends. Again desire will flower, you have to attain to self-realization. Again the future enters in, again you can dream.


Before, it may have been money, power, prestige. It may have been God, moksha, nirvana, the kingdom of God. Now it is self-realization. But you have to keep some goal there. And Hakuin says all is here. You want to have something on the other shore. And Hakuin says this is the only shore. The other shore is hidden in THIS shore. You are not to go anywhere, you are not to seek and search, it is already the case. You have just to be here, for a single moment be here, and...THIS VERY BODY THE BUDDHA.


Now you are creating another...Can't you live without problems? Can't you drop the goal-oriented approach? Can't you be in the present? Can you only be in the future? And to be in the future is to be false, because the future has not come yet. People know only two ways to be: either they are in the past or in the future. Their identity comes either from the past or from the future. In the present they feel very shaky because in the present the identity disappears the self disappears. In the present there is nothing like ego.


Just look into it, this very moment. You are utterly here, not a single thought stirring, silence all around: where are you? In this silence, how can you exist? It effaces you, you become a tabula rasa, you become a child again.


To hold to identity, either you have to look to the past...it supplies identity. You have a Ph. D. from a university, you are a doctor or an engineer, a scientist, a poet, you have written so many books. Or you belong to a royal family, or this and that. You have done these things and those things -- all those accumulated acts, they become the sum total of your being.


And you are not the sum total of your acts. There is another man hidden behind your acts -- the real man, the essential man. The essential man has never done a thing. It is simply there, it is not a doer.


But you will cling to the identity. You have been appreciated, you will ding to it. Even if you have been condemned you will ding to it. The saints cling to their past, and so ding the sinners. The good man dings to the past, so dings the bad man, because they both need identity. And people prefer to have a bad identity than no identity. At least one knows who one is: 'I am a prisoner, I have been put in the prison for twenty years, I am a thief or a murderer. At least I know something about myself.' Then somebody else is a saint and he has renounced the world and he fasts every month and he eats only once a day. He sleeps only three hours, thousands of people worship him, his paradise is certain, he has so many virtues. But both are clinging to identity. And both are in the same boat, the sinner and the saint.


Or you start gathering identity from the future. You are going to do this, you are going to BE this -- you will become the president of a country, or you will become very famous, or you will write a book soon and you are going to win a Nobel prize. You go on thinking of the future, and that gives you a feeling who you are.


But both are false. The true is only the present. Time knows no past, no future; past and future are mind things. Time knows only one tense, and that is the present. But to be in the present means to destroy all goals, to have no future-involvement. Otherwise your energy will be flowing in that direction.


Now you say: IS THE ONLY PURPOSE IN LIFE SELF-REALIZATION?


I go on repeating every day that there is no purpose in life, life is purposeless. Hence it is beautiful. Purpose makes everything business-like. Life is poetry, it is not business. Now you have found a word -- you must have thought I would like this word, 'self-realization'. All nonsense; there is no self to realize. Nothing has to be realized. The real is real -- what are you going to realize! The real is already real and the unreal is unreal. 'Realization' means something is not real yet and you are going to make it real. How can you make something which is unreal real somewhere in the future? How can you transform a lie into a truth? A lie will remain a lie, and truth has always been truth. Nothing has to be realized.


Then what has to be done? The question arises again and again in your mind. In fact nothing has to be done, you have only to see the futility of doing. In that seeing, action stops, mind stops. And that which has been with you for ever, you come to feel it, to know it. Not that you realize it, you simply recognize it. A forgotten thing is remembered again, that's all.

The fourth question:
<p class="question">HOW IS ONE TO BE HAPPY?</p>


If you want to be happy, you will become unhappy: the very wanting will create unhappiness. That's why people are unhappy. Everybody wants to be happy and everybody becomes unhappy. Can't you see this? Have you ever met a man who does not want to be happy? If you have met such a man you will find he is happy. If you meet a man who says 'I don't want to be happy, I don't care a bit' then you will suddenly see, here is a man who is utterly happy.


People who want to be happy you will find miserable, in the same proportion. If they want too much to be happy they will be too much unhappy -- the proportion of unhappiness will be the same as is their desire for happiness. What goes wrong? People come to me and they ask: 'Every-body in the world wants to be happy -- but then why are so many people, almost everybody, unhappy?' That's why: because they want to be happy.


Happiness cannot be desired. You desire, and comes misery; desire brings misery. Happiness is a state of no-desire. Happiness is a state of great understanding that desire brings misery.


There are two ways to be happy -- to snatch at life or to let it be. One is to snatch at life, the second is to let it be. The first demands happiness, refuses all else, and so lives between hope and fear, dream and rejection. The second way takes happiness when it happens but does not demand it and accepts all else too. It is in the acceptance of all else that happiness comes. One is no longer bound by the fearful wish to have, nor by the frantic will to hold, nor by the fever to clutch at straws of certainty. There is instead the ease of swimming with the river where the river flows.

You ask: HOW IS ONE TO BE HAPPY?


That means you want to snatch at life, you want to be aggressive upon life. You cannot be happy that way. Life comes only to those who are not aggressive, life comes only to those who are in a deep passive receptivity. You cannot be


violent with life. Because you are violent, you are unhappy and miserable. You go on missing life; life eludes you, it goes on escaping from your hands. You are a rapist, you want to rape life. That's why you are miserable.


Life comes dancing. But only when you are not violent, aggressive. When you are not ambitious, when you are not even looking for happiness, when you are simply being here, suddenly you find happiness is showering -- there is a meet-ing between you and happiness.


And a man who really knows the art of being happy -- that means non-desiring -- knows also that whatsoever happens has to be accepted deeply, with no rejection. Then everything by and by is transformed into happiness. Small things that don't make much sense, when you accept them become very significant. Things which you go on rejecting create misery. When you drop your rejection and you accept whole-heartedly, you embrace them, suddenly you feel a grace arising in you. Slowly slowly, as the understanding grows and as the desirelessness grows, one becomes overfull of happiness. Not only that one becomes happy, one starts overflowing. One starts overreaching to other people, one starts sharing one's happiness with other people.


So this is my suggestion: Don't be aggressive. Relax -- that's how happiness comes. Wait prayerfully, gratefully -- that's how happiness comes. Be receptive, be feminine, and happiness comes. Don't be male, aggressive.


You can see it around the world -- countries which are too much after happiness are the most unhappy countries. For example, America -- too much after happiness. That very too-much-hankering, that constant effort to be happy, is making Americans neurotic. Almost three out of four are neurotic. And about the fourth I cannot say that he is not neurotic -- he is just suspicious, ambiguous, vague. This has never happened in the history of man -- so many people in a kind of neurosis, as if neurosis has become the normal state of humanity. Because never before have people been so much after happiness, that's why.


Go to a primitive tribe -- people who are still living without civilization, people who are called 'backward' by Americans -- just go and you will find them immensely happy. And they are backward, and sooner or later the missionaries will come and make them forward. And will educate them and will open schools and hospitals and will do great service to them, and soon they will all be unhappy and they will need psychiatrists and psychoanalysts. Then the missionaries are happy, they have done their job. Mm? How much they have served the people. And they do great work and they are really devoted people, but they don't know what exactly they are doing.


America needs to become a little backward. And those people who are backward, please leave them alone, they are the only hope. But we cannot tolerate those happy people. Maybe there is some jealousy -- we cannot tolerate them.


Once a man came to me. For thirty years he had been educating aboriginal children in a jungle in Bastar; he devoted his whole life. He was thirty, then he came to Gandhi and since then he had been working. He devoted his whole life. He had come to me for some help -- he wanted some of my sannyasins to go and teach the aboriginals. I said, 'You have come to the last man. I cannot do such harm to people.'


I know those Bastar people, I have been with them. They are some of the most beautiful people in the world, they should be preserved. They are the only happy people -- they still know how to dance and how to sing and how to love and how to enjoy life. They don't philosophize, they don't know arithmetic and they don't know history and they don't know geography and they cannot write. But they still have being, they still have grace. When they walk you can see, they still have vigour. Their eyes are so innocent....


For centuries nobody has committed a suicide, they don't know of anybody who has ever committed suicide in their tribe. And if sometimes murder has happened then the person goes to the court himself and reports to the court: 'I have murdered. So whatsoever is the punishment, give it to me.' He goes to the police station. Maybe he has to walk two hundred miles, because the police station is very far away from those jungles -- and good that it is far away. Two hundred miles the man who has murdered will walk and will go to the police station and surrender. And nobody was asking him and nobody was after him. Beautiful people.


And they love immensely. And you will be surprised, and they are called 'backward' -- they have for their children a small hall in the center of the town, their village. They have a small hall for their children -- once the children are getting interested in sex, the whole community's children sleep in that hall. They are allowed to make love, but nobody is allowed to move with any girl more than three days. So all the boys and all the girls become acquainted with all other boys and all other girls of the whole tribe. And they learn non-possessiveness. And love is just a play. And they are given all freedom -- there is no taboo, there is no repression. There is no possibility -- the moment a child becomes sexually capable or interested in sex, he is immediately moved to sleep in the common hall and he has to find partners.


Masturbation is not known, there is no need. Only very advanced countries know it, it is part of an advanced country. Homosexuality is not known -- that too is part of a very affluent society. Those are poor people, they don't know anything about homosexuality, there is no NEED. And they become acquainted -- all the boys become acquainted with all the girls, all the girls become acquainted with all the boys. And only then they choose.


And once they get married, their marriage has an immense beauty. It is so intimate, because it depends on a kind of attunement. The boy has been moving with all the girls, then he has chosen the girl who goes deepest into his heart and with her he goes deepest into oblivion. He knows with whom he can have the greatest orgasm; now it is not guess-work. And he does not decide by the size of the nose and the color of the hair, those are just stupid things, and he does not decide by the height and the weight. And he does not decide by clothes, because they are naked people. He simply decides by the innermost experience of orgasm -- with whom he has the greatest experience, the greatest ecstasy. The decision comes out of that ecstasy. And these are 'backward' people. These are the most liberated people.


And then naturally there is no divorce -- there is no need. Because he has found the woman and the woman has found her man; they have found the right partner, as if they were made for each other. And it is not poetic, it is not vague fantasy. It is not a head thing, it is a great experience. And once that experience has settled.... And there is no hurry -- the society leaves them unless they decide, unless they find a partner with whom they really go into the other world, into the other dimension, with whom sex is no more sex but becomes prayer. Once they have found that partner, only then. And even then, the society tells them to wait at least one or two years -- to go with the partner, wait two years after the decision before you get married. Because once you get married then you have settled; then there should be no need. So two years' time. If the honeymoon continues and continues and continues and after two years the boy is still going with the girl and the girl is still going with the boy and they both are still thinking of marriage, only then the society blesses them.


They don't know any divorce. Now missionaries are very much disturbed by these ugly people -- they are ugly people because they allow sexual freedom. And these sexually obsessed and repressed missionaries, they think these are immoral people. They are not immoral. They are amoral, certainly, but not immoral. They don't know any morality. And they are more scientific and their approach is more practical and pragmatic.


How do you decide? How do you decide that you are going to be with this woman for your whole life? The society does not allow you experimentation. And you have not known other women, so you fall in love with one woman and immediately you get married. And another day you see another woman passing by on the road and you are interested and you become fascinated. Now what to do? Jealousy arises. Not a single illegal love affair is known in that small community of Bastar aboriginals. Once a person has settled with a woman, they have settled. There is no jealousy, there is no watching of each other, they don't become jealous of each other. They have settled out of their own heart experience; they have found their woman, their man. They don't know how to read -- but what is there to read? They know how to read nature, they know how to talk to trees, they know how to have a dialogue with the sky. They know REAL reading, because they read the book of life and nature.


Yes, they will not accumulate much money. They will not become Fords and Andrew Carnegies and Morgans, they will not become so rich. There is no need for anybody to become so rich -- because if a man becomes so rich then millions of people become poor. Nobody is rich and nobody is poor. And they have a beautiful tradition that each year whatsoever you have accumulated you have to distribute. The first day of the year, they distribute their things. So nobody accumulates much. How can you accumulate when each year you have to give everything away? All that you have, you have to distribute. So nobody becomes too much attached to things; they are very non-possessive people.


And they have enough to enjoy! They work hard, they are healthy people, and nature supplies them more than is needed. If you don't want to become rich, nature has enough to satisfy you. If you want to become rich then there is no way for you to ever have contentment, ever have happiness.


Somebody has asked a question: 'Osho, you say that children should listen to the birds and not look at the black-board. Then what will happen?'


Then beautiful things will happen, then great things will happen. If for one hundred years all the universities are closed, and all the colleges and all the schools, man will again become alive. Yes, I know there will not be so much money to grab, money will disappear. But there will be more life -- and that is what is needed. And you cannot purchase life with money, you cannot purchase love with money. Money you have. And the person who has asked has also asked how they will earn their living. Do you think that five thousand years ago when people were not educated they were not able to earn their bread and their butter? They were. Living was never a problem. And they had one thing more -- life. Now you have only living, but no life. You think only of a better standard of living, you don't think of a better kind of life. You have quantity but the quality has disappeared.


Nature is abundant, it is enough to fulfill us. But if our desires go neurotic then naturally nature cannot fulfill those desires. And when we are after neurotic desires -- money, power, prestige -- then naturally there is poverty, starvation, war. The wars and the starvation and the poverty exist because of your schools. Your schools teach ambition. Your schools teach people to be jealous of each other, to be competitive of each other.


What do we teach in our schools? For example, a teacher asks a question and the small boy cannot answer it. He may not have done his homework, maybe he fell asleep in the evening, maybe there was a beautiful film going on the TV, or a thousand and one things are there to distract. And beautiful things, good things. Or there were guests in the home and he enjoyed their company. He cannot answer. Mow he is standing there like a culprit, a criminal, condemned. He cannot answer a question.


And another boy is waving his hand and jumping and wants to answer it. And of course the teacher is happy, and the other boy answers it. Now, what has the other boy done? He has exploited the suffering of the first boy. He has proved himself better than the other, he has exploited the situation.


Now, this will not be so in a primitive aboriginal village, they don't exploit each other's situations. Anthropologists have come across tribes -- they cannot understand this -- who would not forgive this second boy. Because the second boy is cruel, violent. When the first was suffering, in a primitive society no boy would answer, they would all keep quiet. This would be thought ugly, violent -- that when one is suffering, somebody exploits the situation and answers and enjoys. These people are thought to be backward? They are not, they are the only hope.


And one thing more: the person has asked what will happen to people's life if they don't know arithmetic and if they don't know geography and history. How will they earn their living? And what kind of a society will it be?


Yes, there will not be much money. There may not be big palaces, there may not be rich gadgets, technology. But there will be joy. And the whole technology is not worth a single moment's joy. There will be love and dance and song and feeling. And people will again become part of nature. They will not be fighting with nature, struggling with nature, they will not be destroying nature. There will he no ecological problem.


If schools continue, nature is going to die. And with nature WE are going to die.


And one thing more: I am not saying that all the boys would like, and all the girls would like, to listen to the song of the bird on the window. No, there will be boys who would like the blackboard more, who would like arithmetic more. Then it is for them. All do not need to be educated -- that is my approach. Only those who have an intrinsic feeling for it should he educated. And there are a few people who love arithmetic more than they love nature. There are people who love literature more than they will love trees. There are people who love engineering, technology, more than they love music, dance, song. Then these are the people to be educated. All are not alike. These people should be educated -- as far as they want, they should be helped.


There should be no universal education, that is a crime. That means you are forcing people who don't want to be educated. That is undemocratic. Universal education is dictatorial.


In a real democratic world, a boy who wants to be educated will be educated. But a boy who wants to go to the carpenter's will go to the carpenter's, and the boy who wants to become a fisherman will become a fisherman. And the woman who wants to cook will cook, and the woman who wants to dance will dance. And the woman who wants to become a scientist, a Madame Curie, she is welcome.


But people should move according to their inner nature; nothing should be imposed on them. This universal education is destroying people. It is as if -- just think of another example -- a dictator comes who loves dancing and forces everybody to dance. That will be an ugly thing. There will be people who don't want to dance, and if you force them to dance what kind of dance will it be? If a dictator comes who wants everybody to become a poet, and opens schools and colleges to teach poetry and everybody has to compose poetry, what kind of world will that be? A very ugly world. Only a few people -- a Shakespeare, a Kalidas, a Milton, a Dante -- will enjoy it. But what about others? They will be simply miserable.


And that is what is happening. When you force arithmetic on all, that is what you are doing. When you force geography on all, that is what you are doing. When you force ANYTHING on all, that is what you are doing. Nothing should be forced, a child should be allowed to find his own way. And if he wants to be a cobbler, perfectly good, there is no need for him to become a president. A cobbler is beautiful if he enjoys his work, if he is happy with his work, if he has found his work.
No universal education.


And missionaries are the most dangerous people. A world without missionaries will be a beautiful world -- it has become a hell.

You ask: HOW IS ONE TO BE HAPPY?


Forget about happiness, happiness cannot be achieved directly. Rather, think of what you enjoy, what you most enjoy doing, and get absorbed into it. And happiness will come on its own. If you enjoy swimming enjoy swimming, if you enjoy chopping wood chop wood. Whatsoever you like, do it and get absorbed into it. And suddenly when you are absorbed you will find that climate coming to you, that sunlit climate of happiness. Suddenly you find it is all around you. That's what I would like to create in our new commune. People have to get ABSORBED. Happiness is a by-product, it is not a goal. Doing the thing that you want to do, happiness comes.

The fifth question:
<p class="question">CAN ENLIGHTENMENT HAPPEN TO A LAZY MAN?

It happens only to a lazy man.

The sixth question:</p>
<p class="question">OSHO, ARE YOU THE SAVIOUR? AND IF YOU ARE, HOW TO RECOGNIZE YOU?</p>


No, I am not a saviour. A thousand times no. Nobody can save anybody else. And you should not look for that, that is a deception. I have saved myself, I cannot save you, you will have to save yourself. I can indicate the way, I can tell you how I have saved myself. Buddhas only show the way, but all else you have to do. Nobody can save you, you should start being responsible for yourself. You have learnt a very ugly trick of throwing responsibility on somebody else. WHY should anybody else be a saviour to you?


I am not. I don't take anybody's responsibility on me. I throw you to yourself. That is the only way to help you, that is the only way to create a soul in you. That is the only way to make you feel that your life is your life. If you want it to be miserable that is your choice, if you don't want it to be miserable I make the way available to you. You can drop your misery this very moment. But don't start clinging to me and don't start throwing your responsibility on me, otherwise sooner or later you will be disappointed and you will be angry with me.


There are sometimes questions -- 'I have been here for three months and, Osho, you are not doing anything to me yet.' Who I am to do anything? I can only indicate. I am a finger pointing to the moon. Don't wait, go to the moon. Don't wait and don't cling to the finger. But there are people who start biting my finger rather than going tO the moon.
I am not a saviour.
Listen to this beautiful anecdote:


In a shopping-plaza parking-lot in the American Midwest, a woman kept seeing a strange man who claimed to be Jesus Christ. Crowds would often gather to hear him preach: 'I am Jesus Christ! Come and be saved.' One day in exasperation she approached the so-called messiah and said, 'You are no more Jesus Christ than I am. You are a fraud.' Whereupon the self-proclaimed Christ declared, 'I am too, and I can prove it if you would like. Come with me if you want proof.' So off she went with him. As they walked along he said, 'You will see that I am indeed none other than Jesus Christ.' He walked up to the front door of a house and knocked. After a few minutes a man opened the door, looked at the preacher and screamed, 'Jesus Christ! Are you here again?!' And he said, 'Look, this is the proof.'


I am not going to give you any proof of any kind. And don't ask 'How to recognize you?' -- there is no need. Just listen to what I am saying to you, let it be transformed into your own insight. You need not recognize me -- as a saviour, as a Jesus, as a Buddha -- there is no need. And how can you recognize me? Unless you have become a Christ you will not be able to recognize a Christ -- you will not know what it means to be a Christ. No, I don't expect you to recognize me. And there is no need. I am what I am, your recognition will not make any difference. So don't bother about that. And I am not going to give you any proofs.


And remember again: Don't look towards me as a saviour. Because of this idea -- that a saviour has to come or a messiah has to come -- people go on living the way they are living. What can they do? they say. When the messiah comes then everything will happen. This is their way of postponing transformation, this is their way of deceiving themselves. Enough is enough, you have deceived enough. Now no more. No messiah is ever going to come. You have to do your own work, you have to be responsible for yourself. And when you are responsible, things start happening.

And the last question:
<p class="question">HORSESHIT, HORSESHIT, HORSESHIT. WHY DON'T YOU SHUT UP? I AM BORED WITH YOUR LECTURES, UTTERLY BORED.</p>


Oh! Another angel from Munich? This time his name is not Alois, his name is Swami Deva Bhanu.


If you are bored don't listen to me! Who is forcing you to listen? You are free. If you want to be bored then it is perfectly okay, listen. But the decision is yours. You cannot tell me 'Shut up.' Who are you to tell me? Even if nobody is here, if I want to speak I will go on speaking. That is my joy!


There have been masters like that. A great master happened in Greece, Pyrrho, who used to talk even when there were no disciples. A disciple would be sitting there and the disciple would feel that it is too long and he is going on and on. And the disciple would leave. And he would continue. Who bothers about disciples? Pyrrho was really a master. It was a song he was singing -- if you want to participate, participate, otherwise you are free. Unless you are a masochist and you want to torture yourself, then it is your decision. Don't listen to me!


And your feeling bored may not have anything to do with what I am saying. It may be just that you cannot understand it, that it goes above your head. So raise your head a little higher!


Or maybe you are expecting something else, maybe you are here for some kind of entertainment. Then you are in a wrong place. But to be here or not to be here is your decision. You are completely free not to be here.


And I don't know -- others may not be bored. Let us see. Where is Deva Bhanu? Can you stand, sir, so all can see? Good. And now I will ask others: Those who don't agree with Deva Bhanu, raise your hands. Now, sir, what can I do? I agree with you -- but what are we two against so many?
			

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> Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
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