---
section: Library
booktitle: "The Buddha Disease"
booktype: "Diaries"
bookcode: "DISEAS"
dategiven: "01 January 1977 pm"
place: " in Chuang Tzu Auditorium"
chapternum: "Chapter #1"
chaptertitle: "If you meet the Buddha on the Way..."
acode: "7701015"
shorttitle: "DISEAS01"
audio: "No"
video: "No"
esttime: ""
displaytitle: "The Buddha Disease: Chapter #1"
---

```style
.sutra {
  font-style: italic;
  white-space: pre-wrap !important;
}
```
<!--This file is automatically generated. Do not edit!-->


Buddha means one who is enlightened, and prem means love -- love for the enlightened one, or love for enlightenment.


Buddha is not a person -- mm? it is a state of ultimate being. There have been many buddhas, and everybody is potentially a buddha. The word itself means tremendously awakened, absolutely alert... one whose consciousness has completely disappeared, who is just pure consciousness. You can look through and through and there is no darkness in it... not even lingering somewhere in the comers.


He has no basement to his being. Nothing is repressed; he holds back nothing. His trust with existence is one hundred percent. Doubts have disappeared... darkness has disappeared. He has come home. That is the meaning of buddha.


But by giving you this name, I would like you to beware of a certain danger. I'm not saying to you to become like gautam buddha -- the most famous buddha. Nobody can become like anybody else -- and there is no need to.


Each individual has to become himself. That's how you will become a buddha -- not by following and imitating a buddha. If you imitate a buddha or a christ, you will be an imitation. So this may look paradoxical but it is a very basic point to be understood. If one really wants to be a buddha he has not to follow any buddha, not to imitate anybody -- he has not to become a carbon copy.


If you really want to follow a buddha you have to resist the temptation of becoming a carbon copy, because when you become a buddha, when the flower opens in you -- then only do you follow him. And that will not be an imitation of anything. There has never been anything like that and there will never be anything like that again. Each individual is unique. That's how god pays respect to each individual. He creates only unique individuals. He never makes carbon copies -- he never repeats. Each individual is original.


This imitation is very much a temptation. Mm? when you love Jesus you want to imitate. When you love Buddha you want to imitate. When you love me you want to imitate. But if you imitate, you miss.


Loving me or loving a buddha is to go into your own self. The master has to throw the disciple into his own being. So zen people have the right name for this temptation to imitate; they call it the buddha disease. They love Buddha tremendously, but they call this the buddha disease. Mm? he is so beautiful that one is naturally tempted to imitate, but then it becomes a disease.


The zen masters are known to have said that if you meet the Buddha on the way, kill him immediately! They worship the Buddha every day morning, evening -- and they pray. And they say if while meditating the Buddha image arises in you, take a sword and cut it immediately. Then and there be finished with it... otherwise this fellow is dangerous.


They say,'If you repeat the name of Buddha, wash your mouth, rinse your mouth immediately, because this name, too, is dangerous.' They love Buddha and they say such things! It looks contradictory, but it is not.


Never be imitative if you want one day to become an offering to god. Always try to listen to your own heart.


My whole effort here is not to make anything out of you but to simply help you to become whatsoever you can become -- whatsoever! I have no fixed idea... I have no ideal. I have to simply help you to grow.


Mm? just like a gardener: he helps the rosebush to be a rosebush, and he helps the lotus to be a lotus. He does not try to make the lotus become a rosebush. Neither does he try to make the rosebush a lotus. He protects. He waters... he gives the manure. He gives his love and warmth. He surrounds the rosebush with all the care that he can, just to help it to become itself.


Anand means bliss, shanti means silence. And in the final analysis bliss becomes silence, or silence becomes bliss. They are two aspects of the same energy, two aspects of the same coin. If you are really silent, you will be blissful. If you are blissful, you will be silent.


That's the difference between real silence and a false silence. One can be in a false silence -- one can force oneself to be silent -- but then one will not be blissful; one will be somehow controlling. Then the silence will be out of discipline, practice, enforcement. That silence will be regimented -- just as in the army you can order people to be silent, and they will be... unmoving like buddha statues. But they are not silent! Deep down they are boiling... they are sitting on volcanoes. They are simply following an order.


You can do the same thing to yourself. You can become the commander and the commanded. You can force yourself, you can torture yourself, and if you do it long enough you will come to attain a certain quality of silence. But it will be dead and it will not have any bliss in it. In fact it will be very, very miserable. It will be empty, negative. It will be more sad than joyful. It will be a sort of death shadow.


The real silence always carries a bubbling joy. The real silence is a dancing silence. The real silence is true bliss, and the real silence cannot be forced. You cannot regiment yourself for it -- you have to understand life. The more you understand, the more silent you become.


The real silence comes through understanding; the false silence comes through practice. The false silence is very cheap and easy; the real silence is difficult. Hence people choose the false because it is very easily available. Any stupid person can have it -- just a little torturing of the body and the mind.


I am completely against any falsity. It is better to be tense but to be true. It is better to be angry but to be true, rather than to be silent and false, because from the true the way goes towards truth, but from the false there is no go.


The false is a dead-end. It doesn't connect anywhere -- it brings you to a cul-de-sac. You cannot go back because you have put so much in it, invested so much in it. And you cannot go ahead because there is no way to go -- just a precipice.


The false can never lead to the real because the false one day or other comes to end suddenly, and the road is no more ahead. You cannot go back, because thirty years, forty years practising... mm? that going back means you have accepted your defeat.


So I see many people -- so called saints, religious people -- sitting there at the end of the road, not courageous enough to come back and to say to the world that they failed, that the path was wrong, that their efforts were in vain and that, please, no one should go again on that path.


No. Rather than doing this, rather than repenting, rather than declaring to the world that they have failed, they go on teaching the same path to other people. They go on calling others too, saying that they have arrived -- come!


From the false there is no way to the real. From the real, there is a way to the real. So real anger is better -- at least it is real. Real anxiety is better -- at least it is real. I am not in favour of anxiety or anger, but I am all in favour of the real. At least something is in it that is true. And if you understand your real anger, anger will disappear by understanding and the truth will remain. This is what is known in the east as sorting out the chaff from the wheat.


Wherever there is chaff, don't be in a hurry to burn it. There is a possibility that the wheat may be hiding somewhere. First take the wheat out.


In anger, anger is the chaff and compassion is the wheat. In sex, sex is the chaff, love is the wheat, and so on and so forth.


[A sannyasin says: My parents are very beautiful people and they are concerned about my being with you. They need to feel that I'm growing in christ.... And I'm not totally resolved with this.]


That need not be a problem -- you are growing in christ. Being with me is being with christ. Just let them understand this. Give them all the christ books.


Don't feel guilty and don't feel in any way that you owe some explanation to them. Just express the situation -- that you are growing in christ... because christ is not a person at all. It has nothing to do with jesus and it has nothing to do with rajneesh. It is a state of ultimate flowering. In the east we call it buddha, in the west you call it christ, but it doesn't matter.


Of course you are not growing in christianity -- that is true -- and that has to be made clear, because by'christ' they may mean'christianity'. Then tell them that it is not growing.


I am against christianity, against hinduism, but I am all for christ. In fact you cannot find any christian who is more for christ than I am. But the idea of christ has to be experienced. Just explain to them lovingly, humbly. There is no need to argue -- because these things are not for argument.


If they love you -- and I see that they love you and that they are loving people -- they will understand. If they can understand love, they can understand everything. Love is vast.


And their concern is natural -- nothing wrong in it. Mm? they may be worried about what you have chosen and where you are going; maybe you will go astray, maybe it will become difficult. Their concern is natural, and you should be grateful that they are concerned. They still care for you... their love is intact.


So feel grateful, and tell them that you feel grateful that they are concerned, but make it clear. And there is no argument in it -- just make it clear... a simple statement that this is the thing, and this is your way to reach christ.


If they love you they will understand, and if they love christ there is every possibility that they will come to me too.


Nobody can reach christ through the church. It has never been so; it is not in the nature of things. Nobody can reach Buddha through the priesthood.


Once I am gone you will not be able to make any contact with me through somebody else -- an organisation, priests, apostles... they won't help. The only way will be either to be directly with me -- which needs rare awareness  -- or go to a living master who may not even have heard about me, and to be with him. Either you have the awareness to contact me directly or you come in contact with somebody who has that awareness. He may not have heard about me -- that is not the point -- but through his presence you will be immediately connected with me. He will function as a bridge.


Masters who are no more on the earth can be connected only through living masters -- there is no other way. And as far as masters are concerned, there is no Christian, no Hindu and no Buddhist. A master is a door to the infinite, and the infinite has no adjective to it.


So if you simply are there, happy, flowing, meditative, praying.... Let them watch, let them just see by the side. Passing the room they will see you are meditating; in the garden you are sitting with closed eyes. Let them have a taste of something that is beginning to happen to you -- that will be the connection. And that's what I call persuasion existential persuasion, not intellectual conviction. Simply go happily... and I will be working on you.


Once I start working on somebody he is bound to come -- don't be afraid! I just go on sitting in this house -- never leave the room -- and people come from such faraway countries, trekking their way, and they find me. I will look after them -- you just give them a taste, that's all!


[The sannyasin, who is a therapist, says: Osho, I'm doing several workshops in your ashrams in the west and I would like you to tell me what to do. I want to do something totally... a new baby. Two weekends are coming up very soon.]


Don't plan it. Just remember me and start, mm? And be in a non-serious mood. Don't try to manipulate -- just float -- and things will start happening. Whenever you are stuck or anything, just take the locket in your hand. Sitting amidst the group tell them to give you silence for one second. Just for one second remember me, and the flow will be there again.


Work as if you are just a vehicle. Don't work from your mind -- allow me. And all that you know will be used -- but not in a planned way... very zig-zag. It will not be like a superhighway -- just a footpath in the forest. Many things will happen unexpectedly and you will be surprised as much as your group.


So you simply start -- don't plan it at all. There is no need to have any plan. You have done many workshops, so you know. Just be there and start. Just sit in the middle and start. Let this be a totally spontaneous thing, and do it in the spirit of a picnic.


... Mm! Don't be serious -- mm? just play. And it will bring out the highest possibility that is hidden in you. When you plan something, you already have planned it -- and you don't allow your spontaneity to flow through. So don't make the formal structure too heavy, because these flowers of being are very very delicate. If the structure is too heavy they cannot come up. They come better when the structure is not there, or at least is very very light, flexible, fluid.


Start with geetam (a sannyas centre in california) -- all will be sannyasins there. Start, and leave it to me, and see what happens. Go in a crazy way -- unplanned. Let things take their own shape and let each moment lead you to another moment... and much is going to happen.
			

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