---
section: Library
booktitle: "The Cypress in the Courtyard"
booktype: "Diaries"
bookcode: "CYPRES"
dategiven: "21 June 1976 pm"
place: " in Chuang Tzu Auditorium"
chapternum: "Chapter #18"
chaptertitle: "None"
acode: "7606215"
shorttitle: "CYPRES18"
audio: "No"
video: "No"
esttime: ""
displaytitle: "The Cypress in the Courtyard: Chapter #18"
---

```style
.sutra {
  font-style: italic;
  white-space: pre-wrap !important;
}
```
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[A sannyasin said that he was a high school counsellor and teacher of Karate...


Osho suggested he do some groups while he was here as they provided a balance, being just the opposite to Karate.... ]


One needs to move between the polarities because then life becomes more intense. Otherwise if you remain at one pole, life becomes monotonous and richness is lost. The opposite pole also has some truth in it, but ordinarily the mind tends to get stuck at one point.


Karate is a very significant training but it is only half of the truth. The whole method depends on a great repression. Knowingly, unknowingly, it is a great control, and by and by it becomes so effortless that you don't even feel that you are controlling. One can become controlled very much through it, but then the spontaneity is lost.


The method is basically a military method. It was created for a certain reason because Japanese are, in many ways, smaller in the body, weaker in the body. For centuries they have remained undernourished, because people who live only on rice become undernourished. Their height never rises to the average. Just within ten years, in Japan the height has risen two inches -- just because of american food.


So they were small people, weak, undernourished, and they needed many techniques to overpower stronger people. They developed them, and they developed beautiful methods. They became one of the powerful races. They depended more on the control of energy, the preservation of energy, and a subtle skill of centring. They did well, but one thing also happened simultaneously -- they became very phoney.


The Japanese are phoney. If they smile, you cannot distinguish whether their smile is true or just polite, just formal. And they smile so beautifully that it is very difficult to make a distinction. They have learned it. They will never fight and in situations where anybody else would become irritated, they don't. Anybody else can be easily provoked, but the Japanese not so easily.


There is a very famous story about a foreigner who came to Tokyo a few hundred years ago. He saw a great crowd gathered as he entered the town, and the people were watching something very eagerly. Two people were fighting -- shouting at each other and screaming. He couldn't understand what they were saying of course, but they were very very angry. They looked as though they would kill each other, but neither of them was even hitting the other. He waited for a few moments and while there was nobody trying to stop them, neither of the n hit the other. They were ready to hit but somehow they managed not to. He asked what was going on.


Somebody said, 'That's how we fight. The person who hits first shows that he is the weaker man. Once one has hit the other, the crowd will disappear immediately because there is no point in continuing; we know who is the weaker. The one who hits first is the weaker so the fight is finished. That's why they are both provoking each other but nobody is hitting. They are both controlling themselves.'


The Japanese have managed a great control, but the by-product has been a very phoney personality.


The growth groups are just the opposite. You are not to control, you are not supposed to control. In fact you are supposed to uncontrol and bring out whatsoever is inside, and to relax. You are not supposed to remain disciplined. Just the contrary: you are supposed to be spontaneous and true, whatsoever it is -- anger, then anger; love, then love; irritation, then irritation. If you like to cry, you can cry, but you float with the moment. This is just the opposite from the eastern systems of Karate, Aikido, Judo, which all depend on control; even Yoga depends on control.


So I would like you to do a few groups here, and in those groups become completely uncontrolled. Then you can have both the visions. Both have their benefits and both have their dangerous shadows. If a person becomes trained too much in eastern methods, he will be controlled, still, silent, but something will be untrue. You will never find fault with him. He will be able to manage himself in every situation, good or bad, but deep down he will become too much of a personality. He will become too much of a performer, so much so that he himself can forget that he had some original face of his own before this discipline started.


It is good to remain controlled and disciplined. It gives you a certain grace, a certain charm, and you become more capable of being with people, moving in relationships, moving in the world. You are always controlled. You look at least mature.


These growth groups have one beautiful thing about them in that they bring out your true essence -- good or bad -- because they are not moralistic. They are chaotic. The whole chaos has to be brought to the surface. But then if one knows only these groups, one becomes just a victim of momentary things, moods. One becomes almost like a driftwood... unreliable, irresponsible.


That too is dangerous, because if you become irresponsible, unreliable, you become useless; you become uncreative. You create so many problems for others and for yourself for nothing, for things which could have been avoided with a little discipline. There was no need for them. This type of man continuously runs into problems unnecessarily. Where a simple polite smile would have helped, he creates such a turmoil. Where just a 'hello' would have helped... but he is not feeling like saying 'hello', and that creates a chain, unnecessarily. It is good to be authentic, but it is not good to become just a victim of momentary moods.


So I always suggest that people who are doing groups should do eastern methods also so that they attain to a certain discipline. A person is very rich when he is true and yet disciplined, authentic yet disciplined. When these two polarities meet together, you become more total. Then it is up to you. Whatsoever the situation demands, you respond that way.


There are situations where discipline is needed; you remain disciplined. There are situations where discipline has to be put aside, then you become spontaneous. You don't have a fixed mode. You don't have a character. You are more fluid, flowing, more alive. Life is circulating in you and you don't carry dead parts around you.
So do these groups. Much is going to happen just be ready.
			

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