Osho the empty boat (from his Books)

You have come to me as somebody, and if you allow me, if you give me the opportunity, this somebodiness can disappear and you can become a nobody. This is the whole effort –to make you a nobody. But why? Why this effort to become a nobody? Because unless you become nobody you cannot be blissful; unless you become nobody you cannot be ecstatic; unless you become nobody the benediction is not for you –you go on missing life.

Really you are not alive, you simply drag, you simply carry yourself like a burden. Much anguish happens, much despair, much sorrow, but not a single ray of bliss –it cannot. If you are somebody, you are like a solid block of stone, nothing can penetrate you. When you are nobody you start to become porous. When you are nobody, really you are an emptiness, transparent, everything can pass through you. There is no hindrance, there is no barrier, no resistance. You become a passivity, a door.

Buddha attained this. Because of language I say attained; otherwise the word is ugly, there is no attainment –but you will understand. Buddha attained this emptiness, this nothingness. For two weeks, for fourteen days continuously, he sat in silence, not moving, not saying, not doing anything. It is said that the deities in heaven became disturbed –rarely it happens that someone becomes such total emptiness. The whole of existence felt a celebration, so deities came. They bowed down before Buddha and they said, ”You must say something, you must say what you have attained. Buddha is reported to have laughed and said, ”I have not attained anything; rather, because of this mind, which always wants to attain something, I was missing everything. I have not achieved anything, this is not an achievement; rather, on the contrary, the achiever has disappeared. I am no more, and, see the beauty of it –when I was, I was miserable, and when I am no more, everything is blissful, the bliss is showering and showering continuously on me, everywhere. Now there is no misery.” Buddha had said before: Life is misery, birth is misery, death is misery –everything is miserable. It was miserable because the ego was there. The boat had not been empty. Now the boat was empty;

The whole effort is how to kill you, the whole effort is how to destroy you. Once you are destroyed, the indestructible will come up –it is there, hidden. Once all that which is nonessential is eliminated, the essential will be like a flame –aliveness, total glory.

The ordinary mind hankers to be extraordinary, that is part of ordinariness; the ordinary mind desires to be somebody in particular, that is part of ordinariness. You may become an Alexander, but you remain ordinary –then who is the extraordinary one? The extraordinariness starts only when you don’t hanker after extraordinariness. Then the journey has started, then a new seed has sprouted.

Once a manasked a miser, a great miser, ”How did you succeed in accumulating so much wealth?” The miser said, ”This is my motto: whatsoever is to be done tomorrow should be done today, and whatsoever is to be enjoyed today should be enjoyed tomorrow. This has been my motto.” Hesucceeded in accumulating wealth –and this is how people succeed in accumulating nonsense also!

It is not a question of whether you behave or misbehave. This is not the question. Even a good man, even a very saintly man, creates anger, because he is there. Sometimes a good man creates more anger than a bad man, because a good man means a very subtle egoist. A bad man feels guilty his boat may be filled, but he feels guilty. He is not really so spread out on the boat, his guilt helps him to shrink. A good man feels himself to be so good that he fills the boat completely, overfills it.

The moralists, the puritans, the virtuous, they are all heavy, and they carry a burden around with them, and dark shadows. Nobody likes them. They cannot be good companions, they cannot be good friends. Friendship is impossible with a good man –almost impossible, because his eyes are always condemning. The moment you come near him, he is good and you are bad. Not that he is doing anything in particular –just his very being creates something, and you will feel angry.

If you believe in God, Socrates will ask something about God; you cannot answer, you have not yet seen. What is the proof? God is a far off thing. You cannot prove even ordinary things. You have left your wife at home –how can you prove, really, that you have left your wife at home, or that you have even got a wife? It may be just in your memory. You may have seen a dream, and when you go back there is neither house nor wife.

Chuang Tzu says: To all appearances the wise man will be like a fool

This is what happened to Socrates, and it had to happen there because the Greek mind is the most rational mind in the world, and a rational mind always tries not to be foolish. Socrates angered everybody. People had to kill him really, because he would ask awkward questions and he would make everybody feel foolish. He put everybody in a corner –because one cannot answer even ordinary questions if somebody insists.

Socrates asked questions, penetrating, analyzing everything, and everyone in Athens became angry. This man was trying to prove that they were all fools. They killed him. Had he met Chuang Tzu –and at that time Chuang Tzu was alive in China, they were contemporaries –then Chuang Tzu would have told him the secret: Don’t try to prove that anybody is foolish because fools don’t like it. Don’t try to prove to a madman that he is mad, because no madman likes it. He will get angry, arrogant, aggressive. He will kill you if you prove too much. If you come to the point where it can be proved, he will take revenge.

Chuang Tzu would have said: It is better to be foolish yourself, then people enjoy you, and then by a very subtle methodology you can help them change. Then they are not against you.

The last thing and the first thing is to be empty: once you are empty you will be filled. The all will descend on you when you are empty –only emptiness can receive the all, nothing less will do, because to receive all you have to be empty, boundlessly empty. Only then can the all be received. Your minds are so small they cannot receive the divine. Your rooms are so small you cannot invite the divine. Destroy this house completely because only the sky, space, total space, can receive.

Meditation is nothing but emptying, becoming nobody

The second thing to be understood about mind is that the mind always longs for the distant, never for the near. The near gives you boredom, you are fed up with it; the distant gives you dreams, hopes, possibility of pleasure. So the mind always thinks of the distant. It is always somebody else’s wife who is attractive, beautiful; it is always somebody else’s house which obsesses you; it is always somebody else’s car which fascinates you. It is always the distant. You are blind to the near. The mind cannot see that which is very near. It can only see that which is very far

If you really want not to be angry again don’t decide against anger. Just look into the anger and just look at the shadow of the anger which you think is non-anger. Look into sex, and at the shadow of sex, which you think is brahmacharya, celibacy. It is just negativity, absence. Look at overeating, and the shadow of it –fasting. Fasting always follows overeating; overindulgence is always followed by vows of celibacy; tension is always followed by some techniques of meditation. Look at them together, feel how they are related; they are part of one process.

If you can understand this, meditation will happen to you. Really, it is not something to be done, it is a point of understanding. It is not an effort, it is nothing to be cultivated. It is something to be deeply understood. Understanding gives freedom. Knowledge of the whole mechanism of the mind is transformation. Then suddenly the clock stops, time disappears: and with the stopping of the clock, there is no mind. With the stopping of time, where are you? The boat is empty.

When the whole moves without any impediment the very movement is bliss. Bliss is not something that comes from outside –it is the feeling that comes when your whole being moves, the very movement of the whole is bliss. It is not something happening to you, it arises out of you, it is a harmony in your being. If you are divided –and you are always divided: half-moving, half-withholding, half saying yes, half saying no, half in love, half in hate, you are a divided kingdom –there is constant conflict in you. You say something but you never mean it, because the opposite is there impeding, creating a hindrance.

You can see if a man has newly acquired wealth –he will be showing it. A real aristocrat is one who has forgotten that he is rich. A man of Tao is the aristocrat of the inner world

Self-knowledge is not possible. If your innocence comes out of your inner source you cannot know it. If you have imposed it from the outside you can know it; if it is just like a dress you have put on you know it, but it is not the very breath of your life. That innocence is cultivated, and a cultivated innocence is an ugly thing.

It happened once that Henry Ford came to England. At the airport inquiry office he asked for the cheapest hotel in town. The clerk in the office looked –the face was famous. Henry Ford was known all over the world. Just the day before there were big pictures of him in the newspapers saying that he was coming. And here he was, asking for the cheapest hotel, wearing a coat that looked as old as he himself. So the clerk said, ”If I am not mistaken, you are Mr. Henry Ford. I remember well, I have seen your picture.” The man said, ”Yes.” This puzzled the clerk very much, and he said, ”You are asking for the cheapest hotel, wearing a coat that looks as old as you yourself. I have also seen your son coming here, and he always inquires about the best hotel, and he comes in the best of clothes.” Henry Ford is reported to have said, ”Yes, my son’s behavior is exhibitionist, he is not yet attuned. There is no need for me to stay in a costly hotel; wherever I stay I am Henry Ford. Even in the cheapest hotel I am Henry Ford, it makes no difference. My son is still new, afraid of what people will think if he stays in a cheap hotel. And this coat, yes, this belonged to my father –but it makes no difference, I don’t need new clothes. I am Henry Ford, whatsoever the dress; even if I am standing naked, I am Henry Ford. It makes no difference at all.”

Have you observed yourself? You are always trying to exhibit your wisdom, always in search of a victim to whom you can show your knowledge, just searching, hunting for somebody weaker than you –then you will jump in and you will show your wisdom.

A wise man need not be an exhibitionist. Whatsoever is, is. He is not aware of it, he is not in any hurry to show it. If you want to find it, you will have to make efforts. If you have to know whether he is gentle or not, that is going to be your discovery.

Remember this. It is very easy to make money and it is also very easy to make a virtue of poverty. But these two types are not different. A man keeps on making money, and then suddenly he gets frustrated. He has achieved, and nothing is gained –so he renounces. Then poverty becomes the virtue, then he lives the life of a poor man and then he says: This is the only real life, this is religiouslife. This man is the same, nothing has changed. The pendulum moved to the left but now has gone to the other extreme.

No, a perfect man, a man who is really a sage, the man of Tao, goes his way without relying on others. If you rely on others you will suffer, if you rely on others, you will always be in bondage, you will become dependent and weak. But that doesn’t mean that you should pride yourself that you walk alone. Walk alone, but don’t take pride in it. Then you can move in the world without being a part of it. Then you can be a husband without being a husband. Then you can possess without being possessed by your possessions. Then the world is there outside, but not within. Then you are there, but not corrupted by it.

This is true loneliness –moving in the world without being touched by it. But if you are proud, you have missed. If you think, ”I have become somebody,” the boat is not empty, and again you have fallen victim of the ego.

Buddha says there is nobody to claim, there is no self within you. Buddha says you are like the onion: you peel, you go on peeling the layers, and finally nothing remains. Your mind is like an onion, go on peeling. This is what meditation is –go on peeling, go on peeling, and a moment comes when nothing is left. That nothingness is your true self. NO SELF IS TRUE SELF. When the boat is empty then only for the first time you are in the boat.

ANDTHEGREATESTMANISNOBODY. It happened that Buddha renounced the kingdom. Then he went searching from one forest to another, from one ashram to another, from one master to another, walking. He had never walked before without shoes but now he was just a beggar. He was passing along the bank of a river, walking on the sand, and his footprints were left. While resting in the shade of a tree an astrologer saw him. The astrologer was returning from Kashi, from the seat of learning. He had become proficient in astrology, had become perfect, and now thathe had become a great doctor of astrology he was coming back to his home town to practice. He looked at the footprint on the wet sand and he became disturbed: These footprints could not belong to an ordinary man walking on the sand without shoes during such a hot summer, at noontime! These feet belong to a great emperor, a CHAKRAVARTIN. A chakravartin is the emperor who rules the whole world. All the symbols were there showing that this man was a chakravartin, an emperor of the whole world of the six continents. And why should a chakravartin walk barefoot on the sand on such a hot summer afternoon? It was impossible! The astrologer was carrying his most valuable books. He thought, ”If this is possible I should throw these books in the river and forget astrology forever, because this is absurd. It is very, very difficult to find a man who has the feet of a chakravartin. Once in millions of years a man becomes a chakravartin, and what is this chakravartin doing here?” Sohefollowed the footprints to their source and he looked at Buddha who was sitting resting under a tree with closed eyes, and he became more disturbed. This astrologer became absolutely disturbed because the face was also the face of a chakravartin. But the man looked like a beggar, with his begging bowl just there by his side, with torn clothes. But the face looked like that of a chakravartin, so what should he do? He said, ”I am very disturbed, put me at ease. There is only one question I have to ask. I have seen and studied your footprints. They should belong to a chakravartin, to a great emperor who rules over all the world, the whole earth is his kingdom –and you are a beggar. So what should I do? Should I throw away all my astrology books? My twelve years of effort in Kashi have been wasted and those people there are fools. I have wasted the most important part of my life, so put me at ease. Tell me, what should I do?” Buddha said, ”You need not worry. This will not happen again. You take your books, go to the town, start your practice and don’t bother about me. I was born to be a chakravartin. These footprints carry my past.” All footprints carry your past –the lines on your hand, your palm, carry your past. That is why astrology, palmistry, is always true about the past, never so true about the future, and absolutely untrue about a buddha, because one who throws off his whole past moves into the unknown –you cannot predict his future. Buddha said, ”You will not come to such a troublesome man again. Don’t you worry, this will not happen again, take it as an exception.” But the astrologer said, ”A few more questions. I would like to know who you are: am I really seeing a dream? A chakravartin sitting like a beggar? Who are you? Are you an emperor in disguise?” Buddha said, ”No.” Then the astrologer asked, ”But your face looks so beautiful, so calm, so filled with inner silence. Who are you? Are you an angel from paradise?” Buddha said, ”No.”

The astrologer asked one more question, saying, ”It seems impolite to ask, but you have created the desire and the urge. Are you a human being? If you are not an emperor, a chakravartin, if you are not a DEVA from paradise, are you a human being?” And Buddha said, ”No, I am nobody. I don’t belong to any form, to any name.” The astrologer said, ”You have disturbed me even more now. What do you mean?” This is what Buddha meant: ANDTHEGREATESTMANISNOBODY. You canbesomebody, butyoucannotbethegreatest. There is always someone greater somewhere in the world. And who is somebody? You are the measure. You say that this man is great –but who is the measure? You. The spoon is the measure of the ocean. You say, ”This man is great.” You say, and many like you say, ”This man is great” –and he becomes great because of you! No. In this world, whoever is somebody cannot be the greatest, because the ocean cannot be measured by spoons. And you are all teaspoons measuring the ocean. No, it is not possible. Sothe really greatest will be nobody amongst you. What does it mean when Chuang Tzu says, ”The greatest will be nobody”? It means: it will be immeasurable. You cannot measure, you cannot label, you cannot categorize, you cannot say, ”Who is this?” He simply escapes measurement. He simply goes beyond and beyond and beyond and the teaspoon falls to the ground. Enough for today.

How do you deceive? There are two ways. One is to go mad. Then you can declare that you are Alexander, Hitler, Nixon. Then it comes easily because then you are not bothered by what others say. Go to the madhouses all over the world and there you will find all the great characters of history, still living! While Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was alive, at least one dozen people in India believed that they were Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Once he went to a madhouse to inaugurate a new department. And the madhouse authorities had arranged for a few people to be released by him, because now they had become healthy and normal. The first person was brought to him and introduced, so Nehru introduced himself to the madman who had become more normal and said, ”I am Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, prime minister of India. ” The madmanlaughedandsaid, ”Don’t worry. Be here for three years and you will become as normal as I have become. Three years ago when I first came to this madhouse that is who I believed I was–Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, prime minister of India. But they have cured me completely, so don’t worry.”

There are two types of superiority. In one you have just hidden the inferiority, covered it, you are using a mask –behind the mask the inferiority is there. Your superiority is just superficial, deep down you remain inferior, and because you go on feeling it you have to carry this mask of superiority, of beauty. Because you are aware that you are ugly you have to contrive to be beautiful, you have to exhibit, you have to show a false face. This is one type of superiority; it is not real. There is another type of superiority, and that superiority is the absence of inferiority, not the opposite to it. You simply don’t compare. When you don’t compare, how can you be inferior? Look: if you are the only one on earth and there is nobody else, will you be inferior? With whom will you compare yourself? Relative to what? If you are alone what will you be, inferior or superior? You will be neither. You cannot be inferior because no one is above you; you cannot declare yourself superior because there is no one beneath you. You will be neither superior nor inferior –and I say to you that this is the superiority of the soul. It never compares. Compare, and the inferiority arises. Don’t compare, and you simply are –unique. A religious man is superior in the sense that the inferiority has disappeared. A politician is superior in the sense that he has overcome his inferiority. It is hidden there, it is still inside. He is just using the garb, the face, the mask of a superior man.Whenyoucompare, you miss; then you will always be looking at others. And no two persons are the same, they cannot be. Every individual is unique and every individual is superior, but this superiorityis not comparable. You are superior because you cannot be anything else. Superiority is just your nature. That tree is superior, that rock is also superior. The whole of existence is divine, so how can anything here be inferior? It is God, overflowing in millions of ways. Somewhere God has become a tree, somewhere God has become a rock, somewhere God has become a bird, somewhere God has become you. And only God exists, so there can be no comparison. God is superior, but not to anything –because only God is, and there cannot be any inferiority. A religious man comes to experience his uniqueness, comes to experience his divineness, and through his experience of divineness comes to realize the divineness of all. This is nonpolitical because now there is no ambition, you have nothing to prove, you are already proved; you have nothing to declare, you are already declared. Your very being is the proof. You are...it is enough. Nothing else is needed.

Buddha says: Don’t be ambitious, because through ambition you will remain inferior always. Be nonambitious and attain to your intrinsic superiority. It is intrinsic. It doesn’t have to be proved, or achieved, you already have it, you have got it. It is already there –it has always been with you and it will always remain with you. Your very being is sup-erior but you don’t know what being is there. You don’t know who you are. Hence so much effort in seeking your identity, in searching, in proving that you are superior to others. You don’t know who you are. Once you know, then there is no problem. You are already superior. And it is not only you that is superior –everything is superior. The whole of existence is superior without anything being inferior, because God is one, existence is one. Neither the inferior nor the superior can exist. The nonambitious mind comes to realize this.

The first thing to be understood is that what you are is what you think of others. Your desires, your own ambitions give you the pattern. If you are after money you think that everyone is after money. If you are a thief you keep checking your pocket: that is how you show that you are a thief. Your inner desire is the language of your understanding

You can find only that which you are. You always find yourself in others, because others are just mirrors. To catch Chuang Tzu, a Lao Tzu was needed. Nobody else could catch him, for who could understand him? A Buddha was needed; Buddha would have guessed where he was. But a policeman? –impossible! Only if he were a thief would it be possible. Look at the policeman, the way he is, the way he talks, the dirty language he uses; it is even more vulgar than thieves’ language. The policeman has to be more vulgar than the thief, otherwise thieves would win.

Chuang Tzu could not be found because the police were searching for his past and he lived in the present. He was a being, not a mind. Mind can be caught but being cannot be caught. There are no nets. Mind can be caught very easily, and you are all caught in some way or other. Because you have a mind, a wife, a husband will catch you; a shop, a treasure, a post, anything will catch you. There are nets, millions of nets. And you cannot be free unless you are free of the mind. You will be caught again and again. If you leave this wife, another woman will catch you immediately. You cannot escape. You can escape this woman, but you cannot escape women. You can escape this man but where will you go? No sooner have you left one than another has come into your life. You can leave this town, but where will you go? Another town will catch you. You can leave this desire but another will become the bondage. Mind is always in bondage, it is already caught. When you drop the mind then the police cannot catch you.

Puranas, no Itihas, no history. Rama is not an historical person. He may or may not have been, it cannot be proved. Krishna is a myth, not an historical fact. Maybe he was, maybe he was not. But India is not bothered whether Krishna and Rama are historical. They are meaningful, they are great epic poems. And history is meaningless for India because history contains only bare facts, it never reveals the innermost core. We are concerned with the innermost core, the center of the wheel. The wheel keeps on moving, that is history, but the center of the wheel, which never moves, is the myth..

Rama is never born and never dies. Krishna is never born and never dies. They are always there. Myth is not concerned with time, it is concerned with eternity. History changes with the times, myth is always relevant. No, myth can never be out of date. Newspaper is history, and yesterday’s newspaper is already out of date. Rama is not part of the newspaper, he is not news, and he will never be out of date. He is always in the present, always meaningful, relevant. History keeps changing; Rama remains in the center of the wheel, un-moving.

Have you ever seen a picture of Rama or Krishna which belongs to their old age? They are always young, without even a beard or mustache. Have you ever seen a picture of Rama bearded? Unless he had some hormonal defect it must have grown; if he was really a man –and he was –then the beard must have grown. If Rama was historical, then the beard would have been there; but we have pictured him beardless, because the moment the beard grows you have started becoming old. Sooner or later it will turn white. Death is coming near and we cannot bear to think of Rama dead, so we have washed his face completely clean of any sign of death. And this is not only so with Rama; the twenty-four TIRTHANKARAS of the Jainas are all beardless, no mustaches. Buddha and all the AVATARS of the Hindus had no beards, no mustaches. It is just to indicate their eternal youth, the eternity, the timelessness, the far-awayness.

There is time –in time everything changes –and there is eternity. In eternity nothing changes. History belongs to time, myth belongs to eternity. Science belongs to time, religion belongs to the non-temporal, the eternal.

All that is great, all that is beautiful, all that is true and real, is always spontaneous. You cannot plan it. The moment you plan it, everything goes wrong. The moment planning enters, everything becomes unreal. But this has happened to humanity. Your love, your sincerity, your truth, everything, has gone wrong because you have planned it, be-cause you have been taught not to be spontaneous. You have been taught to manipulate yourself, to control, to manage, and not to be a natural flow. You have become rigid, frozen, dead. Life knows no planning. It is itself enough. Do the trees plan how to grow, how to mature, how to come to flower? They simply grow without even being conscious of the growth. There is no self-consciousness, there is no separation. Whenever you start planning you have divided yourself, you have become two; the one who is controlling and the one who is controlled. A conflict has arisen, now you will never be at peace. You may succeed in controlling but there will be no peace; you may not succeed in controlling, then too there will be no peace. Whether you succeed or fail, ultimately you will come to realize that you have failed. Your failure will be a failure, your success will also be a failure. Whatsoever you do, your life will be miserable. This division creates ugliness, you are not one, and beauty belongs to oneness, beauty belongs to a harmonious whole. All culture, all civilization, all societies, make you ugly. All morality makes you ugly because it is based on division, on control.