An extract from the book 'The Razor's Edge' by Osho.
A very interesting read. Enjoy.
D I L I P.
Easy is right
Question 1:
BELOVED OSHO,
I LOVE THIS POEM BY CHUANG TZU:
"EASY IS RIGHT. BEGIN RIGHT AND YOU ARE EASY.
CONTINUE EASY, AND YOU ARE RIGHT.
THE RIGHT WAY TO GO EASY IS TO FORGET THE RIGHT WAY
AND FORGET THAT THE GOING IS EASY."
WOULD YOU LIKE TO COMMENT ON IT?
Anand Shanti, Chuang Tzu is very
rare - in a way the most unique mystic in the whole history of man.
His uniqueness is that he talks in
absurdities. All his poems and stories are just absurd. And his reason to
choose absurdity as his expression is very significant: the mind has to be
silenced. With anything rational, it cannot stop; it goes on and on. Anything
logical and the mind finds nourishment through it. It is only the absurd that
suddenly shocks the mind - it is beyond mind's grasp.
His stories, his poems and his other
statements are so absurd that either people simply left him, thinking that he
is mad.... Those who were courageous enough to remain with him found that no
other meditation is needed. Just listening to his absurd statements, the mind
stops functioning. And that is the meaning of meditation.
Meditation is not of the mind.
Most of the Western translations of
treatises from the East on meditation have fallen in the same track. They have
used the word meditation as if it is concentration. And in fact the English
word meditation seems to be synonymous with concentration.
English has three words -
concentration, contemplation, meditation. None of them comes even close to the
Eastern word dhyana, that became in China ch'an and in Japan zen. The root is
the Sanskrit word dhyana, and it will be very good for you to understand the
distinction. In concentration your mind is focused, narrowed only on one
object.
A famous story about one of the
great master archers.... Arjuna says that his teacher, Dronacharya, was giving
the final examination of his disciples. He had put a dead bird far away on a
tree as a target.
He asked one of his disciples,
Duryodhana, "What are you seeing?" Duryodhana said, "Everything!
The trees, the sun rising behind
them, the bird that you have put as a target. I am seeing everything."
Dronacharya asked another disciple;
he said, "I see only the bird." He is more concentrated.
Duryodhana has his mind spread all
over the place. The second disciple says he is seeing only the bird. But the
master is not satisfied.
He asks Arjuna, "What are you
seeing?" Arjuna says, "Only the eye of the bird that you have told us
is going to be the target. I don't see anything else." His concentration
has come even more narrow.
And for an archer, this kind of
concentration is needed. But meditation is not archery.
Contemplation is not being
concentrated on a single object, but thinking about the same object from every
possible aspect. For example, somebody is contemplating about love - what does
it mean?
He remains confined to a certain
line of thinking, not to a certain object, but to a certain subject.
And "meditation", in all
the languages of the world except the Indian, Chinese and Japanese, also gives
the feeling.... The archer is concentrated, but he is not concerned with the
eye, the bull's - eye. His concern is how to shoot the arrow so that it reaches
the eye; his concern is not to miss the target.
Meditation, as far as Western
languages are concerned, is going deeply into one object - thinking, in its
deeper implications. Contemplation was linear; you were thinking about a
subject from all possible aspects, but the mind was moving. In meditation the
mind is not moving. It is similar to concentration without any arrows. Your
thoughts are the arrows, but they are hitting the same subject deeper and
deeper and deeper - not in a line, not horizontal but vertical.
There is no word in Western
languages which can translate the word dhyana absolutely and adequately.
"Meditation" has been chosen because there is no other word, but it
is a wrong choice.
Out of the three words, it is the
best, but dhyana, ch'an or zen have a totally different meaning: mind has
stopped.
In concentration mind has narrowed,
in contemplation it is flowing in a line on a particular subject, in meditation
it is concentrated, and instead of arrows it is throwing thoughts deeper and
deeper into the same object. But all three processes belong to the mind.
Dhyana means the mind has been put aside.
There is no concentration, there is no contemplation, there is no meditation.
It is a state of no-mind; it is absolute silence, not even a small stirring of
any thought.
In the East, so many devices have
been tried... how to stop the mind chattering continuously, how to bypass it,
how to stop it, how to go beyond it. Chuang Tzu has his own, unique
contribution. He talks to his disciples in absurdities, and the mind cannot tackle
them. The mind needs something reasonable, rational, logical; that is its
territory. The absurd is beyond it.
I have told you the famous story
about Chuang Tzu: One morning he woke up with tears in his eyes, so sad and so
depressed. His disciples had never seen him sad or depressed or with tears; he
is an enlightened master... what has happened? They all rushed and enquired,
"Can we be of some help?" Chuang Tzu said, "I don't think
so." They said, "Still, we want to know what is the problem that is torturing
you so much. You are beyond problems!"
Chuang Tzu said, "I used to be,
but last night I saw a dream and it has disturbed my whole attainment,
achievement, self-realization, enlightenment - everything has gone down the
drain."
They said, "Just a dream?"
He said, "It was not just a dream, it has shattered me into pieces."
They said, "Still, please tell us the dream!"
The dream was that Chuang Tzu saw
that he had become a butterfly. All the disciples laughed. They said,
"Unnecessarily being depressed and crying and tears and thinking that your
enlightenment and self-realization have all gone down the drain.... It is an
ordinary dream, nothing to be worried about it. In dreams people see themselves
becoming many things, but a dream is a dream."
Chuang Tzu said, "I understand
that a dream is a dream. The problem is that I am worried, who am I? If Chuang
Tzu in his sleep can dream that he has become a butterfly, a butterfly in her
dream can see she has become Chuang Tzu. And now I am puzzled. Who am I? - a
Chuang Tzu or a butterfly?
"If Chuang Tzu is capable of
dreaming himself to be a butterfly, you cannot cancel the possibility of a
butterfly taking a nap on the rose bushes and dreaming that she has become
Chuang Tzu. Who can prevent her? And the question is, have I awakened, or is
the butterfly dreaming that she is Chuang Tzu? You tell me who I am! - the
butterfly or Chuang Tzu."
They were all at a loss... what to
say? This man goes on finding such absurd things. Millions of people for
millions of years have been dreaming, but nobody has raised this question. You
have been dreaming, but have you ever raised this question? - that when you
wake up perhaps it is the beginning of a new dream.
What makes you so certain that you
are not dreaming? - in the dream you were so certain that you are a butterfly,
and now you are so certain that you are Chuang Tzu. There is no difference in
certainty. In fact when you are awake the possibility of suspicion is there,
you can doubt; but when you are dreaming, there is even no doubt at all, no
suspicion, no question mark - you are simply a butterfly.
He said, "Sit down and meditate
and find out the answer - who am I?" They looked at each other - how to
meditate upon it, how to think about it? It is unthinkable, it is beyond the
mind. His closest disciple, Lieh Tzu, had gone out to the nearest village. He
returned; he saw the whole scene:
Chuang Tzu in tears sitting on his
bed, all the disciples with closed eyes, their minds completely stuck.
What can the mind say about it? The
question is absurd. He asked one of the disciples who was near the door,
"What is the matter? It seems to be really serious! I have never seen such
seriousness here. And why is our master crying? Has somebody died or
something?"
The disciple said, "He has
created a new absurdity. Nobody has died and nothing has happened; he is
torturing us and nothing else! Now we have to meditate upon it." And he
told him the problem.
Lieh Tzu said, "Don't be
worried. You meditate; I am coming."
He went out, brought a bucket full
of ice-cold water and poured it on Chuang Tzu. And Chuang Tzu said laughingly,
"If you had been here before you would have saved all these idiots! They
are looking so serious, as if they are really thinking. And you would have
saved my tears and my misery. Just wait; don't pour the water, it is too
cold."
Lieh Tzu said, "Has your
problem been solved or not?" Chuang Tzu said, "It is solved - you are
my successor!"
It is not a question to be solved by
the mind.
The mind is absolutely impotent.
Chuang Tzu has hundreds of stories
and he must have had a very strange kind of genius - even to invent those
stories is not easy - but his teaching was very simple. And those who remained
with him; all became enlightened. That is a rare phenomenon. He defeated even
his own master Lao Tzu - a few people became enlightened, but most of Lao Tzu's
disciples remained in their old ignorance. He defeated Gautam Buddha - a few of
his disciples became enlightened, but that was a very small proportion, because
he had thousands of disciples and not more than a dozen became enlightened.
Chuang Tzu has a rare position in
the history of mystics. All his disciples became enlightened....
he would not leave you unless you
had become enlightened. He was so much after you that finally people decided
that it was better to become enlightened. Every day new torture... the only way
to save yourself is to become enlightened. But his method was very simple, and
this poem, Anand Shanti, tells in a very aphoristic way his whole approach.
"Easy is right." Nobody
has dared to say it ever. On the contrary, people make the right as difficult
as possible. To you, who have all been conditioned by different traditions, the
wrong is easy, and the right is arduous. It needs training, it needs
discipline, it needs repression, it needs renouncing the world, it needs
renouncing the pleasures....
Lies are easy, truth is difficult -
that is the common conditioning of humanity. But Chuang Tzu is certainly a man
of tremendous insight. He says, easy is right. Then why have people been making
right difficult? All your saints have been making right very difficult.
There is a psychology behind it:
only the difficult is attractive to your ego. The more difficult is the task,
the more the ego feels challenged.
Climbing Everest was difficult;
hundreds of people had died before Edmund Hillary reached the top alive. For
the whole century groups upon groups of mountaineers had been coming, and when
Edmund Hillary reached, there was nothing to be found! Just at the very peak
there is not even space enough... only one person can stand there, on the
highest point. He was asked, "What prompted you? Knowing perfectly well
that hundreds of mountaineers have lost their life during one hundred years,
and not even their bodies have been found... why did you try this dangerous
project?"
He said, "I had to try. It was
hurting my ego. I am a mountaineer, I love climbing mountains, and it was
humiliating that there is Everest and nobody has been able to reach there. It
is not a question of finding anything, but I feel so immensely happy."
What is this happiness? You have not
found anything! The happiness is that your ego has become more crystallized.
You are the first man in the whole history who has reached Everest; now nobody
can take your place. Anybody who will reach there will be second, third... but
you have made a mark on the history; you are the first. You have not found
anything, but you have found a deep nourishment for your ego. Perhaps Edmund
Hillary himself is not aware of it.
All the religions are making the
right difficult, because the difficult is attractive - attractive to the ego.
But the ego is not the truth; The
ego is not right. Do you see the dilemma? The ego is attracted only towards the
difficult. If you want people to become saints you have to make your right,
your truth, your discipline very difficult. The more difficult it is, the more
egoists will be attracted, almost magnetically pulled.
But the ego is not right. It is the
worst thing that can happen to a man. And it cannot deliver to you the right,
the truth; it can only make your ego stronger. Chuang Tzu is saying in a simple
statement the most pregnant statement: Easy is right. Because for the easy, ego
has no attraction.
If you are going towards the easy,
the ego starts dying. And when there is no ego left, you have arrived to your
reality - the right, the truth. And truth and right have to be natural. Easy
means natural; you can find them without any effort. Easy is right means
natural is right, effortlessness is right, egolessness is right.
BEGIN RIGHT AND YOU ARE EASY,
CONTINUE EASY AND YOU ARE RIGHT. They are just two sides of the same coin. If,
beginning to live a right life, you find it difficult, then remember, it is not
right. If, living the right, your life becomes more and more easy, more and
more a let-go, flowing with the stream....
Going against the stream is
difficult, but going with the stream is not difficult. So either choose the
easiest things in life, the most natural things in life, and you will be right;
or if you want to begin the other way, remember the criterion that the right
has to produce easiness in you, relaxedness in you.
CONTINUE EASY AND YOU ARE RIGHT.
Never forget for a moment that the difficult is the food for the ego, and the
ego is the barrier that makes you blind to see, makes you deaf to hear, makes
your heart hard to open, makes it impossible for you to love, to dance, to
sing.
CONTINUE EASY. Your whole life
should be an easy phenomenon. Then you will not be creating the ego. You will
be a natural being, just ordinary. And to Chuang Tzu, and to me also, the
ordinary is the most extraordinary. The people who are trying to be
extraordinary have missed the goal. Just be ordinary, just be nobody.
But all your conditionings are so
corrupting; they corrupt you. They say; to be easy is to be lazy, to be
ordinary is humiliating. If you don't try for power, for prestige, for
respectability, then your life is meaningless - that has been forced into your
mind.
Chuang Tzu in these simple
statements is taking away all your conditionings.
CONTINUE EASY AND YOU ARE RIGHT.
Never for a moment get attracted towards the difficult. It will make you
somebody - a prime minister, a president - but it will not make you divine.
Easy is divine.
I have heard about an American
super-rich man. He had all the things the world can offer and he had been
striving all his life to be on the top; now he had reached and was feeling
stupid inside because there was nothing on the top. If Edmund Hillary was
intelligent enough, he must have felt stupid standing on Everest... for what
have you been trying? The man who walked on the moon must have looked very
embarrassed, although there was nobody to see him.
This man had come to the top as far
as money is concerned, and as far as money can purchase, he had purchased
everything. And now he was looking stupid. What is the point of it all? Inside
he is hollow. He has no time to give to his inner growth, no time even to be
acquainted with himself.
He dropped all his riches and rushed
towards the East to find the truth, because three-fourths of his life was
almost gone - just the tail has remained, the elephant has passed. But if
something could be possible there were a few days left. He rushed fast. He went
from one master to another master, but nobody could satisfy him, because
whatever they were saying was again another trip of the ego.
And he was well acquainted with that
trip.
It does not matter whether you are
accumulating money or whether you are accumulating virtue, whether you are
becoming respectable here or you are becoming respectable hereafter - it does
not matter, it is the same game. Whether you are becoming a world-famous
celebrity or a world- worshiped saint, there is no difference; both are ego
numbers.
And they were all telling him
difficult disciplines and difficult, arduous ways of finding the truth; they were
all saying, "It may not be possible in this life, but start anyhow. In the
next life maybe.... The journey is long, the goal is a faraway star."
But now nobody could deceive him. He
had found that just becoming somebody special is an exercise in stupidity.
Finally he heard about a saint who lived in the Himalayas. And people said,
"If you are not satisfied with him, you will never be satisfied with
anybody. Then forget the whole thing."
So tired and tattered, walking for
miles, finally he found the old man. He was very happy seeing the old man, but
was shocked. Before he could say anything, the old man said, "Are you an
American?"
He said, "Yes, I am."
The old man said, "Very good.
Have you got any American cigarettes with you?"
He said, "My God, where have I
come! I have come to seek truth, to find the right...." He pulled out
cigarettes and the old man started smoking.
The American said, "You have
not even asked me for what I have come here, tired, hungry...."
He said, "That does not
matter."
The American said, "I have come
to find the truth!"
The old man said, "Truth? You
do one thing, you go back. And next time when you come, bring a lot of American
cigarettes, because here in this place it is very difficult to find cigarettes.
And I am an easy-going man, I don't make any effort; people come on their own.
But I like the best cigarettes.
Here Indians come with
beedies...."
"But," the man asked,
"what about my search?"
The old man said, "Your search?
This is the discipline for you: go back, get as many cigarettes as you can get
and come back and remain here with me."
He asked, "Any
discipline?"
The old man said, "I am an
ordinary old man - no discipline, no religion, no philosophy - I only like to
smoke cigarettes. You come here, and slowly, slowly you will also become just
as ordinary as I am. And I tell you, to be ordinary, with no pretensions, is
the right."
And as the man was going back,
puzzled, the old man said, "Listen, at least leave your wristwatch here,
because I don't have any wristwatch so I don't know the time, what time.... And
anyway you are coming back, so you can bring another wristwatch." Chuang
Tzu would have liked this old man.
EASY IS RIGHT. BEGIN RIGHT AND YOU
ARE EASY. That has to be the criterion. If you feel uneasiness, tension, then
what you have started cannot be right.
CONTINUE EASY AND YOU ARE RIGHT.
And the last part is something never
to be forgotten. THE RIGHT WAY TO GO EASY IS TO FORGET THE RIGHT WAY - because
even to remember it is an uneasiness. THE RIGHT WAY TO GO EASY IS TO FORGET THE
RIGHT WAY AND FORGET THAT THE GOING IS EASY. What is the need of remembering
these things?
Relax to such a point... be as
natural as the trees and the birds. You will not find in the birds that
somebody is a saint and somebody is a sinner; you will not find in the trees
that somebody is virtuous and somebody is full of vices. Everything is easy -
so easy that you need not remember it.
I agree with Chuang Tzu with
absolute, unconditional, categorical attunement. I would have loved to meet
Chuang Tzu. If I were given the opportunity to meet one of the mystics of the
whole human history, Chuang Tzu would be my choice. I have named this place
Chuang Tzu Auditorium.
He was very much misunderstood. It
is obvious... because he was destroying all the priests, all the popes, all the
imams, all the shankaracharyas; he was destroying the so-called great
commandments for being right, and destroying them so easily. He was one of the
most natural men the world has seen. He has not given any discipline, he has
not given any doctrine, he has not given any catechism. He has simply explained
one thing: that if you can be natural and ordinary, just like the birds and the
trees, you will blossom, you will have your wings open in the vast sky.
You don't have to be saints. Saints
are very tense - more tense than sinners. I have known both.
and if there is a choice I will
choose the sinners as a company rather than the saints. Saints are the worst
company, because their eyes are full of judgment about everything: You should
do this and you should not do that. And they start dominating you, condemning you,
humiliating you, insulting you, because what they are doing is the right and
what you are doing is not the right thing. They have poisoned your nature so
badly that if real criminals have to be found they will be found in your
saints, not in your sinners. Your sinners have not done much harm to anybody.
I have been visiting jails, meeting
the criminals, and I was surprised that they are the most innocent people. And
perhaps because they are the most innocent they have been caught. The cunning
ones are doing far greater crimes, but they are not caught. Every law has
loopholes. The cunning ones find the loopholes first; the innocent ones get
caught, because they don't have that cunningness.
It is really strange that when
America forced me into jail without any cause.... And since they had no cause,
and no reason to keep me in jail, they tried, as long as they could manage, to
keep me in jail before the trial began, because once the trial began they
didn't have any evidence for anything.
But pre-trial they kept me for
twelve days. It was a good experience to know... I had known criminals,
prisoners, but only as a visitor - and this was a totally different experience,
to be one amongst them.
And it is surprising that I was
taken to five jails just to harass me - for twelve days they went on changing
jails - but to me it was a good experience.
All the inmates of the jails
received me, welcomed me. Behind their bars they were waving their hands and
shouting, "Osho, don't be worried, truth is always victorious." And
they were showing me the sign of victory from every cell, whenever I would
enter a jail or I would get out of a jail.
They would send me small notes:
"We love you. We don't know you, but we have seen you on the television.
We have heard you and we know you are innocent." Looking into their eyes
and looking into the eyes of the law enforcement authorities, one could see the
difference... who are the real criminals? The jailers, the marshals, the
judges, they were the real criminals. You could see it in their eyes, in their
faces.
To torture me they refused to supply
vegetarian food because no vegetarian has ever been in their jails - "So
we don't have any arrangement." And when the inmates heard it, they
started bringing fruits, nuts, milk, which was given to them, and they would
say, "Osho, you take it. We can eat non-vegetarian food and it hurts us
that you are hungry, that you are starving and we cannot do anything." My
cell was full of fruits. And I used to tell them, "I cannot eat so many
fruits, I cannot drink so much milk."
But they would say, "Don't take
this opportunity from us. You are not going to be here for long.
Tomorrow they will move you
again."
And they would bring cuttings of my
photographs from newspapers to be signed in their name, because this will be
their memory - "We have lived with you, even if it was only for one day or
two days."
It is a very strange world in which
we are living. Here criminals are rulers, here criminals are politicians, here
criminals become presidents, vice presidents, prime ministers, because except
the criminal, who wants power? An authentic human being wants peace, wants
love, wants to be left alone, wants freedom to be himself. The very idea of
dominating others is criminal.
Chuang Tzu is right that if you feel
any tension, then remember, whatever you are doing is not right.
And he is the only man who has given
such a beautiful criterion, EASY IS RIGHT. BEGIN RIGHT AND YOU ARE EASY.
CONTINUE EASY AND YOU ARE RIGHT. THE RIGHT WAY TO GO EASY IS TO FORGET THE
RIGHT WAY AND FORGET THAT THE GOING IS EASY.
Relax into nobodiness.
And this is also my message to my
sannyasins: be natural. You don't have to be Christians, you don't have to be
Hindus, you don't have to be Mohammedans - these are all ways of creating
difficulties - you have to be just natural like trees and birds and animals.
Become part of this relaxed universe - so relaxed that you forget all about
easiness and you forget all about rightness. To me, this is enlightenment.
