... use of the masculine-mind and seen the results. Our history of the last 2,000 years, is the history of the experiment of the masculine mind. In 2,500 years, we have made use of logic, struggle, violence, aggression and conquering ambitions. Man became more and more miserable day by day. Whatever we desired to attain, we did not attain. Whatever we had, we lost. This was the result of this experiment...

... of peace." Do you know the meaning of the word Islam? It means peace. If Mohammed had to raise the sword, it was not because of himself but because of the conditions around him. Even when his sword is lifted against someone, it is not out of wrath or aggression or violence but out of sheer compassion. Mohammed has been understood very little. He is one of those few men who have been badly...

...! But it happened so for they found a shield in him. Life is very strange. Mahavira talked of non-violence and he also said that non-violence can result only in a mind that is freed from fear. But the fearful man thought this religion of non-violence was suitable for him. In this religion there were no fights - We shall kill no one and no one will kill us. To this fearful man, non-violence seemed the...

... supreme religion. This was not because he believed non-violence to be the highest of religions but because he thought if all the world accepted non-violence, he would be able to live without fear. So all the weak and cowardly people collected behind Mahavira. So it is not accidental that those who followed Mahavira were a class of impotent people, who have constricted themselves from all sides in life...

... religion that was started in the name of peace became a religion of non-peace and violence. But Mohammed cannot be held responsible for this. What could Mohammed do? What could Mahavira do? Mahavira could never have thought that a line of cowards will form behind him! The logic of life is very strange. You can never say anything about it. There is one more rule of logic, which will help you to understand...

... all. I have seen Jaina monks who have followed all kinds of rules prescribed in the scriptures, and their most important value is non-violence. But they are not non-violent people; they are aggressive. Of course, their aggression takes a different form - it has to - it cannot be expressed in an ordinary way because they have prevented the ordinary way. They are very argumentative; their whole...

... aggression becomes argumentation. Now argumentation is a way of fighting - not-with the body but with the mind. A really non-violent person will not be so much interested in argumentation. And Jaina scriptures are full of arguments, hair-splitting. In fact, nobody else has done so much hair-splitting as Jainas have. It was bound to happen because their whore violence turned into a mental phenomenon, it was...

... a perversion. They cannot even kill an ant, but they can kill a great argument - and they enjoy killing. In India, Jainas, all the Jainas, have become business people. Why did it happen! It happened through the idea of non-violence. One cannot conceive the relationship, but if you look deep into it . . . the Jaina rules say you should not cut a tree, you should not uproot a tree, because trees...

... businessman. So all the Jainas became business people, and their whole violence became concentrated on exploitation. Hence they are the richest people in India. Their violence turned into a subtle channel, it took a very subtle form: Suck the blood of the people, exploit, oppress. Money became their goal; through money they became powerful. They cannot be powerful directly because they cannot fight for...

... power, but in a vicarious way, by having more money, they can purchase a,L They can purchase brahmins, they can purchase sudras, they can purchase the warriors - they can purchase everybody! Their consciousness is not changed: they are as , violent as anybody else. Of course, their violence has taken a very strange turn. Have you observed the fact that hunters, who are violent people, are very good...

... people, very friendly people? - for the simple reason that their violence is thrown out in hunting. Psychologists have observed that woodcutters are very non-violent people, very peaceful, because their whole violence is thrown out of their systems by cutting wood. Their profession is such - chopping wood, cutting wood - that their whole desire to cut and chop disappears. They have done enough chopping...

... from their hurt and discomfort. Similarly doctrines and principles work as buffers and shock absorbers in our life. I am a thief and I hold to the ideal of non-stealing. I am violent and I have non violence as my motto; I say non-violence is the highest of religion. This ideal is my buffer, it helps me to remain violent. Because whenever I will be confronted with the fact of my violence, I will say...

... to myself, "What violence? I am a believer in nonviolence; non violence is the highest religion for me. If I deviate from it sometimes, it is because I am weak; but I am going to attain to my ideal tomorrow or the day after. And even if I fail in this life, I am going to make it in the next. But non violence remains my guiding star." Maybe, I carry the flag of non violence all over the...

... world, and continue to be violent within. The flag is an aid to my violence. Wherever you come across a sticker saying non violence is of the highest, know it for sure that a violent person is around. There can be no other reason for a sign or a flag of non violence; it always comes with violent people. Non violence is a shield to hide violence and perpetuate it. Man has all sorts of devices, and only...

... think you can kill someone. No one ever dies. And you are mistaken to think you can save those standing before you. Who has ever saved anyone? And you cannot escape war, nor can you be non violent, because as long as the I exists - and it is this I that is anxious to save itself and its family and relatives - non violence is next to impossible. No, be rid of this nonsense and face reality. Set aside...

... course for Gandhi but to say that the war of Mahabharat was a parable, a myth, that it did not happen in reality. He cannot acknowledge the reality of the Mahabharat, because war is violence, war is evil to him. So he calls it an allegorical war between good and evil. Here Gandhi takes shelter behind the same dialectics Krishna emphatically rejects. Krishna says a dialectical division of life is...

... - that the war did not really take place or that Krishna did not lead it. They were contemporaries of Krishna, so they could not find any excuse. They sent Krishna straight to hell; they could not do otherwise. They wrote in their scriptures that Krishna has been put in hell for his responsibility for the terrible violence of the Mahabharat. If one responsible for such large scale killing is not...

... war between good and evil. Gandhi's problem is the same one that faced the Jainas of his time. Non-violence is the problem. He cannot accept that violence can have a place in life. It is the same with good. Good cannot admit that bad has a place in life. But Krishna says that the world is a unity of opposites. Violence and non-violence always go together, hand-in-hand. There was never a time when...

... violence did not happen, nor was there a time when non-violence did not exist. So those who choose only one of the opposites choose a fragment, and they can never be fulfilled. There was never a time when there was only light or when there was only darkness, nor will it ever be so. Those who choose a part and deny another are bound to be in tension, because in spite of denying it, the other part will...

... always continue to be. And the irony is, the part we choose is dependent for its existence on the part we deny. Non-violence is dependent on violence; they are really dependent on each other. Light owes its existence to darkness. Good grows in the soil of what we call bad, and draws its sustenance from it. At the other pole of his existence the saint is ultimately connected with the sinner. All...

... shed his violence and give up everything and stand naked like Mahavira, pure and peaceful like Mahavira - which is not possible - then he too will resemble Krishna. It is next to impossible to judge and evaluate Krishna; he defeats all evaluation, all judgment. With respect to Krishna we have to be non-judgmental. Only those who don't judge can go with him. A judging mind will soon be in difficulty...

... together in him. He sees both the creation and destruction of worlds taking place simultaneously. He sees the sprouting seed and the dying tree together. And he panics, seeing the immensity and paradox of Krishna's totality. In the midst of it he entreats Krishna to stop; he cannot bear it any longer. But after seeing this he stops raising questions, because now he knows that what we see as...

... will vehemently contest this claim. For them Krishna is worse than a devil. He is the person who is responsible for their defeat and destruction. There can be a thousand statements about who Krishna is. But there cannot be a thousand statements about who Buddha is. Buddha has extricated himself from all relative relationships, from all involvements, and so he is unchanging, a monotone. Taste him from...

... that devotion is the path to God. Tilak finds something else: for him the GEETA stands for the discipline of action. And curiously enough, from this sermon on the battlefield, Gandhi unearths that non violence is the way. No body has any difficulty finding in the GEETA what he wants to find. Krishna does not come in their way; everyone is welcome there. He is an empty mirror. You see your image, move...

... in a while he would manage to say some sentences, and they were written down. And those sentences are simple: "God created everything for man." So there is no violence - in fact this is the whole purpose of all the animals, birds, trees. And if you don't kill them you are going against God; you have to eat them. Now how are you going to reconcile these two religions? And there are three...

... giving the same message to the world. It is so easy because Krishna has spoken so much. You can find one sentence in which he says, ahimsa paramo dharma non-violence is the greatest religion.' You pick it out, that's enough. Mahavira's whole message is: Non-violence is the greatest religion. Synthesis is accomplished." I asked him, "And what happened about the mahabharat war in which millions...

... be sitting on the golden throne on top of millions of corpses - for whom? There will be nobody to rejoice, to celebrate even. It is better that I become a sannyasin and let my brothers rule the kingdom." If Arjuna had been listened to by Krishna there would have been no war. And Krishna says, "Non- violence is the greatest religion." He is a politician. In some other reference, maybe...

... never even bothered what war means. And he had fought many other small wars and battles, and killed many people, without ever thinking of non-violence and other things, so unconsciously he was ready. Only consciously he became a little troubled, and that trouble was also not about violence. "That trouble was about his master, his grandfather, his brothers, his blind uncle, all his friends. It was...

... really attachment, not the question of violence or non-violence. Deep down it was an attachment to all these people. Relationships, that was troubling him: How to kill our own people? "If they had been somebody else he would have killed them without thinking even a single moment. So unconsciously he must have been ready. But for convincing him, for bringing his unconscious over his conscious, the...

... are in the present, you are not part of the mind. Then each act has tremendous clarity, because you are a mirror. And there is no dust on the mirror because there is no thinking going on. That's all I teach here: how to be aware, how to be conscious - how to be, and without thoughts. And then life starts changing of its own accord. I don't teach you non-violence. Non-violence has been taught down...

... the ages in this country and people are not non-violent at all. In fact, it is difficult to find more violent people anywhere else than in this country. Every day, in every possible way, violence erupts - any excuse is enough. And buses will be burnt and people will be murdered, and the police will have to fire. Every day! It is not news at all - it is not new, how can it be news? You can be certain...

... it will be happening somewhere or other in this country. Madhura has asked a question: Why in India is there so much public violence? It is because of the teachings of non-violence. For five thousand years people have been taught to be non-violent; they have learnt the trick of pretending. And all that has happened is that they have repressed their violence. They are sitting on volcanoes - any...

... excuse, any small excuse, and the violence is triggered. And then it goes on spreading like a wild fire. Whenever there is a Hindu-Mohammedan riot, you can see the real faces of the people of this country - murderous. And just a day before, the Hindu was praying in the temple and the Mohammedan was praying in the mosque, and one was reading the Vedas and the other was reading the Koran, and they looked...

... so pious. Let there be a riot, and all that piousness simply evaporates as if it had never been there, and they are ready to kill, rape.... They are ready to do anything! This violence erupts again and again in this country because of the teaching, a wrong teaching, which is based on repression. Whenever you repress something, it will come up again and again. I teach you awareness, not repression...

.... That's why I don't talk about non-violence. I don't say, "Don't be violent." I only say, "Be alert, be aware!" Whatsoever you are doing, do it with such care, with such meditativeness, that you are absolutely there, in it, involved; that you are not just making some empty gestures. Your presence is there - and that very presence brings an alchemical change. You will never repress...

... violent - you can cultivate non-violence. What will be the result? On the surface there will be a thin layer of non-violence, only on the surface; it will not even be skin-deep. Scratch any non- violent man just a little bit and you will find violence arising. Beware of non-violent people; they are the most dangerous people if you scratch them. If you scratch a violent person he may not be so violent...

..., because he does not carry a long long repressed violence in him; he does not accumulate. He explodes once in a while so there is no accumulation. But the non-violent person, the Gandhian, the so-called religious person, beware of him; he is a dangerous person. He is carrying great explosive forces in himself. Just a little scratch will prove to be a spark and he will explode; he can prove murderous, he...

... can be very dangerous. And when you create non-violence around yourself and inside you are boiling with violence, you live in a prison. A newspaper was running a competition to discover the most high-principled, sober, well-behaved local inhabitant. Among the entries came one which read: "I don't smoke, touch intoxicants, or gamble. I am faithful to my wife and never look at other women. I am...

... not yet man - barbarous. The desire to dominate others is ugly; it is violence, pure violence and nothing else. To reduce people to slaves is the greatest violence possible. And that is the desire of every politician: to dominate, to dominate absolutely. Once a politician is in power, he becomes a totalitarian, he becomes dictatorial. He talks about democracy, but behind the democracy is...

.... "How to change everyone else?" is political. But the politician thinks he is okay; really, he is the model of how the whole world should be. He is the model, he is the ideal, and it is up to him to change the whole. Whatsoever the religious man sees in everyone else he sees in himself also. If there is violence, he immediately wonders whether the violence exists in him or not. If there is...

... violence to yourself. You cannot change one into another, you can simply be aware and accepting. Accept greed as it is. By acceptance is not meant that there is no need to transform it. By acceptance is meant only that you accept the fact, the natural fact, as it is. Then move in life knowing well that greed is there. Do whatsoever you are doing, remembering well that greed is there. This awareness will...

... transform you. It transforms because knowingly you cannot be greedy, knowingly you cannot be angry. For anger, for greed, for violence, unawareness is a basic requirement, just as you cannot knowingly take poison, just as knowingly you cannot put your hand into a flame. Unknowingly you can put it. If you don't know what a flame is, what fire is, you can put your hand in it. But if you know that fire burns...

..., you cannot put your hand in it. The more your "knowingness" grows, the more greed becomes a fire and anger becomes poison. They simply become impossible. Without any suppression, they disappear. And when greed disappears without any ideal of non-greed, it has a beauty of its own. When violence disappears without making you non-violent, it has a beauty of its own. Otherwise a non-violent...

... man is deeply violent. That violence is there hidden, and you can have a glimpse of it from his non-violence also. He will force his non-violence upon himself and upon others in a very violent way. That violence has become subtle. This sutra says that acceptance is transformation, because through acceptance awareness becomes possible. Generated by PreciseInfo ™ ...

... save this earth from destruction. The old man has created only destructive methods, war and violence. The new man will be a buddha, a man of compassion, love and peace. Before you come back, gather all the experiences that are happening there at the center of your being, and persuade the buddha, the flame of life, to come following you and be part of your daily life. Ordinary and mundane existence...

...Inscape - the ultimate annihilation...

... Osho The Zen Manifesto Freedom From Oneself: Inscape - the ultimate annihilation Main Books Headers Help Your browser does not support iframes. < Prev  Osho The Zen Manifesto Freedom From Oneself   Next > Inscape - the ultimate annihilation From: Osho Date: Fri, 7 April 1989 00:00:00 GMT Book Title: The Language of Existence Chapter #: 8 Location: pm in Gautam the Buddha...

... anything unless something renounces you. Many things will renounce you. By and by, you will start seeing - "Why go on playing these games...?" Sooner or later you will be sitting silently, doing nothing, rejoicing in the ultimate annihilation, disappearing into the ocean, losing all your boundaries. Question 2: The second question: LAST NIGHT YOU SAID THAT THE ABSOLUTE CANNOT BE DEFINED BY ANY...

... car." He became silent, and he said, "Perhaps. Deep down it must have been." "And because you were prevented from throwing the car into the valley, in your anger you forgot completely that you were naked, and you jumped on the tree. And out of anger you started shaking the whole tree. All this violence you must have carried inside you. With this much violence inside, how can you...

.... He has to describe the person so they can find out who the person is whom he has hit. Then he has to go to that person with fruits, sweets, to be forgiven - although it happened in the dream. But it must have been in the mind, otherwise it cannot happen even in the dream. In that small tribe, no violence, no war, no battle... they don't have any arms. If it is possible in a small tribe, it is...

... supported - you will be surprised, and this is the holy book - the Vedas supported all kinds of violence. In the Vedic ritual animals have to be sacrificed. You will be surprised that today the Hindus are continuously asking the government - creating trouble, movements, riots - that cow slaughter should be stopped. But the Vedas, their holy book, are full of instances that in their particular rituals...

... narmedh yajnas, man slaughtering rituals. And certainly they must have eaten the flesh of man too, because the brahmin will not slaughter something unnecessarily. Now, no Hindu talks about the fact that their Vedas are full of cannibalism, violence, nonvegetarianism. And these books were written by God! Buddha and Mahavira both hammered on the Vedas. Of course there was no way to answer Buddha and...

... violence, not meat-eating. If the animal dies naturally and you eat the meat, you are not doing any violence. But he had never thought that this argument with Mahavira.... And these arguments were because of the fight for the tirthankarahood - who is the tirthankara, Mahavira or Buddha? And there were six others... and all eight were continuously arguing against each other about small details...

..., unnecessary details. Now, this is a very small, a minute detail, but Buddha proved better as far as argument was concerned, because violence is bad. The reason is not meat-eating, the reason is that you destroy life. But if without destroying life... life has left the body by itself, then why not eat it? What is the problem? Where is the violence? His argumentation was good, but he was not aware that this...

... does not happen in any other country, it only happens in a Buddhist country. They are being killed, they are being butchered. But that notice is enough for the monk and the layman to be satisfied. It is written in the holy book that to eat the meat from an animal which died naturally is not violence. Buddha tried his whole life to insist that there is no holy book. Now his book is holy, Mahavira's...