I wrote this article in 2015. I am republishing it… because it is important to read now… given the next article I just wrote… It will make it easier to get.
Here I am this cool Saturday morning, weeping.
I observe. What is there? Pain, definitely. Sense of loss, yes. Sadness, no. Regret, no. Resentment, no.
I have had a hard life. The hardest part is the last 30 years. Maybe 33… Since I left Hungary.
In Hungary I had friends. I had people who would want me around, who would walk with me, who would vouch for me.
All that was lost when I left. I have had no real friends since then. I miss the intimacy of friendship. I don’t mean companion, I don’t mean significant other, I don’t mean students, I don’t mean teachers… I mean friendship. Chosen. Close. Naked. Intimate. Shared Vision.
On your path, if you want to grow, you need to choose friction. And miss a lot of smooth, comfortable, nice…
Being your persona, your personality is what people like… and I had to leave that all behind if I wanted to be more than what my personality allowed for.
Osho:
There is one statement of Gautam Buddha which Buddhists try to avoid because they don’t have the understanding to explain it. And it is so clear, they cannot even explain it away. The statement that Buddha makes is, “unless you hate your father, your mother, your brother, you cannot follow me.” Now, what kind of statement is this? – “Unless you hate your father, your mother, your family, you cannot follow me.”
The Buddhists don’t quote it. In no Buddhist monastery does anybody even give a sermon on it. Monks just pass it by quickly. How to explain it? A man like Buddha who teaches love, non-violence, is saying to hate your mother and father.
Then Jesus certainly seems to be far superior: “Love your enemy; not only the enemy, love your neighbor” – which is certainly far more difficult. The enemy is far away and once in a while maybe there is some trouble, but the neighbor is a twenty-four hour trouble, and just a pain in the neck continually, twenty-four hours a day. And Jesus says, “Love your neighbor just like yourself.”
Naturally if you compare these statements Jesus will look far more religious than Buddha. But before I say anything else, let me quote Bodhidharma, who defeated his own master, Buddha, in every possible way. And that is the only joy of a real master, that he should be defeated by his disciple. Of course, they were not contemporaries; there was at least eleven hundred years’ difference between Buddha and Bodhidharma.
Bodhidharma says: “First go and kill your father and mother, then come to me. First, be finished with your father and your mother and then come to me. Otherwise go somewhere else – I am not for you.” How you are going to explain it? And I say to you that what Jesus says is just hocus-pocus.
What Bodhidharma is saying is pure psychology. He is not saying that you should kill your father and mother, but in a certain way you have to kill the father that has entered you, and the mother that has entered you. That is your family inside, which is surrounding your being, which won’t allow any ray of light to reach your innermost corner. The crowd has gathered there, and because of that crowd the inner center is in darkness.
Bodhidharma brings Buddha’s statement to its logical conclusion. Why just hate? – be completely finished, because hating is again a relationship, just like love. If you love somebody, you remember him; you cannot forget him – you are not supposed to forget the person you love. Sometimes you may forget the person you love, but you cannot forget the person you hate. Although all the so-called moral teachers have been telling you to forgive and forget, you can neither forgive nor can you forget. Perhaps you can forgive, with effort, but how can you forget? Then you will remember two things: first, that you hated him and second, that you have forgiven him – now you will remember even more. So what have you done?
You cannot forget your enemy. It is a relationship, a very close, very intimate relationship. And that’s why it is very easy for lovers to become haters, friends to become enemies, enemies to become friends. It is very easy because both are relationships: just a little turn, a little change in the situation.
And I didn’t just have to leave everything that tied me to personality, I had to choose a path that is full of friction.
And friction I chose… and because I chose, I don’t complain, but from time to time I am present to the loss of ordinariness… which is comfortable like an old slipper… like your bed, like a cup of tea in cold weather.
A deep inner conflict is needed. You should not be lethargic, you should not relax unless the relaxation happens, and that is totally different. You have to fight and create conflict and friction. Friction is the right word for the inner war. Gurjieff worked through friction; he would create friction in the body. You may not be aware now but remember it: some day you will become aware that your body has many layers of energies. If you are not in friction then you use only the superficial layer. If much conflict arises, the superficial layer is finished and then the second layer starts functioning.
Try it this way: you always go to sleep at ten at night. At ten when suddenly you feel sleepiness coming over you, don’t go to sleep. Sufis have often used this method, and Jesus also used it: vigil. He would not sleep for the whole night; in the wilderness for forty days and forty nights he would not sleep. He remained in the hills alone without sleeping. What happens? If you don’t sleep at ten, for a few minutes you will feel very, very lethargic, sleepier and sleepier and sleepier. But if you resist and fight, a friction is created, you become two: the one who wants to sleep and the one who doesn’t want to sleep. Now there are two parts fighting. If you stick to it and don’t yield, suddenly you will find all sleepiness has gone and you have become as fresh as you have never been in the morning. Suddenly all sleepiness has gone, you are fresh, and even if you want to go to sleep it will be difficult now. What happened? There were only two possibilities, and through the friction between them energy was created.
Energy is always created through friction. All science depends on creating friction; then energy is created. All dynamos are just friction techniques to create a fight, a war between two things. You create a war: your body wants to go to sleep and you don’t want to go to sleep. Friction is there, and much energy is created.
If you yield it will be very bad, because if you yield, the body has won and the consciousness has lost a fight. So if you try, only try with a mind determined not to yield; otherwise it is better not to try.
Friction methods are dangerous: if you try then you have to win. If you don’t win you are lost, because then you lose your confidence. Your consciousness will become weaker and the body will become stronger. And if you lose many times, then there is less and less possibility of winning.
and another quote from Osho… It is a great thing to be able to make sense of your experience of life… Osho has been a great help to me.
Friedrich Nietzsche … says, “Before you can reach heaven, you have to reach to hell. Unless you have fathomed hell completely, there is no way to heaven.”
It looks very absurd. And he used to write in maxims; he never wrote essays explaining anything, that was not his way. Insights never come in essays, in theses; they never come for PhD, DLitt degrees. No. For a PhD degree you have to sit in a library and do a clerical job, just collecting from here and there. You can simply take a pair of scissors and if you can cut from this book and that book, this journal and that journal, and just go on collecting them in a file, sooner or later you will be a PhD. There is not much more to it.
Men like Nietzsche only write maxims. One day suddenly he will write a maxim, and then for months he will not write. This is the meaning of what he says. Now, Jesus cannot understand it. Jesus says, “If you want to avoid hell, come follow me, I will take you to heaven. That’s the only way to avoid hell.” Nietzsche is saying, “If you avoid hell, heaven is already avoided, because heaven is a second step. You have missed the first step.”
In another passage, a similar passage, Nietzsche says, “Before you can reach to the top of a tree and can understand the flowers blossoming there, you will have to go deep to the roots, because the secret lies there. And the deeper the roots go, the higher the tree goes.” So the greater your longing for understanding, for cosmic consciousness – because that is the ultimate lotus, the lotus paradise – then the further you will have to go to the deepest roots in the darkest underground; and the way is only one.
Call it meditation, call it awareness, call it watchfulness – it all comes to the same: that you become more alert, first about your conscious mind, what goes on in your conscious mind. And it is a beautiful experience. It is really hilarious, a great panorama.
So, it’s OK to weep once in a while. It is healthy. It shows awareness. It shows that I don’t live unconsciously.
