The Mahageeta

Religion is nonaggression, nonviolence, freedom from competition. It is not struggle, it is surrender.

Nothing needs to be taken from anyone else. One declares what he has. When we have so much, what need is there to steal from others? Only those who don’t know themselves can steal. They are fighting over bits and pieces when God is enthroned inside. Dying over bits and pieces while the ultimate expanse is present within. The ocean is present, and they crave droplets!

Only those who don’t know themselves can be in politics.
And when I say politics, I don’t mean only those who are in political parties. By politics I mean all those people who are struggling in some way: struggling for money, money politics; struggling for power, power politics; struggling for renunciation, the politics of renunciates.

Among renunciates there is great rivalry that no other renunciate should get ahead. An Olympics goes on among the renunciates, that no mahatma becomes too big. One mahatma will go out to defeat another. If the Olympics are ever hosted by India, there should also be an event for the competition of mahatmas.
But wherever there is competition, there is politics. The basis sutra of politics is, ”What I don’t have, someone else has; I can seize it and make it mine.” But what you take from others, how can it become yours? How will stolen goods become yours? What has been seized will be taken away.

If not today, tomorrow someone else will take it from you. And if no one succeeds in taking it from you, death will surely take it. Only that which you don’t have to take from anyone else is yours. Then even death will not be able take it.

Yours is what you had before you were born, what you will still have after death.

Seek that one.

And to search for that one, Ashtavakra says you don’t need to practice: only be alert, only witness.
Many times you feel you are running unnecessarily, but how to stop? It is not that you haven’t felt it is a meaningless rat-race. You have, but how to stop? And the training for the rat-race is very deep.

You have forgotten how to stop – your legs are in the habit of running, the mind is in the habit of running. Your training is such that you can’t sit. Training for sitting has disappeared.
”A complaint came to my lips but who to tell it to that it won’t be meaningless. Swallowing the pain, I keep moving along, refusing to sit, refusing defeat.”

And people still think it is defeat to just sit. If they sit they think they are defeated. If they sit they think it is escapism, running away! If they just sit the passing thousands will look with condemnation... so people keep moving.

”Complaints that all is useless come often to the mind, but who to tell? Who will understand? Here everyone is like you. No one tells anyone. People go on moving, each hiding his own wound.”

”A complaint came to my lips but who to tell it to that it won’t be meaningless.” If you meet an Ashtavakra or a Buddha it is meaningful to say it. Here who can you tell?

”Swallowing the pain, I keep moving along....” People swallow the pain and move on. ”Refusing to sit, refusing defeat.”
And this becomes the idea of the ego: ”Sitting defeated means... finished, gone under, dead. Keep going, keep doing something or other. Keep trying to accomplish something or other. If not you will be lost.”

And those who just sit attain. Those who stop attain.
God is not attained by running, he is attained by stopping.

Ashtavakra says attain in ultimate ease.
Just sit sometimes. Find some time, only to sit, not doing anything. Zen monks have a meditation technique: Zazen. Zazen means just sitting not doing a thing. It is a very deep method of meditation.

To call it a method is not right, because there is no method, just sit not doing anything. Zen says the same as Ashtavakra is saying: Sit down! Sit for a while and relax. Leave this turmoil for a while.

Leave all ambition a little while. Leave the mind’s running around, leave its rat-race. Simply sit a while, and sink into yourself.

A light will gradually begin spreading inside of you. Perhaps you won’t see it at first. It is like returning home in the bright afternoon sun, at first the house seems dark inside. The eyes are used to the sun. Sit a little while, and the eyes will adjust, and the room becomes lit. Slowly, slowly light comes into the room. It is the same inside. You have been going out, going out for lives, so it seems dark inside. The first time you go in nothing will be visible... nothing but darkness. Don’t freak out. Sit...

let the eyes get adjusted to the inside. The pupils of those eyes have been used to bright sun.
Have you ever thought, in the sun the pupil of the eye becomes small. If you look in a mirror right after being in the sun the pupil will appear very small because so much sunlight cannot be taken in, it is more than enough, so the pupil contracts. Contracting is automatic. Then when you come into the dark the pupil has to expand, the pupil has to enlarge. After sitting in darkness for a while, again look in the mirror and you will find the pupil has become enlarged.

For the third eye it happens exactly the same as with the outer eyes. To look outside the pupil should be small; to look within the pupil should be large. There has been a long and ancient training. To destroy that training no new practice is needed – just go on sitting.

People ask, ”What will we do sitting? Just give us ’ram-ram,’ some mantra to chant, we will repeat it – give us something to do.” People say, ”We want crutches, we want help.” As soon as you practice, bondage starts. Just sit! By sitting I don’t mean sitting down; you can remain standing, you can lay down also. Sitting means don’t do anything, in twenty-four hours just spend some time in non-doing.

Become free of action. Remain empty. Let what is happening happen. The world is flowing by, let it flow. It is moving, let it move. Sounds come, let them come. A train starts out, a plane flies over, there is noise – let it be, you go on sitting. Don’t concentrate – you just sit. Samadhi will gradually start becoming strong inside of you. You will suddenly understand what Ashtavakra means – what it means to be free of practice and rituals.

”Know that which has form is false, and know the formless as unchangeable and everlasting.
Learning this truth it is not possible to be born in the world again.”

Then you are what the Buddha has called anagamin – a person who never returns after death. We come back because of our desires, we come because of our politics; we come back because of desires and hopes. One who dies knowing, ”I am the knower,” doesn’t enter again. He is released from this useless wheel – from coming and going.

”Know that which has form is false, and know the formless as unchangeable and everlasting.
Learning this truth it is not possible to be born in the world again.”
”Know that which has form is false....” Within us what has form is illusory, what has no form is the truth. Look at a whirlpool sometime. What is a whirlpool but waves arising in water? When it becomes calm, where has it gone? There was no whirlpool, it was just a wave in the water, it was just a shape that arose in the water. Likewise, we are just waves of the divine. When the wave is gone, nothing is left behind. Not even ash is left, not a trace remains. It is like writing on water, it disappears as you write – in the same way all that happens in our life are only waves.

”Just as a mirror is the same inside and outside the image reflected in it, God is the same inside and outside this body.” You have seen that when you stand in front of a mirror it makes a reflection.

Does something happen in the mirror? A reflection made means that nothing happens. Move aside and the reflection is gone – the mirror remains just as it was. Your reflection is made by your coming before it; step aside and it is gone. But in the mirror nothing is made and nothing moves aside. The mirror remains in its own nature.

This sutra of Ashtavakra says: stand before a mirror, a reflection is made in the mirror, but is a reflection really made? It seems to be. But don’t be fooled by the reflection. Many are fooled by reflections.

And this sutra says that reflective mirrors are surrounding you; outside, inside, mirrors are reflecting in mirrors, and there is nothing at all. In just the same way God exists inside and outside of this body.

God is within, God is without, God is above, God is below, God is in the west, God is in the east, God is in the south, God is in the north – in every direction that same one. We are small whirlpools, small waves rising in that vast ocean.

Don’t get confused by thinking of yourself as a wave – think of yourself as the ocean. Just this much difference in belie: it is the difference between slavery and freedom. See yourself as a wave and you are bound, see yourself as the ocean and you are liberated.

”Just as the one all-pervading sky is the same inside and outside a pot, the eternal everlasting Brahma is the same in all things.”

”Just as the one all-pervading sky is the same inside and outside a pot....” Consider a pot: it is the same sky inside the pot, the same sky outside. You may smash the pot but the sky is not smashed.

You can make a pot but it doesn’t distort the sky. No matter how the pot is shaped – crooked or round – the sky takes no form. We are all vessels of clay, earthen pots. It is the same outside, the same inside: don’t place too much value on the thin wall of clay. This wall of clay makes you into a vessel – don’t be too tightly identified with it. If you believe you are this wall of clay, you will go on being made into pots of clay, your belief will pull you back here again and again.

No one else brings you into the world. Your fixation that you are a pot brings you back. Once you know that you are the emptiness inside the pot.... Lao Tzu’s statement is meaningful. Lao Tzu says, ”What is the meaning of the sides of the pot? The real meaning is in the emptiness inside the pot.

If you fill it with water, the water fills the space, not the sides. When you make a house, do you call the walls the house? That is not right. The empty space left inside is the house. You live in this, you don’t live in the walls. The walls are only a boundary. In reality we live in the sky. We all exist as digambaras, sky-clad. What difference do the walls make? We remain in the sky, inner or outer.

Today the wall exists, tomorrow it will fall – the sky always exists.
If you mistakenly take the house as the walls, take the pot as layers of clay and take yourself as a body, it will be the same bondage. Just a small mistake in reading the sutra of life and everything goes wrong; a very small mistake....

Once Mulla Nasruddin boarded a bus. Absorbed in thought he took a seat and lit a cigarette.
”It is clearly written that smoking is forbidden on the bus,” the conductor angrily said. ”Didn’t you read it? Don’t you know how to read?”
”I read it but there is so much written in the bus. Which of them should I do?” Nasruddin said. ”Look at this: it says here, ’Always wear Handloom Saris!’”

One need only be a little careful to avoid such mistakes. The body is very close – to read the language of the body is very easy. And the body is so close that its shadow falls on the inner mirror and is reflected. You are in the body, but you are not the body. The body is yours, you are not the body’s. The body is your means, you are the end. Use the body, don’t lose your mastership. Though living in the body, remain beyond the body – like a lotus in the water.

Hari Om Tat Sat.

Osho
The Mahageeta, Vol 1, Ch#5
15 September 1976 am in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium