Excitement Is For Those Who Are Miserable
Beloved Osho,
I really enjoy meditation and am absolutely contented with my life.
But now it has been so long since I had any great passion or great
joy or great pain, that I am wondering if I have become dull and
stuck, or if this is the way things are supposed to be.
Deva Avesh, it is part of this great pilgrimage. The moment you
become contented, in the beginning it feels the journey is over and
you are tremendously blissful. But as time passes contentment
settles down, you are peaceful, you are happy, you are at ease.
But an old habit of millions of lives starts raising its head: there
seems to be no excitement... have you become dull? or have you died?
This is just an old habit and it has to be understood.
Excitement is for those who are miserable. Without excitement they
cannot live; their misery will be too heavy. A little excitement in
their lives, a new love affair, getting a lottery opened in their
name - these small things keep them going. These excitements
function like lubrications and they go on in their miserable lives
hoping another excitement may be coming. And what are your
excitements? Moving into a new house and you are excited...?
Purchasing a new car and you are excited...?
I have heard about a man who was tired of his beautiful house.
Finally, everything becomes tiring, boring. The house was beautiful,
and just behind the house was a beautiful lake and beyond the lake
the mountains and the forest - but the same scene every day,
morning, afternoon, evening... There was no excitement.
He called a real estate agent and told him that he wanted to sell
this boring house. The real estate man was completely puzzled. He
had never seen in his life such a beautiful house with such peaceful
surroundings. It was almost paradise.
So he said, "I will advertise it and it will be sold, there is no
problem." And he advertised it in the newspapers.
The next day the man read the advertisement and he was so excited -
a beautiful marble house surrounded by a lake and just beyond the
lake a primeval forest, thick, with trees so high as if they are
trying to touch the stars. The description was so poetic and of
course there was no mention of his name or his address, only the
phone number of the real estate man.
He immediately phoned and said, "Whatever the price, I want to
purchase this house."
The real estate man said, "This is too difficult a problem; this is
your house!"
He said, "My God, you have written such a poetic piece about it. I
had completely forgotten the lake; I had started taking it for
granted. The forest, the mountains... Yes, I remember now; when I
entered this house for the first time there was so much excitement."
But excitement is a momentary thing. You cannot remain excited
forever; otherwise your blood pressure will rise so high you will
simply pop off! Excitement always means going up to a certain point
and then going down; it is always up and down. Falling back into
misery, searching again for some excitement... this is the ordinary
run of life.
But when you attain to contentment through meditation, when you come
to a peaceful inner space where nothing moves, where time stops...
in the beginning it is a tremendous ecstasy, not only excitement.
But soon you will become accustomed to it, and that′s what is
happening to you. Neither have you become dull, nor are you stuck.
It is just natural. It is the way things are supposed to be.
You have to learn a new art of seeing your contentment, your peace,
your silence, your happiness, not as something that you had
yesterday too. You have to learn to forget completely the past. To
be more exact, you have to die to the past, so that every day your
peace and your contentment are fresh, ecstatic, as if you have
discovered them just now.
Die every moment to the past and be reborn again and again.
Each moment has to be a death and a resurrection. Unless you learn
the art of dying and resurrecting, you will feel a little bored,
because it is the same, always the same, nothing changes.
Your millions of lives in the past you have lived only through
changes, hoping for some excitement. Arriving you have to learn some
new art; some new dimension has to open into your being - how to
live with the eternal.
You have known only living with the changing, with the impermanent,
with the ephemeral. Now learn the new art of living with the
eternal, the unchanging, the absolutely still, unmoving - something
beyond time and space.
Once you have learned this new art, you will find every day new
flowers in your contentment, new stars in your silence, new showers
of blissfulness and ecstasy. But you have to forget your yesterdays,
otherwise it will look like the same repetition.
I am not bored... and I have lived in utter contentment, in absolute
peace. Nothing moves within my being. All is totally silent and
still. But because I never think of yesterdays - what is past is
past, I have never looked back - I am immensely ecstatic every
moment. It is the same contentment, the same peace, the same
silence, but because I go on dropping the past it is always new for
me.
Learn the art of keeping the eternal always fresh. Don′t allow any
dust to gather on the mirror of the eternal.
A Zen Story...
In the world of Zen it is a beautiful tradition that masters send their disciples to other masters just to see the reality from some other angle. Even masters who have been contradicting each other their whole lives exchange disciples, so the disciple can see the truth from a totally different standpoint.It happened, one disciple was getting into the same space as Deva Avesh. He was utterly content, there was no complaint, nothing was missing. But this eternal silence without any change was against the old, very deep rooted habit of the search for excitement. Now there was no excitement possible.
The master called him - he had not been calling him for many days - and then slapped him. The disciple could not believe it. He had not said anything, he had not done anything. He asked, "Why have you hit me?"
The master said, "You needed a little change. And moreover you have to go to the monastery of my eternal enemy, opposite. Now you have to live with that master."
The disciple said, "But you have always been contradicting him. You have never agreed on any point with that man, neither has he ever agreed with you. Why are you sending me to him?"
The master said, "Never ask the master why. He knows, and there is no need for you to know it. You simply go and ask the other master to accept you as a disciple."
His whole contentment, meditation, silence, everything was disturbed. Tidal waves of thought... he had forgotten completely. This was too much: for what was he being punished? He forgot all about boredom and that life has no more any excitement. Now there was great excitement. But if the master says, "You have to go..."
He went to the other master very reluctantly, very unwillingly, almost in a state of split. He knew that that man is wrong; he had been listening to his master and he was so logical in his refutation of the other man....
But finally he knocked on the doors of the monastery. The master himself came out and he said, "What is the matter? What do you want? You belong to my enemy."
The disciple said, "I know it. I never wanted to come here but your enemy, my master, has sent me to request of you that I should be accepted as your disciple."
The master said, "This is very strange. And you followed whatever he said?"
The disciple said, "I had to. He hit me very hard also, and he is a dangerous fellow. If I don′t follow he will beat me every day, morning, afternoon, evening, in the middle of the night. He is not reliable. I thought it prudent to come to you."
The master closed his doors in his face saying, "Your master is very compassionate. Go back to him."
This was even more puzzling. He said, "You have been contradicting my master, writing books against him, teaching your disciples not to listen to him, not even to talk to his disciples - and today suddenly you have changed your mind?, you say, ′Your master is very compassionate′?"
The old man laughed and he said, "Yes, he is very compassionate. Out of compassion he disturbed you to give you a sense that ′don′t be stupid. You are settling... all the waves in your mind are disappearing, all the thoughts becoming silent.′ It is out of his compassion that he has disturbed you and he has sent you to me so that I can disturb you more. I am against him, I am against everything that he says, but I am sorry I cannot accept you. You will have to go back. You have already arrived... just one step more!"
He went back to his master and said, "He has rejected me and the reason he gives is that ′your master is too compassionate. Go back to him.′"
The master said, "Start meditating again."
And again it was excitement and again a beginning into the unknown. But soon, because he was already a great adept, things settled... contentment, peace. But now there was no more desire for excitement, it was stupid.
But it comes to everybody out of a deep-rooted inheritance of
your past lives. It is so deep rooted that it has gone into your
blood, into your bones, into your marrow.
You are not becoming dull and you are not stuck.
You yourself are saying:
"I really enjoy meditation and am absolutely contented with my life, but now it has been so long since I had any great passion or great joy or great pain that I am wondering if I have become dull and stuck, or if this is the way things are supposed to be."
Avesh, this is the way things are supposed to be.
"Why you son-of-a-bitch!" Bernie exploded.
"Wait, darling," cried Stella. "You know that fur coat I got last winter? This man gave it to me. Remember the diamond necklace you like so much? This man gave it to me. And remember when you could not afford a second car and I got a Toyota? This man gave it to me."
"For God′s sake, it′s drafty in here!" shouted Bernie. "Cover him so he does not catch cold!"
Avesh, just be a little understanding. Everything is going
perfectly beautifully.
Just a few jokes for you - not to disturb you, but just as a little
holiday from your contentment, just for a few moments to forget your
meditation and contentment.
One man rushed out and after running a hundred yards down the street, suddenly skidded to a halt. "Wait a minute," he said to no-one in particular, "My name is not MacTavish."
"When you speak of heaven," he said, "let your face light up, let it be bright with a heavenly gleam, let your eyes shine with reflected glory. But when you speak of hell - well, your ordinary face will do."
After a while the Swiss puts his hand out of the window and says, "We are home. This is Switzerland; I touched the mountains."
Finally the Italian sticks his hand out of the window and says, "This must-a be Italy."
"How do you know?" asked the others.
The Italian pulls his hand in and says, "They stole-a my watch-a."
(Osho - Satyam, Shivam, Sundram #3)