I don’t know who I am sharing this with. I know that no one thinks like me. Everyone is busy in life. But at midnight, engulfed in endless thoughts, I started reading. And the more I read, the more I realized something. Understanding is deeper than knowledge. There are many people who know you, but very few who understand you.
I came across Osho. And I could not stop.
People don’t want to listen to your sad story. They want to hear how you became clear-minded, loved, how you faced alone the doubts they are still struggling with. So I am not here to tell you my sad story. I am here to share what I found. Because what we read is what we become. And if we can all grow in life with each other’s knowledge, then let us grow together.
This is what Osho taught me.
Let us do a mental experiment. It is a little intense.
Imagine your son dies. You come back from his funeral. Completely shattered. So much grief there are no words for it. And right at that moment you find out a strange truth. Biologically, he was not your son. He was your wife’s child with someone else.
Just one sentence and your emotions completely change.
You will still feel grief of course. Because if you spend even a little time with an animal you love it so much. So of course you will feel grief. But your emotions will change on some level. You will feel a lot of anger. It will feel very strange that you were living with a lie all this time.
But if you notice carefully, nothing actually changed. The child is the same. The memories are the same. All his memories, all his habits, none of that changed. So why did your grief reduce even a little?
This is where Osho says something very uncomfortable. He says you never actually loved that child. You loved the label that said he is mine. This is actually the design of our entire life. We do not love people. We love the label of ownership. Everything is mine. My son, my husband, my friend. Everything mine mine mine. The person is secondary. But that mine mine mine, that is primary.
Today we are talking about Osho, also known as Bhagwan Rajneesh. The man America itself expelled from the country. Countries around the world banned him from setting foot on their land. The man who had 93 Rolls Royces. And he said that is not enough. There should have been 365. One new car for every single day of the year. The man Netflix made an entire series about. The man Tom Robbins called the most dangerous man after Jesus Christ.
But think about this. How can one person be this dangerous? Without any weapon. Without any army. Without any country. Because he had one thing. Words. The man people called a sex guru.
The story of Osho, the original rebel. Was he a true rebel or just a sex guru? People who do not commit crimes do not escape like this.
Today I will tell you five teachings of Osho that will first break your way of thinking a little. Maybe on the third point you will smile a little. On the fourth point you might feel a lot of anger. And after the fifth point you might pause this and just sit quietly for a little while.
Teaching One. The right way to live.
Osho wrote an entire book on this. I will explain it to you in short. This is a 3000 year old story from China.
One morning a man is crossing a river in his boat. There was a lot of fog so he could not see anything. Suddenly he feels a very hard hit. Another boat comes and crashes into his boat. The man feels intense anger. He turns around and says can you not see where you are going? He was about to start cursing and completely lose it. But then he noticed one thing. That boat was empty. And that intense anger just disappeared. All that irritation just vanished. It became calm the moment he saw that the boat was empty.
Now stop and think. The collision was the same in both cases. The boat was the same in both cases. The hit happened in both cases. The damage was the same in both cases. What changed? Only this. In the first scenario he thought someone was sitting in the boat. In the second scenario he realized no one was there.
Osho says bring this concept into your life. Whenever someone gives you a rude reply, someone shouts at you, imagine someone bumps into your car. You feel such intense anger. Why did this person do this to me? And right there you gave that empty boat a face. You assumed what this person did was personal. You assumed this person is against you. This person is bad. This person wants to harm me. You assumed all of this. But you know what, in 99% of cases that person is not even thinking about you. They are fighting their own battle. Maybe there was a fight at home. Maybe their boss scolded them. Maybe they did not sleep properly. Maybe their stomach is upset. Maybe their girlfriend left them. So their pain is just flowing out. Whoever came in front of them, today it was you, tomorrow it will be someone else.
When we get irritated with someone it is somewhere our own shortcoming. We do not get irritated with someone randomly. If a friend of yours became a content creator and you feel annoyed about it, that he has become such a good content creator or has so many followers, it is not because you are annoyed at him. It is because you wanted to do that same thing. Your battle is with yourself. You have nothing against him. In the same way in this whole world nobody actually has anything against you. In 99% of cases everyone is fighting their own inner battle.
So the next time someone triggers you, Osho says just take one moment and think. Is this person truly against me? Or is some pain of their own eating them? Is some jealousy of their own eating them? This one second gap you take stands between you and your reaction. And all the power is in that gap. We call this gap awareness. Because what is a reaction? He made me angry. But what is awareness? I chose to be angry.
Imagine I put a spoonful of salt in this cup of water. It will become very bitter. But that same spoonful of salt if I put it in a lake, maybe the lake will not be affected at all. The salt is the same in both cases but the capacity of the lake is too much. So do not be like a cup where any small thing affects you. Be like a lake where nothing affects you. Your capacity should be so strong that nothing anyone says bothers you. In life never ask for fewer problems. Ask that your capacity to deal with everything keeps growing.
Teaching Two. Your future is just a shadow of your past.
Let us do one thing. Close your eyes for one minute. Pause and think about your dream life. What do you truly want in life. Just imagine once. What do you want? What kind of life do you want for yourself?
What did you see? Maybe a nice big house. A very famous car. A specific number in your bank account. Foreign trips. A big business. And respect from people.
Now if I ask you one question. How did your mind think of all these things that you want? I will tell you. That house you maybe saw somewhere. In some reel, some film, or at some relative’s place. That car you saw passing on some road. That bank account number you heard from someone else. Maybe in some podcast or some reel. Meaning your entire future is made of things you already know.
And this is where Osho says something very deep if you can understand it. He says a human being never truly thinks about a new future. They just think of a bigger version of their past. You often hear people say think out of the box. But actually people can never think out of the box.
Now you will wonder, what is the problem with that? I will explain with a business example. They say if Henry Ford had asked people what they wanted, do you know what people would have said? A faster horse. Think about it. Cars were not even in people’s minds. So they just think of a better version of whatever was already in their head. They wanted a faster horse. A slightly better horse. Nobody asked for a car because a car was not part of the box at all. The person who invented the car actually thought so far outside the box that they could not even see the box. For them the box did not exist. This is actually a very bad habit of our minds. The mind thinks only what it already knows. Familiar things feel very easy to it.
And this truly does not only happen in business. It happens everywhere in life. A child who wants a government job when they grow up wants it because they saw that government job with their cousin. So the biggest dream of their life became only that government job. So their dream was set not by their possibilities but by their past.
Like if someone in my family became a doctor then my parents and I always wanted me to become a doctor too. Just because someone else became one. But when I quit that path it was very hard for everyone around me to imagine what I would become instead. Because they could not see outside that box. But I knew I had to find my own path.
So know this. Your future that you are imagining right now is built from your past. And that means the real you, the possibilities that are actually yours, are much bigger than what your mind is currently showing you.
Read After this post: Beyond Life and Death Experiencing the Infinite Peace Beyond Life Exploring the Essence of Death Meditation
Teaching Three. Osho and money.
A journalist sits in front of Osho and says you have a lot of Rolls Royces. Osho says how many? The journalist says 60. Osho says no. The journalist says 80. Osho says no. Then says 93 Rolls Royces. And they are not too many. He says I wanted 365. One new car for every day of the year. The journalist is shocked and thinks what kind of spiritual guru is this.
And then Osho says something that takes real courage to say. He says all the gurus of the world are gurus of the poor. Just let me be the guru of the rich. He says I am not a worshipper of poverty. I have a lot of respect for money.
Now this sounds very shocking but there is a very deep truth hidden in it. Have you noticed that the person who says money does not matter has spent the maximum part of their life earning money. And they have earned so much that they can say money does not matter. A poor person can never say this because they have never gotten to that point where they can say this thing does not matter.
A poor person has one thing that a rich person does not have at all. Hope. I am struggling right now but the day money comes everything will be fine. Even in that hope there is a light. But the person who has achieved everything, who has everything, still asks themselves from the inside why am I not happy. That is where the real suffering begins. Because now there is no next excuse left.
And then Osho says right from here the real search begins.
Osho has a famous concept. Zorba the Buddha. A person who lives life fully like Zorba. Dances, sings, enjoys everything. And at the same time is awake inside like Buddha. A king on the outside and an emperor on the inside.
Now this does not mean you should stop earning money. It means the exact opposite. See clearly how much comfort you need, how much convenience you need, where your survival is set, work according to that and make good money. But in the process of making money always remember one thing. Ultimately these things will not satisfy you completely. So along with the outer journey start the inner journey from today itself.
There is a very famous example of Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma. They have legitimately everything in this world. They have achieved every single thing. And now their inclination is toward meditation. They have gone into that inner search after achieving everything on the outside. So achieve all the outer things quickly. Set a timeline for yourself. Think about what you need, what will give you comfort, this is your complete list of things to achieve. But alongside also look for the path inward. Be both Zorba and Buddha.
Teaching Four. The best way to handle your emotions.
If you feel anger or you are a little irritable or you get triggered by small things, this is a very important point. Osho says do not amplify your emotions and do not suppress them either. Just observe them.
Every kind of emotion comes inside us. Anger, greed, fear. And some emotions come that we think, this emotion is wrong. This should not be coming to me. Because our minds already have ideas about what is right and wrong. So what do we do? We suppress that wrong emotion. We think no no I am not that kind of person. I cannot think like this.
Always remember one thing. What you resist persists. Whatever you fight, whatever you try to stop, that thing only grows stronger. The person who suppresses their anger all day in the office in front of the boss and colleagues goes home and takes it out on their family. This is what suppression does. A suppressed thing does not disappear. It just changes its target.
So what should you do? Osho says do not amplify your emotions and do not suppress them. Just observe them without any judgment. And you know something very deep, often we do not even know the source of our own emotions. Imagine a friend of yours got promoted and you felt some jealousy inside. Your first instinct will be I am a good person. I should not be jealous of my friend. Shame on me. And you suppress that emotion.
But if you stop for one second and just observe, you will realize that this jealousy is not about your friend at all. It is about a fear inside you. A fear that I might be left behind. As long as you do not observe, the true face of the emotion never shows itself.
So a very powerful practice is that whenever an emotion comes, do not suppress it. Just give it a name. This is jealousy. This is anger. This is fear. Just that much. Real freedom is not in suppressing the emotion. Real freedom is in witnessing the emotion.
Teaching Five.
Once a man was crossing a field. Suddenly a lion appears. He runs for his life. The lion chases him. While running he reaches the edge of a cliff. There is a deep abyss ahead. To survive he grabs a vine hanging on the edge and hangs from it. He looks up and the lion is roaring. He looks down and there is another lion. That lion too has its mouth open waiting for him. He is hanging by just one thin vine.
And then from somewhere two mice appear. One white and one black. And slowly they start gnawing at the very vine he is hanging from. Death above, death below, and the very thing his entire life depends on is also being gnawed away. Think about how things could possibly be worse.
And then his eyes fall on something. Right nearby, on a small branch, a small red juicy strawberry is hanging. He had both hands gripping the vine. He let go with one hand and with that hand he plucked that juicy strawberry. And then he ate that strawberry and said, wow, how sweet it is.
Read Also: The Quest for Reality: A Journey into Self-Discovery and Nothingness
That was the whole story.
Now do you know what those two lions are? The one behind is the past. Your yesterday. The one ahead is death. Your certain ending. And those two mice, the white one and the black one, that is time. Day and night, slowly slowly slowly going by with every moment. And you are hanging between those two lions on one thin vine. And that is life.
So now the question is, was that man crazy for eating a strawberry? Osho says he is the only wise man. Because death will come anyway. Time will pass anyway. Who has control over any of that? But this moment, this strawberry, that is in his hands.
The person who can taste sweetness even in the shadow of death, that is the only person who is truly alive.
Osho says people are so busy trying to escape death that they escape life itself. We do not take risks because what if we fail. We do not love fully because what if our heart breaks. We do not dream because what if they stay incomplete. We live in such a deep shadow of fear that living itself gets left behind.
A flower is beautiful because it is going to wither. If it were plastic and stayed forever it would have no value at all. Your life is precious precisely because it is limited.
So wherever you are in life right now, make sure you pluck your strawberry and eat it.
Earn money as if you will live forever. And live as if nothing goes with you tomorrow.
We spend our whole lives trying to make everything mine mine mine until we forget that we ourselves are not permanent here. So earn money, build a name, conquer the world. But remember one thing. Between two lions we are all hanging from one thin vine.
And this is my last question for you. While that vine is still there, will you just keep counting the lions? Or will you also taste your strawberry?
CONCLUSION:
You came naked. You will leave naked. You came without anything. You will leave without anything. So why so much hatred, resentment, envy, selfishness and pride? We will all go empty handed. Everything we have earned, we earned here, and we will leave it here only.
I always believed this. My main goal in life is simple. To help others. I didn’t bring anything into this world and I won’t take anything when I leave. So why not use whatever I have. Whether it is my knowledge or something else that everyone needs.
Osho said the same thing in a different way. Earn money as if you will live forever. And live as if nothing goes with you tomorrow.
Remember, we are just jokes. We are all going to go one day and there is no sequel. So the only question that matters is this.
While that vine is still there, will you just keep counting the lions? Or will you also taste your strawberry?
Life will get a whole lot better when you figure out who deserves an explanation, who deserves one answer, and who deserves absolutely nothing. Including your own fears.
Just look at the stars. How beautiful and perfect is everything. Your sadness, your overthinking, your happiness. Nothing matters in this infinity. Everything will end one day. Just enjoy the beauty. You are the magic.
Read Also: The Ultimate Guide to Finding Your Purpose and Crushing Your Goals
About The Author
Hemant Singh
Hello friends, I am Hemant, Technical Writer & Co-Founder of Education Learn Academy. Talking about education, I am a student. I enjoy learning things related to new technology and teaching others. I request you that you keep supporting us in this way and we will continue to provide new information for you. :)
Join Telegram:- Click Here
