TUESDAY, JULY 7, 2009 Osho: Be Ordinary, Nobody A witness is a simple witness. You just watch as you watch the traffic on the road, or some day you lie down on the ground and you watch the clouds in the sky. You don't say this is good, that is bad; you simply don't make any judgments. You watch. You are unconcerned with what is good, what is bad. You are not trying to be moral. You are not trying any concepts... a pure witnessing. And out of that, greater understanding arises and by and by you start feeling that the ordinary life is the only life; there is no other life. And to be ordinary is the only way to be religious. All other extraordinary things are ego-trips. Just to be ordinary is the most extraordinary thing in the world, because everybody wants to be extraordinary. Nobody wants to be ordinary. To be ordinary is the only extraordinary thing. Very rarely somebody relaxes and becomes ordinary. If you ask Zen masters, 'What do you do?' they will say, 'We fetch wood from the forest, we carry water from the well. We eat when we feel hungry, we drink when we feel thirsty, we go to sleep when we feel tired. This is all.' It does not look very appealing -- fetching wood, carrying water, sitting, eating. You will say, 'These are ordinary things. Everybody is doing them.' These are not ordinary things, and nobody is doing them. When you are fetching wood, you are condemning it -- you would like to be the president of some country. You don't want to be a woodcutter. You keep condemning the present for some imaginary future. Carrying water from the well, you feel you are wasting your life. You are angry. You were not made for such ordinary things. You had come with a great destiny -- to lead the whole world towards a paradise, some utopia. These are all ego-trips. These are all in states of consciousness. Just to be ordinary... and then suddenly what you call trivia is no more trivia, what you call profane is no more profane. Everything becomes sacred. Carrying wood becomes sacred. Fetching water from the well becomes sacred. And when every act becomes sacred, when every act becomes meditative and prayerful, only then you are moving deeper into life -- and then life opens all the mysteries to you. Then you become capable. Then you become receptive. The more receptive you become, the more life becomes available. This is my whole teaching: to be ordinary... to be so ordinary that the very desire to be extraordinary disappears. Only then you can be in the present; otherwise you cannot be in the present. Montaigne has written: 'We seek other conditions because we know not how to enjoy our own, and go outside of ourselves for want of knowing what is it like inside of us. So it is no use raising ourselves on stilts, for even in stilts we have to walk on our own legs. Whenever you are -- fetching water or sitting on the throne as a king or as a president or a prime minister -- makes no difference. Wherever you are, you are yourself. If you are miserable in carrying wood, you will be miserable in being a president, because outside things can change nothing. If you are happy being a beggar, only then can you be happy being an emperor; there is no other way. Your happiness has something to do with your quality of consciousness. It has nothing to do with outside things. Unless you become awake, everything is going to make you more and more miserable. Once you are awake, everything brings tremendous happiness, tremendous benediction. It does not depend on anything else; it simply depends on the depth of your being, on your receptivity. Carry wood, and when carrying wood just carry wood -- and enjoy the beauty of it. Don't go on thinking of something else. Don't compare it. This moment is tremendously beautiful. This moment can become a satori. This moment can become the moment of samadhi. Fetching water, be so totally immersed in it that nothing is left outside. Fetching water, you are not there, only the process of fetching water is there. This is what nirvana is, enlightenment is. I am talking to you; I am not there... just enjoying a conversation with you, gossiping with you. Listening to me, if you are also not there, then everything is fulfilled perfectly. If you are there listening to me, watching by the corner, standing there... watching if something valuable is being said so that you can hoard it for future use, watching if something meaningful is said so that you can make it part of your knowledge -- 'it will be helpful to seek something, to be something'... then you will miss me. I am not saying anything meaningful. I am not saying anything for any purpose in view. I am not giving you some knowledge. I am not here to make you knowledgeable. If you can listen to me the way I am talking to you... this moment is total, you are not moving outside it, the future has disappeared... then you will have a glimpse of satori. Remember that we are engaging here in a certain activity. This activity has to be so prayerful, so meditative, that in this activity, the past is no more a burden and the future does not corrupt it and this moment remains pure. This moment simply remains this moment. Then I am not here and you are not here. Then this crowd disappears. Then we become waves of one ocean -- that ocean is life, that ocean is god, that ocean is nirvana. Nirvana is such a deep relaxation of your being that you disappear in that relaxation. Tense, you are; relaxed you are not. Your ego can only exist if you are tense. If you are relaxed, God is, you are not. -- Nirvana: The Last Nightmare / Osho POSTED BY MAQSOOD QURESHI AT 12:47 AM