Once I was asked, "What is philosophy?" I said, "Philosophy is the art of asking the wrong questions." The blind man asking "What is light?" - this is philosophy. The deaf asking "What is music? What is sound?" - this is philosophy.
If the blind man asks, "How can I get my eyes back?" this is no longer philosophy, this is religion. If the deaf goes to the physician to be treated so that he can hear, then he is moving in the direction of religion and not in the direction of philosophy.
Philosophy is guesswork, it is speculation; knowing nothing, one tries to invent the truth. And the truth cannot be invented, and anything invented cannot be true. The truth has to be discovered. It is already there...all that we need is open eyes - eyes to see it, a heart to feel it, a being to be present to it. The truth is always present but we are absent, and because we are absent we cannot see the truth. And we go on asking about the truth, and we don't ask the right question: How to be present? How to become a presence?
We ask about the truth and that asking is also going away from it, because the asking implies that an answer is possible from somebody else. Asking implies that somebody else can tell you what the truth is. Nobody can tell you it, it can't be told.
Lao Tzu says: The truth that can be said is no longer truth. Once said, it becomes a lie.
Why? - because the person who knows, knows it not as information; otherwise, it would have been very easy to transfer the information to anybody who was ready to receive it. The truth is known as an inner experience. It is like a taste on the tongue. If a man has never tasted what sweetness is, you cannot explain it to him - it is impossible.
If a man has not seen color, you cannot explain to him what it is.
There are things which can only be experienced, and through experience understood.
God is that ultimate experience, which is utterly inexpressible, untransferable. It cannot be conveyed. At the most, a few hints can be given; but those hints are also to be received with a very sympathetic heart, otherwise you will miss them.
If you interpret them with your mind you are going to miss them, because what can your mind do as far as interpretation is concerned? It can bring only its own past. It can bring only its own chaos. It can bring its conflicts, doubts, confusions. And all those it will impose on the truth, on the hint given to you, and immediately everything is distorted. Your mind is not in a state to see, to feel.
Religion simply means creating a space in your mind which is capable of seeing, which is capable of nonconflict, which is capable of being one without any split, which is capable of integrity, clarity, perceptiveness. A mind which is full of thoughts cannot perceive; those thoughts go on interfering. Those thoughts are there, layer upon layer.
By the time something reaches your innermost core, if it ever reaches, it is no longer the same as it was delivered by someone who had known. It is a totally different phenomenon.
Buddha used to repeat each hint thrice. Somebody asked him, "Why do you repeat one thing thrice?"
He said, "Even thrice is not enough. When I say it for the first time, you only hear the words. Those words are empty, just empty, hollow shells, with no content. You cannot hear the content the first time. The second time, you hear the content with the words, a fragrance comes, but you are so dazed, you are so mystified by its presence, that you are not in a state to understand. You hear, but you don't understand. That's why I have to repeat it thrice."
I go on repeating again and again for the simple reason that you are so asleep - it has to be repeated, hammered. Maybe in some moment, some auspicious moment, you will not be so deep in sleep; you may be close, very close to awakening, and something may enter into you. You may be able to hear. Yes, there are moments when you are very close to awakening - not awake, not asleep, just in the middle, somewhere in between.
Each morning you know, there are a few moments when the sleep is no more but you are not yet awake, you cannot say you are awake. You can hear, in a very vague way, the sounds of the birds, and the milkman, and the wife talking to the neighbor and the children getting ready to go to school, and the traffic noise, and a train passing by - but in a very vague way, not totally, partially. And you go on dozing off into sleep. One moment you hear the noise of the train passing by, another moment you have gone deeper into your sleep.
Now the sleep researchers say that it happens continuously in your sleep: if you sleep for eight hours, you are not on the same level continuously, your level goes on changing, peaks and valleys. The whole night you are going up and down. Sometimes you are very deep in sleep where even dreams disappear - Patanjali has called it SUSHUPTI, dreamless sleep - and sometimes you are full of dreams. And sometimes you are just on the verge of awakening. If something shattering, shocking happens, you will be awake, suddenly awake.
That's the effort of all the buddhas: waiting for that right moment when you are very close to awakening. Then a little push and your eyes open and you can see.
God cannot be explained but can be seen, can be experienced - can NOT be explained.
Any explanation about God is nothing but explaining him away; hence, the more priests, theologians, professors there are, the less religion there is in the world. The more popes and the more shankaracharyas, the less religion there is in the world - because these people go on explaining and God cannot be explained. They have stuffed your minds with so many explanations, now those explanations are in conflict. Now it is almost impossible to figure it out, what is what, which is which. You are in utter confusion. Man has never been in such confusion before, because humanity has never been so close before. The earth has REALLY become a village, a global village.
In the ancient days the Buddhist knew only what the Buddha had said, and the Mohammedan knew only about what Mohammed had said, and the Christian knew only about Jesus. Now we have become inheritors of the whole heritage of humanity.
Now you know Jesus, you know Zarathustra, you know Patanjali, you know Buddha, you know Mahavira, you know Lao Tzu and hundreds of other explanations, other hints - and they are all jumbled up in you. Now it is very difficult to pull you out of this confusion. The only possible way is to drop this whole noise, not in parts but in toto. That's what my message is.
And by dropping it, you will not be dropping Jesus or Mohammed or Buddha; by dropping it you will come closer to them. By dropping it, you will simply be dropping the priests and the traditions and the conventions and the exploitation that goes on in the name of tradition and convention. By being clear of all this, forgetting the Bible and the Vedas and the Gita, you will attain to a clarity, a cleanliness. Yes, you need a spring cleaning, you need a total unburdening of the heart. Only then, in that silence, will you be able to understand.
Osho Dhammapada Volume 2
If the blind man asks, "How can I get my eyes back?" this is no longer philosophy, this is religion. If the deaf goes to the physician to be treated so that he can hear, then he is moving in the direction of religion and not in the direction of philosophy.
Philosophy is guesswork, it is speculation; knowing nothing, one tries to invent the truth. And the truth cannot be invented, and anything invented cannot be true. The truth has to be discovered. It is already there...all that we need is open eyes - eyes to see it, a heart to feel it, a being to be present to it. The truth is always present but we are absent, and because we are absent we cannot see the truth. And we go on asking about the truth, and we don't ask the right question: How to be present? How to become a presence?
We ask about the truth and that asking is also going away from it, because the asking implies that an answer is possible from somebody else. Asking implies that somebody else can tell you what the truth is. Nobody can tell you it, it can't be told.
Lao Tzu says: The truth that can be said is no longer truth. Once said, it becomes a lie.
Why? - because the person who knows, knows it not as information; otherwise, it would have been very easy to transfer the information to anybody who was ready to receive it. The truth is known as an inner experience. It is like a taste on the tongue. If a man has never tasted what sweetness is, you cannot explain it to him - it is impossible.
If a man has not seen color, you cannot explain to him what it is.
There are things which can only be experienced, and through experience understood.
God is that ultimate experience, which is utterly inexpressible, untransferable. It cannot be conveyed. At the most, a few hints can be given; but those hints are also to be received with a very sympathetic heart, otherwise you will miss them.
If you interpret them with your mind you are going to miss them, because what can your mind do as far as interpretation is concerned? It can bring only its own past. It can bring only its own chaos. It can bring its conflicts, doubts, confusions. And all those it will impose on the truth, on the hint given to you, and immediately everything is distorted. Your mind is not in a state to see, to feel.
Religion simply means creating a space in your mind which is capable of seeing, which is capable of nonconflict, which is capable of being one without any split, which is capable of integrity, clarity, perceptiveness. A mind which is full of thoughts cannot perceive; those thoughts go on interfering. Those thoughts are there, layer upon layer.
By the time something reaches your innermost core, if it ever reaches, it is no longer the same as it was delivered by someone who had known. It is a totally different phenomenon.
Buddha used to repeat each hint thrice. Somebody asked him, "Why do you repeat one thing thrice?"
He said, "Even thrice is not enough. When I say it for the first time, you only hear the words. Those words are empty, just empty, hollow shells, with no content. You cannot hear the content the first time. The second time, you hear the content with the words, a fragrance comes, but you are so dazed, you are so mystified by its presence, that you are not in a state to understand. You hear, but you don't understand. That's why I have to repeat it thrice."
I go on repeating again and again for the simple reason that you are so asleep - it has to be repeated, hammered. Maybe in some moment, some auspicious moment, you will not be so deep in sleep; you may be close, very close to awakening, and something may enter into you. You may be able to hear. Yes, there are moments when you are very close to awakening - not awake, not asleep, just in the middle, somewhere in between.
Each morning you know, there are a few moments when the sleep is no more but you are not yet awake, you cannot say you are awake. You can hear, in a very vague way, the sounds of the birds, and the milkman, and the wife talking to the neighbor and the children getting ready to go to school, and the traffic noise, and a train passing by - but in a very vague way, not totally, partially. And you go on dozing off into sleep. One moment you hear the noise of the train passing by, another moment you have gone deeper into your sleep.
Now the sleep researchers say that it happens continuously in your sleep: if you sleep for eight hours, you are not on the same level continuously, your level goes on changing, peaks and valleys. The whole night you are going up and down. Sometimes you are very deep in sleep where even dreams disappear - Patanjali has called it SUSHUPTI, dreamless sleep - and sometimes you are full of dreams. And sometimes you are just on the verge of awakening. If something shattering, shocking happens, you will be awake, suddenly awake.
That's the effort of all the buddhas: waiting for that right moment when you are very close to awakening. Then a little push and your eyes open and you can see.
God cannot be explained but can be seen, can be experienced - can NOT be explained.
Any explanation about God is nothing but explaining him away; hence, the more priests, theologians, professors there are, the less religion there is in the world. The more popes and the more shankaracharyas, the less religion there is in the world - because these people go on explaining and God cannot be explained. They have stuffed your minds with so many explanations, now those explanations are in conflict. Now it is almost impossible to figure it out, what is what, which is which. You are in utter confusion. Man has never been in such confusion before, because humanity has never been so close before. The earth has REALLY become a village, a global village.
In the ancient days the Buddhist knew only what the Buddha had said, and the Mohammedan knew only about what Mohammed had said, and the Christian knew only about Jesus. Now we have become inheritors of the whole heritage of humanity.
Now you know Jesus, you know Zarathustra, you know Patanjali, you know Buddha, you know Mahavira, you know Lao Tzu and hundreds of other explanations, other hints - and they are all jumbled up in you. Now it is very difficult to pull you out of this confusion. The only possible way is to drop this whole noise, not in parts but in toto. That's what my message is.
And by dropping it, you will not be dropping Jesus or Mohammed or Buddha; by dropping it you will come closer to them. By dropping it, you will simply be dropping the priests and the traditions and the conventions and the exploitation that goes on in the name of tradition and convention. By being clear of all this, forgetting the Bible and the Vedas and the Gita, you will attain to a clarity, a cleanliness. Yes, you need a spring cleaning, you need a total unburdening of the heart. Only then, in that silence, will you be able to understand.
Osho Dhammapada Volume 2
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