BELOVED OSHO

WHEN DOES THE BOAT REACH THE OTHER SHORE?

Deva Vigyan, there is no other shore, this is the only shore there is. And it is not a question of reaching somewhere else, it is a question of awakening here and now. It is never there, it is always here; it is never then, it is always now. This moment contains the totality of reality.

The boat I am talking about is not really a boat. I am talking about becoming aware. Man has fallen asleep -- man is already where he needs to be, where he is meant to be. Man is in paradise. The garden of Eden has never been left, nobody can expel you from it. But you can fall asleep, and you can start dreaming a thousand and one things. Then those dreams become your reality, and the reality fades far away, becomes unreal.

You need not go anywhere. Meditation is neither a journey in space nor a journey in time, but an instantaneous awakening. If you can be silent now, this is the other shore. If you can allow the mind to cease, not to function, this is the other shore.

But the mind is very clever and cunning; it distorts every great teaching. It jumps upon words, catches hold of the words, and starts giving meanings to them which are not real meanings.

Yes, I talked about the other shore. And your mind must have caught the words "the other shore, the boat." "Where is the other shore, and where is the boat, and how can I get to the boat, how can I get into it, and when will I reach the other shore?"

You misunderstood the whole thing. Be awake, and this shore becomes the other shore, and this very moment becomes eternity. This very body the buddha, and this very place the lotus paradise.

And awakening does not need time; not even a split second is needed for it to happen. It is only a question of a tremendous desire arising in you, of such a quality of intensity that you become afire with it. In that fire, the old is gone and the new has arrived. The old was never there in the first place, you only believed in it. And the new has always been the case, you had only forgotten it.

I declare to you that this is the only world there is, and this is the only life there is. Don't start thinking of some other life somewhere after death, beyond the seven skies, in heaven. Those are all just mind dreams, mind trips, new ways to fall asleep again.

Hence my insistence that no sannyasin has to leave the world, because leaving the world is part of a project, part of a dream of reaching to the other world. And because there is none, all your efforts will be in vain. You are not to go to the monasteries or to the Himalayas; you are not to escape from here. You have to become awakened here.

And in fact it is easier to be awakened here than in a Himalayan cave. Have you not observed it? If you are suffering from a nightmare, awakening is easier. If you are having a sweet dream, awakening is more difficult. If in your dream you are on a honeymoon with your beloved, who wants to be awakened? In fact the person who tries to wake you up will look like the enemy. But if you are followed by a tiger and it is a question of life and death, and you are running and running and the tiger is coming closer and closer and closer, and you start feeling his breath on your back, then suddenly you will be awake. It is too much to tolerate, it is unbearable.

In a Himalayan cave you will be dreaming sweet dreams. That's what people are doing in the monasteries -- dreaming beautiful dreams of God, of angels, of heaven, of eternal peace and joy. In the world, people are suffering from nightmares -- the nightmares of the share market, the nightmares of power politics. It is easier to be awakened here. If you cannot awaken here, you cannot wake up anywhere else.

But remember, let me repeat it again, there is no other reality, there is only one reality. But the one reality can be seen in two ways: with sleepy eyes, dreamy eyes, eyes full of dust, and then what you see is distorted; and the same reality can be seen without sleep, without dreaming eyes, without dust. Then whatsoever you see is the truth -- and truth liberates.

The second question:

BELOVED OSHO

WHILE YOU WERE POINTING THE FINGER TO THE MOON YOU SAID TODAY, "MEN HAVE TO BECOME MORE MASCULINE." WHAT IS THIS MASCULINE?

Prem Anubhava, masculinity can have two directions, just as feminineness can have two directions. The masculine mind can be aggressive, violent, destructive -- that is only one of the possibilities. Men have tried that, and humanity has suffered much from it. And when men try this negative aspect of masculinity, women naturally start moving into the negative feminineness, just to keep together with men. Otherwise the rift will be too great, unbridgeable. When the feminine is negative it is inactivity, lethargy, indifference. The negative man can only have a bridge with a negative woman.

But there is a positive aspect too. Nothing can be only negative; every negativity has a positive aspect too. Every dark cloud has a silver lining, and every night is followed by a dawn.

Positive masculinity is initiative, creativity, adventure. These are the same qualities, but moving on a different plane. The negative masculine mind becomes destructive, the positive masculine mind becomes creative. Destructiveness and creativeness are not two things, but two aspects of one energy. The same energy can become aggression and the same energy can become initiative.

When aggression is initiative it has a beauty of its own. When violence becomes adventure, when violence becomes exploration, exploration of the new, of the unknown, it is tremendously beneficial.

And so is the case with the feminine. Inactivity is negative, receptivity is positive. They both look alike, they look very similar. You will need very penetrating eyes to see the difference between the inactive and the receptive. The receptive is a welcome, it is an awaiting, it has a prayer in it. Receptivity is a host, receptivity is a womb. Inactivity is simply dullness, death, hopelessness. There is nothing to wait for, nothing to expect, nothing is ever going to happen. It is falling into lethargy, it is falling into a kind of indifference. And indifference and lethargy are poisons.

But the same thing that becomes indifference can become detachment, and then it has a totally different flavor. Indifference looks like detachment, but it is not; indifference is simply no interest. Detachment is not absence of interest -- detachment is absolute interest, tremendous interest, but still with the capacity of non-clinging. Enjoy the moment while it is there and when the moment starts disappearing, as everything is bound to disappear, let it go. That is detachment.

Lethargy is a negative state. One is like a lump of mud just lying there -- no possibility of growth, no exuberance, no flowering. But the same energy can become a pool, a great pool of energy -- not going anywhere, not doing anything, but the energy accumulating and accumulating and accumulating.

And scientists say that at a certain point the quantitative change becomes a qualitative change. At a hundred degrees heat the water evaporates. At ninety-nine degrees it has not evaporated yet; at ninety-nine point nine degrees it has still not evaporated. But just point one degree more, and the water will take a quantum leap.

Positive feminineness is not like lethargy, it is like a tremendous pool of energy. And as the energy gathers and accumulates, it goes through many qualitative changes.

A man, to be really masculine, has to be adventurous, has to be creative, has to be able to take as many initiatives in life as possible. The woman, to be really a woman, has to be a pool of energy behind the man, so the adventure can have as much energy as possible. Energy will be needed so that the adventure can have some inspiration, so that the adventure can have some poetry, so that the adventurous soul can relax in the woman and be replenished with life, rejuvenated.

Man and woman both together, moving positively, are one whole. And the real couple -- and there are very few real couples -- is one in which each has joined with the other in a positive way. Ninety-nine percent of couples are joined together in a negative way. That's why there is so much misery in the world.

I repeat it again: the man has to be masculine and the woman has to be feminine, but in a positive way. Then to be together is a meditation, then to be together is really a great adventure. Then to be together brings new surprises every day. Then life is a dance between these two polarities, and they help each other, they nourish each other.

Man alone will not be able to go very far. Woman alone will be just a pool of energy with no possibility of any dynamic movement. When both are together they are complementary. No one is higher than the other; complementaries are never higher and lower, complementaries are equal. Neither the man nor the woman is higher, they are complementaries. Together they make a whole, and together they can create a holiness which is not possible for either separately.

That's why Jesus or Buddha look a little less rich than Krishna, and the reason is that they are alone. Krishna is more total. Hence, in India, Krishna is thought to be the perfect avatar, the perfect incarnation of God. Buddha is thought to be partial, so is Mahavira a partial manifestation of God, and so is Jesus. Krishna has something of totality in him.

And one thing more. If it was only a case of an outer meeting of man and woman, it would not have been so important. It is also a case of a meeting deep down in the being of each man and woman, because each man is a woman inside too, and each woman is a man inside too. The outer meeting and merging with the other is really a lesson, an experiment, to prepare for the inner meeting.

Each man is born out of a man and a woman. Half of you comes from your father and half of you comes from your mother. You are a meeting of polar opposites.

Modern psychology, particularly the Jungian school of psychology, accepts this, is based on this, that man is bisexual and so is woman. If your conscious mind is that of a man, then your unconscious will be that of a woman, and vice versa.

But to manage the inner meeting is difficult in the beginning, because the inner is invisible. First you have to learn the lesson with the visible. Meet with the outer woman, meet with the outer man, so that you can have a few experiences of what this meeting is all about. Then, slowly slowly, you can search withinwards and find the same polarity there.

The day your inner man and woman meet, you are enlightened. That day is a day of great celebration, not only for you but for the whole existence. One man has arrived back again. Out of millions and millions, one man has arrived.

It is said that when Buddha became enlightened, flowers showered from the sky. These are not historical facts, they are poetic expressions, but of tremendous significance. The whole existence must have danced, must have sung, must have showered millions of flowers -- because it is a rare phenomenon. A groping soul suddenly has become integrated, a fragmentary soul has become crystallized. One man has become God: it has to be celebrated. It is a blessing to the whole existence.

But the first lesson has to be learned outside, remember. Unless you have known the woman on the outer plane, in all her richness, in all her sweetness and bitterness; unless you have known the man on the outside, in all his beauty and in all his ugliness, you will not be able to move into the inner dimension. You will not be able to allow the yin and yang, Shiva and Shakti, to meet inside.

And that meeting is of utter importance, of ultimate importance, because only with that meeting do you become a god -- never before it.

The third question:

BELOVED OSHO

ALTHOUGH I HAVE NOT BEEN TO KRISHNAMURTI'S LATEST DISCOURSES IN BOMBAY, I HAVE HEARD THAT HE HAS TALKED AGAINST SANNYAS IN THEM. IT SEEMS TO ME THAT THIS ATTITUDE IS A DEVICE THAT HELPS BOTH HIS WORK AND YOURS, THAT HE DOES NOT MEAN WHAT HE SAYS. PLEASE COMMENT.

Anand Jagdish, J. Krishnamurti is an enlightened man -- you need not defend him. He does mean what he says, he is against sannyas. That's his approach towards life, a very narrow approach of course. He has a very tunnel-type of vision. Of course whatsoever he says is right according to his tunnel vision, but his vision is very narrow.

He can say sannyas is wrong, he can say I am wrong. Still, I cannot say that he is wrong, because I have a wider vision, very inclusive. If I can say Buddha is right, Zarathustra is right, Lao Tzu is right, Tilopa, Atisha, and many many more are right, I can also say Krishnamurti is right.

Yes, there are people for whom his vision will be of help, but those people will be very few. In fact the people for whom his vision is right may not need his help at all -- because to need help from a master is what sannyas is all about, to need help from a master is the fundamental of disciplehood. Whether you call it disciplehood or not does not matter.

Krishnamurti is very much against the words disciple and master. But that's what he has been doing for fifty years. He is a master who says that he is not a master. And the people who listen to him and follow him are disciples who think they are not disciples.

It does not matter what you think. What matters is what you ARE. He is a master and he has disciples. He denies that he is a master; that is part of his device. In this egoistic world it is very difficult for people to surrender, to drop their egos. For the egoists who cannot drop their egos he opens a door. He says, "You can keep your ego; you don't need to be a disciple, you don't need to be a sannyasin." The egoists feel very good that they need not bow down to anybody. But listening to him continuously again and again, deep down the bowing starts happening, the surrender starts happening.

He does not claim that he is a master. But whatsoever a master requires, he requires from his listeners. The master says, "Listen without thinking, listen totally, without any interference from your thoughts." And that's what he requires from his disciples whom he does not call disciples. It is a very sophisticated game. He can say sannyas is wrong -- he has to say it.

And whenever he is in India -- and soon wherever he will be, in every meeting of his he will find my sannyasins. That irritates him very much, and it must be even more irritating that when he talks against sannyas and against sannyasins, my sannyasins laugh and enjoy it.

He has been asking them, "Why do you come to me? If you have already got a master there is no need to come." To one of my sannyasins he said in a private interview, "If you have got a master, you need not come here."

And my sannyasin said, "But my master says 'Go everywhere. Wherever you find something can be learned, go there!' This is his teaching and we are following him, and we are not here to follow you!"

Naturally he gets very irritated. But you need not defend him. And this is the beauty, that he cannot accept me but I can accept him. It makes no problem for me. I accept all kinds of people and all kinds of philosophies; my vision is wide enough.

In fact why is he so much against masters and disciples? It is a wound that has healed but the scar is still left. He was forced to be a disciple against his will. He was a small child when he was adopted by Annie Besant and the theosophists, only nine years old, completely unaware of what was being done to him. And he was forced to follow a very rigid discipline.

Twenty-four hours a day he was being trained, because one of the theosophist leaders, Leadbeater, had this idea, this vision, that this boy was going to become a world teacher -- a jagatguru, a master of the whole world -- that he was going to become the vehicle of Lord Maitreya, that he had to be prepared so he could receive the new incarnation of Buddha in his body. So he was tortured in many ways.

He was not allowed to eat like other children, he was not allowed to play with other children, as any child would like to. He was guarded. He was not allowed to go to ordinary schools, he was almost completely kept a prisoner. And then getting up early at three o'clock in the morning, and then the ritual bath, and so many, many rituals -- Tibetan, Chinese, Indian, Egyptian... he must have become tired.

And the last wound happened when his brother Nityananda died. There were two brothers, Krishnamurti and Nityananda, and both were being prepared, because there was a little suspicion as to who was really going to be the master. Nityananda died from this rigid discipline, this almost insane imposition. His death was a trauma for Krishnamurti; he had loved his brother tremendously. There was no other outlet for his love. He had been taken away from his family; his mother had died and his father was not able to look after them, he was just a small clerk. Both the children were adopted by Annie Besant and they had to travel all around the world learning different esoteric disciplines. It was very hard on them. There is every possibility Nityananda died simply because of too much training.

And then those masters whom Krishnamurti had not chosen out of love... they were like prisoners and the masters were like jailers. He carried a very wrong notion about masters; it was very difficult for him to get free from their trap. Finally he got free from their trap -- how long can you hold someone? When he became a young man, and strong enough to get out of the trap, he simply rushed out, and declared, "I am nobody's master, and I am not going to be a world teacher, and this is all nonsense!"

Since then, the scar has remained. Since then he has been talking about things like masters, disciplines, meditations, disciplehood, and he has been against all of them. It is natural. In fact he has never known a master, and he has never known disciplehood -- because these are not things that can be imposed on you, these are things which you accept out of joy and love.

You are far more fortunate than him. You have chosen me out of joy, out of love, and you are free to leave me at any moment. He was not free to leave. He did not choose these people. And there is every possibility that many wrong things were done to him when he was a child.

It is almost an established fact that Leadbeater was a homosexual. The point was even raised in court that he was sexually exploiting children. Just think of a nine-year-old child if sexually mishandled -- he will have a very deep wound from it; it will be difficult for him to erase the scar.

You can ask the psychologists: if a child is in some way sexually exploited, his whole life becomes disturbed. If a girl was somehow sexually exploited against her will, or when she was not aware of what was happening, she will never be at ease sexually, never. The fear will come again and again.

There is every possibility that something like this happened. Krishnamurti never talks about these things, there is no point in talking about these things, all those old fogies are dead. But somewhere there is a scar. Hence his antagonism to masters, to disciplehood, to sannyas, to all kinds of methods. This shows something about his history; it shows nothing about masters and disciples.

What does he know about Buddha and the disciples that Buddha had? What does he know about Atisha and the masters Dharmakirti, Dharmarakshita and Yogin Maitreya -- what does he know about these people?

And one thing more, a calamity happened. Annie Besant and Leadbeater never allowed him to read ancient scriptures because they were afraid he would lose his originality. So he was kept utterly ignorant of all the great traditions of the world.

And if you don't know anything about Atisha and Dharmakirti, you will miss something. Dharmakirti was the master who told Atisha to move to another master, Dharmarakshita, "because what I have known, I have given to you. I can give you the rest too, but that has never been my path. Go to Dharmarakshita, he has followed another route. He will give you something more, something more authentic. I have only heard about it, or only seen it from the mountain-top. I give you emptiness. Now, to learn compassion, go to Dharmarakshita."

What beautiful people they must have been! And Dharmarakshita told him, "I know only the feminine kind of compassion, the passive kind. For the active, you must go to another master, Yogin Maitreya; he will teach you."

These are not people who are possessive, who are jealous, who want to dominate. These are people who give freedom! Krishnamurti is utterly unaware of all the great traditions of the world -- he only knows the theosophists.

And that was one of the ugliest things that happened in this century. All kinds of fools gathered under the banner of theosophy, it was a hotch-potch. It was an effort to create a synthesis of all that is good out of all the religions. But no such synthesis is possible. And if you make such a synthesis you will only have a corpse on your hands, not an alive body, breathing, pulsating.

It is as if you love many women -- one woman has beautiful eyes, you take the eyes out; another woman has a beautiful nose, you cut off the nose -- and so on and so forth. Put all the parts together, assemble them, and you will have a corpse. Making the corpse you have killed twenty beautiful women, and the end result is just utter stupidity.

That's what theosophy did. Something is beautiful in Hinduism, something is beautiful in Taoism, something is beautiful in Mohammedanism, something is beautiful in Judaism, and so on and so forth. Collect all that, put it together, put it in a mixer and mix it, and what you will have will be just a corpse.

Krishnamurti unfortunately had to live with these people. But he has tremendous intelligence. Anybody in his place would have been lost, anybody else in his situation would not have been able to come out of the cage. And the cage was so beautiful, so alluring -- thousands of followers were available. But he had the courage, he had the guts and intelligence to renounce all that, to simply move out of the whole trap.

It was difficult for him, very difficult; even to survive was difficult. I respect the man, I respect him tremendously. And I can understand why he is against masters, disciples, sannyas.

Jagdish, you say, "Although I have not been to Krishnamurti's latest discourses in Bombay, I have heard that he had talked against sannyas in them. It seems to me that this attitude is a device that helps both his work and yours, that he does not mean what he says."

He says what he means, he means what he says. His narrow vision is very clear. That is one of the most beautiful things about narrow visions, they are clear. The wider the sky, the less the clarity; the bigger the vision, the less the clarity.

And my vision contains all. His vision is very exclusive, my vision is very inclusive. His vision is only his. My vision contains Buddha, Zarathustra, Moses, Mahavira, Mohammed, and millions more. And remember, I am not trying to make a synthesis here. I am not trying to choose what is beautiful in one and what is beautiful somewhere else. No, I accept every tradition as it is -- even though sometimes it goes against me, even though sometimes there are points which I would not like to be there. But then who am I? Why should I bring my choice into it?

I accept every tradition as it is, without interfering with it. This has never been done before, and this may not be done again for centuries, because to have such inclusive vision is very confusing. Being with me, you can never have certainty. The more you are with me, the more and more the ground under your feet will disappear. The more you are here with me, the more and more your mind will be taken away, and with it all certainty.

Yes, you will have transparency, but no certainty.

With Krishnamurti everything is certain, absolutely certain. He is one of the most consistent men who has ever walked on the earth, because he has such a narrow vision. When you have a very narrow vision you are bound to be very consistent.

You cannot find a more inconsistent person than me, because I have to make space for so many contradictory standpoints. There is nothing in common between Bahauddin and Atisha, there is nothing in common between Rinzai and Mohammed, there is nothing in common between Mahavira and Christ. And yet they all have met in me, and they are all one in me. And I have not chosen, I have not interfered, I have simply digested them all.

A tremendously new kind of symphony, I will not call it a synthesis but a symphony, is arising here. In a synthesis something dead is produced. In a symphony, in an orchestra, all instruments are playing, but in a tremendous harmony.

Krishnamurti is a solo flute player. I am an orchestra; the flute is accepted. Of course my orchestra will not be accepted by Krishnamurti, he is a solo flute player. And a beautiful flute player he is, I appreciate him. I can appreciate him, but he cannot appreciate me. What does he know about the orchestra? I know everything about the flute, because it is part of my orchestra, just a small part. But for him the flute is all.

Please, Jagdish, don't try to defend him, there is no need. He can defend himself, he is quite capable. I can understand his criticism of sannyas. If he had not criticized it, that would have been a surprise. If he really wants to surprise me he should stop criticizing my sannyasins -- it would be unbelievable, it would be really a shock to me!

But let that old man continue, and you please continue going to listen to him. Provoke him. Just sit in the front row, and whenever he criticizes sannyas, applaud, laugh. And then he will be really in a rage. He is the only enlightened person in the world who can get angry. And that's perfectly beautiful. I love him, I respect him -- and I love him and respect him as he is. But he cannot love and respect me; that too I can understand.

The fourth question:

BELOVED OSHO

LIKE KRISHNA AND BUDDHA AND NANAK AND JESUS, YOUR MESSAGE IS LOVE. HOW ARE YOUR MISUNDERSTOOD SANNYASINS VEHICLES FOR YOUR MESSAGE OF LOVE TO THE WORLD?

Krishna Prem, Krishna has talked about love, Buddha too, Jesus, Nanak and Kabir, they all have talked about love. But nobody has talked about love like me. Their love is very ethereal, abstract; their love is not of this world at all. Their love is philosophical. The way they define their love and the way I define my love are totally different. I accept love in its whole spectrum, all the colors of it, the whole rainbow of it. They are choosers; they say, "Only the color blue is love, all other colors are not love." Or somebody says, "Only the color green is love, all others are not love."

They condemn earthly love, they condemn sensuous love, they condemn the body. And that's where the difference is. To me, love is a ladder. One part of the ladder is resting on the earth -- not only resting but really rooted in the earth -- and the other end is touching heaven.

They talk only of the other end. And because they talk only of the other end, it becomes humanly impossible to reach it, because the lower part is denied, and the higher can be reached only through the lower. You will have to pass over the lower rungs of the ladder, otherwise how are you going to reach the higher part?

There have been people like Charvaka in India, and Epicurus in Greece, who believe only in the lower part of the ladder and deny the higher part.

I accept the totality of it. I accept the mud, I accept the lotus, and I accept all that is in between. Hence I am bound to be misunderstood by everybody. The spiritual people will misunderstand me because they will think I am a materialist -- that I don't believe in the soul, that my preaching of love is nothing but a preaching of sex, that in the name of love I am only teaching people sexuality. And the materialists, the Epicureans, the Charvakas, they are also going to misunderstand me, obviously. They will say that my talk of sex and earthly love is only a trap to take you to those non-existential abstractions -- ecstasy, samadhi, God.

I am going to be misunderstood by both the materialists and the spiritualists. And the same is going to be the case with my sannyasins. You are going to be misunderstood everywhere -- in every culture, in every society, by every religion, by every ideology. To be with me is risky; you will have to be misunderstood. You will have to accept it as a fact of your existence.

And the reason is clear; it is because nobody in the past has accepted the whole spectrum. I accept the whole spectrum because to me, the lower and the higher are not separate, they are one. The lower contains the higher, and the higher contains the lower. The mud is unmanifest lotus, and the lotus is manifest mud. I don't condemn the mud, because in condemning the mud the lotus is condemned. And I don't condemn the lotus, because if you condemn the lotus the mud loses all meaning; then it is simply mud and nothing else.

I accept this earth and I accept this heaven. I accept both the body and the soul, the outer and the inner. My teaching is that of total acceptance.

You will be misunderstood. And it is not only that you will be misunderstood -- there is every possibility that you will misunderstand me too, because many of you will think that sex is all. And you can find quotes from my books easily supporting your standpoint. And many of you will misunderstand that sex has to be transcended, that only samadhi is the truth and that sex is just something to be bypassed, transcended and surpassed. Both these things are going to happen. Those who really understand me will see the point, and will see what I am doing here. I am creating a materialist spirituality, or a spiritualist materialism. It has never been done before. And whenever something is done for the first time, it is natural that it will be misunderstood.

A middle-aged American lady whose husband had recently died went to a spiritualist to get in touch with him as she was feeling lonely. Contact having been established, she said, "Hello, honey! How you doin'?"

Honey: "Fine. In fact I'm a hell of a lot better off than I was before."

Lady: "How do you pass the time, honey?"

Honey: "Well, I wake up, make love, have breakfast, make love, have lunch, make love, have supper, make love, sleep, make love, wake up, make love -- day in and day out."

Lady: "Where are you, honey? In heaven?"

Honey: "No, I'm a bull in Koregaon Park, Poona."

That possibility is there, you can misunderstand me. And there are also others at the other extreme. Anybody who chooses one part of my teaching is bound to misunderstand me.

You have to take me in toto, in my totality. Of course the totality is very confusing, because it contains the polar opposite. It is easier to choose one part -- the materialist or the spiritualist; it is easier, you feel consistent. To choose me in my totality you will have to live a very inconsistent life -- one moment this, another moment that. But that is my whole message.

If one really wants to live life in all its richness, one has to learn how to be inconsistent, how to be consistently inconsistent, how to be able to move from one extreme to another -- sometimes rooted deep in the earth and sometimes flying high in heaven, sometimes making love and sometimes meditating.

And then, slowly slowly, your heaven and your earth will come closer and closer, and you will become the horizon where they meet.

The fifth question:

BELOVED OSHO

WHY DO YOU CALL PEOPLE CABBAGES AND ASSHOLES? IT SEEMS SO DISRESPECTFUL.

Anand Swaghat, cabbages are also people, and very innocent people. What do you mean, "It seems so disrespectful?" Disrespectful to whom? To cabbages? In fact it is more disrespectful to cabbages to compare them with men. What have they done?

Just look at man's history, and the history of cabbages. You will not find more innocent people than cabbages, they are all buddhas -- so silent, so happy, so meditative. And you are saying, "It seems so disrespectful." To man?

And what can I do if somebody is an asshole? I am not condemning him, I am simply stating a fact. Do you want me to lie? An asshole is an asshole, plain and simple. And remember, it is perfectly okay to be an asshole.

But why, Swaghat, are you worried? Are you a cabbage or...?

The last question:

BELOVED OSHO

DON'T YOU TALK EVERY DAY ABOUT SITNALTA?

Parinirvana, yes, whatsoever I talk about is Sitnalta, except the jokes. But there is a problem with jokes this time in this series. Atisha is against jokes. Hence I am not telling you too many jokes. It is really hard on me -- I get so tempted, but then I remember this old Atisha, and I have tremendous respect for him.

He has a sutra which you will soon come to: "Don't tell wicked jokes." So... at first I was thinking to drop that sutra, but then I thought that would not be right.