A Listening Heart_

The surtras:

Master Lu-tsu said:

A tremendously significant statement. A key statement:

The first thing: a matured individual is born only when s/he becomes decisive. With decision is the birth of an mature human being. Those who live in indecisiveness are not really adults yet. And millions live in indecisiveness; they cannot decide about anything. They always lean upon others; somebody else should decide for them. Hence people hang around authorities.

Authoritativeness continues in the world for the single reason that millions of people cannot decide for themselves. They have always to be given an order. Once the order is given, they follow it. But this is slavery, this is how they are preventing the birth of their own soul. Decision should arise in your being, because with decisiveness, integrity arises. Remember, make a few decisions. Decisions will make you individual.

What is indecisiveness? It means you are a crowd inside; many voices in you are contradicting each other, and you cannot decide whether to go this way or that. Even in small things people are indecisive: whether to go to see this movie or that - and they are indecisive. Indecisiveness has become almost their very style of life. To purchase this or to purchase that? Just watch people when they go shopping. See their indecisiveness. Just sit in any shop and just watch people coming and going - customers - and you will be surprised: people don't know how to decide. And those who don't know how to decide will remain vague, cloudy, confused. With decision comes clarity. And if the decision is far-reaching, if the decision has something to do with your foundations, certainly, one is born.

Now there are many people who come to me, and they say, 'We cannot decide whether to take the jump into sannyas or not.' They want me to tell them to take the jump. But then they miss the whole point. If I say to you, 'Take the jump and become a sannyasin,' you have missed an opportunity, a great opportunity, of taking a decision. Again you have leaned on somebody else, and that is not the way a soul grows. And this is a profound decision, of immense significance, because it is going to change your whole life style, it is going to give you a new vision. You will be moving in a new direction, you will not be the same again. Such far-reaching decisions one should be capable of taking on one's own. One should risk. Only with risk, with courage, is one born.

And whenever you take a decision, remember, if you take it then follow it; otherwise don't take a decision, because then it is more dangerous - more dangerous than being indecisive. To take a decision and not to follow it will make you very very impotent. Then it would have been better not to have decided. There are people who decide and then never follow their decisions. Slowly slowly they lose all trust and confidence in their being. Slowly slowly they know perfectly well that whatsoever they decide they are not going to do. They become split; they become deceptive to themselves.

When they are taking a decision, even in that moment they know that they are not going to follow it, because they know their past and their past experiences. Whenever they did decide, they never followed it.

And then very small decisions can be very destructive. Just a small decision - 'I will not smoke from today' - just a very ordinary decision, nothing much is involved in it... Whether you smoke or not doesn't matter: the existence continues. In twenty years time you may have tuberculosis, but that can be cured. Or you may die two or three years earlier. So what? - you never really lived.

Just the other day I was looking at a cartoon.

A man is asking a woman, 'Do you believe in life after death?' And the woman says, 'This is it!'

There is no need to believe in it, this is it. You are living such a dead life, what more can there be after death? It will be just the same. This is what it is!

But a small decision, a very trivial decision not to smoke, and then not to follow it is very dangerous.

You will lose self-confidence. You will lose trust in your own being. You will become mistrustful. It is better not to take such decisions. Go on smoking. And if you decide, then you are committed. Then whatsoever happens you have to do it. And if you can do it, you will find a clarity arising in you, a cloud disappearing, something settling, centring, in you. A decision is tremendously significant and meaningful.

That's what Lu-tsu means. If you do decide, then let your whole heart be in it. Then make it certain that you are not going back. That's what I mean when I say again and again to my sannyasins, 'Break the bridges.' Because you are not going back, so why keep the bridge? Throw the ladder.

Drown the boat, because you are not going back to the old shore again. If you keep the boat safe, harboured, that means you are still wavering, you are still thinking, 'Maybe some day I have to go back.'

Just a few months ago, Anup went to the USA, and I told him when he was going, 'Break the bridges completely now.' And he said, 'Yes, Osho.'

And now he comes, and I ask him, 'What happened? What about the bridges?' He says, 'I could not do that.'

What does that mean? He will be here only half-heartedly. He has kept the door open to go back, he has kept every security there, safe. And the problem is: if he is not totally here, he will not grow.

And this is the vicious circle: if he does not grow, after a few months he will think, 'It is good that I had not broken the bridges. Had I listened to Osho and broken the bridges, I would now have been in trouble. Nothing is happening to me here! It is good that I have saved everything there, and I can fly back home any moment.' And he will think he has been doing the most clever, intelligent thing.

But because he has kept the bridges safe and the doors open to escape back in the first place, he will be here only in a lukewarm way, in an indecisive way, in an uncertain way - wavering. And with the wavering you will not be with me. You can be with me only if you have taken a decision with a collected heart.

And then growth is possible. Growth is possible only then. So see the point: if you are totally here with me, growth is possible and there will be no need to go back and there will be no need to have bridges. But if you are not totally here with me, then the bridges will be needed. And you will feel very intelligent - that it was good that you didn't listen to me. 'Now look, nothing is happening here, and I have to go back. Had I broken all the bridges then where would I have ended?'

This is how the logical mind functions. It creates its own suicidal situations.

And the most important thing is: if you are seeking success you are already divided. Then your heart is not in the work, your heart is already in the result. If you are divided, you will not succeed. Success happens only to undivided hearts who are not worried about the consequence, the result, who are enjoying tremendously the journey itself, and are not concerned about the goal. Only those arrive who are not concerned with the goal at all - because their mind is so undivided, each moment of the journey, each step of the journey becomes a goal. Wherever they are, there is the goal. Success comes to those people on the spiritual path who are not concerned about success at all.

If you are concerned about success, success is not going to come to you, because your mind will be somewhere in the future and you will not be working in the present. And success can only come if the work is totally done in the present. This moment is going to give birth to the next moment. If this moment has been totally lived, the next moment is bound to be of a deeper totality, of a higher quality of totality.

But people go on remaining divided. These problems you have to think about, because these are everybody's problems.

Satya Sai Baba

Just a few days ago, Ashoka wrote me a letter saying that he is here but he still keeps Satya Sai Baba's picture in his room. Now that is his room - he can keep anybody's picture in it - but it is not only a question of the room. Now he will be in trouble. I told him, 'You go to Satya Sai Baba. And there, please don't keep my picture in your room; otherwise there also you will fail. Either be here or be there, but be with a collected heart, an integrated heart. It is better to be with Satya Sai Baba than to be with me if you are here only half-heartedly.'

But I understand his problem: I know he will keep my picture there too. So his failure is destined. One has to choose. One has to decide. At each step in life's journey, there are alternative paths, and you have to choose because you cannot have all the paths and you cannot walk on all the paths.

And I am not saying what is right and wrong, I am saying that whatsoever you choose totally is right for you. Sometimes it has happened that if his total surrender was there, a disciple has become enlightened even with an unenlightened Master. And thousands of times it happens that you may be with a perfect Master and nothing happens.

It is more a question of your totality than of the perfection of the Master. Even with a wrong person you can be transformed. Not that the wrong person can transform you, but if your total decision is there, your total decision transforms you. That is far more important; otherwise you can be with a Buddha and nothing will happen if you are half-half, if you are divided. Any kind of division of the future and the present, of the goal and the journey, this way or that, this Master or that - any kind of division is dangerous. Then your energy will be wasted, and you will throw the responsibility on others.

For example, if nothing happens to Ashoka here - and nothing is going to happen in this way - then, naturally, he will come to the conclusion that he has been in a wrong place. He will not see the point that he has been a divided person, he will only see that he has been in a wrong place, that 'This place was not for me.' But wherever you are, if you are divided, this is going to happen again and again.

Gather courage. I know the mind wants to be clever. The mind says, 'Why not keep both? Who knows? Keep both alternatives open. If this does not work, then that may work.' But this is not how life functions. You want to have the cake and eat it, too. It is impossible.

Lu-tsu says...

Because, even that will become a division. Be utterly herenow, with no division...

And when success comes of itself, it has tremendous beauty. You need not drag it, it opens like a flower; you need not open the flower forcibly. And if you open the flower forcibly you will have killed it. That will not be right.

And you will have opened it before its right time, and there may be no fragrance, because the flower has to wait for the right moment to gather fragrance, to create fragrance. And when the fragrance is ready, only then does it open of its own accord, because now it has something to share with the existence.

One should enjoy the moment. One should be totally in the moment and forget all else. And then, one day, suddenly success has come. One day, suddenly The Golden Flower has opened, and you are transported into a separate reality.

 

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