React from awareness

 React from awareness

Osho : Every person is carrying such a mysterious being but the being is closed to you. Every person can become the door for the divine, any ordinary person is extraordinary. Just behind the surface the mysterious is hidden, but you need a key to open it. And that key is moment-to-moment alert response. Not reaction –response. Reaction is always dead; you do something because he has done something. Response is totally different.

I will tell you one anecdote.

Buddha was passing through a village. The people of that village were against him, against his philosophy, so they gathered around him to insult him. They used ugly words, vulgar words. Buddha listened. Ananda, Buddha’s disciple who was with him, got very angry, but he couldn’t say anything because Buddha was listening so silently, so patiently, rather as if he was enjoying the whole thing.

Then even the crowd became a little frustrated because he was not getting irritated and it seemed he was enjoying. Buddha said, ”Now, if you are finished, I should move – because I have to reach the other village soon. They must be waiting just as you were waiting for me. If you have not told me all the things that you thought to tell me, I will be coming back within a few days, then you can finish it.”

Somebody from the crowd said, ”But we have been insulting you, we have insulted you. Won’t you react? Won’t you say something?”

Buddha said, ”That is difficult. If you want reaction from me, then you are too late. You should have come at least ten years ago, because then I used to react. But I am now no longer so foolish. I see that you are angry, that’s why you are insulting me. I see your anger, the fire burning in your mind. I feel compassion for you. This is my response – I feel compassion for you. Unnecessarily you are troubled.

”Even if I am wrong, why should you get so irritated? That is not your business. If I am wrong I am going to hell, you will not go with me. If I am wrong I will suffer for it, you will not suffer for it. But it seems you love me so much and you think about me and consider me so much that you are so angry, irritated. You have left your work in the fields and you have come just to say a few things to me. I am thankful.”

Just when he was leaving he said, ”One thing more I would like to say to you. In the other village I left behind, a great crowd just like you had come there and they had brought many sweets just as a present for me, a gift from the village. But I told them that I don’t take sweets. They took the sweets back. I ask you, what will they do with those sweets?”

So somebody from the crowd said, ”What will they do? It is easy, there is no need to answer. They will distribute them in the village and they will enjoy.”

So Buddha said, ”Now what will you do? You have brought only insults and I say I don’t take them. What will you do? I feel so sorry for you. You can insult me, that is up to you. But I don’t take it, that is up to me – whether I take it or not.” Buddha said, ”I don’t take unnecessary things, useless things. I don’t get unnecessarily burdened. I feel compassion for you.”

This is response. If a person is angry and you are present there, not with your past, you will feel always compassion. Reaction becomes anger, response always is compassion. You will see through the person. It will become transparent that he is angry, he is suffering, he is in misery, he is ill. When someone is in fever you don’t start beating him and asking, ”Why are you having a fever? Why is your body hot? Why have you got a temperature?” You serve the man, you help him to come out of it.

And when somebody is angry he also is having a temperature, he is in a fever, he is feverish. Why get so angry about it? He is in a mental disease which is more dangerous than any bodily disease, more fatal. So if the wife is angry the husband will feel compassion, he will try in every way to help her to be out of it. This is just mad – that she is angry and you also get angry. This is just mad, insane. You will look at the person, you will feel the misery she is in or he is in, and you will help.

But if the past comes in then everything goes wrong. And it can happen only if you go deep in meditation, otherwise it cannot happen. Just intellectual understanding won’t help. If you go deep in meditation your wounds will be thrown, a catharsis will happen. You become more and more clear inside, clarity is attained, you become like a mirror. You don’t have any wounds really, so no one can hit them. Then you can look at the person, then you can respond.

Response is always good, 
reaction is always bad. 
Response is always beautiful,
 reaction is always ugly. 
Avoid reactions and allow responses. 
Reaction is from the past, response is here and now. 

The Three legged elephant

An unhappy but rich woman, used to the superstitious ways of living, approached a sadhu once. The sadhu, however, was an average thinker in the garb of a sage. He could talk material matters with worldly people, so they felt a certain relief after talking to him. Sadhu thought since people offered him money and stuff, there was no harm in listening to them. That was his bread and butter, in fact. And people thought they will gain respite from sharing their problems with the sadhu. So, this woman goes to the sadhu with a long list of problems and complaints. Her problems seemed to have sprung out of nothing and her issues, petty. You can cure a disease or treat a patient, but how do you cure someone who is actually healthy? The woman was unhappy in spite of everything she had. She had good health, decent family, savings, a home, almost everything. The Sadhu thought there truly was nothing he could give the lady, certainly there was no panacea. But he did not want to return the lady empty handed either.

After a long pause, he said to the lady, "I will give you a very powerful ancient talisman. This will solve all your problems. This must be kept a secret."

The woman concurs.

He gives her a copper coin with a hole in it. He further asks her to bury it near the roots of the peepul tree on the full moon night.

"But, for the talisman to work, there is a condition that must be fulfilled," he says.

"When you are burying the coin, you must not think of any white elephant with three legs, a lame monkey or a talking frog," he adds, "if you think of any of these even for a moment, the remedy will fail."

The woman offered sweets, gold and clothes to the sadhu and left happily. The full moon night was ten days away and she reminded herself everyday to not to think about the three legged elephant, lame monkey or the talking frog. On the night she was to use the talisman, the only thoughts that hit her mind were of the three prohibited things.

Go figure!

The talisman did not work and she had no one to blame. Had the sadhu not mentioned what not to think, it probably would have never even occurred to her to think of a white elephant with three legs or a talking frog.

When you focus too much on what you do not want in your life or think about things that give you grief, you automatically attract those things in your life.

This story tells you everything you need to know about. When you lay emphasis on what you ought not to think , you will feel uneasy, restless and distracted. To discover your mind's natural and unmodulated state, another expression for samadhi, you need to learn to practice meditation with ease. Just gently focusing on the object of concentration and abandoning all intellectual examination will help you slip into that state of bliss.