The Great Path - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 6. THE MAD PROJECTIONIST
These sutras are very valuable in this context.
The first sutra is: THE SOUL IS A DANCER. Your actions and your being are not two different
things. Your actions come out of your own being, just as the dance comes out of the dancer. And
if the dancer starts complaining, ”I am tired of this dance. I don’t want to do it !” what would you
say? You would say, ”Stop! Don’t dance then. Who is asking you to dance? You are the one who is
dancing. Stop! if it is all useless and you find no pleasure in it. If you find it painful then stop! The
dance will disappear”
THE SOUL IS THE DANCER. This means that whatever you do, it is you who is doing it. It has
come out of your own self. Just as leaves come out of the tree, your actions come out of your being.
Stop! And the actions are no more!
Another thing to understand about this sutra - soul is the dancer - is: if you stop your dance of
suffering, if you bring a halt to your life of misery and pain, the dance will not stop- it will change its
form. The dance cannot stop; it is a part of your existence. It is your very nature. You will go on
dancing; but then there will be no tears only laughter. Then your dance will have a rhythm, a melody.
It will be pulsation of joy, of intense pleasure, an intoxication. Right now your dance is the dance of
hell, then it will be a divine dance.
There has been a Mohammedan fakir - Ibrahim. He was a king who later became a fakir. He came
to India during his travels. He saw a sadhu looking sad and depressed. Sadhus are often sad and
depressed because their life was full of pleasure when they were in the family life. They don’t know
any pleasure other than that. They renounce the world and the family life and all pleasure is lost.
They might not be suffering but they are sad and joyless.
There is a slight difference between sorrow and sadness. Sorrow means that there is a sharpness,
a tang, in the sadness. Sadness also has an ardor, a passion. There are two types of ardors: one
is of sorrow, one is of happiness. One, when you are so filled with sadness that tears begin to flow
and one, when you are so filled with happiness that tears begin to flow - both are a kind of flood.
When a man runs away from the world because it is full of sorrow, he also leaves the joys behind.
Then he is filled with sadness; there is no flood, neither of joy nor of sorrow.
Look at your sadhus and sannyasins. They are dead; as if they are ghosts, as if the dance has
stopped. They ran away from sorrow, but the joys were also lost. Their idea was that if they left
sorrow behind there would be only joy left. This was their mistake.
In this world, where there is joy, there is sorrow too. You desire to keep the joys and get rid of the
sorrows. So you run away from sorrow; but in the process the joys are also lost.
The sadhu was sad. He must have been an ordinary sadhu. A true sadhu lets go of both happiness
and unhappiness. He does not want to keep happiness, he simply drops both of them. And the
moment he drops them, all sadness disappears, for sadness is the mid-point between the two.
When you drop both of them, the mid-point also gets lost. Then an entirely new dimensional journey
begins, you may call it bliss, tranquility, nirvana- whatever you please.
The Great Path 106 Osho