The Great Path - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 4. TO BE DEAD DO NOTHING
Never take any vows that you cannot fulfill. It is better to live with a habit than take a vow and
break it. If it becomes a habit with you to take vows and break them, this will make you incapable
of following any resolution in life. The so-called religious teachers have made you very irreligious.
They give you vows so cheaply. you go to the temple, to a holy man or sage, and he tells you, ”Take
a vow.” Now you are in a fix. Sitting in the holy surroundings of a temple you cannot say to the sage,
”I am incapable of taking any vows.” That would hurt your ego. Instead, you say, ”From today on I
will never smoke again.”
I have a friend who is slightly eccentric – but he is much better than you! He went to a monk – he is
a Jaina – and the monk said, ”Take a vow!”
”Very well, I shall,” he said.
The monk asked, ”What have you vowed?”
He said, ”I have vowed to smoke from today on.” He never smoked before. He was slightly eccentric
but he kept the vow faithfully! And I tell you, this man has gained a lot more than the man who takes
vows of not smoking and fails to keep them. He broke his vow, he was filled with self-condemnation.
This man at least kept his word. He may be eccentric but he is better than you. He could, at least,
stick to his resolution.
Whenever you break a vow your self-esteem drops and you are filled with guilt. Each time you fail,
your guilt increases ad you become more and more miserable. You will lose your soul in this state
of wretchedness. To gain your soul you need the self-respect of a king; self-condemnation simply
takes you further and further away from yourself.
Understand the nature of your mind and you will understand this sutra. The whole art of the mind,
its structure, is built on repetition. The mind is a mantra. Whatever you repeated has become your
habit. All that you keep repeating becomes a part of your life. For lives on end you repeat the same
things over and over again and you attain it in each life – and you are addicted to the repetition of all
that is wrong and false!
So what is to be done? One: do not be in a hurry to destroy the false. The best way to go about it
is to start doing the right thing instead of fighting the wrong. Learn a new mantra! If you smoke, it
is perfectly all right! Begin to meditate, and intensify the mantra of meditation every day. The day
meditation pervades your being, you will be filled with self-respect. When this happens it will be
child’s play to give up smoking, for you have now begun a positive mantra.
Don’t be negative in your approach or you will find yourself in difficulty. You will be caught up in
remorse and guilt; you will be lost in pain and sorrow and despair. All your holy men sitting in the
temples – how sad they look! There is no joy, no flowering in their lives; they use only negative
mantras. Their quest is centered around negation – to get rid of whatever is wrong, bit by bit.
I tell you not to be in any hurry to get rid of your bad habits. Be quick to develop good ones. The
day that the good habits become powerful, the bad ones are easy to give up. Don’t fight with your
illness; strive to attain health. That was what Coue used to tell his patients. He told them to practice
auto-suggestion: ”I am getting better! I am getting better...”
The Great Path 67 Osho