The Great Path - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 5. THE KNOWLEDGE THAT IS SELF KNOWLEDGE
What is it that makes you cry? It is only your attachments. What is it that you miss when it is lost? It
is the object of your attachment. Ponder over this. Find out what it is that grips your very life, without
which you feel miserable and destitute; that is the center of your attachment. Before it is taken away
from you, abandon your hold on it, because you are sure to lose it one day.
Nothing is stable in this life, neither love nor friendship. Constant change is the very nature of this
world. The world is like a river... constantly flowing. Nothing is enduring, nothing is constant; and
nothing can be made to endure, no matter how hard you try. You cannot hold that which is forever
moving, forever flowing. You want to hold it, to freeze it. You will have no success, for you are going
against the very nature of things. It is because of the effort that you put into this futile endeavor that
you find yourself so disturbed.
Change is the other name for the world; yet you attempt to find in it some permanent support on
which your life can depend. This cannot be! Every moment of your life is filled with sorrow, for every
moment further erodes the support on which you stand.
Here is what you should do: make an effort to find out what things it would hurt you to lose. Then,
before they are lost, open your hands little by little, relax your grip on them. This is the method for
conquering attachment. There is bound to be pain, but you must bear it; this is your penance. It is
not necessary to renounce anything. It is not that you should leave your wife and run away to the
Himalayas. Remain there, where you are, but gradually stop depending on her. There is no need to
cause any pain; your wife need not even know it. There is no deed to tell her.
Jesus said, ”Only when your right hand does not know what your left hand is doing, are you a true
seeker.” The desire to let others know what you are doing is again a desire of the ego. You want
the world to know, ”Look at that man! He has left his wife and is going to the Himalayas. Isn’t that
wonderful!” It is not the least great. Ask any husband. He is only too happy to go to the Himalayas.
Maybe he is unable to go, but that is a different matter.
Mulla Nasruddin ran to the local lunatic asylum and knocked at the door. When the superintendent
asked him what the matter was he said, ”Has any lunatic escaped from your asylum!”
The superintendent wondered, ”Why do you ask? Have you seen someone running?”
”Someone has run off with my wife,” said the Mulla. ”He must be some crazy man who has escaped
from here.”
Ask any husband. Whoever lives in the world has no end and to his tales of woe. He cannot escape
for he can see no joy anywhere. Where is he to go? Wherever he goes, the world follows him like
a shadow. Besides, with great expectations he has made a place for himself in the world now it is
difficult tom destroy it, for then life becomes meaningless.
Seek out the attachments. Try gradually to live without the things that you now think you cannot live
without. Create such a state within yourself that if and when these things are lost, there is not the
slightest tremor within you. Then you will have attained victory over these attachments. This can be
possible. It has been possible. And if it has happened to even one, it can happen to all.
The Great Path 99 Osho