From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 16. LET’S NOT FACE IT – YOU’RE ABSOLUTELY ALONE
That calendar goes on moving, because in a two hour movie they have to cover many years... if the
calendar moves at the usual pace, you will be sitting in the movie hall for two years; who is going to
be able to afford that? No, the calendar just goes on moving, the dates go on changing, fast. It goes
even faster at the time of death. In a single moment the whole life flashes by, and stops at the first
moment. It is the same process that is happening again – life has come around full circle.
Why did I want you to remember this? – because your God is nothing but your first day’s fear which
goes on and on until the last moment, becoming bigger and bigger. That’s why when a person is
young he may be an atheist, he can afford to be, but as he grows older, to be an atheist becomes a
little difficult. If, when he is just coming close to his grave, one foot in the grave, you ask him, ”Are
you still an atheist?” he will say, ”I am having second thoughts” – because of fear... what is going to
happen? His whole world is disappearing.
My grandfather was not a religious man, not at all. He was closer to Zorba the Greek: eat, drink and
be merry; there is no other world, it is all nonsense. My father was a very religious man; perhaps it
was because of my grandfather – the reaction, the generation gap. But it was just upside down in
my family: my grandfather was an atheist and perhaps because of his atheism my father turned out
to be a theist. And whenever my father would go to the temple, my grandfather would laugh and he
would say, ”Again! Go on, waste your life in front of those stupid statues!”
I love Zorba for many reasons; one of the reasons was that in Zorba I found my grandfather again.
He loved food so much that he used to not trust anybody; he would prepare it himself. In my life I
have been a guest in thousands of families in India, but I have never tasted anything so delicious as
my grandfather’s cooking. And he loved it so much that every week it was a feast for all his friends
– and he would prepare the whole day.
My mother and my aunts and the servants and cooks – everybody was thrown out of the kitchen.
When my grandfather was cooking, nobody was to disturb him. But he was very friendly to me; he
allowed me to watch and he said, ”Learn, don’t depend on other people. Only you know your taste.
Who else can know it?”
I said, ”That is beyond me; I am too lazy, but I can watch. The whole day cooking? – I cannot do
it.” So I have not learned anything, but just watching was a joy – the way he worked, almost like a
sculptor or a musician or a painter. Cooking was not just cooking, it was art to him. And if anything
went just a little below his standard, he would throw it away immediately. He would cook it again,
and I would say, ”It is perfectly okay.”
He would say, ”You know it is not perfectly okay, it is just okay; but I am a perfectionist. Until it comes
up to my standard, I am not going to offer it to anybody. I love my food.”
He used to make many kinds of drinks... and whatsoever he did the whole family was against him:
they said that he was just a nuisance. He wouldn’t allow anybody in the kitchen, and in the evening
he gathered all the atheists of the town. And just to defy Jainism, he would wait till the sun set. He
would not eat before because Jainism says: eat before sunset; after sunset eating is not allowed.
He used to send me again and again to see whether the sun had set or not.
He annoyed the whole family. And they could not be angry with him – he was the head of the family,
the oldest man – but they were angry at me. That was easier. They said, ”Why do you go on coming
From Ignorance to Innocence 219 Osho