From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 6. RENUNCIATION: MORTGAGE TODAY FOR A TOMORROW THAT NEVER COMES
This has been the situation for the poet, for the painter, for the musician, for the dancer – any creative
artist finds it easier not to get involved with women, or to get involved only casually, perhaps with
strangers. Perhaps traveling in a train he may become interested in a woman because there is no
fear – at the next station he is going to get out. Artists have told me that they get interested only
in strangers; they don’t know their name, they don’t want to know their name. The strangers don’t
know the artist’s name nor does he want them to know it – they remain strangers.
The fear is deep-rooted, and it has a reality of its own. And perhaps that is one of the causes
that women have never been creative: they could not afford to live alone in this society which is
absolutely man-made. A woman living alone is continually in danger. Only recently a few women
started their careers – as a novelist, as a poet, as a painter. This is because for the first time, just
in these last few years – and that too only in very few advanced, progressive, avant-garde places
– that a woman has been able to live independently, just like a man. Then they start painting, they
start composing poetry, music....
Women have all the talents but for millions of years their sex was their only creativity, and when the
whole sexual energy was involved in producing children.... You cannot imagine a woman having a
dozen children and composing music – or can you imagine it? Those twelve musical instruments
all around doing everything that is not right... and the woman can compose music or poetry or can
paint? Do you think those twelve painters will sit silently? – they will be painting before she paints!
It looks strange that poets are the least experienced people about women. Perhaps that’s why they
write about women – it is a perversion. Otherwise, why should poets write about women? – they
don’t have much experience, they are almost monks. Why do painters go on painting nude women?
Why do sculptors go on making marble statues of nude women? For what? This is all perversion!
It is better than collecting money or going into politics, but still it is a perversion. They are satisfying
their natural instinct in an unnatural way. So on the one hand they go on doing their painting, music,
poetry, and on the other hand they go on feeling that life is meaningless.
Artists feel the meaninglessness of life the most. It is strange: they write such beautiful poetry,
they paint such beautiful paintings, yet life is meaningless. Life is not meaningless for a clerk,
and it is meaningless for Jean-Paul Sartre, who wins the Nobel prize! It is not meaningless for a
schoolmaster who must be the most miserable person in the world – thirty children against one poor
man – but he is not feeling life to be meaningless.
In fact, the people who feel that life is meaningless are the people who have not moved naturally;
their natural energies have taken an artificial, arbitrary route. They will never feel meaningful. They
have moved away from life’s source.
Similarly, it is strange how monks are the most articulate against women, and they have no
experience about women at all. I have asked Hindu monks, Buddhist monks, Jaina monks, Christian
monks, ”What experience do you have of women? You speak against them, but more experience is
needed to speak against than in favor. What experience do you have?” And none of them could say
that they had any experience. I said, ”Then why do you go on speaking against them?”
Yes, the monks have one experience: the woman in their unconscious is continuously pulling them
down from their holier-than-thou pedestal. They are projecting their antagonism against that woman
From Ignorance to Innocence 74 Osho