The Empty Boat - Osho.pdf - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 7. THREE FRIENDS
He said, ”My wife has insisted that I stop gambling, smoking, drinking, playing cards. I have stopped
all of them.”
So the man said, ”Your wife must be very happy now.”
Nasruddin said, ”That is the problem. Now she cannot find anything to complain about, so she is
very unhappy. She starts talking, but she cannot find anything to complain about. Now she cannot
make me responsible for anything and I have never seen her so unhappy. I thought that when I gave
up all these things she would cheer up, but she has become more unhappy than ever.”
If you go on throwing responsibility onto others and they all do whatsoever you tell them to do, you
will end up committing suicide. Eventually there will be nowhere left to throw your responsibilities.
So it is good to have a few faults; it helps others to be happy. If there is a really perfect husband, the
wife will leave him. How can you dominate a perfect man? So even if you don’t want to, go on doing
something wrong so the wife can dominate you and feel happy!
Where there is a perfect husband there is bound to be divorce. Find a perfect man and you will
all be against him, because you cannot condemn, you cannot say anything wrong about him. Our
minds love to throw responsibility onto somebody else. Our minds want to com-plain. It makes us
feel good, because then we are not responsible, we are unburdened. But this unburdening is very
costly. You are not really unburdened, you are getting more and more burdened. Only you are not
alert.
People have lived for seventy years, and for many many lives, without knowing what life is. They
were not mature, they were not integrated, they were not centered. They lived on the periphery.
If your periphery meets the other’s periphery a clash happens, and if you go on being concerned
that the other person is wrong, you remain on the periphery. Once you realize, ”I am responsible for
my being; whatsoever has happened, I am the cause, I have done it,” suddenly your consciousness
shifts from the periphery to the center. Now you become, for the first time, the center of your world.
Now much can be done...because whatsoever you don’t like, you can drop; whatsoever you like, you
can adopt; whatsoever you feel is true, you can follow, and whatsoever you feel is untrue, you need
not follow, because you are now centered and rooted in yourself.
One friend asked:
”CAN MEN LIVE TOGETHER AND KNOW NOTHING OF IT,
WORK TOGETHER AND PRODUCE NOTHING?
CAN THEY FLY AROUND IN SPACE
AND FORGET TO EXIST, WORLD WITHOUT END?”
THE THREE FRIENDS LOOKED AT EACH OTHER....
The Empty Boat 127 Osho