The Empty Boat - Osho.pdf - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 7. THREE FRIENDS
THE THREE FRIENDS LOOKED AT EACH OTHER....
What happened in that look? They were not heads in that look, they became hearts. They looked at
each other, they felt, they tasted the question – and it was so real that there was no answer to it.
Yes, we live without knowing what life is. Yes, we live together without knowing what togetherness
is. Yes, we live, forgetting completely that we exist. We have been flying round and round in the sky
without knowing where we are going or why.
The question was so real that if any answer had been given, that answer would be foolish. Only a
fool would answer such a question. They looked at each other, they really looked into each other,
and burst out laughing. Why burst out laughing? The whole situation is so absurd. Really, we live
without knowing what life is; we exist without becoming aware of existence, we journey and journey
without knowing from where or to what or why.
Life is a mystery. Whenever you confront a mystery laughter will arise, for how can you answer a
mystery?
What is the most mysterious thing in you? Laughter is the most mysterious thing in you. No animal
can laugh, only man. It is the suprememost glory of man. No animal laughs, no trees laugh – only
man laughs. Laughter is the most mysterious element in man.
Aristotle defined man as the rational being. It is not a good definition because reason exists in other
animals also. The difference is only of degree, and it is not much. Man can only be defined as the
laughing and weeping animal, no other definition will do, because no other animal can weep, no
other animal can laugh. This polarity exists only in humanity. This is something mysterious, most
mysterious, in man.
Anger exists all over, it is nothing. Sex exists all over, it is nothing, it is not so mysterious. If you
want to understand sex, you can understand animal sex, and all that is applicable to animal sex will
be applicable to man. In that way man is nothing more.
Anger, violence, aggression, possessiveness, jealousy, everything exists and exists more purely
and simply in animals than in you. Everything is confused in you. That is why psychologists have to
study rats just to study man. They are simple, clear, less confused, and whatsoever they conclude
about rats is also true of you. All the psychology laboratories are filled with rats. It has become the
most important animal for psychologists because it is like the human in so many ways.
The rat is the only animal which follows humanity wherever it goes. It is universal. If you find a man in
Siberia, there will be a rat somewhere nearby. Wherever he goes, the rat follows – I suspect that rats
have already reached the moon. No other animal can exist everywhere like the rat. And its behavior
is absolutely human. Understand the behavior of the rat and you have understood humanity.
But the rat cannot laugh, the rat cannot weep. Laughter and weeping are two aspects of something
which exists only in man. If you want to understand laughter and weeping you have to study
humanity; there is no other way it can be studied. That is why I call it the most distinctive quality of
the human mind.
The Empty Boat 129 Osho