The Empty Boat - Osho.pdf - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 8. THE USELESS
life completely filled with work. Whenever you start doing something the first thing that comes to the
mind is, what is the use of it? If there is some use, you do it.
Sartre sets one of his stories in the coming century, the twenty-first. A very rich man says, ”Love is
not for me, it is only for poor people. As far as I am concerned my servants can do it.”
Of course, why should a Ford go and waste time loving a woman? A cheap servant can do that.
Ford’s time is more valuable. He should put it to some greater use.
It is possible! Looking at the human mind as it is, it is possible that in the future only servants will
make love. When you can depute a servant, why bother yourself? When everything is thought of
in terms of economics, when a Ford, a Rockefeller can make so much better use of their time, why
should they go and waste their time with a woman? They can send a servant, that will be less
trouble.
It looks absurd to us hearing this but it has already happened in many dimensions of life. You never
play, your servants do that. You are never an active participant in any fun, others do it for you. You go
to see a football match: others are doing it and you are just watching – you are a passive spectator,
not involved. You go to a movie to see a film, and others are making love, creating war, violence –
everything; you are just a spectator in the seat. It is so useless you need not bother to do it. Anyone
else can do it, you can just watch. Work YOU do, fun others do for you. Then why not love? Using
the same logic, somebody else will do it.
Life seems meaningless because the meaning consists of a balance between the useful and the
useless. You have denied the useless completely. You have closed the door. Now only the useful is
there and you are burdened too much by it.
It is a sign of success that if by the age of forty you get ulcers, it shows that you are successful.
If you have passed forty and are now fifty and still the ulcers have not appeared, you are a failure.
What have you been doing all your life? You must have been wasting time.
By fifty you really ought to have your first heart attack. Now scientists have calculated that by forty
a successful man must have ulcers, by fifty the first heart attack. By sixty he is gone – and he never
lived. There was no time to live. He had so many more important things to do, there was no time to
live.
Look all around you, look at successful people; politicians, rich men, big industrialists – what is
happening to them? Don’t look at the things they possess, look at them directly, because if you look
at the things you will be deceived. Things don’t have ulcers, cars don’t have heart attacks, houses
are not hospitalized. Don’t look at things, otherwise you will be deceived. Look at the person bereft
of all his possessions, look directly at him and then you will feel the poverty. Then even a beggar
may be a rich man. Then even a poor man may be richer as far as life is concerned.
Success fails, and nothing fails like success, because the man who succeeds is losing his grip on life
– on everything. The man who succeeds is really bargaining, throwing away the real for the unreal,
throwing away inner diamonds for colored pebbles on the shore; collecting the pebbles, losing the
diamonds.
The Empty Boat 145 Osho