The Empty Boat - Osho.pdf - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 9. MEANS AND ENDS
extrovert; you are involved with the world and you cannot listen to the inner noise that goes on. Your
mind is not there.
The noise is continuously there but you cannot hear it, you are occupied. But whenever you close
your eyes and look within, the madhouse opens. You can see and feel and hear, and then you
become afraid and scared. What is happening? And you thought that through meditation you would
become more silent! And this is happening – just the opposite!
In the beginning it is bound to happen because a wrong base has been given to you. The whole
society, your parents, your teachers, your universities, your culture, have given you a wrong base.
You have already been corrupted, your source is poisoned. That is the problem – how to depoison
you. It takes time, and one of the most difficult things is to get rid of all that you have known, to
unlearn.
Says Chuang Tzu:
WHERE CAN I FIND A MAN
WHO HAS FORGOTTEN WORDS?
HE IS THE ONE
I WOULD LIKE TO TALK TO.
Only a sage is worth talking to. Only a sage is worth listening to. Only a sage is worth living with.
What is a sage? An empty boat – no words inside, the empty sky without the clouds. No sound, no
noise, nobody mad, no chaos within, a continuous harmony, equilibrium, balance. He lives as if he
is not. He is as if he is absent. He moves, but nothing moves within him. He talks, but the inner
silence is there. It is never disturbed; he uses words, but those words are only vehicles – through
those words he is sending you something which is beyond words. And if you catch and grab the
words, you will miss.
When you listen to a sage, don’t listen to his words; they are secondary, they are superficial, they
are only peripheral. Listen to him, don’t listen to his words. When the words reach you, just put
them aside, as the traveler will do who has crossed the sea – he leaves the boat there and goes on.
Leave the boat there and go on. If you carry the boat, you are mad. Then your whole life will become
a burden, you are burdened by the boat. A boat is not to be carried on the head. Feel grateful, that
is okay, but carrying the boat on your head is too much.
How many boats are you carrying on your head? Your whole life has become static because of the
weight. You cannot fly, you cannot float, because you are carrying such a dead burden, not only
from one life, this life, but from many lives. You go on collecting all that is useless, futile. Why does
this happen? There must be some deep reason, otherwise everybody would not be doing it.
Why does it happen? In the first place, you think the word is the reality – the word god is God, the
word love is love – the word is real. The word is NOT the real. You have to make a distinction, a
The Empty Boat 158 Osho