The Empty Boat - Osho.pdf - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 10. WHOLENESS
Then suddenly there arose a storm and the small boat was far from the shore. At any moment it
would sink. Asked Nasruddin, ”Schoolmaster, do you know how to swim?”
The man was very afraid, perspiring. He said, ”No.”
Said Nasruddin, ”Then your WHOLE life has been wasted. I am going!”
Now, this boat cannot go to the other shore. But people think learning can become a boat, or
learning can become a substitute for swimming. No! Can scriptures become boats? No, they are
too heavy. You can drown with them but you cannot cross the river. Unlearning will make you
weightless; unlearning will make you innocent again.
When you don’t know, in that not knowing what happens? The most beautiful phenomenon.... The
greatest ecstasy happens when you don’t know – there is a silence when you don’t know. Someone
asks a question and you don’t know. Life is a riddle, and you don’t know. Everywhere is mystery and
you are standing there not knowing, wondering. When you don’t know there is wonder, and wonder
is the most religious quality. The deepest religious quality is wonder. Only a child can wonder. A
man who knows cannot wonder, and without wonder no one has ever reached the divine. It is the
wondering heart to which everything is a mystery...a butterfly is a mystery, a seed sprouting is a
mystery.
And remember, nothing has been solved: all your science has done nothing. The seed sprouting is
still a mystery and it is going to remain a mystery. Even if science can create the seed, the sprouting
will remain a mystery. A child is born; it is a mystery that is born. Even if the child can be produced
in a test-tube, it makes no difference. The mystery remains the same.
You are here. It is such a mystery. You have not earned it, you cannot say to the universe, ”I am
here because I have earned it.” It is a sheer gift, you are here for no reason at all. If you were not
here, what difference would it make? If you were not here, to what court could you appeal?
This sheer existence, this breathing that goes in and out, this moment that you are here, listening
to me, to the breeze, to the birds, this moment that you are alive, is such a mystery. If you can face
it without any knowledge you will enter into it. If you face it with knowledge and you say, ”I know, I
know the answer,” the doors are closed – not because of the mystery, the doors are closed because
of your knowledge, your theories, your philosophy, your theology, your Christianity, your Hin-duism
– they close the door.
A man who thinks he knows does not know. The Upanishads go on saying that a man who thinks
that he does not know, knows. Says Socrates: When a man really knows, he knows only one thing,
that he does not know. Chuang Tzu says: It is because he has unlearned. Whatsoever the world
taught him, whatsoever society taught him, whatsoever parents and the utilitarians taught him, he
has dropped. He has again become a child, a small child. His eyes are again filled with wonder. He
looks all around and everywhere is mystery.
Ego kills the mystery. Whether it is the ego of a scientist or whether it is the ego of a scholar or of
a philosopher, makes no difference. The ego says, ”I know.” And the ego says, ”If I don’t know now,
then sooner or later I will come to know.” The ego says that there is nothing un-knowable.
The Empty Boat 183 Osho