The Empty Boat - Osho.pdf - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 2. THE MAN OF TAO
Baal Shem’s disciples used to write down whatsoever he said, and Baal Shem used to say: I know
that whatsoever you are writing is not what has been said by me. You have heard one thing, I have
said something else, and you are writing still something else. And if you look at the meaning, the
meaning is something else again. You will never do what you have written, you will do something
else – fragments, not an integrated being.
Why are these fragments there?
Have you heard the story about the centipede? A centipede was walking along on his one hundred
legs – that is why he is called a centipede. It is a miracle to walk with a hundred feet, even to manage
two is so difficult! To manage one hundred legs is really almost impossible. But the centipede has
been managing to do it!
A fox became curious – and foxes are always curious. The fox is the symbol in folklore of the mind,
of the intellect, of logic. Foxes are great logicians.The fox looked, she observed, she analyzed, she
couldn’t believe it. She said, ”Wait! I have a question. How do you manage, and how do you know
which foot has to follow which? One hundred legs! You walk so smoothly. How does this harmony
happen?”
The centipede said, ”I have been walking all my life but I have never thought about it. Give me a little
time.”
So he closed his eyes and for the first time he became divided: the mind as observer, and himself as
the observed. For the first time the centipede became two. He had always been living and walking,
and his life was one whole; there was no observer standing looking at himself, he was never divided,
he had been an integrated being. Now, for the first time, division arose. He was looking at his own
self, thinking. He had become subject and object, he had become two, and then he started walking.
It was difficult, almost impossible. He fell down – because how do you manage one hundred legs?
The fox laughed and he said, ”I knew it must be difficult, I knew it beforehand.”
The centipede started crying and weeping. With tears in his eyes he said, ”It has never been difficult
before, but you have created the problem. Now I will never be able to walk again.”
The mind has come into being; it comes into being when you are divided. The mind feeds on
division. That is why Krishnamurti keeps saying that when the observer has become the observed
you are in meditation.
The opposite happened to the centipede. The wholeness was lost, he became two: the observer
and the observed, divided; the subject and the object, the thinker and the thought. Then everything
was disturbed, then bliss was lost and the flow stopped. Then he got frozen.
Whenever the mind comes in, it comes as a controlling force, a manager. It is not the master, it is
the manager. And you cannot get to the master unless this manager is put aside.The manager won’t
allow you to reach the master, the manager will always be standing in the doorway managing. And
all managers only mismanage – mind has done such a great job of mismanaging.
The Empty Boat 31 Osho