The Empty Boat - Osho.pdf - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 5. THREE IN THE MORNING
A man of understanding always looks at objective conditions, never at his subjective feelings. When
the monkeys said no, if you had been the monkey trainer you would have felt offended. These
monkeys were trying to rebel, they were being disobedient, this could not be toler-ated. It would
have hurt you inside.
You get angry even at dead things. If you are trying to open the door and it resists, you get mad. If
you are trying to write a letter and the pen is not functioning well, smoothly, you get angry. You feel
hurt, as if the pen is doing it knowingly, as if there is someone in the boat. You even feel somebody
is there in the pen trying to disturb you.
And this is not only the logic of small children, this is your logic also. If a child bumps into a table, he
will hit it just to right the wrong, and he will always be an enemy of that table. But you are the same
– with dead things, with objects, you also get angry, you get mad!
This is subjective, and a wise man is never subjective. A wise man always looks at the objective
conditions. He will look at the door, and if it is not open, then he will try to open it. But he cannot get
angry with it because the boat is empty. There is nobody there trying to shut the door, resisting your
efforts.
In order to meet objective conditions the trainer changed his personal arrangement. He looked at
the monkeys and their minds, he didn’t feel offended – he was a monkey trainer, not a monkey. He
looked and he must have laughed within, because he knew the total. And he yielded. Only a wise
man yields. A foolish man always resists. Foolish people say it is better to die than to bend, better
to break than to bend.
Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu always say: When there is a strong wind the foolish egoistic trees resist
and die, and the wise grass bends. The storm goes by and again the grass stands straight, laughing
and enjoying. The grass is objective, the big tree is subjective. The big tree thinks so much of
himself: ”I am somebody, who can bend me? Who can force me to yield?” The big tree will fight with
a storm. It is foolish to fight with the storm, because the storm has not come for you. It is nothing
special, the storm is simply passing and you are there, it is coincidental.
Monkeys are animals and think themselves very superior animals! They are not offending the
monkey trainer. Monkeys are just monkeys. That is the way they are. They cannot look at the
total, they cannot add up. They can look only at the near, not at the far – the far is too far for them.
It is impossible for them to conceive of the evening, they only know about the morning.
So monkeys are monkeys, storms are storms. Why get offended? They are not fighting you. They
are only following their own ways, their own habits. So the monkey trainer was not offended. He
was a wise man, he yielded, he was just like the grass. Remember this when-ever you start feeling
subjective. If somebody says something, immediately you feel hurt, as if it has been said to you.
You are in the boat too much. It may not have been said to you at all. The other may be expressing
his or her subjectivity.
When somebody says, ”You have insulted me,” what is really meant is something else. If he had
been a little more intelligent he would have said it the other way around. He would be saying, ”I feel
insulted. You may not have insulted me, but whatsoever you have said, I feel insul-ted.” This is a
subjective feeling.
The Empty Boat 96 Osho