When the Shoe Fits - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 6. SYMPHONY FOR A SEABIRD
OUGHT IT NOT TO SWIM ON RIVER AND POND, FEED ON EELS AND FISH, FLY IN
FORMATION WITH OTHER WATER FOWL, AND REST IN THE REEDS?
BAD ENOUGH FOR A SEA BIRD TO BE SURROUNDED BY MEN AND FRIGHTENED BY THEIR
VOICES. THAT WAS NOT ENOUGH! THEY KILLED IT WITH MUSIC.
Everybody is being killed by music. That music comes out of good wishing, the well-wishers, the dogooders.
The whole thing seems to be so absurd and insane. If you plant one thousand trees and
only one comes to flower and nine hundred and ninety nine die, will anybody call you a gardener?
Will anybody give you any credit for the one tree that has flowered? They will say it must have
flowered in spite of you because you killed nine hundred and ninety-nine. You cannot take credit
for the one, it must have escaped somehow! It must have escaped your skill, your experience, your
wisdom. In millions of men one becomes a Buddha and flowers. What is happening? Why do many
trees have to live without flowers? And look at a tree when there are no flowers and flowers never
come. What sadness settles on the tree. It cannot laugh; it cannot sing; it cannot dance. Flowers are
needed to dance. How can you dance? Even if I say to you, ’Dance!’ how can you dance? Because
dance is an overflowing delight, such an overflowing that every cell of the body starts dancing, you
become a dancing cosmos. But how can you? The energy is not flowing, there is no energy coming.
You are somehow carrying yourself, dragging yourself. How can you dance? Flowers come when
the tree has so much that it can give. Flowers are a gift, they are a sharing. The tree is saying to the
whole universe: I am more than I need. It is a song. The tree is saying: Now I move into the world
of luxury. My needs are fulfilled. The tree has more than it needs – then flowering happens.
And you are so discontented, you don’t have even as much as you need. How can you dance? How
can you sing? How can you meditate?
Meditation is the ultimate flowering, the ecstasy that comes only when you are overflowing in a
flood, when you have so much energy that you cannot sit, you can only dance; when you have so
much energy that you cannot do anything but share and invite guests to share your energy and your
delight, your singing and your dancing.
It happened that one of my university teachers came to see me. He said: You must remember that
I was your teacher. So I told him: Yes, I remember. How can I forget? It is in spite of you that I am
whatsoever I am. You could not succeed with me. You tried and I will always feel thankful towards
you that you failed. You couldn’t succeed.
He really loved me and he tried in every way to force me into the academic world. He loved me so
much and he cared so much about me that whenever there would be an examination, in the morning
he would come with his car and take me to the examination hall, because he was always afraid that
I may not go or that I may be meditating. Before examinations he would come to tell me: read this,
read this, read this. This is coming up, because I am the paper-setter. And again and again he
would remind me: Have you read that or not? And know well that I am the paper setter and that is
coming up. He was always afraid that I wouldn’t listen to him.
He loved me. Your parents also loved you, your teachers also loved you, but they are unconscious,
they don’t know what they are doing. Even though they love you something goes wrong, and that
something is that they try to give you something according to themselves. He wanted me to become
When the Shoe Fits 88 Osho