When the Shoe Fits - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 7. AUTUMN FLOODS
This is a rose. The mystery is lost, now there is an answer, now the child knows. What absurdity!
Now you will say the child is growing in knowledge. But just the opposite is the case.
Before you told him what was what, he knew, but he knew with his totality. It was not knowledge,
it was experiencing. But then you thought he was ignorant. Now you think he knows because he
carries a word in his mind. The word ’rose’ is not rose, the word ’God’ is not God, the word ’love’
is not love. But we go on accumulating these words. And then there are clever minds who arrange
these words into interpretations, theories and arguments. And the more argumentative, the more
theoretical you become, the further you move from the rose.
Then even echoes become impossible: nothing comes to you, you never go to anything – you simply
live in the mind, arranging words.
I have heard an anecdote: Three Jews were going for a morning walk. They were friends, old
friends, discussing many things. Then they saw the mayor’s big car pass by and the mayor waved
his hand and said: Hello! Now there was trouble. The first one said: Don’t get so happy; he said
’hello’ to me – and he has to. The two asked: What do you mean? The first one said: I have taken
ten thousand dollars from him; I borrowed the money, and for two years he has been waiting and
waiting. He had to say ’hello’ to me.
The other one said: You are wrong, the ’hello’ was said to me – and he had to. The reason is that
I have lent him ten thousand dollars. He owes money to me and he is always afraid of me. The
moment he sees me, he gets scared – he has to.
The third laughed and the two others turned to him and said: What do you mean? Why are you
laughing? He said: He had to say ’hello’ to me, not to you – there you are both wrong. He neither
owes money to me nor do I owe money to him. Why shouldn’t he give me a clean ’hello’? Once
you start looking at reality through the mind then everything becomes a problem; then the ego start
interpreting and then you have only interpretations. You may have proofs for them, and those proofs
may look reasonable, but only to you, not to anybody else – because it is your ego that gives those
interpretations. And you get more and more fixed in your interpretations because you have invested
so much in them.
If somebody says something which goes against Christianity, a Christian feels hurt. If somebody
says something against Hinduism, a Hindu feels hurt. Why? If you are really a truth seeker, as
religious people say they are, why should you get hurt? You should enquire – he may be right. But
the ego is involved. It is not a question of Hinduism being right or wrong, it is a question of you being
right or wrong. How can you be wrong? If you are wrong, then your image starts shaking – you
cannot be wrong. Then for small things, very small things, you start fighting and arguing. But the
real fight, the basis of all fight, is that you are fighting against life. With your answers you are trying
to conquer life; with your theories you are trying to manipulate life. And you think that if you know
the theories then you will be the master.
Through knowledge you strengthen your ego. So if somebody says there is no knowledge through
the mind the ego simply becomes deaf. It never listens to it because it is dangerous. The mind says:
This is also a theory. The mind says: Even anti-philosophy is a philosophy, even Chuang Tzu is a
philosopher. Then everything is settled and you move again into your interpretations. But remember,
Chuang Tzu is not a philosopher – neither am I.
When the Shoe Fits 94 Osho