Come Follow To You, Vol 1 - Oshorajneesh.com

five hundred days -- no. The plant used to double itself so half the pond wouldbe covered on the nine hundred ninety-ninth day and only one day would beleft. But that would not be sufficient time to cut the plant or to keep it to the half.And it happened. On the nine hundred ninety-ninth day the pond was halfcoveredand the man said -- he was not feeling very well, a little sick -- he said,"There is no hurry. I have waited nine hundred ninety-nine days and there wasno trouble. Now it is just a question of one more day. After one day I will do it."The next morning the whole pond was covered and all the trout were dead.This is the puzzle of life. It is a dilemma; one has to choose. If you go onaccumulating things and possessions, the plant is doubling on the pond. Everyday your things go on growing and your life is suffocated. Life looks too long --seventy years, eighty years. There is no hurry. People think, "When we reach tothe mid-point, we will change."People always wait for religion until they get old. People go on saying thatreligion is for old people. Go into the churches, into the temples, and you willfind old people -- just on the verge of death. Their one foot is already in thegrave: the nine hundred ninety-ninth day. The next morning, life is going to besuffocated. Then they start praying, then they start meditating, then they startthinking of what life is -- what is the meaning of existence? But then it is too late.Religion needs a deep urgency. If you postpone it, you will never be able tobecome religious. It has to be done right now. As it is you are already late, as it isyou have already wasted much time -- and wasted it in futile things, wasted it inthings that are going to be taken away from you.You have to pay for all those things, with life. Whatsoever you possess, you loselife for it. It is not cheap; it is very costly. One day you have many possessions,but you are no longer there. Things are there; the owner, dead. Great piles ofthings... but the one who wanted to live through them; no more.People go on preparing for life -- and they die before their preparation iscomplete. People prepare, and never live. To be religious is to live life, not toprepare for it. You are doing a very absurd thing: your rehearsal goes on and onand the real drama never starts.I have heard about a small drama company. They were rehearsing. The realdrama was getting postponed every day because the rehearsal was nevercomplete. One day the heroine was not there, another day some other actor wasnot there, one day something else happened -- the electricity failed or something-- and it went on being postponed. But the manager was happy for at least onething: that the hero of the drama had always been present, he had never beenabsent.The last rehearsal day he thanked the hero. He said, "You are the only personwho can be relied upon. All these other people are unreliable. You are the onlyone who has never been absent. Summer or winter, cold or hot, you have alwaysbeen here."Come Follow To You Vol 1Osho