Osho – Ego, The only Sin…

I am on a discourse binge.

I listen to a discourse of Osho’s everyday. And everyday I am deeply grateful to technology. It is technology that has made Osho’s discourses, a very personal affair. I download the discourses from the Oshoworld website, put on my headphones and start walking. Osho is literally speaking just to me !! What a blessing. I also wonder why I didn’t start doing this earlier. So long as I was driving to work, I had several CD’s of his discourses and they would keep playing throughout the drive.

Now he speaks into my ear and hopefully something reaches my being.

This excerpt is from discourse number 3 in the series titled “And The Flowers Showered”. These are discourses on different Zen masters. I have taken the excerpt from this website – Osho And The Flowers Showered.

Over to the Master –

“…. A sinner can reach the truth more easily than a scholar, because a sinner feels deep down that he is guilty, he can repent, and he feels he has done something wrong. You cannot find a sinner who is basically happy.

He feels the guilt; he has done something wrong and he repents in the unconscious; he wants to undo whatsoever he has done to bring about the balance in his life, and some day or other he will bring the balance. But if you are a scholar, a man of words, theories and philosophies, a great pundit, then it is difficult, because you never feel guilt about your scholarship, you feel happy and egoistic about it.

Remember one thing: whatsoever gives you a feeling of ego is a barrier; whatsoever gives you a feeling of egolessness is the Way.

Valmiki’s story

If you are a sinner and you feel guilty, that means your ego is shaken. Through sin you cannot accumulate ego. It has happened many times that a sinner has taken the jump in a moment and has become a saint. It happened to Valmiki, an Indian saint, the first to tell the story of Rama. Valmiki was a robber and a murderer, and in a single moment the transformation happened. It has never happened like that to any pundit ever — and India is a great country of pundits: the brahmins, the scholars.

You cannot compete with Indian scholars — they have a long heritage of thousands of years, and they have lived on words and words and words. But it has never happened that a scholar in a single moment took a jump, exploded, was broken from the past and became totally new. It has never happened that way.

But it has happened many times with sinners, in a single moment, because deep down they were never able to make arrangements in their ego with whatsoever they were doing. Whatsoever they were doing was ego-shattering — and ego is the wall, the stone wall.

If you feel you are a moralist, a puritan, you will create a subtle ego. If you think you are a knower, you will create a subtle ego. Remember, there is no sin except the ego, so don’t accumulate it. and it is always accumulated through false things, because real things always shatter it. If you REALLY know, the ego disappears; if you don’t know, it accumulates and becomes bigger and bigger and stronger.

If you are really a pure man, a religious man, ego disappears, but if you are a puritan, a moralist, then ego is strengthened.

This should always be the criterion to judge whether whatsoever you are doing is good or wrong: judge it by the ego. If ego is strengthened, then it is wrong. Drop it as soon as you can, drop it immediately! If ego is not strengthened, it is good.

If you go to the temple every day, or to church every Sunday, and you feel ego is strengthened, don’t go to church — stop. Don’t go to the temple, it is not helping you, it is a poison. If you feel by going to church that you are religious, you are something extraordinary, greater, purer than others, holier-than-thou, if this attitude comes to you, holier-than-thou, then drop it, because this attitude is the only sin in the world that exists.

All else is child’s play. This is the only sin — this attitude of holier-than-thou….”

………………………….. end of excerpt ………………………………..

This is not to say that all of us should become sinners in the hope that we will become Sage Valmiki :):). That would be a dumb thing to do. Osho emphasizes on awareness because nearly all of us sleepwalk through life and Osho is trying to shake us awake. Also what are we focussing on in life? Things, wealth and power. We spend all our time in acquiring these three things. Maybe we should spend some time on self-evaluation and become more self-aware.

Thank You Master.

Do read my earlier post – Osho – Everything exists in “Relation”