During my morning walk yesterday, I listened to Osho’s discourses on the 42 sutras of Buddha compiled as “The Discipline of Transcendence”. The following excerpts on Mind and Reality is from Discourse No. 2, Volume 4. If you wish to read the entire transcript click here. If you wish to listen to Osho’s discourse click here.
Mind & Reality
“…….. Reality never comes as a problem; it is only the ideas about reality that create the problem.”
“….. There is an old fable….
Darkness approached God and said, “Enough is enough! Your sun goes on haunting me, chasing me. I can never rest; wherever I go to rest he is there, and I have to run away again. And I have not done any wrong to him. This is unjust.
And I have come to you to get justice.”
It was perfectly right; the complaint was true.
And God called the sun and asked the sun, “Why do you go on chasing this poor woman, darkness? What has she done to you?”
The sun said, “I don’t know her at all. I have never seen her. You just call her in front of me; only then can I say something. I don’t remember ever having done any wrong to her, because I don’t know her. We are not familiar. Nobody has ever introduced us to each other, we are not even acquainted. It is for the first time from you that I am hearing about this woman, this darkness. You call her!”
The case remains pending – because God could not call darkness before the sun.
They cannot exist together, they cannot encounter each other. When darkness is, the sun cannot be; when the sun is, the darkness cannot be.
Exactly the same is the relationship between mind and reality: the psychology is the problem, the reality never is a problem. You just dissolve your psychological problems – and they are dissolved by dissolving the center of them all: the ego.
Once you don’t think yourself separate from existence, problems simply evaporate, as dewdrops disappear in the morning when the sun rises, not even leaving a trace behind. They simply disappear.”
“…..Psychological problems are the only problems. You can become paranoid, you can become split, you can become paralyzed because of fear – but this is nothing to do with reality.
You see a blind man walking on the road perfectly well; blindness in itself is not the problem. You can see beggars – their legs broken, their hands gone, and still laughing, still gossiping with each other, still talking about women, making remarks, singing a tune. Just watch life: life is never a problem. Man has tremendous capacity to adjust to the fact, but man has no capacity to adjust to the future. Once you try to protect yourself and secure yourself in the future, then you will be in a turmoil, in a chaos.”
As I listened to the discourse I was wondering if man’s capacity to see reality is further diminished in today’s world as we have an information overload. News headlines flashing constantly, Social media putting out messages relentlessly and now with Artificial Intelligence added to the mix, isn’t it nearly impossible to stick to reality ?
Everything in the news, in magazines and on the internet is about the future – a better tomorrow as if today is terrible. It’s also all about money and securing the future. No wonder we are frazzled and forever under stress. This is not to say, you never think of the future. That’s only possible if we become a Buddha or at least get on the path.
For normal Buddha-in-the-making folks like all of us, the best we can do is slow down, take in the information and stick to facts as much as possible. Guess that’s the first few steps … till “here and now” becomes the only reality.
Thank you Master. 🙏🏿