Osho on
Aloneness and Loneliness
Osho - Meditation is the
art of enjoying your aloneness, the art of transforming loneliness into
aloneness, solitariness into solitude.
Ordinarily you are not alone, you are lonely and of course loneliness is a state
of misery. There is a
constant hankering to be with the other, to be together. The lonely person is
constantly asking for love. Asking simply means that he is not at ease with himself, he wants somebody else
to be occupied with. And
of course this kind of love is not true love.
If it is a need then there is a motive, if there is a need then it is
businesslike. The other is being used as a
commodity and the other is using you as a commodity; hence the continuous
conflict between lovers. Nobody wants to be reduced to a thing, nobody wants to be used as a moans. That
is a humiliation, it is a
great insult, it is disrespectful. But that's what lovers are doing, hence anger
arises. They are constantly at
each other's necks. Excuses may be different but the fundamental thing is that
both are incapable of being
alone. Out of that incapability they are trying to be together.
But if you cannot enjoy yourself in your aloneness you cannot enjoy yourself in
togetherness either.
Hence meditation is a first stop towards love. Andy means courageous, and great courage is needed to do this miracle. It is
almost a miracle. It is the
greatest change that can ever happen to a man: transforming loneliness into
aloneness, transforming the
negative into the positive, transforming darkness into light. But it is not
impossible -- difficult certainly,
arduous certainly, an uphill task, but not impossible. All that is needed is
courage to risk, to go into it. People are so afraid of being lonely that they never go into it, they never
allow it to happen in its totality
and that's why they go on missing. If they allow it to happen, if they penetrate
into it, if they make it an
adventure, an exploration, without any prejudgement about what it is ... because
how can you make any
judgement if you have not experienced it? So going with no notion, with no idea
of what it is, but just
entering into that space of aloneness, slowly slowly, one starts enjoying the
beauty of it, because it is the
most beautiful thing in existence. But we are constantly running away from it in every possible way -- thinking,
desiring, imagining, going
into the past, going into the future, visiting people, going to the clubs, to
the movies, sitting before that idiot
box called television for hours together, just somehow not facing the reality of
your aloneness. But one
cannot avoid it. Death will bring it to you because everything will be taken
away. And if you have not
learned the art in life what are you going to do when death takes the
television, the movie, clubs, lovers,
everything away from you and leaves you alone? That's why people die in misery,
otherwise death is the
ultimate culmination of joy. If you know how to enjoy your aloneness you have transformed death into
something totally different.
Then death will not come as a calamity, it will come as a blessing. The
meditator dies rejoicing. There is
dance inside his being because he already knows what it is to be alone, and what
a beauty it is and what a
benediction it is. Courage is a basic requirement to penetrate the innermost core of your
aloneness. And once you have
known the joy of being alone you can share it -- and that is love. Love is a
fragrance of the flower of
meditation. Without meditation is just an empty name, an empty word; it has no
meaning, no content. It
hides something else and not only something else but something totally opposite
to love: it hides lust.
So this has to be the work of every sannyasin, this is the work, to go into your
aloneness. Find moments
when you can be alone. There is no need to escape to a monastery or to the
mountains; one can find a few
hours every day. And the best thing is to find it in the world, amongst all
kinds of distractions, because then
nothing can destroy it. If you find it in the Himalayas when you come back to the world it will be
destroyed. It was something
contributed by the Himalayas, it was not something that has grown in you. It was
a gift of the Himalayan
peace. It was just a reflection in you, it was not really yours at all.
So my insistence is that my sannyasins have to live in the world and yet work
silently to create the space
within themselves where the whole world disappears, where one becomes profoundly
silent. Out of that
arises love. And when meditation and love are both there you have achieved your
destiny, you have fulfilled
the task given to you by god. And then naturally there is great contentment, the
joy that comes after
reaching a peak. Now you can rest, now you are at home, now you are at peace with existence.
Neither meditation alone
is enough nor is love alone enough; both are two aspects of the same coin and
for both courage is needed,
but the basic thing is meditation.
Begin with meditation and end in love. That defines the whole journey of sannyas.
Source - Osho Book "I Am Not As Thunk As You Drink I
Am"
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