Selected Quotes from Osho "The True Name" pg. 492-499

Selected Quotes from Osho “The True Name” pg. 492 - 499

One Truth

“Always remember: truth is only one, not many; untruths are infinite, countless.  Only the one is worth attaining; the untold others are only worth discarding.  It is like a children’s maze with many, many paths, but only one exit; the paths all look as if they lead somewhere, but ultimately they arrive at a dead end.”

This quote goes hand and hand with Bruce Lee’s teaching of the Martial Arts being similar to creating a sculpture.  The sculpture starts off as a block of clay, you shed away the unessential until the truth is revealed.  Within the Martial Arts, it is the same thing.  There are thousands of ways and systems, you need to shed away the unessential to discover the truth.  There is only one truth. 

The Need for a Guru

“Life is such a puzzle.  Whereas children’s puzzles are small and contained on a single piece of paper, life’s puzzle is endless.  It has no beginning and no end; therefore the need for a guru.  If you try to solve life’s mystery and persist in walking on your own, you will wander for millions of lives.”

Discovering the way is not an easy process.  The guidance of a Master is necessary.  With the invention of the Internet, people think they can just go onto the internet to learn from anybody, this ultimately leads them astray, they go nowhere, there is no direction, there is confusion.  The Master eliminates this confusion, now instead of trying to follow thousands of people that are pointing in different directions, you simply just follow the Master to the source. 

The Expert Wanderer

“When we do something so many times we become quite efficient at it.  Then it doesn’t matter what the work is; you’ve become such an expert wanderer that even if you come across the right path you will shun it.”

If you were born into a style in the Martial Arts and it is not the true Way, you will be so efficient in the false that you will shun the real.  It is like the expert combat sport fighter who shuns the reality of real modern day combat.  If you were born into a religion and it is not a true religion, you will be so efficient in studying and expressing the false that you will shun the real.  When you invest so much of your life energy into something false, it is difficult to let it go, you will deny the truth in order to hold onto the false, because the false is what your life is grounded upon.  It is like Lance Armstrong in hiding behind a lie, he had to hold on very strong to his lie because his whole life was revolved around this lie, once the lie was exposed, it broke down his entire foundation, his whole life’s work. 

Worthless Respect

“Guru only means a person who has found the door and can stop you from wandering.  He will warn you from treading a path that may seem very attractive and very promising but is only a pseudo-path.  You may attain wealth – untold wealth, but what will you gain in the end?  Where will you reach?  You will find yourself smack against a wall.  What will you attain through position?  Ultimately you will find the path is lost.  Protect you reputation as you will, but what does it yield in the end?  Those who respect you have nothing themselves, so what will they give you?  What value is the opinion of worthless people?  From whom do you seek honor and respect – from those without eyes to see?  Even if they pay homage to you, what is the worth?  It is like a bubble; no sooner do you get it, it bursts into thin air.” 

The respect that you earn from strangers is false respect.  They respect you as long as you are speaking in accordance to what they want to hear from you.  If you speak against their ways, they will immediately turn against you.  The public knows how to bring someone up to fame and then turn against them and bring them back down in a hurry.  They did it to Michael Jackson, the did it with Bill Clinton, they did it to Tiger Woods, they did it to Tupac Shakur, etc.  All they do is mass market slander towards your name in order to bring you down in which to be shunned by society.  The public listens to whatever is marketed towards them, market the false, they will believe the false, market the truth they will believe the truth.  Gaining fame is like air inside a bubble, soon enough the bubble will disappear.  Fame is only momentary, soon enough the time will come when this fame will disappear. 

Passing Through Suffering

“Everyone passes through pain and sorrow, be he in the world or a sannyasin.  The worldly man weeps and wails and misses.  He who passes through suffering with full awareness, with the attitude of acceptance, makes his suffering a stepping stone and goes beyond suffering.  To practice restraint is to accept the suffering as the spiritual path.  One should not be vanquished by it, but on the contrary, make it a stepping stone and rise above it.”

Suffering is inevitable in this world.  When making love, it is pleasure and bliss for the woman, when giving birth the woman goes through suffering, when the baby is born, once again there is bliss.  It is a cycle, there cannot be happiness and bliss without suffering.  If you deeply understand this truth, you will learn to accept suffering with open arms knowing that just around the corner there will be much happiness and bliss. 

Patience

“When gold is thrown into the furnace, one has to exercise great patience.  He who is impatient fails; he who is patient is successful.  If you hurry, become impatient, it means you have not accepted suffering and are eager to be done with it.  In that case you have not understood the glory of suffering.  You do not know that as you suffer you are being cleansed and purified and absolved from all that is worth less and useless.  You have not recognized suffering as a friend yet.  It is only at that point that you attain to self-restraint.  He who recognizes suffering as a friend is in no hurry.  He can maintain his patience, and God is attained only through patience – infinite patience.  To attain God is not a paltry thing to be instantly attained.” 

“The baser pleasure of this life are quickly attainable, but they vanish as quickly.  Remember the equation: the quicker attained, the earlier lost.  If you want to attain God you will have to practice infinite patience.” 

This modern society lacks patience.  Technology has trained the people to be impatient.  People ware not willing to wait for real home cooked meals, they just eat fast food.  People do not want for animals to grow naturally, they inject them with steroids to grow faster.  Humans don’t want to exercise naturally, they wish to inject steroids and other drugs to speed up the process of muscle growth.  People are not out looking for love, they are only guided by feelings of lust.  There is no commitment to jobs, people are changing occupations constantly.  There is no commitment to relationships, people are changing partners constantly.  Everywhere you look, there is no patience.  Only those who learn patience will discover God.

“And remember another fact: the more patiently you observe, the earlier you attain.  The more you rush the later you attain.  You are the cause of the delay.  Why does this happen?  Because the more patient you are, the deeper inside  you go.  Impatience is characteristic of a shallow person; it is a sign of childishness.”

This must be thoroughly understood for the Martial Arts.  A Master in the Martial Arts is not developed over night, not even in 5 years, not even in 10 years, not even in 20 years.  Think about how long it takes for a child to develop into a wise sage.  Bruce Lee died at age 32 and that was just the beginning of this expression of being a Master of the Martial Arts.  Training for over 30 years every single day is not the same as training for 1 year every single day.  Patience is the key towards excellence. 

“You must have noticed the patience and tranquility of the villager.  The city shopkeeper has little patience.  The further into the country side you go, the more peaceful and tranquil they are, because they have learned to be very patient with nature.  You plant the seeds today, but you can’t gather the harvest tomorrow.  Long association with nature and observing the law of patience, and they become tranquil.  But he who wishes to reap the harvest of the infinite must sow and toil in the field of God.”

The closer you are to the city, the farther away from the Tao.  The closer you are to nature, the closer you are to the Tao.  You can notice the different attitudes between people who live in the city and people who live outside of the city.  The city is representing the Ego, nature is representing meditation.  Learning the Art of patience is the key towards your development. 

Borrowed Knowledge

“We can use our intellect in two ways.  We have already made use of it as a knapsack, but not as an anvil.  We fill it with information, just as a ragman fills his bag.  We hear scriptures and listen to satgurus.  Whatever we get, no matter what its source, we dump into this bag, this beggar’s sack.  It contains everything: scriptures, masters’ teachings, newspapers, Vedas, radio advertisements, movie songs.  If someone abuses you, you tuck away the abuse in the sack.  If someone gives you a mantra to recite, you store it there.  Your mind is a sac in which the mantra mingles with foul words.  Vedas are lost in everyday news.  And such a bag we constantly drag behind us.”

“This we call memory.  It is not knowledge, just rubbish.  Genuine knowledge is that which is attained from our own experience.  The intellect is filled with borrowed knowledge; everything is stale.  Nanak says, however, that intellect is the anvil and knowledge is the hammer.” 

When you experience truth, you know, there is nothing to prove because you already know. 

Real Knowledge

“Nanak says knowledge is the blow of the hammer.  Whenever you attain knowledge, howsoever infinitesimal, every hair of your body trembles with its impact.  This is why we avoid knowledge, because we don’t’ want to bear the shcok of it.  Instead we merely gather information, because this gives no shock.  You read in the shastras, “God is the ultimate truth.”  What shock is there in that?  You read, “Meditation is the way.”  You have learned it by heart; you even tell it to others.  What impact does it have?”

“Real knowledge carries an impact; it is born out of life’s experience, the friction of life.  When you take a jump into existence, knowledge is born – not through scriptures and words.  Experience is a blow, so we try to avoid it to save ourselves.”

“Gurdjieff used to compare our knowledge with he buffers of a train or the spring of a car.  Both are shock absorbers.  When there is an impact they absorb the shcok, whereas authentic knowledge is a shock in itself.” 

Real knowledge shocks an individual.  It is so shocking that it shakes their entire being, it shakes their entire foundation.  When you encounter knowledge that is so real, you can never see things the same way ever again.  Before the masses used to think that the sun revolved around the earth, it was a Galileo that proved otherwise, that the earth revolved around the sun.  The masses could not accept this truth so they put him under house arrest.