Between two thoughts try to be alert; look into the interval, the space in between. You will see no mind; that is your nature. For thoughts come and go – they are accidental – but that inner space always remains. Clouds gather and go, disappear – they are accidental – but the sky remains. You are the sky.
This is the definition of Atma – the sky which is always there. All that comes and goes is irrelevant; don’t be bothered by it, it is just smoke. The sky that remains eternally there never changes, never becomes different. Between two thoughts, drop into it; between two thoughts it is always there. Look into it and suddenly you will realize that you are in no-mind.
A Zen student came to Bankei and said: “Master, I have an ungovernable temper — how can I cure it?”
“Show me this temper,” said Bankei, “it sounds fascinating.”
“I haven’t got it right now,” said the student, “so I can’t show it to you.”
“Well then” said Bankei, “bring it to me when you have it.”
“But I can’t bring it just when I happen to have it,” protested the student. “It arises unexpectedly, and I would surely lose it before I got it to you.”
“In that case,” said Bankei, “it cannot be part of your true nature. If it were, you could show it to me at any time. When you were born you did not have it, and your parents did not give it to you — so it must come into you from the outside. I suggest that whenever it gets into you, you beat yourself with a stick until the temper can’t stand it, and runs away.”
THE TRUE NATURE IS your eternal nature. You cannot have it and not have it; it is not something that comes and goes – IT IS YOU. How can it come and go? It is your being. It is your very foundation. It cannot be sometimes, and not be sometimes; it is always there.
So, this should be the criterion for a seeker of truth, nature, tao: that we have to come to the point in our being which remains always and always — even before you were born it was there, and even when you are dead it will be there. It is the center. The circumference changes, the center remains absolutely eternal; it is beyond time. Nothing can affect it, nothing can modify it, nothing really ever touches it; it remains beyond all reach of the outside world.
Go to the sea and watch the sea. Millions of waves are there, but deep in its depth the sea remains calm and quiet, deep in meditation; the turmoil is just on the surface, just on the surface where the sea meets the outside world, the winds. Otherwise, in itself, it always remains the same, not even a ripple; nothing changes.
It is the same with you. Just on the surface where you meet others there is turmoil, anxiety, anger, attachment, greed, lust — just on the surface where winds come and touch you. And if you remain on the surface, you cannot change this changing phenomenon; it will remain there.
Many people try to change it there, on the circumference. They fight with it; they try not to let a wave arise. And through their fight even more waves arise, because when the sea fights with the wind there will be more turmoil: now not only will the wind help it, but the sea will also help — there will be tremendous chaos on the surface.
ALL THE MORALISTS try to change man on the periphery. Your character is the periphery: you don’t bring any character into the world, you come absolutely characterless, a blank sheet, and all that you call your character is written by others. Your parents, society, teachers, teachings — all are conditionings. You come as a blank sheet, and whatsoever is written on you comes from others; so unless you become a blank sheet again you will not know what nature is, you will not know what Brahma is, you will not know what tao is.
So, the problem is not how to have a strong character, the problem is not how to attain no-anger, how not to be disturbed — no, that is not the problem. The problem is how to change your consciousness from the periphery to the center. Then suddenly you see that you have always been calm. Then you can look at the periphery from a distance, and the distance is so vast, infinite, that you can watch as if it is not happening to you. In fact, it never happens to you. Even when you are completely lost in it, it never happens to you: something in you remains undisturbed, something in you remains beyond, something in you remains a witness.
SO, THE WHOLE PROBLEM for the seeker is how to shift his attention from the periphery to the center; how to be merged with that which is unchanging, and not to be identified with that which is just a boundary. On the boundary others are very influential, because on the boundary change is natural. The periphery will go on changing — even a buddha’s periphery changes.
The difference between a buddha and you is not a difference of character — remember this; it is not a difference of morality, it is not a difference in virtue or non-virtue, it is a difference in where you are grounded.
You are grounded on the periphery, a buddha is grounded in the center. He can look at his own periphery from a distance; when you hit him he can see it as if you have hit somebody else, because the center is so distant. It’s as if he is a watcher on the hills and something is happening in the valleys and he can see it. This is the first thing to be understood.
SECOND THING: IT IS VERY EASY TO CONTROL; IT IS VERY DIFFICULT TO TRANSFORM. It is very easy to control. You can control your anger, but what will you do? — you will suppress it. And what happens when you suppress a certain thing? The direction of its movement changes: it was going out, and if you suppress it, it starts going in — just its direction changes.
And for anger to go out was good, because the poison needs to be thrown out. It is bad for the anger to move within, because that means your whole-body mind structure will be poisoned by it. And then if you go on doing this for a long time… as everybody has been doing, because the society teaches control, not transformation. The society says, “Control yourself,” and through controlling all the negative things have been thrown deeper and deeper into the unconscious, and then they become a constant thing within you. Then it is not a question of your being angry sometimes and sometimes not — you are simply angry. Sometimes you explode, and sometimes you don’t explode because there is no excuse, or you have to find an excuse. And remember, you can find an excuse anywhere!
The society teaches you control and condemnation, because a child will control only when he feels something is condemned. Anger is bad; sex is bad; everything that has to be controlled has to be made to look like a sin to the child, to look like evil.
Mulla Nasruddin’s son was growing up. He was ten years of age and so Mulla thought: Now, this is the time. He is old enough and the secrets of life must be revealed to him. So, he called him into his study and gave him the lowdown on sex among the birds and bees. And then in the end he told him, “When you feel your younger brother is old enough, you tell the whole thing to him also.”
Just a few minutes after, when he was passing by the kids’ rooms, he heard the older one, the ten-year-old one, already at work. He was telling the younger: “Look, you know what people do, that stuff people do when they want to get a child, a baby? Well, Dad says birds and bees do the same darn thing.”
A deep condemnation enters about all that is alive. And sex is the most alive thing — has to be! It is the source. Anger is also a most alive thing, because it is a protective force. If a child cannot be angry at all, he will not be able to survive. You have to be angry in certain moments. The child has to show his own being, the child has to stand in certain moments upon his own ground; otherwise, he will have no backbone.
ANGER IS BEAUTIFUL; SEX IS BEAUTIFUL. But beautiful things can go ugly. That depends on you. If you condemn them, they become ugly; if you transform them, they become divine. Anger transformed becomes compassion — because the energy is the same. A buddha is compassionate: from where does his compassion come? This is the same energy that was moving in anger; now it is not moving in anger, the same energy is transformed into compassion. From where does love come? A Buddha is loving; a Jesus is love. The same energy that moves into sex becomes love. So remember, if you condemn a natural phenomenon, it becomes poisonous, it destroys you, it becomes destructive and suicidal. If you transform it, it becomes divine, it becomes a God-force, it becomes an elixir; you attain through it to immortality, to a deathless being. But transformation is needed.
In transformation you never control, you simply become more aware. Anger is happening you have to be aware that anger is happening — watch it! It is a beautiful phenomenon — energy moving within you, becoming hot!
It is just like electricity in the clouds. People were always afraid of electricity; they thought in olden days, when they were ignorant, that this electricity was the god being angry, being threatening, trying to punish — creating fear so that people would become worshippers, so that people would feel that the god was there and he would punish them.
But now we have domesticated that god. Now that god runs through your fan, through your air conditioner, through the fridge: whatsoever you need, that god serves. That god has become a domestic force, it is no longer angry and no longer threatening. Through science an outer force has been transformed into a friend.
The same happens through religion for inner forces. Anger is just like electricity in your body: you don’t know what to do with it. Either you kill somebody else or you kill yourself. The society says if you kill yourself it is okay, it is your concern, but don’t kill anybody else — and as far as society goes that is okay. So either you become aggressive or you become repressive.
Religion says both are wrong. The basic thing that is needed is to become aware and to know the secret of this energy, anger, this inner electricity. It is electricity because you become hot; when you are angry your temperature goes hot, and you cannot understand the coolness of a buddha, because when anger is transformed into compassion everything is cool. A deep coolness happens. Buddha is never hot; he is always cool, centered, because he now knows how to use the inner electricity. Electricity is hot — it becomes the source of air conditioning. Anger is hot — it becomes the source of compassion.
Compassion is an inner air conditioning. Suddenly everything is cool and beautiful, and nothing can disturb you, and the whole existence is transformed into a friend. Now there are no more enemies… because when you look through the eyes of anger, somebody becomes an enemy; when you look through the eyes of compassion, everybody is a friend, a neighbor. When you love, everywhere is God; when you hate, everywhere is the devil. It is your standpoint that is projected onto reality.
Awareness is needed, not condemnation — and through awareness transformation happens spontaneously. If you become aware of your anger, understanding penetrates. Just watching, with no judgment, not saying good, not saying bad, just watching in your inner sky. There is lightning, anger, you feel hot, the whole nervous system shaking and quaking, and you feel a tremor all over the body — a beautiful moment, because when energy functions you can watch it easily; when it is not functioning you cannot watch.
Close your eyes and meditate on it. Don’t fight, just look at what is happening — the whole sky filled with electricity, so much lightning, so much beauty — just lie down on the ground and look at the sky and watch. Then do the same inside.
Clouds are there, because without clouds there can be no lightning — dark clouds are there, thoughts. Somebody has insulted you, somebody has laughed at you, somebody has said this or that… many clouds, dark clouds in the inner sky and much lightning. Watch! It is a beautiful scene — terrible also, because you don’t understand. It is mysterious, and if mystery is not understood it becomes terrible, you are afraid of it. And whenever a mystery is understood, it becomes a grace, a gift, because now you have the keys — and with keys you are the master.
You don’t control it, you simply become a master when you are aware. And the more you become aware, the more inwards you penetrate, because awareness is a going-inwards, it always goes inwards: more aware, more in; totally aware, perfectly in; less aware, more out; unconscious — you are completely out, out of your house wandering around.
Unconsciousness is a wandering outside; consciousness is a deepening of the inside.
So look! — and when anger is not, it will be difficult to look: what to look at? The sky is so vacant, and you are not yet capable of looking at emptiness. When anger is there, look, watch, and soon you will see a change.
THE MOMENT THE WATCHER COMES IN, the anger has already started becoming cool, the heat is lost. Then you can understand that the heat is given by you; your identification with it makes it hot, and the moment you feel it is not hot, the fear is gone, and you feel unidentified with it, different, a distance. It is there, lightning around you, but you are not it. A hill starts rising upwards. You become a watcher: down in the valley, much lightning… distance grows more and more… and a moment comes when suddenly you are not joined to it at all. The identity is broken, and the moment the identity breaks, immediately the whole hot process becomes a cool process — anger becomes compassion.
Even while anger is happening, if you suddenly become conscious it drops. Try it. Just in the middle, when you are feeling very hot and would like to commit murder, suddenly become aware, and you will feel something has changed: a gear inside — you can feel the click. Something has changed, now it is no more the same thing. Your inner being has relaxed. It may take time for your outer layer to relax, but the inner being has already relaxed. The cooperation is broken; now you are not identified.
GURDJIEFF used to play a very beautiful trick on his disciples. You are sitting here, and he will create a situation; he will tell you, “Somebody, A, is coming, and when he comes I will behave rudely with him, very rudely — and you all have to help me.”
Then A comes and Gurdjieff laughs and he says, “You are looking a perfect fool!” — and everybody looks at the man and shows him that everybody agrees. Then Gurdjieff will say nasty things about this man, and everybody nods and feels in agreement. The man gets angrier and angrier, and Gurdjieff will go on and on, and everybody nods as if there is complete agreement, and the man becomes hotter and hotter — and then he explodes. And when he explodes, suddenly Gurdjieff says “Stop and look!”
You are angry: just sit with closed eyes – watch! How long can you remain angry – try! Suddenly after a few minutes you will feel it is no more there, or the acuteness of it has gone, or suddenly half an hour afterwards you may recognize and remember that you had completely forgotten that you were angry, and you were thinking of something else… And if the anger had been followed, you may have killed somebody; or killed yourself; or killed a relationship; or killed a love – and this is more dangerous than killing a beloved; you may have destroyed something beautiful and delicate; and just by sitting, it settles.
Something inside relaxes. Immediately the man understands he has been moved into a situation, he has become angry — and the moment he realizes that this is a situation, that Gurdjieff has played a trick, the gear changes: he becomes alert, aware. The body will take a little time to cool down, but deep at the center, there everything is cool and he can look at himself now.
Be unconscious and you live on the periphery.
Be conscious and you are thrown to the center.
And from the center you can see what is happening on the periphery. Then if two people touch on the periphery, then two people will create trouble on the periphery, but it will not be any trouble for you. You can laugh, you can enjoy it, you can say, “It sounds fascinating.”
Osho: And The Flowers Showered Chapter #3 Chapter title: The temper (Excerpts)
Osho, A Bird on the Wing – Talks on Zen, Ch 2 (excerpt)
Osho: Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 3: CHAPTER 5. BEYOND HONOUR AND DISGRACE (one para)
उनको आता है प्यार पर गुस्सा
हमको गुस्से पर प्यार आता है।
Unko aata hai pyar par gussa,
humko gusse par pyar aata hai.
They know how to be angry when loved;
I know how to love even when angered.
Perhaps, after all, anger is not always as serious as we make it out to be. Sometimes it is just a passing cloud, sometimes a fleeting expression, and sometimes even a playful way of expressing affection. And that brings to mind the delightful old song from Professor (1962): Written by Shailendra, composed by Shankar Jaikishen and sung by Mohammad Rafi. “Khuli palak mein jhootha gussa, band palak mein pyaar…”
A little pretend anger, a little unspoken affection. Perhaps that is how it often is with those we love. The anger comes and goes, but the affection underneath remains.
And maybe that is the point: don’t hold on too tightly to the passing clouds. There is something beautiful beyond them. You are the Sky.
खुली पलक में झूठा गुस्सा 4K Mohammed Rafi Romantic Song | Shammi Kapoor , Kalpana | Professor 1962