Osho on Old Age - Beauty of Old Age, Freedom of Old Age, Wisdom of Old Age

Question : I would appreciate your talking a little about the Phenomenon of old age.
Osho : Everybody here is sooner or later bound to become old. We have to understand the beauty of old age, and we have to understand the freedom of old age. We have to understand the wisdom of old age; we have to understand its tremendous detachment from all foolish things that go on in the lives of people who are still young.
Old age gives you a height. If this height can be joined with meditation, you will rather feel miserable -- why did you waste your youth? why have your parents destroyed your childhood?

Why was meditation not given to you as the first gift the day you were born? But whenever you get it, it is still not too late. Even just a few moments before your death, if you can get the meaning of your being, your life has not been a wastage. Old age in the East has been immensely respected for the simple reason that in the past it was thought almost a shameless act -- when your children are getting married, when your children are giving birth to children... and you are still infatuated, you are still in the bondage of biology?

Osho on beauty of Old Age

You should rise; this is time to leave the ground for other fools to play football. At the most you can be a referee, but not a player. I loved one cartoon in a Dutch magazine. It was strange, because it all consists of world presidents, prime ministers, great leaders, dictators, kings -- I am the only person in that group who is nobody. And I am the first -- unfortunately Ronald Reagan is the last. They have called it a football team, and I am the referee. I was happy, very happy.

I would have sued that newspaper if I was part of the football team, but to be a referee is a totally different matter -- let the fools play! But it is a great insight: I am nobody, I do not count in any way, I have no power... Whoever made the cartoon must have great insight. Unless you can accept everything that life brings you with gratefulness, you are missing the point.

Childhood was beautiful; youth has its own flowers, old age has its own peaks of consciousness. But the trouble is that childhood comes on its own, youth comes on its own; for old age you have to be very creative. Old age is your own creation: it can be a misery, it can be a celebration; it can be simply a despair, and it can also be a dance. It all depends how deeply ready you are to accept existence, whatsoever it brings. One day it will bring death too -- accept it with gratitude.

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