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Vigyan Bhairav Tantra - Meditation
Technique 60 "OBJECTS AND
DESIRES EXIST IN ME AS IN OTHERS. SO ACCEPTING, LET THEM BE
TRANSFORMED."
Osho - This technique can be very helpful. When you are angry,
you always justify your anger, but when someone else gets angry you
always criticize. Your madness is natural, but others' madness is just
"perversion." Whatsoever you do is good -- or even if it was not good,
it was "necessary to do." You always find some rationalization for it.
The same is done by others, but then the same rationalization is not
given. If you are angry, you say it was necessary to help the other. If
you were not angry, the other would have been destroyed., he would have
got a wrong habit, so it was good to give him punishment. It was just
for his "good". But when someone gets angry at you, the same
rationalization is not applicable. Then he is "mad," he is "evil."
We have double standards -- one standard for one oneself and another
standard for everyone else. This double-standard mind is going to be in
deep misery always. This mind is not just, and unless your mind is just
you cannot have a glimpse of the truth. Only a just mind can leave this
double standard.
Jesus says, "Don't do to others what you would not like done to you."
This means a similar standard is needed. This technique is based on the
idea of a single standard: "OBJECTS AND DESIRES EXIST IN ME AS IN
OTHERS...." You are not exceptional, although everyone thinks he is
exceptional. If you think you are exceptional, know well this is how
every ordinary mind thinks. To know that one is ordinary is the most
extraordinary thing in this world.
Someone asked Suzuki about his teacher: "What was exceptional in your
teacher, Suzuki?" Suzuki was a Zen master, so he said, "The only thing I
will never forget is this, that I have never seen a man who thought
himself so ordinary. He was just ordinary, and that is the most
extraordinary thing, because every ordinary mind thinks he is
exceptional, extraordinary."
But no one is extraordinary, and if you know this you become
extraordinary. Everyone is just like everyone else. The same desires
that hover around you hover around everyone else. But you call your sex
love; others' love you call sex. Whatsoever you do, you protect it. You
say it is good. That is why you are doing it, and the same thing done by
others is "not the same." And this happens not only to persons; it
happens to races, nations. This is why the whole world has become a
mess, because of this.
If India goes on strengthening its army it is "for defense," and if
China goes on strengthening its army it is "for attack." Every
government in the world calls its military organization "defense." Then
who attacks? If everyone is defending, who is the aggressor? If you move
into history, you cannot find anyone who is an aggressor. Of course, the
defeated ones prove to be aggressors. The defeated ones always prove to
be aggressors because they cannot write history. The victorious ones
write history.
If Hitler could have won, then the history would have been different.
Then he would have been the savior of the world, not the aggressor. Then
Churchill and Roosevelt and the other allies would have been the
aggressors, and it would have been good if they were destroyed. But
because Hitler couldn't win he was the aggressor, and Churchill and
Roosevelt and Stalin and the other allies saved humanity. Not only with
persons, but with everything we do -- as nations, as races -- the same
logic moves. We are something different and the other is different.
No one is different! A religious mind knows that everyone is the same,
so if you give rationalizations for yourself, please give the same
rationalizations to others also. If you criticize others, then apply
that same criticism to yourself. Don't create two standards. One
standard will transform your being totally because with one standard you
become just and for the first time you can look straight into reality,
as it is.
"OBJECTS AND DESIRES EXIST IN ME AS IN OTHERS. SO ACCEPTING, LET THEM BE
TRANSFORMED": ACCEPT THEM AND THEY WILL BE TRANSFORMED."
What are we doing? We accept that they exist in others. Whatsoever is
wrong exists in others; whatsoever is right exists in you. Then how can
you be transformed? You are already transformed. You think that you are
already good and everyone else is bad; the world needs a transformation,
not you. That is why there are always leaders, movements, prophets. They
go on crying from the rooftops to change the world, to create a
revolution, and we have been making revolutions and revolutions and
nothing changes.
Man remains the same and the earth remains in the same misery. Only
faces and labels change, but misery continues. It is not a question of
how to change the world. The world is not wrong; you are wrong. The
question is how to change yourself: "How to change myself?" is the
religious quest. "How to change everyone else?" is political. But the
politician thinks he is okay; really, he is the model of how the whole
world should be. He is the model, he is the ideal, and it is up to him
to change the whole.
Whatsoever the religious man sees in everyone else he sees in himself
also. If there is violence, he immediately wonders whether the violence
exists in him or not. If there is greed, if he sees greed somewhere, his
first reflection is over whether the same greed is in him or not. And
the more he searches the more he finds that he is the source of all
evil. Then it is not a question of how to change the world; it is a
question of how to change oneself. And the change starts the moment you
accept one standard. Then you are already changing.
Don't condemn others. I don't mean condemn yourself -- no! Just don't
condemn others. And if you are not condemning others, you will have a
deep compassion for them, because the same problems are there. If
someone commits a sin, a sin in the eyes of the society, you start
condemning him, never thinking that you also have the seed to commit
that sin within you. If someone commits a murder you condemn him, but
have you not always been thinking to kill someone, to murder? Is not the
potential seed there always? The man who has committed murder was not a
murderer a moment before, but the seed was there. And the seed is with
you also. A moment later, who knows? You may be a murderer. So don't
condemn him. Rather, accept. Then you will feel a deep compassion for
him because whatsoever he has done any man is capable of doing; you are
capable of doing it.
A non-condemning mind will have compassion; a non-condemning mind will
have a deep acceptance. He knows that this is how humanity is and that
"this is how I am." Then the whole world will become just a reflection
of your own self. It will become a mirror. Then every face becomes a
mirror for you; you look at yourself in every face.
"OBJECTS AND DESIRES EXIST IN ME AS IN OTHERS. SO ACCEPTING, LET THEM BE
TRANSFORMED."
Acceptance becomes transformation. This is difficult to understand
because we always reject, and then too we cannot transform anything. You
have greed, but you reject it. No one wants to think of himself as
greedy. You are sexual, but you reject it. No one wants to feel oneself
as sexual. You are angry, you have anger, but you reject it. You create
a facade, and you try to justify it. You never feel that you are angry
or that you are anger.
But rejection never transforms anything. It simply suppresses, and that
which is suppressed becomes more powerful. It moves to your roots, to
your unconscious deep down within you, and it begins functioning from
there. And from that darkness of the unconscious it becomes more
powerful. You cannot accept it now because you are not even conscious of
it. Acceptance brings everything up. There is no need to suppress.
You know you are greedy, you know you have anger, you know you are
sexual, and you accept them as natural facts without any condemnation.
There is no need to suppress them. They come to the surface of the mind,
and from the surface of the mind they can be thrown very easily. From
the deep center they cannot be thrown. And when they are on the surface
you are always aware of them, but when they are in the unconscious you
become unaware. And a disease of which you are aware can be cured; a
disease of which you are unaware cannot be cured.
Bring everything up to the surface. Accept your humanity, your animality.
Whatsoever is there, accept it without any condemnation. It is there,
and be aware of it. Greed is there; don't try to make it non-greed. You
cannot. And if you try to make it non-greed, you will simply suppress
it. Your non-greed will simply be another form of greed and nothing
else. Don't try to change it into the other; you cannot change it. If
you want to try to change greed, what will you do? And a greedy mind can
be attracted only towards the ideal of non-greed if some further greed
is possible through it.
If someone says that "If you leave all your riches you will be allowed
in my Kingdom of God," then you can even renounce. A further greed
becomes possible. This is a bargain. Greed has not to become non-greed;
greed is to be transcended. You cannot change it.
How can a violent mind become non-violent? If you force yourself to be
non-violent, this will be a violence to yourself. You cannot change one
into another, you can simply be aware and accepting. Accept greed as it
is. By acceptance is not meant that there is no need to transform it. By
acceptance is meant only that you accept the fact, the natural fact, as
it is. Then move in life knowing well that greed is there. Do whatsoever
you are doing, remembering well that greed is there. This awareness will
transform you. It transforms because knowingly you cannot be greedy,
knowingly you cannot be angry.
For anger, for greed, for violence, unawareness is a basic requirement,
just as you cannot knowingly take poison, just as knowingly you cannot
put your hand into a flame. Unknowingly you can put it. If you don't
know what a flame is, what fire is, you can put your hand in it. But if
you know that fire burns, you cannot put your hand in it.
The more your "knowingness" grows, the more greed becomes a fire and
anger becomes poison. They simply become impossible. Without any
suppression, they disappear. And when greed disappears without any ideal
of non-greed, it has a beauty of its own. When violence disappears
without making you non-violent, it has a beauty of its own.
Otherwise a non-violent man is deeply violent. That violence is there
hidden, and you can have a glimpse of it from his non-violence also. He
will force his non-violence upon himself and upon others in a very
violent way. That violence has become subtle.
This sutra says that acceptance is transformation, because through
acceptance awareness becomes possible.
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