Tarot in the Spirit of Zen

by Osho

  Intelligence, a very penetrating and keen intelligence is needed to understand the problem—there is no other solution. I am not going to give you any solution; just the understanding of the problem is the solution. You understand the problem and the problem disappears.

  Schizophrenia is not a disease that happens to a few people—it is the normal state of humanity. Everybody is divided, split. You can watch it in your own life. When you are not with a woman, with a man, not in love, you think, you fantasize about love. Love seems to be the goal.

  That seems to be the very meaning of life. When you are with a woman or with a man and in love, suddenly you start thinking in terms of spirituality: “This is attachment, this is possessiveness, this is lust.” A condemnation arises.

  You cannot be alone and you cannot be with somebody. If you are alone you hanker for the crowd, for the other. If you are with somebody you start hankering to be alone. This is something to be understood, because everybody has to face this problem. You are born in a schizophrenic world. You have been given double standards. You have been taught materialism, and you have been taught spirituality, together. The whole society goes on teaching you contradictory things. You are born in a schizophrenic world. Your parents were schizophrenic, your teachers were schizophrenic, your priests, your politicians are schizophrenic. They go on talking about two diametrically opposite goals, and they go on creating the split in you.

  3 of Clouds: Ice-olation

  You have to dissolve the ego, not to isolate it … . If you want to renounce anything, renounce yourself.

  These three words have to be remembered: dependence, independence, and interdependence. Dependent you are; independence you seek; interdependence I teach.

  Dependent you are, because everywhere you will feel you are dependent, everywhere a limitation comes in. If you love somebody, you become dependent on him or on her. Everywhere life brings dependence. Then the idea arises that in the world you can never be independent, so escape from the world. You can escape, but you can never be independent; you can only be deceived. Even in the Himalayas you are not independent. You are still dependent on the sun. If the sun does not rise, you will be dead immediately. You will be dependent on the oxygen and air: if the oxygen disappears, you will be dead. You will be dependent on water; you will be dependent on a thousand and one things.

  Dependence has to be understood, not avoided. If you understand dependence, you will understand immediately that hidden behind it is interdependence. Dependence is just a misinterpretation. Those who have understood it know that you are not only dependent on the sun, the sun is also dependent on you. Without you the sun cannot exist, as you cannot exist without the sun. Even a small blade of grass will be missed from existence; the existence will never be complete without it. There will be a gap, something missing.

  So don’t think that the stars are great and a blade of grass is very small and tiny. In existence, nothing is great and nothing is small, because existence is one.

  This is what is meant by ecology: interdependence. And ecology is not only of this earth, it is of the totality. Ecology is a spiritual phenomenon.

  Most people interpret interdependence as dependence. That is a wrong notion, and because of that wrong notion, a wrong desire arises: how to be independent. Out of one error another error arises. You cannot be, and if somebody teaches you independence—there are people who teach this—they are teaching sheer stupidity. You are part of, you are one with, the whole. You are a wave in the ocean. The wave cannot be independent. How can you take the wave apart from the ocean? And I tell you, the ocean also cannot be separate from the wave. Without waves the ocean will also disappear. The waves cannot be without the ocean and the ocean cannot be without the waves, because waves are nothing but the ocean waving. Because of language the separation arises. You say the waves and the ocean; in fact, there are not the waves and the ocean, it is all one—the ocean waving. Waves are not things … a process, a movement, a breathing of the ocean. You and your breathing are not two things: you are the breathing, the breathing is you. You breathe and the breathing breathes you—they are inseparable.

  Life is one. For this oneness, interdependence, god is another name. Love is still another name, and even better than god, because god has been destroyed by the theologians. Love is still pure and virgin.

  I don’t teach isolation, because I want you to leave the ego, and not the world. The world is not the problem. The world is tremendously beautiful; it is pure joy; nothing is wrong in it. Something is wrong in you, not in the world. Drop the wrongness in you; don’t renounce the world.

  4 of Clouds: Postponement

  Always think of each moment as the last, as if there is going to be no tomorrow at all. Then what will you do?

  Start being blissful. Don’t postpone it for tomorrow. Don’t say, “Tomorrow I will be blissful.” That is the sure way to miss it forever. Either now or never. Not even a single moment’s postponement is needed. Always think of each moment as the last, as if there is going to be no tomorrow at all. Then what will you do?

  Will you remain miserable in this moment if there is going to be no other moment? Will you still persist in being in misery? You will drop the whole thing and you will say, “Let me dance, let me sing, let me be! Enough of all this nonsense, this trivia, this rubbish … .” You will forget all the small things that were so important just a moment ago because you were thinking you were going to live forever and ever.

  It happened that a great king became very angry with his prime minister—so angry that in a rage he sent the message to him: “This is the last day of your life; tomorrow morning you will be killed.” The house of the prime minister was surrounded by the army so he could not escape. But the king was puzzled, because he didn’t even try. He was a powerful man, he could have managed some way—but rather than escaping, he invited in all his friends.

  When the king heard that they were having a party—dancing and singing and eating and drinking—he himself went to see what was happening. Had the man gone mad? Tomorrow was to be his last day, and the king had never seen the prime minister so happy in his life. He was just vibrating with joy, pulsating, radiating. He was so happy to see the king. He invited the king in and he said, “Come and participate, because this is my last day. I decided: Why waste this day? Why not enjoy it? So I have called all my friends. And you have also come—this is a great blessing. Let us dance and sing, because I will never be again. Tomorrow I disappear … let me disappear with dance. We are going to celebrate the whole night!”

  The king was so impressed that he hugged the prime minister and forgave him and said, “You have taught me one of the greatest lessons of my life.”

  This is the way one should live, because each moment is the last, as far as we know, because the next is not certain. So be blissful here and now, be blissful all the way. And once the decision is there, it starts changing your life. Values become different: things that were important up to this moment lose their importance, and things about which you have always thought, “Someday I am going to do them,” become important. Anger becomes unimportant; love becomes important. Enmity starts looking meaningless; friendship becomes meaningful.

  If one can live in constant remembrance of death, one is bound to become a buddha. Buddha used to send his disciples to the cemetery. The beginners had to go there and to live there for three months so that they could see death continually happening, people being burned. And just the previous day the monk would have seen this man walking so happily on the road, and now he was no more. Day in, day out, people would be brought and would be burned … because in India they are burned—and he would see the people disappearing into flames. He had to wait, to sit there for three months watching, watching, seeing how fragile life is, how uncertain the future is, how death is an absolute certainty. And when he would come back after three months he would be a totally different man—his values different, his priorities different.

  5 of Clouds:
Comparison

  When you compare, you miss; then you will always be looking at others.

  And no two persons are the same, they cannot be. Every individual is unique and every individual is superior, but this superiority is not comparable.

  Once it happened that a disciple came to a Zen master and asked, “Why are a few people so intelligent and a few so stupid? Why are a few people so beautiful and a few so ugly? Why this inconsistency? If God is everywhere, if he is the creator, then why does he create one ugly and another beautiful? And don’t talk to me about karmas. I have heard all those nonsensical answers—that because of karmas, past lives, one is beautiful and another is ugly. I am not concerned with past lives. In the beginning, when there was no yesterday, how did the difference come? Why was one created beautiful and another ugly? And if everyone was created equal, equally beautiful and intelligent, how can they act differently, how can they have different karmas?”

  The master said, “Wait! This is such a secret thing that I will tell you when everybody has left.” So the man sat, eager, but people kept coming and going and there was no chance. By the evening everybody had left, so the man said, “Now?”

  And the master said, “Come out with me.” The moon was coming up and the master took him in the garden and said, “Look, that tree there is small, this tree here is so tall. I have been living with these trees for many years and they have never raised the question of why that tree is small and this tree is big. I used to ask the same question sitting under these trees. Then my mind dropped, and the question dropped. Now I know. This tree is small and that tree is big; there is no problem. So look! There is no problem.”

  The mind compares. How can you compare when the mind is not? How can you say this tree is small and that tree big? When the mind drops, comparison drops, and when there is no comparison, the beauty of existence erupts. It becomes a volcanic eruption, it explodes. Then you see the small is big and the big is small; then all contradictions are lost and the inner consistency is seen.

  When you feel that you are inferior, when you compare yourself with others and see that they are superior to you, what will you do? The ego feels hurt—you are inferior. You just cannot accept it, so you have to deceive yourself and others.

  There is another type of superiority, and that superiority is the absence of inferiority, not the opposite to it. You simply don’t compare. When you don’t compare, how can you be inferior?

  Look: if you are the only person on earth and there is nobody else, will you be inferior? With whom will you compare yourself? Relative to what? If you are alone, what will you be, inferior or superior? You will be neither. You cannot be inferior because no one is above you; you cannot declare yourself superior because there is no one beneath you. You will be neither superior nor inferior.

  And I say to you that this is the superiority of the soul. It never compares. Compare, and the inferiority arises. Don’t compare, and you simply are—unique.

  Be non-ambitious and attain to your intrinsic superiority. It is intrinsic. It doesn’t have to be proved or achieved. You already have it, it is already there—it has always been with you and it will always remain with you. Your very being is superior but you don’t know what being is there. You don’t know who you are. Hence so much effort in seeking your identity, in searching, in proving that you are superior to others. You don’t know who you are.

  Once you know, then there is no problem. You are already superior. And it is not only you that is superior—everything is superior. The whole of existence is superior without anything being inferior, because existence is one. Neither the inferior nor the superior can exist. The non-ambitious mind comes to realize this.

  In fact, everybody is so unique that all comparison is wrong, utterly wrong. But you don’t know your uniqueness. You have never entered your own being, you have never encountered yourself. You have never looked in that direction at all. You are bound to feel inferior. Even the greatest people of your history, the people you call very great, all feel inferior in some way or other, maybe different ways of feeling inferior, but nobody can really feel superior—he will be missing something. He may not be so beautiful as somebody else, he may not be so healthy as somebody else, he may not be such a great musician as somebody else. He may be a president of a country, but when it comes to singing, a beggar can make him feel inferior. He may be the president of a country, but may not be so rich. There are thousands of other people who are far richer.

  Life consists of millions of things and if you are constantly comparing … and that’s what you have been told to do. You have been brought up in such a way, educated in such a stupid way that you are constantly comparing. Somebody is taller than you, somebody seems more beautiful than you, somebody seems to be more intelligent than you, somebody seems more virtuous, more religious, more meditative. And you are always in a state of inferiority, suffering.

  Look within yourself and you will experience great uniqueness. And all inferiority disappears, evaporates; it was created by you and by wrong education, it was created by a subtle strategy—the strategy of comparison. Once you know your uniqueness you are joyous, and then there is no need to follow anybody. Learn from everybody. An intelligent person even learns from idiots, because there are few things you can learn only from idiots because they are experts in idiocy. At least watching them, observing them, you can avoid a few things in your life.

  You can learn from everybody, not only from people but also from animals, from trees, from clouds, from rivers. But there is no question of imitating. You can’t become a river, but you can learn some quality that is river-likeness: the flow, the let-go. You can learn something from a rose flower. You cannot become a rose flower, you need not, but you can learn something from the rose. You see the rose so delicate yet so strong in the wind, in the rain, in the sun. By the evening it will be gone but has no care about it, is joyous in the moment. You can learn from the rose how to live in the moment. Right now the rose is dancing in the wind, in the rain, unafraid, unconcerned for the future. By the evening the petals will wither away, but who bothers about the evening? This moment is all and this dance is all there is.

  Learn something from the rose. Learn something from the bird on the wing—the courage to go into the unbounded. Learn from all sources but don’t imitate. But that is possible only if you have found the right space to begin with, and that is acquaintance with yourself.

  6 of Clouds: The Burden

  Life is a constant resurrection. Every moment it dies, every moment it is born anew. But you go on carrying the old mind; you will never fit anywhere.

  Life is a movement, a constant flux. Each moment it is new. But the mind? The mind is never new. It is always lagging behind. The very nature of the mind is such that it cannot be one with life. Life goes on, mind lags behind. There is always an inconsistency between life and mind—it has to be so.

  You see a flower: the moment you realize that you have seen it, it is no longer the same—life has moved. You see a river, but you don’t see the same river again. You cannot. Says old Heraclitus, “You cannot step in the same river twice.” And I say to you that you cannot step in the same river even once—because the river is constantly flowing.

  The moment mind recognizes something, it is already no longer the case. Mind goes on accumulating dead footprints. Life once existed there, but it is there no more.

  And we are trained as minds; that is the misery. You go on missing life. And you will go on missing it unless you drop the mind, unless you start living out of a state of no-mind. Then you are one with life. Then the inconsistency between you and your mind disappears. Then you no longer live according to some ideas, because ideas are of the mind. You don’t live according to any ideology, religion, scripture, tradition—you simply live out of the emptiness of your being.

  It is difficult in the beginning even to conceive how one can live out of emptiness. But out of emptiness all the trees are growing, and out of emptiness stars are mo
ving, and out of emptiness the whole existence exists—and there is no trouble. Only man has the absurd idea that without mind it will be difficult to exist. In fact, with the mind it is difficult to exist—because existence and mind are separate, not only separate but two contrary dimensions. If you want to be consistent with the mind, you will be inconsistent with life.

  It happened: There was a case against Mulla Nasruddin in the court, and the judge asked him, “How old are you, Nasruddin?”

  And he said, “Of course, you know and everybody knows I am forty years old.”

  The judge was surprised and he said, “But five years ago also you were in the court and I asked you, and then too you said that you were forty years old. How is it possible? After five years, you are still forty years old?”

  Nasruddin said, “I am a consistent man, sir. Once I say I am forty, I will remain forty forever—you can rely on me.”

  If you are consistent with the mind, you will become such a reliable man. You will be consistent—but absolutely inconsistent—because life goes on. It is never static. Not even for a single moment does life stay anywhere. Life doesn’t know any rest. Life has no tradition to follow, no ideology to imitate, no pattern fixed by the past. Life is always an opening into the unknown.

  Mind is always enclosed within the experience that has happened already, and life is always open for the experience that has never happened before. How can they meet? How is there any possibility of their meeting? Then, by and by, mind becomes completely enclosed in itself. Not only that, the mind even becomes afraid to see what life is.