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OSHO Dhammapada-Buddhism-Buddha

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 3

Chapter 6: There is no evolution

Question 1

Energy Enhancement         Enlightened Texts         Dhammapada         The Way of the Buddha, Vol. 3

The first question:
Question 1
BELOVED MASTER,
COULD THERE BE AN ULTIMATE GOAL OF THE PHYSICAL EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS? IF SO, WHAT IS IT?

Digvijay, there is no goal of life. Life itself is its goal. It is not moving towards some target. It is herenow, it has no future. Life is always in the present. But the mind cannot live in the present: mind dies in the present. Hence, down the ages, mystics have invented devices to bring the mind to the present. The moment the mind comes to the present, it melts as snow, melts in the hot sun; it disappears, evaporates.
And the disappearance of the mind is the greatest experience possible to human beings, because in that disappearance is the appearance of God.
Mind lives in the future; future is its territory, its kingdom. And future is possible only through goal orientation. So mind makes goals out of everything; life must have a goal -- not only a goal but an ultimate goal. Then mind is perfectly happy, then it can protect itself: how to achieve that goal, how to reach to that ultimate?
The moment you can ask, "How?" mind is perfectly at ease. It is very clever, cunning, skillful in inventing ways and means to achieve something, whatsoever it is -- but it has to be there in the future. Mind lives through creating goals: political, social, evolutionary, spiritual, and so on and so forth; but the mind needs some goal to exist, it feeds on it.
In truth, all is and nothing is going to happen. Tomorrow never comes. It is always now and here.
The mystic approach is totally different from the goal-oriented mind. The mystic says, "Live the moment in its totality, love the moment in its totality, drown yourself in this overwhelming existence, and you will come closer and closer to God." By "God" I don't mean some person; by "God" I simply mean the essential core of existence, the center of the cyclone.
The universe is the circumference and God is the center. If you dive deep in the now, in the here, you are bound to encounter the center. And the miracle is that the center of all is also your center too. To become aware of it, to live that center, from that center, into full awareness, is to be a buddha, is to be enlightened.
But remember, buddhahood is not an ultimate goal. It is not something which has to be achieved somewhere else. It is available right now -- immediately it is available, not ultimately. Remember these two words: the ultimate and the immediate. The ultimate brings the mind in, the immediate helps the mind to disappear.
To me, the immediate is the ultimate. There is no goal, physical, psychological, spiritual. All is as it should be... it already is. Drop your tensions, anxieties for the future, what is going to happen. All has already happened! Live it! Don't be ambitious. Goals make you ambitious, and they drive you crazy. The more goal-oriented a person is, the crazier he becomes -- because ambition is nothing but ego. You can go on inventing new goals; there will always be the horizon beyond. And with those new goals your ego can go on and on having new trips.
The mystic and the world of the mystic is a totally different dimension. What I am talking about here has nothing to do with goal orientation -- that is the way of the mind. I am teaching you the way of no-mind.
Digvijay, I know your tremendous interest in the evolutionary process. I am perfectly aware that you have devoted your whole life in that search. And you will be shocked when you hear me say that you have been wasting your life -- wasting because the present is being sacrificed for the future. And unless you drop this idea of an ultimate goal you will never be able to come down to the earth, to the present, to the moment. And without that there is no meditation, and without meditation there is no God.
The immediate is the ultimate -- I teach you the immediate, living moment to moment, without carrying the past. Buddha says, not hoarding the past, not accumulating the past; I would like to add, not projecting in the future either. If the past and the future disappear, what is left? A great silence, a profound presence of something utterly unknown. A mystery overwhelms you. And that mystery is immediate. I will not say "ultimate," because 'ultimate' means you can postpone for tomorrow. 'Immediate' shocks you, shakes you into awareness right now.
A goal is possible if we divide life into means and ends. That's how it has been down the ages. But life is one, it cannot be divided. It is indivisible, whole; it is an organic unity. Nothing is a means, nothing is an end. The whole life is one. You cannot categorize means and ends.
But the moment you think about evolution, goal, you have to divide life, then something becomes a means and something else becomes the end. Adolf Hitler believed in evolution, hence he could convince the intelligentsia of Germany, which is one of the most sophisticated intelligentsia of the world. In the name of evolution he could preach his Nazi philosophy that superman is the goal, that man has to be sacrificed for the superman. It appealed, it looked logical.
Who is the superman? And who is going to become the superman? Of course, the Nordics, the Germans. It enhanced the German ego tremendously. "Even if the whole humanity has to be destroyed, it is worth destroying because the great goal of superhumanity is looming large on the horizon. Everything can be sacrificed for it." That's how he could convince his country to drag the whole world into a world war.
Sri Aurobindo also talks in the same language -- the language of evolution. Not the superman but the supermind is the goal. And you have to sacrifice your present for that supermind; again the same idea of sacrifice. Man has remained dominated by the idea of sacrifice. Sacrifice! Sacrifice! Sacrifice! Be a martyr! That's the only way to create a golden future.
My effort here is just the opposite. Avoid Adolf Hitlers and Sri Aurobindos. No sacrifice! Don't try to be a martyr! There is no other goal than this moment, and existence is as perfect as is ever possible. Existence is as perfect as it ever will be. Existence IS perfection.
But because of the idea of a goal, we start comparing: then man is higher than the monkeys and the monkeys are higher than the dogs, and so on and so forth. But who is going to decide? Have you ever asked the monkeys? As far as I know, they still laugh at Charles Darwin, because they can't believe this poor man is higher than the monkeys. Have you ever fought with any monkey? Fight with a monkey barehanded and you will know who is more powerful. Can you jump like the monkeys on the trees? And then you will know whose body is more athletic. Monkeys live on the trees and you live on the earth: you are the fallen monkeys! But Charles Darwin never asked the monkeys.
Man himself goes on deciding. So if Germans decide then Germans are the highest race, obviously. And if Indians decide then they are the Aryans, the real Aryans, the pure blood. And if Jews decide then they are the chosen people of God. But who is going to decide? And if man decides then man is higher than all the animals. In fact, there is nobody higher and nobody lower. All these categories are stupid -- there is no hierarchy.
Existence is absolutely communist. Everybody is equal, participating in the same life, breathing the same air, getting warmed by the same sun, dancing under the same sky. Even trees are not lower than you, even rocks are not lower than you. The very language of lower and higher is utterly wrong. But the word 'evolution' brings that language in; it becomes the "in" thing. Then you have to make a hierarchy: then you are above animals and below angels. And then the whole journey starts: how to go higher and higher and higher? And there is no roof, there is no ceiling; you can go on projecting.
But if you ask the bees they won't think that you are higher than them. The intelligentsia of the bees must be watching a thousand and one stupidities of human beings -- because the bees are the most organized phenomenon in existence. Man and his society must look like chaos compared to the society of the bees. Everything is so organized -- even Adolf Hitler would have felt a little inferior. And so willingly, so voluntarily -- the bees are not forced, they are not living in a concentration camp. Willingly, joyously, they are part of an organization, so deeply involved with the organization that they have lost their individuality totally; they live as an organic part, they are not separate. Or if you watch the society of the ants, it is fixed, systematic; it has a tremendous order.
Now, how are you going to decide who is higher? This chaotic society of man? In three thousand years man has fought five thousand wars -- constantly killing each other, murdering, butchering, in the name of politics, in the name of religion... and this man you think is the highest evolved being on the earth? There are people like Arthur Koestler who think that something in the very beginning has gone wrong in the human mind, some nuts and bolts are missing -- man is born crazy.
If you watch man, it appears so. His whole life seems to be that of violence, struggle, destruction. No other animal is so destructive. No other animal kills its own species; the tigers don't kill other tigers and the dogs don't kill other dogs. Even if they fight, their fights are mock fights; they fight only to decide who is powerful. Once it is decided, the fight stops -- because to attack somebody who is weaker than you is not only wrong, it is utterly destructive and stupid too.
Two dogs will fight: they will show their teeth, they will bark, they will jump at each other, but they are simply watching who is more powerful. Once they have taken note who is more powerful, one dog will stop barking, will put his tail between his legs, and it is finished! He has given the sign that "I am weaker and you are stronger." And there is no shame, he is not ashamed -- what can he do if he is weaker and the other is stronger? How is he responsible for that? One tree is taller, another tree is not taller. Do you think the rosebushes are feeling ashamed because the mango trees and the neem trees and other trees are going so high? The roses are not worried at all: "So what? You are taller and we are not taller -- that's the way you are, this is the way we are."
See the sanity of the point: except human beings nobody is so insane as to fight with someone who is weaker. Once it is decided.... And don't you have even that much consciousness as dogs and tigers have -- that they can see, it is so apparent that the other is stronger? Then what is the point of fighting at all? The game is finished -- the other is the winner. Hence no destruction happens, hence no killing happens. And animals don't kill even other animals unless they are hungry -- except man. Only man goes for hunting.
And Digvijay is a former prince: he must know what hunting is, he must have animal heads in his palace, trophies. The more tigers and lions you have killed, the greater you are. And for what? Just to exhibit! Whenever I have visited the palace of a king, I have felt very sorry for the king. He seems to be utterly insensitive; showing these dead heads and dead bodies and skins of animals, he thinks he is exhibiting his power, his vitality. He is simply exhibiting his utter stupidity, inhumanity.
Animals kill only when they are hungry; then it can be forgiven. No animal ever kills without hunger; no animal ever kills as a play. Killing somebody in a game, can you think this hunter is more evolved than other beings? Just destroying a life for sheer play -- and the play is also unjust, because you are sitting in a treetop and the animal is on the ground, and from high on the top where the animal cannot reach you shoot him. The animal has no weapons to protect himself, and you think you are being very brave? You are simply showing your cowardliness.
If we look at man it does not appear at all that he is the most evolved animal on the earth -- just the opposite. No other animal goes insane except man. Yes, a few animals go insane, but they only go into insanity when they are put in zoos, not in their wild state. And a zoo is a human phenomenon.
Just think of yourself: if the elephants created a zoo and put you into a zoo -- how long would you remain sane? It will be impossible for you to remain sane; it will be just natural to go insane. Animals don't become homosexuals -- unless they are put in a zoo. In a zoo they turn into homosexuals; in a zoo they are bound to because they can't get their females. In a zoo they are confined in such small spaces; those small spaces are bound to drive them crazy.
You must have seen tigers walking up and down in their cages, because they used to live and run for miles. The whole wild world was theirs, and now just a small cage... and surrounded by the tourists and the visitors and foolish people looking at them. Just think of yourself being in a zoo made by the elephants or the tigers or the monkeys, and all kinds of monkeys looking at you, day in, day out, the whole situation unnatural.
Now scientists say that there is a certain territory that is needed by every animal, a certain space; if that is not given to that animal it is bound to go insane. Wild animals need an area of miles and miles to remain free and to remain sane. Yes, in a zoo they go insane, they go crazy. They attack even their own species; they become destructive. Even sometimes they have been known to commit suicide, but never in their natural state. It is only man who commits suicide, goes insane, becomes sexually perverted -- and still man goes on thinking that he is the highest peak!
As far as I am concerned, I don't believe in hierarchy. The monkey is a monkey, the man is a man. Nobody is higher and nobody is lower. The rocks are rocks and the trees are trees. And we all participate in one God. Yes, there are great changes happening, but it is not evolution; evolution means we are going higher. Changes are there, certainly; life is constantly moving, it is a river. But change does not mean evolution, remember. You can change without your being evolving -- and that's what is happening.

And that change, constant change, gives you grounds to impose your theory of evolution on it. Things are changing, life is always in a flux; nothing is permanent, all is fluid. Man has not been like this before, and man will never again be like this. Everything is in a process, but the process is not goal-oriented; it is not moving towards a certain goal. It is a very playful process.
Children playing, you cannot say that they are evolving; children playing, you cannot say they are achieving something. They are not achieving anything. That's exactly the concept of LEELA in the East. Leela means play -- the world is God's play, and in play there is no question of evolution.
The idea of evolution is really Western; the East has never believed in evolution. The East believes in playfulness. In playfulness there is no evolution at all. Nothing is means and nothing is taken as ends. It is a dance of energies, not moving into any particular direction, not meant to achieve something; the joy is in the play itself, the value is intrinsic, not extrinsic. When you start thinking of evolution, the value is extrinsic; the value depends on what you are going to achieve, what you are going to become.
If a man becomes a great scientist, a Nobel Prize winner, he has evolved, but the man who remains a woodcutter, he has not evolved. Why? What is there so significant in doing mathematics? And what is there so insignificant in chopping wood? One likes to chop wood, another likes to play with figures, arithmetic, geometry or something else -- these are likes, different likes. One loves to swim, somebody else loves to philosophize... there is nothing higher and nothing lower.
But we have made a society on a hierarchical pattern. The brahmin is at the top -- the brahmin means the professor, the academician, the Nobel Prize winner, the famous doctor, the famous engineer, the scholar. That is the meaning of the brahmin -- he is the highest. Why? Why is not the woodcutter the highest? If the woodcutter enjoys his chopping of wood more than the professor enjoys his teaching, who is higher? The professor may be simply dragging, repeating every time, every year, the same thing.

I used to know a professor who was repeating the same lectures at least for thirty years. I had heard it, and his other students had told me that exactly the same lectures, word for word.... So one day, when the professor was asleep in the afternoon, I went into his house. I looked into his books, found the book in which he had collected all the lectures, and stole it.
You cannot believe what happened to the professor! He didn't turn up the next day. I inquired after him; he said, "I am shattered, my life is finished -- somebody has stolen my book, and I cannot speak without it. I have been using the same notes for thirty years! Now I cannot make again new notes."
I could see the poor man; he was just functioning like a gramophone record. There was no need of him. I gave him the book and I said, "Why do you bother to come to the university at all? You can simply send this book, one of us can read it, and others can take notes. Why do you bother in your old age to come to the university again and again? This book will do! You can die in peace. This book is enough. You don't have to live at all -- there is no need."
Now, this professor is a brahmin; he is the highest because the head is thought to be the highest. It IS on the top, maybe that's why the idea has arisen that the head and the head people are the topmost people. The bosses are called "heads" and the servants are called "hands"! Why? Just because physically the head is on top...?

We have created hierarchy in society. The lowest are those poor people who are chopping wood or cleaning the roads. Why are they the lowest? -- because they are doing the most essential things. The professors can be discarded, the society can exist without them; but the society cannot exist without the street cleaners, the toilet cleaners, the woodchoppers -- the society cannot exist without them. They are far more essential, far more fundamental, but they are the lowest.
The whole idea is wrong. There is no hierarchy. The professor is doing his work, and the woodcutter is doing his work, and both are needed. Neither is there a hierarchy between men and other animals, nor is there a hierarchy between men and men. I am against the whole idea of hierarchy.
And that's my vision of a new commune.
In the new commune there is going to be nobody higher and nobody lower. In this ashram, there is nobody higher, nobody lower. There are toilet cleaners and there are professors, therapists, and they are all the same -- they are all doing some useful work, some essential work. The vice-chancellor here, in this commune, is on the same ground as the woodchopper. The great therapist has no more prestige, power, than the toilet cleaner. Hence, there is no problem. A Ph.D. can choose toilet cleaning -- one Ph.D. IS doing that; another Ph.D. is just cleaning the streets of the ashram.
If there is no hierarchy, there is no problem; otherwise, the Ph.D. will think, "How can I do this work, this menial job? I am not a hand, I am a head." In this commune there are no heads, no hands -- people, whole people, respected, loved, for whatsoever they are doing, or whatsoever they can do, or whatsoever they LIKE doing.
This whole existence is a commune. God is the center and we are all its circumference.
There is no evolution, Digvijay, no ultimate goal. It is a play. Enjoy it, celebrate it! If this idea of ultimate goal and evolution can drop from your mind, I KNOW your potential; you can become one of the great sannyasins. You can be a new man. But you are going crazy because of this idea; your whole life is being devoted to it. And if it is fundamentally wrong then you will repent one day. Forget all about it! Start meditating more and more about your own inner being. Don't be worried what is going to happen; rather, be involved with what is already happening. God is a presence, God is a being, not a becoming, and so is this whole existence.
The day we drop the idea of evolution and ultimate goal, the world will be freed from its bondage of future. It is the future that is keeping us in a bondage, and the past -- and both are in conspiracy against man.

Next: Chapter 6: There is no evolution, Question 2

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