The First and Last Freedom

“Your mind and your getting involved with it, are not very different. You have to learn to disidentify yourself.

“See the mind working.

“Be watchful.

“But don’t make any judgment, either to stop it, or to help it, or to prevent it. In no other sense should you move from your indifference.

“You will be surprised: a miracle is waiting for you.

The moment you are completely indifferent, standing by the side, the traffic on the road slows down. Less thoughts are coming; bigger gaps between thoughts are happening. And those bigger gaps will give you such a beautiful peace, such silence.

“So two things are happening: the mind is slowing down and gaps of silence are enriching you, nourishing you, making you stronger to become disidentified. You have learnt the secret; now the key is in your hand. Watching, finally one comes to a point when one thought leaves and another thought does not come for hours. One is simply watching and the road is empty.”

***

“A haiku:

“Butterflies setting out
to cross the sea,
have disappeared:
my self comes back to me.

“He is saying that all our thoughts are nothing but butterflies trying to cross the sea: they will disappear somewhere. Have you watched your thoughts? If you have lived forty or fifty years, how many million thoughts have crossed the sea and disappeared?

Every day, you go on creating new thoughts and they go on disappearing into the dust. Only one thing remains with you, and that is your am-ness. Only you remain.

“As a Zen poet has said, ‘Clouds come and go and the sky remains.’ It never goes anywhere, it never comes from anywhere. You are the sky. Anything that happens in this sky is just a traffic – no need to be concerned about it, no need to be identified with it.”

To continue reading and see all available formats of this talk:
Osho, Turning In, Talk #6 – Underlying Great Doubt there Is Great Satori