Osho,
Many people are living in frustration and misery, and are not grateful for what they have been given. Can you say something about it?
“To you, whatsoever life gives… you will never feel grateful. You will always be frustrated because you can always ask more. And there is no end to your expectations and desires. So if you feel miserable, look into the misery and analyze it. What are the conditioning factors which are creating the misery? And there is not much difficulty to understand. If you can create misery, if you are so capable of creating misery, there is no difficulty in understanding it. If you can create it, you can understand it.
Patanjali’s whole standpoint is this: looking into the misery of man, it is found that man himself is responsible.
“He is doing something to create it. That doing has become habitual, so he goes on doing it. It has become repetitive, mechanical, robot-like. If you become alert, you can drop out of it. You can simply say, ‘I will not cooperate.’”
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Haven’t we been brought up to be grateful?
“You have been taught to be grateful to your parents, taught to be grateful to your teachers, taught to be grateful to your elders, but those are all just conditionings. When real gratitude arises, then you see what a tremendous difference there is. The gratitude that was taught was just a concept, a dead ritual. You were following it like a mechanism. When the real gratitude upsurges in your being, you feel for the first time what prayer is, what love is.”
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So what we call gratitude has no sincerity in it at all? It is just our conditioning?
“You will be surprised to know that in India, one of the oldest civilizations in the world, perhaps the oldest, you rarely hear anybody thanking somebody else. No child will thank his parents; no parents will thank their child. In the West that is part of your formal training: on each occasion say, ‘Thank you.’
“I was thinking about the difference, why it has not developed in this old civilization. And I understand… what I said, that is the reason. If you are really thankful, then saying it is useless, because you cannot put your heart into it. And if you are not thankful, then why unnecessarily destroy a beautiful word?
“And to make it a formality means you are making it an unconscious part of your behavior. So just as somebody presents you with a cup of coffee and you say thank you, if somebody brings enlightenment to your consciousness, are you going to use the same words? It is absolutely impossible to use those same words; they have become so formal. You say them without even thinking about it. You simply say them like a robot.”
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Is behaving like a robot making us sick?
“Everybody is suffering from some kind of neurosis. Until one is enlightened, one should remember that he cannot be totally sane. Some insanity, in some corner of his being, is bound to be there. But if you feel a deep gratitude towards existence, in that gratitude you are cleaned and washed away – you are no more. And when you are no more, where can your neurosis remain? You are absolutely needed if you want your neurosis to exist. Your neurosis is nothing but the shadow of your ego. And in gratitude the ego disappears and its shadow disappears automatically.”
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So, gratitude is really an essential part of sanity?
“In gratitude, your mind is no more. The mind can exist with doubt, the mind can exist with anger, the mind can exist with hate, the mind can exist with any kind of neurosis.
But the mind cannot exist with innocence, with humbleness, with gratitude, with love, with meditation.
“And wherever mind is absent, you are sane. Mind is your insanity.
“And the alchemy of gratefulness is that it dissolves your mind, it evaporates your ego, it makes you absent in a sense and present in another sense: absent as a personality, and present as an individuality – absent as somebody, and present as nobody.”
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How to attain this state of gratitude?
“Have you ever loved your body? Have you ever kissed your hands? Have you ever loved your eyes? Have you ever realized what an amazing thing is taking place? It is very unusual to find somebody among you who has loved his eyes and who has kissed his hands, who has experienced gratitude that this amazing thing is happening without his knowledge and even without his participation.
“So first of all be grateful to your body. Only someone who is grateful to his body can be grateful to other people’s bodies. First of all become filled with love for your body, because only someone who is filled with love for his own body is capable of loving other people’s bodies. The people who are teaching you to be against your body are irreligious. The people who are telling you that the body is your enemy, that it is evil, that it is this and that, are irreligious.
The body is a great miracle. The body is amazingly helpful – be grateful to it.
“What is the body? The body is made up of five elements – be grateful to the body, be grateful to these five elements….
“Sitting by the side of the ocean do you ever remember that you also have something of the ocean inside you? You should be grateful to the ocean for the ocean which is inside you, and you should be grateful to the sunlight for the sun which is inside you, and you should be grateful to the wind which is moving your breath. You should be grateful to the sky and the earth that made you. This I call gratitude, divine gratitude.”
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Can this gratitude be practiced?
“Gratitude is natural. Gratitude is not something that can be practiced. You have been taught to be grateful; you cannot be. Gratefulness is a consequence: when you feel existence close by, gratitude arises. It is a by-product. Respect arises. This respect is not something that you manage, it is something beyond you.”
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Can you say more about the alchemy of gratefulness?
“Gratefulness is certainly the most precious alchemical process. If it takes possession of you, then naturally all kinds of neuroses, psychoses, or any other psychopathology will evaporate – for the simple reason that gratefulness consists of a few fundamentals of spiritual awakening.
“The first:
You are needed by existence. Man’s greatest need is to be needed.
And if you can feel that even trees, the moon, the sun and the stars all need you; without you this existence will miss something, will not be complete – although you are so small, almost nothing. But unless you were needed, you would not have been here. There must be some essential need which you are fulfilling; without you there would be a gap which nobody else could fill.
“You are not replaceable. No man is, no rosebush is, no blade of grass is – nothing in the world is replaceable. Such unique individuality has been conferred on you. This is the first element which brings gratefulness to your heart.
“The second:
You are so unworthy, so undeserving, you have done nothing to have this dignity to be part of this beautiful existence.
The feeling of your nothingness, the feeling of your being almost a nobody – still, the existence goes on showering its love. Not that you deserve, not that you have earned it in any way, but it is simply the nature of existence – its overflowing joy, its overflowing love, its overflowing nourishment, its playfulness. And it goes on giving without asking anything in return. Its greatness, its vastness, our smallness, our nothingness – its abundance and our nobodiness – immediately create a deep, heartfelt feeling of gratitude.
“This feeling brings immense grace to you; it brings beauty; it brings a certain song to your being. It suddenly gives you wings to fly in the sky. Just the sheer miracle of it – that you are nothing and the whole existence is available with all its treasures to you. It is unbelievable – what can you do? You don’t have anything of your own except to be in deep gratitude.
“To me, this is the only prayer. All other prayers are manufactured by man. This is the only prayer – that arises out of you as a fragrance arises from flowers; a prayer that is not said, not expressed in words, but is lived. It is expressed in each of your actions, in each of your gestures. You have a tremendous reverence for life; out of this reverence nonviolence arises. Out of this reverence a love for peace and a rebelliousness against all war and all destruction arises. This prayer is nothing but a silent ‘thank you.’ But its alchemical impact on your being is immeasurable.”
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“Gratitude is not a word, it is a deep feeling in the very center of your being…. To me, gratitude is the greatest experience that you can have – not to God, not to me, not to anybody in particular…simple gratitude for this whole existence. These birds, these beautiful trees, this whole existence is so beautiful that not to feel gratitude about it is to remain blind, ignorant, unaware.
The function of meditation is to pull you out of your blindness and make you aware of this tremendous splendor that is spread all over.”
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It sounds like gratitude is the greatest experience we can have?
“You cannot become religious without this gratitude. How can an ungrateful man become religious? Once you begin to experience this gratitude constantly, you will be surprised – this gratitude will fill you with so much peace, with so much mystery. And then you will understand one thing, that you are not worthy of being given all these things, but because you have all these things you will be filled with thankfulness. You will be filled with gratitude because what you have received will give you a sense of fulfillment.
Express your gratitude. Find ways to develop gratefulness and your meditation will deepen through it. And not only your meditation, but your whole life will change tremendously.
“Your life will become very different, it will become something completely new….
“So when you relate with anyone in your life, constantly remember your gratitude. You will find your life becoming full of wonder.”
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“If you can remember as much as possible this state of gratitude, slowly slowly it will penetrate into your blood, into your bones, into your marrow. Then there will be no need to remember; then it will simply be there – like breathing, like heartbeats. Then you can be certain that you have arrived home. Now there is nowhere to go; you have achieved the unachievable, you have found the ultimate secret of life. Now you are not just a part of existence, but the whole of it.”
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