Spiritual Forum

Life in itself has no meaning. Life is an opportunity to create meaning. Meaning has not to be discovered: it has to be created. You will find meaning only if you create it. It is not lying there somewhere behind the bushes, so you can go and search a little bit and find it. It is not there like a rock that you will find. It is a poetry to b composed, it is a song to be sung, it is a dance to be danced. Meaning is a dance, not a rock. Meaning is music. You will find it only if you create it. Remember it.

Millions of people are living meaningless lives because of this utterly stupid idea that meaning has to be discovered. As if it is already there. All that you need is to just pull the curtain, and behold! Meaning is here. It is not like that. Buddha finds the meaning because he creates it. I found it because I created it. God is not a thing but a creation. And only those who create will find. And it is good that meaning is not lying there somewhere, otherwise one person would have discovered it – then what would be the need for everybody else to discover it? Can’t you see the difference between religious meaning and scientific meaning?

Albert Einstein discovered the theory of relativity; now do you have to discover it, again and again? You will be foolish if you discover it again and again. What is the point? One man has done it; he has given you the map. It may have taken years for him, but for you to understand it will take hours. You can go to the university and learn. Buddha also discovered something., Zarathustra also discovered something, but it is not like Albert Einstein’s discovery. It is not there that you just have to follow Zarathustra and his map and you will find it. You will never find it. You will have to become a Zarathustra.

See the difference! To understand the theory of relativity, you need not become an Albert Einstein, no. You have to be just of average intelligence, that’s all. If you are not too much retarded, you will understand it. However, to understand the meaning of Zarathustra, you will have to become a Zarathustra – less than that won’t do. You will have to create it again. And each individual has to give birth to God, to meaning, to truth; each man has to become pregnant with it and pass through the pains of birth. Each one has to carry it in ones womb, feed it by ones own blood, and only then does one discover.

Now you ask me: “Why can’t I see any meaning in life?”

You must be waiting passively for the meaning to come…It will never come. This has been the idea of the past religions, that meaning is already there. It is not! Freedom is there to create it, energy is there to create it. The field is there to sow the seeds and reap the crop. All is there – but the meaning has to be created. That’s why to create it is such a joy, such an adventure, such an ecstasy. Religion needs to be creative. Up to now, religion has remained passive, almost impotent. You don’t expect a religious person to be creative. You just expect him to fast, sit in a cave, get up early in the morning, chant mantras…and this kind of stupid thing. And you are perfectly satisfied! What is he doing?

And you praise him because he goes on long fasts. Maybe he is a masochist; maybe he enjoys torturing himself. He sits there when it is icy cold, naked and you appreciate him. But what is the point? What is the value in it? All the animals in the world are naked in the icey cold – they are not saints. Or when it is hot, he sits in the hot sun, and you appreciate him. You say, “Look! Here is a great ascetic.” But what is he doing? What is his contribution to the world? Has he changed the world a little bit? Has he made it a little more sweet, more fragrant?

Praise a man because he created a song. Praise a man because he created a beautiful sculpture. Praise a man because he plays such a beautiful flute. Let these be religious qualities from now onwards. Praise a man because he is such a lover – love is religion. Praise a man because of him: the world is becoming more graceful. Forget all these stupid things! – fasting and just sitting in a cave, torturing oneself or lying down on a bed of nails. Praise man because he has cultivated beautiful roses. The world is more colorful because of him. And then you will find meaning. Meaning comes out of creativity. Religious qualities has to become more poetic, more aesthetic.

Sometimes it happens that you search for the meaning because you have already concluded. Out of conclusion you search for it. You have already decided what meaning should be there, or has to be there…and than you don’t find it. The inquiry has to be pure. It should be without any conclusion. It should not have any priori in it. What meaning are you looking for? You must be looking for a certain meaning. You will not find it – because from the very beginning your inquiry is polluted, your inquiry is impure. You have already decided. For example, if a man comes to my garden and thinks if he can find a diamond there then this garden will be beautiful, and he cannot find the diamond, so he says there is no meaning in my garden….

And there are so many beautiful flowers, and so many birds singing, and so many colors, and the wind blowing through the pines, and the moss on the rocks. But he cannot see any meaning because he has a certain idea: he has to find the diamond. Only then there will be meaning. He is missing meaning because of his idea. Don’t move with any fixed ideas. Go naked and nude. Go open and empty. And you will not find one meaning – you will find a thousand and one meanings. Then each thing will become meaningful.

Just a colored stone shining in the rays of the sun…or a dewdrop creating a small rainbow around itself…or just a small flower dancing in the wind…what meaning are you searching for? Don’t start with conclusion, otherwise you have started wrongly from the very beginning. Go without a conclusion! That’s what I mean when I say again and again:

Go without knowledge if you want to find truth. The knowledgeable person never finds it. His knowledge is a barrier. If you have a fixed idea, then you are only looking for it through this narrowness of the mind, so all that is available is missed. Meaning has to be created and meaning has to be searched for without consclusion. If you can drop your knowledge, life will suddenly take on color, it will become psycadelic. But you are continuously carrying the load of your scriptures, books, theories, doctrines, philosophie...you are lost in all that. And everything has become mixed. And you cannot even remember what is what.

Your mind is a mess. Clean it! Make it blank. The empty mind is the best mind. The empty mind is closer to God than anything. The Devil cannot do without thoughts. With emptiness the Devil cannot do anything at all. He has no way into emptyness. So many thoughts in the mind, mixed up; nothing seems to be clear; you have heard so many things from so many sources - your mind is a monster. And you are trying to remember, and you have been told to remember: "Dont forget!" And naturally, the burden is so much that you cannot remember. Many things you have forgotten, many things you have imagined and added on your own.

Drop the knowledge and become more creative. Remember knowledge is gathered - you need not to be creative about it; you have only to be receptive. And thats what man has become, man has been reduced to being a spectator. He reads the newspaper, he reads the bible and the koran and the gita; he goes to the movies, sits there and sees the movie, he goes to a football match or sits before his TV to watch the football match, listens to the radio...and so on and so forth. 24 hours a day he just in a kind of inactivity, a spectator.

You can see a thousand and one lovers making love and you will not know what love is - you will not know what orgasmic abandonment by watching. You will have to become a participant. Meaning comes through participation. Participate in life!

The Silence of the heart - Osho