Are Women more courageous than Men?

Are Women more courageous than Men?

Osho : They certainly are. These are men just feeling jealous... nothing courageous. The woman is more loving because she does not live by logic, by reason, but by pure emotion and heart. The way of the heart is beautiful but dangerous. The way of the mind is ordinary but safe. The man has chosen the safest and the most shortcut way of life. The woman has chosen the most beautiful, but the most mountainous, dangerous path of emotions, sentiments, moods. And because up to now the world has been ruled by man, woman has suffered immensely.

She has not been able to fit with the society that man has created because the society is created according to reason and logic. The woman wants a world of the heart. In the society created by man there is no place for heart. Man has to learn to be more heartful because reason has led the whole humanity towards a global suicide. Reason has destroyed the harmony of nature, the ecology. Reason has given beautiful machines, but it has destroyed the beautiful humanity. A little more heart is needed in everything.

As far as I am concerned, the way to your innermost being is closer from the heart than from the mind. Mind is a shortcut if you are going outward, and heart is a very long way. If you are going inward, the whole thing changes into its opposite -- heart is the shortcut to being, and mind is the longest way you can think of. That's why I am all for love, because from love it is very easy to take you to meditation, to take you to the eternity of your life, to take you to your godliness; it is very difficult from the head.

First the man has to come to the heart, and then only he can move towards the being. My emphasis on love has a basic spiritual reason. From the heart the woman can immediately move, and the man can move towards the heart without any difficulty. He has just been wrongly trained; it is only a conditioning. He has been told to be hard, to be strong, to be manly, and all this is nonsense. No man cries and lets his sadness or his joy flow through the tears because he has been told since he was a child that tears are for women, it is girlish. Men never cry and weep.

Looking to nature, the whole thing seems to be absurd. If it was so, if that was the intention of nature, then man's eyes would have been made in a different way, they would not have tear glands. They have tear glands just as women have. What is the purpose of those tears? They are needed; they are a tremendously significant language. There are moments when you cannot say, but your tears can show. You may be so full of joy, and tears come to your eyes.

Tears are always the symbol of overflowing experience. You may be so sad that words cannot contain it; tears help you. It is one of the reasons why women go less mad than men, because they are ready to weep and cry and throw things any moment; temporarily they can go mad every day. Man goes on accumulating, and then one day he explodes -- wholesale. Women go mad retail, and that is a wiser way, to be finished every day. Why collect?  Men commit suicide more than women. This is very strange.

Women talk of committing suicide more than men, but they never commit it. Men never talk about committing suicide but commit more suicide; the quantity is double. Man goes on and on repressing, goes on and on keeping a certain face which is fake. And there is a limit to everything: a point comes where he cannot hold it anymore and everything falls apart. Man has to be taught to be more heartful because from the heart goes the way to being. You cannot bypass the heart. The woman is in a better position,  she can go directly towards being from the heart.

But instead of recognizing this immense quality in women, man has been condemning women. Perhaps there is a reason; perhaps he was aware of some superiority in woman -- the superiority of love. No logic can be higher than love, and no mind can be higher than the heart. But the mind can be very murderous; the mind can be very violent, and that's what the mind has done for centuries. Man has been beating women, repressing women, condemning women.

And not knowing that condemning women, repressing women is making them inferior, half of humanity is deprived of raising its consciousness. And you are deprived, because you could also have learned the art of moving upwards from half of the universe. You could also have moved on the same way, on the same path; hence I always say, the liberation of women is also the liberation of man. It is more the liberation of man than the liberation of women.

Yes, women have more love, but they should also be made aware of the other side of the coin. Man has logic. The other side can be illogical. It is not dangerous, it is just a mistake; it can be corrected. That's why I said the way of the heart is beautiful but dangerous. The other side of love is hate; the other side of love is jealousy. So if a woman gets caught into hate and jealousy, all the beauty of love dies and she is left only with poisons in her hands. She will poison herself and she will poison everybody who is around.

To be loving one has to be more alert because you can fall into the ditch of hate which is just very close by. Every peak of love is very close; the dark valley of hate is surrounding the peak from everywhere -- you can slip very easily. Perhaps that is the reason many women decide not to love. Perhaps that is the reason man has decided to live in the head and forget all about the heart... because it is so sensitive, it feels hurt very easily, its moods change just like the climate changing.

One who really wants to learn the art of love has to remember all of these things, and has to save his love from falling into all these ditches of hatred, jealously; otherwise, going to the being will become impossible -- more impossible than it is from the head. The woman has to drop jealousy, she has to drop hatred. The man has to drop logic and be a little more loving. Logic can be used; it is utilitarian. In scientific work it is useful, but not in human relationships.

Man has to be careful that logic does not become his only way, that it remains just an instrument he uses and puts aside. The woman has to be aware that she does not fall into hatred, into jealousy, into anger, because they will destroy her most precious treasure of love. And both have to move deeper in love; the deeper they move in love, the closer they will reach to the being. Being is not very far away; it is the deepest part of love, a love which is absolutely pure, unconditional.

A love which is absolutely alert, aware, conscious, immediately turns into a tremendous revolution; it opens the doors of the innermost shrine of being. To read to your very centre is to gain all that life can give to you, all the fragrance, all the beauty, all the joy, all the benediction...

Women are certainly more courageous. In all the cultures all over the world, it is the woman who leaves her family and goes to the family of the husband. She leaves her mother, her father, her friends, her town, everything that she has loved, she has grown up with; for love's sake she sacrifices all that. The man will not be able to do that. In fact, because the man has been pretending to be superior, he should have done it; he should have gone to the girl's house rather than bringing the woman to his own house.

But in no culture, in no society in the whole of history, has man taken that step -- to drop out of his family, out of his grounding, out of his atmosphere, to sacrifice everything and to become part of a totally new atmosphere, a new land, to be replanted in a new garden, in a new soil, and to blossom there. The woman has done it, and done it gracefully. She is certainly more courageous. In love, and in different phases... She loves as a mother, which no father can do; she loves as a wife, which no husband can do.

Even as a small child she loves as a daughter, which no boy can do. A woman's whole life is love. For the man, life is a big thing; love is only a small part in it. He can sacrifice love for money, for power, for prestige -- for anything he can sacrifice love. The woman cannot sacrifice love for anything; everything is below love. Everything can be sacrificed, but not love. Certainly she has courage, and man should learn much from women.

If we make our relationship a learning phenomenon of experiencing the other person -- not just a superficial sexual relationship, but something deep, intimate, learning of each other's mysteries -- then each relationship becomes a spiritual phenomenon. Both will be enriched by it and, as a result, the whole of society.

Living in Fear

         

All your fears are by-products of identification.

You love a woman and with the love, in the same parcel comes fear: she may leave you — she has already left somebody and come with you. There is a precedent; perhaps she will do the same to you. There is fear, you feel knots in the stomach. You are too much attached.

You cannot get a simple fact: you have come alone in the world; you have been here yesterday also, without this woman, perfectly well, without any knots in the stomach. And tomorrow if this woman goes...what is the need of the knots? You know how to be without her, and you will be able to be without her.

The fear that things may change tomorrow.... Somebody may die, you may go bankrupt, your job may be taken away. There are a thousand and one things which may change. You are burdened with more and more fears, and none of them are valid...because yesterday also you were full of all these fears, unnecessarily. Things may have changed but you are still alive. And man has an immense capacity to adjust himself in any situation.

They say that only man and cockroaches have this immense capacity of adjustment. That’s why wherever you find man you will find cockroaches, and wherever you find cockroaches you will find man. They go together, they have a similarity. Even in faraway places like the North Pole or the South Pole.... When man traveled to those places he suddenly found that he had brought cockroaches with him, and they were perfectly healthy and living and reproducing.

If you just look around the earth you can see: man lives in thousands of different climates, geographical situations, political situations, sociological situations, religious situations, but he manages to live. And he has lived for centuries...things go on changing, he goes on adjusting himself.

There is nothing to fear. Even if the world ends, so what? You will be ending with it. Do you think you will be standing on an island and the whole world will end, leaving you alone? Don’t be worried. At least you will have a few cockroaches with you!

What is the problem if the world ends? It has been asked to me many times. But what is the problem? — if it ends, it ends. It does not create any problem because we will not be here; we will be ending with it, and there will be no one to worry about. It will be really the greatest freedom from fear.

The world ending means every problem ending, every disturbance ending, every knot in your stomach ending. I don’t see the problem. But I know that everybody is full of fear.

But the question is the same: the fear is part of the mind. The mind is a coward, and has to be a coward because it doesn’t have any substance. It is empty and hollow, and it is afraid of everything. And basically it is afraid that one day you may become aware. That will be really the end of the world!

Not the end of the world but your becoming aware, your coming to a state of meditation where mind has to disappear. That is its basic fear. Because of that fear it keeps people away from meditation, makes them enemies of people like me who are trying to spread something of meditation, some way of awareness and witnessing. They become antagonistic to me. Not without any reason; their fear is well-founded. They may not be aware of it, but their mind is really afraid to come close to anything that can create more awareness. That will be the beginning of the end of the mind. That will be the death of the mind.

But for you there is no fear. The death of the mind will be your rebirth, your beginning to really live. You should be happy, you should rejoice in the death of the mind, because nothing can be a greater freedom. Nothing else can give you wings to fly into the sky; nothing else can make the whole sky yours.

Mind is a prison. Awareness is getting out of the prison — or realizing it has never been in the prison; it was just thinking that it was in the prison. All fears disappear.

I am also living in the same world, but I have never felt for a single moment any fear because nothing can be taken away from me. I can be killed but I will be seeing it happening, so what is being killed is not me, is not my awareness.

The greatest discovery in life, the most precious treasure, is of awareness. Without it you are bound to be in darkness, full of fears. And you will go on creating new fears; there is no end to it. You will live in fear, you will die in fear, and you will never be able to taste something of freedom. And it was all the time your potential; any moment you could have claimed it, but you never claimed it.

It is your responsibility.

What is real, authentic friendliness?

What is real, authentic friendliness?

The question you have asked is very complex. You will have to understand a few other things before you can understand what real authentic friendliness is.

The first is friendship. Friendship is love without any biological tones to it. It is not the friendship that you understand ordinarily — the boyfriend, the girlfriend. To use the word friend in any way associated with biology is sheer stupidity. It is infatuation and madness. You are being used by biology for reproduction purposes.

If you think you are in love, you are wrong; it is just hormonal attraction. Your chemistry can be changed and your love will disappear. Just an injection of hormones and a man can become a woman and a woman can become a man.

Friendship is love without any biological tones. It has become a rare phenomenon. It used to be a great thing in the past, but a few great things in the past have completely disappeared. It is a very strange thing that ugly things are stubborn, they don’t die easily; and beautiful things are very fragile, they die and disappear very easily.

Today friendship is understood either in biological terms or in economic terms, or in sociological terms — in terms of acquaintance, a kind of acquaintance. But friendship means that if the need arises you will be ready even to sacrifice yourself. Friendship means that you have made somebody else more important than yourself; somebody else has become more precious than you yourself. It is not a business. It is love in its purity.

This friendship is possible even the way you are now. Even unconscious people can have such a friendship. But if you start becoming more conscious of your being, then friendship starts turning into friendliness. Friendliness has a wider connotation, a far bigger sky.

Friendship is a small thing compared to friendliness. Friendship can be broken, the friend can turn into an enemy. That possibility remains intrinsic in the very fact of friendship.

I am reminded of Machiavelli giving guidance to the princes of the world in his great work, The Prince. One of his guidelines is, Never tell anything to your friend which you would not be able to say to your enemy, because the person who is a friend today may turn into an enemy tomorrow.

And the suggestion following that is, Never say anything against the enemy, because the enemy can turn into a friend tomorrow. Then you will be very embarrassed. Machiavelli is giving a very clear insight: that our ordinary love can change into hate, our friendship can become enmity any moment. This is the unconscious state of man — where love is hiding hate just behind it, where you hate the same person you love but you are not aware of it.

Friendliness becomes possible only when you are real, you are authentic, and you are absolutely aware of your being. And out of this awareness, if love arises it will be friendliness. Friendliness can never change into its opposite. Remember this as a criterion, that the greatest values of life are only those which cannot change into their opposite; in fact there is no opposite.

You are asking, “What is real authentic friendliness?”

It will need a great transformation in you to have a taste of friendliness. As you are, friendliness is a faraway star. You can have a look at the faraway star, you can have a certain intellectual understanding, but it will remain only an intellectual understanding, not an existential taste.

Unless you have an existential taste of friendliness, it will be very difficult, almost impossible to make a distinction between friendship and friendliness. Friendliness is the purest thing you can conceive about love. It is so pure that you cannot even call it a flower, you can only call it a fragrance which you can feel and experience, but you cannot catch hold of. It is there, your nostrils are full of it, your being is surrounded by it. You feel the vibe, but there is no way to catch hold of it; the experience is so big and so vast and our hands are too small.

I said to you that your question is very complex, not because of the question, but because of you. You are not yet at the point from where friendliness can become an experience. Be real, be authentic and you will know the purest quality of love — just a fragrance of love surrounding you always. And that quality of the purest love is friendliness. Friendship is addressed to someone, somebody is your friend.

Once Gautam Buddha was asked, “Does the enlightened man have friends?” and he said, “No.” The questioner was shocked because he was thinking the man who is enlightened must have the whole world as his friend.

But Gautam Buddha is right, whether you are shocked or not. When he says, “The enlightened man has no friends,” he is saying he cannot have friends because he cannot have enemies. They both come together. Friendliness he can have, but not friendship.

Friendliness is unfocused, unaddressed love. It is not any contract, spoken or unspoken. It is not from one individual to another individual; it is from one individual to the whole existence, of which man is only a small part, because trees are included, animals are included, rivers are included, mountains are included, stars are included. Everything is included in friendliness.

Friendliness is just the way of your being real and authentic; you start radiating it. It comes on its own accord, you don’t have to bring it. Whoever comes close to you will feel the friendliness.

That does not mean that nobody will be your enemy. As far as you are concerned, you will not be an enemy of anyone, because you are no more a friend to anyone. But your height, your consciousness, your blissfulness, your silence, your peace will annoy many, will irritate many, will make many, without understanding you, your enemies.

In fact the enlightened men have more enemies than the unenlightened. The unenlightened may have a few enemies, a few friends. The enlightened men have almost the whole world antagonistic towards them, because the blind people cannot forgive the man who has eyes, and the ignorant cannot forgive one who knows. They cannot feel love towards a man who has attained to his fulfillment, because their egos are hurt.

Just the other day I received four letters from four different American prisons. All the four prisoners are asking for sannyas. One American prisoner has been reading my books. Since I was in that prison for one day, the authorities became interested, the prisoners became interested, so they must have ordered my books. The prisoner has been reading those books.

Although he is an American, he writes that “Osho, reading your books, listening to you on the television, and when you were in the prison for one day, I was also here.” He has been there for almost five years... “It was a blissful experience for me and I will never forget the day we were together in the same cell; it has been the most important day of my life.

And I have been carrying something in me which I want to express to you. You have not committed any sin. Of that I was absolutely certain the moment I saw you. But to be innocent seems to be a greater crime than any other. And because you were talked about on the radio, on the television, your books were read all over the country, there came a moment when you were more important a figure than the president of America. That’s what triggered the whole process of destroying your commune, imprisoning you — just to humiliate you.”

I was surprised that a prisoner would have such a deep insight. He is saying “People like you are bound to be condemned, because even the greatest, most powerful people look like pygmies before your consciousness and your height. It is your fault,” he is saying to me. “If you were not so successful, you would have been ignored. If your commune was not so successful, nobody would have bothered about you.”

The enlightened man has no friends, no enemies, but only a pure love, unaddressed. He is ready to pour into anybody’s heart who is available. That is real authentic friendliness.

But such a man will provoke many egos, will hurt those who think they are very important and powerful people. The presidents and the queens and the prime ministers and the kings will become immediately worried, concerned. A man who has no power has suddenly become the focus of attention of the people, attracts more people than the people who have power and money and prestige. Such a man cannot be forgiven. He has to be punished whether he has committed any crime or not. And a man of enlightenment cannot commit a crime; that is just a sheer impossibility.

But to be innocent, to be friendly, to be loving for no reason at all, just to be yourself is enough to trigger many egos against you. So when I say, “The enlightened man has no enemies,” I mean that from his side he has no enemies. But from others’ side, the greater his height, the more will be their antagonism against him, the more will be the enmity, hatred, condemnation. This is how it has been happening for centuries.

Nirvano was just telling me the other day that the day I was fined four hundred thousand dollars — more than half a crore rupees — knowing perfectly well that I don’t possess a single paisa, a single cent, the attorney who was working for Nirvano told her, “They have done it again.”

She asked him, “What are you saying?” And he said,Yes, they have done it again. They have again crucified Jesus, they have again punished a man who is utterly innocent — but his innocence hurts their egos.”

Just an intellectual understanding will not be enough — although it is good to have some intellectual understanding, because that may help you move towards existential experience. But only the experience will give you the full taste of the tremendous sweetness, the beauty, the godliness and the truth of love.