Osho speaks on a very meaningful parable by Chuang Tzu, and in particular about the phrase ‘the phoenix that never grows old’.
There is time – in time everything changes – and there is eternity. In eternity nothing changes. History belongs to time, myth belongs to eternity. Science belongs to time, religion belongs to the non-temporal, the eternal.
In you also, both exist – time and eternity. On your surface the wheel, time: you were born, you will die, but this is only on the surface. You are young, you will become old. You are healthy, you will be ill. Now you are full of life, sooner or later everything will ebb, death will penetrate you. But this is only on the surface, the wheel of history. Deep down right now in you the eternity exists, the timeless exists. There nothing grows old – the phoenix, the south, the India, the eternal. Nothing grows old, nothing changes, everything is unmoving. That south is within you.
That is why I keep saying that India is not part of geography, it is not part of history, it is part of an inner map. It doesn’t exist in Delhi, it never existed there. Politicians don’t belong to it; it doesn’t belong to politics. It is the inner. It exists everywhere.
Wherever a man comes deep down into himself he reaches India. That is the reason for the eternal attraction, the magnetism, of India. Whenever a person becomes uneasy with his life, he moves towards India. This is just symbolic. Through physical movement you will not find India. A different movement is needed, where you start moving from the outer to the inner, to the south, to the land of myth, and the deathless, ageless phoenix – the phoenix that never grows old.
Osho, The Empty Boat, Ch 3 (excerpt)
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