Osho states, “…millions of gifts are showering on you; just look at those gifts, and you will be surprised. You will be surprised at how you have been missing them..”
It happened… There is a beautiful parable…
A man worshipped God for many years and was always asking ‘Fulfil only one of my desires.’ God must have got tired, bored. One day he appeared and he said ‘Okay, you won’t leave me alone. Morning, evening, you continuously go on harping on the same note “Fulfil one of my desires.” Okay, I am here, what is your desire?’
And the man said ‘Whatsoever I ask should be immediately given to me, that is my desire.’ Very cunning man! God must have thought – out of his innocence – that he would ask for one thing; he asked for it all! He said that he had only one desire that ‘Whatsoever I ask should be given immediately to me.’ But you cannot defeat God, because cunningness never defeats innocence. God said ‘Perfectly okay, this will be so, but remember one thing: whatsoever you ask, your neighbours will get double.’
Now, the man was finished. Months passed, and God would come again and again. ‘You have not asked anything…?’ He stopped praying, and God would come again and again, morning, evening, and he would say ‘What! You have not asked yet?’ And the man became very bored with God. He thought and thought, but whatsoever he will get, neighbours will get double. ‘It is pointless!’ He always wanted to have a beautiful palace, ‘But what is the point now? The neighbours will have doubly big palaces.’ The very idea was crushing him. killing him; he lost all joy of life. Now there was no possibility of ever being happy, and this God would come morning and evening and torture him. So one day he said ‘Okay, give me a beautiful golden palace.’ Immediately his hut became a golden palace, and he saw that the whole town had golden palaces – bigger palaces, doubly bigger, all golden – only his was the poorest one.
He went to a lawyer – because where else can you go when such legal problems arise? The lawyer said ‘You don’t be worried’ – and of course God cannot win with a lawyer – the lawyer said ‘You ask “Now, make a big well in front of my house without a wall.”‘ So a big well appeared before his palace and two wells appeared before everybody else’s. The lawyer said ‘Now ask “Make me one-eyed, let one eye disappear.”‘ The man said ‘What are you saying?’ and the lawyer said ‘Just wait. Law is law.’ His one eye disappeared and both of his neighbours’ eyes disappeared. Now, the whole town blind… two wells in each palace garden… people started falling in wells, people started dying. And the man was utterly happy. He said ‘Now, my desires are fulfilled!’
Forget everybody, just look into the gifts that God has given to you, and gratitude arises. In fact, there is no reason, no raison d’etre for this existence to be, no reason for this rain this morning, for this melody, this beautiful song, that the clouds are singing around you. If it were not there we could not have complained. If it were not there, we could not have asked that it should be. It is simply there without our asking. It is there. We have not even knocked at the door, and the door is open. And millions of gifts are showering on you; just look at those gifts, and you will be surprised. You will be surprised at how you have been missing them. Just the joy of breathing is enough to be grateful for, just the joy of meeting a friend is enough to be grateful for, just the joy of sitting silently doing nothing… The joy of a morning or an evening, the joy of night… Just go on looking for the joyous, and you will find it.
You only find that which you look for.
You have been looking for misery; now, you can create misery. Today it is raining and tomorrow it will not be raining, then tomorrow you can be miserable – ‘Why is it not raining today?’ And when it is raining you are not grateful.
Start feeling grateful. Happiness comes closer and closer the more and more you become grateful. Gratitude functions like a magnetism; the complaining mind repels happiness – it closes doors. It all depends on you. I can show you the way, but you will have to walk on it. Buddha has said ‘Buddhas can only point the way; they cannot walk for you.’ You will have to walk. I am showing you the way, but you have become very clever, efficient, in creating misery for yourself. Change the direction of your energies; channelize them toward the joy, the beauty… this cuckoo calling from far away. And, slowly slowly, you will see that so many things were there but you were not seeing them. Your eyes were full of misery hence you were missing them. Your eyes were clouded, they were hazy, foggy, that’s why you were missing.
And one can miss by a small margin; one can miss by only a small thought. A small thought can become a barrier and you can miss the whole beauty of the vast Himalayas. You can be there, watching the beautiful peaks of the Himalayas, and the sun falling on the Himalayan snow, showering gold all around, and a thought comes into your mind, and the Himalayas have disappeared – the thought clouds you. You remember something: the other day somebody had insulted you, and that’s enough. Or you start planning for the future, ‘Tomorrow I have to leave’, and the Himalayas have disappeared. And the thought is so small, and the Himalayas are so big… But even a small thought can hinder. The thought is so close to you, and it can stand in between. Just a small particle of dust can fall in your eye, and just a small particle – almost invisible – can make you blind, and you cannot open your eyes, and you cannot see the sun shining.
Osho, The Sun Rises in the Evening – Talks on Zen, Ch 8, Q 1 (excerpt)
Series compiled by Shanti
All excerpts of this series can be found in: 1001 Tales
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