Three quotes by Socrates and a commentary by Osho.
If you don’t get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don’t want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can’t hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.
Whenever, therefore, people are deceived and form opinions wide of the truth, it is clear that the error has slid into their minds through the medium of certain resemblances to that truth.
To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?
The crowd is blind, the crowd is not enlightened. Truth has always been in the minority. When Buddha arises he is alone, when Jesus walks in Jerusalem he is alone, when Socrates fights he is alone. Of course, when a few seekers gather together around Socrates, a school arises, but that school is a minority. And to be with Socrates needs courage, needs guts, because he is not there to console you. He will take all your consolations away, he will shatter all your illusions, because that is the only way to bring you to truth. He will force you to open your eyes; he will not sing a lullaby to help you to go to sleep. He will shout from the house tops to wake you up. He will shock you, he will hit you.
Osho, The Secret of Secrets, Vol 1, Ch 15 (excerpt)
Socrates (470 – 399 BCE) was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy. An enigmatic figure, he authored no texts, and is known chiefly through the accounts of classical writers composing after his lifetime, particularly his students Plato and Xenophon.
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Thanks to Antar Marc
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