A poem by Leopold Staff with a commentary by Osho.
God is such a mystery – or call it life, or existence – life is such a mystery that even if you enter into the innermost shrine of it you will not be able to believe it. It is unbelievably true. It is incredible.
I was reading a poem of Leopold Staff. Listen to it:
The Bridge
I didn’t believe,
Standing on the bank of a river
Which was wide and swift,
That I would cross that bridge
Plaited from thin, fragile reeds
Fastened with bast.
I walked delicately as a butterfly
And heavily as an elephant,
I walked surely as a dancer
And wavered as a blind man.
I didn’t believe that I would cross that bridge,
And now that I am standing on the other side,
I don’t believe I crossed it.
Even when you have known God, you will not be able to believe that you have known him. That is what I mean when I say God is a mystery. Unknown, he remains unknowable. Known also, he remains unknowable. Unseen, he is a mystery; seen he becomes an even greater mystery. It is not a problem that you can solve. It is bigger than you. You can dissolve into it – you cannot solve it.
Osho, A Sudden Clash of Thunder, Ch 1 (excerpt)
Leopold Henryk Staff (November 14, 1878 – May 31, 1957) was a Polish poet and one of the greatest artists of European modernism. He was twice granted the Degree of Doctor honoris causa by universities in Warsaw and in Kraków. He was also nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature by the Polish PEN Club. Representative of classicism and symbolism in the poetry of Young Poland, he was an author of many philosophical poems influenced by the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (he translated several of Nietzsche’s books into Polish), the ideas of the Franciscan order as well as paradoxes of Christianity.
Thanks to Antar Marc
Photo by Fabio Comparelli on Unsplash
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