Just the other day a young girl came to me... - OSHO

Just the other day a young girl came to me. She is an Indian girl who fell in love with an American boy.

But after she fell in love and they were just thinking and planning to get married, the boy fell ill and it was discovered, diagnosed, that he had a certain type of cancer that is incurable.

Death was certain.

He could be alive two or three or four years at the most. The boy tried to persuade the girl not to marry him now.

He said, ”Death is so certain, why waste your life with me?”But the more he insisted – this is how the mind functions – the more the girl became adamant about wanting to marry him.

This is how mind works – in paradoxes.

If I would have been in the place of that boy, I would have insisted on marrying;then the girl would have escaped. Then there was no possibility of marriage.

Then I would not have seen that girl again. But the boy insisted - out of his love, but out of a foolish mind, without knowing how mind functions – that she should not marry him.

Anyone would have done the same. And because he was insisting, the girl felt it to be a matter of conscience: she insisted to marry.

Then they got married. Now, after marriage, the girl is surrounded constantly by death.

She is sad;she cannot love the boy. It is easy to die for anyone,.it is very difficult to live.

It is very easy to die... to be a martyr is such an easy thing. It is such an easy thing to be a martyr because it is a momentary thing: you can do it in a single moment.

If you love me and I say, ”Jump out of this building,” you can jump because you feel you love me.

But if I say, ”Okay, now live with me for thirty years,” it is very difficult - VERY difficult!

You can become a martyr in a single moment. To die for someone, for something, is the easiest thing in the world; to live for something is the most arduous and difficult thing.

She became a martyr,but now she has to live enclosed in death’s presence.

She cannot love. She cannot see theface of  her husband, because the moment she sees it the cancer is there, the death is there just by the corner.

Any moment it can happen, so she is in constant agony.What has happened? Death has become a certainty. Now life has no interest for her, everything has dropped and has become death.

She came from America just to meet me. She wants to meditate because life seems futile.

Life has become equivalent to cancer, so now she has come here to ask me, ”Teach me meditation. How can I move beyond life?”

Unless life becomes futile you never think about moving beyond it.

I told her that apparently her marriage looks very unfortunate, but it may prove very fortunate.

Everyone’s husband is going to die, but it is not certain. Everybody’s wife is going to die, but it is not certain.

Death is certain, only the date is not certain. And who knows, even the date may be certain – you do not know.

That is why ignorance is very blissful.

She could have loved that boy if still they were ignorant; apparently nothing would be wrong.

But now love has become impossible,life has become impossible.

Death is always there, constantly present between the two of Them.

So I asked her, ”Why are you not loving him more because he is going to die?

Love him more.”She said, ”How can I love? We are always three; the privacy is lost. I am there and my husband is there, and between we two, Death.

There is no privacy left.”Death is too much; it is impossible to live with. It can become a turning. If you can become aware of death, says tantra, use it as a turning inwards.

No need to go into details about death, no need to go on contemplating about it.

Do not make it an obsession.
Just the awareness that death will  help you to move inwards, to be meditative.

OshO 💕
CHAPTER 24. DOUBT OR FAITH, LIFE OR DEATH; THE BASES OF DIFFERENT PATHS
Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1