The rebellious live now

[Guest guest]

A rebellious person is one who says: "I'm not going to wait, I'm going to live

right now."

 

The revolutionary hopes for the future. He says: "I am going to wait. I will

wait for the right moment." The rebellious person says: "The right moment is

here-now, and I'm not going to wait for anybody, I'm going to live right now." A

rebellious person lives in the present.

 

And one thing more to be understood: a rebellious person is not against anybody.

He may appear against because he is trying to live his own life, but he is not

really against anybody. He may not go to the mosque but he is not against

Mohammedans. He may not go to the temple but he is not against Hindus. He simply

says: "I am not concerned; it is irrelevant." He simply says: "Please leave me

alone. You do your thing and let me do my thing. Don't interfere with me and I

will not interfere with you."

 

The vision of the rebellious mind is very realistic. Life is short. Nobody knows

whether tomorrow will come or not. The future is not certain, and this is the

only moment one can live. Why waste it in fighting with others? Why waste it in

trying to convince others? Enjoy it, delight in it. A Baul is a hedonist; he is

epicurean. He starts living: he loves, he lives, he delights.

 

When a Baul dies, he is not afraid of death -- he is ready. He has lived his

life. He is ripe. The fruit is ripe and ready to fall to the ground, with no

hesitation.

 

You will be afraid. You are already afraid of death because you have not been

able to live. You have not lived yet and death has come or is coming. You have

not yet had time to live and death has knocked at the door. How can you accept

death? How can you welcome?

 

A Baul is ready to die any moment because he has not wasted a single moment of

life. He has lived it as deeply as it was possible to live. He has no complaint,

he has no grudge against life, and he has nothing to wait for. So if death

comes, he is ready to live death also. He embraces death. He says: "Come in." He

becomes a host to death also.

 

If you live rightly, you will be ready to die peacefully, blissfully. If you are

not living rightly, if you are postponing, if you are simply putting aside your

life and doing other things rather than enjoying life, doing a thousand and one

things rather than delighting in life, then of course, naturally, you will be

afraid of death. And when death comes, you will be a coward in front of death.

 

A Baul dies dancing, a Baul dies singing, a Baul dies playing his aektara and

his duggi. He knows how to live and how to die. And he is not worried about God;

he is only worried about the adhar manush, the essential man that resides in

him. His whole search is to find this essential man that he is. "Who am I?" is

his essential search. And he is very respectful about other human beings because

they all belong to that essential nature. All other forms are of that formless

essential nature; all the waves belong to the ocean. He is very respectful,

tremendously respectful. A Baul never condemns anything.

 

To me, that is the very criterion of a religious man: he has no condemnatory

attitude.

 

He accepts everything, his world includes everything. It does not exclude

anything. Sex is accepted, samadhi also. His world is very rich because nothing

is excluded from it. He says: "Everything comes from that essential core of your

being, so why deny it? And if you deny it, how will you be able to reach to the

source?" Wherever you deny something, you cling there, you stop there. Then the

journey cannot move to the very core.

 

Life, as it is, is totally accepted. That does not mean that a Baul is a man of

mere indulgence, no. He knows the alchemy of how to transform the baser into the

higher. He knows how to transform iron into gold. He knows how to transform sex

into samadhi; he knows the secret. And what is the secret of transforming life

into eternal life, time into eternity? The secret is love. Between sex and

samadhi, the bridge is love. Love is participated in by both: on the one hand

sex, on the other hand samadhi. It is the bridge. One bank is sex, the other

bank is samadhi. Love includes both, comprehends both. Through love, the Bauls

say, one reaches to the eternal home.

 

So that is the only provision for the path: love. Love is their worship, love is

their prayer, love is their meditation. The path of the Baul is the path of

love. He loves tremendously.

 

There are two traditions in India: one is the tradition of the Vedas, the other

is the tradition of the Tantras. Vedas are more formal, more of the nature of

rituals. Vedas are more social, organizational. Tantras are more individual --

less concerned with rituals, forms, habits, more concerned with the essential;

less concerned with the forms, more concerned with the soul.

 

Vedas are not all-inclusive. Much is excluded; it is more puritan, more

moralistic. Tantras are non-puritan, all-inclusive, more human, more earthly.

Tantras say that everything has to be used and nothing is to be denied.

 

Bauls belong more to the Tantras than to the Vedas. There is only one

improvement on Tantras; that is the only difference. Tantra is all-inclusive,

more feminine than male. The Vedas are more male-oriented, the Tantras are more

feminine. Of course, woman is more inclusive than man. Man is included in woman,

but woman is not included in man. Man seems to be a sort of specialization.

Woman seems to be more general, more fluid, more round.

 

Osho: The Beloved, Volume 1