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Arpana posted an update in the group Caravanserai 4 years, 11 months ago
SOMEONE ONCE TOLD ME THE SAYING: ”ALL THAT YOU PUT INTO THE LIVES OF OTHERS COMES BACK INTO YOUR OWN. ”IT HAS BEEN WITH ME EVER SINCE, AND I FEEL IT TO BE TRUE. CAN YOU PLEASE TALK ABOUT THIS? IT KEEPS COMING UP A LOT FOR ME.
Prem Kendra, the saying is true. All that you put into the lives of others comes back into your own, for the simple reason that the other is not so ”other” as you think. No man is an island; we are all joined together.
On the surface both my hands seem to be separate. But if I hit my right hand with the left hand, do you think the pain is going to be just confined to the right hand? The left hand is not separate. If the right hand suffers, sooner or later the left hand is going to suffer too. It is not possible to hurt someone and remain unhurt, because the other is not so other as he appears. Deep down in the roots we are one. So when you slap somebody’s face, you are slapping your own face.
People like Jesus, when they say, ”Love your enemy just as you love yourself,” are not just teaching ordinary morality. They are stating a very fundamental truth: the enemy is also part of you, as you are part of the enemy. Love the enemy as you love yourself.
Gautam Buddha used to say to his disciples, ”After each meditation when you are feeling blissful, full of joy, peace, silence… shower and share your silence, your peace, your blissfulness with the whole of existence — with men, with women, with trees, with animals, with birds — with all that is, share it.
”It is not a question whether someone deserves it or not. The more you share it, the more you will get it. The farther your blessings reach, the more and more blessings will shower on you from all directions. Existence always gives you back more than you have given to it.”
One man who was a very great admirer of Gautam Buddha raised his hand and said, ”There is one question. I can share my blessings, my joy, with the whole existence. Please just allow me one exception: I cannot share with my neighbor. He is so disgusting — the very idea of sharing my joy with him makes me sick.” And he said, ”Just one exception I am asking. I am ready to share with all the animals, all the insects, all the birds, all the trees, everything — just that one neighbor who is so nasty. You don’t know about it; otherwise you yourself would have said, `You can have a few exceptions.’”
Buddha said to the man, ”You don’t understand what I am saying. First you have to share your joy with your neighbor; only then you will be able to share your joy with the whole existence. If even your neighbor is not your neighbor, then how can the birds and the animals and the trees can be your friends and your neighbors? So you first practice just that exception — forget about the whole universe. If you can succeed in sharing your joy with your neighbor, there is no problem. You are already ready to share your joy with everybody else.
Perhaps in the same situation, Jesus may also have said, ”Love your neighbor just as you love yourself.” It looks very strange that he makes these two statements: ”Love your enemy just as yourself,” and ”Love your neighbor just as yourself.” George Bernard Shaw joked about it and said, ”It is because they are not two persons; they are the same person, the enemy and the neighbor. There is no need to make two statements. One statement will do, because they are not separate persons.”
Kendra, this is the essential of all religiousness: that we should be able to share unconditionally all that grows in our being, all the flowers and all the fragrance. To be miserly about it is dangerous. In the ordinary world, the economics is that if you give something to someone, that much less will be with you. And if you share everything with everybody, you will be a beggar. But in the higher economics of life, just the opposite law functions: if you hold things to yourself, you will destroy them. They are delicate. They need freedom. They need wings and they need to be allowed to go into the sky.
The more you give your love, your compassion, your blessing, your joy, your ecstasy, the more you will find that the whole existence has become so generous to you that streams of love and joy are running towards you from all directions. And once you have known the secret — that by giving you don’t lose, but you get more, a thousandfold more — your whole life structure goes through a transformation.
But even in our so-called religious and spiritual life, people are as miserly as they are in the ordinary life. They don’t know that the laws of ordinary life are not applicable to the higher dimensions of being.
Osho.
The Hidden Splendor
Chapter #3
Chapter title: Don’t make life a question-answer game