WHAT DOES YOUR MOVEMENT SIGNIFY ABOUT THE CONDITION OF SOCIETY ?

Sannyas has to be a real break away. A loving surrender to the new....

WHAT DOES YOUR MOVEMENT SIGNIFY ABOUT THE CONDITION OF SOCIETY ?

 

You ask me: WHAT DOES YOUR MOVEMENT SIGNIFY ABOUT THE CONDITION OF SOCIETY?

 

It simply signifies that the society is rotten, that the society is ill, that there is no possibility of reforming the society. Because if this society is reformed it will be simply a modified form of the same rottenness — maybe a little bit better decorated, better painted, but it will be the same disease. In five thousand years' history, many times society has been reformed. And nothing basically ever changes; it remains the same in every form. It is the same illness, the same ugliness, the same sickness that continues.

 

Enough is enough!

 

Those who are intelligent have become aware that all revolutions have failed — all social revolutions have failed. And we have not listened yet to Buddhas who have been telling of a totally different revolution: the revolution in the heart of the individual — because the individual is substantial, real. Society is only a relationship.

 

For example, we are sitting here, two thousand people. You can think of it as a society, as a community. But what is society? What is community? There are two thousand individuals sitting here. You will never come across society anywhere; you will never meet the community. Whenever you come across anything, you will come across the real individual.

 

Society is only a word — and a very dangerous word. And man is very very efficient at inventing dangerous words. For example, 'humanity'. Now, I have never seen humanity; I have only seen human beings. Humanity is just an abstraction. But there are people who love humanity. You cannot hug humanity, you cannot kiss humanity. But that becomes a very very subtle camouflage. In the name of humanity you can go on hating human beings — because you love humanity; there is no need to love human beings because you love humanity.

 

And if the need arises, you can sacrifice all human beings for your love of humanity. That has been done again and again: people love nations, and people kill people in the name of 'the nation'. In the name of 'motherland', 'fatherland' — stupid words — but in the name of 'motherland' thousands of people can be killed very easily.

 

The real is sacrificed on the altar of the abstract. This is your whole history. In the name of God, in the name of religion, in the name of love, in the name of peace, in the name of democracy, in the name of communism — ALL abstractions — we go on butchering real human beings.

 

These words are dangerous words. Drop these words; love human beings. If you have to sacrifice the motherland, sacrifice it — it is nothing. If you have to sacrifice religion, sacrifice it — it is nothing. If you have to sacrifice humanity, kill it without a single thought — because there is no humanity and you will not be killing anything. But love the real: avoid the abstract. It is the abstract that has been the greatest calamity.

 

I assert the real against the abstract. And this has been the way of all the Buddhas, but they have never been tried. Politicians have been tried and all the political experiments have failed, but Buddhas have never been tried. We have listened to them, we have worshipped them, but we have never tried them. We have never given a chance to them.

Now the time has come that if Buddhas are not tried, then there is no future. Man is doomed — because man has invented, slowly slowly, so many violent forces, man has discovered such dangerous weapons, the next war will not be the third, it will be the last. The next war will be the total war. It will destroy all life — not only human life but all life, life as such.

 

Before it happens, please give one opportunity to those who have been saying again and again — Krishna, Christ, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Zarathustra — that the individual has to be transformed. And once the individual is transformed, society automatically changes; that is a consequence.

 

So we are not proposing here any social revolution. I am not at all concerned with the society: my whole concern is the real individual.

 

OSHO