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Part IV : Osho meets poets and musicians
It is good not to meet the poet. Take it as a basic policy never
to meet the poet because that will be a disappointment....
This has been my general practice my whole life in India. I have
read poets, heard poets on the radio, but I have not met them
because my early experiences of meeting poets were just shipwrecked.
One great Indian poet, Ramdharisingh Dinkar. He belongs to Patna.
He has written some high-flying songs. He has contributed much
to Indian poetry. He was known as the great poet, Mahakavi; not
just kavi, a poet, but the great poet. He was the only man known
as the great poet.
He used to come to see me, unfortunately. He loved me, I loved
him, but I could not like him. Love is spiritual, you can love
anybody, but liking is far more difficult. Whenever he came he
would talk of such stupid things that I told him, "Dinkar,
one expects something poetic from you."
He said, "But I am not a poet twenty-four hours a day."
I said, "That's right! But come to me when you are! - otherwise
don't come, because my acquaintance is with the poet Dinkar, not
with you." Whenever he came, he would talk about politics
- he was a nominated member of parliament - or he would talk about
his sickness continually; he was making me sick! I told him, "Stop
talking about your sicknesses, because people come to me to ask
something of I said, "That's right! But come to me when you
are! - otherwise don't come, because my acquaintance is with the
poet Dinkar, not with you." Whenever he came, he would talk
about politics - he was a nominated member of parliament - or
he would talk about his sickness continually; he was making me
sick! I told him, "Stop talking about your sicknesses, because
people come to me to ask something of value, and you come to describe
your sicknesses."
But if I prohibited him from talking politics, he would talk
of sicknesses. If I prohibited him from talking of sicknesses,
then he would talk about his sons: "They are destroying my
life. Nobody listens to me. I am going to send them to you."
I told him, "You are too much. And you are spoiling my
joy for when your book comes out: I cannot read it without remembering
you. In between the lines you are standing there talking about
your diabetes, your politics...."
He would talk about diabetes, and he would ask for sweets! "these,"
he would say, "I cannot leave." He died because he continued
to eat things that the doctors were prohibiting. And he knew it;
he would tell me everything that the doctors had prohibited and
ask me, "Osho, can you tell me some way that I can manage
to eat all these things and still the diabetes...?"
In Jabalpur there was one famous poetess, Shubhadra Kumari Chauhan.
I had read her poetry from my very childhood; her songs had become
so popular because of the freedom struggle - she was continuously
fighting for freedom and revolution - that even small children
were reciting them. Before I was able to read, even then I knew
a few of her songs. When I went to the university I discovered
that she had also moved to Jabalpur. That was not her original
place; her original place happened to be near my village. That
I discovered later on, that she was from just twenty miles away
from my village and that she had moved to Jabalpur just two years
before I moved there.
But seeing that woman, I said, "My God! Such beautiful
poetry, and such an utterly homeless - no, I mean homely.... I
got so distracted by her that I forgot even the word homely! Because
she was worse than that, and I don't know any other word that
is worse than that. "Ugly" does not look right to use
for anybody; it seems to be condemning, and I only want to describe,
not to condemn, hence homely. Homely means, you need not pay any
attention; let her pass, let her go.
Then there was another poet, of all-India fame, Bhavani Prasad
Tiwari, who was in immense love with me. I was very young when
I started delivering public discourses; I must have been twenty
when I delivered my first public discourse, in 1950. He was the
president.
He could not believe it, and he was so overwhelmed that rather
than delivering his presidential address he said, "Now I
don't want to disturb what this boy has said. I would like you
to go home with what he has said, meditating over it. And I don't
want to give my presidential address - in fact, he should have
presided, and I should have spoken." And he closed the meeting.
Everybody was in a shock because he was an old man and famous.
He took me in his car and asked me where he could drop me off.
That day I became acquainted with him. I said, "It is a
shock to me. You are certainly a loving person and also an understanding
person. I have read your poems and I have always loved them. They
are simple but have the quality of raw diamonds, unpolished. One
needs the eye of a jeweler to see the beauty of an uncut, unpolished,
raw diamond just coming out from the mine - just born.
"I can also say I have always felt, reading your poetry,
like when the rainy season first begins in India, and the clouds
start showering, and the earth has a sweet smell of fresh, thirsty
earth; and the smell of that earth getting wet gives you a feeling
of thirst being satisfied.
"That's how I have always felt reading your poetry. But
seeing you I am disillusioned" - because the man had on both
sides, inside his mouth, two pans, betel leaves, and the red,
blood-like juice of the betel leaves was dribbling from both sides
of his mouth onto his clothes.
That was a chain thing the whole day. All that he was doing
was making new pans. He used to carry a small bag with everything
in it. And whenever I saw him he was always - this is the way:
tobacco in his hand, rubbing the tobacco, preparing it, chewing
the pan, and the red juice was all around. I said, "You have
destroyed my whole idea of a poet." Since then I have avoided
poets because I came to know that they are blind people; once
in a while they have a flight of imagination. But five thousand
years ago, in the East, they must have understood that we have
to make a distinction between the poet who is blind, and the poet
who has eyes.
A rishi is one who speaks because he sees. His poetry also has
a different name; it is called richa because it comes from a rishi.
Richa means poetry coming from the awakened consciousness of a
being. person05
I used to know a man - the whole city thought that he was mad,
but I watched him very closely. He was one of the sanest men I
have come across, and his sanity was that nobody could deceive
him. If you had said to him, "You are very beautiful,"
he would say, "Wait, define beauty, what do you mean by beautiful?
You will have to convince me. I cannot let you go so easily -
and what is the purpose of calling me beautiful?" And it
is very difficult to define beauty, almost impossible.
If somebody would say to him, "You are very intelligent"...the
same problem. Only on one point he would never argue with anyone.
If people told him, "You are mad!" - he would say, "That's
perfectly right, I am mad. From a madman you cannot expect anything:
you cannot ask, `Can I borrow some money from you?' The moment
you say `mad,' you have put me outside the society, you have made
me an individual. Now you cannot manipulate me."
He used to be a professor, but because of his strange behavior
he was thrown out of his college. I used to go to him when I was
a student. I liked the man very much. He played the flute so beautifully;
I would simply go in and sit, and I never asked anything and I
never said anything. One day he looked at me and said, "It
seems you are saner than me."
I asked him, "What do you mean by saner?"
He said, "Right, absolutely right. You have got the point.
I will never ask anything and never say anything. You are always
welcome; there is no need to go through any social ritual. You
can simply come and rest, sit."
We became friendly. He was living in poverty, but he was immensely
happy. He said, "I always wanted to be a flute player, never
to be a professor. Just my parents forced me...but thanks to God
the college people expelled me. Now I am absolutely free, and
because people think I am mad nobody bothers me. I play my flute,
I write songs.... "
He has translated into Hindi the poetry of Omar Khayyam. There
are at least a dozen Hindi translations of the poetry of Omar
Khayyam - some done by great poets - but none comes even close
to his. And he lived a life of anonymity. It was I who insisted
that his book should be published.
He said, "Who is going to listen to me? I am a madman."
I said, "Don't be worried. I will approach publishers and
I will not mention your name in the beginning. First let them
see the manuscript - because there are so many translations, but
your translation is not only a translation but in some way an
improvement."
I have read Khalil Gibran, I have read Omar Khayyam. He was
interested in these two men and was slowly, whenever he had time,
translating them. But I told him, "No translation comes close
to yours, and listening to you singing Omar Khayyam I sometimes
feel perhaps the original Omar Khayyam does not have that quality,
that much poetry, because he was not an insane man; he was a mathematician."
Now, one cannot hope for a mathematician to write great poetry.
These are opposite poles, poetry and mathematics - what do they
have in common?
Finally I persuaded a publisher...because he was also amazed
and he was continuously asking who the translator was. When he
was absolutely convinced that this was the best translation, then
I told him the name. He said, "My God, but I used to think
he is a madman."
I said, "In this insane world, to be sane is to be mad.
He is not insane at all, but he enjoys this idea that people have
forgotten about him. Now nobody expects anything from him, nobody
expects that he should behave in a certain way. He has attained
freedom by being condemned as a madman. He is completely at ease
with himself, he goes on doing his own thing and he is immensely
happy."
This man died very soon after. Perhaps he was poor and he could
not afford medicine - he had tuberculosis - but he died so peacefully
and so joyously...singing a song of Omar Khayyam. I was present
when he died. The song that he sang last says...in Hindi, just
as in English or Arabic, the body is called the earth. The word
`human' comes from humus, and humus means mud. The word `adami'
or `adam' comes also from mud.
The song that he was singing and died singing was, "When
I die, don't take my body to the funeral or to the cemetery. The
earth in my body belongs to the pub" - he was a drunkard
- "so please let my body be put in a grave inside the pub.
I will be dead but others who will be alive...if they can just
drop a few drops of wine over my grave, that will be enough satisfaction
for me."
You would not call him a saint, you would not call him religious
- he was not, but he lived a life of utter simplicity, of tremendous
beauty. He never harmed anybody, and there was a shine in his
eyes because he knows something which other people don't know.
tahui27
I have heard Ravi Shankar play on the sitar. He has everything
one can imagine: the personality of a singer, the mastery of his
instrument, and the gift of innovation, which is rare in classical
musicians. He is immensely interested in the new. He has played
with Yehudi Menuhin; no other Indian sitar player would be ready
to do it, because no such thing has ever happened before. Sitar
with a violin? Are you mad? But innovators are a little mad; that's
why they are capable of innovation.
The so-called sane people live orthodox lives from breakfast
till bed. Between bed and breakfast, nothing should be said -
not that I am afraid of saying it. I am talking about "them."
They live according to the rules; they follow lines.
But innovators have to go outside the rules. Sometimes one should
insist on not following the lines, just for not following's sake
- and it pays, believe me. It pays because it always brings you
to a new territory, perhaps of your own being. The medium may
be different but the person inside you, playing the sitar or the
violin or the flute, is the same: different routes leading to
the same point, different lines from the circle leading to the
same center. Innovators are bound to be a little crazy, unconventional...and
Ravi Shankar has been unconventional.
First: he is a pandit, a brahmin, and he married a Mohammedan
girl. In India one cannot even dream of it - a brahmin marrying
a Mohammedan girl! Ravi Shankar did it. But it was not just any
Mohammedan girl, it was the daughter of his master. That was even
more unconventional. That means for years he had been hiding it
from his master. Of course the master immediately allowed the
marriage, the moment he came to know. He not only allowed, he
arranged the marriage. He too was a revolutionary, and of a far
greater range than Ravi Shankar. Allauddin Khan was his name.
I had gone to see him with Masto. Masto used to take me to rare
people. Allauddin Khan was certainly one of the most unique people
I have seen. He was very old; he died only after completing the
century. When I met him he was looking towards the ground. Masto
didn't say anything either. I was a little puzzled. I pinched
Masto, but he remained as if I had not pinched him. I pinched
him harder, but still he remained as if nothing had happened.
Then I really pinched him, and he said, "Ouch!"
Then I saw those eyes of Allauddin Khan - although he was so
old you could read history in the lines of his face. He had seen
the first revolution in India. That was in 1857, and he remembered
it, so he must have been at least old enough to remember. He had
seen a whole century pass by, and all that he did this whole time
was practice the sitar. Eight hours, ten hours, twelve hours each
day; that's the classical Indian way. It's a discipline, and unless
you practice it you soon lose the grip over it. It is so subtle....
It is there only if you are in a certain state of preparedness;
otherwise it is gone.
A master is reported to have once said, "If I don't practice
for three days, the crowd notices it. If I don't practice for
two days, the experts notice it. If I don't practice for one day,
my disciples notice it. As far as I am concerned, I cannot stop
for a single moment. I have to practice and practice; otherwise
I immediately notice. Even in the morning, after a good sleep,
I notice something is lost."
Indian classical music is a hard discipline, but if you impose
it upon yourself it gives you immense freedom. Of course, if you
want to swim in the ocean you have to practice. And if you want
to fly in the sky, then naturally it is apparent that immense
discipline is required. But it cannot be imposed by somebody else.
Anything imposed becomes ugly. That's how the word 'discipline'
became ugly - because it has become associated with the father,
the mother, the teacher, and all kinds of people who don't understand
a single thing about discipline. They don't know the taste of
it.
The master was saying, "If I don't practice even for a
few hours nobody notices, but of course I notice the difference."
One has to continuously practice, and the more you practice, the
more you become practiced in practice; it becomes easier. Slowly
slowly a moment comes when discipline is no longer a practice
but enjoyment.
I am talking about classical music, not about my discipline.
My discipline is enjoyment from the very beginning, or from the
beginning of enjoyment. I will tell you about it later on....
I have heard Ravi Shankar many times. He has the touch, the
magic touch, which very few people have in the world. It was by
accident that he touched the sitar; whatsoever he touched would
have become his instrument. It is not the instrument, it is always
the man. He fell in love with Allauddin's vibe, and Allauddin
was of a far greater height - thousands of Ravi Shankars joined
together, stitched together rather, could not reach to his height.
Allauddin was certainly a rebel - and not only an innovator but
an original source of music. He brought many things to music.
Today almost all the great musicians in India are his disciples.
It is not without reason. All kinds of musicians would come just
to touch Baba's feet: sitarists, dancers, flutists, actors, and
whatnot. That's how he was known, just as "Baba," because
who would use his name, Allauddin?
When I saw him, he was already beyond ninety. Naturally he was
a Baba; that simply became his name. And he was teaching all kinds
of instruments to so many kinds of musicians. You could have brought
any instrument and you would have seen him play it as if he had
done nothing else but play that instrument for his whole life.
He lived very close to the university where I was, just a few
hours' journey away. I used to visit him once in a while, whenever
there was no festival. I make this point because there were always
festivals. I must have been the only one to ask him, "Baba,
can you give me the dates when there are no festivals here?"
He looked at me and said, "So now you have come to take
even those away too?" And with a smile he gave me three dates.
There were only three days in the whole year when there was not
a festival. The reason was, there were all kinds of musicians
with him - Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians - and every festival
happened there, and he allowed them all. He was, in a real sense,
a patriarch, a patron saint.
I used to visit him on those three days, when he was alone and
there was no crowd around. I told him, "I don't want to disturb
you. You can sit silently. If you want to play your veena it is
up to you, or whatsoever. If you want to recite the Koran, I would
love it. I have come here just to be part of your milieu."
He wept like a child. It took me a little time to wipe his tears
away and ask, "Have I hurt you?"
He said, "No, not at all. It just touched my heart so deeply
that I could not find anything else to do but cry. And I know
that I should not cry: I am so old and it is inappropriate - but
has one to be appropriate all the time?"
I said, "No, at least not when I'm here." He started
laughing, and the tears in his eyes, and the laughter on his face...both
together were such a joy.
Masto had brought me to him. Why? I will just say a few more things
before I can answer it....
I have heard Vilayat Khan, another great sitarist - perhaps
a little greater than Ravi Shankar, but not an innovator. He is
utterly classical, but listening to him even I loved classical
music. Ordinarily I don't love anything classical, but he plays
so perfectly you cannot help yourself. You have to love it, it
is not in your hands. Once a sitar is in his hands, you are not
in your own hands. Vilayat Khan is pure classical music. He will
not allow any pollution; he will not allow anything popular. I
mean "pop," because in the West, unless you say pop
nobody will understand what is popular. It is just the old "popular"
cut short - badly cut, bleeding....
Ravi Shankar is even more arrogant, perhaps because he is a
brahmin too. That is like having two diseases together: classical
music and being a brahmin. And he has a third dimension to his
disease too, because he married the great Allauddin's daughter;
he is his son-in-law.
Alauddin was so respected that just to be his son-in-law was enough
proof that you are great, a genius. But unfortunately for them,
I had also heard Masto. glimps35
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