Question – Beloved Master, I am sitting silently doing nothing, and the weeds are growing all around me.
Osho – Roderick, weeds are divine. Don’t call them weeds. They are as spiritual as the buddhas. They partake of God as much as roses. Remove men from the earth — will there be any difference between weeds and roses? All these distinctions are made up by the mind.
You are not really sitting silently; otherwise, who is telling you weeds are growing? Your mind is still functioning, whispering things to you. It is your mind! If you are really silent there is no mind — then whether weeds grow or roses grow it is all the same to you. What difference is there? Can’t you enjoy weeds? They are beautiful people! See the weeds swaying, dancing in the wind, in the sun…. What do you think is lacking in them which roses have? Nothing is lacking. This is just an idea, and ideas change. It is possible one day that roses may go out of fashion, weeds may become an “in” thing.
A hundred years ago nobody had ever thought that cactuses would be loved by people, but now the cactus is “in” and the rose is “out.” To talk about the rose looks old-fashioned, looks orthodox, conventional; to talk about cactuses is avant-garde, it shows that you are modern, contemporary. People are keeping cactuses in their bedrooms — dangerous cactuses, poisonous cactuses, which can kill you! But they have come into fashion, and once something comes into fashion there are so many fools who start appreciating it.
People simply go on following whatsoever is made fashionable by a few clever and cunning people. Just a hundred years ago nobody would have liked Picasso’s paintings, and now Picasso is the greatest artist — not only of this century but of the whole history. What has happened? Just the fashion has changed. People get tired of one thing; they go on moving to the opposite extreme.
Roderick, there is nothing wrong in weeds! There is nothing wrong in anything. The idea of right and wrong means the mind is there. You are not sitting silently and you are not sitting doing nothing. You are discriminating, and that is action. You are labeling, and that is thinking. And you are judging.
Drop all judgment, all labeling, all discrimination… and just watch weeds growing. So what — let them grow! When you don’t have a mind at all, you are also a weed; so weeds growing around you, it is not something strange — weeds surrounding a weed! Enjoy!
Once a Zen master was asked by a king — because the master was a great painter — to paint a picture of a bamboo.
The master said, “It will take time.”
“How long?” asked the king.
The master said, “That is difficult to say, but at least two or three years.”
The king said, “Are you mad or something? You are one of the greatest painters. I was thinking you could just draw it right now!”
He said, “That is not the problem, drawing a bamboo is not the problem — but first I have to be a bamboo; otherwise how do I know what a bamboo is? I want to know the bamboo from the inside! So I will have to go and live in a bamboo grove. Now, one never knows how long it will take. Unless I know the bamboo from within I cannot paint it. That has been my practice my whole life: I paint only that which I have known from its deepest core.”
The king said, “Okay, I will wait.”
One year passed. He sent a few people to see what was happening, whether the man was alive or dead. They came back and said, “The man is alive, but we don’t think that he is a man anymore — he is a bamboo! He was swaying with the bamboos in the wind. We passed by his side; he didn’t take any notice. We said, ‘Hello!’ He didn’t hear. We wanted to talk to him. We looked at his eyes — they were so empty that we became frightened; either he has gone mad or something has happened. And he can do anything, so we escaped. He may kill or, who knows? — he may jump upon us! He is no more the same man.”
The king himself went to see, and the master was swaying in the wind, in the sun. And the king asked, “Sir, what about my painting?” He didn’t answer.
After three years he appeared at the court and he said, “Now bring the canvas and the paints. I am ready. And why were you people disturbing me again and again? If you had not disturbed me I would have come a little earlier. These fools from your court, they were saying things to me. They were saying, ‘Hello!’ Do you say hello to a bamboo? They disturbed the whole thing. It took months for me to again settle into being a bamboo and to forget that I am a man. And then you came and you said, ‘Sir.’ Is that the way to address a bamboo? ‘When are you going to paint?’ Has anybody ever heard that bamboos paint? You are a fool, you are surrounded by fools! I had told you that I would come whenever I was ready.”
The canvas was brought, the brushes and the color, and within seconds he drew the bamboo. And it is said that the king wept for joy. He had never seen such a painting: it was so alive! It was no ordinary painting. It was not from the outside, it was from the bamboo — as if a bamboo had sprouted on the canvas, not been painted.
Roderick, sit silently doing nothing, and let things happen — whatsoever is happening. If weeds are growing, let them grow. They have the right to grow as much as you have the right to grow. And if you allow everything without any judgment, if you are nonjudgmental, you will grow to such pinnacles of joy and benediction that you cannot imagine right now.
Source – Osho Book “The Dhammapada, Vol 11”
