저는 왜 삶에서 경이로움을 느끼지 못합니까. 모든 것이 너무 단조롭고 지겨워 보입니다. (영문)

BELOVED MASTER,

WHY DON'T I FEEL ANY SURPRISES IN MY LIFE? ALL SEEMS SO DULL AND DRAB.

Gyano, I have given you the name Gyano: Gyano means knowledge. You are too knowledgeable, you know too much. And when one knows too much, life loses the quality of being mysterious. Then you are never surprised by anything. Your knowledge goes on supplying you all kinds of answers; even before you have asked, the answer is there, you seem to know everything. Knowing nothing you go on believing in borrowed knowledge, and slowly slowly, that borrowed knowledge hypnotizes you so much that you forget that you don't know. You start believing in your own knowledge -- and it is not your own, it is just borrowed. You may have read the Bible, the Gita, the Koran....

Krishna knew what he was talking about, but when you read you don't know. Jesus knew what he was talking about, but when you read the Sermon on the Mount you are simply collecting, gathering words -- words which are not meaningful to you at all, which cannot have any meaning because meaning comes from experience.

Jesus says: If somebody hits you on one of your cheeks, give him the other one too. You can read it, it is a simple statement. You can even try to follow it -- thousands of Christians are trying to follow it.

I have heard about a Christian saint who used to talk too much about this statement. A mischievous person came and hit the saint on one cheek. Of course, true to his teaching, the saint gave him his other cheek hoping that now he would understand: "He will see how great I am, how compassionate, how considerate, how full of love!"

But the mischievous person was also a great devil; if the saint was great he was also great. He was not in any way inferior to the saint. He hit on the other cheek even harder.

Now this was too much! The saint immediately jumped upon him and started hitting him. The mischievous person was surprised. He said, "What are you doing? What happened to your teaching? What happened to Jesus?"

He said, "Jesus has said: If somebody hits you on one cheek, give him the other. I have got only two cheeks, so his teaching is finished -- now I am free of the teaching. I will show you who I am! I have followed the teaching literally, exactly."

Once Buddha was asked by a man, "How many times do you say one should forgive?"

Now, the very question is enough to show the quality of the person. He is saying, "How many times...?" When you ask about how many times, you are not a man of compassion.

Buddha said, "Seven times."

The man said, "Okay."

Because of the way he said, "Okay," Buddha said, "Wait -- seventy times!"

The man felt a little reluctant about accepting seventy times, but still he said, "Okay."

Buddha said, "I withdraw my words. You have to forgive infinitely; even seventy times won't do. The way you are accepting it, it seems that when seventy times are over you will take revenge. And you can do harm in a single blow, you can take revenge in a single blow. You are not a man of compassion. You don't understand me, it is not a question of how many times."

You can read Buddha, THE DHAMMAPADA, you can recite it every day; you will become knowledgeable. All questions will disappear because you will have all kinds of answers, but all those answers are borrowed. Hence they will destroy the beauty of life and they will destroy your sense of awe and wonder, which are the most essential religious qualities.

If someone asks me which is the most fundamental religious quality, I will say wonder. And knowledge kills wonder. You start knowing about everything and the more you know, the more your life will be dull and drab, because all that dust of knowledge that gathers around you makes your mirrorlike consciousness so clouded -- there are so many layers of knowledge -- that you lose the quality of childlike wonder. You can't see the beauty of flowers, you can't see the beauty of a sunset, you can't see the miracle of existence. And existence is full of miracles, and surprises are everywhere, all around you.

Just look, but look with open eyes. The knowledgeable person is blind; the most blind person in existence is the knowledgeable person.

Gyano, I have given you the name just to remind you again and again that that is your problem, that is your main characteristic. Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples, "The first thing for the disciple is to know what his main characteristic is." Your main characteristic is knowledgeability.

Look around without carrying your burden of knowledge, and then you are stumbling continuously into new surprises and life again becomes worth living, worth rejoicing. Life again becomes a mystery to be loved and lived. It is not a problem to be solved, it is a mystery to be lived.

"Brothers," said the colored preacher, "the subject of my sermon today is 'liars'. How many in this congregation have read the sixty-ninth chapter of Matthew?"

Nearly every hand went up.

"You are the very people I want to preach to," the reverend said. "There is no such chapter!"

But nobody wants to accept that he does not know. Sixty-ninth chapter of Matthew.... Everybody wants to pretend. And I will not say that they were doing it very consciously, deliberately. Maybe they were thinking that they had read it, maybe they were believing that they had read it, and seeing so many hands going up they must become convinced that yes, there is such a chapter.

In the old days down South, a minister had a Negro named Ezra in his household. Ezra was smart and ambitious, but he could not read or write.

One Sunday the minister saw Ezra in the church, scribbling away industriously through the sermon. Afterwards, the minister asked him, "Ezra, what were you doing in church?"

"Taking notes, sir. I's eager to learn."

"Let me see," said the minister, and he glanced over Ezra's notes, which looked more like Chinese than English.

"Why, Ezra," he chided, "this is all nonsense!"

"I thought so," said Ezra, "all the time you was preaching it!"

Your preachers have poisoned you. Your knowledge has destroyed you; it has taken away the simple joy of not-knowing. Regain that joy of not-knowing. That's the whole purpose of meditation: coming out of knowledge just as a snake slips out of its old skin.

Slip out of your knowledge, Gyano, and then life is full of surprises. Every moment you will come across so many wonderful things. A seed becoming a sprout is a miracle. A bud opening in the morning is a miracle. A flower releasing its fragrance is a miracle. The night full of stars... what more miracles do you need? The whole existence is in a constant celebration!

And still you say, "I feel dull and drab and dragging"?

Then you must be at fault somewhere; nobody else is responsible for it. But we cling to our knowledge because it fulfills our ego.

D.H. Lawrence was walking in a garden with a small child. And, as children are prone to, the child asked, "Why are the trees green?"

D.H. Lawrence is one of the people I love and I respect. D.H. Lawrence is one of the people of this century who had tremendous insight into things. He stood there, thought for a moment, closed his eyes, meditated.

The child said, "Is it such a difficult question for you? Don't you know why the trees are green?"

D.H. Lawrence said, "The trees are green because they are green."

The child said, "Right! That's the right answer."

But you will not agree; no knowledgeable person will agree with D.H. Lawrence. He will say trees are green because of chlorophyll or some other nonsense. But his answer is tremendously beautiful: "Trees are green because they are green!"

And the child was immensely happy. He said, "Right, that's what I also feel. We agree about it!"

Drop your knowledge, become more childlike, and regain your joy in life. To rejoice in life is sannyas. My sannyas is not renunciation: it is rejoicing, it is celebration.

- OSHO, <The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 12>, Chapter #2 -