I am often able to achieve the state – or what seems like the state – which you call ‘being a hollow bamboo’ – silent, watching, empty. The only problem is that there is no bliss in that emptiness. It is just nothing. Can I expect something to fill it one of these days?
Mariel Strauss, it is because of this idea that you are missing the whole beauty of nothingness: this desire to fill it. You are not really a hollow bamboo, because in this hollow bamboo this desire is there, and this desire is enough to fill the hollow bamboo, to block its emptiness.
This desire to fill it one day, this expectation that “Someday, God will come and fill my emptiness” this very idea is preventing you from really becoming a hollow bamboo. Drop this desire. Forget all about filling your hollow bamboo – then you are a hollow bamboo. And when you are a hollow bamboo, it is immediately full of God. But not that you have to desire it; if you desire it you will go on missing it.
This is one of the basic paradoxes to be understood about religious inquiry. Understand it as deeply as possible, let it sink deeply into your heart, because this is not only Mariel Strauss’s problem, this is everybody’s problem. Anybody who goes on in the search for truth, for being, for God, or whatsoever you call it, will have to come across it.
You can feel that you are empty, but deep down, lurking somewhere is the desire, the hope, the expectation that “Now, where is God? It is getting late and I have remained a hollow bamboo so long. What is the point? This is just nothingness.”
There is condemnation when you say, “This is just nothingness.” You are not happy with this hollow bamboo-ness. You are not happy with this emptiness; there is condemnation. You have managed somehow, because you have heard me saying again and again that the moment you are a hollow bamboo God will descend in you: “Become empty, and you will become full.” You want to become full, so you say “Okay, we will become empty. If that is the only way to become full, we will even try that.” But this is not true emptiness. You have not understood the point.
Enjoy emptiness, cherish it, nourish it. Let your emptiness become a dance, a celebration. Forget all about God – to come or not is His business. Why should you be worried? Leave it to Him. And when you have completely forgotten about God, He comes, immediately He comes. He always comes when you are utterly unaware of His coming; you don’t even hear His footsteps. One moment He was not there, and suddenly another moment He is there. But your emptiness has to be total. And a total emptiness means no expectation, no future, no desire.
You say, “I am often able to achieve the state . . .”
You must be forcing it, you must be trying hard, you must be cultivating it, you must be imagining it. It is imaginary, it is not true.
“. . . or what seems like the state . . .”
And deep down you also know that it is not the real state. You have managed somehow to create a kind of emptiness in yourself. It is a forced emptiness.
“. . . which you call ‘being a hollow bamboo’ – silent, watching, empty . . .”
It is not what I call the state of being a hollow bamboo; it is not. If it were, then there would be no desire for God, because there is no desire. It does not matter what you desire; God, money, power, prestige, it matters not. Desire is desire, its taste is always the same. Desire leads you away from the present, from the herenow into the future, somewhere else. Desire does not allow you to relax into the moment. It takes you away from your being.
So what you desire does not matter: you can desire presidency of a country, or you can desire money, or you can desire sainthood, or you can desire God, you can desire truth – desire is desire. Desire means you are torn apart between that which you are and that which you would like to be. This is anguish; this is anxiety. And this anxiety will not allow you to become a hollow bamboo. To be a hollow bamboo means: a state of desirelessness. Then you are utterly empty, and then that emptiness has a clarity in it. Then that emptiness has a splendor in it, a purity in it. Then that emptiness has a holy quality to it. It is so pure; it is so innocent that you will not call it ‘just emptiness’ or ‘just nothingness’. That emptiness is God itself! Once you are empty, once you are herenow, with no desire taking you away from your reality, God is. God means ‘that which is’.
God is already the case; your desiring mind does not allow you to see it. Your desiring mind makes you a monkey: you go on jumping from one branch to another branch. You go on jumping; you are never in a state of rest. This desire and that desire, and one desire creates another desire, and it is a continuum.
When there is no desire where can you go? When there is no desire where is the future? When there is no desire where is time? Where is past? When there is no desire where is mind? Where is memory? Where is imagination? All gone! Just cut one single root which is the chief root of the tree of mind: cut desire and just be. In that state of being you are a hollow bamboo. And the moment you are a hollow bamboo, reality bursts upon you, as if it has been always waiting but you were not available to it. It floods you!
-Osho
From The Secret of Secrets, Discourse #18, Q5
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