Book: A Bird on the Wing

Book: A Bird on the Wing

Author: OSHO

Chapter #1

Chapter title: Empty Your Cup

A disciple came to Bodhidharma and said, "Master, you told me to be empty. Now I have become empty. Now what else do you say?" Bodhidharma hit him hard with his staff on the head, and he said, "Go and throw this emptiness out."

If you say "I am empty," the "I am" is there, and the "I" cannot be empty. So emptiness cannot be claimed. No one can say, "I am empty," just as no one can say, "I am humble."

If you say, "I am humble," you are not. Who claims this humility? Humbleness cannot be claimed. If you are humble, you are humble, but you cannot say it. Not only can you not say it, you cannot feel that you are humble because the very feeling will give birth to the ego again. Be empty, but don't think that you are empty otherwise you have deceived yourself.

I have heard about a man who was traveling in a train for the first time, a villager. He was carrying his luggage on his head, thinking, "Putting it down will be too much for the train to carry, and I have paid only for my own self. I have purchased the ticket but I have not paid for the luggage." So he was carrying the luggage on his head. The train was carrying him and his luggage, and whether he carried it on his head or put it down made no difference to the train. Your mind is unnecessary luggage. It makes no difference to this existence that is carrying you; you are unnecessarily burdened. I say drop it.

The trees exist without the mind and exist more beautifully than any human being; the birds exist without the mind and exist in a more ecstatic state than any human being.

Look at children who are still not civilized, who are still wild. They exist without the mind, and even a Jesus or a Buddha will feel jealous of their innocence. There is no need for this mind. The whole world is going on and on without it. Why are you carrying it?

Once you can put it down, even for a single minute, your whole existence will be transformed. You will enter into a new dimension, the dimension of weightlessness.

That's what I'm going to give you: wings into the sky, into the heaven – weightlessness gives you these wings- and roots into the earth, a centering.

Work and Its Secrets

This is a small book of postcard size containing merely 10 pages but its messages are relevant and worth mentioning. It is actually a speech delivered by Swami Vivekananda at Los Angeles, California on January 4, 1900.  It was published by Advaita Ashrama, Mayavati, Almora, Himalayas. I read the second edition (1951) of this book. This book describes the secrets of work as the title of the book suggests.

The principal secret of work is: “One should pay as much attention to the means of work as to the end.”

Generally we think only of the ends of the work, we do not pay attention to the means of the work. We keep our eyes on the end and follow any path to achieve that end. But the purity of both the end and the means are needed.

This book teaches many lessons. Some of the great lessons are quoted here:

“It is the cause that produces the effect”

“Weakness is death”

“Strength is life”

“Desire is the father of all misery”

“The perfectly unselfish man is the most successful”

“Be, therefore, not a beggar, be unattached”

“The whole of life is giving”

“A river is continually emptying itself into the ocean and is continually filling up again”

“Every day we renew our determination to be unattached”

“There never has been a blow undeserved”

“If I get real control of myself, the blow will never come”

“We only get what we deserve”

“Get hold of yourself”

“We came here to sip the honey and we find our hands and feet sticking to it. We are caught though we come to catch. We come to enjoy, we are being enjoyed. We come to rule, we are being ruled. We work to get everything from nature but we find in the long run that nature takes everything from us- depletes us and casts us aside.”

“Whenever failure comes, if we analyze it critically, in 99% of cases we shall find that it was because we did not pay attention to the means.”

“If only we had power to detach ourselves at will, there would not be any misery”

“We get caught. How? Not by what we give but by what we expect. We get misery in return for our love, not from the fact that we love, but from the fact that we want love in return. There is no misery where there is no want.”

” Nothing can happen to us, unless we make ourselves susceptible to it”

“No disease can come to me until the body is ready……we get only that for which we are fitted‘’