From: JonYev-AT-aol.com
Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2000 19:02:38 EDT
Subject: Re: concerned zen


In a message dated 4/23/00 6:30:09 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
indi_orpheus-AT-crosswinds.net writes:

<< And if Osho was so damned enlightened, how come he whined all the way to
 his death - listen to his final tapes - cribbing about how th Americans
 had booted him out of his fancy Oregon ashram and what a jerktown
 America was. I used to love the man when he was bhagwan (God) Rajneesh,
 but then he took off into something bigger. Even Nz didn't do that, and
 boy did he love himself! >>

I didn't know who he was so I did a search on Osho. Below is an excerpt from 
the first site I got... synchronicity anybody?
--Jonathan Yevin


It is one of the perennial questions of humanity: the question of freedom and 
responsibility. If you are free, you interpret it as if now there is no 
responsibility. 

Just a hundred years ago Friedrich Nietzsche declared, "God is dead, and man 
is free." And the next sentence he wrote is, "Now you can do whatsoever you 
want to do. There is no responsibility. God is dead, man is free, and there 
is no responsibility." 

There he was absolutely wrong; when there is no God, there is tremendous 
responsibility on your shoulders. If there is a God, he can share your 
responsibility. You can throw your responsibility on Him: you can say, "It is 
you who have made the world; it is you who have made me in this way; it is 
you who is finally, ultimately, responsible, not me. How can I be ultimately 
responsible? I am just a creature, and you are the creator. Why have you put 
seeds of corruption in me and seeds of sin in me from the beginning? You are 
responsible. I am free." 

In fact, if there is no God, then man is absolutely responsible for his acts, 
because there is no way to throw responsibility on anybody else. When I say 
to you that you are free, I mean that you are responsible. You cannot throw 
responsibility on anybody else, you are alone. And whatsoever you do, it is 
your doing. You cannot say that somebody else forced you to do it -- because 
you are free; nobody can force you! Because you are free, it is your decision 
to do something or not to do something. 

With freedom comes responsibility. Freedom is responsibility. But the mind is 
very cunning, the mind interprets in its own way: it always goes on listening 
to that which it wants to listen to. It goes on interpreting things in its 
own way. The mind never tries to understand what really is the truth. It has 
taken that decision already. 


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