Simplicity vs. Complexity: Osho's Insight on Life's Richness

Simplicity is very complex

Osho says, "When a sinner becomes a sage, the sage has a beauty. When a sage is simply a sage, without becoming ever a sinner, he is just a simpleton, he has missed life."

Simplicity needs a very deep and complex experience behind it. A simpleton is simply without experience. He may be a fool, but he cannot be a sage. A sage is one who has lived all the sins of life, who has not denied anything, who has not called anything a sin, who has simply accepted whatsoever has happened, who has allowed it to happen; who has moved with every wave, who has drifted, who went astray, who fell down to the very hell.

Somewhere Nietzsche says, “If a tree wants to reach to the sky, its roots need to go to the very hell.” He’s right. If you want a real flowering into the sky, your roots will need to go to the deepest hell in the earth.

When a sinner becomes a sage, the sage has a beauty. When a sage is simply a sage, without becoming ever a sinner, he is just a simpleton, he has missed life. And no virtue can come out unless there has been wandering away, going astray.

There is a beautiful parable Jesus tells: One father had two sons. The younger son asked for his heritage, took it away, wasted it in the city with wine and women, became a beggar. The other son remained with the father, worked hard in the farms, accumulated much wealth. And then one day, the beggar-son, the son who had gone astray, informed his father, “I am coming back—I was a fool, I wasted your wealth. Forgive me. Now I have nowhere to go, accept me, I am coming back.” And the father said to his sons, “Celebrate this occasion. Kill the fattest sheep, make many delicious foods, distribute sweets to the whole town, find out the oldest wine for him. This is going to be a feast—my son who had gone astray is coming back.”

Some people from the village went to the farm, and they told the other son, “Look—what injustice! You have been with your father, you served him like a servant, you never went astray, you never did anything against him, but a feast was never given in your honor, it was never celebrated. And now that vagabond, who has wasted all your father’s money and who has lived in sin, is coming back. And your father is celebrating it. Come to the town! Sweets are being distributed, a great feast is being arranged.”

It means that if you remain always on the right path, you will not be celebrated by existence.

Of course, the elder son felt very angry. He came back, he was very sad, and he told his father, “What type of injustice is this? You never killed any sheep for me, you never gave me any gift. And now that son of yours is coming back, who has wasted all the wealth that you had given him, and wasted it in wrong ways—and you are celebrating it.”

The father said, “Yes because you have always been with me, there is no need. But his coming back has to be celebrated: he had gone astray, he is the sheep lost and found again.”

It means that if you remain always on the right path, you will not be celebrated by existence. You will be a simpleton, you will not be enriched by life. You will not have any salt in you; you may be nutritious, but no spices. You will be very simple, good, but your goodness will not have a complex harmony in it. You will be a single note, not millions of notes falling into a melody. You will be a straight line, with no curves and no corners.

Those curves and corners give a beauty, they make life more mysterious, they give depth. You will be shallow in your saintlihood, you will not have any depth in you.

That’s why tantra says everything is beautiful. Even sin is beautiful, because sin gives depth to your saintlihood. Even going astray is beautiful, because coming back becomes more enriched. This world is needed for you to move into it deeply so that you forget yourself completely—and then a coming back.

People ask, “Why does this world exist if God is against it? Then why does he throw us into the world, into the world of karmas, sins, wrongs? Why does he throw us? He can simply redeem us.” That is not possible. Then you will be shallow, superficial. You have to be thrown to the farthest corner of the world, and you have to come back. That coming back has something in it—that something is the crystallisation of your being.

Abridged from Tantra:The Supreme Understanding by Osho

Osho is known for his revolutionary contribution to the science of inner transformation, with an approach to meditation that acknowledges the accelerated pace of contemporary life.

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