Destination Vs Direction...."This is it!"
A book written by Osho, entitled 'Intuition' has always forced me to pick it up and read it at the right times! when i needed to know a section of its contents it would present itself to me... and now i share it. Maybe you don't understand, but if even one does... then this has been worth while typing it out... enjoy / read with an open mind...
'The distinction is subtle, but it is the same distinction as between the mind and the heart, between logic and love, or even more appropriate, between prose and poetry. A destination is a clear-cut thing; direction is intuitive. A destination is something outside you, more like a thing. A direction is an inner feeling; not an object, but your very subjectivity. You can feel direction, you cannot know it. You can know the destination, you cannot feel it. Destination is in the future. Once decided you start manipulating your life toward it, steering your life toward it.
How can you decide the future? Who are you to decide the unknown? How is it possible to fix the future? Future is that which is not known yet. Future is open possibility. By your fixing a destination your future is no longer a future, because it is no longer open.
When you decide a destination, it is the past that decides. Your experience of the past the past, your knowledge of the past decides. You kill the future - then you go on repeating your past, maybe a little modified, a little changed here and there according to your comfort, convenience. Repainted, renovated, but still it comes out of the past. This is the way one loses track of the future: by deciding and destination, one loses track of the future. One becomes dead, one starts functioning like a mechanism.
Direction is something alive, in the moment. It knows nothing of the future, it knows nothing of the past, but throbs, pulsates, here and now. And out of this pulsating moment, the next moment is created. Not by any decision on your part- but just because you live this moment and you live it so totally, and you love this moment so wholly, out of this wholeness the next moment is born. It is going to have a direction. That direction is not given by you, it is not imposed by you; it is spontaneous.
You cannot decide direction, you can only live this moment that is available to you. Bu living it, direction arises… destination is fixed by the mind; direction is earned by living. Destination is logical; one wants to be a doctor, one wants to be an engineer, one wants to be a scientist, or one wants to be a politician. One wants to be a rich man, famous man - these are destination. Direction? - one simply lives the moment in deep trust that life will decide. One lives this moment so totally that out of this totality a freshness is born. Out of this totality the past dissolves and the future starts taking shape. But shit shape is not given by you, this shape is earned by you.
One zen master, Rinzai, was dying; he was on the deathbed. Somebody asked, “Master, people will ask after you are gone, what was your essential teachings? You have said many things, you have talked about many thing - it will be difficult for us to condense it. Before you leave, please, you yourself condense it into a single sentence, so we will treasure it. And whenerver people who have not known you desire, we can give them your essential teachings.”
Dying, Rinzai opened his eyes, gave a great Zen shout, a lion’s roar! They were all shocked! They couldn’t believe that this dying man could have so much energy. They were not expecting it. The man was unpredictable, he had always been so, but even with this unpredictable man they were not in any way expecting that dying, at the last moment, he would give such a lions roar. And when they were shocked - and of course their minds stopped, they were surprised, taken aback- Rinzai said “This is it!” closed his eyes and died.
This is it…
This moment, this silent moment, this moment uncorrupted by thought, this silence that was surrounding this surprise, this last lion’s roar over death - this is it.
Yes, direction comes out of living this moment. It is not something that you manage and plan. It happens, it is subtle, and you will never be certain about it. You can only feel it. That’s why I say it is more like poetry, not like prose; more like love, not like logic; more like art than like science. And that’s its beauty- hesitant, as hesitatnt as a dewdrop on a grass leaf, slipping, not knowing where, not knowing why. In the morning sun, just slipping on a leaf of grass.
Direction is subtle, delicate, fragile.
Destination belongs to the ego; direction belongs to life, to being.
To move in the world of direction one needs tremendous trust, because one is moving in insecurity, one is moving in darkness. But the darkness has a thrill in it; without any map, without any guide, you are moving into the unknown. Each step is a discovery, and it is not only a discovery of the outside world. Simultaneously, something is discovered in you also. A discoverer not only discovers things. As he goes on discovering more and more unknown worlds, he goes on discovering himself also, simultaneously. Each discovery is an inner discovery also. The more you know, the more you know about the knower. The more you love, the more you know about the lover.
I am not going to give you a destination. I can only give you a direction - awake, throbbing with life and unknown, always surprising, unpredictable. I’m not going to give you a map. I can give you only a great passion to discover.
Yes, a map is not needed; great passion, great desire to discover is needed. Then I leave you alone. Then you go on your own. Move into the vast, into the infinite, and by and by, learn to trust it. Leave yourself in the hands of life.
The man who trusts, the man who is thrilled even at the gate of death - he can give a lion’s roar. Even dying - because he knows nothing dies- at the very moment of death he can say, “This is it!”
Because each moment, this is it. It may be life, it may be death, it may be success, it may be failure, it may be happiness, it may be unhappiness.
Each moment… this is it.'