Krishna: The Man & His Philosophy

by Osho

About him it is said he was born laughing. Every child enters this world crying. Only one child in all of history laughed at the time of his birth, and that was Zarathustra.

This war of man against himself has continued long enough. And in the history of thousands of years of this war, barely a handful of people, whose names can be counted on one's fingers, can be said to have found God. So in a sense we lost this war, because down the centuries billions of people died without finding their souls, without meeting God.

He accepts life in all its facets, in all its climates and colors. He alone does not choose he accepts life unconditionally. He does not shun love; being a man he does not run away from women. As one who has known and experienced God, he alone does not turn his face from war. He is full of love and compassion, and yet he has the courage to accept and fight a war. His heart is utterly non-violent, yet he plunges into the fire and fury of violence when it becomes unavoidable. He accepts the nectar, and yet he is not afraid of poison.

One who knows the secret of non-violence should cease to fear violence. What kind of non-violence is it that is scared of violence?

Krishna accepts the duality, the dialectics of life altogether and therefore transcends duality. What we call transcendence is not possible so long as you are in conflict, so long as you choose one part and reject the other. Transcendence is only possible when you choicelessly accept both parts together, when you accept the whole.

It has been tested and found that man can remain, like a lotus in water, untouched and unattached while living in the throes of relationship. It has been discovered that man can hold to his love and compassion even on the battlefield, that he can continue to love with his whole being while wielding a sword in his hand.

Only a man of supreme non-violence could give such support to war.

Nature is the visible, the gross aspect of God, and God is the invisible, the subtle aspect of nature.

Nietzsche has a very significant maxim. He says a tree that longs to reach the heights of heaven must sink its roots to the bottom of the earth. A tree that is afraid to do so should abandon its longing to reach the heavens. Really, the higher a tree the deeper its roots go. If you want to ascend to the skies you will have to descend into the abyss as well.

Krishna symbolizes acceptance of the opposites together. And he alone can be whole who accepts the contradictions together. One who chooses will always be incomplete, less than the whole, because the part he chooses will continue to delude him and the part he denies will continue to pursue and haunt him. He can never be rid of what he rejects and represses.

We see big buildings all over. They all came in the wake of castles. And castles were the products of war. The first high walls on this earth were built with a view to keep out the enemies, and then other high walls and buildings followed. And now we have skyscrapers in all the big cities of the world. But it is difficult to think that these high-rises are the progenies of war.

In times of war man's intelligence takes a great leap forward, one it would ordinarily take centuries to make.

We want to avoid war just for so it does not hurt and harm life. But what if life itself is hurt and harmed by preventing war? Then its prevention has no meaning. Even the pacifist wants to prevent war so that peace is preserved. But what sense is there in preventing a war if peace suffers because of it? In that case, we certainly need to have the strength and ability to wage a clear war, a decisive war.

it is good to avoid war, but if it becomes unavoidable it is better to accept it bravely and joyfully than to run away from it.

a community that is afraid of death, afraid of war, eventually begins, deep down in it's being, to be afraid of life itself.

Krishna is neither a pacifist nor a hawk. He has nothing to do with any "ism". In fact, an "ism" means choice, that we choose one of the opposites. Krishna is "non-ism". He says that if good comes through peace, we should welcome peace, and that if good flows from war then war is equally welcome.

if man wants to maintain peace, he needs to have the strength and ability to fight a war and win it. And he asserts that in order to fight a war well, it is necessary, simultaneously, to make due preparations for peace.

ten to fifteen years –

A person who cannot fight is certainly lacking in something. And a person who cannot fight is incapable of being rightly peaceful. And one who is incapable of being peaceful is also crippled, and will soon lose his sanity. And a restless mind is incapable of fighting, because even when one has to fight a kind of peace is needed.

the two work like partners in a common enterprise.

Life is an adventure, an adventure of energy. And people who lag behind in this adventure, for lack of energy and courage, eventually have to die and disappear from the scene.

in twenty years' time a full replica, a scenario of the Mahabharata will be upon us.

When man's state of affairs, when his destiny comes to a point where a decisive event becomes imminent, the same destiny summons and sends forth the intelligence, the genius that is supremely needed to lead the event.

The decisive event brings with it the decisive man too.

You are not only responsible when you hit others, you are also responsible when others hit you.

but all good people do not necessarily have clarity and foresight. Often they are confused people, people who don't know that what they are doing is going to serve the side of injustice.

But people forget that the person who will make them all equal will himself remain tree and unequal; he will remain outside them all.

Anything imposed with force is synonymous with slavery.

Good stands for a society of individuals, free individuals. Individuals will, of course, have relationships, but then it will be a society and not a herd, not a crowd.

The division between good and evil is never so clear-cut, even in a battle between Rama and Ravana. Even in Ravana there is a little of Rama, and there is a little of Ravana in Rama too. The Kauravas share a few of the virtues of the Pandavas, and the latter a few of the vices of the former. Even the best man on this earth has something of the worst in him. And the meanest of us all carries a bit of goodness in him. So it is always a question of proportion and predominance of one or the other.

All great persons are born ahead of their time, and all insignificant people are born after their time. It is only mediocre people who are born in their time.

Now pain can be banished. In the future, birth will cease to be painful both for the mother and for the child. Life will cease to be painful; disease can be removed. Even a cure for old age can be found, and the span of life considerably lengthened. The life span will be so long that dying will cease to be a problem; instead people will ask, "Why live this long?" All these things are going to happen in the near future; Then Buddha's maxim about life being an unending chain of suffering will be hard to understand. And then Krishna's flute will become significant and his song and dance will become alive. Then life will become a celebration of happiness and joy. Then life will be a blossoming and a beauty.

In the midst of this blossoming the image of a naked Mahavira will lose its relevance. In the midst of this celebration the philosophy of renunciation will lose its luster. In the midst of this festivity that life will be, dancers and musicians will be on center-stage. In the future world there will be less and less misery and more and more happiness. That is how I see Krishna's importance ever on the ascent.