Hello Jealousy!
Jealousy is comparison.
And we have been taught to compare, we have been conditioned to compare,
always compare. Somebody else has a better house, somebody else has a
more beautiful body, somebody else has more money, somebody else has a
more charismatic personality. Compare, go on comparing yourself with
everybody else you pass by, and great jealousy will be the outcome; it
is the by-product of the conditioning for comparison.
Otherwise, if you drop comparing, jealousy disappears. Then you
simply know you are you, and you are nobody else, and there is no need.
It is good that you don’t compare yourself with trees, otherwise you
will start feeling very jealous: why are you not green? And why has
existence been so hard on you — and no flowers? It is better that you
don’t compare with birds, with rivers, with mountains; otherwise you
will suffer. You only compare with human beings, because you have been
conditioned to compare only with human beings; you don’t compare with
peacocks and with parrots. Otherwise, your jealousy would be more and
more: you would be so burdened by jealousy that you would not be able to
live at all.
Existence creates only originals; it does not believe in carbon copies.
Comparison is a very foolish attitude, because each person is unique and incomparable.
Once this understanding settles in you, jealousy disappears. Each is
unique and incomparable. You are just yourself: nobody has ever been
like you, and nobody will ever be like you. And you need not be like
anybody else, either.
Existence creates only originals; it does not believe in carbon copies.
A bunch of chickens were in the yard when a football flew over the
fence and landed in their midst. A rooster waddled over, studied it,
then said, “I’m not complaining, girls, but look at the work they are
turning out next door.”
Next door great things are happening: the grass is greener, the roses
are rosier. Everybody seems to be so happy — except yourself. You are
continuously comparing. And the same is the case with the others, they
are comparing too. Maybe they think the grass in your lawn is greener —
it always looks greener from the distance — that you have a more
beautiful wife…. You are tired, you cannot believe why you allowed
yourself to be trapped by this woman, you don’t know how to get rid of
her — and the neighbor may be jealous of you, that you have such a
beautiful wife! And you may be jealous of him….
Everybody is jealous of everybody else. And out of jealousy we create such hell, and out of jealousy we become very mean.
An elderly farmer was moodily regarding the ravages of the flood.
“Hiram!” yelled a neighbor, “your pigs were all washed down the creek.”
“How about Thompson’s pigs?” asked the farmer.
“They’re gone too.”
“And Larsen’s?”
“Yes.”
“Humph!” ejaculated the farmer, cheering up. “It ain’t as bad as I thought.”
If everybody is in misery, it feels good; if everybody is losing, it
feels good. If everybody is happy and succeeding, it tastes very bitter.
But why does the idea of the other enter in your head in the first
place? Again let me remind you: because you have not allowed your own
juices to flow; you have not allowed your own blissfulness to grow, you
have not allowed your own being to bloom. Hence you feel empty inside,
and you look at each and everybody’s outside because only the outside
can be seen.
You know your inside, and you know the others’ outside: that creates
jealousy. They know your outside, and they know their inside: that
creates jealousy. Nobody else knows your inside. There you know you are
nothing, worthless. And the others on the outside look so smiling. Their
smiles may be phony, but how can you know that they are phony? Maybe
their hearts are also smiling. You know your smile is phony, because
your heart is not smiling at all, it may be crying and weeping.
You know your interiority, and only you know it, nobody else. And you
know everybody’s exterior, and their exterior people have made
beautiful. Exteriors are showpieces and they are very deceptive.
There is an ancient Sufi story:
A man was very much burdened by his suffering. He used to pray every
day to God, “Why me? Everybody seems to be so happy, why am only I in
such suffering?” One day, out of great desperation, he prayed to God,
“You can give me anybody else’s suffering and I am ready to accept it.
But take mine, I cannot bear it any more.”
That night he had a beautiful dream ÿ beautiful and very revealing.
He had a dream that night that God appeared in the sky and he said to
everybody, “Bring all your sufferings into the temple.” Everybody was
tired of his suffering — in fact everybody has prayed some time or
other, “I am ready to accept anybody else’s suffering, but take mine
away; this is too much, it is unbearable.”
So everybody gathered his own sufferings into bags, and they reached
the temple, and they were looking very happy; the day has come, their
prayer has been heard. And this man also rushed to the temple.
And then God said, “Put your bags by the walls.” All the bags were
put by the walls, and then God declared: “Now you can choose. Anybody
can take any bag.”
And the most surprising thing was this: that this man who had been
praying always, rushed towards his bag before anybody else could choose
it! But he was in for a surprise, because everybody rushed to his own
bag, and everybody was happy to choose it again. What was the matter?
For the first time, everybody had seen others’ miseries, others’
sufferings — their bags were as big, or even bigger!
And the second problem was, one had become accustomed to one’s own
sufferings. Now to choose somebody else’s — who knows what kind of
sufferings will be inside the bag? Why bother? At least you are familiar
with your own sufferings, and you have become accustomed to them, and
they are tolerable. For so many years you have tolerated them — why
choose the unknown?
And everybody went home happy. Nothing had changed, they were
bringing the same suffering back, but everybody was happy and smiling
and joyous that he could get his own bag back.
In the morning he prayed to God and he said, “Thank you for the
dream; I will never ask again. Whatsoever you have given me is good for
me, must be good for me; that’s why you have given it to me.”
Because of jealousy you are in constant suffering; you become mean to
others. And because of jealousy you start becoming phony, because you
start pretending. You start pretending things that you don’t have, you
start pretending things which you can’t have, which are not natural to
you. You become more and more artificial. Imitating others, competing
with others, what else can you do? If somebody has something and you
don’t have it, and you don’t have a natural possibility of having it,
the only way is to have some cheap substitute for it.
I hear that Jim and Nancy Smith had a great time in Europe this
summer. It’s so great when a couple finally gets a chance to really live
it up. They went everywhere and did everything. Paris, Rome… you name
it, they saw it and they did it.
But it was so embarrassing coming back home and going through
customs. You know how custom officers pry into all your personal
belongings. They opened up a bag and took out three wigs, silk
underwear, perfume, hair coloring…really embarrassing. And that was just
Jim’s bag!
Just look inside your bag and you will find so many artificial,
phony, pseudo things — for what? Why can’t you be natural and
spontaneous? — because of jealousy.
The jealous man lives in hell. Drop comparing and jealousy
disappears, meanness disappears, phoniness disappears. But you can drop
it only if you start growing your inner treasures; there is no other
way.
Grow up, become a more and more authentic individual. Love yourself
and respect yourself the way existence has made you, and then
immediately the doors of heaven open for you. They were always open, you
had simply not looked at them.
OSHO – The Book of Wisdom, Talk #27
Courtesy:
http://oshotimes.blog.osho.com/2010/08/hello-jealousy/
