Kasan, a zen master, was to officiate at the funeral of a famous nobleman. As he stood there waiting for the provincial governor, other lords and ladies to arrive, he noticed that his palms were beginning to sweat.

The next day, he gathered his students together and confessed that he was not yet ready to be a real teacher. He explained to them that he had failed to maintain the same attitude in front of all people, be they beggars or kings. He was still operating with social roles and conceptual identities, unable to understand that people are equal. Kasan left and became a student of another master. Eight years later he returned to his disciples, enlightened.

This story Osho tells is very beautiful. Unfortunately, with the roles and identities that society imposes on us, the education system either inflates our own ego and makes us see more than we are, or we see others more than they are. Mevlana explained the external appearance that is the subject of Nasrettin Hodja's joke "Eat my fur!" in a different way: "People are welcomed with their clothes but passed by with their heads", and hundreds of years after Socrates said "Know thyself!", Einstein gave a similar answer: "There is an enormous contradiction between what people think of my achievements and abilities and who I really am and what I can do." Einstein never defined himself by the image the collective mind created for him, and remained humble until his death. Osho says there are 3 dominant states of the ego, which is our greatest test in this world, and of egoic relationships: "desire, distorted desire (anger, resentment, resentment, blaming, complaining) and apathy.

The ego always wants something, and if it believes that it is not getting anything from the other, it becomes completely indifferent: it doesn't care about you!"

Talking about someone we know, someone famous, someone of fame, makes us feel "important" and "worthy" and in this way helps us to build our personal identity. In other words, while we benefit from their wealth, knowledge and fame, we ignore our real existence in the shadow of the collective image and cause it to disappear. We want to strengthen our own identity with their images, to define ourselves through them. In fact, we are not even interested in them at all. We want to strengthen our sense of self, to pretend that we have what we don't have, to frame the label that we don't have with a red pen, even if it looks like it was put on later. We want to appear more than we are.

This is something we can get from them, and if we don't have all these things, we ignore them and remain indifferent. There is also what we call distorted desire. This is when we don't know people who have achieved success or who are famous and well-known, or when we don't share anything in common, which both hurts and enrages the ego and leads to jealousy and mischief, blaming, complaining and resentment, which coincides with "the tree that bears fruit is stoned".

The postmodern trend of recent years is inflated identities and egotistical frenzies. "some praise only those they think they can imitate" (Horatius).

The differences between us are very valuable. None of us is alike. Each of us is more special and richer than we think; but the system encourages us to take everything from others, to steal, to imitate. They make us forget our own self-worth and self-worth and get us used to benefiting from and using others. We always want more and better. The curiosity for privacy and knowledge is at the level of madness. At the click of a button, information and science are at our fingertips. All excessive, all unnecessary, all part of a plan. It's time for a break! Calm down and take a break!

Mukaddes Pekin Başdil

Researcher-Author

Source: Denizli Haber