Mystic Mantra: Plunge into the whirl, come out with the swirl

There is an ancient Chinese story: Confucius was looking at the waterfall that fell from a height of 200 feet, and its foam reached 15 miles away. No scaly creature could survive it. Yet, Confucius saw an old man jump in and emerge about a hundred paces off, and then he went singing along the bank. Confucius followed him, and when he caught up to him he said: “I had thought, sir, you were a spirit, but now I see you are a man. Kindly tell me, is there any way to deal thus with the water?” 

“No,” replied the man, “I have no way. Plunging in with the whirl, I come out with the swirl. I accommodate myself to the water, not the water to me. And so I am able to deal with it.”

Osho has used this story to give people a new insight into solving their problems. People have many problems, and they try to solve them, but not a single problem gets solved. It cannot be solved because in the first place there are not thousands of problems, there is only one, and if you see thousands of problems, you will not be able to see the one that really is. 

The important thing to be understood is that the problem is perennial, it doesn’t belong in particular to you, or to somebody else. It belongs to man as such. It is born with you and it will die with you. If the problem can die before you die, you have become enlightened. And the whole effort of religion is to help you dissolve the problem before it has finished you completely. There is a possibility of a man who has no problems, and that is the enlightened man. He has no problems because he has solved the basic problem. He has cut the root.

So what is the root problem of the mind?

Osho says: “If you can understand the problem rightly, it is solved immediately because the problem carries its own solution with it. The problem is like a seed and the solution is like a flower that is hidden in the seed. If you can understand the seed correctly, the solution is already there. To solve a problem is not to solve it, but to understand it. The solution is not external to it, it is intrinsic. So don’t look for solutions, just look deeper into the problem. Find the root. In fact, there is no need to even to cut it. Once you have understood it, the very understanding becomes the cutting of the root. 

Follow the wise old man’s dictum: “I accommodate myself to the water, not the water to me.” 

Essentially all human problems amount to one point: The ego is trying to accommodate the whole world to itself. A man who has no ego accommodates himself to the world. In fact, it is not good to say that he accommodates — he simply finds that he has accommodated.

Amrit Sadhana is editor Osho Times International. She facilitates meditation workshops based on Osho insights around the country and abroad.