Panch Mahavrat or The Perennial Path The Art of Living

Author(s): Osho Rajnish
Publisher: Osho Rajnish

Page 15

CHAPTER 2. SOURCE OF VIOLENCE IN MAN
What does Pearse say? He says when you have the violence let out with a purpose against someone, it is exhausted. Now show your violence against air, don't show it against any person, because there will be reaction if it is let out against someone. If I box someone, it will not be lost in the sky, the sky will not absorb it. The person whom I box will react. He may react today, or tomorrow or in future. He may wait but he will surely react. If I box someone and if he happens to be a person like Buddha or Mahavira he may not react, but as soon as I box him, there will be reaction and repentance in his mind also. Bear in mind, anger alone is not bad, repentance is equally bad.
Repentance is anger upside-down. In fact when a person repents, he does nothing else except to start the preparation to become angry. When a man repents and says, 'It was very bad, I became angry', he is trying to persuade himself 'I am not so bad a person; I acted wrongly once, but it is not very important.' Thus by repenting man tries to re-establish himself as a good man. He is re-establishing his old mind from his own viewpoint. and when he is thus re-established, he will be ready to box someone. Again there will be repentance and again a box. In this way the vicious circle of anger and repentance will go on revolving. So when we strike somebody, there follows not only repentance but there is also a preparation to reply to the attack from another person.
Thus violence would create a vicious circle, and it becomes difficult to come out of it. But when a person is striking a pillow, this does not happen. In striking a pillow, catharsis takes place. So, Pearse is asking us to strike a pillow, because the present world in which we live has become very objective. Mahavira flourished 2500 years ago. He would have said, 'Strike the air, where is the necessity of a pillow?' But we would object to it and ask, 'Strike the air? A pillow can be punished. At least, it looks like the back or the stomach of man. When we box or strike a pillow, we feel we have touched somebody. The pillow will also react, though a little.
In 2500 years after the death of Mahavira, the world has become objective. The meditation which Mahavira has talked about, does not require even a pillow. No pillow is necessary in the meditation about which I talk too. But it would perhaps be difficult in America to box-to-strike-without a pillow. There should be some object. If no human being is there, let there be a pillow. Mahavira would prohibit us to strike even a pillow. He would tell Pearse there is some - a little - violence committed in this action. One who strikes a pillow projects his enemy in that pillow. There is no enemy receiving the beating, but the striker is enjoying beating and is taking interest in it. This interest also will keep the flow of violence more or less going.
Complete catharsis of violence cannot take place in this method. So people having undergone the treatment in Pearse's laboratory, will return to him in about six months' time and will say, 'Violence has again accumulated in our minds. Now they will again require a pillow and will have to strike it again.
The process of meditation asks us to leave aside anxiety of anything, one has to practise subjective violence. Objective violence means not to commit violence with ourselves, and subjective violence means simply to let go violence. Impulses of violence suppressed within a person's mind will disappear, when he is practising meditation, shouts aloud, boxes somebody, or jumps and dances. After an hour's experiment on any day, you can experience this fact, that your suppressed impulses have disappeared and you having been lightened, have come out of your room. And on that day, you will not be able to be angry as easily as you had been yesterday. You will not be able to box anybody so easily as you had done always. The same reasons which made your eyes red-hot yesterday, will
The Perennial Path: The Art of Living
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Osho