Education is a form of meditation

In my vision, education is nothing but another form of meditation. All that usually goes on in the name of education is secondary. The priority should be given to meditation — education of the inner. Unless you become acquainted with yourself, all your knowledge is useless. You go on accumulating degrees and inside, you remain empty.

Your degrees can befool people, may even befool yourself, but you cannot have the joy, the blissfulness, the peace, the silence, a life where flowers shower. The world is in a mess because none of your systems has been emphasising the education of the inner — the journey into one's own self.

Education up to now has been goal oriented: what you are learning is not important; what is important is the examination that will come a year or two years later. It makes the future important — more important than the present. It sacrifices the present for the future. And that becomes your very style in life; you are always sacrificing the moment for something which is not present. It creates a tremendous emptiness in life.

What you are doing right this moment should be decisive, not five questions at the end of two years. Of thousands of things you will pass through during these two years, each will be decisive; then the education will not be goal-oriented. That will change your whole perspective from the future to the present and your learning process will remain fresh as a dew drop.

If we can create a sane educational system around the world, then the divisions of religion and the discrimination between white and black and nations, the ugly politics that exists because of them, and the stupid behaviour of men preparing continuously for war… it will all disappear. A right education will teach you how to find your own song and how to learn the dance and not to be shy; how to celebrate the small things of life and make this whole planet alive.

It is only one, as far as we know, where people can become buddhas, where people like Socrates and Lao Tzu can exist.'Education' comes from the root word educare; it means to lead you from darkness to light. A tremendous significant meaning: to lead you from darkness to light. Man lives in darkness, unconsciousness — and man is capable of becoming full of light.

The flame is there; it has to be provoked. The consciousness is there, but it has to be awakened. You have been given all, you have brought it with you: but the whole idea that you have become a man just by having a human body is wrong, and that idea has been the cause of tremendous mischief down the ages.

Your so-called educational systems, rather than bringing anything out from you, do just the opposite. They force things upon you. The real education draws out whatever you have in your innermost core — the joy, the bliss, all the flowers that are possible; compassion and love; all creativity. You are part of a creative universe; you must have some part to play in the whole creativity that is going on everywhere.

-Osho.

(Courtesy: Osho International Foundation, www.osho.com)