Osho Rajneesh Book "Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy"

Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy

Draupadi: A Rare Woman
30 September 1970 pm in

Question 1

QUESTIONER: DRAUPADI, WHO IS ALSO KNOWN AS KRISHNAA, HAS BEEN SUBJECTED TO HARSH CRITICISM AND DETRACTION, BUT KRISHNA LOVES HER TREMENDOUSLY. PLEASE SAY SOMETHING ABOUT HER IN THE CONTEXT OF OUR OWN TIME.

As among men Krishna baffles our understanding, so does Draupadi among women. and how the

critics look at Draupadi says more about the critics themselves than about Draupadi. What we see

in others is only a reflection; others only serve as mirrors to us. We see in others only that which we

want to see; in fact, we see what we are. We do nothing but project ourselves on the world.

It is difficult to understand Draupadi. But our difficulty does not come from this great woman, it really

emanates from us. Our ideas and beliefs, our desires and hopes come in our way of understanding

Draupadi.

To love five men together, to play wife to them at the same time is a great and arduous task. This

needs to be understood rightly. Love does not have much to do with persons; it is a state of mind.

And love that is confined to a single person is a poor love. Let us go into this question of love in

depth.

We all insist that one’s love should be confined to a single person – a man or a woman. If someone

loves you, you want that he should love you and you alone, that he not share his love with another

person. You would like to possess that person, to monopolize him or her. We not only want to

possess things, we also want to possess men and women. And if we had our way we would possess

even the sun and the moon and the stars. So we crave to monopolize love. Because we do not know

what love is, we are prone to think that if it is shared with many it will disperse and dwindle and die.

But the truth is that the more love is shared, the more it grows. And when we try to restrict it, to

control it – which is utterly unnatural and arbitrary – it dries up and eventually dies.

I am reminded of a beautiful story.

A Buddhist nun had a statue of Buddha made of sandalwood. She loved the statue and always

kept it with her. Being a nun she traveled from place to place, where she mostly stayed in Buddhist

temples and monasteries. And wherever she lived she worshipped her own statue of Buddha.

Once she happened to be a guest at the famous temple of a thousand Buddhas. This temple was

known for its thousand statues of Buddha; it was filled with statues and statues. The nun, as usual,

sat for her evening worship, and she burned incense before her statue of Buddha. But with the

passing breeze the perfume of the incense strayed to other statues of Buddhas which filled that

temple.

The nun was distressed to see that while her own Buddha was deprived of the perfume, others had

it in plenty. So she devised a funnel through which the smoke would ascend to her statue only. But

this device, although successful, blackened the face of her Buddha and made it especially ugly. Of

course the nun was exceedingly miserable, because it was a rare statue of sandalwood, and she

loved it. She went to the chief priest of the temple and said, ”My statue of Buddha has been ruined.

What am I to do?”

The priest said, ”Such an accident, such an ugliness is bound to happen whenever someone tries

to block the movement of truth and possess it for oneself. Truth by its nature has to be everywhere,

it cannot be personalized and possessed,”

Up to now, mankind has thought of love in terms of petty relationship – relationship between two

persons. We have yet to know love that is a state of mind, and not just relationship. And this is what

comes in our way of understanding Draupadi

If I am loving, if love is the state of my being, then it is not possible to confine my love to a single

person, or even a few persons. When love enters my life and becomes my nature, then I am capable

of loving any number of people. Then it is not even a question of one or many; then I am loving,

and my love reaches everywhere. If I am loving to one and unloving to all others, even my love for

the one will wither away. It is impossible to be loving to one and unloving to the rest. If someone is

loving just for an hour every day and remains unloving for the rest of the time, his lovelessness will

eventually smother his small love and turn his life into a wasteland of hate and hostility.

It is unfortunate that people all around the world are trying to capture love and keep it caged in their

relationships. But it is not possible to make a captive of love, the moment you try to capture it, it

ceases to be love. Love is like air; you cannot hold it in your fist. It is possible to have a little air on

your open palm, but if you try to enclose it in your fist, the air escapes. It is a paradox of life that

when you try to imprison love, to put it in bondage, love degenerates and dies. And we have all killed

love in our foolish attempts to possess it. Really we don’t know what love is.

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