Life is a play!
In the beginning of his career in Indian movies, superstar Vinod Khanna met Osho and asked: “How can I be a successful actor?
The Master replied, “Jeevan ko aise jiyo jaise wo abhinay hai aur abhinay aise karo jaise wo jeevan hai. Phir tum dono mein safal ho jaoge. (Live life as if you are playing a role and act as if it’s your life. Then you will succeed in both.”
Generally, we live our lives not very consciously. It is lived mechanically soon becomes dull and boring. This kind of life lacks life, it has no real heartbeat and no real sensitivity. It becomes a drag. People become walking corpses.
To transform this socalled life, one needs to energise it constantly with some prana (energy) and live it in a momentto-moment awareness. Then this very life becomes a pilgrimage of consciousness and a divine grace envelops it. On doing this, one feels very light and playful. Lightness and playfulness are inter-connected. A man who is playful will feel a certain lightness of his being. It comes with a spirit of being ego-less. The ego is something very serious. It is too much of identification with the roles that we play in our lives, without the understanding that the role is just a human function. Being a mother, a father is just a role given to us by existence. Being a doctor or a politician is also a role in society. One has to perform with totality but not get too much identified with the roles. The roles keep changing, as all human beings are created by Existence to live a multi-dimensional life. To be identified with only one role of life is to become fixated and imprisoned, while life has so much to offer. Then we don’t see its vastness and remain confined. This is the real misery of human beings.
One needs to move from this misery to the mystery of life that surrounds us every moment. If one observes this whole universe one will see it is not serious or miserable — only the man is.
Osho had said, “I have not seen a serious tree. I have not seen a serious bird. I have not seen a serious sunrise. I have not seen a serious starry night. It seems they are all laughing in their own ways, dancing in their own ways. We may not understand it, but there is a subtle feeling that the whole existence is a celebration.
Osho lovers around the world sing one song in their celebrations. This song is very significant. It is “Leela, Leela. Life is just a play!”
Osho explained, “If you dance the whole existence becomes a dance. It is already a dance. Hindus call it Ras-Leela, God is dancing, and around God the stars and the moon and the sun and the earth and the whole existence. The whole existence is dancing around God. God is Krishna and the whole existence is his gopis. This is the ras that is continuously going on, but one will realise it only when one learns the ways of dance, the language of ecstasy.”