I WAS STANDING BY THE BANK OF A RIVER. It was a small stream and in the gathering dusk the young girls from the village were hurrying home with their earthen jars filled with water. I had observed that they had to stoop down to fill their jars from the river. One also has to know the art of stooping to fill one’s jar at the fountain of life. But how to bend is something man seems to keep forgetting. His ego will not let him bend. And so all love, all prayer, is slowly vanishing from life. In fact, anything of any real significance seems to be disappearing. Life has become a kind of struggle instead of the beauty and harmony it ought to be. But strife is the only thing that can endure where the mysterious art of bending has been lost. It could not be considered at all surprising if rigid and unbounded egoism cause unbearable pain in a world where the warm hearted art of yielding to each other is unknown and unrecognized.
Yielding links the individual to the group. Being unable to yield separates a man from the universal existence. Of course this giving way must be natural and spontaneous or else it only serves to puff up the ego. Any yielding that is done deliberately is not real and behind it, in some recess of the mind, an element of resistance persists. When it springs from the intellect it is not genuine; it is not vital, not complete. And furthermore, this kind of giving way ends up causing remorse because the ego is wounded. It is an action that has gone against the ego and, in revenge the ego indulges itself in self-pity. Only when the human heart is devoid of egoism can it yield naturally and perfectly. And this yielding will be as natural and as complete in every detail as the bending of the tiny blades of grass in the wind. They have no hostility towards the breeze; they have no egos. The day a man is able to assimilate this natural bending, this spontaneous yielding into his being, the mysterious secret of God will be revealed to him.
Osho
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