Q: DO YOU LIKE SPORTS?

A: No. It is a waste of time, and it is really a way of throwing away energy which can be used more creatively. It is stupid. Just look at football, or volley ball; it has no intelligence. People are taking the ball from this goal to that goal, and millions of people are going mad and crazy with them. In the future when people will look back on it, they will not believe that these people were sane. It looks absolutely insane. I have never been interested in sports. My energy has something much more important to do.

OshO


Q: CAN YOU PLEASE TALK ABOUT YOUTH AND SPORTS, WHICH TODAY HAS A STRONG IMPACT ON YOUNG PEOPLE'S LIVES.

A: It is a great relief that it is the last question, because these teenagers can go on asking!
Sports are perfectly right, and the teenagers should be encouraged not just to be observers of other people playing, but to be participants.
What is happening is that thousands of people are just watching, and only a few people, professionals, are playing.
This is not a good situation.
Every teenager should be a participant, because it is going to give him physical health, it is going to give him a certain agility, it is going to give him a certain intelligence, and it is perfectly youthful.
But just to be an observer -- and to be that before a television set -- is not right.
Five or six hours glued in your chair before a television set just seeing others playing football, or any other sport, is not right.
It does not give you any growth.
On the contrary, it makes you only an ...
OshO

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Q: BELOVED OSHO, HAVING HEARD YOU TALK ABOUT COMPETITION AND OUR CHILDHOOD THE OTHER MORNING, IT SET ME THINKING OF MY OWN EDUCATION. I REALIZED THAT FOR TWENTY-ONE YEARS SOLIDLY, EVERY SINGLE EVENT AT SCHOOL -- FROM PLAYING IN THE GARDEN, THROUGH OFFICIAL SPORTS, TO LATIN GRAMMAR -- WAS BASICALLY AN EXERCISE IN HOW TO BEAT THE NEXT PERSON. IT SEEMS AS IF IT WAS THE SINGLE MOST DAMAGING EXPERIENCE OF MY LIFE. I CAN'T THINK OF A MORE PERFECT SYSTEM TO DESTROY CHILDREN AND MAKE US COMPLETELY INHARMONIOUS WITH THE WORLD AROUND US. HOW CAN WE HELP CHILDREN TO GROW TO THEIR FULL POTENTIAL, WITHOUT ENCOURAGING THIS COMPETITIVE SPIRIT?

A: The moment you start thinking how to help children to grow without any competitive spirit you are already on the wrong track, because whatever you are going to do is going to give the children a certain program.
It may be different from the one that you received, but you are conditioning the children -- with all the best intentions in the world.

The trees go on growing without anybody teaching them how to grow.
The animals, the birds, the whole existence, needs no programming.
The very idea of programming is basically creating slavery -- and man has been creating slaves for thousands of years in different names.
When people become fed up with one name, another name immediately replaces it.
A few modified programs, a few changes here and there in the conditioning, but the fundamental thing remains the same -- that the parents, the older generation, want their children to be in a certain way.
That's why you are asking "How?".

According to me, the function of the parents is not how to help the children grow -- they will grow without you.
Your function is to support, to nourish, to help what is already growing.
Don't give directions and don't give ideals.
Don't tell them what is right and ....

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... Everybody cannot become the president of the country, cannot have authority over millions of people. But everybody can become a husband, can have authority over his wife; every wife can become a mother, can have authority over the child; every child can have a teddy bear, and have authority over the teddy bear... kick him from this corner to the other corner, give him good slaps, slaps that he really wanted to give to the mother or to father. And the poor teddy bear has nobody below him. This is an authoritarian society.

What I am saying is in creating children who have freedom, who have heard "yes" and have rarely heard "no", the authoritarian society will disappear.
We will have a more human society.
So it is not only a question of the children.
Those children are going to become tomorrow's society: the child is the father of man.

OshO

Beyond Psychology
Chapter #23
Chapter title: Trees grow without being taught
Archive code: 8604235
ShortTitle: PSYCHO23
Audio: Yes
Video: Yes
Length: 92 mins

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