HE- HIMALAYAN SILENCE

A person who escapes is not really a man of understanding. His very escape shows his fear, not understanding. If you say, "How can I be happy sitting in the marketplace? How can I be silent sitting in the marketplace?" and you escape to the Himalayan silence, you are escaping from the very possibility of ever becoming silent -- because it is only in the

marketplace that the contrast exists; it is only in the marketplace that the challenge exists; it is only in the marketplace that distractions exist. And you have to overcome all those distractions.

If you escape to the Himalayas you will start feeling a little still, but at the same time a little stupid also. You will start feeling more silent, but that silence belongs to the Himalayas, not to you. Come back and your silence will be left behind -- you will come alone. And back in the world you will be even more disturbed than before, because you will have become more vulnerable, soft. And you will come with a prejudice, with this idea that you have attained to silence. You will have become more egoistic.

That's why people who have escaped to the monasteries become afraid of coming back to the world. The world is the test. The world is the criterion. And it is easier to be in the world and, by and by, grow into a silence, then the Himalayan silence comes into your being. You don't go to the Himalayas: the Himalayas themselves come to you. Then it is
something of your own, then you are the master of it.

OSHO A Sudden Clash of Thunder