Single pointedness *.

An arrowsmith woman is a low-caste woman, and for Saraha – a learned brahmin, a famous
brahmin, who had belonged to the court of the king – going to an arrowsmith woman is
symbolic. The learned one has to go to the vital, the plastic has to go to the real. He saw this
woman – a young woman, very alive, radiant with life – cutting an arrow-shaft, looking
neither to the right nor to the left but wholly absorbed in making the arrow. He immediately
felt something extraordinary in her presence, something that he had never come across.
Even Sri Kirti, his master, paled before the presence of this woman. Something so fresh and
something from the very source…

Sri Kirti was a great philosopher. Yes, he had told Saraha to drop all learning, but still he was a
learned man. He had told Saraha to drop all Vedas and scriptures, but he had his own
scriptures and his own Vedas. Even though he was anti-philosophical, his anti-philosophy was
a sort of philosophy.

Now here was a woman who was neither philosophical nor anti-philosophical, who simply
did not know what philosophy was, who was simply blissfully unaware of the world of
philosophy, of the world of thought. She was a woman of action and she was utterly
absorbed in her action.

Saraha watched carefully: the arrow ready, the woman – closing one eye and opening the
other – assumed the posture of aiming at an invisible target. Saraha came still closer… Now
there was no target, she was simply posing. She had closed one eye, her other eye was open
and she was aiming at some unknown target: invisible, it was not there. Saraha started
feeling some message. This posture was symbolic he felt, but still it was very dim and dark.
He could feel something there, but he could not figure out what it was.

So he asked the woman whether she was a professional arrowsmith, and the woman
laughed loudly, a wild laugh, and said, “You stupid brahmin! You have left the Vedas, but now
you are worshipping Buddha’s sayings, the Dhammapada, the scriptures. So what is the
point? You have changed your books, you have changed your philosophy, but you remain all
the time the same stupid man.” Saraha was shocked. Nobody had talked to him that way;
only an uncultured woman can talk that way. And the way she laughed was so uncivilized, so
primitive – but still, something was very much alive. He was feeling pulled; she was a great
magnet and he was nothing but a piece of rigid iron.

Then she said, “You think you are a Buddhist?” He must have been in the robe of the
Buddhist monk, the yellow robe. She laughed again and she said, “Buddha’s meaning can
only be known through actions, not through words and not through books. Is not enough,
enough for you? Are you not yet fed up with all this? Do not waste any more time in that
futile search. Come and follow me!” And something happened, something like a communion.
He had never felt like that before. In that moment the spiritual significance of what she was
doing dawned upon Saraha. Neither looking to the left, nor looking to the right had he seen
her – just looking in the middle.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

• fragment from “Osho Transformation Tarot” .