The last question:

Osho,
Tantra says do not struggle or swim, but let go and float in the river of life. But experience shows that the modern city life of speed and heavy technology creates constant tensions and exertions physically and mentally. What will be Tantra’s attitude about it? Is it not good to avoid unnecessary exertions?

Life has always been so, modern or primitive. Tensions are there, anxieties are there. Objects change, but man remains the same. Two thousand years back you were driving a bullock cart; now you are driving a car – but the driver remains the same. The bullock cart has changed – things are different now, you are driving a car – but the driver remains the same. He was anxious about his cart, tense about his cart; now you are tense and anxious about your car. Objects change, but the mind remains the same.

So don’t think that because of the modern life you are so much in anxiety. It is because of you, not because of modern life, and you will be in anxiety anywhere, in any type of civilization. Go to a village for a few days – two or three days – and you will feel good for a while because even diseases need readjustment. But within three days you will be adjusted to the village, and then anxieties will start coming, disturbances will be felt again. Now the causes will not be the same, but you are the same.

Sometimes it happens that you may be disturbed because of city traffic and noise, and you may be saying that you cannot sleep at night because there is so much traffic and noise. Then go to a village, and you will not be able to sleep because there is no traffic and no noise. You will have to come back because the village looks dead, dull – because there is no life.

People go on reporting such feelings to me. I told one friend to go to Kashmir, to Pahalgam. He came back and said that life is dull there, that there is no life. You can enjoy for one or two days valleys and hills, and then one gets bored. He had been telling me here that city life was getting on his nerves, and now he said that those hills were getting boring and he began longing to come back home.