The more you possess, the less you can love. And love is the door. Or, the less you can love, the more you start possessing things. Things become a substitute.
Let us try to understand it. A child is born. If the mother loves him...psychoanalysts have been studying, much research has been done — if the mother loves him, the child never drinks too much milk; never, because he knows, it is a tacit understanding, that the mother is always available and she’s always ready to share. So what is the fear? If the mother loves the child, the child will drink only as much milk as is needed. If the child is loved, you will never see a big belly in the child.
The child will be proportionate. In fact the mother will be constantly worried that the child is not eating or drinking or taking as much food as needed. But the child has understood that whenever the need arises, the mother is there. He can rely on love.
But if the mother does not love the child, then he is afraid for the future. Love is not there, the tacit understanding is not there, so whenever he gets the opportunity he will eat as much as he can, he will drink as much milk as he can. Now he is already becoming a miser; he has already started accumulating things — in the body. He’s afraid. Who knows about tomorrow? This mother is not reliable; he has to accumulate for emergencies. So he will accumulate fat, eat more.
People who have not been loved in their childhood continue to eat more. No dieting can help unless love arises. They will eat; eating has become a substitute for love. If somebody loves them, they will immediately see that their overeating has stopped.
Love and food both come from the mother’s breast. The first experience of love is from the mother’s breast and the first experience of food is also from the mother’s breast. So love and food become associated. If there is less love, it has to be substituted for by more food.
If love is enough, you can afford not to eat much. There is no need. Have you watched it? Whenever you fall in deep love, hunger disappears. You don’t feel hungry. Love fulfills so deeply that you feel full. Then one starts eating less and less.
One woman was talking to me. She was very puzzled. Her husband had died and she told me, “One thing I have been keeping a secret. I have not told it to anybody because nobody will understand. But you may understand, so I’m telling you. And I will be unburdened whether you understand or not. But please don’t tell this to anybody.”
I said, “What has happened?”
She said, “When my husband died, at night I felt so hungry. The corpse was lying in the house. ‘What will people think if I go to eat?’ The whole family was awake, relatives had come and many friends were there together. And I felt such a deep hunger, such as I have never felt.”
So she had to go in her own kitchen like a thief! In the darkness, she ate. And now, since then, she has been feeling guilty. “My husband had died. Was that the time to feel hungry? His corpse was lying there. I was like a thief, eating in darkness in my kitchen.” She asked me, “What happened?”
I said, “It is a simple fact. The person you loved died. Immediately, you felt empty. Now that emptiness had to be filled by something.”
Since then I have been talking to many people and I have come to the conclusion that whenever you are sad, you eat more. Whenever you are in a deep sorrow, you feel more hungry. Whenever you are happy, flowing, cheerful and loving, and love is showering on you, who bothers to eat much? Even a small amount of food is enough nourishment then, because love is giving so much nourishment.
People who can’t love will always become misers: possessive, accumulators of things.
-Osho
http://www.osho.com/magazine/haveataste/emotionalecology.cfm
Showing posts with label Osho. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Osho. Show all posts
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Resistence to Meditation / Dropping Misery
You offer meditation as a means for my leaving my misery behind and all I do is resist. The thought of being still and silent doesn’t excite me; in fact it scares me.
Could you explain my resistance to meditation?
The thought of stillness and silence excites nobody. It is not your personal problem. It is the problem of human mind as such, because to be still, to be silent, means to be in a state of no-mind.
Mind cannot be still. It needs continuous thinking, worrying. The mind functions like a bicycle; if you go on pedaling it, it continues. The moment you stop the pedaling, you are going to fall down. Mind is a two-wheeled vehicle just like a bicycle, and your thinking is a constant pedaling. Even sometimes if you are a little bit silent you immediately start worrying, “Why am I silent?” Anything will do to create worrying, thinking, because mind can exist only in one way — in running, always running after something or running from something, but always running. In the running is the mind. The moment you stop, the mind disappears.
Right now you are identified with the mind. You think you are it. From there comes the fear. If you are identified with the mind, naturally if mind stops you are finished, you are no more. And you don’t know anything beyond mind.
The reality is you are not mind, you are something beyond mind; hence it is absolutely necessary that the mind stops so that for the first time you can know that you are not mind, because you are still there. Mind is gone, you are still there...and with greater joy, greater glory, greater light, greater consciousness, greater being. Mind was pretending, and you had fallen into the trap.
What you have to understand is the process of identification...how one can get identified with something which one is not.
The ancient parable in the East is that a lioness was jumping from one hillock to another hillock and just in the middle she gave birth to a kid. The kid fell down on the road where a big crowd of sheep was passing. Naturally he mixed with the sheep, lived with the sheep, behaved like a sheep. He had no idea, not even in his dreams, that he is a lion. How could he have? All around him were sheep and more sheep. He had never roared like a lion; a sheep does not roar. He had never been alone like a lion; a sheep is never alone. She is always in the crowd; the crowd is cozy, secure, safe. If you see sheep walking, they walk so close together that they are almost stumbling on each other. They are so afraid to be alone.
But the lion started growing up. It was a strange phenomenon. He was identified mentally with being a sheep, but biology does not go according to your identification; nature is not going to follow you.
He became a beautiful young lion, but because things happened so slowly the sheep also became accustomed to the lion while the lion was becoming accustomed to the sheep. The sheep thought he is a little crazy, naturally. He’s not behaving — a little cuckoo — and he goes on growing. It is not supposed to be so. And pretending to be a lion...but he is not a lion. They have seen him from his very birth, they have brought him up, they have given their milk to him. And he was a nonvegetarian by nature. No lion is vegetarian, but this lion was vegetarian because sheep are vegetarian. He used to eat grass with great joy.
They accepted this little difference, that he is a little big and looks like a lion. A very wise sheep said, “It is just a freak of nature. Once in a while it happens.” And he himself also accepted that it is true. His color is different, his body is different; he must be a freak, abnormal. But the idea that he is a lion was impossible! He was surrounded by all those sheep, and sheep psychoanalysts gave him explanations: “You are just a freak of nature. Don’t be worried. We are here to take care of you.”
But one day an old lion passed and saw this young lion far above the crowd of sheep. He could not believe his eyes! He had never seen such a thing nor had he ever heard in the history of the whole past that a lion was in the middle of a crowd of sheep and no sheep was afraid. And the lion was walking exactly like the sheep, grazing on grass.
The old lion could not believe his eyes. He forgot he was going to catch a sheep for his breakfast. He completely forgot the breakfast. It was something so strange that he tried to catch the young lion. But he was old, and the young lion was young — he ran away. Although he believed that he was a sheep, when there was danger the identification was forgotten. He ran like a lion, and the old lion had great difficulty in catching him. But finally the old lion got hold of him and he was crying and weeping and saying, “Just forgive me, I am a poor sheep.” The old lion said, “You idiot! You simply stop and come with me to the pond.”
Just nearby there was a pond. He took the young lion there. The young lion was not going willingly. He went reluctantly, but what can you do against a lion if you are only a sheep? He may kill you if you don’t follow him, so he went with him. The pond was silent, with no ripples, almost like a mirror. And the old lion said to the young, “Just look. Look at my face and look at your face. Look at my body and look at your body in the water.”
In a second there came a great roar! All the hills echoed it. The sheep disappeared; he was a totally different being — he recognized himself. The identification with sheep was not a reality, it was just a mental concept. Now he had seen the reality. And the old lion said, “Now I don’t have to say anything. You have understood.”
The young lion could feel strange energy he had never felt...as if it had been dormant. He could feel tremendous power, and he had always been a weak, humble sheep. All that humbleness, all that weakness, simply evaporated.
This is an ancient parable about the master and the disciple. The function of the master is only to bring the disciple to see who he is and that what he goes on believing is not true.
Your mind is not created by nature. Try to keep the distinction always: your brain is created by nature. Your brain is the mechanism that belongs to the body, but your mind is created by the society in which you live — by the religion, by the church, by the ideology that your parents followed, by the educational system that you were taught in, by all kinds of things. That’s why there is a Christian mind and a Hindu mind, a Mohammedan mind and a communist mind. Brains are natural, but minds are a created phenomenon. It depends on which flock of sheep you belong to. Was the flock of the sheep Hindu? Then naturally you will behave like a Hindu.
Meditation is the only method that can make you aware that you are not the mind; and that gives you a tremendous mastery. Then you can choose what is right with your mind and what is not right with your mind, because you are distant, an observer, a watcher. Then you are not so much attached to the mind, and that is your fear.
You have completely forgotten yourself; you have become the mind. The identification is complete. So when I say, “Be silent. Be still. Be alert and watchful of your thought processes,” you freak out, you become afraid. It looks like death. In a way you are right but it is not your death, it is the death of your conditionings. Combined they are called your mind.
Once you are capable of seeing the distinction clearly — that you are separate from the mind and the mind is separate from the brain — it immediately happens. Simultaneously, as you withdraw from the mind, you suddenly see that the mind is in the middle; on both sides there is brain and consciousness.
The brain is simply a mechanism. Whatever you want to do with it, you can do. Mind is the problem, because others make it for you. It is not you, it is not even your own; it is all borrowed.
The priests, the politicians, the people who are in power, the people who have vested interests, don’t want you to know that you are above mind, beyond mind. Their whole effort has been to keep you identified with the mind, because mind is managed by them, not by you. You are being deceived in such a subtle way. The managers of your mind are outside.
When the consciousness becomes identified with the mind, then the brain is helpless. The brain is simply mechanical. Whatever mind wants, the brain does. But if you are separate, then the mind loses its power; otherwise it is sovereign. And you are afraid of meditation because of that.
I don’t belong to any religion, I don’t belong to any political ideology, I don’t belong to any nation. I don’t have myself filled up with all kinds of nonsense called “holy scriptures.” I have simply pushed the mind aside. I use the brain directly; there is no need of any conditioning, there is no need of any mediator.
But your fear is understandable. You have been brought up with certain concepts, and perhaps you are afraid to lose them.
-Osho: The Path of the Mystic
http://www.osho.com/magazine/haveataste/emotionalecology.cfm
Could you explain my resistance to meditation?
The thought of stillness and silence excites nobody. It is not your personal problem. It is the problem of human mind as such, because to be still, to be silent, means to be in a state of no-mind.
Mind cannot be still. It needs continuous thinking, worrying. The mind functions like a bicycle; if you go on pedaling it, it continues. The moment you stop the pedaling, you are going to fall down. Mind is a two-wheeled vehicle just like a bicycle, and your thinking is a constant pedaling. Even sometimes if you are a little bit silent you immediately start worrying, “Why am I silent?” Anything will do to create worrying, thinking, because mind can exist only in one way — in running, always running after something or running from something, but always running. In the running is the mind. The moment you stop, the mind disappears.
Right now you are identified with the mind. You think you are it. From there comes the fear. If you are identified with the mind, naturally if mind stops you are finished, you are no more. And you don’t know anything beyond mind.
The reality is you are not mind, you are something beyond mind; hence it is absolutely necessary that the mind stops so that for the first time you can know that you are not mind, because you are still there. Mind is gone, you are still there...and with greater joy, greater glory, greater light, greater consciousness, greater being. Mind was pretending, and you had fallen into the trap.
What you have to understand is the process of identification...how one can get identified with something which one is not.
The ancient parable in the East is that a lioness was jumping from one hillock to another hillock and just in the middle she gave birth to a kid. The kid fell down on the road where a big crowd of sheep was passing. Naturally he mixed with the sheep, lived with the sheep, behaved like a sheep. He had no idea, not even in his dreams, that he is a lion. How could he have? All around him were sheep and more sheep. He had never roared like a lion; a sheep does not roar. He had never been alone like a lion; a sheep is never alone. She is always in the crowd; the crowd is cozy, secure, safe. If you see sheep walking, they walk so close together that they are almost stumbling on each other. They are so afraid to be alone.
But the lion started growing up. It was a strange phenomenon. He was identified mentally with being a sheep, but biology does not go according to your identification; nature is not going to follow you.
He became a beautiful young lion, but because things happened so slowly the sheep also became accustomed to the lion while the lion was becoming accustomed to the sheep. The sheep thought he is a little crazy, naturally. He’s not behaving — a little cuckoo — and he goes on growing. It is not supposed to be so. And pretending to be a lion...but he is not a lion. They have seen him from his very birth, they have brought him up, they have given their milk to him. And he was a nonvegetarian by nature. No lion is vegetarian, but this lion was vegetarian because sheep are vegetarian. He used to eat grass with great joy.
They accepted this little difference, that he is a little big and looks like a lion. A very wise sheep said, “It is just a freak of nature. Once in a while it happens.” And he himself also accepted that it is true. His color is different, his body is different; he must be a freak, abnormal. But the idea that he is a lion was impossible! He was surrounded by all those sheep, and sheep psychoanalysts gave him explanations: “You are just a freak of nature. Don’t be worried. We are here to take care of you.”
But one day an old lion passed and saw this young lion far above the crowd of sheep. He could not believe his eyes! He had never seen such a thing nor had he ever heard in the history of the whole past that a lion was in the middle of a crowd of sheep and no sheep was afraid. And the lion was walking exactly like the sheep, grazing on grass.
The old lion could not believe his eyes. He forgot he was going to catch a sheep for his breakfast. He completely forgot the breakfast. It was something so strange that he tried to catch the young lion. But he was old, and the young lion was young — he ran away. Although he believed that he was a sheep, when there was danger the identification was forgotten. He ran like a lion, and the old lion had great difficulty in catching him. But finally the old lion got hold of him and he was crying and weeping and saying, “Just forgive me, I am a poor sheep.” The old lion said, “You idiot! You simply stop and come with me to the pond.”
Just nearby there was a pond. He took the young lion there. The young lion was not going willingly. He went reluctantly, but what can you do against a lion if you are only a sheep? He may kill you if you don’t follow him, so he went with him. The pond was silent, with no ripples, almost like a mirror. And the old lion said to the young, “Just look. Look at my face and look at your face. Look at my body and look at your body in the water.”
In a second there came a great roar! All the hills echoed it. The sheep disappeared; he was a totally different being — he recognized himself. The identification with sheep was not a reality, it was just a mental concept. Now he had seen the reality. And the old lion said, “Now I don’t have to say anything. You have understood.”
The young lion could feel strange energy he had never felt...as if it had been dormant. He could feel tremendous power, and he had always been a weak, humble sheep. All that humbleness, all that weakness, simply evaporated.
This is an ancient parable about the master and the disciple. The function of the master is only to bring the disciple to see who he is and that what he goes on believing is not true.
Your mind is not created by nature. Try to keep the distinction always: your brain is created by nature. Your brain is the mechanism that belongs to the body, but your mind is created by the society in which you live — by the religion, by the church, by the ideology that your parents followed, by the educational system that you were taught in, by all kinds of things. That’s why there is a Christian mind and a Hindu mind, a Mohammedan mind and a communist mind. Brains are natural, but minds are a created phenomenon. It depends on which flock of sheep you belong to. Was the flock of the sheep Hindu? Then naturally you will behave like a Hindu.
Meditation is the only method that can make you aware that you are not the mind; and that gives you a tremendous mastery. Then you can choose what is right with your mind and what is not right with your mind, because you are distant, an observer, a watcher. Then you are not so much attached to the mind, and that is your fear.
You have completely forgotten yourself; you have become the mind. The identification is complete. So when I say, “Be silent. Be still. Be alert and watchful of your thought processes,” you freak out, you become afraid. It looks like death. In a way you are right but it is not your death, it is the death of your conditionings. Combined they are called your mind.
Once you are capable of seeing the distinction clearly — that you are separate from the mind and the mind is separate from the brain — it immediately happens. Simultaneously, as you withdraw from the mind, you suddenly see that the mind is in the middle; on both sides there is brain and consciousness.
The brain is simply a mechanism. Whatever you want to do with it, you can do. Mind is the problem, because others make it for you. It is not you, it is not even your own; it is all borrowed.
The priests, the politicians, the people who are in power, the people who have vested interests, don’t want you to know that you are above mind, beyond mind. Their whole effort has been to keep you identified with the mind, because mind is managed by them, not by you. You are being deceived in such a subtle way. The managers of your mind are outside.
When the consciousness becomes identified with the mind, then the brain is helpless. The brain is simply mechanical. Whatever mind wants, the brain does. But if you are separate, then the mind loses its power; otherwise it is sovereign. And you are afraid of meditation because of that.
I don’t belong to any religion, I don’t belong to any political ideology, I don’t belong to any nation. I don’t have myself filled up with all kinds of nonsense called “holy scriptures.” I have simply pushed the mind aside. I use the brain directly; there is no need of any conditioning, there is no need of any mediator.
But your fear is understandable. You have been brought up with certain concepts, and perhaps you are afraid to lose them.
-Osho: The Path of the Mystic
http://www.osho.com/magazine/haveataste/emotionalecology.cfm
Friday, May 29, 2009
Will knowing where I was in my past life make it easier to follow the path? - Osho
The past exists nowhere. Many people write to me, "Give us methods so that we can remember our past lives." What are you going to do? Even if you remember that you were Alexander the Great or Cleopatra, how is that going to help in any way? It will create more complications. You are already in such a mess!
That's why nature closes the door every time you die. This is great compassion, otherwise you will be born mad. Remembering all your past lives you will be in such a state that it will be impossible for you to function at all, because your mother may have been your wife in the past life and in another life she may have been your daughter. Now, how to behave with her? -- as your mother, as your wife, as your daughter? You will get very confused!
There is no need to bother about the past. As you become aware, the first thing to disappear from your mind is the past, and the past is one third of the mind. It is the very base of the mind, the foundation. Once it disappears, then the whole building starts collapsing.
The second to go is tomorrow. When there is no yesterday you cannot conceive of tomorrow. Tomorrow is nothing but a projection of yesterday. You would like to live the joys of yesterday again tomorrow and you would like to avoid the miseries of yesterday; that's what your tomorrow is. If yesterday is gone, tomorrow is finished; soon it will disappear.
And when yesterdays are gone and tomorrows are gone, where is today? It exists between the two. If both the banks have disappeared, the river itself will disappear. If both the banks have disappeared, the bridge will disappear. Chunk by chunk in three pieces, time dissolves: first the past, then the future, and finally the present. Then you are left with no time, a state of timelessness. And this, Buddha says, is nirvana.
To experience timelessness is to experience deathlessness. To experience timelessness is to experience that which really is. It is neither past nor present nor future; it simply is. It cannot be confined to any compartment, into any category; it cannot be categorized. You simply experience each moment with tremendous peace and silence and joy. And each moment becomes so fragrant, so alive! Each moment becomes such a benediction that it is impossible to imagine it, it is impossible to describe it. One has to know it to know it; there is no other way. Nobody can explain it to you. It is not expressible, it is not explainable. It is the greatest mystery. When time disappears, mind disappears, what is left? That which is left, that vastness...that is your real being -- in Buddha's words, your non-being, your no-self.
Jesus will call it the kingdom of God ; that is a positive way of describing it. And Buddha calls it a state of cessation -- all has ceased. And with great gladness he knows that he has finished. He has woken from his sleep.
Enough for today
-Osho, excerpted from: The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Volume 12, Chapter 7
http://www.osho.com/magazine/haveataste/emotionalecology.cfm?Nr=1051
That's why nature closes the door every time you die. This is great compassion, otherwise you will be born mad. Remembering all your past lives you will be in such a state that it will be impossible for you to function at all, because your mother may have been your wife in the past life and in another life she may have been your daughter. Now, how to behave with her? -- as your mother, as your wife, as your daughter? You will get very confused!
There is no need to bother about the past. As you become aware, the first thing to disappear from your mind is the past, and the past is one third of the mind. It is the very base of the mind, the foundation. Once it disappears, then the whole building starts collapsing.
The second to go is tomorrow. When there is no yesterday you cannot conceive of tomorrow. Tomorrow is nothing but a projection of yesterday. You would like to live the joys of yesterday again tomorrow and you would like to avoid the miseries of yesterday; that's what your tomorrow is. If yesterday is gone, tomorrow is finished; soon it will disappear.
And when yesterdays are gone and tomorrows are gone, where is today? It exists between the two. If both the banks have disappeared, the river itself will disappear. If both the banks have disappeared, the bridge will disappear. Chunk by chunk in three pieces, time dissolves: first the past, then the future, and finally the present. Then you are left with no time, a state of timelessness. And this, Buddha says, is nirvana.
To experience timelessness is to experience deathlessness. To experience timelessness is to experience that which really is. It is neither past nor present nor future; it simply is. It cannot be confined to any compartment, into any category; it cannot be categorized. You simply experience each moment with tremendous peace and silence and joy. And each moment becomes so fragrant, so alive! Each moment becomes such a benediction that it is impossible to imagine it, it is impossible to describe it. One has to know it to know it; there is no other way. Nobody can explain it to you. It is not expressible, it is not explainable. It is the greatest mystery. When time disappears, mind disappears, what is left? That which is left, that vastness...that is your real being -- in Buddha's words, your non-being, your no-self.
Jesus will call it the kingdom of God ; that is a positive way of describing it. And Buddha calls it a state of cessation -- all has ceased. And with great gladness he knows that he has finished. He has woken from his sleep.
Enough for today
-Osho, excerpted from: The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Volume 12, Chapter 7
http://www.osho.com/magazine/haveataste/emotionalecology.cfm?Nr=1051
Saturday, April 04, 2009
Only one cure - Osho
I don't tackle individual problems. My whole approach is that there are millions of diseases, but there is only one cure, and that cure is meditation.
-Osho
-Osho
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Osho - Have a heart
HAVE A HEART!
I have been experiencing pain of varying degrees in my chest for some years. It disappears when I love, when I melt....
It is not physical; it is certainly concerned with relaxation, total melting, forgetting oneself completely. In those moments it disappears, so certainly it is not physical. You have to learn to give more love. This is not only your problem; in varying degrees it is the problem of everybody.
Everybody wants to be loved; that is a wrong beginning.
It starts because the child, the small child, cannot love, cannot say anything, cannot do anything, cannot give anything; he can only get. A small child’s experience of love is of getting: getting from the mother, getting from the father, getting from brothers, sisters, getting from guests, strangers — but always getting. So the first experience that settles deep in his unconscious is that he has to get love.
But the trouble arises because everybody has been a child, and everybody has the same urge to get love; nobody is born in any other way. So all are asking, “Give us love,” and there is nobody to give because the other person was also brought up in the same way.
One has to be alert and aware that just an incident of birth should not remain a constant prevailing state of your mind.
Rather than asking, “Give me love,” start giving love. Forget about getting, simply give — and I guarantee you, you will get much.
But you are not to think about getting. You are not even indirectly, by the side, to watch whether you are getting it or not. That much will be enough disturbance. You simply give, because to give love is so beautiful that getting love is not so great. This is one of the secrets.
Giving love is the really beautiful experience, because then you are an emperor. Getting love is very small experience, and it is the experience of a beggar. Don’t be a beggar. At least as far as love is concerned, be an emperor, because it is an inexhaustible quality in you. You can go on giving as much as you like. Don’t be worried that it will be exhausted, that one day you will suddenly find, “My God! I don’t have any love to give anymore.”
Love is not a quantity; it is a quality, and a quality of a certain category that grows by giving and dies if you hold it. If you are miserly about it, it dies. So be really spendthrift. Don’t bother to whom — that is really the idea of a miserly mind: I will give love to certain persons with certain qualities. You don’t understand that you have so much...you are a raincloud.
The raincloud does not bother where it rains — on the rocks, in the gardens, in the ocean — it doesn’t matter. It wants to unburden itself. And that unburdening is a tremendous relief.
So the first secret is: Don’t ask for it, and don’t wait, thinking that you will give if somebody asks you. Give it!
Just give your love to anybody — a stranger. It is not a question that you have to give something very valuable, just a helping hand and that will be enough. In twenty-four hours, whatever you do should be done with love, and the pain in your heart will disappear. And because you will be so loving, people will love you. It is a natural law. You get what you give. In fact you get more than you give.
Learn giving, and you will find so many people being loving towards you who had never looked at you, who had never bothered about you. Your problem is that you have a heart full of love but you have been a miser; that love has become a burden on the heart. Rather than making the heart blossom you have been hoarding it, so once in a while when you are in a moment of love you feel it disappearing. But why one moment? Why not every moment?
It is not even a question of a living being. You can touch this chair with a loving hand. The thing depends on you, not on the object.
Then you will find a great relaxation and a great disappearance of your self — which is a burden — and a melting into the whole.
This is certainly a disease, in the literal meaning of the word: it is a dis-ease. It is not sickness, so no physician can help you. It is simply a tense state of your heart that just wants to give more and more. Perhaps you have more love than other people, perhaps you are more fortunate, and you are making out of your fortune a great misery for yourself. Share it, without bothering to whom you are giving.
Just give it, and you will find tremendous peace and silence. This will become your meditation.
One can come to meditation through many directions; perhaps this is going to be your direction.
Beyond Psychology
http://www.osho.com/magazine/haveataste/theothermyself.cfm?Nr=13
I have been experiencing pain of varying degrees in my chest for some years. It disappears when I love, when I melt....
It is not physical; it is certainly concerned with relaxation, total melting, forgetting oneself completely. In those moments it disappears, so certainly it is not physical. You have to learn to give more love. This is not only your problem; in varying degrees it is the problem of everybody.
Everybody wants to be loved; that is a wrong beginning.
It starts because the child, the small child, cannot love, cannot say anything, cannot do anything, cannot give anything; he can only get. A small child’s experience of love is of getting: getting from the mother, getting from the father, getting from brothers, sisters, getting from guests, strangers — but always getting. So the first experience that settles deep in his unconscious is that he has to get love.
But the trouble arises because everybody has been a child, and everybody has the same urge to get love; nobody is born in any other way. So all are asking, “Give us love,” and there is nobody to give because the other person was also brought up in the same way.
One has to be alert and aware that just an incident of birth should not remain a constant prevailing state of your mind.
Rather than asking, “Give me love,” start giving love. Forget about getting, simply give — and I guarantee you, you will get much.
But you are not to think about getting. You are not even indirectly, by the side, to watch whether you are getting it or not. That much will be enough disturbance. You simply give, because to give love is so beautiful that getting love is not so great. This is one of the secrets.
Giving love is the really beautiful experience, because then you are an emperor. Getting love is very small experience, and it is the experience of a beggar. Don’t be a beggar. At least as far as love is concerned, be an emperor, because it is an inexhaustible quality in you. You can go on giving as much as you like. Don’t be worried that it will be exhausted, that one day you will suddenly find, “My God! I don’t have any love to give anymore.”
Love is not a quantity; it is a quality, and a quality of a certain category that grows by giving and dies if you hold it. If you are miserly about it, it dies. So be really spendthrift. Don’t bother to whom — that is really the idea of a miserly mind: I will give love to certain persons with certain qualities. You don’t understand that you have so much...you are a raincloud.
The raincloud does not bother where it rains — on the rocks, in the gardens, in the ocean — it doesn’t matter. It wants to unburden itself. And that unburdening is a tremendous relief.
So the first secret is: Don’t ask for it, and don’t wait, thinking that you will give if somebody asks you. Give it!
Just give your love to anybody — a stranger. It is not a question that you have to give something very valuable, just a helping hand and that will be enough. In twenty-four hours, whatever you do should be done with love, and the pain in your heart will disappear. And because you will be so loving, people will love you. It is a natural law. You get what you give. In fact you get more than you give.
Learn giving, and you will find so many people being loving towards you who had never looked at you, who had never bothered about you. Your problem is that you have a heart full of love but you have been a miser; that love has become a burden on the heart. Rather than making the heart blossom you have been hoarding it, so once in a while when you are in a moment of love you feel it disappearing. But why one moment? Why not every moment?
It is not even a question of a living being. You can touch this chair with a loving hand. The thing depends on you, not on the object.
Then you will find a great relaxation and a great disappearance of your self — which is a burden — and a melting into the whole.
This is certainly a disease, in the literal meaning of the word: it is a dis-ease. It is not sickness, so no physician can help you. It is simply a tense state of your heart that just wants to give more and more. Perhaps you have more love than other people, perhaps you are more fortunate, and you are making out of your fortune a great misery for yourself. Share it, without bothering to whom you are giving.
Just give it, and you will find tremendous peace and silence. This will become your meditation.
One can come to meditation through many directions; perhaps this is going to be your direction.
Beyond Psychology
http://www.osho.com/magazine/haveataste/theothermyself.cfm?Nr=13
Monday, March 16, 2009
Objective art - Osho
What is objective art?
Is creativity somehow related with meditation?
Osho:
Art can be divided into two parts. Ninety-nine percent of art is subjective art. Only one percent is objective art. The ninety-nine percent subjective art has no relationship with meditation. Only one percent objective art is based on meditation.
The subjective art means you are pouring your subjectivity onto the canvas, your dreams, your imaginations, your fantasies. It is a projection of your psychology. The same happens in poetry, in music, in all dimensions of creativity - you are not concerned with the person who is going to see your painting, not concerned what will happen to him when he looks at it; that is not your concern at all. Your art is simply a kind of vomiting. It will help you, just the way vomiting helps. It takes the nausea away, it makes you cleaner, makes you feel healthier. But you have not considered what is going to happen to the person who is going to see your vomit. He will become nauseous. He may start feeling sick.
Look at the paintings of Picasso. He is a great painter, but just a subjective artist. Looking at his paintings, you will start feeling sick, dizzy, something going berserk in your mind. You cannot go on looking at Picasso's painting for long. You would like to get away, because the painting has not come from a silent being. It has come from a chaos. It is a byproduct of a nightmare. But ninety-nine percent of art belongs to that category.
Objective art is just the opposite. The man has nothing to throw out, he is utterly empty, absolutely clean. Out of this silence, out of this emptiness arises love, compassion. And out of this silence arises a possibility for creativity. This silence, this love, this compassion - these are the qualities of meditation.
Meditation brings you to your very center. And your center is not only your center, it is the center of the whole existence. Only on the periphery we are different. As we start moving toward the center, we are one. We are part of eternity, a tremendously luminous experience of ecstasy that is beyond words. Something that you can be... but very difficult to express it. But a great desire arises in you to share it, because all other people around you are groping for exactly such experiences. And you have it, you know the path.
And these people are searching everywhere except within themselves - where it is! You would like to shout in their ears. You would like to shake them and tell them, "Open your eyes! Where are you going? Wherever you go, you go away from yourself. Come back home, and come as deep into yourself as possible."
This desire to share becomes creativity. Somebody can dance. There have been mystics - for example, Jalaluddin Rumi - whose teaching was not in words, whose teaching was in dance. He will dance. His disciples will be sitting by his side, and he will tell them, "Anybody who feels like joining me can join. It is a question of feeling. If you don't feel like, it is up to you. You can simply sit and watch."
But when you see a man like Jalaluddin Rumi dancing, something dormant in you becomes active. In spite of yourself you find you have joined the dance. You are already dancing before you become aware that you have joined it.
Even this experience is of tremendous value, that you have been pulled like a magnetic force. It has not been your mind decision, you have not weighed for pro and for against, to join or not to join, no. Just the beauty of Rumi's dance, his spreading energy, has taken possession of you. You are being touched. This dance is objective art.
And if you can continue - and slowly you will become more and more unembarrassed, more and more capable - soon you will forget the whole world. A moment comes, the dancer disappears and only the dance remains.
There are in India statues, which you have just to sit silently and meditate upon. Just look at those statues. They have been made by meditators in such a way, in such a proportion, that just looking at the statue, the figure, the proportion, the beauty... Everything is very calculated to create a similar kind of state within you. And just sitting silently with a statue of Buddha or Mahavira, you will come across a strange feeling, which you cannot find in sitting by the side of any Western sculpture.
All Western sculpture is sexual. You see the Roman sculpture: beautiful, but something creates sexuality in you. It hits your sexual center. It does not give you an uplift. In the East the situation is totally different. Statutes are carved, but before a sculptor starts carving statues he learns meditation. Before he starts playing on the flute he learns meditation. Before he starts writing poetry he learns meditation. Meditation is absolute necessity for any art; then the art will be objective.
Then, just reading few lines of a haiku, a Japanese form of a small poem - only three lines, perhaps three words - if you silently read it, you will be surprised. It is far more explosive that any dynamite. It simply opens up doors in your being.
Basho's small haiku I have beside the pond near my house. I love it so much, I wanted it to be there. So every time, coming and going.... Basho is one of the persons I have loved. Nothing much in it: An ancient pond.... It is not an ordinary poetry. It is very pictorial. Just visualize: An ancient pond. A frog jumps in.... You almost see the ancient pond! You almost hear the frog, the sound of its jump: Plop.
And then everything is silent. The ancient pond is there, the frog has jumped in, the sound of his jumping in has created more silence than before. Just reading it is not like any other poetry that you go on reading - one poem, another poem... No, you just read it and sit silently. Visualize it. Close your eyes. See the ancient pond. See the frog. See it jumping in. See the ripples on the water. Hear the sound. And hear the silence that follows.
This is objective art.
Basho must have written it in a very meditative mood, sitting by the side of an ancient pond, watching a frog. And the frog jumps in. And suddenly Basho becomes aware of the miracle that sound is deepening the silence. The silence is more than it was before. This is objective art.
Unless you are a creator, you will never find real blissfulness. It is only by creating that you become part of the great creativity of the universe. But to be a creator, meditation is a basic necessity. Without it you can paint, but that painting has to be burned, it has not to be shown to others. It was good, it helped you unburden, but please, don't burden anybody else. Don't present it to your friends, they are not your enemies.
Objective art is meditative art, subjective art is mind art.
- from The Last Testament, Volume 3, #24
http://wwwosho.com/magazine/objartgall/ObjectArt.cfm
Sunday, February 22, 2009
The more you become yourself, the more you will feel responsible for the world - Osho
"The more I move into meditation, the more I feel responsible for myself and for the situation in the whole world. How is that possible?"
The more you become yourself, the more you will feel responsible for the world because the more you are becoming part of the world — you are not separate from it.
Your being authentically yourself means a tremendous responsibility, but it is not a burden. It is a rejoicing that you can do something for existence.
Existence has done so much for you, there is no way to pay it back. But we can do something. It will be very small compared to what existence has done for us, but it will show our gratitude. It is not a question of whether it is big or small; the question is that it is our prayer, our gratitude, and our totality is involved in it. Yes, it will happen: the more you become yourself, the more you will start feeling responsibilities which you had never felt before.
I am reminded.... In the life of Mahavira, the most important Jaina philosopher.... He is going from one village to another village with his close disciple, Goshalak. And this is the question they are discussing: Mahavira is insisting, “Your responsibility towards existence shows how much you have attained to your authentic reality. We cannot see your authentic reality but we can see your responsibility.”
As they are walking, they come across a small plant. And Goshalak is a logician — he pulls the plant and throws it away. It was a small plant with small roots. Mahavira said, “This is irresponsibility. But you cannot do anything against existence. You can try, but it is going to backfire.”
Goshalak said, “What can existence do to me? I have pulled this plant; now existence cannot bring it to life again.”
Mahavira laughed. They went into the town, they were going to beg for their food. After taking food, they were coming back, and they were surprised: the plant was rooted again. While they were in the town it had started raining, and the roots of the plant, finding the support of the rain, went back into the soil. They were small roots, it was windy, and the wind helped the plant to stand up again. By the time they had come back, the plant was back to its normal position. Mahavira said, “Look at the plant. I told you you cannot do anything against existence. You can try, but that will turn against you, because that will go on separating you from existence. It will not bring you closer.
“Just see that plant. Nobody could have imagined that this will happen, that the rain and the wind together will manage that small plant back, rooted into the earth. It is going to live its life. It seems to us a small plant but it is part of a vast universe, a vast existence, of the greatest power there is.” And Mahavira said to Goshalak, “From this point our paths separate. I cannot allow a man to live with me who is against existence and feels no responsibility.”
Mahavira’s whole philosophy of non-violence can be better expressed as the philosophy of reverence for existence. Non-violence is simply a part of it.
It will go on happening: the more you find yourself, the more you will find yourself responsible for many things you have never cared about.
Let that be a criterion: the more you find yourself responsible for people, things, existence, the more you can be at ease that you are on the right track.
-Osho
http://www.osho.com/magazine/haveataste/theothermyself.cfm?Nr=9
The more you become yourself, the more you will feel responsible for the world because the more you are becoming part of the world — you are not separate from it.
Your being authentically yourself means a tremendous responsibility, but it is not a burden. It is a rejoicing that you can do something for existence.
Existence has done so much for you, there is no way to pay it back. But we can do something. It will be very small compared to what existence has done for us, but it will show our gratitude. It is not a question of whether it is big or small; the question is that it is our prayer, our gratitude, and our totality is involved in it. Yes, it will happen: the more you become yourself, the more you will start feeling responsibilities which you had never felt before.
I am reminded.... In the life of Mahavira, the most important Jaina philosopher.... He is going from one village to another village with his close disciple, Goshalak. And this is the question they are discussing: Mahavira is insisting, “Your responsibility towards existence shows how much you have attained to your authentic reality. We cannot see your authentic reality but we can see your responsibility.”
As they are walking, they come across a small plant. And Goshalak is a logician — he pulls the plant and throws it away. It was a small plant with small roots. Mahavira said, “This is irresponsibility. But you cannot do anything against existence. You can try, but it is going to backfire.”
Goshalak said, “What can existence do to me? I have pulled this plant; now existence cannot bring it to life again.”
Mahavira laughed. They went into the town, they were going to beg for their food. After taking food, they were coming back, and they were surprised: the plant was rooted again. While they were in the town it had started raining, and the roots of the plant, finding the support of the rain, went back into the soil. They were small roots, it was windy, and the wind helped the plant to stand up again. By the time they had come back, the plant was back to its normal position. Mahavira said, “Look at the plant. I told you you cannot do anything against existence. You can try, but that will turn against you, because that will go on separating you from existence. It will not bring you closer.
“Just see that plant. Nobody could have imagined that this will happen, that the rain and the wind together will manage that small plant back, rooted into the earth. It is going to live its life. It seems to us a small plant but it is part of a vast universe, a vast existence, of the greatest power there is.” And Mahavira said to Goshalak, “From this point our paths separate. I cannot allow a man to live with me who is against existence and feels no responsibility.”
Mahavira’s whole philosophy of non-violence can be better expressed as the philosophy of reverence for existence. Non-violence is simply a part of it.
It will go on happening: the more you find yourself, the more you will find yourself responsible for many things you have never cared about.
Let that be a criterion: the more you find yourself responsible for people, things, existence, the more you can be at ease that you are on the right track.
-Osho
http://www.osho.com/magazine/haveataste/theothermyself.cfm?Nr=9
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Osho - Vegetarianism
Man, naturally, should be a vegetarian, because the whole body is made for vegetarian food. Even scientists concede to the fact that the whole structure of the human body shows that man should not be a non-vegetarian. Man comes from the monkeys. Monkeys are vegetarians, absolute vegetarians. If Darwin is true then man should be a vegetarian.
Now there are ways to judge whether a certain species of animal is vegetarian or non-vegetarian: it depends on the intestine, the length of the intestine. Non-vegetarian animals have a very small intestine. Tigers, lions — they have a very small intestine, because meat is already a digested food. It does not need a long intestine to digest it. The work of digestion has been done by the animal. Now you are eating the animal’s meat. It is already digested — no long intestine is needed. Man has one of the longest intestines: that means man is a vegetarian. A long digestion is needed, and much excreta will be there which has to be thrown out.
If man is not a non-vegetarian and he goes on eating meat, the body is burdened. In the East, all the great meditators — Buddha, Mahavir — have emphasized the fact. Not because of any concept of nonviolence — that is a secondary thing — but because if you really want to move in deep meditation your body needs to be weightless, natural, flowing. Your body needs to be unloaded; and a non-vegetarian’s body is very loaded.
Just watch what happens when you eat meat: when you kill an animal what happens to the animal when he is killed? Of course, nobody wants to be killed. Life wants to prolong itself; the animal is not dying willingly. If somebody kills you, you will not die willingly. If a lion jumps on you and kills you, what will happen to your mind? The same happens when you kill a lion. Agony, fear, death, anguish, anxiety, anger, violence, sadness — all these things happen to the animal. All over his body violence, anguish, agony spreads. The whole body becomes full of toxins, poisons. All the body glands release poisons because the animal is dying very unwillingly. And then you eat the meat; that meat carries all the poisons that the animal has released. The whole energy is poisonous. Then those poisons are carried in your body.
That meat which you are eating belonged to an animal body. It had a specific purpose there. A specific type of consciousness existed in the animal’s body. You are on a higher plane than the animal’s consciousness, and when you eat the animal’s meat your body goes to the lowest plane, to the lower plane of the animal. Then there exists a gap between your consciousness and your body, and a tension arises and anxiety arises.
One should eat things which are natural, natural for you. Fruits, nuts, vegetables — eat as much as you can. The beauty is that you cannot eat more of these things than is needed. Whatsoever is natural always gives you a satisfaction, because it satiates your body, saturates you. You feel fulfilled. If some thing is unnatural it never gives you a feeling of fulfillment. Go on eating ice cream: you never feel that you are satiated. In fact the more you eat, the more you feel like eating. It is not a food. Your mind is being tricked. Now you are not eating according to the body need; you are eating just to taste it. The tongue has become the controller.
The tongue should not be the controller. It does not know anything about the stomach. It does not know anything about the body. The tongue has a specific purpose to fulfill: to taste food. Naturally, the tongue has to judge, that is the only thing, which food is for the body, for my body and which food is not for my body. It is just a watchman on the door; it is not the master, and if the watchman on the door becomes the master, then everything will be confused.
Now advertisers know well that the tongue can be tricked, the nose can be tricked. And they are not the masters. You may not be aware: much food research goes on in the world, and they say if your nose is closed completely, and your eyes closed, and then you are given an onion to eat, you cannot tell what you are eating. You cannot tell onion from apple if the nose is closed completely because half of the taste comes from the smell, is decided by the nose, and half is decided by the tongue. These two have become the controllers. Now they know: whether ice cream is nutritious or not is not the point. It can carry a flavor, it can carry some chemicals which fulfill the tongue but are not needed for the body.
Man is confused, more confused than buffaloes. You cannot convince buffaloes to eat ice cream. Try!
A natural food...and when I say natural I mean that which your body needs. The need of a tiger is different; he has to be very violent. If you eat the meat of a tiger you will be violent, but where will your violence be expressed? You have to live in human society, not in a jungle. Then you will have to suppress the violence. Then a vicious circle starts.
When you suppress violence, what happens? When you feel angry, violent, a certain poisonous energy is released, because that poison creates a situation where you can be really violent and kill somebody. The energy moves towards your hands; the energy moves towards your teeth. These are the two places from where animals become violent. Man is part of the animal kingdom.
When you are angry, energy is released — it comes to the hands and to the teeth, to the jaw — but you live in a human society and it is not always profitable to be angry. You live in a civilized world and you cannot behave like an animal. If you behave like an animal, you will have to pay too much for it — and you are not ready to pay that much. Then what do you do? You suppress the anger in the hand; you suppress the anger in your teeth — you go on smiling a false smile, and your teeth go on accumulating anger.
I have rarely come to see people with a natural jaw. It is not natural — blocked, stiff — because there is too much anger. If you press the jaw of a person, the anger can be released. Hands become ugly. They lose grace, they lose flexibility, because too much anger is suppressed there. People who have been working on deep massage, they have come to know that when you touch the hands deeply, massage the hands, the person starts becoming angry. There is no reason. You are massaging the man and suddenly he starts feeling angry. If you press the jaw, persons become angry again. They carry accumulated anger. These are the impurities in the body: they have to be released. If you don’t release them the body will remain heavy.
-Osho
Now there are ways to judge whether a certain species of animal is vegetarian or non-vegetarian: it depends on the intestine, the length of the intestine. Non-vegetarian animals have a very small intestine. Tigers, lions — they have a very small intestine, because meat is already a digested food. It does not need a long intestine to digest it. The work of digestion has been done by the animal. Now you are eating the animal’s meat. It is already digested — no long intestine is needed. Man has one of the longest intestines: that means man is a vegetarian. A long digestion is needed, and much excreta will be there which has to be thrown out.
If man is not a non-vegetarian and he goes on eating meat, the body is burdened. In the East, all the great meditators — Buddha, Mahavir — have emphasized the fact. Not because of any concept of nonviolence — that is a secondary thing — but because if you really want to move in deep meditation your body needs to be weightless, natural, flowing. Your body needs to be unloaded; and a non-vegetarian’s body is very loaded.
Just watch what happens when you eat meat: when you kill an animal what happens to the animal when he is killed? Of course, nobody wants to be killed. Life wants to prolong itself; the animal is not dying willingly. If somebody kills you, you will not die willingly. If a lion jumps on you and kills you, what will happen to your mind? The same happens when you kill a lion. Agony, fear, death, anguish, anxiety, anger, violence, sadness — all these things happen to the animal. All over his body violence, anguish, agony spreads. The whole body becomes full of toxins, poisons. All the body glands release poisons because the animal is dying very unwillingly. And then you eat the meat; that meat carries all the poisons that the animal has released. The whole energy is poisonous. Then those poisons are carried in your body.
That meat which you are eating belonged to an animal body. It had a specific purpose there. A specific type of consciousness existed in the animal’s body. You are on a higher plane than the animal’s consciousness, and when you eat the animal’s meat your body goes to the lowest plane, to the lower plane of the animal. Then there exists a gap between your consciousness and your body, and a tension arises and anxiety arises.
One should eat things which are natural, natural for you. Fruits, nuts, vegetables — eat as much as you can. The beauty is that you cannot eat more of these things than is needed. Whatsoever is natural always gives you a satisfaction, because it satiates your body, saturates you. You feel fulfilled. If some thing is unnatural it never gives you a feeling of fulfillment. Go on eating ice cream: you never feel that you are satiated. In fact the more you eat, the more you feel like eating. It is not a food. Your mind is being tricked. Now you are not eating according to the body need; you are eating just to taste it. The tongue has become the controller.
The tongue should not be the controller. It does not know anything about the stomach. It does not know anything about the body. The tongue has a specific purpose to fulfill: to taste food. Naturally, the tongue has to judge, that is the only thing, which food is for the body, for my body and which food is not for my body. It is just a watchman on the door; it is not the master, and if the watchman on the door becomes the master, then everything will be confused.
Now advertisers know well that the tongue can be tricked, the nose can be tricked. And they are not the masters. You may not be aware: much food research goes on in the world, and they say if your nose is closed completely, and your eyes closed, and then you are given an onion to eat, you cannot tell what you are eating. You cannot tell onion from apple if the nose is closed completely because half of the taste comes from the smell, is decided by the nose, and half is decided by the tongue. These two have become the controllers. Now they know: whether ice cream is nutritious or not is not the point. It can carry a flavor, it can carry some chemicals which fulfill the tongue but are not needed for the body.
Man is confused, more confused than buffaloes. You cannot convince buffaloes to eat ice cream. Try!
A natural food...and when I say natural I mean that which your body needs. The need of a tiger is different; he has to be very violent. If you eat the meat of a tiger you will be violent, but where will your violence be expressed? You have to live in human society, not in a jungle. Then you will have to suppress the violence. Then a vicious circle starts.
When you suppress violence, what happens? When you feel angry, violent, a certain poisonous energy is released, because that poison creates a situation where you can be really violent and kill somebody. The energy moves towards your hands; the energy moves towards your teeth. These are the two places from where animals become violent. Man is part of the animal kingdom.
When you are angry, energy is released — it comes to the hands and to the teeth, to the jaw — but you live in a human society and it is not always profitable to be angry. You live in a civilized world and you cannot behave like an animal. If you behave like an animal, you will have to pay too much for it — and you are not ready to pay that much. Then what do you do? You suppress the anger in the hand; you suppress the anger in your teeth — you go on smiling a false smile, and your teeth go on accumulating anger.
I have rarely come to see people with a natural jaw. It is not natural — blocked, stiff — because there is too much anger. If you press the jaw of a person, the anger can be released. Hands become ugly. They lose grace, they lose flexibility, because too much anger is suppressed there. People who have been working on deep massage, they have come to know that when you touch the hands deeply, massage the hands, the person starts becoming angry. There is no reason. You are massaging the man and suddenly he starts feeling angry. If you press the jaw, persons become angry again. They carry accumulated anger. These are the impurities in the body: they have to be released. If you don’t release them the body will remain heavy.
-Osho
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Osho - The Fear of Commitment
Only through decisions do you become more and more conscious, only through decisions do you become more and more crystallized, only through decisions do you become sharp. Otherwise one becomes dull.
People go on from one guru to another, from one master to another, from one temple to another — not because they are great seekers but because they are incapable of decision. So they go from one to another. This is their way to avoid commitment.
The same happens in other human relationships: a man goes from one woman to another, goes on changing. People think he is a great lover; he is not a lover at all. He is avoiding, he is trying to avoid any deep involvement because with deep involvement problems have to be faced, and much pain has to be gone through. So one simply plays safe; one makes it a point never to go too deeply into somebody. If you go too deep you may not be able to come back easily. And if you go deeply into somebody, somebody else will go deeply into you also; it is always proportionate. If I go very deep in you the only way is to allow you also to go that deep in me. It is a give and take, it is a sharing. Then one may get entangled too much, and it will be difficult to escape and the pain may be much. So people learn how to play safe: just let surfaces meet — hit-and-run love affairs. Before you are caught, run.
This is what is happening in the modern world. People have become so juvenile, so childish; they are losing all maturity.
Maturity comes only when you are ready to face the pain of your being; maturity comes only when you are ready to take the challenge. And there is no greater challenge than love.
To live happily with another person is the greatest challenge in the world. It is very easy to live peacefully alone, it is very difficult to live peacefully with somebody else, because two worlds collide, two worlds meet...totally different worlds. How are they attracted to each other? Because they are totally different, almost opposite, polar opposites.
It is very difficult to be peaceful in a relationship, but that is the challenge. If you escape from that, you escape from maturity. If you go into it with all the pain, and still continue going into it, then by and by the pain becomes a blessing, the curse becomes a blessing.
By and by, through the conflict, the friction, crystallization arises. Through the struggle you become more alert, more aware.
The other becomes like a mirror to you. You can see your ugliness in the other. The other provokes your unconscious, brings it to the surface.
You will have to know all hidden parts of your being and the easiest way is to be mirrored, reflected, in a relationship.
Easier, I call it, because there is no other way — but it is hard. It is hard, arduous, because you will have to change through it.
When you come to a Master an even greater challenge exists before you: you have to decide, and the decision is for the unknown, and the decision has to be total and absolute, irreversible. It is not a child’s game; it is a point of no return. So much conflict arises. But don’t go on continuously changing, because this is the way to avoid yourself. And you will remain soft, you will remain babyish. Maturity will not happen to you.
Only the unknown should have a call for you because that you have not yet lived; you have not moved in that territory. Move! Something new may happen there.
Always decide for the unknown, whatsoever the risk, and you will grow continuously.
But go on deciding for the known and you move in a circle with the past again and again. You go on repeating it; you have become a gramophone record.
And decide. The sooner you can do so, the better. Postponement is simply stupid. Tomorrow you will also have to decide, so why not today? And do you think that tomorrow you will be wiser than today? Do you think that tomorrow you will be livelier than today? Do you think that tomorrow you will be younger than today, fresher than today?
Tomorrow you will be older, your courage will be less; tomorrow you will be more experienced, your cunningness will be more; tomorrow death will come closer; you will start wavering and being more afraid. Never postpone for the tomorrow. And who knows? Tomorrow may come or may not come. If you have to decide you have to decide right now.
-Osho
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Osho - Drugs destroy your capacity to meditate
Drugs can slowly slowly destroy your capacities to meditate
The drug experience is a forced, phony experience, but because we don't know the real, the phony seems to be right. If you have not seen the real, then even the phony is too much. If you compare your life with an ordinary man who has never taken anything like LSD, marijuana, then you feel very high -- if you compare it with an ordinary man. Because he has not known any moment, he has not even had a false glimpse; he lives such a mundane life.
You have lived the same mundane life -- then one day this drug creates a dream, gives you a euphoria, and you are tremendously happy. But once meditation can give you an experience, then you will see that this experience was just a dream experience. It is as if you have been thirsty and drinking in a dream from a pool of water, a pure pool of water... but in a dream. By the morning you are awake and thirsty again -- it has not helped. Of course it was so clear and so cool and it had looked, for that moment at least, as if you would never be thirsty again.
But if you go on meddling sometimes with meditation and sometimes with drugs -- the problem is that drugs can slowly slowly destroy your capacities to meditate. Otherwise there is nothing in it.... If it is to be an ordinary straight life, then drugs are perfectly okay. But if you are really interested in meditation, then drugs are dangerous. The drug is not dangerous for the people who think it is dangerous. The so-called common people think drugs are dangerous -- it is not dangerous for them at all because they have nothing to lose, they have nothing to be destroyed! But if you are really interested in search and you want to grow, then drugs are dangerous.
Drugs are not dangerous for politicians -- drugs are dangerous for the religious people because something delicate arises out of meditation. It is very delicate and it comes out of much effort. Just a small quantity of a drug and it is destroyed and you will have to start again from abc. The drug experience is so cheap and the meditation experience is so costly, because you have to go through such effort. Then by and by the mind starts choosing the cheaper one. Mm? It is the path of least resistance, so the mind says "Why bother?" The drug can give you something so easily, then why bother with Vipassana -- sitting and meditating and struggling hard? Why not the easier way?
The mind is always for the short-cut, and the short-cut is always false. As far as the spiritual growth is concerned there is no short-cut. You cannot cheat... there is no back door. Each has to follow the arduous way. In fact the real beauty of the peak depends on how hard your struggle has been. When you struggle hard and you lose the track many times -- many times even the peak disappears and you are again in the dark valley, again you struggle and again you fall and again you move -- this whole effort creates that situation where when the real experience happens, you are in a tremendous bliss.
-Osho
excerpted from This Is It! chapter 8
The drug experience is a forced, phony experience, but because we don't know the real, the phony seems to be right. If you have not seen the real, then even the phony is too much. If you compare your life with an ordinary man who has never taken anything like LSD, marijuana, then you feel very high -- if you compare it with an ordinary man. Because he has not known any moment, he has not even had a false glimpse; he lives such a mundane life.
You have lived the same mundane life -- then one day this drug creates a dream, gives you a euphoria, and you are tremendously happy. But once meditation can give you an experience, then you will see that this experience was just a dream experience. It is as if you have been thirsty and drinking in a dream from a pool of water, a pure pool of water... but in a dream. By the morning you are awake and thirsty again -- it has not helped. Of course it was so clear and so cool and it had looked, for that moment at least, as if you would never be thirsty again.
But if you go on meddling sometimes with meditation and sometimes with drugs -- the problem is that drugs can slowly slowly destroy your capacities to meditate. Otherwise there is nothing in it.... If it is to be an ordinary straight life, then drugs are perfectly okay. But if you are really interested in meditation, then drugs are dangerous. The drug is not dangerous for the people who think it is dangerous. The so-called common people think drugs are dangerous -- it is not dangerous for them at all because they have nothing to lose, they have nothing to be destroyed! But if you are really interested in search and you want to grow, then drugs are dangerous.
Drugs are not dangerous for politicians -- drugs are dangerous for the religious people because something delicate arises out of meditation. It is very delicate and it comes out of much effort. Just a small quantity of a drug and it is destroyed and you will have to start again from abc. The drug experience is so cheap and the meditation experience is so costly, because you have to go through such effort. Then by and by the mind starts choosing the cheaper one. Mm? It is the path of least resistance, so the mind says "Why bother?" The drug can give you something so easily, then why bother with Vipassana -- sitting and meditating and struggling hard? Why not the easier way?
The mind is always for the short-cut, and the short-cut is always false. As far as the spiritual growth is concerned there is no short-cut. You cannot cheat... there is no back door. Each has to follow the arduous way. In fact the real beauty of the peak depends on how hard your struggle has been. When you struggle hard and you lose the track many times -- many times even the peak disappears and you are again in the dark valley, again you struggle and again you fall and again you move -- this whole effort creates that situation where when the real experience happens, you are in a tremendous bliss.
-Osho
excerpted from This Is It! chapter 8
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