Book of Mirdad – Mikhail Naimy – Reading? — Osho Online Library

Book of Mirdad – Mikhail Naimy – Reading? — Osho Online Library

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                                       ...:                                                     The Book of Mirdad             There are millions of books in the world, but...

        

                                           The Book of Mirdad

            There are millions of books in the world, but The Book of Mirdad stands out far above any other book in existence.

It is unfortunate that very few people are acquainted with The Book of Miradad for simple reason that it is not a religious scripture. It is a parable, a fiction, but containing oceanic truth.

It is a small book, but the man who gave birth to this book…And mind my words, I am not saying "the man who wrote this book." Nobody wrote this book. I am saying the man who gave birth to this book—he was unknown, a nobody.

It is an extraordinary book in the sense that you can read it and miss it completely, because the meaning of the book is not in the words of the book. The meaning of the book is running side by side in the silence between the words, between the lines, in the gaps.

If you are in a state of meditative ness, if you are not only reading fiction but encountering the whole religious experience of a great human being, absorbing it; not intellectually understanding but existentially drinking it, the words are there but they become secondary.

And it is a book to be read by the Heart, not by the mind. It is a book not to be understood, but experienced. It is something phenomenal.

Millions of people have tried to write books so that they can express the inexpressible, but they have failed utterly. I know only one book, The Book of Mirdad, which has not failed; and if you cannot get to the very essence of it, it will be your failure, not his.

            The Book of Mirdad needs to be in every house, it is so precious.

            The Book of Mirdad is one of the greatest devices that have been created down the ages. Don't read it like any other book. Don't read it like Shri Bhagvadgita of Holy Bible. Read it as beautiful poetry, as music spread on the pages. Read it as message from a Master of Meditation.

The words are code words.

Don't look for their meaning in the dictionary. Their meaning is when they strike something in your heart.

                                                                               Osho   :  Books I Have Loved

                                                                               

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You are Welcome!...........

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Vipassana Meditation............!

Does Osho recommend sitting meditations like Vipassana?

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Question:

I thought that meditation was a simple thing. But seeing people doing Vipassana, I am losing all hope of ever becoming a successful meditator. Please give me a little enouragement.

Osho:

Meditation is simple. Precisely because it is simple, it looks difficult. Your mind is accustomed to dealing with difficult problems, and it has completely forgotten how to respond to the simple things of life. The more simple a thing is, the more difficult it looks to the mind, because the mind is very efficient in solving difficult things. It has been trained to solve difficult things, it does not know how to tackle the simple. Meditation is simple, your mind is complex. It is not a problem that meditation is creating. The problem is coming from your mind, not from meditation.
Vipassana is the most simple meditation in the world. It is through vipassana that Buddha became enlightened, and it is through vipassana that many more people have become enlightened than through any other method. Vipassana is the method. Yes, there are other methods also, but they have helped only very few people. Vipassana has helped thousands, and it is really very simple; is not like yoga.
Yoga is difficult, arduous, complex.You have to torture yourself in many ways: distort your body, contort your body, sit this way and that, torture, stand on your head -- exercises and exercises... but yoga seems to be very appealing to people.

Vipassana is so simple that you don't take any note of it.

In fact, coming across vipassana for the first time, one doubts whether it can be called a meditation at all. What is it? -- no physical exercise, no breathing exercise; a very simple phenomenon: just watching your breath coming in, going out... finished, this is the method; sitting silently, watching your breath coming in, going out; not losing track, that's all. Not that you have to change your breathing -- it is not pranayam; it is not a breathing exercise where you have to take deep breaths, exhale, inhale, no. Let the breathing be simple, as it is. You just have to bring one new quality to it: awareness.
The breath goes out, watch; the breath comes in, watch. You will become aware: the breath touching your nostrils at one point, you will become aware. You can concentrate there: the breath comes in, you feel the touch of the breath on the nostrils; then it goes out, you feel the touch again. Remain there at the tip of the nose. It is not that you have to concentrate at the tip of the nose; you have just to be alert, aware, watchful. It is not concentration. Don't miss, just go on remembering. In the beginning you will miss again and again; then bring yourself back If it is difficult for you -- for a few people it is difficult to watch it there -- then they can watch the breath in the belly. When the breath goes in, the belly goes up; when the breath goes out, the belly goes in. You go on watching your belly. If you have a really good belly, it will help.
Have you watched? If you see Indian statues of Buddha, those statues don't have real bellies -- in fact, no belly at all. Buddha looks a perfect athlete: chest coming out, belly in. But if you see a Japanese statue of Buddha you will be surprised: it does not look buddhalike at all -- a big belly, so big that you cannot sec the chest at all, almost as if Buddha is pregnant, all belly. The reason why this change happened is that in India, while Buddha was alive, he himself was watching the breath at the nose, hence tr he he belly was not important at all. But as Vipassana moved from India to Tibet to China to Korea to Burma to Japan, slowly, slowly people became aware that it is easier to watch in the belly than at the nose. Then Buddha-statues started becoming different, with bigger bellies.
You can watch either at the belly or at the nose, whichever feels right for you or whichever feels easier for you. That it be easier is the point. And just watching the breath, miracles happen.
Meditation is not difficult. It is simple. Precisely because it is simple you are feeling the difficulty. You would like to do many things, and there is nothing to do; that is the problem. It is a great problem, because we have been taught to do things. We ask what should be done, and meditation means a state of non-doing: you have not to do anything, you have to stop doing. You have to be in a state of utter inaction. Even thinking is a kind of doing -- drop that too. Feeling is a kind of doing -- drop that too. Doing, thinking, feeling -- all gone, you simply are. That is being. And being is meditation. It is very simple.
In your mother's womb you were in the same space. In vipassana you will be entering again into the same space. And you will remember, you will have a deja-vu. When you enter into deep vipassana, you will be surprised that you know it, you have known it before. You will recognize it immediately because for nine months in your mother's womb you were in the same space, doing nothing, just being.
You ask me, "I thought that meditation was simple thing, but seeing people doing vipasssana I am losing all hope of every becoming a successful meditator."

Never think about meditation in terms of success

Because that is bringing your achieving mind into it, the egoistic mind into it. Then meditation becomes your egotrip. Don't think in terms of success or failure. Those terms are not applicable in the world of meditation. Forget all about that. Those are mind terms; they are comparative. And that's the problem: you must be watching others succeeding, reaching, ecstatic, and you will be feeling very low. You will be feeling silly, sitting and looking at your breath, watching your breath. You must be looking very silly and nothing is happening. Nothing is happening because you are expecting something to happen too much.
And in the beginning, every new process looks difficult. One has to learn the taste of it.
A lady's husband was a souse, yet she had never in her life tasted alcohol.
"Here, you souse, give me that bottle. I want to taste whatever it is that has made you the bum you are."
Taking the bottle of cheap whiskey, she took a good gulp of it. "Aargh... glompf... breecch... fuy... brrrit... ptui!" she gasped. "That is the most vile-tasting liquid I have ever had the misfortune to let pass my lips. It tastes terrible!"
"Y'see?" said the old man. "An' all these years you thought I was having a good time."
Just wait a little, Paul. Just a little patience. In the beginning everything looks difficult, even the simplest thing. And don't be in a hurry.
That is one of the problems with the Western mind -- hurry. People want everything immediately. They think in terms of instant coffee, instant meditation, instant enlightenment.
A city slicker had just inherited a farm full of cows and, being a shrewd operator, decided to increase his herd right away. Accordingly, he imported three of the finest bulls in the area and locked them in the barn overnight with the cows. The next morning he called the owner of the bulls to complain.
The stud-man laughed. "What did you expect?" he asked. Did you think you'd find calves the next day?"
"Maybe not," retorted the city slicker. "But I sure did expect to see a few smiling faces on those cows!"
No, not even that is going to happen soon. Just sitting for one day in vipassana, you will not come out of it smiling. You will come out utterly tired -- tired because you were told not to do anything, tired because you have never been in such a silly thing ever before. Not doing anything? You are a doer! If you had chopped wood the whole day you would not have been so tired. But sitting silently, doing nothing, just watching your silly breath going in, coming out... many times the idea arises, "What am I doing here?" And the time will look very, very long, because time is relative. The time will become very long. One day's meditation will look as if years and years have passed -- "And what has happened? Is not the sun going to set today? When is it going to finish?"
If you are in a hurry, if you are in haste, you will never know the taste of meditation.

The taste of meditation needs great patience, infinite patience.

Meditation is simple, but you have become so complex that to relax it will take time. It is not the meditation that is taking time -- let me remind you again -- it is your complex mind. It has to be brought down to a rest, to a relaxed state. That takes time.
And don't think in terms of success and failure. Enjoy! Don't be too goal-oriented. Enjoy the sheer silence of watching your breath coming in, going out, and soon you will have a beauty, a new experience of beauty and beatitude. Soon you will see that one need not go anywhere to be blissful. One can sit silently, be alone, and be blissful. Nothing else is needed, just the pulsation of life is enough. If you can pulsate with it, it becomes a deep inner dance.
Meditation is a dance of your energy, and breath is the key.

Osho:The Guest, Chapter 15.

Awareness meditation Techniqe

Meditation for your realization….                                                                         osho!

Watching the Breath Breath-watching is a method that can be done anywhere, at any time, even if you have only a few minutes available. You can simply watch the rise and fall of your chest or belly as the breath comes in and goes out, or try this version….

Step 1: Watch the In Breath Close your eyes and start watching your breath. First, the inhalation, from where it enters your nostrils, right down into your lungs.

Step 2: Watch the Gap That Follows At the end of the inhalation there is gap, before the exhalation starts. It is of immense value. Watch that gap.

Step 3: Watch the Out Breath Now watch the exhalation.

Step 4: Watch the Gap That Follows At the end of the exhalation there is a second gap: watch that gap. Do these four steps for two to three times – just watching the breathing cycle, not changing it in anyway, just watching the natural rhythm.

Step 5: Counting In Breaths Now start counting: Inhalation – count 1 (don’t count the exhalation), inhalation – 2, and so on, up to 10. Then count from 10 back to 1. Sometimes you may forget to watch the breath or you may count beyond 10. Then start again, at 1.

“These two things have to be remembered: watching, and particularly the gaps at the top and the bottom. The experience of that gap is you, your innermost core, your being. And second: go on counting, but not more than up to 10; and come back again to 1; and only count the inhalation. These things help awareness. You have to be aware, otherwise you will start counting the exhalation, or you will go over 10. If you enjoy this meditation, continue it. It is of immense value.” Osho

 

                        

 

 

                              

longing towards the eternal

I ask every one what he is thinking about life. The meaning and value of life is hidden in the investigation of life itself.

If he is searching only for pearls and stones, then how can the value of his life be more than what he is searching for?

But most of the people become small in the investigation of the small, and in the end find that they have wasted the wealth of life in search of such wealth as, in fact, is no wealth at all.

It is desirable that before we start on a journey we find out where we want to reach, why we want so and also whether we will be able to tolerate the difficulties and hard labour that will be involved in the journey to the object.

He who does not think before starting, often finds that either he does not reach anywhere at all or if he reaches somewhere then he does not find that place worth reaching at all.

I want that such a mistake does not happen in your life because it destroys the whole life itself.

Life is short. Power is limited. Time is little. Therefore, only those who move after careful thinking, and with care and caution, can reach somewhere.

There was a beggar. His name was Shivli. He was on a journey. On the way, he saw a young man running fast and asked him: "Friend, where are you running away?" That young man said without stopping: "To my home". Thereafter Shivli put him a rather strange question. He asked: "Which home?"

I also ask you the same question. You are running away. All are running away. I ask: "Where are you running away?"

Could this entire race not be planned?

Is it not that you are running because all others are running? Without knowing where you have to reach?

I wish in reply to this question you could say the same thing which that young man had told Shivli; and then my whole being will start dancing with happiness.

That young man had said: "There is only one home. The house of God. I am in search of the same".

Doubtless, the rest is all dream. The search for any other home is a dream. Home is only one; real home is only one, the house of God and he who searches for it has to go into himself because he is hidden in the self.

Is there any other house than the house of God?

And can God be found anywhere except in the self.

If I were in place of Shivli. I would have asked that running young man one more question. I do not know what answer he would have given. But let me tell you the question itself.

I would ask him: "Friend, if you want to find God why are you running away? Where are you running away? How will you find him by running away who exists right here. Is not the desire to find him in the future an illusion; Him, who exists in the present and now? And he who exists inside can only be lost by running away. To find him, is it not desirable that you should stop, stay and search within yourself?"

Do not search for religion; search for yourself. Religion will then automatically come to you.

MY LOVE TO YOU FOREEVER

I too am a farmer and I sowed some seeds. They sprouted and now flowers have come to them. My whole life is filled with the fragrance of these flowers and because of this fragrance now I am in a different world. This fragrance has given me a new birth, and now I am no longer that which is seen by ordinary eyes.

The unseen and the unknown have flung open their closed doors, and I am seeing a world which is not seen through the eyes, and I am hearing music which ears are not capable of hearing. Whatsoever I have found and known is eager to flow just as the mountain waterfalls and springs flow and rush towards the ocean.

Remember, when the clouds are full of water they have to shower. And when the flowers are filled with fragrance they have to give off their fragrance freely to the winds. And when a lamp is lit, the light is bound to radiate from it.

Something like this has happened and the winds are carrying away some seeds of revolution from me. I have no idea in what fields they will land and who will tend them. I only know that it is from seeds like these that I have attained the flowers of life, immortality, and the divine. And in whatever field they land, the very soil there will turn into the flowers of immortality.

In death is hidden the immortal and in death is life -- just as flowers are inherent in the soil. But the potential of the soil can never become realized in the absence of seeds. The seeds make manifest that which was unmanifest and give expression to that which was latent.

Whatever I have, whatever I am, I want to give away as seeds of divine consciousness. What is attained in knowledge -- knowing -- love gives away in abundance. In knowing one knows God; in love one BECOMES God. Knowledge is the spiritual discipline, love is the fulfillment.

Story of the Human Mind

I have heard that there was once an ancient and majestic tree, with branches spreading out towards the sky. When it was in a flowering mood, butterflies of all shapes, colors and sizes danced around it. When it grew blossoms and bore fruit, birds from far lands came and sang in it. The branches, like outstretched hands, blessed all who came and sat in their shade. A small boy used to come and play under it, and the big tree developed an affection for the small boy.

Love between big and small is possible, if the big is not aware that it is big. The tree did not know it was big; only man has that kind of knowledge. The big always has the ego as its prime concern, but for love, nobody is big or small. Love embraces whomsoever comes near.

So the tree developed a love for this small boy who used to come to play near it. Its branches were high, but it bent and bowed them down so that he might pluck its flowers and pick its fruit. Love is ever ready to bow; the ego is never ready to bend. If you approach the ego, its branches will stretch upwards even more; it will stiffen so you cannot reach it.

The playful child came, and the tree bowed its branches. The tree was very pleased when the child plucked some flowers; its entire being was filled with the joy of love. Love is always happy when it can give something; the ego is always happy when it can take.

The boy grew. Sometimes he slept on the tree's lap, sometimes he ate its fruit, and sometimes he wore a crown of the tree's flowers and acted like a jungle king. One becomes like a king when the flowers of love are there, but one becomes poor and miserable when the thorns of the ego are present. To see the boy wearing a crown of flowers and dancing about filled the tree with joy. It nodded in love; it sang in the breeze. The boy grew even more. He began to climb the tree to swing on its branches. The tree felt very happy when the boy rested on its branches. Love is happy when it gives comfort to someone; the ego is only happy when it gives discomfort.

With the passage of time the burden of other duties came to the boy. Ambition grew; he had exams to pass; he had friends to chat with and to wander about with, so he did not come often. But the tree waited anxiously for him to come. It called from its soul, "Come. Come. I am waiting for you." Love waits day and night. And the tree waited. The tree felt sad when the boy did not come. Love is sad when it cannot share; love is sad when it cannot give. Love is grateful when it can share. When it can surrender, totally, love is the happiest.

As he grew, the boy came less and less to the tree. The man who becomes big, whose ambitions grow, finds less and less time for love. The boy was now engrossed in worldly affairs.

One day, while he was passing by, the tree said to him, "I wait for you but you do not come. I expect you daily."

The boy said, "What do you have? Why should I come to you? Have you any money? I am looking for money." The ego is always motivated. Only if there is some purpose to be served will the ego come. But love is motiveless. Love is its own reward.

The startled tree said, "You will come only if I give something?" That which withholds is not love. The ego amasses, but love gives unconditionally. "We don't have that sickness, and we are joyful," the tree said. "Flowers bloom on us. Many fruits grow on us. We give soothing shade. We dance in the breeze, and sing songs. Innocent birds hop on our branches and chirp even though we don't have any money. The day we get involved with money, we will have to go to the temples like you weak men do, to learn how to obtain peace, to learn how to find love. No, we do not have any need for money."

The boy said, "Then why should I come to you? I will go where there is money. I need money." The ego asks for money because it needs power.

The tree thought for a while and said, "Don't go anywhere else, my dear. Pick my fruit and sell it. You will get money that way."

The boy brightened immediately. He climbed up and picked all the tree's fruit; even the unripe ones were shaken down. The tree felt happy, even though some twigs and branches were broken, even though some of its leaves had fallen to the ground. Getting broken also makes love happy, but even after getting, the ego is not happy. The ego always desires more. The tree didn't notice that the boy hadn't even once looked back to thank him. It had had its thanks when the boy accepted the offer to pick and sell its fruit.

The boy did not come back for a long time. Now he had money and he was busy making more money from that money. He had forgotten all about the tree. Years passed. The tree was sad. It yearned for the boy's return -- like a mother whose breasts are filled with milk but whose son is lost. Her whole being craves for her son; she searches madly for her son so he can come to lighten her. Such was the inner cry of that tree. Its entire being was in agony.

After many years, now an adult, the boy came to the tree.

The tree said, "Come, my boy. Come embrace me."

The man said, "Stop that sentimentality. That was a childhood thing. I am not a child any more." The ego sees love as madness, as a childish fantasy.

But the tree invited him: "Come, swing on my branches. Come dance. Come play with me."

The man said, "Stop all this useless talk! I need to build a house. Can you give me a house?"

The tree exclaimed: "A house! I am without a house." Only men live in houses. Nobody else lives in a house but man. And do you notice his condition after his confinement among four walls? The bigger his buildings, the smaller man becomes. "We do not stay in houses, but you can cut and take away my branches -- and then you may be able to build a house."

Without wasting any time, the man brought an axe and severed all the branches of the tree. Now the tree was just a bare trunk. But love cares not for such things -- even if its limbs are severed for the loved one. Love is giving; love is ever ready to give.

The man didn't even bother to thank the tree. He built his house. And the days flew into years.

The trunk waited and waited. It wanted to call for him, but it had neither branches nor leaves to give it strength. The wind blew by, but it couldn't even manage to give the wind a message. And still its soul resounded with one prayer only: "Come. Come, my dear. Come." But nothing happened.

Time passed and the man had now become old. Once he was passing by and he came and stood by the tree.

The tree asked, "What else can I do for you? You have come after a very, very long time."

The old man said, "What else can you do for me? I want to go to distant lands to earn more money. I need a boat, to travel."

Cheerfully, the tree said, "But that's no problem, my love. Cut my trunk, and make a boat from it. I would be so very happy if I could help you go to faraway lands to earn money. But, please remember, I will always be awaiting your return."

The man brought a saw, cut down the trunk, made a boat and sailed away.

Now the tree is a small stump. And it waits for its loved one to return. It waits and it waits and it waits. The man will never return; the ego only goes where there is something to gain and now the tree has nothing, absolutely nothing to offer. The ego does not go where there is nothing to gain. The ego is an eternal beggar, in a continuous state of demand, and love is charity. Love is a king, an emperor! Is there any greater king than love?

I was resting near that stump one night. It whispered to me, "That friend of mine has not come back yet. I am very worried in case he might have drowned, or in case he might be lost. He may be lost in one of those faraway countries. He might not even be alive any more. How I wish for news of him! As I near the end of my life, I would be satisfied with some news of him at least. Then I could die happily. But he would not come even if I could call him. I have nothing left to give and he only understands the language of taking."

The ego only understands the language of taking; the language of giving is love.

I cannot say anything more than that. Moreover, there is nothing more to be said than this: if life can become like that tree, spreading its branches far and wide so that one and all can take shelter in its shade, then we will understand what love is. There are no scriptures, no charts, no dictionaries for love. There is no set of principles for love.

I wondered what I could say about love! Love is so difficult to describe. Love is just there. You could probably see it in my eyes if you came up and looked into them. I wonder if you can feel it as my arms spread in an embrace.

Love.

What is love?

If love is not felt in my eyes, in my arms, in my silence, then it can never be realized from my words.

I am grateful for your patient hearing. And finally, I bow to the Supreme seated in all of us.

Please accept my respects.

Message of Osho!

My sannyasins have to be yea-sayers, not no-sayers. My sannyasins have to affirm life in its totality, in its multi-dimensionality, in all its possibilities and richness and variety. My sannyasin has to be rooted in existence, and my sannyasin has to live all the planes of life, from sex to SAMADHI. If something disappears on its own accord that is another thing, but that is not asceticism. I know a moment comes when your energies start moving into higher planes of being: sex disappears because it is not needed. It is not needed because you are enjoying the same energy on higher planes -- not because it is wrong, not because it was something ugly. It is not needed because the same energy is having higher orgasms. SAMADHI is the ultimate orgasm, sex is only a glimpse of it.

Sex is a momentary SAMADHI, and SAMADHI is eternal sex.

Naturally when you have attained to SAMADHI sex will disappear, but not that you have to renounce it. If you renounce it, then you are doing something wrong. You go on moving deeper and higher, and whatsoever needs to disappear will disappear. Ultimately all disappears. Only God is left, only pure joy is left, uncaused joy is left; but not that you renounce. If you renounce you will never attain to that state.

I have heard....

There was a young man who searched for greater and greater austerities, for he believed that nothing of real value is obtained easily. Finally he located an ancient monastery in the Himalayas whose monks had taken the most severe vows of poverty and austerity. This monastery was on the summit of an awesome mountain peak, and the monks had to climb and descend by hauling themselves up and down the iron chains that were hammered into the mountain-face. No heat was allowed in the monastery, and the monks slept on the cold, stone floors. For sustenance they descended the chains each day to pry up the frozen ground in search of the few lichens that grew there. The remainder of the time they meditated, chanted and made offerings. Now these practices pleased the young man and he requested, and he was granted, permission to remain with them.

The monks' form of meditation was to contemplate various riddles, and shortly after the young man's arrival the Abbot of the monastery posed this question: "How high is up?" Then he instructed the young man to meditate for one month and return with the answer. It was diff1cult to think about anything since he was constantly shivering. But the harshness was a challenge to the young man, and after a month had passed he was confident of the answer.

Again the Abbot asked: "How high is up?" and the young man replied: "As high as man's mind may imagine it to be." But the Abbot gave him a look of disdain and said: "Meditate for another month." And the young man did.

When the month had passed he met with the Abbot and his answer was: "Up is as high as God wills it to be." Again he was rejected and returned to his meditation. The next month when asked the same question he said not a word, but raised one cold, stiff finger and pointed up. And again he was sent away. Each month he became more and more convinced that no answer could ever satisfy the Abbot, and the young man's frustration increased. The next time he saw the Abbot and the question was asked, his voice was taut with suppressed anger: "This is foolishness! There is no answer!" And again he was sent away, this time with more mockery than usual, for the Abbot knew the young man was close to the truth.

As he departed from the presence of the Abbot, the young man vowed to make a last attempt to discover the answer. He ceased eating even the few lichens and maintained a vigil atop the roof that was raised over the mountains. When the long month finally ended the other monks removed him from the roof and tried to thaw him out so that he could speak with the Abbot. Then the question was asked again: "How high is up?"

The young man looked blank for a second, then suddenly he screamed and jumped violently up and down several times, and before anyone could stop him, he leaped across the room and kicked the Abbot so hard that he was thrown to the floor. The monks rushed to the aid of the Abbot and lifted him up. As soon as he had recovered, he smiled and said to the young man: "You have got it!"

Then the young man quickly gathered his few possessions and departed from the monastery. By the time he had returned home he was filled with happiness, for he had found truth and achieved enlightenment.

Or perhaps the reason he felt so good was because he was warm.

The ascetic practices give you a kind of ill, morbid joy. The more you go into them, the more you feel you are becoming a conqueror, you are conquering something. The more the body says "Don't destroy me!", the more you become adamant. You create a rift within yourself, between you and your body, and a great battle starts.

And the body is natural. The body simply asks for that which is healthy, natural, only for that which God allows and God wants to happen. The body has no unnatural desires; all its needs are natural needs, healthy needs. And the more you starve the body, the more the body prays and asks and haunts you. But you can make it a challenge: you can think that the body is trying to seduce you, that the body is in the hands of the enemy, in the hands of the Devil. And you can go on fighting more and more, with more strength, with more violence, with more aggression. You go on fighting with the body; a moment comes when you can dull the body.

If you go on fasting for a longer time the body by and by relaxes into a kind of dullness. It starts accepting, it adjusts itself; there is no point. There is nobody who takes care, so what is the point of going on crying? The body becomes dumb. You lose sensitivity, you become thick. You grow a thick skin around yourself: then the hot and the cold do not bother you, then starvation does not bother you. Rather, on the contrary, you feel very good deep inside -- that you are conquering. But you are not conquering, you are losing ground. Each moment you are losing ground, because truth can only be known through the body! Truth is known by the consciousness but known THROUGH the body. One has to remain rooted in the body.

God Himself is rooted in the world. Take a tree out of the soil and it will die. The life of the tree is intertwined with the life of the earth: it needs water, it needs manure, it needs food, it needs the sun, the air, the wind. Those are natural needs, the tree exists through them. Take the tree out of the soil -- for a few days maybe you may not notice that the tree is dying, the old water that it had contained in itself may keep it a little bit green, even a few buds may open, a few flowers may bloom, but not for long -- sooner or later the reservoirs of the tree will be finished and the tree will die.

Take yourself out of your body and you will die. Your body is your earth. Your body belongs to the earth, it has come from the earth, it is a small earth around you. It nourishes you, it is not your enemy. It is not in the hands of the Devil. There is no Devil: the Devil is a creation of the pathological mind, the Devil is the creation of the paranoid mind. It has come into the world because of fear. But your so-called God is also out of fear; so your God and your Devil are both out of your fear. You have not known the real God. The real God is not out of fear. The real God is out of love, out of joy. The real God can only be experienced by becoming more and more sensitive, by becoming more and more open.

Be in your body. Get out of your mind and get into your senses: that is the only way to be religious. It will look paradoxical, but let me say it: the only way to be religious is to be in the world, and deeply in the world -- because God is hidden in the world. There is no 'other world'. The other world is the deepest core of this world, it is not separate from it.

I'm against all ascetic practices. And in the future ascetics will be treated in mad-asylums, psychiatric hospitals. And out of a hundred of your so-called saints, ninety-nine have been neurotic, but because you believed you could not see what was really happening. Once you believe in a certain thing the belief creates the phenomenon.

If you drop all kinds of beliefs and you start looking with clarity, you will be surprised: man has not suffered through irreligious people, man has suffered in the hands of the so-called religious. Man's greatest misery has come out of the split between body and soul. Man has become schizophrenic because of your saints, your churches, your scriptures. And I'm not saying that there have never been real saints; there have been: Jesus or Diogenes, Buddha and Krishna, Zarathustra and Lao Tzu -- these people loved life. And the tradition that says something else is created by the pathological.

Love from Om Family!

Dear all Beloveds
               Love!



This is a nobody an unknown fakir of this mysterious world!
This fakir is sharing you all a beautiful song, a beautiful painting,
a beautiful poetry!
Please try to feel it
try to see it and
try to be it!

Osho is that ................
Yes!
explore this new Gift of God and be the real nobody like this nobody!
Osho! you simply are.
and this too is!

and...............................!

There is a parable:

Once a youth asked a hermit, "What is the method to attain liberation?" The hermit replied, "Who has bound you?" The youth paused for a moment and then said, "Nobody has bound me."

Then the hermit asked, "Then why do you search for liberation?"

"Why do you search for liberation?" This is what I also asked one person yesterday. This is what every person has to himself: "Where is the bondage?"

Wake up to what is! Stop bothering about changing that which is -- don't run after ideals. You are what is in the present, not what is in the future. And there is no bondage in the present. The moment one wakes up to the present, bondages are not found anywhere.

Desire... in the very desire to become something and attain something is the bondage. A desire is always in the future, always in the tomorrow. And that is the bondage, that is the tension, that is the race, that is the world. It is the desire itself that creates the idea of liberation. And if bondage is at the roots, how can liberation be the outcome?

The beginning of liberation has to be in freedom. Liberation is not just the end, it is the beginning as well.

It is not that liberation has to be attained, rather it has to be seen that "I am already exist in liberation." The realization that "I am liberated" is attained effortlessly in a calm, wakeful consciousness. Everybody is already liberated -- it is only a matter of waking up to this reality.

The moment I drop all racing, the moment the race for becoming something goes away, I become. And this 'becoming' in its full sense is liberation.

The so-called religious person does not attain to this becoming because he is in a race for attaining liberation, for attaining the soul, for attaining to God. And the one who is in a race, whatever the form of  that race, is not in himself. To be religious is not a matter of faith, of effort or of doing. To be religious is a matter of being in oneself. And this liberation can come in a moment.

The moment one becomes aware of the truth that bondage is in desiring, in racing, in ideals, the darkness disappears and no bondage is found in what is then seen.

Truth brings revolution in a moment.

haiku.........

Birth of art —

song of rice planters,

chorus from nowhere.   Basho
 

If you are utterly silent, then everything that happens in that silence, takes on a new color. It becomes the very birth of art.


‘Song of rice planters’ — it is not much of a music. Poor rice planters, just to keep them engaged, they are singing in chorus. But a man of silence, immediately makes or gives a glamor to the ordinary stones.

‘Song of rice planters, chorus from nowhere.’ As far as he is concerned he is utterly silent, so he wonders from where this chorus is coming. The whole existence has become a chorus, a beautiful symphony. Our lives can be lived as music, as poetry, as art...as mystics. Those are the right ways to live our lives. Right, because to live those styles, you will have to find your origin first.


Hyakujo: The Everest of Zen

The mystery of the Mind!

Man's mind is wonderful. It holds the mystery of the world and of liberation. Sin and virtue, bondage and liberation, hell and heaven reside within it. Darkness and light are its own creation. Birth is in it and death too is in it. It alone is the door to the external world, it alone is the ladder to the internal being. When it ceases to exist, we transcend both worlds. The mind is everything. Everything is its own imaginative creation. If it disappears, all imagining ceases to exist.

Yesterday I said this somewhere. Someone came forward to ask, "The mind is very unstable and fickle. How to lose it? The mind is polluted. How can it be made pure?"

Then I told a story.

After Buddha had become old, one afternoon he stopped to rest at the foot of a tree in the forest. He felt thirsty, and Ananda went to a nearby mountain stream to fetch water. But just before, some carts had crossed the stream, and the water had turned muddy. Rotting leaves and scum had begun to float on the surface. Ananda returned without water, and said to Buddha, "The water in the stream is not clean; I shall go back to the river and bring water from there." The river was very far off, and Buddha asked him to fetch water from the stream. After a short while Ananda returned again empty-handed: the water did not appear to him fit to bring.

But Buddha made him go back once more. On the third occasion that Ananda reached the stream, he was amazed. The stream had now become completely clear and unpolluted. The mud had settled and the water had become pure.

\

I find the story very interesting. The state of the human mind is just the same. The traffic of life comes and stirs it up. But if one goes on watching it, sitting in silence and patience, the impurities settle and a natural clarity returns. In this clarity of mind, life renews itself. It is only a matter of patience, silent awaiting, and without doing anything the impurities of the mind settle.

One has only to become a witness and the mind becomes pure. Our task is not to make it pure. All difficulty arises because of doing. Simply watch it, just sitting on the bank -- then see what happens!

Death ! the Real Joke!

Death can be a total fulfillment, but that is possible only if life has been lived.

It was one of my pastimes in my childhood to follow every funeral procession. My parents were continually worried: "You don't know the man who has died, you have no relationship, no friendship with him. Why should you bother and waste your time?"—because the Indian funeral takes three, four or five hours.

First, going out of the city, the procession walking, taking the dead body, and then burning the body on the funeral pyre…. And you know Indians, they can't do anything efficiently: the funeral pyre won't catch fire; it will just live half-heartedly and the man will not burn. And everybody is making all kinds of effort because they want to get away from there as quickly as possible. But the dead people are also tricky. They will try their hardest to keep you there as long as possible.

I told my parents, "It is not a question of being related to somebody. I am certainly related with death, that you cannot deny. It does not matter who dies—it is symbolic to me. One day I will be dying. I have to know how people behave with the dead, how the dead behave with the living people; otherwise, how am I going to learn?"

They said, "You bring strange arguments."

"But," I said, "you have to convince me that death is not related to me, that I am not going to die. If you can convince me of that, I will stop going; otherwise let me explore." They could not say to me that I would not be dying, so I said, "then just keep quiet. I am not telling you to go. And I enjoy everything that happens there."

The first thing I have observed is that nobody talks about death, even there. The funeral pyre is burning somebody's father, somebody's brother, somebody's uncle, somebody's friend, somebody's enemy: he was related to many people in many ways. He is dead—and they are all engaged in trivia.

They would be talking about the movies, they would be talking about the politics, they would be talking about the market; they would be talking about all kinds of things, except death. They would make small cliques and sit all around the funeral pyre. I would go from one clique to another: nobody was talking about death. And I know for certain that they were talking about other things to keep them occupied so that they didn't see the burning body—because it was their body too.

They could see, if they had a little insight into things, that they are burning there on the funeral pyre—nobody else. It is only a question of time. Tomorrow somebody else from these people will be there on the funeral pyre; the day after tomorrow somebody else will be—every day people are being brought to the funeral pyre. One day I am going to be brought to the funeral pyre, and this is the treatment that these people will be giving to me. This is their last farewell: they are talking about prices going up, the rupee devaluating—in front of death. And they are all sitting with their backs toward the funeral pyre.

They had to come, so they have come, but they never wanted to come. So they want to be there almost absently present, just to fulfill a social conformity, just to show that they were present. And that too is to make sure that when they die they will not be taken by the municipal corporation truck. Because they have participated in so many people's death, naturally it becomes obligatory for other people to give them a send-off. They know why they are there—they are there because they want people to be there when they are on the funeral pyre.

But what are these people doing? I asked people whom I knew. Sometimes one of my teachers was there, talking about stupid things—that somebody is flirting with somebody's wife…. I said, "Is this the time to talk about somebody's wife and what she is doing? Think about the wife of this man who has died. Nobody is worried about that, nobody is talking about that.

"Think of your wife when you will be dead. With whom will she be flirting? What will she do? Have you made any arrangements for that? And can't you see the stupidity? Death is present and you are trying to avoid it in every possible way." But all the religions have done that. And these people are simply representing certain traditions of certain religions. person12

One of my teachers died. He was a funny man, very fat, and he used to have a very ancient type of turban—very big, maybe thirty-six feet long or more. Thirty-six feet is normal for the old, ancient turban. His face was also such that you could not remain looking at him without smiling. And he was my Sanskrit teacher.

He was a simple man—in fact a simpleton. We had been playing all kinds of tricks on him, and he was never able to find out who had done it; he never punished anybody. We had been really hard on him. He would fall from the chair, because we had managed to cut the legs of the chair before he came. He would fall from the chair, his turban would fall all over the class, and there would be great laughter. But he would start putting his turban back on and writing on the board again, not getting disturbed. He was really a nice fellow.

He died. We used to call him Bhole Baba. That was not his name. Baba is simply used for grandfather, a respectful word. Bhole means a simpleton, so innocent that anybody can deceive him. I have completely forgotten his name, because we never used his name; we always used Bhole Baba. I have been trying to figure out what was his real name, but I cannot find it anywhere in my mind.

When I went to his house with my father, his wife came running from inside the house, fell on the chest of that poor fellow, and said, "Oh, my Bhole Baba!" I could not contain my laughter. My father tried telling me, "Keep quiet!"

I said, "The more I try to keep quiet, the more it is becoming difficult. I cannot contain it; let me laugh!" But everybody was shocked: somebody is dead, and you are laughing so loudly. I said, "Please, don't be shocked. If you knew the whole thing as I do, you would all be laughing."

And I told the whole thing, that he was always getting irritated by being called Bhole Baba. And we used to write on the blackboard every day, "Welcome, Bhole Baba". And the first thing he would do was, he would erase it. And now the poor man was dead and his own wife…

When I told them this, everybody started laughing. And the wife also became silent and said, "It is really strange for me to call him Bhole Baba, because I used to tell that boy not to call him Bhole Baba, that it is not his name."

And who was the boy? Mostly I was the boy who always going past his house, would knock on the door and say, "Is Bhole Baba inside?" And the wife knew me. With the door closed she would say, "No, he is not inside"—he was always inside—"But remember, don't call him Bhole Baba! If you stop calling him Bhole Baba, I can open the door and you can find him inside."

Perhaps continually hammering, "Bhole Baba, Bhole Baba," then at the moment of death…. Of course, a Hindu wife is not supposed to say her husband's name. She cannot, that is thought to be disrespectful—just the male chauvinistic mind. The man can call her by her name, but the woman cannot call her husband by his name. So perhaps…there was no time to figure out what to say; Bhole Baba came in handy.

But even the wife started laughing, thinking that this was really hilarious. "My whole life I have been telling you and other boys who are your friends…who you have been telling that whenever they pass the door, they should knock and enquire, `Is Bhole Baba inside?'"

The death became a laughter. But back home, my father said, "I am not going to take you to another death, another cremation—not with me, at least. What you have done is not right."

I said, "Everybody laughed—even the wife who was crying, started laughing. You should all be grateful to me that I made even death nonserious, fun, a joke."