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Samadhi Without Seeds – Osho

In yesterday’s sutra, Buddha says ‘someone who has set out in the vehicle of a Bodhisattva should decide that “I must lead all the beings to nirvana, into that realm of nirvana which leaves nothing behind.”’ What is this realm of nirvana which leaves nothing behind?

Buddha has talked about two kinds of nirvana. One he calls nirvana with substratum. The tree has disappeared, the tree of desires. The foliage, the leaves, the flowers, the fruits—everything has disappeared. But the roots are still there underground, hidden in the dark soil. From the outside the tree has been removed, but the tree is still capable of renewing itself again. The substratum is still there, the seed has not been burnt yet. This he calls ‘nirvana with substratum.

This is exactly the same that Patanjali calls nirbeej samadhi —samadhi with seed. It is very difficult from the outside. The tree has been completely removed, but underneath the soil the roots are still alive, waiting for the right moment to sprout again. Rains will come and they will sprout. They are waiting for their season, for the moment again to assert.

This is the state when many times you have come to the point where mind disappears, no-mind is felt, but again mind comes back, again it sprouts. You reach to a peak. That moment of that peak experience, you think all is finished—now you will never be falling back to the valley of darkness. You think that you will never go back into those ugly and miserable days—that the dark night of the soul is over, that the morning has arrived, that the sun has arisen.

But again one day you suddenly find you are slipping back into the darkness—again the valley, again light is no more, again that peak experience is just a memory. And one starts becoming doubtful whether it has happened or not. “Have I been just imagining? Or maybe I was just dreaming.” Because if it had happened then where has it gone?

Where is that sunlit peak? Where are those moments of ecstasy? And misery is back and anger is back and agony is back—you have fallen into hell again. This happens many times.

This Buddha calls nirvana with substratum; sabeej samadhi in Patanjali’s words. Manifestation of the world is gone but the unmanifested seed remains.

The second nirvana Buddha calls the nirvana without substratum—in Patanjali’s words nirbeej samadhi—seedless samadhi. Not only the tree has been destroyed, but the seed also burned. A burned seed cannot sprout again, all substratum is gone. Then you remain on the peak forever, then there is no falling back.

That’s what Buddha says in yesterday’s sutra: ‘Someone who has set out in the vehicle of a Bodhisattva should decide that “I must lead all being to nirvana, into that realm of nirvana which leaves nothing behind…”‘ which leaves no substratum, no roots, no seeds behind.

-Osho

From The Diamond Sutra, Discourse #2

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available online from Amazon.com and in the U.S. from OshoStore-Sedona and Osho Here and Now.

Learn the Art of Listening – Osho

Sometimes in discourse, I suddenly come to consciousness and realize that I don’t know where I’ve been, and yet the discourse is coming to a close. Your words were coming through, but I’m not sure if I was awake. If I’m not conscious, am I asleep? Are these the only two possibilities? Is there some stage in between? How to tell the difference?

Mary Catherine, the question you have asked is the question everybody needs the answer for. Man is asleep, but it is no ordinary sleep, he is asleep with open eyes. His sleep is spiritual, not physical.

Just as in physical sleep your consciousness is filled with dreams, in spiritual sleep your consciousness is filled with thoughts, desires, feelings — a thousand and one things. It is not that you are unconscious in the sense of being in a coma; you are unconscious in the sense that your consciousness is covered with too much dust. It is exactly like a mirror: if covered with many layers of dust, it will lose the quality of reflecting, will lose the quality of being a mirror. But the mirror is there; all that is needed is to remove the dust. Your consciousness is there — even while you are physically asleep your consciousness is there — but now more covered than when you are awake.

You are asking, “If I’m not conscious, am I asleep? Are these the only two possibilities? Is there some stage in between? How to tell the difference?”

You are not unconscious in the sense a person falls into a coma; you are not conscious in the sense a Gautam Buddha is conscious. You are in between. A thick layer of thoughts does not allow you to be in the present. That’s why, while you are listening to me, you are listening and yet the listening is very superficial because deep down there are so many thoughts going on. You are listening but it is not reaching you, and as I stop speaking, suddenly you realize that you have been listening, certainly, but you have not understood it. It has not penetrated you; it has not become part of your being. Something has prevented it, like a China Wall. Those thoughts are transparent, but they are thicker than any China Wall can be.

You are neither asleep nor awake, you are in between — awake as far as your day-to-day mechanical activities are concerned and asleep as far as a clear consciousness is concerned. A pure consciousness, a deep innocence like an unclouded sky, is absent.

The pope was sitting with his cardinals signing papers and proclamations. The phone rang and his secretary answered. “Your holiness,” she said. “It is about the abortion bill. A reporter wants to talk to you.”

“Don’t bother me,” the pope interrupted.

“But he wants to know what you are going to do about the bill.”

“Just pay it,” the pope replied. “Pay it quick!”

In what position will you put the pope? Asleep or awake? He is in between; he has heard the word bill, but he has interpreted it in his own way. He has forgotten completely that the bill is about abortion, and certainly he has not been aborted, and he has not to pay any bill.

But this is the situation of us all. We hear what we want to hear; we hear only that which adjusts with our preconceived notions, prejudices.

You will be surprised to know . . . the scientific research is almost unbelievable: it says ninety-eight percent of what you hear is prevented from reaching to you — ninety-eight percent! Only two percent reaches you. It has to pass through so many thoughts, conceptions, beliefs, conditionings, and they go on cutting it according to themselves. By the time it reaches you, it is something totally different than was said, than was heard. It is a long process of screening, and we are all screening. If something falls in tune with our mind, that means with our past, we hear it. But if it goes against it, we certainly hear the sound but we miss the meaning.

To listen is a great art.

People only hear; very few people are able to listen.

One man had reached Gautam Buddha. He was a well-known philosopher of the day and he had defeated many philosophers in discussions about the ultimate, the truth, God. He had come to defeat Gautam Buddha too — that would be the crowning victory. He had brought with him five hundred chosen disciples to see Gautam Buddha defeated. But Gautam Buddha asked a very strange question. He asked, “Do you understand the meaning and the difference between hearing and listening?”

The man was at a loss. He had come to discuss great things, and this was a small matter. And there was no difference . . . as far as language is concerned, dictionaries are concerned, hearing is listening. The man said, “There is no difference at all, and I had hoped you would not ask such an ordinary question.”

Gautam Buddha said, “There is a great difference. And unless you understand the difference, there is no possibility of any dialogue. I will say something; you will hear something else. So if you really want to have a dialogue with me, sit by my side for two years. Don’t speak a single word, just listen. Whatever I’m telling others, be unconcerned; I’m not telling you. So you need not be worried about whether it is true or untrue, whether you have to accept it or not. You are just a witness; your opinion is not required.

“After two years, you can have the dialogue, the discussion you have come for. And I would love to be defeated, so this is not to postpone defeat; it is just to make the dialogue possible.”

At that very moment, Mahakashyap, a great disciple of Gautam Buddha, perhaps the greatest, laughed. He was sitting under a tree far away, and the philosopher thought, “That man seems to be mad. Why is he laughing?”

Buddha said, “Mahakashyap, this is not mannerly; even for an enlightened man this is not right.”

Mahakashyap said, “I don’t care about right and wrong; I’m just feeling sorry for the poor philosopher.”

And he turned to the philosopher and said to him, “If you want to have a discussion, have it right now; after two years, there will be just silence and no dialogue. This man is not trustworthy. He deceived me; I also came with the same idea as you, to defeat him, and he cheated me. He said, ‘Sit down for two years by my side, and listen. Learn first the art of listening. And because you are not concerned at all, your mind need not function.’”

And two years is a long time; the mind starts forgetting how to think, how to function. The very presence of Gautam Buddha is so peaceful, so silent, that one starts rejoicing in the silence. And to listen to his words . . . which are not addressed to you, so you are not worried whether they agree with your prejudices, your philosophy, your religion — with you, or not. You are indifferent. You listen to him as if you are listening to the birds singing in the morning when the sun rises.

“And two years . . . the mind disappears. And although those words are not addressed to you, they start reaching to your heart. Because the mind is silent, the passage is open — the door is open, the heart welcomes them. So if you want to ask anything, if you want to challenge this man, challenge now. I don’t want to see another man cheated again.”

Gautam Buddha said, “It is up to you; if you want to defeat me now, I declare my defeat. There is no need to talk. Why waste time? You are victorious. But if you really want to have a dialogue with me, then I’m not asking much, just two years to learn the art of listening.”

The man remained for two years, and even forgot completely that after two years he had to challenge Gautam Buddha for a debate. He forgot the whole calendar. Days passed, months passed, seasons came and went away, and after two years he was enjoying the silence so much that he had no idea that two years had passed.

It has to be remembered that time is a very elastic thing. When you are in suffering, time becomes longer; suddenly all the watches and clocks of the world start moving slowly — a great conspiracy against a poor man who is in suffering. Time moves so slowly that sometimes one feels as if it has stopped.

You are sitting by the side of someone you love who is dying, in the middle of the night; it seems time has stopped, that this night is not going to end, that your idea that all nights end was a fallacy . . . this night is not going to have a dawn because time is not moving. And when you are joyful, when you meet a friend after many years, when you meet a beloved, a lover for whom you have waited long — suddenly, again the conspiracy. All the clocks, all the watches, start moving faster; hours go like minutes, days go like hours, months go like weeks. Time is elastic: time is relative to your inner condition.

The man had enjoyed those two years of silence so deeply that he could not conceive that two years had passed. Suddenly, Buddha himself asked him, “Have you forgotten completely? Two years have passed; this is the day you had come two years ago. Now if you want to challenge me to a debate, I’m ready.”

The man fell to the feet of Gautam Buddha.

And Mahakashyap laughed again, and said, “I had told you, but nobody listens to me. I have been sitting under this tree for almost twenty years, preventing people from falling into the trap of this man, but nobody listens to me. They fall into the trap, and each person gives me two occasions to laugh.”

The man went, after touching Gautam Buddha’s feet, to touch the feet of Mahakashyap too, saying, “I am grateful to you. I have learned the distinction between hearing and listening. Hearing had made me a great knowledgeable man, and listening has made me innocent, silent — a peace that passeth understanding. I don’t have any questions, and I don’t have any answers; I am utterly silent. All questions have disappeared, all answers have disappeared. Can I also sit by your side under the tree?” he asked Mahakashyap.

Mahakashyap said, “No, I don’t accept disciples; that is the business of Gautam Buddha — you just go there. Don’t crowd around my tree, because even here there is nothing to listen to, only once in a while a laughter when somebody comes and I see that he’s falling into the trap. You have fallen into the trap; now be initiated, become a sannyasin.” Not only did the man become a sannyasin, his five hundred followers who were also sitting and listening for two years had also become silent.

Mary Catherine, you are well-educated, perhaps too much; well-read, perhaps too much. Your mind is so full of thoughts. Those thoughts are creating a state which is neither consciousness nor unconsciousness. Everything seems to be so full of noise in you that if I shout, perhaps my words may reach you, but what about my whispers? And truth cannot be shouted, it can only be whispered. In fact, it can be said only in silence, even whispering is too much verbiage.

Put your educated mind aside. Here you have to be innocent, like small children playing on the beach making castles of sand, running after butterflies, collecting seashells, looking at everything with so much wonder that each and every thing in existence becomes a mystery.

Listening to me is only a beginning; then you have to listen to the trees, to the mountains, to the moon, to the faraway stars — they all have messages for you. To the sunrises, to the sunsets . . . they all have been waiting for so long. Once you start listening, the whole existence starts speaking to you. Right now you only speak to yourself, and nobody listens.

Three Soviet citizens, a Pole, a Czech, and a Jew, were accused of spying and sentenced to death. Each was granted a last wish.

“I want my ashes scattered over the grave of Karl Marx,” said the Pole.

“I want my ashes scattered over the grave of Lenin,” said the Czech.

“And I,” said the Jew, “want my ashes scattered over the grave of Comrade Gorbachev.”

“But that is impossible!” he was told. “Gorbachev is not dead yet.”

“Fine,” said the Jew, “I can wait.”

You should not wait. Start from this moment to listen, to be silent, because the next moment is not certain. Gorbachev may die, may not die. Tomorrow it may not be so easy as it is today because in twenty-four hours you will have gathered more garbage in your head — so the sooner the better, because you cannot sit silently. If you don’t start now, you will be doing something or other . . .

Don’t postpone it. Every postponement is suicidal — particularly of those experiences which belong to the beyond.

-Osho

From The Golden Future, Discourse #16, Q1

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

He is the Breath Inside the Breath – Osho

Kabir says, “Student, tell me, what is God?

He is the breath inside the breath.”

Whenever you ask about God you ask as if God is there like a problem to be encountered. You ask as if you are standing outside God and speculating, observing Him. You ask as if God is an object. God is not an object; God is your subjectivity. God is not there outside, God is your interiority, your innerness. That is the meaning when Kabir says:

He is the breath inside the breath.

Watch your breath and you will come to know what he means – you will see one thing which cannot be seen unless you watch your breath. Buddha made it a great technique for meditation, watching the breath, because through watching it you will come to know the breath inside the breath.

The word “breath” means life. In Sanskrit the word for breath is prana: prana means life. In Hebrew the word for breath means spirit. In all the languages of the world, breath is thought to be synonymous with life or spirit or soul. But breath is not the real soul – you will come to this experience only when you watch.

Try a small experiment: sitting silently, just start watching your breath. The easiest way to watch is from the entrance of the nose. When the breath comes in, feel the touch of the breath at the entrance of the nose – watch it there. The touch will be easier to watch; breath will be too subtle; in the beginning just watch the touch. The breath goes in, and you feel it going in: watch it. And then follow it, go with it. You will find there comes a point where it stops. Just somewhere near your navel it stops – for a tiny, tiny moment, for a pal, it stops. Then it moves outwards again; then follow it – again feel the touch, the breath going out of the nose. Follow it, go with it outside – again you will come to a point, the breath stops for a very tiny moment. Then again, the cycle starts.

Inhalation, gap, exhalation, gap, inhalation, gap. That gap is the most mysterious phenomenon inside you. When the breath comes in and stops and there is no movement, that is the point where one can meet God. Or when the breath goes out and stops and there is no movement.

Remember, you are not to stop it; it stops on its own. If you stop it you will miss the whole point, because the doer will come in and witnessing will disappear. You are not to do anything about it. You are not to change the breath pattern, you are neither to inhale nor to exhale. It is not like pranayama of yoga, where you start manipulating the breath; it is not that. You don’t touch the breath at all – you allow its naturalness, its natural flow. When it goes out you follow it, when it comes in you follow it.

And soon you will become aware that there are two gaps. In those two gaps is the door. And in those two gaps you will understand, you will see, that breath itself is not life – maybe a food for life, just like other foods, but not life itself. Because when the breathing stops you are there, perfectly there – you are perfectly conscious, utterly conscious. And the breath has stopped, breathing is no more there, and you are there.

And once you continue this watching of the breath – what Buddha calls vipassana or anapanasati you – if you go on watching it, watching it, watching it, slowly, slowly you will see the gap is increasing and becoming bigger. Finally, it happens that for minutes together the gap remains. One breath goes in, and the gap . . . and for minutes the breath does not go out. All has stopped. The world has stopped, time has stopped, thinking has stopped. Because when the breath stops, thinking is not possible. And when the breath stops for minutes together, thinking is impossible, absolutely impossible – because the thought process needs continuous oxygen, and your thought process and your breathing are very deeply related.

When you are angry your breath has a different rhythm, when you are sexually stimulated you have a different breath rhythm, when you are silent a different breath rhythm again. When you are happy a different breath rhythm, when you are sad a different rhythm again. Your breathing goes on changing with the moods of the mind. The vice versa is also true – when the breath changes, the moods of the mind change. And when breath stops, mind stops.

In that stopping of the mind the whole world stops – because the mind is the world. And in that stopping you come to know for the first time what is the breath inside the breath: life inside life. That experience is liberating. That experience makes you alert of God – and God is not a person but the experience of life itself.

-Osho

From The Revolution, Discourse #3

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt He is the Breath Inside the Breath.

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Awareness is a Pure Presence – Osho

The essence of the religion of Buddha is awareness. There is no prayer in it, there cannot be — because there is no God. And there cannot be any prayer in it because prayer is always motivated. Prayer is a form of desire, a form of lust.

Prayer has deep down hidden in it the very cause of misery. The cause of misery is that we are not contented as we are. The cause of misery is that we would like a different type of life, a different situation, a different world, and the world that is before us pales down before our imagination. The cause of misery is imagination, desire, hope. And in prayer all the causes are present, so there is no possibility for prayer in Buddha’s religion. Only awareness is the key. So we have to understand what awareness is.

When you pray, you ask for something. When you meditate, you meditate upon something. But when you are aware, you are simply centered in your being. The other is not important at all. The other is irrelevant. You are simply aware.

Awareness has no object to it. It is pure subjectivity. It is a grounding in your being, it is a centering in your being. Standing there inside your being, you burn bright. Your flame is without any smoke. In your light the whole life becomes clear.

In that clarity is silence. In that clarity, time ceases to be. In that clarity, the world disappears. Because in that clarity there is no desire, no motivation. You simply are . . . not wanting anything whatever. Not wanting any future. Not wanting any better world. Not wanting heaven, moksha. Not wanting God. Not wanting knowledge, liberation. You simply are.

Awareness is a pure presence, a centered consciousness. Buddha’s whole effort is how to make you centered, grounded, a flame without smoke, a flame which knows no wavering. In that light, everything becomes clear and all illusions disappear and all dreams become non-existential. And when the dreaming mind stops, there is truth.

-Osho

From The Buddha Said, Discourse #13

Also published in The Discipline of Transcendence V.3, Discourse #3

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Unwind Your Mind – Osho

I am fifty, but I don’t yet feel really mature and fully grown up. What is the matter with me?

Maybe you have not yet killed anybody. That’s a must. If you want to become mature, you have to become a very, very skillful murderer. Unless you kill a few persons you will never become mature.

You have to kill your parents, you have to kill your teachers, you have to kill your leaders. They are all clamoring inside you, and they don’t allow you to become a grown-up person – they go on keeping you childish. They make you a dependant, they don’t allow you independence.

It happened, a monk was taking leave from Buddha – he was going far away to spread Buddha’s message. And when he came to touch his feet, Buddha blessed him and said to his other disciples, ‘Do you see this blessed monk? He has killed his mother, he has killed his father, he has killed his relatives, he has killed his king.’ The people were very much surprised, they could not believe their ears – ‘What is Buddha saying?’

One disciple gathered courage and asked, ‘Sir, what do you mean? Do you mean a murderer has some virtue? You are calling him blessed?’ Buddha laughed and he said, ‘Not only that, he has even murdered himself – he has committed suicide.’ Then Buddha sings a song, says a gatha, in which he explains what he means by it.

Everybody is brought up as a child. That is your first way into the world; that’s how you have been trained for years, to remain a child. Everything was ordered, and you were expected to obey. You have become very dependent – you always go on looking for father-figures, you always go on looking for authorities to say to you what should be done, what should not be done.

Maturity means the understanding to decide for oneself, the understanding to be decisive on your own. To stand on your own feet – that’s what maturity is. But it rarely happens, because parents spoil almost every child, more or less. And then there is the school and the college and the university – they are all ready to spoil you. It is very rare that somebody becomes mature.

The society is not happy with mature people. Mature people are dangerous people, because a mature person lives according to his own being. He goes on doing his own thing – he does not bother what people say, what their opinion is. He does not hanker for respectability, for prestige; he does not bother for honor. He lives his own life – he lives it at any cost. He is ready to sacrifice everything, but he is never ready to sacrifice his freedom.

Society is afraid of these people; society wants everybody to remain childish. Everybody should be kept at an age somewhere between seven and fourteen – that’s where people are.

In the First World War, for the first time, psychologists became aware of this strange phenomenon. For the first time on a large scale, in the army, people’s mental ages were searched for. And it was a strange discovery: the army people had the average mental age of twelve. Your body may be fifty, your mind remains somewhere below fourteen.

Before fourteen you are repressed – because after fourteen repression becomes difficult. By the time a child is fourteen, if he has not been repressed then there is no possibility to repress him ever – because once he becomes a sexual being, he becomes powerful. Before fourteen he is weak, soft, feminine. Before fourteen you can put anything into his mind – he is suggestible, you can hypnotize him. You can tell him everything that you want, and he will listen to it, he will believe in it.

After fourteen, logic arises, doubt arises. After fourteen, sexuality arises; with sexuality he becomes independent. Now he himself is able to become a father, now she herself is able to become a mother. So nature, biology, makes a person independent from parents at the age fourteen. This has been found long before psychologists entered into the world. Priests have found it long before – for thousands of years they have watched, and they have come to know: if you want to repress a child, if you want to make a child a dependent, do it as early as possible – the earlier, the better. If it can be done before seven, success is far more certain. If it cannot be done before fourteen, then there is no possibility to do it.

That’s why all kinds of people are interested in children and their education. All religions are interested; they say children should receive religious education. Why? Before they become independent, their minds should be conditioned.

So the greatest work for a man who really wants to become free, who really wants to become conscious, who really wants to become de-hypnotized – who wants to have no limitations of any kind, who wants to flow in a total existence – is that he needs to drop many things from the inside.

And when I say, when Buddha says, you have to kill your mother and father, that doesn’t mean that you have to go and actually kill your father and mother – but the father and mother that you are carrying within you, the idea.

Watch, observe, and you will find it. You are going to do something, and suddenly you will hear your mother’s voice: ‘Don’t do it!’ You can watch, and you will hear the voice, actual voice – it is a tape inside you. You are going to eat too much ice-cream: watch. Suddenly a moment comes when the mother speaks from within: ‘Don’t eat too much – enough is enough. Stop!’ And at that time you start feeling guilty.

If you are going to make love to a woman or to a man, suddenly all the teachers are standing there in a queue and saying: ‘You are going to commit a crime, you are going to commit sin. Beware! This is the trap. Escape before it is too late.’ Even while you are making love to your wife, your mother, your father, your teachers, are there in-between, destroying it.

It is very rare to find a man or a woman who really goes totally into love – you cannot go. Because for many years you have been taught love is something wrong – how can you drop it suddenly? Unless you are very capable of murdering all these voices… great courage is needed. And that’s what I mean by sannyas. My own definition of sannyas is: a person who is ready to drop all parental voices, who is ready to drop all authorities, who is ready to go into the unknown without any map, on his own. Who is ready to risk.

It happened; Alexander Eliot was studying under a Zen master. For months he was doing meditations, zazen, and he was entering into deeper waters of his own being. One night he had a dream, a very strange dream. But Zen people know about this dream. For Eliot it was strange – he was a Westerner, he was shocked. He relates his dream…

‘I recently had a dream in which Bodhidharma appeared. He was a floating huddle of a man – round, ghostly, with bulging eyes and bulbous brow.’

Just like me . . . Bodhidharma is a dangerous man. And Zen people have painted his face, very lovingly, in a very dangerous way. He was not like that – not actually, not physically. Physically he was one of the most beautiful men ever – but if you come across a picture of a Bodhidharma you will start getting scared. If you look into the eyes of Bodhidharma he looks like a murderer, he is going to kill you. But that’s all that a master does.

Even in the dream, Alexander Eliot became very much scared and started trembling.

‘Was he grinning, or grimacing? His coarse bristling whiskers made this impossible to tell. “You seem to be a grown-up man,” he whispered through the beard, “yet you have never killed anyone. How come?” ’

In a dream, Bodhidharma asks, ‘You have not killed anyone, and you seem to be a grown-up man. How come?’ He was so much shocked that he awoke, and he found himself perspiring and trembling.

‘What does this strange man mean? – “How come you have not yet killed anybody?”’

That’s what I mean when I say if you are feeling you are not yet a grown-up man, that simply shows you have not killed anybody yet. Fifty years is already too late – now don’t waste time any more. Kill immediately all the impressions inside you. Wash your inside of all old tapes, unwind your mind. And start living your life, from this moment, as if you don’t know, as if nobody has taught you anything – fresh, clean, from a b c.

And you will see maturity coming very soon – and without maturity life is not worth anything. Because all that is beautiful happens only in a mature mind, all that is great happens only in a mature mind. To be a grown-up is a blessing. But people simply grow up – they never become grown-ups. In age they go on growing, but in consciousness they go on shrinking. Their consciousness remains in the fetus; it has not come out of the egg, it is not yet born. Only your body is born – you are yet unborn.

Take your life into your own hands: it is your life. You are not here to fulfill anybody else’s expectations. Don’t live your mother’s life and don’t live your father’s life, live your life. And when you start living your life, you are living God’s life.

-Osho

From Zen: The Path of Paradox, V.2, Discourse #6

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available online from Amazon.com and in the U.S. from OshoStore-Sedona and Osho Here and Now.

All Methods are Postponements – Osho

If the divine is right here and now, then what prevents us from seeing Him? Why do we cling to our dream life, even though it has become a misery for us?

No, it has not become a misery for you yet; otherwise you could not cling to it. No one can cling to misery. You still have hopes; you have not yet become totally hopeless. Even in your misery you are hoping. You are thinking that today is misery but tomorrow the doors of paradise will open, and this misery is just a means to reach that paradise tomorrow. Unless the tomorrow dies completely, unless the tomorrow drops completely, unless you become totally hopeless, no hope… only then will you see what misery is there where you are living. And once you become aware of the misery that you are living, you will drop it – there will be no need for me to tell you.

Somebody came to Buddha and asked him, “You go on saying that life is suffering, dukkha; you go on saying that the house is on fire, and I realize that this is so, but how should we come out of that house which is on fire?”

Buddha said, “You are not seeing that the house is on fire. If the house is on fire you will not come to ask me, you will simply jump out of that house.” You won’t go to find a master to learn techniques; you won’t consult The Bible and Koran to find out how to get out of the house which is on fire. When the house is on fire, you will leave your Koran and Bible inside, and you will jump out. And even if a Buddha is sitting there, you will remember only when you are out of the house that Buddha has been left inside; the master has been left inside. When you realize the house is on fire, you simply jump out of it; there is no method.

All methods are postponements. You are in search of a method so that you can postpone, because a method will need time, so you can say to yourself, “How can I jump right now? It will take three years, six years, lives, to practice. It is such a difficult thing, so I will first practice how to jump, and then I will jump. But unless I practice, I cannot jump.”

And you have been doing this practice, this rehearsal, for many lives. You are not here for the first time to ask me – you have asked many times. The same questions you have been asking in every life, but you never do anything, because Buddha may be saying that the house is on fire, but you look… it is a palace, nothing is on fire. Just out of consideration for Buddha you don’t deny him. Otherwise you know he is crazy; the house is not on fire. Or he may be talking in symbols; he may be meaning something else. Or he is such a great man that you cannot understand what he is saying, so just out of respect you don’t deny him, you say yes. Your yes doesn’t mean any more than your no. Your yes, your no are meaningless.

I have heard that Mulla Nasruddin was in love with a woman, but very worried, depressed, always sad, so one friend asked, “What is the matter?”

He said, “Everything is finished, and I am contemplating suicide.”

The friend said, “But you have been contemplating so long. Tell me what the matter is – maybe I can help you.”

Nasruddin said, “I asked the woman to get married to me.”

The friend said, “Yes, no need to say anything more, I have understood. She must have said no. But you are a fool. Don’t believe it when a woman says no; she always means yes.”

Nasruddin said, “I know that wisdom, and if she had said no, then there would have been no problem. But when I proposed she said, ‘Rats.’ So now what to understand? She said, ‘Rats’; she never said no. Had she said no, then yes could be understood.”

Everybody’s mind is just like that woman. When you say no, the yes is hidden behind it. If somebody has slightly penetrating eyes, he can see your yes hidden behind the no. When you say yes it is just skin-deep, the no is hidden behind. And your yes can be turned into no without any effort. Your no can be turned into yes without much effort. Your yes and no are only different in degrees, not in quality. They can be changed, they continuously go on changing.

Even a small child knows this. The father says, “No, you are not going to the movie today.” But even a small child knows that yes is hidden behind it. He starts a tantrum, he starts crying, and within minutes the father says, “Go, go! Go away from here.” The child knows the yes is hidden behind the no. It can be brought out immediately, a little effort is needed. And no child believes in your yes or no because you can change so easily; no child trusts you. But this is how the human mind is.

So the first thing: you are not in misery. Buddha has said so, I may be saying so, but you know that you are not in misery. You go on feeling, hoping, that tomorrow something is going to happen. And tomorrow is the drug; through the tomorrow you intoxicate yourself, and then the day which is present, today, you can suffer it. It is not much, only a question of a few hours and then the tomorrow will be there; it is coming nearer and nearer. Because of the misery on this earth, we conceive of heaven as somewhere in the other life; that heaven is our tomorrow extended. Just to carry on anyhow this misery that is around us, we look somewhere ahead. We never look right now, here.

You are not in misery. I may be saying so; you go on believing that happiness is just near, you are just on the verge of it. The goal is so near, so why leave? Just continue a little more, be patient. If you realize that you are in misery, then there is no need to ask how to drop it. Then masters will be needed to teach you how to cling to it, and even then you will not listen to them.

Once you know that your life is misery, even a buddha cannot persuade you to cling to it. But the penetration is not there. It is not your realization. This knowing is not your knowledge; this wisdom has not been achieved through your own efforts. It is borrowed, it is cheap. You have heard that life is misery, but you have not realized it. And you say, “Why do we go on clinging to this dream life?” It is not a dream life to you; it is real. When you see a dream the dream is real. Somebody who has awakened from sleep may go on saying that whatsoever you are seeing is just a dream, but the person who is dreaming, he is dreaming a reality, not a dream. In a dream, howsoever absurd, you cannot feel it as a dream. You believe in it, because once you feel it is a dream the dream disappears. The dream cannot remain there, your cooperation is withdrawn. You can cooperate only with reality, not with dreams; and if you cooperate dreams become reality – it is through your cooperation.

In the night, deep in sleep, you dream that you have become a king. You may be a beggar, or vice versa: you may be a king and you dream that you have become a beggar. But in that dream you are so identified you cannot think that it could be a dream. If you can think that it could be a dream, the dream will stop immediately. It will be broken; you will come out of it.

Try this. Try this with ordinary dreams. While going to sleep at night, every day just go on thinking only one thought: “When I dream, I must remember that this is a dream.” It will take many months for this thought to drop down into the unconscious, but it will reach there. After three weeks to three months it will reach if you persist, if you don’t forget. Every night while falling into sleep, you go on thinking that when a dream starts you will immediately recognize that it is a dream. After three weeks to three months this will happen; suddenly one day you will start dreaming and you will have the realization, “This is a dream.” Immediately the dream will disappear and your eyes will be open.

If you realize in dream that it is a dream the dream is broken, the dream cannot exist. It exists through your cooperation, your identification is needed. If you are committed to it, if you get involved in it, only then can it continue. And the same happens with the greater dream which is life. When you realize this is a dream, immediately you have become a buddha, you are enlightened. But this enlightenment cannot happen to you by others’ knowing, others’ wisdom.

Buddha may go on calling to you that this is a dream you are living, but you will only feel that this man is a disturbance, a constant nuisance, he is disturbing your life. That’s why we kill such persons. Socrates – we poisoned him because he was a great disturber. Jesus – we crucified him because he was a nuisance. Everybody is dreaming such beautiful dreams, and these persons unnecessarily, and without being invited, go on disturbing people and saying to them, “Wake up! You are dreaming. This is a dream.” And the man may have been dreaming such a beautiful thing that he could throw away all life for that dream.

Now psychologists say that for the ordinary mind, for the normal mind, dreaming is a must. If you cannot dream, if you are not allowed to dream, you will go mad. Previously it was thought that sleep is a necessity, now the new research says a totally different thing. The new research says that sleep is not a must; it is not sleep which gives you rest, it is dreaming which gives you rest. And if you are allowed to dream you will remain happy, if you are not allowed to dream you will go insane.

The whole night there is a rhythm: sleep period, then dream period, then sleep period, then dream period, of almost the same duration. If you sleep for eight hours, at least for four hours you are dreaming: forty minutes dreaming, then forty minutes sleep, then forty minutes dream, then forty minutes sleep – just like day and night, a rhythm.

They have tried many experiments, because now it can be known from the outside whether you are dreaming or not. Not many devices are needed. When a person is sleeping you can simply go on looking at his eyes. When he dreams the eyes move fast. He is looking at the dream, so the eyes move fast. When he is fast asleep the eyes stop and become dead. So just sitting by a person who is asleep, you can note down when he is dreaming and when he is asleep.

They have tried to disturb persons while they are asleep, in their sleep periods of forty minutes. When they are dreaming they don’t disturb them; when they start sleeping they disturb them. Many nights you can disturb a person while he is asleep but allow the dream period, and he will be happy and okay, no problem; he will not feel tired in the morning. But do otherwise: when he is asleep let him sleep; when he starts dreaming wake him. If continuously the whole night, for only three nights, you don’t allow a person to dream, then he will go insane. Why? It is so much needed. Your ordinary mind feeds on dreams, and if a person is not allowed for three days to dream he will start dreaming while awake. It is such a great need. He will be awake, sitting in his chair, and dreaming. He will have to fulfill the quota, in the day he will have to dream.

And if you insist for many weeks, if for at least three weeks a person is not allowed to dream, he will become hallucinatory. He will be awake and talking to a man who is not present. He will become just like madmen. Now psychologists say that these madmen whom we have pushed into madhouses may be simply persons who have been starved as far as dream food is concerned. They need more dreams to be readjusted to normal life. What is the problem? Why are dreams needed so much? Why can’t you live without dreams? Because your life is so miserable that only through dreams can you exist. If you come to know life as it is, in its nudity, without any dreams, you will commit suicide.

Albert Camus has written that the only philosophical problem is whether to commit suicide or not, and that is the big problem. If you come to realize that the whole life is just nonsense…. What are you doing? What is happening? Nothing is happening, and you continue in suffering. If you are reasonable, you will start thinking of committing suicide.

Dreams help you to not commit suicide. They help you to create worlds of your own in which you can be happy, in which you can enjoy, in which you can become emperors, in which you can become conquerors, in which you can fly and reach the planets, in which you can do anything. You are free only in your dreams. The whole life is a slavery, only in your dreams can you destroy the whole world and create a new one.

You can have a beautiful woman in your dreams, a beautiful man. Life is not so beautiful. And howsoever beautiful a woman, you come closer and the flowers disappear and only thorns are left. Howsoever beautiful a man, a person, if you are far away the beauty is there, but the closer you come, the more the beauty starts evaporating. Sartre says, “Hell is other people – the other is the hell.” The closer you come to the other, the more a hell is created. Only in your dreams can you be in paradise.

So don’t say that you know that your life is suffering and dreamlike – it is real to you. To you I say it is real; to a buddha it is unreal. But you are not a buddha yet, so remain with your reality, and remain with your real mind. Don’t move with borrowed things, because once you move on borrowed things you will never come to the reality again.

“If the divine is right here and now, then what prevents us from seeing him? Why do we cling to our dream life even though it has become a misery for us?”

Think again. Contemplate on it. If it is a misery for you – for you I insist again and again, not for me – if it is a misery for you, don’t do anything. Remain with the fact that your life has become a misery to you, because if you start doing something about it you may again create hope in the tomorrow. Just remain with the fact. If it is hell, remain in hell, don’t do anything. Just remain alert that this is hell. And if you can be patient and alert and wait, just through waiting the hell will disappear, it will fall down. It needs your cooperation. It is just like dreams.

That’s why Shankara and Buddha say your life is a dream life – because it can be just dropped like dreams. If you become alert a dream disappears; if you become alert of your misery, the misery disappears. You cling to it because you think it is not misery, or some happiness is hidden somewhere in it. It may be misery outwardly, but a deep treasure is hidden behind it, so you have to cling to it for that treasure. Your life is misery – but not for you. Realize its misery, it falls down. The very truth transforms you. And the moment misery falls the divine is revealed. To a miserable mind the divine cannot be revealed. To a celebrating mind the divine is revealed.

Remember, only to a celebrating mind, to a mind which is happy, blissful, enjoying moment to moment, ecstatic, is the divine revealed. To a miserable mind the divine cannot be revealed, because a miserable mind is closed. The divine is here and now, but you are not here and now. If you are also here and now then the divine will be revealed to you. The whole of my effort is to bring you here and now. This very moment, if you can be here, then nothing is hidden.

-Osho

From Vedanta: Seven Steps to Samadhi, Discourse #3

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Three Floors of Buddha’s Temple – Osho

The magnificent temple that Buddha built consists of three floors; his teaching has three dimensions to it, or three layers. And you will have to be very patient to understand those three layers. I say so because they have been misunderstood down the centuries.

The first floor of Buddha’s teaching is known as Hinayana; the second floor is known as Mahayana, and the third floor is known as Vajrayana. Hinayana means ‘the small vehicle’, ‘the narrow way’. Mahayana means ‘the great vehicle’, ‘the wide way’. And Vajrayana means ‘the supreme vehicle’, ‘the ultimate way’, ‘the transcendental way’. Hinayana is the beginning and Vajrayana is the climax, the crescendo.

Hinayana starts from where you are. Hinayana tries to help you to change your mechanical habits; it is just like Hatha Yoga — very body-oriented, believes in great discipline; strict, almost repressive — at least it looks repressive. It is not repressive, but the whole work of Hinayana consists in changing your centuries old habits.

Just as a tightrope-walker starts leaning to the left if he feels that he is going to fall towards the right, to balance one has to move to the opposite. By moving to the opposite, a balance arises —but that balance is temporary, momentary. Again you will start falling into the new direction, then again you will need balance and you will have to move to the opposite.

Sex is the very basic problem. And all the habits that man has created are basically sex-oriented. That’s why no society allows sex total freedom. All the cultures that have existed — sophisticated, un-sophisticated, Eastern, Western, primitive, civilized — all cultures have tried in some way to control the sexual energy of man. It seems to be the greatest power over man. It seems that if man is allowed total freedom about sex, he will simply destroy himself.

Skinner reports about a few experiments he was doing with rats. He has invented a new theory, that electrodes can be put into the human or animal brain, attached to particular centres in the brain and you just push a button and that centre will be stimulated inside you.

There is a sex centre in the brain. In fact, you are more controlled by the sex centre in the brain than the actual sex centre of your body. That’s why fantasy works so much. That’s why pornography has so much appeal. The pornography cannot appeal to the sex centre itself; it stimulates the brain centre attached to the sex centre. Immediately the sex centre, the physiological sex centre, starts being active once the mind is active.

He fixed electrodes into rats’ brains and taught them how to push the button whenever they wanted sexual stimulation and an inner orgasm. He was surprised, he was not expecting that this was going to happen: those rats completely forgot everything, food, sleep, play — everything they forgot. They continuously pushed the button! One rat did it six thousand times and died; he died pushing the button. Six thousand times! He forgot everything… then nothing else matters.

Sooner or later, some Skinner or somebody else is going to give you also a small box to keep in your pocket, and whenever you feel sexual just push a button and your brain centre will become active and will give you beautiful orgasms and nobody will ever know what is happening inside you. But you will almost follow the rat — then what is the point of doing anything else? You will kill yourself.

Sex is such a great attraction that if there were not limitations on it…. First there is a limitation that body puts on it. A man cannot have too many orgasms in a day; if you are young, three, four; if you become older, then one; when you become a little older still, then even that becomes difficult — once a week, once a month. And, by and by, your body puts so many limitations on it.

Women are more free that way. The body has no limitation. That’s why, all over the world, women have been completely repressed. She has not been allowed freedom; she has not been allowed even freedom to have orgasms in the past because she can have multiple orgasms. Within seconds she can have many orgasms — six, twelve. Then no man will be able to satisfy a woman; then no man will be able to satisfy any woman. Then only group sex will be able to satisfy. A woman will need at least twelve husbands — that will create tremendous complexities.

That’s why, down the centuries, for thousands of years, women were brought up in such a way that they have completely forgotten that they can have orgasm. Just within these fifty years women have again started learning what orgasm is. And with their learning, problems have arisen all over the world. Marriage is on the rocks. Marriage cannot exist with women having the capacity of multiple orgasm. And man only has capacity for one orgasm. There can be no compatibility between the two. Then monogamy cannot exist. It will become difficult.

This society and the pattern that it has evolved up to now is doomed. Man has released some energy that has always been kept under a certain rigid control. But the attraction has always been there, whether you repress, whether you control, discipline, that doesn’t make any difference. The attraction is there — twenty-four hours, deep down like a substratum, sexuality goes on like a river flowing. It is a continuum. You may eat, you may earn money, you may work, but you are doing everything for sex.

Somewhere, sex remains the goal… and this pattern has to be changed, otherwise your energy will go on being drained, your energy will go on being dissipated, your energy will go on moving into the earth. It will not rise towards heaven. It will not have an upward surge.

Hinayana works just exactly where you are. You are continuously obsessed with sex? — Hinayana tries to remove this obsession. It gives you a certain discipline, a very rigid discipline, how to drop out of it.

Hinayana says there are four steps to drop out of sex. The first is called purifying. The second is called enriching. The third is called crystallizing. The fourth is called destroying.

First you have to move your total energy against sex, so that sexual habits developed in many lives no longer interfere — that is called purifying. You change your consciousness, you shift. From sexual obsession you move to anti-sexuality.

The second step is called enriching. When you have moved to non-sexuality, then you have to enjoy non-sexuality; you have to celebrate your celibacy. Because if you don’t celebrate your celibacy, again sex will start pulling you backwards. Once you start celebrating your celibacy, then the pull of sex will be completely gone, and gone forever.

You are obsessed with sex because you don’t know any other sort of celebration. So the problem is not sex really; the problem is that you don’t know any other celebration. Nature allows you only one joy, and that is of sex. Nature allows you only one enjoyment, that is of sex. Nature allows you only one thrill, and that is of sex.

Hinayana says there is a greater thrill waiting for you — if you move towards celibacy. But the celibacy should not be violently forced. If you violently enforce it you will not be able to enjoy it. One has to be just aware of the sexual habits, and through awareness one has to shift by and by towards celibacy.

Celibacy should be brought very slowly. All that brings you again and again to sexuality has to be dropped slowly, in steps. And once you start enjoying the energy that becomes available, when you are not obsessed with sex, just that pure energy becomes a dance in you — that is called enriching. Now, your energy is not wasted. Your energy goes on showering on yourself.

Remember, there are two types of celibates. One: who has simply forced celibacy upon himself — he is a wrong type, he is doing violence to himself. The other: who has tried to understand sexuality, what it is, why it is; who has watched, observed, lived through it, and, by and by, has become aware of its futility; by and by, has become aware of a deep frustration that comes after each sexual act.

In the sexual act you have a certain thrill, a moment of forgetfulness, a moment of oblivion. You feel good, for a few seconds, only for a few seconds, you drop out of this routine world. Sex gives you a door to escape into some other world — which is non-tense; there is no worry; you are simply relaxed and melting. But have you observed? After each sexual act you feel frustrated.

Sex has promised too much, but it has not been supplied. It is difficult to find a man or a woman who does not feel a little frustrated after the sexual act, who does not feel a little guilty. I am not talking about the guilt that priests have imposed upon you. Even if nobody has imposed any guilt upon you, you will feel a little guilt — that is part, a shadow of the sexual act. You have lost energy, you feel depleted, and nothing has been gained. The gain is not very substantial. You have been befooled, you have been tricked, by a natural hypnosis — you have been tricked by the body, you have been deceived. Hence comes a frustration.

Hinayana says: Watch this frustration more deeply. Watch the sexual act and the way your energy moves into the sexual act; become aware of it and you will see there is nothing in it. And frustration. The more you become aware, the less will be the enjoyment and the more will be the frustration. Then the shift has started taking place: your consciousness is moving away, and naturally, and spontaneously. You are not forcing it.

The second step becomes available: enriching. Your own energy goes on feeding your being. You no more throw it into the other’s body; you no more throw it out. It becomes a deep accumulation inside you. You become a pool. And out of that feeling of energy you feel very cool. Sex is very hot. The enriching stage is very cool, calm, collected. There IS a celebration, but it is very silent. There IS a dance to it, but it is very graceful; there is elegance to it.

Then comes the third step: crystallizing. When this energy inside you has started an inner dance, by and by, slowly, enjoying it more and more, becoming more and more aware of it, a certain chemical crystallization happens in you. Exactly the same word was used by Gurdjieff in his work: crystallization. Your fragments fall together, you become one. A unity arises in you. In fact, for the first time you can say “I have an I.” Otherwise there were many I’s; now you have one I, a big I which controls everything. You have become your master.

And the fourth step is destroying. When you have one I, then it can be destroyed; when you have many I’s, they cannot be destroyed. When your energy has become one and is centred, it can be killed, it can be completely destroyed. When it is a crowd it is difficult to destroy it. You destroy one fragment; there are a thousand other fragments. When you rush after those other fragments, the first one grows again. It is just like the way trees grow branches: you cut one, three branches sprout out of it.

You can destroy sexuality totally only when it has become a crystallized phenomenon; When a person has accumulated too much energy and has become one, is no more fragmentary, no more split no more schizophrenic, then Buddhists have a special term for it they call it ‘Manjusri’s sword’.

It is said that when Manjusri reached to this third stage — he was a disciple of Buddha, a great disciple of Buddha — when he reached to this stage of crystallization, in one single moment he took his sword and destroyed it completely, utterly, in a single moment. It is not a gradual process then. That has become known down the centuries as ‘the sword of Manjusri’.

When a person reaches to the third state, he can just raise a sword and destroy it completely in one single attack. Because now the enemy is there, now the enemy is no longer elusive, now there are no longer many enemies — just one enemy confronting you. And the sword is just the sword of perfect awareness, mindfulness, self-remembering. It is a very sharp sword.

When Buddha destroyed his own sexuality, it is said he roared like a lion — because for the first time the whole absurdity of it became clear. And so many lives wasted! so many lives of sheer stupidity — gone forever. He was so happy he roared like a lion.

These are the four steps, and today’s sutras are concerned with these four steps. Before we enter into the sutras, a few more things have to be understood.

The second vehicle is Mahayana. When your sexual energy is no longer obsessed with the other’s body, when you are completely free of the other’s body, when your energy has a freedom to it, then Mahayana becomes possible — the second floor of Buddha’s temple.

Mahayana makes it possible for you to be loving. Ordinarily we think sex makes people loving — sex can never make people loving. In fact, it is sexuality that prevents love from growing, because it is the same energy that has to become love. It is being destroyed in sex. To become love, the same energy has to move to the heart centre. Mahayana belongs to the heart centre.

Hinayana works at the sex centre — Muladhar. Mahayana works at the heart centre — it says love, prayer, have to be developed now. Energy is there, now you can love. Energy is there, now you can pray.

Mahayana is loving-effort. One has to love unconditionally — the trees and the rocks and the sun and the moon and the people —but now love has no sexuality in it. It is very cool, it is very tranquil.

If you come near a person whose energy is moving in his heart centre, you will suddenly feel you are moving under a deep cool shade, no hot energy. You will feel suddenly a breeze surrounding you. The person of love, the person who lives at the heart centre, is to a traveller like a shady tree, or cool running water, or a breeze fragrant with many blossoms.

Mahayana is not afraid of sex. Hinayana is afraid of sex. Hinayana is afraid of sex because you are too much obsessed with sex. You have to move to the opposite. Mahayana is not afraid of sex — it has attained to the balance; there is no fear of the opposites. Mahayana is when the tightrope-walker is balanced; he neither leans to the left nor to the right.

Then the third and the final stage, the third floor of Buddha’s temple, is Vajrayana. ‘Vajra’ means diamond — it is the most precious teaching; certainly very difficult to understand. Vajrayana is Buddhist Tantra.

Vajrayana is called ‘vajra’, the diamond, because the diamond cuts everything. The diamond vehicle, the way of the diamond, Vajrayana, cuts everything completely, through and through, all materiality, all desire, all attachment. Even the desire to be born in heaven, the desire to be in a peaceful state, the desire to become a Buddha, the desire to have Nirvana, enlightenment — even these beautiful desires are cut completely.

Vajrayana knows no difference between the world and Nirvana, knows no difference between ignorance and knowledge, knows no difference, no distinctions — all distinctions are dropped —knows no distinction between man and woman.

Now let me explain it to you.

On the stage of Hinayana, man is man, woman is woman. And man is attracted towards woman, and the woman is attracted towards man — they are out-going; their attraction is somewhere outside them. Of course, they will be slaves. When your attraction is somewhere outside you, you cannot be independent of it.

That’s why lovers never forgive each other, they cannot. They are annoyed. You love a person and you are irritated by the person at the same time. There is a reason for it. There is constant fight between lovers. The reason is: you cannot forgive the lover, because you know you are dependent on him or on her. How can you forgive your slavery? You know your woman makes you happy, but if she decides not to make you happy, then?… then suddenly you are unhappy. Your happiness is in her hands. Her happiness is in your hands. Whenever somebody else controls your happiness, you cannot forgive the other.

Jean-Paul Sartre says: “The other is hell” — and he is right. He has a great insight into it. The other is hell because you have to depend on the other. Sex can NOT make you free; somehow it takes you away from yourself; it takes you farther and farther away from yourself. The goal is the other.

Gurdjieff used to say sex is one-arrowed — the arrow is moving towards the other. Exactly the same metaphor has been used by Vajrayana: sex is one-arrowed — it goes towards the other. Love is double-arrowed — it goes to the other and to you also. In love there is balance.

One arrow going towards the other, then you have to work with Hinayana. Two-arrowed: one arrow going towards the other, one arrow coming towards you — you have attained to balance; that lopsidedness is no more there.

A man of love is never angry with the other, because he is not really dependent on the other. He can be happy alone too; his arrow is double-arrowed — he can be happy alone too. Of course, he still shares his happiness with the other, but he is no longer dependent on the other. Now it is no longer a relationship of dependence: it is a relationship of interdependence. It is a mutual friendship. They share energies, but nobody is anybody’s slave.

In Vajrayana the arrow completely disappears. There is no you and no other; I and thou, both are dropped. The mechanism has to be understood.

When you are looking for a woman or for a man, you don’t know one very important factor: that your woman is within you and your man too. Each man is both man and woman, and each woman is both woman and man. It has to be so! . . . because you are born out of two parents. One was man, one was woman; they have contributed to your being fifty percent each. You have something of your father and you have something of your mother. Half of you belongs to the male energy; half of you belongs to the female energy — you are both.

In Hinayana you have to work hard to bring your energy to the inner woman or the inner man; that is its whole work.

Just recently, in this century, Carl Gustav Jung became aware of this fact, of this fact of bisexuality, that no man is pure man and no woman is pure woman. In each man a woman exists, and in fact every man is searching for that woman somewhere outside. That’s why suddenly one day you come across a woman and you feel, “Yes, this is the right woman for me.” How do you feel it? What is the criterion? How do you judge? — It is not rational, you don’t reason it out. It happens so suddenly, like a flash. You were not thinking about it, you have not reasoned it out. Suddenly if somebody asks you, “Why have you fallen in love with this woman?” you will shrug your shoulders. You will say, “I don’t know but I have fallen in love. Something has happened.”

What has happened? Jung says you have an image of woman inside you; that image somehow fits with this woman. This woman seems to be similar to that image in some way or other. Of course, no woman can be absolutely similar to the inner woman, that’s why no lover can ever be absolutely satisfied. A little similar, maybe: the way she walks; maybe her sound, her voice; maybe the way she looks, maybe her blue eyes; maybe her nose, maybe the color of her hair.

You have an image inside you that has come from your mother, from your mother’s mother, from your mother’s mother’s mother — all the women that have preceded you, they have contributed to that image. It is not exactly like your mother, otherwise things would have been simple. Your mother is involved in it; your mother’s mother is also involved and so on and so forth. They all have contributed little bits.

And it is the same with your man: your father has contributed, your father’s father, and so on and so forth. From your father to Adam, and from your mother to Eve, the whole continuum has contributed to it. Nobody exactly knows, there is no way really to know, whom you are seeking. A man is searching for a woman, a woman is searching for a man — the search is very vague. There is no clear-cut image, but somewhere in your heart you carry it; in the dark corner of your soul you keep it, it is there.

So many times many women and many men will appear to fulfil something of it, but only something. So each lover will give you a little satisfaction and much dissatisfaction. A part that fits will satisfy, and all other parts which don’t fit will never satisfy.

Have you watched it? Whenever you fall in love with a man or a woman, you immediately start changing the man and the woman according to something that you also don’t know what…. Wives go on changing their husbands their whole lives: “Don’t do this! Be like this, behave like this!”

Just the other day, Mulla Nasrudin’s wife was saying to me, “Finally, Osho, I succeeded.”

I asked, “About what?”

She said, “I have stopped Mulla Nasrudin biting his nails.”

I said, “Biting his nails? Fifty years you have been married together — Mulla is seventy — now you have been able after fifty years?”

She said, “Yes!”

I asked, “But how did you succeed, tell me?”

She said, “Now I simply hide his teeth so he cannot bite.”

People go on trying to change. Nobody ever changes — I have never seen, I have never come across it. People even pretend that “Yes, we have changed,” but nobody can change. Everybody remains himself. The whole effort is futile, but the urge to change is there. Why is the urge to change there?

The urge to change is for a real necessity: the woman is trying to make her husband fit with some vague image inside her. Then she will be happy that he does not drink, that he does not smoke, that he does not go after other women… and a thousand and one things… that he always goes to the temple, that he listens to the saints. She has a certain image: she wants her husband to be a hero, a saint, a great man. The ordinary human being does not satisfy her.

And the husband is also trying in a thousand and one ways: brings beautiful clothes, diamonds, rubies and pearls, and goes on decorating his wife. He is trying to find a Cleopatra. Somewhere he has some image of a beautiful woman, the most beautiful woman. Now he tries — even from his very childhood.

I have heard:

The old man asked his precocious six-year-old how he liked the new little girl next door.

“W-e-l-l,” said the kid, “she’s no Elizabeth Taylor, but she’s nice.”

Now even small children think about Hema Malini and think about Elizabeth Taylor. And he says, “She’s no Elizabeth Taylor, but she’s nice.” And this conflict continues. The reason is that we are always looking for someone who is not outside.

Hinayana turns you from looking outside. It says: Close your eyes to the outside. Mahayana makes you more alert and aware, fills your inner chamber with more light, so that you can see the inner woman. And Vajrayana makes it possible for you so that you can have an inner orgasm with your man inside or your woman inside. That inner orgasm will satisfy you, nothing else.

These three steps are of tremendous meaning.

-Osho

From The Buddha Said, Discourse #15

Also published in The Discipline of Transcendence, V.3, Discourse #7

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

You Will Find the Christ – Osho

Can Buddha or Christ be created or developed out of every common human being? Or is Buddha or Christ only born as such? Every man is Buddha, every man is Christ: I feel it is not true.

The Buddha or Christ cannot be created because the Buddha is your intrinsic nature. It need not be created. It has not to be developed either; it is already there; it is already the case. It has only to be unfolded, it has to be discovered. The treasure is there; you have to find the key to unlock the door. The treasure is not to be created; the treasure is not to be developed; you only have to find the right key. You have forgotten about the key — the key is also with you. God provides you with everything that is needed on the journey; you come absolutely prepared. But society disturbs every child, distorts every child because a Buddha or a Christ is useless to the society; they don’t serve any utilitarian purpose.

What can you do with a buddha? What purpose is he going to serve? He will be a beautiful flower, but flowers don’t serve any purpose. Flowers have to be enjoyed, appreciated, loved. You can dance around them, you can drink their beauty, but they are not commodities in the marketplace. What can you do with the full moon? You cannot sell it, you cannot purchase it, you cannot be profited by it. You cannot have a bigger bank balance because of the full moon.

Hence the society is not interested in a buddha or a Christ. Buddha is a full moon, a buddha is a lotus flower; a buddha is a bird on the wing. The Buddha is a poem, the Buddha is a song, the Buddha is a celebration. Because they are utterly beyond utility, the society is not interested in them; it is really afraid of these people. It wants you to be slaves, to be cogs in the wheel of the society. It wants you to be servants to the vested interests. It does not want you to be rebels — and a buddha is bound to be a rebel.

A buddha cannot follow stupid commandments given by the politicians or the moralists or the puritans or the priests. And these are the people who are exploiting humanity, oppressing humanity. They start destroying every possibility of every human child ever becoming a buddha. They start crippling, they start poisoning. And down the centuries they have learnt many ways to poison. It is a miracle that once in a while a child has escaped — must have somehow been a mistake on the part of the priests and the politicians that a child escaped from the trap and became a buddha.

Bal Krishna, every man is born to be a buddha; every man has the seed of Buddhahood in him. But I can understand your question.

You say: I feel it is not true.

Yes, if you look at the masses it doesn’t seem to be true. If it were true there would be many buddhas, but one rarely hears about a buddha. We only know that somewhere, twenty-five centuries ago, a certain Siddhartha Gautam became Buddha. Who knows whether it is true or not? It may be just a myth, a beautiful story, a consolation, an opium for the masses, to keep them hoping that one day they will also become buddhas. Who knows whether Buddha is a historic reality?

And so many stories have been woven around the Buddha that he looks more like a mythological figure than a reality. When he becomes enlightened, gods come from heaven, play beautiful music, dance around him. Now how can this be history? And flowers shower on him from the sky — flowers of gold and silver, flowers of diamonds and emeralds. Who can believe that this is history?

This is not history, true, I agree. This is poetry. But it symbolizes something historical because something so unique has happened in Buddha that there is no other way to describe it than to bring poetry in. Real flowers have not showered on Buddha, but whenever somebody becomes enlightened, the whole existence rejoices — because we are not separate from it.

When you have a headache your whole body suffers, and when the headache goes your whole body feels good, a well-being. We are not separate from existence. And until you are a buddha, you are a headache — a headache to yourself, a headache to others, a headache to the whole existence. You are a thorn in the flesh of existence. When the headache disappears, when the thorn becomes a flower, when one man becomes a buddha, a great pain that he was creating for himself and others disappears. Certainly — I vouch for it, I am a witness to it — certainly the whole existence rejoices, dances, sings. How to say it? It is nothing visible; photographs cannot be taken of it. Hence the poetry; hence these metaphors, symbols, similes.

It is said that when Buddha was born his mother immediately died. It may not be a historical fact, it may be. But my feeling is that it is not a historical fact — because it is said that whenever a buddha is born, the mother immediately dies. That is not true. There have been many buddhas — Jesus’s mother did not die, Mahavira’s mother did not die, Krishna’s mother did not die. Maybe Siddhartha Gautam’s mother died, but it cannot be said that whenever a buddha is born the mother dies, not historically. But I know it has some significance of its own which is not historical. By “the mother” is not really meant the mother; by “the mother” is meant your whole past. You are reborn when you become a buddha, your whole past functions as a womb, the mother. And the moment a buddha is born, the moment you become enlightened, your whole past dies. That death is necessary.

Now, this is absolutely true. It happened with Mahavira, with Krishna, with Jesus; it has happened always. To say it, it is said that whenever a buddha is born the mother dies. You will have to be very, very sympathetic to understand these things.

I can understand that it is difficult; looking at the greater part of humanity, to see that there is any possibility of every human being becoming a Christ or a buddha. Looking at a seed, can you believe that one day it can become a lotus? Just looking at the seed, dissecting the seed, will you be able to infer, conclude, that each seed is going to become a lotus? There seems to be no relationship at all. The seed looks nothing, and when you dissect it, you find nothing in it, only emptiness. Still, each seed carries a lotus within it – and each human being carries the Buddha within him.

You ask me: Can Buddha or Christ be created or developed . . .?

No, they cannot be created, and they cannot be developed: they have to be discovered, they have to be uncovered. They are already there. You just have to reach your innermost core and you will find the Buddha enshrined, you will find the Christ. Christ and Buddha mean the same: the ultimate state of consciousness.

And you say: . . . out of every common human being?

I have never come across a single common human being. I have come across thousands of people, I have looked into the depths of thousands of different people, but I have never come across a common, ordinary man. Every human being is unique, extraordinary, uncommon, exceptional. God never creates common human beings; God only creates unique consciousnesses.

Drop this idea of a common human being. This is an insult to humanity.

And you say: Is Buddha or Christ only born as such?

No. Nobody is born as such. We are all born alike. That too is again a trick of the mind to avoid growing. If it is settled that a buddha is born as a buddha, and a Christ is the only begotten son of God, and Krishna is a reincarnation of God, this is a beautiful strategy to avoid: “Then what can we do? If we are not buddhas it is not our fault – we are not born like that. And if Buddha is a buddha, so what? He is born a buddha. No credit to him; he has not done anything special. If we were born like Buddha, we would be buddhas too. But we are born as common human beings.”

This is a strategy. Very cunning is the mind, and subtle is its cunningness: beware of it. Nobody is born as a buddha, yet everybody brings the potential of being a buddha. And don’t say, “I feel it is not true” — because how can you feel unless you have become a buddha? You can only infer, you can only think, you cannot feel.

Listen to me! I feel that everybody can become a buddha. And I feel it because I was also a common human being . . . and then suddenly this explosion, then suddenly this light, then suddenly this meditativeness blossomed. You can also become a buddha; it is your birthright. Don’t be tricked by your mind — remain alert, aware.

-Osho

From Be Still and Know, Discourse #1

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Meditation is Your Mastercard – Osho

The other night during darshan, listening to your answer to Nivedano’s question, I had tears running down my face. For the first time in the seven years I’ve been with you, I could not only intellectually understand but really feel that to look inside oneself is the only way to find the real treasures of life. Even though I am feeling this so strongly, it doesn’t make it easier to meditate, to look inside.

In the past my favorite subject for you to talk about has always been love and relationships. Now, I can’t get enough of hearing you talk about meditation. Beloved Master, could you please speak about vipassana meditation?

Prem Sampurna, there are hundreds of methods of meditation, but perhaps vipassana has a unique status; just the same way as there have been thousands of mystics, but Gautam Buddha has a uniqueness of his own. In many ways he is incomparable, in many ways he has done more for humanity than anybody else. In many ways his search for truth was more sincere, more authentic than anybody else’s.

Why am I reminded of Gautam Buddha? I am reminded of Gautam Buddha because you have asked a question about vipassana meditation. That is the meditation through which Gautam Buddha became enlightened.

The very word vipassana in Pali, the language in which Gautam Buddha spoke . . . he was perfectly acquainted with Sanskrit – as a prince he was well educated in the highest literature of those days. But when he started speaking, he never used Sanskrit because Sanskrit was the language of the intellectuals, of the brahmins, of the priests, not of the people.

It has never been a living language. It has a uniqueness among all the languages of the world – it has been spoken only by the learned, by the scholarly amongst themselves; and because of its unknowability, the masses have been mystified by it. Translated, it contains nothing special, and sometimes it contains nothing but bullshit, but it has a very musical sound.

Its construction is the most perfect of any language in the world. It is very exhaustive – fifty-two letters in the alphabet, English has only twenty-six; it means the other twenty-six sounds are unavailable in English. Sanskrit is twice as rich because it can express all possible sounds; it has not left a single sound out of its alphabet. Subtle nuances have also been taken into account – sounds which are very difficult to pronounce, sounds which are rarely used by anyone, but which are possible to use, have been included.

But Gautam Buddha decided to speak in the language of the masses. It was a revolutionary step because the languages of the masses are not grammatically right. Just by use, by ordinary people changing their tone, their sound, the words become easier; they are not complicated.

We have seen this happen to English in India. English was the language of the bureaucracy, of the people who were in power, of the British Empire. But a few words were bound to enter into the local people’s languages. And the transformation is worth seeing; it will explain to you the difference between a language which is really living, alive, because rough people use it . . . it has the quality of a wildflower, the quality of a forest, not of a well-clipped British garden.

People have an uncanny sense to change words into their simplest form; for example, the English word “report.” Even the faraway villagers who don’t come in contact with educated people have to use that word – once in a while they have to go to the police station. But in the villages of India the word “report” has become rapat. Report is a little difficult, rapat is more alive.

“Station” is a word that is bound to be used by the people of the lowest education or no education. In Punjab it has become satation; in other parts it has become teshan, but nowhere is it station.

Pali is a language of the simple, and in a way, innocent and ignorant people. Vipassana is their word. In Sanskrit it has its parallel which the public has changed according to their convenience. In Sanskrit it is vipashyana – that is a little difficult. But in Pali it is simply vipassana. The meaning is the same. The meaning – the literal meaning – of the word is “to look” and the metaphorical meaning is “to watch, to witness.”

Gautam Buddha has chosen a meditation which can be called the essential meditation. All other meditations are different forms of witnessing, but witnessing is present in every kind of meditation as an essential part; it cannot be avoided. Buddha has deleted everything else and kept only the essential part – to witness.

There are three steps of witnessing – Buddha is a very scientific thinker. He begins with the body because that is the easiest to witness. It is easy to witness my hand moving, my hand being raised. I can witness myself walking on the road, I can witness each step as I walk. I can witness while I am eating my food.

So the first step in vipassana is witnessing the actions of the body, which is the simplest step. Any scientific method will always begin from the simplest.

And while witnessing the body, you will be amazed at the new experiences. When you move your hand with witnessing, watchfulness, alertness, consciousness, you will feel a certain grace and a certain silence in the hand. You can do the movement without witnessing; it will be quicker, but it will lose the grace.

The Buddha used to walk so slowly that many times he was asked why he was walking so slowly.

He said, “This is part of my meditation: always to walk as if you are walking in winter into a cold stream . . . slowly, alert, because the stream is very cold; aware because the current is very strong; witnessing each of your steps because you can slip on the stones in the stream.”

The method remains the same, only the object changes with each step. The second step is watching the mind. Now you move into a more subtle world – watching your thoughts. If you have been successful in watching your body, there is not going to be any difficulty. Thoughts are subtle waves – electronic waves, radio waves – but they are as material as your body. They are not visible, just as the air is not visible, but the air is as material as the stones; so are your thoughts – material but invisible.

That is the second step, the middle step. You are moving toward invisibility, but still, it is material . . . watching your thoughts. The only condition is, don’t judge. Don’t judge because the moment you start judging you will forget watching.

There is no antagonism against judging. The reason it is prohibited is that the moment you start judging – “This is a good thought” – for that much space you were not witnessing. You started thinking, you became involved. You could not remain aloof, standing by the side of the road and just seeing the traffic.

Don’t become a participant, either by appraising, valuing, condemning; no attitude should be taken about what is passing in your mind. You should watch your thoughts just as if clouds are passing in the sky. You don’t make judgments about them – this black cloud is very evil, this white cloud looks like a sage. Clouds are clouds; they are neither evil nor good.

So are thoughts – just a small wavelength passing through your mind. Watch without any judgment and you are again in for a great surprise. As your watching becomes settled, thoughts will come less and less. The proportion is exactly the same: if you are fifty percent settled in your witnessing, then fifty percent of your thoughts will disappear. If you are sixty percent settled in your witnessing, then only forty percent of thoughts will be there. When you are ninety-nine percent a pure witness, only once in a while will there be a lonely thought – one percent, passing on the road – otherwise the traffic is gone. That rush-hour traffic is no longer there.

When you are one-hundred-percent nonjudgmental, just a witness, it means you have become just a mirror because a mirror never makes any judgments. An ugly woman looks into it – the mirror has no judgment. A beautiful woman looks into the mirror, it makes no difference. Nobody looks into it . . . the mirror is as pure as when somebody is being reflected in it. Neither reflection stirs it, nor no-reflection. Witnessing becomes a mirror.

This is a great achievement in meditation. You have moved halfway, and this was the hardest part. Now you know the secret, and the same secret has just to be applied to different objects.

From thoughts you have to move to more subtle experiences – emotions, feelings, moods . . . from the mind to the heart, with the same condition: no judgment, just witnessing. And the surprise will be that most of your emotions, feelings and moods which possess you . . .

Now, when you are feeling sad, you become really sad, you are possessed by sadness. When you are feeling angry, it is not something partial. You become full of anger; every fiber of your being is throbbing with anger.

Watching the heart, the experience will be that now nothing possesses you. Sadness comes and goes; you don’t become sad. Happiness comes and goes; you don’t become happy either.

Whatever moves in the deep layers of your heart does not affect you at all. For the first time you taste something of mastery. You are no longer a slave to be pushed and pulled this way and that way, where any emotion, any feeling, anybody can disturb you for any trivia. […]

People become disturbed with absolute trivia, meaningless things. Somebody just passes by you twitching his eye. He has not done anything. It is his eye; he has every right to twitch it. It is his constitutional right. Nobody can prevent anybody from twitching his eyes – but why do you get disturbed? And if he makes it a practice that whenever he sees you he twitches his eyes, you will start becoming enraged. Our consciousness is so small, it gets overpowered and possessed by anything – any mood, any feeling, any emotion.

When you become a witness of the third step, you will become, for the first time, a master: nothing disturbs you, nothing overpowers you, everything remains far away, deep below, and you are on a hilltop.

These are the three steps of vipassana. Vipassana has many kinds of methods – this is only one method. Because Buddhism spread all over Eastern Asia, the Far East vipassana has a different structure in Japan. It is watching the belly as you breathe in and out. That’s why the Japanese statues of Buddha have big bellies. No Indian statue of Buddha will have a big belly – that is unathletic, does not look beautiful.

But the Japanese Buddha has to have it because the whole method of vipassana is to practice the belly coming up, not the chest. The chest remains silent, unmoving; only the belly goes up as you breathe in, and the belly goes in as you breathe out. Watching it is a single-step vipassana prevalent in Japan.

In Ceylon there are two steps: first watching the same breathing, not at the belly point, but at the nose point. When you breathe in, the air touches your nostrils, be aware of it. And when the hot air goes out, be watchful. This is the first step.

And the second step: when you breathe in, there is a gap before the breath returns back – just a rest period, a few seconds – watch those few seconds when the breath is not moving. If you become capable of watching those moments, you will be able to watch them outside also. When the breath goes out, before it comes in, there is a small interval – the same interval as inside. Watch that too, just be aware of it.

In Tibet they have a different way, in Korea another way, in China another way, but the essential point is to be a witness. And my feeling is that what I have described as three steps is the most easy, most simple – everybody can do it. It needs no scholarship, no austerity, no great understanding.

And after these three steps comes the real experience. These three steps take you to the door of the temple, which is open.

When you have become perfectly watchful of your body, mind and heart, then you cannot do anything more, then you have to wait. When perfection is complete on these three steps, the fourth step happens on its own accord as a reward. It is a quantum leap from the heart to the being, to the very center of your existence. You cannot do it; it happens – you have to remember that.

Don’t try to do it because if you try to do it your failure is absolutely certain. It is a happening. You prepare three steps; the fourth step is a reward from existence itself. It is a quantum leap.

Suddenly your life force, your witnessing, enters into the very center of your being. You have come home. You can call it self-realization, you can call it enlightenment, you can call it ultimate liberation, but there is nothing more than that. You have come to the very end in your search, you have found the very truth of existence and the great ecstasy that it brings as a shadow, by and around itself.

The Jew and the Irishman are arguing about sex. The Irishman says, that according to his priest, sex is work and solely for the purpose of procreation.

“No,” says the Jew, “my rabbi says sex is pleasure. If it was work, we would let the Irish do it.”

Meditation is not work.

Meditation is purest blissfulness.

As you go deeper, you come across more and more beautiful spaces, more and more luminous spots. They are your treasure . . . deeper and deeper silences which are not only the absence of noise but the presence of a soundless song – musical, alive and dancing.

As you reach to the ultimate point of your being, the center of the cyclone, you have found God – not as a person but as light, as consciousness, as truth, as beauty – as all that man has been dreaming of for centuries. And those dreamed-of treasures are hidden within himself.

It is not a troublesome, torturous, ascetic practice; it is very pleasant, musical, poetic, and it goes on becoming more and more of a sheer joy. It is not work; it is prayer – the only prayer I know of. To me prayer means: when you have achieved your being, you feel a tremendous gratitude toward existence. That gratitude is the only real, authentic prayer; all other prayers are fake, pseudo, manufactured. This gratitude will arise within you just like a fragrance arising out of roses.

It is good that you are dropping your childish questions about boyfriend, girlfriend, your so-called relationships; you don’t know yourself and you have started relating with another!

It is good that you are asking about meditation. That will not only bring transformation to you, it will also bring transformation to your relationships. It will also bring an authentic overflow of love, and only then will you be able to see that what you used to call love was not love; it was simply lust, biological lust, based on your hormones. Only a meditator knows a love that is not biological, that comes as a spiritual abundance with a great urge to share – because the more you share it, the more you have it.

A Jewish swami, Goldstein, takes a gorgeous ma out to dinner. They go to the most expensive restaurant in Poona and feast on Italian spaghetti, Japanese sushi and French wine. For dessert they choose German chocolate cake and finish with Brazilian coffee.

When the waiter brings them the bill, Goldstein finds he has left his wallet at home. So he takes out his picture of Rajneesh and hands it to the waiter.

“What is this?” demands the waiter.

“My Mastercard,” replies Goldstein.

Meditation is your Mastercard!

-Osho

From The Rebel, Discourse #17, Q2

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Meditate Constantly – Osho

Meditate constantly.

The person who is a seeker will not really be interested in getting only philosophical answers from others; he will be interested in knowing on his own. He will not be interested in philosophy; he will be interested in religion. That is the difference between philosophy and religion. Philosophy is juggling with words, the art of hairsplitting, arguing endlessly about abstract ideas, arriving nowhere. Religion is more like science: it experiments, it emphasizes experience. Science is the religion of the objective world, and religion is the science of the subjective world.

Philosophy is going to die one day; it is already on its deathbed. You can go to the universities and see: every year less and less people are turning to the departments of philosophy. Many philosophy departments are empty, deserted. People are going to science or to religion. Those who are interested in knowing the truth about the world are going to scientific inquiries, to physics, to chemistry, to mathematics, to biology. Or, people who are interested in their own interiority, in their own subjectivity, in their own consciousness, are moving towards religion, more and more towards religion.

Religion is the science of the inner. Philosophy is neither: it is neither the science of the outer nor the science of the inner; it is just in between. It only thinks; it thinks about everything — about science, about religion — but it only thinks. And just by thinking, nothing ever happens. You can make very clever answers, but they are not going to solve your real problems; the problems are real and the answers are just abstract. Real problems can be solved only by real answers.

Hence Buddha says: The seeker can be persuaded to meditate — only the seeker can be persuaded to meditate. Meditation means you start changing your inner world. You start removing dust from the inner world, you start removing all that is unnecessary in the inner world. You remove all that clutter, all the rubbish you are full of. Meditation means emptying yourself of all that the society has put inside you so that you can have a clean, clear vision, so that you can have a mirror-like quality. When a mirror is without any dust it reflects reality; so is the case with meditation.

Meditation means making your consciousness a mirror. Thoughts are like dust, they have to be removed. And thoughts contain everything belonging to the mind: desires, ambitions, memories, fantasies, dreams . . . all mindstuff is different forms of thoughts, different kinds, different layers of dust. And the dust is so thick that the mirror is not functioning at all — hence you have to ask others. Once the dust is removed you need not ask anyone, you yourself can see. Existence has given you the magic mirror — it is within you.

I have heard a beautiful parable; it must be a parable, it cannot be an historical phenomenon:

When Alexander the Great came to India he collected many valuable treasures. And when he was leaving he came across a fakir, a naked fakir. He asked him, “Do you see my treasures? Have you ever seen anybody with so many treasures?”

The fakir said, “All your treasures are nothing, but I can give you one thing that will really make you rich!”

Alexander could not imagine what this naked fakir could give him. In his begging bowl he had a small mirror. He gave the mirror to Alexander.

Alexander said, “This mirror will make me the richest man in the world? You must be mad!”

The fakir said, “First look in the mirror.”

And Alexander looked into the mirror: it did not show his face — it showed his inner being, it showed his interiority, it showed his subjectivity. His being was reflected in the mirror. He touched the feet of the fakir and said, “You are right — all my treasures are nothing before this mirror.”

And it is said he kept that mirror continuously with him.

The parable is beautiful. That mirror represents meditation. The fakir must have given him some meditation because only meditation can make you aware of who you are.

But Buddha says meditation has to become something constant. Buddha brings a totally new vision of meditation to the world. Before Buddha, meditation was something that you had to do once or twice a day, one hour in the morning, one hour in the evening, and that was all. Buddha gave a totally new interpretation to the whole process of meditation. He said: This kind of meditation that you do one hour in the morning, one hour in the evening, you may do five times or four times a day, is not of much value. Meditation cannot be something that you can do apart from life just for one hour or fifteen minutes. Meditation has to become something synonymous with your life; it has to be like breathing. You cannot breathe one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening, otherwise the evening will never come. It has to be something like breathing: even while you are asleep the breathing continues. You may fall into a coma, but the breathing continues.

Buddha says meditation should become such a constant phenomenon; only then can it transform you. And he evolved a new technique of meditation. His greatest contribution to the world is vipassana; no other teacher has given such a great gift to the world. Jesus is beautiful, Mahavira is beautiful, Lao Tzu is beautiful, Zarathustra is beautiful, but their contribution, compared to Buddha, is nothing. Even if they are all put together, then too Buddha’s contribution is greater because he gave such a scientific method — simple, yet so penetrating that once you are in tune with it, it becomes a constant factor in your life.

Then you need not do it; you have to do it only in the beginning. Once you have learned the knack of it, it remains with you; you need not do it. Then whatsoever you are doing, it is there. It becomes a backdrop to your life, a background to your life. You are walking, but you walk meditatively. You are eating, but you eat meditatively. You are sleeping, but you sleep meditatively. Remember, even the quality of sleep of a meditator is totally different from the quality of the sleep of a non-meditator. Everything becomes different because a new factor has entered which changes the whole gestalt.

Vipassana simply means watching your breath, looking at your breath. It is not like Yoga Pranayama: it is not changing your breath to a certain rhythm — deep breathing, fast breathing. No, it does not change your breathing at all; it has nothing to do with the breathing. Breathing has only to be used as a device to watch because it is a constant phenomenon in you. You can simply watch it, and it is the most subtle phenomenon. If you can watch your breath then it will be easy for you to watch your thoughts.

One thing immensely great that Buddha contributed was the discovery of the relationship between breath and thought. He was the first man in the whole history of humanity who made it absolutely clear that breathing and thinking are deeply related. Breathing is the bodily part of thinking and thinking is the psychological part of breathing. They are not separate; they are two aspects of the same coin. He is the first man who talks of body-mind as one unity. He talks for the first time about man as a psychosomatic phenomenon. He does not talk about body and mind; he talks about body-mind. They are not two; hence no ‘and’ is needed to join them. They are already one – body-mind — not even a hyphen is needed; bodymind is one phenomenon. And each body process has its counterpart in your psychology and vice versa.

You can watch it, you can try an experiment. Just stop your breathing for a moment and you will be surprised: the moment you stop your breathing, your thinking stops. Or you can watch another thing: whenever your thinking is going too fast your breathing changes. For example, if you are full of sexual lust and your thinking is getting too hot, your breathing will be different: it will not be rhythmic; it will lose its rhythm. It will be more chaotic, it will be unrhythmic.

When you are angry your breathing changes because your thinking has changed. When you are loving your breathing changes because your thinking has changed. When you are peaceful, at ease, at home, relaxed, your breathing is different. When you are restless, worried, in turmoil, in anguish, your breathing is different. Just by watching your breath you can know what kind of state is happening in your mind.

Meditators come across a point: when the mind really completely ceases, breathing also ceases. And then great fear arises — don’t be afraid. Many meditators have reported to me, “We became very much afraid, very much frightened, because suddenly we became aware that the breathing has stopped.” Naturally, one thinks that when breathing stops death is close by. It is only a question of moments — you are dying. Breathing stops in death; breathing also stops in deep meditation. Hence deep meditation and death have one thing similar: in both the breathing stops. Therefore, if a man knows meditation he has also known death. That’s why the meditator becomes free of the fear of death: he knows breathing can stop and still he is.

Breathing is not life; life is a far bigger phenomenon. Breathing is only a connection with the body. The connection can be cut; that does not mean that life has ended. Life is still there; life does not end just by the disappearance of breathing.

Buddha says: Watch your breathing; let it be normal, as it is. Sitting silently, watch your breath. The sitting posture will also be helpful; the Buddha posture, the lotus posture, is very helpful. When your spine is erect and you are sitting in a lotus posture, your legs crossed, your spine is aligned with the gravitational forces, and the body is at its best relaxed state. Let the spine be erect and the body be loose, hanging on the spine — not tense. The body should be loose, relaxed, the spine erect, so gravitation has the least pull on you.

Have you watched it? If you want to go to sleep you have to lie down, for the simple reason that when you are lying down flat on the ground you are in touch with the gravitational forces at the maximum, because all over the body the gravitational pull works, it pulls you. You immediately start falling asleep. It is difficult to fall asleep standing. The most difficult posture to fall asleep in is the lotus posture. The body is so relaxed there is no need to fall asleep, and the gravitational forces are at the minimum; hence they cannot pull you downwards; they can’t make you heavy and dull and lethargic. You are bright, you are full of life. You are more intelligent in the lotus posture than you can ever be in any other posture. The body affects your mind.

Scientists now agree with this: that it is only because a few of the monkeys somehow… they have not been able to find the reason why and how it happened, and monkeys are monkeys — it may have just happened out of curiosity, a few monkeys tried to stand on two legs and these are the monkeys who became the original men; they were the originators. That was the greatest innovation; nothing else has been greater than that. A few monkeys standing erect on their two legs created a great revolution; the revolution happened in the growth of the mind. The erect posture helped the mind to come out of sleep. It became more intelligent, it became more alert, it became more conscious.

Other animals who move on their four legs have not been able to develop intelligence, although many of them have a mind of almost the same capacity as man. For example, the elephant has a mind of almost the same capacity as man, but has not been able to develop it and I don’t think it is ever going to happen. In circuses they try hard to teach the elephant to sit in a chair or to stand even for a few seconds on two feet, but the body is so heavy the elephant cannot manage to be on two feet. Hence the brain remains clouded; the gravitational pull keeps it unconscious.

Hence this lotus posture is something valuable. It is not just a body phenomenon; it affects the mind, it changes the mind. Sit in a lotus posture — the whole point is that your spine should be erect and should make a ninety-degree angle with the earth. That is the point where you are capable of being the most intelligent, the most alert, the least sleepy.

And then watch your breath, the natural breath. You need not breathe deeply, you don’t change your breathing; you simply watch it as it is. But you will be surprised by one thing: the moment you start watching, it changes — because even the fact of watching is a change and the breathing is no more the same.

Slight changes in your consciousness immediately affect your breathing. You will be able to see it; whenever you watch you will see your breathing has become a little deeper. If it becomes so of its own accord it is okay, but you are not to do it by your will. Watching your breath, slowly, slowly, you will be surprised that as your breath becomes calm and quiet your mind also becomes calm and quiet. And watching the breath will make you capable of watching the mind.

That is just the beginning, the first part of meditation, the physical part. And the second part is the psychological part. Then you can watch more subtle things in your mind — thoughts, desires, memories.

And as you go deeper into watchfulness, a miracle starts happening: as you become watchful less and less traffic happens in the mind, more and more quiet, silence; more and more silent spaces, more and more gaps and intervals. Moments pass and you don’t come across a single thought. Slowly, slowly, minutes pass, hours pass….

And there is a certain arithmetic in it: if you can remain absolutely empty for forty-eight minutes, that very day you will become enlightened, that very moment you will become enlightened. But it is not a question of your effort; don’t go on looking at the watch because each time you look, a thought has come. You have to again count from the very beginning; you are back to zero. There is no need for you to watch the time.

But this has been the experience in the East of all great meditators: that forty-eight minutes seems to be the ultimate point. If this much of a gap is possible, if for this much of a gap thinking stops and you remain alert, with no thought crossing your mind, you are capable of receiving God inside. You have become the host and the guest immediately comes.

-Osho

From The Dhammapada, the Way of the Buddha, V. 11, Discourse #5

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

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