Category: poetry

So Much Magnificence – Osho

The darkness of night is coming along fast,
And the shadows of love
Close in the body and the mind. 
Open the window to the West, and disappear
Into the air inside you.
 
Near your breastbone there is an open flower.
Drink the honey that is all around that flower.
Waves are coming in:
There is so much magnificence near the ocean. 
Listen: Sound of immense seashells! Sound of bells
Kabir says, ‘Friend, listen,
This is what I have to say:
The guest I love is inside me!’
 
Friend, hope for the guest while you are alive. 
Jump into experience while you are alive. 
Think and think while you are alive. 
What you call ‘salvation’
Belongs to the time before death. 
If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive,
Do you think ghosts
Will do it after? 

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
Just because the body is rotten –
That is all fantasy. 
What is found is found then. 
If you find nothing now, you will simply end up
With an apartment in the city of death.

And if you make love with the divine now,
In the next life you will have the face
Of satisfied desire. 
Then plunge into the truth,
Find out who the teacher is,
Believe in the great sound!
 
Kabir says this:
‘When the guest is being searched for, it is the
Intensity of the longing for the guest
That does all the work.
 
Look at me…
You will see a slave of that intensity.’

-Kabir

As seen in Osho’s book on Kabir, The Revolution, Discourse #9

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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.

Inspection Required

From where come you
My thoughts
You’re not, you are
Again you’re not

You lead me to your sons and daughters
I have known your ancestors
But on careful inspection
You disappear into silence

Come back and make a stand
But no you fold
Like a nomad’s tent
A shadow hiding

-purushottama

This is from the collection of stories, essays, poems and insights that is compiled to form the book From Lemurs to Lamas: Confessions of a Bodhisattva. Order the book Here.

 

Satsang Invocation

May our inner flame illuminate the way

from darkness to light,

from unconsciousness to consciousness,

from becoming to being.

And from the outer body to the inner body to no body,

from the many to the one and beyond.

Om shanti, shanti, shanti.

This post is from a collection of essays, stories, insights and poems that have occurred to me along the Way titled Here to Now and Behind.

Time to Be

Touched by majesty
Bathed in glorious mystery
Surely shaken, perhaps awakened
Worked, played, meditated, celebrated
We knew it was time in magic.

When the moment passed
Some put away the treasure
Knowing that when the time was right
We’d bring it forth and let it shine.

So, we burrowed, and integrated
Hibernated and some emigrated
There were those who propagated
Even a few were castigated
Still the treasure we knew
Lived in us – our life.

Been hiding in the dark lying in wait
Searching for the time of Now.
As time came, always knew it would,
To shine, to share, to be aware.

Need not wait no more
For surely Now – is the time to
Be
Unto ourselves – the Light.

-purushottama

“Be ye lamps unto yourselves,
be a refuge to yourselves.
Hold fast to Truth as a lamp;
hold fast to the Truth as a refuge.
Look not for a refuge in anyone beside yourselves.
And those, who shall be a lamp unto themselves,
shall betake themselves to no external refuge,
but holding fast to the Truth as their lamp,
and holding fast to the Truth as their refuge,
they shall reach the topmost height.”

Buddha’s Farewell Message to Ananda

This is from the collection of stories, essays, poems and insights that is compiled to form the book From Lemurs to Lamas: Confessions of a Bodhisattva. Order the book Here.

 

Who Am I?

My father is the sky in which I breathe
My mother is the Earth on which I walk
I know their son but I am not he.

Then, who am I?

My heart is love
My head insight,
I am both, no, neither.

So, who am I?

When I close my eyes, the whole world disappears
When I open my eyes, I am reborn
I witness all of life.

But who Is this I?

-purushottama

This is from the collection of stories, essays, poems and insights that is compiled to form the book From Lemurs to Lamas: Confessions of a Bodhisattva. Order the book Here.

 

 

Making the Two 1

No-body is Here

No-mind is Now

Aligned

I slips out

in two

the 1

-purushottama

This is from the collection of stories, essays, poems and insights that is compiled to form the book From Lemurs to Lamas: Confessions of a Bodhisattva. Order the book Here.

 

Someone’s Left the Tap On

in the beginning, the words flow like water

someone’s left the tap on

i become aware – the water is running

the flow begins to slow

enamored by the words

the shapes of the letters

the colors of the sounds

noticing space between words

i am drawn back into myself

the space in which all these words appear

and when the last syllable disappears

there is . . .

-purushottama

This is from the collection of stories, essays, poems and insights that is compiled to form the book From Lemurs to Lamas: Confessions of a Bodhisattva. Order the book Here.

 

A Slip of the Tongue

Woke up this morning and found my English slipping

Maybe it’s the result of all those years teaching it

Can’t find the distinction between god and happiness

Are love and meditation two words or one?

Not able to slip a sliver between the Tao and the Logos

Used to be a division between me and you, what happened?

Perhaps we’ll just rest here before the word

-purushottama

This is from the collection of stories, essays, poems and insights that is compiled to form the book From Lemurs to Lamas: Confessions of a Bodhisattva. Order the book Here.

 

Be That!

There is that which is so subtle

and fine to be neither within

nor without or both.

It is no-thing.

Be that

!

–purushottama

This is from the collection of stories, essays, poems and insights that is compiled to form the book From Lemurs to Lamas: Confessions of a Bodhisattva. Order the book Here.

 

Gnothi Seauton (Know Thyself) – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Gnothi Seauton (Know Thyself)
Ralph Waldo Emerson

I

If thou canst bear
Strong meat of simple truth
If thou durst my words compare
With what thou thinkest in my soul’s free youth,
Then take this fact unto thy soul,—–
God dwells in thee.
It is no metaphor nor parable,
It is unknown to thousands, and to thee;
Yet there is God.

II

He is in thy world,
But thy world knows him not.
He is the mighty Heart
From which life’s varied pulses part.
Clouded and shrouded there doth sit
The Infinite
Embosomed in a man;
And thou art stranger to thy guest
And know’st not what thou doth invest.
The clouds that veil his life within
Are thy thick woven webs of sin,
Which his glory struggling through
Darkens to thine evil hue.

III

Then bear thyself, O man!
Up to the scale and compass of thy guest;
Soul of thy soul.
Be great as doth beseem
The ambassador who bears
The royal presence where he goes.

IV

Give up to thy soul—–
Let it have its way—–
It is, I tell thee, God himself,
The selfsame One that rules the Whole,
Tho’ he speaks thro’ thee with a stifled voice,
And looks through thee, shorn of his beams.
But if thou listen to his voice,
If thou obey the royal thought,
It will grow clearer to thine ear,
More glorious to thine eye.
The clouds will burst that veil him now
And thou shalt see the Lord.

V

Therefore be great,
Not proud,—–too great to be proud.
Let not thine eyes rove,
Peep not in corners; let thine eyes
Look straight before thee, as befits
The simplicity of Power.
And in thy closet carry state;
Filled with light, walk therein;
And, as a king
Would do no treason to his own empire,
So do not thou to thine.

VI

This is the reason why thou dost recognize
Things now first revealed,
Because in thee resides
The Spirit that lives in all;
And thou canst learn the laws of nature
Because its author is latent in thy breast.

VII

Therefore, O happy youth,
Happy if thou dost know and love this truth,
Thou art unto thyself a law,
And since the soul of things is in thee,
Thou needest nothing out of thee.
The law, the gospel, and the Providence,
Heaven, Hell, the Judgement, and the stores
Immeasurable of Truth and Good,
All these thou must find
Within thy single mind,
Or never find.

VIII

Thou art the law;
The gospel has no revelation
Of peace and hope until there is response
From the deep chambers of thy mind thereto,—–
The rest is straw.
It can reveal no truth unknown before.
The Providence
Thou art thyself that doth dispense
Wealth to thy work, want to thy sloth,
Glory to goodness, to neglect, the moth.
Thou sow’st the wind, the whirlwind reapest,
Thou payest the wages
Of thy own work, through all ages.
The almighty energy within
Crowneth virtue, curseth sin.
Virtue sees by its own light;
Stumbleth sin in self-made night.

IX

Who approves thee doing right?
God in thee.
Who condemns thee doing wrong?
God in thee.
Who punishes thine evil deed?
God in thee.
What is thine evil meed?
Thy worse mind, with error blind
And more prone to evil
That is, the greater hiding of the God within:
The loss of peace
The terrible displeasure of this inmate
And next the consequence
More faintly as more distant wro’t
Upon our outward fortunes
Which decay with vice
With Virtue rise.

X

The selfsame God
By the same law
Makes the souls of angels glad
And the souls of devils sad
See
There is nothing else but God
Where e’er I look
All things hasten back to him
Light is but his shadow dim.

XI

Shall I ask wealth or power of God, who gave
An image of himself to be my soul?
As well might swilling ocean ask a wave,
Or the starred firmament a dying coal,—–
For that which is in me lives in the whole.

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