NOTHING IS LARGELY MISUNDERSTOOD IN THE WEST
Generally, here the concept is a negative one, it expresses a sense of emptiness, a lack of meaning and purpose, a lethargy; a lack of usefulness.
Generally, mankind loves ideas – concepts, theories and thinking are king. Our developments in society, in industry, in economics has all come from a sense that we get things done, we improve, we move forward, we discover meaning and purpose in a rationalistic manner. We identify those who do little or nothing as lazy, unconscious and unworthy.
This search for meaning is to a degree a running away or reaction against a feeling within of nothingness. Nothing is associated with depression, meaningless and devoid of any usefulness. When and if we look within ourselves, our mind identifies any sense of nothing as a deeply negative thing. It is dark, empty and dangerous. We are afraid not just of the dark outside in the woods, or in a dark cave, but the deep, dark sea as well. Nature itself reflects a sense of nothing, and I’ve suffered from these fears myself and I know I’m not alone in manifesting such fears.
Because our culture, religion and our peers fear a sense of nothing, so I was inculcated in the same way. As a child I had no reflection of nothingness as a positive or good thing. I was conditioned to fear it and so I followed the crowd like we all generally do.
So what is the reality beyond this negative aspect of nothing and where can we seek a better or more positive understanding of it?
THE CONCEPT OF NOTHING FROM THE EAST
A starting point is a degree of self-reflection or enquiry within. In the East the practice of meditation was their way of exploring this subject. For whatever reason the cultures of the East were drawn to look within whilst the West was generally drawn to look without, out into the world for purpose and meaning.
As we look within, in the first place we find that we are plagued by a constant inner dialogue of the mind. The mind seemingly never stops talking, running around in circles. It worries about the past or the future incessantly and can manifest a deep anxiety within ourselves. Meditating came about as a means of exploring the mind and as an attempt to find something else within, that might provide a sense of peace. And it can work to a degree. It is the beginning of a journey to explore why and how we think incessantly and to discover, even momentarily, where we might stop thinking, where we descend into something else.
The something else is an absence of chatter, a sense that nothing is really going on. In many practices of meditation it is described as “being present” or in the “here and now”. The discovery of this place is a wonderful first step to the realisation or deeper acknowledgment of Nothing itself. As we remove ourselves from the thinking mind we appear more present, and more at peace.
However, the seeking for a greater sense of peace through meditation doesn’t really work in any permanent way. Many a time, we come out of meditation feeling at peace and in the next second we are distracted or affected by some negativity and we feel as angry, disturbed and irritated as we were before the meditation. It’s a common experience and one that is largely ignored or one that confuses those who have meditated. Why can’t the feeling of peace be transferred to our daily lives? Why does meditation only work to a degree?
I suggest that the practice ignores the deeper acknowledging that Nothing is nothing. It’s always an absence of feeling, not a feeling of peace or tranquility that may have happened during meditation. We never fully enter a state of nothingness, we only ever see the effects of nothing. We can’t see it, because it is by its nature unknowable and unseeable.
In the East there are many traditions which try to express this understanding; Buddhism and in particular Zen Buddhism provided some insight into this but it’s often been misunderstood further by those in the West. The constant emphasis on meditation and the search for the “present “ or the “Now” becomes fruitless and endless. Whenever we think or feel we are in the Now, so we have left it behind. The present can’t be caught or seen, or felt, because the moment we feel it it’s the past.
So it is with Nothing, the moment we feel we are in nothing, it’s gone. Indeed it was never truly there in the first place. It’s a truly mysterious phenomenon to acknowledge that we never really touch or know this Nothing place and yet we can if we are sensitive recognise its effects in our daily lives. A deep recognition of this nothing place is in other words transcendental in nature. It removes, if only temporarily the common nature of reality.
But for a moment let’s return to the problem of nothing. As I mentioned earlier we all suffer from a sense of anxiety and even dread of nothing. We intuitively seem to recognise the effects of nothing on our lives as a sense of emptiness and meaninglessness. Beneath the facade of existence, underneath the common idea that we exist for a purpose, even some higher purpose indeed, is a sense that there isn’t really a purpose at all.
As a result so religions were born. We sought the safety of religion or politics or any other belief system to give us meaning, precisely because in our darkest thoughts we felt there is no meaning. For thousands of years humanity has struggled with this sense of meaninglessness and found no real solution. Collectively and personally we fear death itself as the final expression that our lives have had no real meaning or purpose. When we consider that a hundred years after our death no one will be here to remember us in any personal way, so we fear the fact that death itself is another expression of nothingness. Nothing really matters, we waste away and death conquers all.
This dread, this fear is all a consequence or effect of our fear of nothingness. It’s not nothing itself. It’s a real fear and one that has to be acknowledged and understood but we can to a large degree mitigate this fear differently and in a new way.
SELF-EXAMINATION AND MEDITATION
As I indicated earlier, meditation largely began in the East and has now been explored for some years and to some degree in the West. However, here it’s become a focus for a search for peace within but often has ignored the need for deep self-enquiry. It has become a mechanism to escape from reality rather than a means to provide a solution to the nature of our thinking minds.
Our search for meaning has led to the discovery of science and industry, largely through rational thinking. We have made great progress in medicine, in agriculture, we have easier lives than our ancestors, our desire for the new has led us to discover new lands, etc. but we haven’t made great progress in understanding the core problems of humanity.
There is an epidemic of loneliness, of isolation, relationships have broken down, we are obsessed with sex, with pleasure, with keeping pain of all types at bay. The problems of the world seem insurmountable, the wars and famines seem endless and our search for meaning has led us to be deeply confused as to our personal and collective purpose.
The need for profound self-examination is self-evident. This is the process where we examine our thoughts, ideas, our purpose and our identity in a new way. First of all, it’s the exploration of all our belief systems, beliefs that we may hold so close amd dear that we hardly know or recognise that they are imposed upon us through generational copying or conditioning. To do this we have to be very honest about these ideas and beliefs, we have to express and explore them in our relationships to others. We have to explore them intimately and vulnerably together, man to man and man to woman.
It’s a highly charged phenomenon to do so. It involves sharing our loves and our fears within ourselves personally and collectively. It allows us to take steps to see ourselves with a new reality, and to recognise that most ideas are borrowed and stolen, or forced upon us by our parents and peers. It allows us to see how, for example, the media is a tool in which the most prevalent mores of our society are fed to us day by day, repeatedly, to the extent that we are so bombarded that we follow them robotically
But it’s not just media or politicians that do this, our parents and our peers inform us of what is right and wrong, and it takes enormous effort and courage to think for ourselves. As an example, I felt unworthy and unloved as a child, I was taught to consider others before myself, to surrender my own personal experience to that of others. As a consequence I created an identity, a mask in order to survive, I was not true to my feelings of isolation. I struggled with feeling self-worth, like many others.
These core identities are manifested widely in almost everyone to one degree or another. Even children loved and cherished have felt isolated and uncertain, all of us suffer in deep and profound ways that are largely unexplored and unexamined. This honest self-examination is beginning to rise but the solutions are largely still a mystery to most of us.
In many ways you can say we are robots, infected by a virus of negative thinking, fed to us by our wider society. Our sense of isolation is existential in its nature. We all suffer from it, even if we don’t know it. It plagues us both personally and collectively. Random acts of violence and terrorism are an expression of this virus. Domestic violence in the family is a further expression of its nature. Wars a further expression of this. As one country fights another it uses its so-called identity to vilify others. Nationalism is self-identity in a collective sense but its roots are a personal identification with a set of ideas, mores and beliefs.
Behind it all lies a personal lack of understanding as to who and what we are and an unconscious motivation to feel strong and safe in an insecure world. The insecurity lies within each of us, fed by our peers and their lack of understanding as to the core issue.
The core is our own real lack of self-identity. As much as we take on beliefs and ideas from others, so at our deepest we feel insecure and vulnerable. Even the idea of love is failing us. As much as Love is a great healing idea, so the reality of love has failed. As much as we reiterate how love provides the answer, so as we look out, we see failing relationships, divorce, domestic violence, child abuse.
Yet we continue to parrot the notion that love is the answer. And yet we fail to truly know or understand what Love is. There is love of country, love of family, love our pets, love of our children, all differing notions that don’t truly inform us of what it actually is.
Love has become a viral idea that is no different to the virus of negativity fed to us by the same parents and peers.
THE VALUE OF CONFRONTATION
In relationships between man and woman in particular, the breakdown of self-identity and the value of self-enquiry can be at best deeply productive and effective. As opposites man and woman come from different angles and views.
As we explore our relationship and our sense of self, so conflict often arises. Such confrontations cause confusion and anger but they also provide an opportunity for personal resolution about nothing. When we confront each other so there are moments when a deep impasse or breakdown occurs. When handled positively these challenges allow for one side or another to feel deeply alone, isolated and misunderstood. Such moments may lead to divorce and separation but they can also lead to moments when the impasse is so great that one or the other descends into a deep sadness, to tears and to a sense of meaninglessness.
If this is carried through with sensitivity it leads to a discovery that all the trying to get it right has failed. It may lead to a realisation that the isolation and loneliness felt can be transcended and a deep relief may be found.
This process is a confrontation with the deep beliefs we have about love, about how the other should be looking out for us, or how we are so dependent on our partner. This realisation, whilst difficult to handle to the mind, can take us to a place beyond our feelings. It can feel deathly, unknown, yet it can also make us feel spacious.
This is the death of our mind and yet also the birth of an awakening to the power of nothing. If all has failed, we are left with nothing, yet within this sense is a new power, a new possibility, a new sense of inner responsibility. This is a reflection or acknowledgement of nothing itself. As we feel at the bottom, so we are in some sense reborn out of nothing. Whatever the confrontation may have been about has dissolved into a nothingness.
A SOLUTION TO EXPLORE THE VALUE OF NOTHING
Whilst self-examination is a means to the discovery behind the mind and to the value of nothing, there are also simple ways in which we can identify nothing in any moment.
Men seem to find this more difficult than women because men are more rational than women. Men like to think, they have found the rational solutions to the world’s problems and deserve credit for doing so. But as a consequence of thinking they sometimes lack the intuition of women.
NOTHING IS EVERYWHERE AND NOWHERE
Children live more in the moment, their rational minds have yet to develop and as a result they are more in touch with nothing. They can play for hours, many love the solitude of their own lack of identity, playing with the simplest toys, or just muttering to themselves. They are closer to a feeling that nothing is going on, or closer to nothing. In other words they express an absence of thought. Adults often love this simplicity about children and babies or in animals because they reflect a simpler state of mind, and more nothingness
In the same way many women are closer to nothing. They take pleasure in simple things, they can sit quietly, staring at the sky or the sea without the need to talk or think. In this way they are expressing or reflecting nothing going on, or Nothing.
Women tend to be the givers, tending to children, to their friends and partners simply and without thinking. This is another expression of nothing going on.
Men generally find the absence of something to do to be more difficult. Of course this, like the statements about women and even children are a generality and we always find examples where the opposite is also true. Men, however, are generally more forward, more out there, more competitive, more given to do rather than do nothing. We are defined as the hunters of old, often leaving home to find food and to seek pastures new. This outward projection makes the discovery of nothing more problematic.
However, we, like women, can also discover the effects of nothing. As I mentioned before, the degree to which men apply themselves to a self-enquiry about their nature will provide them with the deeper recognition that behind all their worrying, behind all their doing they too can discover nothingness.
However, men can apply themselves to the acknowledgment of nothing in any moment. If we stop for a second and allow our thoughts to drift away we can sense nothing is going on within and without. As a bird flies in the sky we can stop to watch, as we sit at a traffic light we can let go of thinking and just stare. If we ponder a moment on the miracle of existence, of how we are breathing without thought, our hearts are beating without thought, so we touch on a reflection that behind it all nothing is going on.
The more we develop and make conscious that life is mysterious, unfathomable, the more we can see that behind it all there is nothing going on.
And Osho had something to say about this…
“The deeper you go, the more you find yourself empty. Ultimately you find yourself just a zero, and that is the point of enlightenment.”
Thanks to Simon D for writing one of the best articles published on SN. I began reading it last night and returned to it this morning and read the whole thing through. I can’t fault it. The article is well written, well thought out and pretty much true and to the point.
That said, I don’t agree with everything that is written, although I do agree with most of it. If I get around to revising the second Sannyas News book I would like to use this as a final chapter. Such writing deserves any possible opening to a wider readership.
Nothingness. The Beatles sang about it: “Lay down all thought, surrender to the void.”
Buddhist masters put it on the map. Sunyata, in Buddhist philosophy, the voidness that constitutes ultimate reality.
Osho spoke about it: “Nothingness is the fragrance of the beyond. It is the opening of the heart to the transcendental. It is the unfoldment of the one-thousand-petalled lotus. It is man’s destiny.”
So where does that leave us? Destined to travel the road to nowhere? What to do? Celebrate it? Well, at least nothingness will do away with all these questions.
Lokesh wrote, “where does that leave us?”
Osho’s superlatives on Nothingness being ‘man’s destiny’ are rather poetic and may or may not be Truth. My path has not yet carried me far enough to have my own opinion about that. What I do know is that people’s destinies after this life are many and varied, and if you are lucky you will have a choice… which is of course a mixed blessing, because a foolish choice will result in a foolish next life.
In the meantime the best we can do is celebrate this life and live it wisely. Realising the issues around nothingness is a good step toward a deeper understanding, which is why I am interested in what Satchit will have to say about the article…
That said, I don’t agree with everything that is written, although I do agree with most of it. mMe too, I agree with Lokesh on this.
Being in a female body & born in this part of the hemisphere, I would like to share, even if rarely there seems to be darkness, I think & feel that there is no real darkness, I have many a time experimented walking in the dark & have not really missed anything – probably nothing is worth missing!
Guess the Sun is always shining bright & the Moon is always full!
Would be nice to know, if possible, what is it that Lokesh disagrees with.
Thanks, Lokesh, for your generous feedback.
It’s quite a long and in-depth article, and so I took a couple of days to read it with the care it deserves. There has been a lot going on in my life, so time had to be found in the gaps, but this morning I did finish it.
I thought it was interesting how the consideration of nothingness led you to thoughts of meaning, and the relationship between men and women. These topics are related, because when you think about it, it is the fear of nothingness which sets the search for meaning in motion, and many people find meaning in the relationship with their partner.
Osho and other spiritual masters say that Nothingness is not something to be feared, that it is instead a beautiful experience. Whether that experiencing of nothingness is available to most people, I think probably not.
On the whole, a very good piece, a deep exploration of the ideas around nothingness. It gets a little scattered towards the end, with a lot of paragraphs each around a single point, but ending on an Osho quote is not bad strategy.
Interesting analysis, Simon, for the mind. But I feel something is missing.
It is the core message of all the Masters, of Jesus, of Osho: “My burden is light.”
Talking about nothingness makes things heavy, creates burden – my impression.
So I prefer other words instead of nothingness. Other words that mean the same but are positive or neutral like Tao, or even Divinity.
Well, taking sugar with the sometimes rather bitter pill of Truth suits some people, Satchit (lol).
Although I suggest ‘Tao’ is too eastern a term to be readily understood by us westerners (although many will think they do) and even “Divinity” tends to be charged with certain pre-existing concepts we’ve learned from Christianity and is therefore not totally satisfactory (imho).
But I can’t think of any other suitable terms for what’s essentially indescribable, except Emptiness and The Void, both commonly enough used in spiritual terminology. And the dictionary’s synonyms for ‘Nothingness’ tend to equate that state with Death – and that’s ‘not very nice at all’, is it? Here they are (if you can bear to read them):
oblivion
non-existence
non-being
non-life
nullity
blankness
void
vacuum
nihility
Is there a German word that you think fits better?
SD, Emptiness or Void is also an eastern term and belongs to the Buddhist conditioning (Shunyata).
So the question arises, why should I replace the Christian conditioning with another conditioning? Does not make sense to me.
We can choose how we name the mystery.
Even God is possible, if we are free.
Yes, you’re right, Satchit, Emptiness and Void are eastern terms.
But you’ve also suggested Tao, itself a thoroughly eastern term.
Hi Satchit,
I too spent many years ignoring the word ‘Nothing’.
This was because I was afraid of it. It appeared to refer to an emptiness that I feared.
It doesn’t surprise you prefer other words like Tao or Dharma – these words are full of mystique – as a result they are abstract, fanciful – full of eastern promise.
The void is dark, dangerous to the mind – strips away fancy ideas – but it is the source behind everything.
I’d suggest you examine the word and the fear you feel about a word that Osho used and loved
Eckhart Tolle suggested ‘spaciousness’ rather than ‘nothingness’, I thought it was an interesting take.
Yes, that’s a very good one.
I’d say his use of ‘spaciousness’ also suggests that he too is afraid to use the word ‘nothingness’.
Spaciousness implies a subtle feeling which is not the same is nothing. These sort of teachers pander to the desires of their audience, which largely don’t want to look into nothing. Nothing cannot be felt or seen, we only see its reflection.
Nothing is the absence of all feeling and sensation.
The very darkness of space is another reflection of nothing, but even the space outside us contains some matter. I sense that nothing or the void are terms we generally avoid simply because they reflect our mind’s deepest fear.
In the same way “death” is a term that reflects our deepest fear. Death suggests oblivion of the mind – and all that goes with the loss of the rational, materialistic Mind.
His reasoning was not based on fear, it had more to do with conveying the impression of the void as something in which everything else exists. If he had said ‘space’ that would be wrong, but ‘spaciousness’ is about the impression it conveys, a subtle distinction.
How do you know what his reasoning is ? You presume, you project, you infer – that’s lazy thinking.
Dangerous ground to think you know.
He explained it in the talk I saw, pretty sure it was on YouTube.
How do you know what his reasoning is? You presume, you project, you infer – that’s lazy thinking
Dangerous ground to think you know.
Hi Simon,
Have you experienced the Void already or do you have fear from the sound of the word?
Why should I have fear from the Void?
Why should the wave fear the ocean?
On another topic, I just read this old 2013 piece of Lokesh’s:
OSHO: THE CONTRADICTORY MAN, THE MYTH, HIS LEGACY, HIS SANNYASINS AND SANNYAS NEWS
http://sannyasnews.org/now/archives/3278
And it put me in mind to write a few things down…
There was a lot in that piece which I agree with, especially that if you look at Osho’s actions he doesn’t always hold himself to the same guidelines as his sannyasins. I thought it was well-written, to the point and clear.
It is also the perspective of Osho from a mature person’s mind, who has taken the trouble to summarise his thoughts on a complex relationship and that is something that deserves respect. Osho comes out as very human and very talented, both.
Oh, thanks for that, NP.
Well, Osho was human, but I would say he was more skilled than talented.
Hmmm. Skill can be acquired, but I’m not sure that we will ever see another being with his intellectual capacity and let’s call it ‘charisma’, though. I don’t think his selection of capabilities was ordinary enough to be called skill.
My experience of the presence of Osho while listening to discourses is that he still exists in some way, that he can still be encountered. Maybe his plan of dissolving into the universe didn’t quite work out. But that’s just my impression.
NP, this response relates to you writing ‘very talented’ in relation to Osho. Nothing else.
I think it is accurate to say that Osho learned his oratory skills by giving lectures at university and debating with people as he travelled around India. He may have had a talent for that, but it was through practice that he developed the skill.
I think any sannyasin who has spent significant time with Osho or in the communes will have opinions on that, and many of them will be worth reading as a record of those days. I recently came across Parmartha’s piece on Osho’s few directives for his sannyasins, with all the discussion on Osho’s attempts to allow sannyas to quietly go underground. A fascinating piece of sannyas history.
Similarly, Lokesh’s words about how different the guru-disciple relationship was when one could still have personal access to Osho during the early years of Poona 1 struck a bell with me. My earliest memories of the Poona ashram were from 1979, and even then that was from a seven year old kid’s perspective, so I didn’t quite get to live that.
Yet although I find these pieces on SN fascinating, it is more from a desire to frame accurately parts of my personal history than from any idea of revisiting those days. I find myself not very interested in meeting up with new guru types in person.
Good afternoon, fellow sannyasins,
I was considering the effect Osho discourses have on my mind. In a way I don’t spend much time on the content of the words, I listen to them and then I let them go like birds on the wing. I just enjoy the ebb and flow of his speaking.
It’s interesting because apart from a few areas where he talks very little sense you can listen uncritically to Osho and gently consider. There was one discourse where Osho was asked for his thoughts on “the history of the future” where his prognostication went so spectacularly off-target, that I just had to skip it. There are a few areas like that.
But this I enjoyed this afternoon, it had a resonance…
“The art of life begins with meditation. And by meditation I mean silence of the mind, silence of the heart, reaching to the very centre of your being and finding the treasure that is your reality. Once you have known it, you can radiate love, you can radiate life, you can radiate creativity. Your words will become poetic, your gestures will have grace; even your silence will have a song to it. Even if you are sitting unmoving, you will be in a dance. Each breath coming in, going out, will be a joy, each heartbeat so precious because it is the heartbeat of the universe itself – you are part of it.”
(Osho, ‘The Razor’s Edge’ #23)
“The history of the future” sounds a bit contradictory, seeing as how history is the study of past events.
Predicting the future was never one of Osho’s strong points. If he had a crystal ball, it was murky.
His crystal ball certainly was murky. The thing is, the future just carries on. If you look at the news you might think that climate change is going to be some huge disaster like in the film ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ but in fact it’s very likely to just be some flooding around the coastlines, less stable summers and warmer winters, and some crop failures.
But most of the things people worried about in the 1980s did not come to pass.
I can’t agree with that, NP. Here is an excerpt from my first book, ‘Mind Bomb’:
“If the nuclear bombs don’t get us,” continued Angus, “then the destruction of our environment certainly will. Countries like India will be the first to go down the tubes. Too many people. Not enough water. Planting a few million trees won’t do the trick. That’s just like putting a Band-Aid on a compound fracture. The deforestation of the Amazon Rainforest is hitting eight thousand square kilometres a year. In ten years, that’s an area the size of Scotland. That’s insane. Care of our planet’s ecosystem is not an optional extra, some kind of harmless weekend hobby for utopians, but the central task of our age. We must address and control this issue before the balance tips, if it hasn’t already, and a rapid descent into hothouse hell begins.
“Many scientists believe that the sixth extinction has already begun. The human race approaching the finishing line with its blistered tongue hanging out. Only a colossal transformation of our economies and societies can save us from accelerating climate disasters. The Four Riders of the Apocalypse have been signing on at the dole ever since human beings hijacked their jobs and began pumping billions of tons of toxic gas into the atmosphere, not to mention the trillions of litres of pollutants we release into the world’s sewage systems, turning them into underground breeding grounds where new viral and bacteriological infections form and then seep out to plague humanity.
“God knows what our grandchildren will have to say when they reach our age and realise what a diabolical mess we left them as an inheritance. That is if they are permitted to speak. The way things are going, freedom of speech will soon no longer be free.”
Yes, there is gradual deterioration of natural systems, like the insects and wild areas and oceans. But at the same time we are understanding better how to do farming, how to manage the land that is under cultivation.
It’s easy to talk the doom talk, but that’s not all that’s going on. The world may end up being full of just a few species, cows and sheep and chickens and humans, in a farmed arrangement. But that doesn’t mean it will experience some existential disaster.
Well, NP, if you live another 20 years you will see that the deterioration of natural systems that is taking place right now is not gradual but shockingly rapid.
Some days, I sit on the seashore looking over the Mediterranean and wonder how humans managed to damage such a gigantic body of water. I am no prophet of doom, but I am also not someone who can ignore what is taking place on the planet today in an environmental context. Of course, it is not the planet that needs saving; it is the delicate ecosystem we are wholly reliant on for our human existence.
But why do you think this will be such a problem? If you look at what we eat, a very large amount of it is cultivated and not part of the deteriorating wild ecosystem. Some things will get more expensive: wild game, pollinated fruits, etc.
I know this is the accepted wisdom of papers like The Guardian, but I’m not so sure it is what will actually happen. We will have to see, I think.
And I just read this 2014 piece by Lokesh:
Osho and Mr G
http://sannyasnews.org/now/archives/3669
I’m finding a lot of appreciation for Lokesh’s longer articles written for SN in the past, there is some good stuff there in the back catalogue for those of us who haven’t been visiting the site for that long.
In this article Lokesh goes into Gurdjieff’s legacy and what he got out of the ‘Psychological Commentaries on Gurdjieff and Ouspensky’ by Maurice Nicholl. He also talks about the connections between Gurdjieff’s teachings and what Osho taught, which is fertile ground.
Of course this could be the subject of a scholarly work, rather than an essay of limited length on SannyasNews, but really interesting to see that someone has gone to the trouble of making the connections.
Nomen est omen.
SD gone into Nothingness?
Simon, this is undoubtedly the best article on SN!
When handled positively these challenges allow for one side or another to feel deeply alone, isolated and misunderstood – no. not really for everyone.
Sharing through experience, this can be helpful for the partner & as well as ex– partners (if they have been in contact) to have, finally, their own independent journey, as they earlier had been interdependent in this journey.
You practically, literally & humanly – (expessibly – if such a word could exist) covered all ultimately possible aspects of evolution (if evolution exists) from the human-thought to no-thought!
Guess conditioning is the only thing which divides humans.
A mind is a mind is a mind & likewise a no-mind is a no-mind is a no-mind!
Many thanks for your thoughtful reply, Kavita. I feel you express your insights very well into what I was trying to say. It’s a complex subject and one I was inspired to explore so thanks again for the positive feedback.
In my experiance, for me ‘Nothingness/No Mind’ is like an orgasm, it’s not a permanent state! Maybe if someone claims it is, good for them, I would respect that but I don’t have a goal to reach there!
I’ve been reading some more of SannyasNews back catalogue of articles and comments. Highlights of this morning include Lokesh’s piece on the difference between a sannyasin and an ex-sannyasin, various pieces on the goings-on with the running of OIF’s Swiss Foundation, a perspective on dynamic meditation’s effect on the brain, and much else besides. I missed out on a lot of stuff by not reading SN over the years, I see.
I think it’s a shame a lot of those letters don’t come to SN anymore, they made for an interesting and varied landscape of news and discussion which kept people interested. But I think with the passing of influential editors like Parmartha it only makes sense there is a change in news sources too.
Certainly a lot of the articles I have written have not so much been news as retrospectives on aspects of Sannyas and Osho. I am not a reporter and don’t have much reach in the sannyas community. I just like to write about what adds depth to my life and experience, here and on a couple of Buddhist forums.
To return to the article’s theme of ‘nothingness’, if I look at what it means to me it is just that, a blankness. It is a mystery because nothing much can be said about it that is not peripheral — that is, to do with our reactions to the idea or the experience of nothingness. The blankness itself cannot be said to have colour, scent or any other property, indeed it can be defined as the absence of any defining property.
Often we internally are confronted by a space in which small things can be seen in the distance, it might have a colour or an uneven texture, and we might because of its vastness be tempted to label it ‘the Void’ because of other encounters with media where artists have visualised this thing. But this is just the lazy mind associating words and pictures and ideas.
If you really get around to examining it, you will find the void is just a blankness, a nothingness. It is quite simple, quite comfortable — nothing to fear here or get anxious about, once you get to grips with it.
“If you really get around to examining it, you will find the void is just a blankness, a nothingness. It is quite simple, quite comfortable — nothing to fear here or get anxious about, once you get to grips with it.”
In my experience, thinking about nothingness creates only a headache. And whatever you come to think is always something, never nothing.
That is not right, Satchit. If you imagine blankness, the state of there being no definable properties to perceive, you arrive at a place where the senses have nothing to grasp, nothing to perceive, which means the mind has nothing to react to…everything falls into silence and doing-nothing.
It is perfectly possible to imagine this, and to get a little taste of how blankness (‘void’) shocks the mind of the unprepared. If you, Satchit, were to experience that state of blankness, your mind would probably rebel and grasp at things from memory, sending you into distant dreams. Alternatively, you may find freedom and bliss.
Imagining blankness, NP?
Yes, one can imagine many things, even emptiness, but at the end an imagination is mind-created and it is not the reality.
Certainly sometimes a little satori is possible and happening, if one is lucky.
And then one can call this Void or Oneness or whatever.
Well, the imagination is an interesting thing. If you can distinguish between seeing with the mind’s eye and imagining things then you are already doing well. I have found there is a certain quality to what you see with the mind’s eye, a realness…
Think of all the dreams you can remember, which were the most real, the clearest. Those were probably more than just dreams.
Anyway, Satchit, I wish you a good day, just for fun. Namasté!
So in the old SannyasNews articles there is some talk about whether the Pune ashram should be a religious-themed place, with Osho’s Samadhi and many pictures of the Old Boy (as Yatri used to call him), or whether it should be a commercial enterprise and purely a meditation resort.
Personally, I think it should be a spiritual location where people can connect to Osho. It could be both, but there should be spaces there reserved for remembering Osho. I know Osho himself probably wouldn’t care a hoot, considering he was going to dissolve into the universe on his death. And as I am unlikely to visit again I don’t really have strong opinions about this.
But I do think they should professionalise the website, the Osho Library on Osho.com is so slow it’s a disgrace, it doesn’t remember where you were when you log in and so on. It’s creaking at the seams and needs a good sprucing up.
I was just visiting the website of Neelam’s meditation place, Osho Nisarga in Dharamsala. Seems like a nice location also, although I see they now do mindfulness as well as Osho meditations and groups. Next to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Buddhists that is probably wise.
I just came across an old SN article by Krishna Prem, in which he talks about how many of his old sannyas friends had “gone back to the marketplace” while he had his relationship with Jwala, ‘fire’, who after 17 years left him for a younger version of himself. It put me in a contemplative mood.
It seems to me that for many men it is “women or work” to fill the emptiness they feel in ordinary life. For me it was always following an enthusiasm, a joy in doing what I did. There was never a ‘need’ to do things, or an attempt to fill up some imagined hole. With as a result that I often got caught up in the doing of things.
But I think it is interesting to hear about the lives of so-called meditation teachers, after all if you do that for a living you are putting yourself out there as ‘spiritually experienced’ and almost a guru. Does that mean that your life still moves in an ordinary way? Or have you suddenly become a fount of wisdom and does everyone want a piece of you?
Good morning, my dear friends… a nugget for contemplation today:
Does a devotion to Osho bring you bliss? I know some here think ‘devotion’ is a dirty word, but consider, his hypnotic voice, his many anecdotes, his silent namaste. He wasn’t into self-inquiry, or exploring the mind, or into austerities.
In a way, a photo of Osho is all you need. The whole history of the man and all he said and the commune and the ashram just gets in the way. It’s a heart connection, his glance reminds you, and the rest is stories, not to be taken seriously.
I have the same with Ramana Maharshi, I keep one photo of him, and just the look in his eyes connects me to him. He has a presence, a gentle alertness, where Osho is more fire.
The world is not serious, it is play. I think it was Nisargadatta who said in ‘I Am That’ that there was no cause and effect, that unless the whole universe was just so, you would not be as you were or where you were. That gives me comfort, that the world is exactly as it should be.
We are not here to judge.
You can also ask:
Does devotion to Jesus bring you bliss?
https://youtu.be/olQrCfkvbGw?si=xVgaAJxWqeCn0Ug7
Your forbearance is appreciated, Satchit. But not-judging is an interesting mode of mind…on the one hand, it promotes an inner flowering, a beauty, and on the other hand, we can’t seem to help it. And also, totally not-judging would make you mostly non-functional as a human being.
So perhaps it is better to try to not judge unnecessarily, to achieve a spirit of patience and equanimity as often as is possible, and only to formulate a judgment when you need to. When someone asks you what is your favourite kind of coffee, some discrimination is necessary, and you have to judge a number of things in comparison to each other.
I just came across the story of the old man and the horses in the back pages of SN (http://sannyasnews.org/now/archives/5301) and that is a classic example where delaying judgment proves wise.
In a way, judgment makes you see a world full of fools when perhaps it is not necessary. My way is to look at the path of spirit, but I think that everyone has a right to chart their own path to joy.
Non-judging includes also non-judging the judging.
So the world is exactly as it should be.
‘ Morning fellow-sannyasins,
Today I have been revisiting some thoughts I had around my stepfather’s (Swami Anand Yatri’s) death. Now that about six months have passed, I found my feelings becoming more approachable and clearer. I was no longer in the shut-down mode of grief, but my thoughts were turning towards memories of the many good times we had shared together.
I had known him for nearly 40 years, from teenager to middle age. When I was young, we shared a love of science fiction books, we played Dungeons and Dragons together, I introduced him to computer games. When I got older and had a working life, we shared Christmasses at his and my mother’s home, with many presents under the tree. I once imported a pair of books of his favourite author Gene Wolfe from the US for his birthday, which hadn’t been released yet in the UK and so had escaped his notice…his look of surprise and delight still lives with me…they were good times.
So it made me think about a sannyas approach to grief. Saying goodbye to loved ones is not easy, and in a way the period of deep contemplation that follows is good for the heart. It is like the clearing of the mind and the emotions that follows tears and crying and laughter. Sharing these good memories, and sharing what he meant to me, are like an offering on the inner altar of love that I carry.
I think it is partly about celebration. Celebration doesn’t have to be purely dancing and lightheartedness, it can also be the more serious stories of life deeply lived that we get to share around a campfire on a summer’s evening with friends.
Good morning, all…I have been trying the small death meditation from the OshoNews article (https://www.oshonews.com/2024/09/06/death-meditation/) and it has been doing me good, I feel refreshed!
I was reading in the old comments from 2015 where Lokesh was talking about “the Osho trip”, that a lot of old sannyasins still had a lot of their thinking determined by Osho. Lokesh of course had thrown this off, but was still connected to the “vibe of positivity and creativity that had existed around Osho.”
But Lokesh, if Osho was right, and the old religions were religions of negativity and anti-life, then what is the difference? I find a bit of Osho discourse sometimes helps lighten my mood when I’ve somehow slipped away from “the vibe”. Does that mean that I’m still on an “Osho trip”? Help me, Lokesh, I’m adrift in the sea of words…well, alright, that was a joke.
Here’s a real joke from Osho’s back catalogue:
“The curator of an art gallery asked an artist for a painting depicting General Custer’s last thoughts.
Two weeks later, the artist unveiled the painting, an enormous canvas with a lovely blue lake painted in its centre, with a fish leaping from the water with a shining halo around its head. On the shores of the lake were the most detailed pictures of Indians shagging.
After gaping at the painting for some time, the enraged curator demanded to know what the theme was supposed to be.
The artist said, “You asked for a painting of Custer’s last thoughts,” he explained. “That’s it. Custer was thinking, “Holy mackerel, where did all those fucking Indians come from?” “
In reading the old articles and comments on SN I came across some excerpts from Sam’s ‘Life of Osho’ which encouraged me to go read the whole book. I found it thought-provoking.
The whole idea of Osho intentionally breaking down his own image by changing his style, going for flashy robes, watches and cars, encouraging Sheela to be ‘more obnoxious’ – as it were, becoming a guru parody -that sounded a bell of truth for me. He did it on purpose, and it was all about tearing down the image of the Bhagwan. He was too intelligent not to see the consequences.
It’s as if the Rajneesh who had given energy darshans in small groups, who appeared in a plain white robe with a towel draped over one arm, that man vanished even before going to America. All kinds of devices, first in one style in India and then in another in America.
I found Sam’s lines in the book, that he was trying to get to grips with who Osho had been, very key. I think every sannyasin is trying to do that in his or her own way. Is it really relevant to understand Osho? Is it not enough to just see that he brought freedom, laughter, joy, and his own style of meditation?
“Is it really relevant to understand Osho?”
Understanding Osho? Is it not all speculation?
Maybe one has to give up the desire to understand Osho.
In some ways we have a right to inquire into who Osho was. If he truly was not there anymore as he says when talking about relationships. If, as Lokesh is fond of saying, you judge the man by his actions, then something profound must have happened to him around 1980.
The style of the jokes changed, from fairly refined to racist and just plain filthy… then he went into silence and in America started watching videos. He started doing all these weird things. To me it sounds like he is doing it on purpose, for some grand design.
At some point I’m going to have to listen to the lectures from ‘The Last Testament’ where he talks to the world press. In a way that is Osho’s encounter with Western society, the latest word in East meets West dialogues.
It is nothing new that Lokesh is good in judging others.
For me there are two possibilities:
Either he is doing these weird things because he has lost his “enlightenment” or he is doing it to get rid of disciples who know better what’s right and wrong.
One should not forget that the Master-disciple thing is not the end, but a passage.
The Ranch too was just a house built on a bridge, nothing eternal.
Hmm…When I look at things like ‘Life of Osho’s long talk on the sutras and the journey to the Beyond that Osho was trying to make available to us, with its seven supposed stages, I am reminded of what Poonjaji said, that no true teacher would increase the number of burdens on you, instead he would take all burdens away.
That to me sounds more true, the way as described by the Tao is one of letting things go. The more you hold on to things like expectations of a path or stages, the more you create a prison for yourself. You start believing enlightenment is only ‘ok’ if it comes in exactly this shape.
That should of course have been “long talk on the chakras”…
But in any case, there is this contrast between “just loving Osho” as a way into sannyas, and “analysing what Osho says and does” like Sam does in ‘The Life of Osho’. In a way I find that the analysing gets in the way of just loving.
The whole idea of analysing also seems to include a measure of judgment, of finding some things ok and other things not. It’s certainly a very thought provoking book, and it makes you decide where you stand in all this.
Personally I am not a debater, I don’t pretend to have deep psychological insight. But one thing that does still bother me is the idea of Osho as someone who is constantly manipulating. In Poona 1 he was more the teacher, while when he went into silence he became someone else.
We eat, excrete, sleep, and get up;
This is our world.
All we have to do after that
Is to die.
(Ikkyu)
What about work, relating with others, bringing up children, doing what we enjoy, facing challenges, etc?
When did Ikkyu live, hundreds of years ago, far from the world, eg as a monk?
Quotes by Nityaprem:
“But one thing that does still bother me is the idea of Osho as someone who is constantly manipulating…”
This belief of yours does not exclude that someone has constantly tried to manipulate the rarity of a such human and social experience based on sincere love.
If the reason for this belief of yours is based on a deep connection with the old guy, shared by millions of disciples, it should not represent an unbearable burden for you to confront this hypothesis, imagining someone who could look with suspicion or aversion at the vision of the new man proposed by Osho, equipped with the tools of Marx+Freud+Buddha, as synthesized by Paritosh/Sam in Life of Osho.
“Poonjaji said, that no true teacher would increase the number of burdens on you, instead he would take all burdens away”
If you are locked in a room in Lucknow maybe for a few hours you can take care of only the weight of your gravity in the half lotus position, on a pillow, and if lucky with your back leaning against the wall, there is no need need of the useless burdens of the world out there.
You can do the same thing in any other room, why take a plane to India?
By the way, what is it that has pushed millions to face the discomforts and risks of a trip to India?
Were these people free from any burden?
In my opinion, a useless burden is such only if the energy and time invested in an activity does not repay us with the satisfaction of an improved condition.
Why run, swim, do dynamic meditation, relive childhood traumas in a therapy group, protest in the street against a genocidal Zionist government, try to throw balloons full of piss at the blond lady from your village, responsible for ordering billions of our money in vaccines or weapons?
Again, in my opinion, a useless burden is such even when we face aspects of reality with the wrong tools, using Marx to treat death anxiety, using Buddha to reveal the econometric aporias of neoliberal doctrine, using Freud to understand the Power of Now.
In a room in Luckow many things seem like useless burdens, including love for thr rest of the world left outside, where Osho’s finger was pointing.
Can you define the spiritual search in terms of what is worthwhile? It seems to me if you feel the need, the thirst, then you should go find a Guru.
The whole idea of using tools to manipulate reality fails in the spiritual dimensions. Especially when the tools are the ideas of men like Marx or Freud. It just leads you deeper and deeper into the mind…you get entangled in chains of cause-and-effect. The world is ultimately simpler, but full of idiot monkeys.
Far from the world? Not really.
Ikkyu is an old friend of mine.
Ever heard of the “Red thread of Zen”?
Feelings of repetition or depression can also happen with work, relating with others, bringing up children, doing what we enjoy.
“Can you define the spiritual search in terms of what is worthwhile? It seems to me if you feel the need, the thirst, then you should go find a Guru”.
I see that NP has not metabolized the simple message of non-duality of any of the many heirs of Poonja: if the master and the disciple are one, the disciple’s thirst vanishes, just do not leave the room in search of worldly pleasures.
Perhaps by using in the right way the tool that helps us to distinguish between cause and effect we could put in the right relationship the disciples who have been thirsty for 50 years and the meetings with idiot monkeys.
Most disciples never get to the point where they notice they and the master are one, and even those who talk about it have often just heard this somewhere — it is not lived experience.
It’s the same with the concept of the Sadhguru (the guru within), most disciples do not have the inner presence to contact or notice it. It is far easier to find a guru in human form.
But as Osho says, even a wrong step towards the divine is good.
What follows I wrote it some time ago, in one go, trying to summarize the emotions/feelings that had settled in me a few days after reading it.
Since it is a topic of a philosophical (ontological) nature, rather than following the analytical coherence of what was written (about something so little objective and objectifiable) I preferred to go back to the meaning of the cultural and existential atmospheres that could have inspired the author (Simond), imagining them (atmospheres) compatible with the rhetorical choice of words and emphasis (or lack thereof) used to describe nothingness (“I founded my philosophy on nothingness” Max Stirner, famous misanthrope/solipsist).
But now (before adding that text) I do not shy away from a comment on the merit of what I read then and reviewed now.
My synthetic judgment (a priori) of the description and hypostatization of nothingness by Simon is that I do not share his view about a static and universal evaluation of nothingness, which envelops everything and on which everything depends.
For me, any hypothesis on the nature of the subtle fabric of reality cannot be independent of how one arrives in front of it, before Being there is our only way of being in the world, usually before asking ourselves deep questions about the deep meaning of life we have lived it a little.
Arriving at point zero after having passed through point one thousand is perhaps different from arriving at point zero coming from point minus one thousand, there cannot be a point zero imagined by the mind that can take root in the soul passing through the heart, the perfect death does not exist, the mind lies, the heart knows it.
Weeks ago:
“It is funny to see how some in this small group of Osho (ex?) sannyasins, made up mostly of bored, nostalgic or decadent middle-aged men, are at the mercy of cultural fashions, fighting against the hypothesis that the Master of their youth was their true possibility for a taste of infinite and eternal love, everywhere and forever (the void as a possibility/positive condition of love, creativity, joy…).
As much as “Simon and friends” try to erase the cultural, existential and spiritual event represented by Osho, what is clear is that whatever metaphysics they decide to assume as the foundation of reality, it remains not alien to the biographical reality of those who subjectively make that choice, but presuming to objectively describe what is.
Yes, when I am depressed and wallow in solipsism, I agree with certain nihilistic descriptions but without the pretence of infecting others, comforted by the postmodern arguments that are very fashionable today, seeking comfort in the weak thought of others.
However, this cultural phase, which seems to have also infected disciples and ex-disciples of Osho, is declining, judging by the people increasingly intolerant of this form of political correctness, where cultural, social, political, biological differences, etc., are relativized under the pretext of inclusion, killing every social and dialectical passion for a less ferocious world.
Normalizing and relativizing Osho (Simon concludes his article with a decontextualized Osho quote) is part of this ongoing process of ideological overwriting, certainly not conducted consciously by everyone, smoke in the eyes so that the economic and financial structure that guarantees the income of a select few is not seen and razed to the ground (instead of Gaza).
An asphyxiating vision of reality that claims to fix its ontological foundation in “Zero”, “Nothing” and “Black Hole” makes plausible, almost desirable, the need for war, to return the insignificance of young human lives to their ineluctable destiny, without giving them time to create fragile illusions.”
Some of that was kinda interesting, though not very clear.
With the societal “phase” which you feel has infected disciples and ex-disciples of Osho I take it you mean the analytical and thereafter following sceptical movements so prevalent on SannyasNews. I don’t personally agree with those, because I feel the relationship with Osho to be an individual matter, and more about the love for him than anything else.
Analysing Osho’s devices gives me a nonsense tangle. It is enough to know he had a purpose, that the things he did had meaning for him and his disciples. Whether you choose to view his whole life as a series of devices, is up to you. But knowing that the things he did are devices allows you to approach them in a new way, with less seriousness. It allows you to rebalance what is important to you about your discipleship, love or other things.
In a way, the old saying on the Ashram gates of ‘minds being checked in at the door’ is surprisingly apt. All you need to do to relate to Osho is meditate on his photos and love him.
NP, the device is a container, if the content does not nourish you enough to be able to fly then it would be more correct to call it a cage. If everything is a device nothing is, still the dialectical process in action, with the appropriate analytical tools, with which to proceed to describe the multidimensionality of shared reality.
If you prefer to live in the vertical dimension (Buddha) do not believe that the deep dimension of the psyche (Freud) and the horizontal one (Marx) have no relation to the wallet of a Dutchman or a Scotsman.
You say it’s still about dialectics, inquiring into the truth of others’ opinions. But I say it is about your love for Osho and your trust in him, the things that define the bond between you. That is about your experience and your choice.
I’m not so sure the analytical tools apply in the realm of feeling. It’s up to you to decide which you want to be, a heart person or a head person. That is a choice about what you choose to nourish, and while the intellect is a desert, the heart can turn into a garden.
NP, if you are talking to me it is inevitable that there is a dynamic, a movement, a flow of feelings, emotions, thoughts that we receive and send to each other, this process is inevitably dialectical.
Whatever field is taken into consideration, what you think, feel, hear, see, intuit may not correspond to what happens to me.
For example, when you say that you are too full of love to be a rebel, I would be tempted to hug you and congratulate you…but if I think about it a bit, I would argue that it happens to me too to be too full of love, just as I use the guillotine (just kidding, I wouldn’t want an Italian politician to have an erection).
It also applies to feelings or any other field taken into consideration, why does my beloved make my heart beat like a teenager and Ursula Von Der Liar makes me throw up?
These differences between human beings require a dialectical process to be understood and overcome, if there is the will to do so.
Imagine that I have a full belly and you are empty, you have been living on the streets for years having lost everything with online poker, and I am so full of love for the human race that I feel like sharing with you the list of good things I ate just before in the best Italian restaurant in town, then suggesting a nice walk on the beach to talk about the noble Buddhist truths, so as to aid my digestion, and continuing with much more scabrous things (I am rich but I do not give away my money without anything in return), taking advantage of your innocent, one-dimensional spirituality, BUT… wouldn’t it seem normal to you that you could feel a very human feeling of rebellion towards all the material and spiritual things that come between us? How could you love such an asshole?
Here, today, it is likely that in a case like the one described, you would be the one sent to the psychoanalyst, to analyze your anger/frustration, using the wrong tools on you, Freud instead of Marx.
Zorba the Buddha loves himself and life so deeply that he is not afraid to walk the streets among the lost ones, sharing spiritual and material bread, for this reason also willing to use force against those who have accumulated too much of it and prefer to let it rot, for the pleasure of dominating.
“Zorba the Buddha loves himself and life so deeply that he is not afraid to walk the streets among the lost ones, sharing spiritual and material bread, for this reason also willing to use force against those who have accumulated too much of it and prefer to let it rot, for the pleasure of dominating.”
Really, Olfre F? Any examples (apart from Jesus, perhaps)?
Frankly, this is self-dramatising nonsense.
“All you need to do to relate to Osho is meditate on his photos and love him.”
Meditating on his photo is a technique.
How are you doing it, “loving Osho”? Love is not a doing.
It flows from within…
If love flows from within, then Osho is not the only object.
Love does not make distinctions.
That is not true, it is not so that you just love everyone. For me, I have to get to know someone quite well before I will make an emotional connection.
It depends.
On the personal level you make your decision whom to love and whom not.
On the non-dual level you are simply love.
“Some of that was kinda interesting, though not very clear.” (Nityaprem)
True, I reread and I admit that I am a bit rusty with English; you should complain to SD, it is he who allows someone, if not himself, to change the content (not the form, those corrections are welcome) of my comments, so why be accurate then?
In this case (my last comments) SD has not corrected (yet) the spelling and syntactic errors.
No, I was not referring in particular to the criticisms that sannyasins can make to the controversial aspects of Osho’s teachings and private/public life, those ones that we tend to make fall into the “devices” frame, to then argue amongst ourselves about their effectiveness. On this, personally I tend to use the razor (Occam) based on my small/large experience in terms of meditation techniques, therapy groups and social life in the Sangha, largely a positive/enthusiastic balance.
No, I was referring to the prevalence on this Forum of existential postures characterized by the lost multidimensionality that characterized the original Sannyasin movement, so well described by Sam/Paritosh in the last chapters of ‘Life of Osho’ (Marx+Freud+Buddha).
I also share with him the hypothesis that the abandonment of the orange tunic device played an important role, many have begun to be in the world no longer as misfits, crazy at heart, outlaws…but politically correct, socially integrated into the consumer and spectacle society…a bit like you, SD, Lokesh, partly Arpana, good citizens vaccinated against rebellion, behind a mask.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle
MOD:
Oltrefrancesco, you’ve made almost no recent errors in spelling or syntax, so no worries there.
The difficulty in reading parts of your posts is due to them being packed with intellectual concepts in language that can be tricky to decipher, creating a ‘heavy’ feeling that’s not conducive to clarity or enjoyment. Particularly, for instance, the two you wrote yesterday afternoon.
“I also share with him the hypothesis that the abandonment of the orange tunic device played an important role, many have begun to be in the world no longer as misfits, crazy at heart, outlaws…but politically correct, socially integrated into the consumer and spectacle society…a bit like you, SD, Lokesh, partly Arpana, good citizens vaccinated against rebellion, behind a mask.”
To me, Oltrefrancesco, you often come across as essentially a socio-political rebel, your sannyas a means to serve that arena rather than purely psycho-spiritual purposes. So you mourn the demise of orange because that’s no longer a publically worn badge symbolising a sort of alternative political movement. And instead of looking ‘special’ out there in the world, with a publically visible identity (in your eyes anyway) you’re stuck with appearing as just another person.
If you object to what I say here, at least this is an opportunity for you to realise that not only you can play the game of making assumptions about others whom you don’t know.
SD, thank you for your assumptions, probably based on your tendency to justify your apathetic and quite English desperation with the condemnation of everything that could disturb your ordered social vision, as a good Christian subject of his majesty.
My assumptions, in this case, are limited to what I read in the forum, in particular about vaccines and masks.
I do not hide from you that today wearing an orange robe would create some concern in me, accentuating a sense of isolation and social condemnation experienced during the psycho pandemic, a sense of distrust towards the community in which I live, that I have not yet completely overcome.
I’m not surprised you distrust the community in which you live as you’re so profoundly inwardly critical of the people there. Reaping what you sow…
“Ordered” or ‘disordered’ “social vision” – nothing whatsoever to do with Sannyas. You can’t give it all up though because where else would you put your anger, your sense of victimhood?
SD, you are overflowing with your astral divinations, you can assume something about me based on what I write but how can you assume about the community I live in?
Then you got screwed by that well-known philanthropist Bill (5,6,7 times?) and during the lockdown you walked around with a mask, leaving the house only to let the dog pee (while the police stopped me 3 times) and you know what? I don’t feel like a victim at all for being excluded from this majority of sheep, on the contrary, rather proud to have been a wolf, joining other wolves, the pack is growing but still a clear minority.
“…how can you assume about the community I live in?”
It’s enough to know that you’re afraid of their likely response to your wearing orange clothes.
What have you actually achieved in all these years of anger at the injustice of the world?
Hmm, I wouldn’t call myself particularly well-integrated into society of any type, looking at the last decade. But I love too much to call myself a rebel either. I will just have to call myself unique.
I know, NP/Der Einzige, that you don’t rebel and that you are a citizen with a deep sense of institutions. I believe that every time you speak a Dutch politician gets an erection. But you are not alone, the same thing happens in the UK, when SD makes the apologia of the repression of anger, convinced that tyrants do not exist, those whom he just can’t focus on, also because they are often behind his back.
Same old stuff, Ofre F, we’ve heard it all so many times before. You’re wasting your time and energy.
And as you might have noticed we’re deleting abusively offensive posts.
Goodbye then.
“…how can you assume about the community I live in?” ME
It’s enough to know that you’re afraid of their likely response to your wearing orange clothes” SD
“some concern” in Italian is not the same as “afraid”, to be specific it referred to the possibility or not of finding work in a provincial and Catholic context where my mother lives and whom I take care of; bus drivers after the age of 60 have annual psychiatric visits, I think I wouldn’t rebel against a diagnosis of ‘unfit’.
“What have you actually achieved in all these years of anger at the injustice of the world?” SD
First:
How do you deduce that mine are years of anger? Do you believe that revolution cannot be a joyful process? How long has it been since you did dynamic meditation?
Second:
What have you actually achieved in all these years of apathy contemplating the rubble?
What have you achieved by wearing the uniform of the outcast in the heroic 70s, in terms of social relations with the non-sannyasins of your community?
What makes you angry or would you like to change in the world around you?
What makes you judge other people’s anger, perhaps your inability to express or channel it? Oh, sorry, don’t consider this last question, it concerns the horizontal dimension, politics, while you like to fly high, above the heads of foolish materialists, among the stars.
“How do you deduce that mine are years of anger?”
Simply by reading your posts here.
“Do you believe that revolution cannot be a joyful process?”
Not if you’re a typical example.
“How long has it been since you did dynamic meditation?”
About seven months (after several decades) – it wasn’t particularly beneficial and I doubt if I’ll be doing it again. But I am nearly 77 after all.
@MOD
I recognize a certain negligence, perhaps as a response to yours: you have not yet corrected a comment of mine post-edited by some joker like Lokesh (& friends) where it was added that I consume or sell poppers in gay bars.
I don’t feel like trying to explain myself more than most people on this forum try to understand what I write, often looking for excuses to prevail dialectically or to mock. If someone hasn’t understood something they can ask me to specify, I don’t think I sin in terms of pedagogical attitude.
Perhaps in the comment of 15 September, 2024 at 4:50 pm:
“What follows I wrote some time ago, in one go, trying to summarize the emotions/feelings that had settled in me a few days after reading it”. This “it” in the end remained pending, I was referring to the topic in question, Simon’s article.
MOD:
Please provide the date and time of the post you refer to in the first paragraph, Oltre F.
Nityaprem accuses me of using not very simple analytical tools to manipulate reality, when for me there are other people who use sophisticated devices for very simple purposes: money and power.
Maybe, then, it’s him the one who is too complex to accept a truth too simple, that is the Marxian banality that there is someone who for his purposes would trash the “universal politically correct trust towards the human race” by Nityaprem.
Devices sophisticated enough to mislead even the people around Osho, disciples that the Master trusted.
It remains to be seen whether the disciples around Osho, with a medical background, had understood or not the fraud of AIDS (and the related test by Kary Mullis) and, if they had understood/known about the fraud, for which reason they did not shout it out, toward Osho and the Sangha.
I believe that such collective fear not scientifically founded was the first crack in the sannyasin movement, for those who left the boat, rebelling against the health policy applied in the O.M. centres.
https://rumble.com/v3zztdy-deadly-deception-proof-that-sex-and-hiv-absolutely-do-not-cause-aids.html
Another simple crime, when black lives didn’t matter yet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I3vPgJNFwg&t=3272s
P.S:
Last night I watched a boring movie, based on a true story, directed by Hannah Arendt, genre: the banality/simplicity of evil.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Dogs_(2016_film)
Well, I don’t care about money and power. Neither do I care about understanding the devices of those who seek them. Mostly it’s just the mind which cares about more money, status, power…the mind tries to seduce you into thinking these things are important, by thinking about survival, luxury and desirable women.
The same is true for image and impact, the mind is rather wild and suggests all kinds of things which are unbeneficial and unnecessary. It carries around this confusion of images about the state of the world as it is convinced it exists.
It is much better to let all these wild gyrations come and go, and do and say nothing. Be calm, be quiet… focus on just being. Even the energy that seems to pass through the body is but a reflection in consciousness of the body’s image in the mind.
Good morning,
I have been thinking about rationality, Osho and Zen. The usual advice given to a prospective disciple is to examine the guru carefully, but this is not what seems to happen. When you look at Zen stories the student rarely examines the master… so whether it is a rational decision to follow a guru is a question.
In my experience it was a leap into the unknown, I just said “yes”, and the heart connection is something that came later. My heart is slow to trust, and it was only years later that I found there was a love for Osho. But these days I treasure that connection.
Osho did not always appear totally rational. He had his devices, with which he sought to make an impact on the world and his sannyasins. Especially on the Ranch. Any rational examination which tries to make sense of him is going to fall short. But he sought to do what the Buddha did, speak to masses of disciples and enlighten them. And I love him for that.
My Buddhist friends tell me that what I describe when I talk about this is what the Tibetan Buddhists call guru devotion. It is said to be the shortest and easiest path to higher states. But it requires love and trust, and so is not so common.
The mind gets in the way of these things, it tries to convince you with logical arguments to take another route. But although I consider my mind a good mind, it takes a back seat compared to the heart which is in charge.
Be rational, also irrational.
Some late-night musings…
welcome to the site, Mahadev. That is the trick, isn’t it? Osho was a brilliant man, and it is hard to think he didn’t know what he was doing when he switched his style from all-white robes to the striped ones with fancy watches and hats and sunglasses he used to wear on the Ranch. It is all devices…
Sure it may have looked irrational, almost as if he had succumbed to America’s consumerist media space. From being an Indian guru he became like a parody of a Western guru. But it feels to me like there may have been method to his madness. What I did at the time was I just let it wash over me and largely ignored it.
The ideas of Rajneeshism and a Rajneesh Bible, which were largely Sheela’s idea, were an attempt to make a religion out of Osho’s ideas — exactly what he didn’t want, dead words defining a living tradition, though it would have suited his image as a so-called religious leader with the US Immigration and Naturalisation Service.
In a way, Zen suited him well as a tradition to call home and that is why he spoke so much on it towards the end of his life, the ideas of irrational Zen masters were more in tune with his own style than those of an Indian acharya, perhaps.
To me, he never looked at home in America, in contrast to how he was in India. The few years there were enough to shorten his life and destroy the already slim chance of him becoming anything like a ‘world teacher’ (although the time for anyone filling that sort of role surely passed long ago despite or rather because of the all-consuming power of the media).
Sure, he had his moments in America, with that consciousness how could he not? But to me he was a fish out of water in that environment, both in terms of the surroundings and climate at the Ranch and the wider society over there.
It’s difficult to say. I’ve just read the last few chapters of Sam’s ‘Life of Osho’ and it’s pretty clear that despite his prodigious energy in speaking he did not flourish physically after the Ranch. Whether that was due to the nitrous oxide or thallium, who knows?
“To me, he never looked at home in America, in contrast to how he was in India.”
At least he succeeded in coming back to India.
Being “not at home” means not being in the Here and Now. Is it not?
Lately did this thought come to me:
Did this whole Ranch drama happen because of his longing to go back to India?
As far as not being in the Here and Now is concerned, there was a big shift in Osho’s attitude towards his disciples from the point where he went into silence…before that he was very involved with them, after it was like he withdrew more.
I did enjoy ‘Life of Osho’ quite a lot. The descriptions of the meditations were a lot of fun, he had a pretty deep discussion of Osho’s death, and he had a good couple of chapters on Veeresh and Poonja covering the period afterwards. It’s a good read.
I also came across a book titled ‘Encounters with an Inexplicable Man’ about various sannyasins’ lives with Osho. I read the story of Yoga Teertha which was posted on Sannyas News, it’s enjoyable to read the stories of those who have been carried high by Osho.
There is a copy of Anando’s ‘Intimate Glimpses’ somewhere on my bookshelf, I think I will read that next.
This morning I got into a discussion on a Buddhist forum about an interesting topic, the beauty or not of the body.
The Buddha holds that one should learn to see the body as vile and impermanent, because of the hold beautiful bodies have on the mind. He devised a meditation called ‘asubha’ or ‘not-beautiful’ which was about spending a number of days in the company of a decomposing corpse. These days it is often done with photographs because a dead body is difficult and in many countries illegal to hold on to. The idea is you become familiar with the way the body decomposes, the discolouration, the bloating, the effluents, and you learn to see it as “a sack of skin holding bones, muscles and juices”. That helps you break the fascination with the beautiful body.
Of course, from an Osho sannyasins point of view, this comes as a bit of a shock, because Osho meditations and philosophy about Zorba the Buddha was more about the body as the temple of consciousness, a gift from Existence.
But in fact the two are not mutually exclusive, it is possible to see the reality about the body and also see the body as a temple, and I think it is healthy to do so.
Namasté, my friends,
I hope this beautiful day finds you well.
It has been doing me good to live more in the heart, after finally resolving the Osho conundrum with the saying “it is a love affair.” I have been examining the ways I live in the mind, and how to connect more with living in the emotional centre. It is about listening more to the impulses of the heart, which are very small compared to the thundering of reason’s dictates.
But I find that as you relax more, and you start unwinding your motivations, and you listen to the things that are underneath the topmost layers of your mind’s thoughts, you can gradually make more room for the voice of the heart. Usually the mind is loud and it is concerned with security and survival, the fear of death…When you come to understand death is not the end, it is just a door, you start to unwind those impulses of survival, and so a large part of the mind’s obsession. You can relax.
I always think that a good way to know whether you love someone is to see whether their presence makes you happy. This whole thing of being concerned for them, it is largely the mind again, subtly trying to make you look after the sources of your happiness and eventually take possession of them. And that leads to killing your love. Love needs air, and freedom.
So far todays musing….
I was just reading about Shantam Prem’s meeting sannyasins for Osho’s birthday event in Freiburg – I was there on holiday last year! If I had known he lived there we could have met up for coffee! There are secret sannyasins everywhere…
SD, I was reading about your past experiences with being offered anti-depressants, and Lokesh’s comments about their use in Spain. I totally agree, medication to mask the symptoms should be a last resort, and when there is something better like psychedelics which provides six months to several years worth of relief from a single therapy-assisted dose, it really begs the question why the big providers like the NHS are dragging their feet over this.
The whole influence of ‘big pharma’ is a huge problem. They are present from the very early training that doctors get, and it’s a certain mindset that for any given condition there is going to be a pill to cure it. While in fact ‘big pharma’ often doesn’t seek to cure, but it seeks to create captive clients for its drugs.
Hmmm…Madhu’s topic on a blog like SN being used to offer genuine healing for people…
For me, SN introduced a whole bunch of difficult topics into my relationship with Osho, which was already in a rocky patch, when I was first reading and commenting here. It’s like by being confronted by the disenchantment and skepticism of people like Dominic and SimonD that you get a push to look at the “cult” angle.
But eventually I managed to find my way past that, to a more true reflection of my inner being and the love and respect that I still carried for Osho and his sannyasins. I managed to find my own healing and recovery from a problem I largely didn’t have when I first came here.
Having read more of his past contributions I just wanted to say that I think that Parmartha was a huge influence, from his standpoint as a sannyasin but also a publisher, and that he is tremendously missed.
Yes, NP, Parmartha’s influence is greatly missed here, but at least the site has carried on since he left us, which he wanted to happen, albeit it’s been at a different level.
Understood. I also don’t have the connections Parmartha did in order to create a steady stream of newsworthy articles. But the back pages of SN are still valuable and a good read.
The comments from the likes of Arpana, Lokesh, Frank, Madhu, Shantam and the rest on everything from “Can anyone learn to give satsang?” to “Osho talks on Hitler” can really get the mind going and insight flowing. It is like a post-Osho course in sannyas thinking.
But is that a good thing? My most peaceful mornings, when I feel most in touch with meditation and no-mind, are when I just listen to a little music after waking up. I find it moves the emotions and gets one in touch with the heart.
Lately I have been listening to Sam Smith’s album ‘In the Lonely Hour’ on Spotify, I find his voice just awesome.
Here is a sample track: https://youtu.be/BL-WwUYs1uY
Morning, folks,
I said a few days ago, “I have been examining the ways I live in the mind, and how to connect more with living in the emotional centre.” And suddenly last night I found myself in a sea of melancholia… usually I am just cheerful, and emotions like melancholia are distant from my mind, so it was disconcerting to feel that so intensely. But at the same time it was also beautiful, and somehow refreshing.
Today I’m going to contemplate on just why I feel this melancholia, what was at the root of that feeling. Perhaps it was the reading of the back pages of SannyasNews, with its many stories and many commentators. It’s kind of a journey into the past, SannyasNews the last few years hasn’t been like that, and it wouldn’t be strange that it would cause some feeling to arise.
I’ve been listening to ‘The Zen Manifesto’, the last discourse series that Osho gave, which have the ‘no-mind’ meditations at the end with the gibberish. I think it’s interesting that according to ‘Life of Osho’, during the last few years Osho indicated that he would not answer any more questions on sex and the master-disciple relationship, and that he would just focus on attempting to move his people to the next stage.
NP, I was wondering how your life was at the ashram as a boy. Was it not difficult sometimes, your parents being busy with other things?
Well, after our visit to Poona One as a family, my parents ran a centre for a while in the Netherlands and then they got divorced. I think I was nine when that happened. From that time on I stayed with my father, and we moved house often, sometimes living in communes and sometimes not.
So my childhood was very varied. I did miss my mother a lot, sometimes she would come to visit or I would visit her. The time on the Ranch was difficult, I lived in a kids’ trailer with a lot of other sannyasin kids during this time. I’d only see my parents during meal times. Later, when I was back in the Netherlands with my father, my mother and Yatri lived in Italy, and our contact was through regular phone calls.
So yes, there were times when I missed my parents a lot in the communes. I made friends with books — on the Ranch I would rarely be seen without a book, and bookstores and libraries were among my favourite places. But I kind of made up for it in the years after my university study, I spent some time living with my mom and Yatri in my twenties and learning the skill of graphic design from them.
Melancholia is the sadness that nothing is forever.
https://youtu.be/lnvv1Lgj9zM?si=1aVcKVP933LJHV2n
It was certainly a challenge to live as a kid in the communes, but in a way I was lucky, when I was young, just seven years old when we visited Poona One, my parents were still together and in fact we received the last family Darshan that Osho gave.
When my parents separated I was a little older, and I was a teenager on the Ranch, just kind of growing into awareness and young adulthood. I learned to be good at being by myself, though I remember being told that I was going to be doing worship in the afternoons, first in the woodworking shop where I answered the phone for a while, later with the crew building homes, and in the end on the farm.
I don’t think they quite knew what to do with me, at the school they couldn’t teach me anything more, they weren’t really set up for academically gifted older children. And I wasn’t really a hands-on physical kind of boy, being more into books and literature.
Another Sam Smith song from that great album…
https://youtu.be/nCkpzqqog4k
Thank you, NP, for sharing your childhood story.
I can understand that if the family situation is unstable, one searches for some other stabiliy.
This one can find in books. They can become friends or even maybe protection.
This is only the short version, I’m currently writing a longer series of articles about my youth and spiritual journey for OshoNews.
The thing is, my youth was quite stressful. Between my ninth year and my sixteenth my father and me moved house thirteen times, it was very turbulent. So I consider myself lucky to have managed to go to university and get a degree. Call it successful adaptation to difficult circumstances.
Interesting discussion today elsewhere about the helpfulness of discipline in spiritual practice. In some areas like Zen it is quite present, and people believe that “learning to master the mind” is a key element of the path.
I tend to think it is more about centering and bringing different parts of yourself into harmony, about bringing common sense and kindness into that process. About relaxation and letting go.
After all, if discipline were key, you would see a lot of ex-Army people being great spiritual masters.
I’ve been thinking some more about this, and in a way I believe that discipline is learning to follow the goal-directed mind, learning not to be sensitive to your body and mind. A lot of people do this, in order to achieve their goals in today’s consumer society, and they pay for it later with mental ill-health, having to take anti depressants and so on.
The epidemic of mental health issues in Western countries I think is very much due to the pressures of corporate existence, and is having some results in the Great Resignation, where many successful people are leaving their well-paid jobs and are going off to do things like start a fruit orchard and make craft jams.
I just read a news article headline, “Mental health problems with three quarters of Dutch topsporters*.” It just goes to show, too much discipline and too little sensitivity, love, celebration.
* Topsporters are people who engage in professional sports with goals to go to the Olympics, Athletics world championships, major competitions like the Tour de France, and so on.
I just came across Lokesh’s article on this Osho quote:
‘Soon I will not be here either. And remember, I would like to remind my disciples especially: if you really love me, when I am gone I will direct you to people who will be still alive. So don’t be afraid of that. If I send you to Tibet or if I send you to China or if I send you to Japan or to Iran, go. And don’t say that because you belong to me you cannot belong to another real Master. Just look in the eyes and you will find my eyes again. The body will not be the same but the eyes will be the same. If your journey is not complete with me while I am here, if something is still to be done, completed, then don’t be afraid. By dropping me you will not be betraying me. In fact, by not dropping me and by not following the real, the alive Master, you will be betraying me. Keep it in mind.”
(Osho, ‘Sufis: The People of the Path’, Vol.1)
I think Osho’s Sannyas had many beautiful sides to it, and it was unique in its emphasis on aliveness and celebration. In a way it still lives in me, although these days I spend more time on caring for my mother who is not well than on dancing joyfully. Something that comes with age, after all I have passed the half-century.
But I think anyone who decides to follow another living master, be it Mooji or whoever, shouldn’t be given bad feelings about it. As a seeker, if your guru passes away, it is perfectly reasonable to see if you can complete the journey with another incarnation.
Personally, I have just read a lot of books of spiritual teachers, including many more recent non-duality teachers who are still alive, but have not felt particularly drawn to any of them. The ‘Buddha at the Gas Pump’ video blog is also a fun way to become introduced to new teachers. At least that way you can see their eyes….
Just came across an old SN article about ‘fear in the commune’.
It rang a bell, because it was definitely present. But in the normal world these things are also present: fear of losing a job or of splitting up with one’s partner. The commune isolated you from many things, but not from everything, all the usual effects of hierarchy and status were there but in a sometimes-disguised form.
It is a mind effect, it is ego, it is thinking about security and safety, and about what you were attached to and found valuable. In a way, one needs to learn to cope with these things independently, because they are always with you.
Osho loved to provoke. I recently saw him called a “Master of Controversy”, which to a certain extent was true. What did that mean for his sannyasins? Of course you continually got pointed at your own hang-ups, but at the same time what he did was a provocation to ‘normal society’ around the world.
The World Tour was the natural reaction to that, the point where many nations said they couldn’t cope with him. In Poona Two the access to the press was curtailed, the provocations ceased being so extreme.
It was all a thing of its time, more or less forgotten. The closest thing we have to great provocateurs these days are perhaps Graham Hancock or Richard Dawkins or even David Icke (who has also been told his conspiracy theories are not welcome in many parts of the world).
Lately I have heard about websites which get blacklisted for promoting hate speech for example, which means that their place in search results on Google gets reduced. But it’s apparently rather easy to end up on this blacklist, even quoting Osho on homosexuals can do the trick.
So is the internet being censored? You tell me….
Just wanted to share this beautiful mini-documentary, wonderful man who could easily be a sannyasin, there are some great people making these…
https://youtu.be/6oFD8gbic6A
Which leads me on to the topic, what really defines sannyas? How can you say if someone is a sannyasin or not?
Things are simple, NP.
If I call myself a sannyasin, then I am a sannyasin.
If I don’t call myself a sannyasin, then I am no sannyasin.
Basically it is a play and no reason to judge for others.
Anyway, the sinking of the SN-ship can happen soon, with or without definition of sannyas.
I wouldn’t say things are as simple as that. Haven’t you ever come across someone in ordinary life and thought, “that person feels like a sannyasin”?
It’s not about how you identify yourself but the way people live their lives, the way they behave, the things they talk about. Just the general vibe they put out.
Seems this is more a linguistic problem, NP.
I call “sannyasin” an Osho-disciple.
You call “sannyasin” a searcher in general, if he feels auhentic for you.
So you don’t think sannyasins have a particular vibe which one can learn to recognise?
Nobody has a vibe because he is a sannyasin.
Some did only replace one conditioning with another one.
And some have a vibe without ever having heard of sannyas.
Reminds me of the story that only an enlightened one can recognise an enlightened one.
APPEAL FOR FUNDS!
(First posted on 26 September as another topic, reposted here as so far almost no response).
Over two weeks ago SN was landed with a bill for £84.05, larger than expected as the new web host owners charged £29.99 for something called SSL which had previously been free. Clive explains, “As I understand it certifies that the site is what it appears to be… it’s not a dummy set-up for scams.”
Anyway, as usual the bill has been paid by Clive (without whom SN would have folded long ago) and it’s now up to us to repay him.
Please contact Clive directly at: edit@sannyasnews.org and he’ll provide details of where to send donations.
Thanks for your support.