What’s in a name – part two !

Sarovara writes how sannyas name giving procedures were suddenly changed by Osho International….   sometime in the past decade….  you were to choose your own name….

He says:

” Then came the time when it was decided that people could choose their own sannyas names. I was invited along to a meeting with Amrito for Osho Centers and Institutes, in which he explained this change. Two Indian commune guests, Pratap and Tyohar, were assigned the task of revising the sannyas list for it to be published on a website (www.neosannyas.org), as part of the process of giving the responsibility back to people to choose their own names.

I talked to Tyohar and Pratap to offer support and help, but they had been given only one month to do the task, on top of their other daily jobs! They did the best they could, but the result is still full of multiple mistakes, both in spelling and in meanings.

However, I wanted to do it more thoroughly. Initially I began researching all the Darshan Diaries on the Oshobooks CD-ROM, to check which names Osho had given and with which meaning. Soon it became obvious that there were numerous editing errors. For once, Maneesha (or rather Big Prem) was given just one day to transcribe the tape of the darshan. To keep the nature of the darshans as an intimate meeting between master and disciple, Osho had given the instruction that the tape be erased immediately after the transcription. So there is no way now to double-check on audio tapes.

Also the book editors were overwhelmed with work, and as there was no internet in those days, it would have been difficult to get all Sanskrit names transliterated correctly. It was also not an easy task to decipher Osho’s pronunciation on some words even with the tape recordings of regular discourses. Add to that the flimsy quality of audio cassette tapes in India in 1974-1981!

Urged to find the correct spelling of Sanskrit names I found a couple of Sanskrit dictionaries. The main one I used to check the sannyas names is the Monier, i.e. the Monier Williams Sanskrit Dictionary from the late 1890′s. Leafing through the 1333 pages of this tome, I came across many other Sanskrit words that could have also made very interesting names. And thus I started to compile a new list of sannyas names and also corrected the gender of the names.

I have also double-checked all the other names given by Osho which are in other languages, like Hindi, Urdu or Arabic, i.e. not of Sanskrit origin and all those names which the Academy staff have added over the years. Thus I have expanded the 1550 names I found from Osho’s published books to approx 24,000 names in what will be the final list. As I only have extra time for it on occasions, it has taken me about 7 years for a compilation in the form of an Excel file.

I expect to be able to publish it online by September 2012. This will be the fullest list of sannyas names and will help people choose from a greater variety of names. Also it can help those asked to give names to new sannyasins – such as group leaders – so that they can come away from the most common names which they tend to give out usually.

Is it better for people to choose their own names?

I have found that it is more beneficial for the new sannyasins to choose their own name. I usually suggest the person to find, in their meditation, which meaning they need or want for their sannyas name. Then from the meaning we can make a short list of names from which they choose the one which has a sound they like best. We also need to consider that a name in Sanskrit might sound like a word with a not very flattering meaning in the person’s native language, e.g. Sukha is Sanskrit for ‘Joy’ however in Russian it means ‘Bitch’…

Although some people find it difficult to choose a name for themselves, they still have the choice to ask others to choose for them.

Read more about this project on Sarovara’s website…

www.sarovara.com

This entry was posted in Discussion. Bookmark the permalink.

25 Responses to What’s in a name – part two !

  1. Chetna says:

    Well, I guess new sannyasins have no choice to get the name from Osho in Puna Cashram as there is no Osho there anymore and no one is connected to his consciousness! They should take sannyas elsewhere (my advise) and the get the real juice from Osho, be taken by surprise of their new name and live a life of a true sannyasin discovering his/her name day by day….

    The whole point of taking sannyas is to get help from the enlightened consciousness and getting a name is part of that growth in my view.

  2. Parmartha says:

    Chetna:
    Osho did leave some instructions as to how to progress his work. Unfortunately they never reached the public domain. However one of the instructions may have been that they should not reach the public domain!
    In his life he was always changing things, and old sannyasins are uniform about the fact that many things would have changed had he lived.
    For Tapoban and Oshoworld to simply mimic what went on 30 years ago is clearly mistaken.
    I dont agree that in the Pune Resort “no-one is connected to Osho’s consciousness”. There are plenty of sannyasins who continue to visit or live there, and have precisely the same vibe as those connected many years ago. Meanwhile one has to ask who are you to judge this?
    Also the instruction from Pune is not so direct. One can take one’s name from someone else (if you wish), so I dont really see what your condemnation is about.

  3. martyn says:

    a name might make you feel special but it won’t get you enlightened….Apparently each country has its own traditions.. in Holland you can get enlightened by eating loads of cheese….
    the significance of my name is that i was forced to keep it as a result of arup/ garimo talking poor english.. asking me, “you want to ‘leave your name’ “.. and i thought why of course i haven’t come three thousand miles for bicycle clips have i … and of course she meant do you want to leave your name as it is… and we Brits helped them in the ww2 and that’s the kind of thanks you get….. anyway i’m off to forage for some enlightening gouda or edam or edammer or yarlberg… what’s in a name….eh?

    • Parmartha says:

      Given the misunderstanding you are definitely now a candidate for choosing your own name, if as it seems you dont like Martin!
      Maybe there is a Sanskrit translation for a “Vegan who eats cheese”!
      I even once thought you were a fruitarian when I knew you back in the eighties, but do correct me if I am wrong.
      By the way as a counter example the Dutch also helped the Brits in 1944/45. My uncle who was a Royal Marine Commando was dropped behind enemy lines but the British army failed to catch up with them at Arnhem. He owed his life to a Dutch family who hid him in a barn, even though they knew they would be shot if the Gestapo had caught them….. he visited them every year for most of his life thereafter.

    • “if you ain’t dutch , you ain’t much” –Willy Wonka, after he tasted dutch chocolate for the first time.

  4. martyn says:

    yes i did be a fruitarian for six months aged 23/24 ish..it was bizarre…and NOT recommended for any wannabe yogis out there…ahh youth and hair oh well …. and i now live with a pure vegan for company …that’s what i meant when i said i eat vegan….but enough of my culinary habits..

    nice to know of your uncle being taken care of and the endurance of friendship in need….

    it was a big group that ww2…and full of xenophobic sadistic authoritarians on a mission (not mentioning vich zide dat vos) who couldn’t laugh at themselves….
    which come to think of it is a bit like groups everywhere….

  5. Chetna says:

    “Meanwhile one has to ask who are you to judge this?”-I agree, judgment is the one to watch out…The only thing this whole blog is about judgment. So I am sort of playing along.
    I expressed my opinion, and many friends who have stayed with old sannyasins around India and other countries feel the same.

    Many guyes who took sannyas in Puna did it again the “old way” and they were overwelmed!

    At the end of the day, it is a mystery and I have no clue what I am talking about. If Osho is omnipresent, what a hell is the difference?! Must be none!

    I was beautifully surprised in Osho Afroz, Greece, where the sannyas was done in a completely different way and it was amazing!

    And re instructions, I think they were simple-MEDITATION! So those old guys that have meditated sincerely for all these years give are connected to Osho.

    • sannyasnews says:

      (from Parmartha) Unlikely to have been meditation Chetna. Any old sannyaisn worth his salt will tell you that formal meditation is just the beginning of the road, bringing meditation to all and every one of one’s activities and even sleep, yeah, now that’s something else. I am sure that Osho would have started to discourage formal meditation had he lived.
      But Indian sannyasins in particular find this a difficult one. They are brought up on the idea that somehow meditation makes you good, that “progress” can be made, etc. All redundant notions.
      As for Osho’s instructions, I suspect they were fairly extensive, and may well have included a para. saying not to issue them as a public document.

    • Parmartha says:

      There is a question of formal private daily meditation or practice done alone and bespeaking one’s own connection between God and you. Basically a Buddhist precept. The main problem with this to me is it becomes a sort of mental hygiene on a daily basis, and there are many who find they cannot do without it, and you find them “annoyed or cross” in the street, or depressed on the phone cos “they havn’t done their meditation!”
      In neo-sannyas and sticking a little to this string, meditation was/is mostly done as part of a crowd or group, where disciples supported or support each other, and also with the timely reminder of being with the same Master through the given name.
      Being part of a meditation group, even if done under the auspices of an enlightened master, has both advantages and disadvantages.
      Some of the disadvantages are often not acknowledged. For example in sannyas, both early and late, people often go to meditation evenings, etc for social reasons, for social support, etc and lose sight of the main event. I remember in the old London Osho centre, Kalptaru days, disciples coming to the Belmont pub timing their arrival as others came out of the meditation to replenish their thirst on summer evenings…. the whole thing had just become a social club to those who had even ignored doing the meditation.
      There is nothing at all wrong with social clubs of all sorts, but I dont think they should be confused with meditation.
      The other problem is that the Osho active meditations become vehicles of interaction. I can remember when I used to lead Osho Kundalini meditations here in London how in the dancing stage people would somehow “dance with each other” rather than just dance with God. For me this is the whole problem for Veeresh (Dutch Humaniversity) when he wrongly describes his social interaction groups/routines as meditations. Seems misleading and confusing for beginners, though most perfectly valid as group therapeutic techniques.
      Osho himself used to say of his commune that the women come here for me, and the the men come for the women. So he was fully aware that the “society” he created around himself had a dynamic based on little that would distinguish itself from a social club. However he then went on to say, that was his way of baiting the hook so that the journey of the alone to the alone could begin, a step he said that needed very great courage, and many left at that stage for some invented reasons or other even blaming the Master…. I agree.

      • martyn says:

        and that makes you what exactly then Big P ?

        I was just imagining a conversation tonight from our respective second world war relatives set somewhere at the pearly gates……..

        ” so then Mr martyn’s father… what’s your son doing… ?”
        ‘oh yes he has a lot of courage.. tons… ‘
        ”doing what exactly?”
        ‘oh bouncing up and down in a room not blaming ‘ the master….’
        ”really, well that is courageous.. marvellous i guess a touch of the old Dunkirk spirit eh?”
        ‘well yes though he was always very brave like that.. he once ate a whole slice of lemon without wincing’…

        ”its stories like that and making sure he was able to bounce up and down and being very very very introspective.. that make me proud to have spent 5 years defending fine old Blighty…..”

  6. martyn says:

    Chetna those who give sannyas out in Afroz are self appointed… just as much as you could be if you wanted to.. you obviously have Zero idea of who runs the place , how he behaves in private , what he’s capable of , his relationship or less with those who he charges to do therapy , what his background is what many have said about the therapists giving sannyas and the story of control, usury and artificiality , which you could not have possibly dug beneath in order to make your bald statement. You better come up with some more clinical judgements if you want to develop your own authority and get heard instead of pandering to others ….still its your bed .. you can lie in it….no skin off my nose…welcome to sannyas….

  7. Chetna says:

    Martyn, I am not interested in anyone’s dirty clothes. If you are-enjoy it.

    I do not care who gives sannyas and why, whether in Puna or in Tapoban, I was referring to my inner experience during sannyas in Osho Afroz and it was amazing. People were ecstatic including me. Do you have a problem with me/people enjoying sannyas? 

    Not sure who you mean by “he” and frankly do not care. I liked the place, I was a guest and nothing else.

    Would you like to tell us what you are like in private?

  8. Chetna says:

    Sorry, Parmartha, I have just noticed your comment to me.

    I guess it is pointless for us to figure out what that main message was, as it seems for all of us it is different. I love meditation and my name is dhyan so I guess I tend to believe it is the most important thing in life. Now meditation is a very broad word and it begins with the technique (I am certainly at that stage) and hopefully will lead to the state of being that is effortless, i.e. one is in meditation (dhyana)

    Also, having listened to thousand of discourses I also noticed that Osho was super-consistent on his message of meditation (or the sate that you enter through meditation technique, tantra, yoga, paining etc etc).

    And even if you show me the statement from Osho that will prove otherwise, I will never drop meditation as know what it does to my life and what a huge difference it makes like nothing else I have tried or done. And I have also learnt recently (especially during silence retreats) that Osho’s techniques are of amazing help. Sitting silently doing nothing, my grass does not grow by itself, but when I do a technique daily I can see flowers emerging. So I strongly disagree with people proving a theory that techniques are only for beginners. I think our minds are very cunning and put those theories into our heads to just stop meditation.

    “As for Osho’s instructions, I suspect they were fairly extensive, and may well have included a para. saying not to issue them as a public document.”-This takes us to an old argument. Why Osho was so public for 20 years, but had those last words with chosen few.

    If there were any instructions, they would have been made public!

    For example, in 1999 (my boyfriend tells me), all therapists used to ask participants to bow down to Osho’s pictures to show gratitude and respect. Now both things are a sin! So does it mean that Osho’s instructions were found in 1999? So much nonsense…

    • sannyasnews says:

      (from Parmartha)
      Hi Chetna,
      I have no desire to shake your faith in formal mediation. In any case it will drop away when the time is ready like fruit from the tree and Dhyan will become a 24/7 thing.
      On the instructions your argument is a little thin. Osho certainly did have private parts to his life that were not public when we old ones were hanging out with him. One big example was his interest in nitrous oxide, knowledge of which certainly was not in the public domain for 20 years, and even now not well known despite articles from myself and others, and even denied by some acolytes despite overwhelming evidence.
      Also the never ending habit of calling Vivek Osho’s “caretaker” was taken seriously for many years. She was however his lover.
      I dont see any point in speculating about his instructions. They certainly do exist. And of course they may well have been time lagged (for example ‘introduce self naming for sannyas after 15 years’, etc.) and there is no reason at all to think they would necessarily be a public document.

      • dharmen says:

        You are probably right about Vivek, but you say this as a definitive statement! Did someone give you inside information? I’ve only ever heard this as speculation but then I’ve not known many insiders.

      • Arpana says:

        In the old days we talked endlessly about enlightemenment, and knew with such absolute certainty that Bhagwan was, and enlightenment meant you weren’t interested in sex, and didn’t feel all the awful crap we used to feel; but over the years; personally speaking, I find myself more and more aware that I don’t what enlightenment is.
        Could probably come up with a definition, an intellectual definition, based on surmise, but I don’t know if their actually is such a thing any more, and I thought I did. Further to that I don’t know if Osho is enlightened or not; and I don’t care. Non issue. Don’t care if he is sexual or celibate.
        I met him. Thank god. What good karma I must have earned to be born when he was alive, to get his message, and still have a sense of being in relationship with him, such a rewarding relationship with him.

    • no, i believe that sannyasins and therapists can’t decide for themselves how to live… remember the discourse the old man gave about the gay catholic sannyasin back in the ’70′s?.. he said that being gay wasn’t the problem, being catholic was.. then in about 1987 or thereabouts he said homosexuality was the problem and would lead through AIDS, the destruction of human kind… from then on sannyasins treated gays and gay sannyasins like dirt, harassing them, looking down upon them, and basically chasing them out of sannyas…. funny, one day being a gay sannyasin was cool , the next, you’re dog meat…. not at all intelligent, not at all compassionate, not at all the way to live one’s life… BUT since Osho changed his mind… the edict is…..

  9. frank says:

    chetna,
    all meditation is only for beginners.
    thats what the zen guys were on about….
    “beginners mind”
    that is, valuing openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions at what ever level of learning or subject as if you are a beginner……

    the moment its the same old same old,its like,finding yourself doing hard drugs, meaningless sex and listening to status quo…
    definitely time to quit…..

  10. martyn says:

    Today I hitched a ride on the local Haidron collider at the CERN meditation institute in the Alps.
    My neutrino’s had arrived before I had actually left for my daily meditation so I was already there -with the results of intense nothingness, before I even started doing something about it.Which as usual I hadn’t.
    This was very puzzling because my thoughts were still only travelling at just below the speed of shite, as many editors in London can sincerely testify to. Keep it up boys i thought to myself….each neutrino is a law unto themselves, eh? So what was I to do?
    As usual in these situations I indulged myself, my world spinning in and through me, by slowly stirring anti-clockwise a fine bubbling up from within hot mug of tea.
    ‘ Yes,’ I thought before I had thought it, I’ll just post things in the right place in the right way with whatever positively charged neutrino that is quietly supportive of an osh type realization and well oiled community running rings around itself despite infinitesimally small collisions so as to create a bigger picture.Linked neutrinos whether we liked it or not.
    Bother..! First genetic determinism, next Darwninian evolution, then in a frivolous moment of social planning, handing over my own sexual privacy in favour of bullied compelled group behaviour (hello Helmut from the old 80′s Humaniversity ).. and now this … a haidron collision.Which hadn’t actually happened before it had..or something like that.
    Yes, thought I ,which was distinctly getting more difficult as my neutrino’s increased in speed…
    But how do I do that without contravening the same Swiss spirit of discovery and United Nations fraternity and the equal rights of all types of starry eyed seekers.How do I do that whilst remaining ‘nice’?
    Of course ..the answer was there before my very eyes. Quantum physics is happening in Switzerland.A place of polite people where no-one ever bumps into anyone else and if they do, they offer the most quantum physically profuse apology possible.
    Switzerland…No double parking or crossing the road when the red light shines and now…realising that everything already was , now and ever shall be! How cosmic. How unSwiss.
    The funny thing was ….(funny in switzerland is jokes about chickens crossing the road on a red light and neutrinos that are extremely fast) …..that no sooner had scientists made this world shattering discovery than a group had formed, and then another and then another. A bit like matter or anti matter.Or SN and the Caravanserai.Opposites, sort of.
    And the scientific proof was so compelling that everything was really doing stuff that wasn’t being done. Like religious dogmatists or cataleptics.In a tunnel in Switzerland! How permissive of the conservative Swiss thought I , at ever increasing speed, because as luck would have it, I was travelling on a bus at the time, past CERN.
    Well I wasn’t having that and I wasn’t going to be doing with that as they say in cockney London.No cliques! Down with neutrinos! Have some chocolate!

    Monosyllabism or fanaticism….If you spent enough time doing one thing ,the rest of life would spin right past you…., and then all you’d have left is not a multidimensional experience of universal energy or cosmic love from all sorts of human beings, who were often predisposed to being human and caring and loving with or without tunnels… but instead you’d be left looking for those very same things in only one place, with an entry pass and someone checking if you had the right kind of proof .

    It all sounded so very familiar. And I had known a family of liars once.Well a Brotherhood actually, well a few of them lets say.With a pre-disposition for inventing loads of highly unbelievable stuff, which they went around proving, not by being polite or Swiss or even nice.But by getting right up one’s nose.How unscientific I thought as I got off the bus, surely people ought to know about all this and my discovery’s about the speed of shite , the search for truth and being humiliated for the greater good.

    My Tea had gone cold. It was time to stop daydreaming and tell the world.

  11. chetna says:

    agreed with all of the above, but how do you define “beginners”? I think most of us are! that’s where I think people just lie to themselves when they drop practice. Someone said to me once because she was older than me she needed less mediation. Makes me laugh. I think it is quite the opposite.

    In my understanding one drops the technique after Mastering the mind. When I want I use it, when I don’t-I don’t. And this is the point of no return, one is in the heart chakra energetically. Osho gave a lot of lectures that would indicate if one is on that point of no return. I am not. If you think you are, I can only respect that if it is true.

    In terms of instructions, you have more grounds to make statements than me, but whichever way you look at it will always be a speculation.

  12. frank says:

    chetna,
    how to define “beginner”?
    in that zen sense ,i would say that would be someone who retains a sense of joy in the activity they follow whatever “level” they imagine themselves to be at.
    so “beginner” would be a compliment rather than derogatory.
    it could be that meditation “practice” is more in line with the meaning of practice in the sense of practicing a profession rather than practicing say,the piano with a view to becoming a great concert pianist.
    the point being that it is something you do,overall,in whichever ways are relevant throughout your life,rather than a struggle for some (always unattained)perfection.
    once you get to a certain familiarity with an activity, a certain amount of improvisation happens.
    think of swimming,for example.
    you can practice technique,but more important than pounding up and down the pool trying to get your stroke “perfect” and doing your 100 lengths in record time, is simply enjoying the feeling of the water on your body,the sensation of floating,ducking your head under etc..you can still do 100 lengths if you want…
    so rather than “mastering the technique” with its obvious implication of painful struggle,feelings of inadequacy and split personality,you really enjoy it and want to do it more and more,just because…

    as for “heart chakras”… would you hang around with someone you like/love as a means to get permanently into your heart chakra?
    or do you do it just because….

    i would say the same applies to meditation…..

  13. martyn says:

    Therapists and meditation centre spookspeople have been selling ambition for donkeys years….

    Just to recap on the above Afroz heart opening ecstasy…..during the eEaster holidays just a few years ago (a Christian event unless I’m mistaken) a goat was held in the paddock under the olive tree. The centre wasn’t open for business , it was pre-season. I thought oh they had bought an organic lawnmower as the grass got quite high off season.

    The goat was slaughtered and cooked in the pizza oven with lots of laughing and lard dripping from lathery mouths.. having been cooked in the pizza oven down by the seating area.
    Nobody who visits Afroz can fail to note how many go off for their chicken fish and goat kebabs at night. The son in law makes his family money from a meat packing firm in Athens.
    Their friends come in for laughing fish /octopus spearing snorkelling holidays during the summer.

    Mr Variddhi who does the mystic rosethere put me in a headlock once and told me not to fuck with him, because i jokingly made a comment that he preferred to push a kiddybuggy around as a grandfather , instead of owning a therapy centre. It was a lighthearted comment with no malice.. but i guess he doesn’t get laughter despite running the mystic rose with devena in Pune. Which i walked out in Afroz from because when i did it he was letting participants leave the meditation room and make and take phone calls and have cigarette breaks.and his mystic rose assistant had a girlfriend with painted nails who kept popping in and out of the room to be with her boyfriend.Not part of a committed crew

    And this is an Osho centre?

  14. chetna says:

    That’s a shame to hear, Martyn. What to do? Unfortunately that’s what I saw in Puna. Therapists getting pissed in restaurants, eating meat and laughing at participants of their groups…

    Varidhi was not there when we went but they seemed to love and respect him.

  15. martyn says:

    there is a correlation between the language of open approval and states of ecstasy compared,say…to disapproval,…. and states of chatting to goats who are happy minding their own business…..and the goat had some chicken friends too about 25 who died one by one , baked in the open 38deg heat without shelter or adequate food (we intervened when we realised) and so densely packed into an enclosure that they pecked the hell out of each other…or the local very people-friendly cats who had been bothering the food tables sometimes who were packed into a bag and dumped on a beach far away…without thinking of an alternative …Or the history ,allegedly ,of one said Varidhi as a member of the local civilian ‘moral’ police under the dictator colonels…
    the goat didn’t love mr varidhi…. and guess what …neither do I

Leave a Reply