Comments on: What’s in a name – part two !

By: martyn

martyn — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 22:37:06 +0000

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…..”

By: jay. c. pennie

jay. c. pennie — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 20:23:25 +0000

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…..

By: Parmartha

Parmartha — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 15:43:27 +0000

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.

By: martyn

martyn — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 14:08:06 +0000

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

By: chetna

chetna — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 09:52:54 +0000

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.

By: martyn

martyn — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 18:52:16 +0000

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?

By: frank

frank — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 16:55:47 +0000

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…..

By: Arpana

Arpana — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 15:44:34 +0000

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.

By: chetna

chetna — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 09:08:22 +0000

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.

By: dharmen

dharmen — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 23:43:24 +0000

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.