This is news that an Osho Sannyasin from Australia, Swami Dhyan Viral has gone on a hunger strike protesting against the ill-treatment and restriction imposed on him from entering Osho’s Samadhi by the OIF maangement at the Osho Ashram in Pune. Here is a letter sent by him to Vineeta Deshmukh who is a parliamentary candidate in Pune.
The letter:
Subject: Access to Osho’s Samadhi
Dear Vinita,
I have been hearing so many good things about your commitment to Human rights, Indian cultural preservation, Compassion and Justice.
In fact one of my friends was so impressed with your speech you gave two or three nights ago in Pune that he took one of your pamphlets and handed it on to me.
I am not a citizen of India but was born in Australia. Nevertheless I proudly consider myself half Australian and half Indian. I have been visiting India and Pune regularly since 1987 when I spent time at the Ramakrishna Mission as a medical student in Lucknow.
Indian spirituality from many different dimensions has attracted me since my childhood. My meditation practice began at age 14years with Transcendental Meditation. Then onto Paramahansa Yogananda, then Ramakrishna and Neem Karoli Baba. I have been a strict vegetarian since 1986. The Hare Krishna movement is dear to my heart and when in Bangalore last year, January 2013, I met Sri Sri Ravi Shankar at his AOL campus.
On the 5th December 1988 at 7:17pm when I met Osho at his ashram in Pune I was spellbound by his grace, boundless compassion, penetrating intelligence, hilarious humour and delivery of shaktipat. I took sannyas immediately and he dubbed me “Swami Dhyan VIRAL”.
Reasonably enough I resisted the name VIRAL at the time. However over the last 5years the term VIRAL has developed a less negative and stigmatised connotation.
In fact when things are now said to “Go Viral” this is generally a positive term suggestive of unstoppable snowballing public interest. I guess in the political world this could be a good or bad thing in terms of gathering voters preference.
A little more than a year after taking my Osho Sannyas he sadly left the body on 19 January 1990. Since then I felt no real push to return to the ashram until 4years ago.
When I did belatedly return to the ashram for Osho’s death day celebration in January 2010 I was shocked and hurt when ordered to remove my mala by several ashram officials.
I also noted that all photographs of Osho had been removed from the ashram. In fact I was berated for using the term ashram. The attendants insisted I call Osho’s ashram a “resort”.
It seemed to me like Osho’s Pune ashram was being callously sterilised to remove any overt connection to him. I was banned from the ashram for resisting the physical and verbally abusive demands to remove my Osho mala in Osho’s ashram.
Travelling from Australia as I do on relatively short visits of 1-2weeks leaves me feeling vulnerable to comply with the spiritual injustice of being directed by resort officials to write an “apology” letter in order to get my entry pass re-validated.
This in itself ridicules Osho Buddhafield in that to gain entry one must comply with the resort power-brokers directions and distort the truth in order to get access to Osho’s samadhi.
I have now been banned again, the fourth occasion, for wearing a white robe in the grounds of Sunderban resort. In fact a life ban now been issued in my case. Therefore I dealing currently with the distress of being denied access to Osho’s Samadhi.
This constitutes, in my opinion, a level of spiritual and cultural abuse. This is India and the Western minds that are running the resort seem completely dismissive of the importance of having access to one’s Guru’s Samadhi.
Perhaps you may be aware of other banned Osho Sannyassins who seek access to Osho’s Samadhi?
I have now reached a point where I can no longer tolerate being forced by the resort power-brokers to write untruthful and pseudo-apologetic letters.
I have struggled long and hard across this issue and hope that you may have some helpful suggestions. In addition I find it offensive that the resort defile the silence and sanctity of the Samadhi space by conducting all manner of group works there. After all there is plenty of room across the large 13acre campus to hold loud gibberish and screaming groups without spoilIng the peacefulness of Osho’s Samadhi room.
As a protest against this spiritual and cultural abuse I have taken a lead from India’s favourite ahimsic son, Gandhi.
I began a hunger strike on beginning of 21st January 2014 just after the stroke of midnight on the 20th January. I have not eaten food since then and have set up small ahimsic hunger fast camp on the front lawn of Sunderban Hotel.
I’m not sure what constitutes a Gandhi fast but I am taking only ginger water with a little honey.
If you have suggestions then I would love you to send me a note of support or empathy. Naturally I be delighted if were able to send a representative of your office on a visit my tent as shown.
At present I have 36hours 24minutes under my belt. Yes early days but I feel somewhat relieved that at least I’m doing something to ahimsically express my protest.
When for personal issues, weapons of mass movements are used, it helps no one.
This Australian´s hunger strike is one more pebble in the muddy pond, nothing else.
Osho called Ghandi manipulative because he went on a hunger strike to get his own way.
Would have been amazed if this character hadn’t been Indian.
Interesting to consider that Osho
had to put up with this kind of crap
from Indian fundamentalists.
Osho called Gandhi crap, Osho Called Mother Teresa crap, Osho called almost all his contemporaries crap….and now craps are parroting and thinking it is not crap!
Nobody feels sympathy with the spectacular fall of those, who were always taking the high moral ground.
if this story is true and not “made up”
made up for reasons we cannot know anyway
well
its altogether really sad
and i feel we shouldn’t brag about it
too sad a thing -
and concerning him who wrote it
i wish him to get better soon
madhu
Swami Viral, this will be your new name. It means…..
Hunger strikes would not work in Cuba, China, North Korea, Sudan, et al.
The worked in India when India was ruled by the British — I doubt that they would work in India today.
(That’s what I found after some googling)
There is not such thing as “a hunger strike”. When you stop consuming comestibles, you begin to consume yourself, until there isn’t any left.
Bodhi Vartan,
Google Anna Hazare´s fast as anti corruption crusader, and also about the new political party born out of this movement.
fast as a tool of socio political transformation has got a new lease of life in India. They give very good material to 24×7 Tv´s.
Unfortunately The Australian guy won´t get nation wide coverage. His cause is too personal. He does not even know, what can be the bigger cause.
>> Google Anna Hazare´s fast as anti corruption
Google Mohamed Bouazizi for a method that works a lot quicker.
Is it getting hotter here?
Does this ring a bell.
‘The most depressing aspect of modern football is the hatred poured at players from the stands – often, bizarrely, from home “fans”. Footballers live with weekly exposure to grotesque personal abuse in which any point of difference is seized upon and ridiculed.’
At least the players are being paid enough to be able to take the abuse.
Why is it happening? The abusers were themselves being abused in the past. Too much to go into. It is modern day dwarf tossing. I wouldn’t worry about it.
Christ!
You and your tossing of
clever dick knowing comments.
Give it a rest.
Please explain on what kind of response ‘you’ would expect to what ‘you said’.
Did it ring your bell?
If you want to suck up to
kumbaya get on with it,
but don’t use me to do it.
It’s the times we live (or exist) in, arps. There’s been a mass ‘emotionalising’ of the people going on for a long time, aided and abetted in the last 20-odd years by the proliferation of electronic mass communication, recently including ‘social media’, eg the sort of site we’re using right now.
As is self-evident, one-dimensional, ‘body-less’ communication very easily degenerates into abuse, name-calling and the like, simply because, as in a football (or any other) crowd, one can just hide, the medium doesn’t in itself encourage personal meeting, therefore responsibility. So in a real sense, it’s unreal.
That’s why so much of Twitter etc. and blog talk is at a pretty adolescent or at times even crypto-psychopathic level. Some are good at being ‘clever’, but it’s often ultimately shallow, just another facility for people to polish their ‘egos’.
No names mentioned, of course….
Thanks.
Glad someone got the point
I was making.
It is up to the messenger to make sure the correct message is getting across. You cannot blame the listener (reader) for not getting it. I still have no idea what you are on about.
There appears, in the communication between Arpana and SD, an assumption that everybody is different on the net from the way they are in real life.
What I took objection to was, worrying about multimillioner footballers being called names…
I don’t give a fuck about multimillionaire footballers being called names.
The remark was do with people in the public eye being abused as much as put on a pedestal.
I was connecting that to the attitudes to the individuals who run the ashram.
I am just one of millions of blind people touching the elephant, although I am beginning to realise that.
You and Kumbaya think you are the only people with a viewpoint worth anything,
and you are projecting that onto anyone who doesn’t agree with you.
Typical Christian mind set.
I, along with others who post here, see life as a bit more pluralistic, and all the better for it, a little less black and white than you do.
“Typical Christian mind set.”
You are the witness… Jehovah’s witness.
Someone who parrots and copypastes from the bible of their master, and has little to say themselves.
Who does that remind you of?
Another own goal.
No, vartan, not “everybody” (thank God).
But online, one-dimensional communication so often leads to the exchange of mutual abuse far more quickly than in ‘real life’ 3-D. Probably because one feels much ‘safer’, but also, I suggest, because at some level body-less interaction is simply intrinsically unsatisfactory, therefore has a built-in low stress threshold, as it’s not what we’ve been created for.
Feeling is good,
but too much just
becomes incontinence.
Exactly, arpana.
Until another teacher made a point of demonstrating it, I had no concept of the difference between feeling and emotion, which is a useful thing to be aware of, I’ve found.
In a way, much of ‘spiritual growth’ might well boil down to ‘renouncing’ (in the sense of ‘giving up’, ‘dissolving’) emotion, leaving space for ever-finer modes or octaves of feeling.
Not that I’m a great example (as usual).
“Not that I’m a great example (as usual).”
We’re in agreement then.
No surprise at all you make such a comment, Dominic, as I doubt you’d care to examine what I’ve just said, it’s almost certainly far too close to home for your comfort.
In a way, much of ‘spiritual growth’ might well boil down to ‘renouncing’ (in the sense of ‘giving up’, ‘dissolving’) emotion, leaving space for ever-finer modes or octaves of feeling….
Finer modes or octaves of Feelings…..I got it
A V A Ta Ra.. ta ra ra ra………A v A T a R a…..
Get back to that girlie mag, Shantam, you’re so far out of your depth you don’t even know you’re drowning!
shantam prem says:
>> Finer modes or octaves of Feelings…..
Wow Shantam, did you come up with that yourself? It shows that you will reincarnate as a woman.
I have really no exact idea why it is so but with rough estimate, there must be around 10-12 ladies and gentlemen in South India, who propagate themselves as Avataras i.e. the people send on earth by all mighty to preach the message to the needy and sleepy.
I have also no idea why some people from industrial countries have the fetish to find out Avataras and invite them for Satsangs in their cities?
Before bothering your mind about such things, Shantam, I suggest you take a look inside and there you might just perceive that you are full of both sexist and ‘regionalist’ prejudice.
First, you seem to robotically inwardly then outwardly denounce female ‘masters’, teachers, gurus.
Second, you appear, like many Sikhs, to feel somehow intrinsically ‘superior’ to people from other regions of India, especially, it would seem, to those from south India.
Add those two apparently up to now unexamined factors that are detrimental to unbiased judgment to your total lack of first-hand experience of these teachers and your negative attitude towards them will be found to have very flimsy, if any, valid foundation.
shantam prem says:
>> I have also no idea why some people from industrial countries have the fetish to find out Avataras and invite them for Satsangs in their cities?
We used to put them in circuses but that became politically incorrect.
Somebody asks a stupid question and somebody else pretends to know the answer. Who do you blame?
Apana, you want to agree with people living in Holland, don’t you? it’s ok..just good to know.
I have no idea what you are referring to Fresch.
False modesty arps.
You speak excellent (double)dutch.
Something that surprises me is why Osho International dont have some kind of Press website so that they can put “their side of things”.
I sometimes feel the likes of our Shantypants, etc have too free a reign on these “stories”. My experience of now quite a long life is there are always two sides of any “story” and sometimes “many” sides!
At least on this thing about Mr Viral, they have put out a denial. They need to do it more. People like Arun become too little questioned about their own “agendas” in all this tooing and froing.
Parmartha says:
>> People like Arun become too little questioned about their own “agendas” in all this tooing and froing.
As far as Arun is concerned Osho always wanted the centre of His movement to be in Nepal. He (Arun) sees the current situation in India as incidental and temporary and that the Indians today, tomorrow, or in a hundred years (but probably sooner), will eventually take control of the ashram and that will be that.
Osho’s authenticity is that he has reached to every nook and cranny of the world, including places like China.
We didn’t know that Arun expects that the Osho movement will be at some point be directed from Nepal. Sounds like an ego thing for him!
The flavour of Osho has somehow or other reached the whole planet if you look for it carefully, and it is better that it has done this in esoteric ways, and not through a formal temporal structure of control and directives. One would not want to be seen as disrespectful to Arun, but I do find his approach very old fashioned and trapped in Poona one times. It is very unlikely to really take off anywhere else but the sub-continent.
bv , you know Osho told me once that he wanted his movement to be in London , like all precious things land up there ! (LOL)
Did you you know that most of Osho’s flowers are in a vault deposit box in London?
We all hear what we want hear.
yes bv , I heard so , but well Iam not sure about ‘ We all hear what we want hear.’ , probably one only remembers what one wants to .
If you can’t remember it, how would you know you heard it?
hehe
bv thats because you reminded me & i would have rather not remembered that , don’t bother , anyway hard to get me (lol) like most of us here .
The seed of Zen was supposed to re-germinate in England, and flower in the USA according to Osho, speaking in Poona one times…. … clearly an error.
I’m looking for Swami Dhyan Viral.
I would be grateful if anyone could put me in touch.