Here are a selection of recent answers from those given by Satyananda to the German Osho Times, which one guesses he is doing at this time to publicise his new book in German, Out of the comfort Zone – Jump into Freedom.
For those who dont know the background Satyananda was a Poona one sannyasin. In 1977 he was an international political reporter for Stern Magazine. He was assigned to do an article about Osho and the then ashram, but to his employer’s great surprise he dropped his career, became a sannyasin and lived in the ashram. His first book about his experiences, ‘Totally Relaxed in the Here and Now’ was well known at the time.
Questions:
When in 1977 you came as a Stern reporter to the ashram in Pune you already had seen much of the world and brushed up against many interesting people. What fascinated you so much about Osho that you decided to stay?
First I was fascinated by Osho’s daily discourses that I attended every morning. The rational mind of the reporter Elten was impressed by their intellectual and rhetoric brilliance. But already after two days I wrote a sentence in my diary, which surprised me, “This is about life and death.”
That sounds highly dramatic! How did this happen?
My subconscious probably connected with very very old experiences, which had to do with life and death – the death of the ego of course. Suddenly Osho seemed eerily familiar to me and I had the overwhelming feeling, “I have arrived! Here is my home!” My journalistic mind reacted with a shrill warning: “Watch out, the man is a charlatan!” I took the warning signs very seriously indeed. But in the end, trust won over scepticism.
“There you are at last,” said Osho and spread his arms wide when I met him for the first time, “I’ve been waiting and waiting for you. I recognise my people, when they come to me…” That was it. A year later I moved into the ashram and meditated for eight years close to Osho. The reporter vanished. The spiritual seeker followed his inner voice.
How did your journalistic perception change through Osho?
I realised that I do not perceive the world as it is but rather through the lens of my projections. I can only perceive reality after I have understood my own reality – my prejudices and my quirks. That’s why I also think that meditation should be part of the curriculum in every school of journalism, because meditation has a lot to do with perception of reality. When you are totally dominated by your projections, fears, hopes and wishes and so on, you are stewing in the cage of your unconsciousness. You have to get to know yourself first, before you can see the world as it really is.
After a hiatus in Pune, and later in Oregon, you went back to journalistic work. Now you are publishing a selection of your essays that you wrote in the past 14 years, Raus aus der Komfortzone – Sprung in die Freiheit (Out of the Comfort Zone – Jump into Freedom). Is there such a thing as a common thread?
Those essays were not about commenting on events with fleeting actuality. My focus was on the powers behind the scenes. Where do they come from? In which direction are they moving? Last but not least what is our relationship to these powers? Can we help shape them or are we at their mercy? When I started as a twenty-year old journalist in 1947, I wanted to change the world. I imagined my work could contribute to strengthen democracy, to stand up for minorities, to fight against corruption, etc. I tried to do my work in this spirit. But then, suddenly, at age 49, I became aware that my approach to try and improve the world was completely naive, or even arrogant. Although my articles were read with relish and found to be interesting, they had changed nothing!
Why are you so sure? Particularly when you think about ’68 and the revolution that suddenly engulfed large parts of society; you could have had the impression that something is changing, to which you – as a journalist – have contributed something.
The feeling is tempting, right? (laughs) But completely unwarranted! What has actually improved? Have people become more honest, less anxious, less aggressive, less greedy? Is there more love and less corruption? Has the economy become more social? Is there such a thing as free enterprise? Tell me one area where something has fundamentally moved in the right direction.
For example, it is now easier for minorities to have their place in society. Gays and lesbians are no longer on the outside as they were in the 60s …
Okay, as gays and lesbians are concerned, something has really changed. But I cannot see that this is true for minorities in general. Think about the poor refugees who cross the water in floating coffins, from Africa and the Middle East, and drown in the Mediterranean just because we don’t want to let them enter legally and grant them asylum.
We live in a time when many certainties have been shattered; do you see this as an opportunity?
Yes, I am convinced that it is a great opportunity. What we have now is an economic system that is ruining the planet and the planet is fighting back. That’s how I understand the disasters that are increasing everywhere. Chernobyl, Fukushima, the typhoon that wiped out a city with 200,000 inhabitants in the Philippines, devastating floods everywhere – and that’s probably just the beginning. We are entering a phase where nothing remains as it once was. Of course now we can try to oppose this upheaval. But this is not going to make us happy. We must try to use the upheaval as a positive momentum. For me, positive changes have only come after I walked through the valley of tears. In other words, only when I’ve felt in the dumps did I wake up and learn something. And that’s what I also see for society: it will only change if a critical mass of intelligent individuals discover meditation and understand the crisis as a chance for their own transformation.
Are you an optimist?
Of course! We are currently experiencing that meditation has arrived in the mainstream. The media is dealing with meditation and recommending its positive effects. For example against burnout, sleep disorders, poor concentration and so on and so forth…
Nevertheless, we don’t hear or read much about the spiritual aspect of meditation, which is the most important thing. How do you explain that?
I think that’s actually quite normal. The spiritual aspect of meditation will become a media topic the moment many people have had spiritual experiences during meditation. Initially there are other, more practical matters to be solved. For example the question: Is it perhaps time to break out of my comfort zone and free myself from the dictates of my need for security? Millions of people drive every morning, at the same time, to the same workplace. There they always encounter the same colleagues and complete tasks they haven’t been interested in for a long time. In that way hours, days and years go by in robot mode. The routine increases constantly and the vitality implodes. The robot existence strengthens the illusion of safety. What worked yesterday shouldn’t that also work tomorrow? This is exactly the attitude that works in our time of upheaval – like a suicide strategy.
Meditation like Yoga has become part of the mainstream.
All the fitness centres are offering it.
Satyananda should have been asked, “Why Lidl of Osho has lost marketing share?
Will Aldi suffer the same fate because founder has recently died?”
Failure is in the internal organs and people are asking about cough and cold.
Since when have you been interested in meditation, Shantam, you hypocrite would-be ‘politician’?
SD, matter of the fact is I have not felt a single time any fragrance of meditation through your words. They are not even cheese but chalk.
So if you want to have the sticker of Meditators glued on your forehead go for it.
The “matter of the fact is” that you are in a movement that’s largely based upon meditation, upon one man’s unceasing, multiple efforts to bring meditation, meditativeness and all its fruits to his people – yet you have no feeling for and utterly zero interest in ‘practising’ meditation or meditativeness, and, given your dumb responses in a recent exchange on the topic, I sincerely strongly doubt you have the slightest clue what these words mean!
Ignorant on these key matters as you are, you are self-evidently unqualified to pronounce judgment on my or upon anyone else’s ‘meditativeness’ – especially at a distance of 1000 miles or so.
If I were you I’d think at least twice before shooting off such self-damning statements, as they show you up as a total fool (albeit ‘entertaining’ in your foolishness – as long as you don’t foster the ridiculous self-delusion that you deserve to have any sort of major say in the present or future of Sannyas).
“That’s how I understand the disasters that are increasing everywhere. Chernobyl, Fukushima, the typhoon that wiped out a city with 200,000 inhabitants in the Philippines, devastating floods everywhere – and that’s probably just the beginning.”
Jehovah the Witness people feel a kind of rush of Adrenaline when they describe the routine upheavals on Earth. Many other people desperate to sell their products restore too on such gimmicks.
Why such people don´t appreciate the people who helped to prolong human life?
So many billion people are existing on the Earth; are they because of Om Mani Padme Hum…?”
Oooh, Shantam, you’re SO contemporary, so much the 21st century Indian!
How DID you ever THINK of such a radical idea?
Leg-end you are, sir – in your own lunchtime!
El Chudo enquires, “So many billion people are existing on the Earth; are they because of Om Mani Padme Hum?”
Not exactly. It would appear that humanity works like some sort of membrane on the face of the earth, functioning a bit like a bio-transmitter/receiver. To make this planetary mechanism for us cells, this Cell-Prison, more interesting a fascinating equation has been written into the software that allows for an escape plan from bio-bondage in the hugely complex humo-membrane, used for interplanetary communication, possibly galactic. The plan is called self-development.
The idea being that as bio-organisms we humans have the potential to grow into something beyond our imagination, imagination being a trap in the game that makes you believe, amongst other things, that you are a free and conscious entity, which is of course ridiculous if we take El Chudo’s verbal outpourings as an example. It is a great idea but so beyond the mundane reality that most people feel comfortable with that very few are interested.
Once in a while, a game master like Osho comes along and tries to inspire people to get busy with this here human potential thinga-me-jiggy-jiggy. Alas, it is rare for people to go for such a cosmic idea and the game master’s instructions concerning meditation and such doctrines as witnessing consciousness go mainly unheeded.
When the game master leaves the stage the zombies get fired up and want to start a religion. Old hands at the game love to while away the time reading re-runs of their dreams like the above article, promoting a stupefying state of nostalgia and a longing in their hearts for the good old days, which probably has a lot to do with the loss of their youth and the scary onset of old age and dying.
Talking of which, that is where it might serve one well to remember the ancient mantra of liberation…Om Mani Padme Om.
“We are currently experiencing that meditation has arrived in the mainstream. The media is dealing with meditation and recommending its positive effects.”
Something called “meditation” (mind control, TM, IAM, etc.) is popular. As Wikipedia says, “Meditation is a practice in which an individual trains the mind or induces a mode of consciousness, either to realize some benefit or as an end in itself.”
This definition doesn’t resemble what I understand Osho to be saying about meditation. For Osho, meditation is not instrumental, not a strategy to “train the mind” or get “some benefit.” My understanding is that Osho speaks of meditation as simply a state of being that is relaxed, aware, and nonjudgmental. It is a state of NO-MIND.
I rarely see mainstream media speak of no-mind in their articles on “meditation.”
Good comment, Kabir. My sentiments entirely.
Anything that leads to dissolution – shunyata or f’na -
the absence in presence and
presence in absence
is
the only constant
…
Now, beloveds, let us…play…(recite the Lord’s Player)…
Our Osho who is in Heaven….
Satyananda is certainly an old sannyasin, and as I understand it still sees himself as one, and lived as a sannyasin most of the intervening years since he took it.
But I am surprised really by what he says, having gone through his thirty years of sannyas.
He sounds like a purveyor of ‘hope’. There is no hope!
His talk about meditation going mainstream is really off-centre. What is called meditation in the commercial world is just a device to make people more peaceful and tranquillised. Moving towards spiritual revolution in one’s life is something else, of which meditation is a lever, and a lever towards aliveness being a 24/7 thing, not bouncing around on one’s bum for an hour.
This is incorrect. ‘Mindfulness’ has become really popular. It is a process of giving attention to your thoughts, which is basically meditation.
You seem to misunderstand me, Alok. I know these types of courses are popular, what I am saying is that they miss the mark and are not about a radical approach to revolutionising the self, which I always felt Osho’s methods were.
Well, it just depends on how much meditation you do. If you do lots you will “revolutionise the self” – I am sure the Old Boye would say “dissolve the self”, but anyway…
One dynamic won’t “revolutionise the self” . Lots might.
Similarly, one workshop of mindfulness won’t “revolutionise the self”. But if you did an awful lot of weekends you might “revolutionisae the self.”
I would still say mindfulness is essentially meditation, though far less effective than Osho meditation.
I agree, Alok, mindfulness is a meditative approach, shining therapeutically transformative light upon the otherwise habitually robotic and unconscious.
In fact, although it might not be as ‘dramatically cathartic’, as potentially ‘revolutionising’ for the brain and nervous system, or directly engender precious body/mind well-being to the same degree as many Osho meditations, it has the advantage of being something one can apply at any time, in any situation, rather than depending upon ‘doing a meditation’ to achieve an ‘effect’, as it were (albeit an effect that enhances awareness and the capacity for self-enquiry).
Although pure, thought-less ‘Being’, ‘Nothing Arising’ is, or is the ‘goal’ of meditation, the mindfulness approach is surely very much a prerequisite for a meditative life, as I understand it.
In the end, there’s no conflict, surely, as all ‘right’ meditation serves the same purpose. But I agree with Kabir, Madhu and Parmartha that what’s called ‘meditation’ is often – even almost invariably – not the ‘real deal’ at all, which ideally should be made much clearer than it is, although as both Madhu and Parmartha have said, everything has its value, its place.
The vested commercial interests and their promoters aren’t going to announce the truth, of course, they really couldn’t care less, or they’re themselves misled, deluded, so it’s probably always going to be a minority – and a small one at that – who’ll seek out what’s ‘really real’.
Still, at least we can congratulate ourselves for our superior discernment, worthy of the sort of elite we are…Always a most gratifying pay-off for having people and ‘projects’ to look down upon…
(PS: I trust Shantam is carefully studying, er, I mean ‘meditating’ upon the multiple nuggets of wisdom in this thread. Should be a veritable spiritual education in itself for the would-be Guardian of the Future of Sannyas…).
The translation from German may well have affected the apparent meaning.
Yes, it should read…
‘U vill meditate und surrender…
und enuff loffing…make viz der arm movements und qvick….’
Hi, Mister Spock on Enterprise Balearenensis,
Your intergalactic dinner, dessert and team check yesterday evening
must have been fabulous – and what else to prescribe for the moment as remedy:
“Talking of which, that is where it might serve one well to remember the ancient mantra of liberation…Om Mani Padme Om.”
Up to the moment that some of the other ‘quickies’ posted from other planets disappear into nothingness.
Looking forward to this
is
Madhu.
Dear Prem Martyn,
I remember your moaning request the other day to sponsor a cow to escape from the slaughterhouse.
You can be helped: google “GUT AIDERBICHL”.
As you are a kind of travelling agent you can also visit this place.
Otherwise, when I was googling ‘carnivore’ I found on top of the list
data-meat eaters from FBI, who, since 1994 created a project with this same name (ongoing).
So that might be of interest too – concerning bad manners in ‘eating’.
Madhu
Great news on the gut aiderbichl, my donation is on its way, every bit helps…
Am currently and always looking for a European animal welfare org. that can use me…any tips gratefully received…
I use helpx already.
Ta very muchen.
There´s nothing wrong in it, Parmartha, I feel, when many people feel attracted to develop ‘ínner skills’ to ease outer and inner pain or confusion.
And there is also nothing wrong in it beforehand if they try to share (in words)
what was of help for them and what wasn’t.
The failure to give words to what Meditation IS is included intrinsically, it is bound to be that way.
Why I feel a wrong outcome of this intrinsic failure to be unavoidable is the destructive direction to deal with that failure in interpersonal connection.
‘Ours’ has been a love-shuttle, but hasn’t made the U-turn yet, inside-out like it was meant to BE, in understanding that a fellow-traveller like Satyananda (the first one appearing here in the UK chat I know personally throughout the time) is trying in his way and his best to share wisdom, and sometimes, like in the talk show I saw recently on tv, with people who do not want to listen, their minds wide shut and their ears as well.
That happens…
We here, at this very spot in and on a virtual ‘caravanserai’,
could all do well to look inside at a mirror
while trying to share and to connect.
Little ‘failure prayer’ of a summer morning….
Madhu
Meditation? Rings a bell. Doesn’t that have something to do with discovering that one is not what one thinks one is?
We shouldn’t worry as a bloke in Turkey, land of page and verse, has already sorted out what the problem is…
And here he iz -
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/women-should-not-laugh-in-public-says-turkeys-deputy-prime-minister-in-morality-speech-9635526.html
I think a bunch of mixed male and female sannyasins should stalk this guy and do the laughing meditation everywhere he goes.
Thanks for the link – I am truly amazed.
It is indeed ‘amazing’, on one level the stuff of an absurd cartoon ‘villain’, totally and utterly laughable, based as it is on fear, hence the drive to suppress, to control;
on another, a chilling insight into an almost psychopathic mentality, beliefs and values that have long enslaved half of humanity and are arguably ultimately largely responsible for much of the dysfunctional misery of the entire human race. And they have the nerve to call it ‘morality’, ‘religion’…
When I hear about such people and their mentors, teachers and ‘legitimisers’ – including the ones who elect them – and also the rest of the madness going on, an obvious example being on our screens daily from Gaza, I begin to wonder whether this human world can ever be ‘saved’, it’s just so far gone along the road of what can only be termed ‘evil’.
Perhaps, as in the case of individual encounters with extreme suffering, a nuclear holocaust is the only thing that will bring people to their senses – but then it’ll be too late…
Now, where’s my nearest Kingdom Hall again….
In what world you are living, Parmartha?
Bunch of sannyasins cannot even protest before their own Chairman, and you want them to protest before someone from a totalitarian regime.
Living in a fool’s paradise has its own advantage!
One can even talk about the bicycle which flies!
Would make a lot more good publicity for sannyas than the internal squabbles, and attract some brave souls.
There are always a few who hide within the frock folds of any totalitarian society. It’s just a matter of drawing them out!
Osho “laughter” meditation is clearly needed throughout Turkey, and women there need every support to laugh in public as much as possible.
As Havel said, you do something because you’re impelled to, not because you know the outcome will result the way you wish…
The process itself can be fun too, which is why when Greek airlines failed to answer several faxes I sent a fax photo of their bearded anti-gay pope asking them if he was a homosexual and if they could change the ticket. I got a reply – to both questions.
Phew! What a relief.
There is nothing wrong in it, but it is just sticking plaster stuff.
It is, for example, much better than the sort of medications that western medicine puts people on for even quite simple things like mild anxiety… God knows what the side-effects of such things are, but that there are side-effects even the medical researchers freely accept.
The best is to change one’s life.
It is nice that you know Satyananda personally, Madhu. Why don’t you expand on him a little and your contact with him.
“It is nice that you know Satyananda personally, Madhu. Why don’t you expand on him a little and your contact with him.”
Nothing much more to say here, Parmartha. I did not only read all his books and articles but also met him sometimes in silent meditations when he visited one of his daughters whom I also know in Munich.
And I also liked it when I had a ride with him in the buses of Oregonian shuttles on the Ranch.
He is an integral fellow-traveller and his sharing is integral. And what I really like about him is that he is not boasting being very specially “evolved”, climbing the spiritual ladder…
Kind of honesty which has become rather rare.
Madhu
Meditation is a new Ibuprofen.
It is generic, over-the-counter medicine.
A strip of 10 tablets costs less than a pound!
“I think a bunch of mixed male and female sannyasins should stalk this guy and do the laughing meditation everywhere he goes.”
In a Land, a Society, Parmartha, where a man (an artist, a dancer) was arrested in Istanbul for a silent ‘resistance meditation’, and others, who followed him in silent standing in resistance (without any weapons and not even voicing) have been imprisoned; and in a land where torture as imprisonment is quite an easy thing to encounter, I feel that your recommendations fit rather for a safe place; to get strength for other creative forms to connect and to take action in a way that is not suicidal on a broad scale.
I was very shocked when I followed the story of this artist in Istanbul, quite some time ago.
Charlie Chaplin ‘reloaded’ might have to invent other creative skills to get fresh air into more and more fascistic circumstances and Turkey is not the only place where such stuff is needed!
The laughing meditation with friends in safe places would be for sure of help to overcome coma-like states of being.
As a performance, I doubt it, as well as I doubt the performances of the so-called Feme activists.
It’s amazing and shocking too how quickly it happens that any performance or idea (also resistance to something unbearable) gets merchandised these days and in an obscure way is robbed of its may-be-good effects.
(Sorry to say that I see some of the good ‘sannyas-fruits’ have also gone that way in the wellness market industry).
Madhu
Back in 2007 me and Jyoti popped into Istanbul to look for the Osho centre and centre leader. We found a note in a corridor by a cafe where we asked for the place again. A guy turned up very nervous and surprised.There was no centre – what did we want, who were we? Apologising for the disturbance, we explained and received a curt explanation back.
The local police heavies had intimidated him into abandoning this centre of dubious religiosity which threatened the status quo.
After much travelling I really appreciate the British informality, the incessant parody, the festival culture, the alternative media-savvy creativity…Elsewhere, in so many countries, the amount of incompetent, uncivil bureaucracy, the hostilty to outsiders and the deformed status games infect every day…beyond the brochure attractions…they also tend to be much more confused about solutions and defeatist about change, whereas the UK has seen a fertility of integration and the fun of intelligent diversity.
The risk for us in allowing mostly corporate petit bourgeois slave mentalty to go unchallenged in favour of live and let live is the degeneration of our psychological advantage over ritualised societies..which includes the heavily indoctrinated Christians, not only other more foreign arrivals.
This is not a permit to export western ideologies, it’s just a note on how crap many of these places are in the fabric of their potential let alone any effect for networking and meeting one’s own peer group.
Why, I was told by an infamous therapist that another Turkish wealthy sannyasin had tea brought to him by his house waiter after meditating. I wonder if he meditated for his boss too.
Thank you, Prem Martyn, for sending the echo ripples of your and maybe even the addressed by you (?) laughter -
sending back a ripple of a laughter here -
and how creative have you been this way – nice.
Madhu
That’s guten newsen…
Thanks… : )))
Other day I have seen a video posted on facebook about mob meditation in Münich. I think it is annual event by some Pune 1 sannyasin.
Energy feeling was like a lukewarm soup without salt and pepper. Similar is the atmosphere when one sees very recent photos of a prominent swami’s death celebration in Pune.
If disciples don’t care about the trees planted by the masters, they will be able to grow bushes and nothing else.
This is one of the reasons I am sceptical about Satyananda’s answers or other sannyas school intellectuals. They can talk about Tibet, Gaza, Turkey, Kuwait but not the areas where they have the experience, where they invested their energy.
I remember talking with a friend over the phone. “Now India has got new Prime Minister, my feeling is Osho Ashram should also get a new chairman.”
He answered, “Let us see how Existence decides.”
It is a kind of inner handicap when human affairs are left to Existence to decide.
All in the name of self-development and meditation!
How can anyone take your self-appointed mission to advise on the former Pune ashram and ‘the Future of Sannyas’ seriously, Shantam, when in so many of your posts it’s clear for all to see that you have zero interest in, knowledge of or even respect for “self-development and meditation”?!
You write with great enthusiasm about events like festivals, celebration days and general ‘social excitement’, which are or were really just the ‘icing on the cake’ (or even “salt and pepper” in the soup), but nothing whatsoever that I can recall concerning the essence of the matter, the whole point of the exercise, the ‘main course’, what has been called ‘the flight of the alone to the alone’.
How is it then that you deem yourself somehow qualified to pronounce judgment, how come you think you know how things ‘should’ be when you appear to have not the slightest clue about the fundamental raison d’etre of the ashram or of Sannyas itself?
Recently, you declared re your Pune experience that I didn’t “know the half of it”, which is true, of course, as you’ve never actually spelt out exactly what you meant, apart from saying what work you did there and how ‘wonder-ful’ it all was (especially mingling with all those foreign women). If you don’t want to be misrepresented, misunderstood, Shantam, why not go into details of your experience and communicate exactly what you mean?
Otherwise, I’m left with the conclusion that whatever experience you had over there was fundamentally of an extrovert nature, not enough to build an inner foundation upon in later years, in ‘exile’ from that Pune ‘Shangri-la’, because you depended too much upon the prevailing external conditions rather than upon what was/is ultimately the object of the exercise, ‘going inside’ in, for want of a better term, meditative self-enquiry.
In other words, the inner ‘job’ wasn’t done – and to compensate, you’re trying to do the impossible, to re-create the ‘golden’ past, while making yourself ‘important’, ‘someone’, by maintaining this obsessional ashram-related/’future of Sannyas’ purpose.
“Showing off your bottom in public, while admittedly fun, doesn’t tend to free people from the shackles of whatever economic system binds them.”
Humphrey, C. (2001) The Politics of Carnival: Festive Misrule in Medieval England. Manchester: Manchester University Press [p. 33]
I reckon like the flying bird men of Worthing pier, you have put your bottom on the line there, in a wild poke into the unknown.
Sannyas could do with a little less of the nose-in-the-air posturing…and yes, you guessed it, a bit more posterioring…before…during…and after any religious search for orifices to talk out of.
Perhaps tartans instead of robes for easy exhibiting of both sides of our cheeky duality….
“All countenanced by unspoken ritual and unexplored, implosive nuclear family relations…
How do I know about such things?
Trust me, I know – first hand….”
There is this ancient (Sufi ?) story, Prem Martyn, about an ancient old Kingdom and its happenings in Court assemblies, where King, Queen, Liiers and Lawyers and simply all of the huge amount of personal servants used to come together once in a while – in a festivity.
Quite dominant (sometimes dangerous for his head on his shoulders too) was the role of the harlequin, the clown, and he was allowed to sit very close to the King and Queen and show up with his witty comments and bring laughter to the whole assembly and amuse the King.
One day, at a festivity, so it was told, he had been going too far with his comments and got a hard slap from the King on his face.
And what he did was turn around and passed on the slap to the next person standing with the words:
“Pass it on!”
Sure enough, soon the whole Court found themselves in an ongoing slapping of each other, passing on the slapping.
Late in the evening when the King came to bed to hug his wife, the Queen, it is told, instead of a hug he got a hard slap on his face from his wife, who told him then that the whole procedure had also finally ‘faced’ her too…and she had passed it on….
I have been always loving this story – like a childlike fable of the Dharma Wheel, or call it a Samsara, or name it – whatsoever.
Childlike – because it nourishes a trust that all returns to its origins – including injustice.
It´s childlike though – but that´s indeed what is happening –
very much more than less…
a whole slapping-each-other-procedure – mostly for reasons you don´t feel responsible for.
To be able to meet a Mystery man, a Master of Meditation in the body, for even a ‘little while’, is an unforgettable invitation to leave the old habit of ‘slapping’ either ourselves or the other – and try our best to stop the ‘Wheel’.
Whenever I am reminded of how Osho told these kinds of stories, to get us all to laugh and then be silent – I am in awe.
Love,
Madhu
In the process of ‘work as meditation’, as essential worker at Osho Commune International, 2 weeks of annual holidays were allowed. Many used to go for visa extension in neighbouring countries and many to their families for arranging the basic finances for the year to come.
So during such visits many relatives will visit our home. Many religious-minded, socially stable and financially well-to-do relatives were always trying to influence with the similar sentences, “It is all about self-development – for that you don’t need to go anywhere.”
To declare one´s essentiality as a kind of VIP and to declare to be a meditator while working are like parallels in the universe which will never meet, Shantam.
Wisdom is like money: everybody has it, few less, few more and very few in abundance.
How many wise people can create some banking-like institutions?
Ashrams are banking-like institutions. Wise energy is traded and it creates ripple effects in the patterns of hearts.
There are villagers-type city smartasses too, who think what is the need for spiritual institutions, they think money is saved under their pillows and grows in the purse hidden in their wives’ bras!
To extend your financial analogy, Shantam, you’re proposing reviving an essentially bankrupt institution as, unfortunately, the case for any specific ashram diminishes in direct proportion to the time since the death of the master who originally inspired its creation and was its very Living Centre.
Unless, of course, its ‘investors’, eg you, are content with inevitably lukewarm versions of how things were when the master and consequently the place, were alive…
You’re living in hope, in nostalgia for your own ‘good old days’, imagining it can and would all be recreated exactly as it was – but the harsh fact of life is that such ‘special’ times never return, for anyone – including you, Shantam. That’s why they’re so special….