Neehar remembers a unique message from Osho in the 1970′s.
The problem with “messages from Osho” for disciples since 1974 was whether they were really from Osho, or came from one of his Secretaries, to whom he may have delegated such work. In fact, should anyone who was involved with the letters/messages that Osho received and how they were admoinistered who is reading this should comment to help posterity.
Any which way, this message below might be seen as a controversial message!
Neehar says: Working in the Ashram gardens, one day we discovered an infestation of rats in Jesus House garden. We wrote to Osho about how to cope.
The reply we got on a little slip of yellow paper that we assumed came from Osho himself said simply:
Liberate them from their bodies. With awareness.
Osho is the father of Frank boy. It explains a lot….
Well, I guess the Jaina culture that Osho grew up with would never have approved of such a move. I think Osho used to carry a small hand towel which he would use to kill the mosquitoues which would aim for his legs during his darshan. Self-defence, of course.
The Jains (at least the monks anyway) follow a strict protocol of ahimsa and non-violence towards other beings, which is admirable. Ants and insects must not be trodden on if can be avoided. Hair must be pulled out.
But they still have to pull vegetables out of the ground to eat, which could be considered a form of violence.
This is a violent world and most beings here spend ninety per cent of their time hunting and trying to eat other beings, or running away from beings that want to eat them.
I have known some Hari Krishna folk who thought it was a good idea to feed the wasps at a festival with honey, as it would produce good karmas. Unfortunately, this idea produced a big buzzing infestation all around the field and more than a few stings.
Thanks, Shanti. A sensible, and, at the end, amusing post!
I myself always had my doubts whether any messages that were said to come from Osho were actually from Osho himself, and some people I knew who worked on the administrative side – but not high up! – reckoned so in Pune 1.
Rats/mice etc. only infest where they find food, in my experience. If you take out their food source they go away and search for food elsewhere.
I do know vegan gardeners who remove slugs from their allotments/gardens and take them in a plastic bag and put them on Hampstead Heath!
Life has, of course, been for billions of years a case of eating other life forms or being eaten by them. Why the ‘Creator’ should have set this up this way is beyond me.
I think the Jain edict should be changed to a common sense one of simply minimising any form of killing of other life forms, unless it becomes totally necessary for survival.
Rats in Jesus House – now I wonder who lived there?! Rich sannyasins with private incomes maybe, who had loads of western food parcels hanging around.
I asked Osho a really daft question in Poona, and had an answer that has stayed with me for years; and I have not until this moment wondered if the response came from him (the answer wasn’t used in discourse). And I also realised some years later, the sort of question I would have expected, in retrospect, to be put down for; but as I say, I received an answer that wasn’t a quotation that is still on occasions useful to me:
“Wherever you are, put your total energy.”
Yeah, come to think of it, rats in India really are very common and a few rats in the ashram would be considered no big deal, at least by the Indians anyway. They don’t carry the same stigma that westerners associate with them.
I seem to have become more aware of rats in my more recent trips to India, and often notice them scuttling around somewhere. I have also observed them once in broad daylight in a hotel, running right up the legs of a table in the banquet hall to get to the sugar bowl.
That place really had a bit of a problem with rats; I used to have one that popped up in my bathroom, and although I kept blocking up different entrances it would just unblock them and find new ways to get in.
Once it ran over my bed and I threw the blanket up, which flung the rat across the room and it hit the wall, but determined, it still kept coming back.
But rats do not seem to be a big deal to Indians. “Just step on that mouse if you see it again” was a response I got when I mentioned the rat problem in the hotel. Then they offered to bring out a “rat-trap”, but I left the place after that.
Rats are considered a bit sacred there, I reckon. An elephant god rides one around as a chariot.
I heard that the reason that you see rats in pictures of Ganesh running about is because rats were seen as a sign of abundance.
Back in the day, if your grain store was overflowing, you got lots of rats – so early Indian agrarian societies saw rats as harbingers of good times.
That`s one way of looking at it.
Also, in India, I`m not sure that they made the connection between plague and rats, as happened in 14 century Europe with the Black Death.
And have you seen this vid?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OOs1l8Fajc
Ganesh hangs out with bandicoot rats.
I remember seeing rats as big as cats in the Pune Commune around 2008 or so; now I am wondering if those 1970s rats were left to live/survive!
You are so right, Kavita. They were huge!
Perfectly correct, Kavita!
Also, in what should be the most holy shrine in mighty Bhorat I have seen chronic infestation of red-bottomed baboons the size of goras!
They are bringing many diseases like alcoholism and corruption, which were unknown in glorious past!
These goras have strange religious beliefs whereby they believe they are superior because they are descended from other apes!
Then they steal wallets of the faithful pilgrims and then stand there taunting them by waving large bundles of cash and forged wills at them and laughing!
Yahoo!
Hari Om!
Rats!
Apparently, rats are becoming resistant to poisons, and are growing bigger and becoming “superats”.
Perhaps some of those giant rats in Poona were the survivors from the seventies.
These superats are also becoming a problem in England, it seems.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/z82mmp3
When confronted by a problem you can solve it easily by reducing it to
the question, “How would the Lone Ranger have handled this?”
I seem to recall seeing some poison bait stations at Pune Resort. I think that is how you liberate them. Mind you, make sure the mongoose and peacocks can’t get in them. I saw mice but no rats at Pune Resort. “The greatest victory is to win without fighting.” (Sun Tzu)
Then again, you don’t want to kill the squirrels or have the hawks eat poisoned meat…so perhaps, encourage the eagles to do what comes naturally to them. I recall an anecdote of them taking a squirrel in front of a witness. Perfectly natural.
“Liberate them from their bodies. With awareness.”
Thus Euthanasia became part of Sannyas life!
Trap the rats and feed them to a pet snake? Freeze them if there is a surplus so you don’t waste. If it’s food for another creature I really don’t see a problem with it. I never saw a python in India – do you have them?
This rat is in trouble.
I do feel sorry for this one.
Rats are very clever but this one is in a difficult situation here.
Shantam, Osho had this to say:
http://www.osho.com/read/osho/osho-on-topics/euthanasia/
But clearly the rat has a lesser awareness…?
Bong, if you address your posts to me then first introduce yourself. I am never in the mood to communicate with faceless people with funny sounding names.
And secondly, try to avoid sharing Osho discourse links. Nobody gave me the first Osho books and neither someone told me the benefits of meditation. In that case, I would have also said after turning pages, “What is so special? Everything is said before. Acharya is singing other people´s song in his voice.”
Seekers are like hunters. They don´t buy frozen meat.
http://www.bagheera.com/inthewild/van_anim_python.htm
Let’s go full Conan!
One message from Osho to His people has stayed with me during all these years. I have forgotten whether Osho was coming for discourse that evening or not, but as it used to happen sometimes before Osho´s arrival, Amrito or Anando will address the gathering to convey some instructions or deliver message from Osho.
Message was something like this:
Osho has been informed that sannyasins are doing all kind of things to earn quick money to be here. At this He has given the message to convey to my people that one cannot achieve right goals through wrong means, and also seekers of truth need to aware of thin line between needs and greed.
These sentences I have written on the base of my memory and my elephant memory is quite reliable.
One of the charming aspects of life in commune was that almost all the disciples were living on essentials. When cycle or scooter are only mode of convenience and you live in a rented room and wear same coloured robes most of the time, essentials can be packed in one trunk.
Those who say work loses the shine after master´s departure are the people who departed from the master during his lifetime.
Till 2000, before the name and concept changed into Soso Black Cage Resort, trunk storage business boomed to its peak. Around 1500-2000 people were storing their trunks on regular basis with the idea they will be back in few months. Naturally, everyone could not make it in few months but show was always ‘house full’.
I see Shantam off-topic again (missed the moderators!)
His comment not about questions to Osho. But public statements made on his behalf, often in my view made by the administration to manage the affairs of the commune, and nothing to do with Osho. He just told them to get on with it and say he had said it if necessary.
I was always surprised by the number and range of questions that Osho got, and it is no wonder that he got others to answer them.
I think it is an Indian thing to ask gurus all sorts of stupid questions, like ‘shall I marry?’, or ‘shall I take up painting?’, or ‘my bicycle was stolen and I am upset, what should I do?’ Nothing to do with spiritual growth whatsoever.
I think Osho said that Vimalkirti never asked him a single question and praised him for it; if that is the case, someone to emulate.
Parmartha, my comment is not off the topic.
When someone says on microphone before a big gathering, one cannot mix one´s mind but deliver Osho’s version.
Maybe you are not aware, during Pune 2 Osho had multiple teams to inform him and make him update with the happenings in the world and also to keep tab on others.
You may be well-educated person in the field of religion and spirituality; tell me a single instance where master leaves behind a parliament and not one hand-picked successor? So one cannot ignore the collective messages.
P.S:
Surely I am off the target because, like others, I have not written about rats and mice!
Well,it’s always warm and comfy down there with an excellent and wide variety and choice of foodstuffs. Beats Pune railway station any day.
A constant supply of tasty and sumptuous cousines, bustling foodhalls, and sweaty, fat-bellied foreigners wearing bum-belts and sunglasses and leaving scraps of donuts everywhere.
The Lotus Paradise, that’s what he called it, didn’t he? “This very body the Buddha, this very place the Lotus Paradise.”
Even the rats are grooving on down there and absorbing Osho’s discourses.
One evening it rang out over the sound-system in Buddha Hall:
“Now Osho’s been told about some of your get-rich-quick schemes and he ain’t happy. Sannyasins selling everything from ecstasy to even their own body parts down at the local hospital, and women selling themselves to wealthy Arabs in Bombay’s five-star hotels, just to make a few bucks and stay in Pune a bit longer.”
Osho shook his head sternly and asked for another diet-coke. Then he asked Anando to remind everybody that he had made an honest living working hard as a professor and a newspaper editor before he became enlightened.
Thanks, Swamishanti!
For your last two chapters in your 7:11pm contribution of today, mentioning the shadow work on ´rats´ in minds (quite a fertilized greed as well as other stuff – and its outcome or follow-ups)
and nothing to do with the chaps in rat-animal bodies, being the favourite animals to be used in medicine and pharmaceutical labs by humans as they are easy to handle and thus fertile material and intelligent too.
Couldn´t relate otherwise to that kind of dirty paper presented here at the topic, it seemed to be as forged for me as some testament or the other stuff…and did transport other whatsoever hidden messages.
And couldn´t relate either to the lady’s metaphorical speech about the sooo big rats of 2008…(from the 70s). Or other similiar stuff, coming into its gears.
It is said by the buddhist teaching, one should be very pleased to be born as a human being, to have so many possibilities to interconnect and to live and to love and share, besides eat, shit, sleep, fuck, be fertile and have children, and die (after a little while).
Otherwise, the Chinese horoscope in animal metaphors have the rat character every twelve years; and those people know much about rats and dogs and other creatures that they choose for their yearly cycles.
However, that doesn´t hinder many of those Chinese people from eating slaughtered dogs as a meal, and maybe even rats too?
Well, it is said (we) the humans are the crown of creation, but I sometimes severely doubt it.
Thanks, Swamishanti, for making up a point behind the point, behind a point here – at least.
Madhu
Thank you, Madhu.
I have heard that aspartame (which is an ingredient in diet-coke and Coca-Cola) has been found to cause cancer in rats in lab experiments.
Yes, they sure are clever animals, just like the Chinese portray them in their horoscope, and they would have been well clued up on the whole scene in the Ashram, and all of the sannyasin schedule, including the White Robe Brotherhood, the time people were getting up and going for dynamic, who was fucking who, what Osho was eating for dinner (and this was the same meal day in, day out, according to some reports) and where the sweets were stashed.
I have also heard about the Chinese eating dogs and bees and everything else, like you too. Mind you, tribal people living in the jungles and the tipis also eat pretty much everything that moves too.
Are humans “the crown of creation”?
“You are the crown of creation.
You are the crown of creation,
And you’ve got no place to go.
Soon you’ll attain the stability you strive for,
In the only way that it’s granted:
In a place among the fossils of our time.
In loyalty to their kind
They cannot tolerate our minds.
In loyalty to our kind
We cannot tolerate their obstruction!
Life is change.
How it differs from the rocks.
I’ve seen their ways too often for my liking.
New worlds to gain.
My life is to survive and be alive
For you.”
Lyrics by Jefferson Airplane:
https://youtu.be/uOrb0G0tw08
You are off the target because we are talking about questions to Osho and his answers.
NOT public statements made up most likely by those bete noires of yours, Devaraj and Jayesh!
For this, I would like to request editor to ask Maneesha or Keerti, how many questions were tailor made.
Audience in any magic show feels awesome at the performance, only the staff knows how much immaculately show is planned.
Doctor is checking out three old guys suspected of being senile.
Doctor: “What’s 3 times 3?”
1st Man: “106″
Doctor, to second man: “What’s 3 times 3?”
2nd Man: “Tuesday”
Doctor, to third man: “What’s 3 times 3?”
3rd Man: “9″
Doctor: “Very good! How’d you get that?”
3rd Man: “Easy, I just subtracted Tuesday from 106.”
……
Health warning:
In case of incomprehension…
Please infer accordingly.
That´s a really good one, Prem Martyn – can be used as a KOAN too – post-modern-contemporary…stuff….
Thanks,
Madhu
“The Lotus Paradise, that’s what he called it, didn’t he? “This very body the Buddha, this very place the Lotus Paradise.” (Swamishanti).
I think the Lotus Paradise refers to where you are right now, planet earth, not to the commune. Osho speaking on Zen is not saying the commune is a special place.
“ZEN IS JUST ZEN. There is nothing comparable to it. It is unique – unique in the sense that it is the most ordinary and yet the most extraordinary phenomenon that has happened to human consciousness. It is the most ordinary because it does not believe in knowledge, it does not believe in mind. It is not a philosophy, not a religion either. It is the acceptance of the ordinary existence with a total heart, with one’s total being, not desiring some other world, supra-mundane, supra-mental. It has no interest in any esoteric nonsense, no interest in metaphysics at all. It does not hanker for the other shore; this shore is more than enough. Its acceptance of this shore is so tremendous that through that very acceptance it transforms this shore – and this very shore becomes the other shore:
This very body the buddha;
This very earth the lotus paradise.
Hence it is ordinary. It does not want you to create a certain kind of spirituality, a certain kind of holiness. All that it asks is that you live your life with immediacy, spontaneity. And then the mundane becomes the sacred.”
Osho, ‘Ah, This (chap. 1)
Sometimes the pond becomes the Lotus paradise….
Couldn’t say it better myself… but it is not ordinarily ordinary…the lotus paradise is extraordinarily ordinary when living with consciousness, compassion, and unpredictability…
http://sannyasnews.org/now/archives/6186
I still think growing a huge Indian python is a better way to deal with the rats than poison (remaining on topic).
An Indian python surely liberates them from their bodies, with consciousness?
“Oi, Den!”, I shrieked excitedly. “Come over, quick! They’ve all fucked off to that big tent again!”
It was 7pm, outside ‘Miriam’s’. Usually a bustling, busy canteen full of smelly, noisy people, we knew that if you were lucky enough to get here in one piece at this time in the day it was unusually quiet.
The giant fuckers would be sitting in the big tent for a couple of hours, sitting, along with periods of laughing, gibbering nonsense sounds and clapping. It was the perfect chance for us to grab a snack. You had to be wary of attention of the local ashram cat, however.
“Has the guy in the Rolls Royce shown up yet?”, shrieked Den.
“No, but they’ve all headed over there. He’ll be there soon,” I squeaked back.
“Watch out for the trays with the blue pellets. They look good but they make you ill.”