From the collection of Osho letters before the Poona one period called “A Cup of Tea”
Love
Why does man suffer so much?
Because in his life there is pandemonium
but no soundless music.
Because in his life there is a babble of thoughts
but no emptiness.
Because in his life there is a turmoil of feeling
but no equanimity.
Because in his life there is a mad rushing around
but no stillness which knows no directions.
And finally because in his life
there is much of himself
but of God, nothing at all.
For this soundless music, stillness and emptiness, human longing has created religions and spirituality.
As I know from the history, these letters were written when master was on the verge of creating his own mystery school.
Yes indeed…spirituality points us to look beyond body & mind, where there is no suffering….
Cake is rarely the solution to a problem (other than hypoglycaemia!), but even the most insurmountable problem seems slightly less daunting after a slice of cake and a cup of tea.
I suspect that if our world leaders shared a Victoria sponge and pot of tea before their various meetings, the world would be a rather better place.
Didn’t paint today. Made a cake.
For the first time ever.
All gone. God, I’m full.
Perhaps you could channel your creativity into cakes and do some designs with the icing – like a nativity set perhaps, but sannyas-style.
There’s lots of scope for those kinds of scenes with icing, I had an aunt who used to do that.
“Perhaps you could channel your creativity into cakes and do some designs with the icing – like a nativity set perhaps, but sannyas-style.”
I’m on it. What a terrific idea. Could you be more specific?
Act as Shantam thinks I should, or act as I feel like doing.
What a difficult choice. NOT.
“Nirgun, don’t be serious about it. Enjoy your gossiping, enjoy the small things of life, the small joys of life. They all contribute to the enrichment of your being. And always remember: nonseriousness is one of the most fundamental qualities of a really religious person.
A sincere young man went to an understanding old rabbi for advice. “The problem is my sexual appetite. When I shake hands with a woman it is aroused — even when I pass a pretty woman on the street it is aroused. It disturbs me because I love my wife very much.”
“Don’t worry, son,” said the rabbi. “It doesn’t matter where you work up an appetite as long as you dine at home.”
This rabbi is a wise man, nonserious, taking life playfully. My sannyasins have to take life very playfully — then you can have both the worlds together. You can have the cake and eat it too. And that is a real art. This world and that, sound and silence, love and meditation, being with people, relating, and being alone. All these things have to be lived together in a kind of simultaneity; only then will you know the uttermost depth of your being and the uttermost height of your being.”
Osho
The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 2
Chapter 2: Drink To The Full And Dance
https://justpaste.it/10tjt
Arps,
Be careful with the cake…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0tMvxV-GC4
I remember that episode. The furore that followed!!
The possibilities are endless…
Osho gave playful expression to his idea that we could have our cake and eat it – with his colourful display of Rolls-Royces and shoulder-padded suits, and perhaps that could be celebrated with a cake-form…
Hundreds of marzipan Rollers covered with a sprinkling of hundreds and thousands…
There could be a ‘Ranch scene’ cake, with a model of Rajneeshpuram with marzipan miniatures of Osho in his swimming pool, or driving by, and Sheela, complete with her strap-on pistol and suitcase full of smack.
A colourful ‘Poona 2′ scene, with a Buddha Hall complete with podium. Intricate details…shelves full of his massive collection of books.
Anything is possible with marzipan and icing. And don’t forget some of those silver balls.
And while your at it, perhaps you could make some meringues too for good measure.
I’m going to have a bash at Eccles cakes next.
I used to know a Swami Deva Eccles.
“Maturity longs for only one thing and that is such a contentment which lacks nothing; such a perfect contentment beyond which there remains nothing to be achieved; a contentment which is so total that every cell and every pore of your body overflows with the delight, the thankfulness and the gratitude towards the divine.
This can happen.All arrangements for it to happen are within you; just a slight rearranging is all that is needed. All the ingredients are present, only a small change has to be managed. You have the flour, you have the water, and the oven is lit. All you have to do is make the dough, roll it into bread and let it bake, and the hunger will be satiated. But you sit there, with the flour and water and burning fire – but weeping! You have everything, just a small re-organizing…
And this reorganizing is the spiritual discipline.
Enough for today.”
Osho
Nowhere To Go But In
Chapter 16: None
“I used to know a Swami Deva Eccles.”
So did I, Arps. What a great sense of humour, a crazy man indeed – ‘made’ for Sannyas, wasn’t he?
He told me he’d asked Osho for that very name and Osho apparently readily agreed, with a huge chuckle, having known him from old BBC World Service recordings. That should be somewhere in a ‘Darshan Diary’ although I’ve never seen it.
Extraordinary thing was (and still is, I believe) that few realised he was, in fact, the ‘former’ Spike Milligan. He never let on and I didn’t want to pry, but I suspect he insisted on anonymity as he wanted a refuge from being famous.
He had some connection to the (Italian, I think) psychotherapist, Assagioli, who put great emphasis on will power.
Yes, and he was a stickler for time too…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tjHlFPTwVk
Well, Satyadeva, and Arpana too, if it was the man and artist you presume, he suffered lifelong from what is called a ‘bipolar psychic sickness’ after his war experiences as a soldier.
And if that was so, one could say he made as an artist and comedian the best of it, at least most of the time. What it might have been to live with him, is another matter.
Can even imagine that his audience, getting that strong a mirror on stage to all that turmoil and noise and pain happening inside, while trying to cope with the average madnesses, cruelties and wars in the world, got a taste of silence, just by being overwhelmed.
Like watching a very strong gibberish meditation. On stage.
Guess that´s not the content of the love-letter from Osho, posted here. But who knows?
Madhu
P.S:
Easy, though, to imagine that Osho had a bright chuckle…such a big Heart He had, didn’t He?
@ SD:
Have you got an earliest memory of The Goons? Mine is of being between 8 or 9 and talking to a friend on the way home in a goon voice. We were in a state of rapture. Enthralled by Neddy Seagoon. Eccles. Min. Kids love nut-job grown-ups.
I guess The Goons arrived quite early in my life, hearing their shows on the radio and my older brother gleefully imitating them.
I can still do the voices.
Discussion on Osho´s words has gone into the art of cake-making.
Happy Sunday Brain Storming!
For experiment’s sake, let us presume 1000 people have read these charming words, truthful words:
“Why does man suffer so much?
Because in his life there is pandemonium
but no soundless music.
Because in his life there is a babble of thoughts
but no emptiness.
Because in his life there is a turmoil of feeling
but no equanimity.
Because in his life there is a mad rushing around
but no stillness which knows no directions.
And finally because in his life
there is much of himself
but of God, nothing at all.”
AND THEN?
No idea, Shants – kindly enlighten us via your own particularly vast personal experience of this condition.
My idea, SD:
Osho was using the words to attract people and create his own brand. In spirituality it is called The Path. In religious terms, the path which sooner or later becomes Mini-Religion.
As far as longing and soulful words are concerned, many tv channels in every Indian language have plenty of orators talking about God and inner beauty and Wow effect of meeting and merging with Parmatma. (Parmatma is an Indian name for Mr. God(.
Let me say also, it is not difficult to create wise sentences out of words; masterly work is to create a wise world out of such words. Osho, in my memory, will remain that wise man.
He thinks he’s about to convert you to Shantamism.
Problem is, Shantam, that you want it all on your own terms. If you REALLY wanted freedom from all those symptoms and conditions listed in the Osho quote and reckoned only a communal setting would be of any significant help you’d have been somewhere else by now instead of sitting at your computer complaining about the Pune ashram every day.
But have you ever asked yourself whether that freedom is what you really want? Or is that just a nice, spiritual-sounding idea, pleasant to play around with in your imagination, but in reality coming way behind the wish to simply be part of a pleasant community where you can do a bit of this, a bit of that, sit around talking about your ideas and concepts and how things ‘should’ be, while keeping an eye out for any sexual chance that might come your way? With a decent prospect, hopefully, of being ‘looked after’ in your old age?
SD, don’t you think hundreds of millions of Buddhist, Jains, Hindus and Christian monks and nuns were moved with similar sentiments as described by Osho?
Wordsmithery may be new but such sentiments are the base of every religion.
What irritates me the most is the long nose, “We are the first one to take such journey.” For example, you always come out as if knowing alpha and omega of true spirituality.
Can I ask how many hundred hours you have logged into the search of divine music and soundless sound and lotus opening and a confirmed booking in heaven through airbnb?!
As per usual, you avoid the question, Shantam. So one can only presume you don’t really get the point, or that it’s too near the mark, too threatening for you to even begin to look at it.
Please, Mr Would-Be Politician, for once address the issue put to you instead of deliberately muddying the waters with ‘religious’ and other red herrings.
Humour, you guys – as you know already – is timeless, at least some of it. Found this this morning on the universal clipboard, and like to pass it over (with just a little updating of the content)…
Engine Trouble — 30 November 2016
“An airliner en-route to London Heathrow DC was having engine trouble.
The pilot instructed the cabin crew to have the passengers take their seats and get prepared for an emergency landing.
A few minutes later, the pilot called the crew and asked if everyone was buckled in and ready.
“All set back here, Captain,” came the reply, “except the lawyers are still going around passing out business cards.”
Happy good landing for caravanserai-home and for everybody.
Madhu
Good joke, Madhu.
Please share one joke a day and once in a week non-veg!
Just responding to your request for more jokes today, Shantam Prem, and just for you. Looked for another ´one, happening when you might have been present in the commune in Pune. According to your report.
It’s a Gorilla story:
“The zoo has hit upon hard times, and as the animals die, the director can´t afford to replace them…until he has a brilliant idea.
Sometime later, Kowalski is walking past the zoo when he sees a sign, ‘Strong man wanted, apply within’.
So he goes in and the director tells him, “Our star attraction, Gregory the Gorilla has died, and I want you to replace him. All you have to do is put on this gorilla suit, go out there and thump your chest and eat peanuts”.
Kowalski starts work right away.
Every day he thrills the crowd by pumping and thumping. But the climax of his act is when he climes up a tree in his pen and throws peanuts at the lions next door, who get really mad and try to climb the fence.
Unfortunately, one afternoon, Kowalski is up the tree when the branch breaks and he falls into the lions’ den. He jumps up and starts screaming and shouting for help, until one of the lions walks over to him, growling and snarling, and then speaks out of the corner of his mouth.
“Shut up, Kowalkski”, he whispers, “or we will ALL lose our jobs!”
Do you remember that old joke which ran something like:
Q. What is Hell like?
A. It`s where the English are the cooks (cake).
The Germans are the comedians telling jokes.
The Indians think they are running the place.
The pot-heads are the philosophers.
Hang on a minute…
That reminds me of somewhere….
@ Frank at 11.17 am:
As you remember what´s a nightmarish “Hell” so clearly, maybe you can share your remembrance of Heaven too? (As one perspective doesn´t go without the other..).
Looking forward to your heavenly response.
Madhu
Madhu,
I don`t recall saying that Hell was “nightmarish”. Indeed, I like it.
As Freddie N said:
“In Heaven, all the interesting people are missing.”
Madhu, very apt joke in these times, or perhaps since man invented law & lawyers!
Not everybody is longing to be enlightened. They are enjoying all the senses, enjoying physical existence. Sounds of music also leads to soundless music. Seeing beauty also nourishes. Good food also brings joy. Life is there to enjoy.
https://t.co/qRJVZuypXI #lestweforget #mkultra #mindcontrol #ar #vr #hypnosis #memoryloss #nlp
Imho, true meditation requires no drug or hypnosis, Satyadeva. In reply to your comment on the previous (closed) thread, but on the topic of cake….
What Osho means with “soundless music”? Is it the ‘divine sound’?
First time I hear “soundless music”. It doesn’t sound right.
Could anyone comment, please?
That feeling you get when one of your little horrors/darlings appears and wants feeding. That look.
That feeling you get when you turn a corner and coming towards you is a friend you haven’t seen for ages for some reason or other.
The way you felt when Osho came into you life. The early times.
The way you feel when you have one of those moments of awareness after all these years that you’re still connected to Osho.
***** has just made another school*** quip, and you grin and snigger, or chuckle if you’re a bit more grown up, and you haven’t even met *** face to face, but feel like you know ***.
MOD:
Arpana, WHY ALL THE *, PLEASE?!
Tan, I guess Osho is saying silence, he is probably using “soundless music” as a figure of speech. Wonder what “divine sound” is?!
Tan,
Technically, “soundless music” is an oxymoron, which is defined as: “a figure of speech that juxtaposes elements that appear to be contradictory, but which contain a concealed point.”
What`s the concealed point in question, you might ask?
I think it`s one of those pointing-at-the-moon/the truth-can`t-be-said-in-words thingies.
‘The Music of the Spheres’….
Frank, thank you for expanding on that; frankly, that didn’t cross my mind at that time.
Thanks, Kavita, Frank and Satyadeva.
Osho said: “Hari Om Tat Sat: the divine sound – that is the truth… It is one of the mahavakyas, the great sayings which have been embedded in the hearts of the mystics since eternity. It is not something theoretical, not something philosophical, it is something existential.”
What puzzles me is that he always stops there. He never explains it like he explains enlightenment and so on…He always says this sound is everything and millions of people listen to it.
But “soundless music”? Maybe a bad translation?
Cheers!
But Tan, what would you or anyone get by an explanation of something you rightly intimated with “It is not something theoretical, not something philosophical, it is something existential”?
I simply love to see it like this: We are all part of this mystery, if we come to know it, or not. And that´s very good news after all.
And to pour out cups and cups of tea, again and again, ever compassionate invitations to listen to the sound of Silence is a very loving offer, isn´t it?
My own experience is that the very existential stuff, I can´t speak, but have to live it. My resistance, however, is very, very noisy.
And a reminder of that I found in that quote of a cup of tea, making that ´thread – tea´. For all of us.
Madhu
P.S:
The translation “soundless music” is in my ears as correct as it can be, if using language at all….
MOD:
NOT SURE WHAT YOU MEAN BY “And a reminder of that I found in that quote of a cup of tea, making that ‘thread – tea.’” PLEASE EXPLAIN.
Some meditators and mystics talk about hearing a sound a bit like “Ommmmm”.
https://youtu.be/LHXuUQeGNMw
Not like a Tibetan horn but similar to humming perhaps.
Osho`s brother, also in the business, explains more:
https://youtu.be/EgcCVMVTTuE?list=PLhjCBuiXo9GMn6rDZmljAapJH4r7gwPRt
Thanks, SS.
Osho is still the best, just watching this video…
What a difference to his brother! XXX
Osho said “Hold my hand, go wid me. REJOICE!”
Osho`s brother is also saying, “Hold my hand, go wid me. REJOICE!”
It is like those Russian dolls that you keep opening and then another one pops up.
Osho was the elder brother. His large shoulder wings may show that he had attained a deeper state of enlightenment, a ‘beyond enlightenment’. Perhaps Osho`s brother felt like it was his duty to carry on the family business.
On the footsteps of Frank’s “What is Hell like?”, let me write ‘What is Heaven like?’…
Heaven is where English work in publication.
German women show the beauty of hairy armpits.
Indians don’t pretend to be Tantra masters.
Italians look like extras in the movies
and…
Osho is alive!
Shantam forgot – Indians show their Astrology skills to all other nationalities!
Not all the Indians, Kavita, I think other than me there were hardly one or two with Astrology skills in Pune. What Indians think in general is how good they are in Ayurvedic Massage and deep No Mind talks.
In fact, many Indians think themselves to be experts of Ayurveda, Yoga, Astrology & of course, Meditation, after a few Osho discourses!
I remember Yogi saying that Vedic astronomy was more advanced than western astronomy.
Western science managed to land on the moon, but the ancient sages had long ago discovered that with a few carefully placed banana skins, it was possible to land on Uranus.
Yogi knows it all!
Assteroids? Western or Vedic astronomy?