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….

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….

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!

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.”

Humphrey, C. (2001) The Politics of Carnival: Festive Misrule in Medieval England. Manchester: Manchester University Press [p. 33]

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

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.

Thanks… : )))

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!