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From: <RiverIIOsho@yahoogroups.com>
Date: 2010/7/31
Subject: [RiverIIOsho] Digest Number 869
To: RiverIIOsho@yahoogroups.com
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From: <RiverIIOsho@yahoogroups.com>
Date: 2010/7/31
Subject: [RiverIIOsho] Digest Number 869
To: RiverIIOsho@yahoogroups.com
Messages In This Digest (9 Messages)
- 1.
- Silence is enough From: Subhuti
- 2.
- Nobody is an island From: Subhuti
- 3.
- LIVE THE MOMENT From: Subhuti
- 4.
- Humbly accept your imperfection From: Subhuti
- 5.
- ACCEPTANCE CREATES THE MILIEU IN WHICH LOVE GROWS From: Subhuti
- 6.
- SUBHUTI WAS SENT TO SPREAD BUDDHA'S MESSAGE From: Subhuti
- 7.
- Consciousness is the only reality..... Ramana Maharishi From: Subhuti
- 8a.
- THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN LIFE IS MEDITATION From: Subhuti
- 8b.
- Re: THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN LIFE IS MEDITATION From: rumika
Messages
- 1.
Silence is enough
Posted by: "Subhuti" subhuti@comcast.net subhutiii
Fri Jul 30, 2010 5:13 am (PDT)
----- Original Message -----
From: Antar Kabeer
To: subhuti@comcast.net
Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2010 9:10 AM
Subject: orkut - Antar Kabeer left you a new scrap!
Antar:
Hearing will make you a great knowledgeable man, and listening will make you innocent, silent -- a peace that passeth understanding.
Modern mind has lost all capacity to wonder. It has lost all capacity to look into the mysterious, into the miraculous, because of knowledge, because it thinks it knows.
Language is for non-lovers, those who are not in love. For lovers silence is enough. Without saying anything, they go on speaking.
OSHO
Love to be your prayer
by
- 2.
Nobody is an island
Posted by: "Subhuti" subhuti@comcast.net subhutiii
Fri Jul 30, 2010 5:24 am (PDT)
----- Original Message -----
From: anand tk
To: Spiritual
anand:
ENLIGHTENMENT
Drop all ambition to be the first to become enlightened. There is no individual enlightenment. All individuals are joined together with the whole.
Buddha reached the gate of heaven. Of course, the people there were waiting. They opened the door, they welcomed him, but he turned his back towards the door looked at the world - millions of souls on the same path, struggling, in misery, in anguish, striving to reach this gate of heaven and bliss.
The doorkeeper said, "Come in, please. We have been waiting for you."
And Buddha said, "How can I come when others have not reached? It doesn't seem to be the right time. How can I enter when the whole has not yet entered? I will have to wait. It is just as if my hand has reached into the door and my feet have not reached yet. I will have to wait. Just the hand cannot enter alone."
It is said in this beautiful story that Buddha is still waiting. He has to wait - nobody is an island, we make a continent, we are together.
--- A Buddhist Tale
by
- 3.
LIVE THE MOMENT
Posted by: "Subhuti" subhuti@comcast.net subhutiii
Fri Jul 30, 2010 5:47 am (PDT)
ONE HAS TO LEARN TO LIKE THAT WHICH IS HAPPENING. That is what I call maturity. One has to like that which is already there. Immaturity is always living in 'oughts', 'shoulds', and never living in the 'is' -- and 'is' is the case, 'should' is just a dream.
One 'should' live intensely. Why? WHATSOEVER IS THE CASE IS GOOD. Love it and like it and relax into it. When sometimes intensity comes, love it; when it goes, say goodbye. THINGS CHANGE... LIFE IS A FLUX. Nothing remains the same -- so sometimes great spaces and sometimes nowhere to move. But both are good. Both are gifts from God. ONE SHOULD BE SO GRATEFUL THAT WHATSOEVER HAPPENS, ONE IS GRATEFUL, THANKFUL.
I don't see any problem. JUST ENJOY IT. This is what is happening right now. Tomorrow it may change -- then enjoy that. The day after tomorrow something else may happen -- enjoy that. Don't compare the past with futile future fantasies. LIVE THE MOMENT. Sometimes it is hot, sometimes very cold -- but both are needed otherwise life will disappear. It lives in polarities.
So let this be your meditation: WHATSOEVER HAPPENS, LIKE IT. Give it a try, mm?
OSHO
A Rose is a Rose is a Rose
Ch #5, a darshan diary
pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
- 4.
Humbly accept your imperfection
Posted by: "Subhuti" subhuti@comcast.net subhutiii
Fri Jul 30, 2010 6:02 am (PDT)
People have judged you,
and you have accepted their idea
without any scrutiny.
You are suffering from all kinds of people's judgments,
and you are throwing those judgments on other people.
And this game has grown all out of proportion;
the whole of humanity is suffering from it.
If you want to get out of it, the first thing is:
Don't judge yourself.
Accept humbly your imperfection, your failures,
your mistakes, your frailties.
There is no need to pretend otherwise.
Just be yourself, that, 'This is how I am -- full of fear:
that I cannot go in the dark night,
that I cannot go in the thick forest.'
What is wrong in it? -- just human.
OSHO
The Transmission of the Lamp
Ch #1: The animals must all be laughing
pm in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.
- 5.
ACCEPTANCE CREATES THE MILIEU IN WHICH LOVE GROWS
Posted by: "Subhuti" subhuti@comcast.net subhutiii
Fri Jul 30, 2010 6:12 am (PDT)
LOVE STARTS WITH SELF-LOVE. Don't be selfish but be self-full -- and they are two different things. Don't be a Narcissus, don't be obsessed with yourself. But a natural self-love is a must, a basic phenomenon. Only then out of it, you can you love somebody else.
ACCEPT YOURSELF, LOVE YOURSELF; you are God's creation. God's signature is on you; and you are special, unique. Nobody else has ever been like you, and nobody else will ever be like you. You are simply unique, incomparable. Accept this, love this, celebrate this.
And in that very celebration you will start seeing the uniqueness of the others, the incomparable beauty of the others. Love is possible only when there is a deep acceptance of oneself, the other, the world. ACCEPTANCE CREATES THE MILIEU IN WHICH LOVE GROWS, the soil in which love blooms.
OSHO
The Revolution
Ch #4: Forth from your caves
am in Buddha Hall
- 6.
SUBHUTI WAS SENT TO SPREAD BUDDHA'S MESSAGE
Posted by: "Subhuti" subhuti@comcast.net subhutiii
Fri Jul 30, 2010 6:33 am (PDT)
Osho,
Would you not like to say something to me?
//Osho://
FAREED, I HAVE NOTHING TO SAY. And all that I say is only to say this, that I have nothing to say. And all that I say to you is just to prepare you for a moment of eternal silence when you also stop saying and you start being.
ONCE Buddha asked his disciple, Subhuti, 'Subhuti, what do you think? Does the Buddha expound the dharma?' Subhuti said, 'WORLD-HONORED ONE, THE BUDDHA DOES NOT EXPOUND ANYTHING.'
And for forty-two years, Buddha was expounding the dharma. And Subhuti says, 'World-Honored One, the Tathagata does not expound anything.' AND BUDDHA GAVE HIS CONFIRMATION TO SUBHUTI'S UNDERSTANDING -- because another disciple, Ananda, was sitting there, and Ananda said, 'What do you mean? He has been expounding the dharma for forty-two years, continuously -- morning, afternoon, evening, year in, year out. What else he is doing?'
But Buddha confirmed Subhuti's understanding, not Ananda's understanding. Subhuti knows. Ananda has only heard the words. And Buddha says, 'Ananda, you will have to wait to know. Subhuti is right.'
AND IT HAPPENED when Buddha died, all the monks, all the disciples, gathered together to collect all the sayings of Buddha. Ananda was not allowed to enter in the hall; Subhuti was the head. Now, this seems strange -- but these people called Buddhas are strange people.
Ananda had lived for forty two years continuously with Buddha like a shadow. He had moved with him wherever he had gone. He had slept in his room for forty-two years. He was the only one who was closest. He had heard all that he had said, and his memory was tremendously perfect.
NOW SUBHUTI IS THE HEAD OF THE CONGREGATION WHICH IS GOING TO COLLECT THE SAYINGS OF BUDDHA -- and the man who had heard him always... Subhuti was not always with him, rarely -- because Subhuti was sent to spread Buddha's message to other parts of the country. So he was rarely there. Only few times he had heard Buddha. He becomes the head who is going to collect Buddha's sayings. And Ananda -- who seems to be the right person to be the head -- is not even allowed into the hall.
And Subhuti says to Ananda, 'You sit at the door as a guard -- as you used to sit with Buddha too. You sit at the door outside. Unless you become enlightened we are not going to allow you inside.'
And Subhuti, who says Buddha has not expounded anything, becomes the head of the exposition of the dharma scriptures -- ALL THAT HAS BEEN COLLECTED THEY HAVE BEEN COLLECTED UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF SUBHUTI. But this basic understanding is there, this tacit understanding is there, that all this is superficial -- because THE ULTIMATE CANNOT BE SAID. But people are foolish, so even a Buddha has to say the ultimate for these foolish people.
Ananda remained outside the hall. Five hundred monks are inside -- they are all juniors to Ananda, Ananda is the senior-most. Not only is he the senior-most disciple, he is also a cousin-brother to Buddha -- not only a cousin-brother, he is the elder cousin-brother to Buddha. And he is standing there outside, crying.
For twenty-four hours, it is said, he was standing there crying. And after twenty-four hours, something exploded in him, and he understood. He understood why Buddha had confirmed that 'Subhuti is right; Ananda, you are not right. YOU HAVE ONLY HEARD MY WORDS -- AND THE WORDS ARE NOTHING. The reality is silent.'
He danced. And the moment it happened outside the hall.... Subhuti was inside, and they were collecting the sayings. Suddenly he stopped and he said, 'Call Ananda in. Now he is worthy to be asked to be in.'
The monks went out, they found Ananda dancing. They had never seen this man so blissful, so luminous. And Ananda said, 'Buddha was right, I had been only hearing the words. Now I have heard the soundless sound.'
Subhuti said, 'Now you can also relate whatsoever you know, whatsoever you have heard from Buddha. Now your memory can be trusted, because knowing has arisen. Up to now your memory was just mechanical -- it had no light inside it.'
So say I to you, Fareed: I have nothing to say. And if you hear me rightly, that is the message.
OSHO
Zen: The Path of Paradox
Vol 2, Ch #6: The door to the wild
am in Buddha Hall
- 7.
Consciousness is the only reality..... Ramana Maharishi
Posted by: "Subhuti" subhuti@comcast.net subhutiii
Sat Jul 31, 2010 12:38 am (PDT)
----- Original Message -----
From: anand tk
To: subhuti@comcast.net
anand:
Existence or consciousness is the only reality. Consciousness plus waking, we call waking. Consciousness plus sleep, we call sleep. Consciousness plus dream, we call dream. Consciousness is the screen on which all the pictures come and go. The screen is real, the pictures are mere shadows on it.
~~~~~~~
He who thinks he is the doer is also the sufferer.
~~~~~~~
You have to ask yourself the question 'Who am I ?' This investigation will lead in the end to the discovery of something within you which is behind the mind. Solve that great problem and you will solve all other problems.
~~~~~~~
Creation is neither good nor bad; it is as it is. It is the human mind which puts all sorts of constructions on it, seeing things from its own angle and interpreting them to suit its own interests.
Ramana Maharishi
by
- 8a.
THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN LIFE IS MEDITATION
Posted by: "Subhuti" subhuti@comcast.net subhutiii
Sat Jul 31, 2010 12:45 am (PDT)
MEDITATION SIMPLY MEANS TO BE WITH YOURSELF in your absolute aloneness, so that you can have a taste of your own being. To be with yourself is meditation.
In my philosophy of life, ONLY TWO THINGS ARE VALUABLE: one is MEDITATION, the other is LOVE. And both are complementary. Meditation means the joy of being alone, and love means the joy of being together with somebody. These are the two wings of a true education.
MEDITATION MEANS INDEPENDENCE, FREEDOM -- freedom from all, even from the beloved; because even the presence of the beloved encroaches on your space. It is good for the time being, it is good to overlap your space with somebody, it is good to meet and merge, but ultimately, AND fundamentally, you are alone. And you have to learn how to be alone, and not only how to be alone, but joyously alone, ecstatically alone.
MEDITATION MEANS SITTING SILENTLY, DOING NOTHING... just being! The world is too much full of doing. The society teaches you to do this, to do that -- why? Because if you do this, you will have that; if you don't do this, you will not have that. Doing is a way of having more; and we are conditioned to have more and more and more -- as if by having more, we will really be satisfied, contented; as if by having more, we will really become rich.
The truth is just the opposite: THE MORE YOU HAVE, THE MORE YOU FEEL YOUR INNER POVERTY -- in contrast. The richer you become in the outside world, the emptier you feel inside; and no outer richness can fill the inner gap. Nothing from the outside can be taken in. You can have as much wealth as possible, but it will go on piling up outside you; and the bigger the heap, the more you will see your inner emptiness, nothingness, hollowness -- the more miserable you will become.
Hence, THE RICHER A SOCIETY GETS, THE MORE AND MORE IT BECOMES INTERESTED IN RELIGION. Poor societies cannot be religious; it is almost impossible. I am not saying a poor person cannot be religious -- a poor person CAN be -- but a poor society cannot be. A poor person may be an exception: Kabir was a poor man -- and attained to the highest peak possible, became a Buddha. But the poor society as such cannot be religious.
The poor society remains interested in having more and more; AND IF YOU WANT TO HAVE MORE, YOU WILL HAVE TO DO MORE. You will have to put your whole energy into doing -- and meditation is just the opposite of doing. Meditation is a state of non-doing, it is a state of utter passiveness. It is a state of being: one simply IS... and ENJOYING that simple isness. And then something starts happening inside -- without any doing on your part.
Sitting silently,
Doing nothing,
The spring comes,
And the grass grows by itself...
Something starts growing in you.
One thing, THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN LIFE IS MEDITATION. No education can be called real education. Even the word 'education' simply means to draw out that which is within you. This commune is educational, because our effort is to draw out whatsoever is in you. And your so-called universities are NOT educational; they don't fulfill the requirement of being educational. They stuff people from the outside; they don't draw out, they force in. Even literally they are not educational.
The whole effort in the so-called educational institutions is TO STUFF PEOPLE WITH MORE AND MORE KNOWLEDGE, because knowledge will help them to do more and do more efficiently; and if they can do things more efficiently, they will have more things. This is what you call education? This is not real education.
Real education will teach a person the most fundamental truth that: "I am alone. I come alone, I will go alone. And between coming and going, I can deceive myself that I am not alone, but that is only a deception. Intrinsically I remain alone. Aloneness is my intrinsic nature, so I have to fall in tune with it, I have to dive deep into it. I have to know exactly what it is -- what is this aloneness?"....
AND IT IS TREMENDOUSLY BEAUTIFUL, it is incredibly beautiful, unbelievably beautiful. When you enter into your aloneness, you start becoming aware of God, you start becoming aware of your treasures hidden within you. You start becoming aware of the kingdom of God that is within you.
Kabir says:
You don't grasp the fact that what is most
Alive of all is inside your own house...
BUT NOBODY TEACHES YOU. The whole teaching is: "Go out! Search for money, for power, for prestige" -- and they are not found within. Peace is found within, silence is found within, stillness is found within, godliness is found within. But those are not the goals that you have been taught to fulfill; those are not your targets.
It is said of a great Sufi mystic, Bayazid:
One day, some people came to Sheikh Bayazid's door and knocked. He opened his upstairs window and looked out saying, "What do you want?"
"Oh," they said, "we are looking for Bayazid."
He said, "Well, I have been looking for Bayazid for ten years now, and I have not found him yet!" and closed the window.
THIS IS WHAT MEDITATION IS ALL ABOUT: trying to find oneself.
And the other most important thing is love. LOVE MEANS TRYING TO FIND ONESELF REFLECTED IN THE OTHER. Love is a mirror. Meditation is a search without a mirror; love is nothing but seeing yourself in the eyes of the other you love, reflected in his being, and a way of enjoying the togetherness.
We ARE alone, but we are not alone in the sense that we exist alone. We are alone, but there are other people around us -- who are ALSO alone! WE EXIST WITH MANY PEOPLE WHO ARE ALONE. Bridges have to be made. Love is the meeting of two alonenesses. One aloneness is immensely beautiful -- what to say about when two alonenesses meet and merge? A great flowering happens, life becomes more mysterious, more joyous.
AND THEN ONE LEARNS THE RHYTHM: sometimes be alone, enjoy yourself; sometimes be together, enjoy love, friendship. When tired of togetherness, escape into your innermost being; when tired of your aloneness, escape into the being of the other.
IT IS LIKE WALKING ON A TIGHTROPE: sometimes you lean towards the left, and then you know that if you lean any more you will fall, so you start leaning towards the right. Then again a point comes when you know that if you lean more towards the right you will fall, and you start leaning towards the left. That balance, the balance of the tightrope-walker, is the balance that gives richness to man. WALK BETWEEN LOVE AND MEDITATION, BALANCING EACH OTHER. Become rich with meditation and love.
BUT, REMEMBER, THE FIRST THING IS MEDITATION. If you don't know who you are, you will not be able to love either. If you don't know inner blissfulness you will not be able to share it with anybody else either.
BUT PEOPLE DON'T GO IN; they are running hither and thither -- they are running everywhere except inwards. And all this running is nothing but dreaming, desiring. Just watch your mind! What your mind goes on doing? In the night it dreams, in the day it dreams... it goes on running and running. It moves in circles, but those circles are all dreams.
THE TRUTH IS YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS, NOT YOUR MIND. Your mind is created by the society: your consciousness comes from God. Move to the consciousness; change the gestalt. Your emphasis has to be changed -- that's what it means to be religious. That's what conversion is: changing your attention from the mind to consciousness.
MIND IS A SOCIAL BY-PRODUCT -- the Hindu mind, the Christian mind, the communist mind, the Catholic mind -- these are social by-products. The society has put ideas in your head: that is your mind. Shift your consciousness, your attention, to that which is God-created; otherwise you will live in dreams; and dreams cannot fulfill. Dreams are dreams -- they are not really there.
Two friends meet on the street after several years of not seeing each other. The usual salutation of "How are you?" provokes the answer from Saul that he feels awful -- is suffering terribly from a strong dream. It seems that every night, the moment he goes to sleep, he dreams he is getting on the train from Tel Aviv to Haifa. The train reaches Haifa, but he does not get off. He returns to Tel Aviv, and upon arriving, he wakes up to find the new day and he is hot and tired from the trip.
Morris exclaims that he too is in a similar shape for basically the same reason. It seems that every night he dreams that the door on the left side of his bedroom opens and in walks Sophia Loren. She strips stark naked and walks into the room and climbs into his bed. At the moment he turns on his left side, the door on the right side of the bedroom opens, and in comes Raquel Welch -- equally as naked -- she climbs into the other side of the bed. He turns to be with Raquel and Sophia taps his shoulder. He turns to her and there is Raquel touching him. All night long he is turning from one side to the other. He is a wreck when he wakes up.
Saul immediately says, "For Christ's sake, why didn't you phone me? That's what friends are for. I would gladly come over and help you any night."
Morris answers, "I did phone you several times -- but each time I called I was told you had just caught the train for Haifa."
THE MIND GOES ON DREAMING... The mind keeps you un-aware of who you are, so many dreams that the truth is lost. In the rubbish of your dreams the diamond of your being is covered.
Kabir says:
You don't grasp the fact that what is most alive of all is inside your own house; and so you walk from one holy city to the next with a confused look!
YOU CAN SEE -- all faces look confused. It is very rare to find a face which does not look confused, which has a transparency to it, a clarity. And whenever a face has clarity, transparency, the face has beauty -- a beauty that is not of the physical body only, a beauty that is something from the beyond, a beauty that wells up from within.
BUT LOOK AT PEOPLE'S FACES -- just confused, split, schizophrenic. That's what their being is: their faces are only reflecting their being. Faces are mirrors. One part of your being wants to go to the north, another part wants to go to the south, and another part to the east and another still to the west... and you are torn apart. And your faces show that -- a confused look.
You don't know who you are, where you are, why you are. Everything seems to be just accidental. You feel like a driftwood with no direction, with no sense of direction even. Where are you going? Why you are? For what? The question mark is there on every face, and the reason? Kabir is right -- the reason is YOU HAVE NOT LOOKED AT THE DEEPEST CORE OF YOUR BEING, where there is a space, a center of the cyclone, a space which is indivisible. In fact, that space known makes you an individual. 'Individual' means indivisible -- one who is not falling in parts, one who is one piece.
AND THAT CENTER IS THERE IN EVERYBODY'S BEING, but you never go there. And even if sometimes the desire to search within arises, you again start searching outside. Somebody goes to Kaaba, because a great desire has arisen in him to know who he is. Why are you going to Kaaba? Somebody goes to Kashi, somebody to Mathura, somebody to Tibet... and people go on. But still the search remains somewhere outside.
Even if the right question arises, YOU MOVE IN WRONG DIRECTIONS. If you really want to know who you are, you need not ask anybody else. Nobody can answer it.
And even if somebody answers, that answer will not become your answer. That will become at the most information, but not knowing; AND INFORMATION IS FUTILE, because you will interpret the information according to your own mind. You will read the Gita, you will read the Koran, you will listen to great teachers, but you will understand according to your own mind. You will translate everything according to yourself, according to your level of being. And then all gets lost.
Not only will the information be of no help to you, IT WILL CREATE MORE CONFUSION IN YOU. The more learned a person is, the more confused he is. If you read the Vedas and the Koran and the Bible and the Dhammapada, you will become more and more confused, because each Buddha says, in his own way, the same truth, but it is said in millions of ways. But you will not be able to understand the truth, because you don't know what the truth is.
The real process is FIRST TO KNOW WITHIN and then go into the Vedas and the Gita and the Koran, and they will all become witnesses to your experience, they will authenticate your experience. They will witness that you are right, and you will witness that they are right. Otherwise, all reading, studying, is going to create more and more confusion, because who is going to interpret it?
"Listen," the man said to his friend Albert, "I have got this female gorilla that I bought a while back. It cost me a lot of money. The problem is that I can't find any male gorilla to mate with it. I was wondering if you would mate with my gorilla for a hundred dollars."
"Hmmm, let me think this over," replied Albert.
The next day Albert went over to his friend's house and said, "I will do it, only under three conditions."
"What are the conditions?" asked the friend.
"One is that there is no hugging and kissing, and no foreplay. Two is that all the children are to be raised Catholic. Three is that you give me at least two weeks to come up with the hundred dollars."
Who is going to interpret? You cannot understand more than you know; you can understand only that much which you know on your own. Hence, THE REAL MASTER DOES NOT IMPART INFORMATION: he imparts being. He does not make you more knowledgeable: HE MAKES YOU MORE MEDITATIVE, he makes you more silent. He does not give you theories, hypo-theses, philosophies: he throws you upon yourself again and again and again. And he has to do it in spite of you, even against you, because you want clearcut answers, you want some philosophy to cling to, some idea to believe in. And the real Master will never give you any idea, any theology. In fact, he will take all ideas away from you, and all theologies -- Catholic and Protestant and Hindu and Mohammedan. And slowly slowly he will leave you utterly naked, so that you can see yourself as you are -- not according to some idea, but actually as you are. That is revelation.
That can happen within you. You need not go anywhere....
OSHO
The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty
Chapter #1: But man is
am in Buddha Hall- 8b.
Re: THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN LIFE IS MEDITATION
Posted by: "rumika" ma_rumika@yahoo.co.in ma_rumika
Sat Jul 31, 2010 1:04 am (PDT)
just what i needed the most...
to read it today...
thks subhuti, as always
--- On Sat, 31/7/10, Subhuti <subhuti@comcast.net> wrote:
From: Subhuti <subhuti@comcast.net>
Subject: [RiverIIOsho] THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN LIFE IS MEDITATION
To: RiverIIOsho@yahoogroups.com
Date: Saturday, 31 July, 2010, 1:13 PM
MEDITATION SIMPLY MEANS TO BE WITH YOURSELF in your absolute aloneness, so that you can have a taste of your own being. To be with yourself is meditation.
In my philosophy of life, ONLY TWO THINGS ARE VALUABLE: one is MEDITATION, the other is LOVE. And both are complementary. Meditation means the joy of being alone, and love means the joy of being together with somebody. These are the two wings of a true education.
MEDITATION MEANS INDEPENDENCE, FREEDOM -- freedom from all, even from the beloved; because even the presence of the beloved encroaches on your space. It is good for the time being, it is good to overlap your space with somebody, it is good to meet and merge, but ultimately, AND fundamentally, you are alone. And you have to learn how to be alone, and not only how to be alone, but joyously alone, ecstatically alone.
MEDITATION MEANS SITTING SILENTLY, DOING NOTHING... just being! The world is too much full of doing. The society teaches you to do this, to do that -- why? Because if you do this, you will have that; if you don't do this, you will not have that. Doing is a way of having more; and we are conditioned to have more and more and more -- as if by having more, we will really be satisfied, contented; as if by having more, we will really become rich.
The truth is just the opposite: THE MORE YOU HAVE, THE MORE YOU FEEL YOUR INNER POVERTY -- in contrast. The richer you become in the outside world, the emptier you feel inside; and no outer richness can fill the inner gap. Nothing from the outside can be taken in. You can have as much wealth as possible, but it will go on piling up outside you; and the bigger the heap, the more you will see your inner emptiness, nothingness, hollowness -- the more miserable you will become.
Hence, THE RICHER A SOCIETY GETS, THE MORE AND MORE IT BECOMES INTERESTED IN RELIGION. Poor societies cannot be religious; it is almost impossible. I am not saying a poor person cannot be religious -- a poor person CAN be -- but a poor society cannot be. A poor person may be an exception: Kabir was a poor man -- and attained to the highest peak possible, became a Buddha. But the poor society as such cannot be religious.
The poor society remains interested in having more and more; AND IF YOU WANT TO HAVE MORE, YOU WILL HAVE TO DO MORE. You will have to put your whole energy into doing -- and meditation is just the opposite of doing. Meditation is a state of non-doing, it is a state of utter passiveness. It is a state of being: one simply IS... and ENJOYING that simple isness. And then something starts happening inside -- without any doing on your part.
Sitting silently,
Doing nothing,
The spring comes,
And the grass grows by itself...
Something starts growing in you.
One thing, THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN LIFE IS MEDITATION. No education can be called real education. Even the word 'education' simply means to draw out that which is within you. This commune is educational, because our effort is to draw out whatsoever is in you. And your so-called universities are NOT educational; they don't fulfill the requirement of being educational. They stuff people from the outside; they don't draw out, they force in. Even literally they are not educational.
The whole effort in the so-called educational institutions is TO STUFF PEOPLE WITH MORE AND MORE KNOWLEDGE, because knowledge will help them to do more and do more efficiently; and if they can do things more efficiently, they will have more things. This is what you call education? This is not real education.
Real education will teach a person the most fundamental truth that: "I am alone. I come alone, I will go alone. And between coming and going, I can deceive myself that I am not alone, but that is only a deception. Intrinsically I remain alone. Aloneness is my intrinsic nature, so I have to fall in tune with it, I have to dive deep into it. I have to know exactly what it is -- what is this aloneness?"....
AND IT IS TREMENDOUSLY BEAUTIFUL, it is incredibly beautiful, unbelievably beautiful. When you enter into your aloneness, you start becoming aware of God, you start becoming aware of your treasures hidden within you. You start becoming aware of the kingdom of God that is within you.
Kabir says:
You don't grasp the fact that what is most
Alive of all is inside your own house...
BUT NOBODY TEACHES YOU. The whole teaching is: "Go out! Search for money, for power, for prestige" -- and they are not found within. Peace is found within, silence is found within, stillness is found within, godliness is found within. But those are not the goals that you have been taught to fulfill; those are not your targets.
It is said of a great Sufi mystic, Bayazid:
One day, some people came to Sheikh Bayazid's door and knocked. He opened his upstairs window and looked out saying, "What do you want?"
"Oh," they said, "we are looking for Bayazid."
He said, "Well, I have been looking for Bayazid for ten years now, and I have not found him yet!" and closed the window.
THIS IS WHAT MEDITATION IS ALL ABOUT: trying to find oneself.
And the other most important thing is love. LOVE MEANS TRYING TO FIND ONESELF REFLECTED IN THE OTHER. Love is a mirror. Meditation is a search without a mirror; love is nothing but seeing yourself in the eyes of the other you love, reflected in his being, and a way of enjoying the togetherness.
We ARE alone, but we are not alone in the sense that we exist alone. We are alone, but there are other people around us -- who are ALSO alone! WE EXIST WITH MANY PEOPLE WHO ARE ALONE. Bridges have to be made. Love is the meeting of two alonenesses. One aloneness is immensely beautiful -- what to say about when two alonenesses meet and merge? A great flowering happens, life becomes more mysterious, more joyous.
AND THEN ONE LEARNS THE RHYTHM: sometimes be alone, enjoy yourself; sometimes be together, enjoy love, friendship. When tired of togetherness, escape into your innermost being; when tired of your aloneness, escape into the being of the other.
IT IS LIKE WALKING ON A TIGHTROPE: sometimes you lean towards the left, and then you know that if you lean any more you will fall, so you start leaning towards the right. Then again a point comes when you know that if you lean more towards the right you will fall, and you start leaning towards the left. That balance, the balance of the tightrope-walker, is the balance that gives richness to man. WALK BETWEEN LOVE AND MEDITATION, BALANCING EACH OTHER. Become rich with meditation and love.
BUT, REMEMBER, THE FIRST THING IS MEDITATION. If you don't know who you are, you will not be able to love either. If you don't know inner blissfulness you will not be able to share it with anybody else either.
BUT PEOPLE DON'T GO IN; they are running hither and thither -- they are running everywhere except inwards. And all this running is nothing but dreaming, desiring. Just watch your mind! What your mind goes on doing? In the night it dreams, in the day it dreams... it goes on running and running. It moves in circles, but those circles are all dreams.
THE TRUTH IS YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS, NOT YOUR MIND. Your mind is created by the society: your consciousness comes from God. Move to the consciousness; change the gestalt. Your emphasis has to be changed -- that's what it means to be religious. That's what conversion is: changing your attention from the mind to consciousness.
MIND IS A SOCIAL BY-PRODUCT -- the Hindu mind, the Christian mind, the communist mind, the Catholic mind -- these are social by-products. The society has put ideas in your head: that is your mind. Shift your consciousness, your attention, to that which is God-created; otherwise you will live in dreams; and dreams cannot fulfill. Dreams are dreams -- they are not really there.
Two friends meet on the street after several years of not seeing each other. The usual salutation of "How are you?" provokes the answer from Saul that he feels awful -- is suffering terribly from a strong dream. It seems that every night, the moment he goes to sleep, he dreams he is getting on the train from Tel Aviv to Haifa. The train reaches Haifa, but he does not get off. He returns to Tel Aviv, and upon arriving, he wakes up to find the new day and he is hot and tired from the trip.
Morris exclaims that he too is in a similar shape for basically the same reason. It seems that every night he dreams that the door on the left side of his bedroom opens and in walks Sophia Loren. She strips stark naked and walks into the room and climbs into his bed. At the moment he turns on his left side, the door on the right side of the bedroom opens, and in comes Raquel Welch -- equally as naked -- she climbs into the other side of the bed. He turns to be with Raquel and Sophia taps his shoulder. He turns to her and there is Raquel touching him. All night long he is turning from one side to the other. He is a wreck when he wakes up.
Saul immediately says, "For Christ's sake, why didn't you phone me? That's what friends are for. I would gladly come over and help you any night."
Morris answers, "I did phone you several times -- but each time I called I was told you had just caught the train for Haifa."
THE MIND GOES ON DREAMING... The mind keeps you un-aware of who you are, so many dreams that the truth is lost. In the rubbish of your dreams the diamond of your being is covered.
Kabir says:
You don't grasp the fact that what is most alive of all is inside your own house; and so you walk from one holy city to the next with a confused look!
YOU CAN SEE -- all faces look confused. It is very rare to find a face which does not look confused, which has a transparency to it, a clarity. And whenever a face has clarity, transparency, the face has beauty -- a beauty that is not of the physical body only, a beauty that is something from the beyond, a beauty that wells up from within.
BUT LOOK AT PEOPLE'S FACES -- just confused, split, schizophrenic. That's what their being is: their faces are only reflecting their being. Faces are mirrors. One part of your being wants to go to the north, another part wants to go to the south, and another part to the east and another still to the west... and you are torn apart. And your faces show that -- a confused look.
You don't know who you are, where you are, why you are. Everything seems to be just accidental. You feel like a driftwood with no direction, with no sense of direction even. Where are you going? Why you are? For what? The question mark is there on every face, and the reason? Kabir is right -- the reason is YOU HAVE NOT LOOKED AT THE DEEPEST CORE OF YOUR BEING, where there is a space, a center of the cyclone, a space which is indivisible. In fact, that space known makes you an individual. 'Individual' means indivisible -- one who is not falling in parts, one who is one piece.
AND THAT CENTER IS THERE IN EVERYBODY'S BEING, but you never go there. And even if sometimes the desire to search within arises, you again start searching outside. Somebody goes to Kaaba, because a great desire has arisen in him to know who he is. Why are you going to Kaaba? Somebody goes to Kashi, somebody to Mathura, somebody to Tibet... and people go on. But still the search remains somewhere outside.
Even if the right question arises, YOU MOVE IN WRONG DIRECTIONS. If you really want to know who you are, you need not ask anybody else. Nobody can answer it.
And even if somebody answers, that answer will not become your answer. That will become at the most information, but not knowing; AND INFORMATION IS FUTILE, because you will interpret the information according to your own mind. You will read the Gita, you will read the Koran, you will listen to great teachers, but you will understand according to your own mind. You will translate everything according to yourself, according to your level of being. And then all gets lost.
Not only will the information be of no help to you, IT WILL CREATE MORE CONFUSION IN YOU. The more learned a person is, the more confused he is. If you read the Vedas and the Koran and the Bible and the Dhammapada, you will become more and more confused, because each Buddha says, in his own way, the same truth, but it is said in millions of ways. But you will not be able to understand the truth, because you don't know what the truth is.
The real process is FIRST TO KNOW WITHIN and then go into the Vedas and the Gita and the Koran, and they will all become witnesses to your experience, they will authenticate your experience. They will witness that you are right, and you will witness that they are right. Otherwise, all reading, studying, is going to create more and more confusion, because who is going to interpret it?
"Listen," the man said to his friend Albert, "I have got this female gorilla that I bought a while back. It cost me a lot of money. The problem is that I can't find any male gorilla to mate with it. I was wondering if you would mate with my gorilla for a hundred dollars."
"Hmmm, let me think this over," replied Albert.
The next day Albert went over to his friend's house and said, "I will do it, only under three conditions."
"What are the conditions?" asked the friend.
"One is that there is no hugging and kissing, and no foreplay. Two is that all the children are to be raised Catholic. Three is that you give me at least two weeks to come up with the hundred dollars."
Who is going to interpret? You cannot understand more than you know; you can understand only that much which you know on your own. Hence, THE REAL MASTER DOES NOT IMPART INFORMATION: he imparts being. He does not make you more knowledgeable: HE MAKES YOU MORE MEDITATIVE, he makes you more silent. He does not give you theories, hypo-theses, philosophies: he throws you upon yourself again and again and again. And he has to do it in spite of you, even against you, because you want clearcut answers, you want some philosophy to cling to, some idea to believe in. And the real Master will never give you any idea, any theology. In fact, he will take all ideas away from you, and all theologies -- Catholic and Protestant and Hindu and Mohammedan. And slowly slowly he will leave you utterly naked, so that you can see yourself as you are -- not according to some idea, but actually as you are. That is revelation.
That can happen within you. You need not go anywhere....
OSHO
The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty
Chapter #1: But man is
am in Buddha Hall
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"Não estamos buscando nenhum paraíso nas nuvens. Se ele estiver lá, nós o apanharemos, mas primeiro precisamos construir um paraíso aqui na terra; essa será nossa preparação. Se pudermos viver num paraíso na terra, então, esteja ele onde estiver, será nosso." Osho
