Thank Osho

Prayer Meditation - Osho Meditation

WHAT IS PRAYER?

Prayer is wonder, reverence. Prayer is receptivity for the miracle that surrounds you.

Prayer is surrender to the beauty, to the grandeur to this fantastic existence. Prayer is nonargumentative dialogue with existence. It is not a discussion... it is a love-dialogue. You don't argue... you simply whisper sweet nothings. When a man falls in love with a woman he whispers sweet nothings into her ear. When a man falls into love with existence... the same romance: prayer IS romance. It is fantasy; it is becoming available to the miraculous. Many people have lost the capacity to pray, because many people have lost the capacity to wonder. They have lost the capacity to be surprised. You go on seeing millions of wonders every day but you are not surprised at all. Your eyes are so full of dust and knowledge that you don't see anything. A seed is sprouting, and you don't see any wonder. A new leaf coming out of the tree, and you don't see any wonder. A bird singing, and nothing happens inside you. A peacock dances, and nothing dances inside you. A white cloud floats in the sky, and you remain untouched. Then prayer is impossible. Prayer needs a poetic heart, a loving heart. Approach reality more poetically -- don't be too much of a scientist, don't be too much of a rationalist. don't think that you know; nothing is really known -- ignorance is absolute, ignorance is ultimate. Once you understand that nothing is known, and ignorance is ultimate, you will again be full of those beautiful eyes you had when you were small children. I have heard... The husband was one of those cynical, sour guys whom nothing moved or impressed. To him, everything was just a big "so what?" He visited a psychiatrist, and after a short examination was given this diagnosis: "You are cold and blase. To you, everything means a big nothing. You are married, eh? Well, here's what you do. Ringling's circus is in the town: take your wife and see the show. Take a look at how red-blooded people live and act. Watch the performers who live dangerously; see how they pulsate and glow." The schnook took his wife to the circus. Out into the ring came the roaring lions and tigers. The wife was thrilled by the excitement, but the husband yawned and replied, "Yeah? So what?" Finally there came the grand finale where the daredevil was shot out of a cannon three hundred feet into the air, turned several somersaults, and then, pulling out a clarinet, began playing before hitting the net. The crowd roared its appreciation for the act, but the husband, after a few minutes of thought, turned to his wife and grunted in a bored manner, "A Benny Goodman he's not!" Prayer is the capacity to be amazed. prayer is the capacity that you had as children, and you have lost. Claim it -- reclaim it -- because with prayer you have lost all. The day your wondering eyes closed, God became nonexistential to you. Open your wondering eyes again, and you will find him pulsating again. He's very close by... he's all around you... he is within and without.

Osho - The Divine Melody,

Ch#6 - Chapter title:: You will awake praying - Question 5

am in Buddha Hall

Opposites

Tantra goes on working on all and every technique possible. Tantra is not for someone, it is for all. EVERY TYPE OF MIND CAN MOVE THROUGH TANTRA. Every type of mind cannot be Christian, every type of mind cannot be Hindu, every type of mind cannot be Buddhist. A particular type of mind will be attracted by Buddha, a particular type by Jesus, a particular type by Mohammed. Shiva contains all. Shiva can have an appeal for every type possible. The total, the whole has been included, it is not a partial standpoint. THAT'S WHY TANTRA HAS NO SECT.

You cannot create a sect around the whole; you can create a sect only around a fragment. You can live the whole, but you cannot create a sect. A sect can be created only when you are for something and against something else. If both the opposites are contained, how can you create a sectarian mind? SO TANTRA IS THE ESSENTIAL RELIGION, it is not a sect. Hence so many techniques.

People keep on coming to me and asking, "There are so many techniques, and one technique contradicts the other?' Yes, it contradicts the other -- because it is not meant for a particular mind. In these hundred and twelve techniques, ALL THE POSSIBLE TYPES OF HUMANITY HAVE BEEN INCLUDED.

You please don't be concerned with all the techniques, otherwise you will get confused. You simply find that which suits you, that which appeals to you. Towards it you will feel a deep affinity, an attraction; you will fall in love with it. Then forget all the remaining one hundred and eleven techniques. Forget them. YOU JUST STICK TO THE ONE THAT WORKS FOR YOU.

In these one hundred and twelve techniques, ONLY ONE TECHNIQUE IS FOR YOU. If you try many techniques you will get confused -- because to try so many techniques, you will need a very big mind which can absorb contradiction. That's not possible right now. One day it may become possible. You can become so complete, so total, that you can move easily with many techniques. Then there will be no problem. But then there will be no need also! Right now is the need. Find out your technique.

I CAN BE HELPFUL TO YOU in finding which technique will be suitable for you. And if you feel that other techniques are contradictory to the technique that suits you, don't think about them. They are contradictory. But they are not for you. At least they are not for you now. One day it may become possible that when you don't have the ego within, then you can move to the opposite without any problem. The ego creates the problem. It is stuck somewhere, it clings to something, it is not liquid, it cannot flow. And Shiva is flowing in all directions.

So remember, don't start thinking about these techniques: that this technique is against that. Shiva is not trying to create a system here, he is not a system-maker. Shiva is giving all the techniques without any systematizing. They cannot be systematized, because a system means that the contradictory, the opposite, must be denied. AND HERE THE OPPOSITE IS INCLUDED. It is both Apollo and Dionysus; it is both serious and laughing; it is immanent and transcendent both; it is earthly and unearthly both -- because it is all.

OSHO

Vigyan Bhairav TantraVol 2,

Ch #35: The search for the rhythm of the opposites

pm in Bombay, India

Fortunately/Unfortunately

Once there was a man who took a ride in an airplane.

Unfortunately he fell out of the plane.

Fortunately he was wearing a parachute.

Unfortunately the parachute was not properly packed and it did not open.

Fortunately there was a haystack in the field below.

Unfortunately there was a sharp pitchfork sticking straight out of the haystack.

Fortunately the man missed the pitchfork.

Unfortunately he also missed the haystack!

THAT'S HOW LIFE GOES ON. There is no need to be too much worried about it. Enjoy your energy. Sometimes it is fortunate, and sometimes unfortunate -- YOU HAVE TO ACCEPT BOTH. If you want it always to be fortunate, then you are asking too much; it is not possible in this changing world.

EVERYTHING IS GOING UP AND DOWN ALWAYS. So when you are up, enjoy; when you are down, rest and wait, then soon you are going to be up. The down periods should be rest periods, and the up periods should be dancing periods. And it is perfectly natural. Otherwise life will become very monotonous. This tragic-comic drama -- one moment it is tragedy, another moment it is comedy -- makes life more juicy, more spicy.

OSHO

The New Dawn

Ch #9: The more you know it, the less you know it

pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Relationship

If I’m allowed to give my advice to the world, my advice will be: Help people to experience as much love as possible. Let them go into the turmoil, into the cyclone, and let them find, in the cyclone, their rootedness. Don’t try to hide them in the house, don’t close the windows and the doors. Of course they will be more comfortable in the house, but dead. Then the best comfort is in the grave – no worry, no problem, nobody can harm you any more; even death is impotent now. What more security, what more comfort, what more luxury can you expect? A marble grave and your name written in golden letters on it. But you are dead.
No, this is not the way to live and to experience life and to experience what I call godliness.
And the same is true about meditation – even more true, because if they have destroyed your love, they have not destroyed your spirituality. They have only destroyed your biology, your lower being. But they have been trying to destroy your higher being too. By taking a child to the rabbi, to the pundit, to the imam, they are destroying your higher possibility too, for the same reason – the reason is the same, but now it is even more dangerous.
In the first, you may have been in trouble, but that trouble was not much of a trouble. People get into such trouble and get out of it, it is not much of a problem. But the spiritual part of your being is vast, enormous, infinite. If you are lost in it, then you may never be able to find the way back home. You may go on and on, farther and farther away from home.
And what is home? In their mind, a Jew thinks the Torah is the home, a Christian thinks The Bible is the home, a Hindu thinks the Gita is the home. And the people who become bridges to the Torah, to The Bible, to the Gita – they are the masters. They are not. They are only teachers. They teach you whatsoever they have been taught, they have not experienced anything.
Hence the difference and the unique relationship between me and my disciples.
I am not a teacher. I am not teaching you anything at all. I am not a bridge between you and The Bible, between you and the Gita, between you and the Koran. I am not even a bridge between you and God – no. I am not giving you a teaching, a dogma, a creed, a philosophy, a theology. So understand the difference between a teacher and a master.
In the old religions teachers are called masters. They are simply teachers, they know the teaching.
They have been handed down that teaching by other teachers; they will hand it over to you. They have not experienced anything, and through their teaching you are not going to experience anything either. Those are just beautiful words, and they can give you consolation – as if you know.
A master is not a teacher in the first place. A master shares his being with you, not his philosophy.
A master exposes himself to you, allows you closeness so that you can see your face in his mirror.
A master is exactly a mirror.
He never does anything to the disciple. Let me emphasize it. A master is not a doer... because if I start doing something to you I may spoil your being. I may give you a mask, a discipline, and I may change you into something else that you are not. The master cannot do that.
The teacher does that. He gives you a teaching; he teaches you discipline and then he enforces it through greed, persuasion, fear, in every possible way. He tries to fit you into a mold: how a Christian should be, how a Buddhist should be. There are thirty-three thousand rules for a Buddhist monk. I do not think that I can remember thirty-three thousand rules – what to say about following them, I cannot remember them! And anybody doing that will be in the same situation as it happened in one of Aesop’s fables.
A centipede is just going for a morning walk. Now, a centipede has one hundred legs. A frog looks at him, cannot believe his eyes, blinks his eyes, looks again... a hundred feet! How does he manage?
Which one to raise first, then the second, then the third, then the fourth...? One hundred legs! If you forget the number you will be caught in your own legs and fall down.
He rushes up to him, jumps, stops the centipede and asks him, ”Uncle, I should not stop you on your morning walk, but a very philosophical question has arisen in my mind, which I cannot solve – I am just a frog, you know. Only you can help.”
The centipede says, ”What is the problem?”
The frog explains to him, ”This is the problem. I saw your hundred legs, I counted them; and the problem is, how do you manage?”
The centipede said, ”I had never thought about it. I will try and see how I have been managing. I have never thought about it – I really have never looked down and counted the legs. You are great; you are a mathematician and a philosopher!”
The centipede tried, and you can visualize what must have happened. He fell immediately, all his hundred legs entangled in each other. He was very angry at the frog and said, ”Never again ask anybody such questions. Keep your philosophy to yourself! You idiot – I have been managing my whole life, and not only I, millions of centipedes are managing perfectly well. Nobody has fallen like me. But now I am afraid: you have created such a question in my mind that if I don’t get rid of this question I may not be able to walk at all. Now tell me how to get rid of this question.”
The frog said, ”I don’t know. I am myself puzzled. I asked you because you are an experienced person, an old centipede, and you go every day for a morning walk; if you cannot solve it, how can I? I am just a poor frog.” I don’t know what happened to that centipede afterwards, but I can imagine that his whole life must have become a mess. Again and again the question would have come to him, ”A hundred legs! Am I putting the right leg in the right place?”
Life has its own ways. The moment you start managing everything, you spoil it.
Allow life its freedom.
About love, allow freedom, and don’t be guided by fixed ideas.
Experience – don’t go with the idea that love is permanent or not permanent. Experience, and you will know it, what it is.
Don’t take the criterion from others about what is true and what is not true. These are the teachers who have been spoiling the whole of humanity. They tell you how to walk, which leg first and which leg second, and if you put them in some other order you are a sinner, you will fall into hell. Hell is far away; you will fall here! You may not be able even to reach hell, because one needs legs. It is a long journey. Only very expert teachers, professors, philosophers, have been able to reach there. It is no ordinary person’s business to reach hell. It is a long, long journey, and very complicated.
The master’s function is not to mold you into a certain idea, but to withdraw all the crutches, all the supports that the society has given to you. Of course in the beginning you will feel very much afraid – all supports gone, crutches gone, the very earth you were standing on is no longer there.
There will be great fear, but it has to be faced. Only by facing it, going through it, will you be able to overcome it.
Love will give you troubles, anxieties, anguishes, but it is lack of intelligence that is making the whole problem. Just be a little intelligent and see that love has done nothing. It has simply given you a few beautiful, tremendously ecstatic moments. And it has not asked anything in return. It was not a bargain, it was a sheer gift. And what kind of person are you – you don’t feel even grateful? You feel revengeful?
The person who made it possible for you to have those few moments, the woman, the man – be grateful, immensely grateful to the person. Yes, those moments are no more there. Nothing can be done about it. They cannot be pulled back, and even if there was some way to pull them back, they would not be the same. It would be a repetition. It wouldn’t bring you the same joy, the same ecstasy. It is good that they cannot be pulled back, otherwise even the memory of those cherished moments would be spoiled.
Respect the person, be grateful to the person that, for no reason at all – she is a stranger, you are a stranger – for no reason at all, for no bargain, there was no business... mysteriously the universe managed; something transpired between you. And it was nourishing to both of you. It has made you more mature.
Perhaps tomorrow again some spring breeze may move towards you. But never ask the return of the past. It is not possible, and it is not possible for your good. Keep the future open, available.
Don’t carry any grudges, because those will close the future. If you are angry at one woman, or one man, you are angry at all women and all men – because a woman is nothing but a representative of womanhood, a man is nothing but a representative of manhood. If you start feeling hatred, anger, you are closing the doors and the windows. Now no spring breeze will be able to enter your house.
For the higher level, I am not a teacher. I don’t want to make something of you resembling some of my ideas. I don’t have any idea about you. I don’t carry any image that everybody should fit into.
My whole approach is that each individual is unique, and nobody can predict what you are going to be. Even the master cannot predict what you are going to be, because predictions are possible only about things, not about consciousnesses. Consciousness is unpredictable. What is going to blossom in you can be known only when it blossoms.
So the master can do only one thing: he can remove everything that can stop your blossoming.
Hence the master will look very hard.
The teacher will look very compassionate, because he will be giving you every guideline, he will be taking all responsibility. He will be showing you the path; he will be leading you on the path, and you have just to follow.
The master is not interested in you following him. No, just the contrary; you should not follow him, otherwise you will miss becoming yourself. Then what does he do? In fact, all his functioning is negative. He destroys your crutches, your supports. He makes you vulnerable to all kinds of fears, anxieties, challenges. This is all negative. As far as positivity is concerned, he does nothing. He is just a mirror.
He allows you to come close and see your face in his mirror. He does not want you to imitate and become his face. He wants you to look into him. He has no ideas. That means all the dust from the mirror is gone. His mirror is clean. You can come close and look, and you will find your face. The mirror simply mirrors; it is not a doing, it is not an act.
Certainly my relationship with you is unique. In the first place it is not a relationship, because what relationship can you have with a mirror? You can see your face and be thankful, be grateful – but that is not a relationship. What relationship can the mirror have with you? There is no possibility.
The mirror is simply there. It does not relate in any possible way, it simply exists.
So the relationship is unique because if you go to other religions, the master – who is not really a master in the first place, but they call him the master – the master, the so-called master, will have a thousand and one demands to be fulfilled because he is going to do a great job for you. I’m not doing anything for you, so I cannot demand anything from you. The ’master’ will have conditions to be fulfilled. If you fail to fulfill the conditions, then the condemnation; if you fulfill the conditions, then the praise, the reward.
I cannot condemn you, I cannot reward you – because I don’t have any conditions that you have to fulfill. To be my disciple is your decision. It has nothing to do with me. To accept me as your master is your decision, it has nothing to do with me. I am not seeking converts; I am not a Christian missionary. I am not striving so that people should be converted to my way of thinking, my way of life. No, not at all. Otherwise in these thirty-five years I would have converted millions of people, with no trouble. They were ready to be converted; I was not ready to convert.
It is your decision. Always remember, whatsoever happens here is your decision.
If you are a sannyasin, it is your decision.
If you drop sannyas, it is your decision.
If you take it again, it is your decision.
I leave everything to you.
So it is a unique relationship: it is absolutely onesided; from my side there is no relationship. It has to be absolutely clear: from my side there is no relationship. From your side... and that is continually changing. When you first come, you come as a student. It is a different kind of relationship from your side. Then you just want to learn something. Being near me, slowly you understand that learning is not enough. Some experience is needed. You become a disciple, you become a sannyasin. That is your decision. You simply indicate that you want to come closer to me. What else is sannyas?
Just your declaration that you would love and like to be closer to me. From your side, the student is disappearing and the disciple is appearing. And then the last stage comes, when you feel even experiencing is not enough: being.
Now see the three points. Teaching is a very faraway thing, borrowed: experience – but it is outside you. You are the experiencer, and the experience is there: beautiful, ecstatic, blissful, but you know it is there, an object; inside, but still an object. No, you want to be at the center of your being. Then you come even closer: the disciple disappears into the devotee. Now, the devotee means from your side also the relationship has disappeared. Now you are absolutely happy just to be the way you are. You understand now why there was no relationship from my side. I am enjoying my aloneness, and you start enjoying your aloneness.
So the relationship is not static like father and son, brother and sister; it is not static. It is not like marriage. There is no law that prevents you from dropping sannyas or that forces you to be a sannyasin. Slowly you understand that your relationship also is disappearing. When you were a student there was a very strong relationship with the teacher, with the master. When you are a disciple the relationship is fragile, like a lover. When you are a devotee you have come... arrived.
Now you can blossom in your aloneness.
Gratitude is there; gratefulness is there, thankfulness is there, and infinite gratitude – but no relationship, no demand from your side or from my side. Then it is just as if two candles are burning side by side, so close that their flames become one.
Okay Sheela?

Osho

From Unconciousness to Consciousness,

Ch#18. MARRIAGE – THE COFFIN OF LOVE
pm in Lao Tzu Grove

No Water, No Moon

WHETHER YOU HONOR HIM or whether you dishonor him, cannot make any difference to a sage, to a man of purity. What you think about him is really irrelevant.

WHY IS IT SO RELEVANT TO YOU WHAT OTHERS THINK? Why is the opinion of others so relevant to you? Why do you care so much?

BECAUSE YOU DON'T KNOW WHO YOU ARE, YOU DEPEND ON THEIR OPINIONS ABOUT YOURSELF. That is your only self-knowledge. If they say you are good, you are good; if they say you are bad, you are bad. You have nothing inside which can say, "Their opinions are their opinions. If I am good, I am good, and whatsoever they say makes no difference. If I am bad, I am bad. The whole world may respect me like a saint, but if I am bad, I know I am bad, and this reputation cannot become a substitute; it is useless. And if I am good, the whole world may say that I am not good -- bad, evil, the very devil incarnate -- but what difference does it make? How does it make any difference?"

ONE WHO KNOWS HIMSELF IS NEVER DISTURBED BY WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT HIM. But one who doesn't know himself -- he is always disturbed, because his whole knowledge consists of your opinions. His whole knowledge is just a file he has gathered on what people think about him. This is not knowledge, not self-knowledge. This is self-ignorance, which you hide, disguise, by others' opinions. Your whole identity, your whole image is made by others. You are bound to remain in constant anxiety because others go on changing their opinions.

OPINIONS ARE LIKE THE CLIMATE: IT IS NEVER THE SAME. In the morning it was cloudy and now the clouds have gone. Now it is sunny, and the next moment it is raining. Opinions are just like clouds, just like the climate. What can you do about it? Look at Richard Nixon. Just a moment before he was everything, and just a moment later -- nothing. The opinion has changed, the people who were for him are against him -- and the same people!

This is the beauty of it: THE SAME PEOPLE WHO WILL PUSH YOU TOWARDS THE THRONE, WILL PULL YOU DOWN. There is a dynamics, an inner law that the people who respect you, deep down also disrespect you. The people who love you, also hate you -- because they are divided; they are not one. So when they help you to reach the throne, one part of them is finished -- the love part. Now what will happen to the hate part? Immediately the hate part starts functioning. So, once a man becomes respectable, the climate is already changing. Once a man has become a president or a prime minister, the voters are already changing. Really the moment they voted, one part finished -- the love part. Now the hate part will come up. So the same people take you to the throne, and the same people bring you down.

ONLY A SAGE REMAINS UNDISTURBED. Why? Because he never pays any attention to what you say. What you say is really rubbish. You don't know anything about yourself, and you say something about Mahavira, Buddha, Christ. You don't know anything about yourself, and you are so confident about Jesus: that he is good or bad. It is rubbish! And a person can pay attention to your rubbish only if he is just like you. A sage is not like you, and this is the difference....

IN MISERY, IN HAPPINESS, THE SAGE REMAINS THE SAME. Respected, insulted, the sage remains the same. In life, in death, the sage remains the same.

OSHO

No Water, No Moon

Ch #3: Is that so?

am in Buddha Hall

The Mahageeta

Religion is nonaggression, nonviolence, freedom from competition. It is not struggle, it is surrender.

Nothing needs to be taken from anyone else. One declares what he has. When we have so much, what need is there to steal from others? Only those who don’t know themselves can steal. They are fighting over bits and pieces when God is enthroned inside. Dying over bits and pieces while the ultimate expanse is present within. The ocean is present, and they crave droplets!

Only those who don’t know themselves can be in politics.
And when I say politics, I don’t mean only those who are in political parties. By politics I mean all those people who are struggling in some way: struggling for money, money politics; struggling for power, power politics; struggling for renunciation, the politics of renunciates.

Among renunciates there is great rivalry that no other renunciate should get ahead. An Olympics goes on among the renunciates, that no mahatma becomes too big. One mahatma will go out to defeat another. If the Olympics are ever hosted by India, there should also be an event for the competition of mahatmas.
But wherever there is competition, there is politics. The basis sutra of politics is, ”What I don’t have, someone else has; I can seize it and make it mine.” But what you take from others, how can it become yours? How will stolen goods become yours? What has been seized will be taken away.

If not today, tomorrow someone else will take it from you. And if no one succeeds in taking it from you, death will surely take it. Only that which you don’t have to take from anyone else is yours. Then even death will not be able take it.

Yours is what you had before you were born, what you will still have after death.

Seek that one.

And to search for that one, Ashtavakra says you don’t need to practice: only be alert, only witness.
Many times you feel you are running unnecessarily, but how to stop? It is not that you haven’t felt it is a meaningless rat-race. You have, but how to stop? And the training for the rat-race is very deep.

You have forgotten how to stop – your legs are in the habit of running, the mind is in the habit of running. Your training is such that you can’t sit. Training for sitting has disappeared.
”A complaint came to my lips but who to tell it to that it won’t be meaningless. Swallowing the pain, I keep moving along, refusing to sit, refusing defeat.”

And people still think it is defeat to just sit. If they sit they think they are defeated. If they sit they think it is escapism, running away! If they just sit the passing thousands will look with condemnation... so people keep moving.

”Complaints that all is useless come often to the mind, but who to tell? Who will understand? Here everyone is like you. No one tells anyone. People go on moving, each hiding his own wound.”

”A complaint came to my lips but who to tell it to that it won’t be meaningless.” If you meet an Ashtavakra or a Buddha it is meaningful to say it. Here who can you tell?

”Swallowing the pain, I keep moving along....” People swallow the pain and move on. ”Refusing to sit, refusing defeat.”
And this becomes the idea of the ego: ”Sitting defeated means... finished, gone under, dead. Keep going, keep doing something or other. Keep trying to accomplish something or other. If not you will be lost.”

And those who just sit attain. Those who stop attain.
God is not attained by running, he is attained by stopping.

Ashtavakra says attain in ultimate ease.
Just sit sometimes. Find some time, only to sit, not doing anything. Zen monks have a meditation technique: Zazen. Zazen means just sitting not doing a thing. It is a very deep method of meditation.

To call it a method is not right, because there is no method, just sit not doing anything. Zen says the same as Ashtavakra is saying: Sit down! Sit for a while and relax. Leave this turmoil for a while.

Leave all ambition a little while. Leave the mind’s running around, leave its rat-race. Simply sit a while, and sink into yourself.

A light will gradually begin spreading inside of you. Perhaps you won’t see it at first. It is like returning home in the bright afternoon sun, at first the house seems dark inside. The eyes are used to the sun. Sit a little while, and the eyes will adjust, and the room becomes lit. Slowly, slowly light comes into the room. It is the same inside. You have been going out, going out for lives, so it seems dark inside. The first time you go in nothing will be visible... nothing but darkness. Don’t freak out. Sit...

let the eyes get adjusted to the inside. The pupils of those eyes have been used to bright sun.
Have you ever thought, in the sun the pupil of the eye becomes small. If you look in a mirror right after being in the sun the pupil will appear very small because so much sunlight cannot be taken in, it is more than enough, so the pupil contracts. Contracting is automatic. Then when you come into the dark the pupil has to expand, the pupil has to enlarge. After sitting in darkness for a while, again look in the mirror and you will find the pupil has become enlarged.

For the third eye it happens exactly the same as with the outer eyes. To look outside the pupil should be small; to look within the pupil should be large. There has been a long and ancient training. To destroy that training no new practice is needed – just go on sitting.

People ask, ”What will we do sitting? Just give us ’ram-ram,’ some mantra to chant, we will repeat it – give us something to do.” People say, ”We want crutches, we want help.” As soon as you practice, bondage starts. Just sit! By sitting I don’t mean sitting down; you can remain standing, you can lay down also. Sitting means don’t do anything, in twenty-four hours just spend some time in non-doing.

Become free of action. Remain empty. Let what is happening happen. The world is flowing by, let it flow. It is moving, let it move. Sounds come, let them come. A train starts out, a plane flies over, there is noise – let it be, you go on sitting. Don’t concentrate – you just sit. Samadhi will gradually start becoming strong inside of you. You will suddenly understand what Ashtavakra means – what it means to be free of practice and rituals.

”Know that which has form is false, and know the formless as unchangeable and everlasting.
Learning this truth it is not possible to be born in the world again.”

Then you are what the Buddha has called anagamin – a person who never returns after death. We come back because of our desires, we come because of our politics; we come back because of desires and hopes. One who dies knowing, ”I am the knower,” doesn’t enter again. He is released from this useless wheel – from coming and going.

”Know that which has form is false, and know the formless as unchangeable and everlasting.
Learning this truth it is not possible to be born in the world again.”
”Know that which has form is false....” Within us what has form is illusory, what has no form is the truth. Look at a whirlpool sometime. What is a whirlpool but waves arising in water? When it becomes calm, where has it gone? There was no whirlpool, it was just a wave in the water, it was just a shape that arose in the water. Likewise, we are just waves of the divine. When the wave is gone, nothing is left behind. Not even ash is left, not a trace remains. It is like writing on water, it disappears as you write – in the same way all that happens in our life are only waves.

”Just as a mirror is the same inside and outside the image reflected in it, God is the same inside and outside this body.” You have seen that when you stand in front of a mirror it makes a reflection.

Does something happen in the mirror? A reflection made means that nothing happens. Move aside and the reflection is gone – the mirror remains just as it was. Your reflection is made by your coming before it; step aside and it is gone. But in the mirror nothing is made and nothing moves aside. The mirror remains in its own nature.

This sutra of Ashtavakra says: stand before a mirror, a reflection is made in the mirror, but is a reflection really made? It seems to be. But don’t be fooled by the reflection. Many are fooled by reflections.

And this sutra says that reflective mirrors are surrounding you; outside, inside, mirrors are reflecting in mirrors, and there is nothing at all. In just the same way God exists inside and outside of this body.

God is within, God is without, God is above, God is below, God is in the west, God is in the east, God is in the south, God is in the north – in every direction that same one. We are small whirlpools, small waves rising in that vast ocean.

Don’t get confused by thinking of yourself as a wave – think of yourself as the ocean. Just this much difference in belie: it is the difference between slavery and freedom. See yourself as a wave and you are bound, see yourself as the ocean and you are liberated.

”Just as the one all-pervading sky is the same inside and outside a pot, the eternal everlasting Brahma is the same in all things.”

”Just as the one all-pervading sky is the same inside and outside a pot....” Consider a pot: it is the same sky inside the pot, the same sky outside. You may smash the pot but the sky is not smashed.

You can make a pot but it doesn’t distort the sky. No matter how the pot is shaped – crooked or round – the sky takes no form. We are all vessels of clay, earthen pots. It is the same outside, the same inside: don’t place too much value on the thin wall of clay. This wall of clay makes you into a vessel – don’t be too tightly identified with it. If you believe you are this wall of clay, you will go on being made into pots of clay, your belief will pull you back here again and again.

No one else brings you into the world. Your fixation that you are a pot brings you back. Once you know that you are the emptiness inside the pot.... Lao Tzu’s statement is meaningful. Lao Tzu says, ”What is the meaning of the sides of the pot? The real meaning is in the emptiness inside the pot.

If you fill it with water, the water fills the space, not the sides. When you make a house, do you call the walls the house? That is not right. The empty space left inside is the house. You live in this, you don’t live in the walls. The walls are only a boundary. In reality we live in the sky. We all exist as digambaras, sky-clad. What difference do the walls make? We remain in the sky, inner or outer.

Today the wall exists, tomorrow it will fall – the sky always exists.
If you mistakenly take the house as the walls, take the pot as layers of clay and take yourself as a body, it will be the same bondage. Just a small mistake in reading the sutra of life and everything goes wrong; a very small mistake....

Once Mulla Nasruddin boarded a bus. Absorbed in thought he took a seat and lit a cigarette.
”It is clearly written that smoking is forbidden on the bus,” the conductor angrily said. ”Didn’t you read it? Don’t you know how to read?”
”I read it but there is so much written in the bus. Which of them should I do?” Nasruddin said. ”Look at this: it says here, ’Always wear Handloom Saris!’”

One need only be a little careful to avoid such mistakes. The body is very close – to read the language of the body is very easy. And the body is so close that its shadow falls on the inner mirror and is reflected. You are in the body, but you are not the body. The body is yours, you are not the body’s. The body is your means, you are the end. Use the body, don’t lose your mastership. Though living in the body, remain beyond the body – like a lotus in the water.

Hari Om Tat Sat.

Osho
The Mahageeta, Vol 1, Ch#5
15 September 1976 am in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium