Awareness & Relaxation

Awareness & Relaxation....The ResolutionAwareness & Relaxation

Step 1: Daily Watching“Start being aware with day-to-day, routine actions, and while you are doing your routine actions, remain relaxed.

“There is no need to be tense. When you are washing your floor, what is the need to be tense? Or when you are cooking the food, what is the need to be tense? There is not a single time in life that requires your tension. It is just your unawareness and your impatience.

“I have not found anything — and I have lived in all kind of ways, with all kinds of people. I have always been puzzled: why are they tense? It seems tension has nothing to do with anything outside you, it has something to do within you. Outside you always find an excuse only because it looks so idiotic to be tense without any reason. Just to rationalize, you find some reason outside yourself to explain why you are tense.

“But tension is not outside you, it is in your wrong style of life.

Step 2: Accept yourself“You are living in competition — that will create tension. You are living in continuous comparison — which will create tension. You are always thinking either of the past or of the future, and missing the present that is the only reality — that will create tension.

“Just find your own talent. Nature never sends any single individual without some unique gift. Just a little search…. Whatever qualities and whatever talents you have, use them to the fullest, and the energy that is involved in tensions will start becoming your grace, your beauty.

Step 3: Be an Artist of Love“Whatever you are doing, do it with such love, with such care that the smallest thing in the world becomes a piece of art. It will bring great joy to you. And it will create a world without competition, without comparison; it will give dignity to all people. It will restore their pride, which religions have destroyed.“Any act done with totality becomes your prayer.”

Osho: The Hidden Splendor

Tale 52 ~ 100 Tales For 10,000 Buddhas

Today is the last day in Pahalgaon. With Osho, sometime it feels the time has

stopped and at other times it feels it is running very fast. While I am busy packing, I hear the voice of this Muslim watchman, who is standing at the door. I ask him to come after an hour to help us carry our luggage to the car. As a token of his services, I give him twenty rupees, which he receives with thanks and leaves.

We are sitting on the verandah with Osho, ready to leave. The watchman comes and salutes Osho saying, "Aleikum Salaam". Osho smiles at him. He asks Osho if he can come to Bombay to serve Him. I can see tears in his eyes. He is deeply touched by Osho's love. Osho blesses him by placing His hand on his head, and asks me if I have given him some money. I tell Osho about giving him twenty rupees. Osho says, "Give him twenty more". Twenty rupees is quite an amount in these days. People hardly give five rupees as baksheesh to their servants. Osho has the heart of an emperor who is always ready to share to the maximum. I give the watchman twenty rupees more. While receiving it he holds my hand and starts crying. It touches me deeply and tears overflow from my eyes also. Thank you beloved master, for giving me this opportunity to open my heart to a stranger.

Osho – Whatever you live unconsciously becomes a hangover

Osho – The first thing to remember is how to drop thoughts and become thoughtless — thoughtless but alert, because in deep sleep also you become thoughtless, and that won’t do. It is good for the body, that is why after a deep sleep your body feels rejuvenated. But the mind remains tired even in the morning, because the mind continues its activity. The body relaxes, though it too cannot relax totally because of the mind; but still, it relaxes. So in the morning the body is okay, at least workably okay — but the mind feels tired, even in the morning. You go to bed tired, you get up in the morning more tired because the mind was continuously working, dreaming, thinking, planning, desiring; the mind was continuously working.
In deep sleep for a few moments when you are absolutely unconscious you become one. This same oneness is needed with a conscious and alert mind. As you are in deep sleep — no thought, no distinction of good and bad, heaven and hell, God and the devil, no distinction of any sort, you simply ARE, but unconscious — this has to be attained while you are alert and conscious. Samadhi, the final, the ultimate, the utter meditation, is nothing but deep sleep with full consciousness. Deep sleep you attain, so the only thing to be attained is more and more consciousness. If you can add more consciousness to your deep sleep you will become enlightened. The mountain is transcended and the path opens — one thing.
Second thing: you carry the past within you — that creates multiplicity. You were a child, the child is still hidden in you, and sometimes you can still feel the child kicking; in certain moments you regress and become the child again. You were once young, now you are old; that young man is hidden there, and sometimes even an old man starts being as foolish as a young man.
You carry the whole past, every moment of it, and you have been many things! From the womb up to now you have been millions of persons, and they are all carried within you, layer by layer. You have grown, but the past has not disappeared; it may be hidden, but it is there — and it is not only in the mind, it is even in the body. If, when you were a small child and you were angry and someone said, ‘Stop! Don’t be angry,’ and you stopped, that anger is still being carried by your hand. It has to be so because energy is indestructible, and unless you relax that hand it will persist, unless you do something consciously to complete the circle of that energy which became anger in a certain moment fifty years back or sixty years back, you will carry it within you, and it will color all your actions.
You can touch somebody, but the touch won’t be pure: the whole past is carried by the hand; all repressed anger, all repressed hatred is there. Even if in love you touch a person your touch is not pure, love cannot be — because where will that anger go which is carried by the hand?
Wilhelm Reich worked very much on this somatic repression. The body carries the past, the mind carries the past; because of this loaded state you cannot be here and now. You have to come to terms with your past. So meditation is not only a question of doing something here and now; before that is possible you have to come to terms with your past — you have to dissolve all hangovers, and there are millions of them.
Even when one becomes old he is also a child, a young man, and all that he has ever been is there, because you don’t know how to die every moment. That is the whole art of life — to die moment to moment so that there is no hangover. A relationship has finished — you don’t carry it, you simply die to it! What can you do? Something was happening and now it is not happening. You accept it and you die to it — you simply DROP IT with full awareness, and then you are renewed in a new moment. Now you are not carrying the past.
You are a child no more, but watch yourself and you will feel the child is there — and that child creates trouble! If you were really a child there would be no trouble, but you are young or old….
I have heard: Mulla Nasruddin was hospitalized. He was eighty — and then came his birthday, and he was waiting for his three sons to bring him some present. They came of course, but they had not brought anything — because he was eighty years old! A child feels happy with a present, but an old man? Eighty years old! His eldest son was sixty. So they didn’t think about it at all, but when they came and Mulla looked and they were empty-handed, he felt angry, frustrated, and he said, ‘What! Have you forgotten your old father, your poor old father’s birthday? It is my birthday!’
The child… at that moment you could have looked into his eyes, and this eighty-year-old man was not there, just a child waiting for some toys.
One son said, ‘Forgive us, we forgot completely.’
Mulla Nasruddin said, ‘I reckon I will forgive you, because it seems this forgetfulness runs in our family. Really, I forgot to marry your mother.’ He was really angry.
So they all three shrieked in unison, and they said, ‘What! Do you mean we are…?’
He said, ‘Yes! — and damned cheap ones at that!’
The child continues somewhere in you: when you weep you can find him, when you laugh you can find him, when somebody gives you a present you can find him, when somebody forgets to, you can find him, when somebody appreciates you, you can find him; when somebody condemns you, you can find him — it is very difficult to be really mature. One can never be mature unless the child simply dies within you, is no longer a part of you — otherwise it will go on influencing your actions, your relationships.
And this is not only true for the child, every moment of the past is there and influencing your present — your present is so loaded. And millions of voices from the body and the mind go on manipulating you; how can you reach the path? You are a mountain. This mountain has to be dissolved. What to do? It can be dissolved consciously — one thing is to live your past again, consciously.
This is the mechanism of consciousness: whenever you live something consciously it never becomes a loaded thing on you; try to understand this. It never becomes a burden on you if you live it consciously. If you go to the market to purchase something and you move consciously, walk consciously, purchase the thing consciously, with full remembrance, mindfully come back home, this will never be a part of your memory. I don’t mean that you will forget it — it will not be a load. If you want to remember it, you can remember it, but it will not be constantly forcing your attention towards it, it will not be a loaded thing.
Whatsoever you do consciously is lived through and is no longer a hangover. Whatever you live unconsciously becomes a hangover, because you never live it totally — something remains incomplete. When something is incomplete it has to be carried — it waits to be completed.
You were a child, and somebody had broken your toy, and you were crying; and your mother consoled you, diverted your mind somewhere — gave you some sweets, talked about something else, told you a story, diverted you — and you were going to cry and weep, and you forgot. That has remained incomplete; it is there, and any day whenever somebody snatches a toy from you — it may be any toy, it may be a girlfriend, and somebody snatches her — you start weeping and crying. And you can find the child there, incomplete. It may be a post: you are mayor of the town and somebody snatches the post, a toy, and you are crying and weeping again.
Find out… regress into the past, move through it again, because there is no other way now; the past is there no more, so if something has remained hanging the only way is to relive it in the mind, move backwards. Every night make it a point to go backwards for one hour, fully alert, as if you are living the whole thing again. Many things will bubble up, many things will call your attention — so don’t be in a hurry, and don’t pay half-attention to anything and then move again because that will again create incompleteness. Whatsoever comes, give total attention to it. Live it again. And when I say live it again I mean LIVE it again — not just remember, because when you remember a thing you are a detached observer; that won’t help. RELIVE IT!
You are a child again. Don’t look as if you are standing apart and looking at a child as his toy is being snatched. No! BE the child. Not outside the child, inside the child — be again the child. Relive the moment: somebody snatches the toy, somebody destroys it, and you start crying — and cry! Your mother is trying to console you — go through the whole thing again, but now don’t be diverted by anything. Let the whole process be completed. When it is completed, suddenly you will feel your heart is less heavy; something has dropped.
You wanted to say something to your father; now he is dead, now there is no way to tell him. Or you wanted to ask his forgiveness for a certain thing you did which he didn’t like, but your ego came in and you couldn’t ask his forgiveness; now he is dead, now nothing can be done. What to do? — and it is THERE! It will go on and on and destroy all your relationships.
I am very much aware of that because to be a master is to be in a certain sense a father — it is to be many things but very importantly it is in a certain sense to be a father. When people come to me, if they are loaded with their relationship with their father, then it becomes very difficult to be related to me because I always feel their father comes in. If they have hated their father they will hate me, if they wanted to fight with their father, they will fight, if they love their father they will love me, if they respected their father they will respect me, if they respected him just superficially and deep down they had a disrespect, it will be the same with me — and the whole thing starts working.
If you are conscious, you can watch. Go back. Now your father is no more but for the eyes of the memory he is still there. Close your eyes; again be the child who has committed something, done something against the father, wants to be forgiven but cannot gather courage — now you can gather courage! You can say whatsoever you wanted to say, you can touch his feet again, or you can be angry and hit him — but be finished! Let the whole process be completed. Remember one basic law: anything that is complete drops, because then there is no meaning in carrying it; anything that is incomplete clings, it waits for its completion.
And this existence is really always after completion. The whole existence has a basic tendency to complete everything. It does not like incomplete things — they hang, they wait; and there is no hurry for existence — they can wait for millions of years.
Move backwards. Every night for one hour before you go to sleep, move into the past, relive. Many memories by and by will be unearthed. With many you will be surprised that you were not aware that these things are there — and with such vitality and freshness, as if they had just happened! You will be again a child, again a young man, a lover, many things will come. Move slowly, so everything is completed. Your mountain will become smaller and smaller — the LOAD is the mountain. And the smaller it becomes, the freer you will feel. A certain quality of freedom will come to you, and a freshness, and inside you will feel you have touched a source of life.
You will be always vital — even others will feel that when you walk your step has changed, it has a quality of dance; when you touch, your touch has changed — it is not a dead hand, it has become alive again. Now life is flowing because the blocks have disappeared; now there is no anger in the hand, love can flow easily, unpoisoned, in its purity. You will become more sensitive, vulnerable, open.
If you have come to terms with the past suddenly you will be here and now in the present, because then there is no need to move again and again. Go on moving every night. By and by memories will come up before your eyes and they will be completed. Relive them; completed, suddenly you will feel they drop. Now there is no more to be done, the thing is finished. Less and less memories will come as the time moves. There will be gaps — you would like to live, nothing is coming — and those gaps are beautiful. Then a day will come when you will not be able to move backwards because everything is complete. When you cannot move backwards, only then do you move forwards.
There is no other way. And to move forwards is to reach the path: the whole consciousness moving ahead every moment into the unknown. But your legs are being pulled back continuously by the past, the past is heavy on you; how can you move into the future, and how can you be in the present? The mountain is really big, it is a Himalaya, uncharted, unmapped; nobody knows how to pass through it — and everybody is such a different Himalaya that you can never make a map, because it differs with everybody. You have your Himalayas to carry, others have their Himalayas to carry, and with these mountains, when you meet with people there is only clash and conflict.
The whole life becomes just a struggle, a violent struggle, and everywhere you can see and feel and hear the clash. Whenever somebody comes near, you are tense and the other is also tense — both are carrying their Himalayas of tension and sooner or later they will clash. You may call it love but those who know, they say it is a clash. Now there is going to be misery.
Be finished with the past. As you become more free from the past, the mountain starts disappearing. And then you will attain a unison: you will become, by and by, one.
Source – Osho Book “And the Flowers Showered”

Osho on Consciousness, Meditation is the whole science of bringing more and more consciousness out of darkness

Question – Beloved Osho, When I was a student at a Japenese Buddhist University, I heard the word Consciousness. Beloved Osho, What does it mean?
Osho – Kranti Satbodha, consciousness you already have, but only in a very small proportion. It is just like an iceberg — one tenth is above water and the rest is under water. Just a little bit is conscious in you.
I am saying something and you are listening to it; without consciousness it is not possible. These pillars of Chuang Tzu Auditorium are not listening — they don’t have consciousness. But we are aware only of a very small piece of consciousness.
Meditation is the whole science of bringing more and more consciousness out of darkness.
The only way is to be as conscious as possible twenty-four hours a day. Sitting, sit consciously, not like a mechanical robot; walking, walk consciously, alert to each movement; listening, listen more and more consciously, so that each word comes to you in its crystal clear purity, its definitiveness. While listening, be silent, so that your consciousness is not covered by thoughts.
Just this moment, if you are silent and conscious you can hear small insects singing their song in the trees. The darkness is not empty, the night has its own song; but if you are full of thoughts then you cannot listen to the insects. This is just an example.
If you become more and more silent, you may start listening to your own heartbeat, you may start listening to the flow of your own blood, because blood is continuously flowing all through your body. If you are conscious and silent, more and more clarity, creativity, intelligence, will be discovered. There are millions of geniuses who die without knowing that they were a genius. There are millions of people who don’t know why they have come, why they lived and why they are going.
It happened… George Bernard Shaw was traveling from London to some other place in England. The ticket checker came and Bernard Shaw looked in all his pockets, opened his suitcase — he was perspiring — the ticket was missing.
The ticket checker said, “I know you, everybody knows you, there is no need to be worried. You must have put it somewhere, don’t be so tense”. Bernard Shaw said, “Who is being tense about the ticket?” The ticket checker said, “Then why are you perspiring and looking so nervous?”
He said, “The problem is that now the question arises of where I am going. It was written on the ticket. Now, are you going to tell me where I am going? Who is going to tell me?” The ticket checker said, “How can I tell you where you are going?”
So Bernard Shaw said, “Then you should go and leave me alone. I have to find the ticket. It is a question of life and death. Where am I going? I must be going somewhere, because I have come to the station, purchased the ticket, entered the compartment. So one thing is certain, I must be going somewhere.”
This is the situation most people never come to know — their consciousness is a hidden treasure. One does not know what it contains unless you awaken it, unless you bring it into light, unless you open all the doors and enter into your own being and find every nook and corner. Consciousness in its fullness will give you the idea of who you are, and will also give you the idea of what your destiny is, of where you are supposed to go, of what your capacities are. Are you hiding a poet in your heart, or a singer, or a dancer, or a mystic?
Consciousness is something like light. Right now you are in deep darkness inside. When you close your eyes there is darkness and nothing else.
One of the great philosophers of the West, C.E.M. Joad, was dying, and a friend, who was a disciple of George Gurdjieff, had come to see him. Joad asked the friend, “What do you go on doing with this strange fellow, George Gurdjieff? Why are you wasting your time? And not only you… I have heard that many people are wasting their time.”
The friend laughed. He said, “It is strange that those few people who are with Gurdjieff think that the whole world is wasting its time, and you are thinking that we are wasting our time.” Joad said, “I don’t have much longer to live; otherwise I would have come and compared.”
The friend said, “Even if you have only a few seconds more to live, it can be done here, now.” Joad agreed. The man said, “You close your eyes and just look inside, and then open your eyes and tell me what you find.”
Joad closed his eyes, opened his eyes and said, “There is darkness and nothing else.” The friend laughed and he said, “It is not a time to laugh, because you are almost dying, but I have come at the right time. You said that you saw only darkness inside?” Joad said, “Of course.”
And the man said, “You are such a great philosopher; you have written such beautiful books. Can’t you see the point, that there are two things — you and the darkness? Otherwise, who saw the darkness? Darkness cannot see itself — that much is certain — and darkness cannot report that there is only darkness.” Joad gave it consideration and he said, “My God, perhaps the people who are with Gurdjieff are not wasting their time. This is true, I have seen the darkness.”
The friend said, “Our whole effort is to make this “I,” the witness, stronger and more crystallized, and to change the darkness into light. And both things happen simultaneously. As the witness becomes more and more centered, the darkness becomes less and less. When the witness comes to its full flowering, that is the lotus of consciousness — all darkness disappears.”
Satbodha, we are here in a mystery school, doing nothing else than bringing more and more crystallization to your witness, to your consciousness; so that your inner being, your interiority, becomes a light, so full and overflowing that you can share it with others. To be in darkness is to be living at the minimum. And to be full of life is to live at the maximum.
Source – Osho Book “The Razor’s Edge”

Osho – Consciousness and Bliss are two aspects of one phenomenon

Osho – Consciousness and bliss are two aspects of one phenomenon: from one side it is consciousness, from the other side it is bliss. And exactly in the same way unconsciousness and misery are related, they are aspects of one phenomenon – from one side unconsciousness, from another side, misery.

It is impossible to be conscious and miserable, just as it is impossible to be unconscious and blissful. Seek one and the other follows; there is no need to seek both. And to you my suggestion is: seek consciousness, because that will be easier for you. Your involvement is with intelligence. Your involvement is not with feeling; your involvement is with thinking. You think too much.

The thinking person can easily become conscious; the feeling person can easily become blissful.
So for the feeling person the journey starts by being blissful; for the thinking type the journey starts by being conscious. So transform your energy that is involved in thinking into consciousness. Rather than becoming identified with the thoughts that come to you, watch them; don’t become identified. Just see them as a procession… separate from you.

They are separate. You are always a witness. Don’t get lost in the crowd of the thoughts. Remain aloof, standing by the side of the road, let the traffic pass, and slowly slowly become more and more detached, distant. The more detached you are, the more distant you are. Soon you will see that thoughts are still coming but the old rush is no more there.

Thoughts are still coming but their grip over you is lessening. They are still coming but they look pale, ill, not so healthy and strong as they used to be, because their health depends on your identification with them. When you become identified with thought, the thought becomes very strong. It is your energy that the thought lives on. A thought is a parasite: it exploits you, can possess your whole being.

The more detached, the more observing you are, the more you will see that thoughts are far away, distant noises. Slowly slowly they lose all meaning, and the day they lose all meaning they disappear. When you don’t give them any importance they disappear. They come only because they are welcomed guests. When they become unwelcome, ignored, they stop coming. And the day that the no-thought moves in the mind, the whole energy is available to be conscious; and then consciousness rises in a vertical direction.

Thoughts move horizontally: one thought followed by another, followed by another. They move
horizontally. Consciousness moves vertically: it goes higher and higher and higher. Thoughts move like a river… consciousness rises like a tree… but it can rise only if the energy is no more involved in thoughts.

So this is your work: you have to become more alert, conscious, aware of your thinking process,
detached and distant. And as you become distant you will start feeling a great blissfulness arising in you for no reason at all. Just in the same gap that was occupied by thoughts, bliss arises. In the same emptiness in which thoughts were continuously gathering and crowding, bliss arises.

Nature abhors vacuum – it is true for the outer nature, it is also true for the inner nature. When you create an emptiness in your mind, immediately something that has always been there inside you, waiting for some space to spread, starts spreading. And that phenomenon is bliss.

Source : from Osho Book “Hallelujah!”

Osho on Consciousness, Only your witnessing consciousness is essential

Osho – REMEMBER remain alert that you don t get too much attached to the accidental — and all is accidental except your consciousness. Except your awareness, all is accidental. Pain and pleasure, success and failure, fame and defamation — all is accidental. Only your witnessing consciousness is essential. Stick to it! Get more and more rooted in it. And don’t spread your attachment to worldly things.

I don’t mean leave them. I don’t mean leave your house, leave your wife, leave your children — but remember that it is just an accident that you are together. It is not going to be an eternal state. It has a beginning; it will have an end. Remember that you were happy even before it began; and you will be happy when it has ended. If you can carry this touchstone, you can always judge what is accidental and what is essential.
That which is always is truth. That which is momentary is untrue. In the East and in the West there is a difference in the definition of truth. In the Western philosophy, truth is equivalent to the real. In the East. truth is equivalent to the eternal — because in the East we say even the momentary is real: real for the moment; but it is not true because it is not eternal. It is just a reflection. The reflection is also real!
You see the moon in the sky and the reflection in the lake — the reflection is also real because it is there! There is a difference between the reflection and no reflection, so it is real. Even a dream is real, because when you dream it is there! It is real as a dream, but it is real.
The only difference between the dream and the waking state is that the dream lasts only for a few moments — the waking state lasts longer. But in the East we have come to the ultimate awakening also. Then this waking state also looks momentary, then this too is dreamlike.
The eternal is true. The temporal is untrue. Both are real. The accidental is also real and the essential is also real, but with the accidental you will remain in misery. And with the essential the doors of bliss open, the doors of satchitanand — of truth, of consciousness, of bliss.

Osho – Meditation means how to create the state of no-mindedness

Osho – Mind is just a disturbance. Mind is just a disturbance in consciousness. It is not your nature; it is just a disturbance. The moment there is no disturbance, there is no mind. And this state of no-mindedness is the state of consciousness – the expansion of consciousness. You drop into yourself: not into dreaming, not into projections, into yourself. Consciously, with full alertness, you come to your center the moment mind is not there.
Meditation means how to be not a mind. How to be not a mind! Meditation means how to create the state of no-mindedness. It doesn’t mean unconsciousness. It means conscious and still, without any disturbance in the consciousness; conscious with no ripples, with no waves, with no vibrations; conscious as a deep, calm, silent pool with no ripples on it, with no disturbances on the surface; just a calm silent pool with no breeze to disturb, just mirrorlike.
With mind one goes on being disturbed more and more, and then this whole process of disturbance is self-perpetuating. One disturbance creates ten more, and those ten create a hundred more. This is self-perpetuating, and then you are in a vicious circle. With this mind something can be done.
That is, you can travel outwardly, you can go more into the world. But the more you go into the world the farther you are from yourself. And the farther you have gone, the more the track back is lost. Then you only remember that there is a home, but there is no way to get back. And we continue to remember there is a home; there is a homesickness always somewhere present. There is a home and one has to go back.
But there is no way, and we continually try to find the home with the mind itself, which has lead us astray. Then we go into scriptures, then we go into words, then we go into philosophies, metaphysical systems. And then we are lost even more in it, even more deeply, and the track is not found at all. The track can be found only if you begin to feel and understand that mind is the disease, so you cannot go back with the mind; the mind cannot be used as a vehicle, it cannot be used as a passage. It is not a door towards consciousness. It is a door towards the world, towards objects – not towards the subjectivity. That’s why it is said to be a disease, a complex.
Source – Osho Book “That Art Thou”

Osho – To live unconsciously is to live in sin; to live consciously is to be virtuous, is to be religious

Question – Beloved Master, Any marks for Choiceless UnAwareness?
Osho – Anand Buddha, even if you are aware of that, that will do. Are you aware of choiceless unawareness? That will destroy that choiceless unawareness. Make it an object of awareness and it will disappear, evaporate. And no marks can be given for it, because if marks have to be given for it then everybody will succeed in getting marks — everybody, because everybody is living it.
A huge bully sauntered into the dimly lit saloon. “Is there anybody here called Kilroy?” he snarled. Nobody answered. Again he sneered, “Is there anybody here called Kilroy?”
There was a moment of silence and then a little Irishman stepped forward. “I am Kilroy,” he said.
The tough guy picked him up and threw him across the bar. Then he punched him in the jaw, kicked him, slapped him around and walked out.
About fifteen minutes later the little fellow came to. “Boy, didn’t I fool him,” he said. “I ain’t Kilroy!”
A pretty young girl stretched out on the psychiatrist’s couch. “I just can’t help myself, Doctor. No matter how hard I try to resist, I bring five or six men with me into my bedroom every night. Last night there were ten. I just feel so miserable, I don’t know what to do.”
In understanding tones the doctor rumbled, “Yes, I know, I know, my dear.”
“Ah!” the surprised girl exclaimed. “Were you there last night too?”
People are living in unconsciousness, doing all kinds of things in unconsciousness. Everybody is an unconscious robot. We are just pretending that we are conscious; we are not conscious.
The moment you become conscious, all unconscious actions disappear from your life. Your life starts moving in a new dimension. Your each act comes out of inner clarity; your each response is virtuous, is virtue.
To live unconsciously is to live in sin; to live consciously is to be virtuous, is to be religious. And to live in total awareness is to be a buddha, is to be a christ.
It will be good if we start calling Christ “Joshua the Buddha.” His real name was Joshua; from Joshua has come Jesus. And ‘christ’ has become ugly because of the Christian church; the word has lost its beauty. It will be good if we change, if we start calling him Joshua the Buddha — because they are all buddhas, they are all awakened people. They live through inner light. You only grope in inner darkness.
Anand Buddha, I have given you the name Buddha. If you feel you are living in choiceless unawareness, make it a point to be aware of it.
A thief asked a great Buddhist mystic, Nagarjuna, “Can I meditate and still remain a thief?”
Nagarjuna said, “Yes. Just do one thing: while you are stealing remain alert, aware, conscious.”
The thief was very happy. He said, “You are the right master! I have gone to many people, and they all say, ‘First stop stealing, then you can be a meditator.’”
Nagarjuna said, “Those are not masters — they must be ex-thieves. I am a master. I am concerned with meditation, not with other things. What you do is YOUR business; whether you steal or donate, that is your business. My business is to tell you to be alert, and do whatsoever you want to do.”
Of course the thief was very happy — happy because now he could have both worlds. But after fifteen days he came back, fell at the feet of Nagarjuna, and he said, “You are a very sly fellow! You destroyed my whole profession — because if I try to be alert I cannot steal; my hands simply won’t move. Last night I entered into the king’s palace; this was such an opportunity that it happens only once in a lifetime. It was very difficult to enter — my whole life I have tried — but it must be because of your blessings: last light I entered, and all the guards were fast asleep. I opened the treasure and such precious diamonds I have never seen in my life! I could have become the richest man, and everything was within my grasp, but you were standing between me and the treasure. You were telling me, ‘Be aware!’ You were shouting at me, ‘Be aware!’ And if I tried awareness, those precious stones looked just like stones, not worth bothering about. If I forgot about awareness, they were again precious stones, tremendously valuable.
“It changed many times. I became aware and they were ordinary stones; I became unaware and they were great riches. But finally YOU were victorious. I have come back to you. Now initiate me into sannyas.”
Nagarjuna must have been a man like me; otherwise, ordinary teachers can’t accept a thief.
Sometimes a drunkard comes to me and he says, “I am a drunkard. Can I also be a sannyasin?”
I say, “Don’t be bothered about small things. Sannyas will do! You first be a sannyasin, then we will see.”
He seems to be puzzled, he can’t understand. But once he becomes a sannyasin, things start changing. Sooner or later he comes and reports that “You did the trick. I cannot drink anymore; it has become more and more impossible. It is so repulsive, disgusting.”
One drunkard told me — he has become a sannyasin just a few months ago — he said, “It has become so difficult. Now I know the strategy and the trick behind these orange clothes, because when I go to the pub people start touching my feet! They say, ‘Swamiji, this is a pub! You must have come thinking it is some other place.’ And I say, ‘Yes — is this a pub?’ And I have to turn back! I can’t even go in.” He was really angry at me; he said, “I can’t even go to the movie, because standing in the queue people start touching my feet, and they say, ‘Swamiji, what are you doing here?’ And I have to escape!”
Just a small bit of awareness and it will affect your whole life. Just a small bit of awareness and your total life as you have lived up to now will be shattered, will collapse, and a new life will start arising around that small center of awareness.
Source – Osho Book “The Dhammapada, Vol8″