Osho Stories ~ Trust

Osho Stories ~ Trust

"A man just got married and was returning home with his wife. They were crossing a lake in a boat when suddenly a great storm arose. The man was a warrior, but the woman became very much afraid because it seemed almost hopeless -- THE BOAT WAS SMALL AND THE STORM WAS REALLY HUGE, AND ANY MOMENT THEY WERE GOING TO BE DROWNED. But the man sat silently, calm and quiet, as if nothing was happening.

The woman was trembling and she said, "Are you not afraid? This may be our last moment of life! IT DOESN'T SEEM THAT WE WILL BE ABLE TO REACH THE OTHER SHORE. Only some miracle can save us, otherwise death is certain. Are you not afraid? Are you mad or something? Are you a stone or something?"

THE MAN LAUGHED AND TOOK THE SWORD OUT OF ITS SHEATH. The woman was even more puzzled -- what he is doing? Then he brought the naked sword close to the woman's neck -- so close that just a small gap was there, it was almost touching her neck.

He said, "ARE YOU AFRAID?"

She started to giggle and laugh and said, "WHY SHOULD I BE AFRAID? If the sword is in your hands, why should I be afraid? I know you love me."

He put the sword back and said, "This is my answer. I know God loves me, and the sword is in His hands, and the storm is in His hands -- so WHATSOEVER IS GOING TO HAPPEN IS GOING TO BE GOOD. If we survive, good; if we don't survive, good -- because EVERYTHING IS IN HIS HANDS, AND HE CANNOT DO ANYTHING WRONG."

This is the trust one needs to imbibe. SUCH TREMENDOUS TRUST IS CAPABLE OF TRANSFORMING YOUR WHOLE LIFE! And ONLY such tremendous trust is capable of transforming your life -- less than that won't do."

~ Osho

Who is Osho ???

 
Osho was born in Kuchwada, Madhya Pradesh, India, on December 11, 1931. Rebellious and independent from the very childhood, he insisted on experiencing the truth for himself rather than acquiring borrowed knowledge from others’ belief systems.
He attained Enlightenment at the age of twenty one and went on to complete his education. He taught philosophy at the University of Jabalpur for many years. Meanwhile, he would meet people, address large gatherings and give talks traveling all over India.
Osho revived all the ancient spiritual traditions like Vedanta, Sankhya, Yoga, Tantra, Sufi, Hasid, Tao, Baul and Zen. Not only he revived all these traditions and spoke on great saints and masters like Krishna, Jesus, Buddha, Mahaveera, Shiva he developed his unique dynamic meditation techniques that help the modern man unburden his anxieties, stress through a deep cleansing process in order to achieve a relaxed state of meditation and ultimately – Enlightenment.
Osho spoke on almost every aspect of life not through an intellectual understanding but based on his own existential experience distilling the essence of what is significant to the spiritual growth of modern man. His talks are transcribed and published in over 600 volumes and translated into many languages. The meditation centers owing allegiance to him can be found all over the world.
In early 1970′s a commune started to emerge around him in Pune where many seekers came from around the world to meditate. This beautiful Buddhafield became the spiritual capital of the world. Osho traveled to USA and many other countries finally arriving in Pune commune in 1987 where he left his body on January 19, 1990. The transcription on His Samadhi says:

Osho
Never Born – Never Died
Only visited this planet earth between
December 11, 1931 – January 19, 1990

• “Freedom” means freedom from the mind. Then you are simply in a silence, and in that silence you melt, you merge with the whole. And to melt and merge with the whole is to be holy. Not by fasting, not by torturing, but by becoming one with the whole, one becomes holy.
• Your freedom is a supreme value. Nothing is higher than that. But your freedom is possible only if you are not encaged in your habits, unconscious patterns of living. Change your gestalt from unconsciousness to consciousness

Questions on Witnessing and Awareness

Question: Beloved Osho, you describe witnessing as a knack. Often, late at night, when I am in a very relaxed state, witnessing happens. At other times, though, it just seems to be mind watching mind watching mind. Please comment on this knack.
Osho: The moment I say that witnessing is a knack, it implies that there is no way to explain it, no way to teach someone about it, no way to train someone in it. That’s the whole meaning of the word ”knack.”
I can say things which are close enough, but they can never be exact descriptions of the knack. It is not an art, not a craft that can be explained in detail, step by step. But if it is happening to you, there is no problem. You should know what it is, you should know the taste of it.
The problem is arising because you must be trying to do it; not allowing the knack to happen, but trying to make an art of it, so that you can control it. Man wants to control everything; it is part of his basic ego. The knack cannot be controlled. Either you know it or you don’t know it.
You can play around it, and sometimes by chance you stumble upon it: suddenly you have come to know it. That is the moment when you have to be aware in what situation it is happening. In the night, when you are relaxed, you find it happening. That gives you a clue that relaxation, not an effort to attain witnessing, allows the knack to happen.
At other times when you are trying, making an effort, an endeavor to get it, then it is mind watching mind watching mind. It is always the mind. Mind cannot get the knack. Mind can learn any art, any technique, any craft: a knack is beyond it. It is not its language, it is not its world. A knack is something beyond mind.
So you have to be clearly aware: the thing is happening to you, the failure of the mind is happening to you. Whenever you are trying, you watch – then you find that it is mind watching another part of the mind. And then you find the one who has found this is also another part of the mind.
And this can go on ad infinitum. Mind is capable of dividing itself infinitely. But finally you will find only mind – you will not come to meditation, you will not come to witnessing. So your failure is helpful. It says, ”Don’t make the effort, don’t try.” Your success indicates that it happens when you are relaxed, when you are not trying. In relaxation, mind is no longer functioning.
The mind is going to be in sleep, it is ready to go into sleep; it is not going into an effort because effort will keep you awake. You cannot fall into sleep by effort. Sleep and witnessing have something in common. You cannot make the effort – one thing. Every effort is going to be a failure – another thing.
Unless you learn that every effort fails, you cannot get the knack. But once in a while when your mind is getting ready to go to sleep – in between, when you are still awake, and the mind is relaxing to go into sleep – suddenly, witnessing happens. You have got the knack! Now don’t ask me what it is.
That may destroy even your night witnessing, because you may start trying it. Just let it happen as it is happening in the night. You can, at the most, create the same atmosphere whenever you want it to happen, and wait. You cannot force it. One has to learn a great lesson – that there are things beyond you which you cannot force; you can only remain open, available, waiting, and they come.
The moment you become tense to get hold of them, they slip away. It is just like, in the open fist you have all the air possible. With the closed fist all the air disappears. You may be thinking that with a closed fist you are catching hold of the air. No, it has slipped out. It does not belong to the closed fist, it belongs only to the open hand – and it is easily available.
You just have to see when it happens, what the surroundings are. The surroundings mean you are going into sleep, you are tired of the whole day’s work – you don’t want to work anymore. In the gap, before the mind slips into sleep and you lose consciousness – the mind is preparing, is getting ready to go into sleep, but you are still awake – in that minute gap, witnessing happens.
Now, you cannot try the knack. You can simply create the outer situation. In the day, anytime, let the mind go into relaxation. Don’t try – as if you are going to create witnessing: you are simply allowing mind to rest. And at a certain point, that same gap will appear, and in the gap descends the witness. This is the mystery of a knack – its strangeness and its simplicity too.
Source: “Light on the Path” – Osho

Life is a celebration, not competition ~OSHO~

Don’t invest in misery, invest in celebration”. Man is born with the capacity to celebrate but is he celebrating? Man is missing something terribly; something has gone really wrong; man has moved astray. Even birds are far more in tune with god than man. Even animals, trees and rocks, are more in harmony with existence than man. Celebration is missing, the quality in laughter is missing and even if people celebrate it is false.

Because of a thousand and one barriers created by society and the priests and a thousand reasons not to celebrate and live in misery but none towards making each moment a celebration. Life should be a sweet song but man has made it very bitter, very ugly. It has lost all the qualities of music, rhythm, harmony. It has become an ugly struggle to survive, and survival to no purpose at all, just an ugly struggle which leads nowhere, a cut-throat competition, absolutely unnecessary.

Life is meant to be a celebration, not a competition. Osho says there is no need to go on postponing celebration. “Nothing else is needed. To celebrate, life is needed and life you have. To celebrate, being is needed and being you have. To celebrate, trees and birds and stars are needed, and they are there. What else do you need?”.

Man has that innate capacity to just be a festival from the cradle to the grave, a pure celebration. Very few people have achieved it, but everybody can achieve it. It needs just a little understanding, a little search into one's own misery, a little investigation into the causes of why one goes on missing, just a little effort, just a little intelligence, and one can change the whole gestalt. One can simply get out of all kinds of miseries into a totally different world of bliss and benediction.

“It is really a question of our attitude towards what we do. And with the change of attitude, with work turning into a celebration, the whole milieu of life changes.”
OSHO

Tale 64 ~ 100 Tales For 10,000 Buddhas

Osho has started speaking every evening from 8:00pm at His apartment in Woodlands. Sometimes discourse goes on for a couple of hours. It takes me more than an hour to reach my home in the suburbs. It is quite an odd time. There are hardly any women traveling by local train at that late hour. Men give me funny looks and sometimes pass ugly remarks. But at any cost, I don’t want to miss His discourse.
As usual, I am going back home by local train and for some reason the train stops between two stations nearly half an hour. I am getting worried. It is going to be too late tonight. By the time the train reaches Andheri station it is already 11:45pm.
I walk out of the station and wait at the bus stop. One man standing by my side starts talking to me very gently and offers me a lift in a taxi. First I hesitate, but finding no other way, I agree to it. He hires a taxi and opens the door for me. I enter first and he sits by my side. As the taxi starts, he puts his arm around me and tells me to introduce myself. I can smell his vibe and feel myself stupid for accepting his offer. My mind stops working. I don’t know what to do now. He comes more close and says I look tired. If I would like to eat and have some drink first… I gather myself together and tell him, “It is too late, I want to go straight home.” He laughs and whispers in my ear, “tonight, you are not going home.” He presses my hand. I simply freeze and remember Osho. To my utter surprise, suddenly something clicks. I become very much aware and tell him, “Yes please. I am feeling very hungry. Let us get down here and have some food.” He asks the taxi driver to stop and we get out of the taxi. He is looking at the meter to pay the taxi fare. And really a miracle happens. One bus arrives and halts right in front of me. I rush and enter into the bus from the exit door, which the driver does not object to at all. My heart is still throbbing fast in fear, though I have reached home safely. I promise to myself never to take a ride again in my life.
What an incident! But it proves what Osho is saying about our sexually suppressed society.

Osho on Rajneeshpuram Fall and Gang of Sheela

Question : Beloved Master,Is it true that power-oriented people were needed to create this commune? Is it also true that meditative and loving people cannot create such beautiful and rich communes? Please comment.
Osho : Power-oriented people can create much, but their creation is basically criminal. And sooner or later, it is going to fall apart. Meditative people, loving people, can create higher things, better things. And whatever they create is never in the service of death and destruction.
Whatever they create is basically godliness. Whatever they create remains forever; it is eternal. Adolf Hitler used to say that the regime that he is creating is going to last for one thousand years. I want you to know, what we are creating is going to last forever. Love is immortal. Love knows no death. Meditation leads you within yourself to eternity.
So don’t think that I had put Sheela and her group to create the commune. They turned out to be power-oriented. Perhaps any one of you would have turned out to be the same. You all carry the same desire to be somebody special.
What has happened was bound to happen. It is a tremendously good experience that it happened so soon, just in four years. And now we have learned a lesson and we will not allow it to happen again.
The whole fault was mine, that I was silent. I had my reasons to be silent. I wanted to be silent forever, because words don’t convey… it is not real communion that happens through words. I wanted to communicate through silence.
So my reason was there to be silent, but I cannot say that it was not my fault. I knew that something like that is possible, but I also knew that I can start speaking any moment when I see that things have come to a peak and they have to be stopped.
And no harm has happened to you. In fact, you have become more mature through the experience. It will make you more responsible, less dependent on authorities, more responsible on your own towards the whole commune. We will turn this fascist nightmare we have passed through, into something beautiful. It is always in our hands to change things.
I have started changing the same nightmare into a beautiful experience that will help you along the way, and you will not fall in the same hole again. Sheela has done a great service to you, and you should feel gratitude to her and her gang.