TAO THE GOLDEN GATE - Talks on Ko Hsuan’s The Classics of Purity

If you don’t love yourself you cannot love anybody else in the world.

Tao which means the ultimate principle that binds the whole existence together is another name for God. Buddha’s word for Tao is Dharma. The Golden Gate, the Taoist way of saying God, is an opening into existence. Tao says, “Empty yourself totally, become a nothingness.” and “if you are empty, the door opens within you.” This book is the transcript of Osho’s talks on Ko Hsuan’s ‘The Classics of Purity’ which is one of the smallest treatises ever written and is considered as the first mystic treatise ever written down as a book. Ko Hsuan was preceded by Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu and Lieh Tzu.

By purity Ko Hsuan means innocence. Ko Hsuan’s sutra says, the soul of man loves purity and his mind loves stillness, but his desires draw him into activity. It also says, when the mind is in a thoughtless state one will be able to see the purity of his inner being.

Tao teaches non-ambitiousness, powerlessness and effortless naturalness. It does not believe in effort as Yoga does. All that is essential is natural, and to live your whole life in natural way is the only teaching of Tao. According to Osho, Tao is the most profound insight that has ever been achieved on the earth.

This book contains a total of 10 chapters of which only 3 are set apart for Osho’s commentaries on Ko Hsuan’s sutras. The remaining chapters are solely devoted to Osho’s answers to questions from his disciples. In the backdrop of the queries Osho discusses a number of topics which include discipline and repression; husband - wife relationship; science,religion and spirituality etc.etc.

Some of Osho’s observations:

I declare that God is imperfect because imperfection means evolution, imperfection means life, imperfection means flow, growth.

Similarity is not equality. And if women start becoming like men they will never be equal to men, remember.

Marriage is a plastic rose; love is a real rose. Grow real rose in your life.

I don’t want any followers because I don’t want to be surrounded by fools.

Osho loves telling jokes, stories etc. during his discourse. Here is a joke to illustrate the futility of borrowed knowledge in a real life situation:

A thief and a theologian decided to escape from the prison.
As the thief climbed over the wall, the guard heard some rattling. “Who’s there?”
“Meow”, said the thief, imitating a cat, and passed safely.
Up came the theologian and again the guard heard some noise. “Who’s there?”
“It’s nothing,” answered the theologian. “Just another cat!”

One more joke:
A new transit sign was put in front of the school. It read: “Drive Slowly. Do Not Kill a Student!”
The following day there was another sign under it scribbled in a childish writing: “Wait for the Teacher!”

THE WHITE LOTUS Talks on the Zen Master Bodhidharma

Life is a playful creativity with no goal as such.

In this book Osho comments on Bodhidharma who is considered as the first patriarch of Zen. Osho’s commentaries are based on a disciple’s notes on the dialogue between Bodhidharma and an unknown disciple. Bodhidharma speaks the essence of Buddha through these dialogues . He says,”Drop liking and disliking. Stop choosing, stop projecting, and the world disappears.” To him “God is both light and darkness, life and death - that God is and is not, and He is both together simultaneously.” Bodhidharma also says, “ Let us have a totally different mind, which thinks not, desires not, dreams not. Then you enter the world of the buddhas.”

Bodhidharma has said the ultimate truth:There is nothing to be attained, no goal to be reached, no target to be arrived at. Osho qualifies those answers of Bodhidharma to the disciple to one single phrase: ‘choiceless awareness.’
Here are some of Osho’s observations:

A disciplined life is rigid, frozen, cold, dead. You simply go on doing things mechanically.
Art is concerned with your response: not what is there but what is inside you.

What was right for one person two thousand years ago can’t be right for you today.
Every person in his old age starts thinking that his childhood was very beautiful.

Osho answers diverse questions from audience and seekers, which appear in alternate chapters, on various topics like sanyas and discipline; believing and knowing; fear and love; innocence and seriousness; religion and pornography . Whatever be the topic of discussion he does answer it with utmost clarity and uniqueness. Osho also tells a number of small stories, parables and anecdotes during the course of his talks. Jokes like the following are also his favourites:

A little boy went to school for the first time, and the teacher explained that if he wanted to go to the washroom he should raise two fingers. The boy looking puzzled, asked, “How’s that going to stop it?
***
This happened in the auditorium of a faculty of medicine....
The well-known professor begins his first course with this declaration: “To be a good practitioner, two qualities are required. The first is, you should not be disgusted with anything. The second is, you should be able to observe accurately.
“As an illustration of this, watch. You see this age-old corpse lying on the table? I dip one finger in the anus of the corpse, and then you see, I take it out, put it in my mouth and suck it.”
The whole class is horrified.
The professor goes on, “Now, who of you will be able to do this?”
A very zealous student comes up and, without hesitation, dips his finger into the corpse’s anus and sucks it.
A great silence follows this performance.
The professor congratulates the student, “Very good, young man, you certainly have the first quality required to be a good doctor. That is, not to be disgusted with anything. However, the second quality is missing: you have no sense of observation at all. You see, it was this finger, the index, that I dipped. And it was this finger, the medius, that I put into my mouth!”
***
The white lotus, says Osho, is a beautiful symbol. It contains all colours yet it seems to be colourless ; it lives in the water and yet remains untouched by the water. ‘The White Lotus’ which contains Osho’s commentary on Bodhidharma is undoubtedly a beautiful book.

THE REVOLUTION - Talks on Kabir

Real prayer is when God talks to you, false prayer is when you talk to God.

This book is the transcribed version of Osho’s talks on Kabir, a mystic poet and singer and above all an ordinary householder doing his day to day work as a weaver. Kabir does not believe in temples, churches or in mosques but he believes in the living reality. To him Nature is God. Kabir says: “All the gods sculpted of wood and ivory can’t say a word.”

According to Osho, people go far away places like Himalayas and Tibet as if God is sitting there.They look into the scriptures and search in the past-in the Vedas and in the Bible and in the Koran -as if God is no longer a contemporary, as if for God one always has to go into the past.Kabir says:“All the Scriptures of the East are nothing but words.” In one of Kabir’s poems God wonders: “Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat: your shoulder is against mine.”

Osho says: “God comes to you, you need not go to him. He has always been coming to you. He goes on knocking on your door, but you don’t listen, you are so full of your inner noise. He is everywhere, but you don’t see - you are blind because of your beliefs.”

Kabir is the poet of man’s dream of becoming God. He says, be innocent, spontaneous and totality will follow. He also says, become a silent listener first and only then one will be able to say something to God. To him the real prayer is a desireless silence and trust is the real key that opens all the doors of heaven. Life and death both are one and the same for Kabir and no effort is there on the part of him to choose between the two . Love and Death too according to Kabir are two aspects of the same energy. In Osho’s words: “ He creates the greatest synthesis that has ever been tried. How can love and death be one? He says God is both, Love and Death - They are one. Here is his revolution.”

Osho’s replies to questions from seekers and disciples on various topics including love and hate, prayer and meditation, acceptance and rejection, marriage and sanyas, frustration and happiness and contentment, loneliness and aloneness, love and revolution appear in alternate chapters. Here are some of his observations:

Seriousness is part of ignorance, seriousness is a shadow of the ego.

God is always the God of love and laughter and light.

People are not together because of love, people are together because of the common enemy.

Man has created a culture, a society, which has not taken any note of the woman.

In this book Osho gives a beautiful commentary on Kabir’s selected poems. The commentary is unique and it sheds light on almost all the aspects of love, life and death.

THE PERFECT WAY

We remain occupied with the other and forget our own selves.


This book is the transcribed version of Osho’s discourses on meditation which was delivered at his first meditation camp in Ranakpur, Rajasthan in the early years of 1960s. The book had been originally published in Hindi as Sadhana Path and that became his first published book.
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According to Osho, meditation is a state of mind - a state of being, it is non-doing and it is the way to know the self. To him the path of meditation is the path of religion i.e. from right awareness to observation, from observation to knowing and from knowing to liberation. It is the means of rekindling the lost light in man’s heart, in his inner being; it gives direction to man’s drifting boat. Osho wants us to understand the three key points before preparing the mind for meditation; the first is: live in the present, the second is: live naturally and the third is: live alone.
Osho also responds to a number of queries from the audience with utmost clarity. Some of his observations found in this book are given below:

Truth is not to be found in the scriptures. It is in the self, in your self.

I am not what others know of me from the outside. I am what I know myself to be from the inside.

Whatever is easy and near is quickly forgotten for that very reason.

All temples are outside, all temples are part of the world, and you cannot reach the self through their doors.

God is not separate as some creator, it is the creation, it is creativity, it is life.

In this book what Osho wants to teach us is that the perfect way is the way of meditation and it also is the way of awareness. If both meditation and awareness are there godliness will automatically follow.

THE LAST MORNING STAR - Talks On The Enlightened Woman Mystic, Daya

Written words can carry a transforming message to the reader.


This book is the transcript of Osho’s talks on Dayabhai, a devotee, a poet and an enlightened mystic. Not much is known about her. Her master was Charandas who had two female disciples: Sahajo and Daya.They were uneducated. They came from the same region that Meera had come from. Osho has taken the title of this book from Sahajo’s verse: The world is like the last morning star.

Just as the last morning star does not remain for long, so the world is the star of the dawn .One moment it is here and then it is gone. “The world is like the last morning star”, Sahajo says: “It is fast disappearing like a pearl of dew, like water held in the hollow of your hands.”

Daya is an ardent devotee and her love is the ultimate love, ultimate love to the divine.There is no greater love than this. She has no desire for heaven, for salvation, for paradise, for bliss or for truth. Her desire is to enthrone her beloved in her heart. Daya says:
“I have no ascetic disciplines, no spiritual practices, have undertaken no pilgrimages, no vows, no charity, like an innocent child who relies on his mother, I depend wholly on you. Like a young child who relies on her mother, I rely on you.The child may make a million mistakes, yet his mother will never abandon him.”

Daya’s sutra tells us that the riches of this world cannot become worthless until we know the wealth of the divine. A sadhu knows the worthlessness of the riches of the three worlds. Experience the wealth of the divine, she says, and the entire wealth of this world will become worthless. Daya’s verses carry a transforming message to the reader. In her words,“Life in this world is but a one night’s stay at an inn” and “Like a pearl of dew, it is in a moment gone”. So "carry the divine in your heart"

Osho’s replies to questions from disciples and seekers on various topics appear in alternate chapters which include master-disciple relationship, devotion and witnessing, politics and education, life and death, character and individuality, doubt and trust, love and jealousy, sanyas and truth. Here are some of Osho’s observations found in this book:

Happiness is your self-nature. If it were possible to obtain happiness from others you would have found it by now.

We give others what we have; we ask for what we don’t have.

Everyone thinks that his way of seeing things is the correct way.

The ultimate realization of one’s own ignorance is also the ultimate moment of knowing.

What we call life is really nothing but a queue at the door of death.

In this book Osho sheds light on an ancient and little known woman mystic poet. It is rather unique on the part of Osho to dig out such little known personalities from the past and present them into the limelight. Osho gives a very good commentary on Dayabhai’s poems.

THE HIDDEN SPLENDOR - Discovering Your Inner Beauty

There is nothing more beautiful than to be just simple and ordinary.


The hidden splendor that Osho speaks of is the inner beauty that one feels when he sits in aloneness. It is the purity of consciousness – the total awareness that one experiences when he sits silently within himself. In Osho’s words “ Tremendous is the splendor of a person who has come to know everything that goes on within him, because by being aware, all that is false disappears and all that is real is nourished.”

This book is a collection of Osho’s reflections on diverse questions from disciples and seekers on worldly, non-worldly and spiritual matters. Osho says that there may be thousands of questions, but there is only one answer, and that answer is one’s awareness. Osho’s thinking is always unique and his observations are always worth noticing. A few of his observations are given below:

These trees don’t know any Ten Commandments; the birds don’t know any Holy Scriptures. It is only man who has created a problem for himself.

There is no need of knowledge, because nature has its own wisdom. If you don’t interfere with nature and its wisdom, everything goes as it should go.

The moment you believe in someone, you lose intelligence. Belief is almost like poison to your intelligence.

Life’s aim is life itself - more life, deeper life, higher life, but life always. There is nothing higher than life

Osho uses a good number of jokes, stories and anecdotes in this book. To him it is an indirect way of telling things. Here is one joke:

A small child had gone to the zoo with his father, and they were watching a very ferocious lion in his cage - he was walking up and down. The boy became very afraid; he was not more than nine. He asked his father, “Dad, if this lion gets out and something happens to you...Please just tell me what number bus I have to take to reach home.”

And a very beautiful story about Jesus:
Jesus was walking through Jerusalem when he saw an angry crowd shouting and screaming at a woman. He came closer and heard the mob accusing the woman of adultery. Jesus strode to the front of the mob, held up his arms and said, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” the crowed fell silent, but one little old lady pushed to the front, picked up a huge rock and hurled it at the sobbing woman. Jesus gently took the old lady by the arm and said, “Mother, why do you always embarrass me?”

The way Osho thinks is always different and his views always surprise the readers.”The Hidden Splendor” too is not an exception.