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.
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