NIRVANA: THE LAST NIGHTMARE - Learning to Trust in Life

 

Life consists of small things; they become great if you love.

Zen Buddhists say that after Buddha became enlightened he did not utter a single word, and they also say that he has said five thousand and forty-eight truths. Buddha might have tried hard to express the truth and missed, again and again because the very nature of truth itself is inexpressible. That may be the reason why it is being said that Buddha uttered five thousand and forty-eight separate truths during his lifetime. Zen monks also say that Buddha uttered infinite lies - because whatsoever is uttered becomes a lie. This book is the transcribed version of Osho’s discourses on Zen in the backdrop of five Zen parables.

Zen means dhyan, meditation which, according to Osho,is something that can be found only when there is no ego. Nirvana is freedom and it is the whole performance of life. Osho says: “God, nirvana, Tao, truth all are just meaningless sounds; indicative, pointing towards the infinite, towards the beyond - fingers pointing to the moon.” Osho also says that the world is a nightmare because of desiring, and hence nirvana becomes the last nightmare. The whole teaching of Zen is: “to be ordinary, to be so ordinary that the very desire to be extraordinary disappears.” 

Osho tells a number of jokes, parables and anecdotes during the course of his talks. Here is an interesting anecdote:

A man was brooding over his beer at the bar, and said to his friend, “I tell you, Mulligan, I don’t know what I am going to do about my wife.”

“What is it now?”

"The same old thing - money. She is always asking for money. Only last Thursday she wanted ten dollars, yesterday she was around asking for twenty, and this morning, if you please, she demanded fifty dollars!”

“What does she do with all the money, for heaven’s sake?” asked the friend.

“There is no way finding out. I never give her any.”

Osho’s answers to questions from disciples and seekers are included in alternate chapters. His answer to a question - what will happen if the Eastern mind meets with the Western mind - is worth noticing. He says: the Western mind is active and time conscious whereas the Eastern mind is passive, almost lazy and relaxed in eternity. If the Eastern mind and the Western mind meet, that will be the greatest synthesis of the male and the female mind, of the passive and the active mind. It will be simply humanity - whole, total. 

Some of Osho’s observations:

If you are happy being a beggar, only then can you be happy being an emperor.

When you know death is coming, go and meet it at the gate. Let death be welcomed.

A dead routine gives the feeling that everything is perfectly right. Underneath, everything is in chaos. They are missing life. 

All that you think about yourself is others’ opinions that you have collected.

EARTHEN LAMPS : 60 parables and stories

 

Man is an earthen lamp and his immortal flame of soul is constantly rising towards the sky. 

Someone asked an old sage, “Among all the things of the world, which is the biggest?” The sage replied, “The sky, because whatever exists, exists in the sky and the sky itself does not exist in anything.” The person continued, “And what is the best thing?” The sage replied, “Grace, because everything can be sacrificed for grace but grace cannot be sacrificed for anything.” Then he asked, “And the most mobile?” “Thought,” responded the sage. And the man asked, “And what is the easiest to give?” The sage replied, “Advice.” “And the most difficult?” “Knowledge of the self,” said the sage. Knowing the self is the most difficult because in order to know it, everything else has to be given up. The self, the soul is not a dead lamp but an immortal flame which is constantly rising towards the sky. This book of sixty parables and stories is Osho’s only book that is written by him. In these parables Osho’s saying of things is poetic , simple and direct. The stories can even overturn our conventional thinking process. Here is one such story:

 A boat was travelling to a distant land. Among those on board sat a poor monk. Some mischievous people were teasing him in all kinds of ways. While he was praying at night, they thought that he would be unable to protect himself and so they started beating on his head with their shoes. He was deep in prayer and tears of love were falling from his eyes. Then a voice came from the sky. “My beloved one, you just have to ask and I will overturn the boat.” The antagonists became nervous and the other travellers were also concerned. Their sport was becoming too dangerous. They fell at the monk’s feet and started apologizing to him. When the monk’s prayers came to an end he got up and spoke to them saying, “Don’t be worried.” then he lifted his face up to the sky and said, “Dear God, in what Devil’s language were you talking? If you want to play the game of overturning, overturn the understanding of these people. What is the use in overturning the boat?” 

Given below are some of Osho’s observations:

A person whose opinion has any value will never express it without being asked.

He who takes an oath is a weak man and who decides to renounce never does so.

If a man is ignorant, he stuffs himself with words and scriptures and covers himself with their knowledge.

The person who sees the small, is filled with the small; the one who sees the great, is filled with that greatness.

THE BOOK OF CHILDREN: Supporting the Freedom and Intelligence of a New Generation

Parental conditioning is the greatest slavery in the world.

The child is the most exploited phenomenon in the world and he is exploited behind a facade of love. The child, says Osho, is a slave to his own parents, who love him. Osho’s responses to questions on children and parenting selected from his various talks are compiled in this book.

 Every child, according to Osho, is being enveloped in many layers of conditioning by the parents, by the society, by the teachers and by all the vested interests. The obedient child is praised by his parents, by his teachers and by others whereas the playful child is condemned by everybody. The children, Osho says, are very intelligent and he asks us to watch the intelligence of small children and see how spontaneous they are in their day to day life.

 A passerby asks a boy,”Son, can you please tell me what time it is?” “Yes, of course,” replies the boy, “but what do you need it for? It changes continuously!”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    *  

Little Pierino comes home from school with a big smile on his face. “Well, dear, you look very happy. So you like school, do you?” “Don’t be silly, Mom,” replies the boy. “We must not confuse the going with the coming back!” 

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Small children are innocent but they have not earned it. It is natural. A little boy, seized with hiccups, cried, “Mommy, I am coughing backwards!” 

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The second - grade teacher had sent the children to the board to work out arithmetic problems. One little fellow said, “I ain’t got no chalk.” “That is not right,” the teacher said. “The right way to say it is, ‘I don’t have any chalk. You don’t have any chalk, we don’t have any chalk, they don’t have any chalk...’ Now do you understand?” “No,” said the little boy. “What happened to all the chalk?”  

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Childhood has its beauties, because it does not know the etiquette, the manners, and all kinds of crap. It is so simple and so innocent and so spontaneous. In a better world, Osho says, every family will learn from children. All the religions of the world, according to Osho, have the idea in parables that once man lived in paradise and somehow, for some reason he has been expelled from that paradise. Osho is of the view that these stories are nothing but a poetic way to express that every man is born in paradise and then loses it. Osho says, “The search for paradise is the search for your childhood again” and “those golden moments of wonder, joy, no tension, no worry, no anxiety, have to be regained and rediscovered.”

 Some of Osho’s observations are given below:

Children come through you, but they don’t belong to you. You can give your love to them, but you should not impose your ideas on them.

 Education is to give you inner richness. It is not just to make you more informed; that is a very primitive idea of education. 

 If parents really love children, they will help them to be courageous - courageous even against the parents themselves.                                      

                                                                      

THE FIRST PRINCIPLE: Talks on Zen

When a life is not a life of doing, but happening, then there is rest.

“what is the first principle, master?” And the master said: “If I were to tell you, it would become the second principle.” The real, the true cannot be conveyed through words. It cannot be asked or it cannot be answered. That which can be asked and that which can be answered will be the second principle. “God is the first cause, the uncaused cause, the most fundamental, the substantial, the substratum.” Zen people call it the first principle. This book is the transcribed version of Osho’s talks on Zen. 

“Zen”, according to Osho “is a crossbreeding of Taoism and Buddhism and it contains all that was beautiful in these two cultures.” Zen says the world is God, the creation is the creator and the very creativity is divine. The insistence of Zen is that doing is not important at all and what is important is being. The Zen people say this samsara, this world, is the other world too. The first principle is that samsara is nirvana i.e the way is the goal.

A man came to a Zen master and asked, “Sir, where should I go to find the truth?” And the Zen master said, “You just keep looking in front of your nose and go on, and you will find it.” The Zen master’s approach is that “Seek, and you will not find. Drop seeking and find it here-now!” Zen says, “Truth is not hidden, from the very beginning, so you are not to uncover truth, you are only to uncover your eyes.”

Zen’s vision of life and reality is unique; it is a quality that one has to attain to. “A Zen master, on a cold night, burned a Buddha statue, a wooden statue, because he was feeling cold and in the morning he was worshipping again.” According to Osho this playfulness, this non-seriousness, is of tremendous value . He asks whether a Christian, a Hindu or a Mohammedan can do such an act.

In one of the chapters of this book Osho explains the famous koan : “If a man puts a gosling into a bottle and feeds him until he is full grown, how can the man get the goose out without killing it or breaking the bottle?” A koan is made in such a way that it cannot be solved.

Osho says that truth is found only when there is no “I” i.e. only when there is nobody to find it or nobody to seek it. He also explains that the “I” has seven layers; the first layer consists of memory, the past, the second layer consists of unawareness, the third layer consists of ambition, comparison with the others the fourth layer consists of future, the fifth layer consists of conditioning, the sixth layer consists of arrogance, of non-humbleness and the last layer of “I” consists of imitations. These seven layers are the “bottle”, the ego. When those seven layers of ego disappear one becomes a flame of awareness. Osho says; “If these seven layers are dropped, you will simply become aware of who you are. You are God, as everybody else is God.”

Some of Osho’s observations:

There are no bad habits and no good habits, because all habits are bad. 

To look at the mistake of the other is a way of avoiding your own mistake.

If you try the impossible you cannot enjoy the possible, and in trying the impossible you miss the possible too.

Time is not valuable, because eternity is available. There is no end to time and there is no beginning to time. So don’t be worried about it.

THE PATH OF YOGA : The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

 

Throw out this whole mind; whatsoever it contains, it is useless. 

Yoga is a methodology for inner awakening and Patanjali is the greatest name in the world of Yoga. Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra is not a popular scripture; it is a simple, scientific treatise, only for the few. Osho’s talks on Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra are transcribed in this book. 

Yoga is the cessation of mind, says Patanjali. And when patanjali says, “Cessation of the mind,” he means cessation of mind’s functioning as a master. In other words mastery of the mind is Yoga. He says, “ You may do all the postures but if the mind goes on functioning, if you go on thinking, you are not in Yoga.”

Osho says that Patanjali has written whatsoever can be written about Yoga and he has left nothing out. According to Patanjali the mind has five modifications, five modes of function which are right knowledge, wrong knowledge, imagination, sleep and memory. What is needed for the cessation of the mind with all its modifications is first, constant inner practice, abhyasa, and second, desirelessness, vairagya. Abhyasa and vairagya - constant inner practice and desirelessness are the two foundation stones of Patanjali’s Yoga.

 Patanjali neither follows any religion nor insists on any concept; he follows only truth, the scientific truth. According to him God is not the goal but is just one of the paths. Patanjali says, “ you can also reach, so be godless, don’t bother about God.” “That’s why”, says Osho, “ the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are rare, unique.”

 Osho also answers questions from disciples and seekers. A question asked by one of his disciples is how Osho becomes a Taoist sage while talking on Lao Tzu, a tantrika while talking on Tantra, an enlightened bhakta while talking on bhakti and a perfect yogi while talking on Yoga. Osho’s reply to this is worth noticing, which says: “If You are not, then you can become Patanjali; there is no difficulty. You can become Krishna, you can become Christ. If You are there, then it is very difficult. If You are too much there, your ego is there and then whatsoever I am saying cannot flow in you.”

Osho tells a number of jokes and stories during the course of his talks. A rule obsessed Mulla is portrayed in the following joke:

Mulla Nasruddin was working as a door-keeper in a museum. The first day he was appointed he asked for the rules: “What rules have to be followed?” So he was given the book of rules that were to be followed by the doorkeeper. He memorized them, he took every care not to forget a single detail. And the first day when he was on duty, the first visitor came. He told the visitor to leave his umbrella with him there outside at the door. The visitor was amazed. He said, “But I don’t have any umbrella.” So Nasruddin said, “In that case, you will have to go back. Bring an umbrella because this is the rule. Unless a visitor leaves his umbrella here outside, he cannot be allowed in.”

 Given below are some of Osho’s observations:

 If you are right then everything becomes right, if you are wrong then everything goes wrong.

The past, if continuously present, will not allow the present to be. And if you miss the present you miss all.

The persons who claim that they love humanity are the persons who cannot love a person.

The more you make others responsible for your life the more you are a slave.