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15 December 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8012145 ShortTitle: GREENR15 Audio:

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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Dhyan Joy. Dhyan means meditation.

Meditation is a way of silencing your being. Ordinarily it is in a turmoil, but it has the capacity to become silent. In fact unless there is a capacity to be silent there cannot be turmoil. The opposites always go together. If there is one polarity one can assume without any doubt that the opposite polarity must be in existence, we have only to discover it. Just as electricity cannot exist without the negative and the positive, everything in life is balanced by its opposite. But we can focus our mind on one pole and we can completely forget the other -- that's what the situation is ordinarily. And to live in turmoil is to live in misery. To move towards silence is to enter into the world of joy, bliss, ecstasy.

Meditation is the path from misery to ecstasy. Initiation into sannyas is really initiation into meditation.

The sannyasin's whole life work is to create as much silence as possible because when one is absolutely silent one comes into contact with god; not as a person, of course, but only as a presence, overflooding the whole existence.

Anand Arabella. Anand means bliss, Arabella means yielding to prayer.

It is one of the strange phenomenon that miserable people pray -- and it is impossible for the miserable person to pray; out of misery prayer cannot arise.

Misery is like a desert, nothing grows in it; certainly prayer is impossible. Prayer is the most beautiful flowering in existence, there is nothing comparable to it. It can happen only when one is blissful; bliss becomes the foundation. When one is blissful prayer is natural: one has to thank existence. The miserable person has nothing to be thankful for; he has a thousand and one things to complain about, but he has nothing to be thankful for.

One of the characters in Dostoevsky's greatest novel BROTHERS KARAMAZOV says 'If I meet god the only thing that I want to ask is "Why did you create me? -- and without my permission. This is unjust, unfair; at least you could have asked me!" And the next thing,' he says 'I will do, I will give him back the ticket and tell him that I don't want to exist any more.'

The existentialist philosopher, Marcel, says the only real philosophical problem is whether to commit suicide or not -- and he is right in a sense. If you have not tasted bliss then of course there is only one question which is bound to assert itself again and again: why go on living, for what? Then the whole of life becomes just a waiting for God, who never comes, nothing ever happens. It seems such a futile exercise, so 1/08/07

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much ado about nothing -- how can one yield to prayer? There is no point. And if one does pray then that prayer will be pseudo, phony, false.

The temples, the mosques, the synagogues, the churches, the gurudwaras, are all full of pseudo and phony people, for the simple reason that they have gone there to complain, not to pray; they have gone there to ask for something not to thank. And prayer essentially is not a desire, you cannot ask for anything, but that's what it has become. To pray means to pray for something. It has become synonymous with desiring while it is exactly the opposite of desiring; it is gratitude. One feels tremendously overwhelmed by what existence has done. One also feels one's unworthiness and yet existence goes on showering a

thousand and one blessings.

Feeling that, one bows down, not to a particular god -- Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan -- but to the whole: to the stars, to the sky, to the mountains, to the oceans, to the trees, to all that is. One simply bows down, feeling immensely grateful. That is yielding to prayer.

So I don't teach prayer, I teach bliss, because prayer is a natural consequence of blissfulness. I say to my sannyasins be blissful and prayer will come of its own accord. And when it comes of its own accord, it is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Mohammedan; it is simply prayer. Then it does not divide you, then it unites you, not only with humanity but with animals, with trees, with rocks. It simply unites you with existence, it becomes a bridge.

Ordinarily we are living surrounded by walls, All those walls disappear and suddenly the same bricks that were creating those walls start making a new form, a new gestalt, a bridge, which spreads from your heart to the heartbeat of the universe. Then the whole of life becomes prayer, then to breathe is prayer, then to be is prayer. And only when everything is prayer has one come to know the mystery which is there at the very centre of prayer.

Prayer is a lotus that opens only when the sun of bliss is shining.

Vinamro Maximilian, Vinamro means egoless. Maximilian means the greatest (laughter).

Jesus says blessed are the meek, blessed are the humble, the egoless, for theirs is the kingdom of god.

Religion is a paradox: you have to become nothing to become all, you have to become nobody to become a god, you have to prepare for nothingness and then the wholeness descends in you. They are two sides of the same phenomenon.

So the person who is not, is the greatest; the person who thinks he is the greatest, he is just an idiot and a very ordinary idiot at that -- not even an extraordinary idiot! For example, Mohammed Ali, the Greatest Alexander the Great -- these people are basically stupid. Their whole desire is a kind of megalomania. And of course they suffer much. They themselves are responsible for their suffering: they go on puffing up the balloon of their ego, then one day it bursts.

It need not be burst by somebody else. Although just a pinprick will do, even that is not needed. If you go on making the balloon bigger and bigger a point comes when it bursts automatically. It becomes so thin and the pressure of the air inside is so much that it bursts of its own accord. Every ego goes on becoming bigger and bigger and bigger and a moment comes when the puncture happens, when everything goes flat (laughter)... just like a flat tire and a flat tire on an Indian road! That's what they call hell! (laughter) Ego is the root cause of it, it is bound to create hell.

Egolessness is paradise, that's why Jesus' statement is significant. He has many beatitudes like this but this one has one special quality about it: in other beatitudes he says... For example, those who are last shall be the first in the kingdom of god -- note the difference: he is using the future tense, 'They shall be the first', but when he says blessed are the meek for theirs is the kingdom of god, he is not using the future tense, he is using the present tense.

The moment you are meek, humble, egoless, then it is not a question of waiting for some future, that one day you will enter into the kingdom of god; it is already the kingdom of god, to be egoless is to be in the kingdom of god. They are synonymous so there is no gap, no time gap between the two.

So become more and more Vinamro and less and less Maximilian. The day Maximilian disappears completely and only Vinamro remains you have arrived!

These two words will be very decisive now. Pull your energy out from Maximilian, go on withdrawing from the idea of the greatest. Everybody has it -- it is just that you are honest, your parents were honest, they gave you the name. But everybody has the idea, everybody is basically trying to be the greatest. And the whole project is doomed, it cannot succeed; it has never succeeded. It is against existence.

Ego means you are trying to win against the whole. That's not possible. No-ego means you dissolve with 1/08/07

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the whole, you are in a state of let-go. You say 'Thy kingdom come, thy will be done' -- and suddenly life is a totally new phenomenon, it has tremendous beauty, bliss, benediction.

Sahajanando means spontaneous bliss.

That is one of the most significant things to understand about bliss: it is spontaneous, you cannot cultivate it, you cannot practise it. A practised blissfulness is bound to be phony. You will be smiling but that smile will be a Jimmy Carter smile. You may show all your teeth but it will be just an exercise of the lips -- maybe good for the lips and for the teeth, a little bit of open air and (laughter) not joy, it is not heartfelt, it is not coming from your being. It is just painted, it is a mask, not a reality, Bliss, to be true, has to be spontaneous. Then the problem arises, what does one have to do for it? If it cannot be cultivated, cannot be practised, and it is not there, then what is one supposed to do about it? One can only remove the barriers. There are barriers. For example, the light is there but you are sitting with closed eyes: just open your eyes. You are not to create the light, it is already there, but if you keep your eyes closed you remain unavailable. Open your eyes, remove the barrier and suddenly it is light.

If you are sitting in the room with closed doors and you are feeling the stuffy atmosphere, only you are responsible. Open the doors and the windows and the wind is ready to come in and the sun is ready to come in and the fragrance of the flowers is ready to flow in.

We only have to remove barriers. Once the barriers are removed bliss starts flowing naturally, spontaneously. It is like removing rocks and then the spring starts flowing. And the rocks are very subtle so we don't think of them as rocks. Thoughts, desires, memories, dreams, expectations -- these are the rocks and they are hindering your self-nature in asserting itself. Remove them.

Removing them is the whole art of sannyas. And they can be easily removed; once you know these are the causes of your misery, they can be removed. In fact just to understand that they are the causes of your misery is enough; one need not even remove them, they simply disappear. You were supporting them up to now thinking they were very essential for your joy, for your life, for your success, this and that. You were supporting them, you were clinging to them; once you open your hands they start disappearing on their own.

They are not clinging to you.

But bliss is spontaneous. That's the beauty of it: it is a natural fragrance of our being. So we have not to find it somewhere else, we are not to go anywhere else to find it, we are not supposed to do anything positively; only a few negative things have to be dono: opening the doors, and the windows and the eyes, removing a few thoughts, desires, creating a few gaps so that in those gaps you become connected with existence. And that connection immediately starts a dance in you.

When the trees dance something dances in you -- if you are connected; when the flowers open something opens in you -- if you are connected; when the sun rises something rises in you -- if you are connected. And the whole existence is a celebration. When you are connected with existence each moment a new experience, a new ecstasy, is waiting for you, is ready to welcome you.

Veet Nito. Veet means going beyond. Nito means morality.

There is a morality which is beyond all moralities, there is a religion which is beyond all religions -- and that is the true morality and the true religion.

Our so-called moralities are just utilitarian. For thousands of years we have been programmed for them, so we go on following them, but we don't have any clear- cut perception of our own whether what we are doing is right or wrong.

Moses has said that something is right and something else is wrong and so has Manu and so has Mohammed, but it is not your heart. And the ultimate decision has to be yours. How can Manu, Moses or Mohammed decide for you? -- everything has changed. So much water has gone down the Ganges since Manu. Manu existed five thousand years ago and Hindus are still following his dictates; he has decided what is moral and what is immoral. No, this is sheer nonsense.

Life has completely changed. If Manu comes back he will not be able to recognise anything he will be simply bewildered. He will only be able to understand his own book, MANUSMRATI, the book that he wrote five thousand years ago; everything else has changed. But he will certainly laugh at the foolishness of the Hindus -- that they are still following him.

In a totally different world, in a totally different situation, a different response is needed.

So I don't give any morality to you, I don't give any discipline to you. That has been done again and again and it has always failed, it has not helped humanity. I believe in the individual and my effort is 1/08/07

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basically different from all the efforts that have preceded me. They all depended upon giving you certain instructions, detailed instructions.

In Buddhist scriptures there are thirty-three thousand rules of morality. Now even to remember them is impossible -- thirty-three thousand moral rules, such a detailed description on how to sit, how to walk, how far to look ahead when you are walking -- only four feet ahead, not even four feet, six inches. You are not supposed to look sideways because some women may be passing. Just four feet, that is the minimum that one needs for walking, otherwise one will stumble into a woman and everything will be lost! (laughter) Just four feet so one can see the feet, nothing else: if a woman is coming, only her feet. And you can escape immediately; seeing by her feet that a woman is coming, the monk escapes.

Such a fear, such a fear-oriented morality...

Don't talk to a woman because they are very seductive; don't touch a woman. Even this is a rule for the Buddhist monks, that if a woman has been sitting... for example, that place that you have been sitting in (Osho nods towards her former place in the line of waiting would-be sannyasins ) for nine minutes no monk should sit there -- this is just absurd -- because it is vibrating with feminine energy! You may destroy the monk's life.

Now Vishwasa is just sitting behind you -- he may already be in hell! (Vishwasa, the resident artist, looks up from his drawing to laugh.) But he is not looking anywhere, he is just doing his painting. Afraid --

so many women...

(Osho's words are lost in laughter; Vishwasa has retreated into his work.)

... not even four feet, just down on his page! This is how a Buddhist should behave! (much laughter) This type of nonsense has been thought of as a moral discipline.

I teach you consciousness, not conscience: just be alert, watchful, aware, and let your acts come out of your watchfulness, your awareness. So whatsoever comes out of awareness is moral -- that is my only definition -- and whatsoever comes out of unawareness is immoral. So no need for thirty-three thousand rules, only two rules, only two commandments, not even ten commandments; and in fact not two, it is really one commandment. The other is just its negative part. Act in awareness, that's all, and whatsoever you do is good because out of awareness nothing wrong can ever happen. And it's other side is: out of unconsciousness nothing right can ever happen.

So go beyond the so-called taught moralities of all the religions and puritans and the so-called great thinkers. Get rid of them. Live your life as authentically and fully, with as much awareness, as possible.

A life lived totally in awareness is a divine life.

Veet Parigraha. Veet means going beyond. Parigraha means possessiveness.

The old religions have taught people to go beyond possessions; I teach you to go beyond possessiveness

-- and there is a vast difference between the two.

Going beyond possessions is a masochistic thing. Then you are unnecessarily torturing yourself.

Mahavira lived naked, he carried the idea of non-possessions to the ultimate extreme, so he did not even have clothes. He had to live naked -- that is the logical consequence of the idea of not possessing anything, not even the begging bowl which was allowed in India for the monks, for all kinds of mystics. But Mahavira would not have anything to do even with a begging bowl. He would eat with his hands, he would beg with his hands.

But this is in a way masochistic. When it was cold he must have been shivering and when it was hot and when it was raining Seasons change and this is going

to be unnecessarily hard on your body, which is a gift from god. You need not

torture it. This is committing a slow suicide.

Buddha does not go to that extreme. That's why the followers of Mahavira are angry at him, they don't accept him as the ultimate embodiment of enlightenment. He is thought a little lower than Mahavira, because he allowed three changes of clothes and a begging bowl for his monks and for himself. Three changes of clothes -- two to wear and one could be washed -- and a begging bowl so you could carry your food. It is not much, but according to Mahavira's concept it is too much! It is luxury! And of course, if you saw Mahavira shivering in winter and Buddha sitting under a tree, wearing two garments and having a third spare one, it was luxury! And when you saw Mahavira taking his food in his hands and Buddha having a beautiful begging bowl, on which some disciple had carried drawings, then of course it looked luxurious.

Luxury always means comparison.

I don't teach against possessions, because I am not against the body or against comforts or against luxury, but I teach non-possessiveness. That is a totally different phenomenon, possessing and yet not 1/08/07

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possessing, having and yet not having.

Use everything that is available. If a palace is available why live in a hut? -- live in the palace. If a hut is available why live under a tree? -- live in the hut. If the tree is available why live under the sky? -- live under the tree. Whatsoever is available make the best out of it, but don't be possessive, don't claim that it is yours. That idea has to be dropped. We come empty-handed into the world and we go empty-handed from the world, so there is no need to be possessive.

My feeling is that the people who taught against having possessions were afraid of being possessive. If you are afraid of even having a begging bowl, that simply means if the begging bowl is there then you will become possessive -- that fear is there, so better not to have the bowl. You have destroyed the thing and you can

live with the idea that you have destroyed your possessiveness. That is not necessarily true.

You may live in a hut and you may desire a palace. You may have renounced the palace, you may have escaped from the palace, but the very escape shows your fear. And a man full of fear cannot be full of joy.

You cannot afford both together.

So I am bringing a totally new concept of sannyas. Sannyas means non- possessiveness. There is no need to leave your wife, your children, your parents; there is no need to leave anybody. Be in the world but remember that nothing belongs to you, that sooner or later you will have to go, so don't cling. Non- clinging is what I teach. Use everything possible, but don't cling. In short, be in the world but don't let the world be in you.

Veet Samayo. Veet means go beyond. Samayo means time.

Meditation is going beyond time. Time is mind. Mind consists of past and future; mind has no experience of the present. It is thought that time has three tenses: past, present and future. I don't agree, my own experience is totally different; time consists only of two tenses, past and future. The present is not part of time, the present is part of eternity. It is a totally different thing. Past and future are horizontal and present is vertical.

Mind lives horizontally, meditation is a vertical phenomenon. When you drop out of the past and the future, suddenly you enter into the present, and that is beyond time. And that is the beginning of god, of truth, the beginning of that which is.

The whole science of meditation is to help you to get rid of past and future; and in fact it is not much of a work, because the past is no more and the future is not yet, so you are simply getting rid of something which is not yet, it is not much of a work. And you are getting rid of something which is no more -- that too is not much of a work. You are entering into which is and which always is. Hence meditation is simple, just a right understanding is needed.

But in the name of meditation so many stupidities go on in the world that people have become very much confused; what is meditation? People are changing mantras, doing certain rituals, worshipping, bowing down to statues. All kinds of

things are being done. The Tibetan Buddhists go on doing things the whole day: lying down on the ground and touching the ground with their head. And the more you do, the more meditative you become. There are people who do it one thousand times a day, two thousand times a day, three thousand times a day -- the bigger the number, the greater you are. And just think, a person doing this nonsense of lying down on the earth and touching the earth with his head for the whole day -- of course he will become mindless... but that is not meditation. That is falling below mind, not going above mind. He will become idiotic but he will not become a buddha. He may become very robust because this is a good exercise, continuously doing it for the whole day. He may enjoy good health but he will be utterly in an illusion if he thinks, that he knows what meditation is.

Then people are chanting mantras continuously -- they become mechanical, they go on chanting and they go on thinking also. Mind is capable of doing many things, you just have to learn the trick. You can try it -- you can chant "Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama..." and after a few days you start counting, "One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, Rama, Rama, one, two, three, four, Rama...", and both will start happening together. You will have both together. "Rama, Rama and one, two, three, four," then a woman passes by and you look and you miss and that too enters in the head and you start fighting, feeling this is not good.

The mind is capable of many processes together, so just by chanting a mantra you cannot get rid of it.

All that is needed is a great understanding, awareness, alertness, not to get into past memories and not to get into trips about the future.

Slowly slowly one settles in the present.

The moment you are here-now you have found it. 1/08/07

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Is the Grass Really Greener...?

Chapter #16

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