Chapter title: None

‌Chapter title: None‌

19 June 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8006195 ShortTitle: IMPRIS19 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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up.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.]

Meditation is not achieved through effort, it is achieved through surrender. All the effort that is made, is made to make surrender possible. Once surrender becomes possible then you are ready to receive the gift.

Effort is needed, but not for meditation; effort is needed only to prepare you to receive the gift. Meditation always comes as a gift; hence it is never food for the ego, it cannot be because it is not your achievement at all. On the contrary, it happens only when the ego has been totally surrendered. You cannot say 'I have found it,' you can only say, 'God has found me.' You cannot say, you cannot brag 'This is my achievement, my realisation,' because it happens when you are not, hence how can it be your realisation and your achievement? It is god's grace.

But it is a very complex phenomenon.

There are two kinds of misunderstandings about meditation. One is that no effort is needed. Then why make any effort? Whenever it is going to happen it will happen -- what can we do about it? That is a misunderstanding. You can do something, not to achieve meditation but to prepare yourself to be receptive.

The other misunderstanding is that because effort is needed to prepare, then

effort is essential, and you 1/08/07

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

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achieve meditation through your effort. So: go on making effort. If you are not achieving it, that means your effort is still not enough, so make more effort, put more intensity into it, put more energy into it, get more involved. Both are misunderstandings.

Effort is needed but not for meditation. Effort is needed only up to a point. It has nothing to do with meditation, but it is very essential too, because unless you are ready you will miss the gift. The gift is arriving every moment, it is showering on everybody, but people are missing it because they don't have any space to absorb it, they don't have any place to allow it entry into their being. It is all full of rubbish, all full of junk.

This has to become one of the most important understandings, that effort is needed, yet meditation is a gift. it is needed for surrender and surrender is needed for meditation. So there is no direct connection with the effort, but a very indirect connection is there.

So avoid both pitfalls and just be in the middle. It is a razor's edge: if you fall here, you fall into a lake, if you fall on the other side you fall into a well. You have to keep yourself like a tightrope walker; avoiding both pitfalls, avoiding both extremes, maintaining a balance between effort and no-effort. Once that balance is there, meditation comes like a spring and you become full of flowers. Your life has all the splendour and all the joy that existence can give to you -- it is infinite.

A sannyasin has to transcend all hardness. He has to become soft, vulnerable, open. We are had because we have been told that life is a struggle. We are hard because we are prepared to fight for sheer survival.

But that is not the way to find god. Maybe that is the way to find money, power, prestige, but that is not the way to find god. We cannot conquer god, we have to be conquered by him, we have to allow him to conquer us. In fact, to be defeated

by god is to be victorious. In that very defeat is victory.

The sannyasin is just the opposite of a soldier. The soldier has to be hard, aggressive, violent, ambitious, and the sannyasin has to be soft, receptive, non- ambitious so that god can conquer him. And god is always ready: he goes on waiting patiently for us to get ready.

Bliss is a by-product of the search for truth. If you seek truth you will find it without seeking it. The moment truth is found bliss happens of its own accord. It is the flavor, the fragrance of truth.

You can hold a flower in your hand but you cannot hold its fragrance. And if you are seeking the fragrance you will never find it. Seek the flower. Once the flower is found the fragrance is all yours.

Truth is the flower and bliss is its fragrance. It has been found only by those who have found truth.

Everybody seeks bliss, nobody bothers about truth -- that's why everybody is miserable. Very few people seek truth, and those who have sought truth have also found bliss. It comes like a shadow, the other side of truth. It happens without making any effort to seek it.

In ordinary life also that is true: you cannot seek happiness directly; it happens through something else.

Somebody may enjoy swimming and he may tell you that it is ecstatic. It brings such joy, and you may go to swim in order to get the joy, the ecstasy. You will miss the whole thing because the whole time you will be waiting: "When is it going to happen?" You will simply feel tired, you will look stupid, silly. What are you doing? -- throwing your hands in the water and nothing is happening. This man always says that there is so much ecstasy in swimming. You are also swimming but you have made happiness your goal. For him swimming is his goal; happiness comes as a by-product.

These are the three planes of bliss. The first, the most gross is pleasure, and the highest, the most subtle is bliss. Between the two is happiness, it is half way: a little gross, a little subtle, a part of it pleasure and a part of it bliss. But their happening is the same.

If somebody is making love to a woman to get pleasure out of it, he will not find it. It is impossible to find any pleasure. He will look simply stupid, going through all those empty exercises. Making love will simply be like an exercise.

I have heard about a drunkard who saw a man doing some exercises on the beach -- just push-ups. He sat by the side and looked at the man: The man was breathing hard and perspiring. The drunkard started laughing: the man was a little annoyed. He asked, "What is the matter? Why are you laughing?" The drunkard said, "I am laughing because the woman you are making love has left! What are you doing? --

There is no woman at all! You are looking so silly, that's why I am laughing."

A man who is seeking pleasure will simply be doing push-ups, nothing else. He will simply feel tired, he will be perspiring and will look stupid and start thinking "What is all this about orgasm, etcetera? I have been befooled."

1/08/07

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

But if you are in love and you are not thinking of pleasure at all and love happens on its own -- a spontaneous phenomenon -- then there is pleasure, great pleasure.

Millions of people are missing orgasm for the simple reason that they are seeking it. And after the Kinsey Report, and Masters and Johnsons' research work, millions of people are looking for orgasm. These people had never bothered about it before. Now these books were talking so much about orgasm that they started feeling that they are missing something very essential. And the more they feel they are missing, the more they look at it; the more they look for it, the more they are going to miss. Now they are in a vicious circle.

Somebody has to tell them, "Forget all about orgasm, drop the whole idea of orgasm, and then there is a possibility of its happening."

That is the lowest... but the rule exists, the same rule, for higher planes too.

If you listen to music and you are a lover of music there is great happiness. But if you have just gone there to be happy and you don't love music, you don't bother about music, you have no ear for music, no sensibility for music, you are just sitting there, waiting for when happiness comes and knocks on your door, it will never come.

Bliss also happens, but you cannot seek it directly. Seek truth and in finding truth you will find bliss also.

Bliss and truth are synonymous, they are inseparable, just like two sides of the same coin. Everybody is interested in bliss, naturally -- who wants to be miserable? -- but nobody is ready to pay the price.

Everybody wants it cheap, and if possible, then free. Nobody wants to travel; one wants to find a short-cut, or is it is possible, not to take even a single step -- that would be the best thing. That's why people go on boiling in their misery; their whole life is nothing but hell.

One has to pay for truth, for bliss, and the only way is to become committed. Sannyas is a commitment, a commitment to the search. It is not just curiosity, it is going on a long pilgrimage -- not seeking any short-cut, not asking that it should be cheap or without any cost. If it is needed, the committed person is ready to sacrifice even his life for it. Not that to sacrifice your life is needed, but that readiness must be there.

With that very readiness some radical change starts happening within your being. When something is higher than life, when something is so valuable to you that you can even sacrifice your life for it, in that very moment a transformation has already happened. You are no more concerned with the ordinary things, you have become interested in the extraordinary. Your priorities have changed: money is no more valuable, power is no more valuable, fame is no more valuable. Only one thing is valuable now: how to know oneself.

That's what the goal of sannyas is: how to know oneself. By knowing oneself one comes to know truth on one hand and bliss on the other hand.

Socrates is right when he says 'Know thyself,' because in knowing that, all is known, all that is worth knowing is known. Except for that, all knowledge is

simply rubbish, it is of no use. It won't help you to go beyond death, to go beyond time. It won't help you to transcend misery, anguish, anxiety, darkness.

Knowing yourself you become light, you become luminous. Now even death cannot extinguish your light.

Now you know something indestructible in your being, something immortal has been found. And with that finding all anguish, anxiety disappears, all fear, all greed disappears. That is true freedom.

The ultimate goal of sannyas is freedom, and the means to that ultimate goal is self-knowledge.

The Imprisoned Splendor

Chapter #20

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