When sadness surrounds...

Photo:Osho International Foundation

When the hype and excitement of the new year is over the real state of mind emerges. All the depressing emotions are hidden behind the momentary joy, waiting to surface. They have a life of their own and want the opportunity, too.The superficial celebration had only suppressed it little deeper but when the fire is blown away you can feel the amber smoldering inside.

One thing is sure, pushing the negative emotions down is no cure for them. On the contrary the more you are in a denial mode the more tension keeps mounting, and one day, all of a sudden it explodes.

Once a woman came to see Osho and expressed that sometimes she has these bouts of sadness. They come as a wave, for no apparent reason,but when they overcome her consciousness it is very strong and she cannot fight or pretend to be happy.

Osho's advice to her will prove to be a great insight for all of us to look into our various shades of emotions and how to deal with them. The first and foremost is: never to escape. Escaping from a situation is only strengthening it in an indirect way.

" Whenever you feel sad, sit silently and allow sadness to come; don't try to escape from it. Make yourself as sad as you can. Don't avoid it , that's the one thing to remember. Cry, weep... have the whole taste of it. Fall down on the earth, roll. This is to be remembered -- when you are feeling sad, don't lose the opportunity. Close the doors, sit down, and feel as sad as you can, as if the whole world is just a hell. Go deep into it... sink into it. Allow every sad thought to penetrate you, every sad emotion to stir you. And cry and weep and say things -- say them loudly, there is nothing to worry about."(Be realistic, plan for a miracle)

This becomes a meditation because such intense  sadness  is the moment to enter yourself. The ordinary tendency is not to allow it, we  find some ways and means so that we can look somewhere else --we go to the restaurant, or to the swimming pool, meet friends, read a book or go to a movie, play some happy music so that we can be engaged and can put  our attention somewhere else.

When it goes you will be unburdened, absolutely unburdened, as if the whole gravitation has disappeared and you can fly, weightless.And let it go by itself. Don't force it to go; it will go, because nobody can remain in a permanent mood.

Maxims to meditate upon

  Osho International Foundation

Osho encouraged people to ask questions of all kinds. His answers were very unpredictable. Sometimes he would twist the question and sometimes he would tear the questioner off. He has given lots of sutras or maxims to meditate upon in a funny way. Here is a colorful bouquet of one-liners Osho has given to meditate upon to an old actress and a theater person.

* A woman who looks like a dream usually gives a man insomnia.
* Two is company, three is the result.
* The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.
* Sometimes the best way to liven up the party is to leave.
* It is better to be in the missionary position than never to have any religion at all.
* The only time most people look like their passport photographs is during a hijack.
* In these days of jet travel, the only journeys that take a long time are the ones from your house to the             airport.
* A husband who gets his breakfast in bed is in hospital.
* Married life is like sitting in a bathtub -- after a while, it is not so hot.
* Marriage is like a violin. After the beautiful music is over, the strings are still attached.
* Nobody is ever satisfied. Poor men wish they were rich, rich men wish they were handsome, bachelors          wish they were married, and married men wish they were dead.
* The fastest way to discover your bad habits is to move in with your lover.
*  Sex is the most fun you can have without laughing.

Please don't make new year's resolutions

 The flowers and the butterflies don't make a new resolution, they just live the new. They are always new.
It is only the humans who make a folly of making resolutions.
Traditionally, people start thinking of making new year's resolutions at the end of the year: the things they want to change in their lives, the habits they want to drop or cultivate become part of their new resolutions.
Wait a moment! Stop and listen to the Osho advice before you jump into repeating the old pattern.

Osho says, there can only be one resolution for the new year : " I resolve never to make any resolutions for the future."
Wow! Never thought about it that this can also be a resolution.

But why does Osho say so? He has solid reasons for it.

*  All resolutions are restrictions for the future. All resolutions are imprisonments.
*You decide today for tomorrow? You have destroyed tomorrow. Allow the tomorrow to have its own being.
*Let it come in its own way! Let it bring its own gifts.
*Resolution means you will allow only this and you will not allow that.
*Resolution means you would like the sun to rise in the west and not in the east. If it rises in the east, you will not open your windows; you will keep your windows open to the west.
* What is resolution? Resolution is struggle. Resolution is ego.
*Resolution is saying, "I cannot live spontaneously." And if you cannot live spontaneously, you don't live at all -- you only pretend.
* So let only one resolution be there: I will never make any resolutions. Drop all resolutions!
*Let life be a natural spontaneity. The only golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

Walk without feet, fly without wings and think without mind

Every politician should meditate

Once Mandela was asked, how he kept himself from hating his tormentors, Mandela answered, "Hating clouds the mind... leaders can't afford to hate." Wish more politicians had this wisdom. It was an enigma for everyone close to him that how he did not carry any malice or a grievance against the whites who had tortured and humiliated him. This special quality of his being made Mandela tower over his detractors. Mandela was a politician in search of himself.

He did not talk about his interest in meditation publicly but his magnanimous heart and his behavior with his fellowmen had the fragrance of a maturity that blossomed within. He had turned his 27 years of incarceration into a retreat, where meditation transformed him into this rare human being.

He gave the same advice in a letter he wrote to his wife, Winnie Mandela, when she was sent to prison in Kroonstad: "You may find that the cell is an ideal place to learn to know yourself, to search realistically and regularly the processes of your own mind and feelings. In judging our progress as individuals we tend to concentrate on external factors such as one’s social position, influence and popularity, wealth and standard of education … but internal factors may be even more crucial in assessing one’s development as a human being: honesty, sincerity, simplicity, humility, purity, generosity, absence of vanity, readiness to serve your fellow men – qualities within the reach of every soul – are the foundation of one’s spiritual life…. Regular meditation, say of about 15 minutes a day before you turn in, can be fruitful in this regard. You may find it difficult at first to pinpoint the negative factors in your life, but the tenth attempt may reap rich rewards. Never forget that a saint is a sinner that keeps on trying.”

  

This is exactly what Osho has proposed for everyone in power, particularly politicians. “As far as I can see, all politicians should be meditators, should know something of the inner world. They should be more conscious, more compassionate, should know the taste of love. They should know the experience of the silence of existence, and the beauty of this planet, and the gifts of existence. And they should learn to be humble and grateful.”

"The world needs only one thing -- not great scriptures, just a simple method of becoming silent, of becoming yourself, of coming to your innermost center. Every politician should be forced to participate in some school of meditation, and unless he graduates from there he cannot stand for any political post. All politicians, unless they are meditative, are disqualified. They don't know themselves and they are controlling millions of people and their lives."

We saw another Osho insight inadvertently being followed outside Mandela's house, which is celebrating death. Yes, Mandela's admirers were singing and dancing instead of   mourning his death. A befitting farewell to a gorgeous life. The media lensemen who kept searching around looking for long faces outside Mandela's house were stumped!  

I am tempted to quote Osho once again, "Celebrating death will help you to understand that there is nothing in life to be afraid of. If death is a celebration, then what else can be a cause of fear? And if you can celebrate death, you have attained a maturity.It is possible only to those who live life as a rejoicing, a constant celebration."

Bharat Natyam at OSHO International Meditation Resort

Swati and Nupur Daithankar mesmerize  Osho Meditators

Renowned Bharat Natyam dancer Dr Swati Daithankar along with her competent daughter Nupur gave a stunning dance performance at Osho International Meditation Resort. The lovely duo opened the evening with a Shiva stuti and went along  presenting different aspects of this ancient temple dance namely rhythm, emotiing, foot work and theatre. Nupur's electrifying movements were a perfect foil to Swati's mature expressions and body postures. In the end Dhanjay Daithankar, Swati's famous husband, played Santoor while Swati danced to the tune of the hundred strings. A rare combination of North and South Indian music! The international audience was glued to their seats in the cold night as if mesmerized. 

Swati reads Osho's books and says they have helped through her  life, understand the art and are a great support inside.

 The union of inner man and inner woman

    

                                        Happy spectators at the concert

Allow the kids to throw tantrums

 

 When kids go astray, the parents ask, " Where did we go wrong?" but when the parents go astray, what can the kids ask, to whom? They suffer silently or maybe they are silenced forever by their own parents. And yet nobody dares to look with fresh eyes into this vital issue of bringing up children.

The repressive attitude of the past generations to their children will not work any longer. Osho endorses the new studies of psychologists who say that the screaming and shouting of a child is very healthy. Those children who cannot scream and shout in their childhood, who cannot throw tantrums, cannot show their displeasure openly become mentally sick forever. This screaming and crying of a child is a deep process, it is a method of relieving his pain. 

Osho has suggested a meditation for parents or elders who are bringing up children.

" If a child is crying, neither you scold him, nor pat him, nor advise him, just sit with him silently, go on watching him meditatively, lovingly. But do not stop him from crying or try to make him sleep by patting his head. Do not give him toys because it means you are bribing him. Do not distract  his mind by showing him a beautiful sparrow sitting on a tree. By doing this you are distracting him from his natural way. Just be silent without getting angry – because your anger too can function as suppression for the child. Go on looking at the child silently and lovingly, then you will be amazed. As long as you give attention to a child lovingly, he would cry with all his heart, he would scream. The child will vent out his feelings  for a while and afterwards will become light. He will start smiling, will become happy. He is not smiling to please you. Now this laughter is arising from the release of his pain. Now he has become light-hearted.  

If we silently cooperate with the children's emotional needs  the perversion, the madness would be greatly reduced in this world. Parents should participate in  the emotional cleansing of their children, it will help their own cleansing, too. The children will start trusting their parents and a deep intimate bond will be created between both. So when the children mature sexually and they have strange sensations and attractions in their body and mind they will feel free to ask their parents about it, and the parents will not doubt their children's intentions. 

From medicine to meditation

                                           Osho Dynamic meditation at OSHO International Meditation Resort

Ever wondered why are there so many chemists and druggists' shops in the modern  world? Almost at every corner you will find a shop packed with medicines. Have you ever thought who on earth must be taking all these pills and syrups? And in the first place do they need them?

To be honest  they don't. Recently it has been discovered that fifty to ninety percent of man’s diseases are produced by the mind. But the repercussions occur in the body. Because by and by the poison oozes out from the mind and seeps in the body  who  has to suffer its long lasting effects. Viewing this Osho introduced cathartic meditations. Just by breathing vigorously, gathering your whole energy and expelling the foul air from lungs cleanses the body so much! One feels light like a balloon filled with air. And if you can introduce some chaos in your breathing,  which means breathe irregularly, breaking the rhythm you are giving additional fuel to the mind to break down the old habits and drop the dead patterns.

Osho says," If you can do it wholeheartedly then you will not only find that your mind becomes pure but your body will also attain new dimensions of health, you will find that many illnesses are suddenly released by your catharsis. So many diseases which had firmly gripped you have suddenly disappeared. As as an example, if you have asthma, it means that somewhere the relation between breathing and the mind has become unnatural, somewhere the link is broken, some obstacle has arisen. If you can rightly experiment with the deep un-rhythmic breathing, that obstacle will dissolve, it will drop away.

If you suffer from a constant headache, then more often than not it means that some worries are corroding your brain from within like worms. You are overburdened, you have become loaded. If those anxieties are dropped, suddenly you will find that your head has become light. As if there was a constant weight inside and it has been lifted."

Mysteriously enough, health is something inherent inside everybody; no one can give the gift of health to anybody. Neither physicians nor your friends. They can wish you good health  but they cannot make you healthy.

Then what do the medicines do? They just remove the ill health. They remove the negative blocks and knots that disturb the natural harmony of the physical system. It is interesting that  those who are unhealthy have a close bond with their body whereas the healthy people live in the body but are not bogged down by it. Their body hums with them This state is the prerequisite  to meditation. So move from medicine to meditation at the earliest.