Thursday, January 29, 2009

Gaan Saraswati - Kishori-tai Amonkar

Kishori Amonkar – Gaan Saraswati (Saraswati of Singing – Saraswati of course being the Hindu Goddess of knowledge, music and the arts) and one off the finest exponents of Indian classical music, alive.

Some consider her voice the voice of divinity. I am transported into bubbles of ecstasy hearing it.

A small sample for your enjoyment




And yes, she did sing for a Hindi film. Open the link to watch ‘Geet Gaya Pattharon Ne’

http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=tLLix-jWPls or
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=bjMBb3LCoNg

And there was another song for the film Drishti (Sight) which goes ‘Megha Dhire Dhire…..’. couldn’t find it on youtube though


Resources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kishori_Amonkar
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=21461
http://www.hinduonnet.com/folio/fo0012/00120100.htm
http://www.hindu.com/2007/08/20/stories/2007082055360300.htm
http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=242579
http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=128956
http://www.screenindia.com/old/20010921/mcov4.html
http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=139726
http://www.hindu.com/fr/2008/02/08/stories/2008020850410100.htm
http://www.chowk.com/interacts/5122
http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/musical-nirvana/238168/
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/ayaz/20020920.htm

Your Condom Friend

Guaranteed to bring a smile to your face

Saturday, January 24, 2009

P.G. Wodehouse - 6

From ‘The Small Bachelor’

Nothing could make a woman of Mrs. Waddington’s physique ‘leap from the chair’: but she had begun to rise slowly like a balloon half-filled with gas, and her face had become so contorted and her eyes so bulging that any competent medical man of sporting tastes would have laid seven to four on a fit of apoplexy in the next few minutes. (pg 86-87)



‘Engaged to George?’ said Molly. ’Yes, its quite true. I am. By a most extraordinary chance we met this afternoon in Central Park near the Zoo…..’
………………………………..
’Well, anyway, we walked round for awhile, looking at the animals, and suddenly he asked me to marry him outside the cage of the Siberian yak.’
’No, sir!’ exclaimed Sigsbee H. with a sudden strange firmness, the indulgent father who for once in his life asserts himself. ’When you get married, you’ll be married in St Thomas’s like any other nice girl.’
’I mean it was outside the cage of the Siberian yak that he asked me to marry him.’
’Oh, ah!’ said Sigsbee H. (pg 88-89)



From ‘The Girl on the Boat’

………..when suddenly a sharp pain shot through his right arm, and he spun round with a cry.
It seemed to Sam that he had been bitten, and this puzzled him, for New York crowds, though they may shove and jostle, rarely bite.
He found himself face to face with an extraordinarily pretty girl.
…………….She was not the prettiest girl he had ever seen. She was the third prettiest. He had an orderly mind, one capable of classifying and docketing girls.
…………….At last he told himself, he was in love, really in love, and at first sight too……………………..Oh, to clasp this girl to him and …
But she had bitten him in the arm. That was hardly the right spirit. That, he felt, constituted an obstacle.
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” she cried.
Well, of course, if she regretted her rash act…After all, an impulsive girl might bite a man in the arm in the excitement of the moment and still have a sweet, womanly nature…
“The crowd seems to make Pinky-Boodles so nervous.”
Sam might have remained mystified, but at this juncture there proceeded from the bundle of rugs in the neighbourhood of the girl’s lower ribs a sharp yapping sound…….
………..”I hope he didn’t hurt you much. You’re the third person he’s bitten today.” She kissed the animal in a loving and congratulatory way on the tip of his black nose. “Not counting waiters at the hotel, of course,” she added. And then she was swept from him in the crowd, and he was left thinking of all the things he might have said-all those graceful, witty, ingratiating things which just make a bit of difference on these occasions. (pg 19-21)



Billie had been standing near the wall, inspecting the portrait of the late Mr.Josiah Appleby, of which the kindest thing one can say is that one hopes it did not do him justice (pg 127)



Eustace closed his eyes. After all this girl had fought lions, tigers, pumas, cannibals, and alligators in her time with a good deal of success. There might be a sporting chance of victory for her when she moved a step up in the animal kingdom and tackled his mother. He was not unduly optimistic, for he thought she was going out of her class; but he feflt faintly hopeful. (pg 167)



“………………Rufus Bennett’s word is his bond. Rufus Bennett is a white man!”
……………”I am not disputing Mr.Bennett’s claim to belong to the Caucasian race………..” (pg 183)





From ‘Uncle Dynamite’

Sir Aylmer Bostock’s collection of African curios was probably the most hideous, futile and valueless that even an ex-Governor had ever brought home with him, and many of its items seemed to take Pongo into a different and a dreadful world.
And he had picked up and started to scrutinize the nearest to hand, a peculiar sort of what-not executed in red mud by an artist apparently under the influence of trade gin, and was wondering why even an untutored African should have been chump enough to waste on an effort like this hours which might have been more profitably employed in chasing crocodiles or beaning the neighbours with his knobkerrie




Ever since his meeting that afternoon with Lord Ickenham, Bill Oakshott’s emotions had been rather similar to those which he would have experienced, had he in the course of a country walk discovered that his coat tails had become attached to the rear end of the Scotch express en route from London to Edinburgh.




Pongo uttered a curious hissing sound like the death-rattle of a soda-water siphon.




This was unfortunate, for we have made no secret of Sir Aylmer Bostock’s views on nervous gigglers. The ex-Governor had never actually fallen on a nervous giggler and torn him limb from limb, but that was simply because he had not wanted to get himself involved in a lot of red tape.




Her father might look like a walrus and her mother like something starting at a hundred to eight in the two-thirty race at Catterick Bridge, but Hermione herself, tall and dark, with large eyes, a perfect profile and an equally perfect figure, was an Oriental potentate’s dream of what the harem needed




‘Plank?’ he said, speaking raspingly. ’Did I hear her call you Major Plank?’
’That’s right,’ said Lord Ickenham. ’Major Plank.’
’Are you Major Brabazon-Plank, the explorer?’
’I am.’
‘So am I,’ said the gentleman, evidently rather impressed by the odd coincidence.





From ‘Cocktail Time’


……as snug as a bug in a rug





From ‘Psmith Journalist’


…..his remarks sound like the output of a gramophone with a hot potato in its mouth



….Your narratives, Comrade Maloney, always seem to me to suffer from a certain lack of construction. You start at the end, and then you go back to any portion of the story which happens to appeal to you at the moment, eventually winding up at the beginning



“I had a cat oncest,” said Mr. Jarvis……“dat ate beetles and got thin and used to tie itself into knots.”
“A versatile animal,” agreed Mr. Psmith

OshoSpeak – 2009: #5

From ‘Be Still and Know’ – Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh responding to disciples’ and visitors’ questions.


The East has lived religiously – that is one pole – and because it has lived religiously it has not been able to produce science. The West has lived scientifically, and because of its science it has lost track of religion. Now for the first time, the East is no more East and the West is no more West. The earth is becoming one:….becoming one global village.
Man is entering a new phase……




Zen painting is not done in the Western way. In Western painting you will find that the painter goes on improving…..Zen painters cannot do that…….they use a certain kind of paper, rice-paper, on which you can make only one stroke. You cannot correct it, you have to leave it as it is…………It has to be from the heart, a single stroke. If your heart is full of it, it will come right. But you cannot correct it, correction comes from the mind…………It has to come out of your meditativeness, your silence. Your feeling of the moment is spread on the rice-paper.




The whole art of meditation consists in witnessing…what does it bring? At the most we can stay it brings total peace; it simply brings eternal silence………..
The state of witnessing remains indefinable. That’s why Buddha has not used the word ‘bliss’ at all, because it can give you a wrong idea – because in your mind bliss will mean happiness……..Buddha has not……used the word ‘God’.
The word that he has used is ‘absolute void’ – shunyam




Just the other night I was looking at a book: Jesus, The Only Way. Why the only way? Is Buddha not a way? Is Lao Tzu…..Zarathustra…..Moses……Mohammed not a way? Thre are infinite ways to reach God. Why make God so poor? – only one way?
But the Christian priest is not interested in god: he is interested in creating a business. He has to claim that Jesus is the only way, that all other ways are wrong. He is in search of customers.
That’s why every religion creates fascists and fanatics………the world has suffered very much from this fanatical approach. It is time, ripe time now, to drop all kinds of fascist and fanatical attitudes




It is almost impossible to understand Jesus through the priests. The only pure way…..return inside. There you will meet Christ-consciousness………Never be a Christian – be a Christ! Never be a Buddhist – be a Buddha! Never be a Hindu – be a Krishna!..........u need not go into the scriptures and you need not ask the scholars: you will have to ask the mystics how to go in.




Each religion creates Adolf Hitlers because of this idea that “My way is the only right way.”




Ego is a state of no-prayer: egolessness is a state of prayer………..it is wordless silence………In prayer you are not Hindu or Christian………….In prayer you are not: in prayer God is.




…….religion is possible only in a civilized, cultured, sophisticated society………….primitive people also have religion, but their religion………..it is magic, it is ritual. Hence they have not produced Buddhas. They are good people, simple, beautiful, innocent………..
…….at the most they create magicians……..Their religion………..never reaches the heights of a Patanjali or a Lao Tzu or a Mohammed. They have not produced any Koran, Upanishads, Bible; they cannot. They are people who have not yet said no………who have not yet disobeyed. They have not eaten the fruit of knowledge yet………….
………Eat the fruit of knowledge! Become knowledgeable and one day renounce your knowledge. Then wisdom is born………..
Before you can become a Christ you will have to become a disobedient Adam and Eve……..Christ is the higher stage of Adam. Adam says no, creates a personality; Christ says yes, drops the old personality and attains to a new individuality which is eternal.




Tomorrow when you go for a morning walk, enjoy the walk – the birds in the trees and the sunrays and the clouds and the wind……remember you are a mirror; you are reflecting the clouds and the trees and the birds and the people.
This self-remembering Buddha calls ‘sammasati’ – right mindfulness. Krishnamurthi calls it ‘choiceless awareness’, the Upanishads call it ‘witnessing’, Gurdjieff calls it ‘self-remembering’




……..when Buddha became enlightened somebody asked him, “What have you gained?”
He said, “I have not gained anything, but I have lost so many things. I have lost my desires…..dreams….sleep….anger….greed….ambition…..ego……But by losing all those things I have come home. I have become just myself – a purity, a clarity, a cloudless sky.”




The Devil is nothing but the other side of God……….’Divine’ and ’devil’ both come from the same root, ‘dev’ in Sanskrit…………if you repress one part of God, one aspect of his being, sooner of later it is going to assert itself…………
In the East, particularly in India, there is no Devil worship at all……….The Indian trinity……..Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh: these are the three faces of God. Brahma is the creator…..the aspect that creates, Vishnu, the aspect that maintains the world…keeps it running….Mahesh, the destroyer who destroys the world………..
…..The Christian concept of God as creator makes it a very limited one. Then whose responsibility is it to destroy things?......no creation is possible without destruction



Reference

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upanishad
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiddu_Krishnamurti
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurdjieff

Friday, January 23, 2009

OshoSpeak – 2009: #4

From ‘Beyond Enlightenment’


You will be surprised to know that the English word ‘love’ comes from a very ugly root in Sanskrit. It comes from ‘lobh’. Lobh means greed.
And as far as ordinary love is concerned, it is a kind of greed.





……..please talk about the sadhana based on holding as much as possible to the “I” thought or the sense of “I am”, and on asking oneself the questions, “Who am I?”

………….It is an ancient method of meditation, but full of dangers. Unless you are alert, the greater possibility is that you will be led astray……..

The method is simple – concentrating yourself on the concept of I, closing your eyes and inquiring, “Who am I?”
The greatest problem is that………who is going to answer you? Most probably the answer will come from your tradition, from your scriptures, from your conditioning.
………If you want to go rightly into the method, then the question has not to be verbally asked………..it has to remain just a vague idea, just like a thirst.
……………..Not knowing oneself hurts, it is a wound. Not knowing oneself makes the whole of life meaningless…….
The emphasis is on watching, watchfulness. All those points are just excuses. You can watch the breath at the tip of the nose where the breath goes in, you can watch it while it is going in, you can watch it when it returns – you can watch it anywhere…………..The important thing is that you are watchful…………..and slowly slowly, as the watcher becomes more and more solid, stable, unwavering, a transformation happens. The things that you were watching disappear.
For the first time, the watcher itself becomes the watched, the observer itself becomes the observed.
You have come home.





……………………………….in the East, it has been known for centuries that a man of meditation can see if somebody is going to die within six months or not………….you yourself can know………….the day you stop seeing the tip of your nose, that means only six months are left – because at the time a person dies, his eyes turn up, and they start turning up six months before that, very slowly, very slowly




……….my philosophical standpoint………ten non-commandments
The first: freedom
The second: uniqueness of individuality
The third: love
The fourth: meditation
The fifth: non-seriousness
The sixth:playfulness
The seventh:creativity
The eighth:sensitivity
The ninth: gratefulness
tenth: a feeling of the mysterious
These ten non-commandments constitute my basic attitude towards reality, towards man freedom from all kinds of spiritual slavery.




Raman Maharshi is a mystic, but not a master.
The mystics have never travelled because the mystics are not making any effort of any kind to transfer their experiences to others. They have decided that what they have experienced is untransferable, that it cannot be communicated
……………
Buddha, Mahavira, Bodhidharma, Shankara, Nagarjuna, Mohammed, Jesus, J.Krishnamurti, they were all travelling, going continuously………
These are masters…..Not that they are against the mystics; basically they agree that it is difficult, almost impossible to communicate, to say anything about the truth, about self-realization. It is beyond words………
But still the masters say that some indirect ways can be always tried, and there is no harm


Resources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramana_Maharshi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gautama_Buddha
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahavira
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhidharma
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adi_Shankara
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagarjuna
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krishnamurti,_J.




From ‘Tantra Vision: Beyond the Barriers of Wisdom’ – Diamond Pocket Books


Tantra takes all disciplines away. When there is no discipline, when there is no enforced order, a totally different kind of order arises in you. What Lao Tzu calls Tao, what Buddha calls dharma – that arises in you. That is not anything done by you; it happens to you. Tantra simply creates space for it to happen………….and when the space is ready, the whole flows in.




Tantra says: If you are in order, then the whole world is in order for you.




Tantra says: there is no way to be satisfied with the outer; you will have to move inward. You will have to find your inner woman and inner man. You will have to attain to a sexual intercourse inside. That is a great contribution…………….When the energy moves outside, you need a woman outside. You have a little glimpse for a moment……….For a single moment you can lose yourself into each other. Again you are thrown back to yourself……with a vengeance.




In the moment of orgasm, forget the woman or the man completely. Close your eyes and be in, and let it be a meditation. When energy is stirred, don’t miss this opportunity




Tantra does not say that to make love to the outer is sin, it simply says it is not very far-going. It does not condemn it, it accepts its naturalness.




You are holding your sex centre very tightly. The society has made you very much aware of the sex centre; it has made you obsessed with it……….Relax it………drop the fear. Sex is beautiful, its not a sin, it is a virtue.




……..sex is not the ultimate in pleasure………it is not the bliss supreme………When the sex centre feels a little happiness, it is just a far-away echo of sahasrar




…………when a Master is dead he finds more disciples than when he is alive. With a dead Master the disciples are completely at ease……..Jesus had only twelve disciples – now, half the earth………..He is no more alive; he cannot destroy your dreams and imaginations………




Tantra is not against lovemaking……….it is all for it, but not just for it. It is the first rung of the ladder, a seven-runged ladder…………The first rung is sex and the seventh rung is sahasrar-samadhi. The first rung joins you with samsara, the world, and the seventh rung joins you with nirvana, the beyond. With the first rung; you move in a vicious circle of birth and death again and again………with the seventh rung, you go beyond birth and death. Life eternal is yours…the Kingdom of God




The Ultimate Scripture has no word in it. The Sufis have a book. The Book of the Books. It is simply empty – not a single word written in it………The Vedas are not so beautiful, the Bible is not so beautiful because something is written there. The Book of the Books is really of tremendous value.
The Western world can understand the word: the black ink spread on the white page; it cannot see the white page directly……………..Thoughts are just like black ink on white paper; thoughts are just the written message. When thoughts disappear, you will become the Book of the Books – empty. But that is the voice of God




What is sex? Just two persons meeting at the maximum point – not holding hands, not only hugging each others bodies, but penetrating into each others energy realm. Why should you hate sex?..................Sex is one of the most beautiful phenomena in the world. Of course, the lowest, that is true, but the higher moves through the lower – the lotus comes out of the mud. Don’t hate the mud, otherwise how will you help the mud to release the lotus?




It is very easy for the mind to indulge. The opposite is also very easy to renounce. To move to the extreme is very easy for the mind. To remain in the middle…….is the most difficult thing for the mind. The mind dies in the middle, and the no-mind arises. That’s why Buddha has called his path majjhim nikaya – the middle path




Tantra is an encounter with the reality of life. And sex is fundamental. so is death. They are the two most fundamental chakras – muladhar and swadhistan. Understanding them, the third chakra opens. Understanding the third, the fourth opens, and so on………….When you have understood the six chakras, the very understanding hits the seventh chakra and it blooms into a one-thousand-petalled lotus………That day God comes to you……that day is the day of cosmic orgasm……..that day the river disappears into the ocean forever and forever. Then there is no coming back.



Resources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lao_tzu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chakras
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahasrara
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam%C4%81dhi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muladhara
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swadhisthana

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

George W. Bush – The Frightful Reality

Its truly scary that the most powerful country on earth can throw-up such specimens who reach the top through their electoral system. It would have been pretty amusing were it not so scary. And i havent even gotten started on Sarah Palin. Terrible! Terrible!



Tuesday, January 13, 2009

OshoSpeak – 2009: #3

From ‘Sing, Dance, Rejoice’ – a Diamond Pocket Books collection

The Egyptian mystics have a saying: When the disciple is ready, the master appears… And Egypt had a few of the most ancient mystery schools. They were connected with those mystery schools which existed on the continent of Atlantis and Lemuria. Those continents are drowned….




………India is not just geography or history. It is not only a nation……a mere piece of land. It is something more: it is a metaphor, poetry………it is vibrating with certain energy fields which no other country can claim.
For almost ten thousand years, thousands of people have reached to the ultimate explosion of consciousness.
Their vibration is still alive, their impact is in the very air, you just need a certain perceptivity……..
It is strange because it has renounced everything for a single search, the search for the truth. It has not produced great philosophers…………no Plato, no Aristotle, no Thomas Aquinas, no Kant, no Hegel, no Bradley, no Bertrand Russell. The whole history of India has not produced a single philosopher – and they have been searching for the truth!
…………In other countries people were thinking about truth…………
India is the only land in the whole world, strangely which has devoted all its talents in a concentrated effort to see the truth and to be the truth.
…………For ten thousand years millions of people persistently making a single effort, sacrificing everything for it……………..it has created………a certain ocean of vibrations around you.
………..If you try to categorize it with other countries……..they have not produced a Gautam Buddha, a Mahavira, a Neminatha, an Adinatha. They have not produced a Kabir, a Farid, a Dadu. They have produced scientists…poets….great artists….painters,……all kinds of talented people. But the mystic is India’s monopoly; at least up to now it has been so.
………It is not coincidental that whenever anybody is thirsty for truth, suddenly he has become interested in India……….
Pythagoras, twenty-five centuries ago, came to India in search of truth. Jesus Christ came to India…….In the Bible there is no record about Jesus between the ages of thirteen to thirty……………those seventeen years Jesus was wandering through Egypt, India, Ladakh, Tibet.
………………in the Old Testament God says,”…………….I am very jealous and I am very angry. And those who are not with me are against me.”
And Jesus says, “I say unto you that God is love.” From where did he get this idea………….Nowhere in the world has there been any record of God being love, except in the teachings of Gautam Buddha.




……….there are only a few women masters in the whole of history………….The most ancient is Gargi. She’s reported in the Vedas. One of the great kings…………ninety thousand years ago according to the Hindu scholars………….one of the great scholars, Lokmanya Tilak, proved beyond any doubt that ‘Rig Veda’ is ninety thousand years old……based on……astronomy




Resources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahavir
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neminatha
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rishabha_(Jain_tirthankar)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabir
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_Farid


BBC documentary







A clip from a Channel 4 documentary

Sunday, January 4, 2009

OshoSpeak – 2009: #2

From ‘Ecstasy: The Language of Existence’ – Diamond Pocket Books


These songs of Kabir are tremendously beautiful. He is a poet, he is not a philosopher. He has not created a system. He is not a theoretician or a theologian. He is not interested in doctrines, in scriptures. His whole interest is in how to flower and become a god.




……….nothing much is known about him…….whether he was a Hindu or a Mohammedan. The story goes that he was born a Mohammedan but was brought up by a Hindu. And this is beautiful: this is how it should be……..he has the heritage of two rich traditions…………Look at my richness, I am a Hindu and a Mohammedan and a Christian and a Sikh and a Parsi. Not only that, I am a theist and I am an atheist too. I claim the whole heritage of humanity. I claim all…………..the whole evolution of human consciousness is yours, but you are so miserly. Somebody has become a Hindu: he claims only a corner, and lives in that corner, crippled and paralysed……………A religious person will claim all – Buddha, Mahavir, Christ, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Nanak, Kabir, etc.etc.




All ideologies are violent. A real man of understanding has no ideology: then he is undivided, then he is one with the whole of existence




Buddha, Mahavir, Krishna, Ram, they were all very special people. They were all kings, and they were well-educated, well-cultured. Kabir is a nobody, a man of the masses, very poor, very ordinary, with no education at all, with no culture. And that is his rarity…………because to be ordinary in the world is the most extraordinary thing.




………..be innocent: only then will you be able to understand Kabir. Don’t bring your mind in, don’t start arguing with him, because he is not a logician. When you go to see a painting you don’t argue with the painting. You enjoy it.




Religion deteriorates into rituals. When a religion is dead, it becomes ritualistic. When a religion is alive, it remains spontaneous……………Let your prayer be very spontaneous, very real. If anger is there, what else can you offer to him? Offer anger. If love is there, offer love.…………God is nothing but a tremendous understanding that existence shows towards you.




…………there are people who have logically concluded either God is or God is not. Both are useless. They don’t have any experience.




Kabir is not interested in doctrines, philosophies. He says this life is divine – don’t bother about heaven and hell. Don’t think about faraway subjects: be realistic: be existential.




Says Jesus, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and then all else will be added unto you.” The same I day to you, and the same is the teaching of Kabir. Live here-now as totally as possible, as fully alert as possible, and as lovingly as possible: and all else will be added unto you




The Indian term for religion is very, very beautiful: the Indian term is dharma. Dharma means your intrinsic nature. Whatsoever you want to become, in fact, you are already, it is already the case. It is not a question that you have to practice something and then as a result, as a reward, you become religious. No, you become religious if you just become aware……………..Whenever you are alert, silent, peaceful, you are religious




I teach you that the first and foremost thing is to be loving towards yourself. Don’t be hard: be soft……Learn how to forgive yourself…….Then you will flower




The Zen people say, “Look for your original face; find it out.”…………”the face that you had before you were born – and the face you will have again when you have died.”…………That is truth, or call it God




Be more vulnerable. Don’t be so prejudiced, don’t decide. Experience and let experience be decisive. Never decide before the experience – never, never. Otherwise you will always be surrounded by your prejudice




………..it will be difficult if you have certain ideas implanted in you for or against. A Christian cannot be a religious man, neither can a Hindu be, nor a communist. A theist cannot be religious, an atheist cannot be religious; they are already full of ideas. They have already decided, without experiencing anything……………Be an agnostic, and that is the sure step towards religion………A religious person….He says, “…………If I come across an experience, I should like to remain open, vulnerable, so nothing is distorted”




Adam is turned out of the garden of Eden because he has eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge. It is a very significant parable. Because of his knowledge, Adam is turned out of heaven, loses all his blessedness…….his innocence, happiness, loses immortality, becomes a mortal, becomes miserable. This is the original sin……….Meditate on this parable as much as possible………There is no other parable so significant in the whole history of religion.
Adam’s sin is knowledge. Then what is Jesus’ virtue? It must be ignorance………..Thats what Jesus says when he says, “Unless you are like children you will not enter into the kingdom of my God”………unless you are innocent, ignorant like children, unless you drop all your knowledge………..
All meditative techniques……are nothing but efforts to make you free of your knowledge, efforts to make you free of your mind. Meditation means to create a state of no-mind……..A state of no-mind will be a state of tremendous ignorance – primal ignorance.




When Buddha became enlightened, for seven days he remained silent. He would not utter a single word. It was so difficult. It is so easy to talk when you don’t know; it is so difficult to talk when you know………….Listening to my words, you may fall silent.………you may become attentive……in that alertness truth may be able to penetrate you………….Truth is available here in my presence, but not in my words………….Maybe words can be helpful as a contrast to my silence. When you write on a blackboard with a white chalk it comes out clear and loud. Hmmm? because the blackboard gives the contrast………I can keep quiet here, I can sit silently here, but then you will not be able to understand my silence at all…………I talk to you – I create a blackboard of words, of language, concept, logic, philosophy……and then I leave just a few small gaps, silent gaps, intervals. Those gaps come very loudly


Resources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabir

Friday, January 2, 2009

OshoSpeak – 2009: #1

From ‘Meeting the Ultimate’ – Diamond Pocket Books

……..As far as I am concerned, my feeling is that his disciples were fast asleep – and Jesus had tried everything to wake them up and they would not wake up. Hence, he had chosen the last resort of a master. Perhaps his life cannot help. There is no harm in taking the chance – maybe what life has not been able to do and perform, death succeeds in doing.

And it succeeded – the shock not only made an impact on the disciples but on sympathizers, on curiosity mongers, on people who were absolutely neutral, on people who had never thought about Jesus Christ……….Where do you think so many Christians have come from? Their basic number has come from the Jews.

When Jesus was alive…………not a single Rabbi recognized him. Not a single man of reputation…because everyone was afraid……But when he was crucified – and crucified in such a primitive and ugly way that it shocked the whole nation – even those who were in opposition felt that what had happened was not right…………Thousands of Jews who had never paid any attention to Jesus became Christians, and the basic number came from Judea.

Perhaps the strategy of crucifixion worked. And for a man like Jesus, life and death don’t matter. What matters is that he has found something and he wants to share it – but it is so difficult to find somebody willing to share life’s greatest blessings and benedictions.




According to Eastern mystics and seers, every being is potentially a god.




In fact, Sushrut, the greatest surgeon the East has produced………..7000 years have passed since Sushrut was alive. According to Sushrut…………..surgery learned the art of anesthesia from the common death

Seeing that everybody becomes unconscious before dying, it became a clue. It means that such a great surgery is going to happen that the man may not be able to withstand it consciously. It is better to let him go deep into sleep, and in that sleep the transfer of the soul is easier.

That is why you don’t remember your past life, because that gap of unconsciousness functions as a barrier. So it has two functions. It helps you to be moved from one body to another body. It has another function also: that gap of unconsciousness is so deep – the deepest possible – that it becomes a block to the memories of your past life. Because those memories are risky….




Is there anything like destiny in life or do we create our future moment to moment?

It all depends on you.
If you behave mechanically, unconsciously, life has a destiny. Then you are simply following a certain program that your biology, your physiology, your chemistry, your hormones, have given to you. You appear to be free but you are not.




A man because he is conscious can choose any moment a different direction, can choose to be something else than what the astrologers have predicted.




And that’s why we call the man who is enlightened, liberated – liberated from the chains of destiny

Resources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sushrut




From ‘Love and Meditation’ – Diamond Pocket Books

That is the mystery of the Koran.
Mohammed thought that he had heard it –
and he was right.
And Mohammedans are wrong
if they think God was speaking.
…………….Nobody was speaking

But when your mind is silent,
from the very depths of our being arises the answer.
And it is so deep, so beyond your so-called mind,
that you feel that you have heard it.
It has come to you.
It has been revealed to you




Hindus have always been saying
that your real Master is within u.
And the outer Master is just trying
to bring your inner Master up.




Be more meditative.
Be more silent.
Allow more and more stillness to penetrate you.




Yes, Gurdjieff has said
that a woman cannot attain
except through a man –
and he is right……..
because female energy differs from male energy.




…..this is not a question of equality or inequality –
this is a question of difference.
Woman are not lower than men
because they cannot attain directly;
man is not lower than woman
because he cannot give birth to a child directly.
…………They are simply different and this is a fact




Why is it difficult for woman
to attain enlightenment directly?
And why for man is it possible
to attain enlightenment directly?

There are two ways………
which lead to enlightenment.
One is meditation and the other is love.
……….Love needs another; meditation can be done alone
………..
Man can achieve through meditation –
that’s why he can achieve directly.
He can be alone. He is alone deep down.
For a woman, to be alone is difficult…….almost impossible
Her whole being is a deep urge to love,
and for love, the other is needed
……..if love exists around a woman, it nourishes her.
Whenever a woman feels that love is not there,
she is simply starving, suffocating;
the whole being shrinks.
So a woman can never think that loneliness can be blissful




Existence itself is divine –
then from where does the evil come?
………..
the good is okay
because we have made it synonymous with God –
……..but from where does the bad come?
This has puzzled humanity for centuries.
………The logical solution………that the mind can find
is to divide existence, to create a duality,
to say that there is a God, which is good,
and there is evil……which is bad
Mind thinks the problem is solved…………
…………If God is the creator,
then he must have created the Devil
…….or God is not the supreme creator.

And the Devil has been always there,
just as an enemy, the antagonistic force –
then both are eternal………
so the conflict will continue eternally.
God cannot win – the Devil will be always there disturbing.

This is the problem for Christian theology,
Mohammedan theology, Zoroastrian theology,
because all these three theologies
have followed the simple solution that mind suggests.
……………
There is another possibility…………
That possibility has arisen in the East,
particularly in India,
and the possibility is
that there is no Devil, there is no basic duality –
only God exists, there is no other force

This is what advait – the non-dual philosophy – means
only God is.
……………
Hindus say
that the evil exists in your interpretation,
not in itself.
You call it bad because you cannot understand it,
or because you are disturbed by it.
It is your attitude that makes it bad, or appear bad.
There is no evil. Evil cannot exist.
Only God exists, only the divine exists.




………….
And when I say ‘God’,
I don’t mean a person sitting somewhere up in the sky
This is an anthropocentric attitude:
we conceive of God in our own image.
There is nobody sitting there.
God means the whole, the totality of existence.

A bad man breathes as beautifully as a good man
And a sinner is as accepted by existence as a saint.
Existence makes no differentiation
But because of dualistic thinking
- Christian, Mohammedan, Zoroastrian –
we think in terms of conflict




For existence,
there is no interpretation and no division
Good and bad are human conceptions, not divine




See, observe a little child touching his toes –
and happy, happy as you can never be
even if you go to the moon.
He has discovered his body!
He touches his toe, enjoys it, brings it to his mouth -
mm? – because these are the ways he discovers.
He will taste it, smell it, touch it.

But when he comes to his sexual parts,
parents become disturbed
That disturbance is in the parents, not in the child.
He does not make any distinctions –
toe or the sexual organ are the same.
………………
Whenever a child, boy or girl, touches the sexual organs
immediately we say: Don’t touch!
We remove the hand.
The child is shocked………….
He cannot understand what you are doing.

and this will happen many times.
You are hammering into the child
that something in his body has to be rejected,
the sexual part of the body is bad.
The child will grow,
but he will never be able to accept his sexual organs.
And if you cannot accept your body in its totality,
there will be problems……….
he will move into the sexual act,
but there will be guilt………something wrong is going on.




Be alert.
Give more freedom
…………..And when your child flowers into a yes-sayer,
or a no-sayer………
because there have been beautiful no-sayers:
Nietzsche is a no-sayer – but beautiful!
………..He cannot say yes.
It is difficult for him.
No is his whole being.

Buddha is a no-sayer
He said: There is no Brahma,
there is no soul, there is no world.
You cannot find a greater no-sayer.
………He goes on saying no, goes on eliminating.
It is very difficult to find a yes from him – impossible.
But what a beautiful being evolved out off that no!

………….There have been yes-sayers,
the devotees – the bhaktas: Meera, Chaitanya
or Jesus! or Mohammed! – these are yes-sayers
……………..
If you are a no-sayer,
then Buddhism will be a great help to you.
If you are a yes-sayer,
then Buddhism cannot help you at all;
it will be destructive.
Christianity can help, Hinduism can help.




In America, every 3 years on average
people are moving.
This is the most nomadic civilization that has ever existed:
vagabonds – no house, no family, no town, no village
……….wherever you go you are a stranger.
…………..Sitting in a group…………touching each others bodies,
you become part of the community
………….A hundred people dancing, touching each other,
moving around each other, become one.
They merge. The ego is dissolved for a few moments –
that merger becomes a prayerful thing.
……………..
In the East, people are in the community too much.
So whenever they want to be religious,
they want to go to the Himalayas.
The society is too much around.
They are not fed up with themselves,
they are fed up with the society
This is the difference.
…………………
In the West, you run to the society;
in the East, people run from the society
That’s why lonely methods, individual methods
have existed in the East;
group methods are in existence in the West




One Zen Master was asked: What is meditation?
He said: When I am hungry, I am hungry
and when I feel sleepy, I fall asleep
……………
there is no division………….
No fight with life, no resistance -
surrender, floating, becoming a white cloud
…………
That’s what Krishna says to Arjuna:
Do whatsoever happens to you,
whatsoever the situation demands, do it.
and forget the doer
Don’t think: I am doing;
rather, think: God is doing through me.
……………..
A mirror never thinks:
When another man comes in front of me,
what am I going to do?
There is no need!
The mirror is there – it will mirror
If intelligence is there
you will never think about the next problem,
because when the problem will be there,
you will have intelligence –
the intelligence will respond.
You can rely on it
………….
a Buddha never thinks – there is no need!
Whatsoever life brings before him, he responds.




Life is just like birds flying in the sky.
They never leave any mark, there is no path
When they have flown,
the sky is as vacant as it was before.


Resources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._I._Gurdjieff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nietzsche
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirabai
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaitanya
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhagavad_Gita (the dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna)