Just close your eyes

Just sit under a tree. The breeze is blowing and the leaves of the tree are rustling. The wind touches you, it moves around you, it passes. But don’t allow it just to pass you; allow it to move within you and pass through you.

Just close your eyes, and as it is passing through the tree and there is a rustling of the leaves, feel that you are also like a tree, open, and the wind is blowing through you ― not by your side but right through you.

The rustling of the tree will enter in you, and you will feel that from every pore of your body the air is passing. It is really passing through you. It is not only imagination, it is a fact ― you have forgotten.

You are not only breathing through the nose, you are breathing through the whole body ― from every pore of it, from millions of pores. If you are allowed to breathe through your nose, but all the pores of your body are closed, painted, you will die within three hours. You cannot be alive just by breathing through the nose.

Every cell of your body is a living organism, and every cell is breathing. The air is really passing through you, but you have lost the contact. So sit under a tree and feel.

In the beginning it will look like imagination, but soon it will turn into a reality. It is a reality ― that the air is passing through you. Then sit under a rising sun, and not only feel that the rays of the sun are touching you, but that they are entering you and passing through you, so you become vulnerable, you begin to feel open.

The ego is the barrier. When you feel you are, you are so much that nothing can enter in you. You are filled with your own self. When you are not, then everything can pass through you. You have become so vast that even the divine can pass through you. The whole existence is now ready to pass through you, because you are ready. So the whole art of religion is how not to be, how to dissolve, how to surrender, how to become an open space.

Osho: Excerpted from The Book of Secrets

I did not decide to learn dance

"I DO not dream of becoming a dancer. I am a dancer and have always been a dancer. Dance is the ultimate reality, not a dream, of my life," said Mr Janak Khendry, who has been devoted to dance for more than forty five years.

He has given more than a thousand performances in various parts of the world including five command performances for two past Presidents of India, Dr. Rajendra Prasad and Dr Radhakrishnan.

He said, "I did not decide to learn dance, but dance decided to become the most important part of my life."

He was born in Amritsar, Punjab, India. His formal dance training started when he was nine years old. For six years he studied Kathak dance style from Pandit Mahadev Kathak and for two years Manipuri dance style from Mrs. Aruna Gandhi. His Bharatanatyam dance training started in 1955 and is still going on. He has had the great honour of studying Bharatanatyam under the greatest Gurus of the 20th century - Swami Muttukumar Pillai, Mr. TK Narain, Mr. and Mrs. US Krishna Rao, Mrs. Kalanidhi Narayanan and Guru Kittapa Pillai. He also studied Modern Dance for two years at the Ohio State University.

He excels at choreograph­ing works based on very rare philosophical subjects that have never been tried as dance works, blending several different Indian classical dance styles and creating a new and powerful dance vocabulary.

He said, "One needs the knowledge and the understanding of several dance styles and very strong powers of observation, to be able to create a dance vocabulary. The subject you are choreographing, and the dancers who are performing, and their training play a vital role."

His professional choreographic career started in 1961 when he was invited to choreograph a dance drama BASANT for Tagore's centenary celebrations. With the passage of time Khendry's works are becom­ing deeper in their philosophical approach.

He said, "There are the several reasons why my works are becom­ing deeper. In my way of thinking there are two ways an artist can work - either horizontally or vertically. The horizontal process is that you keep on doing what you are good at and comfortable with. The vertical process is that you keep climbing the steps of creation – sometimes you fall down or miss a step - but you keep trying and keep climbing.

I have chosen to climb the steps of creation vertically. Besides I do not like to create works based on the subjects that have been danced. At this point in my dance career I want to create works that have some universal mes­sage that I can convey to my audiences around the world through my dance creations. I also feel very strongly that we human beings have to reach out and touch each other and develop a better understanding for each other."

When Khendry is not creating, he is constantly choreographing the tradi­tional Bharatanatyam repertoire for the Janak Khendry Dance Company which has more than 125 woks in its active repertoire.

He said, "My choreographic process starts with the selection of a rare philosophical theme that has never been danced before but has a universal message. After that comes the extensive process of research from one to four years or more, depending on the complexity of the subject. My choice of the music director is the next step. After the creation of the music, l listen to it for several weeks without creating a single step."

His recent works have stressed the messages of non-violence, self-discipline, human-equality and peace.

Khendry is recipient of several very prestigious grants and awards: Nizam's Grant and Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in India. In Canada he has received Toronto Arts Council; Ontario Arts Council; Laid law Foundation; Ministry of Culture, Citizenship and Recreation; The Canada Council for the Arts and Canada's Year of Asia Pacific grants.

His four-day visit to Myanmar, the neighbour of his motherland, last month was his first and was really short. But he made good use of it by lecturing at a workshop on Indian and Myanmar classical dances at the Yangon University of Culture, learning Myanmar cultural and traditional dance and visiting Bagan, the archaeological treasure house of Myanmar.

He said, "I loved Myanmar and I had the most interest­ing and culturally fulfilling experience. I was touched by the kindness of the people, the art and the ancient monuments in Yangon and Bagan. I found the classical dances beautiful, graceful and very well presented. I was very impressed by the discipline and the standard of the students of the University of Culture in Yangon.

"I would love to come back to Myanmar, perhaps for a longer visit. I would very much like to present some of my dance creations. Also I would like to spend extended time with the dance students and the excellent faculty of the University of Culture."

The dance is not a dream, it is Janak Khendry’s life
By Aung Kyaw and Moe Moe Oo
The Myanmar Times, Yangon, June 27 and July 3, 2005

Into the Heart of Silence

Beloved Osho, A while ago you said something about silence which startled me.

In my sleepiness, I'd simply thought of it as just an absence, an absence of noises. But you were saying it had positive qualities, a positive sound. And in my meditations I've noticed a distinction between a silence in my body and a silence in my mind.

I can have the first, without the second. Beloved Master, please talk to me about silence.

Silence is usually understood to be something negative, something empty, an absence of sound, of noises. This misunderstanding is prevalent because very few people have ever experienced silence. All they have experienced in the name of silence is noiselessness. But silence is a totally different phenomenon.

It is utterly positive. It is existential, it is not empty. It is overflowing with a music that you have never heard before, with a fragrance that is unfamiliar to you, with a light that can only be seen with the inner eyes. It is not something fictitious; it is a reality and a reality which is already present in everyone – just we never look in. All our senses are extrovert. Our eyes open outside, our ears open outside, our hands move outside, our legs... all our senses are meant to explore the outside world.

But there is a sixth sense also, which is asleep because we have never used it. And no society, no educational system helps people to make the sixth sense active. That sixth sense, in the East, is called the "third eye." It looks inwards. And just as there is a way of looking in, so there is a way of hearing in, so there is a way of smelling in. Just as there are five senses moving outward, there are five counter-senses moving inward. In all, man has ten senses, but the first sense that starts the inner journey is the third eye, and then other senses start opening up.

Your inner world has its own taste, has its own fragrance, has its own light. And it is utterly silent, immensely silent, and eternally silent. There has never been any noise, and there will never be any noise. No word can reach there, but you can reach. The mind cannot reach there, but you can reach because you are not the mind. The function of the mind is again to be a bridge between you and the objective world, and the function of the heart is to be a bridge between you and yourself.

This silence that I have been talking about is the silence of the heart. It is a song in itself, without words and without sounds. It is only out of this silence that the flowers of love grow. It is this silence that becomes the garden of Eden. Meditation, and only meditation, is the key to open the doors of your own being.

You are asking, "A while ago you said something about silence which startled me. In my sleepiness, I had simply thought of it as an absence – an absence of noises. But you were saying it had positive qualities, a positive sound. And in my meditations, I have noticed a distinction between a silence in my body and a silence in my mind."

Your experiences are true. The body knows its own silence – that is its own well-being, its own overflowing health, its own joy. The mind also knows its silence, when all thoughts disappear and the sky is without any clouds, just a pure space. But the silence I am talking about is far deeper.

I am talking about the silence of your being.

These silences that you are talking about can be disturbed. Sickness can disturb the silence of your body, and death is certainly going to disturb it. A single thought can disturb the silence of your mind the way a small pebble thrown into the silent lake is enough to create thousands of ripples, and the lake is no longer silent. The silences of the body and the mind are very superficial, but in themselves they are good. To experience them is helpful, because it indicates that there may be even deeper silences of the heart.

And the day you experience the silence of the heart, it will be again an arrow of longing, moving you even deeper.

Your very centre of being is the centre of a cyclone. Whatever happens around it does not affect it; it is eternal silence. Days come and go, years come and go, ages come and pass, lives come and go, but the eternal silence of your being remains exactly the same – the same soundless music, the same fragrance of godliness, the same transcendence from all that is mortal, from all that is momentary.

It is not your silence.

You are it.

It is not something in your possession; you are possessed by it, and that's the greatness of it. Even you are not there, because even your presence will be a disturbance. The silence is so profound that there is nobody, not even you. And this silence brings truth, and love, and thousands of other blessings to you. This is the search, the longing of all the hearts, of all those who have a little intelligence.

But remember, don't get lost in the silence of the body, or the silence of the mind, or even the silence of the heart. Beyond these three is the fourth. We in the East have simply called it "the fourth," turiya. We have not given it any name. Instead of a name, we have given it a number, because it comes after three silences – of the body, of the mind, of the heart – and beyond it, there is nothing else to be found.

So, don't misunderstand. Most of the people... for example, there are people who are practicing yoga exercises. Yoga exercises give a silence of the body, and they are stuck there. Their whole life they practice, but they know only the most superficial silence. Then there are people who are doing concentration like transcendental meditation, of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

And there are Sufis who know the third, which is the deepest of the three. But it is still not the goal, the target; your arrow is still falling short. It is very deep because Sufis know the heart more than anybody else. For centuries they have been working on the heart, just as yogis have been working on the body, and people of concentration and contemplation have been working on the mind.

The Sufis know the immense beauty of love. They radiate love, but still the home has not been reached. You have to remember the fourth. Unless you reach the fourth, continue the journey.

People misunderstand very easily. Just a little bit of experience and they think they have arrived.

Mind is continuously rationalizing, and sometimes it may appear that what it is saying is right, because it gives arguments for it. But one has to be aware of one's own mind, because in this world nobody can cheat you more than your own mind.

Your greatest enemy is within you, just as your greatest friend is also within you.

The greatest enemy is just your first encounter, and your greatest friend is going to be your last encounter – so don't be prevented by any experience of the body or the mind or the heart. Remember always one of the famous statements of Gautam Buddha. He used to conclude his sermons every day with the same two words, "Charaiveti, charaiveti." Those two simple words – just one word repeated twice – mean "Don't stop, go on, go on."

Never stop until the road ends, until there is nowhere else to go – charaiveti, charaiveti.

Osho, The Golden Future

Meditation is the answer

And the simplest method of meditation is just a way of witnessing. There are one hundred and twelve methods of meditation, but witnessing is an essential part of all one hundred and twelve methods. So as far as I am concerned, witnessing is the only method. Those one hundred and twelve are different applications of witnessing.



The essential core, the spirit of meditation is to learn how to witness. You are seeing a tree: You are there, the tree is there, but can't you find one thing more? - that you are seeing the tree, that there is a witness in you which is seeing you seeing the tree. The world is not divided only into the object and the subject. There is also something beyond both, and that beyond is meditation.



So in every act... and I don't want people to sit for one hour or half an hour in the morning or in the evening. That kind of meditation is not going to help, because if you meditate for one hour, then for twenty-three hours you will be doing just the opposite of it. Meditation can be victorious: witnessing is such a method that it can spread over twenty-four hours of your day.



Eating, don't get identified with the eater. The food is there, the eater is there, and you are here, watching. Walking, let the body walk but you simply watch. Slowly, the knack comes. It is a knack, and once you can watch small things.... This crow, crowing... you are listening. These are two - object and subject. But can't you see a witness who is seeing both? - The crow, the listener, and still there is someone who is watching both.



It is such a simple phenomenon. Then you can move into deeper layers: you can watch your thoughts; you can watch your emotions, your moods. There is no need to say, "I am sad." The fact is that you are a witness that a cloud of sadness is passing over you. There is anger - you can simply be a witness. There is no need to say, "I am angry." You are never angry - there is no way for you to be angry - you are always a witness. The anger comes and goes; you are just a mirror. Things come, get reflected, move - and the mirror remains empty and clean, unscratched by the reflections.



Witnessing is finding your inside mirror.And once you have found it, miracles start happening. When you are simply witnessing the thoughts, thoughts disappear. Then there is suddenly a tremendous silence you have never known. When you are watching the moods - anger, sadness, happiness - they suddenly disappear and an even greater silence is experienced. And when there is nothing to watch - then the revolution.



Then the witnessing energy turns upon itself because there is nothing to prevent it; there is no object left. The word "object" is beautiful. It simply means that which prevents you, objects you. When there is no object to your witnessing, it simply comes around back to yourself - to the source. And this is the point where one becomes enlightened.



Meditation is only a path: the end is always buddhahood, enlightenment. And to know this moment is to know all. Then there is no misery, no frustration, no meaninglessness; then life is no longer an accident. It becomes part of this cosmic whole - an essential part. And a tremendous bliss arises that this whole existence needs you.



Man's greatest need is to be needed. If somebody needs you, you feel gratified. But if the whole existence needs you, then there is no limit to your bliss. And this existence needs even a small blade of grass as much as the biggest star. There is no question of inequality. Nobody can substitute for you. If you are not there, then existence will be something less and will remain always something less - it will never be full. That feeling - that this whole immense existence is in need of you - takes all miseries away from you. For the first time, you have come home.



Osho -"Light on the Path" #1

On Love and Compassion

Beloved Osho, You speak about love and compassion. I know of and feel different forms of love and compassion. Can You explain the different forms of love, and what You mean by compassion?

Osho: Love is a ladder, a ladder of three rungs. The lowest rung is sex, the middle is love, and the highest is prayer. Because of these three rungs there are a thousand and one combinations possible.Real compassion appears only at the third rung when sex energy becomes prayer -- the compassion of a buddha, the compassion Atisha is talking about. When passion has been transformed so totally, so utterly that it is no more passion at all, then compassion appears.

Real compassion appears only when your sex energy has become prayer.But compassion can appear on the second rung too, and compassion can appear on the first rung also. Hence there are so many different compassions. For example, if compassion appears on the first rung, when you are living at the lowest level of love-energy, sex, then compassion will be just an ego trip.

Then compassion will be very egotistic: you will enjoy the idea of being compassionate. You will really enjoy the other's suffering, because it is the other's suffering that is giving you the opportunity to be compassionate.

Somebody has fallen in the river and is drowning. The sexual person can jump in and save him, but his joy is that he was so good, that he did something beautiful, something great. He will talk about it with pride, he will brag about it. Compassion on the lowest rung, that of sex, will appear only as an ego trip.

That's what millions of missionaries all over the world are doing -- serving the poor, serving the ill, serving the uneducated aboriginals, primitives. But the whole joy is that, "I am doing something great." The 'I' is strengthened. That is an ugly form of compassion. It is called duty. Duty is a four-letter dirty word.

The second kind of compassion appears when love has arrived. Then compassion is sympathy: you feel, you really feel for the other. You fall into a harmony with the other, the other's suffering stirs you. It is not something to brag about.

On the second rung, you will never talk about your compassion, never; it is not something to be talked about. In fact you will never feel that you have done anything special, you will simply feel you have done whatsoever was to be done. You will see that it was human to do it. There is nothing special in it, nothing extraordinary; you have not attained some spiritual merit in doing it.

There is nothing like merit in it: it was natural, spontaneous. Then compassion is becoming more soft, more beautiful.At the third rung, where sex energy becomes prayer, compassion appears as empathy -- not even sympathy, but empathy. Sympathy means feeling the other's suffering, but you are still at a distance; empathy means becoming one with the other's suffering -- not only feeling it but suffering it, actually going into it.

If somebody is crying, sympathy means you feel for the one who is crying, empathy means you start crying. You are not only in a feeling space, you become attuned, you become really one: at-one-ment happens.

A man came to Buddha and asked, "I am very rich and I have no children, and my wife has also died. Now I have all the money in the world. I would like to do some meritorious work. I would like to do something for the poor and the downtrodden. Just tell me, what should I do?"And it is said Buddha became very sad and a tear rolled down from his eye.

The man was very much puzzled.

He said, "Tears in your eyes? And you look so sad -- why?"Buddha said, "You cannot help anybody, because you have not even helped yourself yet. And you cannot do anything compassionate, because your energies are still at the lowest. Your base metal has not yet become gold. In fact," Buddha said, "I am feeling so sorry for you. You want to be of some help to people, but you are not. You don't exist yet, because awareness has not happened, and without awareness how can you be? You don't have a real center from where compassion can flow."

Compassion can have these three categories, and love also has three categories. First, sex. Sex simply means: "Give me -- give me more and more!" It is exploitation, it is what Martin Buber calls the I-it relationship: "You are a thing and I want to use you." The man uses the woman, the woman uses the man, the parents use the children and the children use parents, friends use friends.

They say, "A friend is a friend only; a friend in need is a friend indeed." Use, reduce the other into a commodity.To live in the I-it world is to miss the whole wonder of existence. Then you are surrounded by things -- not by persons, not by people, not by life, but just material things. The poorest man in the world is one who lives in the I-it relationship. Sex is exploitation.Love is totally different.

Love is not exploitation. Love is not an I-it relationship, it is an I-thou relationship. The other is respected as a person in his own right; the other is not a thing to be used, to be possessed, to be manipulated. The other is an independent person, a freedom. The other has to be communicated with, not exploited. Love is a communication of energies.Sex is only "Give me, give me, give me more!" Hence the sexual relationship is continuously that of war, conflict, because the other also says "Give me!"

Both want more and more, and nobody is ready to give. Hence the conflict, the tug-of-war. And of course whosoever proves more strong will exploit the other. Because man has been muscularly stronger than woman, he has exploited, he has reduced women to utter nonentities; he has destroyed the soul of women. And it was easier for him if the soul was completely destroyed.

For centuries women were not allowed to read; in many religions women were not allowed to go to the temple, women were not allowed to become priests. Women were not allowed any public life, any social life. They were imprisoned in the houses; they were cheap labor, the whole day working, working, working. And they were reduced to sex objects. There has not been much difference between prostitutes and wives in the past.

The wife was reduced into a permanent prostitute, that's all. The relationship was not a relationship, it was an ownership.Love respects the other. It is a give-and-take relationship. Love enjoys giving, and love enjoys taking. It is a sharing, it is a communication. Both are equal in love; in a sexual relationship both are not equal.

Love has a totally different beauty to it.The world is slowly slowly moving towards love relationships; hence there is great turmoil. All the old institutions are disappearing -- they have to disappear, because they were based on the I-it relationship.

New ways of communication, new ways of sharing are bound to be discovered. They will have a different flavor, the flavor of love, of sharing. Nonpossessive they will be; there will be no owner.Then the highest state of love is prayer. In prayer there is communion. In sex there is the I-it relationship, in love the I-thou relationship.

Martin Buber stops there; his Judaic tradition won't allow him to go further. But one step more has to be taken: that is "neither I nor thou" -- a relationship where I and thou disappear, a relationship where two persons no more function as two but function as one.

A tremendous unity, a harmony, a deep accord, two bodies but one soul. That is the highest quality of love: I call it prayer.Love has these three stages, and compassion accordingly has three stages, and both can exist in different combinations.Hence, Dorothy Kaplan, there are so many kinds of love and so many kinds of compassion. But the basic, the most fundamental, is to understand this three-rung ladder of love.

That will help you, that will give you an insight into where you are, what kind of love you are living in and what kind of compassion is happening to you. Watch. Beware not to remain caught in it. There are higher realms, heights to be climbed, peaks to be attained.

Going Into Fear

Whenever there is fear, never try to escape from it In fact, take hints from fear. Those are the directions in which you need to travel. Fear is simply a challenge. It calls you: 'Come!'

Whenever something is really good, it is also scary, because it brings you some insights. It forces you toward certain changes. It brings you to a brink from where, if you go back, you will never forgive yourself. You will always remember yourself as a coward. If you go ahead, it is dangerous. That's what is scary.

Whenever there is some fear, always remember not to go back, because that is not the way to solve it. Go into it. If you are afraid of the dark night, go into the dark night because that is the only way to overcome it. That is the only way to transcend the fear. Go into the night; there is nothing more important than that. Wait, sit there alone, and let the night work. If you fear, tremble.

Let the trembling be there, but tell the night, 'Do whatever you want to do. I am here.' After a few minutes you will see that everything has settled. The darkness is no longer dark, it has come to be luminous. You will enjoy it. You can touch it the velvety silence, the vastness, the music. You will be able to enjoy it, and you will say, 'How foolish I was to be afraid of such a beautiful experience!'"

Everyday Meditations

Osho

Unique practice of Tantra

My brother disciple, whose father was a learned Sanskrit pandit, was from Medanipur, Bengal. When he was eighteen years old, before I had met him, his family forced him to get married. The marriage ceremony was being performed in the evening, and this suited his plans well.

During a Hindu wedding the bride and groom participate in a fire ceremony and take seven steps around the fire. On the fourth step he jumped out of the ritual and ran into the fields. The people in the wedding party did not understand his behavior. They began to chase him, but could not catch him.

He walked for several days until he reached the banks of the Ganges and started following the river in search of a spiritual teacher. For six years he went through many experiences, but did not find a teacher. Then he met my master at Shrinagar, in the Himalayas. When they met, my master embraced him and knew that they had known each other before. My brother disciple lived with my master for three months and then was instructed to go to Gangotri, where we stayed in a cave together.

One day he began talking about his hometown, Medanipur, and told me that if ever I visited there I should tell his family that he had become a renunciate and lives in the Himalayas. Soon after that I visited his home and met the woman to whom he was to have been married. She was waiting for him to come home. I suggested that she get married to someone else because the marriage ceremony had not been completed. On hearing such advice from me, she said, “You and your brother disciple are the worshippers of the devil and not of God.” She was in a fit of anger.

I went back to my hut, which as situated outside the village. In that area tantra was practiced. Practically all the homes of this area worshipped Mother Divine, calling her Ma Kali. I had heard much about tantra and had read a few scriptures.

I wanted to meet someone who could really demonstrate the practices so that I would have no doubts of their validity. One of my brother disciple’s cousins in that village introduced me to a Mohammedan tantric who was ninety-two years of age. I went to see him and we talked for three hours. He was famous there as a maulavi, a priest who leads the prayers in the mosques and knows the Koran, the sacred bible of Islam.

The next morning the maulavi took me to a pond outside the village. He also brought a chicken. First he tied this chicken with a string and then he tied the other end of the string to a banana plant. He told me to sit down and watch attentively. He was muttering something and throwing black-eyed peas on the string. The chicken fluttered and became lifeless. He said, “The chicken is dead.”

I thought, “This is not being creative. It s a very bad power. It’s black magic.” He asked me to make sure that the chicken was dead. I said, “Can I put the chicken under water for some time?” He said, “Go ahead.”

I kept the chicken under water for more than five minutes and then took it out. To my knowledge the chicken was dead. Then he brought the chicken back to life by performing that same ritual of throwing black-eyed peas and muttering something. This really shook me up. He said, “Now tie one end of the string on the banana plant and tie the other end to your waist. I’ll show you something different.”

Instead of doing what he said, I ran as fast as I could toward the village, leaving the old maulavi and his chicken far behind me. When I arrived I was breathless and the villagers did not know why I was running so fast. I told them that the old maulavi wanted to kill me, but no one believed me, for in that area he was considered to be a very holy man. I thought, “I’d better leave this place and tread my path instead of seeking such miracles.”

From this place I went to Calcutta to stay a few days with the chief justice, R P Mukharji. When I told him of my experience and asked if I had imagined it or hallucinated, he said, “No, such things happen.” Later I asked some sages how such a miracle was accomplished. They could not explain it, but acknowledged that Bengal was famous for such practices. When I related this story to my master, he laughed at me and said, “You need exposure to all sorts of things, although you should not attempt to practice yourself. You should follow only that discipline which has been given to you.”

This sort of tantra is not the real science of tantra, but is an offshoot of tantrism. The power of the mind can be used in many ways. Without knowledge of the goal of life, mental faculties can be directed negatively for harming others. But ultimately this misuse of mental powers destroys the person who practices it. There still exist a few people with such tantric powers. But out of a hundred, one is genuine and the other ninety-nine are magicians.