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Osho – More aware you become the more responsible you become

Swami Amitabh — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:40:19 +0000

Tao Sutra – Who receives unto himself the calumny of the world is the preserver of the state.

Osho – Who moves lowest is the sage, and who takes on himself the whole responsibility of the whole darkness of the world, who becomes like a Jesus — he preserves the world. The world is not preserved by politicians, they are pretenders; the world is preserved by very few people who may not even be known to you, because even to know them is difficult, they live so ordinarily; they are lost deep in the woods of the world, you may not be knowing them.

There is a story in the Bible, a beautiful parable. There was a town called Sodom. From that town comes the word sodomy. The people had become very corrupt. All sorts of sexual perversion were prevalent. People were homosexual, people were making love to animals — the whole town was perverted. God decided to destroy the town. But there was one difficulty: there was one good man in the town. Unless the good man could be persuaded to leave the town, the town could not be destroyed.

Angels were sent to persuade the good man: Please, leave the town. Because of you the town cannot be destroyed. But the good man was difficult to persuade. He said: I am needed here! Where should I go? These people are ill, these people are perverted, their lives are miserable, they live in hell — I am needed HERE. And I am responsible for these people! Because they don’t know and I know — that’s why I am responsible.

Look! he said. Because they don’t know, how can you tell them they are responsible? They are doing all sorts of things unknowingly. They are completely oblivious, ignorant, not remembering what they are doing. They are as if drunkards. I am the only one who knows what is happening, and if I go, then who will save them? I am responsible for them.

So it is said the good man was persuaded in a very cunning way. He was told: There is another town, Gomorrah, where people are even more corrupt. You please go there. So when the man was going to Gomorrah, Gomorrah and Sodom were both destroyed. Because he was just in the middle. The world is preserved by very few people, a few people of crystal purity, of childlike innocence — but they feel responsible. Because they are aware.

It is said that when Buddha reached nirvana, the last ultimate home, the doors were opened, there was great celebration, because centuries and centuries pass then only one person comes and enters in those gates. But Buddha would not enter. He stood at the gate, his back towards the gate. They were worried, they asked: Why are you standing there? The door is open and we have been waiting for you and there is much celebration and much jubilation — Come in! Be a guest!

The Buddha is reported to have said: How can I come in? The whole world is suffering. I will stand here until the last man passes by, enters into the ultimate. I will have to wait — I will be the last, I feel responsible. I am aware, and they are not aware so they cannot be responsible, but I am responsible.

The more aware you become the more responsible you become, the more you feel, the more you become a help — not that you start serving people, but your whole life becomes a service. Not that you are doing something for them out of any obligation. No, you are simply fulfilling your own awareness.

Source – Tao, The Three Treasures Vol 4

Osho – T'ai Chi is very good But when the body is unburdened of repressed emotions

Swami Amitabh — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:13:00 +0000

[A new sannyasin said she would like to learn T’ai Chi.]

Osho – T’ai chi is very good, mm? But when the body is unburdened of repressed emotions and energy starts flowing, then T’ai Chi is just the right thing to do. But just wait… Just wait a little, mm? Always remember, everything has a particular time, a particular season and a particular climate. First create the season and the climate. Let there be spring, then flowers come very easily. Otherwise sometimes in the wrong season, in the wrong climate, you can go on working hard and nothing will happen.

My experience with T’ai Chi is that if a person has many repressed emotions, those emotions become like a wall around the diaphragm. He cannot feel the hara, the T’ai Chi centre. Even if you tell him that it is there, just below the navel, two inches below the navel, he cannot feel it. He can believe it, he can imagine it, but he cannot feel it – and unless you feel it exactly where
it is, t’ai chi doesn’t start. You have to be focused there, centred there – there is the source of your ’chi’, your energy.

But unless one has thrown all the repressed emotions …. Anger, greed, jealousy, and a thousand
and one things are there and we go on piling them up in the stomach because that is the only empty space in the body. So whatsoever you want to throw, you throw it there – either throw it out or throw it in; only two are the ways.

Catharsis means throwing it out so it doesn’t spoil your system. If a person is in a situation where he wants to scream and he does not – maybe there are so many people and it will look odd; they will think him bizarre, mad, crazy and he himself thinks that it is crazy – where will he throw it? Where will the scream go? He will push it down inside the stomach, he will sit upon it.

Now the scream will be pressed like a spring: you can sit upon a spring, but the spring is there and any moment that you go away the spring will uncoil. You go on repressing millions of things every day in this way – the stomach is too much burdened – then suddenly you start T’ai Chi. You cannot feel where your ’chi’ centre is. You have lost all contact, because between you and the ’chi’ centre there is such rubbish, a mountain of rubbish.

That mountain has to be removed first. Once it is removed – once your ’chi’ centre starts functioning well and you can see it directly; you can relate to it not in imagination but actually, you can start feeling your life energy bubbling there – then things become very simple and T’ai Chi comes very very easily. So just finish a few groups and then I will suggest you do T’ai Chi, but go on asking me so I remember, mm?

Source: from Osho Book “This Is It”

Osho – Ego can even renounce. It can Renounce everything but it will always save itself

Swami Amitabh — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 06:43:00 +0000

Osho – All arrangements of life, like for instance our own life, is all based on a trance. We live in a trance; and the centre of this unconsciousness, is our ego.

Lao Tzu says, ”Nature is eternal for it lives not for itself.” He who has no thought about himself, will not live for himself. We all live for our own selves. There is an astonishing statement in the Upanishads: ”The husband does not love the wife; through her, he loves his own self. The father does not love the son; through him, he loves his own self. The mother does not love her daughter; through her, she loves her own self”.

The Upanishads say that when we say we love someone then too, it is our own self that we love through that medium. Even when we say we live for others, our statement is not authentic. It is erroneous; for the one we allege we live for, today we might feel to kill tomorrow.

I say, ”I live for my son”. If tomorrow this son disobeys me, displeases me, goes against my wishes, I will create a thousand obstructions in his way. I will see that I cause him all kinds of hardships in life – and I used to say I live only for him! As long as he gratified my desires, obeyed all my commands, nourished my ego, he was an extension of my ego and I professed to live only for him.

If I say, ”I live for my wife”. I can only do so when she satisfies my desires; when she is an instrument for the gratification of my passions, my very shadow. Let not this delude you though. I only live for her as long as she is useful to me. The day she is no longer useful, she becomes redundant for my ego. I will then throw her out as we throw away articles that have outlived their use. She becomes so much trash for me.

But we swear we live for others. As long as there is even a vestige of the ego within us, we cannot live for others. Then no matter how much we proclaim, we live for ourselves alone. One person says, ”I live for my country, I shall die for my country.” This is absolutely false. No man lives or dies for a country. He dies for ’my country’. In that too, is the fulfillment of his own ego. If I am
a Hindu, I can die for the Hindu religion.

But supposing in the last moments before I am executed, I am told I am not a Hindu and that I was actually a Muslim brought up in a Hindu family, all sacrifice on my part becomes useless. That very moment my whole attitude will change. I was not going to the gallows for the sake of Hinduism, but because I was under the illusion that I was a Hindu, my ego was Hindu, and in dying for Hinduism, I was only gratifying my ego. Now today, this gratification is gone. The matter finishes. Now I shall curse myself for my foolishness.

As long as ego persists, whatever we do, ego will be the master. Try to understand this well: We do many things, thinking the ego has nothing to do with it. But as long as there is ego within us, whatever we do will be related to the ego. We can implant humility on ourselves. It will only become an ornament for our ego and remain as such. I may fall at your feet and feel myself to be the dust on your feet. The ego within however, will keep reminding me that there is no one more humble than myself. My ego will exploit this humility and strengthen itself on it.

Ego can even renounce. It can renounce everything but it will always save itself. It never dies. A man like Lao Tzu says, ”Life eternal can only be attained when you begin to live for others”. But I can live for others only when there is no ’I’ within me; or when I begin to see my own self in others. These two happenings are the same. If I begin to see my own self in others it is the same as when my ’I’ is annihilated. The happening is the same whether I begin to see myself in others or the ’I’ within me becomes extinct.

Though this statement seems paradoxical, I repeat: I can exist for others only when the other is no longer ’the other’ to me. As long as the other is ’the other’ to me, I cannot live for others; till then I live only for myself. The very feeling of the other being the other, is a feeling of the ego within me. Or else, how will I know the other to be the other? Only when the other does not feel as the other to me, can I live for him.

We can express it this way also: I should spread out so, that everything and everybody becomes my own self. If I live in this manner, my existence becomes free, without anxiety, it is without any burden; it is an existence of freedom in which our bonds with the eternal are cemented. Till then all our relationships are with the temporal. There is nothing more transitory than the ego and hence all its connections are with the momentary.

Source: from Osho Book “The Way of Tao, Volume 1″

Osho Discourse on Tai Chi – Guidance onTai Chi Exercise

Swami Amitabh — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 10:08:00 +0000

Osho – When doing these exercises, feel more like a liquid, Flowing energy, than like a solid body. Drop the concept of a solid body and help to focus on a different concept of liquid, fluid, flowing energy. Before you start T’ai Chi start doing this in the night so that you will be ready. Before going to sleep, just sit in the bed and start feeling that you are energy, and that energy is flowing all around your body. You are in a whirlpool of energy – ripples, waves, are coming.

Then feel that the whole room is full of energy, and it is your energy. You don’t know where to make a demarcation; you don’t know where you stop and the world starts. Then feel that the energy is flowing and becoming bigger and bigger like a balloon. Not only is it in the room, the room is in it, the whole house is in it. You have become a flood.

At this moment, go to sleep. This will take not more than three to five minutes. While you are falling asleep, continue to feel like a flood – surging waves reaching to the high heavens and the whole world is engulfed in you, in your energy. Just fall asleep meditating on it so it will enter into your sleep and will remain there as a shadow, hovering around you the whole night.

In the morning, the moment you feel that you are awake now, don’t open your eyes – first feel again the flood-like energy. Connect yourself again with the time you fell asleep. Bridge it again. Again start feeling like a surging wave, an ocean, an oceanic energy.

Just for three to five minutes Lying in the bed, and then get up. You will feel very very energised and vital. You will feel a new elan rising in you, a new life. Continue this for a few days and then go into T’ai Chi. Then you will be perfectly ready.

Chi means energy. The whole concept is that solidity is false – just as in modern physics. These walls are not real – it is just pure energy, but the electrons are moving so fast, with such terrific speed; that’s why it appears solid. Just like a fan can move with such a terrific speed that you cannot see the blades separately. So it gives a sense of solidarity. The same is true with your body. What modern physics has come to know right now, Taoists have known for thousands of years – that man is energy.

It is said about a T’ai Chi master that he would tell his disciples to attack him, and he would just sit in the middle. Five or ten disciples would rush from every corner of the room to attack him, but when they came near him, they would feel as if he were a cloud; there was nothing solid… as if you could pass through him and you would not be obstructed by anything.

If you continue this idea that you are energy, it is possible to become just like a cloud with no boundaries, melting and merging with existence. This anecdote is not just an anecdote. With a man who has gone deep into T’ai Chi, it is very easily possible that when you come across him, you will not find any obstruction; you can simply go through him. You cannot hurt him because he is not there to be hurt. So for these ten days before you start T’ai Chi, imbibe the spirit.

Source: from Osho Book “The Passion for the Impossible”