Buddha in Bazaar -

To meditate, Buddha left the city and sought isolation. Life in the city didn’t give him the space to be himself. But when he realized his potential, he returned to the city—to share what he had found in isolation.

The city’s hectic pace may compel an escape into solitude, where the seeker’s individuality can blossom. But this does no mean that it can blossom only in the jungle, not in a city say Delhi. It can—if we know how to meditate in the marketplace! Osho taught us how...

In a beautiful poem, Tagore says: “After Enlightenment, Buddha returns home. His wife asks him: ‘What you attained in the jungle—was it not possible to attain it here? Why leave home, me, your child?’” Buddha was silent.

Mystic Kabir says: “Kabira khada bazaar mein.” Yes, Kabir comes to the bazaar and urges people to gather courage, burn their houses of imagination, transform their lives… They can do so by meditation and following the path of love. Meditation blossoms into love, yielding a spontaneous sharing, like a flower shares its fragrance, unconditionally. Love is unconditional if rooted in meditation.

Ordinary relationships are based on conditional love. It’s a barter—you give me something, I give you something. And we keep calculating whether we profited or not! This calculation is not bliss but mundane mathematics. Real joy comes when one shares love without any conditions.

The marketplace can corrupt the minds of those who get lost in it. We need enlightened people like Kabir and Osho to remind us to stay in it yet rise—just like a lotus in mud. And you won’t find a better place than Delhi, with all its political tangles, cutthroat competition, mazes of ambition… It’s a real challenge to meditate in such an atmosphere.

One need not escape into isolation. One can meditate in the world itself, it one is intelligent. Osho suggests Vipassana (watching your breath and the gaps in breathing) as a meditation to be practiced amidst worldly activity. You are eating: Eat on but be attentive to the gap. You are walking: Walk on but be attentive to the gap. You are about to sleep: Lie down, let sleep come but mind the gap!

Don’t let your activity distract your mind. Exist in two layers—doing and being, circumference and center. And as you work on the periphery, attend on the core as well. Your activity will become an act, as if you’re playing a part. Let your entire life become a long drama. Become an actor playing roles, but constantly centred in the gap. Life is just a role, given to you by society, by circumstance, by culture, by family, by tradition, by nation, by situation...

Play on and focus on the gap between breaths. Let life move on, along the periphery, while you stay in the gap, in the core, in the center. This is the way to being a Buddha in the bazaar.

- Swami Chaitanya Keerti

The Times of India (What’s Hot) - 29 ^th August, 2008

Don’t Just Do Something. Sit There!

The Times of India (What's Hot) - 1^st August, 2008

I see a basic reason. We think too much about ourselves. We think the whole world depends on your doing. Due to this illusory self-image, we lose touch with our real self. The image haunts us and we take on a false identity. One cannot relax with falseness. How can you relax with a shadow? The more we try to relax, the tenser we get! What will it take to let this illusory image recede and the real self emerge?

In The Discipline Of Transcendence, Osho talks about an ancient meditation method, still in use in a few Tibetan monasteries. It teaches us that, at times, we can simply disappearing. Sitting in the garden, you start feeling that you’re disappearing. Just see how the world looks when you have gone from it , when you’ve become absolutely transparent. Try for a single second ‘not to be’. In your own home, be as if you are not. Just think, one day you will still prepare breakfast, the kids will be gone—yet the radio will blare songs, the wife will still go to school…Just visualise this and become a ghost.

Think: “I have no more reality. I am not.” And see how the house continues. There will be tremendous silence. Everything will continue as is. Without you. Then what’s the point of always being occupied, doing something, obsessing with action? What’s the point? You will be gone. Whatsoever you have done will disappear, as if you had signed your name on sand, and it gets swept away by water...

It really is a beautiful way to meditate. You can try it often in 24 hours. Even half a second will do. For just half a second, simply stop! You are not… and the world continues. When you become more alert to the fact that, even without you, the world continues perfectly, then you will quickly discover that part of your being that has been neglected for too long. You will then enter a receptive mode.

You will simply allow, become a door. Things will happen without you. This is what the Buddha means when he says: “Become driftwood. Float in the stream like timber. And wherever the stream goes, let it take you. Don’t make any effort.” The Buddhist approach is receptive. That’s why you see the Buddha sitting under a tree. Sitting, doing nothing.

Osho adds: “To do good work is one thing, and to be good is another. I don’t say don’t do good work. I say let good work emerge from your BEING good. First reach the receptive, non-active mode. When your inner being flowers – and you are in tune with the integrated centre within – death suddenly disappears. All worries vanish because you are no more a body, no more a mind. Then arise compassion, love, prayer. You become a blessing to the world.”

- Swami Chaitanya Keerti

Be Conscious. Be Compassionate. Be Human.

The Times of India (What's Hot) - 8 ^th August, 2008

Here’s a beautiful story from the Buddha’s time: A rich man is initiated into sannyas by an enlightened master. He travels with the master and thousands of disciples. They rest at a guesthouse but there isn’t enough space, so some monks sleep outside the rooms. This rich man gets a spot on a pathway and can barely sleep. Miserable and agitated, he wants to revoke his decision to become a sannyasi.

Next morning, he informs his master. The master tells him about his past life, about how he became a human. He says, “Let me remind you that you were an elephant in your past life. One day, you were in a forest that caught fire. You stared running to escape, like all other animals. You rested under a tree that was not burning. As soon as you lifted a leg to walk on, a hare scampered under it for shelter. Your heart was full of compassion and you didn’t put your foot down, for that would have crushed the hare. You kept one foot up and soon the fire burnt you. That compassionate act helped you evolve into a human. Now, wouldn’t you like to evolve further into an awakened one, a Buddha?” This story awakened the rich man’s consciousness, and he continued on his journey of a sannyasi.

Compassion is the fragrance of awakened consciousness. A fully awake person is naturally compassionate, he doesn’t practice compassion as morality. He shares whatever he has. It is his joy. His bliss.

Osho explains: “Suffering makes people hard, dulls their sensitivity, makes them thick. To protect themselves, they grow a hard crust around their heart. If they continuously feel for every body who suffers, it will be impossible to live. Suffering is all over. People invent beautiful theories to protect themselves, like karma. Karma has nothing to do with the person who suffers but it gives good justification to he person who wants to avoid compassion. It is psychological armour.”

He adds: “Only bliss makes a person compassionate. If he has known joy, he’ll feel compassion for those who suffer. If he hasn’t known any joy, he’ll ask why he should feel compassion… He has suffered, so everybody will suffer!” When one discovers innermost joy, when one knows something of god, of love, of meditation—then a great compassion arises. One would like to share all that one has. One would like to pour one’s whole being. One would like all of existence to get enlightened. One would like everybody to celebrate.

“So,” says Osho, “I make bliss a prerequisite to compassion. I teach not compassion but bliss. Compassion comes of its own. Teaching people compassion is not the right way. Unless they taste joy, they’ll never be compassionate. It they’re convinced rationally, their compassion will be an obligation. So I teach bliss, and compassion comes as a shadow.”

- Swami Chaitanya Keerti

The Partnership of Love & Marriage

The Times of India (What's Hot) - 15^th August, 2008

Mulla Nasruddin shook hands with the future groom. “Congratulations,” he said, “on one of the happiest days of your life.” The future groom said, “But I’m not getting married until tomorrow!” Mulla responded, “I know. That’s what makes this one of your happiest days!”

Having observed many couples and their fights over petty things, I conclude that they should give space to each other to stay sane. It seems that the problem is that they are together too much…24/7, stifling each other, killing each other’s individuality! A few moments or hours or days or months of aloneness can be really nourishing for each partner.

Before people become couples, they have sweet dreams of how they will be together and their life would be fragrant all the way. But when they are too ‘together’, they smell the real stink in their relationship. They cannot stand each other!

A man told Osho about his wife and their constant conflict. Osho remarked, “Seems you can’t understand each other.” The man exclaimed, “Understand? I can’t even stand her!”

This is a harsh fact. Many couples feel that they cannot stand each other, even though theirs was a love marriage. They are in constant strife… Osho says that the very basis for this struggle is that we reduce relating to relationship. “Why are we in such a hurry? Because to us, to relate is insecure and relationship is security! A relationship has certainty while relating is just a meeting of strangers. We’re so afraid of uncertainty that we want to make it predictable. We like tomorrow to fit into our ideas. We don’t want freedom to have its say. So we reduce every verb to a noun.”

If you love a woman or man, you immediately start to think of marriage. Of making it a legal contract. Why? How does law enter love? Law enters love when there is no love! It’s only a fantasy, which you know can disappear. Before it disappears, do something so it becomes impossible to separate.

Osho elaborates: “In a more meditative world, people will love immensely but their love will be a ‘relating’, and not a ‘relationship’. But I don’t say their love will be momentary. Their love may go way deeper than yours, may be more intimate, may have more poetry and godliness… And it may last longer than your so-called relationship. But it won’t be guaranteed by law, courts or cops! The guarantee will be inner, a commitment from the heart, a silent communion.”

True love has to be a commitment from one heart to another. It does not need to be verbalized, because to verbalise it is to render it profane. It has to be a silent commitment—eye to eye, heart to heart, being to being. It has to be truly understood, not said.

- Swami Chaitanya Keerti

Polarities of Life: The Power of Two

The Times of India (What's Hot) - 22 ^th August, 2008

Osho retells a Sumatran legend: “God created man and woman together, with joined bodies, so that each was a couple. But it became burdensome. If the husband wanted to go north, the wife was unwilling, so the bodies would have to be dragged together. Or vice versa! It was such a problem that God decided to divide them. But then they got lost in the wide world.” Sumatrans still believe that everyone has a partner somewhere, and that people are forever seeking him or her...

Osho narrates a Christian story: “Adam was very alone and very depressed. He asked God for a companion, so God created a woman. God asked Adam, ‘What will you call her?’ Adam was ecstatic to have someone to talk to, to love, to relate with! He said he’d call her ‘Eve’, ‘Eva’, ‘Havva’… ‘Why?’ asked God. Adam said, ‘Because that means life. She is my life. Without her, I was nearly dead.’”

When deeply in love, a woman becomes God for the man, and vice versa, though ultimately they are just two manifestations of one soul. They are soul mates. The flipside: Often, men and women meet and get go fascinated with each other that they think they have found their soul mates. Then they start living together and find that they are living with the wrong person! Such is the power of imagination that takes love to such peaks, only to throw it into abysmal valleys later!

There’s a polarity of peaks and valleys in relationships. We believe anything when we are in love and the absolute opposite when love disappears. Life manifests these two aspects of illusion and disillusionment.

In Secret of Secrets, Osho elaborates: “In ordinary life, you stay dual. And in the space of 24 hours, you change often from one pole to the other. Watch. You may be a man but, at times, you’re feminine, very vulnerable. You may be a woman but, at times, you’re masculine. When a woman is masculine, she’s very aggressive, more aggressive than any man, because her aggressiveness has been lying unused. Similarly, if a man is tender, he is much more so than a woman...”

Osho adds: “This inner polarity keeps you in a kind of conflict, without which you can’t exist. The One stays invisible, like God. To be visible, the One must split into two. To exist, one needs contrast. That’s why you can’t see stars in the day but you can in the night, when darkness provides a backdrop. The stars are there in the day too but there’s no contrast, no Other.”

- Swami Chaitanya Keerti

Trial by Marriage

The idea of trial marriage is nothing new; secular freethinkers have been proposing it for a number of years. But facing the large number of youthful weddings that end in divorce, some reputable Christian theologians today are cautiously debating whether temporary liaisons make good common as well as spiritual sense.

Speaking last month to a Protestant conference on welfare work in West Germany, Theologian Siegfried Keil of Marburg University argued that while sexual mores have quite obviously changed during the 2,000 years of Christian history, churchmen nonetheless continue to act as if there were a permanent, inflexible standard of behavior. "Why," he asked, "should it not be conceivable to think of the act of marriage as being divided into several stages, from single life to matrimony?" One such interim stage, he suggested, might be a "recognized premarriage," during which sexual relations by the couple would not be condemned as sinful.

Under Strict Controls. Roman Catholic Father Jacques Lazure, a Harvard-educated sociologist who is on the staff of the University of Montreal, has tentatively proposed that the church might some day consider the institution of "probationary marriages" as an antidote to the high divorce rate among the young. Lazure—who was promptly silenced by his superiors after explaining his views to the Toronto Star—suggested that trial marriages, if ever they are authorized, ought to be surrounded with strict social and ecclesiastical controls. The couples involved should be at least 18 years old, and would be required to practice birth control. Sanctioned by both church and state, such unions might last anywhere from three to 18 months, and could be readily dissolved at the request of either party. Hopefully, however, most would end in permanent marriage.

Although most U.S. theologians are somewhat reluctant to openly challenge traditional church views on the indissolubility of marriage and the sinfulness of premarital sex, there is some support for these proposals. Says Dr. Edward Craig Hobbs of Berkeley's Episcopal Church Divinity School of the Pacific: "Something like trial marriage would be vastly superior to our present system, which is marriage, divorce and remarriage." In addition Dr. Robert Lee of San Francisco Theological Seminary argues that since "intercourse during engagement is becoming standard," the time of betrothal, in effect, "has become a trial marriage."

Paying an Indemnity. Another theologian intrigued by the idea of trial marriages is William Hamilton of Colgate-Rochester Divinity School, one of the leading "Death-of-God" thinkers, who suggests that a betrothal period in which sexual relations are licit would actually be in accord with the marital patterns that prevailed in the time of Christ. Under early Jewish custom, couples who became betrothed often lived as man and wife, without being required to enter permanent marriage. By this custom, if either party objected to formalizing the union, it could be dissolved by a religious court.

From http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,836993,00.html

The Bhakti Bhav In Hindustani Music--THE SPEAKING TREE

Rasa and rang do play a significant role in Hindustani classical music. But, its spiritual life force

or prana has much deeper roots.

Anhad naad, the unstruck sound or naad has been mentioned by saints like Kabir and Mira, as

the music heard within the depths of one’s being. Anhad naad is a divine melody, a celestial

music which is transcendent, beyond the senses and intellect. It can neither be sung nor heard.

It can be contacted by the soul alone. Anhad naad and soul are in essence the same as God.

There is therefore a natural spiritual magnetic attraction between them. So when a listener’s

soul is turned towards the anhad naad within it is drawn like a needle to a magnet.

In the realm of Nirakar, the Unmanifest Supreme God, like every thing else in Creation, music

too is in its potentiality only. But this potentiality is the thing that eventually takes form —

aakaar — as music in our physical world when sung or played.

The pleasure or satisfaction experienced by the listener as rasa and rang is due to the union

of the manifest music with the unmanifest anhad naad deep within the listener.

The relationship between the listener’s soul and anhad naad within her being is like that

between the struck — baaj ke taar — strings of a sitar and its unstruck sympathetic strings or

tarben which resonate only by the vibrations caused by the struck strings. The musicality of the

sound produced by the struck strings is hollow and incomplete without the complementary

sound lent by the sympathetic unstruck strings. That is why sitar maestros give so much time

and attention to the fine-tuning of the tarben.

The same applies to the listener of Hindustani classical music. The more finely attuned are

her soul and the inner celestial melody, the deeper and more fulfilling will be the music heard

by her. This is why everybody does not appreciate or enjoy music to the same extent or

intensity. The fine-tuning of body and soul differs from person to person.

Every lover of classical Hindustani music may not be aware of the anhad naad within, like an

accomplished saint, but anhad is very much there as an integral part of the Supreme Akhand

and Anant or Oneness of the unmanifest or Nirakar and the manifest or Sakar.

Brahmn is “Shabdabrahmaswaroop”. He is manifest when audible (Omkaar or Om+aakaar)

and unmanifest when dormant and formless as “OM” in Brahmn.

Only a true and perfect maestro can join the disciples’ soul with the anhad naad within. We

cannot achieve this by reading books or listening to the recordings of past maestros. Anhad

naad is a transcendent entity and therefore cannot be conveyed or given to others indirectly.

Reciprocity is a must. Only a living person can open the current of the divine melody within

us. If his own soul has awakened to this anhad naad, he can awaken other souls too.

Our own zeal and practice do matter, but these too are part of the guru’s grace only. The

guru, performing artist’s soul, the listener’s soul, God and anhad naad, are one and the same.

Little wonder then that Pandit Amarnath finds bhakti bhav the essential underlying rasa in

Hindustani classical music. But bhakti bhav is the outcome of the spiritual roots of Hindustani

music. It is not the other way round.

Times Of India Mumbai; Date:2008 Aug 28; Section:Editorial; Page Number16

THE ROOT PROBLEM OF ALL PROBLEMS

The root problem of all problems is mind itself. The first thing to be understood is what this mind is, of what stuff it is made; whether it is an entity or just a process; whether it is substantial, or just dreamlike. And unless you know the nature of the mind, you will not be able to solve any problems of your life. 

You may try hard, but if you try to solve single, individual problems, you are bound to be a failure -- that is absolutely certain -- because in fact no individual problem exists: mind is the problem. If you solve this problem or that, it won't help because the root remains untouched. 

It is just like cutting branches of a tree, pruning the leaves, and not uprooting it. New leaves will come, new branches will sprout -- even more than before; pruning helps a tree to become thicker. Unless you know how to uproot it, your fight is baseless, it is foolish. You will destroy yourself, not the tree. 

In fighting you will waste your energy, time, life, and the tree will go on becoming more and more strong, far thicker and dense. And you will be surprised what is happening: you are doing so much hard work, trying to solve this problem and that, and they go on growing, increasing. Even if one problem is solved, suddenly ten problems take its place. 

Don't try to solve individual, single problems -- there are none: mind itself is the problem. But mind is hidden underground; that's why I call it the root, it is not apparent. Whenever you come across a problem the problem is above ground, you can see it -- that's why you are deceived by it. 
 

Always remember, the visible is never the root; the root always remains invisible, the root is always hidden. Never fight with the visible; otherwise you will fight with shadows. You may waste yourself, but there cannot be any transformation in your life, the same problems will crop up again and again and again. You can observe your own life and you will see what I mean. I am not talking about any theory about the mind, just the "facticity" of it. This is the fact: mind has to be solved. 

People usually  ask: "How to attain a peaceful mind?" I say to them: "There exists nothing like that: a peaceful mind. Never heard of it." 

Mind is never peaceful -- no-mind is peace. Mind itself can never be peaceful, silent. The very nature of the mind is to be tense, to be in confusion. Mind can never be clear, it cannot have clarity, because mind is by nature confusion, cloudiness. Clarity is possible without mind, peace is possible without mind, and silence is possible without mind -- so never try to attain a silent mind. If you do, from the very beginning you are moving in an impossible dimension. 

So the first thing is to understand the nature of the mind, only then can something be done. 
 

Dated: 27 May 2008

Place : Mumbai      S.K.Gupta