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