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Part V : Osho teaches friends meditation
Once it happened that one of my friends, a very old man of seventy-eight,
fell from the staircase and broke many of his bones. The doctors
told him to remain on the bed for six months, because he was very
old and the body would take a long time to regain its strength.
He was an active man, very very active. When I went to see him
he started crying - and he is not a man who ordinarily cries;
I had never seen him cry before. He said, 'It would have been
better if I had died. Death is not so bad, but six months just
lying on the bed is impossible. I will commit suicide. Six months
seems almost endless and the pain is too much, I will not be able
to survive it.' I told him to do one thing: to close his eyes
and move to where the pain was, to pinpoint it.
For half an hour he looked inside. His whole face relaxed, and
after half an hour when he came back he was a totally different
man. He said, 'I could watch, I could see, and just seeing and
looking at it, suddenly there was the realisation that I am separate
from the pain.'
Those six months became a blessing. He had to remain on the
bed, but he continued watching. For the first time in his life
he became a meditator. Now he says that that was the greatest
thing that has happened in his life. Now it has become an everyday
process. For at least two or three hours he lies down on the bed,
on his back - and now there is no need - just to watch.
One should always be looking for methods of how to change a
calamity into a blessing. There is always a way; one has just
to look for it. This is the basic art of life - how to change
misery into celebration, how to change a curse into a blessing,
how to use suffering to grow, how to use pain to be reborn. wobble10
Once it happened: I was staying in a rest-house. And a political
leader was also staying there - a very small rest-house in
a very small village. The political leader came to me in the middle
of the night, and said, "It is impossible to sleep. How are
you sleeping?" He shook me, and said, "How are you sleeping,
there is so much distraction?"
Somehow or other at least two dozen dogs…they must have
made the rest-house their abode - the whole village's dogs.
Maybe they were having a political gathering also - and they
were so many; there was such a loud barking and fighting.
He said, "But how are you sleeping? These dogs won't allow
me to sleep, and I am tired."
So I said to the political leader, "But they are not aware
of you. They don't read newspapers, they don't listen to the radio,
they don't look at television; they are not aware of you. I was
also here before you. That is their usual way: they are not doing
it specially for you. You are fighting, resisting. The notion
that they are disturbing you is disturbing you; not they. Accept
them!" I told him to do one small meditation. "Lie down
on the bed. Enjoy their barking. Let it be a music. Enjoy it.
Listen to it, as attentively as possible."
He said, "How is it going to help me? I want to avoid, I
want to forget that they are there, and you are telling me to
listen to them. That will disturb me even more."
I told him, "You just try. You have been trying your way,
and it has failed. Now try my way; and you can see that it has
been successful with me."
He was not ready for it, and he didn't believe it; but there was
no other way, so he tried. And within five minutes he was fast
asleep, and snoring. So I went and shook him up, and I said, "How
are you sleeping? How is it possible?"
lf you accept, nothing can distract you. lt is the very rejection
in you that creates the distraction. So, if you want to meditate
without distraction, don't reject anything. The traffic noise
has to be accepted - it is part of this world, and perfectly
okay; the child crying and weeping is part of this world, and
perfectly okay. Once you say that everything is okay, just watch
the feeling that everything is okay and accept it. Something within
you melts. Then nothing distracts. And unless this happens, you
can go anywhere you like and you will be distracted by one thing
or another. foll308
Once a young man came to me. He was a good runner, a champion
runner, and he asked me how to meditate, and he was so bubbling
with energy. He was a great runner, and he said, 'When I sit,
and you tell me to sit silently, I cannot sit; the energy is so
much. Is there any possibility for me to ever become meditative?'
I said, 'You forget about meditation. You run, and you drop yourself
in running. One day meditation will happen.'
He said, 'What are you saying? Just by running? Has anybody ever
become a Buddha just running?'
I said, 'Yes, there is a possibility. Because a person can become
a Buddha in any activity.'
He said, 'I will try.'
After a week he came and he said, 'It is unbelievable. I cannot
even believe that it has happened. Something tremendously beautiful
happened. I was running, I was going as fast as I could. And as
you had said, I forgot myself completely. I was not performing,
it was not a competition. I was simply in it…the sun falling
on my being, showering me, the morning breeze, the birds singing,
and the empty bank of the river. And I was running and running.
'And by and by I started falling into a rhythm with the river,
with the breeze, with the trees. And suddenly, yes, it was there.
I was so full of joy. I have never been so joyful. Tell me, Osho,
has it really happened? Because I cannot believe that just by
running…and I have been running for many years and it has
never happened.' He was not losing himself; running was a performance….
I am saying to you that even a thing like running, if it is no
more a performance, will give you the same orgasm that love can
give, and the same ecstasy that meditation can give. trans204
I had a friend who had a problem with anger. He said, "I
am very much disturbed by it and how much it is beyond my control.
Show me a method to control it without me doing something myself - because
I have almost given up, I don't think I can do anything about
it. I don't think that I can get out of this anger by my own efforts."
I gave him a paper on which were written the words: 'Now I am
getting angry'. I told him, "Keep this paper in your pocket
and whenever you feel angry, take it out, read it and put it back
again." And I said, "You can do at least this much;
this is the minimum. I can't tell you to do anything less! Read
this paper and then put it back in your pocket." He said
he would try.
After two or three months, when I met him again, I asked, "What
happened?"
He said, "I am surprised. This paper has worked as a mantra.
Whenever I feel angry I take it out. The moment I take it out,
my hands and feet become numb. As I put my hand in my pocket I
realize that I am feeling angry and then something in me loosens
up; the grip that the anger used to have on me inside suddenly
disappears. As my hand goes into the pocket, it relaxes, and there
is no longer any need even to read it. When I feel the anger I
start seeing the paper in my pocket."
He asked me, "How did this paper have this effect? What is
the secret?"
I said, "There is no secret to it. It is simple. Whenever
you are unconscious, the perversions, the imbalances, the chaos
of the mind take hold of you. But when you become aware everything
disappears."
So watching will have two results. Firstly your knowledge of your
own energies will develop and knowing them makes you a master.
And secondly, the strength of the grip these energies have on
you will decrease. Slowly, slowly you will find that first anger
comes and then you watch. Then after a while, gradually, you will
find that anger comes and the watchfulness comes at the same time.
And finally you will find that the anger is about to arise but
the watchfulness is already there. From the day the watchfulness
comes before the anger, there is no longer any possibility of
anger arising.
Awareness of things before they happen has a SIZE=2>journy07
One of my friends, he was a colleague in the same university
where I was a teacher, said to me "I have been trying to
drop my smoking, for almost twenty years."
I said, "That is too long a time to drop a cigarette; just
give me a cigarette and I can drop it right now."
He said, "Don't make a laughing stock of me. I have worked
hard to drop it, and sometimes for a few hours, or sometimes even
for few days, I manage not to smoke. But finally I have to give
way. And now I have even dropped fighting; it is meaningless - twenty
years fighting."
I said, "You don't understand simple laws of life. You are
a man fast asleep, and in sleep you cannot make any decisions,
any commitments. My suggestion is that you do one thing: you smoke
more consciously."
He said, "What - smoke? I want to drop it."
I said, "Just listen to what I am saying, you smoke more
consciously. Take the packet from your pocket very slowly and
consciously. Pull the cigarette out very slowly - there is
no hurry. Look at the cigarette from all sides, put it in your
mouth, wait. There is no hurry. Go very slow-motion, just as if
a film is going in slow motion.
He said, "What is that going to do?"
I said, "That we will see later on…then take your lighter,
look at it."
He said, "You are making me a fool - what is that going
to do?"
I said, "You just…. Twenty years you have done it your
way; twenty days you do it my way. Look at the lighter, then light
the cigarette, then smoke as slowly as possible. And be watchful
that the smoke is going in, then the smoke is going out. That
is the oldest meditation, vipassana. Gautam Buddha may never have
thought that it will be used with a cigarette and a cigarette
lighter - but I have to manage for him."
He would not do Vipassana, but this…. He said, "Okay,
I will try it, twenty days it is not much."
But the second day he came to me and said, "This is strange.
Doing things so slowly makes me so alert; smoking, and watching
the smoke going in and the smoke going out makes me so silent
that already, in two days, I am smoking almost fifty percent less.
I said, "Just wait twenty days."
He said, "I don't think it will last twenty days; at the
most five days and it will be finished."
I said, "Don't be in a hurry to finish it, because if anything
remains clinging it will enforce you again. So go very slowly;
there is no hurry, and there is no harm. It does not matter - at
the most you may die two years earlier. But anyway, what were
you going to do in those two years - just smoke…more!
So there is no harm anyway; the world is too populated, and if
people go on disappearing a little earlier, making space for other
people, it is very compassionate of them."
He said, "You are a strange fellow." And after the fourth
day he told me, "Now, as my hand moves towards the pocket,
suddenly a stop comes - from where, I don't know. I have not
been smoking for one whole day because each time I try to take
a cigarette, I cannot take the packet out. What is the secret
of it?"
I said, "There is no secret; you have just learned to smoke
consciously, with awareness. And nobody can smoke with awareness,
because smoking is not a sin - smoking is simply a stupidity.
If you are alert and awake, you cannot be so stupid. There is
fresh air available; you can go and have good breathing, deep
breaths, fresh air, perfumed with flowers. You must be an idiot
if you have to pay money to make your breathing dirty, dirty with
nicotine, harming your lungs, harming your life; and there is
no point in it." golden02
A friend came to me. He said, "I don't think I shall be
able to meditate. I am a drunkard and the habit has got hold of
me so much that it is impossible for me to leave drinking in this
birth. Now I shall have to await for next birth to tread this
path." He had tried many ways and means to kick off the habit
but all had proved futile. And now he had even given up trying
because slowly slowly he had no will-power left. And he had faced
so much disappointment that he was not hopeful of carrying out
any further promise. So he requested me not to ask him to give
up drinking. He wanted to find out if there was a way in which
he could drink and meditate at the same time. "If so please
tell me," he asked.
I told him, "Your drinking is also for the sake of meditation."
He was startled to hear this. He said, "People rightly
say that you are a dangerous man and I shouldn't have come to
you. And I was thinking that you will definitely tell me some
way to get rid of my drinking and give me assurance. And you say
that drinking too is meditation."
So I told him, "Try to understand. And if you can understand
that drinking too is meditation then drinking can be dropped.
After all why do you drink? Forget about the wine part of it,
but tell me why do you drink?"
He said, "I drink to forget myself."
I told him, "The desire to forget yourself is also the
desire of meditation. To lose yourself, to drown, is also the
desire of meditation. Mistakenly you have taken up drinking. You
want to drink meditation and instead you are drinking wine. So
then I will not ask you to give up drinking. Instead I will ask
you to learn from wine the art of loosing yourself and drowning
yourself. And once you have learned the art of drowning, of forgetting,
then you will not have much trouble in giving up the support of
wine. If you can drown and forget yourself without the help of
wine then the habit of drinking will go away. Because I say unto
you that you are not a drunkard but you want to meditate, only
you have adopted the wrong type of meditation."
So then he asked me, "Can I come for meditation? But I will
continue to drink."
I said to him, "Don't mention to me at all about wine.
I am going to give you a new type of wine. You drink that. And
if this new taste suits you then the old will become tasteless.
And till you have begun to like the new wine it is also foolish
to drop the old wine, and there is no sense to it also. First
get a good experience of the new wine. If the new one has some
kick…. And if meditation does not even possess this much
strength to make you give up drinking, then don't be under any
illusion that it will be able to make you have a union with God.
After all if you can't leave a small thing like drinking, then
it means that meditation is weaker than wine. And always you should
choose strong friends, and what is the use of choosing weak friends?'
So he came along. He was skeptical, but he became so immersed
in meditation - so immersed, which is not possible for those
who have never tasted drink because those people do not know how
to drown themselves. Those who have never drunk wine, they don't
know how to lose themselves.
Now by this I don't mean that you should start drinking. It
is not necessary, you can go into meditation even without having
drunk wine. But if you have tasted wine then it is proper to utilize
it. It is not proper to waste any experience in life, it is necessary
to distill it's essence.
He immersed himself deeply in meditation, and the wine got lost.
Now he comes to me and says, "You have cheated me. If you
had warned me before that it would be like this I would have never
come. You never talked about leaving wine. I came under this illusion
that this man is okay because he never asks you to drop drinking
but makes you meditate also, So I have nothing to lose. But now
I am so engrossed in meditation that…." sadhan03
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