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Part VIII : Osho gives darshan on the four Celebration Days
Osho continues to give a darshan on the four Celebration Days.
A week-long festival is arranged for July 1982, attended by twenty
thousand sannyasins. Osho gives silent satsangs each morning.
For the first time, Osho wears coloured robes instead of white.
He is greeted by sannyasins lining the road on his daily drive,
and on the last day, showered with rose petals. On the final evening
Osho gives a celebration darshan, with music and dance. This festival
is held annually for the next three years.
I do not have any celebration. Every moment is a celebration
to me. Talking to you, I am enjoying it so much!…
Really! My people celebrate—I remain the same. I am celebrating
all the year round. last220
You say: In one of the festival darshans I was sitting at your
feet, bowing down to you, and suddenly found there was no you—there
was only an empty chair*. And all the thousands of people were
bowing down to an empty chair, sitting in silence with an empty
chair, singing and celebrating with an empty chair. I nearly burst
out laughing, seeing the ridiculousness of us needing you as an
excuse to be able to do all this. But then comes the gratefulness
of seeing the caring of existence to let us have beautiful, loving
eyes to look at, a voice talking to us, a body we can give a dress
to, a car to drive… to let us care about someone so totally,
that this very love opens us up to be transformed. Buddham sharanam
gachchhami—you are the feet of the whole world for me, where
I can bow down in gratefulness.
Gayan, that was the real experience of me as non-existent. Once
in a while a disciple will come so close that he will be able
to see that there is no "I" within me. It has died long
ago. This body is empty, this chair is empty. But it will be only
at rare, intimate moments, that you will be able to penetrate
to my reality. I am simply a nothingness—of course covered
with a body.
Ordinarily you will see the body. To see the nothingness within
you need a deep insight. And one never knows in what condition
it may happen.
You were dancing around me joyously, so deeply in the moment.
With great love you were sitting in front of me, bowing down,
repeating the greatest mantra there has ever been: Buddham sharanam
gachchhami, "I go to the feet of the awakened one".
And thousands of people were creating a milieu around you. It
was not an ordinary situation: an extraordinary device, so when
you opened your eyes suddenly for a moment I was not there.
And your understanding is right, that it is just for your love
that I am carrying the body. Howsoever difficult it may be, it
is worth it if it can help you to realize your potential. Otherwise
my body's work is long ago finished. It should not be there.
I am trying every effort to hang on to it, because most of you
are not yet ready to see me. You see only the body. The day you
all will be able to see me, there will be no need for the body
to be carried continuously—which is for me just a burden,
just a trouble. But I will wait until enough of you are aware
of my nothingness.
Remember, the moment you are aware of my nothingness, you are
also experiencing nothingness in you. Only two nothingnesses can
recognize each other.
Gayan, you saw the chair empty, and the experience was so strange
that you forgot to look within yourself. If you had done that,
you would have found that the same nothingness is there.
We are not egos. We consist of universal nothingness. And nothingness
is not a negative word; it simply means absence of everything,
just pure existence. Of course the pure existence cannot have
a form. So if you happen to see pure existence, you will see the
body disappear, the chair empty.
If it happens again, then in the same moment look within yourself,
and you will find your body is also absent—you are not.
And to know that one is not is the door to know that one is eternal.
This is the ultimate paradox of spiritual experience.
Shakespear is puzzled by the problem "to be or not to be,"
because he is absolutely unaware that the way to be is not to
be. There is no question of choice. It is not that you have to
choose one. If you choose to be, you will have to choose not to
be. If you are ready to disappear, evaporate, you will find your
authenticity for the first time. It is certainly a paradox. No
logic can explain it, but experience can make it absolutely clear.
You had felt ridiculous. You had laughed, because thousands
of people are bowing down to an empty chair chanting Buddham sharanam
gachchhami, and there is nobody.
Your laughter, Gayan, was still half. If you had looked into
yourself, your laughter would have been complete. Then you would
not have only seen me not there, you would have seen yourself
not there, you would have seen those thousands of people disappearing—an
empty mandir resounding with the chanting of Buddham sharanam
gachchhami.
Next time it happens, don't let it be incomplete. Because if
it is complete, then you have come to a clear understanding which
will follow you like a shadow in every act throughout your life.
It will change your whole being. It will give you a new aroma,
a new aura—and not only to you, you will see it in others
too; although those others are not aware of it. But you will be
aware of it.
That's why the Japanese awakened soul Hotei has been called
the laughing Buddha. For what is he laughing?—his whole
teaching was laughing. Seeing this ridiculousness that people
are not what they are thinking they are, and people are what they
never dream about…. It is a cosmic joke, but one has to
understand it to come to a point when one can become a laughing
buddha.
And I want the world filled with laughing buddhas, not the serious
ones. We are sick of them.
We need the whole earth filled with laughter, and not ordinary
laughter but cosmic laughter—a laughter that arises out
of the understanding that it is a beautiful joke existence has
played with us. transm30
*Note: Osho radiates so much light that his physical body becomes
invisible to some, and only his chair can be seen; on photographs
in darshans this phenomenon looks like double exposure!
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