the journey to where we first started...

“Life is a dual journey: 

one journey is in time and space the other is within oneself and truth. 

 The first ends in death - the second in deathlessness. 

 The second is the real journey because it takes you somewhere. 

Those who take the first journey as it, waste their lives. 

The real life begins the day you start the other journey.”

— O S H O, 'A Cup of Tea'

 

“We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring 

Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.” 

  T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

Spiderwort plant in bloom

 

contribute to the world some beauty, joy, happiness, celebration...

ArtworkByErinn

~osho

 "According to me a religious person is one

who contributes to the world some beauty, 

some joy, some happiness, some celebration 

which was not there - something new, 

something fresh, some more flowers. 

But religion has never been defined 

the way I am defining it. 

All the ways religion has been defined 

have been proved absolutely ugly and wrong. 

But they have not helped humanity to rise

 to the heights of joy and beauty and love. 

They have drowned the whole humanity 

in misery and suffering,

 they have not taught you freedom. On the contrary, they have enforced on you all kinds of slavery in the name of obedience. Obedience to whom? Obedience to the priests, obedience to those who have money, obedience to those who have power - in short, obedience to all the vested interests." 

the capacity to be alone is the capacity to love...

~O~

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~O~

spiritual attainment is greed or a form of ego desire

"The first thing to be understood is that the very word "attainment" 

 is nonspiritual. It is part of your greed. The idea to attain is very worldly. 

Whether you want to attain prestige, power, wealth, or God or nirvana 

does not make any difference. The desire to attain is worldly; it is materialistic.

The spiritual revolution happens only when you drop this greed,
when you drop the very idea of becoming. You are that. You are already that,
 so then don't hanker for attainment. You have never been anything else
 other than that which you are trying to attain.
God is within you this very moment - healthy and kicking.
Because God is not something separate from you or from life.
But your greed has been a problem; and because of your greed,
exploiters have existed who go on showing you ways how to attain."
~osho

Sunrise  9-15

pleasure vs delight

"Deva means divine, nirvesham means delight.... And all delight is divine. 

Pleasure is not divine - delight is always divine. 

And the distinction between pleasure and delight has to be under-stood.

Delight is always of the immediate. You see a bird on the wing - and suddenly
there is delight. You see a sunset and the clouds are luminous with the light -
and there is delight. You don't even become so conscious that you were filled with delight;
only later on when it has gone - when the sun has set, when the dark night has descended,
and the clouds are no more luminous - then retrospectively you will become aware
that there was a great moment, there was joy, and it is no more now.

Now you think about it... now you start bringing the mind into it.
Now it starts turning into pleasure. When the mind takes possession of a delight,
it turns into pleasure. So pleasure is of the past and of the future,
and delight is only of the present. In fact when it is there, you are not -
hence it is divine. It brings a moment of egolessness."
~osho

Hibiscus Blossom 

(from my back yard)

who is responsible for our asleep awake states?...

 ~Ethan Nichtern

"Nobody is going to save you from your own mind. 

Nobody can get into the heart of your experience 

and fix anything for you. 

If you want to make your own internal experience more hospitable, 

only you can do that work. 

Others can always support and guide you and spark insights, 

but ultimately you are your own boss 

and the agent of understanding your mind 

and opening your heart."

~)(~

~Osho 

"No one is responsible for your sleep . 

How can someone else be responsible for your awakening?"

~)(~

Zafu Meditation Cushion

~)(~

 
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you are born every second again and again and again...

"The art of remaining a child forever 

is to never collect. 

When the moment is gone, leave it.

 Don't collect the past and then you are never old. 

You are born every second again and again and again.

 It is a constant rebirth... a riverlike flow of rebirth. 

You are renewed, resurrected. 

Die to the past every moment 

so it is no more a hangup and is not a burden on your head and on your heart, 

so that it does not hang like a rock around your neck. 

Go on dying to the past 

so you become more and more available to the present. 

Childhood is a state of consciousness, 

of purity, 

of uncorruption, 

of uncontamination."

~ osho.

waiting...the lost art.

"We have forgotten how to wait;

 it is almost an abandoned space. And it is our greatest treasure

 to be able to wait for the right moment. 

The whole existence waits for the right moment. 

Even trees know it--

when it is time to bring the flowers and when it is time to let go of all the leaves

 and stand naked against the sky. 

They are still beautiful in that nakedness, 

waiting for the new foliage with a great trust that the old has gone, 

and the new will soon be coming, 

and the new leaves will start growing. 

We have forgotten to wait, 

we want everything in a hurry.

 It is a great loss to humanity.... 

In silence and waiting 

something inside you goes on growing--your authentic being. 

And one day it jumps and becomes a flame, 

and your whole personality is shattered; 

you are a new man. 

And this new man knows what ceremony is,

 this new man knows life's eternal juices."
OSHO

(facebook) 

~o~ 

Sitting and waiting on Spirit - that's the new Doing. ;-)

Medallion Zafu

available at ZafuChi.etsy.com

zen is all inclusive

"Zen is all inclusive. 

It never denies - never says "no" to anything.

 It accepts everything 

and transforms it into a higher reality."

~Osho

~~0~~

Green Gingham Check Zafu Meditation Cushion

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becoming free...

To Become Free in an Unfree Society

"Man can be physically ill; then the physician, the doctor is needed.
Man can be psychologically ill; then a little help can be given by Freud and Jung and others.
But when man is existentially ill, neither a physician nor a psychiatrist can be of any help. Existential illness is spiritual. It is neither of the body nor of the mind, it is of the total – and the total transcends all parts. The total is not just a composition, a composition of the parts, it is something beyond the parts. It is something that holds all the parts into itself. It is a transcendence.

And the illness is existential. Man suffers from a spiritual illness."
~osho

you are already awake....

"One of the most important things to be understood about man is that man is asleep. Even while he thinks he is awake, he is not. His wakefulness is very fragile; his wakefulness is so tiny it doesn’t matter at all.
His wakefulness is only a beautiful name but utterly empty.
You sleep in the night, you sleep in the day – from birth to death you go on changing your patterns of sleep, but you never really awaken. Just by opening the eyes don’t befool yourself that you are awake. Unless the inner eyes open – unless your inside becomes full of light, unless you can see yourself, who you are – don’t think that you are awake. That is the greatest illusion man lives in. And once you accept that you are already awake, then there is no question of making any effort to be awake."
~Osho

bliss - as Joy, or as Peace...

"Anand means bliss, salama means peace. 

Bliss can have two expressions: either it can be an ecstasy, overflowing, 

or it can be silence, peace, stillness. If bliss flows outward it is ecstatic. 

If it simply remains in then it is peace, and peace is a higher state than ecstasy. 

Even if one has attained to ecstatic joy, one has to go one step more, 

because one cannot remain in ecstasy forever; it tires.

All kinds of excitement are tiring; although this is spiritual excitement, 

still it tires. It can't become a permanent state; you cannot live in it forever - 

you will have to rest.

But one can be in peace forever, so that seems to be more natural. 

Sufis are ecstatic - they dance, they sing. 

Buddha sits silently. 

There is no visible dance, there is no visible song, but there is utter peace. 

Even dance has been transcended. 

Even song has disappeared into silence.

So the dance that dances not is the highest, 

and the song that remains silent is the greatest - that is the song of the songs. 

But one has to begin with ecstasy. 

The right procedure is to begin with great ecstasy - dance, song, expression - 

and then slowly slowly to let all disappear into bliss."

 

~osho

response-ability...

"You don´t understand even the meaning of the word responsibility. 

The society has been so cunning. It has destroyed our most beautiful words, 

 given them distorted meanings. Ordinarily in your dictionaries "responsibility" means duty, 

doing things the way you are expected to do them 

by your parents, by your teachers, by your priests, by your politicians, by somebody else.

Your responsibility is to fulfill the demands made upon you by your elders and your society.

 If you act accordingly, you are a responsible person; if you act on your own ― individually ―

 then you are an irresponsible person. And your fear is: in acting spontaneously, here and now, there is a danger ― you may start acting individually. What will happen to your responsibility?

The fact is that "responsibility", the very word, has to be broken into two words.
It means "response ability". And response is possible only if you are spontaneous, here and now.
Response means that your attention, your awareness, your consciousness, is totally here and now, in the present. So whatever happens, you respond with your whole being. It is not a question of being in tune with somebody else, some holy scripture, or some holy idiot. It simply means to be in tune with the present moment.This ability to respond is responsibility."
~osho

to Love means to be yourSelf...

Love has to become your very quality, 

your very character, your very being, your radiance.

 Just as the sun radiates light not for anyone in particular,

 unaddressed, meditation radiates love unaddressed.
"Of course, first it is felt within oneself, for oneself, 

and then it starts radiating all around. Then you love

 not only human beings, you love trees, you love birds; you simply love, you are love
"You are asking, What does it mean to love myself?
"It means meditation.
"It means to be yourself.
"And nature will bring love as a reward.

~osho~

life is happening in you...

Life is not somewhere waiting for you, it is happening in you. 

It is not in the future as a goal to be arrived at, 

it is herenow, this very moment — 

in your breathing, circulating in your blood, beating in your heart. 

Whatsoever you are is your life, 

and if you start seeking meaning somewhere else, 

you will miss it. 

Man has done that for centuries.
~ Osho

on being alone...

"The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. 

It may look paradoxical to you, but it's not. 

It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone 

are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of another person--

without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, 

without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. 

They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, 

they will be as happy as they are now. 

Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, 

because it is not given by the other."
Osho

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compassion and love vs love and sex

“You simply think that you have a soul. 

You believe that you have a soul because of your fear of death. 

But you have not known unless you have loved. 

Only in love does one come to feel that one is more than the body, more than the mind. 

That’s why I say compassion is therapeutic. 

What is compassion? Compassion is the purest form of love. 

Sex is the lowest form of love, compassion is the highest form of love. 

In sex the contact is basically physical; in compassion the contact is basically spiritual.

 In love, compassion and sex are both mixed; 

the physical and the spiritual are both mixed. 

Love is midway between sex and compassion. 

You can also call compassion prayerfulness. 

You can also call compassion meditation. 

The highest form of energy is compassion. 

The word compassion is beautiful. 

Half of it is passion – 

somehow passion has become so refined that it is no longer like passion. 

It has become compassion.”

 Osho

non resistant non grasping - no push pull

"Whatever comes, do not push away, 

whatever goes, do not grieve. 

Everything appears just like clouds floating by; 

they just come and go. 

Stay only as the unmoving awareness. 

Awareness and truth are one."

~ Mooji

February 2014
www.mooji.org

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 "There is no conflict between the world and sannyas.
It is not the world but ignorance that one must renounce.
Giving up the world is not sannyas.
The awakening of knowledge, of self-knowledge, is sannyas.
This awakening leads to a renunciation, not of the world,
but of attachment to it.
The world stays where it is and as it is but we are transformed.
Our outlook is transformed. This transformation is very fundamental.
In this awakened state we do not have to give up anything. 
What is useless and superfluous automatically drops 
like the ripened fruit from a tree. 
Just as darkness disappears at the coming of light, a
t the dawn of knowledge impurities pass away 
and what remains thereafter is sannyas.
Sannyas has nothing to do with the world. 
It has to do with the self. It is the purification of the self.
It is just like the purification of alloyed gold."
 ~osho

Nobody can be miserly with love...

Nobody can be miserly with love.

Let me repeat it: nobody can be miserly with their love. Either one has love -- then it starts overflowing in its own time; you don't have to push it, you don't have to force it -- or one has not. When one has not, one can only pretend. Millions of people are doing that. Everybody is pretending to love and they have not known what love is.

Love can be known only as a fragrance of meditation, not before it. You have not known even the flower. You are not acquainted with the fragrance. Once the flower opens up, it is beyond the capacity of the flower to be miserly about fragrance -- what can it do? The fragrance will go with the winds, it will spread all over.

The flower cannot be miserly, neither can love be, because love also is a flower that grows in your meditation.... So you just enjoy being alone; this is your meditation. And the spring will come, it always comes. Trust existence. The flower will blossom, and love will flow from you. 

~osho~

existence is not a problem to be solved...

Existence is not a problem to be solved, it is a mystery to be lived. 

And you should be perfectly aware what the difference is between a mystery and a problem. 

A problem is something created by the mind; 

a mystery is something which is there, not created by the mind. 

A problem has an ugliness in it, like disease. A mystery is beautiful. 

With a problem, immediately a fight arises. 

You have to solve it; something is wrong, you have to put it right; 

something is missing, you have to supply the missing link. 

With a mystery there is no question like that. The moon arises in the night.... 

It is not a problem, it is a mystery. You have to live with it. 

You have to dance with it. You have to sing with it, or you can be just silent with it. 

Something mysterious surrounds you.

Be less of a judge and you will be surprised that when you become a witness 

and you don't judge yourself, you stop judging others too. 

And that makes you more human, more compassionate, more understanding.

 ~osho~