Tag: technoserene
Temper Tantrums
There once was a little boy who had a bad temper. His father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, he must hammer a nail into the fence. The first day, the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. Over the next few weeks, as he learned to control his anger, the number of nails hammered daily, gradually became fewer. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence. Finally, the day came when the boy didn’t lose his temper at all. He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper.
Days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone. The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence. He said, “You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they have a scar just like these.” You can put knife in a man and draw it out. It won’t matter how many times you say I’m sorry, the wound will always be there.
The Speaking Tree, Page: 06, 1, May, 2011
A Constant Civil War
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Don’t be stupid and get drawn into a war with your own self, warns OSHO
OSHOSPEAK
1. No one is divided; every one of us is one harmonious whole. There is just one camp, and that is you
2. Conflicts are created so that one part of you begins to fight with the other. Isn’t that stupid?
3. The body is an illusion; beyond matter is pure energy. Realise inner reality; become conscious
The past has created a constant civil war in every human being. The strategy that has been used is to divide you into two enemy camps: Zorba and the Buddha, the materialist and the spiritualist.
You are not divided in reality, for you are a harmonious whole. But the conditioning in your mind is that you are not whole; you have to fight against your body. If you want to be a spiritual being, the body has to be conquered, defeated, destroyed and tortured in every possible way.
Engineering Divisions
This has been the accepted ideology all over the world. In different cultures, different religions, the formulations may be different, but the basic rule is the same: divide man, create a conflict in him so one part starts feeling higher, becomes holy, and starts condemning the other part as the sinner.
The trouble is that you are one; there is no way to divide you. Every division is going to create misery in you. Up to now, humanity has lived in a schizophrenic (depression) way. Everyone has been cut into pieces, fragments. Your religions, philosophies and ideologies have not been healing processes; they have been the root causes of inner conflict and war.
Soul Versus Body
The west chose to go with Zorba. There was no other way to remain sane — one part had to be completely destroyed, forgotten. The West denied the inner reality of man, his consciousness: man is only a body, there is no soul.
Eat, drink and be merry is the only religion. This was simply a way to find some peace of mind, to get out of the conflict, to come to a decision and a conclusion — by accepting that you are one: just matter, just body.
The East has chosen the other way: you are the soul and the body is an illusion. Matter does not exist, the world is made of the same stuff as dreams are made of, so don’t be bothered about it…. It’s not worth taking note of. On the surface, it seems that East and West are doing different things, but they are not. Essentially, they are trying to find a rational way to be one. To be two, means a constant disease, a conflict.
East And West
Why have East and West chosen differently? The Eastern mind, in search of a unitary being, tried to find out all about inner consciousness. Why call the body illusory? To us the body seems real, and consciousness is just a word. The natural tendency will be to decide in favour of the body, because the body is there; consciousness you have to search for; you have to go into an inner pilgrimage.
People like Gautama Buddha and Mahavira were sincere. Their sincerity was so clear, their presence was so impressive, their words were authoritative. It was impossible to deny. These people were their own argument, their own validity. They were so peaceful and joyful, relaxed and fearless. Certainly, they had found a source within themselves. You cannot just deny it without giving to search. Unless you find that there is no consciousness; you cannot deny it.
All-pervasive Energy
We had people so fragrant…. The fragrance was so much that the East tried to look inside, and found taht the soul is far more real. The body is just an appearance. Modern science has come to the same conclusion — that matter is illusory, that matter does not exist, it only appears — from a very different route. They have found, as they reach deeper into matter, that it is less and less substantial. At a point after the atom there is no matter at all. There are only electrons, which are particles of electricity — which is not matter but energy.
The East moved inwards and found that the body, mater, is relatively non-substantial; the ultimate reality belongs to consciousness. In the East there has been at least ten thousand years of a constant, consistent search into the inner reality of man… all the genius fo the East has been devoted to it.
Beyond Enlightement, Osho International Foundation.
The Speaking Tree, Page No: 04, 3rd, April, 2011
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The Ways of Karma
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Every object in this universie is endowed with four characterstics — dharma, karma, prema and gyana. Of these, karma is the most talked about and the most misunderstood. The Bhagavad Gita says ‘Gahna Karmanyo Gathi‘, which means unfathomable are the ways of karma and yet it seems to be the only logic to explain this whole creation, its existence and the cycle of life and death.
Karma is beyond all logic and reasoning. The more you understand it, the more amazed you are. It causes people to be together or separate. It causes some to be weak and some to be strong. It makes some rich and others pooor. The literal meaning of karma is ‘action’. There are three types of karma — prarabha, sanchita and agami. The first is the latent karma which is karma as an impression or seed of action. The second is karma as an action, and the third is karma as a result.
Prarabha means ‘begun’; the action that is already manifesting and that is yielding its effect right now. You cannot avoid it or change it, as it is already happening. Sanchita is the gathered up or piled up karma, It is latent or manifested in the form of a tendency or impression in the mind. Sanchita karma can be burned off by spiritual practices before it manifests. Agami karma is the future karma of the action; that which has not yet come and which will take effect in the future. If you commit a crime, you may not get caught today, but will live with the possibility that, one day you may get caught.
Karma is also always bound by time, because every action has a limited reaction. If you do something good to people they will come to thank you and be grateful to you as long as they are experiencing the effect of your action.
If is often asked, “Why do good people suffer?” No good action will yield a bad result and no bad action will bring a god result. This is the law of karma. As you sow, so shall you reap.
Karma is that which propels reincarnation. Why are some people born in a very violent environment and others in comfortable environment? The stronger the impression, the greater the possibility of the next life being according to that . So, often you reincarnate like the person you hate or love. The mind which is full of different impressions leaves this body but the impressions wait for a proper situation to come back. So it is the last thought that is very important. Whatever you do throughout your life, in the last moment your mind should be free and happy.
Getting rid of karma means getting rid of impressions. Some karma can be changed and some cannot. As human beings we have the ability to erase fear through meditation. If you meditate, become hollow and empty, whatever the fear is will just dissolve and disappear.
Our perception of suffering, of good and bad, is always relative. God is absolute reality; witness of all. See God as a movie director, rather than as a judge. He has no ill feeling for the villain and no special favour for the hero. Each one is playing his role. Live with the karma and not be attached to it. Awareness, alertness, knowledge and meditation will help erase past impressions. It has the strenght to dissolve and destroy any karma and bring freedom to you.
— Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
The Speaking Tree, Page No: 18, 13, April, 2011
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Try To Figure Out Love
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You cannot measure love; and love does not diminish when you share it, says OSHO
“When the whole is taken from the whole, behold, the remainder is whole” — Ishavasya
OSHOSPEAK
1. Arithmatically speaking, If I take ten rupees from a safe full of millions, the total will be less.
2. When you give love and feel a sense of loss, know that what you gave wasn’t love
3. As you give love freely, the love within you begins to grow and you experience infinite love.
From the point of view of ordinary arithmetic this is absolutely incorrect. If we remove some part of a thing, the remainder cannot be the same as it was originally. Something less will remain. If I take ten rupees from a safe conatining millions of rupees, the total will be something less. It will be less even if ten paise are taken out. The remainder cannot be equal to the amount as it originally was. Similarly, however great the fortune may be, ten paise added will make it greater. But according to this sutra, the whole may be taken from the whole, not just ten paise but the entire fortune, and still the remainder is whole.
This seems like the babbling of a madman whose knowledge of arithmetic is nil. Even a beginner knows that a thing will be less if something is taken from it, no matter how little is taken; and if the whole is taken, there will be nothing left at all. But this sutra declares that not just something, but the whole, remains. Those who know only the logic of the money-box will certainly not understand this phenonmenon. Understanding appears from an altogether new direction.
Give To Have More
Does your love decrease when you give it to someone? Do you experience any shortage of love when you give it totally? No! ‘Love’ is the word we need to come to an understanding of this sutra; this is the word we shall have to use. However much you may part with your love, what you are left with remains as much as it was originally. The act of giving it away produces no shortage. On the contrary, it grows, increasing as you give it away, entering you deeper and deeper as you distribute it more and more. As you give it freely away, the wealth of love within you begins to grow. One who gives his total love, freely and unconditionally, becomes the possessor of infinite love.
Simple arithmetic can never comprehend that when the whole is taken from the whole, the remainder is whole. Only love can find the meaning in this statement. Perhaps, through Meera and Chaitanya you can find your way to understanding, for this is a subject relating to some other, unknown dimension, in which nothing decreases when given away. The only experience you have that can enable you to understand this in a sudden flash of insight is love.
If, having given your love, you experience a sense of loss, then know that you have no experience of love at all. When you give your love to someone, and feel within you that something has disappeared, then know that what you gave must have been something else. It cannot be love. It must be something belonging to the world of dollars and pounds. It must be a measurable thing which can be valued in figures, weighed in a balance and estimated in metres. Remember, whatever is measurable is subject to the law of diminution. Only that which is immeasurable and unfathomable will remain the same no matter how much is taken from it.
Drop Your Delusion
If someone loves me, I want that she love no one else, because my reasoning says that love divided is love diminished. So I seek to become sole owner and possessor of her love. My demand is that the person loving me give not even a loving glance to anyone else; such glance is poison because “I know” that now her love for me will begin to diminish. If I cling to this notion of love diminishing, I need to accept that I have no idea what love is. If I had any appreciation of true love, I would want my beloved to go out, and give it freely to the whole world, because through so giving it she would come to understand its secrets and mysteries, and as she falls deeper and deeper into love, her love towards me, too, would overflow. Love is immeasurable. Drop your delusion that true love diminishes when it is shared.
The Heartbeat of the Absolute,
Ishavasya Upanishad. Courtesy Osho Intl. Foundation.
The Speaking Tree, Page No: 04, 10, April, 2011
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Magic of Meditation
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Often, stress remains in the system. Focus on the rhythm of your breath that is linked to the state of the mind, says Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Once Mullah Naseeruddin met with an accident and he landed in a hospital. He had band-aid all over his face. One of his friends came and asked him, Mullah how are you doing? He said, “I am fine. Only it hurts when I laugh.” The friend then asked Mullah, “How can you laugh being in this condition?” Mullah replied, “If I don’t laugh now I have never laughed in my life.”
Undying enthusiasm is one aspect of being in perfect health. To be able to be in that state, the mind should be in that state, the mind should be stress-free and tension proof. Half of our health we spend in gaining wealth and then we spend that wealth to gain back our health. This is not economical.
Nature has provided us with an inbuilt mechanism — sleep. Sleep is very important as that is when the body releases stress and energy gets recuperated. To some extent, sleep takes care of the fatigue. But most of the time, stress remains in the system. For tackling these kinds of stresses, there are techniques of pranayama and meditation which focus on the rhythm of breath that is linked to the state of the mind.
Human beings hold onto stress. When You are stressed, you frown. Whenever you frown, you use 72 nerves and muscles in your face. But when you smile, you use only four. So you give more work to your face every time you frown. More work means more stress. Stress also makes your smile disappear. What if some failure happens here and there? Every failure is a big step for success. If you have the skill, you can turn any situation around by inducing a little humour in it. Humour is a very good greasing for avoiding stress.
The stress and tension in society today calls for meditation. The busier you are, the lesser time you have, the lesser time you have, the more desires and ambitions you have — all the more is the need to meditate. Because meditation not only relieves you of stress and strain, it also enhances your abilities, strengthens your nervous system and mind. Not only does it eliminate stress and tensions, release toxins from the body, soothes the mind, it also makes you more capable and enhances you in every way.
If you want to be happy and healty, just meditate.
–Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Founder, The Art of Living Foundation
Times Wellness, Page: 01, 7, April, 2011
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Friends & Enemies
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The ego, or individual self-sense, is both your best friend and your worst enemy. It is your best friend and your worst enemy. It is your best friend because, in the most positive sense, it represents your capacity to individuate — to see yourself as a unique, autonomous entity and to bear witness to your own experience with some measure of objectivity. Individuation is what makes it possible for you to be a conscious agent of evolution, a vessel for Spirit in action. The more profound our individuation, the more powerfully Spirit can shine through us. However, ego is also our worst enemy. And this is because, for too many of us, over-identification with our seperate individuality obscures the deeper and higher spiritual dimensions of our being. It is very important to understand this paradoxical nature of the ego if you, as an individual, want to take responsibility for creating the future, as yourself.
–Andrew Cohen
The Speaking Tree, Page: 02, 3, April, 2011
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Winning And Losing
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Winning and losing are a part of life. The are two sides of the same coin. Winning and losing come in cycles; neither is permanent. Today’s victor is tomorrow’s or yesterday’s loser. And today’s loser might well be the champion next year or the next. While we are fully aware of this, we continue to crave for victory and live in dread of losing, although we know in our heart of hearts that one is invariably followed, with the passage of time, by the other.
The feeling of happiness and joy that any victory brings is basically felt and enjoyed by our ego. Our true Self knows neither victory nor loss. The atman or soul is beyond the duality of good an bad, right and wrong, winning and losing. But the human mind and ego exult when it can do something better than the other person or other team. And sometimes it becomes difficult to conclude whether our win or their loss causes greater satisfaction.
Just as victory brings extreme emotions, so does defeat. How often we have seen that today’s heroes become tomorrow’s non-heroes or villains? Today’s idols are smashed tomorrow, when they fail to perform. Such is the price of celebrity status; such is the price of victory.
What about the loser? We owe a great deal to the loser, for withuot a loser, there cannot be a winner. Imagine if all other teams from other parts of the world stopped playing cricket, then where would we be? There would be no contests and no victories to celebrate or defeats to ponder over. A good performance is inspired by competition and from learning from the experience of others.
Swami Vivekananda used to say “Let not the giver feel proud, for he can give only when there is someone to receive. Let the giver kneel down and let the receiver stand erect, during the act of giving and receiving. For the giver is blessed to find a receiver”. In the same vein, let the winner have respect for the loser, for without the loser, the winner too disappears.
When someone loses, there are enough people to ridicule, criticise and berate the losing team members. It is ironical that the seeds of defeat are actually sown during the act of winning, whether it is a sporting encounter or a personal feud, because the losers are already getting together and planning their next move, their come-back, so that they can regain their lost glory. It is only a matter of time before the tables are turned, before the tide is reversed, and the winner is on the losing side.
While giving full credit to the winners, one question that comes up is: “Is it possible to play, enjoy the game, have fun, but not have losers and winners?” This is true for all examinations and competitions. That would really be something to look forward to . Because if we are going to win at someone else’e cost, it is only a partial victory.
For a total or abslute victory, everyone should be a winner, something that is of course not routinely possible, but something we can think about for the future, where encounters are not only winners, no loser. And ther is still the possibility of feeling excited and elated.
The Speaking Tree, Page: 20, 2, April, 2010
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It’s All About Feeling
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Is it possible to increase your happiness or success by pushing your “energypendulum” in the direction you want it to go – towards more possessions, greater fame, and more intense pleasure? Doesn’t the pendulum always swing back in the opposite directioin?
There are times in this ceaseless cycle of hope and disappointment when we feel repelled by the sheer monotony of it all. Finding ourselves no longer attracted by the excitement of a meaningless chase, we long for rest. But only if rest is sought within can lasting peace be really ours. Any rest we find outwardly – in retirement, let us say, to a quit cottage by the sea – is as temporary as our emotional joys and sorrows. That “peace” ends when we come to experience it as boredom. When this happens, we set out once again on our former quest for excitement. And so – interminably – it goes on.
Everything in existence is balanced by its polar opposite. Heat is balanced by cold, light by darkness, and positive by negative. In humankind, duality is found in the opposites of male and female, joy and sorrow, love and hatred. Wherever one quality exists, its complementary opposite will also be found.
The overall level of an ocean is not altered by the height of the waves at its surface. The higher the wave, the deeper is its trough. Our essential consciousness, similarly, remains unaffected by our emotional ups and downs. Pleasure and pain, success and failure, fulfilment and disappointment – these are but waves on the surface of calm, intutive feeling.
The Law of Duality is present in our lives, too. Because our emotions are tied to the post of egoconsciousness, every joy that we experience emotionally must be balanced in our own emotions by an equal and opposite sorrow. Every personal success must be balanced by an equally personal failure; every personal fulfilment must be balanced by a corresponding personal disappointmet.
The only state in which joy and other positive feelings are not balanced by opposites is in the state of superconsciousness. There, waves of emotion subside in calm, intuitive feeling. Joy, love and peace are realised, then, as absolutes, not as relativities, for they are attributes of Pure Consciousness.
Calm feeling is intution. When that calm feeling is disturbed, it becomes emotion. Until clarity of feeling is achieved, the one who meditates will be forever vacillating in purpose. Without devotion, indeed, in the form of deep yearning for the truth, you will not feel the incentive even to try to meditate deeply. Wisdom without devotion is like knowing that there is a good restaurant next door, and even committing its entire menu to memory, but not being hungry enough to go there and eat. The feeling quality is what makes it possible to commit oneself to the spiritual search.
When people think of the pure consciousness of God, they usually visualise an abstract mental state. Feeling is absent. Yet there is nothing inspiring, surely, about such abstractions. For, without love, how can we identify the fog with God? Feeling is as intrinsic to awareness as heat is to fire.
The Speaking Tree, Page: 16, 1, April, 2011
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YOUR MIND YOUR BODY
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As we move deeper and deeper to the straight in the meditatioin, we will pass through our inner bodies i.e. physical body, subtle body, causal body and the super causal body.
Swami Vivekananda rightly says in his lecture. “There is the soul, and inside this soul is all powers will be unfold. all knowledge in the soul, to lessen the misery…. all unhappines is caused by our not having mastery over the body…”
Swami Vivekananda, Sanfrancisco, April 5, 1900
The world of the mind seems very different from the one inhabited by our bodies. The psychic space inside our heads in infinite and ethereal; it seems obvious that it must be made of different stuff than all the other organs. Cut into the body, and blood pours forth. But slice into the brain, and thoughts and emotions don’t spill out onto the operating table. Love and anger can’t be collected in a test tube to be weighed and measured.
The brain is just another organ, albeit more intricate than the rest. The thoughts and emotions that seem to color our reality are the result of complex electro chemical interactions within and between nerve cells. The disembodi voices of schizophrenia and the feelings of worthlessness and self hatered that accompany depression, although they seem to be based on reality, are no more than distortions in brain electrochemistry. Researchers are learning how these distortions arise, how to lessen their severity and , in some cases, how to correct them.
Scientists are also learning something else. Not only is the mind like the rest of the body, but the well-being of one is intimately interwined with that of the other. This makes sense because they share the same systems-nervous circulatory, endocrine and immune. What happens in the pancreas or liver can directly affect brain function. Disorders of the brain, conversely, can send out biochemical shock waves that disturb the rest of the body.
MEDITATION MEANS
~ Becoming detached from the Mind
~ Becoming a witness of the Mind
~ Looking at the Mind as separate from you
~ That’s what actually it is
~ You can see through passing by
~ You can see the whole traffic that goes on in the mind
~ The memories, the fantasies, the past, the future all kinds of things are passing
~ You can just stand by the side of the road.
The Story of Life, Page: 44, Jan-March 2011
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