The art of living by Osho

If to love one person is so beautiful, how much more will it be to love the whole existence? That's prayer. One need not believe in god to be able to pray. First one has to know prayer.

This is from unpublished transcript of an audio recording of Osho’s talk (called as Darshan Diary) with his disciples on 21st July 1980 at Chuang Tzu Auditorium, Pune, India and new sannyasins titles as ‘The Golden Wind’.

It is my effort to get such selected talks published on such platforms so that thirsty people could be benefitted. My comments are included in italics and within brackets are to bring more clarity from my experiences.

Osho:-

Religions have not been able to create a synthesis between bliss and peace. It has been one of the greatest problems in the past, because they failed in creating a synthesis they failed in creating the whole man, because a man can be peaceful but if he is not blissful his peace is utter coldness; it is more death than life. It is the peace of a cemetery, the peace that prevails in a grave. It is convenient to others but to oneself it is suicidal.

Society prefers that kind of peace because then you are no more a nuisance to anybody. Society really wants you to be dead, not alive. The whole effort is how to kill you and yet use you as an efficient mechanism. And society has succeeded in that: it has destroyed aliveness and replaced it with mechanical efficiency.

Its whole interest is in protection, even at the cost of life. It is more interested in commodities than in human growth. Hence society goes on preaching to people to be peaceful, to be obedient, to be undisturbing to anybody, and it praises such peace as if it is something divine, something of ultimate value.

But one call become peaceful in this way only if one is stupid, if one can't see the cost that he is paying for such a dead peace which is not worth anything at all. He is losing his freedom, his intelligence, his joy, his love, his whole quality of being adventurous.

His whole being is lost; he becomes a convenient cog in the wheel, a replaceable part. If A dies he can be replaced by B, if B dies he can be replaced by D or C, anybody, because they are not individuals, they were only functionaries. And all the religions have tried for this. There has been a conspiracy between the priest and the politician to destroy humanity.

A few people have rebelled against this, and it is good that a few people rebelled, but then they fell into another extreme. They dropped the whole idea of peace as useless, worthless, as a political strategy to dominate, and they were not ready to be dominated by anybody. They chose to be blissful, joyous. But a bliss without peace is feverish; it is excitement but tiring and ultimately there is no fulfilment in it. It keeps you hot, burning hot; it gives an intensity to your life. And if this is the only possibility, to choose between a cold peace and a hot bliss, then I will say choose hot bliss.

At least you will be alive -- feverish but alive; you will go crazy but you will be alive! You are bound to go insane sooner or later, but at least you will be alive! If this is the only alternative then I am all for bliss.

But it is not the only alternative; it is the other extreme.

My effort here is to create a higher synthesis in which peace and bliss are two aspects of the same coin.

When a tremendously beautiful phenomenon happens: you have bliss but you are not hot and you have peace but you are not cold.

You are exactly in the middle, neither hot nor cold, If you compare this state of being exactly, precisely in the middle with one extreme, cold, then you can call it warm; if you compare it with the other extreme of being hot, you can call it cool. Because it is exactly in the middle it is both warm and cool -- cool compared to cold, warm compared to hot. But it is both together: it is peaceful bliss or blissful peace.

Then your being is whole, you are rooted in wholeness. You are not partial, you are not lopsided. It is not that you have chosen one part at the cost of the other; you have chosen both in a higher synthesis. You have transcended both throughthe synthesis.

To be exactly in the middle of any two extremes is transcendence -- synthesis and transcendence. Both are there and yet the extremity of both is lost. To know it is to know god. To know it is to know all.

If you repress all the factors that destroy peace you are never the master of the situation because your whole state is false: you are a slave of all that you have repressed.

Repression never brings mastery. That is one of the most fundamental things to be understood: repression creates slavery.

A man who represses sex will become more sexual, pervertedly sexual, than the normal sexual human being.

Hence monks and nuns and all kinds of repressed people are more sexual. They dream and they think only of sex and nothing else. There is a constant undercurrent of sexuality within them and they are afraid of it. And they think they represent humanity so they go on telling people beware of sex. It is the greatest danger, the greatest temptation of the devil. It is a temptation to them, but they know only themselves and they think they are representatives. They are not -- they are perverted people.

To them sex is the most tempting thing in the world because they have repressed it and it is constantly hammering on their heart: 'Release me!'

The energy becomes stronger the more you accumulate it. It continuously forces itself to find a way out, and it is bound to find a way out, if not from the front door then from the back door. Then some kind of perversion —homosexuality, lesbianism... They are all somehow related to religion; their origin is in religion.

It is the repressive religion that has created those things, and then it condemns them.

The whole problem is 'the more you repress' the more you become afraid; the more you become afraid, the more you repress and the more you condemn. It becomes a vicious circle, and you go on moving faster and faster in the vicious circle.

The same is true about everything. If you repress your tensions you can attain to a very superficial peace, but you will not be the master of it, you will be only a slave.

And you will know that at any moment your peace can be lost. It is not even skin-deep, it is an absolute farce. You know that perfectly well because you have repressed all that is against it and it is there, and it goes on accumulating energy. Just a thin layer of peace exists and you are sitting on a volcano. How can you be a master?

To be a master of peace means you have not repressed anything but you have tried to understand everything and through understanding comes mastery.

This is the magic of understanding: whatsoever you have understood rightly has no more any power over you.

This is the miracle that I teach to my sannyasins. I don't teach any discipline. I believe in magic rather than in discipline. This is the magic: that if you try to understand anything... If you try to understand anger and if you come to a deep understanding of your anger, anger disappears, evaporates just like dewdrops in the early morning sun.

Your understanding functions like the rising sun and dewdrops evaporate. You need not do anything -- just the presence of an understanding consciousness....

And that's what meditation is all about: creating an integrated consciousness so that you can watch everything undisturbed, unprejudiced, without any a priori conclusions, without being for or against from the very beginning just watching it silently without any interpretation, just looking at anger, at jealousy at possessiveness, at sexuality, everything that disturbs your peace -- and there are hundreds of things. You have to use the same method -- that of detached observation -- and you have to go to the very root of everything unafraid. There is no need to be afraid and there is no need to be in a hurry; it needs patient observation.

When you have reached the very root of any problem you will be surprised: at that very moment, when you touch the rock bottom of its causes, it disappears; you are finished with it. And a tremendous energy which was entangled in the problem, which was imprisoned by the problem is released. The more problems you go on solving, the more powerful you go on becoming.

This is how one day one becomes a master. Then peace comes, but it comes naturally, spontaneously.Then it is not only a superficial thing, then it is your whole being. And whenever peace is your whole being, whenever your are the master of it, it brings bliss with it automatically.

You can try to reach through peace, and bliss will come and love will come and compassion will come and a tremendous understanding of other people's lives, forgiveness, a great humility, humbleness, egolessness, truthfulness, sincerity, authenticity; they will all bloom. Just reach from any one angle... or try to reach from love or try to reach from compassion; it does not matter.

There are many doors to the temple of god, but at every door you will need the same key to unlock it -- and that is meditation, that is awareness.

And when you reach the temple, suddenly you see that all others who were trying and working on other doors have also arrived, and you have arrived at the same centre.

Jesus and Buddha and Krishna and Mohammed and Lao Tzu and Zarathustra all meet at the very centre.

The doors were so different and they were knocking on different doors and they were arguing when they were at the doors that 'I am right' or 'You are right' or ‘Who is right.' But as they enter inside they suddenly know all doors are right.

And the miracle of miracles is that they were all using the same key. The doors were different, the shape of the locks were different but they were using the same key.

Jesus says to his disciples again and again, ‘Beware!' Beware means be aware.

Buddha says to his disciples continuously, day in, day out, year in, year out... for forty-two years he was teaching a single word, ‘right-mindfulness', another name for awareness.

Krishnamurti simply calls it awareness.

Gurdjieff used to call it 'self-remembering'; that is a Sufi word for Jikr or dikr.

Kabir simply called it surati, ie remembrance. There is no need to call it self-remembrance because when you are in a state of remembrance it is naturally of the self, of the centre.

These are different words but they are for the same key.

Bliss is not something that can be added to you. It is not an achievement. it is already inside you. You have brought it with your very life; it is intrinsic to your being. It needs unfoldment. It is like a bud: just a little effort and it can become a flower. In the morning when the sun rises buds start becoming flowers.

The same happens with meditation in the inner world, in the inner garden of the soul. As your awareness rises, awareness gives some inner warmth. One can almost feel it. When it starts awakening in you you can see some energy moving within you, moving upwards against gravitation. The higher it comes, the more you can feel it. And as your inner world becomes warm and full of light, many buds start becoming flowers.

Suddenly the spring is there.

Bliss is the first flower to open and then many other things follow, as if bliss opens the doors of the temple. The first is bliss and the last is the experience of godliness, and between the two there will be many flowers.

Love and prayer are two expressions of the same energy.

Love is more earthly, prayer is more unearthly, but the experience is the same. Love has a limitation to it; it is person to person.

Prayer is unlimited, it is from a person to the impersonal existence. And it is so, that it is from the person to the impersonal existence only in the beginning because when you relate with the impersonal existence your person is lost.

It is like a dewdrop slipping into the ocean: it cannot remain, it is bound to lose its boundaries. It will become the ocean. It is not losing anything, it is gaining everything, but the old identity will be gone.

But the problem is, unfortunately very few people know what love is -- what to say about prayer?

That's why prayer has become almost non-existential.

Even love is experienced by very few people, rare people, because love also demands many essential things before you can experience it. If your mind is full of anti-love attitudes it is impossible for love to exist. It cannot co-exist with jealousy, with possessiveness, with ego, with hatred, with anger; it cannot co-exist.

They are all anti-love phenomena; they destroy the very possibility of love.

But mind is very inventive. If it cannot find the real thing it always invents something plastic and befools himself.

Man is so clever in befooling that not only does they befool others, they befools themselves too.

If one cannot grow real roses then they go to the market and purchases plastic flowers. They look like roses but they are not roses. But in a way they are very convenient: you don't need to grow them, you don't need to bother about them, you don't need to labour for them, you don't need any patience.

To grow in real love needs guts; it is risky, it is dangerous. Its requirements are great; it demands, it challenges you. And you have to drop many things to become worthy of it.

The first thing to be dropped is the ego -- and we cling to it.

We would like to have love with our ego intact.

I have heard: A film actress was getting married to another film actor. When they were in the court just signing in the magistrate's presence for their marriage contract, as the man signed the woman said 'No, I don't want this marriage!'

The magistrate could not believe it.

He said 'What has happened? Nothing has happened!

You have both come, you just signed!'

But she said 'I want to apply for divorce''

And the magistrate said 'Can I ask what has happened? -- because I was here.

Nothing has happened, not even a single word between you both!'

She said 'Everything has happened. Look, he has signed with such big letters, I cannot tolerate it!

He is trying to show his male chauvinistic attitude. I have signed just as one should sign.

And look!'

And really the magistrate also saw that he had signed over the whole page.

This is the beginning of marriage!

But that's exactly how it is. People may not sign so legibly, so manifestedly, but deep down they are all exhibitionists, all egoists.

They are trying to move into a love affair, but they are not ready to drop their egos at all, so immediately their egos start conflicting.

For centuries marriage remained intact because man had killed the woman's ego completely. Not that it was killed, it went underground, that's all; it worked in an underground way. The woman became very subtle in her egoistic demands, hence the nagging and all kinds of feminine strategies. She had to invent them because the man would not allow her ego any direct expression; she had to find indirect ways, but she had to show the man who the real master was.

And every day in every house the whole problem is: who is the master?

It is almost impossible to decide because the whole thing is nonsense.

If love is there nobody is the master, love is the master. You both disappear into love. Neither the man is master nor the woman is master -- love possesses both.

But nobody is ready for that. They would like to possess love and the object of love. Hence the man tries to reduce the woman to a commodity and the woman also tries to reduce the man to a commodity, and they have both succeeded.

So the woman has become only a means for sexual exploitation and the man has become the means for economic exploitation.

The woman is very loving when the payday comes close by; then she is very loving!

Once she has got hold of the pay, then who cares?

Then for twenty-ninedays you are nobody!

And the man is very loving only when there is a sexual need, otherwise he is not interested at all. Once he has made love to the woman he turns on his side and goes to sleep; he does not even bother whether the woman has enjoyed it or not, whether she has attained any orgasm or not; it is none of his concern.

His sexual tension is released, that's all -- he used the woman, and because there is a disparity between man and woman, man comes quickly to orgasm and the woman cannot come so quickly.

So almost always she is just a means, she is not a partner.

She is being used and she knows it, that's why she suffers.

Love does not exist, and because love does not exist everything else higher than love is impossible.

Then people go to the churches and their prayer is false.

Prayer is the ultimate flowering of love, it is the fragrance of love.

A man who has known love deeply, intensely, who has been able to drop his ego, jealousy, possessiveness and all nonsense will naturally move towards prayer.

If to love one person is so beautiful, how much more will it be to love the whole existence?

That's prayer.

One need not believe in god to be able to pray. First one has to know prayer then one is bound to believe in god -- but prayer comes first, god is second, secondary.

In the false world god comes first; you have to believe in god. That means plastic -- belief means plastic. And then you pray; you are praying to your own belief. Then you can make a statue of god or anything that you like -- it is your own toy. And you can compose a beautiful prayer or other experts, the priests, can compose it or you can find it from the ancient sources -- but they are all man-made. The whole of religion is man-made, hence it is false.

The real religion arises out of love, naturally. Then it is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Mohammedan.

My sannyasins are neither Hindu nor Christian nor Mohammedan. They belong to a totally new vision of religion: a religionless religion, just a religiousness, not a religion at all, not a church or a dogma or a creed but an overflowing love which becomes prayer. And ultimately prayer reveals god to you. Then it is not a belief -- it is a revelation.

-Osho, The Golden Wind, #21, Copyright Osho International Foundation, Pune, India

My suggestions:-

Awareness Meditation is the way worked for me and I tried it first during brushing my teeth in the morning after trying 8-10 meditations over period of 15 years! So there is no need to reinvent the circle for you. May be you too find it suitable otherwise with Dynamic meditation and/or Kundalini in the evening it is suitable for most of the people. There are 110 other meditation techniques discovered by Indian Mystic Gorakhnath about 500years before and further modified by Osho for contemporary people that one can experiment and the suitable one could be practiced in routine life.

Hi ….. I write my comments from my personal experiences of my inner journey. This post may include teachings of Mystics around the world which from my personal experience I found worth following even today. For more have a look at my linktree website for getting regular updates through social media lor subscribe to YouTube channel or listen to the podcasts etc.

For references of content on Osho, Copyright © OSHO International Foundation, An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho(dot)com or you can listen or watch his discourses @ OSHO International channel of YouTube where you can get subtitles in language of your choice or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library. Many of Osho’s books are available online at Amazon.