RANT TOWARD ENLIGHTENED SPACE

(A Lost Art: Developing Masterhood of Oneself)

6/24/04

(revised 2/4/07)

 

 

 

Someone has recently asked me, “What has happened to you? Something has happened.”

 

“Nothing,” I said. “I’m just living life.”

 

Then I realized LOTS has happened to me, only it all has happened so slowly and gradually, it has felt like “nothing.”

 

Another friend has asked, “Have you dropped?” By this they meant was I still a Sannyasin, one of Osho’s disciples.

 

“Dropped what?” I asked, “The ego?” Then I smiled at them.

 

I personally believe “once a Sannyasin, always a Sannyasin,” even when one moves on to other things. Some things are just too powerful to “drop.” The consciousness is never quite the same afterwards. Indelible positive imprints remain seared into one’s consciousness for all of Eternity. However, I AM still a sannyasin and do Osho's meditations regularly with other sannyasins.

 

To me, enlightenment is a mysterious, yet natural phenomenon.

One could say,

Much Ado About Nothiness

 

 

My personal feeling is that if each and every one of us, no matter who we are on this planet, did meditation, we could become Enlightened Beings. I believe we all are Avatars. Every Master has said this, in each and every religion, as far as I can tell. They all say The Kingdom of Heaven Is Within....Answers Lie Within. Their compassionate love brought them to us, as examples, to show us Who We Are. It’s just a matter of removing a little bit of mud....under that mud is The Diamond. Meditation Cleans off All The Mud. The diamond is already underneath the mud, hidden.

 

How much more simple can it be?

 

Buddha has said All Sentient Beings in Existence have this Very Same Potential.

 

“Are you Enlightened?” someone once asked me.

 

“NO!” I answered. Then I wondered. Am I Enlightened? I don't know!!! I don’t even know what enlightenment is. I prefer to see Divinity in All things, rather than to go around Deifying myself or a few others, placing them on pedestals. Anyway, I have heard that Enlightenment Never Ends....one keeps transforming.

 

 

My Dog has much more patience than I have. He meditates night and day. Not only that, but he gives me

Unconditional Love! I am not in his league. He surpasses me, in this regard.

 

My pet birds are capable of Intelligent Speech. They often use words in Very Correct Contexts. Most people say they “parrot,” which they do, however, they also understand the meanings behind these words, and are capable of intelligent speech. Not only that, but they can FLY! That is something special. I can speak, but I cannot fly. So who is more evolved, here? Who is “more enlightened?”

 

I have also seen some insects which can walk and scoot around on water. Flies can walk up walls and even stand on the ceiling without falling. I certainly cannot do either one of those things.

 

 

 

 

 Hakuin has said, “All beings are from the very beginning Buddhas.”

 

ALL BEINGS. That means you and me.

 

I began attending some nearby Tibetan Buddhist Retreats with visiting Lamas and Rinpoches. One is in my neighborhood.This helped me. This has been very healing for me. Their energies are so similar to Osho’s. Relaxing into their womb-like sangha is healing me of my loss of Osho. Here, it isn't about any special teacher. It was all about The Teachings, the meditative energies, and About Us All getting Enlightened AS FAST AS POSSIBLE, for the sake of all sentient beings in existence.

 

I experienced the same familiar “hunger” for my own fulfillment as I had experienced with my master, Osho. The others in these Tibetan retreats also are Totally Open about their own hunger, including The Teachers!

 

Yet, all were humble and kind to each other. There were rules about this...vows, even.

Venerable Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche  

 

 

 

 

 

 

To quote both Hukuin and Osho,

“This very body the Buddha, this very place the Lotus Paradise.”

 

I sincerely hope we all will contribute to a more beautiful planet, leaving it a bit more beautiful than we found it.

 

 

 

 

Maybe some Bodhisattvas clean homes. Maybe they are helping an elderly person or rescuing animals. Perhaps they ask for help for others less fortunate than themselves. Or simply love their kids. One needn’t Become Enlightened, in order To Help. We can all start right where we are, Here-Now.

 

I have heard Osho say he will “be dissolved into his people.” That means ALL OF US!

 

I also heard him say “if you get enlightened, don’t tell anyone. Then you can do whatever you want.” Pretty good advice.

 

Hopefully we will start seeing more familiar names in Sarlo’s Guru Rating Service, as well as Silent Ones never heard of, and everything in between, peacefully coexisting, and Helping out Planet Earth through her Transition into her Golden Age.

 

 

Blessings to All. Liberation and Enlightenment for all sentient beings in Existence.

 

copyright Anupama Deanne Kallman AHA! STORIES

Excerpt from Osho(Bhagwan)'s out of print Book, The Silent Explosion:

What is the difference between an Enlightened Incarnation and a Realized Soul?

 

 

Me, Enlightened?

Osho: Be Still and Know, Chapter 10

Osho,
Today when you talked about your father, for the first time it became very clear and close for me that everybody, I also, can become enlightened. although you have said so many times that we are all Buddhas in the center, I always felt it very very far away. Suddenly all your teaching from the last two and a half years became immediate, maybe because your father was kind of close for me. I saw him in his house eating a chapati, saw him taking his morning walk through the ashram -- and he became enlightened! Too much! I want to tell you that I had a great realization in lecture.

Deva Kanchha, great truths take time to sink in. And this is the greatest of all, that you all are potentially Buddhas. It is impossible for your mind to accept it. You can accept somebody far away, a Siddhartha Gautam being a Buddha, a Jesus Christ, a Zarathustra, a Lao Tzu. They are so far away, millions of light years away; they have become mythological. They are no more thought to be real persons. They have lost all substance, they have become pure shadows -- pure poetry with no words, pure silence with no sound. You can imagine them, but you cannot feel them.

Hence, although I go on repeating again and again that you can become a Buddha...in fact you are a Buddha, unaware of the fact. On the circumference maybe there is a great storm, just as on the surface the sea is stormy -- sometimes more, sometimes less, but there are always waves, bigger or smaller; there is always turbulence, disturbance. But at the depth there is not even a ripple: all is silence.

You are the center of the cyclone, but you are not aware of your center. And down the ages priests have condemned you so much that it has become almost impossible for you to conceive of yourself as a Buddha. The priests have condemned you according to your circumference; they know only your circumference. In fact they are interested only in condemning you, so whatsoever they can condemn they see very predominantly in you. They choose that which can be condemned, because through condemnation you are reduced to slaves: slaves of religion -- Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Mohammedan, Jaina, Buddhist; and slaves of societies, cultures, civilizations, political ideologies -- communist, fascist, Gandhian.

The only way to reduce you to a slave is to condemn you so badly that you lose all self-respect. And it can be done because your circumference is there, and you also are aware only of the circumference. You are fast asleep snoring at the center. Only at the circumference are you a little bit awake, and that too because of the disturbance, noise. In the marketplace you are a little bit more alert.

When you sit silently in your meditation room you start falling asleep, because the only kind of alertness that you know is that which is created by the noise around you. You know only one kind of awareness, which is pathological because it is out of disturbance, not out of stillness.

That's why it is one of the basic experiences of all meditators that the moment they start meditating they start falling asleep. Hence the Zen Master has to walk amongst his disciples with a stick in his hand: whenever he sees somebody asleep, he hits him immediately. The hit you can understand, because it is on the circumference. Suddenly the energy rushes upwards in your spine, and you are awake, alert. The Zen tradition says that when the Master hits you, bow down to him in deep respect. He has obliged you; he has taken great trouble to hit you.

You know only one kind of alertness -- when you are hit, when you are in some danger, when you are in some accident. It is because of this that people go mountain climbing, because when they are climbing mountains and the danger is great they become a little alert. It is because of this that people compete in car races, because the speedier the car goes, the more danger is close by: death can happen any moment, you have to become alert.

Danger has an attraction. The only attraction of danger is that you become a little alert, but this is a superficial kind of alertness.

Real alertness has to happen at the center, otherwise you can remain alert on the circumference because of the noise, disturbance, but it is coming from others, it is not your own, and your center can go on sleeping.

I go on telling you this again and again. Why do I say it again and again? So that it can sink in and can reach your center. It takes time, and it takes a right moment.

My father's disappearance from the body may have been the right moment for you, Kanchha. Yes, he was a simple man, just like anybody else. So was Buddha and so was Mahavira and so was Jesus -- simple people, innocent people. He was not in any way extraordinary; that was his extraordinariness. I have known him from my very childhood -- so simple, so innocent, anybody could deceive him.

He used to believe anybody. I have seen many people cheating him, but his trust was immense; he never distrusted human beings although he was cheated many times. It was so simple to see that people were cheating him that even when I was a small child I used to say to him: "What are you doing? This man is simply cheating you!"

Once he built a house and a contractor was cheating him. I told him: "This house is not going to stand, it will fall, because the cement is not in the right proportion and the wood that is being used is too heavy." But he wouldn't listen; he said: "He is a good man, he cannot cheat us."

And that's what actually happened; the house could not stand the first rains. He was not there, he was in Bombay. I sent him a telegram telling him: "What I have been telling you has happened: the house has fallen." He did not even answer. He came when he was supposed to come, after seven days, and he said: "Why did you unnecessarily waste money on the telegram? The house had fallen, so it had fallen! Now what can I do? That contractor wasted ten thousand rupees and you wasted almost ten rupees unnecessarily -- those could have been saved."

And the first thing that he did was to celebrate that we had not moved -- because we had been going to move within two or three weeks. He celebrated: "God is gracious, he saved us. He made the house fall before we had moved into it." So he invited the whole village. Everybody was just unable to understand: "Is this a moment to celebrate?" Even the contractor was invited, because he had done a good job: before we moved, the house fell.

He was a simple man. And if you look deep down, everybody is simple. The society makes you complex, but you are born simple and innocent. Everybody is born a Buddha; the society corrupts you.

And the function of a Master is to take away all the corruption that the society has worked on you. the function of the Master is to undo that the society has done to you, and you will be a Buddha again.

The child when he is born functions from the center; we teach him how to function from the circumference. That is our whole educational system all over the world: teaching the child how to function from the circumference. We pull him away from his center, we make him more and more accustomed to the circumference, to living on the circumference...twenty-five years of conditioning, education: good names we have given to ugly things. We call it education -- it is not education, nothing can be a greater miseducation.

The very word "education" means drawing something out, to draw something out. When you draw water out of the well it is education. Just like that, when something is drawn outwards from your center it is education. But this is not what is going on in the name of education; it is forcing things upon you. It is not bringing your center to function. It is not sharpening your center; it is dulling it, making it more and more sleepy, dozy.

The society succeeds the day your center goes into a coma and your circumference remains functioning. Then you are a robot, a machine, no more a man.

Because we function from the circumference Buddhas look so unreal -- of course, because they function from a totally different center. That's why I say that unless you are in contact with a living Buddha, you will never believe that you can become a Buddha.

But a living Buddha also, slowly slowly, appears far away. It is because of your mind working; it is a strategy of the mind to save itself from going through that revolution. So you create a distance -- it is imaginary.

There is no distance between me and you, not at all. I am just a neighbor to you; not even a fence divides me from you. But you cannot believe it, because that is too dangerous for you, for your established pattern of life. You can't allow me too close; you will create a distance.

Pradeepa has asked a question: "Osho, whenever you quote Lao Tzu as saying: 'Everybody is clear, only I am muddleheaded,' I love it, because I am also muddleheaded. But there must be some difference between my muddleheadedness and Lao Tzu's."

There is none, Pradeepa. But you cannot believe it. Lao Tzu is exactly as muddleheaded as Pradeepa. Lao Tzu will agree with me, Pradeepa will not agree. There is the problem: how can Pradeepa agree that her muddleheadness...? Lao Tzu must be meaning something very mysterious, something of a totally different dimension.

No. Lao Tzu is simply saying there is no need to be a great genius to know God. God is available to all, unconditionally to all, categorically to all. You do not have to fulfill certain conditions, you do not have to rise to a certain level. God is available to you as you are, because God has become you. There is nobody else inside you. Just a look....

So it is beautiful in a commune, because when you live in a commune you live with people not knowing whether this man is going to become a Buddha; then one day suddenly the lotus opens: that man has become a Buddha. It gives you great courage. You know this man, he is just like you. You have been drinking tea with him, gossiping with him, reading the same newspaper, listening to the same radio, looking at the same TV, you have been to the same movie. You know him, inside and out; he was just like you. If he can become a Buddha, then why not you? In fact, his becoming a Buddha becomes the greatest uplifting force in your life.

That is the beauty of a commune, because many many people with whom you were working will one day become Buddhas. Somebody was working under you ...for example, one day Deeksha finds that the man who has been washing the pots has become a Buddha! Then Deeksha can believe that: "Although I am an Italian, and nobody has ever heard of any Italian becoming a Buddha, still I can become one."

Have you ever heard about any Italian...? At least I have not heard of it. But it is going to happen here, because this commune is ninety percent Italian: you eat Italian food, you drink Italian water -- everybody is turning ninety percent Italian. My effort in creating a commune is simply to make you alert and aware that one day the cobbler of the ashram becomes enlightened, another day the guard becomes enlightened, and people go on blossoming. Each blossoming brings new courage, new inspiration, and in that courage and inspiration your spring comes closer to you. A great self-respect arises, and a trust: "God has not forsaken us. If people like me are becoming Buddhas, then I am also on the way. Sooner or later...." And it is going to be sooner than later -- because if so many people start flowering, then the season has come and it is time not to resist. It is time not to fight any more, but to be in a let-go.

 

 

 

 

 WHAT IS ENLIGHTENMENT, ANYWAY?

To find out the answer, I'd suggest reading these books by Jed McKenna.

I find them to be stark, honest, humorous, wonderfully uncomfortable, and life-transforming!

 

 

 

 

 

Zazen Wasan Song of Zazen, by Hakuin

From the beginning, all beings are Buddha;
Like water and ice, without water no ice,
Outside us, no Buddhas.
How near the Truth, yet how far we seek!
Like one in water crying, "I thirst",
Like the son of a rich man
Wandering poor on this earth,
We endlessly circle the Six Worlds.
From dark path to dark path
We've wandered in darkness.
How can we be free from the wheel of Samsara?

The Perfection of freedom is Zazen-Samadhi,
Beyond exaltation, beyond all our praises,
The pure Mahayana.
Observing the precepts, repentance and giving,
The countless good deeds, and the Way of Right Living,
All flow from this Zen.
Even one meditation extinguishes evil;
It purifies karma, dissolving obstruction.
Then where are the dark paths to lead us astray?
The Pure Lotus Land is not far away.
Hearing this Truth, heart humble and grateful,
To praise and embrace it, to practice its wisdom,
Brings unending blessings, brings mountains of merit.

But if we turn directly, and prove our True Nature,
That true Self is no-self,
Our own Self is no-self,
We stand beyond ego and past clever words.
Then the gate to the oneness of cause-and-effect is thrown open:
Not two, and not three,
Straight ahead runs the Way.
Now our form is no-form,
So in coming and going we never leave home.
Now our thought is no-thought,
So our dancing and songs are the voice of the Dharma.
How bright and transparent the moonlight of Wisdom!
What is there outside us, what is there we lack?
Nirvana is openly shown to our eyes.
This earth where we stand is the Pure Lotus Land,
And this very body, the body of Buddha!

 

 

 

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anupama@ahastories.com

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