by Osho
Why do you seek precepts and principles? You may not have observed why. It is because with precepts you need not be alert. Suppose I make a precept out of non-violence and then I stick to it, or I make it a precept to be truthful and I stick to it. Then it becomes a habit and there is no need to be alert. I cannot speak lies because a habit, a principle, will always create a barrier.
Society depends on principles, on inculcating and educating the children with principles. Then they become incapable, really, of being otherwise. If a person becomes incapable, he is dead.
Your truth can be alive only if it comes through alertness, not through precepts and principles.
Each moment, you have to be alert in order to be true. Truth is not a principle; it is something born out of your alertness. Non-violence is not a principle; if you are mindful, you cannot be violent. But, that is difficult. You have to transform yourself.
It is easy to live according to principles, rules and regulations. Then you need not worry about being more alert and aware; you can follow the principles. Then you are just like a railway train running on the tracks. Those tracks are your principles. You are not afraid because you cannot miss the path. Really, you don't have any path; you have just iron rails on which your train is running. You will reach the destination, you need not be afraid. You will be asleep and the train will reach it. It is running on dead paths.
But, practice says that life is not like that, it is more like a river. It is not running on iron rails. The path has not even been charted before. As the river flows, the path is created. The river will reach the sea, and this is how life should be. Life is like a river. There is no pre-charted way; there are no maps to be given to you which are to be followed. Just be alive and alert, and then, wherever life leads, you go with full confidence in it. Trust in the life force. Allow it to lead you towards the sea.
Just be alert, that is all. While life leads you towards the sea, just be alert so that you don't miss anything. If you are alert, this life will be bliss. The very movement of the river is bliss in itself. Passing through the valleys, through the rocks, falling down from the hills, moving into the unknown is itself bliss.
The river is not simply going to meet the sea, it is "growing" to be the sea, and this is possible only through rich experience, alert experiences, moving, trusting. This is the human search. Of course, it is dangerous. If rivers could be run through predetermined paths, there would be less danger, fewer errors. But the whole beauty of aliveness would be lost.
So don't be a follower of precepts. Just be a creator of more and more awareness. The principles will happen to you, but you will never feel enclosed in them.
Showing posts with label Osho. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Osho. Show all posts
Look into your headache
After seeing Thay's video from yesterday, the mechanism underlying this technique to deal with physical pain, taken from the Orange Book by Osho, can be immediately grasped.
Next time you have a headache try a small meditative technique, just experimentally - then you can go on to bigger diseases and bigger symptoms.
...Sit silently and watch it, look into it - not as if you are looking at an enemy, no. If you are looking at it as your enemy, you will not be able to look rightly. You will avoid - nobody looks at the enemy directly; one avoids, one tends to avoid. Look at it as your friend. It is your friend; it is in your service. It is saying, "Something is wrong - look into it." Just sit silently and look into the headache with no idea of stopping it, with no desire that it should disappear, no conflict, no fight, no antagonism. Just look into it, into what it is.
Watch, so if there is some inner message, the headache can give it to you. It has a coded message. And if you look silently you will be surprised. If you look silently three things will happen. First: the more you look into it, the more severe it will become. And then you will be a little puzzled: "How is it going to help if it is becoming more severe?" It is becoming more severe because you have been avoiding it. It was there but you were avoiding it; you were already repressing it. When you look into it, repression disappears. The headache will come to its natural severity. Then you are hearing it with unplugged ears, no wool around your ears.
First thing: it will become severe. If it is becoming severe, you can be satisfied that you are looking rightly. If it does not become severe, then you are not looking yet; you are still avoiding. Look into it - it becomes severe. That is the first indication that, yes, it is in your vision.
The second thing will be that it will become more pin-pointed, it will not be spread over a bigger space. First you were thinking, "It is my whole head aching." Now you will see it is not the whole head, it is just a small spot. That is also an indication that you are gazing more deeply into it. The spread feeling of the ache is a trick - that is a way to avoid it. If it is in one point then it will be more severe. So you create an illusion that it is the whole head which is aching. Spread all over the head, then it is not so intense at any point. These are tricks that we go on playing.
Look into it and the second step will be that it comes to be smaller and smaller and smaller. And a moment comes when it is just the very point of a needle - very sharp, immensely sharp, very painful. You have never seen such a pain in the head. But very much confined to a small spot. Go on looking into it.
And then the third and more important thing happens. If you go on looking at this point when it is very severe and confined and concentrated at one point, you will see many times that it disappears. When your gaze is perfect it will disappear. And when it disappears you will have the glimpse of where it is coming from - what the cause is. When the effect disappears you will see the cause. It will happen many times. Again it will be there. Your gaze is no more that alert, that concentrated, that attentive - it will come back. Whenever your gaze is really there, it will disappear; and when it disappears, hidden behind it is the cause. And you will be surprised: your mind is ready to reveal what the cause is.
And there can be a thousand and one causes. The same alarm is given because the alarm system is simple. There are not many alarm systems in your body. For different causes the same alarm is given. You may have been angry lately and you have not expressed it. Suddenly, like a revelation, it will be standing there. You will see all your anger that you have been carrying, carrying... like pus inside you. Now this is too much, and that anger wants to be released. It needs a catharsis. Cathart! - and immediately you will see the heachache has disappeared. And there was no need for the aspro, no need for any treatment.
Next time you have a headache try a small meditative technique, just experimentally - then you can go on to bigger diseases and bigger symptoms.
...Sit silently and watch it, look into it - not as if you are looking at an enemy, no. If you are looking at it as your enemy, you will not be able to look rightly. You will avoid - nobody looks at the enemy directly; one avoids, one tends to avoid. Look at it as your friend. It is your friend; it is in your service. It is saying, "Something is wrong - look into it." Just sit silently and look into the headache with no idea of stopping it, with no desire that it should disappear, no conflict, no fight, no antagonism. Just look into it, into what it is.
Watch, so if there is some inner message, the headache can give it to you. It has a coded message. And if you look silently you will be surprised. If you look silently three things will happen. First: the more you look into it, the more severe it will become. And then you will be a little puzzled: "How is it going to help if it is becoming more severe?" It is becoming more severe because you have been avoiding it. It was there but you were avoiding it; you were already repressing it. When you look into it, repression disappears. The headache will come to its natural severity. Then you are hearing it with unplugged ears, no wool around your ears.
First thing: it will become severe. If it is becoming severe, you can be satisfied that you are looking rightly. If it does not become severe, then you are not looking yet; you are still avoiding. Look into it - it becomes severe. That is the first indication that, yes, it is in your vision.
The second thing will be that it will become more pin-pointed, it will not be spread over a bigger space. First you were thinking, "It is my whole head aching." Now you will see it is not the whole head, it is just a small spot. That is also an indication that you are gazing more deeply into it. The spread feeling of the ache is a trick - that is a way to avoid it. If it is in one point then it will be more severe. So you create an illusion that it is the whole head which is aching. Spread all over the head, then it is not so intense at any point. These are tricks that we go on playing.
Look into it and the second step will be that it comes to be smaller and smaller and smaller. And a moment comes when it is just the very point of a needle - very sharp, immensely sharp, very painful. You have never seen such a pain in the head. But very much confined to a small spot. Go on looking into it.
And then the third and more important thing happens. If you go on looking at this point when it is very severe and confined and concentrated at one point, you will see many times that it disappears. When your gaze is perfect it will disappear. And when it disappears you will have the glimpse of where it is coming from - what the cause is. When the effect disappears you will see the cause. It will happen many times. Again it will be there. Your gaze is no more that alert, that concentrated, that attentive - it will come back. Whenever your gaze is really there, it will disappear; and when it disappears, hidden behind it is the cause. And you will be surprised: your mind is ready to reveal what the cause is.
And there can be a thousand and one causes. The same alarm is given because the alarm system is simple. There are not many alarm systems in your body. For different causes the same alarm is given. You may have been angry lately and you have not expressed it. Suddenly, like a revelation, it will be standing there. You will see all your anger that you have been carrying, carrying... like pus inside you. Now this is too much, and that anger wants to be released. It needs a catharsis. Cathart! - and immediately you will see the heachache has disappeared. And there was no need for the aspro, no need for any treatment.
Introduction to the Path of Yoga, Part II - "Yoga is the Cessation of Mind"
1.2: "Yoga is the cessation of mind."
What is mind? Ordinarily we think that it is something inside the head. Patanjali doesn't agree. Mind is just an activity. You are walking and then you sit down. While you are sitting, no one can ask, "Where have you put your walking? Where has the walking gone?" You will laugh and say, "Walking is not something substantial. It is just activity." Mind is also activity, but because of the word "mind", it appears that something substantial is there. It is better to call it "minding" -- just like walking. Mind means "minding," mind means thinking. It is an activity.
Again and again I have been quoting Bodhidharma . . . . He went to
The very looking is anti-mind, because a look is not a thinking. And if you look intensely, your whole energy becomes a look.
Yoga is the cessation of mind. This is Patanjali's definition: when there is no mind, you are in Yoga; when there is mind, you are not in Yoga. So you may do all the postures but if the mind goes on functioning, if you go on thinking, you are not in Yoga. The basic thing to be understood is: when the activity of thinking is not there. . . then you are there. When thoughts have disappeared -- they are just like clouds -- when they have disappeared, your being, just like the sky, is uncovered. It has always been there -- only covered with clouds, covered with thoughts.
Now in the West there is much appeal for Zen -- a Japanese method of Yoga. The whole training of Zen is how to be, simply, without thinking. Try it! When I say try it, it will look contradictory, because if you try, the very trying, the effort, is coming from the mind. You can sit in a posture and you can try some chanting, a mantra, or you can just try to sit silently, not to think. But then "not to think" becomes the thinking. Then you go on saying, "I am not to think, stop thinking". But, this is all thinking.
When Patanjali says no-mind, cessation of mind, he means complete cessation. He will not allow you to make a mantra. He will say, "Simply stop!" But you will ask, "How? How can you simply stop?" The mind continues. Even if you sit, the mind continues. Patanjali says, "Then just look. Let mind do whatever it is doing. You just look. You don't interfere. You just be a witness. You just be an onlooker, not concerned -- as if the mind doesn't belong to you, as if it is not your business, not your concern. Just look and let the mind flow." If you don't cooperate, if you just look, unconcerned -- Buddha's word is upeksha, indifference, equanimity: looking without any concern -- the mind will flow for a while and it will stop by itself. When the momentum is lost, when the energy has flowed, the mind will stop. When the mind stops, you are in Yoga. You have attained the discipline.
Introduction to the Path of Yoga, Part I - "The Discipline of Yoga"
(by Osho)
Yoga is an inward turning. It is a total about-turn. When you are not moving into the future, not moving towards the past, then you start moving within yourself, you are present here and now. This moment is indicated by the first sutra of Patanjali:
1.1: "Now, the discipline of Yoga."
This "now" may not have come for you. Then I may go on talking about Yoga but you will not listen. You can listen only if the moment is present in you. Then you can enter Yoga. And then this entry will not be an entering into a mental, speculative phenomenon. This entry will be an entry into a discipline. The word "discipline" is beautiful. It comes from the same root as the word "disciple." "Discipline" means the capacity to be, to know and to learn.
All the Yoga postures are not really concerned with the body, they are concerned with the capacity to be. Patanjali says if you can sit silently without moving your body for a few hours, you are growing in the capacity to be. Why do you move? You cannot sit without moving even for a few seconds: your body starts moving, somewhere you feel itching, the legs go dead, many things start happening -- these are just excuses for you to move.
If you can remain in one posture, the body will become a slave; it will follow you. And, if the body is not moving, your mind cannot move, because mind and body are not two things. They are two poles of one phenomenon. You are not body and mind, you are bodymind. The mind is the subtlest part of the body. Or you can say the reverse, that body is the grossest part of the mind. So, whatever happens in the body happens in the mind and whatever happens in the mind happens in the body. If the body is non-moving, the mind is non-moving -- you are centered.
When you are centered, when you know what it means to be, then you can learn because then you will be humble. No false ego will cling to you because, once centered, you know all egos are false. Then you can surrender. Then you can bow down. Then a disciple is born. To become a disciple is a great achievement. Only through being centered will you become empty and the guru, the teacher, can come and reach you. Communication becomes possible. The teacher is not going to do anything. He is simply there, available. He flows like a river. If you are empty like a vessel, ready, open, he will flow in you.
Yoga is an inward turning. It is a total about-turn. When you are not moving into the future, not moving towards the past, then you start moving within yourself, you are present here and now. This moment is indicated by the first sutra of Patanjali:
1.1: "Now, the discipline of Yoga."
This "now" may not have come for you. Then I may go on talking about Yoga but you will not listen. You can listen only if the moment is present in you. Then you can enter Yoga. And then this entry will not be an entering into a mental, speculative phenomenon. This entry will be an entry into a discipline. The word "discipline" is beautiful. It comes from the same root as the word "disciple." "Discipline" means the capacity to be, to know and to learn.
All the Yoga postures are not really concerned with the body, they are concerned with the capacity to be. Patanjali says if you can sit silently without moving your body for a few hours, you are growing in the capacity to be. Why do you move? You cannot sit without moving even for a few seconds: your body starts moving, somewhere you feel itching, the legs go dead, many things start happening -- these are just excuses for you to move.
If you can remain in one posture, the body will become a slave; it will follow you. And, if the body is not moving, your mind cannot move, because mind and body are not two things. They are two poles of one phenomenon. You are not body and mind, you are bodymind. The mind is the subtlest part of the body. Or you can say the reverse, that body is the grossest part of the mind. So, whatever happens in the body happens in the mind and whatever happens in the mind happens in the body. If the body is non-moving, the mind is non-moving -- you are centered.
When you are centered, when you know what it means to be, then you can learn because then you will be humble. No false ego will cling to you because, once centered, you know all egos are false. Then you can surrender. Then you can bow down. Then a disciple is born. To become a disciple is a great achievement. Only through being centered will you become empty and the guru, the teacher, can come and reach you. Communication becomes possible. The teacher is not going to do anything. He is simply there, available. He flows like a river. If you are empty like a vessel, ready, open, he will flow in you.
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