(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.
Showing posts with label ego. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ego. Show all posts
Ego and Desires
(by unknown)
The Buddha says there is nothing to be desired, desires are futile. Just imagine, if there is no desire within you, what will you be? If all desires go, you simply disappear. Not that you will not exist -- you will exist, but as an emptiness; no one is there, just a nothingness. Your ego is nothing but desires; there are millions of them, they make you. If you go on pulling out desires one by one, a moment will come when there is no desire left. You have disappeared, just vacant space remains.
Unless you are completely gone, silence cannot descend on you. You cannot be silent because you are the problem; you cannot be peaceful because you are the struggle. When you are not, silence will be there, peace will be there, bliss will be there. The emptiness itself is bliss.
The Buddha says there is nothing to be desired, desires are futile. Just imagine, if there is no desire within you, what will you be? If all desires go, you simply disappear. Not that you will not exist -- you will exist, but as an emptiness; no one is there, just a nothingness. Your ego is nothing but desires; there are millions of them, they make you. If you go on pulling out desires one by one, a moment will come when there is no desire left. You have disappeared, just vacant space remains.
Unless you are completely gone, silence cannot descend on you. You cannot be silent because you are the problem; you cannot be peaceful because you are the struggle. When you are not, silence will be there, peace will be there, bliss will be there. The emptiness itself is bliss.
Zen Practice and the Ego
(by unknown)
When people approach Zen practice, they often don't know what it truly is. People come, think they can sit and do meditation and somehow arrive at a state where they can escape their problems and troubles, escape the complications of the world. They are going to become concentrated, wiser, happier, healthier. Almost everyone has something that impels him to seek a way to end suffering, a way to happiness. So people sit on their cushions, come to the meditation hall when it's convenient, and after meditation go home, go back to daily life. But, true Zen is not to follow your own desires, not to follow your own dreams, your thoughts, your ambition, not to look for status, wealth, power, position or career.
Our practice has been here for countless years, countless lives. If you think you're going to improve the practice, change it, if you think you know a better way -- this is the ego speaking, the ego-self. Mushotoku, without desire -- this is the way of true Zen. It is not following your own personal wishes, not following your own agenda (some goal, object or something to gain). Nor is it running away from something you fear or want to lose. When we follow the bodhisattva way, we harmonize with our surroundings. We don't have fixed ideas in our mind about what's good, what's bad, what's godly, what's evil. Forgetting ourselves, we respond to the situation we're in each moment.
This may seem like a strange attitude for many people. "Living a selfless life, that's good for saints, special people. But for me, oh, I'm not a saint. I cannot just be selfless in this world! What's going to happen to me? What about my future? What about my old age? Retirement? How am I going to live?" This is the mind. Always the brain is thinking, calculating, protecting, arguing, always looking for something. Instead of looking right in front of us, we look everywhere else. Instead of living right here and now, we want to plan for some mythical future. But when we practice, truly concentrate on our practice, we can forget ourselves. We can forget our ego, our desires, our fixed ideas of how to live, how to act, how to be, forget all these ideas, thoughts and attachments, and help the other.
"Why should I always help the other? Why can't I be helped?" Try it. Help yourself. And then, come back to the practice. That's why you're practicing in the first place: you've been helping yourself, not understanding the dharma, not understanding what life is. But if we repeat the practice, make the effort over and over again, then bit by bit our lives can blossom, become deep and broad. Give up your fixed ideas and come to true life. Don't run away and don't run after. Remain here and now, where we find our strength, our liberation.
When people approach Zen practice, they often don't know what it truly is. People come, think they can sit and do meditation and somehow arrive at a state where they can escape their problems and troubles, escape the complications of the world. They are going to become concentrated, wiser, happier, healthier. Almost everyone has something that impels him to seek a way to end suffering, a way to happiness. So people sit on their cushions, come to the meditation hall when it's convenient, and after meditation go home, go back to daily life. But, true Zen is not to follow your own desires, not to follow your own dreams, your thoughts, your ambition, not to look for status, wealth, power, position or career.
Our practice has been here for countless years, countless lives. If you think you're going to improve the practice, change it, if you think you know a better way -- this is the ego speaking, the ego-self. Mushotoku, without desire -- this is the way of true Zen. It is not following your own personal wishes, not following your own agenda (some goal, object or something to gain). Nor is it running away from something you fear or want to lose. When we follow the bodhisattva way, we harmonize with our surroundings. We don't have fixed ideas in our mind about what's good, what's bad, what's godly, what's evil. Forgetting ourselves, we respond to the situation we're in each moment.
This may seem like a strange attitude for many people. "Living a selfless life, that's good for saints, special people. But for me, oh, I'm not a saint. I cannot just be selfless in this world! What's going to happen to me? What about my future? What about my old age? Retirement? How am I going to live?" This is the mind. Always the brain is thinking, calculating, protecting, arguing, always looking for something. Instead of looking right in front of us, we look everywhere else. Instead of living right here and now, we want to plan for some mythical future. But when we practice, truly concentrate on our practice, we can forget ourselves. We can forget our ego, our desires, our fixed ideas of how to live, how to act, how to be, forget all these ideas, thoughts and attachments, and help the other.
"Why should I always help the other? Why can't I be helped?" Try it. Help yourself. And then, come back to the practice. That's why you're practicing in the first place: you've been helping yourself, not understanding the dharma, not understanding what life is. But if we repeat the practice, make the effort over and over again, then bit by bit our lives can blossom, become deep and broad. Give up your fixed ideas and come to true life. Don't run away and don't run after. Remain here and now, where we find our strength, our liberation.
The Ego and the Absolute
(by unknown)
So long as you identify with the ego, you cannot transcend it. It is only when we take the enormous risk of not looking into it, of leaving the ego completely alone, that we will finally be able to see it for what it really is. It takes tremendous courage to do this. You have to leave it completely alone. There's no other way to achieve the liberating result. It's an all-or-nothing game and most people don't want to play because the stakes are just too high. We are speaking about a leap into another dimension that reveals a perspective that is absolute. Within that perspective, the ego just does not exist. If you want to know what that perspective is, you have to be willing to leave this one behind. The ego will never do this; its own survival depends upon clinging to the unquestioned conviction that it is important.
The ego always pleads for time. Its refrain, in the face of the call from the Absolute is, "I'm not ready yet, I need more time". But, the Absolute never hears the ego's pleas. Its ceaseless refrain is: "Every moment that you hesitate, you're keeping yourself from me". Its constant demand is always, "Now!" and the ego insists, yet again, "No, I'm not ready". This is the spiritual drama that has played itself out between man and God for thousands of years -- between the individual sense of self and the call of the Absolute.
So long as you identify with the ego, you cannot transcend it. It is only when we take the enormous risk of not looking into it, of leaving the ego completely alone, that we will finally be able to see it for what it really is. It takes tremendous courage to do this. You have to leave it completely alone. There's no other way to achieve the liberating result. It's an all-or-nothing game and most people don't want to play because the stakes are just too high. We are speaking about a leap into another dimension that reveals a perspective that is absolute. Within that perspective, the ego just does not exist. If you want to know what that perspective is, you have to be willing to leave this one behind. The ego will never do this; its own survival depends upon clinging to the unquestioned conviction that it is important.
The ego always pleads for time. Its refrain, in the face of the call from the Absolute is, "I'm not ready yet, I need more time". But, the Absolute never hears the ego's pleas. Its ceaseless refrain is: "Every moment that you hesitate, you're keeping yourself from me". Its constant demand is always, "Now!" and the ego insists, yet again, "No, I'm not ready". This is the spiritual drama that has played itself out between man and God for thousands of years -- between the individual sense of self and the call of the Absolute.
Relationships and The Sense of "Me"
(by unknown)
It is in our relationships with one another, that our buttons get pushed most easily and that we come up against the sense of "me" and "my territory" and "my way" being violated or thwarted. Relationships provide tremendous opportunities to look into what is at the root of all this hurt and conflict that human beings experience. What is it we are defending? For me, it seems as if my very life is somehow threatened when someone questions or seems to be defying "my way". When I look into it, I see that it isn't so much the particular opinion or way of doing things that I'm fighting for, it's that sense of "me".
Can we look and see if this "me" is really here? Let us listen to the stories we tell ourselves and each other, and notice how a single thought can generate feelings of depression, elation, anxiety or bliss. This is immense work, to sit with all the feelings, to explore, listen, discover what's here. Not once and for all, but this moment. And this moment. And this moment. This work is to see the awesome power of our habitual reflexive tendencies, and to discover that in this moment, in open listening, they do not have to continue.
It is in our relationships with one another, that our buttons get pushed most easily and that we come up against the sense of "me" and "my territory" and "my way" being violated or thwarted. Relationships provide tremendous opportunities to look into what is at the root of all this hurt and conflict that human beings experience. What is it we are defending? For me, it seems as if my very life is somehow threatened when someone questions or seems to be defying "my way". When I look into it, I see that it isn't so much the particular opinion or way of doing things that I'm fighting for, it's that sense of "me".
Can we look and see if this "me" is really here? Let us listen to the stories we tell ourselves and each other, and notice how a single thought can generate feelings of depression, elation, anxiety or bliss. This is immense work, to sit with all the feelings, to explore, listen, discover what's here. Not once and for all, but this moment. And this moment. And this moment. This work is to see the awesome power of our habitual reflexive tendencies, and to discover that in this moment, in open listening, they do not have to continue.
Disengaging from the Ego
(by unknown)
In the beginning, just try for a few moments to live without any 'I'. You are digging a hole in the earth in the garden; just dig the hole, just become the digging, and forget that "I" am doing it. Let the doer evaporate. You will perspire in the sun, and there will be no doer, and the digging will continue. And you will be surprised how divine life is if the ego can disappear even for a single moment. Taking a shower, just let the water fall on you, but don't be there as an 'I'. Relax, forget the 'I', and you will be surprised. The shower is not only cooling your body, it cools your innermost core too.
If you search, you will find so many moments in ordinary life every day when the ego can be put aside. And the joy is so great that once you have tasted it you can do it again and again. And slowly, slowly you become capable of putting it aside, unless it is absolutely necessary. And then that day of blessing also comes when you know it is not necessary at all. You say the final goodbye to it. That is your real being. Not to be is to be for the first time.
In the beginning, just try for a few moments to live without any 'I'. You are digging a hole in the earth in the garden; just dig the hole, just become the digging, and forget that "I" am doing it. Let the doer evaporate. You will perspire in the sun, and there will be no doer, and the digging will continue. And you will be surprised how divine life is if the ego can disappear even for a single moment. Taking a shower, just let the water fall on you, but don't be there as an 'I'. Relax, forget the 'I', and you will be surprised. The shower is not only cooling your body, it cools your innermost core too.
If you search, you will find so many moments in ordinary life every day when the ego can be put aside. And the joy is so great that once you have tasted it you can do it again and again. And slowly, slowly you become capable of putting it aside, unless it is absolutely necessary. And then that day of blessing also comes when you know it is not necessary at all. You say the final goodbye to it. That is your real being. Not to be is to be for the first time.
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