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To be in any form, what is that?
(Round and round we go, all of us, and ever come back thither,)
…
Mine is no callous shell,
I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop,
They seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.
I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy,
To touch my person to some one else’s is about as much as I can stand.
~ from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself
“A mark of the perfected man is his ability to play to perfection any desired role in his external life while inwardly remaining free and not allowing himself to ‘blend’ with anything proceeding outside of himself.”
was Osho a porous woman, an egotistical guru or a prophet of enlightenment? When asked ‘who are you?’, he replied:
“Whomsoever you think, because it depends on you. If you look at me with total emptiness, I will be different. If you look at me with ideas, thsoe ideas will color me; if you come to me with a prejudice, then I will be different. I am just a mirror. Your own face will be reflected. There is a saying that if a monkey looks into the mirror he will not find an apostle looking at him through the mirror. Only a monkey will be looking through the mirror.
So it depends on the way you look at me. I have disappeared completely so I cannot impose on you who I am. I have nothing to impose. There is just a nothingnness, a mirror. Now you have complete freedom.
If you really want to know who I am, you have to be as absolutely empty as I am. Then two mirros will be facing each other, and only emptiness will be mirrored. Infinite emptiness will be mirrored: two mirrors facing each other. But if you have some idea, then you will see your own idea in me.”
357
It’s a rule of life that we can, and should, learn from everyone. There are solemn and serious things we can learn from quacks and crooks, there are philosophies taught us by fools, there are lessons in faithfulness and justice brought to us by chance and by those we chance to meet. Everything is in everything.
In certain particularly lucid moments of conetemplation, like those of early afternoon when I observantly wander through the streets, each person brings me a novelty, each building teaches me something new, each placard has a message for me.
My silent stroll is a continual conversation, and all of us - men, buildings, stones, placards and sky - are a huge friendly crowd, elbowing each other with words in the great procession of Destiny.
Fernando Pessoa
The Book of Diquiet
This is it…
This moment, this silent moment, this moment uncorrupted by thought, this silence that was surrounding this surprise, this last lion’s roar over death - this is it.
Yes, direction comes out of living this moment. It is not something that you manage and plan. It happens, it is subtle, and you will never be certain about it. You can only feel it. That’s why I say it is more like poetry, not like prose; more like love, not like logic; more like art than like science. And that’s its beauty - hesitant, as hesitant as a dewdrop on a grass leaf, slipping, not knowing where, not knowing why. In the morning sun, just slipping on a leaf of grass.
Direciton is subtle, delicate, fragile.
Destination belongs to the ego; direction belongs to life, to being.
To move in the world of direction one needs tremendous trust, because one is moving in insecurity, one is moving in darkness. But the darkness has a thrill in it: without any map, without any guide, you are moving in the unknown. Each step is a discovery, and it is not only a discovery of the outside world. Simultaneously, something is discovered in you also. A discoverer not only discovers things. As he goes on discovering more and more unknown worlds, he goes on discovering himself also, simultaneously. Each discovery is an inner discovery also. The more you know, the more you know about the knower. The more you love, the more you know about the lover.
I am not going to give you a destination. I can only give you a direction - awake, throbbing with life and unknown, always surprising, unpredictable. I’m not going to give you a map. I can give you only a great passion to discover.
Yes, a map is not needed; great passion, great desire to discover, is needed. Then I leave you alone. Then you go on your own. Move into the vast, into the infinite, and by and by, learn to trust it. Leave yourself in the hands of live. The man who trusts, the man who is thrilled even at the gate of death - he can give a lion’s roar. Even dying - because he knows nothing dies - at the very moment of death he can say, “This is it!”
Because each moment, this is it. It may be life, it may be death; it may be success, it may be failure; it may be happiness, it may be unhappiness.
Each moment … this is it.
Osho
Intuition: knowing beyond logic
Many came - Sariputta came, Moggalayan came, Mahakashyap came - to Buddha. All these people were great philosophers with thousands of disciples, and they came to challenge Buddha. His simple process throughout his whole life was, “If you know, I am happy. You can consider yourself to be victorious. But do you know? I know, and I don’t think that I have to challenge anybody. Because there are only two types of people - those who know and those who don’t know. Those who don’t know, how can I challenge those poor fellows? It is out of the question. Those who know - how can I challenge those rich fellows? That is out of the question.”
Buddha asked Sariputta, “If you know, I am happy - but do you know? And I am not challenging you, simply inquiring. Who are you? If you don’t know, then drop the idea of challenging me. Then just be here with me. Someday, in some right moment, it may happen - not through challenge, not through discussion, not even through expression.”
And people were really honest. Sariputta bowed down and said, “Please forgive me for challenging you. I don’t know. I am a skillful arguer and I have defeated many philosophers, but I can see you are not a philosopher, And now the time has come for me to surrender and to see from this new angle. What am I supposed to do?”
Buddha said, “You have to be silent for two years.” That was a simple process for every challenger who came - and many came: “Two years complete silence and then you can ask any question.” And two years’ silence is enough, more than enough. After two years they have even forgotten their own names, they have forgotten all challenge, all idea of victory. They have tasted the man. They have tasted his truth.
Osho
Intuition: knowing beyond logic
The whole history of man can be reduced to a single statement:
it has been a history of hysteria.
Osho
Intuition: knowing beyond logic
when you’re a winner you always know the ending because there’s only one ending and it’s always the same ending: you win. it’s the losers that don’t know the ending.
junkies always feel that they are in the right
it’s impossible to deal with them, they think the world is against them
and feel totally justified in all their actiions
the only thing to do is cut them off, kick them out,
and it’s such a drain of one’s energy to have to deal with these kind of things
and be around these people
there is a difference between being on drugs and being a junkie
the junkie is just self-centered fear
if you don’t die it means you weren’t born
and if you don’t die it means your birth was never completed.
is it possible that despite our discoveries and advances, despite our
culture, religion, and science, we have remained on the surface of
life? is it possible that even this surface, which might still have
been something, has been covered with an incredibly tedious material,
which makes it look like living-room furniture during the summer
vacations?
yes, it is possible.
is it possible that the whole history of the world has been
misunderstood? is it possible that the past is false, because we have
always spoken about its masses, just as if we were telling about a
gathering of many people, instead of talking about the one person they
were standing around because he was a stranger and dying?
yes, it is possible.
is it possible that we thought we had to retrieve what happened before
we were born? is it possible that every one of us would have to be
reminded that he had his origin in all who had gone before, that
consequently he contains this past and has nothing to learn from those
who assert that their knowledge is greater?
yes, it is possible.
rainer maria rilke
the notebooks of malte laurids brigge
because you are going to die you must act now
because you will inevitably do wrong you must learn from these occasions and use them to grow
because there will be suffering on your path you must aspire to convert suffering to wisdom
a first step to happiness: accepting one’s life for what it is
a second step to happiness: accepting one’s death
a third step to happiness: NOT BEING Miserable
voila!
it’s not wise to concentrate on the void
voids are just the negative space surrounding the true object
No political, economic, social or environmental system can fulfill its purpose unless peoples´ lifestyles, and value-systems correspond to the sustained continuity of that system or state of affairs. The quality of any society or community is no better or worse than the personal qualities of its members, and to achieve economic growth and social development it is crucial to achieve personal growth. Without this the very building blocks of any ´new world order´ will themselves be the downfall of that order…
Sister Jayanti
Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won’t know for twenty years. And you’ll never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there is no fate, but there is: it’s what you create. Even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but doesn’t really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope for something good to come along. Something to make you feel connected, to make you feel whole, to make you feel loved.
And the truth is I’m so angry and the truth is I’m so fucking sad, and the truth is I’ve been so fucking hurt for so fucking long and for just as long have been pretending I’m ok, just to get along, just for, I don’t know why, maybe because no one wants to hear about my misery, because they have their own, and their own is too overwhelming to allow them to listen to or care about mine.
Well, fuck everybody.
Amen.
