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Thread: The Art of Dying

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    The Art of Dying

    The Art of Dying....

    LIFE is in living. It is not a thing, it is a process. There is no way to attain to life except by living it, except by being alive, by flowing, streaming with it. If you are seeking the meaning of life in some dogma, in some philosophy, in some theology, that Is the sure way to miss life and meaning both.

    Life is not somewhere waiting for you, it is happening in you. It is not in the future as a goal to be arrived at, it is herenow, this very moment -- in your breathing, circulating in your blood, beating in your heart. Whatsoever you are is your life, and if you start seeking meaning somewhere else, you will miss it. Man has done that for centuries.

    Concepts have become very important, explanations have become very important -- and the real has been completely forgotten. We don't look to that which is already here, we want rationalizations.

    I have heard a very beautiful story....

    Some years ago a successful American had a serious identity crisis. He sought help from psychiatrists but nothing came of it, for there were none who could tell him the meaning of life -- which is what he wanted to know.

    By and by he learned of a venerable and incredibly wise guru who lived in a mysterious and most inaccessible region of the Himalayas. Only that guru, he came to believe, would tell him what life meant and what his role in it ought to be.

    So he sold all his worldly possessions and began his search for the all-knowing guru. He spent eight years wandering from village to village throughout the Himalayas in an effort to find him. And then one day he chanced upon a shepherd who told him where the guru lived and how to reach the place.

    It took him almost a year to find him, but he eventually did. There he came upon his guru, who was indeed venerable, in fact well over one hundred years old. The guru consented to help him, especially when he learned of all the sacrifices the man had made towards this end.

    'What can I do for you, my son?' asked the guru.
    'I need to know the meaning of life,' said the man.

    To this the guru replied, without hesitation, 'Life,' he said, 'is a river without end.'
    'A river without end?' said the man in a startled surprise. 'After coming all this way to find you, all you have to tell me is that life is a river without end?'

    The guru was shaken, shocked. He became very angry and he said, 'You mean it is not?'

    Nobody can give you the meaning of your life. It is your life, the meaning has also to be yours. Himalayas won't help. Nobody except you can come upon it. It is your life and it is only accessible to you. Only in living will the mystery be revealed to you.

    The Art of Dying by Osho, Chapter 1 (pages 1-2)

    Last edited by turiya, 14th December 2018 at 17:14.

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    I do like Osho's work. Despite his highly controversial lifestyle, his books and talks stood the test of time and are still valuable today. I guess, he's a bit like many artists, who were pretty controversial in the kind of life they lived or the personal views they had (Wagner, anyone?), but the work they produced endured and proved to be valuable for subsequent generations to come.

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    Krishnamurti said the word is not the thing. You need no guru. Wasn't Osho only interested in being a guru and collecting people who contributed to his coffers?
    Last edited by Kathy, 10th December 2018 at 22:28.

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    Quote Originally posted by Kathy View Post
    Krishnamurti said the word is not the thing. You need no guru. Wasn't Osho only interested in being a guru and collecting people who contributed to his coffers?
    That's certainly true. But I don't have to like the messenger to like the message. Also, as I've explained in another thread, Gurus of old often were an awful lot like he was. They often gathered a huge following and were immensely wealthy. There is quite a lot of precedent for this.

    There is no doubt that he was brilliant though and had genuine spiritual power. Some of the first-hand accounts of the effect he had on people are quite astonishing. People would tremble and go through incredible spiritual experiences just by catching a glimpse of him. That he used his immense spiritual power to enrich himself, rather than help humanity, is a tragedy, but again, not that unusual.

    Us, westerners, are brought up in the Christian tradition and this colours our expectations of "Holy men". Even Hindus and Buddhists are affected by Western views of what is "pious" and "holy". In fact, celibacy and poverty is more of a hindrance in old Vedic Hinduism than a requirement of holiness. The way the gods lived (in opulent celestial palaces, surrounded by lovers and concubines) is more of a reflection of what Old Hinduism thought was associated with godliness than what our current views are. Great wealth and good fortune was seen as a sign of good Karma and therefore Holy people in particular were seen as deserving of it, due to their good works going back many lifetimes.

    This is the reason rich people in India can still get away with robbing the poor blind and being so immensely wealthy amongst terrible poverty. Poor people believe the rich are rich because of their good Karma and they themselves are poor because of their bad karma. This is in fact a major reason India cannot develop evenly and wealth inequality is so extreme. Whilst hundreds of millions live in abject poverty, worse than what you would see in sub-saharan Africa, at the same time there is a Billionaire's wedding going on in Udaipur right now, that is historic in its opulence. Hillary Clinton and Beyonce are amongst the guests. Compared to the rich industrialists of India, Osho was actually rather modest...

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    Quote Originally posted by Chris View Post
    Quote Originally posted by Kathy View Post
    Krishnamurti said the word is not the thing. You need no guru. Wasn't Osho only interested in being a guru and collecting people who contributed to his coffers?
    That's certainly true.
    That, most certainly, is not true, Chris.
    We can agree to disagree.

    As for Krishnamurti...
    Certainly, he would say you don't need a Master. And the more he said it, the more people flocked to him as being their Master.

    So, what can a poor guy do?
    People are people. And people will do what people do.

    As for Osho. It was the people around him that caused the problems.
    He was like the center of the storm.
    In the eye of the storm.
    There is a great stillness.
    Last edited by turiya, 11th December 2018 at 15:20.

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    If you really want to live you have to be ready to die.

    Life is already there bubbling within you. It can be contacted only there. The temple is not outside, you are the shrine of it. So the first thing to remember if you want to know what life is, is: never seek it without, never try to find out from somebody else. The meaniannot be transferred that way. The greatest Masters have never said anything about life -- they have always thrown you back upon yourself.

    The second thing to remember is: once you know what life is you will know what death is. Death is also part of the same process. Ordinarily we think death comes at the end, ordinarily we think death is against life, ordinarily we think death is the enemy, but death is not the enemy. And if you think of death as the enemy it simply shows that you have not been able to know what life is.

    Death and life are two polarities of the same energy, of the same phenomenon -- the tide and the ebb, the day and the night, the summer and the winter. They are not separate and not opposites, not contraries; they are complementaries. Death is not the end of life; in fact, it is a completion of one life, the crescendo of one life, the climax, the finale. And once you know your life and its process, then you understand what death is.

    Death is an organic, integral part of life, and it is very friendly to life. Without it life cannot exist. Life exists because of death; death gives the background. Death is, in fact, a process of renewal. And death happens each moment.

    The moment you breathe in and the moment you breathe out, both happen. Breathing in, life happens; breathing out, death happens. That's why when a child is born the first thing he does is breathe in, then life starts. And when an old man is dying, the last thing he does is breathe out, then life departs. Breathing out is death, breathing in is life -- they are like two wheels of a bullock cart. You live by breathing in as much as you live by breathing out. The breathing out is part of breathing in. You cannot breathe in if you stop breathing out. You cannot live if you stop dying. The man who has understood what his life is allows death to happen; he welcomes it. He dies each moment and each moment he is resurrected. His cross and his resurrection are continually happening as a process. He dies to the past each moment and he is born again and again into the future.

    If you look into life you will be able to know what death is. If you understand what death is, only then are you able to understand what life is. They are organic. Ordinarily, out of fear, we have created a division. We think that life is good and death is bad. We think that life has to be desired and death is to be avoided. We think somehow we have to protect ourselves against death. This absurd idea creates endless miseries in our lives, because a person who protects himself against death becomes incapable of living. He is the person who is afraid of exhaling, then he cannot inhale and he is stuck. Then he simply drags; his life is no longer a flow, his life is no longer a river.

    If you really want to live you have to be ready to die.

    The Art of Dying Chapter 1
    Last edited by turiya, 11th December 2018 at 15:37.

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    Quote Originally posted by turiya View Post


    That, most certainly, is not true, Chris.
    We can agree to disagree.

    As for Krishnamurti...
    Certainly, he would say you don't need a Master. And the more he said it, the more people flocked to him as being their Master.

    So, what can a poor guy do?
    People are people. And people will do what people do.

    As for Osho. It was the people around him that caused the problems.
    He was like the center of the storm.
    In the eye of the storm.
    There is a great stillness.
    Did you ever meet him? I wonder what he was like in real life. I can only base my opinion about him on second and third-hand accounts, which tend to be biased.

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    Quote Originally posted by Chris View Post
    Did you ever meet him? I wonder what he was like in real life. I can only base my opinion about him on second and third-hand accounts, which tend to be biased.
    I cannot say I personally met the man. I had traveled to India. I had been present when he gave several of his discourses.

    At that time (1987), he was still recovering from being poisoned by the American government. This was done by the Reagan Administration.

    Edwin Meese was the Attorney General at the time. He was the man that ordered it. He was in charge of the Department of Justice.... i.e. 'Just us.'...


    Edwin Meese

    I watched how he slowly, slowly became increasingly more ill as time went on. Losing his hair, becoming more weak, more & more frail with each passing day. But still he continued to give 2 hour discourses twice a day to a live audience. He was only 58 years-old when he left his body.

    He never wrote any of his books. They were all transcribed from discourses to a live audience. I was one of the people in the audience during some of his discourses.
    Last edited by turiya, 11th December 2018 at 18:44.

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    Quote Originally posted by turiya View Post
    I cannot say I personally met the man. I had traveled to India. I had been present when he gave several of his discourses.

    At that time (1987), he was still recovering from being poisoned by the American government. This was done by the Reagan Administration.

    Edwin Meese was the Attorney General at the time. He was the man that ordered it. He was in charge of the Department of Justice.... i.e. 'Just us.'...


    Edwin Meese

    I watched how he slowly, slowly became increasingly more ill as time went on. Losing his hair, becoming more weak. But still continued to give 2 hour discourses twice a day to a live audience.

    He never wrote any of his books. They were all transcribed from discourses to a live audience. I was one of the people in the audience during some of his discourses.
    Thanks, that's useful info. I would be interested in learning more about him. I've only read a couple of his books (I know they are transcripts, but still, that's how they're published), however I still found them to be authentic and they helped me a lot on my own spiritual journey. Tantra in particular is a treasure trove of information. I think you should consider starting a thread on him and perhaps clearing up some of the misconceptions about the man. I had no idea for instance that the US government tried to murder him.

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    In India they say the messenger of death is very ugly - dark, black - comes sitting on a very big ugly buffalo...

    The Messenger of Death Comes Sitting on a Big Ugly Buffalo

    Everything returns to its original source, has to return to its original source. If you - understand life then you understand death also. Life is a forgetfulness of the original source, and death is again a remembrance. Life is going away from the original source, death is coming back home. Death is not ugly, death is beautiful. But death is beautiful only for those who have lived their life unhindered, uninhibited, unsuppressed. Death is beautiful only for those who have lived their life beautifully, who have not been afraid to live, who have been courageous enough to live -- who loved, who danced, who celebrated.

    Death becomes the ultimate celebration if your life is a celebration. Let me tell you in this way: whatsoever your life was, death reveals it. If you have been miserable in life, death reveals misery. Death is a great revealer. If you have been happy in your life, death reveals happiness. If you have lived only a life of physical comfort and physical pleasure, then of course, death is going to be very uncomfortable and very unpleasant, because the body has to be left. The body is just a temporary abode, a shrine in which we stay for the night and leave in the morning. It is not your permanent abode, it is not your home.

    So if you have lived just a bodily life and you have never known anything beyond the body, death is going to be very, very ugly, unpleasant, painful. Death is going to be an anguish. But if you have lived a little higher than the body, if you have loved music and poetry, and you have loved, and you have looked at the flowers and the stars, and something of the non-physical has entered into your consciousness, death will not be so bad, death will not be so painful. You can take it with equanimity, but still it cannot be a celebration.

    If you have touched something of the transcendental in yourself, if you have entered your own nothingness at the centre -- the centre of your being, where you are no more a body and no more a mind, where physical pleasures are completely left far away and mental pleasures such as music and poetry and literature and painting, everything, are left far away, you are simply, just pure awareness, consciousness -- then death is going to be a great celebration, a great understanding, a great revelation.

    If you have known anything of the transcendental in you, death will reveal to you the transcendental in the universe -- then death is no longer a death but a meeting with God, a date with God.

    So you can find three expressions about death in the history of human mind.

    One expression is of the ordinary man who lives attached to his body, who has never known anything greater than the pleasure of food or sex, whose whole life has been nothing but food and sex, who has enjoyed food, has enjoyed sex, whose life has been very primitive, whose life has been very gross, who has lived in the porch of his palace, never entered it, and who had been thinking that this is all life is. At the moment of death he will try to cling. He will resist death, he will fight death. Death will come as the enemy.

    Hence, all over the world, in all societies, death is depicted as dark, as devilish. In India they say that the messenger of death is very ugly -- dark, black -- and he comes sitting on a very big ugly buffalo. This is the ordinary attitude. These people have missed, they have not been able to know all the dimensions of life. They have not been able to touch the depths of life and they have not been able to fly to the height of life. They missed the plenitude, they missed the benediction.

    Then there is a second type of expression. Poets, philosophers, have sometimes said that death is nothing bad, death is nothing evil, it is just restful -- a great rest, like sleep. This is better than the first. At least these people have known something beyond the body, they have known something of the mind. They have not had only food and sex, their whole life has not been only in eating and reproducing. They have a little sophistication of the soul, they are a little more aristocratic, more cultured. They say death is like great rest; one is tired and one goes into death and rests. It is restful. But they too are far away from the truth.

    Those who have known life in its deepest core, they say that death is God. It is not only a rest but a resurrection, a new life, a new beginning; a new door opens.

    The Art of Dying, Chapter 1
    Last edited by turiya, 11th December 2018 at 18:13.

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    Quote Originally posted by turiya View Post

    The Messenger of Death Comes Sitting on a Big Ugly Buffalo

    Everything returns to its original source, has to return to its original source. If you - understand life then you understand death also. Life is a forgetfulness of the original source, and death is again a remembrance. Life is going away from the original source, death is coming back home. Death is not ugly, death is beautiful. But death is beautiful only for those who have lived their life unhindered, uninhibited, unsuppressed. Death is beautiful only for those who have lived their life beautifully, who have not been afraid to live, who have been courageous enough to live -- who loved, who danced, who celebrated.

    Death becomes the ultimate celebration if your life is a celebration. Let me tell you in this way: whatsoever your life was, death reveals it. If you have been miserable in life, death reveals misery. Death is a great revealer. If you have been happy in your life, death reveals happiness. If you have lived only a life of physical comfort and physical pleasure, then of course, death is going to be very uncomfortable and very unpleasant, because the body has to be left. The body is just a temporary abode, a shrine in which we stay for the night and leave in the morning. It is not your permanent abode, it is not your home.

    So if you have lived just a bodily life and you have never known anything beyond the body, death is going to be very, very ugly, unpleasant, painful. Death is going to be an anguish. But if you have lived a little higher than the body, if you have loved music and poetry, and you have loved, and you have looked at the flowers and the stars, and something of the non-physical has entered into your consciousness, death will not be so bad, death will not be so painful. You can take it with equanimity, but still it cannot be a celebration.

    If you have touched something of the transcendental in yourself, if you have entered your own nothingness at the centre -- the centre of your being, where you are no more a body and no more a mind, where physical pleasures are completely left far away and mental pleasures such as music and poetry and literature and painting, everything, are left far away, you are simply, just pure awareness, consciousness -- then death is going to be a great celebration, a great understanding, a great revelation.

    If you have known anything of the transcendental in you, death will reveal to you the transcendental in the universe -- then death is no longer a death but a meeting with God, a date with God.

    So you can find three expressions about death in the history of human mind.

    One expression is of the ordinary man who lives attached to his body, who has never known anything greater than the pleasure of food or sex, whose whole life has been nothing but food and sex, who has enjoyed food, has enjoyed sex, whose life has been very primitive, whose life has been very gross, who has lived in the porch of his palace, never entered it, and who had been thinking that this is all life is. At the moment of death he will try to cling. He will resist death, he will fight death. Death will come as the enemy.

    Hence, all over the world, in all societies, death is depicted as dark, as devilish. In India they say that the messenger of death is very ugly -- dark, black -- and he comes sitting on a very big ugly buffalo. This is the ordinary attitude. These people have missed, they have not been able to know all the dimensions of life. They have not been able to touch the depths of life and they have not been able to fly to the height of life. They missed the plenitude, they missed the benediction.

    Then there is a second type of expression. Poets, philosophers, have sometimes said that death is nothing bad, death is nothing evil, it is just restful -- a great rest, like sleep. This is better than the first. At least these people have known something beyond the body, they have known something of the mind. They have not had only food and sex, their whole life has not been only in eating and reproducing. They have a little sophistication of the soul, they are a little more aristocratic, more cultured. They say death is like great rest; one is tired and one goes into death and rests. It is restful. But they too are far away from the truth.

    Those who have known life in its deepest core, they say that death is God. It is not only a rest but a resurrection, a new life, a new beginning; a new door opens.

    The Art of Dying, Chapter 1
    no, no, no, no, NO!! U can buy that if it feels right to U but NOT ME!! here's what i'm workin' on...

    I no longer believe that
    I cannot recover my entire Spirit
    IN THIS LIFETIME!!

    that's all i have to say in the matter. carry on. but i ain't buyin' what yer peddlin'...
    Last edited by palooka's revenge, 12th December 2018 at 01:04.

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    He is dead, peddling no more.

    I read the Queens sutras from Osho and yes it was life changing, the Q n A within it blew my mind because the answers were in the questions many times, incredible aha for me.

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    Don't allow yourself to be dictated to by others....



    The first thing, or the most fundamental thing is: how to live.

    Let me tell you a few things. First: your life is your life, it is nobody else's. So don't allow yourself to be dominated by others, don't allow yourself to be dictated to by others, that is a betrayal of life. If you allow yourself to be dictated to by others -- maybe your parents, your society, your education system -- your politicians, your priests, whosoever they are -- if you allow yourself to be dominated by others you will miss your life. Because the domination comes from outside and life is within you. They never meet.

    I am not saying that you should become a 'no-sayer' to each and everything. That too is not of much help. There are two types of people. One is an obedient type, ready to surrender to any and everybody. They don't have any independent soul in them; they are immature, childish, always searching for a father-figure, for somebody to tell them what to do and what not to do. They are not able to trust their own being. These people are the greater part of the world, the masses.

    Then there are, against these people, a small minority who reject society, who reject the values of the society. They think they are rebellious. They are not, they are only reactionaries. Because whether you listen to society or you reject society, if society
    remains in either way the determining factor, then you are dominated by the society.

    Let me tell you an anecdote....

    Once Mulla Nasrudin had been away for a while and arrived back in town wearing a long beard. His friends naturally kidded him about the beard and asked him how he happened to acquire the fur-piece. The Mulla with the beard began to complain and curse the thing in no uncertain terms. His friends were amazed at the way he talked and asked him why he continued to wear the beard if he did not like it.

    'I hate the blasted thing!' the Mulla told them.
    'If you hate it then why don't you shave it off and get rid of it?' one of his friends asked.

    A devilish gleam shone in the eyes of the Mulla as he answered, 'Because my wife hates it too!'

    But that does not make you free. The hippies, the yippies and others, they are not really rebellious people, they are reactionaries. They have reacted against the society. A few are obedient, a few are disobedient, but the centre of domination is the same. A few obey, a few disobey, but nobody looks at his own soul.

    A really rebellious person is one who is neither for society nor against society, who simply lives his life according to his own understanding. Whether it goes against society or it goes with society is not a consideration, it is irrelevant. Sometimes it may go with the society, sometimes it may not go with the society, but that is not the point to be considered. He lives according to his understanding, according to his small light. And I am not saying that he becomes very egoistic about it. No, he is very humble. He knows that his light is very small, but that is all the light that there is. He is not adamant, he's very humble. He says, 'I may be wrong, but please allow me to be wrong according to myself.'

    That is the only way to learn. To commit mistakes is the only way to learn. To move according to one's own understanding is the only way to grow and become mature. If you are always looking at somebody to dictate to you, whether you obey or disobey makes no difference. If you are looking at somebody else to dictate to you, to decide for or against, you will never be able to know what your life is. It has to be lived, and you have to follow your own small light.

    It is not always certain what to do. You are very confused. Let it be so. But find a way out of your confusion. It is very cheap and easy to listen to others because they can hand over dead dogmas to you, they can give you commandments -- do this, don't do that.

    And they are very certain about their commandments. Certainty should not be sought; understanding should be sought. If you are seeking certainty you will become a victim of some trap or other. Don't seek certainty, seek understanding. Certainty can be given to you cheap, anybody can give it to you. But in the final analysis you will be a loser. You lost your life just to remain secure and certain, and life is not certain, life is not secure.

    Life is insecurity. Each moment is a move into more and more insecurity. It is a gamble.

    One never knows what is going to happen. And it is beautiful that one never knows. If it was predictable, life would not be worth living. If everything was as you would like it to be, and everything was certain, you would not be a man at all, you would be a machine.

    Only for machines is everything secure and certain.

    Man lives in freedom. Freedom needs insecurity and uncertainty. A real man of intelligence is always hesitant because he has no dogma to rely upon, to lean upon. He has to look and respond.

    Lao Tzu says, 'I am hesitant, and I move alertly in life because I don't know what is going to happen. And I don't have.any principle to follow. I have to decide every moment. I never decide beforehand. I have to decide when the moment comes!'

    Then one has to be very responsive. That's what responsibility is. Responsibility is not an obligation, responsibility is not a duty -- it is a capacity to respond. A man who wants to know what life is has to be responsive.

    That is missing.

    Centuries of conditioning have made you more like machines. You have lost your manhood, you have bargained for security. You are secure and comfortable and everything has been planned by others. And they have put everything on the map, they have measured everything. This is all absolutely foolish because life cannot be measured, it is immeasurable. And no map is possible because life is in constant flux. Everything goes on changing. Nothing is permanent except change.

    Says Heraclitus, 'You cannot step in the same river twice.'

    And the ways of life are very zig-zag. The ways of life are not like the tracks of a railway train. No, it does not run on tracks. And that's the beauty of it, the glory of it, the poetry of it, the music of it -- that it is always a surprise.

    If you are seeking for security, certainty, your eyes will become closed. And you will be less and less surprised and you will lose the capacity to wonder. Once you lose the capacity to wonder, you have lost religion. Religion is the opening of your wondering heart. Religion is a receptivity for the mysterious that surrounds us.

    Don't seek security; don't seek advice on how to live your life. People come to me and they say, 'Osho, tell us how we should live our life.' You are not interested in knowing what life is, you are more interested in making a fixed pattern. You are more interested in killing life than in living it. You want a discipline to be imposed on you.

    There are, of course, priests and politicians all over the world who are ready, just sitting waiting for you. Come to them and they are ready to impose their disciplines on you.

    They enjoy the power that comes through imposing their own ideas upon others.

    I'm not here for that. I am here to help you to become free. And when I say that I am here to help you to become free, I am included. I am to help you to become free of me also.

    My sannyas is a very paradoxical thing. You surrender to me in order to become free. I accept you and initiate you into.sannyas to help you to become absolutely free of every dogma, of every scripture, of every philosophy -- and I am included in it. Sannyas is as paradoxical -- it should be -- as life itself is. Then it is alive.

    So the first thing is: don't ask anybody how you should live your life. Life is so precious.

    Live it. I am not saying that you will not make mistakes, you will. Remember only one thing -- don't make the same mistake again and again. That's enough. If you can find a new mistake every day, make it. But don't repeat mistakes, that is foolish. A man who can find new mistakes to make will be growing continuously -- that is the only way to learn, that is the only way to come to your own inner light.

    The Art of Dying
    Last edited by turiya, 13th December 2018 at 16:25.

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  27. #14
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    I agree with the above and this has always been my philosophy. Every time I've listened to somebody else's advice or persuasion, I've regretted it. I've never regretted following my own heart and my own instincts. Nobody can know what's really good for you, except your own higher Self, which will guide you and lead you into situations that are necessary for you to learn and grow. One word of advice though, which as per the above, you shouldn't listen to

    It is unlikely that you will learn and grow by staying in one place all your life. You can only really learn by travelling, moving to new places, meeting new people. It should be obvious, but stagnation is the enemy of growth. If you never risk anything, you will not gain anything either.

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  29. #15
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    A person who has lived life, will be ready to live death also...

    One night the poet, Awhadi of Kerman (a very great Muslim poet) was sitting on his porch bent over a vessel. Shams-e-Tabrizi, a great Sufi mystic, happened to pass by.

    Shams-e-Tabrizi looked at the poet, at what he was doing. He asked the poet, 'What are you doing?'
    The poet said, 'Contemplating the moon in a bowl of water.'

    Shams-e-Tabrizi started laughing, with an uproarious laughter, a mad laughter. The poet started feeling uncomfortable; a crowd gathered. And the poet said, 'What is the matter? Why are you laughing so much? Why are you ridiculing me?'

    Shams-e-Tabrizi said, 'Unless you have broken your neck, why don't you look directly at the moon in the sky?'

    The moon is there, the full moon is there, and this poet was sitting with a bowl of water and looking into the bowl of water at the reflection of the moon.

    Seeking truth in scriptures, seeking truth in philosophies, is looking at the reflection. If you ask somebody else how you should live your life, you are asking for misguidance, because that man can only talk about his own life.

    And never, never, are two lives the same. Whatsoever he can say or impart to you will be about his own life -- and that too only if he has lived. He may have asked somebody else, he may have followed somebody else, he may have been an imitator himself. Then it is a reflection of a reflection. And centuries pass and people go on reflecting the reflection of the reflection of the reflection -- and the real moon is always there in the sky waiting for you. It is your moon, it is your sky, look directly. Be immediate about it. Why borrow my eyes or anybody else's eyes?

    You have been given eyes, beautiful eyes, to see, and to see directly. Why borrow understanding from anybody? Remember, it may be understanding to me, but the moment you borrow it, it becomes knowledge to you -- it is no more understanding. Understanding is only that which has been experienced by the person himself. It may be understanding for me, if I have looked at the moon, but the moment I say it to you it becomes knowledge, it is no longer understanding.

    Then it is just verbal, then it is just linguistic. And language is a lie.

    Let me tell you an anecdote...


    A chicken farmer, dissatisfied with the productivity of his flock, decided to use a bit of psychology on his hens.

    Accordingly he purchased a gay-colored, talking parrot and placed him in the barnyard. Sure enough, the hens took to the handsome stranger immediately, pointed out the best tidbits for him to eat with joyous clucks, and generally followed him around like a bevy of teen-age girls following a new singing star sensation.

    To the delight of the farmer even their egg-laying capacities improved.

    The barnyard rooster, naturally jealous of being ignored by his harem, set upon the attractive interloper, assailed him with beak and claws, pulling out one green or red feather after the other. Whereupon the intimidated parrot cried out in trepidation, 'Desist sir! I beg of you, desist! After all, I am only here in the capacity of a language professor!'

    Many people live their life as language professors.

    That is the falsest kind of life. Reality needs no language, it is available to you on a non-verbal level. The moon is there; it needs no bowl and no water, it needs no other medium. You have just to look at it; it is a non-verbal communication. The whole of life is available -- you just have to learn how to communicate with it non-verbally.

    That's what meditation is all about -- to be in a space where language does not interfere, where learned concepts don't come in between you and the real.

    When you love a woman don't be bothered about what others have said about love, because that is going to be an interference. You love a woman, the love is there, forget all that you have learned about love. Forget all Kinseys, forget all Masters and Johnsons, forget all Freuds and Jungs. Please don't become a language professor. Just love the woman and let love be there, and let love lead you and guide you into its innermost secrets, into its mysteries. Then you will be able to know what love is.

    And what others say about meditation is meaningless. Once I came upon a book written by a Jaina saint about meditation. It was really beautiful but there were just a few places by which I could see that the man had never meditated himself -- otherwise those places could not be there. But they were very few and far between. The book on the whole, almost ninety-nine per cent, was perfect. I loved the book.

    Then I forgot about it. For ten years I was wandering around the country. Once in a village of Rajasthan, that saint came to meet me. His name sounded familiar, and suddenly I remembered the book. And I asked the saint why he had come to me. He said, 'I have come to you to know what meditation is.' I said, 'I remember your book. I remember it very well, because it really impressed me. Except for a few defects which showed that you have never meditated, the book was perfectly right -- ninety-nine percent right. And now you come here to learn about meditation. Have you never meditated?'

    He looked a little embarrassed because his disciples were also there. I said, 'Be frank.
    Because if you say you know meditation, then I am not going to talk about it. Then finished! You know. There is no need. If you say to me frankly -- at least be true once -- if you say you have never meditated, only then can I help you towards meditation.' It was a bargain, so he had to confess. He said, 'Yes, I have never said it to anybody. I have read many books about meditation, all the old scriptures. And I have been teaching people, that's why I feel embarrassed before my disciples. I have been teaching meditation to thousands, and I have written books about it, but I have never meditated.'

    You can write books about meditation and never come across the space that meditation is. You can become very efficient in verbalizing, you can become very clever in abstraction, in intellectual argumentativeness, and you can forget completely that all the time that you have been involved in these intellectual activities has been a sheer wastage.

    I asked the old man, 'How long have you been interested in meditation?' He said, 'My whole life.' He was almost seventy. He said, 'When I was twenty I took sannyas, I became a Jaina monk, and those fifty years since then I have been reading and reading and thinking about meditation.' Fifty years of thinking and reading and writing about meditation, even guiding people into meditation, and he has not even tasted once what meditation is!

    But this is the case with millions of people. They talk about love, they know all the poetries about love, but they have never loved. Or even if they thought they were in love, they were never in love. That too was a 'heady' thing, it was not of the heart. People live and go on missing life. It needs courage. It needs courage to be realistic, it needs courage to move with life wherever it leads, because the paths are uncharted, there exists no map.

    One has to go into the unknown.

    Life can be understood only if you are ready to go into the unknown. If you cling to the known, you cling to the mind, and the mind is not life. Life is non-mental, non-intellectual, because life is total. Your totality has to be involved in it, you cannot just think about it. Thinking about life is not life. beware of this 'about-ism'. One goes on thinking about and about: there are people who think about God, there are people who think about life, there are people who think about love. There are people who think about this and that.

    Mulla Nasrudin became very old and he went to his doctor. He was looking very weak so the doctor said, 'I can say only one thing. You will have to cut your love-life to half.'

    The Mulla said, 'Okay. Which half? Talking about it or thinking about it?'

    That's all. Don't become a language professor, don't become a parrot. Parrots are language professors. They live in words, concepts, theories, theologies, and life goes on passing, slipping out of their hands. Then one day suddenly they become afraid of death.

    When a person is afraid of death, know well that that person has missed life. If he has not missed life there cannot be any fear of death. If a person has lived life, he will be ready to live death also.

    The Art of Dying
    Last edited by turiya, 13th December 2018 at 22:06.

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