Mahaparinirvana Day
September 08th, 1979 is the day when Osho’s father, Swami Devateerth Bharti lovingly called Dadda ji, left his body. Osho guided us to Celebrate 8th September every year as the “Mahaparinirvana Day”, a day dedicated to all His Sannyasins, Past, Present and Future, who have gone to the other shore.
Osho explains the meaning of the word MAHAPARINIRVANA. Osho says one day, one golden day, you will disappear and only the buddha will remain in place of you. That will be the greatest height of your blossoming, the greatest golden moment of your thousands of lives. Beyond that is only the cosmos. First, become the buddha. This is called nirvana. Then take a jump into the cosmos, and disappear into the blue sky. This is called Mahaparinirvana — the great enlightenment. The first is called enlightenment, the second is called the great enlightenment. Then you are not, even the buddha is not. Only the existence is, with all its glory, with all its majesty, with all its flowers blossoming, its beauty, its truth, its divineness spread all over the cosmos. Then you will become one with the whole, not part of the whole. To become one with the whole is the only holiness.
When asked to say something about his father’s death the subsequent day, Osho said it was not a death at all. Or it was total death. And both mean the same thing. I was hoping that he would die in this way. He died a death that everybody should be ambitious for: he died in samadhi, he died utterly detached from the body and the mind… … He left the world in utter silence, in joy, in peace. He left the world like a lotus flower – it was worth celebrating. And these are the occasions for you to learn how to live and how to die. Each death should be a celebration, but it can be a celebration only if it leads you to higher planes of existence.
Osho explains what He means by the term TOTAL DEATH. He says My effort here is to help you all to live like Buddhas and die like Buddhas. The death of a Buddha is both! It is not a death, because life is eternal. Life does not begin with birth and does not end with death. Millions of times you have been born and died; they are all small episodes in the eternal pilgrimage. But because you are unconscious you cannot see that which is beyond birth and death. As you become more conscious, you can see your original face. He saw his original face yesterday. He heard the one hand clapping; he heard the soundless sound. Hence it is not a death: it is attaining life eternal. On the other hand; it can be called a total death – total death in the sense that he will not be coming any more.
One should go on deeper and deeper into the phenomenon of love and at the ultimate core god will be found. But that is not to be made much of a concern, because once god becomes your concern you start going astray because you start forgetting about love; you start thinking about god, believing in god, worshipping god. And that is all false because you don’t know god at all. The same is not true about love. You know something, everybody knows something about love. Love is a natural phenomenon. Of course it needs great refinement, it is very crude; it is like a raw diamond. But the diamond is there, you just have to become a little bit of a jeweler. You have to learn how to polish it, how to cut it, how to make it shine — and that is not very difficult. Once you have discovered the inner beauty of the diamond and you have cut away all that was unessential, you have found god. Love is like a raw diamond and god is a fully polished, cut, shining diamond.
But your concern should be with love because the journey begins in love and ends in god, and you cannot begin at the end. That’s where all the religions have gone wrong: they begin at the end — how can you begin at the end? You have to begin from the very beginning. So all religions have become theologies. Theology means logic about god. That is sheer stupidity, there is no logic about god. God is the most illogical phenomenon. It is as illogical as love. Is there any logic in love? You fall in love with somebody — what logic is there? If somebody insists “Why?”, you can only shrug your shoulders, that’s all. You can only say it has happened; it is a happening, not a doing. It is something bigger than you, hence it is incomprehensible. And it is not of the mind, it is of the heart, so the mind knows nothing about it. The mind condemns it, the mind calls it falling in love. Mind the word “falling”, it is a condemnatory word. The mind says you have fallen, you are no more in your senses, you have gone a little bit cuckoo. It is a condemnation. And all the languages of the world have such words, about this they all agree.
I don’t agree. I say rising in love, not falling in love, because the heart is a higher centre than the mind. Of course physiologically the mind seems to be at the top and the heart seems to be in the middle, a little below. It is only physiologically so. But the heart is at the innermost core because the most precious thing is always kept at the core, at the inner centre, and the head is on the periphery. Just think that way then the total evaluation changes; then the heart becomes the centre and the mind is just something on the periphery, on the circumference. And when you have great treasure you don’t keep it outside, on the circumference of your house; you keep it hidden deep in the innermost chamber of your house. The heart is your inner chamber where all that is beautiful and great is hidden. Jesus calls it the kingdom of god. It is within you. It has to be discovered — not by logic.
Logic is good for discovering things. It is good for scientific enquiry, it is absolutely impotent in subjective enquiry. For subjective enquiry you need a totally different method — that is love. It is only through love that you will become aware of beauty, not through logic. It is only through love that you will become aware of bliss, not through logic. It is only through love that you will become aware of god, not through logic. All that is significant is discovered through love and all that is insignificant, mundane, is discovered by logic. Logic is good as far as it goes but it does not go far enough, it has a limitation. Love has no limitations. It is as vast as the sky, or even vaster.
I teach only one thing and that is love. Love unconditionally, love for the sheer joy of loving, for no other motive. Love people, love animals, love birds, love trees, rocks, stars. Don’t miss any opportunity to love. Whatsoever is available shower your love on it, because the more you shower your love, the more love grows in you. The more you share, the more you have, the more you give, the more you have — that’s why I say it is a very illogical phenomenon. Logic will not agree with it. How can logic agree with the statement that the more you give, the more you have? It will say of course you will have less. If you give that much has to be deduced, you will have less. If you have ten rupees and you give away five you have only five left.
Love is illogical. It says if you have ten rupees, give ten and you have twenty. And all the great masters are absolutely in agreement with it. It is meta-economics. It is something like a higher mathematics, not comprehensible by lower mathematics of the mind. To enquire into love is the only purpose of life. Life is an opportunity to enquire into love. People go on accumulating money, power, prestige — these are the fools. Death will knock at their door any moment and all their money and all their power and prestige will collapse. They came empty-handed and they will go empty-handed. Only a lover goes so full. He comes empty-handed but goes very full, overflowingly full. His death is a celebration; his life is a celebration — his death is the crescendo of his life.
At the moment of death when a man like Buddha or Jesus or Socrates dies, his death is the ultimate in sharing because this is his last moment on earth, his goodbye to existence. He gives totally and in that total giving he receives god as a guest. Buddha has used two words. When a person starts moving into the world of love, becomes loving, he calls it nirvana. The word “nirvana” means cessation of the ego — and of course, when the ego ceases one becomes loving. And when such a person dies Buddha calls it mahaparinirvana, the great nirvana, because then he gives totally. He gives his body, his mind, his heart, his life — he gives everything back to existence. He simply disappears into nothingness. His giving is absolute, nothing is retained. He simply evaporates, he is no more. He has not kept anything, not even himself; hence Buddha calls it the great cessation.
These are the two Moments which are the most valuable: the first is nirvana when you become loving and you start sharing and the ego disappears, and the second is the great nirvana — that is when death comes; you give totally, nothing is left behind, not even a trace. And that is the moment when one becomes part of god or part of the whole. And to be part of the whole is the only way to be holy. To be whole is to be holy. Except for love there is no way to attain to this infinity, to this eternity.
Source:
Read complete discourse at mentioned below link.
Discourse Series: Just the Tip of the Iceberg Chapter #29
Chapter title: None
29 September 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
References:
Osho has spoken on ‘Mahaparinirvana, Nirvana, Death, Wholeness, Holy’ in many of His discourses. More on the subject can be referred to in the following books/discourses:
- The Path of the Mystic
- Hsin Hsin Ming: The Book of Nothing
- Vedanta: Seven Steps to Samadhi
- Walking in Zen, Sitting in Zen
- Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 2
- I Am That
- Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1
- The Golden Future
- Zen: The Path of Paradox
- Come Follow To You Vol.1-4
- Bodhidharma: The Greatest Zen Master
- Nirvana: The Last Nightmare
- The Tantra Vision, Vol 1, 2
