Swamiji’s Enlightenment Day
A born rebel or a freedom fighter or a highly educated person or a top corporate executive or a sannyasin? Is it possible to find such a versatile being? YES! Everything is possible with the blessings of Osho for the authentic seekers who came to Him and remained at His feet, before taking the highest flight and dissolving into the Ultimate. Swami Om Prakash Saraswati is one such blessed being who scaled the peaks of worldly success and then surrendered unconditionally at the feet of the Master, dissolving himself completely. Lovingly known as “Swamiji”, he is the epitome of absolute surrender by a disciple to his Guru.
Born on December 31, 1918, in Faridnagar near Meerut in UP, India; Swamiji was a born rebel, questioning everything – any injustice or violence. As a resolute & earnest youth, Swamiji joined government service and was soon married. The absence of meritocracy and abundance of inefficiencies plaguing government service compelled him to quit his otherwise stable job; and he joined the renowned corporate DCM at Kota, Rajasthan; as a senior executive. During his stint as the Accounts Head, he was inspired by a series of magazine articles of Osho, then known as Acharya Rajneesh. Allured by Osho’s magnetism, he attended that momentous meditation camp at Mt. Abu, Rajasthan in 1971 and was initiated into Sannyas. Guided by his Master, he integrated his family life and professional life with his inner journey with remarkable elegance. His life is truly exemplary of a Sannyasin balancing a life of career, family, meditation and aloneness. He moved to Delhi to take care of his wife who needed personal and medical care and continue to work in the DCM. After his wife died in 1976 Swamiji took pre mature retirement from his work and was invited by Osho to relocate to the Ashram in Pune, a call that he was eagerly awaiting.
In 1978, Osho sent Swamiji to Delhi to start a meditation center and He also gave Swamiji the name for this new Centre – Rajyoga Rajneesh Dhyan Kendra. This is how the Centre (now known as Osho Rajyoga) came into being. Swamiji’s powerful presence made this Centre the fulcrum of Osho’s work for the entire northern India conducting meditation camps, distributing audio/video discourses, publishing magazines and more. In 1981, when Osho went to the United States, the Center began publishing a newsletter “Rajneesh Buddhafield” to connect people with Rajneeshpuram, Oregon. The creation of Osho Dham, a meditation campus on the outskirts of Delhi, was the culmination of Swamiji’s efforts to provide a suitable space for meditation for a large number of seekers with restful accommodation facilities. Swamiji’s commitment and love enabled the realization of Osho’s vision ‘to bring meditation to the marketplace’ when Osho World Galleria was inaugurated at Ansal Plaza, a fashionable mall in the heart of south Delhi. The creation of the website www.oshoworld.com a treasure chest of Osho’s audio & video discourses, ebooks, posters, meditations and articles; and the publication of monthly magazines Osho World Patrika and Osho News were further manifestations of Swamiji’s vision to make Osho available to a Seeker in any corner of the world.
As Swamiji blossomed in meditation, his inner growth manifested in his work. He is an inspiration to young disciples on the journey of meditation. Swamiji attained enlightenment on May 21, 2001. He continued to meditate, work and provide vision for the future to spread the message of his beloved Master till he attained his Mahaparinirvana on March 27, 2003. Like a drop that dissolves into the Ocean, Swamiji merged with the vast ocean of Osho.
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“A disciple becomes almost a part of the very being of the Master. There arises an invisible connection between the two hearts. They dance together.” Osho
JOSHU WAS A MASTER WHO STARTED TO STUDY ZEN WHEN HE WAS SIXTY. WHEN HE WAS EIGHTY HE FOUND ENLIGHTENMENT. THEY SAY HE TAUGHT FOR FORTY YEARS AFTER HIS ENLIGHTENMENT.
ONCE A STUDENT ASKED OLD JOSHU: ‘YOU TEACH THAT WE SHOULD EMPTY OUR MINDS. I HAVE NOTHING IN MY MIND — NOW WHAT SHOULD I DO? ‘THROW IT OUT,’ SAID JOSHU. ‘BUT I HAVE NOTHING — HOW CAN I THROW IT OUT?’ JOSHU SAID:’ IF YOU CAN’T THROW IT OUT, CARRY IT OUT, DRIVE IT OUT, EMPTY IT OUT — BUT DON’T STAND THERE IN FRONT OF ME WITH NOTHING IN YOUR MIND !’
What is Joshu’s single note?
This is the single note — emptiness. This is the lotus flower that Buddha transmitted to Mahakashyap. And this is what all of the Buddhas have been teaching through the ages — be empty. The ego wants to be All. The All happens, but it happens through emptiness, and therein lies the difficulty, the impossibility of it. You can become perfect, but if perfection is the ideal, then you will miss it. You can become perfect through being totally empty. That seems inconceivable for the mind, because the mind says: To be perfect one has to make much effort, to be perfect one has to create an ideal in the future, and one has to make effort to reach the goal. The goal happens. Perfection comes to man, man need not go there. The goal comes to you. Nobody has ever gone to the goal. It has always been otherwise; the goal comes to you when you are empty. And to be empty is just the opposite, just the opposite of all efforts towards perfection, because perfection means you would like to be God himself. Perfection means you would like yourself eternally, infinitely, spread all over. Emptiness is just the opposite — you have to destroy yourself utterly. Not even a trace should be left behind. When your house is empty, the guest comes. When you are no more, the goal has been attained.
So don’t make perfection your goal, the goal happens indirectly. You be empty, and you have created the situation for it to come. Because nature abhors emptiness, nothing can remain empty. If you empty yourself completely, you will be filled by the Unknown. Suddenly, from all directions the Divine rushes towards you. You have created the situation; it has to be filled.
When you are not, God is. So remember, there cannot be any meeting between you and God. There has never been, and there will never be. When you are not, God is; when you are, God is not. They both cannot be together. Here you disappear, and suddenly the Total, the Perfect, the Whole appears.
It has always been there. But you were filled by yourself so much that there was no space for it to come in. It was all around, but y
ou were not empty.
You are just like a house without doors — just walls and walls and layers and layers of walls. And remember, a house is in fact not the walls but the doors. Lao Tzu says: What is a door? — a door is nothing, it is an emptiness; and from the door you enter. The wall is something, the door is nothing. And have you observed that the house is not the walls but the emptiness within? The very word ‘room’ means emptiness, space. You don’t live in the walls, you live in the space, in the emptiness. All that exists, exists in emptiness. All that lives, lives in emptiness. You are not your body. Within your body, just like within your house, space exists. That space is you. Your body is just the walls. Think of a person who has no eyes, no ears, no nose, no windows, no doors in the body — he will be dead. Eyes and ears and nose and mouth, they are the doors, they are emptinesses. And through that emptiness, existence enters into you. The outer and the inner meet, because the outer space and the inner space are not two things, they are one. And the division is not a real division.
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It is just like, you can go to the river, and you can fill an earthen pot with water. When the water is moving in the earthen pot, the river outside and the water inside the pot are the same. Only an earthen wall exists, and even that earthen wall is porous; water is continuously flowing out and in. Your body is also porous; existence is continuously flowing in and out. What is your breathing? — it is existence coming in and going out. And scientists say, millions of holes in the skin are continuously breathing in and out. You are porous. If your whole body is painted thickly, and only the nose is allowed to remain open, you can go on breathing, but within three hours you will be dead. Because the whole body breathes — it is porous. Existence continuously renews you.
And inside who are you? Inside is an emptiness. When one realizes this emptiness, the ego simply disappears — it is a myth, it is a dream, it is a fallacy. Because you have never looked within, you have created a false ego.
There is a necessity, because no man can live without a center. And you don’t know your own center. So the mind creates a false center; that false center is the ego. When you move inwards and look for the ego, you will never find it there. The deeper you go, the more you will laugh because the ego is not there. You are not there. Sometimes, just close your eyes and look for the ego. Where are you? Who are you? And emptiness surrounds you from everywhere; nobody is there inside. And this moment is the most beautiful and ecstatic moment possible, when you feel that there is no ego. When there is no ego, you are empty. And when you are empty, the Divine rushes towards you. You have created the situation. This was the single note of Kakua; and this is my single note also. This story is very beautiful. Try to understand every word of it.
JOSHU WAS A MASTER WHO STARTED TO STUDY ZEN WHEN HE WAS SIXTY.
Remember, your age is not relevant. You may be a child or you may be very, very old. You may be young, you may be healthy, or you may be ill — it makes no difference. Because the basic thing is to be empty within. It has nothing to do with your walls, young or old.
A child can attain Enlightenment. A man just on the verge of death can attain Enlightenment because Enlightenment is not concerned with your body — it is concerned with something which is absolutely bodiless. It is concerned with the within which has no age. It is non-temporal. Time is not at all a problem.
You may not have observed this, because you live such an unconscious life, and observation needs consciousness, alertness, awareness. If you look within can you feel the age, how old you are? If you close your eyes and look within, the emptiness within seems to be ageless, without age. Are you a child? Are you young? Are you old? The inner space seems to be non-temporal — it is. That’s why you become old through others’ eyes. You become old because of the mirror. If mirrors disappear and nobody talks about your age, and there is no calendar and no time measurement, you will remain young longer…If you are too concerned with the body, you become the body. If you go on looking in the mirror, you become the body. That’s why women age faster than men — the mirror. And the miracle is, basically they live longer than men, but they age faster. On average, all over the world, they live four years longer than men, but they age faster. They lose their beauty and their youth quickly. The mirror kills them; continuously meditating on the body.
Meditate on the inner being, not on the body. Find a mirror which reflects you, not the body. That mirror which reflects you is meditation. The more you meditate, the more ageless you become.
JOSHU WAS A MASTER WHO STARTED TO STUDY ZEN WHEN HE WAS SIXTY.
So it is never too late. Don’t be worried. Whenever you come, it is okay. It is never too late, it is always early, so don’t think about it. Many people come to me and they say: Now we are very old. And the mind is so cunning. Young people come to me and they say: Now how can we meditate? We are too young. And old people come and they say: How can we meditate? We are too old. Others come to me and they say: Don’t initiate children, they are just children. Don’t give them sannyas — don’t initiate them. So who am I to initiate? — dead men? Nobody is left. Some are children, some are young, some are old. Mind is cunning. When you are a child, you say you are a child. When you are young, you say you are young, you have to live life a little more. By the time you are old, you feel exhausted, energy gone, tired. You say: Now what can I do? Nothing is left. I can simply wait helplessly for death. Never in the history of man, has man been as helpless before death as he is now — and with such tremendous advances in medical science! Never before has man been so helpless before death. Never has man worried about death as much as he worries now. Why such a helplessness? Because you are not in contact with the eternal; your roots are not in the eternal. You have lived a temporal life, and death is the end of time. Not you. Remember, death ends time, not you. And if you have lived in time, with time, only with temporal goals, then death is a problem.
But if you have lived deeper within yourself, in the remoter mountains where Kakua moved, inside where nobody can visit you, totally alone — then death is not a problem. Because, you know the deathless — it is hidden there.
On the surface is time, at the center is eternity. Remember, eternity is not a long, long time — no. Eternity is not time at all. Eternity means ‘no time’.
At the age of sixty, Joshu started. You can start any time, and this has always been my feeling. Joshu lived so long — he lived one hundred and twenty years — he must have lived one hundred and twenty years, because he started at the age of sixty. And when you start meditating, you become so fresh and young, you can simply live long without any effort. A person who is ready to learn always becomes a child. Joshu again became a child at the age of sixty…
In the East, when death started approaching, when death knocked for the first time on the door, people became very, very happy.
Death was a door, it was not the end. Something new was going to start, and it was not the enemy, it was God coming in the garb of death. They had come to know that they are not the body, they are not going to die. The bodies will be left behind and they will go on an eternal journey. Death was not the end. Death was a meeting, a meeting with the Unknown. Death was a long, long awaited moment — desired, dreamed, hoped. It was the last desire: to leave the body and to meet the Divine, to merge into it so totally that not even a trace of you is left behind. The body looked like a barrier, so when it was dropped, you were completely free. Death was freedom and the culmination of life, it was not just the end.
If death is just the end and you simply finish, life cannot be meaningful. How can life be meaningful when it just ends? Then the whole life becomes gloomy; the shadow of death makes it sad. Whatsoever you do is meaningless, because you are going to end. Whatsoever you create is meaningless, because you are going to end. Whatsoever you do is just fooling yourself, because you are going to end. If death is a new beginning, if death is a rebirth, if death is a meeting with the Divine, then life has a significance. Then whatsoever you do is meaningful. Then you are something significant, and the existence hopes many many things through you.
At the age of sixty Joshu was again beginning a new childhood; he started learning Zen. Remember, if you can learn to the very end, you will never become old. A man who can learn is never old. A man who cannot learn anymore is already old. A man who cannot learn anymore is already dead — now there is no purpose for him to be here. Life is a school, a discipline; it is a learning process. If you have stopped learning, you are already dead. Sufis say that ordinarily people die at thirty and are buried at sixty. When you stop learning, you are dead.
JOSHU STARTED AT THE AGE OF SIXTY, AND WHEN HE WAS EIGHTY, HE FOUND ENLIGHTENMENT.
Remember, Enlightenment is not a game. Everything else is a game except Enlightenment. It is not a game, you have to be patient about it, and Joshu must have been a man of infinite patience. Beginning at the age of sixty, it is difficult to wait — one thinks of death. One thinks: If death comes before Enlightenment, what then? Then one must be in a hurry — but Joshu was not in a hurry. Remember, the more you are in a hurry, the less is there a possibility for you to reach. The more you are patient, the more is the possibility.
I will tell you one small Hindu anecdote. It happened that a messenger was going to God, and he passed one very ancient ascetic, an old man, very old, just sitting under a tree, meditating. He looked at the messenger and said: Wait — are you going to God? Then just ask about me. It is already too long. I have been making thousands of efforts, and it is now already three lives that I have been making them, so just ask how much longer have I to wait? When you ask: How much more do I have to wait? — you are not patient. You are in a hurry. And with God nothing is possible in a hurry, because he is not in a hurry. He has no time problem, He is eternity. The messenger said: Yes, I will ask. And just jokingly, he asked another young man who was dancing under another tree and singing praises to God. He asked: Are you also interested in knowing how much time it will take for you to become Enlightened? The young man didn’t bother. He wouldn’t even stop, he continued his dance.
The messenger returned. He said to the old man: I asked and God said, ‘Three lives more.’ The old man threw his rosary, and said: Enough is enough! Is this justice? I have been wasting my life continuously for three lives, and three lives more? This is too much! The messenger went to the other tree where the young man was still dancing ecstatically. He said: Even if you have not asked, I have asked. And God has said: That young man? It is very, very long before he will attain Enlightenment, the same number of lives as there are leaves on the tree under which he is dancing. Hearing this, the young man became more ecstatic, mad, and he started dancing faster and faster. And he said: Then it is not too long, because on the whole earth, how many leaves are there and how many trees? And this tree, only this tree? And these leaves? Then it is not too long, I have already achieved! And it is said that in that very instant that young man became Enlightened.
Infinite patience can bring it this very moment, because infinite patience changes your total being. When you have infinite patience, you have no tension inside, because all tensions are for the future. All tensions are: when, how, how much more time, will I achieve or not, am I going to miss? All tension is concerned with your impatience. If you are patient, tensions cannot exist within you. Patience is the only relaxation. You cannot relax with tensions inside the mind. A goal-oriented mind cannot relax; the tomorrow is too heavy, and you are so worried about it.
Jesus said to his disciples passing by a garden, he said: Look at the lilies, they don’t worry about the future; that’s why they are so beautiful. Even Solomon in his glory was not so beautiful. Look at these lilies; they are so beautiful, so graceful, because they don’t worry about tomorrow, about what is going to happen. They are not worried at all — they are simply here and now. Twenty years is too much when a man is sixty.
I have come across young men who come to me and they say: Three days have passed. I have been meditating for three days, and yet nothing has happened. How many lives will these people have to wait? You calculate: how many trees and how many leaves are there on the whole earth, and all the trees on this earth, and all the leaves — no, that number won’t do. ‘Three days,’ they say. I have come across one woman, and no ordinary woman, a professor in a university. She had just meditated once, and she came and told me: I have not realized God yet. One meditation…. How much you oblige God! Just by sitting foolishly for forty minutes — and you will be sitting foolishly because a fool cannot sit otherwise. You may look like a Buddha, but that is just on the surface. Inside the fool travels, chatters. Inside you are a monkey. You can control the body, but the monkey inside goes on jumping from one branch to another, and chattering continuously. That’s why I always feel that Darwin must be right. I don’t know whether scientifically he is right or not, but spiritually, the more I observe you, the more I am convinced that he must be right: man must have come from the monkey. Because deep inside he still remains a monkey. Only the surface has changed. It is just the body that is a little different, but the mind is the same. And just by sitting once, you start hoping for the infinite?
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Joshu, at the age of sixty could wait for twenty years. A rare man. At the age of eighty, he found Enlightenment. And they say that he taught for forty years after his Enlightenment. Not in a hurry — he waited for twenty years. It is said that he never asked his Master when it would happen. It is said that even the Master was a little worried, because this man was so old. But Joshu — never. He never asked his Master: When? He simply waited and meditated, and waited and meditated. He attained. When he attained, the Master said: Even I was worried a little, because this man is so old. And after his attainment, for forty years he continued teaching.
But the note is one, the same as Kakua’s. The note is emptiness. He was teaching for forty years on how to be empty. And this is the whole teaching of all the religions. If something else is taught to you, know well that it is not religion. Then something else it may be, but not religion.
Religion is concerned with making you empty so that God can enter into you; to create space within you. Very shattering. You would like to be somebody, not nobody. How subtly you try to be somebody; how subtle are the techniques you employ to be somebody — somebody in this world or somebody in that world, but somebody.
On the last night, when Jesus was to depart, and it was almost destined that the next day he would be killed, the disciples were asking him: In the kingdom of God you will be sitting just on the right side of God. Where will we be sitting? — where? They were not worried about Jesus. They were not worried about his death the next day — they were not worried about it. They were worried about their positions: twelve disciples — in what hierarchy? Jesus would be sitting there of course, by the right side of God. That much they could tolerate. But then who would be next, then who, and then who? Politics follows you to the very end. This mind is political, not religious. Politics is concerned with who you are in the hierarchy. Religion is not concerned with who you are. Religion has no hierarchy, because in religion, only one enters who is nobody. Then how can a hierarchy exist? Only one enters who has left himself behind.
Source:
This is an excerpt from the transcript of a public discourse by Osho in Buddha Hall, Shree Rajneesh Ashram, Pune.
Discourse Series: Returning to the Source
Chapter #2
Chapter title: Throw It Out!
12 December 1974 am in Buddha Hall
References:
Osho has spoken on ‘Enlightenment, Emptiness, Patience, Relaxation, Zen’ in many of His discourses. More on the subject can be referred to in the following books/discourses:
- Beyond Enlightenment
- Bodhidharma: The Greatest Zen Master21
- From Death to Deathlessness
- The Great Zen Master Ta Hui
- The Osho Upanishad
- The Zen Manifesto: Freedom From Oneself
- Sermons in Stones
- Nirvana: The Last Nightmare
- Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 3
- The Secret of Secrets, Vol 2
- The Buddha: The Emptiness of the Heart
- And The Flowers Showered
- Hsin Hsin Ming: The Book of Nothing
- Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 1
- Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 2
