Osho on Mystic Rose
You are asking, “In what soil and in which climate might one find the mystic rose?”
Your heart is the soil.
Your trust is the climate.
And your being is the mystic rose — its opening, blossoming, releasing its fragrance.
The mystic rose became just a symbol of the man whose being is dormant no more, is asleep no more, but is fully awake and has opened all its petals and has become sensitive to all that is truthful, beautiful, good — the very splendor of existence. His being has become part of the eternal and the immortal. He is no more the same man he used to be. He has found his real self, his original face.
The only way is to look inwards: there is the soil. To look with trust, with love and with a guarantee that if other people have found themselves there is no reason why you cannot find. The day Gautam Buddha became awakened, something in you has also become awakened. No man is an island; we are all connected, deep down in our roots. In the awakening of Gautam Buddha or in the laughter of Mahakashyap I am also a part. The moment I understood the beauty and silence of those tears, something in me has also responded.
Just in this century, Carl Gustav Jung has been able to find a right word for this experience which in the past has been called the transmission, the transfer, the communion. Jung’s word is certainly very significant — although he himself is not a mystic, he is a man of great intelligence. He calls it synchronicity. And it was only by chance that he discovered the word.
He was staying in an old castle with a friend. The old castle had two big antique clocks and the mystery about those clocks was that they were hanging on the same wall — and people used to come to see them — and they always kept the same time. Even if you disturbed their balance, set one clock a few minutes back or put it ahead, you would be surprised: soon, within a few minutes, they would start coming back again, closer to each other.
Jung was very mystified — what miracle is there? There was really no miracle, it was a very simple thing, but nobody before Jung had bothered. Everybody thought it was something mysterious. It was something mysterious, but it is not something that cannot be understood. The mystery was that the clocks were hung upon a piece of board, very sensitive wood, so that the “tick-tick” of one clock was heard by the other clock — “tick-tick” — and they would slowly find that they were not in step. Something vibrated on the wood, and the clocks fell into step.
Jung was in great difficulty to find the right word. What is happening between these two clocks? He coined the word `synchronicity’ — something like deep sympathy, such a deep love that they cannot move differently.
The mystic rose… When it was given to Mahakashyap, certainly there were many disciples who asked Buddha, “We are puzzled — what is happening? You have not said a word; neither has he said any word, not even in thankfulness. You have given him the rose and he has received it. No language has been used from either side.”
Gautam Buddha said, “It is for that purpose I have brought the rose. It is very symbolic, because the heart is so beautiful, your innermost being is beautiful as no rose can be, but the rose is the nearest symbol. And when it opens… the fragrance also is the closest symbol, because the same fragrance, similar — of a higher level, more mysterious — the rose can represent in the mundane world of our day-to-day reality.
“This rose that I have given to Mahakashyap will die. Right now it is so alive, so beautiful and so young. Just by the evening its petals will start dropping, dying. Today it is — tomorrow there will not be even a trace left behind. Tomorrow it will be impossible to think what beauty, what fragrance has been existing in reality yesterday.”
One of Gautam Buddha’s most basic philosophical standpoints is momentariness. Everything is only in the moment. It is changing. Nothing is permanent. What seems to be permanent is your inability to see the impermanence of it! Otherwise… mountains disappear, continents disappear, stars disappear, what to say about flowers? Everything that is born, dies. Only this moment is real; you cannot be certain about the next moment. The roseflower signifies his fundamental attitude of momentariness.
Source:
This is an excerpt from the transcript of a public discourse by Osho in Buddha Hall, Shree Rajneesh Ashram, Pune.
Discourse Series: YAA-HOO! The Mystic Rose
Chapter #3
Question 1
Chapter title: Heart is the soil — trust is the climate
21 March 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium
References:
Osho has also spoken on ‘man, being, awakening, mysticrose’ in many of His discourses. Some of these can be referred to in the following books/discourse titles:
- This, This, A Thousand Times This: The Very Essence of Zen
- The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha
- The Book of Wisdom
- From Darkness to Light
- The Path of the Mystic
- Sat Chit Anand
- The Transmission of the Lamp
- That Art Thou
- Bodhidharma: The Greatest Zen Master
- Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega
- The Hidden Splendor
- The Ultimate Alchemy
- Satyam Shivam Sundaram
