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In Japanese, the word ‘campai’ literally means empty cup. Most commonly it is used when making a toast, though, like the Germans say 'prost', the Danes 'skål', the English 'cheers', the Italians 'cin-cin'. One of the biggest faux pas I ever committed in Japan happened in Osaka after an event. It was evening and I was sitting around a table waiting to have dinner with some Japanese friends. I was feeling tired and spaced-out from all the day’s activities. Drinks arrived. I had been in Italy only a few days before and without thinking picked up my glass and said, "Cin-cin!"

The red faces and shocked looks all around indicated something had gone terribly wrong. Someone leaned close to my ear and whispered 'cin-cin' means 'prick' in Japanese.

“Skål!" I quickly said.

Oops, wrong country again.

"Uh … Campai!" I shouted.

Everyone laughed nervously and drained their glasses in one gulp - very politely, of course.

In Japan, as with other modern cultures, celebration is simply 'skål!' You clink your glass of beer with friends and hope for a better day tomorrow. A friend of mine who teaches English in Japan was sharing how beautiful and full of life the young children are who come to his school and yet how quickly society seems to crush them, squeezing out all their joy of life. I have heard Osho say most people in the world die around the age of thirty. Maybe not physically, but spiritually. They just give up and the rest of their life is a long, boring march to the grave. Sure you find beautiful temples in Japan - perhaps once upon a time they even provided shelter and inspiration to real meditators - but nowadays they are simply museums of a dead past. Within their aesthetic gates, you find no music, no dancing, no singing - only the boring silence of a graveyard. It's a kind of silence, yes. But there is no celebration in it. Things look beautiful on the outside. But are very seriousness on the inside. Is this not the nature of the world we live in?

I have always been puzzled why Osho made celebration the last stage of Dynamic Meditation, why it doesn't just end in silence like Kundalini and Nadabrama. Is it because he realized that not only is mankind incapable of silence, but has forgotten the language of celebration too? This koan revealed itself during my most-recent tour in Japan. I was participating myself in Dynamic Meditation one morning with a group of enthusiastic Japanese. On this particular morning, the fourth stage (silence) went very deep. As the first notes of music heralding the fifth and final stage pierced the stillness, the roomful of meditators began to pulse with joy and dance. Suddenly, I remembered how it was to be a child again - innocent, a clean slate, tabula rasa, how I came into this world before society, the priests, my parents, and educators got hold of me. In this moment, I had an insight into a deeper meaning of the word 'campai!'.

If one thinks of campai as the last stage of Dynamic Meditation, in the sequence of stages one reaches campai via silence, the previous stage. In silence, we remember who we are again, and from silence we become the small children we once were - dancing and singing in the sun and rain, our life worth living and full of magic, laughter and joy bubbling spontaneously from deep sources within. And onec we know who we are, the real celebration, the real campai, begins. Because campai is our birthright. Campai is our empty cup: empty, yet full, overflowing with love and the wine of life. Sound Zen? Let’s just say, campai!