December 11 was a blissful day in Centreville, Virginia at Dhyanyoga Center with many friends and lovers enjoying meditation, dance and song, high energy and silent inner moments; also wonderful food, laughters, and LOTS of chai. It even snowed giving things a special touch of magic from Existence. The day after with friends still here, we enjoyed a long walk in the bright sun and fresh, brisk winter air — and there was much more kitchen fun. We even squeezed in another Evening Meeting Meditation with few remaining friends reluctant to depart.
Virginia is definitely on the map now for Osho. I encourage everyone living here, or just passing through, to enjoy the weekly meditations and yoga classes offered by Vasanti, Anam, and their team. And thank you for inviting me to celebrate with you. In gratitude, I want to share some words from Osho that have particularly resonated with me in recent days. And of course a few photos!
“I have been absent for almost thirty-five years. Once I used to be… but for thirty-five years I have been just empty, a hollow bamboo. In the right hands that hollow bamboo can become a flute. I have allowed my hollow bamboo to bring to you any music, any song, any ecstasy that existence wants to share with you. But on your part, perhaps listening to a beautiful flute player, you start looking at the flute, thinking perhaps the music is of the flute. The music is not of the flute. I am singing songs of existence. My gestures are not my gestures.
“I am no longer a person, but only a presence. But perhaps that presence is giving you the idea of beauty. In fact you yourself have said, “I have fallen so much in love with you.” Love imparts beauty to anything. It is not my fault. If you have fallen in love with me, to you I will look as gorgeous as your love is deep. But that shows the heart of a disciple. That shows the eyes of a devotee; that shows the feeling of a lover. It has nothing to do with me; it is all your experience. It is your own inner beauty projected on me. It is your own feeling projected on the screen which is empty. You are also saying, “Not only you are the most beautiful and gorgeous master, but also the most irresistibly charming being my eyes have ever seen.” Your eyes have remained closed to the whole existence. You have not fallen in love with trees and birds and animals. You have not fallen in love with the ocean and the mountains; otherwise you would have seen the same beauty millionfold. Let this be the beginning of a long pilgrimage. Don’t stop at me.
“The master has to be only a beginning, just a push on the way. But remember that these are your eyes full of love which are projecting. These eyes can make this whole existence beautiful. And the moment you can start seeing into rocks and into flowers and into stars, you will be amazed, overwhelmed what a great existence you have been missing. If the master can give you just a glimpse, that’s enough; then you can go on your way.
“Gautam Buddha is reported to have said, “If you meet me on the way again, cut my head immediately. “No authentic master would like you to become addicted to him. He would like you to move on. If you have seen the beauty in me, you are capable of seeing beauty. Just here, you have opened your eyes in trust, in love. To the whole existence you remain closed in distrust, in doubt, in uncertainty; otherwise, this is the most perfect existence possible. And anyway, there is no other existence.
“If the master can become your window and you can see through the window to the open sky, to the vast spaces, you will remain grateful to the master, but not addicted to him. The fear of addiction is not unfounded: there are millions of people who are addicted to Gautam Buddha, millions of others who are addicted to Jesus Christ, millions of others addicted to Mohammed. They have forgotten that a master is only a window frame, and if you start becoming addicted to the frame of the window, you will never look through it. Then the window becomes your worship, the object of your worship. Windows are not to be worshiped; windows are to be opened so that you can see beyond.”
Osho: The Great Pilgrimage #23
“We are not born with our birth, and we are not going to die with our death. Neither birth nor death… our essence is eternal, beginningless, endless. Births and deaths have happened a thousand-and-one times, they are just episodes, very small things compared to our eternity. Whenever anybody finds this eternity, it starts transforming him. He becomes a new man in the sense that his vision is clear. He does not belong to any crowd, he cannot be a Christian or a Hindu, or a Mohammedan; because he knows in his innermost core that we are all part of one existence.”
Osho: Dogen, the Zen Master #4
