August 20, 2009

Dakini Night Poem



Traktung Rinpoche wrote this poem on Losar of 2007 in answer to a question from a disciple "What is it like traveling from lifetime to lifetime without losing the thread of awareness? How did it all begin?" Recalling a conversation with Guru Rinpoche (Padmasambhava) he jotted down these words which his friend Sky then sang.

August 6, 2009


Man gets and forgets,
God gives and forgives.

Nurse Lisa Parker

I am hoping to find this nurse and kindly see if we can get an interview to share with the Osho community.

Lessons for the Political Economist...

"Our whole attitude about life is money-oriented. And money is one of the most uncreative things one can become interested in. Our whole approach is power-oriented and power is destructive, not creative. A man who is after money will become destructive, because money has to be robbed, exploited; it has to be taken away from many people, only then can you have it. Power simply means you have to make many people impotent, you have to destroy them – only then will you be powerful, can you be powerful.

Remember: these are destructive acts. A creative act enhances the beauty of the world; it gives something to the world, it never takes anything from it. A creative person comes into the world, enhances the beauty of the world – a song here, a painting there. He makes the world dance better, enjoy better, love better, meditate better. When he leaves this world, he leaves a better world behind him. Nobody may know him; somebody may know him – that is not the point. But he leaves the world a better world, tremendously fulfilled because his life has been of some intrinsic value."

--OSHO
A Sudden Clash of Thunder
Chapter #4
Man is Always an Opening

Story about our Hero...



"Let me tell you one anecdote. I have heard a very beautiful Jewish story. It is tremendously significant – it is about a man:

He was always sleepy. And always ready to sleep. Everywhere. At the biggest mass meetings, at all the concerts, at every important convention, he could be seen sitting asleep.

You must have known that man because you are that. And you must have come across that man many, many times, because how can you avoid him? –it is you.

And he slept in every conceivable and inconceivable pose. He slept with his elbows in the air and his hands behind his head. He slept standing up, leaning against himself so that he should not fall down. He slept in the theater, in the streets, in the synagogue. Wherever he went, his eyes would drip with sleep.

Had he been a Hindu he could have even slept standing on his head in shirshasana. I have seen Hindus sleeping that way. Many yogis become efficient in sleeping standing on their head. It is difficult, arduous; it needs great practice – but it happens.

Neighbors used to say that he had already slept through seven big fires, and once, at a really big fire, he was carried out of his bed, still asleep, and put down on the sidewalk. In this way he slept for several hours until a patrol came along and took him away.

It was said that when he was standing under the wedding canopy and reciting the vows, "Thou art to me...." he fell asleep at the word 'sanctified' – try to remember him – and they had to beat
him over the head with brass pestles for several hours to wake him up. And he slowly said the next word and again fell asleep.

Remember your own wedding ceremony. Remember your honeymoon. Remember your marriage. Have you ever been awake? Have you ever missed any opportunity where you could have fallen asleep? You have always fallen asleep.

We mention all this so that you may believe the following story about our hero.

Once, when he went to sleep, he slept and slept and slept; but in his sleep it seemed to him that he heard thunder in the streets and his bed was shaking somewhat; so he thought in his sleep that it was raining outside, and as a result his sleep became still more delicious. He wrapped himself up in his quilt and in its warmth.

Do you remember how many times you have interpreted things through
your sleep? Do you remember sometimes you have fixed the alarm clock,
and when it goes off you start dreaming that you are in the church and the bells are ringing. A trick of the mind to avoid the alarm, to avoid the disturbance that the alarm is creating.


When he awoke he saw a strange void: his wife was no longer there, his bed was no longer there, his quilt was no longer there. He wanted to look through the window, but there was no window to look through. He wanted to run down the three flights and yell 'Help!' but there were no stairs to run on and no air to yell in. And when he wanted merely to go out of doors, he saw that there was no out of doors. Everything evaporated!

For a while he stood there in confusion unable to comprehend what had happened. But afterward he bethought himself: I will go to sleep. He saw, however, that there was no longer any earth to sleep on. Only then did he raise two fingers to his forehead and reflect: Apparently I have slept through the end of the world. Isn't that a fine how-do-you-do?

He became depressed. No more world, he thought. What will I do without a world? Where will I go to work, how will I make a living, especially now that the cost of living is so high and a dozen eggs costs a dollar twenty and who knows if they are even fresh, and besides, what will happen to the five dollars the gas company owes me? And where has my wife gone off to? Is it possible that she too has disappeared withthe world, and with the thirty dollars' pay I had in my pockets? And
she is not by nature the kind that disappears, he thought to himself.

You will also think that way one day if you suddenly find the world has disappeared. You don't know what else to think. You will think about the cost of eggs, the office, the wife, the money. You don'tknow what else to think about. The whole world has disappeared! – but you have become mechanical in your thinking.

And what will I do if I want to sleep? What will I stretch out on if there isn't any world? And maybe my back will ache? And who will finish the bundle of work in the shop? And suppose I want a glass of malted, where will I get it?

Eh, he thought, have you ever seen anything like it? A man should fall asleep with the world under his head and wake up without it!

This is going to happen one day or other – that's what happens to every man when he dies. Suddenly, the whole world disappears. Suddenly he is no longer part of this world; suddenly he is in another dimension. This happens to every man who dies, because whatsoever you have known is just the peripheral. When you die, suddenly your periphery disappears – you are thrown to your center. And you don't know that language. And you don't know anything about the center. It looks like void, empty. It feels like just a negation, an absence.

As our hero stood there in his underwear, wondering what to do, a thought occurred to him: To hell with it! So there isn't any world! Who needs it anyway? Disappeared is disappeared – I might as well go to the movies and kill some time. But to his astonishment he saw that, together with the world, the movies had also disappeared.

A pretty mess I've made here, thought our hero, and began smoothing his mustache. A pretty mess I've made here, falling asleep! If I hadn't slept so soundly, he taunted himself, I would have disappeared along with everything else. This way I'm unfortunate, and where will I get a malted? I love a glass in the morning. And my wife? Who knows who she's disappeared with? If it is with the presser from the top floor, I'll murder her, so help me God.

Who knows how late it is?

With these words our hero wanted to look at his watch but couldn't find it. He searched with both hands in the left and right pockets of the infinite emptiness but could find nothing to touch.

I just paid two dollars for a watch and here it's already disappeared, he thought to himself. All right. If the world went under, it went under. That I don't care about. It isn't my world. But the watch! Why should my watch go under? A new watch. Two dollars. It wasn't even wound.

And where will I find a glass of malted? There's nothing better in the morning than a glass of malted. And who knows if my wife.. I've slept through such a terrible catastrophe, I deserve the worst. Help, help, he-e-e-lp! Where are my brains? Where were my brains before? Why didn't
I keep an eye on the world and my wife? Why did I let them disappear when they were still so young?

And our hero began to beat his head against the void, but since the void was a very soft one it didn't hurt him and he remained alive to tell the story."

--OSHO
A Sudden Clash of Thunder
Chapter #3

August 5, 2009

A prayer by Saint Francis

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred . . . let me sow love
Where there is injury . . . let me be the one to pardon
Where there is doubt . . . let me give faith
Where there is despair . . let me bring hope
Where there is darkness . . . let me be light
Where there is sadness . . . let me give joy

Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled . . .as to console
To be understood . . .as to understand,
To be loved . . . as to love

For it is in giving . . .that we receive,
It is in pardoning, that we are pardoned,
It is in dying . . .that we are born to eternal life

St Francis Prayers