Thursday, June 21, 2012

Anandmurti Gurumaa - What is Death {Part 3}


Anandmurti Gurumaa - What is Death {Part 2}


Anandmurti Gurumaa - What is Death {Part-1}


Osho - Renounce To Enjoy


You get just as much as you are ready to give up and let go, says OSHO. 

Give it up if you want to enjoy it. But no, that is not our belief. On the contrary, we believe that we can enjoy only that to which we hold fast. But the “Upanishadic” sage instructs us to do quite the opposite. He says that they alone can enjoy things who renounce them. The statement is antithetical to our belief. They alone become real masters who refuse to be masters. Everything falls into the hands of those who have no desire to hold onto things.

Renounce To Enjoy

A good analogy is the attempt to hold air in your hand. You can comprehend the real meaning of this “Ishavasya Upanishad” sutra — renounce to enjoy — if you simply try to hold air in your hand. As soon as you tighten your grip, the air escapes. The tighter you clench your fist, the less air you hold, until in the end there is no air left. Loosen your grip and air will rush towards your open hand. There is always air in an open hand, but from the closed fist it flees. One who keeps his hand open has it always full of air; it is never empty, every moment the air is fresh. Have you ever observed this? An open hand is never empty, and a closed hand is always empty; and if a little air remains in the closed fist, it is stale and old and decayed. They alone are able to enjoy who renounce.

Life Is a Paradox

In this world, in this life, we get as much as we are willing to give up & let go. This is paradoxical — but all the rules of life are paradoxical. They are not opposites; they are paradoxes. It only appears that they are opposites. The person, who wishes for honour & respect, is sure to find dishonour & disrespect. An individual desires to be rich, but when he begins to accumulate wealth, he becomes as poor and mean within as he appears rich without. He, who thinks or dreams of immortality, is worried about fear of death 24X7. Death never visits the house of the person who is willing to welcome it: one who is willing to meet death tastes nectar, while one who is afraid of death dies every hour of the day. He dies all the time because he does not know at all what life is. 

One who says, “I will become the master,” will soon become a slave; and one who says, “I am willing to be a slave,” will have infinite mastery. But these are contradictory statements so it is very difficult to understand them, and when we try to interpret them, we do so in such a way that we are saved from the paradox in them — and hence we miss the point.

Thus people have misinterpreted these sutras. “Enjoy through renunciation” has come to mean that if you give charity, you will be rewarded with heaven. Give a paisa to a beggar sitting on the bank of the Ganga and you will be rewarded a thousand-fold. Nothing else in this world is as badly treated as are sutras such as these, and similarly, nobody is as unjustly treated as are the sages — because it is difficult to comprehend them in their true spirit. Instead, we interpret them from our own perspective. 

We think we understand the sutra: if you give away something in charity, you will go to heaven after death. But pay attention: the sutra says, “He who renounces, receives.” It does not say, “He who gives up with a view to getting, will receive.” In fact, he who gives up with a view to getting does not give up, because he is just working out how to get the reward.

Tightening Of Fists


The person who gives charity here so that he may get the reward in heaven is not renouncing at all. He is simply tightening his fist for the future. If rightly understood, his action is not only a tightening of his fist in this world, but a tightening of it also for the next world. He is telling others by his action, “This action is not very important here, it is quite ordinary, but it is very important there in the next world.” If he is quite sure, if he is one hundred per cent certain that he will be rewarded in the next world for his good actions in this world, then he is prepared to make some investment. He is prepared to risk some of his property if he is assured fully of his reward in the next world.

This sutra makes a straight, simple statement that he who renounces, enjoys. It does not say, “Give up if you desire to enjoy.” It announces that if you can give up, then you can enjoy; but if you are nursing the idea of enjoyment, you can never renounce.

Osho - Suffer Joyfully & Observe


You don’t have to be a masochist, says OSHO

When I say suffer joyfully, it looks paradoxical and your mind starts thinking how to compromise both, because to you they are contradictory. They are not, they only appear contradictory. You can enjoy suffering.

The Secret

What is the secret? How to enjoy suffering? The first thing is: if you don’t escape, if you allow suffering to be there, if you are ready to face it, if you are not trying somehow to forget it, then you are different. Suffering is there but just around you; it is on the periphery. It is impossible for suffering to be in the centre; it is not in the nature of things.… A subtle joy spreads all over your being because you have realised one of the basic truths of life: that you are bliss and not suffering.
So when I say enjoy it, I don’t mean become a masochist. There are people of that type and many of them have become ascetics, and they are creating suffering for themselves. They are masochists, they are ill. They are very dangerous people. They wanted to make others suffer but they are not so courageous, so their whole violence has turned within. Now they are torturing themselves, and enjoying it.

Just Watch It

Suffering is already there; life by its very nature creates suffering. Look at it with a very dispassionate eye. Don’t escape. Immediately the mind says, “Escape from here, don’t look at it.” But if you escape then you cannot be blissful.
Next time you fall ill and the doctor suggests to remain in bed, take it as a blessing. Close your eyes and rest and just look at the illness. Watch it, what it is. Don’t try to analyse it, don’t go into theories, just watch it, what it is. The whole body is tired and feverish — watch it. Suddenly, you will feel that you are surrounded by fever but there is a very cool point within you; the fever cannot touch it, cannot influence it. The whole body may be burning but that cool point cannot be touched. Watching, you will recede towards the source. Watching, not doing anything.... What can you do? The fever is there, you have to pass through it; it is no use unnecessarily fighting with it. You are resting, and if you fight with the fever, you will become more feverish, that’s all. So watch it.

The Unbridgeable Gap

Watching fever, you become cool; watching more, you become cooler. Just watching, you reach a peak, such a cool peak, even the Himalayas will feel jealous; even their peaks are not so cool. This is the Gaurishankar, the Everest within. And when you feel that, the fever has disappeared.... It has never really been there; it has only been in the body, very, very far away.
Infinite space exists between you and your body — infinite space, I say. An unbridgeable gap exists between you and your body. And all suffering exists on the periphery. Hindus say it is a dream because the distance is so vast, unbridgeable. It is just like a dream happening somewhere else — not happening to you — in some other world, on some other planet.

Get Centred

When you watch suffering, suddenly you are not the sufferer, and you start enjoying. Through suffering, you become aware of the opposite pole, the blissful inner being. So when I say enjoy, I am saying: Watch. Return to the source, get centered. Then, suddenly, there is no agony; only ecstasy exists.
Those who are on the periphery exist in agony. For them, no ecstasy. For those who have come to their centre, no agony exists. For them, only ecstasy.
When I say break the cup, it is breaking the periphery. And when I say be totally empty, it is coming back to the original source, because through emptiness we are born, and into emptiness we return.
So when I say enjoy, I mean watch, and you will enjoy. When I say enjoy, I mean don’t escape.

Osho - Money Mania


The more you hoard, the more futile it is, for we simply cannot take it with us, says OSHO

Wealth means all that which you go on collecting or accumulating according to your desire, even knowledge. One person goes on counting how much money he has put in his locker, another one is counting how much knowledge he has accumulated, how much information he has gathered and how many scriptures he has read, but both of them are accumulating.

Don’t Accumulate

The third person may be accumulating renunciations, counting how many fasts he has done. The fourth may be accumulating fame — he may be counting how many people have faith in him, how many worship him and how many follow him.
Whatever you accumulate and whatever can be accumulated is wealth. And this wealth is very deceptive because outside you may go on accumulating, but you remain poor within.
Whatever is accumulated outside cannot be taken inside, and death will snatch away what you cannot take inside, because you alone can go through death and nothing else.
Only your being will pass; flames will not be able to burn it, arrows will not be able to pierce it. Only you will be able to pass through the gate of death, you in your purity and nothing else.

Outside Wealth

If you have accumulated only outside wealth, you will remain poor while passing through the gate of death. If death proves you to be poor, then it means that the wealth accumulated during life was nothing but a deception. Wealth is only that which can go with us; otherwise the rest is nothing but trouble.
What you are accumulating appears like wealth to you, but actually it is not so, it is only trouble. You also come to know after accumulating that the trouble has increased. The real wealth would bring contentment; the real wealth would bring peace, relaxation and fearlessness, and would resonate a paradise in your life. It would bring the relief of reaching the destination, of reaching home; a perfume of relaxation would arise in your life.
But there is no such thing in you. With the increase of wealth, your life stinks more. It becomes unhappy and more fearful. The amassing of wealth creates thousands of worries. Wealth does not bring peace; it only disturbs peace. Why are people so mad about accumulating?

Meditate For Awareness

Really, there is big emptiness inside which has to be filled, and it has to be filled up with anything, otherwise one feels very empty. If one possesses nothing then one feels very empty inside. Just think: if you have nothing to possess, you will be free and empty inside.
People come to me for meditation. When they have meditated for some time, they start seeing that emptiness inside themselves. That emptiness was always there but it was not noticed.
Meditation makes you more aware — awareness increases and then one becomes aware of the emptiness. A very peculiar thing then happens. Whosoever feels that inner emptiness, starts eating a lot. One or two cases of this type come to me every day. They say, “What are we to do? We never used to eat so much food. The effect of the meditation is such that we want to eat all the time.”

Just Be, It’s Fulfilling

I explain to them that the reason for this is that meditation has shown you the inner emptiness, and this emptiness hurts so it has to be filled up. You, therefore, fill up this emptiness with money, position and fame.
By accumulating things and sitting amongst them, one feels that one has something. Those who do not have anything, have the desire of accumulating. But those who have something, do not accumulate, they are sufficient unto themselves.
Just ‘being’ is so fulfilling, that there is no need to collect anything.

Osho - First Get To Know Each Other


Going on a honeymoon before marriage could put things in perspective, says OSHO

Two people, separately unhappy, create more unhappiness for each other when they come together. That’s mathematical. You were unhappy, your wife was unhappy and you both are hoping that being together you both will become happy? This is such ordinary arithmetic, as two plus two makes four. You both will become unhappy…My suggestion is that marriage should happen after the honeymoon, never before it. If everything goes right, only then should marriage happen. The honeymoon after marriage is very dangerous.

Ninety per cent of marriages are finished by the time the honeymoon is over. But then you are caught, you have no way to escape. Then society, law, courts — everybody is against you if you leave the wife or the wife leaves you. In fact, society should create all barriers possible for marriage and no barrier for divorce. Society should not allow people to marry so easily. The court should create barriers — live together for two years at least; only then the court can allow you to get married. Right now they are doing just the reverse. If you want to get married, nobody asks whether you are ready or whether it is just a whim…. Two people should be allowed to live together long enough to become acquainted, familiar with each other. And even if they want to get married, they should not be allowed to do so until some time has lapsed. Then divorces will disappear from the world.
Divorces happen because marriages are wrong and forced — and because marriages are done in a romantic mood.

A romantic mood is good if you are a poet..., poets are almost always bachelors. They fool around but they never get ‘caught’, and hence their romance remains alive. They go on writing beautiful poetry. One should not get married to a woman or man in a poetic mood. Let the prose mood come, then settle, because day-to-day life is more like prose than like poetry. One should become mature enough. Maturity means that you are no more a romantic fool. You understand life and the responsibilities that go with it as well as understand the possible problems of being together with a person. You accept all those difficulties and yet decide to live with the person.…

When you have become alert to all of these problems and still you decide that it is worthwhile to risk and be with a person rather than to be alone, then get married. Then marriages will never kill love, because this love is realistic. Marriage simply brings out whatsoever is hidden in you...I am not saying that love is destroyed by marriage. Love is destroyed by people who don’t know how to love. Love is destroyed because in the first place love is not. You have been living in a dream. Reality destroys that dream. Otherwise love is something eternal, part of eternity. If you grow, if you know the art, and you accept the realities of love-life, then it goes on growing every day. Marriage becomes a tremendous opportunity to grow into love.

Nothing can destroy love. If it is there, it goes on growing. If love is really love... just being in the presence of the other you feel suddenly happy, just the very presence of the other fulfils something deep in your heart. Something starts singing in your heart, you fall into harmony. Just the very presence of the other helps you be together; you become more individual, centered, grounded. Then it is love.

Love is not a passion, love is not an emotion. Love is a very deep understanding that somebody somehow completes you. Somebody makes you a full circle. The presence of the other enhances your presence. .. it is enough to make you happy... a thousand and one lotuses bloom... then you are in love, and then you can pass through all difficulties that reality creates. And your love, by overcoming them, will become more and more strong.

Osho - Your Breathing can not Lie


A good indicator of whether you are living the truth is the way you breathe, says OSHO

Appearances are very deceptive. They may give you respectability but they cannot give you contentment.
The truth has a way of surfacing. It cannot be repressed forever. If it can be repressed forever, then it is not truth. In the very definition of truth, one should include the fact that truth has a way of bubbling up. You cannot go on avoiding it forever. One day or other, knowingly or unknowingly, it surfaces; it reveals itself.

Truth Reveals Itself

Truth is that which reveals itself. And just the opposite are lies. You cannot make a lie appear as truth forever and ever. One day the truth will surface and the lie will be condemned.
You cannot avoid truth. It is better to face it, accept it and live it. Once you start living the life of truth, authenticity, of your original face, all troubles disappear by and by, because the conflict drops and you are no more divided. Your voice has a unity then, your whole being becomes an orchestra. Right now, when you say something, your body says something else; when your tongue says something, your eyes go on saying something else simultaneously.


Watch & Observe

Many times people come to me and I ask them, ‘How are you?’ And they say, ‘We are very, very happy.’ And I cannot believe it because their faces are so dull — no joy, no delight! Their eyes have no light. And when they say, ‘We are happy,’ even the word ‘happy’ does not sound very happy. It sounds as if they are dragging it. Their tone, their voice, their face, the way they are sitting or standing — everything says something else. Start watching people. When they say they are happy, watch for a clue. Are they really happy?
By and by, watch yourself. When you say that you are happy but you are not, there will be a disturbance in your breathing. Your breathing cannot be natural. It is impossible, because the truth is that you are not happy. If you had said, ‘I am unhappy,’ your breathing would have remained natural. There was no conflict. But you said, ‘I am happy’. Immediately you are repressing something — something that was coming up, you have forced down.
In this very effort, your breathing changes its rhythm; it is no longer rhythmical. Your face is no longer graceful, your eyes become cunning.
First, watch others because it will be easier to watch others. You can be more objective about them. And when you have found clues about them use the same clues about yourself. And see —when you speak truth, your voice has a musical tone to it; when you speak untruth, there’s a jarring note. When you speak truth you are one, together; when you speak untruth you are not together, a conflict has arisen.
Watch these subtle phenomena, because they are the consequence of togetherness or un-togetherness. Whenever you are together, not falling apart; whenever you are one, in unison, suddenly you will see you are happy. That is the meaning of the word ‘yoga’. That’s what we mean by a yogi: one who is together, in unison; whose parts are all interrelated and not contradictory, interdependent, not in conflict, at rest with each other. A great friendship exists within his being. He is whole.

When You Become One

Sometimes it happens that you become one, in some rare moment. Watch the ocean, the tremendous wildness of it — and suddenly you forget your split; you relax. Or, moving in the Himalayas, seeing the virgin snow on the Himalayan peaks, suddenly coolness surrounds you and you need not be false because there is no other human being to be false to. You fall together. Or, listening to beautiful music, you fall together.
Whenever, in whatsoever situation, you become one, at peace; happiness, bliss surrounds you, arises in you. You feel fulfilled.

Osho - Women's Breats


OSHO comments on Sankara’s sutra: ‘Do not be infatuated by the beauty, the breasts, the navel and the waistline of a woman’

Man is attracted to woman and woman is attracted to man. The opposite always attracts; it is hypnotic. A newborn’s first contact with this world is the breast of the mother; his journey in this world begins with the mother’s breast. Hence man’s obsession with woman’s breasts; that’s the first impact. That is why all paintings, pictures statues, films, stories, all go on revolving around the breasts of women. Women keep trying to hide the breasts and men keep trying to uncover them.

Indigenous People

Tribal people who live close to nature — who we call “primitive” — have no attraction to the breasts because their women’s bodies and breasts are not covered. Every child is free to suck milk from the breast of his mother as long as he wants. Sometimes he does so until the age of 10, even. In so-called “civilised” societies, they try to wean away the child from the breast of the mother as early as possible. The sooner they wean the child away from the breast, the deeper becomes the attraction for it.
People go on writing poetry, painting pictures & making statues depicting beauty of breasts. Their mind is totally obsessed with breasts. This means that the child was not satiated, he remained dissatisfied. “Sankara” says to remember this continuously — the earlier impact can only be removed by remembering this again & again.

Story of a Chicken

One scientist was experimenting with chickens. When a chicken was born of a hen’s egg, he did not let the chicken see the hen but kept it with a duck. When the chicken opened its eyes it saw the duck, & this was its first imprint. It would run after the duck & it would not recognise the hen. The duck could not tolerate the chicken running after her all the time so she used to kick it, beat it; despite this it would follow her everywhere. The hen tried her best to win it over, to get it near her, but it would be frightened of her & stand far away. At night also the chick wanted to sleep in the same place where the ducks were kept, but the ducks would throw it out. The hen wanted to take it to the hen house, but it was not ready to go there. The first imprint, the first conditioning, is very important. It goes on haunting you the whole of your life. The first event of life, whatever it is, always haunts a person, and you keep dreaming about it.

What is so attractive in a man’s or a woman’s body? Every person is half woman & half man. Your whole existence is incomplete. The womanly half in you goes on yearning for the man and the manly half in you goes on yearning for the woman.
Psychologists say that in the unconscious mind of every man is hidden the woman & in the unconscious mind of every woman is hidden the man. They go on searching outside till their inner man & inner woman meet. Until this happens, until your conscious & unconscious minds become one, attraction for the opposite will always be there. A man will be attracted towards a woman and a woman will be attracted towards a man.

In a statue of “Ardhanarishawara”, Shiva is shown as half woman & half man. Until the half man & half woman within you become the image of “Ardhanarishawara”, until you become whole within yourself, you will go on searching outside feeling lost & thinking that meeting a woman will bring fulfilment. But the woman is there in your unconscious mind. That is why all the yogas & tantras are basically the process of uniting your inner energies. When you become united & one within you, then your outer desire ceases to exist. At the same time, when the outer desire ceases to exist, only then can you become one. These two things are interdependent. 

Inner Man & Woman

No, it is not a question of a man or a woman. The attraction for the opposite is of no use. You must contemplate that these are perversions of flesh and thereby remove this imprint in the mind.
Continuous remembrance is like the waterfall which breaks the stone. Eventually, the stone turns to sand granules and water continues falling in the same way. This imprint is very strong and deep but if the thought continues like the trickle of water, one day the stone will break and disappear. And the day your imprints disappear, you become free.

Osho - Three Levels Of Sleep


Osho - Three Levels Of Sleep

How deep is your slumber, asks OSHO

Buddha’s path is the negative path, his assertions are negative. That’s why Hindus called him a nastik; they called him an atheist, an absolute nihilist. But he is not. When things disappear, thoughts disappear, and the witnessing disappears — that which remains is truth. It liberates. It is nirvana, enlightenment.

Deny & Transcend

Buddha is very deep. He never asserts a single positive. If you ask about any positive, he simply remains silent. He never says God is, he never says the soul is; in fact he never uses the word is. You ask and he will use the word ‘not’. ‘No’ is his answer for everything. And if you can understand, if you can feel a rapport, you will see that he is right. When you deny everything, that doesn’t mean you have destroyed everything. That only means you have destroyed the world that you had created. The real remains because the real cannot be denied. But you cannot assert it. You can know it, but you cannot state it. When you deny all this, when you transcend all this, you become a buddha. You are enlightened.

Deep Sleep

Buddha says you are awakened only when three sleeps are broken. One sleep is the sleep with things: many people are asleep there; that is the grossest sleep. Millions of people, 98 per cent of them are asleep there. One goes on thinking about his bank balance, one goes on thinking about the house, about clothes, about this and that — and one lives in that. There are people who only study catalogues for things. Then, there is the second sleep, the sleep of the mind. There are people who are not concerned with things — only one per cent of people — who are concerned with the mind. They don’t bother about what type of clothes they use — artists, novelists, poets, painters; they are not worried about things in general, they live in the mind. They can go hungry, or they can go naked, they can live in a slum, but they go on working in the mind. The novel they are writing...they go on thinking, ‘I may not be immortal but the novel that I am going to write is going to be immortal; the painting that I am doing is going to be immortal.’ But when you cannot be immortal, how can your painting be immortal? When you are to perish or die, everything that you create will die, because how is it possible that from death something immortal can be born?

The Subtle Ego

Then there are people who go on thinking of philosophy, thoughts, oblivious of things, not worried much about them. And then there is a third sleep: monks, those who have renounced the world, and also the mind, who have been meditating for many years and they have stopped the thought process. Now no thoughts move in their inner sky, now no things are there; they are not concerned with things, not concerned with thoughts. But a subtle ego, the ‘I’ — now they call it Atman, the soul, the self, the Self with a capital ‘S’ — is their sleep; they are asleep there.

Becoming Mindful

Buddha says sleep has to be broken on these three layers, and when all the sleeps are broken, nobody is awake, only awakening is there; nobody is enlightened, only enlightenment is there — just the phenomenon of awareness, without any centre....
When the mind disappears, thoughts disappear. It is not that you become mindless; on the contrary, you become mindful. Buddha uses this word ‘right mindfulness’ millions of times. When the mind disappears and thoughts disappear, you become mindful. You do things — you move, you work, you eat, you sleep, but you are always mindful…. What is mindfulness? It is awareness. It is perfect awareness.

Osho - Channelise Your Anger


When it grips you, meditate, be creative, says OSHO

Learn to transform your poison into honey. There is a simple process. In fact, to call it transformation is not right, because you don’t do anything; you only need patience. This is one of the greatest secrets I am telling you. Try it: when anger comes, you must not to do anything; just sit silently and watch it. Don’t be against it, don’t be for it. Don’t cooperate with it, don’t repress it. Let it rise.
Just give it a little time and wait... and you will be surprised. If you can wait enough, anger itself becomes compassion. It is a wheel; it is moving on its own — you are in a hurry. Just as night becomes day if you can wait a little, in the same way, anger becomes compassion if you can wait a little. The same energy — just patience has to be added to it, nothing else. Remember one thing: never do anything in the mood when the poison possesses you; just wait.
Negativity provokes more negativity, anger brings more anger, hostility brings more hostility, and things go on and on and on...and people have been estranged with each other for ages. And they continue!

Time To Meditate

Wait. When you are angry, this is the moment to meditate. Don’t waste this moment when anger is creating such great energy in you — it can destroy. But energy is neutral — the same energy that can destroy, can also be creative. The same energy that can shatter, can shower life — just wait. Waiting and not doing anything in a hurry, one day you will be surprised, seeing the inner change. You were full of anger, and then anger goes on and on and comes to a climax... and then the wheel turns. And you can see the wheel is turning, and the anger is relaxing, and energy is released, and now you are in a positive mood — the creative mood. Now you can do something.
 
Wait & Watch

Always wait for the positive. I am not saying to repress the negative. I am saying watch the negative. Remember the difference. I am not saying sit on top of the negative, forget the negative, do something against it — no. I am not saying when you are angry, smile — no; that smile is false, ugly, phoney. Don’t smile when you are angry. Close the room, keep a mirror in front of you, see your angry face yourself. There is no need to show it to anybody else. It is your business, it is your energy, it is your life, and you have to wait for the right moment. Go on looking in the mirror: see the red face, the red eyes, the murderer there.
Have you ever thought that everybody carries a murderer inside? You also carry a murderer inside. Don’t think that the murderer exists somewhere else — somebody else is a murderer who commits a murder — no: everybody has the possibility to commit a murder. You carry the suicidal instinct in you.

Know Yourself

Just look in the mirror: these are your climates — you have to be acquainted with them. This is part of the growth towards self-knowledge. You will see that anger cannot be there forever. If you don’t do anything, what is going to happen? Can anger hang there forever and forever? Nothing hangs there forever. Happiness comes and goes, unhappiness comes and goes.
Can’t you see a simple law? — that everything changes, nothing remains permanent. So, why be in a hurry? Anger has come — it will be going. You just wait, have a little patience. Just look in the mirror and wait. Let anger be there, let your face go ugly and murderous — but wait, watch.
Don’t repress and don’t act according to the anger, and soon you will see that the face is becoming softer, the eyes are becoming calmer, the energy is changing — and soon you will be full of radiance. The same redness that was anger, now is a certain radiance — a beauty on your face, in your eyes.

Osho - The Cycle of Birth & Death


It’s the reason why the East conceived of history in a circular dimension, says OSHO. It reflects the repetitive cycle of birth and death.

The western attitude is still time-obsessed. There are reasons behind it. Why did time become linear in the West? Because the concept of rebirth never became prevalent. Pythagoras introduced it, but then it was lost; Jesus hinted about it; he talked indirectly about it. He never talked directly, he indicated it. But it could not be understood.

The concept of rebirth is the reason why the East could conceive of history in a circular dimension. If you are to be reborn again & again there will be birth & death — then birth will follow & again there will be death. It will be a repetition. But if there is only life — birth followed by death, but death not followed by birth — then birth becomes absolute, death becomes absolute. Neither will come again. That is why time became so important in the West, and the West became time-obsessed.

So Tense About Time

These are all related things: history, time, tension. Why has the West become so tense about time? Not a single moment is to be lost because once lost, you cannot find it again; it cannot be reclaimed. The East is at ease. Nothing is lost, everything can be reclaimed. You cannot lose it even if you try. Things will come back. Death will be followed by birth again, you will be young again. Everything will come back, will return to itself.

This seems more natural. Every movement is circular — it may be of an atomic particle or it may be of a great star. Everything moves in a circle; there is no movement that is linear. Einstein talks of a limitless circular space. Even space is circular. Not only are things circular, but even nothingness, the vacuum itself, is circular. Even the movement of a vacuum is circular. In fact, that which is not circular cannot move: movement is circular.

The whole of nature moves in a circle. Summer follows again in the same course; each season comes and goes and is followed in repetitive progress. Time cannot be different. Time is nothing but a medium of movement.

Moving In Circles

You become aware of time because of movement. We cannot conceive of movement without time. Time means a sequence between moving events: something is followed by something else. This passage occurs in time. Since everything is moving in a circle, the passage of time cannot be non-circular.
History is an awareness of time: its events and their position in a particular framework — the framework of linear movement. People in the East became aware of linear time and of history, only when the East came in contact with the West. Then the East felt that it was lacking something. We have no history at all; we cannot create any history. Anyone can say that Buddha is mythological and we cannot prove that he is not. Anyone can say that Rama is just a story, a myth. We cannot say that he is not because we have not maintained any record of when he lived. Where is the proof?

We were not aware that any proof is needed. We became aware of it only when we came in contact with the West. We came to know that they have everything recorded; they have exact proofs. Only then, India began to write its history.

But still, a historic sense is not there. It cannot be, because with a circular time concept, history cannot exist. With an infinite opening toward the future, with an infinite possibility of repetition, a historic sense cannot exist. With the concept that death is just temporary — just a phase and not the end — history cannot exist. History can exist only with the concept of absolute death.

Then, each moment becomes significant. You have to live it, otherwise it will be lost. Tension follows; you cannot be relaxed. The West can never be relaxed unless its time concept changes.  How can you be relaxed when a moment is going, passing, and it will not come back? And the paradox is that the more obsessed you become with time, the more tense you become and the less you can live each moment.


Water On A Lotus Leaf

The more obsessed you are with time, the more you will write history and the less you will live it. History, as it exists — and it cannot exist otherwise — this history, this historic attitude, can never confront those phenomena that are beyond time. Even life is beyond time. It passes through time, but is always beyond. It is like a lotus leaf: always in water, but still beyond water, untouched by it. Life is like that. And the deeper life becomes, the more lotus leaf-like it is. Always touching somewhere, but never touched. Always in touch with time, but always beyond time. Untouched, virgin.http://www.facebook.com/samarth.vyas