Truth Liberates
January 20, 2009
Letting go of shock-absorbers
Man has created many psychological shock-absorbers around himself. Unless you drop all shock-absorbers you are never going to be free.
Only truth liberates. In the beginning, truth shocks very much — but that’s how it is, that’s how things are, that’s how nature functions. You have to open yourself, you have to be vulnerable to all the shocks of life. It will hurt, it will wound, you will cry, you will weep, you will be in a rage against life. But slowly slowly you will start seeing that truth is truth, and it is pointless to be in a rage against truth. And once the rage has subsided, the truth has a beauty of its own. Truth liberates.
It frightens, it scares, but that is the only way you can grow. Growth has to be with reality, not against reality. And once you have tasted something of reality as it is, you will never gather any other buffers, shock-absorbers, around you again.
Osho, excerpts from The Book of Wisdom #12
Osho book recommendations
The Zen Manifesto; Freedom from Oneself
No Water No Moon: Talks on Zen Stories
Gold Nuggets: Messages from Existence
Death and Life Meditation
January 12, 2009
15 minutes dying before sleep
15 minutes vitality after waking up
In the night before you go to sleep, do this fifteen-minute meditation. It is a death meditation. Lie down and relax your body. Just feel like dying and that you cannot move your body because you are dead. Just create the feeling that you are disappearing from the body. Do it for ten, fifteen minutes, and you will start feeling it within a week. Meditating that way, fall asleep. Don’t break it. Let the meditation turn into sleep, and if sleep overcomes you, go into it.
In the morning, the moment you feel you are awake — don’t open your eyes — do the life meditation. Feel that you are becoming more wholly alive, that life is coming back and the whole body is full of vitality and energy. Start moving, swaying in the bed with eyes closed. Just feel that life is flowing in you. Feel that the body has a great flowing energy — just the opposite of the death meditation. So do the death meditation in the night before falling asleep and the life meditation just before getting up.
With the life meditation you can take deep breaths. Just feel full of energy… life entering with breathing. Feel full and very happy, alive. Then after fifteen minutes, get up. These two — the life and death meditation — are going to help you tremendously.
Osho, excerpts from A Rose is a Rose #12
Osho book recommendations on meditation
Meditation: The First and Last Freedom
Everyday Osho: 365 Daily Meditations for the Here and Now
Meditation For Busy People: Stress-Beating Strategies To Calm Your Life
Discover the Buddha: 53 Meditations to Meet the Buddha Within
From Boy to Man to Old Man to ?
December 21, 2008
Consciousness continues the journey
Death is impossible in the very nature of things — only life is. Yes, life goes on changing forms; one day you are this, another day you are something else. Where is the child you once were? Has the child died? Can you say that the child has died? The child has not died, but then where is the child? The form has changed. The child is still there in its essentiality, but now you have become a young man or a young woman. The child is there with all its beauty; it has been superimposed by new riches.
One day you will become old. Then where is your youth? Died? No, again something more has happened. Old age has brought its own crop, old age has brought its own wisdom, old age has brought its own beauties.
The child is innocent, that is his core. The youth is overflowing with energy, that is his core. And the old man has seen all, lived all, known all; wisdom has arisen, that is his core. But his wisdom contains something of his youth; it is also overflowing, it is radiant, it is vibrant, it is pulsating, it is alive. And it also has something of the child; it is innocent.
If the old man is not young also, then he has only aged, he is not old. He has grown in time, in age, but he is not grown-up. He has missed. If the old man is not innocent like the child, if his eyes don’t show that crystal clarity of innocence, then he has not yet lived.
If you live totally, cunningness and cleverness disappear, and trust arises. These are the criteria to know whether one has lived or not. The child never dies but only is metamorphosed. The youth never dies, there is only a new mutation again. And do you think the old man dies? Yes, the body disappears because it has served its purpose, but the consciousness continues the journey.
Osho, excerpt from The Book of Wisdom #14
Osho book recommendations
And Now, And Here: On Death, Dying and Past Lives
From Death to Deathlessness: Answers to the Seekers of the Path
