It is fitting that I should write a foreword for Shunyo’s book, for it is I, as she puts it, who started her off on her adventure and waved goodbye as she boarded the plane to India seventeen years ago. She was to become an intimate disciple of the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, who became known as Osho (Zen Master) shortly before he died in January 1990.Continue reading
A woodcutter used to go into the woods every day. Sometimes he had to remain hungry because it was raining, sometimes it was too hot, sometimes it was too cold.
A mystic lived in the woods. He watched the woodcutter growing old, sick, hungry, working hard the whole day. He said, “Listen, why don’t you go a little further?”
The woodcutter said, “What am I going to get a little further? More wood? Unnecessarily carrying that wood for miles?”Continue reading
“Anything to Say?”
A voice inside is screaming “I’m here, I’m here,” but I am struck dumb. And then, the eyes.
When the Master looks into the eyes of the disciple, and he looks, and looks… he is seeing the whole story; everything, past, present and future. The disciple is transparent to the Master and he can see the unrealized Buddha. I could only sit there, letting him in, because it is the only way to find the diamond. Fear is there that he may see things in the unconscious that I would rather keep hidden; but he looks at me with such love that I can only say, yes. Sometimes, such a look can leave no trace in the memory – just an ecstatic feeling, an intense rush of joyful energy that leaves me fit to burst.Continue reading
After my first night in an Indian hotel, in Poona, I decided to abandon the search for Truth. The hotel had appeared to be a good one from the outside, and I arrived tired and shaken at my first experience of an Indian airport and train station. The station looked like a refugee camp with whole families asleep on their pathetic bundles of possessions, right in the middle of the platform, where passengers rushed past and over them. Maimed, starving people pulled at me, begged from me, and stared as though they wanted to eat me. Porters and taxi drivers shouted at each other and even had a fist fight, punching each other’s faces and half strangling each other over who was to have a customer. And so many hundreds of people – everywhere. Population explosion!
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Lao Tzu House (Osho’s house) used to belong to a Maharaja. It was chosen because of the gigantic almond tree that stands over the house, changing colors like a chameleon, from red, orange, yellow, to green. Its seasons change every few weeks, and yet I have never seen it with bare branches; as one leaf drops, the new shining green one is already waiting to take its place. Under the tree’s foliage is a small waterfall and rock garden, created by a crazy Italian who has never been seen since. Continue reading
Osho became enlightened on March 2lst 1953. Since that date he has been searching for people who will be able to understand him and seek their own enlightenment. He has helped hundreds of thousands of people along the path to self-realization. I have heard him say:
“Man’s quest for truth continues through many lives. One achieves it after so many births, and those who search for it think that they will experience relief after achieving it. But those who succeed in finding it, however, discover that their success is only the beginning of a new travail, without any relief whatsoever. Truth, once found, gives birth to a fresh labor.” Continue reading
lst June, 1981, New York City.
Osho left India with about twenty disciples. Saying goodbye, his sanyasins, hands folded in namaste, had stood outside his door in the hallway and car porch and had lined the road through the Ashram. He left in a Mercedes with Vivek and his doctor Devaraj.Continue reading
Rajneeshpuram was not in America.
It was a country on its own, without American dreams. Maybe that is why the American politicians went to war with it. We flew across America, me, Asheesh, Arpita and Gayan. Asheesh is a wood wizard. he is not only a master carpenter, he makes Osho’s chairs and fixes anything technical or electrical. It’s always, “Asheesh, Asheesh! where’s Asheesh?” when anything needs fixing or inventing. And he has a great way of speaking with his hands, because he is Italian.Continue reading
It seems to be a sad fact of human nature, that if a person, or group of people, are different from you – then you fear them. I was brought up in a small town in Cornwall, England, where even the people living in the next village were called “them strangers.” It wasn’t even enough to be born in the town, at least one parent had to be born there before you were accepted. So I wasn’t surprised at the local Oregonians’ reaction to us, although it was certainly excessive and violent. The shouts from their local church minister of “satan worshippers go home,” the T-shirts that read “Better dead than red,” with the sights of a gun on Osho’s face; and the bomb that exploded in our hotel in Portland, were definitely excessive.Continue reading
October 28th, 1985.
The Lear jet was just coming in to land at Charlotte, North Carolina, and I looked out into the darkness and saw that the airport was deserted. A few thin tall bushes were blowing in the wind gusts created by the jet as we touched down, and as the engines were switched off Nirupa saw Hanya. Hanya, with whom we were going to stay in Charlotte, was Nirupa’s extremely young mother-in-law. She was standing on the tarmac with her friend Prasad.Continue reading