Читать книгу OSHO: The Buddha for the Future - Maneesha James - Страница 14

Man is from heaven and music is from heaven, and whenever you know the keys to open the doors of music you have opened the doors of heaven also. The secret lies in the music.

If you ask me, if there were a choice between philosophy, religion, science, music, if there is a choice for me to choose one and all the remaining ones will disappear from the earth, I will choose music, because if music is there, religion will follow—it cannot disappear. ~ Osho

Impressions of these Pune days will be so many and remain so vividly alive for me many, many years later. The years and adventures to follow are beyond amazing. Each phase of my life as a sannyasin has its own beauty, yet there is something particularly magical about what comes to be known as “Pune One.”

Music is the thread throughout this time. I hear it in the Tibetan cuckoo at darshan time, his plaintive “Coo-oo…coo-oo” ringing through the stilling dusk; in the birds’ exuberant awakening at dawn. One morning earlier than usual, I clamber out of bed and set up a tape recorder on the balcony of my room, which is directly over Osho’s. From the nearby minaret the Muslims’ unearthly call-to-prayer rings through the still-dark silence. I pause and close my eyes to savor it, a sound so much part of the East. It’s a constant reminder of the value given here to the inner dimension and of how spirituality is part of everyday life—so different from the Christianity that, growing up in the West, I was surrounded by. A sense of the ineffable is meant to be confined to Sundays; anything else is excessive and suspect. Now, in the 1970s, those of us Westerners who are making spirituality the center of our lives are seen to have gone overboard. Friends, relatives and the media worldwide view us as eccentric; we’re “drop-outs.”

The day is gently ushered in with, at first, just an occasional twitter here and there. Then the avian overture gradually builds up in volume and density as other birds join in. Half an hour later, the crow of a distant rooster is interspersed with the heave-and-puff of the local trains and, at 6:00 a.m., the throbbing of the drums from the meditation hall as the first stage of Dynamic Meditation begins. By now the birds are really letting rip, their conversations frenzied. So much energy in their hallelujah chorus! And this is not for some special occasion—or, it is for the special occasion of being alive for this new morning.

*

After discourse, while some of us set to work cleaning, accounting, doctoring, building, cooking, gardening or writing, others go to our therapy groups or join “Sufi Dancing.” Held in Buddha Hall, where we also meet for the daily discourses and meditations, it is a loving and often hilarious exercise in dance and song. Aneeta, blond hair flying, is in the center with musicians Anubhava on his guitar and Anugama on percussion as participants create various combinations of couples or foursomes, or join together as one big group.

I think of the typical man on the street in the West commuting his way to his office, a newspaper between him and those pressed tightly around him. By contrast how delightfully and outrageously pagan we are; how delicious not to be doing “the done thing,” the “right thing”! Instead of tethering ourselves to typewriters in airless offices, fifty orange, red, pink and russet-colored figures are joining arms, stepping this way and then that, our voices interwoven in rounds and harmonies. The pauses between songs are invariably filled with laughter and hugging, or with a heartfelt silence, before Aneeta announces the next one and demonstrates the steps to go with it, then off we go again.

Individuals compose some of the songs—“Thank You, Osho/ for bringing me here/ and taking me by the hand./ Nowhere to go/ but I know/ I’m a Buddha as I am. /Oh yeah!/ I’m a Buddha as I am!”—and an occasional song from the past, revised and vitalized, is given an airing. For example, “Amazing Grace”—that somber, evangelical hymn—is transformed into an ecstatic, “Praise life! Praise here! Praise now! Praise Osho!” The singing rides over rooftops and trees so that, sitting up on the balcony where I work in Lao Tzu House, I pause to listen or sing along.

The Music Group, led by Anubhava on his guitar, meets in the evenings during darshan, the songs blending in and providing a lovely backdrop as Osho leans forward to explain someone’s new name to them or to touch a forehead in blessing. And later, darshan concluded, those who spill out from the gates of Lao Tzu House fall into the arms of those who have been singing and dancing the hour away in Buddha Hall.

Occasionally instrumentalists, singers, and dancers from the Music Group or Sufi Dance come to darshan to play and sing for Osho. Chuang Tzu Auditorium, housed within Lao Tzu House, is surrounded by the dense jungle of Osho’s garden. Imagine then, a group of two hundred flame-dressed men and women arranged in a circle within a circle, walking slowly, arms and faces uplifted, singing our version of the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’—a several-layered harmony in which male and female parts meet and then diverge and intermingle in easy accord. This is the real temple—the life energy of several hundred people throbbing with love and joy and gratitude. Here is the Song of Songs, the testimony that life lived passionately is the essence of prayer.

Each “Celebration Day” is another chance to express our many “hearts full of love, beating in the rhythm of your song.” Whether it is to celebrate Osho’s birthday, his enlightenment, Guru Purnima or Mahaparinirvana (or Mahaparibanana, as some of us irreverently call it), hundreds of guests from all over India and from the West throng through the gates of the ashram. We residents man the many stalls offering a variety of books, discourse audiotapes, large, glossy, colored prints of Osho, handmade gifts from the mala shop—little “snuff” boxes, jewelry boxes, hairpins of ebony or teak—clothes from the boutique, toiletries from the “Bodydharma” department, cookies, cakes, and sweets.

The late afternoon is for individual preparation for the evening festivities—everyone engaged in hair washing, body scrubbing, and dressing in their most beautiful robes. Once seated in the brightly lit Buddha Hall, several thousand of us sing to the band’s accompaniment, or perhaps just sit quietly with eyes closed, until the car carrying Osho purrs up to the back of the podium.

The music segues into the beautiful Rumi-inspired song…

Draw near, draw near

Draw near, draw near

And I will whisper in your ear

the name whose radiance

makes the spheres to dance:

Osho!

The faces around me are radiant. I am full to bursting as we fold our hands in namaste to greet Osho’s entrance, which coincides perfectly with this particular song. He has paused, his hands raised in namaste, a soft smile playing on his face.

Just one glimpse of the real man

standing there

and we are in love love love love

love love love love love!

And miraculously, here he is, the “real man,” in our midst. Rumi has written, those many centuries ago, of such a moment, of this very man and those who love him. Time and space have disappeared. I am so full of love and joy that I feel as if I will burst. Tears spill down my face.

Perhaps the format of these celebration changes over the years, but always foremost for me is Osho sitting so still and elegantly in front of us, and our singing. Singing our hearts out—in gratitude to him, to each other, to life, and singing, too, for no reason other than that we cannot not! The love is palpable and expressed in songs that are tender—

He’s a flower of a man,

he’s a rainbow who can sing

who can sing, who can sing,

who can sing.

He’s a waterfall of music,

pouring rainbows over me,

over me, over me

over me.

—and some that are poignant. Indian Taru sings the perennial favorite to a hall that has become absolutely silent, spellbound now:

Guru Brahma, guru Vishnu

guru devo maheshwara

Tasmai shree guruvai namah now.

Om shanti-i-i, shant-i-i, shanti-i-i….

The song dissolves into silence, there is a pause, then once again we are off, riding the crest of

You fountain of love, of love,

You river of love, of love.

You ocean, -o-o-cean!’

And finally, as Osho rises and glides out, beaming, we sing our all-time favorite, the one that ends each celebration:

Yes, Osho, yes!

Yes, Osho, yes!

Yes, Osho,

Yes! yes! yes!

*

Surrendering to a master and into the energyfield around him is really just an excuse to encourage our small selves to dissolve. Osho says on one occasion:

From the heart there is no ego. Because of this we have become afraid of the heart. We never allow it to have its own way, we always interfere with it, we always bring mind into it. We try to control the heart through the mind because we have become afraid—if you move to the heart, you lose yourself. And this losing is just like death. Hence the incapacity to love, hence the fear of falling in love. Because you lose yourself, you are not in control. Something greater than you grips you and takes possession. Then you are not on sure ground and you don’t know where you are moving. So the head says, "Don’t be a fool, move with reason. Don’t be mad."

[You are] possessed…but unless you are ready to be possessed there can be no God for you. Unless you are ready to be possessed there is no mystery for you, and no bliss, no benediction. One who is ready to be possessed by love, by prayer, by the cosmos, means one who is ready to die as an ego. Only that one can know what life really is, what life has to give. What is possible becomes immediately actual, but you must put yourself at the stake.

He suggests we find as many opportunities as we can to be more loving.

Remember, whatsoever you are doing, the quality of love must be there. This has to be a constant remembering. You are walking on the grass—feel that the grass is alive. Every blade is as much alive as you are.

Be loving. Even with things, be loving. If you are sitting on a chair, be loving. Feel the chair; have a feeling of gratitude. The chair is giving comfort to you. Feel the touch, love it, have a loving feeling. The chair itself is not important. If you are eating, eat lovingly.

Music, singing and dancing have always been important to me personally, and I can hardly believe my good luck at not only finding Osho and living such an extraordinary life in exotic India but discovering that all three are intrinsic to our every day. In listening to music, in singing and especially in dancing I can lose myself, or find my real self in the space of vastness they all take me to. One day I ask Osho in a question for discourse, “Our love for music, poetry, dance, our love for love itself—doesn’t that suggest an urge in us to disappear? If that is so, why does meditation, the art of disappearing, not come more naturally to us?”

Osho responds:

Maneesha, music, poetry, dance, love are only half way. You disappear for a moment, then you are back. And the moment is so small…. Just as a great dancer, Nijinsky, said, "When my dance comes to its crescendo, I am no more. Only dance is." But that happens only for a small fragment of time; then again you are back.

According to me, all these—poetry, music, dance, love—are poor substitutes for meditation. They are good, beautiful, but they are not meditation. And meditation does not come naturally to you because in meditation you will have to disappear forever. There is no coming back. That creates fear. Meditation is a death—death of all that you are now. Of course there will be a resurrection, but that will be a totally new, fresh original being which you are not even aware is hidden in you.

It happens in poetry, in music, in dance, only for a small moment that you slip out of your personality and touch your individuality. But only because it happens for a small moment, you are not afraid; you always come back. In meditation, once you are gone in, you are gone in. Then, even when you resurrect you are a totally different person. The old personality is nowhere to be found. You have to start your life again from ABC. You have to learn everything with fresh eyes, with a totally new heart. That’s why meditation creates fear.

Music, poetry, dance or love can become hindrances to meditation if you stop at them. First comes meditation, and then you can create great poetry and great music. But you will not be the creator; you will be just a hollow bamboo flute. The universe will sing songs through you, will dance dances through you. You will be only an address—c/o you. Existence will express itself, and you will be just a hollow bamboo.

Meditation makes you a hollow bamboo; then whatever happens through that hollowness, that empty heart belongs to existence itself. As far as I am concerned, poetry and music and love and dance are more religious activities than the so-called religious rituals, because at least they give you a little glimpse. If you follow that glimpse you will enter into meditation.

Meditation directly and naturally does not attract you because of a great fear of death. You don’t know after death whether there is going to be a resurrection or not. That’s the place where a master is needed to give you a promise, a trust: "Don’t be worried. That which is dying is not you, and that which is arising is your original being."

But you can have a master only if you can trust someone. It is going into very dangerous ways. Meditation is the most dangerous thing. You need someone who has been on the path, who has been treading on the path, coming and going. You need someone who can create courage, encouragement, and trust in you that you can take the quantum leap.

*

For years after I take sannyas, I wonder intermittently how is it that I have stumbled across Osho and am actually living with an enlightened master.

The answer lies in the question: it has been just a stumbling; something that has happened not because of me and anything clever I have done but in spite of myself. I think back to the many beautiful people I have come across in my life—intelligent people; alive, open, loving and concerned people. Why are they not with Osho, while I am? Yet if I use openness and intelligence as the criterion by which people find Osho, that suggests that I was intelligent or open, and more so than them —and I’m certain that’s not so.

It is easy enough, at a certain point in one’s life, to look back and be able to see a logical thread that seemed destined to lead one to that point. However, at least before meeting Osho, I was on a path that felt haphazard, that was created as I was propelled along by an inner restlessness that—in spite of my initial resistance—brought me here, to what feels like home. “It seems,” I write in a question to Osho, “I came to you in spite of myself, rather than because of myself.” Osho replies:

That’s the right thing to do, coming to me in spite of yourself. Yes, there are people who come because of their openness, receptivity. There are people who come with their intelligence, with their rationality. But these are not going to be closest to me.

You are fortunate that you are here in spite of yourself. That means neither a conviction of the head has brought you here, nor an openness of the heart has brought you here, but something which can only be called a magnetic pull between two human beings. That’s why you are puzzled. It is inexplicable. It is one of the greatest mysteries. Two beings can find…pulled against their minds, against their logic, against everything. Nothing can prevent them. Something more powerful than openness, than intelligence, has made them a flame.