Shanmugam

The So-called Good Men Whenever you come near a good man, you will always feel tortured – not that he is torturing you, it is just his presence. With so-called good men you will always feel sad, and you would like to avoid them. So-called good men are really very heavy. Whenever you come into contact with them they make you sad, they depress you, and you would like to leave them as soon as possible. The moralists, the puritans, the virtuous, they are all heavy, and they carry a burden around with them, and dark shadows. Nobody likes them. They cannot be good companions, they cannot be good friends. Friendship is impossible with a good man – almost impossible, because his eyes are always condemning. The moment you come near him, he is good and you are bad. Not that he is doing anything in particular – just his very being creates something, and you will feel angry. .......................... Chuang Tzu is saying that the halo of saintliness around you shows that you are still there. The halo that you are good is sure to create calamity for you, and calamity for others also. Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu – master and disciple – have never been painted in pictures with halos, auras, around them. Unlike Jesus, Zarathustra, Krishna, Buddha, Mahavira, they have never been painted with an aura around their head, ”because,” they say, ”if you are really good no aura appears around your head; rather on the contrary, the head disappears.” Where to draw the aura? The head disappears. All auras are somehow related to the ego. It is not Krishna who has made a self-portrait, it is the disciples. They cannot think of him without drawing an aura around his head – then he looks extraordinary. And Chuang Tzu says: To be ordinary is to be the sage. Nobody recognizes you, nobody feels that you are somebody extraordinary. Chuang Tzu says: You go in the crowd and you mix, but no one knows that a Buddha has entered the crowd. No one comes to feel that somebody is different, because if someone feels it then there is bound to be anger and calamity. Whenever someone feels that you are somebody, his own anger, his own ego is hurt. He starts reacting, he starts attacking you. So Chuang Tzu says: Character is not to be cultivated because that too is a sort of wealth. And so-called religious people go on teaching: Cultivate character, cultivate morality, be virtuous. But why? Why be virtuous? Why be against the sinners? But your mind is a doer, you are still ambitious. And if you reach paradise and there you see sinners sitting around God, you will feel very hurt – your whole life has been wasted. You cultivated virtue, you cultivated character, while these people were enjoying themselves and doing all sorts of things which are condemned, and here they are sitting around God. If you see saints and sinners together in paradise you will be very hurt, you will become very sad and miserable – because your virtue is also part of your ego. You cultivate saintliness to be superior, but the mind stays the same. How to be superior in some way or other, how to make others inferior, is the motive. If you can gather much wealth, then they are poor and you are rich. If you can become an Alexander, then you have a great kingdom and they are beggars. If you can become a great scholar, then you are knowledgeable and they are ignorant, illiterate. If you can become virtuous, religious, respectable, moral, then they are condemned, they are sinners. But the duality continues. You are fighting against others and you are trying to be superior. Chuang Tzu says: If you cultivate your character and outshine others, you will not avoid calamity. Don’t try to outshine others, and don’t try to cultivate character for this egoistic purpose. So for Chuang Tzu there is only one character worth mentioning, and that is egolessness. All else follows it. Without it, nothing has worth. You may become godlike in your character, but if the ego is there inside, all your godliness is in the service of the devil; all your virtue is nothing but a face and the sinner is hidden behind. And the sinner cannot be transformed through virtue or through any type of cultivation. It is only when you are not there that it disappears. ................................................. Religious people go on teaching: Be content with yourself. But yourself remains there to be content with. Chuang Tzu says: Don’t be there, then there is no question of contentment or discontentment. This is real contentment, when you are not there. But if you feel that you are content, it is false – because you are there, and it is just an ego fulfillment. You feel that you have achieved, you feel that you have reached. Tao says that one who feels that he has achieved has missed already. One who feels that he has reached has lost, because success is the beginning of failure. Success and failure are two parts of one circle, of one wheel. Whenever success reaches its climax the failure has already started, the wheel is already turning downwards. Whenever the moon has become full there is no further progress. Now there is no further movement. Then next day the downward journey starts and now every day the moon will be less and less and less. Life moves in circles. The moment you feel that you have achieved, the wheel has moved, you are already losing. It may take time for you to recognize this, because mind is dull. Much intelligence is needed, clarity is needed, to see things when they happen. Things happen to you and you take many days to recognize it, sometimes many months or years. Sometimes you even take many lives to recognize what has happened. But just think about your past. Whenever you had a feeling that you had succeeded, immediately things changed, you started falling – because the ego is part of the wheel. It succeeds because it can fail: if it cannot fail then there is no possibility of success. Success and failure are two aspects of the same coin. - From 'The Empty Boat' , Osho

Bliss is Showering on you Every Moment Mind can live in the future, but cannot live in the present. In the present, you can simply hope and desire. And that’s how you create misery. If you start living this very moment, here and now, misery disappears. But how is it related to the ego? Ego is the past accumulated. Whatsoever you have known, experienced, read, whatsoever has happened to you in the past, the whole is accumulated there. That whole past is the ego, it is you. The past can project into the future – the future is nothing but the past extended – but the past cannot face the present. The present is totally different, it has a quality of being here and now. The past is always dead, the present is life, the very source of all aliveness. The past cannot face the present so it moves into the future – but both are dead, both are nonexistential. The present is life; the future cannot encounter the present, nor can the past encounter the present. And your ego, your somebodiness, is your past. Unless you are empty you cannot be here, and unless you are here you cannot be alive. How can you know the bliss of life? Every moment it is showering on you and you are bypassing it. - From 'The Empty Boat' , Osho

Becoming a Nobody To think oneself a rooster is crazy; to think oneself a body is also crazy, even crazier. To think oneself a rooster is madness; to think oneself a human being is a greater madness, because you don’t belong to any form. Whether the form is that of a rooster or of a human being is irrelevant – you belong to the formless, you belong to the total, the whole. So whatsoever form you think you are, you are mad. You are formless. You don’t belong to any body, you don’t belong to any caste, religion, creed; you don’t belong to any name. And unless you become formless, nameless, you will never be sane. Sanity means coming to that which is natural, coming to that which is ultimate in you, coming to that which is hidden behind you. Much effort is needed because to cut form, to drop, eliminate form, is very difficult. You have become so attached and identified with it. This Samadhi Sadhana Shibir, this meditation camp, is nothing but to persuade you towards the formless – how not to be in the form. Every form means the ego: even a rooster has its ego, and man has his own. Every form is centered in the ego. The formless means egolessness; then you are not centered in the ego, then your center is everywhere or nowhere. This is possible, this which looks almost impossible is possible, because this has happened to me. And when I speak, I speak through experience. Wherever you are, I was, and wherever I am, you can be. Look at me as deeply as possible and feel me as deeply as possible, because I am your future, I am your possibility. Whenever I say surrender to me, I mean surrender to this possibility. You can be cured, because your illness is just a thought. The prince went mad because he became identified with the thought that he was a rooster. Everybody is mad unless he comes to understand that he is not identified with any form – only then, sanity. So a sane person will not be anybody in particular. He cannot be. Only an insane person can be somebody in particular – whether a rooster or a man, a prime minister or a president, or anybody whatsoever. A sane person comes to feel the nobodiness. This is the danger.... You have come to me as somebody, and if you allow me, if you give me the opportunity, this somebodiness can disappear and you can become a nobody. This is the whole effort – to make you a nobody. But why? Why this effort to become a nobody? Because unless you become nobody you cannot be blissful; unless you become nobody you cannot be ecstatic; unless you become nobody the benediction is not for you – you go on missing life. Really you are not alive, you simply drag, you simply carry yourself like a burden. Much anguish happens, much despair, much sorrow, but not a single ray of bliss – it cannot. If you are somebody, you are like a solid block of stone, nothing can penetrate you. When you are nobody you start to become porous. When you are nobody, really you are an emptiness, transparent, everything can pass through you. There is no hindrance, there is no barrier, no resistance. You become a passivity, a door. Right now you are like a wall; a wall means somebody. When you become a door you become nobody. A door is just an emptiness, anybody can pass, there is no resistance, no barrier. Somebody...you are mad; nobody...you will become sane for the first time. But the whole society, education, civilization, culture, all cultivate you and help you to become somebodies. That is why I say: religion is against civilization, religion is against education, religion is against culture – because religion is for nature, for Tao. All civilizations are against nature, because they want to make you somebody in particular. And the more you are crystallized as somebody, the less and less the divine can penetrate into you. You go to the temples, to the churches, to the priests, but there too you are searching for a way to become somebody in the other world, for a way to attain something, for a way to succeed. The achieving mind follows you like a shadow. Wherever you go, you go with the idea of profit, achievement, success, attainment. If somebody has come here with this idea he should leave as soon as possible, run as fast as possible from me, because I cannot help you to become somebody. I am not your enemy. I can only help you to be nobody. I can only push you into the abyss...bottomless. You will never reach anywhere; you will simply dissolve. You will fall and fall and fall and dissolve, and the moment you dissolve the whole existence feels ecstatic. The whole existence celebrates this happening. - From 'The Empty Boat' , Osho

You are the Barrier Be aware that through me you are not going to gain anything. Through me you can only lose all – because unless you are lost, the divine cannot happen; unless you disappear totally, the real cannot arise. You are the barrier. And you are so much, so stubbornly much, you are so filled with yourself that nothing can penetrate you. Your doors are closed. When you disappear, when you are not, the doors open. Then you become just like the vast, infinite sky. And that is your nature. That is Tao The Empty Boat, Osho

Where did you get this story? And what do you mean by 'writing for Osho'?

yes...

I just read the one book 'Kriya Yoga exposed'. It covers everything. But I will also read the other books soon and give me feedback about them.

@moon777light Kriya Yoga has a lot of myths. If you want to learn Yoga, go through this thread: Regarding Sadhguru, read this: https://nellaishanmugam.wordpress.com/2017/12/12/why-do-i-criticize-sadhguru-jaggi-vasudev/

You are starting to sound like Jim Jones

Her full story is sad, interesting and also seen controversial: http://www.wiki-global.org/teal-swan/.. Felt like reading a novel

go ahead man.. I am not afraid

@Stoica Doru still have to listen to her... but she looks very beautiful !!!!

@Faceless .. Yes, you will find it similar. I have just put up a guide for spiritual seekers, in my blog. It combines Buddhism and Vedanta: https://nellaishanmugam.wordpress.com/for-seekers-of-liberation/ But the essence of Vedanta really doesn't have anything to do with Vedas. It is a very ancient approach and too traditional but I have simplified it by taking it out from a lot of unnecessary dogma, scripture reading, myths etc.

@Shin

Yeah its funny I was just joking

@Shin Jokes are meant to laugh Shin, not to analyse... You are becoming serious these days..

There is a good story in the tradition. This story is very useful for people who are in the spiritual path. Four blind men who are blind from birth were trying to understand how an elephant looks like. One man touched and felt the elephant's trunk for about an hour and said "I found it! I finally got it.. Elephant looks like a pipe" Another man felt the ear and said "I would have said the same thing before.. You have to go a little deeper because the elephant looks like a winnowing basket" The third man who was feeling the elephant's stomach said "BAHAAAAA! that's hilarious... Everyone's experience is different, so why are you stating things so authoritatively? In my experience, elephant looks like a huge pot!" The fourth man who was touching the elephant's leg got frustrated and said "Folks, you guys still don't understand! Elephant looks like a pillar". ....................................................................................... This story exists in almost all the non-dual traditions. Here is an expert from a Buddha's tale: Then they began to quarrel, shouting, “Yes, it is!” “No, it is not!” “An elephant is not that!” “Yes, it’s like that!” and so on, till they came to blows over the matter. Brethren, the raja [who in this version had presented the elephant] was delighted with the scene. Just so are these preachers and scholars holding various views blind and unseeing. … In their ignorance they are by nature quarrelsome, wrangling and disputatious, each maintaining reality is thus and thus. Then the Exalted One rendered this meaning by uttering this verse of uplift: “O how they cling and wrangle, some who claim For preacher and monk the honoured name! For, quarrelling, each to his view they cling. Such folk see only one side of a thing.” (Udana 68–69)

@Nahm not really.. Just sharing.

If you want to know about Buddha, do a Google search; you will find a lot of resources. Why don't you PM me for such questions? You are spamming the threads by pointless questions really and with no relation to the topics of the threads.

@KrackJack If anything happened, that happened because of you...

oh ok... Yes, his accent is very much indianized.. You can read instead of listening to him..

ok.. then listen to or read someone that you understand..