Osho - Weekly Meditation For The Here And Now
Weekly Meditation - Week 14. Simple Heart
April 2
Simple Heart
To be simple means shifting from the head to the heart.
Mind is very cunning; it is never simple. The heart is never cunning, it is always simple. To be simple means shifting from the head to the heart.
We live through the head. That's why our life becomes more and more complicated, more and more like a jigsaw puzzle: Nothing seems to fit. And the more we try to be clever, the more in a mess we are. That has been our history: We have gone more and more insane.
Now the whole earth is almost like a madhouse. The time has come, if humanity is to survive at all, for a great shift to happen: We have to move from the head to the heart. Otherwise, the head is ready to commit suicide. It has created so much misery and so much boredom and so many problems that suicide seems the only way out.
The whole earth is preparing for suicide. It is going to be a global suicide, unless a miracle happens. And this is going to be the miracle-if it happens, this is the miraclethere will be a great shift, a radical change, in our very outlook: We will start living from the heart. We will drop the whole universe of the mind, and we will start afresh like small children. Live from the heart.
Feel more, think less, be more sensitive and less logical. Be more and more heartful, and your life will become a sheer joy.
April 3
The Unconscious
The unconscious is nine times bigger than the conscious, so whatever comes from the unconscious is overwhelming. That's why people are afraid of their emotions, feelings. They hold them back, they are afraid they will create chaos. They do, but chaos is beautiful!
There is a need for order, and there is a need for chaos too. When order is needed, use order, use the conscious mind; when chaos is needed, use the unconscious and let chaos be. A whole person, a total person, is one who is capable of using both, who does not allow any interference of the conscious into the unconscious or of the unconscious into the conscious. There are things that you can only do consciously. For example, if you are doing arithmetic or scientific work, you can do it only from the conscious. But love is not like that, poetry is not like that; they come from the unconscious. So you have to put your conscious aside.
It is the conscious that tries to hold things because it is afraid. It seems to it that something big is coming, a tidal wave; will it be able to survive? It tries to avoid it, it wants to escape, hide somewhere. But that is not right. That's why people have become dull and dead. All springs of life are in the unconscious.
April 4
Elasticity
There are moments when people should be so relaxed, so wildly relaxed, that they don't have any formalities to follow.
Once it happened that a great Chinese emperor went to see a great Zen master. The Zen master was rolling on the floor and laughing, and his disciples were laughing too - he must have told a joke or something. The emperor was embarrassed. He could not believe his eyes, because the behavior was so unmannerly; he could not prevent himself from saying so.
He told the master, "This is unmannerly! It is not expected of a master like you; some etiquette has to be observed. You are rolling on the floor, laughing like a madman."
The master looked at the emperor who had a bow; in those old days they used to carry bows and arrows. He said, "Tell me one thing: Do you keep this bow always strained, stretched, tense, or do you allow it to relax too?"
The emperor said; "If we keep it stretched continuously it will lose elasticity, it will not be of any use then. It has to be left relaxed so that whenever we need it, it has elasticity."
And the master said "That's what I'm doing."
April 5
Power
If vulnerability grows along with power, there is no fear that power will be abused.
People decide to live at the minimum so that there is no risk. When you have power, there is every risk that you will use it. When you have a sports car that can go two hundred miles per hour, there is a risk that one day you will decide to go that fast. The very thing that's possible becomes a challenge. So people live low-key lives, because if they know how much they can rise in power, how powerful they can be, then it will be difficult to resist. The temptation will be too much; they will want to go the whole way.
Patanjali, the founder of yoga, has written a whole chapter in his Yoga Sutras about power just .to help every seeker to walk very carefully in this area, because great power will be available, and there will be great danger. But my view is totally different. If vulnerability grows along with power, there is no fear; if power grows alone without vulnerability, then there is fear, then something can go wrong. That's what Patanjali is afraid of, because his methodology goes against vulnerability. It gives you power but no vulnerability. It makes you stronger and stronger, like steel, but not strong like a rose.
April 6
Be Available
A relationship is not something than just happens out if the blue, you have to help it to happen.
With relationships, you can always throw the responsibility onto others: Nobody is coming to you, nobody is worth the bother, or you don't have feelings for anyone, so what can you do? But these things are very deeply related. If you move, you will start feeling. If you feel, you move more. These things go on helping each other, and one has to start from somewhere.
The world is full of so many beautiful people who are available. Everybody is seeking and searching for love. Just be available. Be a little outgoing, available; otherwise it will not happen. With meditation there is a deep necessity for love. They are both like wings, and you cannot fly with one wing. If meditation is going well, suddenly you will see that love is missing. If love is going very well, suddenly you will see that meditation is missing. If nothing is going well, then it is okay. One settles with one's sadness, one's closedness. But when one wing has started moving, the other wing is needed.
April 7
Making Love
Love has to be cherished, tasted very slowly, so that it suffuses your being and becomes such a possessing experience that you are no more.
It is not that you are making love - you are love. Love can become a bigger energy around you. It can transcend you and your lover so that you are both lost in it. But for that you will have to wait. Wait for the moment, and soon you will have the knack of it.
Let the energy accumulate, and let it happen on its own. By and by, you will become aware when the moment arises. You will start seeing the symptoms of it, the presymptoms, and then there will be no difficulty. If the moment does not arise in which you naturally fall into lovemaking, then wait; there is no hurry. The Western mind is in too much hurry - even while making love, it is something that has to be done with and finished. That is a completely wrong attitude.
You cannot manipulate love. It happens when it happens, if it is not happening, there is nothing to be worried about. Don't make it an ego trip that somehow you have to make love. That is also there in the Western mind; the man thinks he has to perform somehow. If he is not managing, he is not manly enough. This is foolish, stupid. Love is something transcendental. You cannot manage it. Those who have tried to have missed all its beauty. Then at the most it becomes a sexual release, but all the subtle and deeper realms remain untouched.
April 8
Movement And Stillness
On the circumference is a dance, and at the center is absolute stillness.
Meditation is not just when you close your eyes and sit silently. In fact, deep down, when Buddha is sitting silently under his bodhi tree, not moving at all, there is a dance deep inside him - the dance of consciousness. It is invisible of course, but the dance is there because nothing remains at rest. Rest is an unreal word; nothing corresponds to rest in reality.
It depends on us: We can make our life just a restlessness or a dance. Rest is not in the nature of things, but we can have a very chaotic restlessness - that is misery, that is neurosis, that is madness. Or we can be creative with this energy; then restlessness is no longer restless. It becomes smooth, graceful - it starts taking the form of a dance and a song. And the paradox is that when the dancer is totally in dance, there is rest - the impossible happens, the center of the cyclone. But that rest is not possible in any other way.
When the dance is total, only then does that rest happen. And there is a center to this whole dance. It cannot go on without a center. The periphery is dancing, the circumference is dancing - to know the center, the only way is to become a total dance. Only then, in contrast to the dance, does one suddenly become aware of something very quiet and very still.
