Osho - Weekly Meditation For The Here And Now
Weekly Meditation - Week 32. Buddhahood
August 5
Buddhahood
Nothing is missing; all is as it should be. Everyone is already perfect.
Perfection has not to be achieved; it is already there. The moment you accept yourself, it is revealed. If you don't accept yourself, you keep chasing shadows, mirages, faraway mirages. And they only look beautiful when you are very far away from them. The closer you come, the more you find that there is nothing, only sand; it was a mirage. Then you create another mirage. And this is how people waste their whole life.
Just accept yourself as you are. Nothing has to be condemned, nothing has to be judged. There is no way to judge, no way to compare, because each person is unique. There has never been a person like you, and there will never be again, so you are alone; comparison is not possible. And this is the way existence wants you to be, that's why you are this way. Don't fight with existence, and don't try to improve on yourself; otherwise you will create a mess. That's how people have created a mess out of their lives.
So this is my message to you: Accept yourself. It will be hard, very hard, because the idealistic mind is always watching and saying, "What are you doing? This is not the right thing to do! You have to become great, you have to become a Buddha or a Christ what are you doing? This does not look like a Buddha, you are behaving like a fool. Are you mad?" Accept yourself. In that acceptance is Buddhahood.
August 6
Song Of Life
Life can be a song, but one can miss it; it is not inevitable.
The potential exists, but it has to be actualized. Many people think that the day they were born all was finished. Nothing is finished. The day one is born, things only start; it is the beginning. Birth has to happen millions of times in your whole life: You have to go on being born again and again and again.
People have such potential, so many aspects; they are multidimensional. But people never explore their own being, hence life remains, sad, poor. That is real poverty. The outer poverty is not a big problem; it will be solved. Technology has come to the point at which poverty is going to disappear from the earth; the time has come for that.
But the real problem is the inner poverty. Even rich people live very poor lives. Their bodies are stuffed with food, but their souls are starving. They have not yet known the song of life, they have not heard anything about it. They go on existing somehow, managing, pulling themselves along, dragging, but there is no joy.
Great song is possible, great richness is possible, but one has to start exploring. And the best way to explore the song of one's life is to love; that is the very methodology. Just as logic is the methodology of science, love is the methodology of the spirit. Just as logic makes you capable of going deeper and deeper into matter, love makes you capable of going deeper and deeper into consciousness. And the deeper you go, the deeper songs are released. When one has reached the very core of one's being, the whole of life becomes a celebration, an utter celebration.
August 7
Keep The Sanctity
Each person has to have his or her own inner space. Then there is joy in meeting, there is longing and passion in meeting.
My feeling is that it is always good to separate your work from our love. They don't go well together. Your work problems start affecting your love, and your love problems start affecting your work; things become multiplied. Love in itself is enough; it is a world. Don't load it up with anything else; it is already complicated.
Keep things separate, and your work will be easier, your love life will be smoother. A husband and wife should not be together twenty-four hours a day; that too is hard. We lose interest. The wife becomes taken for granted, the husband becomes taken for granted. You don't have your own space. You keep overlapping, you keep crowding each other, and sooner or later it becomes a stress.
Better to keep the sanctity of the person. Each person has to have his own inner space, her own inner space. Then it is good to meet sometimes. Then there is joy in meeting, there is a longing and a passion in meeting. One tends to forget the person who is too close twenty-four hours, the obvious tends to be forgotten. Work separately, and your closeness will grow, your intimacy will grow.
August 8
Dark Night Of The Soul
We all learn how to be happy and to laugh and joke. That's how the whole society goes on a merry-go-round. But everybody is carrying a deep, dark night within them, and nobody is even aware of it.
When you enter a meditative state you will first enter this dark night of the soul. If you can pass through it - and there is no difficulty in passing through it - then for the first time you will become aware that your happiness was not true. False happiness will go and real sadness will come, and only after real sadness will real happiness surface. Then you will know that the false happiness was even worse than the real sadness, because at least in that sadness there is a reality. If you are sad-but truly and sincerely sad-that sadness will enrich you.
It gives you a depth, an insight. It makes you aware of life and its infinite possibilities and of the limits of the human mind, the smallness of human consciousness encountering the infinity all around, the fragile life always surrounded by death. When you are really sad you become aware of all these things. You become aware that life is not just life - it is death too.
If you really want to be happy, don't just go on pretending, playing the game of being happy. As unhappiness comes, soon you will see that it will darken, it will become intense. But when the night is dark, the morning is very close. Once you stop fighting, once you accept it, it will give you a silence, a deep humming. Of course it is sad, but it is beautiful. Even the night has its own beauty, and those who cannot see the beauty of the night will miss much.
August 9
Food
When a child is born, his first love and his first food are the same thing — the mother. So there is a deep association between food and love; in fact, food comes first and then love follows.
The first day the child cannot understand love. He understands the language of food, the natural primitive language of all animals. The child is born with hunger; food is needed immediately. Love will not be needed until long after-it is not so much of an emergency. One can live without love one's whole life, but one cannot live without food - that's the trouble.
By and by he feels that whenever the mother is very loving, she gives her breast in a different way. When she is not loving, but angry or sad, she gives the breast very reluctantly or does not give it at all. So the child becomes aware 'that whenever the mother is loving, whenever food is available, love is available. This awareness is in the unconscious.
When you are missing a life of love you eat more - it becomes a substitute. And with food things are simple, because food is dead. You can go on eating as much as you want-food cannot say no. One remains a master with food. But in love you are no longer the master. So I will say forget about food, go on eating as much as you want. But start a life of love, and immediately you will see you are not eating so much. Have you watched? If you are happy you don't eat too much. A happy person feels so fulfilled that he feels no space inside. An unhappy person goes on throwing food into himself.
August 10
The God Of Love
Surrender to something higher than both if you — that is the God of love.
The very myth that there is a God of love is beautiful, it is a tremendous understanding. Then two lovers can surrender to the God and they remain independent. And when you are independent there is beauty - otherwise you become just a shadow, or your partner becomes a shadow. If your partner becomes a shadow, in that very moment you will start losing interest - who loves a shadow? If you become a shadow your partner will start losing interest in you. We want to love real human beings, not shadows.
There is no need to become anybody's shadow. You remain yourself, and your partner remains herself or himself. In fact, by surrendering to the God of love, you become authentic. And you are never as authentic as when you become authentic for the first time. Two authentic beings can love, and can love deeply, and then there is no need to hold back.
Let me underline this idea: When you are surrendered to the God of love, then it is not very important whether your partner remains with you or leaves you or whether you leave. One thing is important: that love remains. Your surrender is toward love, not toward your partner. So the only thing is not to betray love. Lovers can change; love can remain. Once you have understood that, there is no fear.
August 11
Celebrate!
Small things have to be celebrated - sipping tea has to be celebrated.
Zen people have created a tea ceremony. That is the most beautiful ritual ever to have evolved. There are many religions, and many rituals have been born, but there is nothing like the tea ceremony-just sipping tea and celebrating it! Just cooking food and celebrating it! Just taking a bath - lying down in the tub and celebrating it or standing under the shower and celebrating it. These are small things-if you go on celebrating them, the total of all your celebrations is what God is.
If you ask me what God is, I will say the total of all celebrationssmall, mundane celebrations. A friend comes and holds your hand. Don't miss this opportunity - because God has come in the form of the hand, in the form of the friend. A small child passes by - and laughs. Don't miss this, laugh with the child-because God has laughed through the child. You pass through the street and a fragrance comes from the fields. Stand there a moment, feel grateful - because God has come as fragrance.
If one can celebrate moment to moment, life becomes religiousand there is no other religion, there is no need to go to any temple. Then wherever you are is the temple, and whatever you are doing is religion.
