Mind says: the important thing is to have the answer.
Life says: the important thing is to have the question.
Thinking, the proper use of the thinking part of the brain, is to ask questions. Questions allow you to penetrate things deeply, to see new connections, to see what’s below the surface.
The mind, also a part of the brain, isn’t interested in that, the mind really isn’t interested in anything. Maybe gossip, but that is it.
The bad:
The biggest flaw of Andy Shaw’s work is it’s starting point.
Andy Shaw considers the mind important: He holds, that if you can change your mind you can change everything.
Not so. The mind isn’t the problem.
Even if you could change your mind, change the content in your mind, nothing would change.
The determinant of your actions, your attitude, your moods, your feelings is NOT the mind, but your being.
I think, that of all Osho’s talks that I know, this is the most significant, and the most helpful, if you EVER want to be able to return HOME, to the present moment, where you can be content, happy, and start living.
Osho talks: The Man Who Loved Seagulls
7 May 1975 am in Buddha Hall
There …
ASCENDING TO THE HIGH SEAT, DOGEN ZENJI SAID: “ZEN MASTER HOGEN STUDIED WITH KEISHIN ZENJI.
ONCE KEISHIN ZENJI ASKED HIM, JOZA, WHERE DO YOU GO?’
HOGEN SAID. ‘I AM MAKING PILGRIMAGE AIMLESSLY.’
KEISHIN SAID, ‘WHAT IS THE MATTER OF YOUR PILGRIMAGE?’
HOGEN SAID, ‘I DON’T KNOW.’
KEISHIN SAID, …
In this whole series, Osho examines a piece of poem or a story from a world culture that is spiritually meaningful. This poem is Japanese. Osho distinguishes being in the present, not being in the past, not being in the future, not desiring the present different from what it is.
Ultimately, this is the path to joy and happiness… Please read.
You live in a world of your own design. And you create the world with your beingness.
We think that beingness is all good… But beingness is neutral.
One of the beingnesses we are really familiar with is BEING judgmental. Or the flip side of it (they always go together, like the two sides of the coin!) BEING judged.
Both are beings.
Which is more frequent? They are the two sides of the same coin: judgment. Pretending that you have the right and the power over life and death…
Change vs. what you really want
We all say we want to change. Change ourselves, our financial situation, our habits.
Some of us only use the word because we don’t know how to say what we mean. But most of us literally mean: change.
But there is a problem with the phenomenon: change. It actually gets you more of what you are changing.
It sounds like an oxymoron. More of what I don’t want? Yeah, that’s right. More of what you don’t want.
Recently I found myself finding my life blah. So I set out to regain my will to live… because with blah comes no will to leave, much like when you are forced to eat tasteless food, you lose your will to eat.
I also noticed that the color faded from my language. People stopped complimenting me on the turn of phrases, the expressions, the metaphors I used… because I stopped using them.
I am very lucky: the questions my students send me have caused me to have a deeper understanding for my own work.
These students are often seeking new insights in their pressing circumstances from me. Lately it is all about making a decision to go or leave, to let go or to fight.
It is a huge responsibility to talk to people who are looking for answers.
If they use the insights I give them and don’t make them their own, they run the risk of making a decision “because” I said so.
One of my students asked “is it a matter of meditating over this decision now?”
This particular student has been a meditator for five years. The particular form of meditation he is doing with some master is to open up his ability to gain insight from All-of-it.
And this seemingly intelligent move, to meditate to gain insight is what I want to talk about today.
If you are a “normal” human being, brought up by parents or caregivers, if you went to school, if
Ask anyone; the happiest moments of one’s life are the moment when we find ourselves in our vertical self… or at least centered and grounded in the bottom of it.
It doesn’t happen a lot, because we are brought up and encouraged to live in our horizontal being.