Everyone should be their own guru as far as I’m concerned—so I’m not a great fan of gurus—but there is definitely a guru mentality, and they often draw heavily on certain archetypes to get reactions and give us zen thwacks upside our heads. I mean of course, for example, the typical guru trickster antics designed to shock us out of our little mental ruts. Something that Osho, the Master was good at even when he was a plain “Shree” . . . Sri Baghwan Rajneesh.
Gu – darkness; Ru – light.
When guru energy is good energy it is powerful. It’s the energy that keeps the Ashram—the work and living place for practice—alive and thriving positively. It’s the teacher that brings light out of darkness and seeringly illuminates everything with “truth” . . . Gu – darkness; Ru – light.
Zorba the Buddha
For instance I love this vintage Osho, “be Zorba the Buddha” . . . and: “your buddha mind, your buddha heart, your buddha nature are all there just waiting to be revealed . . . and existence needs every drop of you.” As the Master, he knew that we could all be the buddhas we truly are but that we might need our butts kicking every so often to just sit down and meditate and stop being neurotic.
True Buddha Nature
But . . . if being your true buddha nature means being a bit bonkers, then what? And he certainly was insistent in that guru-type no-messing way, that we shouldn’t try to be gurus saying that gurus are self-gratifiers. Then he went on to guru-ify himself. What a contradiction . . . but as a monk who used to visit our sangha when I lived in Baltimore, South West Ireland, Shinrin, told us: “unique”. Shinrin had been there with Osho at the beginning in London, when he was Sri Baghwan Rajneesh and they were the “orange-people”.
Unique
Osho certainly knew that everyone is still human: that the weeds of co-emergent energy—the crap—come up with the blossoms of living in the magic just like the lotus blossoms out of the mud every day; and that if you spend your day meditating as your medicine then you can’t be watching what the entourage are up to, as happened to him . . . and chaos can break out, because chaos does, and as long as you’re alert and watchful and mindful, then it’s just an experience. But if the leader’s finger is off the button, chaos can get scary.
So our monk Shinrin gave us an insight on one of our zen weekends in Baltimore. He had been an Osho sannyasin, and he was there at the last in America at the Ashram when things were getting crazy. Osho had given Shinrin his orange-people sannyasi name and then turned him onto zen.
This was the insight: when Osho was young they grew up in such poverty in India. Young devotees had so many barriers, personal, psychological, emotional, and spiritual to break through as young sannyasins themselves, during the epoch Sri Bagwan Rajneesh—later Osho—and his cohorts were steeped in their Yoga training: this would have been Tantra and Kundalini.
I have an old book by one of Swami Satyananda’s students, written from the view point of a yogi, and he poignantly points out that they were themselves trying in India to break through Victorian values imposed on them by the authoritarianism of an obsolete British Empire.
Clue-less
This is something I totally empathise with, having grown up in Bradford in Yorkshire, England and its mixed Asian population—Pakistani, Indian, Muslim, Hindu—and from the never-to-be-forgotten experience of training there with my meditation teacher, Sam Singh a Kashmiri man. The devotees at the time I’m talking about would have been clueless to our way of seeing them, these young bloods of brahminism . . . and uncomprehending as to why the followers weren’t just deep in sadhana and discipline: being too much into ahimsa and samadhi and motivating us all into living in intoxicating bliss.
So, when he was kicked out of America for causing stink, someone lent Osho a plane and he circled the planet, unwelcome in most countries . . . I’m not going to touch on politics at all here. Ireland let him land and he spent a short time. Apparently, he’d got on the plane clutching a handful of gold watches . . . still essentially the young Indian brahmin suffering from compulsions caused by the spiritual riches and material poverty of the East he so often spoke about? I seem to remember he had to leave all the Rolls Royce cars behind to US Government repossession.
” . . . skies upon skies to be experienced . . . “
He thought he was dying then. One of his transcribed discourses reminded me when I was deep in my own grief and feeling country-less in England following my husband’s death, that there are “skies upon skies to be experienced”. And, as it turned out, a few years from his own death he spent months in the skies with no country to take him in, until eventually India had to as he had an Indian passport. Too much consciousness and not enough grounding? Not enough living in reality, and in the moment of zen? Or just a result of gurus of his generation not really having to deal with practicalities? As Gandhi had to learn in 6 years of imprisonment, there are consequences to the minutae of physical existence here and now . . .
” . . . here to point the finger.”
Anyway, Shinrin said that Osho had said that he himself was “only here to point the finger”—to the “Way” or dharma. And now these days, they teach his style in University Communications courses: the use of silence; speaking for 3 hours at a time; storytelling to pick up the energy when people were falling asleep . . . There’s an Osho classic bit of video on Youtube “Almost Drunk with Emotional Wellness”, a concept which just fills my heart with laughter!
Purpose and prosperity, your blossoming
The voice of my heart always says I will continue to pass on his discourses and to be inspired myself by some of the truly “bonkers” nature of the teachings of a man who was uniquely a “zorba”—reference to the film Zorba the Greek—and a buddha. And out of respect for a consumate communicator, I treat him as a Master—though fallen guru—for his Satsangs . . .
Purpose and prosperity are interlinked in the way of dharma . . . prosperity isn’t always about money, although in Osho’s case it certainly was. Prosperity is everything like health as well as wealth, satisfaction from your calling, wealth in relationships, following your bliss and purpose. And in the way of dharma, purpose can be about anything, not necessarily career or job . . . because with dharma it is your blossoming, the way you blossom—which might have nothing to do with job or career, as mine doesn’t.
Blossoming, being unique, as only your own spirituality can be unique.
Namaste, Suzen
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