Osho - Everyday Osho: 365 Meditations for the Here and Now

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As most readers know by nowthanks to the increasing availability on the internet of the original audio and video recordingsOshos books are not written but rather created from transcripts of his extemporaneous talks to those gathered in his presence to listen to him. Those talks, responding to questions and requests from his audience, are often punctuated with anecdotes, jokes, and even references to current news headlines. In the process, weaving a story that extends over many pages in print and sometimes lasting well over an hour in its original, recorded format. Each talk, Osho says, is always complete unto itself.

Less well known, however, is the archive of Osho material from transcripts of smaller, more intimate gatheringscalled Darshan in their daywhere visitors could go and sit in front of Osho to ask their questions in person, in the moment, in the here and now.

Osho points out that while the word darshan is often translated as the English word philosophy, it is not the same at all. It is not love of knowledge, and it has nothing to do with weighing pros and cons. Its not about debating different points of view, citing experts, or thinking about big important questions. Darshan, explains Osho, reflects an entirely different and uniquely Eastern understanding of how one arrives at truth. The word itself literally means seeingnot the ordinary seeing we do with our eyes, but a seeing that engages and lights up our entire being.

Heres how he once described it when talking about the purpose of the Darshan meetings:

The East knows how to just sit in silence, without agreeing or disagreeing, because we have discovered one fundamental thing: truth is already inside you. If you hear the truth from the outside, your truth will be awakened, it will be provoked. Suddenly you will say, Yes! as if you had known it already. It is a recognition. It is a remembrance. You are simply being reminded by the master about that which you have forgotten.

The 365 meditations for the here and now in the pages that follow are all selected from transcripts of Darshan meetings with Osho. As such, they carry a penetrating and straight-to-the-point flavor that reflects the unique context in which they happened. The selections as a whole encompass the entire range of human dilemmasfrom relationship problems to challenges at work, from family quarrels to struggles with the existential meaning of life. Some might provoke a sudden Yes! in you, or some remind you of a truth that is now so familiar that you take it for granted. Others might not ring any bells for you personally, but help you see more clearly or compassionately the behavior or struggles of a friend or loved one.

How you use the book is entirely up to you. Since there are 365 days in the average calendar year, you can read a new one every morning and just sit in silence with it throughout the day, or you can read one each night before bed and let it do its work while you are sleeping. But those arent the only choicesyou can also open the book at random and see what pops up. Take more than a day to sit with a passage that seems to want to spend more time with you, or go back to one you felt indifferent about before but now seems suddenly relevant. However you decide to enjoy the book, our hope is that you will enjoy in the same spirit and space from which it comes:

It is not a question of agreement or disagreement. I am not interested in creating beliefs in you, and I am not interested in giving you any kind of ideology. My whole effort here isas it has always been, of all the buddhas, since the beginnings of timeto provoke truth in you. I know it is already there, it just needs a synchronicity. It just needs something to trigger the process of recognition in you.

The moment you are illuminated, the whole of existence is illuminated. If you are dark, then the whole of existence is dark. It all depends on you.

There are a thousand and one fallacies about meditation prevalent all around the world. Meditation is very simple: it is nothing but consciousness. It is not chanting, it is not using a mantra or a rosary. These are hypnotic methods. They can give you a certain kind of restnothing is wrong with that rest. If one is just trying to relax, it is perfectly good. Any hypnotic method can be helpful, but if one wants to know the truth, then it is not enough.

Meditation simply means transforming your unconsciousness into consciousness. Normally only one-tenth of our mind is conscious, and nine-tenths is unconscious. Just a small part of our mind, a thin layer, has light; otherwise the whole house is in darkness. And the challenge is to grow that small light so much that the whole house is flooded with light, so that not even a nook or corner is left in darkness.

Then the whole house is full of light, then life is a miracle; it has the quality of magic. Then it is no longer ordinaryeverything becomes extraordinary. The mundane is transformed into the sacred, and the small things of life start having such tremendous significance that one could not have ever imagined it. Ordinary stones look as beautiful as diamonds; the whole of existence becomes illuminated. The moment you are illuminated, the whole of existence is illuminated. If you are dark, then the whole of existence is dark. It all depends on you.

All great discoveries are made by amateurs.

It always happens that when you start new work, you are very creative, you are deeply involved, your whole being is in it. Then by and by, as you become acquainted with the territory, rather than being inventive and creative you start being repetitive. This is natural because the more skilled you become in any work, the more repetitive you become. Skill is repetitive.

So all great discoveries are made by amateurs, because a skilled person has too much at stake. If something new happens, what will happen to the old skill? The person has learned for years and now has become an expert. So experts never discover anything; they never go beyond the limit of their expertise. On the one hand, they become more and more skillful, and on the other hand they become more and more dull and the work seems to be a drag. Now there is nothing new that can be a thrill to themthey already know what is going to happen, they know what they are going to do; there is no surprise in it.

So here is the lesson: it is good to attain a skill, but it is not good to settle with it forever. Whenever the feeling arises in you that now something is looking stale, change it. Invent something, add something new, delete something old. Again be free from the patternthat means be free from the skillagain become an amateur. It needs courage and guts to become an amateur again, but thats how life becomes beautiful.