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Osho - Meetings with Remarkable People

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Osho Meetings with Remarkable People
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Even now, nearly two decades after his death, Oshos books continue to sell in the hundreds of thousands, and his website receives over a million hits every month. His host of admirers simply increases with every succeeding generation. Here, Osho brings to life many of mankinds most influential religious and spiritual leaders from a variety of cultures, including Krishna, the Buddha, and Jesus; poets such as Lao Tzu and Rumi; philosophers from Pythagoras and Socrates to Heraclitus and Nietzsche; and great thinkers of more recent times, including Gurdjieff, Krishnamurti, and Kahlil Gibran. Osho uses their lives and knowledge to guide the reader in a profound journey of spiritual discovery and wisdom

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Bodhidharma

In the long evolution of human consciousness there has never been such an outlandish buddha as Bodhidharma very rare, very unique, exotic. Only in some small ways George Gurdjieff comes close to him, but not very close and only in some ways, not in all ways.

There have been many buddhas in the world, but Bodhidharma stands out like an Everest. His way of being, living, and expressing the truth is simply his; it is incomparable. Even his own master, Gautama the Buddha, cannot be compared with Bodhidharma. Even Buddha would have found it difficult to digest this man.

This man Bodhidharma traveled from India to China to spread the message of his master. Although they are separated by 1,000 years, for Bodhidharma and for such men there is no time, no space for Bodhidharma, Buddha was a contemporary. Superficially there is a thousand-year gap between Buddha and Bodhidharma, but there is not even a single moments gap in reality, in truth. On the circumference Buddha was already dead for 1,000 years when Bodhidharma arrived on the scene, but at the center he is together with Buddha. He speaks the essence of Buddha of course he has his own way, his own style. Even Buddha would find it strange.

Buddha was a very cultured man, very sophisticated, very graceful. Bodhidharma is just the opposite in his expression. He is not a man but a lion. He does not speak, he roars. He has not the grace which belonged to Gautama the Buddha; he is rough, raw. He is not polished like a diamond; he is just from the mine, absolutely raw, no polishing. That is his beauty. Buddha has a beauty that is very feminine, very polished, very fragile. Bodhidharma has his own beauty, like that of a rock strong, masculine, indestructible, a great power.

Buddha also radiates power, but his power is very silent, like a whisper, a cool breeze. Bodhidharma is a storm, thundering and lightning. Buddha comes to your door without making any noise; he will not even knock on your door, you will not even hear his footsteps. But when Bodhidharma comes to you he will shake the whole house from its very foundations.

Buddha will not shake you even if you are asleep. And Bodhidharma? He will wake you up from your grave! He hits hard, he is a hammer. He is just the opposite of Buddha in his expression, but his message is the same. He bows down to Buddha as his master. He never says, This is my message. He simply says, This belongs to the buddhas, the ancient buddhas. I am just a messenger. Nothing is mine, because I am not. I am only a hollow bamboo who has been chosen by the buddhas to be a flute for them. They sing; I simply let them sing through me.

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Bodhidharma was born 14 centuries ago as a son of a king in the south of India. There was a big empire, the empire of Pallavas. He was the third son of his father, but seeing everything he was a man of tremendous intelligence he renounced the kingdom. He was not against the world, but he was not ready to waste his time in mundane affairs, in trivia. His whole concern was to know his self-nature, because without knowing it you have to accept death as the end.

All true seekers, in fact, have been fighting against death. Bertrand Russell has made a statement that if there were no death, there would be no religion. There is some truth in it. I will not agree totally, because religion is a vast continent. It is not only death, it is also the search for bliss, it is also the search for truth, it is also the search for the meaning of life; it is many more things. But certainly Bertrand Russell is right: if there were no death, very few, very rare people would be interested in religion. Death is the great incentive.

Bodhidharma renounced the kingdom saying to his father, If you cannot save me from death, then please dont prevent me. Let me go in search of something that is beyond death. Those were beautiful days, particularly in the East. The father thought for a moment and he said, I will not prevent you, because I cannot prevent your death. You go on your search with all my blessings. It is sad for me but that is my problem; it is my attachment. I was hoping for you to be the successor, to be the emperor of the great Pallavas Empire, but you have chosen something higher than that. I am your father so how can I prevent you?

And you have put in such a simple way a question which I had never expected. You say,If you can prevent my death then I will not leave the palace, but if you cannot prevent my death, then please dont prevent me either. You can see Bodhidharmas caliber as a great intelligence.

And the second thing that I would like you to remember is that although he was a follower of Gautama Buddha, in some instances he shows higher flights than Gautama Buddha himself. For example, Gautama Buddha was afraid to initiate a woman into his commune but Bodhidharma got initiated by a woman who was enlightened. Her name was Pragyatara. Perhaps people would have forgotten her name; it is only because of Bodhidharma that her name still remains, but only the name we dont know anything else about her. It was she who ordered Bodhidharma to go to China. Buddhism had reached China 600 years before Bodhidharma. It was something magical; it had never happened anywhere, at any time Buddhas message immediately caught hold of the whole Chinese people.

The situation was that China had lived under the influence of Confucius and was tired of it. Because Confucius is just a moralist, a puritan, he does not know anything about the inner mysteries of life. In fact, he denies that there is anything inner. Everything is outer; refine it, polish it, culture it, make it as beautiful as possible.

There were people like Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu, contemporaries of Confucius, but they were mystics not masters. They could not create a countermovement against Confucius in the hearts of the Chinese people. So there was a vacuum. Nobody can live without a soul, and once you start thinking that there is no soul, your life starts losing all meaning. The soul is your very integrating concept; without it you are cut away from existence and eternal life. Just like a branch cut off from a tree is bound to die it has lost the source of nourishment the very idea that there is no soul inside you, no consciousness, cuts you away from existence. One starts shrinking, one starts feeling suffocated.

But Confucius was a very great rationalist. These mystics, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu, knew that what Confucius was doing was wrong, but they were not masters. They remained in their monasteries with their few disciples.

When Buddhism reached China, it immediately entered to the very soul of the people as if they had been thirsty for centuries, and Buddhism had come as a rain cloud. It quenched their thirst so immensely that something unimaginable happened.

Christianity has converted many people, but that conversion is not worth calling religious. It converts the poor, the hungry, the beggars, the orphans, not by any spiritual impact on them but just by giving them food, clothes, shelter, education. But these have nothing to do with spirituality. Mohammedanism has converted a tremendous amount of people, but on the point of the sword: either you be a Mohammedan, or you cannot live. The choice is yours.

The conversion that happened in China is the only religious conversion in the whole history of mankind. Buddhism simply explained itself, and the beauty of the message was understood by the people. They were thirsty for it, they were waiting for something like it. The whole country, which was the biggest country in the world, turned to Buddhism. When Bodhidharma reached there 600 years later, there were already 30,000 Buddhist temples, monasteries, and 2 million Buddhist monks in China. And 2 million Buddhist monks is not a small number; it was 5 percent of the whole population of China.

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