Meaning of Life. Major life event changes perspective.

 

3 Tips for finding Real Gratitude—Courtesy of Osho.

Re blogged  from

Elephant Journal 

By  Kim  Hill

“What are you grateful for?” they’ll ask around the dinner table.

We’ll go down the list with our earnest answers, served up as predictably as turkey and mashed potatoes: Family. Friends. Health. Home.

None of this is bad, of course. Practicing gratitude is a healthy part of any mindfulness practice.

But there is a danger in this kind of cursory thankfulness inventory, which calls to mind things we have (or think we have), with a sense of claiming, even clinging.

The spiritual teacher Osho said, “Here is what you should do: make an effort to find out what things it would hurt you to lose. Then, before they are lost, open your hands little by little, relax your grip on them. This is the method for conquering attachment.”

Real gratitude means recognizing that, actually, we own nothing. We are entitled to nothing. And yet, look at all of this.

The way you get there is by letting go. Here are three simple practices to help cultivate gratitude through non-attachment:

Accept things as they are.

Expectation is the root of disappointment. We want things to be a certain way, or to not be a certain way, and our acceptance hinges on those conditions being met. 

The problem is, most of the time these conditions represent fanciful wishes over which we have no control. We become attached to an outcome that may never come true. 

When you let go of expectations, it frees you to see the good in places you hadn’t noticed before.

Sometimes the most valuable experiences are those you wouldn’t have necessarily wanted.

Accept things as they change.

When my son was first born, we heard a common lament from well-meaning visitors: “They grow up too fast!”

The comment would always ping me with anxiety. Am I taking enough photos? Am I appropriately revering his tiny little fingers and toes? Am I dutifully present enough when he wakes me up all night, every night, to nurse?

Irbecame more about capturing the correct moment in time than about witnessing the miracle of transformation.

When things are good, there’s nothing wrong with appreciating it. But be careful that the appreciation doesn’t hinge on everything staying exactly how it is. How quickly gratitude can turn into fear.

I put down my phone. I got down on the ground with him, on his little activity mat. We looked at the shadows the plants made on the walls, listened to music. Each day a little different. Each day something new.

He started rolling over. Then sitting. Then crawling. Then walking.

Growing up, just fast enough.

Accept what you will lose

What would it hurt you to lose? Your job? Your family? Your home? Your health? None of these things are forever. There is a powerful lesson in this inevitability.

As Osho challenges us, have the courage to be curious about those things you think you couldn’t lose. If the thought makes you uncomfortable, you’re on the right track. Can you use the discomfort to put these things into a new perspective?

Real gratitude is not conditional. It is the quiet, awe-inspiring realization of the beautiful, fleeting things that just happen to exist right now…but not forever.

Link to Original post

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Osho's Ten Commandments and more.,

 

The sound of the ocean reverberates in Osho’s words.

By Kate Bartolotta

The real you is eternal. The ocean continues, the waves come and go.

“Look deep down into the ocean,”  Osho said, and “you will find yourself, and the eternal depth and unfathomable mystery of it.” Osho said his name came from an understanding of the “oceanic” experience of a human’s spiritual seeking.

Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, was an Indian mystic and zen guru. A professor of philosophy in the 1960s in India, his outspoken criticism of religion, and controversial and provocative lectures earned him the title “sex guru.” After travelling to the U.S., and later being deported, twenty-one countries denied him entry. Some people considered him a danger to society. He criticized orthodox religion, described Gandhi as a masochist, and condoned birth control.

His ideas were radical to a new era, and he attracted wealthy followers seeking spiritual advice in exchange for their money. In 1969, when invited to speak at the Second World Hindu Conference, he radically exclaimed:

“Any religion which considers life meaningless and full of misery, and teaches the hatred of life, is not a true religion. Religion is an art that shows how to enjoy life.”

He encouraged his followers to live extravagant lives, rather than an ascetic lifestyle. He is recorded as having said that he was not to be worshipped, but regarded as a catalyst, “a sun encouraging the flower to open,” to provoke opportunities for self-observation and transcendence.

After fifteen years of discourse and lectures, Osho took a three and half year vow of silence, announcing that it was time “to speak his own truths.” According to Osho, every human being is a Buddha and every person possesses the capacity for enlightenment.

“The mind’s appeal to the past,” he said, “deprives human beings of the ability to live authentically in the present, causing them to repress genuine emotions and to shut themselves off from joyful experiences that arise naturally when embracing the present moment.”

He argued that psychological repression caused suppressed emotions to reemerge in different guises. A society that condemns sex, for instance, would result in a culture obsessed with sex.

Osho described meditation as not something that you can practice for 10 minutes a day, but as a state of mind to be achieved in every single moment. His teachings spoke of awakening from our cultural paradigms, beliefs, traditions, mechanical reactions to the world, to live organically, fresh and blissfully new in every waking moment, with an open mind.

During your meditation, he claimed:

“Let whatever is happening, happen…Laugh, shout, scream, jump, shake—whatever you feel to do, do it!”

Then he would encourager the meditator to remain completely still and silent. Alas, a person closes his or her mediation with dancing, singing, playing, laughing and celebrating!

A correspondent once asked Osho for his “10 commandments.” Osho noted that he was against any kind of commandment, but “just for fun,” replied:

1. Never obey anyone’s command unless it is coming from within you also.

2. There is no God other than life itself.

3. Truth is within you, do not search for it elsewhere.

4. Love is prayer.

5. To become nothingness is the door to truth. Nothingness itself is the means, the goal and attainment.

6. Life is now and here.

7. Live wakefully.

8. Do not swim—float.

9. Die each moment so that you can be new each moment.

10. Do not search. That which is, is. Stop and see.

Just for fun, I reconstructed nine of my favourite Osho quotes to write my own 10 commandments. The last quote isn’t Osho, but I think that he would agree:

1. “The highest state of love is not a relationship at all, it is simply a state of your being. Just as trees are green, a lover is loving. They are not green for particular persons, it is not that when you come they become green. The flower goes on spreading it’s fragrance whether anybody comes or not, whether anybody appreciates or not. The flower does not start releasing its fragrance when it sees that a great poet is coming by ‘Now this man will appreciate, now this man will be able to understand who I am.’ And it does not close its doors when it sees that a stupid, idiotic person is passing there—insensitive, dull, a politician or something like that. It does not close itself – ‘What is the point? Why cast pearls before swine?’ No, the flower goes on spreading its fragrance. It is a state of being, not a relationship…”

~ Osho

2. “These three things are to be taken note of: the lowest love is sex—it is physical—and the highest refinement of love is compassion. Sex is below love, compassion is above love; love is exactly in the middle. Very few people know what love is. Ninety-nine percent of people, unfortunately, think sexuality is love—it is not. Sexuality is very animal; it certainly has the potential of growing into love, but it is not actual love, only a potential…. If you become aware and alert, meditative, then sex can be transformed into love. And if your meditativeness becomes total, absolute, love can be transformed into compassion. Sex is the seed, love is the flower, compassion is the fragrance. Buddha has defined compassion as love plus meditation. When your love is not just a desire for the other, when your love is not only a need, when your love is a sharing, when your love is not that of a beggar but an emperor, when your love is not asking for something in return but is ready only to give—to give for the sheer joy of giving—then add meditation to it and the pure fragrance is released. That is compassion; compassion is the highest phenomenon.”

~ Osho

3. “Falling in love you remain a child; rising in love you mature. By and by love becomes not a relationship, it becomes a state of your being. Not that you are in love—now you are love.”

~ Osho

4. “Drop the idea of becoming someone, because you are already a masterpiece. You cannot be improved. You have only to come to it, to know it, to realize it.”

~ Osho

5. “Creativity is the greatest rebellion in existence.”

~ Osho

6. “You become more divine as you become more creative. All the religions of the world have said God is the creator. I don’t know whether he is the creator or not, but one thing I know: the more creative you become, the more godly you become. When your creativity comes to a climax, when your whole life becomes creative, you live in God. So he must be the creator because people who have been creative have been closest to him. Love what you do. Be meditative while you are doing it—whatsoever it is.”

~ Osho

7. “Nobody is here to fulfil lyour dream. Everybody is here to fulfill his own destiny, his own reality.”

~ Osho

8. “Only those who are ready to become nobodies are able to love.”

~ Osho

9. “Enlightenment is the understanding that this is all, that this is perfect, that this is it. Enlightenment is not an achievement, it is an understanding that there is nothing to achieve, nowhere to go.”

~ Osho

10. “Chastity: The most unnatural of the sexual perversions.”

~ Aldous Huxley

Editor: Kate Bartolotta
https://www.elephantjournal.com/2012/06/oshos-ten-commandments/

7 Principle to Live By

i. I came across this motivational video on Twitter and am sharing the link below for as they say, we need motivation on a daily basis! 

7 PRINCIPLES TO LIVE BY FOR SUCCESS & HAPPINESS – MOTIVATIONAL VIDEO

ps://iamfearlesssoul.com/principles-to-live-by-success-happiness/?utm_content=bufferc0a89&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

The Buddha and Sustainability

                                             

Once, a disciple of Buddha, said, "Oh Master! I have a request to make."

Buddha: "What is it; tell me?"

Disciple: "My robe is worn out. It is no longer decent enough to wear. Please, may I have a new one?"

Buddha looked at the disciple's attire and found that the garment was absolutely in tatters and really needed replacement. So he asked the store-keeper to give a new robe to this disciple.

The disciple offered obeisance to the great master and left the room.

Buddha kept thinking about the incident and felt that he had perhaps missed an opportunity to teach a valuable lesson to the disciple. So he went to the disciple's quarters to talk to him.

Buddha: Are you comfortable in your new robe? Do you need anything else?

Disciple: Thank you, Master. I am very comfortable and do not need anything else.

Buddha: Now that you have a new one, what have you done with the old one?

Disciple: I have used it to replace my worn out bedspread.

Buddha: What did you do with the old bedspread?

Disciple: Master, I am using it as a curtain on my window.

Buddha: Did you discard your old window curtain?

Disciple: Master, I tore it into four pieces and am using them as napkins to handle the hot pots and pans in the kitchen.

Buddha: What about the old kitchen napkins?

Disciple: We are using them as mops to wash and wipe the floor.

Buddha: Where is the old mop?

Disciple: Lord, the old mop was so tattered that the best we could do was to take all the threads apart and make wicks for your oil lamp. One of them is presently lit in your room."

Buddha was content. He was happy that His disciples realized that nothing is useless. We can find a use for everything, if only we want to! Nothing should be wasted; not even time!

                                    

If all of us were to practice the habit of thrift, we can preserve the non-renewable resources for our children, our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren as our forefathers so thoughtfully did for us.

Let us vow together to leave at least one monument for our children: The Earth!

The real measure of a man's wealth is what he has invested in eternity.

~ Shared by Purvi Joshi

Osho On relationships ~ Love. Hate. Separation.

 

In all relationships, nobody is responsible for misery.

Just the very nature of a relationship is that it turns sour at a certain point.

It is neither you nor the other who is responsible for creating the misery, but both are suffering immensely.

And the nature of the mind is such that it goes on clinging and hoping, even hoping against hope that perhaps tomorrow things will be better, that it is only a passing phase.

You go on somehow consoling yourself.

You go on thinking that the other will understand, but it is not the fault of the other.

The other is also waiting for you to understand. And it is not your fault either.

So there is nothing to understand, you have simply to see and recognise that a relationship as such is bound to end up in a boring, miserable suffering.

The moment it starts happening, if you are alert you will separate ... not condemning or complaining about the other because nobody is really doing anything.

It is the relationship’s very nature that it cannot remain the same as it was before the honeymoon ended.

It cannot be the same after the honeymoon; the whole world has changed.

And as days pass, things that you were dreaming start becoming clear to you – that they were only dreams, they don’t have any reality.

Both feel frustrated, and both try to throw the responsibility on the other, so that instead of love, fighting becomes their only relationship.

But the problem is that the man or the woman goes on clinging even though everything is going towards hell.

The reason for clinging is the fear of loneliness.

It is better to be miserable but with somebody, than to be lonely – because when you are lonely you have to face yourself.

And unless you are prepared for a deep meditation, and to see your inner being and transform your loneliness into aloneness, you are going to cling even though it is miserable.

And that’s what you were doing, that’s what many are doing.

Separate peacefully, separate with respect towards each other; separate in such a way that you don't become enemies, that at least you remain friends.

Separate without hate.

Remember the person you have loved at least deserves not to be hated.

But if you go on clinging too long, all love is forgotten, all beautiful moments are forgotten.

All that you can remember is misery and misery and misery – everyday misery.

Then love turns into hate, and then everything is poisoned.

Then you cannot separate even with grace, and after separation, you cannot even think of friendship.

Osho ️ 
CHAPTER 30. THE PATH GOES ROUND AND ROUND
The New Dawn

Shared by Ravi Nandwani

Paying it forward. Red marbles.

                                                 

Red Marbles!

I was at the corner grocery store buying some early potatoes. I noticed a small boy, delicate of bone and feature, ragged but clean, hungrily appraising a basket of freshly picked green peas.

I paid for my potatoes but was also drawn to the display of fresh green peas. I am a pushover for creamed peas and new potatoes.

Pondering the peas, I couldn't help overhearing the conversation between Mr.. Miller (the store owner) and the ragged boy next to me.

'Hello Barry, how are you today?'
'H'lo, Mr. Miller. Fine, thank ya. Jus' admirin' them peas. They sure look good..'
'They are good, Barry.. How's your Ma?'

'Fine. Gittin' stronger alla' time.'
'Good. Anything I can help you with?'

'No, Sir.
Jus' admirin' them peas.'
'Would you like to take some home?' asked Mr. Miller.

                     

'No, Sir. Got nuthin' to pay for 'em with.'
'Well, what have you to trade me for some of those peas?'
'All I got's my prize marble here.'

'Is that right? Let me see it' said Miller.

'Here 'tis. She's a dandy.'
'I can see that. Hmm mmm, only thing is this one is blue and I sort of go for red. Do you have a red one like this at home?' the store owner asked.
'Not zackley but almost.'
'Tell you what. Take this sack of peas home with you and next trip this way let me look at that red marble'. Mr. Miller told the boy.
'Sure will. Thanks, Mr. Miller.'

Mrs... Miller, who had been standing nearby, came over to help me.
With a smile she said, 'There are two other boys like him in our community, all three are in very poor circumstances. Jim just loves to bargain with them for peas, apples, tomatoes, or whatever.

When they come back with their red marbles, and they always do, he decides he doesn't like red after all and he sends them home with a bag of produce for a green marble or an orange one, when they come on their next trip to the store.'

I left the store smiling to myself, impressed with this man. A short time later I moved to Colorado , but I never forgot the story of this man, the boys, and their bartering for marbles.

Several years went by, each more rapid than the previous one. Just recently I had occasion to visit some old friends in that Idaho community and while I was there learned that Mr. Miller had died. They were having his visitation that evening and knowing my friends wanted to go, I agreed to accompany them. Upon arrival at the mortuary we fell into line to meet the relatives of the deceased and to offer whatever words of comfort we could.

Ahead of us in line were three young men. One was in an army uniform and the other two wore nice haircuts, dark suits and white shirts...all very professional looking. They approached Mrs. Miller, standing composed and smiling by her husband's casket.

Each of the young men hugged her, kissed her on the cheek, spoke briefly with her and moved on to the casket. Her misty light blue eyes followed them as, one by one, each young man stopped briefly and placed his own warm hand over the cold pale hand in the casket. Each left the mortuary awkwardly, wiping his eyes...

Our turn came to meet Mrs. Miller. I told her who I was and reminded her of the story from those many years ago and what she had told me about her husband's bartering for marbles. With her eyes glistening, she took my hand and led me to the casket.

'Those three young men who just left were the boys I told you about.
They just told me how they appreciated the things Jim 'traded' them. Now, at last, when Jim could not change his mind about color or size.....they came to pay their debt.'

'We've never had a great deal of the wealth of this world,' she confided, 'but right now, Jim would consider himself the richest man in Idaho ..'

With loving gentleness she lifted the lifeless fingers of her deceased husband. Resting underneath were three exquisitely shined red marbles.

The Moral :
We will not be remembered by our words, but by our kind deeds. Life is not measured by the breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath.

Today I wish you a day of ordinary miracles:

A fresh pot of coffee you didn't make yourself...
An unexpected phone call from an old friend .....
Green stoplights on your way to work...
The fastest line at the grocery store...
A good sing-along song on the radio...
Your keys found right where you left them.
Share this with the people you'll never forget.
I just Did...
IT'S NOT WHAT YOU GATHER, BUT WHAT YOU SCATTER THAT TELLS WHAT KIND OF LIFE YOU HAVE LIVED

Story shared by Lata Vaidya.