Sunday, February 3, 2013

Osho: Worshipping a Tree





From The Discipline of Transcendence:

If the child is forced into a dogma, into a dogmatic ideology, then the ego will gather, then the ego will become Christian, and the ego will be against the Hindu and against the Mohammedan. Then the ego will become Hindu, and will be against the Christian and against the Mohammedan. But if the house is really religious -- by religion I mean meditative, loving -- they help the child to be, but yet without the ego. They help the child to feel more and more the affinity, the unity, that exists. The child has to be helped; he is helpless, he does not know where he is, he does not know where he is going. If he is loved and there is a meditative rhythm in the family and the family vibrates with silence, understanding, the child will
start growing into a more organic way. He will not feel himself separate, he will start learning how to become part. That has not happened. I am not telling you to have any grudge about it -- but you can do it right now. You can stop helping your ego and you can start dropping the burden. Make it a point not to miss any opportunity where you can feel one with anything. If it is a full moon night, feel one with the moonlit night. Allow to flow... stream with it, dance, sing...and drop your ego.

There is nothing better than dance for dropping the ego; hence I insist that all meditators should dance. Because if you go really in a whirlwind, if you are really a whirling pool of energy, if you really are in the dance, the dancer is lost. In the dance the dancer is always lost. If it is not lost then you are not dancing. Then you may be performing, then you may be manipulating, then you may be doing some bodily exercises, but you are not dancing.

Dancing means so lost, so drunk -- and enjoying the energy that is created by dance. By and by you will see your body is no more so solid as it was before. By and by you will see that you are melting; the boundary is losing its sharpness, it is becoming a little vague. You cannot exactly feel where you end and where the world starts. A dancer is in such a whirlpool, he becomes such a vibration, that the whole life is felt as in one rhythm.

So whenever you can find a time, a place, a situation... you are in love with somebody; don't miss this opportunity. Don't talk nonsense, don't bring your ego and bragging. Drop that! Love is tremendously divine, god has knocked at your door. Be lost. Hold hands with your woman, or with your man, or with your friend. Get lost! Sing together, or dance together -- but get lost. Or sit together -- but get lost! And feel that you are no more an individual. Sitting by the side of a tree, get lost.

That's how it happened to Buddha. In that moment the bodhi tree and Buddha became one. For five hundred years after Buddha, Buddha's statues were not built. Instead, only the bodhi tree's picture was worshipped. It was tremendously beautiful. Those people must have understood. Just the bodhi tree was worshipped. In buddhist temples there was just a symbol of the bodhi tree. Because in that moment Buddha completely disappeared.

He was not there, only the bodhi tree was. He was completely lost. Disappearing, you appear. Non-being is your way of real being. And this can happen in ordinary life. You need not go to the Himalayas or to a monastery. There are millions of chances in ordinary life, millions of momentous situations where this can happen. You just have to be a little watchful and a little courageous to use them. Once you start using them, more and more situations will be coming. They have always been coming, but you were not aware so you missed them.

Sitting on the beach taking a sunbath, melt with the sun. It is an energy experience. Suddenly you see you are nothing but sun energy. Melting and meeting with the sun, hindus came to worship the sun. They said, 'The sun is god.' They said, 'The moon is god.' They worshipped trees as divine. They worshipped rivers, mountains.

It is very significant. Wherever it happened that they met god... sitting by the side of a river, listening to the beautiful music of the river, seeing the beautiful patterns of ripples, if they got melted, dissolved, the river became the god. It happened there. Sitting on a lonely mountain, they dissolved and disappeared -- that mountain became their god.

God comes in millions of ways to you, but your ego never allows you to see him. And he comes in such ordinary ways that you miss. He never comes like a monarch with a great procession, with a great band and noise and fuss. He never comes like that. Only foolish people do that. God comes very silently -- he never comes shouting, he comes whispering. You will have to be very quiet to understand his message. It is a love whisper. And man tends to forget the natural.