"How do I know I am doing Karma Yoga?"

Osho answers a question during his discourse on the Bhagavad Gita:

Listen to the discourse in Hindi here:

I provide a translation below:

A friend has asked this question: “I am pursuing the practice of Karma Yoga. But sometimes I am scared whether I am really performing Karma “Yoga”. I have no inclination to Bhakti or pursuit of Jnana. I continue to do my duties, but what is the yardstick that what I am doing is actually Karma Yoga and I am not fooling myself? What if my days are simply passing by? How do I know that my own right path is Karma Yoga?”
The question is significant, and the one who has asked it is not asking the question with mere curiosity but in earnest enquiry. Of course one can fool oneself. We have known that, of course we have been fooling ourselves for a long time. We have done it over many lives. So it’s a natural question for a seeker, whether he is simply doing work or practising Karma Yoga.
The first criterion: the work that you are doing after entrusting it to the Lord, is it giving you peace? The result of Karma Yoga is the same as that of meditation- it should give you peace. If you’re still restless, without peace, then you know it is not the right way. When you hand over all your work to the Lord and do it all in His service, then there is no question of restlessness. Peace has to perforce follow. Peace eludes me only when I have taken over the burden of responsibility on my shoulders, and think that I am the doer. If you discover on your path that your restlessness is giving way to peace, to a tranquillity that follows from giving over the reins to the Lord, then you can infer you are doing Karma Yoga.
The second criterion: whether you meet with success or failure, whether you find comfort or difficulty in your work, you will be equanimous. You have left everything to the Lord, and you don’t react whether you get positive or negative results, as you are merely the Lord’s vehicle. Then you have become a mere witness to your work. That gives equanimity, and if this feeling keeps growing, then you’re surely on the path of Karma Yoga. You’re not fooling yourself.
The third criterion: the moment you hand over the controls to the Lord, this world gets a dreamlike quality. It becomes a drama. Until then everything is so real, and you see yourself as the doer. When you give over the controls to Him, you become a spectator, not a doer. It’s like a cinema. Who are you? He is the director, and you are a mere audience. You are now only a watcher, an audience to this drama. It becomes a play. His play. You feel a sense of witnessing.
If these criteria are not satisfied, then it is clear it is a kind of self-deceit. If even after trying hard, you find the absence of these three qualities.. .peace, equanimity, witnessing, then you have to ask yourself if this is your true path. You may have to try other paths.
But what happens every day? People think they have to discharge their duties, and that is Karma Yoga. “With wife, children, we are stuck, we have to do our work or business , earn and consume…”…those who think of life as a series of unavoidable duties, you will see them carrying a burden of life. There is no joy. It is drudgery. Sometimes deep within they feel like murdering the people around. They wish they could have avoided this trap. This is not Karma Yoga. In fact it’s a kind of impotency. A state of Trishanku. These people cannot run away, and yet cannot enjoy the tasks on hand. There is no courage to give up and go away. And there is no meaning in going about this drudgery, as there is no attitude to do one’s duty with joy as God’s work.
This word duty stinks. If one loves one’s wife, and says, “I want to give my wife a beautiful home, a garden, get a car, give her a comfortable life. I love my children, I really want to provide for them, make their life full of laughter”- that person will not talk of duty. This is his joy, not mere duty. That is a good place to be in, because there is the joy of doing things for loved ones.
Then there is the other, who is going about his work as God’s work. He has joy, as we said before, from the word go.
In-between is the man who talks of duty and drudgery. He is stuck and almost dead. The time is ripe for him to take some drastic measures.
When you’re on the path of Karma Yoga, you will be feeling increasing bliss. When you’re going in the wrong direction, your restlessness increases.
It is perfectly Ok that you are full of the joy of providing for your loved ones. If you become happy by making your wife and children happy, that’s perfectly beautiful. Such a man knows how to be happy. And one day, when he turns towards God, he will get joy manifold. So that’s good too.
The man inbetween is in a sorry state. If you’re blissful, be assured that you are on the right path. If you’re depressed, feel stuck, be clear you’re headed in the wrong direction.
We should not take unhappy sadhus also as role models. If they are not blissful, they won’t like you to be joyous, they will say you are sinners. Save yourselves from such sadhus. If we mere mortals are getting joy from everyday tasks, and little things, shouldn’t these sadhus, on the path to God, be happy?  Bliss is the touchstone indeed!
If bliss, or joy, is missing, there is something wrong. Don’t listen to those who decry joy. Maybe you are not doing the right things, but it is your experience that you feel joy. What does that mean? A day will come that you feel bored with these trinkets and little things. You will then rise higher, and seek joy in higher things. The key thing is you’re in bliss, and you’re on the right path. Look at a little boy. He loves playing with stones. He won’t give them up and even goes to bed taking these stones. Don’t snatch away those stones saying they are nothing. That is a very wrong thing. You are not only taking away the boy’s stones, you are damaging  his joy. It’s true that you have no interest in mere stones, but remember while throwing away the gross stones, you are also snatching away his inner joy. And that’s unforgivable. Remember right now the boy is too small to know that these stones are nothing much. How can he know that, since he getting so much joy from playing with them? This is not the time to teach him about higher things. If you give him the right inputs, he will become aware, evolve to higher things and one day he will give up these stones himself. The idea is to increase a sense of awareness, not coerce somebody to give up things that they enjoy doing today. Awareness is the key component in one’s path.
So it’s simple. If you’re happy doing something, know you’re on the path. It maybe that your joy comes from something not so significant, but so what? You will evolve, become more aware, sooner or later. Then you will rise to the joy of higher things. The two criteria are awareness and bliss. If one is not blissful and one is not becoming more aware, then one needs a course correction. Not otherwise.  

A story about three grains of wheat.

I heard this story from Osho.

A king was about to retire and wanted to select one of his three sons to inherit the reins of his kingdom. He called them all and told them that he was going to decide who among them would make the best successor. He gave each of them a grain of wheat and said they should each do what they deemed fit with the grain during the next couple of years when he would be gone on his travels.

On his return, the king called each son to narrate what he had done with the grain of wheat.

The first replied, 'father, as your successor, I should preserve the safety of our kingdom. I understood at once this grain of wheat is your metaphor for the kingdom. Here it is, I have kept it safe in a gold box.' When the box was opened, the grain looked wasted and dead.

The second son replied, 'father, I knew you wanted to test how well I would inherit the richness of our kingdom. The wheat grain was your metaphor for our wealth. The wealth of a grain is in its eating, so I cooked it and ate it up.'

The third and last son told his father, 'father, I request you to come with me to see what I have done with the grain'. He took him to a field, and showed a rich harvest of wheat. He said, 'father, the true potential of our kingdom is to grow and prosper. I knew your grain was your metaphor for the productive potential of our land. I took it, sowed it, and turn by turn, it has grown into a lot of wheat here in this field'.

The richness of life is in its living and growing. Not being hoarded away like gold.

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.

Osho: what does it mean to be selfish?

From The Discipline of Transcendence:

YOU HAVE TOLD US MANY TIMES: BE SELFISH. WHAT IS IT TO BE SELFISH?
Drop the self. Because that is the most beautiful thing that can happen to you. That will be the greatest contentment that can come to you.
Drop the self, if you really are selfish. If you really want to be blissful, drop the self -- because self is creating all your miseries and all your hells.
Difficult, because it looks like a paradox. But have you watched? All miseries come to you because of your self, because of the ego. You are hurt again and again, you suffer so much because of the ego. It is like a wound which remains always alive, and anything, even a breeze, a cool breeze, hurts you. Somebody smiles and it hurts, somebody laughs and it hurts, somebody is going on his way, maybe lost in his own thoughts, not looking at you, then it hurts.
Mulla Nasrudin was saying to his wife, 'Don't annoy me any more! You are irritating me!' And he was really mad.
The wife said, 'But I have not said a single thing. I am doing my work.'
Mulla said, 'That's why. You are keeping so quiet, it is annoying. For god's sake, say something!'
Now, if you keep quiet, then too somebody can get annoyed. If you speak, then there is trouble. Ego is ready to be hurt; it will find ways and means to be hurt. So a person who lives with the ego, with the self, is not really a selfish person, he is a foolish person. Because he only suffers. What type of selfless selfishness is this, if you only suffer?
I show you the way: drop the self. Forget all about the ego. Be as if you are not, exist as an emptiness, and see -- millions of beautiful experiences become available to you. Everything becomes a deep, satisfying experience. Everything brings a gift, a grace. Everything becomes a benediction.
The ego is always expecting and hence always being frustrated. The non-egoistic person expects nothing, hence everything is fulfilling; whatsoever happens is tremendous, whatsoever happens is fantastic. Even if he comes across a small grass flower, he is hypnotised by it. 'So beautiful a flower! And I have not done anything, I have not deserved it, and it is there just waiting for me.' Just looking at the sky, and he is fulfilled. Just listening to the birds, and a great song arises in his heart. Then everything fulfils him.
Remember, frustration is out of expectation, and ego is always expecting. The ego is a beggar.
I have heard a beautiful Sufi story.
A beggar came to an emperor and the beggar said, 'If you are going to give me anything there is a condition.' The emperor had seen many beggars -- but beggars with conditions? And this beggar was really strange, a very powerful man. He was a sufi mystic. He had charm, a charisma, his personality had an aura. Even the emperor felt a little jealous. And conditions?!
The emperor said, 'What do you mean? What do you mean by your condition?'
The beggar said, 'This is my condition: I accept only if you can fill my begging bowl absolutely.'
It was a small begging bowl. The King said, 'What do you think I am? Am I a beggar? I cannot fill this dirty small begging bowl?'
The beggar said, 'It is better to tell you before, because later you can get into trouble. If you think you can fill, fill.'
The King called his vizier and told him to fill it with precious stones: with diamonds and rubies, emeralds. Let this beggar know with whom he is talking! But then there was difficulty. The bowl was filled but the king was surprised -- as the stone fell into it, it would disappear. It was filled many times and each time it was again empty. Now he was in a great rage, but he told the vizier, 'Even if my whole kingdom goes, if all my treasuries are emptied, let them be -- but I cannot allow this beggar to defeat me. This is too much.'
And all the treasures, it is said, disappeared. By and by the king became a beggar. It took months. And the beggar was there and the king was there and the whole capital was there and everybody was wondering what was going to happen, what would happen in the end. Everything was simply disappearing.
Finally the king had to fall at the feet of the beggar and he said, 'Forgive me, but before you leave just tell me one thing. What is the secret of this begging bowl? All has disappeared in it.'
The beggar started laughing. He said, 'It is made of human ego. I have made this begging bowl of a human ego: everything disappears in it, nothing ever fulfils it.'
It is a tremendously beautiful story. That's what is happening to you. It is not a story, it is your life. You go on putting in your begging bowl houses, cars, bank balances -- everything disappears. Again you are empty. Never any satisfaction, never any contentment. Again you are begging. You have been doing it for many lives. It is your story. It is literally true, it is not just symbolically true. It is a truth in everybody's life, in every man's life.
We remain a beggar. The begging bowl remains empty. It seems it has no bottom to it. You drop anything, it simply disappears.
The ego is never fulfilled. So the egoist is a person who is very unselfish. Remember this paradox: the egoist is a person who is very unselfish, because he is never fulfilled. The non-egoist is a person who is very selfish because he is fulfilled. He attains to bliss.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Why I am miserable

Osho on why I am miserable:

You ask for boredom because you ask for repetition. Something happened; for example, you were sitting, and the first star of the evening was becoming visible. And you watched. And it was a quiet evening; and it was cool and birds were returning back to their nests. And it was silent and it was very musical and you were in tune. Just watching the star becoming visible you felt beautiful.  Now, you have tasted something—you will gather it like a treasure. THIS treasure will make you miserable.

First, you will hanker for it again and again. That hankering will create misery. And it cannot be repeated by your hankering, remember—because it happened only because there was no hankering in you. You were simply sitting there not knowing what was going to happen. It happened in a state of innocence. It happened in a state of nonexpectation.It happened because you were not looking for it. That is a basic ingredient in it. You were not looking, you were not asking. In fact, you were not desiring—you were simply there. Suddenly you became aware: the first star. And IN that moment when you became aware of the first star, you were not thinking that it was happiness, remember that too. That comes later on; that is a recapitulation. In that moment you were simply there— not happy, not unhappy, nothing. These words don’t mean anything. Existence is so vast that no word is meaningful about it.

But then it is gone and there remains a memory. And you say again and again, “It was beautiful—how beautiful! how divine!” Now a desire arises to repeat it every evening.  Next day you are waiting again, but now the whole situation has changed: you are waiting for it, you are looking for it. You want to repeat the old experience. Now, this is something new which was not present in the previous experience. So this won’t allow you. You are looking too much. You are not relaxed; you are tense—you are afraid you may miss the first star. You are apprehensive. You are worried whether it is going to be again or not. It is not going to be.

First, it is not possible now because you have lost that innocence, that unexperienced state where no memory existed, where past was not, where future was not. Secondly, if some day it is repeated it will be boring because it will be a repetition. You have already known it. The beauty is in the new, it is never in the old. The beauty is in the fresh, it is never in the dead. The beauty belongs to the original, never to the carbon copy. The beauty is when an experience is firsthand, not secondhand. Now, if it happens at all, it will not make you happy; it will be a secondhand experience. And remember: God is never secondhand. God is always fresh.

To know that God in the beauty of the evening, or in the beauty of a bird on the wing, means you have to be absolutely innocent. The past has to be completely dropped and the future is not to be allowed to interfere. Then, and only then, there is beauty and there is benediction, there is blessing, there is happiness and bliss.  Once you experience something, you start asking for it, you become a beggar. Then it will never happen. And you will carry the memory like a wound.  Have you watched it? Watch it: whenever you are happy, in that moment you don’t know it is happiness. It is only afterwards, when the experience is gone, faded away, is no more, then mind comes in and starts looking for it, starts comparing, evaluating, judging, and says, “Yes, it was beautiful! so beautiful!” When the experience itself was present, mind was not present.

Happiness is when mind is not.

( The Dsicipline of Transcendence vol. III discourse 9)

The Sound Unheard

(based on a talk by Osho)


The Sound Unheard


The musicians get busy, twanging and tonking their instruments oblivious to the restive audience-as they tune strings and drums into unison so that the music may arise presently.

 The musicians only tune in. It’s the music that descends into the air - the grace of the Sound Unheard that is the source of all music.

 Theologies east and west stake their positions irreconcilably but all agree on the primordial source of life - the one truth. That is the Sound Unheard.

 Temples and churches have a welcome bell. The bell rings truly not to waken the One within - but to beckon us to journey to the beyond, stepping through that sound of the ringing bell to the music beyond hearing. And who is unmoved by the music coming from beyond?

Of all things, music alone stirs us beyond our senses and is the substratum of life, of breath and being. Science says all matter is but vibration- but in truth it is the Sound Unheard.

 Thereby hangs a fable. Once Wajid Ali of Oudh was bent on bringing a famed singer to his court. The singer had his own mad condition. He said he would sing only to those who did not move at all, not even shake their heads to his music. Wajid Ali was true to his reputation. Out went the drum roll around town calling only those to court who could hear the music without any physical sign of being moved at all. The town was bemused to hear that strange call to court - any one who showed any sign of being swayed by the music was courting death - That was the punishment proclaimed by Wajid Ali.

 This is no pointless tale. So a handful did come.

Perhaps they were those stoics and mendicants who had hardened all their senses into frigid obedience. But when the music started –

None could resist its eternal charms. Heads swayed, hands moved, bodies showed sheer enjoyment.

 Wajid Ali was chagrined. He stopped the singer and asked, “Sir, must I accept defeat and have these wretched ones beheaded?”

The musician laughed - “Of course not! I have been waiting all along to sing to such as these who dared death to court music! These intrepid ones are truly worthy of partaking with me of that grace of primordial Sound!”

 How should one reach the Sound Unheard? By being still- still within and not running about looking for true bliss in the world of the senses. Only stillness prepares us - the guru then wakens within you that Primordial Sound. And then you see - it was, is and will always be everywhere! You did not hear it so far- like a fish feeling thirsty in water!

 There is only one true prayer that is neither begging nor bribery. It’s that ever-eager wait in the stillness for the Music to descend - to become one with it. The musician merely tunes in- its that Music that then flows.