A man who lives a natural and a meditative life may not need any of the therapies available in the modern world.

A man who lives a natural and a meditative life may not need any of the therapies available in the modern world. Nature is therapeutic and so is meditation. Medicine and meditation have something in common, that is “Medi” and it is healing element. There are trees in India, especially the Peepal tree and Banyan tree, that provide the meditators abundant prana energy day and night.

The Peepal is well-known for its therapeutic properties and is considered to be the largest oxygen provider as it releases oxygen even at night. And it is antibacterial. That’s the reason our ancient sages always chose these trees to meditate under them. And whenever in deep meditation, the seekers attained to enlightenment, such trees became more blessed and divine.

People started worshipping these trees like living temples. They became more significant than the stone idols of deities in the temples. Sometimes the temples are meant only for certain sects of believers and they are not open for all, and some temples were not open for the women, half of the population of this country. But there have been no restrictions about meditatting under the trees or worshipping them.

In the time of Gautama, the Buddha, one village woman called Sujata used to worship a Peepal tree. One day she came to give an offering of kheer ( the sweet rice-pudding) to the tree. Suddenly, to her amazement, she saw a person sitting there in deep relaxation.

The tree was mysteriously glowing with his glow. She felt blessed that her prayers have been heard, the tree deity has manifested himself. It was Gautama the Buddha who accepted her kheer.

In Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna declares “of all the trees, I am the Peepal tree”. Another popular belief is that Lord Krishna attained to nirvana under this tree.

Osho is an exception. He attained enlightenment under a Maulshri tree. So even if the meditator does not find any Peepal or Banyan tree, meditating under any tree or near many trees, or in a forest is also beneficial. All you need to do is to first create an empathy with the tree. Share your love and be caring and then you get much more in return. Just hug a tree. Hugging a tree is an ancient technique of meditation, cited in the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, one of the oldest spiritual manuals in existence.

Osho says: Hug a tree, and a day will come soon when you will feel that it was not only you who was hugging the tree — the tree was responding, you were also hugged by the tree, although the tree has no hands. But it has its own way of expressing its joy, its sadness, its anger, its fear.

Hug a tree and relax into it.

While conducting meditation retreats around the world, it has been my experience that the participants went deep into meditation in places where there were more trees or where we felt that we were in a forest. More than a decade ago, a meditation camp was organised for us in Kanha National Park in Madhya Pradesh, but the hotel where we stayed did not have a proper meditation hall. So the reception courtyard was temporarily turned into a space for the group of meditators. There were about 30 participants. This courtyard did not feel the right space, suitable to settle into oneself in meditation. Suddenly, on the first morning, when I looked outside the hotel area, I saw one huge Banyan Tree. There was a gentle intuitively feeling that there we could do our meditations–Osho Dynamic, Tantra Prana, Vipassana, Nataraj, Naadbrahma, Kundalini, Kirtan and Evening Satsang–and it was a right decision. After the first session of meditation, the participants got so much rejuvenated that they themselves did not want to leave the tree area. There was some kind of magical prana energy which kept us all there every day from 7am to 8pm. The 3 day camp seemed to be a very short time. The participants did not want the retreat under this benevolent tree to end.

In ancient India, the sages who went deep into meditation and attained enlightenment, most of the credit goes to the forests. Their ashrams were also situated in the forests.

And now we hear about a new concept of “healing forests” in Japan and Korea. The researchers are informing us:  Forests are known to have great healing properties. As humans, we have evolved in nature. It’s where we feel most comfortable. It has been scientifically proven that when we spend time in nature, our brain behaves differently. It affects how we feel and think, which has a direct impact on our immunity and healing powers.

The ted.com tells us that the establishment of dozens of healing forests has become now a part of South Korea’s surprising  prescription to improve the health of its citizens. It is attracting large number of health conscious people. It has been reported that Mr. Park Hyun-Soo, a cancer patient, didn’t look like a man on chemotherapy. Forty-one and with a full head of black hair, he can hike the socks off anyone, but he prefers to take his time. Not exactly a forest ranger, Park is is part of a new breed of Korean Forest Agency employee known as a forest healing instructor. He’d actually gone to graduate school for this, passing rigorous entrance qualifications. Although he began his career in a competitive corporate job, he received a diagnosis of chronic myeloid leukemia at age 34. He decided to seek peace and recovery in the woods, and it worked so well he decided to orient his entire life to the cypress trees.

Mr Park says: Between 2,000 and 3,000 visitors come through here every month, including three to four groups per day geared to some kind of healing, from cancer patients to kids with allergies to prenatal groups and everything in between. Depending on the program, participants may do activities like guided meditation, woodcrafts and tea ceremonies. But the heart of it all is walking in the Hinoki forest.

“Park is at the forefront of South Korea’s ambitious National Forest Plan. Its goal is “to realize a green welfare state, where the entire nation enjoys well-being.” The scope of all this is, true to Korean form, ambitious. In the same way Samsung is trying to outmaneuver Apple and K-Pop intends to dominate Asia, Korea is on a path to outdo the world in forest therapy trails and science.” (Courtesy ted.com)

The other Asian country, Japan also woke up to this phenomenon in 1980.  There they use certain term Shinrin-yoku that means “taking in the forest atmosphere” or “forest bathing.” It was developed in Japan during the 1980s and has become a cornerstone of preventive health care and healing in Japanese medicine. Researchers primarily in Japan and South Korea have established a robust body of scientific literature on the health benefits of spending time under the canopy of a living forest. Now their research is helping to establish Shinrin-yoku and forest therapy throughout the world.  The idea is simple: if a person simply visits a natural area and walks in a relaxed way there are calming, rejuvenating and restorative benefits to be achieved.

(Swami Chaitanya Keerti is the author of Mindfulness: the Master Key. He facilitates Osho Meditation Retreats around the world)

Each time I hear the word “follower”–as in follower of this guru or that guru; follower of this leader or that leader–I feel that this person, the follower,  has no dignity of his own. To me, the dignity means being essentially original, and not a copy or an imitation. And the strange thing is that most of the people we see in the world are followers and imitators, though they may be feeling proud to be followers, just because they believe in a certain great man, such as Buddha or Jesus, Gandhi or Ambedkar; or in an ideology, such as Hindutva or Islamic State. Now in USA, they are discussing a new ideology Trumpism as in India they discuss Moditva. They are discussing something that a certain mob believes in and not seeking something about being an integrated individual. And the strange thing is that even an idiotic ideology such as Nazi propagated in the past by Hitler had influenced most of common Germans and also the intellectuals.  Often the psychologists have often been wondering why Adolf Hitler was able to dominate a great intelligent race like Germans. It appears a paradox that a man like Martin Heidegger, one of the greatest thinkers of this age became a believer and supporter of Hitler.

This tendency of being influenced and following at the cost of one’s own wisdom seems to be deeply in most of the people. May be it comes from our past lives unconscious conditioning of being the sheep. This conditioning is persisting even after evolving as human beings.

And it is not just a conditioning continuing from past life, it has become our restlessness also. Everybody seems to be looking for some leader to show him the path or lead him to a certain direction.

Osho contemplates: People live accidentally. They don’t have any sense of direction, they don’t have an inner discipline for growing, they don’t have a certain target. They simply go on, not knowing why. Maybe just because they are restless they go on doing this and that. Restlessness needs some kind of occupation, any kind of occupation will do. But any kind of occupation is not going to help you to grow. Growth needs a very selective life.

It happened once that two drunkards were sitting in a car and the car was going as far as it could. One drunkard said to the other, ‘Now from the next cross-road you have to turn left and then you have to turn right.’ And the other said, ‘Why do you go on telling these things to me — you are driving!’

Such unconscious people become the followers. Nobody knows who is driving but everybody is being driven to this direction or that direction. When you run after money, power or prestige or fame, it is because all others doing the same. Why is everybody interested in fame? — because all other fools are interested. And you have to be in tune with the fools because you are surrounded by them. You are the follower–a blind follower. You are burning the buses and damaging other things because you are part of the certain crowd that believes in certain ideology or certain mad leader. You are not doing anything original–and you have grown to be an intelligent human being who has an original insight to live his life in his own unique way.

An intelligent person moves consciously moment to moment. Whatsoever he is doing he is doing for a certain reason. He has an intrinsic value system. He lives according to a certain inner discipline — not imposed by others but by his own awareness.

Ideologically speaking, India and the rest of the world has become so miserable. Osho points out that this misery is an indicator, so is bliss. They are real indicators: if people are miserable that simply shows they are upside-down; if they are blissful they flow into an organic unity. They are no more a crowd. They have created a certain integration. They now have a centre, they are rooted, grounded… And then bliss starts happening, naturally, simply. It does not come from anywhere else, it simply arises out of your own inner being in an accord.

The modern man, who has to adjust with city-life, with all its maddening speed, traffic and noise, has become unnatural.

Off late, the people in the Western world are increasingly adopting mindfulness and meditation as part of their daily routine to acquire peace of mind.

But most of the people who meditate regularly wonder why they start falling sleep during such a process of self-exploration. As soon as their body and mind relax, some sort of sleepiness begins to possess their being. This is quite natural.

The modern man, who has to adjust with city-life, with all its maddening speed, traffic and noise, has become unnatural. So the first thing that the meditation does, in the moments of relaxation, is to give him some good sleep that his body needs urgently. The environment we live in is not so conducive to meditation — not enough oxygen and prana-energy to keep us fully awake while we meditate. And to meditate in air-conditioned rooms, may be suitable to most people, is not equal to meditating in a forest or gardens.

So the first requirement for meditation is to let our body regain its naturalness with letting it fall into sleep. The body will keep asserting and asking for more sleep. Be kind to your body. For a few days, you cooperate with it and it will cooperate with you. In the beginning, the body may be fidgety also. Don’t worry, continue with meditation. ultimately, it would be a rewarding experience. Recently, ABC news anchor Dan Harris has written a book, named Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics, in which he shared his own experience to highlight the benefits of meditation, which has become popular as Mindfulness.

Another neuroscientist Davidson suggests that one needs to part from his/her favourite gadgets and technology in order to achieve the benefits of meditation. Also, as one starts practising meditation, he would be easily able to manage things in spite of being busy. Today, meditation is being fully supported by the scientific researches highlighting the benefits of practising mindfulness to maintain a healthy body and mind.

Says Osho on this subject: “The world can come to a harmony if meditation is spread far and wide, and people are brought to one consciousness within themselves… My effort is to make meditation almost a science, so it is not something to do with religion, so anybody can practice it — whether he is a Hindu or a Christian or a Jew or a Mohammedan, it doesn’t matter. What his religion is, is irrelevant: he can still meditate. He may not even believe in any religion. He may be an atheist; still he can meditate. Meditation has to become almost like a wildfire. Then there is some hope….. It should be ecstatic. It should be enjoyable. It should bring a dance to people’s hearts.”

Spiritual discourses are often very serious and profound, and majority of people do not find it easy to grasp the essence.

First of April is universally celebrated as the day of pranks and jokes to lighten up the atmosphere of seriousness of friendship and relationships. We are living in an era of “fake news” and instant social media circulation, which is not fun but irritation to many people. April Fool day is pure fun which is harmless and should be observed that way.

Osho lovers around the world have chosen this day to be dedicated to Mulla Nasruddin, a Sufi and also one of the oldest figures of Sufi anecdotes. Osho made him alive again by telling thousands of jokes in his name.

Spiritual discourses are often very serious and profound, and majority of people do not find it easy to grasp the essence. The enlightened ones and mystic masters create anecdotes, some times very funny and hilarious, weave them in their discourses, to make the profound  things easy to understand. For Mulla Nasruddin, the world is a cosmic joke — and he himself is part of that. Hindus call this world God’s Leela, a divine play.

Down the centuries the religion has been very serious affair for most of the believers. It has been too ritualistic and too grim. Being pious or holy became synonymous with seriousness. Hence, the so-called religion deprived people of their natural innocent laughter. By performing so many rituals people became egoistic, the priests and the religious followers started feeling holier than others. Others who were not doing the routine rituals became condemned as unholy or un-spiritual. So not to be condemned by the so-called holy people the ordinary people started performing their religious affairs just not to feel guilty. This conduct made them hypocrites and serious. The whole affair of religion became heavy and serious and most of the people have been living with that burden on their heart. They forgot to laugh and celebrate.

Osho changed it all. He says: Religion cannot be anything other than a celebration of life. And the serious person becomes handicapped: he creates barriers. He cannot dance, he cannot sing, he cannot celebrate. The very dimension of celebration disappears from his life. He becomes desert-like. And if you are a desert, you can go on thinking and pretending that you are religious but you are not. You may be a sectarian, but not religious. You can be a Christian, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Jain, a Mohammedan, but you cannot be religious. You believe in something, but you don’t know anything. You believe in theories. A man too much burdened by theories becomes serious. A man who is unburdened, has no burden of theories over his being, starts laughing.

According to Osho: Laughter is far more sacred than prayer, because prayer can be done by any stupid person; it does not require much intelligence. And Sufis are very playful; they created Mulla Nasruddin. And Mulla Nasruddin is an alive figure, you can go on adding to him — I go on adding.