Osho Neo Vipassana Meditation Retreats
in USA and Canada
Facilitated by Swami Chaitanya Keerti
(The author of Mindfulness the Master Key)

July 28-30 Washington DC…Ma Vasanti (813) 830-1008

August 4-6 Dallas Zorba Studio ( 214 )995 8925,
Ma Sangeeta  (214) 724-1991

August 11-13 San Diego (760) 887-4192
Mission San Luis Rey4050 Mission Ave,
Oceanside, CA.

August  15-16 Boulder: C Kabir (303) 443-8029
<ckabir@naropa.edu> Informal get-together and Sharing

August  17-18 Vancouver Sw. Govind (778) 855 7301
(Informal get-together and meditation event)

August 25-27 Toronto Sw. Anmol (416) 365-1800

September 1-3: New York ( 718) 644-7077
Osho Sadhana Meditation center, New York.

The traditional method of vipassana is a very cold, dull and dead way,
and because it is cold it takes a longer time – perhaps a few lives to
become awakened. I want vipassana to be a warmer path; then it becomes
a short cut.
When there is music and your whole body thrills to it, and when there
is song … although you are sitting, in a subtle sense there is a dance
in you. You cannot remain unconscious; you have to become more
watchful. And if you can start living moment to moment in different
ways – but always total – vipassana will happen to you more easily
than you can conceive because you have never seen anything happening
so easily, without effort, on its own accord. You can force yourself
to sit in silence and remain awake. I don’t teach that kind of
vipassana. I teach a vipassana that follows you like a shadow, as a
by-product of your total living.
Osho

http://educateinspirechange.org/spirituality/zen-negative-emotions-letting-feel-bad-key-feeling-better/

We all can agree that negative emotions can be tough to deal with. Sometimes it can be much easier to avoid them and keep them bottled up inside.

Yet, according to research, one of the main causes of many psychological problems is the habit of emotional avoidance. It appears that avoiding negative emotions buys you a short-term gain at the price of long-term pain.

According to spiritual guru Osho, it’s crucial to experience all emotions if we want to be truly happy:

“Sadness gives depth. Happiness gives height. Sadness gives roots. Happiness gives branches. Happiness is like a tree going into the sky, and sadness is like the roots going down into the womb of the earth. Both are needed, and the higher a tree goes, the deeper it goes, simultaneously. The bigger the tree, the bigger will be its roots. In fact, it is always in proportion. That’s its balance.”

The question is:

How do we learn to embrace our emotions?

Osho believes that’s all about listening to your being and becoming mature:

“Listen to your being. It is continuously giving you hints; it is a still, small voice. It does not shout at you, that is true. And if you are a little silent you will start feeling your way. Be the person you are. Never try to be another, and you will become mature. Maturity is accepting the responsibility of being oneself, whatsoever the cost. Risking all to be oneself, that’s what maturity is all about.”

One strategy to learn to embrace your emotions

Osho also offers a brilliant strategy to embrace difficult emotions like sadness, anxiety and depression:

“Sadness is silent, it is yours. It is coming because you are alone. It is giving you a chance to go deeper into your aloneness. Rather than jumping from one shallow happiness to another shallow happiness and wasting your life, it is better to use sadness as a means for meditation. Witness it. It is a friend! It opens the door of your eternal aloneness.”

Master Buddhust Pema Chödrön also echoes these feelings:

“…feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away. They’re like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we’re stuck. This very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it’s with us wherever we are.”

By viewing these emotions as friends, you will gradually rewire your brain to accept them and work with them, rather than fighting against them.

For example, when you experience anxiety, you can see it as an overprotective friend that is just looking out for you. You can simply say, “Thanks for looking out for me, even if you’re being a bit silly.”

Love is the way of enlightenment and ego is the way of politics leading to insensitive violence.

About 2,500 years ago, when India was rising high in consciousness in the presence of Buddha, Mahavira and many of their enlightened disciples, like Mahakasyapa and Sariputta, the same period was equally glorious for China too. Some of the greatest enlightened masters were born in China, who shared their unique vision of Tao. Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu and Lieh Tzu were the pillars of consciousness who illumined their country and neighbouring countries. And both India and China had one thing in common — the spiritual breeze of consciousness spreading all around the Himalayas and no China wall to obstruct.

The concrete walls do not matter; mental walls or psychological walls are more obstructive. The so-called modern world, which claims to be progressive with its technological wonders and economic growth, is suffering hugely from its psychological walls. Such psychological China walls are blocking human evolution to the higher levels of consciousness, which most of the Eastern countries experienced, shared and celebrated 2,500 years ago.

There is one very mysterious Tao sutra: How does the true man of Tao walk through walls without obstruction and stand in fire without being burnt?

Osho explains it: Someone asked Chuang Tzu, “We have heard that a man of Tao can walk through walls without obstruction, how?” If you don’t have any obstruction within you, no obstruction can obstruct you. This is the rule. If you have no resistance within you, in your heart, the whole world is open for you. There is no resistance. The world is just a reflection, it is a big mirror; if you have resistance then the whole world has resistance. This is very difficult for the ego to understand. Ego is the wall within us and puts up the main resistance. Ego is in conflict with others, and others are also not without ego. This is the reason that the world is full of violence.

An evolved person does not suffer from ego. The true evolution consists of love that shares its fragrance. Love has no fight with any one as the fight always makes the ego strong — as strong as China wall. Love is the way of enlightenment and ego is the way of politics leading to insensitive violence. The politicians don’t meditate and they rule the world. Their bloated ego vitiates the whole atmosphere and they are always busy inventing conflicts. They function without love and meditation. This is the reason that all the nations are always in conflict with each other.

The world today needs to return to the core of the Eastern consciousness — that is the dhamma and the Tao and what the Upanishads call — Rit. These are the intrinsic laws of nature. All this we have already been experiencing thousands of years ago when there was a golden period of spirituality. It was a natural way of living without conflict with nature.

Osho says: “Nature gives her secrets. There is no need to grab, there is no need to kill, there is no need to break the lock. Love nature and nature gives you her secrets. Love is the key. Love does not want to conquer anybody. Love is essentially sharing. The sun, the moon, millions of stars in the sky and Mother Earth are always sharing their abundance. Nature shares everything without any condition. Only the man has forgotten this feeling of sharing — man is into conquering and as a result creates suffering for himself and fellow human beings and other beings.”

Osho warns us: “The world is being poisoned very slowly. The rivers are being polluted, the oceans are being polluted, the lakes are dying. Nature is being destroyed. We are exploiting the Earth so much that sooner or later we will not be able to live in it. We are not behaving well with nature. Our approach is wrong; it is destructive. We only take from Earth, and we never give anything back. The ecology is broken, the circulation is broken; we are not living in a perfect circle, and nature is a perfect circle: if you take from one hand, you give from another, you don’t destroy it. But we are doing it: we only go on taking, and all the resources are being spent. But this poisoning is happening slowly. You don’t see it happening because it takes a long time. And then there are politicians who go on gathering more and more atomic weapons as if man has decided to commit suicide.”

In the beginning of his career in Indian movies, superstar Vinod Khanna met Osho and asked: “How can I be a successful actor?

The Master replied, “Jeevan ko aise jiyo jaise wo abhinay hai aur abhinay aise karo jaise wo jeevan hai. Phir tum dono mein safal ho jaoge. (Live life as if you are playing a role and act as if it’s your life. Then you will succeed in both.”
Generally, we live our lives not very consciously. It is lived mechanically soon becomes dull and boring. This kind of life lacks life, it has no real heartbeat and no real sensitivity. It becomes a drag. People become walking corpses.

To transform this so-called life, one needs to energies it constantly with some prana (energy) and live it in a moment-to-moment awareness. Then this very life becomes a pilgrimage of consciousness and a divine grace envelops it. On doing this, one feels very light and playful. Lightness and playfulness are inter-connected. A man who is playful will feel a certain lightness of his being. It comes with a spirit of being ego-less. The ego is something very serious. It is too much of identification with the roles that we play in our lives, without the understanding that the role is just a  human function. Being a mother, a father is just a role given to us by existence. Being a doctor or a politician is also a role in society. One has to perform with totality but not get too much identified with the roles. The roles keep changing, as all human beings are created by Existence to live a multi-dimensional life. To be identified with only one role of life is to become fixated and imprisoned, while life has so much to offer. Then we don’t see its vastness and remain confined. This is the real misery of human beings.

One needs to move from this misery to the mystery of life that surrounds us every moment. If one observes this whole universe one will see it is not serious or miserable —only the man is.

Osho had said, “I have not seen a serious tree. I have not seen a serious bird. I have not seen a serious sunrise. I have not seen a serious starry night. It seems they are all laughing in their own ways, dancing in their own ways. We may not understand it, but there is a subtle feeling that the whole existence is a celebration.

Osho lovers around the world sing one song in their celebrations. This song is very significant. It is “Leela, Leela. Life is just a play!”

Osho explained, “If you dance the whole existence becomes a dance. It is already a dance. Hindus call it Ras-Leela, God is dancing, and around God the stars and the moon and the sun and the earth and the whole existence. The whole existence is dancing around God. God is Krishna and the whole existence is his gopis. This is the ras that is continuously going on, but one will realize it only when one learns the ways of dance, the language of ecstasy.”

A man of Zen treats all forms of life including inanimate objects with reverence, as Zen is the purest form of meditation. For a Zen practitioner it does not matter what is outside; what matters is how he responds to it — sensitively or insensitively. He feels the heartbeat of life in everything that surrounds him. Life exists in an organic unity in all its forms. The inner eye of meditation looks at it with sensitivity and grace. I have heard a Zen story told by Osho in one of his talks: A disciple came to the Master to learn meditation. Earlier the disciple had gone to see a polo game. The Zen masters are unique and they enjoy all kinds of games, even those which we normally think are mundane.

So this Master was curious about the polo game. He asked his disciple, “Tell me a few things. Were the riders on the horses tired?” The disciple said, “Yes, at the end of the game they looked tired.” Then the Master said, “Were the horses tired ?” The disciple said, “Yes, a little bit, not as much as the riders, but even the horses were tired.” Then the Master said, “The last and the final question — were the posts, the wooden posts which are needed in the game, were they tired too?”
Now, this was too much! The disciple hesitated a little. The Master said, “Go into your room and meditate over it. Tomorrow morning you can answer.”
The disciple was really puzzled about how wooden posts could be tired, and so could not sleep the whole night, he kept tossing and turning in his bed. Finally at dawn, some insight dawned on him and he rushed to the Master, fell at his feet, and he said, “Yes Master, they were tired.” The Master said, “I am happy. Your going to the polo game has not been useless.” A disciple who was present there and listening to this conversation, asked the Master, “What nonsense is this? How can wooden posts be tired?”

And the Master responded, “If wooden posts cannot be tired then nobody can be tired because this whole existence is one. If a man gets tired, if horses get tired, then wooden posts also get tired. The whole existence is a manifestation of one energy.” Osho concludes in his talk on the Thread of Meditation: It has been one of the most dangerous ideas down the centuries that life can be divided into separate parts. Life is indivisible, it is an organic — whole. The moment one divides it one kills it. This is one of the most fundamental things in my approach towards life. I take it as a whole.