Gautam Buddha, Tirthankar Mahavir and many other awakened ones have preached reverence for all life forms. This includes sensitivity towards and abstinence from killing of animals for our pleasure.

Osho tells us: It seems to me that killing animals for eating is not very far away from killing human beings. They differ only in their body, in their shape, but it is the same life that you are destroying. With new technology, the earth is perfectly capable of giving you food. You can make it as tasteful as you want and you can give it any flavour. Destroying life for the sake of taste is disgusting. In destroying life you are destroying many qualities within yourself. In this way you cannot become a Buddha. You cannot have that purity of consciousness, that sensitivity.

A meditator who does sadhana is supposed to be conscious in every moment, as life presents problems at each step. Osho explains this with a story: “The Buddha had told his bhikkhus, ‘Whatsoever is given to you when you go begging, never reject it. That is insulting.’ And he was careful, because if he allowed people to reject anything then they would choose good things only. ‘So accept whatever is given gracefully, thankfully, and eat it. And don’t throw away anything’.”

One day, a bird dropped a piece of meat in a monk’s begging bowl. The monk was in a bind as he could neither empty the contents of his begging bowl nor eat the meat as both would amount to flouting the Buddha’s order. So he came into the commune and and asked the Buddha what to do.

Even Gautam Buddha, for a moment, was in a dilemma. If he said, “throw it away,” then he would allow an exception which would soon become a rule. If he said, “Eat it,” then he is allowing meat to be eaten. But then he thought, birds are not going to drop meat every day. So he said, “We are vegetarians, and we will remain as such, but you I allow to eat this meat, so that nobody ever throws out anything which is given to him.” But Buddhists took this to be an assent in support of non-vegetarianism. So Buddhists in China, Japanese and Korea — the whole of Asia, except India, eat meat.

A meditator cannot allow him/herself such a leeway if s/he seeks enlightenment. To attain Buddha nature one must remain true to the teachings of the Buddha, instead of quoting an idle statement to indulge one’s appetites.

Recently I came across a random poem aspiring to be something what it is not. It read:
“Looking to the future is something that is often done,
What will the coming years bring except for great fun?
How will the times change, what kind of person will I become?
This is a question often asked; I’ve contemplated it some.
To be respected, live happily, and be an example to all,
I want to bring a smile to everyone, the big or the small.”

The aspiration expressed in this poem is the aspiration that often springs in our hearts. While most of us try our best to fulfil our ambitions, often we don’t succeed. Many of us feel miserable and then the failure becomes a suffering. We start finding fault with ourselves; we feel incomplete.

This constant feeling of being incomplete is the rootcause of all misery. We spend our entire life trying to become something that we are not. We do all kinds of things to reach somewhere — what we assume is our goal. This goal has nothing to do with our inner reality because this goal does not originate out of our understanding of reality but from confusion and tension.

In reality, we are the seed that needs to flower. We are supposed to become what we are in our essence or potentiality. In that sense, We are perfect as we are, because we originate from the whole.

The Upanishads declare:
Om Purnamidah Purnamidam
Purnath Purnamudachyate.
Purnasya Purnamadaya
Purnamevava shisyate

(This is the whole. That is the whole. From the whole springs the whole. Take the whole from the whole and only the whole remains.)

Meditation on this sutra can liberate us from all our anguish and misery.

This wholeness is not something that will happen in future, nor it is something to be achieved. This wholeness is pulsating within us right now, in the present moment.

The future never really comes. It is only a mental imagination functioning as conditioning. Meditation helps us become aware of this conditioning. Meditation is the key and witnessing our being without any divisions is the realisation.

In one of his discourses on Zen, Osho says: “You are carrying a masterpiece hidden within you, but you are standing in the way. Just move aside, then the masterpiece will be revealed. Everyone is a masterpiece, because God never gives birth to anything less than that. Everyone carries that masterpiece hidden for many lives, not knowing who they are. Often, they keep trying to become someone. 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 realise it. God himself has created you; you cannot be improved.”

All we need to do is to settle in our witnessing consciousness and let the flower of godliness bloom. It happens by itself. as the Zen mystics declare:

“Sitting silently
Doing nothing
The spring comes
And the grass grows by itself”.

Meditation is becoming very popular these days. People do not have the time nor luxury of going to the Himalayas or to forests to meditate in isolation. They are happy meditating while living the urban life.

It was very different in the Buddha’s time. He left the city and his palace as it did not give him the space to be himself. But, when he realised his potential and attained enlightenment, he returned to the city to share the learning gathered in isolation.

The city’s hectic pace may compel an escape into solitude, where the meditator’s individuality can blossom. But this does not mean that it can blossom only in the jungle. If we know how to, we can also meditate in the marketplace.

In a beautiful poem, Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore tells us that after enlightenment, when Gautama the Buddha returned home, his wife asked him: “What did you attain in the jungle — was it not possible to attain it here? Why leave home, me, your child?” The Buddha remained silent.

Kabir, the mystic, lived a domestic life, worked as a weaver and yet sang: Kabira khada bazar mein. He not only taught meditation but preached love and asked people to gather courage, burn their houses of imagination and transform their lives. Real meditation blossoms in love, spontaneous sharing and like a flower shares its fragrance, unconditionally.

The alchemy of meditation and love transforms the ordinary love of attachment and possession into unconditional love.

Ordinary relationships are based on conditional love. It is a barter — something, in return for something. And we keep calculating the profits. This cannot bring us bliss.

Real joy comes when one shares unconditionally.

The marketplace can corrupt the minds of those who are prone to get lost in it. We need enlightened people like Kabir and Osho to show us how to rise about the world while remaining in it — just as a lotus blossoms in a pond. Delhi, with all its political tangles, cut-throat competition, mazes of ambition is a real challenge to meditate in.

Osho suggests Vipassna (watching your breath and the small gaps in the breathing) — simple meditation to be practiced amidst worldly activity. When you are eating try to be attentive. Be attentive while you’re walking. Don’t let your activity distract your mind. Practice a dual existence of doing and being.

Doing is work (peripheral) while Being is consciousness (central). As you work on the periphery, attend to the core as well.

Your activity will constitute the core. Like an actor, you can play several roles, while being rooted in consciousness. Life is just a role assigned to you by society, circumstance, culture and nation. Rejoice in it and settle in your Being.

Swami Chaitanya Keerti, editor of Osho World, is the author of Osho Fragrance

There’s a very meaningful Sufi story: A man was very worried because every night someone would enter his garden and destroy all his plants. He did everything that could be done to protect it. He posted guards all along the boundary, but never was anybody seen entering the garden at night. Yet, every morning, the garden would be trashed. The man did everything he could, but nothing helped. He then went to a Sufi master, in the hope that the master would be able to see things he and the guards could not. The master closed his eyes and said, “Do one thing, fix the alarm on your clock for two o’clock in the night.” The man said, “How is this going to help? My guards are continuously watching and patrolling around the house.” The master said, “There is no need to argue. Just do what I say. Fix the alarm for two o’clock. Then come the next day and tell me what happened.”

He was not convinced but he tried. At two o’clock, when the alarm went off, he woke up. He was standing in his own garden, wreaking havoc on his plants. He was a somnambulist — a sleepwalker!

If we look deep within ourselves, we will see that in some way or the other, we are all sleepwalkers. We sow the seeds of our misdeeds in the deep sleep of unconsciousness, and then wonder why our lives are so miserable. When we love another person, we often end up taking things for granted in the name of love.

Osho suggests: Remain a watcher, remain a witness. Remember that. Remind yourself continuously. Sadness has come. It has happened to you; it is not you. The moment you remember this, suddenly you will see a distance arising between you and the sadness. It does not affect you any longer. When you lose awareness, it affects you; when you gain awareness, there is a distance. The more your awareness rises, the more the distance increases. A moment comes when you are so far away from your sadness that it is as if it’s not there at all. The same has to be done with happiness too. It will be difficult, because one wants to cling to happiness. But by clinging to happiness, you are sowing the seeds of your sorrow. That’s how this parable is of tremendous significance.

The master himself — in his sleep, in his unawareness — came to the field, the wheat field and sowed the seeds of weeds. In deep sleep! He was a sleepwalker. In the morning he started asking, “Who has done this?” You are responsible for the wrongs in your life. You have brought them upon yourself. But in the morning, when you wake up, you ask, “Who has done this?” and start searching for the wrongdoer. The enemy is within. The enemy is hidden deep within your unconsciousness.

Swami Chaitanya Keerti, editor of Osho World, is the author of Osho Fragrance.

Recently I came across a random poem aspiring to be something what it is not. It read:

“Looking to the future is something that is often done,
What will the coming years bring except for great fun?
How will the times change, what kind of person will I become?
This is a question often asked; I’ve contemplated it some.
To be respected, live happily, and be an example to all,
I want to bring a smile to everyone, the big or the small.”

The aspiration expressed in this poem is the aspiration that often springs in our hearts. While most of us try our best to fulfil our ambitions, often we don’t succeed. Many of us feel miserable and then the failure becomes a suffering. We start finding fault with ourselves; we feel incomplete.

This constant feeling of being incomplete is the rootcause of all misery. We spend our entire life trying to become something that we are not. We do all kinds of things to reach somewhere — what we assume is our goal. This goal has nothing to do with our inner reality because this goal does not originate out of our understanding of reality but from confusion and tension.

In reality, we are the seed that needs to flower. We are supposed to become what we are in our essence or potentiality. In that sense, We are perfect as we are, because we originate from the whole. The Upanishads declare:

Om Purnamidah Purnamidam Purnath Purnamudachyate.
Purnasya Purnamadaya Purnamevava shisyate

(This is the whole. That is the whole. From the whole springs the whole. Take the whole from the whole and only the whole remains.)

Meditation on this sutra can liberate us from all our anguish and misery. This wholeness is not something that will happen in future, nor it is something to be achieved. This wholeness is pulsating within us right now, in the present moment. The future never really comes. It is only a mental imagination functioning as conditioning. Meditation helps us become aware of this conditioning. Meditation is the key and witnessing our being without any divisions is the realisation.

In one of his discourses on Zen, Osho says: “You are carrying a masterpiece hidden within you, but you are standing in the way. Just move aside, then the masterpiece will be revealed. Everyone is a masterpiece, because God never gives birth to anything less than that. Everyone carries that masterpiece hidden for many lives, not knowing who they are. Often, they keep trying to become someone. 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 realise it. God himself has created you; you cannot be improved.” All we need to do is to settle in our witnessing consciousness and let the flower of godliness bloom. It happens by itself. as the Zen mystics declare:

“Sitting silently Doing nothing The spring comes And the grass grows by itself”

Swami Chaitanya Keerti, editor of Osho World, is the author of Osho Fragrance

Also published at: www.asianage.com and www.deccanchronicle.com