Once an actor came to see Osho in Mumbai. He was a new entrant into the film world. He asked for autograph with a message for him. Osho wrote in his book: “Act as if it is real life and live as if it is acting.”

Osho explained that the sanyasin is one who lives life like an actor. If someone wants to blossom in sanyas living in the thick of the world, he should cease to be a doer and become an actor, become a witness. He should live in the thick of life, play his role, and at the same time be a witness to it, but in no way should he be deeply involved in his role, be attached to it. He should cross the river in a way that his feet remain untouched by the water. It is, however, difficult to cross a river without letting the water touch your feet, but it is quite possible to live in the world without getting involved in it, without being tied to it.

He elaborates: In this connection it is necessary to understand what play acting is. The miracle is that the more your life becomes play acting, the more orderly, natural and carefree it becomes. If a woman, as a mother, learns a small truth, that although the child she is bringing up has been borne by her, yet he does not belong to her alone, that she has been no more than a passage for him to come into this world, that he really belongs to that unknown source from which he came, which will sustain him through his life and to which he will return in the end, then that mother will cease to be a doer; she will really become a play actor and a witness.

Life is a gift — an existential gift of God. But most people are unable to treat it as such, because priests, across religions, preach renunciation or rejection of life. Priests gave themselves the role of interpreting the teachings of avatars, messiahs and enlightened ones while forcing common people to follow them blindly or suffer the eternal hell-fire. They said God was compassionate, but they themselves did not show any compassion to common people. They did not preach reverence towards life.

Rather, they divided people in the name of religion and taught them to hate others who did not agree with their belief system or dogma. The priests have been promising paradise to those who would follow their interpretations. In this way, the people became idiotic and sheepish instead of being religious and intelligent. They became violent and estranged from life. This made life a living hell.

Given this situation, people were told to renounce life and become sanyasis. So, sanyas became synonymous with renunciation. But this was not how the sages conceived sanyas to be.

In 1970, in Manali, Osho once again introduced this original idea of sanyas which has been lost to the people. That day, Osho introduced his vision of neo-sanyas and initiated his first group of disciples as his sanyasis in a meditation camp. During this camp, Osho talked about Krishna: The Man and his Philosophy, and gave birth to a new sanyas of life-affirmation, joy, freedom and celebration. He brought the spirit of Krishna, his dance and playfulness into the 21st century. He wanted to give sanyas a fresh lease of life infusing it with new vigour, vitality, colour and creativity. “Sanyas has to be invested with a new meaning, a new concept. Sanyas has to live; it is the most profound, the most precious treasure that mankind has. But how to save it, preserve it, is the question. I would like to share with you my vision on this score,” declared Osho in the foothills of the Himalayas.

Previously, the flavour of sanyas had deteriorated into a denial of life. Osho rejected this misconception about sanyas and said that in order to survive, sanyas needed a new meaning and a new dimension of celebration and creativity. He said: “My sanyasis celebrate everything. Celebration is the foundation of my — not renunciation but rejoicing; rejoicing in all the beauties, all the joys, all that life offers, because this whole life is a gift of God… The old religions have taught you to renounce life. They are all life-negative; their whole approach is pessimistic. They are all against life and its joys. To me, life and God are synonymous. In fact, life is a far better word than God itself, because God is only a philosophical term, while life is real, existential. The word ‘God’ exists only in scriptures; it is a word, a mere word. Life is within you and without you — in the trees, in the clouds, in the stars. This whole existence is a dance of life. I teach love for life.”

This neo-sanyas is not one of formal renunciation. In fact, it is to rejoice in life, in love, in meditation, in the beauties of the world, in the ecstasy of existence — rejoice in everything! Transform the mundane into the sacred. Transform this shore into the other. Transform the earth into paradise.

He did not give any code of conduct, he did not impose anything on sanyas. He conferred total freedom to sanyasis. He concluded: “By initiating you into sanyas I am not giving you an ideology — I am just giving you courage to get free of all ideologies… I am not giving you a certain religion… I am simply giving you courage to be an individual… a unique individual.”

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