It is often said that you become what you think. Thinking is thought to be so powerful that it can transform anybody. Though this is a hypnotic belief, not everybody believes in it, the majority of people doubt it. But the motivational thinkers and writers keep motivating people: You truly become what you think about. Have positive, joyous thoughts and you will attract more joy and love in your life. Thoughts do become actions. So the more you think about what you want as opposed to what you don’t want, the more you will attract what you want.

So, it all depends on your thoughts — but the trouble is that you don’t have your own thoughts. You do have thoughts, thoughts in abundance — but they are not yours. You are filled with them — inundated with thoughts, you cannot contain them. It is such a mess — this mind of yours. Bringing one more thought of being successful in life, thoughts of being younger than what you are — a 70-year-old person thinking that he is 35 will not make him 35 years younger. An idiot (a buddhu person) thinking that he is the Buddha, the enlightened one, will not make him the Buddha, the awakened one. Such auto-suggestive thinking will lead him to a futile imagination, a hallucination.

But the successful authors of motivational books, the so-called bestsellers, keep alluring common people — “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” And then one thinks: So by changing your thoughts to the best case scenario, you start changing your world to become what you think about.

This kind of thinking, based on the idea of success, ambition, and greed may change you — but this change is worthless. You may even become cruel and violent more than what you were before you thought about all this. This is what the whole world is today. Everybody is thinking furiously to achieve something and ruining the wonderful gift of life in hollow pursuits. All these thoughts are desires — a jungle of desires.

No, forget all sorts of thinking — rather, drop all thinking, have a holiday from it. Go into feeling. Enter your heart and transform your energy. Do something with your energy and consciousness. In one word, we can say: meditate. Meditation is not thinking or desiring. It is much closer to feeling.

Osho reminds us: Remember, this shift has to happen — from thinking you have to go to feeling. Feeling is closer, closer to something in you that is called intuition. Thinking is the farthest point from intuition. Thinking is a kind of tuition. You have been taught by others — that is tuition. Something that has not been taught to you and blooms in you, that is intuition. Nobody has taught you — no school, no university, no college. Nobody has said anything about it to you. It explodes in you — that is intuition. You need not go anywhere, you only need to go inside yourself. Feeling is closer to intuition.

Zen is the purest form of meditation — better to use the original Sanskrit word, dhyana. When Gautama Buddha started teaching meditation, he used the Pali language word, jhana. Many centuries later, Bodhidharma, an enlightened mystic travelled to China, and jhana became chan. Later, when chan reached Japan, it became Zen. Often the people of different countries pronounce the same word differently in their local language. Since the last century, Zen has become very famous all over the world, but it is the same Sanskrit word, dhyana, though Zen is the distilled form of it. Dhyana in India got corrupted, but in Japan it went through a total transformation. The whole credit goes to the long tradition of Zen Masters. In hundreds of his discourses, Osho spoke on such wonderful Zen Masters and their unique contributions. In one of his books, Notes of a Mad Man, Osho talks about this journey of transformation — and also in his book titled: The Search.

Osho says: There is an ancient story, the famous Zen story, The Ten Bulls of Zen. It is a pictorial story with ten picture cards, each card containing a phase of man and his evolution. The original pack consisted of only nine cards; and the tenth was added by a madman like me. Everybody opposed him and everybody denounced him. He had to leave his country. He added the tenth picture, and the tenth picture is the most beautiful, the very culmination — the culmination of culmination itself.

In the first picture, the bull is lost and the owner is searching for it. In the second, he is looking everywhere and he cannot find it. In the third, far, far away he can infer: “Perhaps that is my bull.” In the fourth, he has actually seen the bull — not the whole bull but just its tail. In the fifth, he has seen the whole bull. In the sixth, he has caught hold of the bull by its tail. In the seventh the man has learned a lesson; he is holding the bull by the horns. In the eighth, he is riding on the bull. In the ninth, they have arrived home. The ninth has no picture, neither the bull nor its owner. That was the old pack. A madman like me added the tenth to those nine cards. In the tenth the man is seen in the marketplace — not only seen but with a bottle of wine. Now, no Buddhist can forgive it! Nobody thinking himself religious can forgive it!

Osho adds: That madman was thrown out of his country, but miraculously the tenth card has remained. Whatsoever is done by men like me… you may throw them out, you may kill them, you may crucify them, but what they do remains. You cannot destroy it. The man — nobody even knows his name, they even erased his name from the books; nobody knows who he was, but he has done a tremendous service to humanity.

This unique journey is the process of one’s own transformation through meditation — and then celebration — coming back to the world.

There’ s a beautiful Zen story in Osho’ s talks on “Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha”. The story goes like this: Basho’ s master died — Basho is a Buddha, a Buddha who writes poetry, a Buddha who paints beautiful pictures, a very aesthetic Buddha. His master died, thousands of people gathered. His master was very famous; more famous because of Basho, because Basho was a famous poet and painter and he was Basho’s master. Thousands of people gathered and they were very surprised when they saw Basho crying, big tears rolling down his cheeks.

A few close disciples of his master came to Basho and said, “It does not look right. Thousands of people are coming and they are getting confused. They don’ t think a Buddha should cry and weep. You are the man who has been saying to them again and again: There is no death and the innermost core lives forever. Then why are you weeping? Your master is not dead, he has only moved from the small body to the universal body of God. So why are you weeping?”

Basho wiped his tears and he said, “Listen! This is nobody’ s business. I live according to my inner feelings, I cannot pretend. When my innermost core has disappeared into the universal I don’ t care whether people think it right or not. If they don’ t think that I am enlightened it’s okay, but I cannot pretend. I cannot do something which is not really there. And yes, I have said that the soul is immortal and my master has not died, he has disappeared into the universal. That’ s why I am crying — not crying that he is dead but crying that now I will never be able to see his form. Now he has become formless — and his body was beautiful. I will never be able to look again into those deep eyes, I will never be able to hold his hand and touch his feet. I have lost his form — I am crying for his body, for his form; I am not crying for the formless soul. And I am not concerned whether people consider me enlightened or unenlightened, that is their business. Who cares?”

There is a beautiful book by Osho, Emotional Wellness, and in one of the chapters, the enlightened master explains:

“Emotions cannot be permanent. That’s why they are called ‘emotions’ — the word comes from ‘motion’ — ‘movement’. They move; hence, they are ‘emotions.’ From one to another you continually change. This moment you are sad, that moment you are happy; this moment you are angry, that moment you are compassionate. This moment you are loving, another moment full of hatred; the morning was beautiful and the evening is ugly. And this goes on. This cannot be your nature, because behind all these changes something is needed like a thread that holds all of them together.”

Chinmaya is one of the most adorable sannyasins. Many may already know that he was initiated into Neo-Sannyas by Osho in Manali in 1970, together with the first batch of sannyasins, such as Yoga Laxmi and Dharm Jyoti. At the time he had already been Osho’s secretary for three years, having come to Osho in 1965 when he lived in Jabalpur.

Chinmaya left Pune in October 1990 and has not been in the limelight for many many years as he preferred a life of seclusion and meditation in Bageshwar (Uttarakhand, Himalayas), together with a select group of fellow travelers.

I have always seen him fit and radiant as a real yogi, and soft and serene as a real meditator. Now he is nearing 80, and a year ago he was diagnosed with cancer. For some time he had several treatments and chemotherapy sessions, but very recently he came to a point where he felt that the medical treatment was not proving any good and decided to stop it and live in let-go, surrendering to the divine will.

He took this decision on 5th of April, and the message started spreading like wildfire. Osho’s lovers started arriving in large numbers at Shiroda, a village on the border of Goa where he is living now.

The loving energy of hundreds of Osho’s disciples assembling here is doing him good, and his health is gradually stabilizing and improving. It is really wonderful to sit with him every evening in absolute silence, with gentle live music, followed by Osho’s audio discourse.

This area has become a vibrant energy field filled with Osho’s grace.

There has been a rare enlightened master, one can say “the rarest”, who went from India to Tibet and illumined the whole of the Himalayas with his inner light. It is said about him that he meditated deeply under the guidance of three enlightened masters — Dharmakirti, Dharmarakshita, and Yogin Maitreya — that when he became known to people, he was lovingly called: Atisha, the Thrice Great. The first master Dharmakirti taught him the first principle of meditation. And for the second he was sent to Dharmarakshita, and for the third to Yogin Maitreya.

In his world-famous book, The Book of Wisdom, Osho talks about him: Atisha was born in India, but the moment his love became active he started moving towards Tibet, as if a great magnet were pulling him there. In the Himalayas he attained; then he never came back to India. He moved towards Tibet, his love showered on Tibet. He transformed the whole quality of Tibetan consciousness. He was a miracle-worker; whatsoever he touched was transformed into gold. He was one of the greatest alchemists the world has ever known.