Showing posts with label Spiritual reading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spiritual reading. Show all posts

Monday, June 3, 2019

Spiritual Reading Discussion - Maturity by Osho, All of life should be a celebration



As your silence grows, your friendliness, your love grows; your life becomes a moment-to-moment dance, a joy, a celebration.

Have you ever thought about why, all over the world, in every culture, in every society, there are a few days in the year for celebration? These few days for celebration are just a compensation—because these societies have taken away all the celebration of your life, and if nothing is given to you in compensation your life can become a danger to the culture.

Every culture has to give some compensation to you so that you don’t feel completely lost in misery, in sadness. But these compensations are false.

Firecrackers and colored lights cannot make you rejoice. They are only for children—for you they are just a nuisance. But in your inner world there can be a continuity of lights, songs, joys.

Always remember that society compensates you when it feels that the repressed may explode into a dangerous situation if it is not compensated. The society finds some way of allowing you to let out the repressed—but this is not true celebration, and it cannot be true.

True celebration should come from your life, in your life.

And true celebration cannot be according to the calendar, that on the first of November you will celebrate. Strange, the whole year you are miserable and on the first of November suddenly you come out of misery, dancing? Either the misery was false or the first of November is false; both cannot be true. And once the first of November is gone you are back in your dark hole, everybody in his misery, everybody in his anxiety.

 Life should be a continuous celebration, a festival of lights the whole year round. Only then can you grow up, can you blossom.

Transform small things into celebration.

Osho. Maturity: The Responsibility of Being Oneself (Osho Insights for a New Way of Living) . St. Martin's Press.pp. xvii-xviii

Comment:

Do UUs say grace before meals? Do they practice mindful eating? I have done this with evangelical Christians but never with UUs. Why is that?

Do UUs say their prayers before they go to bed and when they awake in the morning? I was taught to do this as a child having been raised as a Roman Catholic, but I have never heard of this practice in Unitarian Universalism.

Do UUs pray five times a day directing their prayers towards Mecca as the Muslims do, or follow the practice of praying the hours as Christians do? I have never heard of such a thing in Unitarian Universalism.

There is some effort to be mindful and mindfulness practices have been encouraged by and for UUs, and these mindfulness practices take many forms such as mindful eating, mindful walking, mindful working.

The Buddhists have told us that prayer can be chopping wood and carrying water. It can be driving to work and home and doing our paperwork. Can running errands and taking the kids to their activities be a prayer? If so, Osho tells us, there is no need for holidays, for vacations, for celebrations. All of life is a celebration and every day is a holiday - a holy day.

Slow down and smell the roses and have a holy day today with several holy moments.

Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Spiritual reading, Ah, This! - How to approach a Master

Osho says in his book, "Ah, this!", "You know how to approach a teacher, you know how to approach a book, you know how to approach dead information, but you don't know how to approach a Master. It is a totally different way of communing. It is not communication, it is communion - because the Master is not a proof but an evidence. He is not an argument for God, he is a witness for God. He does not possess great knowledge about God, he knows. He is not knowledgeable, he simply knows." p.12

In reading this, I have realized my mistake. I go to church and listen to sermons and hope to commune with a Master, and many times I have just left. I can't sit through it. It is agony. I can't bear it.

I look around and some people seem to be listening with rapt attention, and some people seem to be just looking like they are paying attention politely, and some are staring off apparently daydreaming and a few brave ones are asleep.

I, myself, can do none of these things. I was hoping to commune, but there is no communing to be done here, today. So I leave demoralized and wonder why these preachers don't seem to understand this great faith that they are representatives of? You can tell they have never tasted of the ecstatic joy of the Divine. They are simply playing a role to entertain, and perhaps inform, and yam on about the things of the ego to fill up 20 minutes as painlessly as possible.

A person can't share what she doesn't have, can't give something she doesn't possess.

Jesus says in Matthew 7:14, "How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life. There are few who find it."

The UU preachers, themselves, have not searched and found truth and meaning, our fourth principle, and so what do they have to share, to give to others. What is the basis for any communing? Forget the communication, let's consider communing. They, unfortunately, with all their seminary training, their M.Div's and Ph.D.s have not found Life. If anything, their theological training have prevented them from finding Life. Their academic endeavors have been a distraction and a counterfeit attempt to find truth and meaning in their books, and lessons, and scriptures, and religious practices.

Stephen Gaskin said one time that the ultimately the only thing we have to share with another human being is our own state of being.

Are there Masters in the UU tradition? Emerson perhaps?

Spiritual reading, Ah, this! - God is a verb

Osho says in his book, Ah, this!, "God can neither be proved or disproved; it is not an argument. God is not a hypothesis, it is not a theory: it is experience. The Master is living evidence." p.10

I had a friend who got upset when I mentioned that God is not a noun but a verb. She acted indignant and demanded, "What do you mean by that?"

I couldn't explain it at the time. Now I have better words. I got them from Osho. "Godliness is an experience." I have had it. Rarely, but nonetheless it has occurred. I have been calling it "grace," but now I sense that it is God.


Sunday, May 13, 2018

Spiritual Reading - Ah, this! - The lustrous diamond within

This is the first post in a new feature on UU A Way Of Life which is called, "Spiritual Reading." I average 15 minutes of spiritual reading every day and will be featuring notes on the books I am reading. If you have a book you would like to feature or comment on, please forward the information to me in the comments or by sending me an email at davidgmarkham@gmail.com.

The book being discussed is "Ah, This!" by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh who later changed his name to Osho. This is a book on Zen and based on talks which Bhagwan gave at the Shree Rajneesh Ashram on Poona, India from January 3 - 10, 1980.

The Bhagwan says, "Before we enter into this small anecdote it will be good to understand a few things. The first: the Masters do not tell the truth. Even if they want to they cannot; it is impossible. Then what is their function? What do they go on doing? They cannot tell the truth, but they can call forth the truth which is fast asleep in you. They can provoke it, they can challenge it...........So anybody who pretends to give you the truth is simply exploiting your stupidity, your gullibility...........Truth cannot be given;it is already in you. It can be called forth, it can be provoked." P. 4

This is the meaning of education which comes from the Latin word, "educare" which means to lead out or call forth.

Unitarian Universalists know that there is no single path to Godliness, the Divine. UUs teach that there are many roads to Rome, many ways to skin the cat, and if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!

We must find our own way and this free and responsible search for truth and meaning is within not without. The Master can not give you the truth. The Master helps you find your own truth which is already buried within you like a lustrous diamond.
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