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The Spiritual Life - Where is innocence to be found?

The Spiritual Life - Topic Thirteen

Where is our innocence to be found?

From  Maturity: The Responsibility For Being Oneself by Osho

But you have to begin from being innocent. So first, throw out all crap that you are carrying—and everybody is carrying so much crap! One wonders, for what? Just because people have been telling you that these are great ideas, principles … 

You have not been intelligent with yourself. Be intelligent with yourself. Life is very simple, it is a joyful dance. And the whole earth can be full of joy and dance, but there are people who are seriously vested in their interest that nobody should enjoy life, that nobody should smile, that nobody should laugh, that life is a sin, that it is a punishment. How can you enjoy life when the climate is such that you have been told continually that it is a punishment, that you are suffering because you have done wrong things, and it is a kind of jail where you have been thrown to suffer?

 I say to you life is not a jail, it is not a punishment. It is a reward, and it is given only to those who have earned it, who deserve it. 

Now it is your right to enjoy; it will be a sin if you don’t enjoy. It will be against existence if you don’t beautify it, if you leave it just as you have found it. No, leave it a little happier, a little more beautiful, a little more fragrant. P .xxi

The basic question for homo sapiens from a metaphysical perspective is: Were you born with original sin or original blessing?

The Judeo-Christian teaching is that human beings were guilty of original sin and therefore doomed to suffer. People are taught that life is a punishment and can only be redeemed with the help of religion and clergy, ritual and sacrifice, and suffering. This metaphysical teaching is deeply ingrained in  the human psyche and gives rise to hypocrisy, cynicism, fear, and suffering.

This idea of original sin leads to the two basic human dynamics of separation and divisiveness which is “one or the other” and “give to get.” The idea of Unconditional Love, God, has been forgotten which we have been told repeatedly over the centuries by the mystics is our natural inheritance.

And so the most fundamental question of all is: Are human beings basically good or bad? Are human beings cursed or blessed?

The ego offers us all kinds of temptations promising to make us happy: money, special relationships, power, status and prestige. In the end we come to realize that all these promises are false. We come to realize that we don’t need any of these things of the ego world to be happy. The life we have been socialized and conditioned to believe will make us happy is all a Big Lie.

Osho teaches us that we have to throw all the crap of the Big Lie out. We have to reclaim our innocence which resides in merging with the non dualistic Oneness from which we have separated ourselves.

We long to go home to that from which we came. That’s where our innocence is to be found.

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Celebrating death with a spirit of thanksgiving.

The Spiritual Life, Topic Twelve, Death is a celebration of thanksgiving

The Spiritual Life - Topic Twelve

Death is a celebration of thanksgiving

Make everything creative, make the best out of the worst—that’s what I call the art of living. And if a man has lived his whole life making every moment and every phase of it a beauty, a love, a joy, naturally his death is going to be the ultimate peak of his whole life’s endeavor. The last touches … his death is not going to be ugly as it ordinarily happens every day to everyone. If death is ugly, that means your whole life has been a waste. Death should be a peaceful acceptance, a loving entry into the unknown, a joyful good-bye to old friends, to the old world. There should not be any tragedy in it. .pxx


One Zen Master, Lin Chi, was dying. Thousands of his disciples had gathered to listen to the last sermon, but Lin Chi was simply lying down—joyous, smiling, but not saying a single word. 

Seeing that he was going to die and he was not saying a single word, somebody reminded Lin Chi—an old friend, a Master in his own right; he was not a disciple of Lin Chi, that’s why he could say to him—“Lin Chi, have you forgotten that you have to say your last words? I have always said your memory isn’t right. You are dying … have you forgotten?” 

Lin Chi said, “Just listen.” And on the roof two squirrels were running, screeching. 

And he said, “How beautiful,” and he died. 

For a moment, when he said “Just listen,” there was absolute silence. Everybody thought he was going to say something great, but only two squirrels fighting, screeching, running on the roof … . And he smiled and he died. 

But he has given his last message: don’t make things small and big, trivial and important. Everything is important. 

At this moment, Lin Chi’s death is as important as the two squirrels running on the roof, there is no difference. In existence it is all the same. That was his whole philosophy, his whole life’s teaching—that there is nothing that is great and there is nothing that is small; it all depends on you, what you make out of it. p.xx

Osho teaches that death is no big deal. It is simply saying “goodbye” and moving on. Why do we make such a big deal out of it? Why are we so afraid on the one hand, and so sad on the other? Because we haven’t dealt with our ego.

As the Buddhists teach, we become attached to our ego. This attachment to the ego causes suffering especially if our spirit has to be pried loose.

For some people this detachment from the ego has been a gradual process and it has already been shed. For these people death is nothing to be feared because it has already occured.

Lin Chi, in Osho’s story about him, has nothing to say that hasn’t already been said. He has no more poignant last words.  He’d rather listen to the squirrels on the roof.

How about you? How will you spend your dying moments: terrified or listening for the music of the universe?

Osho teaches that death should be a celebration of thanksgiving for the wonder and awe that has been our existence here.

As George Burns used to say, at the end of the Burns and Allen show, to his wife and comedy partner, Gracie Allen, “Say goodnight, Gracie,” and Gracie would say, “Goodnight, Gracie.”

Burns and Allen brought a lot of humor and comfort and joy to the world. They both, now, have died but their memories live on as surely as any spiritual masters.

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Celebrate Life Every Day