A flower the color of silence
The Indian master Osho spent most of his life seeking an unshakeable truth, in every conceivable branch and nationality of psychology or science of philosophy, following the traces of a Path walked and illuminated by spiritual teachers throughout history, following their practices with his own practice, taking their experiences and making his own experience. His methods were nonconforming at best and, following the tendencies of the 70s and 80s, subversive at worst, simultaneously earning him praise as an enlightened teacher and derision as a dangerous lunatic, the perspective depending to some extent on how dogmatically the person making the evaluation clung to ideas which he or she had never challenged.
Osho delighted in challenging what is accepted as “Gospel”. Gospel is the Good Word – good words which one should read and consider, experiences one should listen to and adopt, or adapt, as the time of the world or the conditions of a life dictate. There may be wisdom in words, but there is no wisdom in following blindly. Many of our greatest human spiritual traditions are wisdom traditions, whose best elements teach us to think, to absorb and to remain flexible in our thoughts and actions; to listen well, and listening well arrive at better questions. We are most truly alive and most fully engaged when we are asking about the things of this life – asking ourselves if what we have heard is the whole of the story, especially when it is we ourselves who have just spoken.
Osho was a Master of meditation; and meditation is the mastery of allowing questions to be spoken.
I am careful to use the passive voice here, because your formation of the question… if you make an effort to form the question, you have also created the box into which the answer must fit. If you ask using the English language, you assume a history of connotation and concepts which allow certain thoughts to occur readily, while denying the possibility of others. If you ask to be educated without first challenging the cultural norms in which you were raised, you will have simplified your question by making it virtually pointless. This sort of exercise rarely results in creative solutions or insight into the heart of a matter, perpetuating instead the patterns of thought and practice which are already in existence.
Is that a bad thing?
One Pattern which pervades everything in creation… no, it doesn’t pervade creation, it is creation, and our best result is to help our thinking stay out of the way of our understanding. How do you let a question be spoken? Everything is metaphor for everything else: what about giving birth to a child? Some speak about “making a baby” – notice how the words chosen assume we are the craftspeople, toiling away at our drafting tables, to deliver this perfect product? If anyone actually believes he is a master of his fate, from the captains of industry (interesting assumption in that phrase) to the careless and carefree (is careless bad in comparison to captaining industry? is it good to be without care?), I will show you a man or woman who has never witnessed the utter lack of control, the complete surrender of self at the instant of a child’s conception; or the power and powerlessness of the woman’s body, made home to this new life, made one with this new life, during its gestation; or the even greater powerlessness, if that is possible, of the man, who wanders behind the parade as best he can, hoping not to get lost in the process; or the tidal forces that push and pull the child out of its womb – and I would have to say that, while it is part of its mother’s miraculous body, the womb belongs to the child, and no mother since the dawn of time has resisted the surge of labor, but become part of it; or push and pull and propel the young adults into a new world of meaning and attachment and disattachment they literally could never have fully imagined, before they themselves experienced it.
You cannot make a baby any more than you can make the sun. But you are as much a part of the baby’s being here as the Sun is part of yours. You don’t make the Being – you offer the seed. You are not a machine and are not Captains of Creation, and if you have done your little bit of work well, and haven’t forced things too much, you may just well have a prolonged bit of bliss as your reward. You offer the seed… and then you hang on.
Meditation is all of this. You allow your life to happen. You allow a question to be spoken, using your vocal chords; and using your own thoughts it forms itself. If you hold on, gently, and keep your Self open to receive whatever appears… well, that is the practice. It is the practice of holding on, more and more gently, until the pressure of the hands and of your intention is at the point where the object, the thought, will fall – just at the point between holding on and letting go; just at the balancing point between everything you always knew to be true, and utter chaos; at the fullest or the emptiest in your circle of inhalation and exhalation; at the last instant a ringing bell can be heard; at the blinding moment of release in love (blinding? is that utter darkness, or utter light?); at the border between waking and sleeping, or between sleeping and waking; at the precise joining of space and time where/when a photon is created in the heart of the sun, and spins out toward your eye at the speed of itself; when all your structured plans just begin crumbling; at the exact moment when your last neuron fires, and your physical body ceases to participate, and everyone present and afar feels the wave of your passing; in the very center of smallest particle of matter; at the furthest reach of the edge of endless space…
Meditation is participating more consciously. That’s the beautiful science, because you allow yourself to grow. You allow your silence to happen, and then a sound is spoken into it… one which you didn’t create. There are as many forms as there are people: sitting still, walking, dancing, athletics, knitting, using drugs (not recommended), making love (recommended, carefully – full of care), singing, working… consciously.
A wisdom tradition does not tell you to follow rote. A tradition which offers wisdom recognizes the equilibrium between the giving and receiving in all things, between our power and our servitude, and teaches us ways to apply our strength, give to those pursuits which allow us best to receive. Not Think this, think that, but Think.