Osho brings gifts: Zen sticks, Buddha statues, and swans



Osho brings gifts: Zen sticks, Buddha statues, and swans

In October 1988, Osho brings several gifts:

The master enjoyed hitting and the disciples enjoyed being hit. It is a very loving gesture, the hit was not hurting.
Somebody has brought me a Zen staff. It is made of bamboo, and the bamboo is cut in such a way that howsoever hard you hit, it makes only sound, not much hurt. I have put it with Anando, so when Zen Master Stonehead Niskriya comes back he can have this really authentic Zen stick from Korea. However you hit, it makes a good noise. It seems as if somebody's head is broken!
But Zen is a very playful religion. It has made even hitting a joyful play. There is no other religion in the world which allows playfulness and laughter and life and love. Zen allows total freedom in all the aspects of life....
Zen has created a totally different approach to everything. If the world understands Zen, it will be a different world. It is certainly the most alchemical process.
So when I said to you, Maneesha, that I will hit you just for the joy of it, remember that the joy is not only my joy. It has to be your joy also; only then it takes the great quantum leap. Then the master and disciple are simply playing with each other. Nobody is higher and nobody is lower....
I am introducing you to Zen for a simple purpose: all other religions have destroyed your laughter, destroyed your smiles, destroyed your creativity--destroyed even the sense of humor. And life without a sense of humor is not much of a life. joshu05

Our stickholder--because I am a lazy man, I cannot carry the stick--has come from Germany. Just show your stick and hit poor Maneesha! (Niskriya takes the stick and taps maneesha on the head. It makes a loud, sharp click.) isan08

In my dining room I have got a small statue of Buddha. It is only a statue, but when Jayesh came for the first time and saw it, he said, "This statue has a great presence." I have loved that statue and carried it from India to America, from America to India, because it has a presence. It is only a statue, but a statue of a meditating buddha. Something of meditation in that very posture radiates a very alive aura.
I have brought another statue for your Buddha Auditorium, to be placed just at the gate, so you can see that even a statue, because it is in a meditative posture, radiates something. Just sitting by the side of the statue you will find something flowing from the statue towards you. It is not a worship, it is just being silently close and watching the posture. Because the posture is of meditation, something of meditativeness radiates even from the stone.
So when you are meditating, you are doing both the things: on one hand you are throwing away all that is garbage, and on the other hand you are helping roses to blossom. You will have an absence and you will have a great presence, together: absence of all that was ugly in you, and presence of all that is beautiful. rinzai06

The marble buddha statue is installed at the entrance to Buddha Hall. In the meditation at the end of discourse, Osho says:
Relax. But remain a witness. The body is lying there as an object, the mind is there as an object. You are the witness. You are neither the mind, nor the body. You are a pure consciousness. This pure consciousness we have been calling the buddha. The buddha is only a symbol.
So many flowers have blossomed, so much fragrance...all boundaries have disappeared and the Buddha Auditorium has become a lake of consciousnesses without any ripples. You have to bring all this fragrance with you, all these flowers with you.
Now I have brought the Buddha statue, just in front of the Buddha Auditorium. He is waiting there. When you pass by, remember: he was also one day just a human being, as you are. Pay your respects; pay your gratitude, because this man alone introduced the world to a new dimension--of beautitude, of truth, of dignity. This man alone declared that man is God, and other than man there is no god. This was the greatest revolutionary statement ever made.
Nivedano... (Drumbeat)
Come back, but with the same gesture of peace, silence and grace. Bring the buddha with you. Sit for a few moments silently, reminding yourself of your potential, and the glimpse, the center and the silence. Remember the beauty of eternity in the moment and the encounter with your buddha.
You have brought a few invisible flowers; while going out of the Buddha Auditorium you can shower Buddha with flowers in gratitude.
At this moment you have become his contemporary. I want to make everyone in the world a contemporary of Buddha. This is the only possibility for humanity to survive on a higher plane.
You are not working only for yourself, you are also working for the survival of this beautiful earth. isan02

Swans are brought for the large pond in Lao Tzu Garden. Osho designs a new logo of a swan flying, against a background of the moon.

Zen wants you to know that even the leaves falling from the trees have a consciousness of their own. Nothing is unconscious. There are different ways of being conscious, but we are living in an ocean of consciousness. Millions are the aspects...so that we cannot understand exactly what the bamboos are doing.
Now in Mukta's pond, two beautiful snow-white swans have come, flown from England. Great visitors! And every night when I come and go, I cannot resist looking at them. They look so meditative, the whole day doing zazen...because they don't have any rented bicycle, they don't have to go to any movie. They are so silent that if you sit by the side of Mukta's pond you will become silent, seeing their silence. They just don't do anything--simply exist, no philosophical argument.
Seeing those swans I remember that in India, the man of self-realization is also called paramhansa. Hansa means swan and paramhansa means the great swan. Every day seeing them, I could understand: they look so buddhalike, just enjoying being--no work, no job, no strike, no lock-out, no interest in the whole world around them; they don't have anything.
But with their coming, the pond has become a temple. They are meditating day and night. What is happening inside them is difficult for us to know, but something must be happening inside them. They are such beautiful people. It must be in a different dimension, so we never crisscross each other, but in the same direction there must be other people, other birds.
There were ducks also--now, ducks are small; they became afraid when the swans came. So the ducks were in a very great trouble for a few days because the peacocks peck them on the head, so they cannot come out of the pond. And in the pond, two big swans are there--so unfamiliar, one does not know what they will do. So the ducks were hiding in the bushes. But slowly slowly some communication is certainly happening, because the ducks are coming closer...and yesterday Avesh informed me that they have entered the water with the swans. In silence, something has grown, a friendship. Nothing has been said, nothing has been heard, but something must have transpired between them.
Either the swans must have told them, "Come on, don't be worried," or the ducks must have asked, "Can we come in?" Something is bound to have happened, because suddenly it cannot be. But it is outside the area of our intelligence. joshu05

Who shall halt the swan
In its flight?
Or life in its flow?
I have been telling you: everything is moving so fast--and there is nobody who is capable of preventing a swan in its flight.
The great swans live deep in the Himalayas, in the highest lake in the world, Mansarovar. Mansarovar remains frozen for nine months of the year, you can drive a car on it. It is a lake miles and miles long, but the snow becomes hard as stone.
The swans leave--they have to leave because there is no water to drink, no fish to eat, they cannot penetrate the thick layer of hard snow--and three thousand miles they fly over the Himalayas and come to small lakes, rivers, around North India. It is a very mysterious phenomenon.
In those nine months...nature has such balance, such harmony, that those nine months are the months for their mating also. So they mate and they lay the eggs, but before the eggs open and their children come out, nine months are over. Now Mansarovar will be melting. They fly again, leaving the eggs in the plains of North India, a three-thousand-mile flight--thousands and thousands of swans disappearing into the Himalayas.
The miracle is, when the parents are gone, then the eggs open and those small swans immediately start moving towards Mansarovar. They don't have any map, no guide, no parents to tell them which is exactly the same route the parents have taken for millions of years. Every year the miracle happens: those small swans start flying three thousand miles high above the Himalayan peaks where the snow has never melted since eternity, and they take the same route and they reach to the same Mansarovar lake.
And people think nature has no intelligence!
Nature has tremendous wisdom, just we have forgotten to listen to it. The only way for you to listen to nature is by going deeper into yourself, because there are roots which are spread into existence. Those roots still understand the language of existence.
Far away from the roots, you are hung up in the head. You don't know anything about the wisdom of existence. That's why you ask questions which are not needed at all. You need only one thing: to find a connecting link with existence, and all questions disappear.
My new symbol is going to be a flying swan.
Who shall halt the swan in its flight or life in its flow?--but people try hard. christ03

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