11^th December is a day when celebration gets an added thrust in the lives of Osho’s sannyasins; it is after all the birthday of our beloved Master Osho! Fun and fervor gets amplified at Osho Dham at every celebration and 11^th December 2020 is going to be no exception.

A sannyasin once asked Osho – BELOVED OSHO, AS FAR AS YOU ARE CONCERNED, IS YOUR BIRTHDAY JUST LIKE ANY OTHER DAY IN THE YEAR? OR IS IT IN SOME WAY SPECIAL FOR YOU? Osho replied – Time exists no more for me. That’s why I have to go on looking at my watch, because I don’t have any sense of time. If I don’t look at my watch, I may speak for the whole night! To me, every day is the same, every moment is the same. But when I say every moment is the same, it means it has the same blissfulness, the same ecstasy, the same joy, the same silence, the same peace that passeth understanding. I don’t see any difference between two points, between two days. As far as I am concerned, all differences have disappeared. I live in absolute silence. Even while I am speaking to you, believe it or not, I am silent. Only the mechanism of the mind is being used, but my consciousness is centered in absolute beauty and silence.

On his 46^th birthday celebration at Pune in 1977, Osho gave the gift of this Message to his sannyasins –

MY BELOVED ONES: I love you. Love is my message – let it be your message too. Love is my color and my climate. To me, love is the only religion. All else is just rubbish, all else is nothing but mind-churning dreams. Love is the only substantial thing in life, all else is illusion. Let love grow in you and God will be growing on its own accord. If you miss love you will miss God and all. There is no way to God without love. God can be forgotten – if love is remembered, God will happen as a consequence. It happens as a consequence. It is the fragrance of love and nothing else. In fact there is no God but only godliness.

There is no person like God anywhere. Drop all childish attitudes, don’t go on searching for a father. Divineness is, God is not. When I say divineness is, I mean whatsoever is, is full of God. The green of the trees, and the red and the golden – all is divine. This crow crying, and a bird on the wing. and a child giggling, and a dog barking – all is divine. Nothing else exists.

The moment you ask ‘Where is God?’ you have raised a wrong question. Because God cannot be indicated anywhere. He is not in a particular direction, He is not a particular thing, He is not a particular being. God is universality. Ask where God is not, then you have asked the right question. But for that right question you will have to prepare the soil of your heart. That’s what I mean by love – preparing the soil of your heart. If you are full of love, the world is full of God – they go parallel, they are part of one symphony. God is the echo from the universe. When you are in love, the echo is there. When you are not in love, how can there be an echo? It is only you who are reflected again and again in millions of ways, it is you who are thrown back to yourself again and again. If you are in love, God is. If you are not in love, then what to say about God? — even you are not.

I was thinking what should I give to you today? Because this is my birthday, I was incarnated into this body on this day. This is the day I saw for the first time the green of the trees and the blue of the skies. This was the day I for the first time opened my eyes and saw God all around. Of course the word ‘God’ didn’t exist at that moment, but what I saw was God. I was thinking what should I give to you today? Then I remembered a saying of Buddha: SABBA DANAM DHAMMA DANANA JNATI – the gift of truth excels all other gifts. And my truth is love. The word ‘truth’ looks to me a little too dry and desert-like.

I am not in much tune with the word ‘truth’ – it looks too logical, it looks too ‘heady’. It gives you the feeling of philosophy, not of religion. It gives you the idea as if you have concluded – that you have come to a conclusion, that there has been a syllogism behind it, argumentation and logic and reasoning.

No, ‘truth’ is not my word, ‘love’ is my word. Love is of the heart. Truth is partial, only your head is involved. In love you are involved as a totality – your body, your mind, your soul, all are involved.

Love makes you a unity – and not a union, remember, but a unity. Because in a union those who join together remain separate. In a unity they dissolve, they become one, they melt into each other. And that moment I call the moment of truth, when love has given you unity.

First, love gives you unity in your innermost core. Then you are no more a body, no more a mind, no more a soul. You are simply one – unnamed, undefined, unclassified. No more determinate, definable, no more comprehensible. A mystery, a joy, a surprise, a jubilation, a great celebration.

First, love gives you an inner unity. And when the inner unity has happened the second happens on its own – you are not to do anything for it. Then you start falling in unity with the whole beyond you. Then the drop disappears in the ocean and the ocean disappears into the drop. That moment, that moment of orgasm between you and the whole, is where you become a Buddha. That moment is the moment Buddhahood is imparted to you. Or, better, revealed to you – you have always been that, unaware.

My word is love. So I say: My beloved ones, I love you. and I would like you to fill the whole world with love. Let that be our religion.

Not Christianity, not Hinduism, not Islam, not Jainism, not Buddhism, but love. Love without any adjective to it. Not Christian love – because how can love be Christian? It is so stupid. How can love be Hindu? It is ridiculous. Love is simply love. In love you can be a Christ, in love you can be a Buddha – but there is no Buddhist love and there is no Christian love. In love you disappear, your mind disappears.

In love you come to an utter relaxation. That’s my teaching to you, I teach love. And there is nothing higher than love.

Then I thought I should give you something beautiful on this day. And I remembered Hakuin’s Song of Meditation. It is a very small song, but a great gift. Hakuin is one of the greatest Zen masters. His song contains all: all the Bibles and all the Korans and all the Vedas. A small song of few lines, but it is like a seed – very small, but if you allow passage to it to your heart, it can become a great tree. It can become a Bodhi tree – it will have great foliage and much shade and thousands of people can sit and rest underneath it. It will have big branches and many birds can come and have their nests on it. See I have become a tree. You are the people who have come to make their nests on my tree. You can also become this. Everybody SHOULD become this – because unless you become this you will go on missing your fulfillment. Unless you become a great tree, which has come to its foliage, flowers and fruits – which is fulfilled – you will remain in discontent. Anguish will go on gnawing in your heart, misery will linger around you. Bliss will be only a word, signifying nothing. God will be just gibberish. When you have fulfillment then there is grace and then there is God. In your fulfillment you come to realize the benediction of existence.

This is a song of meditation. Hakuin has called it ‘song’ – yes, it is a song. If meditation is without a song it is do and dead – it does not beat it does not breathe. It is a song and a dance: sing it and dance it. Just don’t think upon it – then you will miss the messages you will miss its content. You will find this song and its meaning only when you are singing and dancing. When the music of life has overtaken you, has possessed you.

Source:

This is an excerpt from the transcript of a public discourse by Osho in Buddha Hall, Shree Rajneesh Ashram, Pune. 

Discourse Series: This Very Body the Buddha
Chapter #1
Chapter title: The Lion’s Roar
11 December 1977 am in Buddha Hall

References:

Osho has spoken on ‘love, meditation, truth, god, enlightenment’ in many of His discourses. More on the subject can be referred to in the following books/discourses:

1. The Beloved Vol 1
2. Dang Dang Doko Dang
3. The First Principle
4. Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2
5. The Secret of Secrets, Vol 2
6. Take It Easy, Vol 2
7. Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1
8. The Book of Wisdom
9. Hsin Hsin Ming: The Book of Nothing
10. The Messiah, Vol 2
11. Theologia Mystica
12. Zarathustra: The Laughing Prophet
13. Sat Chit Anand