thegoodfellas/blogset-br huggingface dataset:
The many teachers of JunnaidNo situation is without a lesson, no situation at all. All situations are pregnant, but you have to discover; it may not be available on the surface. You have to be watchful, you have to look at all the aspects of the situation.One of the great Sufi Masters, Junnaid, was asked when he was dying... his chief disciple came close to him and asked, "Master, you are leaving us. One question has always been in our minds but we could never gather courage enough to ask you. Who was your Master? This has been a great curiosity among your disciples because we have never heard you talk about your Master." Junnaid opened his eyes and said, "It will be very difficult for me to answer because I have learned from almost everybody. The whole existence has been my Master. I have learned from every event that has happened in my life. And I am grateful to all that has happened, because out of all that learning I have arrived."Junnaid said, "Just to satisfy your curiosity I will give you three instances. One: I was very thirsty and I was going towards the river carrying my begging bowl, the only possession I had. When I reached the river a dog rushed, jumped into the river, started drinking. "I watched for a moment and threw away my begging bowl--because it is useless. A dog can do without it. I also jumped into the river, drank as much water as I wanted. My whole body was cool because I had jumped into the river. I sat in the river for a few moments, thanked the dog, touched his feet with deep reverence because he had taught me a lesson."I had dropped everything, all possessions, but there was a certain clinging to my begging bowl. It was a beautiful bowl, very beautifully carved, and I was always aware that somebody might steal it. Even in the night I used to put it under my head as a pillow so nobody could snatch it away. That was my last clinging--the dog helped. It was so clear: if a dog can manage without a begging bowl... I am a man, why can't I manage? That dog was one of my Masters."Secondly," he said, "I lost my way in a forest and by the time I reached the nearest village that I could find, it was midnight. Everybody was fast asleep. I wandered all over the town to see if I could find somebody awake to give me shelter for the night, until finally I found one man. I asked him, 'It seems only two persons are awake in the town, you and I. Can you give me shelter for the night?' "The man said, 'I can see from your gown that you are a Sufi monk....'"The word Sufi comes from suf; suf means wool, a woolen garment. The Sufis have used the woolen garment for centuries; hence they are called Sufis because of their garment. The man said, "I can see you are a
Sufi and I feel a little embarrassed to take you to my home. I am perfectly willing, but I must tell you who I am. I am a thief--would you like to be a guest of a thief?"For a moment Junnaid hesitated. The thief said, "Look, it is better I told you. You seem hesitant. The thief is willing but the mystic seems to be hesitant to enter into the house of a thief, as if the mystic is weaker than the thief. In fact, I should be afraid of you--you may change me, you may transform my whole life! Inviting you means danger, but I am not afraid. You are welcome. Come to my home. Eat, drink, go to sleep, and stay as long as you want, because I live alone and my earning is enough. I can manage for two persons. And it will be really beautiful to chit-chat with you of great things. But you seem to be hesitant."And Junnaid became aware that it was true. He asked to be forgiven. He touched the feet of the thief and he said, "Yes, my rootedness in my own being is yet very weak. You are really a strong man and I would like to come to your home. And I would like to stay a little longer, not only for this night. I want to be stronger myself!"The thief said, "Come on!" He fed the Sufi, gave him something to drink, helped him to prepare for sleep and he said, "Now I will go. I have to do my own thing. I will come back early in the morning." Early in the morning the thief came back. Junnaid asked, "Have you been successful?" The thief said, "No, not today, but I will see tomorrow."And this happened continuously, for thirty days: every night the thief went out, and every morning he came back empty-handed. But he was never sad, never frustrated--no sign of failure on his face, always happy --and he would say, "It doesn't matter. I tried my best. I could not find anything today again, but tomorrow I will try. And, God willing, it can happen tomorrow if it has not happened today." After one month Junnaid left, and for years he tried to realize the ultimate, and it was always a failure. But each time he decided to drop the whole project he remembered the thief, his smiling face and his saying "God willing, what has not happened today may happen tomorrow." Junnaid said, "I remembered the thief as one of my greatest Masters. Without him I would not be what I am."And third," he said, "I entered into a small village. A little boy was carrying a lit candle, obviously going to the small temple of the town to put the candle there for the night." And Junnaid asked, "Can you tell me from where the light comes? You have lighted the candle yourself so you must have seen. What is the source of light?"The boy laughed and he said, "Wait!" And he blew out the candle
in front of Junnaid. And he said, "You have seen the light go. Can you tell me where it has gone? If you can tell me where it has gone I will tell you from where it has come, because it has gone to the same place. It has returned to the source."And Junnaid said, "I had met great philosophers but nobody had made such a beautiful statement: 'It has gone to its very source.' Everything returns to its source finally. Moreover, the child made me aware of my own ignorance. I was trying to joke with the child, but the joke was on me. He showed me that asking foolish questions--'From where has the light come?'--is not intelligent. It comes from nowhere, from nothingness--and it goes back to nowhere, to nothingness."Junnaid said, "I touched the feet of the child. The child was puzzled. He said, 'Why you are touching my feet?' And I told him, 'You are my Master--you have shown me something. You have given me a great lesson, a great insight.'"Since that time," Junnaid said, "I have been meditating on nothingness and slowly, slowly I have entered into nothingness. And now the final moment has come when the candle will go out, the light will go out. And I know where I am going--to the same source."I remember that child with gratefulness. I can still see him standing before me, blowing out the candle."OSHO
The samurai's prideHeaven and hell are not geographical, they are psychological, they are your psychology. Heaven and hell are not at the end of your life, they are here and now. Every moment the door opens; every moment you go on wavering between heaven and hell. It is a moment-to-moment question, it is urgent; in a single moment you can move from hell to heaven, from heaven to hell. Hell and heaven are within you. The doors are very close to each other: with the right hand you can open one, with the left hand you can open another. With just a change of your mind, your being is transformed --from heaven to hell and from hell to heaven. Whenever you act unconsciously, without awareness, you are in hell; whenever you are conscious, whenever you act with full awareness, you are in heaven. The Zen master Hakuin is one of the rare flowerings. A warrior came to him, a samurai, a great soldier, and he asked "Is there any hell, is there any heaven? If there is hell and heaven, where are the gates? Where do I enter from? How can I avoid hell and choose heaven?" He was a simple warrior. A warrior is always simple; otherwise he cannot be a warrior. A warrior knows only two things, life and death--his life is always at stake, he is always gambling; He is a simple man. He had not come to learn any doctrine. He wanted to know where the gate was so he could avoid hell and enter heaven. And Hakuin replied in a way only a warrior could understand. What did Hakuin do? He said, "Who are you?" And the warrior replied, "I am a samurai." It is a thing of much pride to be a samurai in Japan. It means being a perfect warrior, a man who will not hesitate a single moment to give his life. For him, life and death are just a game. He said, "I am a samurai, I am a leader of samurais. Even the emperor pays respect to me." Hakuin laughed and said, " You, a samurai? You look like a beggar." The samurai's pride was hurt, his ego hammered. He forgot what he had come for. He took out his sword and was just about to kill Hakuin. He forgot that he had come to this master to ask where is the gate of heaven, to ask where is the gate of hell. Hakuin laughed and said, "This is the gate of hell. With this sword, this anger, this ego, here opens the gate." This is what a warrior can understand. Immediately he understood: This is the gate. He put his sword back in its sheath. And Hakuin said, "Here opens the gate of heaven." Hell and heaven are within you, both gates are within you. When you are behaving unconsciously there is the gate of hell; when you become alert and conscious, there is the gate of heaven. What happened to this samurai? When he was just about to kill Hakuin,
was he conscious? Was he conscious of what he was about to do? Was he conscious of what he had come for? All consciousness had disappeared. When the ego takes over, you cannot be alert. Ego is the drug, the intoxicant that makes you completely unconscious. You act but the act comes from the unconscious, not from your consciousness. And whenever any act comes from the unconscious, the door of hell is open. Whatsoever you do, if you are not aware of what you are doing the gate of hell opens. Immediately the samurai became alert. Suddenly, when Hakuin said, "This is the gate, you have already opened it"-- the very situation must have created alertness. A single moment more and Hakuin's head would have been severed; a single moment more and it would have been separated from the body. And Hakuin said, "This is the gate of hell." This is not a philosophical answer; no master answers in a philosophical way. Philosophy exists only for mediocre, unenlightened minds. The master responds but the response is not verbal, it is total. That this man may have killed him is not the point. "If you kill me and it makes you alert, it is worth it"--Hakuin played the game. This must have happened to the warrior--stopped, sword in hand with Hakuin just before him--the eyes of Hakuin were laughing, the face was smiling, and the gate of heaven opened. He understood: the sword went back into its sheath. While putting the sword back into the sheath he must have been totally silent, peaceful. The anger had disappeared, the energy moving in anger had become silence. If you suddenly awake in the middle of anger, you will feel a peace you have never felt before. Energy was moving and suddenly it stops--you will have silence, immediate silence. You will fall into your inner being and the fall will be so sudden, you will become aware. It is not a slow fall, it is so sudden that you cannot remain unaware. You can remain unaware only with routine things, with gradual things; you move so slowly you can't feel movement. This was sudden movement-- from activity to no-activity, from thought to no-thought, from mind to no-mind. As the sword was going back into its sheath, the warrior realized. And Hakuin said, "Here open the doors of heaven." Silence is the door. Inner peace is the door. Nonviolence is the door. Love and compassion are the doors.OSHO
The healthy love of oneself is a great religious value. The person who does not love himself will not be able to love anybody else, ever. The first ripple of love has to rise in your heart. If it has not risen for yourself it cannot rise for anybody else, because everybody else is farther away from you.It is like throwing a stone in the silent lake - the first ripples will arise around the stone and then they will go on spreading to the further shores. The first ripple of love has to be around yourself. One has to love one's body, one has to love one's soul, one has to love one's totality.And this is natural; otherwise you would not be able to survive at all. And it is beautiful because it beautifies you. The person who loves himself becomes graceful, elegant. The person who loves himself is bound to become more silent, more meditative more prayerful than the person who does not love himself.If you don't love your house you will not clean it; if you don't love your house you will not paint it; if you don't love you will not surround it with a beautiful garden with a lotus pond. If you love yourself you will create a garden around yourself. You will try to grow your potential, you will try to bring out all that is in you to be expressed. If you love, you will go on showering yourself, you will go on nourishing yourself.And if you love yourself you will be surprised: others will love you. Nobody loves a person who does not love himself. If you cannot even love yourself, who else is going to take the trouble? And the person who does not love himself cannot remain neutral. Remember, in life there is no neutrality.The man who does not love himself hates, will have to hate - life knows no neutrality. Life is always a choice. If you don't love that does not mean that you can simply remain in that not loving state.No, you will hate.And the person who hates himself becomes destructive. And the person who hates himself will hate everybody else - he will be so angry and violent and continuously in rage. The person who hates himself, how can he hope that others will love him? His whole life will be destroyed. To love oneself is a great religious value.I teach you self-love. But remember, self-love does not mean egotistical pride, not at all. In fact it means just the opposite. The person who loves himself finds there is no self in him. Love always melts the self: that is one of the alchemical secrets to be learned, understood, experienced. Love always melts the self.Whenever you love, the self disappears. You love a woman and at least in the few moments when there is real love for the woman, there is no self in you, no ego.Ego and love cannot exist together. They are like light and darkness: when light comes, darkness disappears. If you love yourself you
will be surprised - self-love means the self disappears. In self- love there is no self ever found. That is the paradox: self-love is utterly selfless. It is not selfish - because whenever there is light there is no darkness, and whenever there is love there is no self.Love melts the frozen self. The self is like an ice cube, love is like the morning sun. The warmth of love... and the self starts melting. The more you love yourself the less you will find of the self in you, and then it becomes a great meditation, a great leap into God.And you know it! You may not know it as far as self-love is concerned, because you have not loved yourself. But you have loved other people; glimpses of it must have happened to you. There must have been rare moments when for a moment suddenly you were not there and only love was there, only love energy flowing, from no center, from nowhere to nowhere. When two lovers are sitting together there are two nothingnesses sitting together, two zeros sitting together - and that is the beauty of love, that it makes you utterly empty of the self.Remember again: just the other day I was saying, empty yourself in hugs, in kisses, in love, in embraces. Empty yourself! Pour yourself into love so that in your inner-world space is created - because God can enter only when there is space in you to contain him.And great space will be needed, because you are inviting the greatest guest. You are inviting the whole existence into you. You will need infinite nothingness in you.Love is the best way to become nothing.So remember, egoistical pride, is never love for oneself. Egoistical pride is just the opposite.The person who has not been able to love himself becomes egoistic. Egoistical pride is what psychoanalysts call the narcissistic pattern of life, narcissism.You must have heard the parable of Narcissus: he had fallen in love with himself. Looking into a silent pool of water, he fell in love with his own reflection.Now see the difference: the man who loves himself does not love his reflection, he simply loves himself. No mirror is needed; he knows himself from inwards. Don't you know yourself, that you are? Do you need a proof that you are? Do you need a mirror to prove that you exist? If there were no mirror, would you become suspicious of your existence?Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection - not with himself. That is not true self-love. He fell in love with the reflection; the reflection is the other. He had become two, he had become divided.Narcissus was split. He was in a kind of schizophrenia. He had become two - the lover and the loved. He had become his own object of love - and that's what happens to so many people who think they are in love.When you fall in love with a woman, watch, be alert - it may be nothing but narcissism, and the woman's face, and her eyes,
and her words, may be simply functioning as a silent lake in which you are seeing your reflection.My own observation is this: that out of a hundred loves, ninety-nine are narcissistic. People don't love the woman that is there. They love the appreciation that the woman is giving to them, the attention that the woman is giving to them, the flattery that the woman is showering on the man.Two lovers were sitting on the sea beach, and it was a fullmoon night, and great waves were arising in the sea - it was a tide time. And the lover said loudly to the sea, "Now, roll into great waves!Roll, rise into great waves!" And the great waves started rising, and the great waves started rolling towards the beach.And the woman came closer to the lover, hugged him, kissed him and said, "I knew it before, that you are a miracle! Even the ocean follows your orders! "This is what goes on happening. The woman flatters the man, the man flatters the woman - it is a mutual flattery. The woman says, "There is nobody as beautiful as you are. You are a miracle! You are the greatest that God has ever made. Even Alexander the Great was nothing compared to you."And you are puffed up, and your chest becomes doubled, and your head starts swelling - although there is nothing but straw, but it starts swelling. And you say to the woman, "You are the greatest creation of God. Even Cleopatra was nothing compared to you. I can't believe that God will ever be able to improve upon you. There will never again be another woman so beautiful. "This is what you call love! This is narcissism. The man becomes the silent pool and reflects the woman, and the woman becomes the silent pool and reflects the man; in fact not only reflects the truth, but decorates it, in a thousand and one ways makes it look more and more beautiful. This is what people call love. This is not; this is mutual ego-satisfaction.The real love knows nothing of the ego. The real love starts first as self-love.Naturally, you have this body, this being, you are rooted in it - enjoy it, cherish it, celebrate it! And there is no question of pride or ego because you are not comparing yourself with anybody. Ego comes only with comparison. Self-love knows no comparison - you are you, that's all. You are not saying that somebody else is inferior to you; you are not comparing at all. Whenever comparison comes, know well it is not love; it is a trick somewhere, a subtle strategy of the ego.Ego lives through comparison. When you say to a woman, "I love you," it is one thing; when you say to a woman, "Cleopatra was nothing compared to you," it is another, totally another, just the opposite.Why bring Cleopatra in? Can't you love this woman without bringing Cleopatra in? Cleopatra is brought in to puff the ego. Love this man - why bring in Alexander the Great?Love knows
no comparison, love simply loves without comparing.So , whenever there is comparison, remember, it is egoistical pride. It is narcissism. And whenever there is no comparison, remember, it is love, whether of oneself or the other. In real love there is no division. The lovers melt into each other. In egoistical love there is great division, the division of the lover and the loved.In real love there is no relationship. Let me repeat it: in real love there is no relationship, because there are not two persons to be related to. In real love there is only love, a flowering, a fragrance, a melting, a merging. Only in egoistic love are there two persons, the lover and the loved. And whenever there is the lover and the loved, love disappears. Whenever there is love, the lover and the beloved, both disappear into love.Love is such a great phenomenon; you cannot survive in it.Real love is always in the present. Egoistical love is always either in the past or in the future. In real love there is a passionate coolness. It will look paradoxical, but all greater realities of life are paradoxical; hence I call it passionate coolness: there is warmth, but there is no heat in it. Warmth certainly is there, but there is also coolness in it, a very collected, calm, cool state. Love makes one less feverish. But if it is not real love but egoistical love, then there is great heat. Then the passion is there like fever, there is no coolness at all.If you can remember these things you will have the criterion for judging. But one has to start with oneself, there is no other way. One has to start from where one is.Love yourself, love immensely, and in that very love your pride, your ego and all that nonsense, will disappear. And when it has disappeared your love will start reaching to other people. And it will not be a relationship but a sharing. And it will not be an object/subject relationship but a melting, a togetherness. It will not be feverish, it will be a cool passion. It will be warm and cool together. It will give you the first taste of the paradoxicalness of life.OSHO