Challenges awakes you

All Adventures are dangerous, all adventures are risk, and all adventures are insecure; only through that insecurity and risk doe’s life take on grandeur, a splendor. Only through that risk does life remain fresh. Only through that challenge does one go on being alive. When the challenge dies, how can you remain alive? You fall asleep. There is nothing to keep you awake.

Feeling Anxious? Be Alert!

When you feel anxious, anxiety-ridden, what is one to do? What do you ordinarily do when anxiety is there? You try to solve it. You try alternatives, and you get more and more into it. You will create a bigger mess because anxiety cannot be solved through thinking. It cannot be dissolved through thinking because thinking itself is a sort of anxiety.

This technique says don’t do anything with anxiety. Just be alert!

I will tell you one old anecdote about Bokuju, another Zen Master. He lived alone in a cave, but during the day, or even in the night, he would sometimes say loudly, “Bokuju” his own name, and then he would say, “Yes, I am here.” And no one else was there.

Then his disciple used to ask him, “Why are you calling “Bokuju” your own name, and then saying, ‘yes sir, I am here’?”  He said, “Whenever I get into thinking, I have to remember to be alert, and so I call my own name, Bokuju. The moment I call Bokuju and I say, ‘yes sir, I am here, the thinking, the anxiety disappears.”
Then, in his last days, for two or three years, he never called “Bokuju” his name, and never had to reply, “Yes sir, I am here.” The disciple asked, “Master, now you never do this.”

So he said, “But now Bokuju is always there. He is always there, and there is no need. Before I used to miss him. Sometimes the anxiety would take me, cloud me all over, and Bokuju was not there. So I had to remember Bokuju, and the anxiety would disappear…”

Try your own name. When you feel deep anxiety, just call your name – not “Bokuju” or any other name , but your name –and then reply to it, “Yes sir, I am here,” and feel the difference. Anxiety will not be there. At lease for a single moment you will have a glimpse beyond the clouds, and that glimpse can be deepened.

Once you know that if you become alert anxiety is not there, it disappears; you have come to a deep knowing of your own self and the mechanism of inner working. 

Ma Yoga Vivek

Vivek takes sannyas in April 1971, and is osho’s caretaker from 1973 onwards

Osho- I had a girlfriend when I was young. Then she died. But on her deathbed she promised me she would came back. And she has come back. The name of the girlfriend was Shashi. She died in 47. She was the daughter of a certain doctor in my village, Dr. Sharma. He is also dead now. And now Shashi has come as Vivek to take care of me. Vivek cannot remember it. I used to call Shashi Gudiya, and I started calling Vivek Gudiya also, just to give a continuity.

Life is a great drama, a great play-it goes on from one life to onother to another.

Yesterday, someone came to me in the morning, and I told her to take sannyas. She was bewildered. She said to give her time to think and decide, at least two days. I said to her “who knows about two days? So much you require… take it today, this moment.” But she was not decisive, so I gave her two days. The next morning she came and took it. She has not taken two days. Only one day. I asked her, “why? You have been given two days, why have you come so soon?” she said. “At three o’clock at night, suddenly I was awake, and something went deep within me telling me, “Go take sannyas”

It is not a decision that she has made, But a decision that has been made by her very deep-rooted mind. But the moment she came in the room I knew her, I knew that mind which she came to know twenty hours later.

So when I say take sannyas, there are so many reasons with every person to whom I tell it. Either he has been a sannyas in the last life, or somewhere in the long journey he has been a sannyasin.

I had given her another name yesterday, but today I had to change it because I gave her that name in her indecision. Now I am giving her a different name that will be a help to her. When she came this morning, she herself was decided. That other name was not needed at all. And I have given her the name Ma Yoga Vivek, because now the decision has come through her Vivek-her awareness, her consciousness. (16 April 1971)

Ma Yoga Vivek

Here is some information on Vivek’s death Ma Yoga Vivek, English disciple of osho since 1971, legal name Christine Walfe, was cremated at the burning ghats at karegaon park on December 9 1989, two days before her birthday.

Sannyasins in the commune were then told that she was being treated for hormonal unbalance which made her very depressed and she committed suicide while feeling so.

There were unsubstantiated Rumours of heroin overdose. Either suicide or drug overdose, no outopsy was conducted. Though once close to Osho, she had fallen from her grace in Crete in 1986. She had gone to Bombay with a German friend and supposedly was asked to come back. The German friend was not present at the funeral and was not seen later

In 1986 Osho was to say-

Vivek has been for sixteen years with me. When she came she was only twenty years old; now she is thirty six, almost twice the age. And all these sixteen years, day in day out, she has been taking care of me with as much Love as possible, with a deep devotion.

People that come into your life.

Sometimes people come into your life and you know right away that they were meant to be there, to serve some sort of purpose, teach you a lesson, or to help you figure out who you are or who you want to become. You never know who these people may be possibly your roommate, neighbor, co-worker, longest friend, lover, or even a complete stranger but when you lock eyes with them, you know at that very moment that they will affect your life in some profound way. 

Some people come into our lives and quickly go.
Some people move our souls to dance.
They awaken us to new understanding with the passing whisper of their wisdom.
Some people make the sky more beautiful to gaze upon.
They stay in our lives for awhile, leave footprints in our hearts, and we are never, ever the same.

And sometimes things happen to you that may seem horrible, painful, and unfair at first, but in reflection you find that without overcoming those obstacles you would have never realized your potential, strength, willpower, or heart. Everything happens for a reason, nothing happens by chance or by means of luck. Illness, injury, love, lost moments of true greatness, and sheer stupidity all occur to test the limits of your soul. Without these small tests, whatever they may be, life would be like a smoothly paved, straight flat road to nowhere. It would be safe and comfortable, but dull and utterly pointless. The people you meet who affect your life. And the success and downfalls you experience help to create who you become.

Even the bad experience can be learned from. In fact they are probably the most poignant and important ones.

If someone hurts you, betrays you, or breaks your heart, forgive them, for they have helped you learn about trust and the importance of being cautious when you open your heart. If someone loves you, love them back unconditionally, not only because they love you, but because in a way, they are teaching you to love and how to open your heart and eyes to things.

Make every day count!!! Appreciate every moment and take from those moments everything that you possibly can for you may never be able to experience it again. Talk to people that you have never talked to before, and actually listen. Let yourself fall in love, break free, and set your sights high. Hold your head up because you have every right to. Tell yourself you are a great individual and believe in yourself, for if you don’t believe in yourself; it will be hard for others to believe in you.

You can make of your life anything you wish. Create your own life then go out and live it with absolutely no regrets.