Dhyan Sutra #2
Chapter Summary
He insists his guidance comes from personal experience rather than scripture, and that the night can be a fertile prelude to meditation. Through sustained, repetitive inner effort—like a waterfall wearing down rock—a sudden entry into silence occurs and sorrow is transcended. This assurance he offers is not theoretical; experiment and continued practice will produce the result. He confesses a new sorrow: not his own problems trouble him, but seeing others stand weeping before an open door when the solutions are simple. On practice: Persistent, non-accidental effort is the method—not techniques or doctrines—and the promise is a definite breakthrough when the inner fall becomes continuous. On problems and worry: Only what is genuinely one's own can burden you; compassion need not mean taking on another's problem, yet witnessing avoidable suffering brings its own grief. On meditation/night: The night is presented as an opportunity to enter within; darkness and solitude become the prelude where inner work ripens into inner entry. On perception: The frozen snake in the Parsi tale warns of mistaking what is harmful for helpful when one is unaware, urging clarity of inner seeing instead of comforting delusions.
Questions in this Discourse
I had read a little Parsi story. A blind man and his friend were crossing a desert. They had set out on separate journeys; they happened to meet on the way, and the sighted man took the blind man along with him. They walked together for a few days; their friendship grew deep.
One morning the blind man woke first. He groped about for his stick. It was a desert night, and the weather was cold. He didn’t find the stick; there lay a snake, which from the cold had curled up completely and become stiff. He picked it up. He thanked God: “My stick was lost, but you have given me a much better one—very smooth and very beautiful.” He thanked God, “You are so compassionate.” With that same “stick” he nudged his sighted friend and tried to rouse him: “Get up, it’s morning.”
Osho's Commentary
I have said a few things to you about how the night can become a prelude to meditation. The vision of practice I carry in my heart is not based on any scriptures, any treatises, or any particular sect. I am only speaking to you of the paths I have walked within and come to know. Therefore what I say is not theoretical. And when I ask you to walk and see, I do not have even an iota of the thought that if you walk you will be unable to attain what you long to attain. Hence this assurance and trust: I speak only of those paths into which I myself have entered and seen.
I passed through a time of great pain and anguish—a time of intense striving and effort. In those days I tried with all my might to enter within. By many ways and many methods I made a deeply engaged effort to move in that direction. Those were days of much pain, much sorrow and trouble. But through sustained effort—just as a waterfall keeps plunging from a mountain, and by its continual falling even the rocks below are broken—through such continuous effort, at a certain moment an entry happened. Of the way by which I found that entry possible, only of that am I speaking to you. And so, with great assurance and trust, I can say: if you experiment, the result is certain. Then there was a sorrow, there was a pain; now there is no such sorrow and no such pain within me.
Yesterday someone asked me that…