According to Osho, the 112 techniques of Vigyan Bhairava Tantra are variations of one thing—witnessing. Zen also centers on witnessing, but there’s no provable historical link; Buddha realized witnessing only after abandoning methods, not by following Shiva’s text. Thus, VB Tantra isn’t the root of Zen, though both converge on the same essential method.
They teach the same clear watching of experience, but Zen didn’t directly come from that old book.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Sutra: devi asks: oh shiva, what is your reality? What is this wonder-filled universe?
WHAT CONSTITUTES SEED? WHO CENTERS THE UNIVERSAL WHEEL? WHAT IS THIS LIFE BEYOND FORM PERVADING FORMS? HOW MAY WE ENTER IT FULLY, ABOVE SPACE AND TIME, NAMES AND DESCRIPTIONS? LET MY DOUBTS BE CLEARED! LET MY DOUBTS BE CLEARED. The emphasis is not on questions but on doubts: LET MY DOUBTS BE CLEARED! This is very significant. If you are asking an intellectual question, you are asking for a definite answer so that your problem is solved. But Devi says, LET MY DOUBTS BE CLEARED. She is not really asking about answers. She is asking for a transformation of her mind, because a doubting mind will remain a doubting mind whatsoever answers are given. Note it: a doubting mind will remain a doubting mind. Answers are irrelevant. If I give you one answer and you have a doubting mind, you will doubt it. If I give you another answer, you…
We have always heard that tantra is basically concerned with sex energy and sex center techniques, but you say that tantra is all-inclusive. If there is any truth in the former standpoint, the majority of techniques in vigyana bhairava seem to be non-tantric. Is this true?
The first thing is to understand sex energy. As you understand it, it is just a part, one part, one fragment of the life force, but as Tantra understands it, it is just synonymous with life. It is not a part, not a fragment -- it is life itself. So when Tantra says "sex" energy it means "life" energy. The same is true about Freudian concepts of sex energy. Freud was also very much misunderstood in the West. It appeared to people that he was reducing life to sex, but he was doing the same thing that Tantra has been doing for so long. Life is sex. The word "sex" is not confined to reproduction, the whole play of life energy is sex. Reproduction is just a part of that play. Wherever two energies are meeting -- negative and positive -- sex has entered. It is difficult to understand. For…
Consider your essence as light rays from center to center up the vertebrae, and so rises "livingness" in you.
OR IN THE SPACES BETWEEN, FEEL THIS AS LIGHTNING. FEEL THE COSMOS AS A TRANSLUCENT EVER-LIVING PRESENCE. In India, because of this, we have developed a particular yoga which we call SAHAJ YOGA. SAHAJ means spontaneous, easy, natural. Always remember SAHAJ. If you feel any technique spontaneously coming to you, if you feel more affinity with it, if you feel better with it -- more healthy, more alive, more at home -- then that is the method for you. Move with it; you can trust it. Don't create unnecessary problems. And the inner mechanism is very complex. If you do something which is too much for you, you may destroy many things. So it is better to move with something which feels harmonious to you. The third technique: <q>"FEEL THE COSMOS AS A TRANSLUCENT EVER-LIVING PRESENCE."</q> This again is concerned with light: "FEEL THE COSMOS AS A TRANSLUCENT EVER-LIVING PRESENCE."…
Beloved master, please explain whether the techniques you have discussed so far from vigyana bhairava tantra belong to the science of yoga instead of to the actual and central subject matter of tantra. What is the central subject matter of tantra?
This question arises to many. The techniques that we have discussed also belong to yoga. They are the same techniques, but with a difference: you can use the same techniques with a very different philosophy behind them. The framework, the pattern differs, not the technique. You may have a different attitude toward life, just the contrary to tantra. Yoga believes in struggle; yoga is basically the path of will. Tantra does not believe in a struggle; tantra is not the path of will. Rather, on the contrary, tantra is the path of total surrender. Your will is not needed. For tantra your will is the problem, the source of all anguish. For yoga your surrender, your will-lessness is the problem. Because your will is weak, that is why you are in anguish, suffering - for yoga. For tantra, because you have a will, because you have an ego, an individuality,…
What is tantric sex? After 'monkey sex' and after 'love-bliss sex', before the highest cosmic and religious sex in which no partner is needed, in which the cosmos is the partner, isn't there tantric sex in which two partners are involved, a sex act which is a meditation based on certain techniques?
Many things will happen to the world. First, wars will become impossible. 'There will be no Vietnams and no Israels, because people will never accumulate so much anger in them that they have to kill, and kill millions. Many things will happen to the world if people are natural. Then they will not shout so much as you think they will shout. Right now they are allowed to shout they will shout -- but for how long? If they are given complete freedom, shouts and abusing and condemnation and fights will start disappearing from the world. It is a vicious circle. It is as if you have been starving a person and you don't allow him to go close to the fridge. And you say 'If we allow him he will eat too much. ' And you have been starving him -- and now you are afraid if you allow…