Middle Way

Osho, what is the relationship between meditation and patience?

If you sit to meditate to remove mental restlessness, you will keep looking back again and again: “Has it gone yet?” And the irony is that when you begin to meditate, restlessness will increase. Because what has been repressed will start surfacing; catharsis will begin. The rubbish you have kept hidden within and never allowed to express—meditation will break open those doors too. It will clean the house. Dust piled up for years, for births, will rise again; there will be gusts and storms. For a while even the little peace you had will be lost. Then you will panic: “I came for peace, and even what I had is gone.” Without patience, you could even become unhinged, because meditation brings such a great storm. The disease is not from a day or two; it’s from lifetimes. Meditation will break through all the layers to reach your innermost core. In…

Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE IN THE MIDDLE? Anand Niyama, it means many things to be in the middle. I will have to start my answer from Gautam Buddha, because he was the first man to use the words "to be in the middle," and of course nobody has been able to improve upon the meanings that he gave to the word `middle.' He called his path the middle path. The first meaning is that if you can avoid both the extremes, the rightist and the leftist -- if you can be exactly in the middle of both the extremes, you will not be in the middle, you will have transcended the whole trinity of extremes, and the middle. If you drop both the extremes, the middle disappears on its own accord. Middle of what...?

Question: ONE NIGHT A MONK WAS RECITING A SUTRA BEQUEATHED BY KASHYAPABUDDHA. HIS TONE WAS SO MOURNFUL AND HIS VOICE SO FAINTING, AS IF HE WERE GOING OUT OF EXISTENCE. THE BUDDHA ASKED THE MONK, "WHAT WAS YOUR OCCUPATION BEFORE YOU BECAME A HOMELESS MONK?" SAID THE MONK, "I WAS VERY FOND OF PLAYING THE GUITAR." THE BUDDHA SAID, "HOW DID YOU FIND IT WHEN THE STRINGS WERE TOO LOOSE?" SAID THE MONK, "NO SOUND IS POSSIBLE." "HOW WHEN THE STRINGS WERE TOO TIGHT?" "THEY CRACK." "HOW WHEN THEY WERE NEITHER TOO TIGHT NOR TOO LOOSE?" "EVERY NOTE SOUNDS IN ITS PROPER TONE." THE BUDDHA THEN SAID TO THE MONK: RELIGIOUS DISCIPLINE IS ALSO LIKE UNTO PLAYING THE GUITAR.

Osho, Mahavira and Gautam Buddha were contemporaries. From your talks it becomes clear that the two were saying the same thing. Yet their disciples would argue and quarrel among themselves. After they were gone, there was even violence and war among their followers. But if Mahavira and Buddha had said that we are speaking of the same religion and the only difference is in method, then such hostility would not have grown and the harm that befell both religions would not have occurred. Kindly explain. Amrit Bodhidharma has asked:

If someone is enchanted by the design of the mosque, by its minarets, let him go to the mosque. But this has nothing to do with religion; it has to do with architecture, with aesthetic sense. You build your house one way, I build mine another—this creates no quarrel. I build my God’s house one way, you build yours another—why should that create quarrel? I build mine round, you build yours square—there is no quarrel. The purpose of a house is one: that I will live in this round house, you will live in that square one. We build houses to live in. There must be that much freedom—that whoever wishes should build as he likes; in old style or new; ancient design or an invented one; with a high roof or low; with a garden or without; with plants or with sand—a matter of taste! We do not quarrel…