Osho - on argumentative people...

If you have lived A CHILDHOOD OF A DEEP SHOWERING OF LOVE AND TRUST on you, YOU GATHER A BEAUTIFUL SELF-IMAGE about yourself. And if your parents have been really in deep love with each other, and they were very happy in you -- because you are the culmination of their love, the crescendo of their love, the actualization of their love... If they were deep in love, then you are the song that is born out of their love. YOU ARE THE PROOF, THE EVIDENCE THAT THEY LOVED EACH OTHER. You are their creation: they feel happy about you. They accept you, and they accept the way you are. Even if they try to help you, they try to help you in a very loving way. Even if they say sometimes, "Don't do this," you don't feel offended and you don't feel insulted. In fact, you feel cared about. BUT WHEN THE LOVE IS MISSING and the father and mother go on saying, "Don't do this, and "Do this," by and by the child starts learning that, "I am not accepted as I am. If I do certain things, I am loved; if I don't do certain things, I am not loved -- if I do some other things, I am hated." SO HE STARTS SHRINKING. His pure being is not accepted and loved. The love is conditional, trust is lost. THEN HE WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO HAVE A BEAUTIFUL SELF-IMAGE. Because it is mother's eyes which reflect you for the first time. And if you can see happiness there -- a bliss, a thrill, a great ecstasy just watching you -- you know you are valuable, you know you have intrinsic value. Then it is very easy to trust, very easy to surrender -- because you are not afraid. BUT IF YOU KNOW THAT YOU ARE WRONG, then you are always trying to prove that you are right. People become argumentative. ALL ARGUMENTATIVE PEOPLE basically are people who DON'T HAVE GOOD IMAGES OF THEMSELVES. They are very defensive, very touchy. If there is some argumentative person, and you say that, "This thing you have done wrong," he immediately jumps on you, becomes very angry. HE CANNOT EVEN TAKE A SMALL FRIENDLY CRITICISM. BUT IF HE HAS A GOOD IMAGE ABOUT HIMSELF he is ready to listen, he is ready to learn, he is ready to respect others' opinions -- maybe they are right. And even if they are right and he is wrong, he is not worried -- because that doesn't matter. He remains good in his own eyes. PEOPLE ARE TOUCHY -- THEY DON'T WANT CRITICISM, they don't want somebody to say to them to do this; they don't want somebody to say to them not to do that. And these people think they cannot surrender because they are very powerful. THEY ARE JUST ILL, NEUROTIC. ONLY A POWERFUL MAN OR WOMAN CAN SURRENDER -- weaklings, never. Because in surrender they think their weakness will be known to the whole world. They know they are weak, they know their inferiority complex, so they cannot bow down. It is difficult for them -- because bowing down will be accepting that they are inferior. ONLY A SUPERIOR PERSON CAN BOW DOWN, inferior persons can never bow down. They cannot respect anybody, because they don't respect themselves. They don't know what respect is, and they are always afraid of surrender -- because surrender means weakness to them. Remember it: SURRENDER IS POSSIBLE IF YOU ARE TREMENDOUSLY POWERFUL: you are not worried about surrender, you know that you can surrender and still you will not be weak. You can surrender, and you will not lose your willpower. In fact, by surrendering you are showing the greatest willpower there is. OSHO

The Beloved

Vol 2, Ch #4: Remember To Stop In The Middle

am in Buddha Hall

(cosmix) Pointless Universe

The Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg famously said: "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless."

The first question that springs to mind is, if the universe is pointless — as in being a random or one-off event — then why should it seem comprehensible? Because anything comprehensible has to have a point to it.

Maybe not a point immediately or absolutely relating to transcendence, design, purpose or development towards an end but a purpose nevertheless. Mathematics, for instance, is comprehensible because it has rules and is not chaotic or random.

The same goes for physics. Perhaps the arts too since not all scribbling is aesthetic and experts can tell the difference between bad art and good. Just like other experts can differentiate between good math and bad.

The second question we need to consider is: what about biology? That's because the life sciences are not only just a part of any universe Professor Weinberg may have in mind, but ultimately involve human beings like him who, after all, are the only ones we know raising issues like this. No one of course would doubt the issue is comprehensible; but is it also pointless in that case?

Weinberg might argue then that at least he himself would seem pointless but the rules of biology would beg to differ. Life might have arisen randomly some three to four billion years ago on Earth or many billennia earlier in some other cosmic structure but once it got going here its "purpose" (yes "purpose" — blind or not, it doesn’t matter) was to keep going.

The cardinal rule which governed the first protein or RNA or whatever that organised itself out of the primordial elemental soup of just-right ingredients was to be able to reproduce. Where did it suddenly get that "point" from? Inanimate chemicals don't reproduce like that; animate ones do and the only time they don't any more is when they’ve died trying.

We don't necessarily have to invoke a divine hand as being the architect of such a rule; a little common sense will suffice. Meaning, in order for the universe to be truly pointless, it would have to be totally incomprehensible too. Which by Weinberg's own admission it doesn't appear to be.

The same logic then should also apply to its parts, including living systems arising in it. Actually, only if the professor had admitted he comprehended nothing would he have had a point.

(cosmix) "making up" 4 past, in actual, daily practice !

'Making up' in actual practice
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K Vijayaraghavan, ET Bureau


Rightly was it said that the taste of the pudding is in its eating! Monologues and exhortations on ‘making up’ for past bad karma through present
good karma would assume meaning only when these are capable of practical interpretation through positive results that show in actual life, in the form of tangible changes for the better.

Repentance, through realisation of past mistakes and slip ups, would also bear fruit only when this is followed by adoption of new and changed ways of living, acting and thinking. Otherwise, such acts of remorse would only serve to further depress the spirit within. This would be akin to this situation conceived of by Whittier in his Maud Muller: “For all sad words of tongue and pen, /The saddest are these, It might have been.”

Dynamic and positive repentance along with simultaneous intelligent analysis, observation and inferences would, on the other hand, usher in that optimism, recognising that the past is, after all, a bucketful of ashes. This, verily, is also the practical application of the great Sutra of Patanjali (2, 16) that suffering, which would otherwise have ensued, can be pre-empted.

Swamy Satyananda Sarswati, in this regard, alludes to the analogy of the intelligent farmer, who, after discovering about and repenting over the improper techniques adopted thus far, changes his approach. Though the results of the immediate harvest cannot be changed, those of the future ones can. So is the case with every aspirant’s apparent drift in the past, which can be made up through realisation of specific and universally applicable rules to live by, leading to right and powerful action — karmasu kaushalam.

Thus, the actual practice of ‘making up’ commences from making the needed changes within — tendencies, mind sets, habits, paradigms, and perceptions, which had thus far impeded all progress towards freedom, life and light.

A highly practical guideline in this regard is found, as noted by Priyadarshana Jain, a scholar of Jainism, in Acharya Kundakunda’s Pravachana Sara (3, 38). This verse observes how an ignorant soul takes many years to destroy its bad karma through painful austerities, while a true jnani does this in a jiffy, through “exercising restraint of mind, body and speech.”

Indeed, the road map to the actual practice of ‘making up’ and thus being born to a new world is clear to the seeker who is prepared to open his eyes to sublime truths and indications, which beckon his spirit!