Once upon a time, on a scorching summer afternoon, Majnu was wandering in the desert. He was lost in the thoughts of his beloved Laila….
There was a very rich and powerful merchant (Saudagar) who was offering his afternoon prayer (namaaz) laying a carpet on the sand. It is said that no one should cross the place when someone is offering namaaz or else you disturb and break their namaaz. But Majnu, in his trance and forgetfulness, crossed before the merchant.
“You stupid fella”…..roared the merchant. “You idiot…didn’t you notice that I was offering prayer here and you were not supposed to cross me? You broke and disturbed my prayer in your ignorance.”
Majnu immediately realized his mistake and profusely apologized to the merchant. He said, “Please forgive me. I am really sorry. I made a mistake. I sincerely regret the inconvenience caused to you while you were praying.”
After a pause Majnu asked, “If you don’t mind, can I ask you one question? — I was in thoughts of my Laila and didn’t realize that someone was praying here. But you were offering prayer to Allah, in thoughts of Allah, how did you notice that someone was passing from here?”
Merchant realized the deeper question, and kissed Majnu’s hands as he felt embarrassed.
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How can people turn the human phenomenon of falling in love into a meditation?
“IT IS THE EASIEST WAY. In human life, love is the closest phenomenon to meditation. The moment you fall in love with someone, what actually happens? What transpires between those two who have fallen in love with each other? They drop their egos — at least for each other. They drop their hypocrisies, their masks. They want to be together, almost one soul within two bodies. That’s the desire of love.
And this is a beautiful moment to change it into a meditation. Just nobody has ever told them. In fact, just the opposite has been told to them: that love is against meditation, so people who are falling in love can never become meditators.
THE SAME PEOPLE who make celibacy ( ब्रह्मचर्य ) spiritual make love unspiritual, something dirty, condemned. But to me things are totally different. Love helps you to relax, which is part of meditation. Love helps you to be joyous, which is part of meditation. Love helps you, for a few moments at least, to be silent, which is the essential part of meditation. And finally, making love, if you attain to an orgasmic experience, gives you a glimpse of what meditation is, but it is millions of times more than this.
LOVE IS JUST LIKE when you enter into a swimming pool, step by step you are going into deeper water. Then the floor of the swimming pool is divided in two parts, one for those who cannot swim, so the water is up to your neck, and then the second part for those who can swim.
But those who want to learn swimming have to learn in the first part, which is not for swimmers. They have to learn it there. Once they have learned, then slowly they will gather courage and enter into deeper water, because for a swimmer it does not matter how deep the water is; the swimmer is always on the surface. The water may be a hundred feet deep, five hundred feet deep, or five miles deep, it makes no difference to the swimmer. It makes a difference only to the non-swimmer. Beyond five feet, everything is death. But the swimming pool is one — shallow, deep — it is one. And the boundary line is only a line until you learn to swim.
To me, love and meditation are just like that. Love is the shallow space in a swimming pool, for those who cannot meditate. But that is the place to learn meditation. And it is the same pool, it is the same water, it is the same kind of phenomenon. You are just unable to go deeper because you have been made afraid even to enter into it. The shallow part has been condemned, and you have been told to jump into the deeper part without knowing how to swim.
The key is: no thoughts, no ego, no time — you just are.
That’s why I have never been against love. I have been much condemned for it, naturally, because I was cutting the very roots of the business of all the religions.
EVERY RELIGION IS against me. Their profession depends on condemning love and praising meditation. They know you cannot attain to meditation, and they know now your love is condemned, it is a sin. You will never experience any orgasmic phenomenon, so meditation will remain just a philosophy, and your life will remain loveless, angry, full of rage, ready to explode at any excuse. Because where will your energy go?
It could have become peace, silence, joy, blissfulness. You did not allow it to become that. That repressed energy turns into poison. That’s why everybody is irritable, annoyed, worried, tense. The simple reason is that they have lost the natural source of relaxation.
No animal looks irritated, annoyed, angry, because they don’t understand the language the priests speak.
And once you know how to be silent, how to be thoughtless, how to be in a state of no time, no mind, you experience such orgasmic joy, which has nothing to do with sex, it has such purity and such innocence.
Love is a natural kind of meditation. And meditation is a supernatural kind of love.”
Excerpts from OSHO : The Last Testament, Volume 2 , Discourse 21
उस की याद आई है साँसो ज़रा आहिस्ता चलो
धड़कनों से भी इबादत में ख़लल पड़ता है ।
us kī yaad aa.ī hai sāñso zarā āhista chalo
dhaḌkanoñ se bhī ibādat meñ ḳhalal paḌtā hai
Breath slowly as I remember Thee
even heartbeats could disturb my prayers.