Transcendental Zen Meditations from Osho
Major Arcana 0 Regarding The Fool - A fool is one who goes on trusting; a fool is one who goes on trusting against all his experience. You deceive him, and he trusts; and you deceive him again, and he trusts you; and you deceive him again, and he trusts you. Then you will say that he is a fool, he does not learn. His trust is tremendous; his trust is so pure that nobody can corrupt it.
Be a fool in the Taoist sense, in the Zen sense. Don't try to create a wall of knowledge around you. Whatsoever experience comes to you, let it happen, and then go dropping it. Go on cleaning your mind continuously; go on dying to the past so you remain in the present, here-now, as if just born, just a babe. In the beginning it is going to be very dificult. The world will start taking advantage of you...let them. They are poor fellows. Even if you are cheated and deceived and robbed, let it happen, because that which is really yours cannot be robbed from you, that which is really yours nobody can steal from you. And each time you don't allow situations to corrupt you, that opportunity will become an integration inside. Your soul will become more crystallized.
Major Arcana I Regarding Existence - You are not accidental. Existence needs you. Without you something will be missing in existence and nobody can replace it. That's what gives you dignity, that the whole existence will miss you. The stars and sun and moon, the trees and birds and earth - everything in the universe will feel a small place is vacant which cannot be filled by anybody except you. This gives you a tremdous joy, a fulfillment that you are related to existence, and existence cares for you. Once you are clean and clear, you can see tremendous love falling on you from all dimensions.
Major Arcana II Regarding Inner Voice - If you have found your truth within yourself there is nothing more in this whole existence to find. Truth is functioning through you. When you open your eyes, it is truth opening his eyes. When you close your eyes, it is truth who is closing its eyes.
This is a tremendous meditation. If you can simply understand the device, you don't have to do anything; whatever you are doing is being done by truth. You are walking, it is truth; you are sleeping, it is truth resting; you are speaking, it is truth speaking; you are silent, it is truth that is silent. This is one of the most simple meditation techniques. Slowly, slowly everything settles by this simple formula, and then there is no need for the technique.
When you are cured, you throw away the meditation, you throw away the medicine. Then you live as truth - alive, radiant, contented, blissful, a song unto yourself. Your whole life becomes a prayer without any words, or better to say a prayerfulness, a grace, a beauty which does not belong to our mundance world, a ray of light coming from the beyond into the darkness of our world.
Major Arcana III Regarding Creativity - Creativity is the quality that you bring to the activity that you are doing. It is an attitude, and inner approach - how you look at things... Not everybody can be a painter - and there is no need also. If everybody is a painter the world will be very ugly; it will be difficult to live. And not everybody can be a dancer, and there is no need. But everybody can be creative.
Whatsoever you do, if you do it joyfully, if you do it lovingly, if your act of doing is not purely economical, then it is creative. If you have something growing out of it within you, if it gives you growth, it is spiritual, it is creative, it is divine. You become more divine as you become more creative.
All the religions of the world have said God is the creator. I don't know whether he is the creator or not, but one thing I know: the more creative you become, the more godly you become. When your creativity comes to a climax, when your whole life becomes creative, you live in God. So he must be the creator because people who have been creative have been closest to him.
Love what you do. Be meditative while you are doing it - whatsoever it is!
Major Arcana IV Regarding The Rebel - People are afaid, very much afraid of those who know themselves. They have a certain power, a certain aura and a certain magnetism, a charisma that can take out alive, young people from the traditional imprisonment...
The enlightened man cannot be enslaved - that is the dificulty - and he cannot be imprisoned...
Every genius who has known something of the inner is bound to be a little difficult to be absorbed; he is going to be an upsetting force. The masses don't want to be disturbed, even though they may be in misery; they are in misery, but they are accustomed to the misery. And anybody who is not miserable looks like a stranger.
The enlightened man is the greatest stranger in the world; he does not seem to belong to anybody. No organization confines him, no community, no society, no nation.
Major Arcana V Regarding No-Thingness - Buddha has chosen one of the really very potential words - shunyata. The English word, the English equivalent, 'nothingness', is not such a beautiful word.
That's why I would like to make it 'no-thingness' - because the nothing is not just nothing, it is all. It is vibrant with all possibilities. It is potential, absolute potential. It is unmanifest yet, but it contains all. In the beginning is nature, in the end is nature, so why in the middle do you make so much fuss? Why, in the middle, becoming so worried, so anxious, so ambitious - why create such dispair?
Nothingness to nothingness is the whole journey.
Major Arcana VI Regarding The Lovers - These three things are to be taken note of: the lowest love is sex - it is physical- and the highest refinement of love is compassion. Sex is below love, compassion is above love; love is exactly in the middle.
Very few people know what love is. Ninety-nine percent of people, unfortunately, think sexuality is love - it is not. Sexuality is very animal; it certainly has the potential of growing into love, but it is not actual love, only a potential...
If you become aware and alert, meditative, then sex can be transformed into love. And if your meditativeness becomes total, absolute, love can be transformed into compassion. Sex is the seed, love is the flower, compassion is the fragrance.
Buddha has defined compassion as 'love plus meditation'. When your love is not just a desire for the other, when your love is not only a need, when your love is a sharing, when your love is not that of a beggar but an emperor, when your love is not asking for something in return but is ready to give - to give for the sheer joy of giving - then add meditation to it and the pure fragrance is released. That is compassion; compassion is the highest phenomenon.
Major Arcana VII Regarding Awareness - Mind can never be intelligent - no-mind is intelligent. Only no-mind is original and radical. Only no-mind is revolutionary - revolution in action.
This mind gives you a sort of stupor. Burdened by the memories of the past, burdened by the projections of the future, you go on living - at the minimum. You don't live at the maximum. Your flame remains very dim.
Once you start dropping thoughts, the dust that you have collected in the past, the flame arises - clean, clear, alive, young. Your whole life becomes a flame, and a flame without any smoke. That is what awareness is.
Major Arcana VIII Regarding Courage - The seed cannot know what is going to happen, the seed has never known the flower. And the seed cannot even believe that he has the potentiality to become a beautiful flower. Long is the journey, and it is always safer not to go on that journey because unknown is the path, nothing is guaranteed. Nothing can be guaranteed. Thousand and one are the hazards of the journey, many are the pitfalls - and the seed is secure, hidden inside a hard core. But the seed tries, it makes an effort; it drops the hard shell which is its security, it starts moving. Immediately the fight starts: the struggle with the soil, with the stones, with the rocks. And the seed was very hard and the sprout will be very, very soft and dangers will be many.
There was no danger for the seed, the seed could have survived for millennia, but for the sprout many are the dangers. But the sprout starts towards the unknown, towards the sun, towards the source of light, not knowing where, not knowing why. Great is the cross to be carried, but a dream possesses the seed and the seed moves.
The same path for man. It is arduous. Much courage will be needed.
Major Arcana IX Regarding Aloneness - When you are alone you are not alone, you are simply lonely - and there is a tremendous difference between loneliness and aloneness. When you are lonely you are thinking of the other, you are missing the other. Loneliness is a negative state. You are feeling that it would have been better if the other was there - your friend, your wife, your mother, your beloved, your husband. It would have been good if the other was there, but the other is not.
Loneliness is absence of the other. Aloneness is the presence of oneself. Aloneness is very positive. It is a presence, overflowing presence. You are so full of presence that you can fill the whole universe wtih your presence and there is no need for anybody.
Major Arcana X Regarding Change - Life repeats itself mindlessly - unless you become mindful, it will go on repeating like a wheel. That's why Buddhists call it the wheel of life and death - the wheel of time. It moves like a wheel: birth is followed by death, death is followed by birth; love is followed by hate, hate is followed by love; success is followed by failure, failure is followed by success. Just see!
If you can watch just for a few days, you will see a pattern emerging, a wheel pattern. One day, a fine morning, you are feeling so good and so happy, and another day you are so dull, so dead that you start thinking of committing suicide. And just the other day you were so full of life, so blissful that you were feeling thankful to God that you were in a mood of deep gratefulness, and today there is great complaint and you don't see the point why one should go on living... And it goes on and on, but you don't see the pattern.
Once you see the pattern, you can get out of it.
Major Arcana XI Regarding Breakthrough - To transform breakdowns into breakthroughs is the whole function of a master. The psychotherapist simply patches you up. That is his function. He is not there to transform you. You need a metapsychology, the psychology of the buddhas.
It is the greatest adventure in life to go through a breakdown consciously. It is the greatest risk because there is no guarantee that the breakdown will become a breakthrough. It does become, but these things cannot be guaranteed. Your chaos is very ancient - for many, many lives you have been in chaos. It is thick and dense. It is almost a universe in itself. So when you enter into it with your small capacity, of course there is danger. But without facing this danger nobody has ever become integrated, nobody has ever become an individual, indivisible.
Zen, or meditation, is the mehtod which will help you to go through the chaos, through the dark night of the soul, balanced, disciplined, alert.
The dawn is not for away, but before you can reach the dawn, the dark night has to be passed through. And as the dawn comes closer, the night will become darker.
Major Arcana XII Regarding New Vision - When you open up to the ultimate, immediately it pours into you. You are no longer an ordinary human being - you have transcended. Your insight has become the insight of the whole existence. Now you are no longer separate - you have found your roots. Otherwise, ordinarily, everybody is moving without roots, not knowing from where their heart goes on receiving energy, not knowing who goes on breathing in them, not knowing the life juice that is running inside them.
It is not the body, it is not the mind - it is something transcendental to all duality, that is called bhagavat - the bhagavat in the ten directions...
Your inner being, when it opens, first experiences two directions: the height, the depth. And then slowly, slowly, as this becomes your established situation, you start looking around, spreading into all other eight directions.
And once you have attained to the point where your height and depth meet, then you can look around to the very circumference of the universe. Then your consciousness starts unfolding in all ten directions, but the road has been one.
Major Arcana XIII Regarding Transformation - A master in Zen is not simply a teacher. In all the religions there are only teachers. They teach you about subjects which you don't know; and they ask you to believe, because there is no way to bring those experiences into objective reality. Neither has the teacher known them - he has believed them; he transfers his belief to somebody else. Zen is not a believer's world. It is not for the faithful ones; it is for those daring souls who can drop all belief, unbelief, doubt, reason, mind, and simply enter into their pure existence without boundaries.
But it brings a tremendous transformation. Hence, let me say that while others are involved in philosophies, Zen is involved in metamorphosis, in a transformation. It is authentic alchemy: it changes you from base metal into gold. But its language has to be understood, not with your reasoning and intellectual mind but with yout loving heart. Or even just listening, not bothering whether it is true or not. And a moment comes suddenly that you see it, which has been eluding you your whole life. Suddenly, what Gautam Buddha called 'eighty-four thousand doors' open.
Major Arcana XIV Regarding Integration - The conflict is in man. Unless it is resolved there, it cannot be resolved anywhere else. The politics is within you; it is between the two parts of the mind.
A very small bridge exists. If that bridge is broken through some accident, through some physiological defect or something else, the person becomes split, the person becomes two persons - and the phenominon of schizophrenia or split personality happens. If the bridge is broken - and the bridge is very fragile - then you become two, you behave like two persons. In the morning you are very loving, very beautiful; in the evening you are very angry, absolutely different. You don't remember your morning...how can you remember? Another mind was functioning - and the person becomes two persons. If this bridge is strengthened so much that the two minds disappear as two and become one, then integration, then crystallization, arises. What George Gurdjieff used to call the crystallization of being is nothing but these two minds becoming one, the meeting of the male and female within, the meeting of yin and yang, the meeting of left and right, the meeting of logic and illogic, the meeting of Plato and Aristotle.
Major Arcana XV Regarding Conditioning - Unless you drop your personality you will not be able to find your individuality. Individuality is given by existence; personality is imposed by the society. Personality is social convenience.
Society cannot tolerate individuality, because individualltiy will not follow like a sheep. Individuality has the quality of the lion; the lion moves alone. The sheep are always in the crowd, hoping that being in the crowd will feel cozy. Being in the crowd one feels more protected, secure. If somebody attacks, there is every possibility in a crowd to save yourself. But alone? - only the lions move alone.
And every one of you is born a lion, but the society goes on conditioning you, programming your mind as a sheep. It gives you a personality, a cozy personality, nice, very convenient, very obedient.
Society wants slaves, not people who are absolutely dedicated to freedom. Society wants slaves because all the vested interests want obedience.
Major Arcana XVI Regarding Thunderbolt - What meditation does slowly, slowly, a good shout of the master, unexpectedly, in the situation where the disciple was asking some question, and the master jumps and shouts, or hits him, or throws him out of the door, or jumps over him... These methods were never known. It was purely the very creative genius of Ma Tzu, and he made many people enlightened.
Sometimes it looks so hilarious: he threw a man from the window, from a two-storey house, and the man had come to ask on what to meditate. And Ma Tzu not only threw, he jumped after him, fell on him, sat on his chest, and he said, "Got it?!"
And the poor fellow said, "Yes" - because if you say "No," he may beat you or something else. It is enough - his body is fractured, and Ma Tzu, sitting on his chest, says, "Got it?!"
And in fact he got it, because it was so sudden, out of the blue - he could never have conceived it.
Major Arcana XVII Regarding Silence - The energy of the whole has taken possession of you. You are possessed, you are no more, the whole is.
This moment, as the silence penetrates in you, you can understand the significance of it, because it is the same silence that Gautam Buddah experienced. It is the same silence that Chuang Tzu of Bodhidharma or Nansen... The taste of the silence is the same.
Time changes, the world goes on changing, but the experience of silence, the joy of it, remains the same. That is the only thing you can rely upon, the only thing that never dies. It is the only thing that you can call your very being.
Major Arcana XVIII Regarding Past Lives - The child can become conscious only if in his past life he has meditated enough, has created enough meditative energy to fight with the darkness that death brings. One simply is lost in an oblivion and then suddenly finds a new womb and forgets completely about the old body. There is a discontinuity. This darkness, this unconsciousness creates the discontinuity.
The East has been working hard to penetrate these barriers. And ten thousand years' work has not been in vain. Everybody can penetrate to the past life or many past lives. But for that you have to go deeper into your meditation, for two reasons: unless you go deeper, you cannot find the door to another life; secondly, you have to be deeper in meditation because, if you find the door of another life, a flood of events will come into the mind.
It is hard enough even to carry one life...
Major Arcana XIX Regarding Innocence - Zen says that if you drop knowledge - and within knowledge everything is included, your name, your identity, everything, because this has been given to you by others - if you drop all that has been given by others, you will have a totally different quality to your being - innocence.
This will be a crucifixion of the persona, the personality, and there will be a resurrection of your innocence; you will become a child again, reborn.
Major Arcana XX Regarding Beyond Illusion - This is the only distinction between the dream and the real: reality allows you to doubt, and the dream does not allow you to doubt...
To me, the capacity to doubt is one of the greatest blessings to humanity. The religions have been enemies because they have been cutting the very roots of doubt, and there is a reason why they have been doing that: because they want people to believe in certain illusions that they have been preaching...
Why have the people like Gautam Buddha been so insistent that the whole existence - except your witnessing self, except your awareness - is just ephemeral, made of the same stuff as dreams are made of? They are not saying that these trees are not there. They are not saying that these pillars are not there. Don't misunderstand because of the word 'illusion'... It has been translated as illusion, but illusion is not the right word. Illusion does not exist. Reality exists. Maya is just in between - it almost exists. As far as day-to-day activities are concerned, it can be taken as reality. Only in the ultimate sense, from the peak of your illumination, it becomes unreal, illusory.
Major Arcana XXI Regarding Completion - This is the way of Zen, not to say things to their completion. This has to be understood; it is a very important methodology. Not to say everything means to give an opportunity to the listener to complete it. All answers are incomplete. The master has only given you a direction... By the time you reach the limit, you will know what is going to remain. This way, if somebody is trying to understand Zen intellectually he will fail. It is not an answer to the question but something more than the answer. It is indicating the very reality... The Buddah nature is not something far away - your very consciousness is buddha nature. And your consciousness can witness these things which constitute the world. The world will end but the mirror will remain, mirroring nothing.
Major Arcana Regarding The Master - Masters don't teach the truth; there is no way to teach it. It is a transmission beyond scriptures, beyond words. It is a transmission. It is energy provoking energy in you. It is a kind of synchronicity...
You have to approach the master with great love, with great trust, with an open heart. You are not aware who you are. He is aware who he is, he is aware who you are. The caterpillar might be said to be unaware that it may become a butterfly. You are caterpillars - bodhisattvas. All caterpillars are bodhisattvas and all bodhisattvas are caterpillars. A bodhisattva means one who can become a butterfly, who can become a buddha, who is a buddha in the seed, in essence...
The master/disciple relationship is the relationship between a caterpiller and a butterfly. The butterfly cannot prove that the caterpillar can become a butterfly; there is no logical way. But the butterfly can provoke a longing in the caterpillar - that is possible.
Note: All of the excerpts and photos shown come from The Transcendental Game of Zen, Osho Zen Tarot
** Bookmark this Page or Save to your Favorites File for Easy Reference **
Servicing the Universe
Natural Obsession's
1-406-871-2515
naturalobsessions@hotmail.com
top of page
Servicing the following major cities and their surrounding cities and towns: anchorage ak, fairbanks ak, juneau ak, birmingham al, mobile al, montgomery al, fayetteville ar, little rock ar, flagstaff az, phoenix az, tucson az, los angeles ca, sacramento ca, san diego ca, san francisco ca, colorado springs co, denver co, grand junction co, bridgeport ct, hartford ct, dover de, jacksonville fl, miami fl, orlando fl, tampa fl, atlanta ga, macon ga, savannah ga, hilo hi, honolulu hi, cedar rapids ia, des moines ia, sioux city ia, boise id, idaho falls id, chicago il, springfield il, columbus in, evansville in, fort wayne in, indianapolis in, south bend in, bowling green ky, frankfort ky, lexington ky, louisville ky, kansas city ks, topeka ks, wichita ks, baton rouge la, new orleans la, shreveport la, boston ma, worcester ma, annapolis md, baltimore md, augusta me, portland me, detroit mi, flint mi, grand rapids mi, lansing mi, st. paul mn, minneapolis mn, kansas city mo, st. louis mo, jackson ms, billings mt, great falls mt, kalispell mt, libby mt, missoula mt, charlotte nc, greensboro nc, raleigh nc, bismarck nd, fargo nd, lincoln ne, omaha ne, concord nh, manchester nh, edison nj, newark nj, toms river nj, trenton nj, albuquerque nm, santa fe nm, carson city nv, las vegas nv, reno nv, albany ny, binghampton ny, buffalo ny, rochester ny, new york ny, akron oh, cincinnati oh, cleveland oh, columbus oh, dayton oh, toledo oh, oklahoma city ok, tulsa ok, eugene or, medford or, portland or, salem or, allentown pa, erie pa, harrisburg pa, philadelphia pa, pittsburgh pa, reading pa, scranton pa, san juan pr, cranston ri, new bedford ri, newport ri, providence ri, columbia sc, charleston sc, pierre sd, sioux falls sd, rapid city sd, chattanooga tn, knoxville tn, memphis tn, nashville tn, austin tx, dallas tx, houston tx, san antonio tx, salt lake city ut, st. george ut, chalottesville va, richmond va, roanoke va, burlington vt, montpelier vt, olympia wa, seattle wa, spokane wa, eau claire wi, green bay wi, madison wi, milwaukee wi, charleston wv, casper wy, cheyenne wy, washington d.c., calgary ab, edmonton ab, lethbridge ab, kamloops bc, kelowna bc, vancouver bc, winnipeg mb, ottawa on, toronto on, montreal qc, quebec qc, regina sk, saskatoon sk