Showing posts with label pilgram. Show all posts

2020/08/30

The Book of Wisdom: The Heart of Tibetan Buddhism by Osho

The Book of Wisdom: The Heart of Tibetan Buddhism. Commentaries on Atisha's Seven Points of Mind Training by [Osho]

by Osho (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.7 out of 5 stars 51 ratings

Length: 450 pages Word Wise: Enabled Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled

Customer Reviews: 4.7 out of 5 stars 51 ratings

Customers who bought this item also bought

Page 1 of 3Page 1 of 3

This shopping feature will continue to load items when the Enter key is pressed. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

Back

The Search: Finding Your Inner Power, Your Potential (OSHO Classics)

Osho

4.5 out of 5 stars 28

Kindle Edition

$11.21

The Tantra Experience: Evolution through Love

Osho

4.3 out of 5 stars 23

Kindle Edition

$10.44

Buddha Said

Osho

4.5 out of 5 stars 29

Kindle Edition

$8.62

Secret of Secrets: On The Secret of the Golden Flower

Osho

4.8 out of 5 stars 28

Kindle Edition

$10.12

A Course in Meditation: A 21-Day Workout for Your Consciousness

Osho

4.9 out of 5 stars 17

Kindle Edition

$17.99

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars

4.7 out of 5

51 customer ratings

5 star 80% (80%)

80%

4 star 14% (14%)

14%

3 star 3% (3%)

2 star 0% (0%)

1 star 3% (3%)

How are ratings calculated?

Review this product

Share your thoughts with other customers

Write a customer review

The Book of Wisdom: The Heart of Tibetan Buddhism

Osho

4.63 · Rating details · 8 ratings · 0 reviews

Pages: 550

From the Jacket

These seven points of mind training are the fundamental teaching that Atisha gave to Tibet. They are of immense value. They are the whole of religion condensed. They are like seeds; they contain much, the moment you move into them deeply, when you contemplate and meditate and start experimenting with them, you will be surprised you will be going into the greatest adventure of your life.

Life in itself is not meaningful.
It is meaningful only if you can
sing a song of the eternal
if you can release some fragrance
of the divine, of the godly,
if you can become a lotus flower
deathless, timeless
if you become pure love,
if you can beautify this existence,
if you can become a blessing
to this existence, only then
does life have significance;
otherwise it is pointless.
it is like an empty canvas:
you can go on carrying it your
whole life and you can die under
its weight, but what is the point?
Paint something on it!

OSHO

From the Back of the Book

India has given great gifts to the world. Atisha is one of those great gifts. Just as India gave Bodhidharma to China, India gave Atisha to Tibet.

Meditate on Atisha, listen to his advice; it is of immense value. It is not a philosophy. It is a manual of inner transformation. It is the book that can help you grow into wisdom. I call it the Book of Wisdom.

Preface
Atisha, as Osho explains in The Book if Wisdom, was a Ioth-century mystic who is credited with establishing the foundations if Buddhist teachings ill Tibet. In t1le following introduction, taken from a discourse series Om Mani Padme Hum, Osho talks about the priceless contribu (less)

Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic eBook: Osho: Amazon.com.au: Kindle Store

Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic Kindle Edition

by Osho (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.6 out of 5 stars 88 ratings

Understand the life and teachings of Osho, one of the twentieth century’s most unusual gurus and philosophers, in Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic.

In 1990, Osho prepared for his departure from the body that had served him for fifty-nine years—in the words of his attending physician—“as calmly as though he were packing for a weekend in the country.” Who was this man, known as the Sex Guru, the “self-appointed bhagwan” (Rajneesh), the Rolls-Royce Guru, the Rich Man’s Guru, and simply the Master?

Drawn from nearly five thousand hours of Osho’s recorded talks, this is the story of his youth and education, his life as a professor of philosophy and years of travel teaching the importance of meditation, and the true legacy he sought to leave behind: a religion-less religion centered on individual awareness and responsibility and the teaching of “Zorba the Buddha,” a celebration of the whole human being.

Osho challenges readers to examine and break free of the conditioned belief systems and prejudices that limit their capacity to enjoy life in all its richness. He has been described by the Sunday Times of London as one of the “1000 Makers of the 20th Century” and by Sunday Mid-Day (India) as one of the ten people—along with Gandhi, Nehru, and Buddha—who have changed the destiny of India. Since his death in 1990, the influence of his teachings continues to expand, reaching seekers of all ages in virtually every country of the world.

Length: 340 pages Word Wise: Enabled Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled

Page Flip: Enabled Language: English

Product description

Review

A delightful glimpse into the life of one of the most outrageous twentieth-century spiritual leaders...entertaining, insightful, and for some, perhaps, even enlightening. "BOOKLIST"

Followers and seekers will find this a profound and playful collection of stories and teachings. "Amazon.com""

"A delightful glimpse into the life of one of the most outrageous twentieth-century spiritual leaders...entertaining, insightful, and for some, perhaps, even enlightening." --BOOKLIST

"Followers and seekers will find this a profound and playful collection of stories and teachings." --Amazon.com

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Author

Osho was one of the most provocative spiritual teachers of our time. In the 1970s he captured the attention of young people who wanted to experience meditation and transformation. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Read more

Product details

File Size : 1187 KB

Print Length : 340 pages

Word Wise : Enabled

Language: : English

Text-to-Speech : Enabled

Enhanced Typesetting : Enabled

4.6 out of 5 stars 183

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars

4.6 out of 5

Top reviews

Top reviews

IshaRa

5.0 out of 5 stars I LOVED this book

Reviewed in Australia on 15 May 2015

Verified Purchase

I LOVED this book...there were no boring bits, and it was fascinating to hear Osho describe what it was like to go through enlightenment in his own words. OK so the actual book wasn't written by Osho himself, but compiled from the HUGE mountain of recordings and transcriptions Osho left on his death, but whoever put it together did a masterful job of choosing the juicy parts and keeping the story going. I had MANY "aha moments" reading this, and could feel blocked energies opening in my body just from reading the book. I could also feel Osho reading over my shoulder and laughing a lot!! If you enjoy Osho's words and his unique perspectives on life and living, I definitely recommend this book.

Top international reviews

James

4.0 out of 5 stars Surprisingly good

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 October 2018

Verified Purchase

I came at this with low expectations but he writes in a very engaging way and it is a good read. Clearly he is a bit of a fantasist but he does know a thing or two about spirituality as well. Don't think of him as a guru but as an entertaining man with some interesting ideas and a good portion of Buddhist knowledge.

Helpful

Report abuse

MANJUNATH HIRENNAVAR

5.0 out of 5 stars GREATEST MASTER EVER BORN ON THIS EARTH

Reviewed in India on 23 February 2016

Verified Purchase

"LOVE YOU OSHO. PLEASE COME BACK"

OSHO IS REALLY MASTER OF MASTER. I REALLY WEPT FOR HOW OUR SOCIETY TREATED THE GREATEST MASTER & IN THE END HOW UNITED STATES BEHAVES WITH HIM. I FEEL SHAME ON FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. THATS NOT AT ALL THE WAY TO TREAT A GREATEST BUDDHA WHO LOVES HUMANITY LIKE THAT, AND WHO WANTED TO LIBERATE HUMANITY FROM RELIGIOUS SLAVERY. AS FAR ME OSHO IS THE MASTER WITH GREAT COMPASSION TO HUMAN BEING, THATS WHY HE WAS ABLE TO DO ALL THAT IS POSSIBLE BY HIM TO LIBERATE HUMAN BEINGS. HE COULD HAVE PLAYED SAFE AND GOT GREAT HONOR OF ALL COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD EASILY BUT HE DID NOT. ENLIGHTENING AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE WAS HIS ONLY MOTTO AND HE TOOK GREATEST RISKS FOR THAT. I REALLY FEEL GREAT GRATTITUDE TO HIM AND I THANK EXISTANCE FOR GIVING GREAT MASTER LIKE HIM TO THIS PLANET EARTH...

35 people found this helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating reading especially for a seeker

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 May 2015

Verified Purchase

Totally refutes the idea that Osho was a cult leader. Full of ideas on rebelling against everything that limits the joy of life, finding your truth your own way and doubting all things except your own existence.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Report abuse

Paul

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 September 2011

Verified Purchase

Excellent book detailing the life of the controversial author, cult leader and all round showman. The autobiography fits in with other writings of Osho, interweaving spirituality, details of his own life and a plethora of eastern philosophies.

Anand Gupta

5.0 out of 5 stars Soulful and worldly!

Reviewed in India on 19 July 2016

Verified Purchase

This will be the closest one can get to an autobiography of Osho, though he didn't actually write or dictate it for the purpose. In some sense, I think his final evolution was beyond cause-effect one can derive from a biography and yet, there were open clues to make out the person he was in public life. Perhaps, these life events were an excuse, a sequence that sort of helped in uncovering the inner being, the true soul, as he motivates everyone to realize.

Evidently, he was a rebel from the very beginning, but not because he wanted to be one. He lived as a free spirit and ferociously defended any attempts by others to contain it. He was often controversial, not always because he wanted to create sensation; rather it was to jolt people from their perennial slumber and to think afresh! The book is a good compilation of his own narrations of this life and account of other events unfolding around him. A nice read for anyone who feels fallible as a human and strives to rise beyond the depths we often encounter in life.

14 people found this helpful

Helpful

Report abuse

---

Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic

Want to Read

Rate this book

1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars

Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic

by Osho

4.28 · Rating details · 1,005 ratings · 73 reviews

An indispensable work for understanding the life and teachings of one of the most unusual mystics and philosophers of our time.

Ten years have past since, in the words of his attending physician, Osho prepared for his departure from the body that had served him for fifty-nine years "as calmly as though he were packing for a weekend in the country." This volume is recognition that the time has come to provide a historical and biographical context for understanding Osho and his work. Who was this man, known as the Sex Guru, the "self-appointed bhagwan" (Rajneesh), the Rolls-Royce Guru, the Rich Man's Guru, and simply the Master?

Drawn from nearly five thousand hours of Osho's recorded talks, this is the story of his youth and education, his life as a professor of philosophy and years of travel teaching the importance of meditation, and the true legacy he sought to leave behind: a religionless religion centered on individual awareness and responsibility and the teaching of "Zorba the Buddha," a celebration of the whole human being. (less)

GET A COPY

KoboOnline Stores ▾Book Links ▾

Paperback, 336 pages

Published June 9th 2001 by St. Martin's Griffin (first published November 27th 2000)

Original TitleAutobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic

ISBN0312280718 (ISBN13: 9780312280710)

Edition LanguageEnglish

Other Editions (17)

Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic

Osho: Autobiografia De Un Mistico Espiritualmente Incorrecto

Autobiografia de Um Místico Espiritualmente Incorreto

Autobiography Of A Spiritually Incorrect Mystic

AUTOBIOGRAFÍA DE UN MÍSTICO ESPIRITUALMENTE INCORRECTO

All Editions | Add a New Edition | Combine

...Less DetailEdit Details

FRIEND REVIEWS

Recommend This Book None of your friends have reviewed this book yet.

READER Q&A

Ask the Goodreads community a question about Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic

54355902. uy100 cr1,0,100,100

Ask anything about the book

Be the first to ask a question about Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic

LISTS WITH THIS BOOK

I Am That by Nisargadatta MaharajThe Power of Now by Eckhart TolleTao Te Ching by Lao TzuA New Earth by Eckhart TolleThe Diamond in Your Pocket by Gangaji

Best Books on Spiritual Enlightenment / Awakening

315 books — 329 voters

Siddhartha by Hermann HesseSteppenwolf by Hermann HesseDemian by Hermann HesseThe Power of Now by Eckhart TolleReveries of the Solitary Walker by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Best Books on Awakening

233 books — 272 voters

More lists with this book...

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Showing 1-30

Average rating4.28 · Rating details · 1,005 ratings · 73 reviews

Search review text

English ‎(60)

More filters | Sort order

Sejin,

Sejin, start your review of Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic

Write a review

Melanie

Sep 18, 2007Melanie rated it liked it

Recommends it for: people looking for a guru

Well, I had heard a bit about Osho as I am in the whole New Age thing, but I have to say, this guy is so full of himself, it's hard to see past it.

Osho was the guru who built a huge ashram in Oregon in the late 80s and was arrested for dipping his hands in the cookie jar more than once. He was known to live a lavish lifestyle and make no apologies about it. The book is his story, and the whole time, he just keeps reminding readers about how great he is.

To be fair, some of the things he has to say are important: "You are being taught from the very childhood not to be yourself, but the way it is said is very clever, cunning. They say, 'You have to become like Krishna, like Buddha,' and they pain Buddha and Krishna in such a way that a great desire arises in you to be a Buddha, to be a Jesus, to be a Krishna. This desire is the root cause of your misery...Try to understand the point. If it is against your will, even in paradise you will be in hell. But following your natural course of being, even in hell you will be in paradise. Paradise is where your real being flowers. Hell is where you are crushed and something else is imposed on you"

Here here!

So a mixed bag. Good for reading in small doses while in the potty.

(less)

flag10 likes · Like · comment · see review

Priya

Oct 11, 2015Priya rated it really liked it

"When a dewdrop slips from a lotus leaf into the ocean, it does not find that it is part of the ocean, it finds it is the ocean."

I picked this book out of curiosity to know what goes into the making of an enlightened master and I got my answer. It was a delightful read. It made me question a lot of things I took for granted and has left a lasting impact.

flag6 likes · Like · comment · see review

Claudius Odermatt

May 23, 2013Claudius Odermatt rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Those Seeking Truth, spiritual and religious individuals or those wanting a good laugh

I personally have immensely enjoyed this book, packed with great insight on life and 'god' were at times you may question yourself but then a couple pages later you burst into sheer laughter at the madness (especially when he goes on talking about his 93 RR's). Osho has strived for his whole life to get the 'truth' out to those who truly seek in such a way that he will help you realize the golden gems hidden within you as he understands humanity.

Having Osho share with us his experience you will get a glimpse into his life's story (Amusing and interesting, especially during his University years) and allows you to develop a better understand of his teachings and his very nature through his own words, not the medias or what you have heard online.

His overall vision was to have one religion for the world, science. Now the very definition of science is 'knowing' however the world only focuses one end of science, the external and not its polar opposite, internal. The science of looking within. Both are needed. Along with LOVE. <3

Alll in all i would much rather not say too much about this book as it will take away its authenticity with my words, read it for yourself, one i would consider re-reading.

Thankful to have stumbled upon Osho and his books, especially this one.

(less)

flag4 likes · Like · comment · see review

Michael Sinai

May 25, 2012Michael Sinai rated it it was amazing

Autobiographies from enlightened beings make for some of the most interesting and inspirational reading. This one is right up there at the top of the list.

flag3 likes · Like · comment · see review

Kavya

Oct 23, 2012Kavya rated it really liked it

This is one autobiography one wants to read if she wants to know more about the person himself than the trivias surrounding his life. This book doesn't have any great details all the people who came in his life (for those who see a mention, sometimes even the basic like his/her name is skipped) to my utter relief !!. In order to build enough context, most of the biographies go in depth talking about the inane details starting form the person's schooling to what not. But this book doesn't has any of it. The context is set by speaking in the language of spirituality;

This book revolves around the life of a man. This book is a small effort in presenting the man himself as it raises more doubts in my mind about him than it clears. His journey pre,during and post enlightenment , re-affirms certain notions to me; I see a sync in his experience and some others narrators (authors whom I have read in the past) who quote about their journey of spiritual enlightenment.

Osho being osho is still remains a mystic to me. (less)

flag2 likes · Like · comment · see review

Hlyan

May 29, 2017Hlyan rated it it was amazing

In this autobiography, Osho gets very personal. His recount of his childhood, his life as a college student and professor are so amusing, funny and also emboldening. Then his life as a spiritual master becomes rather exciting. When he went to America, it feels like I was reading a suspense or a crime novel. I already knew what was going to happen to the commune but I wanted to know his recount of the events, how he perceived them, what he learned and how he responded - and they were really heartening.

You will get not only glimpses of this spiritually incorrect mystic but also a taste of his philosophy, his teachings, and his bold and daring visions. (less)

flag2 likes · Like · comment · see review

Narendra Singh

Dec 19, 2008Narendra Singh rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Anyone who is seeker, or want to know about Osho

Recommended to Narendra by: I just got it in book store

This is a very good book. I like the book very much becasuse it tell much about religion, about osho and about being yourself. The line in this book which is like the most is "Be in the world, but don't be of it. Live in the world, but don't allow the world to live in you"

flag2 likes · Like · comment · see review

Tejvinderbrar

Jun 23, 2014Tejvinderbrar added it

Osho is spitually correct and always was he was an enlighyened master. In fact a master of masters. He had expeirnced enlightenment to its hightest level possible by man. he never was and never will be "spitually incorrect"

flag2 likes · Like · 1 comment · see review

Justin

Sep 19, 2008Justin rated it did not like it

Shelves: spirituality, nonfiction, personal-faith-journeys-etc

Osho apparently experienced genuinely high spiritual states at one point, but he came under the influence of negative forces later in his life. He is best left alone.

flag2 likes · Like · 1 comment · see review

Swarna Pawar

Feb 02, 2016Swarna Pawar rated it it was amazing

It's a masterpiece about a master who took on the rotten belief systems. He lives on & his teaching will inspire people forever (less)

flag2 likes · Like · comment · see review

Nick

Jul 21, 2013Nick rated it really liked it

"consciousness continues. The pilgrimmage of consciousness is endless. So what is happening in the consciousness, inside the body, will go on happening outside the body. That is a simple understanding." (xvii)

"But to me, spirituality has a totally different connotation. It needs an honest individuality. It does not allow any kind of dependence.

It creates a freedom for itself, whatever the cost. It is never in the crowd, but alone, because the crowd has never found any truth.The truth has been found only in people's aloneness." (3)

"Spiritual, to me, simply means finding one's self. I never allowed anybody to do this work on my behalf--because nobody can do this work on your behalf;

you have to do it yourself." (3)

"In the past there were children married before they were ten. Sometimes children were even married when they were still in their mother's womb. Just two friends would

decide: 'Our wives are pregnant, so if one gives birth to a boy and the other gives birth to a girl, then the marriage is promised.' The question of asking the boy and girl does not arise at all; they are not even born yet! But if one is a boy and another is a girl, the marriage is settled. And people kept their word.

My own mother was married when she was seven years old. My father was not more than ten years old, and he had no understanding of what was happening. I used to ask him,

'What was the most significant thing that you enjoyed in your wedding?' He said, 'Riding on the horse.' Naturally! For the first time he was dressed like a king, with a knife hanging by his side, and he was sitting on the horse and everybody was walking around him. He enjoyed it tremendously. That was the thing he enjoyed most about his wedding. A honeymoon was out of the question. Where will you send a ten-year-old boy and a seven-year-old girl for a honeymoon? So in India the honeymoon never used to exist, and in the past, nowhere else in the world either." (5)

"Silence has its vibe; it is infectious." (7)

"The moment you see someone dependent on you in any way, you start indoctrinating." (10)

"in fact, if you believe in any religion, you cannot meditate. Religion is an interference with your meditation. Meditation needs no God, no heaven, no hell, no fear of punishment, and no allurement of pleasure. Meditation has nothing to do with the mind; meditation is beyond it, whereas religion is only mind, it is within mind." (10)

"as far as religion is concerned, everybody is lying. Christians, Jews, Jainas, Mohammedans--everybody is lying. They all talk of God, heaven and hell, angels and all kinds of nonsense,

without knowing anything at all." (13)

"Nobody should lie--to a child, at least, it is unforgiveable. Children have been exploited for centuries just because they are willing to trust. You can lie to them very easily, and they will trust you. If you are a father, a mother, they will think you are bound to be true. That's how the whole of humanity lives in corruption, in a very slippery, thick mud of lies told to children for centuries. If we can do just one thing, a simple thing--not lie to children and to confess to them our ignorance--then we will be religious and we will put them on the path of religion." (13)

"It is a scientific fact that people who eat less live longer." (14)

http://www.pbs.org/safarchive/4_class...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles...

http://www.askmen.com/sports/news/21_...

"Unless one is a born troublemaker one cannot become a buddha."(18)

"It is never too late to change. If you see what you have chosen is not right, change it. In fact, be quick, because you are getting old. Don't say 'I am old, so I cannot change.' A young man can affort not to change but not an old man--and you are old enough." (19)

"Stop all this nonsense! Nobody ever changes unless one changes right now. Don't say 'I will, I will.' Either change or don't change, but be clear." (19)

"Unless one is rebellious, one is not religious. Rebellion is the very foundation of religion." (20)

"Separation has its own poetry, one just has to learn its language, and one has to live in its depth. Then out of sadness itself comes a new kind of joy...which looks almost impossible, but it happens." (20)

"Death can only be encountered in the death of a loved one. When love plus death surrounds you, there is a transformation, an immense mutation, as if a new being is born. You are never the same again. But people do not love, and because they do not love they can't experience death the way I experienced it. Without love, death does not give you the keys to existence. With love, it hands over to you the keys to all that is." (25)

"Love with freedom--if you have it, you are a king or a queen. That is the real kingdom of God--love with freedom. Love gives you the roots into the earth, and freedom gives you the wings." (25)

"I want to be an educated vagabond,not a vagabond out of weakness. I don't want to do anything in my life out of weakness--because I could not be anything else, that's why I'm a vagabond--that is not my way. First I want to prove to the world that I can be anything that I want to be,still I choose to be a vagabond-- out of strength. Then there is a respectability even if you are a vagabond, because respectability has nothing to do with your vocation, your profession; respectability has something to do with acting out of strength, clarity, and intelligence." (28)

"I take direct action. I don't believe in unnecessary talk." (31)

"I never missed a single opportunity to sharpen my intelligence. I turned every possible opportunity toward sharpening my intelligence, individuality. You can understand now, looking at the whole picture, but in fragments...The people who came into contact with me of course were unable to understand what kind of man I am--crazy, nuts--but I was going about it very methodically." (32)

"Only once in a while a man becomes a wild human being. I am now; Buddha was, Zarathustra was, Jesus was--" (33)

"Whenever you are in love with flowing things, moving things, you have a different vision of life. Modern man lives with asphalt roads, cement and concrete buildings. These are nouns, remember, these are not verbs. The skyscrapers don't go on growing; the road remains the same whether it is night or day, whether it is a full-moon night or a night absolutely dark. It doesn't matter to the asphalt road, it does not matter to the cement and concrete buildings.

Man has created a world of nouns and he has become encaged in his own world. He has forgotten the world of the trees, the world of the rivers, the world of the mountain and the stars. They don't know of any nouns, they have not heard about nouns; they only know verbs. Everything is a process. God is not a thing but a process." (39)

"Although Jesus says, 'man cannot live by bread alone,' man cannot live without bread either. He needs the bread. It may not be enough, he needs many more things, but many more things come only later on; first comes the bread. Man certainly can live by bread alone. He will not be much of a man -- but who is much of a man? But nobody can live without bread, not even Jesus." (40)

"I was going into the mosque, and they allowed me. Christians, Mohammedans--these are converting religions; they want people from other folds to come into their fold. They were very happy seeing me there--but the same question: 'Would you like to become like Hazrat Muhammad?' I was surprised to know that nobody was interested in my just being myself, helping me to be myself.

Everybody was interested in somebody else, the ideal, their ideal, and I have only to be a carbon copy? God has not given me any original face? I have to live with a borrowed face, with a mask, knowing that I don't have any face at all? Then how can life be a joy? Even your face is not yours.

If you are not yourself, how can you be happy?" (41)

"You are taught from the very childhood not to be yourself, but the way it is said is very clever, cunning. They say, 'You have to become like Krishna, like Buddha,' and they paint Buddha and Krishna in such a way that a great desire arises in you to be a Buddha, to be a Jesus, to be a Krishna. This desire is the root cause of your misery.

I was also told the same things that you have been told, but from my very childhood I made it a point that whatsoever the consequence I was not going to be deviated from myself. Right or wrong I am going to remain myself. Even if I end up in hell I will at least have the satisfaction that I followed my own course of life. If it leads to hell, then it leads to hell. Following others advice

and ideals and disciplines, even if I end up in paradise I will not be happy there, because I have been forced against my will.

Try to understand the point. If it is against your will, even in paradise you will be in hell. But following your natural course of being, even in hell you will be in paradise. Paradise is where your real being flowers. Hell is where you are crushed and something else is imposed upon you." (41)

'it is very difficult for the old traditionalists, the orthodox people, to accept laughter. You cannot laugh in a church." (44)

"It is good to fall a few times, get hurt, stand up again--to go astray a few times. There is no harm. The moment you find you have gone astray, come back. Life has to be learned through trial and error." (46)

"Life is the basis of all worries. When you are going to die anyway one day, why worry?

...If you accept death, there is no fear. If you cling to life, then every fear is there...

If you accept death, a distance is created. Life moves far away with all its worries, irritations, everything. I died, in a way, but I came to know that something deathless is there.

Once you accept death totally, you become aware of it." (57)

"When nobody expects anything from you, you fall into a silence. The world has accepted you; now there is no expectation from you." (61)

"That one year of tremendous pull drew me farther and farther away from people, so much so that I would not recognize my own mother, I might not recognize my own father; there were times I forgot my own name. I tried hard, but there was no way to find what my name used to be. Naturally, to everybody else during that one year I was mad. But to me that madness became meditation, and the peak of that madness opened the door." (63)

"When you first enter the world of no-mind it looks like madness--the "dark night of the soul," the mad night of the soul. All the religions have noted the fact; hence all the religions insist on finding a master before you start entering into the world of no-mind--because he will be there to help you, to support you. You will be falling apart but he will be there to encourage you, to give you hope. He will be there to interpret the new to you. That is the meaning of a master: to interpret that which cannot be interpreted, to indicate that which cannot be said, to show that which is inexpressible. He will be there, he will devise methods and ways for you to continue on the path--otherwise you might start escaping from it. And remember, there is no escape. If you start escaping you will simply go berserk. Sufis call such people the mastas. In India they are known as mad paramhansas. You cannot go back because it is no longer there, and you cannot go ahead because it is all dark. You are stuck. That's why Buddha says 'Fortunate is the man who has found a master.'" (64)

"I was working alone on myself with no friends, no fellow travelers, no commune. To work alone, one is bound to get into many troubles, because there are moments that can only be called dark nights of he soul. So dark and dangerous, it seems as if you have come to the last breath of your life, this is death, nothing else. That experience is a nervous breakdown. Facing death, with nobody to support and encourage you...nobody to say not to be worried, that this will pass away. Or, 'This is only a nightmare, and the morning is very close. The darker the night, the closer is the sunrise. Don't be worried.' Nobody around whom you trust, who trusts you--that was the reason for the nervous breakdown.

But it was not harmful. It looked harmful at the moment, but soon the dark night was gone and the sunrise was there, the breakdown had become the breakthrough. To each individual it will happen differently. And the same is true after enlightenment: the expression of enlightenment will be different." (79)

"That is how all religions are created: individuals imposing their experience on the whole of humanity, without taking into consideration the uniqueness of every individual... They cannot accept other enlightened people for small reasons, because they don't suit their ideas. They have to fit with a certain concept, and that concept is derived from their own founder. And nobody can fit with that, so everybody else is denounced as unenlightened." (81)

"the enlightened man has no answers, no scriptures, no quotations marks. He is simply available; just like the mirror he responds, and he responds with intensity and totality. So these are liquid qualities, not qualifications. Don't look at small things--what he eats, what he wears, where he lives--these are all irrelevant. Just watch for his love, for his compassion, for his trust. Even if you take advantage of his trust, he does not change his trust. Even if you misuse his compassion, cheat his love, that does not make any difference. That is your problem. His trust, his compassion, his love remain just the same. His only effort in life will be how to make people awake. Whatever he does, this is the only purpose behind every act: how to make more and more people awake, because through awakening he has come to know the ultimate bliss of life." (82)

"a man who has never gone in the rains, under the trees, cannot understand poetry." (85)

"Universities destroy most people's interest and love for poetry. They destroy your whole idea of how a life should be; they make it more and more a commodity. They teach you how to earn more, but they don't teach you how to live deeply, how to live totally--and these are where you can get glimpses. These are where small doors and windows open into the ultimate. You are told the value of money but not the value of a rose flower. You are told the value of being prime minister or a president but not the value of being a poet, a painter, a singer, a dancer. Those things are thought to be for crazy people." (85)

"The way you present your arguments is strange. It is sometimes so weird that I wonder...how did you manage to look at it from this angle? I have been thinking about a few problems myself, but I never looked from that aspect. It strikes me that perhaps you go on dropping any aspect that can occur to the ordinary mind, and you choose only the aspect that is unlikely to occur to anybody.

For four years you have been winning the [interuniversity debating] trophy for the simple reason that the argument is unique and there is nobody ready to answer it. They have not even thought about it, so they are simply in shock. Your opponents--you reduce them so badly, one feels pity for them, but what can we do?" (86)

"you have seen me only in the debate competitions. You don't know much about me; I may prove a trouble for you, a nuisance. I would like you to know everything about me before you decide.

Professor S.S. Roy said, 'I don't want to know anything about you. The little bit that I have come to know, just by seeing you, your eyes, your way of saying things, your way of approaching reality, is enough. And don't try to make me frightened about trouble and nuisance--you can do whatsoever you want." (87)

"The first day I joined his class, Professor S.S. Roy was explaining the concept of the Absolute. He was an authority on Bradley and Shankara. Both believe in the Absolute--that is their name for God.

I asked him one thing, which made me very intimate to him and he opened his whole heart to me in every possible way. I just asked, "Is your 'absolute' perfect? Has it come to a full stop

or is it still growing? If it is still growing, then it s not absolute, it is imperfect--only then can it grow. If something more is possible, some more branches, some more flowers--then it is alive.

If it is complete, entirely complete--that's the meaning of the word absolute; now there is no possibility for growth--then it is dead...Is your God alive or dead? You have to answer this question." (87)

"My whole life from the very beginning has been concerned with two things: never to allow any unintelligent thing to be imposed upon me, to fight against all kinds of stupidities, whatsoever the consequences, and to be rational, logical, to the very end. This was one side, which I was using with all those people with whom I was in contact. And the other was absolutely private, my own: to become more and more alert, so that I didn't end up just being an intellectual." (91)

"I was amazed to know that when you discuss something and discover the logical pattern, the whole fabric, you need not remember it. It is your own discovery; it remains with you. You cannot forget it." (94)

"When you trust someone, it is very difficult for him to deceive." (95)

"When I do something, I do it to the very end." (96)

"I have found throughout my life that if you are just a little ready to sacrifice respectability, you can have your way very easily. The society has played a game with you. It has put respectability on too high a pedestal in your mind, and opposite it, all those things that it wants you not to do. So if you do them, you lose respectability.

Once you are ready to say, 'I don't care about respectability,' then the society is absolutely impotent to do anything against your will." (97)

"Don't hesitate! Just move and get mixed. In my class you cannot sit separately. And I don't mind if you try to touch the girl or the girl tries to pull your shirt; whatever is natural is accepted by me. So I don't want you to sit there frozen, shrunken. That is not going to happen in my class. Enjoy being together. I know you have been throwing slips, stones, letters. There is no need. Just sit by her side, give the letter to the girl, or whatever you want to do--because in fact you are all sexually mature; you should do something. And you are just studying philosophy, you are absolutely insane! Is this the time to study philosophy? This is the time to go out and make love. Philosophy is for the old age when you cannot do anything else--you can study philosophy then." (98) (less)

flag1 like · Like · comment · see review

Anda

Oct 13, 2019Anda rated it really liked it

Shelves: 50book-2019

Silence has its vibe; it is infectious, particularly a child's silence, which is not forced, which is not because you are saying, "I will beat you if you create a nuisance or noise." No, that is not silence. That will not create the joyous vibrations I am talking about, when a child is silent on his own, enjoying for no reason; his happiness is uncaused. That creates great ripples all around. p 7

My grandfather loved me, but he could not help me much. He was loving, but to be of help more is needed - a certain kind of strength. p 9

Nobody should lie - to a child, at least, it is unforgivable. Children have been exploited for centuries just because they are willing to trust. ... That's how the whole of humanity lives in corruption, in a very slippery, thick mud of lies told to children for centuries. If we can do just one thing, a simple thing - not to lie to children and to confess to them our ignorance - then we will be religious and we will put them on the path of religion. Children are only innocence; leave them not your so-called knowledge. But you yourself must first be innocent, unlying, true. p 13

Knowledge makes you cunning. I was not cunning. I simply asked the question any child could have asked if he were not educated. Education is the greatest crime man has committed against poor children. Perhaps the last liberation in the world will be the libration of children. p 17

"It is never too late to change. If you see what you have chosen is not right, change it. In fact, be quick, because you are getting old. Don't say 'I am old, so I cannot change' A young man can afford not to change, but an old man-you are old enough." p 19

Whenever you are in love with flowing things, moving things, you have a different vision of life. Modern man lives with asphalt roads, cement and concrete buildings. These are nouns, remember, these are not verbs. The skyscrapers don't go on growing; the road remains the same whether it is night or day, wether it is a full-moon night or a night absolutely dark. It doesn't matter to the asphalt road, it does not matter to the cement and concrete buildings. / Man has created a world of nouns and he has become entangled in his own world. He has forgotten the world of trees, the world of the rivers, the world of the mountains and the stars. They don't know of any nouns, they have not heard about nouns; they know only verbs. Everything is a process. God is not a thing but a process. p 39

They were very happy seeing me there - but the same question: "would you like to become like Jesus/Hazrat Muhammad?" I was surprised to know that nobody was interested in my just being myself, helping me to be myself. / The whole existence is blissful because the rock is rock, the tree is tree, the river is river, the ocean is ocean. / You are being taught from the very childhood not to be yourself, but the way it is said is very clever, cunning. They say 'You have to become like Krishna, like Buddha,' and they paint Buddha and Krishna in such a way that a great desire arises in you to be a Buddha, to be a Jesus, to be a Krishna. This is the root cause of your misery. // Paradise is where your real being flowers. Hell is where you are crushed and something else is imposed on you. p 41

...our language is created by us. It consists of words like achievement, attainment, goals, improvement, progress, evolution. Our languages are not created by enlightened people; and in fact they cannot create language even if they want to, because enlightenment happens in silence. How can you bring that silence into words? And whatsoever you do, the words are going to destroy something of that silence. p 67

But right now whatsoever you see is not the truth, it is a projected lie. / You are using the real world as a screen and projecting your own ideas on it. p 77

- that was the reason for the nervous breakdown. But it was not harmful. It looked harmful at the moment, but soon the dark night was gone and the sunrise was there, the breakdown has become the breakthrough. // if I were to make a religion, then this would be a basic thing in it: that anybody who becomes enlightened will first have to go through a nervous breakdown, only then he will have a breakthrough. That is now all the religions are created: individuals imposing their experience on the whole of humanity, without taking into consideration the uniqueness of every individual. p 79

But the enlightened man has no answers, no scriptures, no quotation marks. He is simply available; just like a mirror he responds, and he responds with intensity and totality. // even if you take advantage of his trust, that does not change his trust. Even if you misuse his compassion, cheat his love, that does not make any difference. That is your problem. His trust, his compassion, his love remain just the same. p 82

So my whole life from the beginning has been concerned with two things: never to allow any unintelligent thing to be imposed upon me, to fight against all kinds of stupidities, whatsoever the consequences, and to be rational, logical, to the very end. // And the other was absolutely private, my own: to become more and more alert, so that I didn't end up just being an intellectual. p 91

And I was amazed to know that when you discuss something and discover the logical pattern, the whole fabric, you need not remember it. It is your own discovery; it remains with you. You cannot forget it. p 94

I have found throughout my life that if you are just a little ready to sacrifice respectability, you can have your way very easily. The society has played a game with you. It has put respectability on too high a pedestal in your mind, and opposite it, all those things that it wants you not to do. So if you don't do them, you lose respectability. Once you are ready to say, "I don't care about respectability," then the society is absolutely impotent to do anything against your will. p 97

Teachers are born as poets, it is a great art. Everybody cannot be a teacher, but because of universal education, millions of teachers are required. / Just think of a society that thinks everybody has to be taught poetry and poetry has to be taught by poets. Then millions of poets will be required. Of course, then there will be poets' training colleges. Those poets will be bogus, and then they will ask. "applaud us! Because we are poets. Why are you not respecting us?" This has happened with teachers. / In the past there were very few teachers. People used to travel thousands of miles to find a teacher, to be with him. There was tremendous respect, but the respect depended on the quality of the teacher. It was not demanded from the disciple of from the student or the pupil. It simple happened. p 101

Gautam Buddha, Lao Tzu in China, Socrates in Athens - they were all contemporaries but they had no idea of each other. p 102

The synthesis has to include all the artists and their insights-all the musicians, all the poets, all the dancers, their insights. All the creative people who have contributed to life, who have made humanity richer, have to be taken into account. Nobody has ever thought of the artistic people, that their contribution is also religious. // In my vision it is a triangle-science, religion, art. And they are such different dimensions-they speak different languages / unless you have a deep insight in which they can all melt and become one. p 103

The awakened man understands humanity so deeply. By understanding himself he has understood the miserable state of all human beings. // He does not return evil for evil, for the simple reason that he does not feel offended in the first place. Second he feels sorry for now, he does not feel antagonistic toward you. p 105

I would have loved not to be associated in any way with the word religion // and this is not about any one single religion, it is the same story repeated by all the religions of the world: man exploiting man in the name of God. // in my communing with people, those words-atheist, irreligious, amoral-functioned like impenetrable walls. The moment people heard that I was [] they were completely closed. p 106

"I have risked everything; I was rich, I renounced that to become a Jaina monk. Now I have renounced Jainism, the monkhood, just to be a nobody so that I can have total freedom to experiment." p 116

I simply became tired of the whole thing, because each day I would have to start from ABC. It was always ABC ABC ABC and it became absolutely clear that I would never be able to reach XYZ. p 116

[enlightened man sculpting sand sculptures p 118] These people will remain unrecognised. A dancer may be a buddha, a singer may be a buddha, but these people will not be recognised for the simple reason that their way of doing things cannot become a teaching. p 119

The question arises almost for everyone, that the way I talk is a little strange. No speaker in the world talks like me-technically it is wrong, it takes almost double the time // My speaking is really one of my devices for meditation; I do not speak to give you a message but to stop your mind functioning. // I am using words to create silent gaps. The words are not so important soI can say anything contradictory, anything absurd, anything unrelated, because my purpose is just to create silent gaps. The words are secondary; the silences between those words are primary. This is simply a device to give you a glimpse of meditation. And once you know that it is possible for you, you have traveled far in the direction of your own being. p 120

I cannot force you to be silent, but I can create a device in which spontaneously you are bound to be silent. I am speaking and in the middle of a sentence, when you were expecting another word to follow, nothing follows but a silent gap. And your mind was looking to listen, and waiting for something to follow, and does not want to miss it-naturally it becomes silent. p 121

You may be a sinner, you may be a saint-it does not matter. If the sinner can become silent, he will attain the same consciousness as the saint. p 121

The more you become confident, the more you will be able. without my speaking you will start finding devices yourself. For example, you can go on listening to the birds-they suddenly stop, and they suddenly start. Listen ... there is not reason why this crow should make noises and then stop. It is just giving you a chance. You can find these opportunities, once you know... p123

Pay more attention to it, to why you become silent. Don't make me wholly responsible for your silence, because that will create a difficulty for you. Alone, what are you going to do? Then it becomes a kind of addiction, and I don't want you to be addicted to me. I don't want to be a drug to you. p 125

I have been telling you it is possible to go 'from sex to superconsciousness' and you have been very happy-you hear only 'from sex' you don't hear 'to superconsciousness.' // sex is only a beginning-not the end. And nothing is wrong if you take it as a beginning. If you start clinging to it, then things start going wrong. p 131

And I am not afraid of brainwashing because I am not putting cockroaches in your mind. I am giving you an opportunity to experience a clean mind, and once you know a clean mind you will never allow anybody to throw rubbish and crap into your mind. // Dirtying other people's minds is a crime, but all over the world all the religions, all the political leaders, are using your mind as if it is a toilet. // I am a brainwasher. / And those who come to me should come with clear conception that they are going to a man who is bound to brainwash, to clean minds of all kinds of cockroaches. Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian-they are all against me for the simple reason that they go on putting their cockroaches, and I go on washing people's minds. / It is an up-to-date religious laundry. p 134

I am not saying, 'just follow me, I am the saviour. I will save you' All that is crap. Nobody can save you, except yourself. // The real and authentic independence is that you are not dependent on anybody for your inner growth. // This is a company, not of a master and disciples, this is a company of a master and potential masters. p 135

And by and by you will see-the master is coming. And it is not coming from the outside, it is coming from your inner most core, it is arising from your depths. I looked in, and found him there. My message is simple-that I have found the god within me. My whole effort is to persuade you to look within. The only question is of becoming a watcher on the hills. Become a witness-alert, observing-and you will be fulfilled.

You are here because you are frustrated with your money. You are here because you are frustrated with your success. You are here because you are frustrated with your life. A beggar cannot come because he is not yet frustrated. / Religion is a luxury-the ultimate luxury I call it, because it is the highest value. When a man is hungry, he does not bother about music-he cannot. And if you start playing the sitar before him, he will kill you! He will say 'You are insulting me! I am hungry and you are playing a sitar-is this the time to play the sitar? Feed me first! [] I am dying!' When a man is dying of hunger, what use is a can Gogh painting or a Buddha sermon or beautiful Upanishads or music? Meaningless, he needs bread. // When a man is happy with his body, has enough to eat, has a good house to live in, he starts becoming interested in music, poetry, literature, painting, art. Now a new hunger arises. The bodily needs are fulfilled, now psychological needs arise. There is a hierarchy in needs [...] // A Kabir becomes religious. He was not a millionaire, but he was tremendously intelligent. Buddha became religious because he was tremendously rich. Krishna and Ram and Mahavir became religious because they were tremendously rich. Dadu, Raidas, Farid-they became religious because they were tremendously intelligent. But a certain sort of richness is needed. p 147/148

Not a single exception! That's why I say meditation is a scientific thing. That's how science works: If you can find something without exception, then it becomes a rule. Meditation is a scientific method because in the whole of history nobody has said that it does not lead you to the ultimate blissfulness. p 154

A spiritual mind makes no distinctions between matter and spirit; it is undivided. The whole existence is one-that is the spiritual mind. The materialist, even if he loves a woman, reduces her to a thing. Then who is a spiritualist? A spiritualist is a person who, even if he touches a thing, transforms it into a person. p 156 . (less)

flagLike · 2 comments · see review

Tom Stevens

Sep 25, 2016Tom Stevens rated it it was amazing

If you've read any of Osho's talks and want to know more about Osho, this book will give you some insight into Osho.

Or maybe not.

Osho was an enigma, and he liked it that way. He said things like "The answer you are seeking is that there is no answer." He told some great stories, including plenty of funny jokes, and he may have been a wonderful distraction for those who needed a coping mechanism, a way to distance themselves from the suffering of this existence. But Osho was a stirrer. He loved to stir things up. His clear headedness (according to him) was nothing short of brilliant in the most difficult of situations, which he managed to sometimes even turn into situational comedies.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and just the fact that these stories purport to be true make them feel real and exciting, though it may be impossible to prove or disprove them.

Spoiler:

The end of the book points very strongly to a catholic/US government conspiracy to poison him. But the book is edited and published by Osho's adherents. Some internet articles about Osho's chief of staff give me the impression that his chief of staff stands out as a likely suspect. Not only did she have a penchant for poisoning people, it was known that she had her chemist/poisoner prepare an untraceable poison for Osho in case he wanted to end it all with minimal suffering. Any indication of Osho willingly taking poison has to my knowledge never surfaced.

(less)

flag1 like · Like · comment · see review

Eden

Oct 28, 2009Eden rated it it was amazing

Osho's life story. It puts his teachings in context.

Osho has become a real teacher for me in the last year. From his words, I am learning to be alive in each moment, as "the future" is illusory and unknown and "the past" has already come and gone. He emphasized the equal importance of silence and celebration in the balanced, whole person. That is a balance I find incredibly difficult to strike, but am continuing to understand as a truly healthy way of being. Further, I am working to balance the growth of my intellectual understanding of life with my direct experience of life - as both knowing and knowledge each have their place. (less)

flag1 like · Like · comment · see review

Michael Graber

Sep 26, 2011Michael Graber rated it it was amazing

This autobiography was weaved together from many talks given by OSHO over a long period of time. The 30+ year span enabled something too rare in Autobiography, which is the summary of life from one temporal vantage point. Osho was such a talented speaker, critical thinker, and had such a sharp wit that this book ranks highest among the many autobiographies I have read (others that rate as high are Mark Twain and Steve Martin's Born Standing Up). More important, OSHO's insistence on meditation as a path to integrate cultures, science and religion, and fuse the arts led to a universal vision that might, if we try and practice it, save humanity from itself. (less)

flag1 like · Like · comment · see review

오쇼 자서전 - 길은 내안에 있다

오쇼 (지은이),김현국 (옮긴이)태일출판사2013-07-10원제 : Autobiography Of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic

정가

20,000원

판매가

18,000원 (10%, 2,000원 할인)

마일리지

1,000원(5%) + 멤버십(3~1%)

+ 5만원이상 구매시 2,000원

세액절감액

810원 (도서구입비 소득공제 대상 및 조건 충족 시)

배송료

무료

Sales Point : 119

9.0 100자평(2)리뷰(2)

이 책 어때요?

카드/간편결제 할인

무이자 할부

품절 출판사/제작사 유통이 중단되어 구할 수 없습니다.

품절센터 의뢰

보관함 +

- 품절 확인일 : 2017-03-09

이 도서는 <오쇼 라즈니쉬 자서전 - 길은 내안에 있다>의 개정판입니다.

구판 정보 보기

새상품

eBook

중고상품 (5)

판매알림 신청

출간알림 신청

23,000원

중고모두보기

중고로 팔기

기본정보

624쪽

117*187mm

624g

ISBN : 9788981511975

주제 분류

신간알림 신청

국내도서 > 인문학 > 동양철학 > 인도철학

국내도서 > 종교/역학 > 명상/선

국내도서 > 종교/역학 > 종교일반 > 종교인물

이벤트

인문ON 앱레터 수신 신청하면 추첨 적립금

이 시간, 알라딘 굿즈 총집합!

책소개

'길은 내안에 있다'. '나'라는 존재에 대한 인식과 진정한 자유에 대한 성찰을, 그리고 명상의 중요성을 가르쳤던 '오쇼 라즈니쉬' 자서전이다. 철학적인 질문으로 많은 나날을 보냈던 어린시절부터 성장하고 자라나는 과정속에서의 깨우침, 그리고 세계적인 명성을 얻은 후의 발자취를 담았다.

편집자 서문

서문

1부 평범한 인간: 전설 뒤의 숨은 역사

평범한 인간: 전설 뒤의 숨은 역사

황금빛 어린 시절의 일별들

반역적인 영혼

불멸을 찾아서

깨달음: 과거와의 단절

칼날을 세우며

길 위에서

표현될 수 없는 것을 표현하다: 단어들 사이의 침묵들

2부 빈 거울에 비친 그림자들: 결코 존재하지 않았던 한 인간의 여러 얼굴

빈 거울에 비친 그림자들: 결코 존재하지 않았던 한 인간의 여러 얼굴

섹스 구루

컬트 교주

사기꾼

‘자칭 바그완’

부자들의 스승

농담꾼

롤스로이스 구루

스승

3부 유산

유산

종교 아닌 종교

21세기를 위한 명상

제3의 심리학: 붓다의 심리학

조르바 붓다: 완전한 인간

4부 오쇼의 일생과 그 주요 사건들

오쇼의 일생과 그 주요 사건들

접기

저자 및 역자소개

오쇼 (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh) (지은이)

저자파일

최고의 작품 투표

신간알림 신청

오쇼는 자신을 특정 영역으로 구분하는 것을 거부한다. 오쇼의 가르침은 삶의 의미를 묻는 개인적인 질문에서부터 현대사회가 직면한 정치 사회적 문제들까지 모든 분야를 망라하고 있다. 오쇼의 책들은 전 세계의 청중들과 나눈 즉석문답을 오디오와 비디오로 기록하여 책으로 엮어낸 것이다. 이에 대해 오쇼는 ‘이것을 명심하라. 지금 나는 그대들만을 위해 말하고 있는 것이 아니다. 내 말은 다가오는 미래 세대를 위한 것이기도 하다.’라고 말한 바 있다.

런던의 <선데이 타임즈>는 20세기를 일군 1천 명의 주요인물 가운데 한 명으로 오쇼를 선정했으며, 미국의 작가 탐 로빈스Tom Robbins는 오쇼를 예수 이후에 가장 위험한 인물로 평가했다. 인도의 <선데이 미드데이>는 인도의 운명을 바꾼 열 명의 위인들 중에 간디, 네루, 붓다와 더불어 오쇼를 선정했다.

오쇼는 자신의 일에 대해 새로운 인류가 탄생할 수 있는 환경을 조성하는 것이라고 설명했다. 그는 이 새로운 인류를 ‘조르바 붓다Zorba the Buddha’로 규정했는데, 이는 그리스인 조르바의 세속적인 기쁨과 고타마 붓다의 평온함이 조화를 이룬 인간상을 말한다.

그의 강의와 명상법들은 시간을 초월한 지혜와 함께, 현대 과학기술이 지닌 잠재성까지도 포괄하고 있다. 오쇼는 날로 가속화되는 현대인의 삶에 적합한 명상법을 고안해 냄으로써 내적 변형이라는 분야에 혁명적인 공헌을 한 것으로 알려져 있다. 그의 독창적인 액티브 명상법Active Meditation들은 우선적으로 신체에 쌓인 스트레스를 해소하기 위해 고안된 것이다.

오쇼의 자서전에는 <내 어린 시절의 황금빛 추억>이 있다. 접기

최근작 : <잠에서 깨어나라>,<감정을 초월하라>,<내부로부터의 행복> … 총 966종 (모두보기)

김현국 (옮긴이)

한국외국어대학교 인도어과를 졸업했다. 옮긴 책으로 <거위는 밖에 있다>, <누구도 죽지 않는다>가 있다.

최근작 : … 총 3종 (모두보기)

출판사 제공 책소개

길은 내 안에 있다

나는 밤의 어둠 속에서 별들과 함께 강을 보며, 대양을 향해 흐르는 강물과 함께 춤을 추었다. 나는 이른 아침 떠오르는 태양과 함께 강을 보았다. 나는 보름달 속에서 강을 보았다. 나는 일몰과 함께 강을 보았다. 나는 강기슭에 홀로 앉아, 혹은 친구들과 함께, 혹은 피리를 불며, 혹은 강기슭에 서 춤을 추며, 혹은 강기슭에서 명상을 하며, 혹은 그 안에서 배를 저으며, 혹은 강을 가로질러 수영을 하며 그 강을 보았다. 빗속에서도, 겨울에도, 여름에도…….

어느 날은 성공하고, 어느 날은 실패한다.

어느 날은 정상에 있고, 또 어느 날은 밑바닥에 있다.

그러나 그대 안의 무엇인가는 언제나 그대로이다.

그리고 바로 그 무엇인가가 그대의 실체이다.

나는 나의 실체를 살 뿐이다.

나는 실체를 둘러싼 모든 꿈과 악몽들 속에 살지 않는다.

북플 bookple

이 책의 마니아가 남긴 글

친구가 남긴 글

내가 남긴 글

친구가 남긴 글이 아직 없습니다.

마니아

읽고 싶어요 (3)

읽고 있어요 (0)

읽었어요 (6)

이 책 어때요?

구매자

분포

자서전을 읽을 정도라면 오쇼의 책을 어느 정도 섭렵하셨겠지요? 역시 이분은 탄생과 유년시절부터 남달랐던 분입니다. 두근거리며 읽었고, 그 아름다운 에너지에 넋을 잃었습니다. 아, 물론 제목만 '자서전'입니다^^

白野 2015-09-16 공감 (0) 댓글 (0)

마이리뷰

자신만을 믿어라

오쇼 라즈니쉬, 나와 동시대를 겹치게 살았으면서도 오래 전에 사두었던 몇 권의 책이 그와 나의 인연의 전부였다. 그러나 이 분의 책을 좋아한 선배들이 있었고 그들과의 인연으로 이 책이 나에게로 왔다. 나는 오쇼 라즈니쉬를 몰랐다. 그런데 그의 인생 전기가 이토록 나에게 강렬한 인상을 남길 줄 그 누가 알았으랴! 아마 좀 더 이 존재에 대해 알았다면 더 많은 책들을 읽었을 것이고 그의 영향을 더 많이 받았으리라 생각한다. 모든 종교적 교리와 맹목적 믿음에 대해 비판하고 탈종교적 움직임의 진리추구에 그가 기여한 바가 크며 그래서 인간적이고 세속적인 면들과 영적이고 정신적인 면들을 모두 누리고 즐기고 살아간 존재, 그가 얘기한 조르바붓다와 같은 존재로서의 삶을 세상의 많은 젊은이들로 하여금 찾게 하였던 것이다.

그는 정신적 성장을 위해 그 누구에게도 의지하지 말고 전적인 자신에 초점을 맞춘 삶을 살라고 한다. 스승을 모시고 배우는 것도 중요하지만 결국은 스스로의 체험에 이르기까지 자신의 책임으로 홀로 의지하지 않고 자신의 길에 우뚝 서 있으라고 한다. 그러나 이 세상에 스스로의 밝은 영혼의 길을 따라 바람부는 대지 위에 홀로 우뚝 서 있을 수 있는 사람이 과연 몇이나 되는가? 스승의 도움으로 스승같은 글의 도움으로 근근히 하루하루 벌어먹고 사는 존재인 우리들.....그러니 스스로 홀로 가는 이들은 그야말로 전생과 전전생 그 무수한 생을 통해 닦고 공부한 이들이 아닐까?

그러나 공부의 길에 들어선 이라면 이러한 마음가짐은 필요하다고 생각한다. 사막 위에 홀로 우뚝 서서 길을 걷는 자세로 걸어야 한다. 스승에게 의지하되 홀로 걸음을 내디딜 수 있어야 한다. 스승이 비춘 길을 향해 스스로의 체험으로 스스로의 두 발로 고통을 겪어가며 직접 걸어가야 한다. 그리하여 비로소 홀로서 가는 길 위에서 정직하게 만나야 하는 체험들 속에서 더욱 성숙해져야 하리라. 그러기 위해서는 자신의 안으로 시선을 돌려야 한다. 스스로를 들여다보는 오랜 시간의 깊어짐을 겪은 후에야 비로소 그 길을 스스로 찾아갈 수 있다.

눈이 밝아진 자는 스스로의 때를 알아 세상에 나서고 또 스스로의 때를 알아 공부한다. 밝지 못하면 때를 모르고 나서서 좌충우돌하고 때를 모르고 상을 쫒는다. 세상 모두가 자신의 마음이 빚어낸 어리석음으로 휩싸여 고통받고 놀림당한다. 스스로가 스스로를 속이고 스스로를 조롱한다. 그 상황에서 벗어나기 위해서는 바른 안목과 공부하는 자세가 필요하다. 눈이 밝은 자라야 비로소 사람을 만나도 온전하고 또 그 사람을 바른 공부의 길로 인도할 수 있다. 그러니 우리는 앞길을 못보는 장님이다. 바른 길을 가르쳐주는 이의 글을 길삼아 마음으로 난 길을 걸어야 한다. 오늘도 내 눈앞에는 그 길이 있다. 아니, 그 길을 만들어가야 한다. 한 걸음 한 걸음 내가 디딜 땅은 스스로가 만들어내어야 한다. 그럴 때에라야 비로소 나는 걸을 수 있고 제자리에서 벗어날 수 있다.

온 세상의 음모와 권력이 그를 미워했을 때에도 그가 흔들리지 않을 수 있었던 힘은 어디에 있었을까? 그는 떳떳했고 부끄러워야 할 것은 세상이었다. 어떻게 하면 이렇듯 큰 사람이 될 수 있을까? 그의 인생 앞에서 나는, 작은 나는 좀 더 성장하기를 기원할 뿐이다.

- 접기

달팽이 2013-11-12 공감(3) 댓글(0)

Thanks to

깨어살아라 - 세상의 모든, 유일한 가르침

이 책은 하나의 가르침을 담기위한 수많은 비유와 상징 그리고 일화들로 가득하다.

설명할 수 없는 것을 설명하기 위한 오쇼의 많은 세월에 걸친 고민과 노력이 엿보인다.

"깨어살아라"

이 가르침은 동서고금의 모든 영적 스승들과 선각자들의 공통된 가르침이면서,

그 자체로 수행과 그 결실을 아울러 담고있는 유일한 가르침이다.

깨어사는 삶의 중요성은 요즘시대를 사는 사람이라면 누구나 공감하지만

어떻게 깨어살 수 있는지와, 그것이 실생활 가운데 구체적으로 어떤 영향을 주는지,

혹은 내가 고민하는 지금 이 상황에서 어떤 도움을 주는지는 대다수는 잘 모르고있다.

동서고금의 영적 스승들의 가르침이 이 하나의 문장을 상황에 맞게 적용, 변형, 확장한 내용이라는 작은 통찰을 이루었다면 이 책을 읽은 50%의 성과를 달성한 것이다.

그러나 깨어산다는 결심이 실제 평상심으로 굳어지게 하기 위해서는,

이 책을 반복적으로 읽을 필요가 있다.

뼈에 새겨질 때까지 읽어야,

정말로 깨어사는 것이 나의 일상생활이 될 것이다.

- 접기

2020/08/11

Racism in America, Post-George Floyd – RECONCILERS with Chris Rice

Racism in America, Post-George Floyd – RECONCILERS with Chris Rice

RECONCILERS with Chris Rice

truth & mercy embrace. justice & peace kiss. psalm 85

Blog
Bio
Books/Resources
Projects/Initiatives
In the Media
Contact/Follow

Racism in America, Post-George Floyd
Chris Rice August 4, 2020 Uncategorized
Post navigation
Previous
Next

Global Church/Public Square – August 2020 edition

A Continuing Survey of Faith, Public Witness, and the World

With this I begin a monthly post called “Global Church/Public Square” – an extended, essayish commentary on global issues and voices through the lens of Christian faith and public witness. The August focus is racism in America.
When black men die too soon

In recent years I’ve been haunted by the early deaths of a number of black American men, friends who were part of our interracial church community in Mississippi where I worshipped for 17 years. Most were in their 40s, the oldest was 62, all died of so-called “natural causes.” Our church was perhaps 150 members, half black and half white. But I know of no early deaths of any white members. Some anecdotes matter, they are symbolic. How could so many of our black men die so early and none of us white men? For me this makes painfully vivid the consequences of historic racial healthcare disparities seen in the disproportionate deaths of black Americans (as well as Hispanics and Native Americans) due to COVID-19 that are, as Rev. William Barber and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove write in TIME, “like contrast dye on an MRI, highlighting a malignancy in our body politic” (malignancy– remember that word). In this double U.S. crisis of COVID-19 and continuing legacies of racism revealed in the police killing of George Floyd, there is now a double mourning of both the too-soon loss of friends and early deaths for so many across the U.S. which are not “natural” at all.

Why America’s racism is treatment-resistant

Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson, author of The Ordeal of Integration and Slavery and Social Death

The story above brings to mind the angry young person who recently asked me: “Why does racism still exist in America?” As in, “one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”? A succinct answer is provided from one of America’s most penetrating racial analysts, Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson (see The Long Reach of Racism in the U.S. and Why America Can’t Escape Its Racist Roots). The key words are “racist roots.” Patterson writes in the Wall Street Journal that the U.S. is “the only modern nation that had slavery in its midst from the very beginning,” and gives a brief history of how inequality was woven into political, economic, and judicial systems from slavery, to state-supported segregation and violence, to federal housing laws, to today’s criminal justice system (the world’s largest prison system), with continuing harmful effects. Very importantly, Patterson also contends there have been periods of significant progress made possible by America’s other paradoxical founding reality: a system with potential to create change, seen in the current protests which he calls “a sign of societal strength” (quite different, for example, from Hong Kong protesters facing a mainland China system which does not allow protest or the vote). But here is today’s disturbing reality according to Patterson: America is as racially segregated in 2020 as it was in the 1960s, the black poverty rate is 2.5 times the white rate, the wealth gap is worsening, and more black children (two-thirds) grow up in high-poverty segregated areas than they did in 1970. In naming slavery of African people and the colonizing of Native American people as “racists roots” or, theologically, America’s “original sins,” we name a cancer of the kind civil rights veteran James Lawson called “malignant” – deeply rooted, capable of mutating into new forms, cells not easily dying, and infectious, with its consequences passed down generationally. Furthermore, unlike the intense treatments of national Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in countries like South Africa with apartheid and Canada with indigenous people, and Germany’s confrontation with its Nazi past, there has never been a sustained national process of repair and healing related to black and Native Americans (see the new book Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery by Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah). This brings to mind peace studies sociologist John Paul Lederach’s sobering claim that it takes as many years to get out of a conflict as it took to get into it, which is why he calls for “decades-thinking approaches” when it comes to healing deep social wounds and injustices. Treatment must be long-term and tenacious, in multiple stages and at multiple levels (institutional, interpersonal, individual), and is resistant to success.
Just Mercy, the suffering of John Perkins, and criminal justice in America

Bryan Stevenson and John Perkins in June 2020 online dialogue.

The murder of George Floyd starkly revealed the relationship of policing and criminal justice culture to America’s racial malignancy. A Wall Street Journal article by a U.S. military veteran contends that policing in America is a culture formed in a mindset and practices appropriate not to guardianship but to war – including a default to view certain communities as “enemy,” to dehumanize them, and to expect immunity for doing so. I thought of this as I listened to a remarkable online “bible study” conversation between Christian lawyer Bryan Stevenson of Just Mercy fame and Christian Community Development Association founder John Perkins (Stevenson first heard Perkins speak when he was a student at Eastern University). As Stevenson narrated the historical movements of violent control of black lives in America, I could not help but look at Perkins and think of his brother Clyde returning to Mississippi from World War II in 1946 as a decorated war veteran. Standing in line for a movie, Clyde objected to a police officer’s harsh words. The officer shot Clyde on the spot and he died on the way to the hospital. Then, 24 years later, Perkins became a threat due to his civil rights activism. In 1970 he was ambushed on a highway by Mississippi state police and nearly beaten to death overnight in a jail. Neither these officers or Clyde’s killer were ever punished. Then, 21 years later it was Rodney King’s beating by Los Angeles officers and the protests that followed. And now, 29 years later, the many incidents of police brutality leading up to George Floyd. This goes alongside political policies from Presidents Reagan to H.W. Bush to Clinton which resulted in black people being six times more likely than white people to be imprisoned for the same crime, like drug use, even though both groups consume illegal drugs at roughly the same rate.
One obstacle to white evangelical liberation

Federal housing policies left African-Americans and other people of color out of new suburban communities — and pushed them instead into urban housing projects, such as Detroit’s Brewster-Douglass towers.
Paul Sancya/AP

The cure is not to focus on either “this or that racist officer” at one extreme or “good officer” exceptions at the other (see this inspiring New Yorker story of one black and high-ranking New York City officer whose grandmother told him black families never call the police, who is working for change from within). Addressing the malignancy of racism in America is impossible without thinking and locating oneself institutionally. Here we meet a major obstacle for many white American evangelicals. Sri Lankan theologian Vinoth Ramachandra recently wrote that “many of my white friends in the U.S. (and elsewhere, I should add) … cannot grasp the severity of the situation. Their view of ‘sin’ is individual, rather than structural and systemic. Because they themselves are not ‘racist’ in their attitude to others, they fail to empathize with the rage of those who suffer every day… And they are more offended by the ‘tone’ in which people protest than the situation which gives rise to such protest.” (Ouch. I remember the 1983 racial reconciliation meetings at our church in Mississippi, when I stood precisely in this camp, unable to receive any truth beneath the surface of black anger.) This Atlantic article maintains that many white evangelicals dismiss the category of systemic racism as a form of “cultural Marxism.” But here is the blindspot. In the landmark book by Michael Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America, the sociologists assert that white evangelicalism – due to an individualistic, ahistorical, and anti-institutional captivity – does not have the resources to engage racism’s institutional reality:

… it is a necessity for evangelicals to interpret the [race] problem at the individual level. To do otherwise would challenge the very basis of their world, both their faith and the American way of life. They accept and support individualism, relationalism, and anti-structuralism. Suggesting social causes of the race problem challenges the cultural elements with which they construct their lives. This is the radical limitation of the white evangelical toolkit … … [for whom] there really is no race problem other than bad interpersonal relationships (italics mine).

Hard words, yes. But we cannot grow toward beloved community apart from hard truth. A worldview – even more a theology – which says that life chances, good health, and social mobility are earned and deserved (or not) solely by individual effort, and says racism is an ideology of those diminishing numbers who contend whites are superior to blacks, cannot account for racism’s institutional consequences. Ramachandra draws the critical distinction: “If I live within and benefit from a socio-economic-political system that has been constructed on such a premise, I share in the guilt of racism.” A Wall Street Journal article about the current systemic racism debate points to federal housing policy as being where lingering effects of past actions are most clear; via policies beginning in the early 1940’s, as one expert puts it, “houses were sold at a very, very cheap rate that allowed for generational wealth to be developed in the white population, and did not in the Black population” (see the 2017 book The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America). If this race-based disparity cannot be understood as a kind of harmful institutional sin then, as author Jemar Tisby tells the Atlantic magazine, a “mainly intrapersonal, friendship-based reconciliation [is] virtually powerless to change the structural and systemic inequalities along racial lines in this country (see Tisby’s book The Color of Comprise: The Truth About the American Church’s Complicity in Racism). At Duke Divinity School Stanley Hauerwas taught us that, in the Bible, sin is more of a captivity than something you do or don’t do. To accept that the benefits I enjoy are not simply earned, but tainted by inequality by design? This requires a shattering change of identity. A conversion.
Thomas Jefferson statues and how America is only a 60-year old nation

June 2020: Thomas Jefferson statue torn down in front of Jefferson High School in Portland, Oregon.

A critical challenge is moral wrestling with history. If I would recommend only one video, it’s this PBS interview with two top Jefferson scholars Annette Gordon-Reed and Jon Meacham (a black woman and white man) as they wrestle with the legacy of Thomas Jefferson as a slaveholder who authored the ideal of human equality expressed in the Declaration of Independence. Should Jefferson statues be taken down along with statues to Confederate leaders? Meacham says Washington and Jefferson were “wildly imperfect,” yet should be judged differently from those who took up arms against the Constitution to create a Confederate slave empire. “There’s a difference,” adds Gordon-Reed, “between trying to destroy the United States of America and having created it. And the people who created it… we have to grapple with the imperfection of their lives.” I find this kind of wisdom about human fallibility often missing in the left’s outright dismissal of any moral good in the American past, and the right’s outright blessing of American exceptionalism – with both cleanly dividing the nation into good people and bad people. Here is the two scholars’ critical claim, and for me it was a revelation: The United States which seeks justice for all is only a 60-year old nation. “There can be a tendency to say that [racism] is over,” says Gordon-Reed. “But you don’t get rid of hundreds of years of slavery in a century. Blacks don’t become full citizens until 1965. That is a blink of an eye in history.” And then Meacham: “The country we have right now, the polity we have, was really created in 1965. Not only with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act but with the Immigration Naturalization Act, which totally changed the nature of the country. So no wonder this is so hard. No wonder we’re having such a ferocious white reaction… It’s simply the lesson of history that we are in fact a better country than we were yesterday. It doesn’t mean we’re perfect. It doesn’t mean we stop. But there are enough of us doing all we can as citizens and leaders to create a country that more of us can be proud of.” All the more reason to press forward into a new stage of pursuing justice for all.
Kinds of white people: 4 emerging critiques

Protesters gather in front of Minnesota Governor’s Residence on June 1, 2020, in Saint Paul, MN. (Photo by Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)

The new climate of anti-racism protest is offering up much analysis on the current state of white people in America, and I have seen four categories emerging which point to the work ahead. First is what sociologist Patterson describes as an estimated 20 to 25 percent who still hold white supremacist views and “have been encouraged and are leading a revanchist sort of movement.” I find this percentage alarming; when the U.S. president, for example, refuses to denounce the Confederate flag, he emboldens this group. They are the ones who many have traditionally limited the term “racist” to, as in “I am not one of them, so I am not responsible.” A second group of white people emerging is what Vinoth Ramachandra describes as those of “comfortable middle class lethargy.” They are said to remain quiet because they find charges of racism to be overblown and the Black Lives Matter movement to be divisive (see a response to these objections from professors at two predominantly white evangelical schools, Biola University and Greenville University: “How Christians Should – and Should Not – Respond to Black Lives Matter”). One white North Carolina Baptist pastor writes in the Christian Century that support for Black Lives Matter among these Christians may have accelerated in part because so many white churches have closed their buildings. Such churches’ traditional responses to racial unrest, he contends, have prioritized “civility” and forms of education, dialogue, and prayer which have “neutraliz[ed] the radical and more costly message of justice.” Now, however, “undeterred by the well-established responses they host, historically white churches have been less able to keep a distance. We’ve been less sheltered, less apt to respond in traditional ways, and… have had less power to moderate the tension and thereby neutralize the moment.” A third group of whites coming under scrutiny have liberal views yet are said to be historically unwilling to pay the price for deep change. While Patterson sees “extraordinary progress in the changing attitudes of white Americans toward blacks and other minorities,” many “are not prepared to make the concessions that are important for the improvement of black lives.” New York Times columnist Charles Blow states it more bluntly in “Allies, Don’t Fail Us Again”: “Many white people have been moved by the current movement, but how will they respond when true equality threatens their privilege?” The fourth group is what some call “woke whites.” They, too, meet skeptical voices, such as Blow’s concern that protests not become “an activist chic summer street festival … not systemic racism Woodstock.” The Biola and Greenville professors write that in this era of “virtue signaling,” whites can appear righteous simply by using the right words and attending the right protests with the right angry demeanor. A contradiction they see is that progressive whites tend to gather in cities that are at once diverse and also some of the most segregated and unequal places in American society. The danger is this:

… the rhetorical displays associated with protest culture give elite white people a chance to exhibit apparent solidarity ‘on the cheap.’ White enthusiasm for antiracist rhetoric may compensate for other forms of solidarity that would be too costly. Put differently, white performative solidarity may disguise a lack of deeper forms of solidarity.

Ironically, then, it may not only be white evangelicals who lack an adequate understanding of institutional change. New York Times columnist David Brooks critiques what he calls a “Social Justice theory of change” (an unfortunate turn of phrase by Brooks, detaching social justice from moral and biblical traditions) which emerged from elite universities and seeks to purify the culture, such as “canceling” people who voice contrary opinions. This approach, he argues, doesn’t produce much actual change. “Corporations are happy to adopt some woke symbols and hold a few consciousness-raising seminars and go on their merry way,” he writes. “Worse, this method has no theory of politics.” The four groups of white people I’ve described point to four obstacles to a new chapter of justice for all: Active resistance from white extremists. The comfortable and silent majority. Solidarity without sacrifice. All of which avoid costly political change. Blow squarely names the cost: “We must make ourselves comfortable with the notion that for the privileged, equality will feel like oppression.” I felt a painful jolt when I read that, muscle memory from the 1983 racial crisis in our Mississippi church. Black members began asking why we whites dominated positions of leadership and contended that whites needed to step back, and blacks step forward. I almost left during that painful summer. But I came to see that I was a big fan of justice for all – as long as it didn’t affect benefits for me. What I also learned was that our black members were staying step back, not step out. That is another way of saying let’s stay together – with equity. The way forward, writes Brooks, is reparations and integration, namely, “an official apology for centuries of slavery and discrimination, and spending money to reduce their effects.” This means that “racial disparity, reform [of] militaristic police departments and … an existential health crisis … is going to take government. It’s going to take actual lawmaking, actual budgeting, complex compromises — all the boring, dogged work of government that is more C-SPAN than Instagram.” And because much of the segregation in America is geographic, lasting change must include giving reparations money to neighborhoods. Brooks points to Minneapolis where George Floyd was killed, where “early-20th-century whites-only housing covenants pushed blacks into smaller and smaller patches of the city. Highways were built through black neighborhoods, ripping their fabric and crippling their economic vitality.” This resulted in “long-suffering black neighborhoods.” Brooks contends that the expertise to lift up such neighborhoods lies with the people who live there, giving examples from South Los Angeles in the Sisters of Watts and Unearth and Empower Communities.
White people and sacrifice

Edwin King (left) and Aaron Henry, members of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Tougaloo College Archives.

New York Times columnist Blow comes down hard on white allies in the 1964 summer civil rights movement who, he says, ultimately disappointed. Of 2020 he asks, “How will our white allies respond when this summer has passed? How will they respond when civil rights gets personal and it’s about them and not just punishing the white man who pressed his knee into George Floyd’s neck? How will they respond when true equality threatens their privilege, when it actually starts to cost them something?” Critical questions, and with them, where do we look for hope? If hope requires sacrifice, what does that sacrifice look like? Where are stories of white people who illuminate the alternative? During the Mississippi summer of 1964, with their black Mississippi colleague James Chaney, New York City civil rights workers Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were murdered and buried in an earthen dam. When I think of meeting white Mississippian Ed King I remember his facial scars from white violence and his work alongside Dr. King and NAACP chair Medger Evers. “Medgar became the older brother and teacher,” says King. “And Martin must have felt somehow that this white Southerner was worth redeeming.” In recent times I think of Glen Kehrein in Chicago and Allan Tibbels in Baltimore, who through Circle Urban Ministries and New Song Ministries bound their lives living and working for justice with black people who welcomed them into their communities. There, Kehrein and Tibbels themselves found liberation, and their lives enlarge our vision for what is required to build a new reality of justice for all. “The reason I believe in racial reconciliation,” Kehrein once told me, “is because it’s the best way I know of for a white male to die to self.” Deep work for racial justice is public and visible. But much of the time it is gradual, local, quiet, and long-term – the very opposite of “activist chic.” For white people writes David Goatley, Duke Divinity School professor and Director of the Office of Black Church Studies, this is about choosing to be uncomfortable. “White folks need to join communities that Black folks lead,” such as black-led justice organizations like NAACP local branches. And when it comes to white Christians, “I have said to friends who long for more multicultural churches, ‘Join a Black church’ … Black folks suffer non-Black cultural leadership all the time. It is time for white people to learn to be uncomfortable without their cultural leadership.”
More Than Equals, boundary-crossing relationships, and a theory of change

In the 1993 book I co-authored with Spencer Perkins (John Perkins’ son), More Than Equals: Racial Healing for the Sake of the Gospel, we called for deep, honest, and costly boundary-crossing relationships across racial lines. That might sound sentimental next to today’s protests and calls to address institutionalized racism. Yet a great deal of conflict studies research about theories of change shows that the institutional and the relational have to be held together. A powerful example is two of today’s most important voices regarding America’s criminal justice crisis, Just Mercy’s Bryan Stevenson and Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Both lawyers, Stevenson and Alexander testify they were blind to this crisis for many years. What gave them eyes to see was unexpected interruptions – encounters with inmates inside prison walls. Relational encounters across a divide became ground for being persuaded by previously unseen truth, which evoked compassion, which led to passionate advocacy for change. The deepest, long-term work for change comes not from people who are forced to change but who become persuaded and passionate to change, and central to that is life-changing relationship and encounter on strange and difficult ground. As we mourn the recent death of civil rights pioneer and U.S. Congressional leader John Lewis, I think of his relational influence on Robert F. Kennedy. As a Netflix documentary tells the story, when Kennedy was killed in 1968 he stood to become America’s first social justice president. But that required a long journey of conversion, through encounters across divides with Lewis, in the Mississippi Delta with Marian Wright Edelman, and in California with Cesar Chavez and striking farm workers. Alexander, Stevenson, and Kennedy reveal the truth that deep work for social justice requires holding together relational and institutional change. And add to that a biblical understanding of spiritual change, revealed in the truth that “our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world (Ephesians 6:12). In choosing More Than Equals as our book title, by “more” Spencer and I meant a new and costly interracial reality of trust, justice, forgiveness, and mutuality – in short, koinonia. But it would be a serious problem to jump over “equals” to “more.” The title was not Less Than Equals, or Let’s Be Friends Now.
Anti-racism toward what?

Anti-racism is now at the forefront of calls for change. In Jesus’ first public words in the gospel of Luke, reading from Isaiah 61, he states emphatically that God is anti-oppression:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.

If God is anti-oppression, then God is anti-racist. And anti-oppression and anti-racist toward what? The “favorable year of the Lord” says Jesus, a reference to the Jubilee year of liberation, of the setting free of prisoners and debts, and returning land to the original owners. God’s liberation is more than anti-this or that. It moves toward a goal, an end, a positive new reality. It moves, in the words of the Psalmist, to where “truth and mercy embrace, justice and peace kiss” (Psalm 85). It moves to tear down the dividing walls of hostility to create “one new humanity” (Ephesians 2). It moves to the end of time, the “vast multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language” gathered as one people (Revelation 7). At the end of the day, as Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote, beauty will save the world. I glimpsed that in a column by Michelle Alexander (see America, This is Your Chance). Writing of the best of the recent protests – “people of all races, ethnicities, genders and backgrounds rise up together, standing in solidarity for justice, protesting, marching and singing together” – she says: “Our only hope for our collective liberation is a politics of deep solidarity rooted in love.” Then there is John Lewis, writing a few days before his death (Together, You Can Redeem the Soul Of Our Nation), “In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way.” The “toward what” question reimagines, yet must not lose sight of, what is most needed in the here and now. Certain biblical texts speak to certain times. (After the 9/11 attacks in 2001 I remember Duke professor Ellen Davis saying it was not the time for Americans to pray psalms of imprecation). In an online devotion in July, New York City pastor Rich Villodas mentioned a comment by Yale Divinity professor Willie Jennings in his commentary on Acts that prophetic boundary crossing does not happen after worship, but is an interruption on the way to the sanctuary itself and, if a road not taken, questions the authenticity of worship. Villodas then asked how many times we had heard the words of Amos preached from the pulpit (Message translation, 5:21-24):

I can’t stand your religious meetings.
I’m fed up with your conferences and conventions.
I want nothing to do with your religion projects,
your pretentious slogans and goals.
I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes,
your public relations and image making.
I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music.
When was the last time you sang to me?
Do you know what I want?
I want justice—oceans of it.
I want fairness—rivers of it.
That’s what I want. That’s all I want.

Listening to Amos, what is the word for this time? When it comes to the challenge of race in America, writes Duke’s Goatley, “destroying anti-Black racism is not the only work to be done. If we make progress on this stubborn and sinful reality, however, we will handle the rest.” The word for here and now, he suggests, is this: “I am weary about conversations and resolutions… Consequently, I challenge more of us to start working for liberation. Then we can work on reconciliation.” Like the comfortable religious leaders in Jesus’ Good Samaritan story, we dare not pass quickly by the murdered body of George Floyd on the other side of the Jericho road. As I wrote elsewhere, you cannot reconcile with somehow who has a foot on your neck. We dare not talk about reconciliation without getting feet off necks. For everything there is a season. In the spirit of Luke 4 and of Amos, this is the season to take down racial disparities. This is the season of liberation.
“We Need More”

Paramedic Anthony Almojera (third from right) and his team: “The things we see are sometimes difficult to shake”

More Americans have now died of COVID-19 than in World War I, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War combined. While for most Americans the pain of those 154,000 deaths is hidden, not so for the Bronx, New York family of beloved father and church deacon Nathaniel Hallman. After he died, his family was unable to find a funeral home to take his body, which was finally discovered in an unrefrigerated U-Haul truck. There is also dedicated New York City paramedic Anthony Almojera, his courage amid harrowing experiences, and truths learned. “One thing this pandemic has made clear to me,” he tells the Washington Post, “is that our country has become a joke in terms of how it disregards working people and poor people. The rampant inequality. The racism. Mistakes were made at the very top in terms of how we prepared for this virus, and we paid down here at the bottom.” For Mr. Almonjera and the Hallman family this pandemic has been shattering. Mindful of them, and all the 154,000 dead and counting, and their loved ones, and of countries which have brought the virus under control, where is our collective outrage about the failure of governmental leadership at so many levels? For God intends this pain to not only speak to us, but to activate us. As Vinoth Ramachadra writes with regard to COVID-19, “the Biblical writers know nothing of apologetics. In the face of innocent human suffering, they don’t defend God. They protest to God. And if the cause of that suffering is systemic injustice or political oppression, they confront those responsible.” Tears flowed when I first heard Taylor Fagins’ song of lament dedicated to George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and many other black people who have died. “We Need More” he cries out. May we all cry out. May we all be shattered. In this time of crisis, may we all become more.

Chris Rice is director of the Mennonite Central Committee United Nations Office in New York City. He is co-author of Reconciling All Things and was founding co-director of the Duke Divinity School Center for Reconciliation.

Share this:

Twitter
Facebook

Related

Credibility for Christianity: A Revival at America’s MarginsIn "Christian Community Development Association"

Loving Enemies Doesn’t Mean Ignoring Injustice

Why I’m Sticking with “Reconcilers”In "Racism"
Post navigation
PreviousThe Irreplaceable Love of a Mother
NextHow Long O Lord? Lamenting 70 Years of Korea’s Division

2 Comments

Nancy Rich
August 10, 2020 at 2:07 pm

So true and well said and documented. Thanks Chris, Nancy
Reply

Laura Truax
August 10, 2020 at 2:52 pm

What a terrific article. Thank you for your thoughtful compilation and analysis.
Reply

Leave a Reply

About

Chris Rice (Doctor of Ministry, Duke University) is an award-winning author and was cofounding director of the Duke Divinity School Center for Reconciliation. From inner-city Mississippi, to Duke University, to East Africa, to Northeast Asia, he has helped give birth to pioneering initiatives to heal social conflicts and renew Christian life and mission. Chris currently serves as Director of the Mennonite Central Committee United Nations Office in New York City.

Recent Posts
Pandemic Pilgrimage: How Life with Dad Became Holy Ground
How Long O Lord? Lamenting 70 Years of Korea’s Division
Racism in America, Post-George Floyd
The Irreplaceable Love of a Mother
We Cannot Grow in Love Without Loving Truth