How I found my master or how he found me

My journey to meet Osho started in autumn 1976. At that time I was engaged in the hippie movement, and we tried to run a country commune in a rotten old farmhouse on wasted land in the middle of nowhere in Germany. There it happened one night that I had a dream that changed my life completely.

But I have to go a little further back in time. I had my first contact with sannyasins one year earlier, on my first journey overland to India. In those days we used to travel by hitchhiking, local bus or local train, because it was cheap and we had only little money to spend. I think it was in Teheran that I met a freak-bus-driver named Anand Dharma and his friend Satyarthi from Switzerland, who was running a bus line from Amsterdam to Poona, called Neo-Sannyas Tours. We checked in and drove with them all the way to Nepal, which was their first destination. In Pokhara I split with them, because I wanted to stay there for some time as it was beautiful in Nepal at that time. It was there that I met Premananda sitting under a bodhi tree, playing on his sitar. He told me a lot about sannyas and Bhagwan, as we used to call Osho at that time. Premananda became my first close sannyas friend; we lived together and remained connected over many years.

I left Nepal after a couple of weeks heading for Poona, but ended up in Goa, where it was just like paradise. Then, on my third day there, I met Madhav Krishna on Chapora beach; he was walking around at sunset-time dressed in a lungi, playing his bamboo flute. As we came into talking, I found out that he came from the same area where I used to live in Germany, and that he was a sannyasin already since 3 years or so. We became friends, and I moved into his house. He was my second longtime friend and we are still in touch today.

The plan was to travel together to see Osho in Poona after the Hindi lectures were over, but then I went broke and also my visa expired. So I had to leave India, flying back from a hot paradise right into cold winter in Germany, only dressed in a loose Indian shirt and trousers, and chappals on my bare feet. In Munich there was heavy snowfall and I had to hitchhike for another 300km to get home!

However, back home I met old friends and we decided to start this hippie commune thing I was talking about in the beginning.

So then in autumn 1976 my journey to see Osho started with this dream I had one night. Like in a film I saw Osho in a white robe, in the middle of dancing orange people, waving at me with his arms and telling me something very important. Unfortunately I had forgotten what he had said to me the very moment I woke up and opened my eyes.

Now this was really staggering. Somehow it hit me right in the bottom of my soul. After thinking it over for some time I came to a sudden conclusion and decided to leave the village and to head for Poona straight away to see this man – finally in person.

Three days later I left my friends and my girlfriend. She was crying her eyes out and screamed at me, asking me to stay or to take her with me all along the way overland to India. But both was not possible. I had this strong spiritual urge to go and she could not come because she was only seventeen and had to go to school.

So I split, took all my money, which was about 400 DM, hitchhiked to Munich, and from there I drove a car, a brand new American Chevy Blazer, for a rich Iranian guy all the way down to Teheran, which earned me another 450 DM, and this seemed to be enough money to make it till Poona. From Iran I went overland via Isfahan and Quetta to Kabul, where I stayed for a couple of weeks, doing side trips to see famous places like Band-e Amir and Bamyan with the gigantic Buddha statues which unfortunately can no longer be seen today. In short, I very much liked the people and the way of life in Afghanistan during those pre-war times.

Finally I arrived in Poona around Christmas, went to the ashram office the next day and got a darshan date for the 1st January, 1977, which was exactly 21 days before my 21st birthday.
I still remember that I was very nervous on that evening, because I still had an ugly cough hanging on me since Afghanistan. I also had recently discovered lice in my long hair, which I needed to treat with some utterly stinking Indian anti-lice lotion. So, after showering almost half a dozen times, I finally took heart and mind together, caught a rickshaw and headed to the ashram for darshan.

On the gate was Punitam, later a guard at Lao Tzu, another friend of mine. He smelled my hair with his big nose and shook his head, saying that smelling like this I would never get in. So this was not very helpful to my already shaky state of mind. But I thought, let’s try, and move on… And, amazingly, the darshan smellers let me in! I got a place on the very front, and there I sat trembling and shivering inside.

Suddenly my name fell, I stood up, went ahead, falling at Oshos feet, literally, and touching his feet with my head, because I heard somewhere this would be the traditional posture a disciple had to approach the master with.

But Osho touched my shoulders, led me sit up, smiled heavenly and said: ”No need to do this.” Then I sat down before him, looked into his eyes, and suddenly all my turmoil was gone, and I dissolved within a flush of bliss. It felt like coming home, like I had known this soul for many a lifetime, and so did he know me.

He told me then something about my new name and that I should join in the AUM marathon group led by Veeresh, which was one of his first groups that he led at the ashram. Later on, on the way out, I walked like on feathers, feeling high, far out and totally blissed out. But I had forgotten a lot of what Osho had said to me.

Fortunately my darshan is documented in the Darshan Diary The Buddha Disease, which came out a couple of years later, I think around 1980. So I am able to quote some parts of what he said.

“This will be your new name: Swami Buddhaprem.

Buddha means one who is enlightened, and prem means love – love for the enlightened one, or love for enlightenment.

Buddha is not a person – mm? It is a state of ultimate being. There have been many Buddhas, and everybody is potentially a Buddha. The word itself means tremendously awakened, absolutely alert… one whose consciousness has completely disappeared, who is just pure consciousness. You can look through and through and there is no darkness in it… not even lingering somewhere in the corners.

He has no basement to his being. Nothing is repressed, he holds back nothing. His trust with existence is one hundred percent. Doubts have disappeared… darkness has disappeared. He has come home. That is the meaning of Buddha.

But by giving you this name, I would like you to beware of a certain danger. I am not saying to you to become like Gautam Buddha – the most famous Buddha. Nobody can become like anybody else –there is no need to.

Each individual has to become himself. That´s how you will become a Buddha – not by following and imitating a Buddha. If you imitate a Buddha or a Christ, you will be an imitation. So this may look paradoxical but it is a very basic point to be understood. If one really wants to become a Buddha he has not to follow any Buddha, not to imitate anybody – he has not to become a carbon copy. […]

My whole effort here is not to make anything out of you but to simply help you to become whatsoever you can become – whatsoever! I have no fixed idea… I have no ideal. I have to simply help you to grow.

Mm? just like a gardener: he helps the rosebush to be a rosebush, and he helps the lotus to be a lotus. He does not try to make a lotus become a rosebush, neither does he try to make the rosebush a lotus. He protects. He waters… he gives manure. He gives his love and warmth. He surrounds the rosebush with all the care that he can, just to help it to become itself.

Will it be easy to pronounce, Buddhaprem? Good!”

Read Part 2: Travels with Sadhus and Yarns of Wool

Buddhaprem now lives near Stuttgart, Germany working as a free artist. See his work on Osho News: Glass Art by Buddhaprem – www.privatetiffanyatelier.info