Suha, who has just published a poetry book, talks about her life.
I first met Osho in 1985 when my sister Jivanmukta invited me to visit her in the Commune in Oregon. Before leaving I had a dream: I am sitting on a bed with Osho to my left and Jivanmukta to my right. Osho turns towards Jivanmukta and says to her: “But you never told me that your sister writes poetry.” Who would have thought I would write poems someday – because until then I had written only two!
On the bus from Portland to the Ranch I fell asleep and dreamt that I would leave Rajneeshpuram without taking sannyas – and this is exactly what happened! (I eventually took sannyas in early 1986 in Amsterdam.) Osho had recently started to speak again and, in the first discourse I attended in the Mandir, he was talking about Paris, the town where I live and where I was just coming from. It was like a welcome. But in the ocean of red-robed sannyasins my green-yellow dress was remarkably visible!
After Osho had returned to India, I spent my summer holidays (from 1986 to 1988) in Pune. Three times the blessed gaze of his eyes penetrated me like a shower of pure light! I used to visit my friends at the Italian Osho Times and while watching their graphic designers my long-time wish to work for a newspaper got kindled. I remember dreaming with open eyes walking through the ashram at a quick pace with files under my arms. And in 1991, there I was in front of a computer with a tutorial to learn the basics of the art. My dream had become reality and this for seven years. I have never developed into a great designer, I have to say, but working in those privileged conditions, with other meditators, helped me become more mature and grounded.
What am I doing now? I live, or rather, let life live me. I go where my heart takes me and this heart of mine has a definite path: Milan (the city of my family), Paris (the city where I live) and Pune (the city of my heart). I move from one to the other and collect the nectar which each one is so generous to give me. Because I stay in each of those three cities for only a few months at a time, intensity has become my steady companion. Whether active or sharing, with no effort on my part it gives me an extra gear – without wanting to sound presumptuous. Instead of living in a ‘trantran’ routine (as we say in Italy) I am carried away at ‘vroom vroom’ speed. I certainly can’t postpone anything!
To be a pensioner is a blessing. I am astonished when people ask me if I am not getting bored. “It’s evening before I even notice!” I reply. Freedom to do nothing, to be still, listening, to write and finally read the books which Osho speaks about in Books I Have Loved (I have collected them all, at least in three languages); sharing time with friends and the new people life brings my way. To enjoy life as it unfolds in front of my joyous and wondering eyes requires full-time attention! I love to be on my own and I love to be with others. Alone I get regenerated which then helps me jump back into the flow of life.
Recently, when celebrating my ‘first’ three quarters of a century, I looked back with affection at my journey and remembered that:
- Once I was afraid to put my feet on the ground, until the day I realized I was walking on my ‘knees’.
- Once I was afraid to become mad, until I realized I was mad already, and that only meditation could give me sanity. Nevertheless, a little craziness is still there, as my sweet beauty.
- Once I was afraid of the mere shadow of the other, until I realized the other doesn’t exist. I am the other and I carry in me whatever I seem to see in the other and around me.
- Once when I thought I had understood, I could not see. When I thought I was seeing, I could not understand. Now I know that neither do I understand nor see but that which I carry within.
- Once I was worried about everything, until I noticed that my feet were tired to carry my heavy head.
- Once I used to run after things to complete them, run after recognition to feel appreciated, run after people to be remembered, until I realized that my heart loves me the way I am, that there is nothing special to do to love and to feel loved and that every moment in life is complete and perfect in itself.
Love has come late in my life. I remember when I once looked at my beloved, I could see him as if transparent: I could go through him and come out – alone. I was struck when we first met – 1991 in Pune – to perceive that his being a man (and what a man he was, Yoga Teertha!) matched my inner man and I as a woman resonated with his inner woman. We did not have a common cultural background, Teertha being from India and I from Italy – and both no longer young! What helped us grow was meditation, love for the work we did in different departments of the ashram, and our mutual interest in anything which was ‘different’. This sparked a lot of laughter!
His deep love has given me eyes to see, even in most difficult moments, another side of me, a dark side which I had not seen before. To take full responsibility for it helped me move on, with my beauty and my ugliness hand in hand. This is how I earned with great difficulty the love I now have for myself. Since then the creation of my life, I feel, has been in my own hands. It is easy for me these days to laugh about myself and find a humorous side in everything – dressed as a clown or not. It makes me feel so good, so alive, so outrageous; my underlying natural mischievousness has finally surfaced!
I am happy to be exactly the way I am, in this body exactly as it is. My darkness is being transformed into light; I have immense trust in life and I love it with my whole heart, joyously accepting all the hits and suggestions I receive along the way. My heart is my master. Only my body is getting older, while inside I feel young and fresh. I let myself be carried by iridescent rippling currents of life, certain that – sooner or later – they will take me to the ocean.
Suha has recently published her poetry book in Italy: ‘Poemi per una giornata qualunque’ (Poems for an Ordinary Day).
The original article in Italian was first published in Osho Times – www.oshoba.it
More articles and poems by this author in Osho News
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