A great teacher

No, nothing extraordinary has happened. Only, when I was visiting my friend Marta in Bologna, after breakfast she suddenly asked me: “Tell me, Suha, and don’t answer if you don’t feel like it, since your master is gone, who gives you the Zen stick now?” I thought it over. Undoubtedly Osho’s way of doing it is matchless: with love, he turns us and overturns us, keeps us suspended upside down, squeezes us thoroughly and even shakes us up with laughter in order to cause a dart of awareness to take root in our uncultivated ground. Meanwhile, I wondered: isn’t existence itself a great teacher of life? Doesn’t it give, and hasn’t it always given, lessons to everybody and not only to the sannyasins? It acts in a much more discreet way, its way of “waking us up” is different, and more attention is needed to catch its whispers.

A slight hint is usually enough for me: it’s my nature, I like to get to understand things by myself. Sometimes, however, life’s messages are mercilessly clear: an unexpected turn of events I care about, the reactions of the beings who surround me that sometimes come as murderous arrow-shots, the difficult situations that force me to reconsider data that I hoped were well-established! At first it’s a strong shock for me, and I often feel unprepared and bewildered, but in my opinion it’s only a matter of patiently setting in motion my creativeness in order to look for new approaches – and this obviously also means new mistakes!

Yet, this is the process I love in my existence, the one that makes my great passion for life vibrate in any condition, under any sky. And I am certainly not afraid of the world, the great stage on which everything happens and takes form. It does not frighten me, because I am discovering that the world, with all its nonsense, is also inside me: the sudden, foolish acts, the turnabouts, the unaccountable changes of direction, the tendency to look backward, the violence of judgements that peep out and gain ground. On the latter I have banged my head so hard as to almost lose my mental faculties. If only I had simply judged myself – but, absurdly, I had even already convicted myself! And just when I was feeling cornered and in a situation of stall, something unexpected happened.

A miraculous alarm signal made me realise I was harming myself even on a physical level, and, I don’t know how, from some remote corner a glimmer of light suggested to me – as a desperate measure – to transform my seriously negative judgements on myself into acceptance of my dark side. I “saw” myself and said: “Ok, this is my dark side, well then I’ll start from here,” and, without realising that I had rid myself of it, of the opinions about me, forever, with this new awareness, which has never left me since then, I found myself launched into the playful mystery of life and taking part in it. Joy, lightness and transformation followed immediately.

Once you’ve hit the bottom, you can only bob up buoyantly! I realised that if everything can be transformed and it depends on me, life becomes interesting, hilarious… A fresh, playful spontaneousness, that still surprises me, has asserted itself in my relationships with myself, other people and the outside world, meaning that everything – and every instant – is important in itself, but never final; and since I am quite curious, I watch with amazement everything change and be transformed, both within me and outside of me. I must add that I am also helped by a healthy sense of humour, since my “naughty” underlying vein has emerged bringing even more lightness and hearty laughter. How could I not want to play with everything and everybody, were it only to reciprocate the gift of existence?

Suha is a regular contributor
Translated from Italian by Marta Innocenti – previously published in Osho Times, Italian editon (oshoba.it)
More articles and poems by this author in Osho News