Chinmaya Dunster, just back from Dorset, is already looking forward to the Osho Summer Festival 25-29 August.
I’m just back from the Easter Joy of Spring Festival at Osho Leela in the English Dorset countryside. The sun shone all day, the full moon graced us all night; twenty children of all ages ran around in the gardens and woods; a hundred guests and community members danced to live music, participated in meditations and workshops and met up for the inevitable catch-ups and hugs.
Osho Leela is 26 this year. I was fortunate to be invited to play at their first ever summer festival back in 1997. With my partner Naveena and daughter Koyal I reconnected to the place twenty years later in 2018 for the Osho Summer Festival. I met faces I hadn’t seen for thirty years, Naveena found a community of Osho lovers from her own generation, while Koyal found a place where she and the other kids could roam free in the safety of the huge grounds and with friendly faces all around.
Thus knowing that Osho Leela was just two hours drive from South Devon was a big factor in our decision to leave New Zealand, and in the three years we’ve lived here we’ve visited numerous times, for festivals, meditation weekends and volunteering in the grounds. Part of what makes the place so special for me is that, with it’s roots in both Pune and the Humaniversity, it attracts people of all ages and backgrounds to tantra, self-development and shamanistic events as well as the name Osho.
Keeping the heart of Osho Leela beating are three remarkable people who act as directors. Tarisha (who I met in Pune when she first arrived in 1996 and invited me to that festival the following summer) is a musician and shaman with a focus on love and healing, who works with song and ceremony. Bavo (Svabhavo) is from the Pune One and Ranch generation, focusing on integrity, the growth process and empowerment; while Amura’s background is both Pune and the Humaniversity, and seems to me to bring the gift of divine feminine flow to everything she does.
Now I’m looking forward to Sw Keerti’s visit from India to run a meditation camp in July and then the Osho Summer Festival in August. I’ll be playing Hindustani classical as an intro to Keerti’s weekend and for the Festival I’ve volunteered again to be part of the team offering creativity and fun for the kids. Naveena will doubtless be found in Tarisha’s teepee in the field whenever there’s a workshop offered there and Koyal will be little seen by her parents –day or night – as she explores being a tween with total freedom.
Updated: Link to the Osho Festival – The Eternal Flame – osholeela.uk
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