Sampatti remembers…
The moment I enter the Gateless Gate of the Ashram, I am transported into a different atmosphere. The air is fresher, the temperature is cooler than in the hot city, and there is something unexplainable in the air.
I walk through the gate and, when turning left, I pass by the garden and the waterfall, then by the bag-check, where shoes, bags and all personal belongings are kept, and there in front of me is the beautiful white Buddha Hall.
At the entrance, by Osho’s request, a marble Buddha statue. It is soft, almost feminine.
All around Buddha Hall there are green, radiant gardens with little ponds, huge gulmohar trees towering even higher than the slanting roof, and whispering bamboos!
I don’t know who designed the hall, but to me it is a masterpiece.
As you enter, two little steps up, or maybe three, bare feet touching white marble, you are enveloped by an indescribable energy; it is at the same time cool and very warm, the kind of warmth you feel when someone embraces you lovingly.
White marble as far as you can see, this hall is BIG – maybe a thousand or more people can sit. The roof is made of a waterproof canvas, very high, here you have space to be and to breathe. It seems to me that Buddha Hall is as vast as the universe.
Across the hall, the podium where Osho comes to sit with us to share his enlightenment. To talk to us, to make us close our eyes and move inside, to listen carefully and attentively, to make us burst with laughter, to dance, to cry, to celebrate, to enter deep deep silences, to feel free and incredibly loved and accepted as who we are.
Buddha Hall is full of his presence, his very vibe. It embraces you and enters your very being. Here one can disappear.
Cool white marble under my feet, I walk toward my special place. It is special to me because, for some reason, I feel drawn to sit here day after day after day.
Buddha Hall is not really a hall, it is part of the garden. Instead of walls there are green mosquito nets all around (for some reason I love them very much), and beyond the garden, the incredibly clean marble road that leads around the hall, the trees, the waterways, the swan pond, the singing birds, Bodhidharma tea garden, and during the day the happy sound of people talking, laughing, of the gardeners watering the plants. Every sound is part of the hall and deepens the meditation. Till this day meditation goes deeper for me when I can hear the sounds of nature and simple life. I don’t like to sit in a soundproof space.
Buddha Hall is overflowing with Osho’s vibration and the presence of those who come to meditate, to sing, to dance, to celebrate, or just to lie down on the cool marble during lunchtime. And of course, it is overflowing with the song of the birds, koel, bharadwaj, the black-and-white one, and the yellow bird, the cries of the peacocks and swans, the crickets and the melody of the trees, the whispering and creaking of the bamboos and, most of all, the unspeakable.
It is unbelievably clean. Physically, energetically, spiritually.
To me, it is a sacred space.
Oh, if I could take you there.
First published as a Facebook post – reproduced with the author’s permission
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