Srajan’s story from the Dutch collection ‘Hoe Osho in mijn leven kwam’ (How Osho Came into My Life)
Swami Anand Srajan
(Bliss and Courage)
Born in 1949 in Kuala Belait, Brunei
Took sannyas in 1980
Tears are running down my cheeks. I’m sitting on the veranda of my house, looking out over the foothills of the Colombian Andes. Coffee bushes and bougainvilleas. Jan Foudraine’s (Swami Deva Amrito’s) book about Osho in my lap. What Osho says moves me deeply: be a Christ, not a Christian, be a Buddha, not a Buddhist. Who is this man? I want to see him with my own eyes! But how?
My work at the agricultural training institute has taken off since we began collaborating with a number of experienced leaders of peasant organisations. The work really engages me, and after three years I feel I’m finally doing something meaningful. But Colombia is also starting to frighten me.
The man we recently had a run-in with at that land occupation is known as a hitman. Why did he come to my door the other day asking for me? My small children are happily playing outside on the village square with their friends, but there are more and more rumours about kidnappings.
Last month two police officers were murdered in broad daylight in the next village along, while playing pool in the café. Probably the work of the FARC guerrillas, who are higher up in the mountains behind our house. The Dutch student I was supervising – from Wageningen, my old university – had gone into the jungle to do research for an organisation of settlers, but had already come back after a week, distraught. The FARC had raided the village, robbed the bank and killed the peasant leader who had given him lodging. He only just managed to escape.
During my leave in the Netherlands I join a meditation weekend on an old cargo boat in the Oosterdok in Amsterdam. After the Whirling Meditation I’m lying on the floor and I feel something break in my belly. A wave of emotion, of pure energy, streams through me. Very unusual, but not unpleasant.
For the rest of the weekend I’m completely on a high, and on the train home I sit giggling like a kid at the serious people around me. I have so much energy that for the next three weeks I go out in the freezing cold to do Dynamic Meditation every morning, with my little cassette recorder, in the woods near my house.
I decide to take extra leave to go to Poona for three weeks before returning to Colombia for another two years. As the plane takes off for India, I already have a sense of something irrevocable. About three weeks later I’m sitting at Osho’s feet in a kind of orange pyjama suit. I’ve phoned my employer to say I won’t be extending my contract, but it gnaws at me. I feel like a coward for leaving behind the people and the good projects we had started, purely out of fear for my own safety.
With a smile, Osho places a mala round my neck, and with a few simple words he takes away all my doubts: “Anand means bliss and Dolf means courage, the courage to take life as it comes to you. Only the coward clings to misery.”
It feels like coming home. I feel utterly naked, as if someone is looking straight through me, yet accepts me completely, with all my shortcomings and doubts. I no longer need to prove myself – I can simply let go and relax.
Amsterdam, 15 November 2011
This piece is part of a collection of stories written by Dutch sannyasins:
Hoe Osho in mijn leven kwam
(How Osho Came into My Life)
Stichting Vrienden van Osho, Amsterdam
vrienden-van-osho.nl – sannyas.wiki
2013 and 2019 editions, 236 pages
Available as a paperback from boekenbestellen.nl
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