The true sage: Talks on Hasidism

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In a style infused with the earthiness of Jewish culture, Osho speaks on classic Hasidic stories compiled by the philos- opher, Martin Buber.

"These tales, small stories, have such a flavor. It is different from Zen, it is also different from Sufism. The Hasid loves, laughs, dances. His religion is not of celibacy, but of creation."

Through his commentaries on the stories, Osho lifts away any preconceived ideas about how things are, allowing us to see life as it really is. Along the way, he scatters his own anecdotes and jokes, making this a book full of lighthearted wisdom. On his unique use of funny stories, he says:

"I don't tell them to you just to make you laugh. No, they are not mere jokes. They are pointers. You should not just laugh and forget them, you should make them part of your understanding.”

Osho's unique contribution to the understanding of who we are defies categorization. Mystic and scientist, a rebellious spirit whose sole interest is to alert humanity to the urgent need to discover a new way of living. To continue as before is to invite threats to our very survival on this unique and beautiful planet.

His essential point is that only by changing ourselves, one individual at a time, can the outcome of all our "selves" - our societies, our cultures, our beliefs, our world - also change. The doorway to that change is meditation. Osho the scientist has experimented and scrutinized all the approaches of the past and examined their effects on the modern human being and responded to their shortcomings by creating a new starting point for the hyperactive 21" Century mind: OSHO Active Meditations.

Once the agitation of a modern lifetime has started to settle, "activity" can melt into "passivity," a key starting point of real meditation. To support this next step, Osho has transformed the ancient "art of listening" into a subtle contemporary method- ology: the OSHO Talks. Here words become music, the listener discovers who is listening, and the awareness moves from what is being heard to the individual doing the listening. Magically, as silence arises, what needs to be heard is understood directly, free from the distraction of a mind that can only interrupt and interfere with this delicate process.

A few things about Hasidism. First, the word said comes Afront a Hebrew word which means pious, pure. It is derived from the noun hased, which means grace.

This word hasid is very beautiful. The whole standpoint of Hasidism is based on grace. It is not that you do something, life is already happening - just be silent, passive, alert, receiving. God comes through his grace, not through your effort. So Hasidism has no austerities prescribed for you. Hasidism believes in life, in joy. Hasidism is one of the religions in the world which is life-affirmative. It has no renunciation in it; you are not to renounce anything. Rather, you have to celebrate. The founder of Hasidism, Baal Shem, is reported to have said, "I have come to teach you a new way. It is not fasting and penance, and it is not indulgence, but joy in God."

The Hasid loves life, tries to experience life. That very experience starts giving you a balance. And in that state of balance, some day, when you are really balanced, neither leaning on this side nor leaning on that side, when you are exactly in the middle you transcend. The middle is the beyond, the middle is the door from where one goes beyond.

If you really want to know what existence is, it is neither in life nor in death. Life is one extreme, death is another extreme. It is just exactly in the middle where neither death is nor life is, where one is simply unborn, deathless. In that moment of bal- ance, equilibrium, grace descends.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages