VIDEHA: Osho disciple since 1980. Initiated into the Mevlevi Sufi Order of Konya (“The Whirling Dervishes”), Videha integrates the Sufi Path into Osho’s vision and love. For years as a Zazen practitioner, he has traveled and trained in Turkey, Mongolia, China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, India, Central Asia and Tibet, where he received many initiations. He has been leading groups, seminars, camps and meditation retreats all over the world for more than 35 years, uniting the path of Love and the path of Meditation.
In 2022 he moved to live in the Alps mountains in North Italy, where he created Osho Mokurai Meditation Center, an expression of his heart, and the love and devotion for the Dharma, a place for committed meditators, a place of Remembrance...
“All the work is inspired by Osho’s teachings, my Master, an endless source of compassion and wisdom, an inexhaustible mine of countless Dharma teaching treasures”
MY LOVE STORY WITH OSHO
When, almost 50 years ago, a friend gave me “The book of secrets” from Osho, I had no idea of what was going to start for me, ….or better to say “continuing”…?
I opened it, and the moment I started reading a few pages, so many tears welled up; I was so touched, so moved. I had found what I always felt, but of course I didn’t have the clarity, let alone the words, to express it I didn’t know, I could not have imagined, what it was starting, that I was on the way of a one-way trip, an endless journey… It took 2 or 3 years before I could manage to go to Pune; I reached there in December 1980. Five days after my arrival I took Sannyas from Osho’s hands, in Lao-Tzu house. That unforgettable moment….Looking straight into Osho’s eyes, I saw the infinity of the luminous night of the universe full of stars….. Osho was talking to me, but it was like His body was empty, nobody inside there, … His voice was coming from everywhere. I felt like the doors of heaven and the doors of hell had widely opened…. Hahaha….
The greatest love story had begun.
”Oh beloved Master, all these universes
are just the reflection of the call of Your love.
From the door of Your eyes I have seen my destiny.
Since then, carried by the wind of Your song,
we dance amongst the stars.”
I felt so lucky…. A few days later Osho stopped giving Sannyas.
I had found the greatest treasure of my life, and I caught it just in time!
This love keeps going, at every instant, deeper and deeper, always opening, with great
and constant wonder, new and new sky.
“My heart is dancing for You!
The light of the night carries my smile,
and the darkness unites our breaths.
The deeper I go, the greater the space,
and Your presence is like the breathing air.
Just like that You enter into me.
And my heart dances for You"
It is almost impossible to list all the teachings, with all their aspects, that Osho reveals to us.
“I’ve seen you dancing my beloved Osho. Your silver light pervading the space , and my soul too. Countless time you echo in my heart, overwhelmed by You. Your hands calling my joy, Your loving gaze dissolving me.”
I think we can’t really say who or what Osho is, but we can listen to these words
“I am an invitation for all those who are seeking, searching, and have a deep longing in their hearts to find their home. I am an answer to the question that everybody is, but cannot formulate, a question that is more a quest than a question, more a thirst than a verbal, mental inquiry; a thirst that one feels in every cell and fiber of his being, but has no way to bring to words and ask. I am an answer for that question which you cannot ask and you cannot expect that it could be answered…
….It is a strange invitation. It will take you on a long pilgrimage and it will end only where you already are. You will have to move many steps and on many paths just to come to yourself, because you have gone far away from yourself. You have completely forgotten the way back. I am a reminder, a remembrance, of the lost home. As a person I do not exist. As a person I only appear. I exist as a presence. Since the day I came to know myself, the person disappeared. There is only a presence, a very living presence that can quench your thirst, that can fulfill your longing. Hence, in one word I can say I am an invitation, of course just for those who have a deep longing in their hearts that they are missing themselves, a deep urge, that unless they find themselves, everything else is meaningless. Unless it is your “a priori” concern, your ultimate concern, such that if it is needed you are even ready to lose everything for it, but you cannot drop it….
…My invitation is to make you aflame, and unless you know a life which is luminous and aflame all your knowledge is just a deception. You are gathering it to help you forget that the real knowledge is missing. But however great is your accumulation of the other, the objective, the world, it is not going to become a substitute for your self-knowing. With self-knowing suddenly all darkness disappears, and all separation from existence. I am an invitation to take a courageous jump into the ocean of life. Lose yourself, because that is the only way to find yourself.“
Yes Osho, yes !
“The night wake opened my wings. Oh Osho, your gaze saw my soul. In the beauty of the line of Your eyes the blessing of eternity. I remember only the tops of the trees dancing in the wind.”
Sometime ago I had to send my “biography” for a group in a new place. I was going to send it with the usual data, experiences, curriculum, bla bla bla…. , and inside myself I was thinking, look, I could simply say “Osho’s disciple on “a long pilgrimage” … “. To me this would be more than enough, ...it is the abundance, the joy, the richness of existence.
I have lived most of my life traveling, in the outer world and in the inner world, and most of my traveling has been and is in the East. Because of the search and sometime by “chance”, this put me in contact with some of the teachings and some of the Paths of the East of which Osho often talks. Particularly with the Sufi path in Turkey and Central Asia, Chan (Zen) in Taiwan and China, and Vajrayana Buddhism in Tibet. To know, to encounter, to live those traditions, receiving some of their teachings and transmissions, meeting some Masters of those Paths, have been a precious gift and a contribution to my understanding. From all this I can say that one thing has constantly and clearly surfaced, and always shines in a growing joy: to feel and see the immense, boundless wisdom, the love, the compassion, the vastness of Osho. Everything is included in His words, in His silences, in His transmission of the living and pulsating reality of all that has moved and moves the human heart, in all ages, in every place, in all the paths of awakening. I think that we should be more aware of what it means to be with Osho, because as the Dalai Lama once said when talking about Osho to a sannyasin, “… you are very lucky, because you are at the source.”
-Videha
