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Religion

COMMENTARY: Chanting Osho and letting go

By Chhaya Nene | Religion News Service, Updated: Wednesday, April 30, 2:50 PM

PUNE, India The large crowd of followers shouted, Osho! Osho! Osho! as Kundalini meditation
started. For me, Osho became Oh-no!
If I chanted his name would I betray my faith?
Hindus believe prayers can reach God in
whatever form, be it Allah or Jesus or Shiva.
Osho wasnt God, so was chanting his name
OK? I decided against it. I wasnt quite ready
to let go of everything I knew.
I was dressed head to toe in the mandatory
floor-length maroon robes, like the more than
100 spiritual seekers from Russia to South
America and from Japan to the U.S. who were
also there that day. Yet I felt I didnt blend in.
My brown skin stuck out against the paler
shades in the room. I was reminded of
something I had known all along. I have
always had one foot in the American world,
and the other firmly entrenched in my Indian
roots.
I had no idea whether I was ready for the
Osho International Meditation Resort. But
chanting a name other than the divine ones I
believe in felt wrong.
The resort is tucked away in Koregaon Park,
one of the most prestigious residential areas
in the city. Wealth is evident in the elegant
white houses that nestle among trees, fields
and peacocks strutting on the grounds.
This wasnt the Pune I had spent time visiting
as a child. This felt opulent, and even
ostentatious.
In 1974 Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, a
philosophy professor turned mystic and sex
guru, founded an ashram in Pune that
attracted thousands of spiritual seekers. After
trouble with the local authorities, Rajneesh

decamped for the U.S., where he established a

controversial commune in Oregon. Charged
with immigration fraud and bioterrorism,
Rajneesh was deported from the U.S.
He and his followers eventually returned to
Pune. Rajneesh took on the name Osho
(Buddhist high priest), reflecting the
increased focus on Zen in his discourses. The
controversial guru, who died in 1990,
renamed the ashram the Osho International
Meditation Resort.
As my mind raced through this multicolored
history, I heard that chant, Osho! Osho!
Osho! Kundalini meditation had begun.
Shake your body, but dont will the shake. If
you will the shake you wont enjoy it, and if
you enjoy it, you wont be willing it, a young
British voice boomed out from a loudspeaker
projecting Oshos teachings.
I looked around anxiously. There they were.
My classmates, my professor and a sea of
people who had come to find their true
selves through partaking in an active
meditation. But I actively resisted.
Would joining this strange ritual mean I was
abandoning my Hindu heritage? Would it
make me some kind of an Indian freak? Was I
idolizing a bearded old man who had taken
things too far?
I saw an Indian couple who told me they had
come for a weekend escape. They were
shaking to bells and started dancing with no

patterns. Slowly I found my inhibitions

melting away.

Exams? Trying to make everyone happy?

Running five minutes behind schedule?

When the dancing stopped and silent

meditation began, I realized that I had never
been able to surrender to a religious or
spiritual experience without putting up both
emotional and mental walls.
Oshos meditations were unlike any Hindu
meditation I was taught as a child. Meditation
was always a silent act. The focus is on the
third eye and saying the word Aum. That
was my social conditioning. That was
Hinduism.

Were all
anymore?

Oshos teachings are not Hinduism; he had

rejected all institutionalized religion.
But there are echoes of religion in his system,
and if Hinduism encourages embracing all
different cultures and experiences, I was going
to do it.
I decided I would do what the voice coming
from the speakers told me. I would open my
mind and embrace the experience.

Osho wasnt brown enough for me, and maybe

I wasnt brown enough to understand why
some Indians wanted to escape to this place
and to chant his name.

The soft music coming from the speakers now

sounded like a roar. My other senses became
keener too.

those

I had taken a step into the spiritual and

religious world through meditations and
reached a higher level of consciousness. I had
come to a new level through Oshos teachings.
All of a sudden it didnt matter that I was
Indian-American or that this wasnt
Hinduism. I had tapped into a new spiritual
plane and I could see its appeal.
For the first time I was able to connect with
some part of myself where all the stressors in
my life seemed unimportant. Homework?

really

important

I had found a small nugget of peace,

something I could hold onto when life began
to spin out of control. And that was
invaluable.
Maybe Osho wasnt Hindu, and maybe his
methods were unorthodox, but my experience
was real.

But I was ready to ready to stop worrying

about shades of brown and focus on the
maroon.
(Chhaya Nene is a graduate student at the
University of Southern California and traveled
to India recently as part of a class trip.)
YS/MG END NENE

As I let my mind wander, I could see what a

drop of water looks like. I saw what happens
when water droplets make contact with the
ground and explode, the swimming path of
catfish and the slow growth of a plant.
I was so deep within this mental state that I
felt as though I was having an out-of-body
experience. It made me excited and scared at
the same time.

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