Gratitude is the fragrance and shadow of a Buddha

Gratefulness is always towards the outside, and gratefulness is always because deep down you wanted something directly or indirectly and it has been given to you. That's why you are grateful. Gratefulness simply means thankfulness. That will make it clear. You thank the person who has fulfilled a desire which was hidden in you whether you were aware of it or not. Something has been gratified; hence you feel a thankfulness.

Thankfulness is going to be outward. It may be thankfulness towards God which does not exist. It can be thankfulness towards a friend who exists. But thankfulness is a gratification of conscious or unconscious desire being fulfilled.

Gratitude is a totally different phenomenon, though not in the dictionaries. In the dictionaries gratefulness, thankfulness, gratitude — all are put into the same category. Existence is not according to your dictionaries. Gratitude has no outward object nor inward object. Gratitude is almost like a fragrance arising out of a flower. It is an experience not directed to anybody.

When you reach to the very source of your being where you are completely in the mood of spring, and the flowers are showering on you, you suddenly feel a gratitude not directed to anybody, just like a fragrance arising out of you, just as incense brings ripples of smoke and fragrance moving towards the un.known sky and disappearing

Gratitude arises out of you just like a fragrance, not as a thankfulness to anybody. It is the shadow, the by-product of your becoming the Buddha. It is not a gratification of any desire. If you have any desires, conscious or unconscious, you cannot become a Buddha. It is only when all desires have passed on, when you have transcended all desires and demands, that you become a Buddha. And out of a Buddha a fragrance radiates. That fragrance has many elements in it. It is gratitude, it is compassion, it is love, it is blissfulness, it is ecstasy — it is manifold, multidimensional.

OSHO. God is Dead, Now Zen is the Only Living Truth, Chapter #4

Osho Quotes on Gratitude

Osho Quotes on Gratitude

1. Your enlightenment is perfect only when silence has come to be a celebration. Hence my insistence that after you meditate you must celebrate. After you have been silent you must enjoy it, you must have a thanksgiving. A deep gratitude must be shown towards the whole just for the opportunity that you are, that you can meditate, that you can be silent, that you can laugh.
2. God has given you this life, this tremendously valuable gift, and you cannot even appreciate it. You cannot welcome it, you cannot feel any gratitude for it. On the contrary, you are complaining and complaining and complaining. Your heart is full of grudges, not gratitude.
3. The Baul lives in tremendous gratitude. He sings and dances — that is his prayer. He cries. He simply wonders why, for what has life been given to him, for what has he been allowed to see the rainbows in the sky, for what has he been allowed to see flowers, butterflies, people, rivers and rocks? For what? Because life is so obvious you tend to forget the tremendous gift hidden in it.
4. The only way to show our gratitude to the Master is to help others. If it has been a gracious gift to you, give it to others as a gracious gift. Give it without any idea of giving only then is it gracious. Give it without any idea of reward only then is it gracious. Simply give it for the sheer joy of giving It.
5. A real prayer has nothing to suggest to God except a deep gratitude, thankfulness. It simply accepts whatsoever God is pouring. Prayer is receiving the gift.
6. Meditation, compassion and gratitude. Whenever you are meditative, you feel blissful; whenever you are in compassion, you feel ecstatic. And then gratitude arises — not towards anyone in particular, gratitude just arises. It is not towards me or towards Jesus, or Zarathustra or Buddha, it is simply gratitude. You feel so grateful just for being here, just for being alive, just for being able to be meditative, just for being able to be in compassion. You feel simply grateful. That gratefulness is not towards anybody, it is towards the whole.
7. Man has to be real, real to reality. Whatsoever the reality, man has to accept it and live it in deep gratitude, and live it with such reverence, respect — because it is God’s reality. It is His temple.
8. All moments are beautiful, only you have to be receptive and surrendering. All moments are blessings, only you have to be capable of seeing. All moments are benedictions. If you accept with a deep gratitude, nothing ever goes wrong.
9. If you feel grateful towards me it is a gratitude of the mind. If you meditate and if you flower in compassion you will feel simply grateful, not grateful towards me. Then there is no “towards” — you feel simply grateful towards all. And when you feel grateful towards all, that is really gratefulness towards me, never before it. When it is a choice you choose me; then your master becomes a point, not the whole.
10. The whole play of existence is so beautiful that laughter can be the only response to it. Only laughter can be the real prayer, gratitude.
11. Hasidism has no techniques; it has no yoga, no Tantra in it. It simply says: trust life, trust God, and whatsoever has been given to you, enjoy it. Enjoy it so deeply and with such gratitude that every ordinary thing becomes hallowed, becomes holy, each small thing in life becomes sacred. Transform everything into a sacred thing — the profane disappears when you bring your energy of love, grace, gratitude.
12. Humbleness arises only, gratitude arises only, when you have experienced what the master has been trying to express through words, through actions, through silence, through every possibility — because that experience is something inexpressible.
13. Gratitude arises whenever you start feeling God’s presence around you; then only gratitude is left. Then your whole energy becomes gratitude, then your whole being becomes a thanksgiving, it becomes a prayer — because nothing is missing, and the world is so perfect, and everything is as it should be. Gratitude is natural. Gratitude is not something that can be practiced. You have been taught to be grateful; you cannot be. Gratefulness is a consequence: when you feel God close by, gratitude arises. It is a by-product. Respect arises. This respect is not something that you manage, it is something beyond you. You have been taught to be grateful to your parents, taught to be grateful to your teachers, taught to be grateful to your elders, but those are all just conditionings. When real gratitude arises, then you see what a tremendous difference there is. The gratitude that was taught was just a concept, a dead ritual. You were following it like a mechanism. When the real gratitude upsurges in your being, you feel for the first time what prayer is, what love is.
14. The real gratitude can never find words to express itself. The gratitude that can find words to express itself is just a formality — because anything heartfelt immediately goes beyond words, concepts, language. You can live it, it can shine from your eyes, it can come as a fragrance from your whole being. It can be a music of your silence, but you cannot say it. The moment you say it, something essential dies immediately. Words can only carry corpses, not living experiences.
15. The master is not higher than the disciple. The master is simply trying to awaken you. The moment you are awakened there is no master and no disciple. It is just out of gratitude that the disciple remains a disciple — just out of gratitude. But there is no difference; they have known the same reality. They have become what nature wanted them to become, they have blossomed.
16. As far as reality is concerned, those who were real disciples are still disciples — even if they become enlightened, they will not lose their disciplehood. In fact, they have attained to the ultimate of disciplehood. Their gratitude and their love towards the master is not less but more than ever.
17. All that you want is already present in you. The master is not going to give you anything that you don’t have. In fact, the master goes on taking away things which you think you have but you don’t have. And the master cannot give you, of course, that which you have. He can only take away all the barriers, all the hindrances, all the obstacles, so only that which is your own, remains behind. In that unpolluted space, the distinction between the master and the disciple is no more. That does not mean that you don’t feel grateful to the master. In fact, only after this has happened, you feel for the first time a tremendous gratitude.
18. Patience is the only prayer by the side of a master. Utterly relaxed, in deep love, in great gratitude, something goes on growing in you without any effort. Something goes on maturing, something goes on becoming more and more crystallized, without any effort on your part. You are just a watcher of the miracle that is happening to you.

Then I dropped all my learning

A Sufi mystic, Hasan, was dying. When he was dying a man asked him,  Hasan, you have never told us who your Master was. We have asked again and again; you always somehow managed not to answer it. Now you are leaving the world. Please tell us who your Master was. We are very curious.

Hasan said,  I never answered the question for the simple reason that there has not been just a single Master in my life, I have learned from many people. My first teacher was a small child.
They were puzzled. They said,  A small child! What are you saying? Have you lost your senses because you are dying? Have you gone mad, crazy?

He said,  No, listen to the story. I went into a town. Although I had not known the truth up to that time, I was very knowledgeable. I was a scholar. I was well known all over the country; even outside the country my name was spreading. People had started coming to me thinking that I knew it. I was pretending that I knew it, and I was pretending without knowing that I was pretending   I was almost unconscious. Because people believed that I knew they convinced me that I must be right, I must be knowing, otherwise why should so many people be coming to me? I had become a teacher. Without knowing, without experiencing anything of truth, without ever entering into my own inner world, I was talking about great things. I knew all the scriptures; they were on the tip of my tongue.

 But for three days I was moving in a country where nobody knew me and I was very much hankering to find somebody to ask me something so that I could show my knowledge.

Knowledgeable people become very exhibitionistic; that is their whole joy. If a knowledgeable person has to remain silent he would rather commit suicide. Then what is the point of living in the world? He has to exhibit his knowledge. Only a wise man can be silent. For the wise man to speak is almost a burden; he speaks because he has to speak. The knowledgeable person speaks because he cannot remain silent. There is a vast difference; you may not be able to know it from the outside because both speak. The Buddha speaks, Jesus speaks, and Hasan was also speaking. And they all say beautiful things. Sometimes the knowledgeable people say wiser things than the wise people because the wise persons may speak in contradictions, in paradoxes, but the knowledgeable person is always logical, consistent; he has all the proofs and arguments, he has all the scriptures to support him.

But for three days he had to keep silent. It was almost like fasting, and he was feeling hungry   hungry for an audience, hungry for somebody. But he had not come across anybody who knew him so nobody asked anything.

He entered this town. It was just getting a little dark, the sun had just set. A small child was carrying an earthen lamp, and he asked the child,  My son, can I ask you a question? Where are you taking this earthen lamp?

And the child said,  I am going to the temple. My mother has told me to put this lamp there because the temple is dark. And this has been my mother’s habit: to always put a lamp there in the night so at least the god of the temple does not have to live in darkness.

Hasan asked the child,  You seem to be very intelligent. Can you tell me one thing   did you light this lamp yourself?

The child said,  Yes.

Then Hasan said,  A third question, the last question I want to ask you: if you lit the lamp yourself, can you tell me where the flame came from? You must have seen it coming from somewhere.

The child laughed and he said,  I will do one thing   just see!  And he blew the flame out and he said,  The flame has gone just in front of you. Can you tell me where it has gone? You must have seen!

And Hasan was utterly dumb; he could not answer. The child had shown him that his question, although it looked very relevant, meaningful, was absurd. He bowed down to the child, touched his feet.

He said to the inquirer,  That child was my first Master. That very moment I realized all my metaphysics, all my philosophy was meaningless. I didn’t know a thing on my own. I didn’t even know from where the light comes into a lamp, where it goes to when the light has been put out   and I have been talking about who made the world, how he made the world, when he made the world! For that moment I have always remembered the child. He may have forgotten me, he may not even recognize me, but I cannot forget that incident.

 And since then thousands of people have taught me. I have avoided the question again and again because there is not a single person I can call my Master. Many have been my Masters, I have learned from many sources, and from each source I have learned one thing: that unless you know through your own experience, all knowledge is futile.

 Then I dropped all my learning, all my knowing; all my scriptures I burned. I dropped the idea of being a scholar, I forgot all my fame. I started moving like a beggar, absolutely unknown to anybody. And slowly slowly, going deeper into meditation, I discovered my own intelligence.

Even though the society destroys your intelligence it cannot destroy it totally; it only covers it with many layers of information.

-Tao: The Golden Gate, Osho
http://www.oshoinsight.net/i-discovered-my-own-intelligence/

Junnaid’s Gratitude

I have always loved to remember a Sufi master, Junnaid. He was the master of al-Hillaj Mansoor. He had a habit: after each prayer  and Mohammedans pray five times a day  after each prayer he would say to the sky, Your compassion is great. How beautifully you take care of us, and we don’t deserve it. I don’t even have words to show my gratefulness, but I hope you will understand the unexpressed gratitude of my heart.

They were on a pilgrimage, and it happened that for three days they passed through villages where orthodox Mohammedans would not allow them even to stay in the villages; there was no question of giving them food or water. For three days without food, without water, without sleep, tired, utterly frustrated.The disciples could not believe that this man Junnaid, their master, still goes on saying the same things. Before, it was okay  but still he goes on saying, You are great, you are compassionate, and I don’t have words to express my gratitude.

On the third evening when he had finished his prayer, his disciples said, Now it is time for an explanation. For three days we have been hungry, we have not had water, we are thirsty; we have not slept, we have been insulted continually, no place has been given to us, no shelter. At least today you should not say, ‘You are great, you are compassionate.’ For what are you showing your gratitude?

Junnaid laughed. He said, My trust in existence is unconditional. It is not that I am grateful because existence provides this and that and that. I am  that’s enough. Existence accepts me  that’s enough. And I don’t deserve to be; I have not earned it. Moreover, these three days have been of tremendous beauty because I had an opportunity to watch whether anger would arise in me, and it didn’t arise; whether I would start to feel that God had forsaken me, and the idea did not arise. There has been no difference in my attitude towards existence. My gratitude has not changed, and it has filled me with more gratitude than ever. It was a fire test, and I have come out of it unburned. What more do you want? I will trust existence in my life and I will trust existence in my death. It is my love affair.

-Osho

Excerpt from Beyond Enlightenment, Chapter 19

Chuang Tzu’s Funeral

Apologies
If a man steps on a stranger’s foot
In the marketplace,
He makes a polite apology
And offers an explanation:
“This place is so crowded.”
If an elder brother
Steps on his younger brother’s foot
He says, “Sorry.”
And that is that.
If a parent steps on his child’s foot
Nothing is said at all.
The greatest politeness
Is free from all formality.
Perfect conduct is free of concern.
Perfect wisdom is unplanned.
Perfect love is without demonstrations.
Perfect sincerity offers no guarantee.

Means and Ends
The purpose of a fishtrap
Is to catch fish,
And when the fish are caught
The trap is forgotten.
The purpose of words
is to convey ideas.
When the ideas are grasped
The words are forgotten.
Where can I find a man
Who has forgotten words?
He is the one I would like to talk to.

The Need to Win
When an archer is shooting for fun
He has all his skill.
If he shoots for a brass buckle
He is already nervous.
If he shoots for a prize of gold
He goes blind
Or sees two targets –
He is out of his mind.
His skill has not changed,
But the prize divides him.
He cares
He thinks more of winning
Than of shooting –
And the need to win
Drains him of power.

Flight from the Shadow
There was a man
who was so disturbed
by the sight of his own shadow
and so displeased
with his own footsteps,
that he determined to get rid of both.
The method he hit upon was
to run away from them.
So he got up and ran.
But everytime he poot his foot down
there was another step,
while his shadow kept up with him
without the slightest difficulty.
He attributed his failure
to the fact
that he was not running fast enough.
So he ran faster and faster,
without stopping,
until he finally dropped dead.
He failed to realize
that if he merely stepped into the shade,
his shadow would vanish,
and if he sat down and stayed still,
there would be no more footsteps.

Fighting Cock
Chi Hsing Tzu was a trainer of
fighting cocks for King Hsuan.
He was training a fine bird.
The king kept asking
if the bird was ready for combat.
“Not yet”, said the trainer.
“He is full of fire.
He is ready to pick a fight
with every other bird.
He is vain and confident
of his own strength.”
After ten days he answered again,
“Not yet. He flares up
when he hears another bird crow.”
After ten more days,
“Not yet. He still gets that angry look
and ruffles his feathers.”
Again ten days.
The trainer said,
“Now he is nearly ready.
When another bird crows,
his eyes don’t even flicker.
He stands immobile like a block of wood.
He is a mature fighter.
Other birds will take one look at him and run.”

The Turtle
Chuang Tzu with his bamboo pole
was fishing in the Pu river
The prince of Chu sent two vice-chancellors
with a formal document:
We hereby appoint you prime minister
Chuang Tzu held his bamboo pole still.
Watching the Pu river, he said:
“I am told there is a sacred tortoise offered
and canonized three thousand years ago,
venerated by the prince, wrapped in silk,
in a precious shrine on an altar in the temple.
What do you think?
Is it better to give up one’s life
and leave a sacred shell
as an object of cult
in a cloud of incense
for three thousand years,
or to live as a plain turtle
dragging its tail in the mud?”
“For the turtle”, said the vice-chancellor,
“better to live and drag its tail in the mud!”
“Go home!”, said Chuang Tzu.
“Leave me here
to drag my tail in the mud.”

Duke Hwan and the Wheelwright
Duke Hwan of Khi, first in his dynasty,
sat under his canopy reading his philosophy.
And Phien the wheelwright was out in the yard
making a wheel.
Phien laid aside hammer and chisel,
climbed the steps
and said to duke Hwan,
“May I ask you, Lord,
what is this you are reading?”
Said the duke: “The experts, the authorities.”
Phien asked: “Alive or dead?”
The duke said: “Dead, a long time.”
“Then,” said the wheelwright,
“you are only reading the dirt they left behind.”
The duke replied, “What do you know about it?
You are only a wheelwright.
You had better give me a good explanation
or else you must die.”
The wheelwright said,
“Let us look at the affair from my point of view.
When I make wheels, if i go easy they fall apart,
and if I am too rough they don’t fit.
But if I am neither too easy nor too violent
they come out right,
and the work is what I want it to be.
“You cannot put this in words,
you just have to know how it is.
I cannot even tell my own son exactly how it is done,
and my own son cannot learn it from me.
Se here I am, seventy years old, still making wheels!
The men of old took all they really knew
with them to the grave.
And so, Lord, what you are reading there
is only the dirt they left behind them.”

The Man of Tao
The man of Tao acts without impediment,
He harms no other being by his actions,
Yet he does not know himself
to be kind and gentle.
He does not struggle to make money
And he does not make a virtue of poverty.
He goes without relying on others,
And does not pride himself
on walking alone.
The man of Tao remains unknown.
Perfect virtue produces nothing.
No Self is True Self.
And the greatest man is nobody.

Wholeness
How does the true man of Tao
Walk through walls without obstruction
And stand in fire without being burnt?
Not because of cunning or daring,
Not because he has learned –
But because he has unlearned.
His nature sinks to his root in the one.
His vitality, his power,
Hide in secret Tao.
When he is all one,
There is no flaw in him
By which a wedge can enter.
So a drunken man who falls out of a wagon
Is bruised, but not destroyed,
His bones are like the bones of other men,
But his fall is different.
His spirit is entire.
He is not aware of getting into the wagon,
Or falling out of it.
Life and death are nothing to him.
He knows no alarm,
He meets obstacles without thought,
without care,
And takes them without knowing they are there.
If there is such sincerity in wine,
How much more in Tao?
The wise man is hidden in Tao,
Nothing can touch him.

Chuang Tzu’s Funeral
When Chuang Tzu was about to die,
His disciples began planning a grand funeral.
But Chuang Tzu said:
“I shall have heaven and earth for my coffin,
the sun and moon will be jade symbols
hanging by my side;
planets and constellations
will shine as jewels all around me,
and all beings will be present
as mourners at the wake.
What more is needed?
Everything is amply taken care of.”
But the disciples said:
“We fear that the crows and kites
will eat our Master.”
Chuang Tzu replied:
Well, above the ground I shall be eaten
by crows and kites,
And below the ground by ants and worms.
In either case I shall be eaten –
So why are you favoring the birds?”

Source: http://theunboundedspirit.com/inspirational-taoist-quotes-and-stories-by-chuang-tzu/