CHAPTER FOUR  - OSHO

WEEK EIGHT. conversation by clair and rebecca

"Life seems to want to rise to some height, these ocenanic waves, these life waves seem to be wanting to rise somewhere higher, but they only crash into the shore and sre destroyed.  New waves arise, crash, end.  This ocean of life has been pounding for so many billions of years.  Battling, rising and falling everyday.  What must be the purpose behind it?"

Osho from his book 'sex matters'.

~ ~ ~

there seem to be processes in this life of life and death.  but i am not convinced, am not feeling, that there necessarily is any  major  (or minor) plan.  

life is like lots of spirials and the direction and the speed and the degree of turn depends on the event, the  behaviour, the feeling, the sensation, just before it and that thing depended on the event or feeling just before that one.

life is making its own way through the universe.  my feeling is that it doesnt care about a meaning.  it just is.  it just is. and it just is.  even if that is just fades away.

thats not to say that lives arent meaningful / cant be meaninglful, but that that is something we ourselves pour into it/onto it.

Hello Clair!

When I first read the Osho quote I thought about humanity itself as a persistent surge of creation, against a seemingly indifferent planet. The Mayan Hypothesis preposes that our desire to preserve the planet and is misguided as human, plant, animal life are of no real consequence in the grand scheme of things as the earth might wipe us out at any moment and will regain its own equilibrium, which is not dependent on us. The continual crashing waves of life which dominate this indifferent planet are in a sense futile, but still they exist and flow in a cycle which seems to imply some order, if not purpose, due to the persistent nature of humanity's desire to create meaning and to flourish despite death, evil, natural disasters and disorder. 

My friend recently lost a close friend of hers and she wrote a poem about the impact of the grief. This quote and your discussion immediately brought this to mind, as she uses water as an analogy for the continual cycle of life. She begins by describing the waves of grief as waves crashing against a river bed and then describes the flow of her friend's life force or influence, which she feels continues even in death. I feel the end passage is particularly relevant:

'I fell asleep and it spat me out,

And now it’s Monday morning.

The blue blue sky and white cloud,

Water going somewhere I cannot tell

Where.

Back to the earth, Into rivers, into the sea.

And the cycle continues.

I watch it.

What more can I do?

And yet...'

Where is the water going? Where does all our energy and striving for survival and success lead us to? Where does it leave us if life can dissipate so quickly, evaporate without trace - other than in the mark we leave upon those still living? The futility of life always presents itself as a cruel, striking reality when we have to face the untimely death of those close to us. In the face of these sudden devastating travesties our small influence on others seems of the utmost importance and that is perhaps why my friend ended her poem with a challenging, lingering 'And yet...'  I interpret her ending uncertain question as one of remorse, as she is haunted by the idea that she could have perhaps done more to prevent her friend from taking her own life. But her 'and yet...' can also be taken to show that we must continue, we must not give in to these blows, as the cyclical spiral is the reality of life, and of nature. 

We have to be thankful for the time we do have, the lives we do touch, for everything we experience however chaotic or indifferent it may seem. In the cyclical liquid nature of life and death there is also a sense of wonder and beauty. Our insignificance is frightening and astounding, and our vulnerability is always apparent to me. But without death we would not strive for anything, we would not appreciate this life and our courageous continual mass of aspirations, desires and deeds are the embodiment of our hope to 'rise to some height' before we crash, trickle away and disappear. For who knows how long any of us have?

Rebecca. 

thank you for your words...for me feelings can span two polar opposites - one, that every little thing, even, as has been said, a butterfly flapping its wings in japan, is so meaningful that it will have its effect here in england on the other side of the world.

and this is true.  the smile or frown you give to the man, women or child in the street will ripple its way along forever

in the same breath, there is no great plan...

and we are not even searching around for relics of our own family trees, do i know even the name of  my great great grandmother?  will they remember my name?  generally no.  but does it even matter?...as i said, that smile or frown will ripple its way through the universe  f  o   r    e     v      e        r . . . 

clair 

Hmmm... Clair,

Meaning... 

When and how do we decide what is meaningful? It is important to remember that we do not know when a facial expression will stay with someone forever, or go completely unnoticed. The full significance of our gestures and actions can never be known. I struggle on a daily basis with the idea that I have been misunderstood or have conveyed something wrongly through my words, my body language, or (accidentally!) scathing looks. But as someone reassured me recently, most people are not thinking about or remembering you at the end of the day, they are probably just wondering how much philadelphia to have on their toast... 

Rebecca 

hee hee ;)...im guessing its only the lovely gestures that people remember - like a smile which didnt necessarily have their name on it...and was unexpected and thus able to make an especially good impact :)  

we can imagine the lady who recieved the smile, sitting in her kitchen in the evening, (with just the right amount of philadelphia on her toast), thinking, 'what a lovely, warm unexpected smile that lady gave me today' and with this she gave their cat an extra long stroke and a kiss on his whiskers and consequenly the cat goes out into the garden and makes an extra special purrrrr!  for the elderly women living next door and the elderly women goes back inside and calls her friend who she hasnt seen for a long time, and asks her round for scones with cream and jam and then the friend, walking round to the old ladies house, picks up a fallen apple  and hands it back to the mother of 3 struggerly along with her groceries

....and thats is how the smile started and! who knows where it will end (or!.... how kong it will take to get to Japan ;)

clair X 

Clair...

This is a very pretty scene that you paint... However, I am inclined in turn to imagine the negative gesture which travels along, making it's destructive way through the world... 

A bald man awakes from his dream on a beach and he's got a burned skull, in his anger he lashes out at a small dog, kicking it in the face... The dog in it's confusion and fear at the inexplicable rage of the man, runs away and bites a small boy who had tried to stroke it's fur, and then the small boy bursts into tears and smashes his sisters sand castle over in anguish. The sandcastle topples over and fills in a small hole in the sand which was the home of a family of burrowing sea turtles, who are now forced to burrow the other way into the earth. The turtles shift a rock, dislodging a precariously placed tectonic plate causing a catastrophic shift in the earth's crust. A rush of water fills the hole left by the crust, causing a wave which slowly builds up in amplitude as it traverses the surface of the North Pacific Ocean. Eventually it becomes a tidal wave which breaks shore off the eastern coast of Japan, flooding the generator rooms of three nuclear reactors resulting in total meltdown and much death.

This was just my initial response to your picture of positivity. Does this make me sound like a bit of a negative fatalist? haha

well.....! its good to have both sides of the coin up for pre-view ;) yes, chains of events can go either way, (and anywhere in between...) but its worth remembering, for me, how far the good can go, by default, it has as much travelling power as 'negative' stuff, and possibly more, because my friend told me that in other dimensions bad energy is dark and always sinks to the bottom and to avoid it you simply have to travel above it....that why birds get it so good...imagine...!

and it makes me think of the concept of 'good' and 'bad'....and how so many 'bad', 'negative' things have happened recently, but so far, they have all had little shimmering silver linings so! are they indeed bad or were they in fact good?

clair