Osho Quotes on Satori

People feel very puzzled as to how satori is attained so fast. It is attained so fast because you are already in it. It is not something to be achieved in time, with effort; no effort is needed. It is as if a man has fallen asleep and he has forgotten his name -- as you all forget in your sleep. Then somebody comes and shouts, "Ram! What are you doing here? Get up -- the sun has risen!" He opens his eyes, and he is Ram again. And just a moment before, he was under a thousand and one dreams -- floating, moving, going in a thousand directions, dreaming impossible things. And suddenly a shout, "Ram! Get up -- the sun has risen!" and Ram opens his eyes. Exactly like that is Satori.
One time, the old Zen Master, D. T. Suzuki, gave a talk on Zen in Tokyo. He spoke of the silence, the emptiness, the nothingness, and all the rest, together with the deep wisdom that comes from satori. When he had finished, one of his audience rose to his feet and, not without a touch of irritation exclaimed, "But Dr. Suzuki, what about society? What about other people? What about the other?" Suzuki looked at the man with a smile and remarked, "But there is no other."
Everybody has to find in what situation his satori starts bubbling, his own samadhi starts happening. Everybody has to feel his own way. If you are a little alert, after a few experiences you will become able to create the situation, mm?
So just sit silently sometimes, relaxed, and feel that you are losing yourself in a cloud that surrounds you... constantly changing, and yet remaining with you. And as you start losing yourself, you will feel more and more blissful. There will be some rare moments when you are completely lost and the cloud is and you are not. Those are the moments of satori, samadhi -- first glimpses... far away glimpses, but yet of the truth.

The real journey starts when the first satori happens. When you have had a first glimpse, trust arises. Then you are no more groping in the dark, you know now. You yourself know that it exists. Now it is not taken from some authority -- not that Osho says, not that Buddha says, not that Christ says. Now you have also become a witness to it. It is!It is your own experience -- of course, very atomic, seed-like, but that is nothing to be worried about. Once the seed is there, the tree will be coming.
Many times the glances of satori come but you cannot hold them. But nothing is wrong in it and don't be worried that you could not hold it for longer. Forget all about it. Just remember the situation in which it happened and try to move in that situation again and again. The experience is not important. How you were feeling just a moment before, that is important. If you can create that situation again, the experience will happen again. Experience is not important. The situation is important; how you were feeling -- flowing. Loving... what the situation was.

Music may have been on, people were dancing, eating... the flavour of food, or some beautiful woman just by your side, a friend talking to you -- and suddenly....Just remember the aroma in which it happened, the field. Try to create that field. When the field is right and you are in tune again, the bull will enter and you can ride on him...One day one has to. Just sit silently and try to create that situation again, because it is a field that you can create. Sometimes it happens accidently.
This is what in Zen they call a mini satori. You were working for only three, four, five days and you felt such frustration that you thought 'Drop it. Let these people go. Nothing is happening and the method is not going to work. These people are wrong... this method is wrong. It is just futile.' Just think of a zen monk alone in his cell for fifteen or eighteen or even twenty years working, and continuously frustrated... frustrated, frustrated; nothing but frustration.

Then comes the moment after eighteen years of wasted effort... almost looks like eighteen lives. It almost looks timeless, as if he has been strug-gling for ever and for ever. And the wall remains there and nothing has happened. The whole life has gone into dust... gone to the dogs. He starts thinking to leave -- enough is enough! And exact-ly in that moment the first satori happens.

Suddenly he is so full of light. Something penetrates his very core of being. He becomes illuminated. The old is gone. The person who is struggling is no more. Then something new, absolutely discontinuous with the past, has happened. This they call the first satori.

In groups also, mini satoris happen. They are mini because the effort has not been very long. By and by, as people will be getting more and more into it. I will be creating bigger groups continuing for three months or six months or one year; just a group of twenty people working continuously for one year. They will come out completely changed. You will not be able to recognise their faces as being those of the same people who had gone into the group. So, good. This has been a very beautiful experience of a mini satori. Whenever you feel that it has happened and you don't take any credit for it, it is something spiritual. If you take credit for it, again the ego has been strengthened through it.

Go on working and more and more will become possible. But do all you can do. Never relax before that point because then it will not happen. If you think that it happens when you don't do anything so one should just sit and not do anything, it won't happen. Make all efforts, and more intense so that it happens after the second day. If you put all your energy into the group and it puts all its energy into the effort, even one hour's effort can be so in-tense that it can happen. It depends on intensity.

Related Osho Discourses:
        Osho discourse on Satori
        Osho on Mini Satori and Full Satori
        Osho - Is a Master needed after Satori
        Osho on difference between Satori and Samadhi

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