53 Meditations to Meet the Buddha Within

Osho describes Gautama Buddha as the greatest breakthrough in the evolution of human consciousness because his discovery of meditation shifted the focus away from praying to a god toward meditation; toward becoming alert to the potential of each human being for godliness.

Discover the Buddha is a tool to support watchful awareness of the mind, emotions and physical activities in everyday life. These are not ″divination cards″ - that is, they are not meant to be used for reading the future, or even to interpret what is happening in the present. Rather, they are reminders that each of us carries within ourselves the potential to wake up, to become buddhas in our own right, and that it is this process of awakening that gives meaning and significance to our lives.

There are a total of 53 cards in the deck - one card for each week of the year, plus one, unnumbered ″remembrance″ card - Sammasati - which serves as a reminder that ultimately, the task is to become a light unto ourselves, to fulfill the promise of the buddha within.

Each card carries a photograph of a Buddha statue, a short quotation (sutra) from the body of work known as The Dhammapada of Gautam Buddha, and a brief Osho commentary on the sutra. The book corresponds to the deck, and provides more detailed commentary on each card.

The following suggestions are offered for using the entire package:
Before you start using the cards, read the Introduction to the book. This will help you understand the purpose of the text, where it comes from, and how to approach it.

Choose one card at the beginning of each week, with the intention to keep it with you so that you can refer to it often during the day. It might be useful at first to select ″trigger″ events to help you remember - mealtimes, for example, or your scheduled breaks at work. It is better to keep the card in a place where you must intentionally stop what you are doing, and take it out to look at it. When we leave things ″on display″ they often become part of the landscape, and we don′t notice them anymore.

The cards are numbered to make it easier to find the corresponding text in the book, but they need not necessarily be used in this order. You can also choose them randomly, or according to what words or photographs appeal to you at the moment. Just be sure to put the card aside after the week has passed, so that you are always working with a new one.
Read the section of the book that corresponds to the card you have just chosen. As the week passes, and the words on the card begin to ″sink in,″ you will discover that if you read the text in the book again, it will reveal deeper layers of meaning to you.

After the first couple of days, you will find a rhythm that fits best with your day and allows you to really spend time with the card, to ″take a break″ and come back to your center of watching. It works best to read the text just as poetry, without making an intellectual effort to understand or analyze it. This allows the words to provoke and wake up the intuitive, wordless understanding that you already carry as a seed within.

Whenever possible during the week, spend some time with your card and re-read the corresponding text in the book, just before you go to sleep. This will allow a deep sense of relaxation and acceptance to permeate your sleep throughout the night. This will be reinforced if you keep the card next to your bed, and look at it again when you wake up in the morning.

Finally, a note about the ″remembrance″ card (Sammasati) This card is, in a sense, the most important of all. Each of the other cards is pointing toward this one, which is the reminder that waking up and allowing the buddha within to emerge is our most important task in life. It is suggested that you keep this card on top of the deck, and refresh your acquaintance with its message each week before you choose a new card for the week to come.

Osho describes Gautama Buddha as the greatest breakthrough in the evolution of human consciousness because his discovery of meditation shifted the focus away from praying to a god toward meditation; toward becoming alert to the potential of each human being for godliness. The 52 cards in this deck together comprise a thoughtful guide to understanding the Buddha’s important contribution to human enlightenment. Each card contain a sutra, a commentary by Osho, and a beautiful image of a Buddha statue. Readers can first enjoy the words as poetry and allow them to evoke an intuitive, emotional response; they can then read Osho′s corresponding entry in the book to create meaning. A 53rd card, called Sammasati, represents the last word spoken by the Buddha and an inspiring reminder of the reader’s own buddhahood. Individual sutras include Only Love Dispels Hate; Beyond Judgments; Neither Praise Nor Blame; Conquer Yourself; Beyond Sorrow; Awake Forever; and The Shining Way.


WHAT IS A SUTRA?

A sutra is an essential statement with no elaboration, with no explanation, with no decoration - just the bare, naked core of it. It was needed in ancient days, because people had to remember these sutras. Hence they had to be very condensed, they had to be telegraphic so people could remember for centuries, because they would go from one generation to another just as part of peoples memories. Books were not in existence, printing had not come into being. People had to remember; hence the device of the sutra. A sutra means a maxim, just the very essential core. But if you remember it you can always decode it.
And that′s what I am doing here - decoding these sutras for you.

In the East, all the great scriptures are written in sutras. Sutra means the most condensed statement, so thin as if it is just a thread - the word sutra literally means a thread. Everything inessential has been cut; only the most essential has been saved. It is the most telegraphic way of expressing things. Hence in the East there are great commentaries. In the West there are no commentaries at all, because in the West no sutras have been written. A sutra needs a commentary.
In the West, the very phenomenon of commentaries has not happened. Nobody comments on Kant, nobody comments on Hegel, nobody comments even on Socrates, nobody comments on the Bible. The very phenomenon of commentaries is absolutely Eastern. And the reason is that the great philosophers of the West came into existence when writing had arrived, when it was not anymore a question of memorizing - you could write a treatise.

And when philosophers like Kant or Hegel or Feuerbach write, they write with all possible implications, complexities, meanings. They also write keeping in mind whether somebody is going to contradict them, what their points might be. They are also keeping in mind what the arguments of the opposite philosophy can be, and they are already replying to them - although nobody has opposed them, nobody has even understood what they are writing about. So their writings are very complete in a way, full and entire. They have not left anything for anybody else to add.

In the East, commentaries started for a certain historical reason. It is at least ten thousand years old - that is the very orthodox view about the history of philosophical development in the East. There are people who think it is far more ancient than ten thousand years. And because there was no writing - printing was not yet invented - every master had to speak in small maxims - not elaborate treatises, but in small sutras. The word sutra means ′ the thread′. They are giving you the very minimum to remember, because to remember a vast amount of a great philosophical treatise will not be possible. And there is a danger of forgetting something, there is a danger of adding something of your own. So the way of the sutras was the only possibility - to write in such a condensed way that every disciple of any master could remember the small, seed-like maxims.

But they are only seeds. They indicate the way, they indicate a certain direction. Unless your heart becomes a soil for those seeds, they will not sprout into leaves, into branches, into flowers, into fruits. Those seeds contain everything that is going to happen, they have the whole inbuilt program. If you allow that seed to enter into your being, as it sinks deeper and deeper, you will realize all that is contained in it. It will become a reality in you.

But because individuals are different, because individuals are unique - each individual heart is not the same soil, not the same territory, not the same land - the seed will have to grow according to the soil. Somebody′s heart may be very fertile, creative. The tree may become very huge, the foliage may be very green, and when the spring comes there will be thousands of flowers and fruits.
But somebody′s heart may be very hard. The seed is the same, but the soil is not going to help the seed much. The seed has to grow against all odds, against all hindrances. The heart is not going to help but on the contrary it will hinder. It is just a seed that has fallen into a land full of stones. It may grow but it won′t be the same as if it had fallen in a fertile, creative heart. It may not attain to the same height; it may even be a bi crippled; it may not have much foliage; it may come to only a few flowers.
But the uniquenesses are such - somebody is a poet and the seed may become poetry. And somebody is a musician and the seed may become music. And somebody is a sculptor and the seed may become beauty in stone. It will all depend in which kind of heart the seed falls. And there are many more implications.

It is possible that one heart may be very fertile and it may bring thousands of flowers. And one heart may not be so fertile and it may not bring thousands of flowers but just one flower - very huge, very big. Those thousand flowers will not be in any way competitive to this one flower. In numbers they may be many, but the beauty of this one flower has almost accumulated the whole beauty of thousands of flowers.
I had one gardener with me for many years while I was teaching in the university. I had a beautiful garden. And this old man I had chosen for a certain reason - he was somebody else′s gardener, some army officer′s gardener. He was winning every year the competition for growing the biggest roses. I used to go to see, because the whole city was involved in the competition.

All the rich people - officers, bureaucrats, professors, doctors, those who could afford a garden - were participants. But I was not interested in the people who were participating.
I was interested in finding out who the gardener was, because the poor gardener was not even mentioned when the trophy was given to the winner. It was given to the owner of the garden. I was looking out for the gardener, because this army officer could not be a gardener himself - the poor gardener was not even there.
I followed the officer′s car. I looked around his house, I watched, and I found where the gardener was working. When the army officer went in, he did not even tell the gardener, ″I have won the trophy because of you. In fact, it belongs to you.″ He simply went into his garage and then into his house. I went into his garden. The old man, a poor man, was working. I asked him, ″Have you heard that your roses have been chosen as the best for this year?″ He said, ″Nobody has told me yet.″ I said, ″How much is this army officer giving you as salary?″
He said, ″Not very much.″
I said, ″Whatever he is giving, I will give you double.
You can tell me later how much he is giving. You just bring whatever you have into my car and come with me.″
And then I saw how he was winning. His whole art was never to allow any rose bush more than one flower. He would cut all the buds and leave only the biggest bud.
I asked him, ″What is the secret of it?″
He said, ″The secret is simple. The rose bush has a certain amount of juice. It can be distributed in a hundred flowers, but if you don′t allow it to be distributed it is bound to assert itself into one flower.″

I remained nine years in that city. For nine years continuously this gardener was the winner. And his secret was just to allow one flower to grow. So it is possible - these are the uniquenesses I am talking about - that the same seeds in different hearts will bring different manifestations.
And that is how commentaries began. The master dies, he has thousands of disciples who have listened to him -now they start thinking, what is the significance of a certain statement or of a certain word? In the East it has been a very delicate affair. Not brutal logic, but a very subtle, very feminine art.