19 January : Osho Mahaparinirvan day celebration, Osho Tapoban

25-27 January : 3 days camp at Osho Tapoban
8-10 February : Osho Om Bodhisattwa Commune, Dehradun, India

Get details [here]

Jessica Benjamin is a 22 year old traveller from America who recently graduated in Psychology from Harvard University. She is spending one year traveling in Tibet, Nepal, and India and has been living at Osho Tapoban for the past few weeks experimenting with different Osho meditation techniques. We sat down with her to discuss her experiences.

1.      How did you come to know about Osho and Tapoban?
I was doing a 10-day Vipassana course in Nepal and two girls there told me about this "Osho" place near Kathmandu. For me this year is about exploring and experiencing as many new things as I can, so a stay at Tapoban seemed only natural, but I really didnt know anything about it before I came. Now, of course, things are different…
 

2.      Tell me about your Osho experience so far?
I didnt come in with any expectations, just kind of left myself open to whatever might happen, and Im constantly awed by what does happen, even after only two weeks here. Im not sure how to verbalize, Im not sure that I can, much of it is beyond words. The people especially have been wonderful, really really warm and talkative and insightful, and the location itself is so calm yet charged, very conducive to meditating.
 

3.      You recently graduated from college, what are the differences between college life and a commune life?
For me college was more individualistic, no real community and somewhat of a spiritual void. Here its much, much different, and discussions dont involve as much frivolity and small-talk. Its also a lot quieter at Tapoban. My school was in a small city, so finding a quiet place to meditate was next to impossible, even in the middle of the night. The sharing, though, thats a common thread in both environments, although the content of the transference is variable.
 

4.      What are Western attitudes towards meditation and have you noticed any difference from Eastern attitudes?
There are two stories of meditations assimilation into Western culture. The most recent is a diluted, celebrity-driven movement that appeals to aesthetics more than it does to spirituality. The second story is only a half-century or so old. A few Western pioneers traveled to the East and brought back with them not only the knowledge and practices that would eventually take root in the West, but also the teachers, the true facilitators. The Dharma is migrating, meditation is migrating. Its catching on in the Western world, and as a consequence its changing, its adapting. This is inevitable, this is what needs to happen for an ancient tradition to make itself applicable and relevant to modern cultures and societies. But the Dharma itself, the essence of the meditation does not change, its nature is inviolable. What changes is how a collective cultural consciousness interprets it. Im fortunate to be in a unique position experiencing meditation as an indigenous phenomenon and then witnessing its nascency, or its tranformation, in the West.
 

5.      Can you speak on Western Psychology and Meditation?
There is a tendency in the West, especially in America, to seek out the quickest and most painless solutions to problems. In the field of psycholgy this manifests itself in the form of pills. Patients expect this type of treatment, and doctors feel pressured to provide it. The result is that we have a nation full of people who are unwell, who are spiritually and psychologically repressed, and theyre only being treated for the symptoms, not the core of the problem. Meditation reaches that core and cleanses the system, but its not an easy process. Its not a matter of going to the pharamcy and picking up a prescription, its a matter of committing yourself to yourself, to working through whatever is inside in order to reach that essential, untarnished Self. There is no way that pills can accomplish that.

6.      Whats your favorite Osho meditation and why?
Kundalini because I understand so little and feel so much. Also chakra breathing and chakra sound, just because. (laughs) (again laughs)

7.      You were doing Vippassana before you started doing Osho meditations, has Osho meditation helped in your Vipassana? If yes how?
      I wouldnt say that Osho has helped, per se, in my Vipassana because theyre so different. Actually, no, theyre not so different. What I mean is that theyre two separate ways of going about the same thing. Both emphasize an ultimate no-mind state, and both both work with energy flow, but they go about these aims. in radically different ways. Theres no dancing in Vipassana, and theres no sitting for 11 hours a day in Osho (unless you feel like it), among other things. At this stage, Im enjoying both techniques. Ive experiences at Osho that I havent had doing Vipassana, and vice versa. Id like to continue experimenting with both,  and with other meditations as well. Theres still so much to learn.

*Interview taken at Osho Tapoban by Sw Aatmo

 
Forthcoming Osho Meditation camps