Question : Beloved Osho, What is a Buddhafield? Just living together, running businesses, doesn’t seem to be enough, it is not satisfying. It feels like something deeper – something more challenging for the collective and the individual, in which both grow – is needed.
Osho : A buddhafield is one of the most mysterious phenomena in existence. It simply means whenever someone becomes awakened, his consciousness radiates a certain aura around him. Whoever is receptive, available, can be transformed by the radiating energy from an awakened being. The very presence of the awakened person can hit you so deep that your dormant energy starts awakening.
It has been described as a sleeping serpent being awakened. It was lying coiled, looking almost dead, and when provoked, it uncoils itself. Because of the similarity of the phenomena, in the East the uncoiling energy in the presence of the awakened person is called Kundalini. Kundalini simply means the serpent power.
The buddhafield can become a network. In the hands of a skilled master it need not be confined to a small area; hence I have introduced the communes. It is as if you put a mirror in front of a light. The mirror has no way of producing light, but it can reflect light. A single light surrounded by thousands of mirrors can create a light of immense quantity.
In India there is a temple made completely of small pieces of mirror. When you enter the temple you are suddenly surrounded by yourself from every side, in thousands of ways: from the ceiling, from the floor, from the walls. Each piece represents you in your totality. It is not that the piece of mirror is going to reflect only a certain part of you; it reflects you totally, your whole personality. And those thousands of mirrors all reflect you.
Just take a burning candle inside with you and you will be surprised at the effect: just one candle suddenly becomes thousands of candles, and all the reflections create tremendous light. The man who had made the temple was one of the richest men in India. He simply loved to make unique things. He loved me very much. I asked him – he had taken me to the temple to show me – I asked him, “Do you know the meaning of this temple?”
He said, “Meaning? I have simply created a unique piece of beauty, architecture, and something which has no parallel in the whole world.”
I said, “That’s true, but there is meaning also in it, and you must know it, because it is very embarrassing that you created the temple and you don’t know the meaning of it. The meaning is, this temple represents in a material way the fabric of a buddhafield.”
One buddha can create thousands of seekers around him. They are not awakened but they are willing to be awakened. They have not yet reached the goal, but they are very receptive, open, available. In the presence of the master they can at least function as mirrors very easily; then one buddha becomes millions of buddhas.
I had made the communes so that five thousand people could live together and learn to reflect me. Not to imitate me, remember – these are two totally different things. The mirror never imitates you; the mirror simply reflects you.
Now I have dissolved the communes, because now I want the whole world to be my commune. Wherever there is a sannyasin, he has to be a mirror. And time and space make no difference: If he is available to me, he is as close to me as you are. And from the farthest corner of the earth he can reflect me.
And now I have millions of sannyasins around the world. I have withdrawn all conditions that can hinder people from becoming sannyasins. These millions of people are going to create a network of energy enveloping the whole earth.
Just one sun rises in the morning, but it is being reflected by all the oceans, all the lakes, all the rivers, all the ponds. Small ponds reflect the same sun as the biggest ocean. Just one sun rises, and millions of places start reflecting it. And it is not only the ocean, lake, river, ponds – there are other reflections too, which are more subtle.
Even before the sun comes above the horizon, the birds suddenly start singing. They are awakened, something has happened to them, and something tremendously beautiful; otherwise from where will the song arise? And they are so full of life! The flowers open their petals… these are also reflections. There is no obligation on their part; they can remain buds. There is no obligation on the part of the birds; they may decide not to sing, but something irresistible which is beyond their control….
When the sun is rising, something is rising in them too: their life energy, their kundalini. Of course a bird cannot become a buddha, but he can at least sing, dance, fly in the sky just out of sheer joy, open his wings as an indication of freedom, aliveness. He can claim the whole sky as his own.
And all the flowers – from the smallest grass flower to the biggest lotus – they suddenly all fall into a symphony. They forget their differences; they forget that there are poor flowers and there are rich flowers, that there is the proletariat and there are the bourgeois; suddenly all classes disappear. And in their flowering, in their opening, they release whatsoever they have.
They give back to existence as a gift whatever existence has given to them. They don’t keep it, they don’t hoard it. They give it back a thousandfold, they multiply it, because what was – apparently – not in the seed, what was not in the roots, what was not in the tree, in the branches, in the leaves… has suddenly come to blossom in the flower: all the colors, all the fragrance. But they waited long in the dark night for the sun to rise.
The presence of the sun suddenly gets reflected in millions of ways and creates a network of light, life, joy, fullness, overflowing ecstasy. That’s what I mean by a buddhafield. One man getting awakened means the sun has risen. It is the declaration that the dark night of the soul is at an end. But it is possible only if there are millions of people spread all over the earth to create a connectedness. With this net of energy we may be able to transform many people who had no idea, who had never dreamed that there is something more than a mundane life.
So you are right – just working together, creating a commune, creating finances to run it, is not enough. It has nothing to do with the buddhafield. Seeing the fact that in communes you will get entangled in so many unnecessary things, that there is a possibility to forget for what you had gathered there in the first place…. Now I don’t want big communes but small groups, more intimate, or individuals doing their ordinary work in the world. That takes only five hours, five days a week, and leaves you immense time and energy to become part of a great, ecstatic experience.
In the commune I found it is difficult, because you are trying to create an alternative society – which takes too much time, too much energy. People were working for twelve hours, fourteen hours, and had no energy left. Even if the sun rises, the bird has no energy to sing. The sun rises, but the rose has no energy to open its petals and release the fragrance.
And because you are creating an alternative society, the ordinary world is going to be antagonistic to you. You are strangers and you are trying something which their tradition and their experience prohibits. And they are in the majority; they have governments in their hands, they have the law in their hands. So creating takes your time and energy; and then fighting with the society – which is too big for you – that also takes your energy.
I was thinking that humanity had progressed since the days of Socrates, but I was wrong. It is still where it was, it has not progressed at all. Civilization has not yet happened, culture is still a dream, and democracy a faraway utopia.
So whenever you come in conflict you will see the barbarous, the primitive, the animalistic, coming up to destroy you. And naturally you cannot survive against the vast masses, the blind people.
I am reminded of a story – not a story but a real fact; it is so strange that it looks like a story. In South America in a hidden valley deep in the mountains, it was found that there lived a small community of people, not more than three hundred – all blind. It was strange – what had happened to these people? What calamity had fallen on them?
One man, very adventurous, a scientific enquirer, wanted to know what had happened to these people… because people were afraid to go into the valley, it was dangerous. If three hundred people are blind, perhaps there is something wrong in the air, something wrong in the water, something wrong in the food – who knows what is wrong? You may go blind!
But this courageous young man entered the commune and was surprised… he did not become blind. He figured out what was happening: there was a certain fly in the mountains…. Every child was born with eyes, as every child is born everywhere else, but within three, four months – if the fly bites the child – he will go blind. Three or four months was too great a time, and the fly was a common fly, all around, everywhere.
So everybody was born with eyes, but nobody ever remembered that once he had eyes because he had lost them so early in life – when he was two months old, at the most four months old. But that fly’s bite was not capable of destroying a young man’s eyes. So anybody who had passed at least one year was beyond the reach of the fly; it needed only the very vulnerable child.
The man wanted to help them because he had found the cause; the cause could be destroyed and those common children could be saved. While he was working on the plans of how to destroy the fly, the whole commune of those primitive people used to laugh at the madman. They used to laugh because they could not believe that he had eyes and they didn’t.
And of course they were three hundred and he was alone and there was no way to prove that he had eyes. Those three hundred people had never heard about eyes – he was just a poet, a dreamer!
But living with them he fell in love with a girl of the community. He wanted to marry that girl, but the community had a condition: “You will have to drop this illusion that you have eyes. And to make certain, we have our elders who will check you. If they find something that you call eyes, they will destroy them… because you have something which you should not have. No human being has eyes – something is wrong with you.
“You can marry the girl of our community, but the condition is that you have to become part of our community. You have to become blind. You can choose. Either you have to leave – leave us alone and don’t disturb us. Since you have come it has been a continuous disturbance. You have been corrupting our youth, putting in their minds the idea of eyes – which we have never heard of from our elders, our forefathers. We have always lived this way. And we don’t need eyes. What will we do with eyes? – we are perfectly happy and content.
“You have disturbed our peace and now you want to get entry into our community. You will have to choose: you will have to lose your so-called eyes if you want to get married, or you forget all about this love affair and leave this valley and never come back again.”
The young man thought for the whole night. He really loved the woman, but this was stupid, the condition was simply idiotic, that he had to lose his eyes. In fact he loved the woman because of his eyes. She was so beautiful, and all those three hundred people were not aware of her beauty and they would never be aware of her beauty. It was his eyes that had given the glimpse of the beauty of the woman.
He had seen so many women, but he settled for a blind woman. Although she was blind, she had something indescribable, something otherworldly. But to lose one’s eyes to get that woman seems to be a very strange bargain, because in losing your eyes you will be also losing that woman; you will never be able to see her again. Then all women are equal. To a blind man what difference does it make that you have a homely woman or a Cleopatra? It doesn’t matter.
No, he could not manage to convince himself to lose his eyes, because his eyes were the source of the experience of the beauty. In the middle of the night he escaped from the valley. And this is not a story, it is a historical fact.
So when we created communes, I was thinking humanity has progressed, has come a long way from the days of Socrates and Buddha. But I was wrong. They have not moved a single inch! They have changed their masks, they wear better masks than their ancestors, but behind the mask is hidden a barbarous soul – uncivilized, uncultured.
It is not able to accept the stranger. It is not vast enough to absorb the new, the unknown, the unexperienced. It becomes irritated, it becomes annoyed. It wants to destroy your eyes, because it is blind and your eyes will remind it about its blindness.
Seeing the situation, I have dissolved the communes. I would rather rely on individuals. In that way I can spread my message far and wide. I have even allowed you, if you feel it difficult, not to use the red color, not to use the mala, so no blind man is annoyed by you…. Because I want to protect your eyes – and they are very vulnerable because you are in the situation of a child and just a fly can destroy your eyes. And these people are not flies, they are monsters.
The buddhafield has expanded its area, but its strategy has changed. Now I will depend on the individuals – and individuals can move around the world, to faraway corners; still there will be a connecting link with me. Wherever there is a sannyasins of mine, I am there. He will be my mirror, he will reflect me and my light. He will transmit my energy, my understanding.
So you are right: just being together and working hard and running a disco and making money and doing all kinds of things does not seem enough. It is not enough. It is not only not enough, it is a sheer wastage. So you work in the world; and it is a simple thing – whenever you feel a deep urge to be with me, I will be available. You can always come to me.
To make it a reality, now we will not be having any celebrations; now the celebration will continue all the year round – three hundred and sixty-five days of celebration! And I will be living somewhere, soon – my people are searching for the right place for me to be. And all the year round you can come to me, whenever you have time. So there will be always three to five hundred people coming and going. And I would like a more intimate contact with you be
cause now I am going to depend on the individual.
You cannot understand how painful it has been for me that people longing for years to come, would come to the commune but then there would be twenty thousand people and they would not be able even to see me while I am speaking. I will not be able to see their faces, I will not be able to look into their eyes – and they have come from far away. Waiting for years, earning money, somehow they have managed to come. But with twenty thousand people gathering I cannot manage individual intimacy.
So my new format of work is going to be an all-year-round festival. So you are welcome any moment, because the festival will be continuous, so we don’t collect twenty thousand or fifty thousand people at one time. We distribute people all over the year, so I can sit with you on the lawn, I can sit with you under the trees, I can sit with you under the stars, and I can talk to you or I can be silent with you. So when you go back you are full of me. And this is going to be the new order of the buddhafield.