Osho, Zen, Dao, China and Meditation

By chance I recently came across an intriguing website www.livingworkshop.net. I really recommend you have a look at it. Bob has ‘mapped’ Osho’s references in his discourses to China – people and places.

I was fascinated with the ‘Dao Sites in China’ link which shows beautiful photos of the Hangu Pass near Lingbao, Henan Province. Bob writes:

‘This is the actual border pass where Laozi (Lao Tzu) was detained and forced to write the Dao De Jing (Tao Te Ching), considered to be the most powerful piece of Daoist literature extant.’

Chuang Tzu’s tomb is also supposedly in this area although its exact location is not known.

Looking on a map I found that this place is also near X’ian from where some of the terracotta statues now on exhibition in the British Museum in London come. And further down the Yellow River valley are the Longmen Caves, home of the ‘Ten Thousand Buddhas’, the holy mountain, Mt Song, which is where Bodhidharma came after leaving India and where he sat in his cave on one of the peaks, Taoshi Shan, for 9 years.

The last link ‘What is an Osho?’ is particularly interesting. Here possible connections between Chinese, Japanese and Hindu terms for the words osho, acharya, and a Chinese word meaning namaste (the greeting with two hands together) are discussed.

Osho is many things to many people, but, if he is a Zen Master for you (he is for me), this site is well worth a visit.

text by Veena – May 2008