Be Cool

Knowing is not of the Mind It is an Experience or rather, Experiencing

Deva means divine and sita means coolness; divine coolness. So become cool, and just surround yourself with the feeling of coolness. Don’t get heated up. Whenever you catch yourself getting heated up, relax immediately. Exhale deeply and you will suddenly feel cool. Anger, or any other sort of heatedness, has to be dropped, and you will feel tremendously beautiful.

Even while making love, remain as cool as possible. It will be difficult in the beginning, mm? because we don’t know how to make love in a cool way. We know only the heated state of passion, the feverish state of passion. But once you have known how to make love in a cool way, you will be surprised how much you were missing. Then love becomes meditation. Anything done with coolness becomes meditative.

So let that be your secret mantra – coolness. Sitting, walking, talking, remember it again and again, and relax. If you are walking, don’t walk in a hurried way. There is no hurry... we are not going anywhere. Existence is here. All going is pointless. Everything is available here, so don’t be goal- oriented.

A goal-oriented person becomes heated up, because he has to live for the future. When you live in the present you become cool. There is no worry in the present. The worry comes when you start living in the future. Then you start thinking and planning what to do, what not to do.

Just herenow there is no problem. Problems don’t exist in the present; they come as a by-product of the future. And with problems, fever, wastage of energy. With wastage of energy, one goes on committing suicide. Then life becomes nothing but a long drawn affair of death. Then between death and birth there is nothing but a long, slow coming death... a gradual death.

If you remain cool, you collect energy. If you remain cool, you become a tremendous pool of energy. And when energy is there and you are not doing anything with it, there is delight. Energy is delight.

Ordinarily we know only the pleasure of release – that is pleasure. In sex, in anger, in exercise, we know one pleasure – and that is of releasing energy. You feel unburdened. But pleasure is not delight, pleasure is not joy – it is a very poor substitute.

Delight comes when the energy is there and you are not doing anything with it, you are not throwing it away. You have become a reservoir; then there is delight. And delight is a totally different dimension. Delight brings you to bliss.

Delight is divine, I say, and pleasure is human – not even human... it will be better to call it animal. Pleasure is animal.

So just try it – in every possible way, keep cool. And you can do it – that’s why I am giving you that process.

Deva means divine or god, and arpita means devoted; devoted to the divine. Let devotion be your way, and prayer, your path. Mm ? you will grow from the feeling centre. So feel more, love more. Bring more and more compassion and friendliness to your life. And for no reason at all – not addressed to anybody in particular. Just let that be your way of being, your very style, your climate – of love, compassion, friendship.

Move in dimensions where feeling can have easy growth – music, poetry, painting. Listen to music, play or sing, dance... recite poetry or compose poetry, read poetry. Move more and more into the world of feeling. They are different worlds.

We don t live in one world. People live in different worlds. A man who lives from his thinking centre, lives in a totally different world from the person who lives from his feeling centre. The man who lives from his thinking centre, lives in flat prose, mathematics, logic, calculation. The man who lives from the feeling centre lives in a poetic way. He is not logical.

His approach is not for consistency; his approach is for beauty. He does not approach life’s problems through logic, argument – no! He approaches life’s problems through wonder, awe, reverence. In fact, the word ’problem’ never arises in the person who lives through the feeling centre. The problem – the very word ’problem’ – belongs to the thinking mind.

For the feeling person the same thing appears more like a mystery rather than a problem. Not that it has to be solved, but that it has to be lived and loved.

If a man of thinking looks at a flower, the flower poses itself before him as a problem. The man living through the head would like to know what the name of the flower is, to what species it belongs, from what country it has come. He would like to know about it. He is not interested in the flower itself, in the beauty that is there... in the joy that is moving with the flower itself.

A man of feeling is not concerned with what the name of the flower is, to what species it belongs. He is not even concerned whether it is a flower or not – words don’t count. The presence, the reality of this flower is so tremendously overwhelming that he feels in awe, reverence, wonder. He is feeling a mystery. His feeling is that of love, of beauty.

So try to approach life through love, through beauty, through feeling, and anything that can be helpful for it, will be helpful for your growth. So become more interested in music, dancing, singing. And sometimes just sit silently with folded hands, bowing to the whole existence. Looking at the stars, bow down. Feel a thrill in the heart.... And we are all connected. Even the farthest star is connected with you. Nothing is disconnected.

Once you start feeling, you will feel tremendously alive, because the whole life is yours, and everything is criss-crossing. The stars and the moon and the sun and the flowers, and the people – they all pass through you... their rays pass through you. They enhance your being.

In the morning, the early morning, a sun ray has come.... It has travelled ninety-three million miles... and a small violet flower opens to receive that ray. Ninety-three million miles to open this violet? The ray has travelled very far, and these ninety-three million miles are just an empty darkness... just in search of this violet flower? And this violet flower waiting for this ray? Waiting tremendously in trust.

The ray will come and the flower will open and receive it, and will be joyous and will dance... will have its being, and will have its moment of life. With tremendous trust this flower was waiting for something which is so far away. Unbelievable that it will ever reach!

This miracle is happening all around – every single moment. Watch for these miracles, and feel for these miracles. This is the temple of god – this ray coming from the sun... this violet flower opening. This is the temple of god. A far away star reflecting in a small pool in your garden.... Look at that shimmering light! It is so incredible!

But we are blind – we don’t see. And we are deaf – we don’t hear. We have lost all sensitivity, we have lost all feeling.

So let feeling be your path, devotion, prayer. Surround yourself in them....

Osho Discourses -18 December 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

52+ Things to Do

You've stumbled upon a surplus of time. Freed from work, between jobs or a simple but radical shift in perspective has opened new vistas to fill with enriching activities. Perhaps you've exhausted or grown tired of all the negative habits and fillers that once served as escapes or diversions from a busy schedule and troubled mind and may now be looking for some constructive habits and quests that will build your resources rather than deplete them.  Maybe it's been years or decades or lifetimes since you actually chose your own activities  and you've forgotten where your true interests lie. Hopefully something on this list may fan that ember of exploration, discovery and endeavor that once made you look forward to jumping out of bed in the morning.

1. First, get some free hugs at the nicest place on the internet
2. College courses, free ones, taught by professors you always wish you had. Teachers so enthusiastic about their topics that if you had any morsel of interest at all, you'll be caught up in the excitement that always attends true learning. Try Coursera or Kahn Academy, Udemy, Reddit University and more. 
3. Volunteer for help in your area 
4. And find out what's going on
5. Or where to go
6. Computer graphics, games, design, coding, try some free tutorials at tutsplus or code academy or go through the very fun, hands-on cs course at Kahn.
7. Build something cool at Instructables or Make.
8. Watch one of the 166 free documentaries that will expand your consciousness or these 25 documentaries everyone should watch.
9. Practice Zhan Zhuang, standing qigong.
10. Learn a foreign language with sites like DuoLingo or with Pimsleur audio, if you just want to listen and speak 30 minutes a day without taking notes and develop a killer accent.
11. Learn how to meditate, and do it 20 minutes every day. And maybe try some variations. And, for the hardcore.
12. Learn how to cook. Maybe start with a crockpot.
13. Learn how stuff works
14. Play strategy games like chess or star craft online and enter online tournaments.
15. Play a retro MMORPG like Ultima Online Second Age
16. Check out this list of must see anime for adults and add this one.
17. Discover some new music you like with Pandora or Spotify.
18. Start Journaling
19. Learn to draw
20. Make some art
21. Play with Fractals or 3D Modeling and Rendering
22. Make your own music with MixCraft or GarageBand or make some quick chiptunes or sound effects
23. Get in shape with body-weight workouts, start some martial arts or yoga. (more yoga) Get an exercise bike and do tabata intervals 3 times a week. Go for long walks
24. Get rid of stuff, embrace a minimalist lifestyle and feng shui your living space
25. Become an ordained minister.  
26. Take a 30 day journey with Mandala or just print out some geometry to color
27. Help people around the world out with micro loans or random acts of pizza or contribute to a new idea
28. Develop and refine your perfect set of daily routines
29. Learn how to pick locks 
30. Instead of TV
31. Start or update a blog. Or build a website if you are more ambitious
32. Learn Poi, Juggling or Spinning fire thingies
33. Learn a musical instrument
34. Learn how to tie a bunch of different kinds of knots  and carry some rope or string in your pocket or purse to practice at odd times.
35. Design some t-shirts, mugs, bumper stickers and set up your own store on zazzle if you need a good graphics program to get started, try the free InkScape.
36. Try your hand at remote viewing with target monkey
37. Learn knife or shuriken throwing, and try painting them glow in the dark, or get a real bull whip and figure out how it works. Practice until you can snuff out a candle (without setting the room on fire.)
38. Learn storytelling. And a few good stories. Start with one, and tell it to yourself until you learn its rhythm.
39. Find out how to identify all the edible and medicinal plants that grow in the area you live and try some recipes with them.  
40. If you work/ed with computers as a day job, especially with the os or networking, but developers too will find learning a little ethical hacking a great hobby.   
41. Get a USB microscope and create microscopic art that you blow up into images.  
42. Master a few origami folds.  
43. Plan and execute an excursion, big and small. If it's travel, try this packing list.
44. Randomize parts of your day. What to do, wear, eat, go... a roll of the die among alternatives and go with the choice made by the die. Mindfully. Ethically.  
45. Walk, run or ride under the full moon 
46. Keep a dream journal. And if you have some flexibility on your waking times, try some tech for lucid dreaming.  
47. Learn the constellations with your android or iphone, just point it up to the sky at night. 
48. Master self-hypnosis over the weekend (one of the best resources I've found, comes with 3 very good recorded inductions as well.) 
49. Prepare for time travel by brushing up on caveman chemistry.  
50. Experiment with moving slower  
51. Try your hand in online competitions like Kaggle with this book or this one and a little R or the Art of R or even Machine Learning with R. 
52. Master a few techniques to radically improve your memory. 
53. Know 41 things, you didn't know before, for no particular reason.  
54. Complete something that is pending. 
55. Start tracking something to learn more about yourself. What you eat. Your fitness and/or how you sleep. etc.  
56. Stop doing 1 or more of these.  
57. Do nothing for 2 minutes. 
58. Listen to white noise, or the sound of rain. 
59. Surf through 50 creative diversions. 
60. Find a float tank in your area and schedule a 90 minute session.