2-08-11 - Birthday, More Osho, and Dolano

It's Feb 9th here now but in the USA it's the ninth only on the East. At 1:45 this afternoon here it will be 2:15am in Fort Worth, Texas, where I was born at that time 66 years ago. It's been a good 66. Shirt size XXL.

Yesterday Clay and I left our too expensive place in this expensive part of Pune (was Puna) and, as usual, got some chai on the street, little cups of milk tea - try to get it without sugar but half the time it's already made. That's my favorite thing to do in India. I'm a tea addict, tea and chocolate being my only psychoactives. Oh, and today makes six years without a puff of pot, not that it was anything I was doing too much but it just seemed like the thing to do at sixty, to eliminate another substance that had to be managed. And where I live and with whom I know, it's everywhere - like booze and tobacco which I haven't had to manage for an even longer time. And the 12th makes six years for coffee and October six for credit cards. Next I'll work on blabbering, weight, and then finally, bragging.

Back to Clay and me. We got two refreshing glasses of orange-pineapple juice from a street vender and talked to a businessman about where to find a cheaper place. He made some calls and gave us a number and a name and his name to drop. Everywhere people helpful, cooperative. Yeah, to you, to foreigners, one Indian told me - but not to each other - used to hear that in Japan. But still the way we get on a bus so crowed no one can move and pass twenty rupees from hand to hand to the collector minutes later, having forgotten it, receiving two small tickets and six rupees change that came back down to us via poor strangers.

At Buddha Paradise over more tea later met a guy who told us he was there doing a one month intensive with a teacher named Dolano who was by chance giving an open satsang (true company, being with the teacher, sometimes silent) which she only does twice a month. He drew a map - it was walking distance away.

We had a little time so we passed by the in construction German Bakery and went to the Osho Meditation Resort (see yesterday's cuke report) and asked about a tour but they don't do them anymore. Talked to a German sunyasen which devotees of the late Rajneesh, Osho, are called. He'd been there a long time and was called Alok. I asked him if he know the Chinese Alok, a calligrapher who was with Osho in Pune years ago for years and who does sesshin with PZI (Pacific Zen Inst), and the German Alok was quite happy to hear about the Alok I know but he wouldn't take Alok's email address because he doesn't do compters, spent all his time now in the now. Not a bad idea. He directed us to the Osho bookstore next door which reminded me of a bookstore in a modern art museum, not in India, and which had only books and tapes by Osho, hundreds of them. It reminded me of being at Adi Da's place in Lake County, CA which was all Adi Da all the time (see my experience there). We looked out the large plate glass windows into the Osho Meditation Resort and saw beautiful landscaping and walks and gardens and buildings and sunyasen in purple flowing robes and it reminded me of a scene of an idyllic society of the future from a science fiction movie, a scene alas we couldn't afford to join (see yesterday).

On the way back to the main road a man came up and asked if we wanted to rent a room and before long we'd done so in an apartment where we had to walk through the people's kitchen to get to our room which is great for security and there's a balcony and half of what we paid the day before.

The satsang with Dolano was free and wonderful. I'd take an intensive with her but can't fit it in quite yet. Flying out tomorrow. Clay and I both asked questions - it was not a silent satsang and there were a few other questions and it went on for over an hour. She sat next to an alter that had a four photos, Osho's being the largest. Also there was Ramana Maharshi, Papaji, and Gangaji. (you can Google them if you wish). She said she'd learned a lot from Osho but is more like the other three in terms of her teaching which is simple, straightforward Advaita emphasizing the importance of meditation. She said that of those four Osho didn't give satsang which is the teaching or enlightenment or whatever word she used which I forget but that Osho gave discourse which is about it. She said that his way was the most difficult, that he talked about everything and eliminated everything in doing so (my words). Check her out at Friends of Dolano.

added 3-23-11 - I remember Dolano saying that it's good to be a seeker and that's a good thing to be and do, but that there is something to find and she found it and she's no longer a seeker and she urged us not to be satisfied with seeking. I mentioned this in a conversation later at the Krishnamurti Foundation in Chennai and was told that Krishnamurti said that the seeker must disappear.

See KFI post