It’s Monday morning. The alarm goes off insistently and you hit the snooze button furiously. Thus, you gained another 5 minutes of sleep. So you think, so you hope, you’ve gained another 5 minutes of sleep. But all you’ve “gained” is 5 minutes of tossing and turning in bed. You’re too hot or too cold, you need to go to the bathroom, but you’re desperately clinging to the bed sheets. Your heart is pounding, you know the inevitable can’t be put off too long, you’ll have to get up. Maybe you’re even dozing off. And the alarm rings again, mercilessly. Thoughts rush into your head, one on top of the other. “It’s Monday, a bad day, I’m going to work, the traffic will be hellish, I have to brush my teeth again!?” You drink coffee on an empty stomach. Your stomach hurts. You quickly throw on some clothes and leave. You come back. You forgot your car keys.
Let’s change the perspective. It’s Monday morning. The alarm goes off. You smile. You got ahead of it again, you already woke up. You take a deep breath, looking out the window. It will be a hot day. You have already prepared your clothes from last night, so you have time to prepare a hearty breakfast and a cup of coffee. You inhale the aroma of coffee. It smells so good! As you stand in the shower, you close your eyes and feel the last of the night’s numbness go down the drain with the water. You look in the mirror and smile before you leave the house. It will be a beautiful day.
Every day is a celebration
Osho says that every day of life should be a celebration. Let’s wear festive clothes every day, not just for Christmas, Easter, birthdays or December 1st (National Romanian Day). These days of celebration are just a compensation, because society has taken all the celebration out of people’s lives. Why not celebrate every day? Why not take out the crystal glasses on an ordinary evening and celebrate another normal day of life? Why not enjoy a Monday morning?
“The real celebration must come into your life from within you. And the true celebration is not according to the calendar, let’s not impose a certain date on which you must celebrate. Isn’t it strange to be miserable all year, and then all of a sudden, on, say, November 1st, you snap out of your misery and start dancing? Either the unhappiness was fake, or November 1st is fake, they can’t both be true. And once November 1st is over, you go back to your unhappiness, your angst.”
The tea ceremony
“In Japan there is a tea ceremony. In every Zen monastery and every affordable home there is a small temple for drinking tea. Tea is no longer an ordinary, profane thing: it has been transformed into a ceremony. The temple for drinking tea is made in a certain way. In a beautiful garden, with a beautiful oak tree, with swans and flowers all around. Guests come and leave their shoes outside: it’s a temple. And when you enter the temple, you are not allowed to speak; you must leave your thoughts and speech outside with your shoes. You sit in a meditative position, and the hostess, the woman who prepares your tea, moves around you as if dancing, preparing the tea with graceful movements, placing cups and saucers in front of you as if you were a god. she bows deeply with great respect, and you receive the tea with the same respect.
The tea is prepared in a special samovar, which makes beautiful sounds, a music of its own. And as part of the ceremonial, everyone must first listen to the tea music. So everyone shuts up and listens, outside in the garden the birds are chirping and the samovar is singing its song. Peace descends…
When the tea is ready and poured into cups, it is not drunk the way people everywhere drink it. First you smell the aroma of the tea, then you sip it as if it came from beyond, leisurely, unhurried. Someone starts playing the flute or the sitar. An ordinary thing, a simple tea, became a religious festival. Every participant leaves it nourished, refreshed, feeling younger, more alive.”
And what was done with tea can be done with everything else, with clothes, with food. Even with the things and states we perceive as negative, like illness.
Illness is part of life
“If you get sick and stay in bed, you can make those moments of lying in bed moments of beauty and joy, moments of relaxation and rest, moments of meditation, moments of listening to music or poetry. You don’t have to be sad about being sick. You have to be glad that everyone is at work and you are lying in bed like a king, relaxing. Someone is making your tea, the samovar is singing, a friend has offered to come and play the flute for you…
These things are more important than any medicine. When you are sick, you call a doctor. But more important is to call those who love you, because there is no medicine more important than love. Call upon those who can create beauty, music, poetry around you, for nothing heals like the festive mood. We rely on medicine, and we’re grumpy and sad, as if we’ve lost some great joy at work!”
Life is very simple, it’s a dance full of joy
“And the whole earth could be full of joy and dancing, but there are people who have every interest that no one should enjoy life, that no one should smile, who say that life is a sin, that it is a punishment. How can you enjoy life when you are constantly told that life is a punishment, that you suffer because you have done bad things, and that life is a kind of prison in which you have been thrown to suffer?
Doing everything creatively, turning bad into good, that’s what I call the art of living.”
Positive thinking does not mean that nothing bad can happen, or that nothing bad exists in the world. But, as Osho says, let’s have the wisdom to turn bad into good and celebrate life every day, enjoying every moment.
The quotes are from Osho’s book “Maturity, the responsibility to be yourself”
