The Tao of breathing-Lecture on Lao Tzu -Part 1.

[Guest guest]

The breath is the most important thing. With it life starts and with it life

ends. It is the most mysterious thing; without it there is no possibility of

life.

 

Life seems just a shadow of breath. When breath disappears, life disappears. So

this phenomenon of breathing has to be understood.

 

Every child born is not really alive until he breathes. He has just a few

moments left. If he breathes after the birth, in those few moments life enters.

If he does not breathe he will remain dead.

 

Those first few moments of life are the most important. The doctors, the

parents, all become concerned when a child is born. Will he breathe? Will he cry

and start breathing? Or will he remain dead? Again, as in all the myths created,

in every man Adam is born again.

 

The child cannot breathe on his own. To expect that is impossible because the

child does not know how to breathe, nobody has taught him. This is going to be

his first act, so this cannot be his act.

 

Let me repeat it: This is going to be his first and the most significant act --

that's why it cannot be his act. If God does it -- okay; if God is not willing

-- finished.

 

The whole has to breathe in him, that's why those few moments are full with

suspense, doubt, apprehension, fear -- because both possibilities are still

open. The child can remain dead. Then nothing can be done. The child cannot do

anything, the parents cannot do anything, the doctors cannot do anything;

humanity is helpless. It is up to the whole.

 

Only prayer can be done. We can only wait in deep prayer. If the whole moves

into the child, the child becomes alive, otherwise not.

 

This first breath is taken by the whole. And if the first breath is taken by the

whole then everything else which depends on breathing cannot be your act. If you

think you are breathing then you have taken a very wrong step. And because of

this wrong step ego will be created. Ego is accumulated ignorance.

 

You missed. You have not been breathing, the whole has breathed into you, but

you have taken it as if you are breathing.

 

The first act of breath bridges you with the whole, makes you one with the

whole, and all that follows will not be your activity; all that is going to

happen after this first breath till you die, till the last breath, is going to

be the activity of the whole. The whole will live within you.

 

You can think that you are doing all those things -- then you live in ignorance.

If you become aware that the whole is doing everything, you are being possessed

by the whole, breathed by it, you are just a hollow bamboo, a flute, the sound

comes from the whole, the whole life comes from it -- then you live a life of

enlightenment

 

Osho: Tao: The Three Treasures

 

 

 

 

 

Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!