The traditional method of vipassana is a very cold, dull and dead
way, and because it is cold it takes a longer time - perhaps a few
lives to become awakened.
But because all the religions of the world have praised coldness in
their saints, in their seekers, searchers, they have all delayed
progress, delayed the evolution of consciousness.
Energy moves better when it is warmer.
This is one of my contributions, which will be condemned by all the
religions - the religions of the cold. I teach you a religion of
warmth, love, singing, dancing, music. These are all tremendously
helpful to make you alert, wakeful.
Sitting in a cave - a dark cave in a mountain alone - people have
been dozing in the name of vipassana. They can doze, it is their
life. I am not in any way going to interfere. They have chosen it.
They will doze their way towards enlightenment, however long it
takes.
But when there is music and your whole body is thrilling, and when
there is song, although you are sitting, in a subtle sense there is
a dance in you. You cannot remain unconscious, you have to become
more watchful.
I want vipassana to be a warmer path; then it becomes a very short
cut. I would like you to sing and dance and play on instruments -
that will take you away from the mundane world, the day-to-day
world. I would like you to love, I would like you to laugh.
The society has repressed everything; even when you laugh it is
halfhearted because it is thought to be not gentlemanly. To laugh
wholeheartedly looks a little rustic. But if you laugh totally, then
the laughter will be coming from your hara, just below the navel,
two inches below the navel, and that is the source of your life,
that's where your center of life is.
You should learn laughing through Geeta. She is Japanese and she
knows how to laugh from the hara and then it is like bells ringing
in a temple. It is only Geeta who makes me laugh; otherwise I
somehow manage seriousness.
Whenever you are total in anything you will feel more watchful, more
alert, more awakened, more fresh, more alive.
I am all for life. Your so-called religions are all against life,
they are anti-life. Naturally they have to be as cold as a corpse.
I would like my sannyasins to be living totally and
multi-dimensionally, even in small things - bringing their whole
being to a focus. And if you can start living moment to moment in
different ways - but always total - vipassana will happen to you
more easily than you can conceive because you have never seen
anything happening so easily, without effort, on its own accord. You
can force yourself to sit in silence and remain awake. I don't teach
that kind of vipassana. I teach a vipassana that follows you like a
shadow, as a by-product of your total living.