Enlightenment is not caused by anything that you can do…OSHO

Sannyas has to be a real break away. A loving surrender to the new....

Enlightenment is not caused by anything that you can do...

 

The Jaina Tirthankara, Mahavira, became enlightened sitting in a certain pose which is very strange because you are rarely found in that pose. In yoga that posture is called, "cow-milking posture." In India, machines are not used; men sit on a tripod and milk the cows by hand. But what was Mahavira doing? — because he was certainly not milking a cow so why should he sit in the milking-a-cow posture?

 

That can be done only for one reason …and I will not tell you the reason.

 

Now, after Mahavira Jaina monks had been thinking one could not become enlightened because to sit in that posture is very difficult. You cannot sit long enough — and it is a very strange posture. To meditate one needs to sit in such a way that one is relaxed, at ease. Mahavira's is a very tense posture.

 

But what is accidental, people start thinking of as if it is the cause — as if that posture is a necessity for enlightenment. Nothing is a necessity for enlightenment because enlightenment is not caused by anything that you can do. Enlightenment happens only when you are absent, so utterly silent that it is not your doing.

 

You cannot brag, "This is my enlightenment. I have done it." When enlightenment happens, you can simply say, "I was not. And because I was not, I was so silent, so absent — just a pure nothing, only a receptivity — it happened." It came from the beyond just as sunrays come to the flowers and they open their petals. Something from the beyond comes into you and your lotus opens its petals and releases all its inexhaustible fragrance. But there is no cause.

 

OSHO