A Dharma friend passed me a book. Here is my revew of it… On the book ‘Meetings with Remarkable People’, unfortunately, it is, as experienced before, one of those books by Osho who misrepresents the Buddha. Not that all he writes is downright wrong, but he habitually mixes his inaccurate limited personal views with truth, which makes it hard for the undiscerning reader to sift fact from fiction.
For example, in the chapter on the Buddha, he describes him as so – ‘He does not care what you can understand, he cares only what the truth is. He says it without being worried whether you understand it or not.’ This is absolutely untrue. The Buddha is the most caring and skilful teacher ever, and ensures he delivers the Dharma appropriately to each person he encounters.
As another example, he describes the Buddha as so – ‘That’s why he does not talk about God, he does not talk about heaven, he does not talk about any future.’ This again is absolutely untrue. The Buddha is highly critical on delusional perceptions of ‘higher’ beings, including those who mistaken themselves to be almighty creator gods. An instance can be seen at http://thedailyenlightenment.com/2012/03/the-buddhas-victory-over-a-god-demon The Buddha also taught in detail on the many heavenly planes (and why they are limited in nature), and much about the future in terms of karmic consequences and the importance of practising the Dharma well now for a better tomorrow.
These are just some random misrepresentations spotted. Osho is also known to be of much controversy, as one of those new-age gurus who mixes and muddles religions at personal convenience to concoct a brew that misrepresents the original religions on the pretense of presenting the how they really are. Just reading a little of how he ‘rewrote’ the character of the Buddha was already enough to make me put the book down. It made me wonder how much more he misrepresents others written about in the book. He is already gone, but sadly, his books are still in the marketplace.
There is no safer avenue to learn about the Buddha than through the scriptures and well-learned Buddhist teachers. Even if alternative points of view are looked for, there would then be safe references to know if those encountered are accurate or not. It is good not to recommend anyone to read his books for the above reasons. This is why I hesitated taking the book, as the bad aftertaste from reading his other books remained clear in my mind.
If anyone did watch avengers, the Buddhist cosmology is very much like the avengers movie where we have gods and not god. There are higher beings before other beings. Loki, a heavenly being was filled with all the three poisons of desire, anger and ignorance. It is such worldliness that steer one away from holiness embroiling oneself in wars and conquest. Doesn’t that remind us of religious wars in the past where some heavenly beings played command and conquer over human beings he claimed to be father of, preferring some and discriminating against others. Indeed the Buddha advised us against taking refuge in worldly gods. How does worldly gods lead us out of desire, anger and ignorance which they themselves are not free from? Worldly beings will only have worldly solutions and sometimes they stoop as low as man and think the same as we do despite being holy. On this point, it is important we learn from the correct sources. Learning from those who are not good at it or even clueless is not only misleading oneself but allowing others to mislead us.