Common Ground's meeting room is filling up, and Viram is
letting it all hang out. His mala, usually hidden beneath
designer-label shirts, is out in the open. Tall, broad-shouldered,
with short salt-and-pepper hair and a goatee, Viram has
been a follower of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh since the
mid-'80s. Tonight, he's the unofficial greeter at an event
commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Bhagwan's death.
He hugs a couple of old friends, shakes hands with some
new ones, and reminds stragglers to leave their shoes
under the bench in the hall. Like most people here, Viram
is cautious about sharing his sannyasin identity with
outsiders. If his professional peers ever discovered he
was a Bhagwan follower, Viram says, they'd have him "drawn
and quartered." Gesturing to the string of polished wooden
beads with a pendant of the Bhagwan around his neck and
the growing crowd of people, he adds, "So, I keep it all
sub rosa."
A glance at the bulletin board in any local coffee shop
reveals a thriving market in Portland for tarot card readings,
goddess workshops and shamanic counseling. Portlanders
don't have a problem with alternative spirituality, they
have a problem with the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. The Indian
guru renamed himself Osho in 1989, but the new moniker
didn't erase his old public image. Too many Oregonians
remember the Rajneeshee excesses of the 1980s--the Bhagwan's
collection of Rolls-Royces and expensive jewelry, his
red-robed disciples' poisoning 750 residents of The Dalles
with salmonella, and his venomous secretary Ma Anand Sheela's
references to ranchers' kids as "retards."
So, while local interest in alternative spirituality
and national interest in the Bhagwan have both increased
over the past decade, the two trends have not overlapped.
At ground zero of his American experiment, the Bhagwan
Shree Rajneesh remains persona non grata, says Ma Chit
Tantra, director of the Portland Osho Information Center.
"Around here, being a sannyasin is worse than being gay."
Hard numbers are difficult to come by in a community
that insists it isn't one. Tantra says Portland has fewer
sannyasins than Mill Valley, Calif., or Sedona, Ariz.,
but more than anywhere east of Denver. She estimates there
are about 150 sannyasins statewide, split evenly between
pre- and post-ranch recruits. Many have nothing to do
with her center or other sannyasins. "I get e-mails all
the time from people who say they love Osho, but they
don't come to meditation," she says. "They're fine where
they are."
Without a living leader to rally around and with Osho's
books and tapes a mouse-click away, many followers meditate
in the privacy of their living rooms and forgo the stigma
of associating with other sannyasins. In Oregon, the Rajneesh
movement has morphed from the notorious '80s commune with
its strict dress code into a loose affiliation of individuals
whose only identifying feature is their devotion to Osho
and his teachings--a blend of Eastern mysticism, Western
pop psychology and simple meditation techniques.
The failure of their Oregon experiment in communal living,
says Sarito Carol Neiman, editorial director of Osho International,
taught sannyasins "that as long as people look outside
themselves for a savior they are going to miss the point."
After the Antelope ranch debacle, personal responsibility
became sannyasins' unofficial mantra and meditation their
only daily requirement. Of the 30 people at the Common
Ground meditation-celebration Viram recognized only a
handful. "It's all about the meditations," he says. "The
rest is just politics."
Judged by appearances, the Common Ground gathering could
have been the audience for a Tracy Chapman concert at
the Schnitz: overwhelmingly white and clad in jeans and
sweaters, some trying to be hip, some trying to be liberal,
and some digging the mellow music with a message. There
were college students, businesswomen and retired men with
pot bellies in patterned golf shirts. Viram's was the
only mala in evidence, and only Ma Anand Arupo, who led
the meditation, wore all red. Between the meditation,
the sitar playing, and the Osho funeral video, attendees
chatted about First Thursday and Portland's crappy weather.
The meditation itself consisted of 40 minutes of dancing,
20 minutes of lying down and another five minutes of dancing.
It was like playtime for grown-ups, right down to the
reminder to use the potty five minutes before the meditation
started. At the end, as the music wound down, the dancers
broke into broad grins and a few of them raised their
arms in the air, palms up--as evangelical Christians often
do in joyous praise.
Viram says that, as a Presbyterian deacon and Sunday
school teacher in Salem, he used to beg Jesus for "joy,
joy, joy." But neither Christian prayer nor transcendental
meditation helped him cope with the stresses of life.
"Who wants to come home after a stressful workday and
deal with a mantra? Blah, blah, blah," he mimics with
a pained look on his face. "It never got my mind off my
business. But this is cathartic. It's helped me through
some really difficult times."
Viram isn't alone in seeking something or someone to
help him experience joy through life's rough patches.
American gurus of general spirituality Deepak Chopra and
Marianne Williamson praise Osho's meditation techniques.
Osho's
Web site, available in seven languages with three
more forthcoming, receives 5,000 hits a day. St. Martin's
Press has reissued Osho's all-time bestseller, From
Sex to Superconsciousness ("Some people," Tantra pointed
out, "are still out there looking for the perfect orgasm")
and has started publishing a new Osho series, Insights
for a New Way of Living.
Osho's general appeal, sannyasins say, is his ability
to translate ancient religious traditions into contemporary,
ecumenical and autonomous terms. "It's about individual
spirituality," Sarito emphasizes, "not an organization,
group, set of beliefs, or practices to learn." Whether
or not they become sannyasins, people come to Osho, Tantra
says, who are "into holistic movements, becoming vegetarian,
and more into Eastern thought. They like that he doesn't
come from Christianity but he's not quite Buddhist, which
can seem a little rigid. It's for people who don't want
to be conspicuous."
Oregon sannyasins, however, feel they have no choice
in the matter. Along with Osho's transcendent wisdom,
sannyasins were also left with the guru's bitter Oregon
legacy. Voluble as Viram is, he would not give WW
his real name nor was he willing to be photographed. Tantra,
too, uses her legal name only in her professional life.
"I would never tell people at work that I'm a Rajneeshee,"
she says. "I would never put up with that kind of discrimination."
Viram, who continues his meditations by himself in his
living room, concedes that solo seeking can get lonely
sometimes. He wishes for more "structure"and is thinking
about renting the Odd Fellows Building on Sunday mornings
so sannyasins can get together for regular weekly meditations.
Something, he says, a little more like church.
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Willamette Week | originally
published February 2,
2000
