Zorba the Buddha: The convergent spirituality

According to Osho, a new human being is coming. 

He epitomizes this new type of human as ‘Zorba the Buddha,’ passionate for this material realm and transcendent simultaneously.

Can’t you feel it — the new spirituality is sensual too. Delight in the things of this earth is celebrated side by side with the ability to detach from excess.

For hundreds of years, if not millennia, in both the East and the West, self-denial reigned supreme. Self-flagellation, sleeping on beds of nails, wearing clothing that ripped at one’s skin . . . the inventiveness of the human mind for ways to inflict pain on one’s self and others in the name of divinity knew few bounds.

Zorba the Buddha is earthy and alive, capable of enjoying love and sexuality and all the joys of this planet. Zorba the Buddha also embodies serenity and soul connection, rhythmically dipping into the pool of deep consciousness to maintain balance.

It is exciting to behold this great convergence in our time. I use ‘our time’ loosely, it’s been coming since the Enlightenment, for hundreds of years. In earlier times the most exalted spiritually abandoned families and friends — think Buddha, think Jesus, think nuns, think the traveling mendicant with a begging bowl.

The convergent spirituality embraces the woman or the man who takes up a life, works in the world, moves among people. The convergent spirituality reveres retreats . . . yet is wary of those who must remain there, who don’t have the strength to engage in the flux of life. The convergent spirituality embraces the flow of Energy in all its guises.