News Release
New Delhi, June 6
The famous Hollywood actor Anthony Quinn who played Zorba The Greek has died but Zorba the Buddha conceived by Osho lives on for ever. In his most memorable role Quinn played a middle-aged guide who celebrates life in a film based on the novel of the same name by Nikos Kazantzakis. He eats, drinks, sings, dances; he lives, loves and laughs passionately, totally. Enjoying all his senses, he relishes every moment of his life that is just a game for him.
In Gautama the Buddha, the world knows a prince who abandons his luxurious life – his palaces, his pleasures, his princess and even his infant son to search his true self in the forest. He starves himself, denies himself until he becomes quiet, calm, still, peaceful, silent, and serene.
Can Zorba be combined with Buddha? Naah! One cannot imagine a Buddha who celebrates life, who dances and sings and laughs or a Zorba who sits still, seriously, silently, unsmilingly – and yet this is the combination of two polar opposites Osho presents us as the only alternative to our current madness of the marketplace. The two opposites can never meet until Osho declares that not only they should but they must if the modern man is to survive.
Says Osho, “Zorba is the roots in the earth, and the Buddha is a longing to fly into ultimate freedom, to reach to the space, which is unbounded. I would like you to be Zorba the Greek and Gautama the Buddha together, simultaneously. Less than that won’t do. Zorba represents the earth with all its flowers and greenery and mountains and rivers and oceans.
“Buddha represents the sky with all its stars and clouds, and the rainbows. The sky without the earth will be empty. The sky cannot laugh without the earth. The earth without the sky will be dead. Both together – and a dance comes into existence. The earth and the sky dancing together – and there is laughter, there is joy, there is celebration.
“You have to be whole: rich in the body, rich in science; rich in meditation, rich in consciousness. Only a whole person is a holy person, according to me,” says Osho.
“I want Zorba and Buddha to meet together. Zorba alone is hollow. His dance has not an eternal significance, it is momentary pleasure. Soon he will be tired of it. Unless you have inexhaustible sources, available to you from the cosmos itself… unless you become existential, you cannot become whole. This is my contribution to humanity: THE WHOLE PERSON,” concludes Osho.
The whole person can achieve goals, targets, results, deadlines and all it entails and yet live, love and laugh. Osho World Foundation implements Osho’s meditation techniques for creating Zorba the Buddha in our society for individuals and business corporations, professional groups and specialist organizations so that all can perform to their optimum level without the ill effects of the marketplace. In brief, Zorba the Buddha who lives forever.
