Talk:Osho Timeline 1979
Buddha Hall / Chuang Tzu Auditorium
There may be some unclarity concerning the exact location of Hindi discourses for this period (Buddha Hall vs Chuang Tzu Auditorium). For now, location for the high season and celebrations will be entered as Buddha Hall, and for the rest of the year Chuang Tzu.
As of this writing, no reliable source has been found for this information. Anecdotal sources and memory suggest different things, and the announcements (of dates and venues) at the beginnings of discourse tapes have been expunged by Pune authorities, citing (as they do) Osho's guidance.
The CD-ROM does state venues but only for English original talks and those Hindi talks that had been translated as of 1993 or so, only about thirty and most of them preceding Pune One. As of the CD-ROM's creation, there were no Hindi discourses from 1979 that had been translated, so no record there. And furthermore, at the beginning of the Pune One period, neither Buddha Hall nor Chuang Tzu had been built, but the CD-ROM has the very first discourses in both English and Hindi in Buddha Hall, so we may have reliability issues there as well.
A more in-depth exploration of this theme can be found at the page on these venues.
Gaps in the Timeline
About the gaps mentioned in the timeline and linked to this talk page, all are noteworthy in their particular ways:
Jun 11-13/20 gaps
This kind of three-night gap in the darshans happened from time to time and would not be noteworthy except for the accompanying gap of ten days in the discourse schedule. Usually one such gap would be very similar to the other but the difference of seven days is a real puzzler. Either a whole English discourse series has been lost -- very unlikely -- or possibly Osho had some kind of design for the discourse series that was to come next, the very first talks in The Dhammapada mega-series, and this was his way of adapting to the few days of interruption. ¿Quien sabe?
- About this timeline-entry (and about the "11 -- 20 Jun 1979 am: No English Discourses were held for 10 days"), Krishna Prem, ch.8 "1980" (sic), p.285, writes:
- "The infection comes in the middle of the Hindi series. Suddenly half the youngsters in the commune are covered in tiny red spots. Osho, it appears, has never had chicken pox, and Laxmi declares a general quarantine, sealing our Master in his room in Lao Tzu House. No one who hasn't had the childhood disease goes near the place, she says emphatically. There's no discourse; there's no darshan. (...)
- When the quarantine is over and Osho's ready to come out again, it's announced that instead of resuming the Hindi series, we'll sit in silence with him for ten days - a prelude to a six-month period of discourses on the Dhammapada, the Buddhist scriptures. There is to be twenty minutes of music, with gentle humming and swaying, followed by twenty minutes of silence, and then, to complete the hour of satsang, of siting in silence with the Master, more music, humming and swaying." (Then KP describes his experiences with these meditations.)
- So can we put in 10 mornings in the timeline of type=meditation? Seems difficult, as that would leave no room for the chicken pox quarantine.
- How long was that quarantine? KP doesn't say. It seems most likely that the meditation mornings were less than 10. --Sugit (talk) 09:07, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
- About this timeline-entry (and about the "11 -- 20 Jun 1979 am: No English Discourses were held for 10 days"), Krishna Prem, ch.8 "1980" (sic), p.285, writes:
- I'd say that this is an excellent general explainer as to what happened to create the seven-day difference in the discourse and darshan gaps. But it looks like KP has gone off the rails a little in some details. Adapting the general idea here ...
- The Hindi series was due to end on the 10th anyway, since the 10th of every month was the normal last day back then in the cycle of Hindi/English monthly discourse alternation. Utsav Amar Jati was finished. It was not going to resume in any case.
- And a satsang for ten days is not possible either. The Dhammapada started on the 21st, so there would have been only six-seven days possible for the satsang given the quarantine. In practice back then, there would be at most a two-day difference between the day gap and the night gap, depending on the times of day the quarantine was declared in force. In this case, both gaps began on the same day, so at most there would have been a one-day difference. So the satsang format could only have run six or seven days, from the 14th or 15th to the 20th, and until we get other first-hand reports, it's a pure guess. My guess would be that they started on the 15th, since "normally" a decision to end a quarantine would be made during the working day, after the discourse period would have passed. (And "normally" a decision to start a quarantine would also have been made during the working day, but in this case it wasn't. Starting a quarantine would have been inherently more spontaneous, i'd say.) -- doofus-9 17:35, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
Subhuti Anand Waight's book Wild Wild Guru (2019), p.99:
- ... His talks on The Dhammapada were planned as a huge project, eventually filling 12 volumes of books. But on the morning he was due to begin, he fell sick and couldn’t come to the meditation hall. In his absence, we sat together in silence, facing an empty chair on the podium, where he usually sat.
- Afterwards, on my way to the press office, it struck me as the perfect introduction to Buddha, a man who preached shunyata, inner emptiness and silence. A little poem flowed into my mind and I immediately typed it out and sent it to Bhagwan in the form of a discourse question:
- Beloved Bhagwan,
- An empty chair, a silent hall,
- An introduction to Buddha.
- How eloquent! How rare!
- He answered it as the first question of the new discourse series:
- “Yes, Subhuti, that’s the only way to introduce Buddha to you. Silence is the only language he can be expressed in. Words are too profane, too inadequate, too limited. Only an empty space, utterly silent, can represent the being of a buddha.”
The Nov 15/17 - Dec 4 gaps in Ram Duware and Scriptures
This was a major chicken-pox quarantine event, with a few odd details. The CD-ROM has, in its rendering of Scriptures:
- Nov 14: "[There is no transcript for Nov 14; probably there was no darshan that evening]" (and that's all there is for ch 14)
- Nov 15 and 16: Text for a lone initiation talk given on each of these nights.
- nothing for Nov 17, and
- Dec 5: "[From Nov 18 to Dec 4, Osho did not give darshan. A few sannyasins had contracted chicken pox and to avoid any infection being passed to Osho, he did not give darshan again until Dec 5.]"
The entries for Nov 14-16 are fairly odd given the complete disappearance of twenty days for Hindi discourses, but at least they point the way to a decent guess for which days are missing from Ram Duware. It is not 100% certain but looks good enough to go with for now.
Days of Ram Duware series are: 11-18 Nov, 9-10 Dec (source: 1980 edition).
Dec 11 no darshan
As with Jul 11 above, absolutely normal for a darshan to be skipped Dec 11, for Osho's birthday celebration, but the CD-ROM has a darshan for the 11th and none for the 12th. This is likely wrong, so it has been altered here.
Kahe Hot Adheer
This Hindi series spanned twenty days, from Sep 11 to Sep 30, but actually consisted of only nineteen discourses. The day off is not known. So the real dates will have to be fixed if and when the day off date comes to be known.
This is Sep. 12th, silent discourse dedicated death of Sw Devateerth Bharti or no discourse at all, see Talk:Kahe Hot Adheer (काहे होत अधीर).--DhyanAntar 05:57, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
Jul 11 no darshan
It was absolutely normal for a darshan to be missed in July on the night/day of the full moon to make way for a Guru Purnima celebration, and that must have happened this year too. The mysterious thing here is that full moon in 1979 was on Jul 9 (UT, early am Jul 10 Indian Time). The celebration would not likely have been put on another day, so possibly one of the dates is wrong for the darshans, and either Jul 9 or 10 was actually the one skipped.
Music albume (1979-07-10 Guru Purnima Darshan ~ Meditation Music) mentioned Jul 25. I think this date more suitable, as Guru Purnima celebration in 1980 was Jul 27, here is the album from darshan 1980-07-27 Guru Purnima Darshan. --DhyanAntar 10:12, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
Full moon 1979: "Monday, 9 July 1979, 08:59:18 pm" CET, that would be July 10 in Pune. So maybe here also (just as 1978) the date/name of the Darshan in OMA has been based on an assumption and is incorrect.
Still, useful to check if we can find a verification for the date of Guru Purnima. --Sugit (talk) 13:07, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
1979-07-10 Osho Guru Purnima (film) has on the title-board "Guru Purnima July 10th 1979". --Sugit (talk) 17:41, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
Guru Purnima is always on the full moon in July. See Talk:Osho Timeline 1978 for more on that. -- doofus-9 02:46, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
G.P. has nothing to do with July or the Hindu Ashadha but with the simple rule : This day marks the first peak of the lunar cycle after the peak of the solar cycle. --Rudra (talk) 12:48, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
OK good we found out. The Rainbow Bridge has all dates from July 1-30, except Tuesday 10. I will change the names of the celebrations involved. --Sugit (talk) 17:08, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
Likely Ashadha is the most correct conceptual version of when GP is but it may not be so easy to apply. More at Talk:Osho Timeline 1978. -- doofus-9 02:33, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
the Indian calculator places it on the 9th of July 1979 , see [1] --Rudra (talk) 06:03, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
Re. Rudra's post above: I propose we stick to July 10, as long as we do not have better info. See my post of 18 December 2017-17:08. --Sugit (talk) 12:38, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
Agree July 10 looks best. The "Indian calculator" in the linked page placing it on the 9th makes it the 9th for Ottawa, Canada, for some reason, ~ twelve time zones away. By that time it's the 10th in India. -- doofus-9 21:14, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
Other issues
About the Darshan Diary entries Sep 30 and Oct 1: These two books, Upset and Gawd, mark a shift to a new era (dispensation / paradigm) in Darshan Diary publishing. Upset was eventually published, as a cheapo ranch edition, Gawd and all but one which followed were never published. -- doofus-9 (talk) 04:23, 5 February 2015 (UTC)
When was first celebration of Mahaparinirvana day? (Osho News) In 1979 or 1980?--DhyanAntar 05:04, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
The article says at the end:
- After Osho’s father, Swami Devateerth Bharti, dies enlightened on 8th Sept 1979, Osho creates an annual festival on 8th September, the Mahaparanirvana Day, to celebrate all sannyasins, past and future, who have died and will die.
So it seems logical that the next year, 1980, was the first "official" Mahaparanirvana Day. And that confirms with the audio recordings.
I will add a note in the 1979 timeline --Sugit (talk) 13:52, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
