Buddha Hall and Chuang Tzu Auditorium: Difference between revisions

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[[image:buddha hall 01.jpg|300px|left]]
[[image:buddha hall 01.jpg|500px|left|thumb|Buddha Hall]]
 
[[image:buddha hall 02.jpg|500px|left|thumb|Buddha Hall]]
 
[[image:buddha hall 03.jpg|500px|left|thumb|Buddha Hall]]


For most visitors to the wiki, these iconic places where Osho gives so many discourses and darshans likely need no introduction. That ''may'' happen eventually but for now the primary focus is on their early history: when were they built and when did they start getting used for Osho's events?
For most visitors to the wiki, these iconic places where Osho gives so many discourses and darshans likely need no introduction. That ''may'' happen eventually but for now the primary focus is on their early history: when were they built and when did they start getting used for Osho's events?

Revision as of 14:51, 2 February 2015

Buddha Hall
Buddha Hall
File:Buddha hall 03.jpg
Buddha Hall

For most visitors to the wiki, these iconic places where Osho gives so many discourses and darshans likely need no introduction. That may happen eventually but for now the primary focus is on their early history: when were they built and when did they start getting used for Osho's events?

Osho moved to Pune from Mumbai on Mar 21, 1974. Some preparatory work had been done, stuff moved, living quarters arranged, but there was a whole lot of infrastructure that wasn't in Pune in the beginning and had to be created, including Buddha Hall and Chuang Tzu, sites of so many discourses, darshans and celebrations. Info elsewhere on the net about them is sparse and inconsistent, with some sources putting Buddha Hall's opening in 1975 and some 1977 ...

Even the CD-ROM may not be so reliable in this aspect of its data in Pune One. It has its very first Pune series, My Way: The Way of the White Clouds, as given in Buddha Hall but May 1974 seems too early for a completed Buddha Hall. And it has the next series, a translation of Nahin Ram Bin Thaon, also in Buddha Hall, while the writer remembers all the Hindi series he went to, mostly in 1978, in Chuang Tzu.

Memory of course can be unreliable, so we need to hear from others who (think they) "know" to find some consensus. The question of where Hindi discourses were held is especially tricky, as they certainly were not in Buddha Hall from when it was built, perhaps because attendance was smaller and Osho wanted to keep the more intimate atmosphere of Chuang Tzu for those talks. At any rate, in the wiki for now, we are placing Hindi talks somewhat arbitrarily in Buddha Hall towards the end of Pune One and Chuang Tzu for the early and middle years, with some allowance for high season swings and celebration times. Personal accounts and reliable sources are welcome.

In Pune Two, Buddha Hall underwent a substantial renovation, even getting a new name, Gautam the Buddha Auditorium, and was not in use for much of 1987. The CD-ROM has discourses mostly in Chuang Tzu for that year with a couple of short "tries" in GtBA until back there for good on Dec 22, for discourse three of Om Mani Padme Hum. This all fits with memory, reports and anecdote, so it looks reliable for that period.

One account of the early days has it thus:

"I arrived in late July, '74, and I might have been there for at least a few of the 'White Clouds' series or it might recently have ended by then, not sure. Anyway, Buddha Hall certainly didn't exist then, and the early talks were held at some sort of porch area, quite small really; looking back, remarkably intimate. But that wasn't the darshan area, which was behind the main building, to the left, I think. [Radha Hall?] The meditations and camps also took place in the area behind the main building. By the time I left, towards mid-May, '75, Buddha Hall did exist and Osho was a faraway figure...."