Veena Schlegel

B.A.(English); B.Ed.(English); Cambridge CELTA Certificate (Teaching of English as a Foreign Language)

After completing her studies in 1966 in South Africa, where she was born and brought up, Veena Schlegel left home to see the world.

In 1971 she travelled overland on an epic journey through unknown lands to India where she met her spiritual master, the enlightened mystic, Osho, in Mumbai – and her life changed forever. This was a new and different journey. Until Osho died in 1991, she lived and worked in his various communes in India and around the world.

After his death she travelled further East on her spiritual quest, first to Japan where she taught English, and more recently to China which she visits often to meditate on the sacred Song Mountain in Henan Province. Living in a rural village called ShiLiPu in the foothills of this mountain, she has immersed herself in the heritage of Zen Buddhism – as explained by Osho — which originated here when the Zen patriarch, Bodhidharma, sat meditating in a cave on this mountain for 9 years. As a result of his meditations he fused Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism to create Chan or Zen, which the Chinese happily adopted. From the Song Mountain area Zen then spread to Japan and the rest of the world.

Simultaneously she has come to know in detail a small slice of contemporary Chinese life – observing, with the help of young English-speaking university graduates, the breathtakingly fast-paced changes from old to new ways of living and the excitement and conflicts consequently arising.

Veena has written about Osho and his life and work for many publications in paper or online and is now working on this trilogy of books detailing her travels on the path. The first book, ‘A Vanished Road’ (available on Amazon as an ebook) is an account of her overland journey to India. The second book, ‘Glimpses of my Master’ (available as an ebook and a paperback book on Amazon) is an account of her life as a disciple of Osho. The third book, ‘A Mountain in China’ (to be published later this year) describes her journeys in China.

CHINA 2012

Veena leaves shortly to visit China for the sixth time. Here she plans to research and write her third book ‘A Mountain in China’. She also plans to do a 21 day silent retreat in the Luya Temple — a Buddhist nunnery — on Song Mountain in Henan Province.