Osho on Meditation
Meditation Is a Death
"Meditation is a death – death of all that you are now. Of course there will be a resurrection, but that will be a totally new, fresh original being which you are not even aware is hidden in you.
"It happens in poetry, in music, in dance, only for a small moment that you slip out of your personality and touch your individuality. But only because it happens for a small moment, you are not afraid; you always come back.
"In meditation, once you are gone in, you are gone in. Then, even when you resurrect you are a totally different person. The old personality is nowhere to be found. You have to start your life again from abc. You have to learn everything with fresh eyes, with a totally new heart. That's why meditation creates fear."
-Osho, Rinzai: Master of the Irrational, Talk #1
Meditation Is Enough
"It is a very unreasonable, almost insane world in which you are living. If you can manage just to meditate, you have done more than is expected of the contemporary man. And your meditation is going good. Just go on saying, 'Good Lord!' In meditation there never comes any cliff. You don't have to remember 'Amen' – there is no need.
"Meditation slowly, slowly turns into your enlightenment. You suddenly become aware one day, where is that darkness? where is that continuous rush of thoughts? where has the mind gone? Suddenly you are absolutely as hollow as a bamboo; but your hollowness is not empty – it is full of joy and full of rejoicing. You will dance for no reason at all, you will sing for no reason at all, songs that you have not composed, dances that you have not learned. They are just bubbling spontaneously in your consciousness.
"That is enlightenment, but don't make it a goal.
"Meditation is enough. Everything else follows on its own."
-Osho, The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here, Talk #9
Mind Cannot Do Anything About Meditation
"Mind cannot do anything about meditation. It simply does not know meditation, and there is no intrinsic possibility for the mind ever to come in contact with meditation. Just as I said before, darkness cannot come in contact with light because darkness is only an absence – so is the mind.
"Mind is the absence of meditation. The moment meditation arises in you, mind is found nowhere."
-Osho, The Great Zen Master Ta Hui, Talk #11
Meditation and Love Are the Same Experience
Osho,
Love and meditation seem to be opposite polarities. Can you please talk to us on how to grow in meditation and in intimacy with the beloved.
"You neither know what love is, nor do you know what meditation is. Still, you are disturbed by the question. To you, love and meditation seem to be opposite polarities – I wonder where you got that idea? If love and meditation are opposite polarities, then nothing in this world can be close to any other thing. But I know all the old religions have also been under the same fallacy.
"The meditators have been escaping to the mountains to avoid love, and the lovers never bothered about meditation because they knew that if they meditated their love life would be finished. It has been one of the longest fallacies humanity has lived with. Love is a silence, a joy, a peace, a blissfulness between two persons. But because there are two persons, sometimes they don't match.
"Meditation is the same experience of silence and peace and bliss – but alone. But if two meditators are in love, then things come to the highest peak. If one meditator can reach to a certain peak in his blissfulness, in his silence, two meditators who love each other can become an immense support to each other's flight into the unknown. Their love can become a nourishment to their meditation, and vice-versa, their meditation can become a nourishment to their love.
"This is the point where I differ from all the religions of the past. They have made love and meditation polarities, parallel lines which meet nowhere.
"To me a man of meditation is bound to be immensely loving."
-Osho, The Golden Future, Talk #31
Meditation Needs No Technique
"You will have to understand one of the most fundamental things about meditation: that no technique leads to meditation. The old so-called techniques and the new scientific biofeedback techniques are the same as far as meditation is concerned. Meditation is not a byproduct of any technique.
"Meditation happens beyond mind. No technique can go beyond mind.
"But there is going to be a great misunderstanding in scientific circles, and it has a certain basis. The basis of all misunderstanding is: when the being of a person is in a state of meditation, it creates certain waves in the mind. These waves can be created from the outside by technical means. But those waves will not create meditation – this is the misunderstanding.
"Meditation creates those waves; it is the mind reflecting the inner world. You cannot see what is happening inside. But you can see what is happening in the mind. Now there are sensitive instruments… We can judge what kinds of waves are there when a person is asleep, what kinds of waves are there when a person is dreaming, what kinds of waves are there when a person is in meditation.
"But by creating the waves, you cannot create the situation – because those waves are only symptoms, indicators. It is perfectly good; you can study them. But remember that there is no shortcut to meditation, and no mechanical device can be of any help. In fact, meditation needs no technique – scientific or otherwise.Meditation is simply an understanding.
"It is not a question of sitting silently, it is not a question of chanting a mantra. It is a question of understanding the subtle workings of the mind. As you understand those workings of the mind a great awareness arises in you, which is not of the mind. That awareness arises in your being, in your soul, in your consciousness."
-Osho, Beyond Enlightenment, Talk #29
To Be With Yourself Is Meditation
"Once you turn in, meditation has started. Meditation means the capacity to be joyously alone, the capacity to be happy with yourself, the capacity to keep company with yourself. To be with yourself is meditation. There is no need for the other in meditation; the joy of aloneness, not the misery of loneliness, is meditation...
"Meditation in the East is not what is understood in the West. In the West, meditation means contemplation: meditating on God, meditating on truth, meditating on love...
"Meditation in the East has a totally different meaning, just the opposite of the Western meaning. Meditation in the East means no object in the mind, no content in the mind; not meditating upon something but dropping everything; neti, neti, neither this nor that. Meditation is emptying yourself of all content. When there is no thought moving inside you there is stillness; that stillness is meditation. Not even a ripple arises in the lake of your consciousness; that silent lake, absolutely still, that is meditation. And in that meditation you will know what truth is, you will know what love is, you will know what godliness is."
-Osho, The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol. 6, Talk #1
Music and Meditation Should Go Together
"To me, music and meditation are two aspects of the same phenomenon. And without music, meditation lacks something; without music, meditation is a little dull, unalive. Withoutmeditation, music is simply noise – harmonious, but noise. Without meditation, music is an entertainment. And without music, meditation becomes more and more negative, tends to be death-oriented.
"Hence my insistence that music and meditation should go together. That adds a new dimension to both. Both are enriched by it."
-Osho, The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol. 1, Talk #2
Meditation Is a Quality Of Being
"Meditation is a quality of being that you bring to the act. It is not a particular act, it is not that you do this then it is meditation – that you sit in a certain posture, siddhasana, and you keep your spine erect, and you keep your eyes closed or you look at the tip of your nose or you watch your breath, then it is meditation – no, these are just devices for the beginners…
"Do you know that the words meditation and medicine come from the same root? Meditation is a kind of medicine; its use is only for the time being. Once you have learned the quality, then you need not do any particular meditation, then the meditation has to spread all over your life. Only when you are meditative twenty-four hours a day then can you attain, then you have attained. Even sleeping is meditation."
-Osho, The Sun Rises in the Evening, Talk #7
Run After Meditation
"When I use the words 'inner journey', I simply mean that you have looked at one aspect of the journey in your life called 'outer', now try to look at another aspect of the journey called 'inner'. You have been running after money, now run after meditation. You have been running after power, now run after God. Both are running. Once you start running after meditation then one day I will tell you, 'Now drop meditation too. Now stop running.' And when you stop running then real meditation happens."
-Osho, The Wisdom of the Sands, Vol. 2, Talk #3
Prayer Is a Consequence of Real Meditation
"Kabir will suggest meditation, Buddha has suggested meditation, I suggest meditation. Meditation is a different approach: it has nothing to do with God, it has something to do with you, with your mind. It has to create a silence within you, a deep utter silence. In that utter silence you will start feeling the presence of God.
"Prayer is a consequence of real meditation. Only a meditator can pray because he knows, because he feels; because now God's presence is not just an argument, not a logical thing, but something experienced, something lived. And then prayer is no longer a complaint. Then prayer is a surrender, then prayer is pure love – no desire attached to it, no conditions. It is sheer gratefulness.
"Let prayer come after meditation. You meditate. Meditation will prepare your heart, it will cleanse you. It will cleanse you of your thoughts, it will throw out all the rubbish that you have been carrying in your head for ages, for lives; it will make space for prayer to happen. Meditation is like preparing the ground for a rosebed: prayer is like a rose. First you have to prepare the ground, you have to remove the weeds, you have to change the soil, you have to throw out all the stones.
"Meditation prepares the bed. And only in a prepared bed can you plant roses. Otherwise weeds will overrun your roses and weeds will exploit the whole soil and your roses will not get much, they will be poor roses. And if there are stones in the ground the growth of the roses will be stunted.
"First prepare the ground, then prayer happens on its own accord. Prayer is something that you cannot do. Meditation is something that you can do because it has something to do with your mind."
-Osho, The Revolution, Talk #2
Science Is Thinking, Religion Is Meditation
"The failure of thinking is the arousal of meditation.
"Science is thinking, religion is meditation. If you think about God, it is philosophy, it is not religion. If you live God, then it is religion.
"If you are looking at a lotus flower and thinking about it, then it is science, philosophy, aesthetics. But if you are simply looking at the lotus flower… The look is pure, uncontaminated by any thought, and the lotus flower is not thought to be a problem but just a beauty to be experienced…you are there, the lotus flower is there, and there is nothing in between – just empty, nobody is standing between you and the flower – it is meditation.
"Then the flower is not outside you, because there is nothing to divide as the in and the out. Then the lotus flower is somehow within you and you are somehow within the lotus flower. You melt into each other; divisions are lost, boundaries become blurred. The lotus starts touching your heart, and your heart starts touching the lotus. There is communion. It is meditation."
-Osho, I Say Unto You, Vol. 1, Talk #10
Meditation Is Not Concentration
"Meditation is not concentration. In concentration there is a self concentrating and there is an object being concentrated upon. There is duality. In meditation there is nobody inside and nothing outside. It is not concentration. There is no division between the in and the out. The in goes on flowing into the out, the out goes on flowing into the in. The demarcation, the boundary, the border, no longer exists. The in is out, the out is in; it is a nondual consciousness.
"Concentration is a dual consciousness: that's why concentration creates tiredness; that's why when you concentrate you feel exhausted. And you cannot concentrate for twenty-four hours, you will have to take holidays to rest. Concentration can never become your nature. Meditation does not tire, meditation does not exhaust you. Meditation can become a twenty-four hour thing – day in, day out, year in, year out. It can become eternity. It is relaxation itself."
-Osho, The Heart Sutra, Talk #7
You Can See It Right Now
"Meditation is an insight that all goals are false. Meditation is an understanding that desires don't lead anywhere. Seeing that… And this is not a belief that you can get from me or from Buddha or from Jesus. This is not knowledge; you will have to see it. You can see it right now!"
-Osho, The Heart Sutra, Talk #7
It Has to Become a Kind of Climate
"Meditation is not something you do in the morning and you are finished with it, meditation is something that you have to go on living every moment of your life. Walking, sleeping, sitting, talking, listening – it has to become a kind of climate. A relaxed person remains in it. A person who goes on dropping the past remains meditative."
-Osho, The Heart Sutra, Talk #7
Love And Meditation Are Two Aspects of the Same Coin
"Wherever you find self-consciousness disappearing – in alcohol, in love, in meditation – you feel good. But alcohol cannot give you a permanent state; love can give that to you, but that possibility is very very difficult. Remember, love is more difficult than meditation because love means living with the other and without the self. Meditation means living with oneself, forgetting the other completely – it is a less difficult dimension than love. That's why those who can love don't need meditation; they will reach through love…
"If you grow in love, meditation will happen like a shadow. Love and meditation are two aspects of the same coin; if you have gained control of the one aspect, the other follows. If you meditate, love will follow; if you love, meditation will follow. This you have to choose. Meditation is easier, love is difficult. Unless you want to move into the difficult unnecessarily – that is for you to decide; otherwise with meditation love comes automatically."
-Osho, Returning to the Source, Talk #8
Meditation Is Not a Doing
"Thought and meditation go in totally opposite directions. One is outward-going; the other, inward-going. Thought is the way to know the other; meditation, the way to know the self. But generally thought, contemplation, has been taken for meditation. This is a very serious and widespread mistake and I want to caution you against this fundamental error.
"Meditation means to be in non-doing. Meditation is not a doing but a state of being. It is a state of being in one's own self."
-Osho, The Perfect Way, Talk #2