Osho Quotes on Meditation

 

 

If you are meditating, Buddha says, let it be samyak -- right meditation. Don't make too much fuss about it, don't make a tension out of it. Don't create anguish. Don't become mad. Don't be aggressive. And he also says that that does not mean to forget all about it and go on living the way you are living. No, make efforts for meditation, but in a joyous way, a graceful way, always in the middle. Be gentle, be gentlemanly. Buddha is the perfect gentleman; the emphasis is on gentle. He is a rare person in that way.

 

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Don't think about the future, don't be worried about it. Live in the present. That is what meditation is all about: living in the present. Mind lives in the past and in the future; and if you can be in the present, mind disappears, and silence prevails -- profound silence, virgin silence.

 

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Sannyas means exploring your interiority, moving towards the center. That's what meditation is all about. When you become centered, suddenly there is great freedom because you know you are not the mind and you are not the body. That does not mean that you start rejecting the body or the mind. You respect the body, you respect the mind. You love the body more so, more than ever. It is a beautiful house. It is your home and you have to live in it seventy, eighty, ninety years. And it is serving you so beautifully; its service is of great value. You respect it, you befriend it, you take care of it. But still you know: "I am neither the body nor the mind. I am consciousness."

 

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Meditation cannot be purchased and no one can give it to you. You have to achieve it. It is not something outer, it is something inner, a growth, and that growth comes through awareness. Call your own name, in the morning, in the night, in the afternoon, whenever you feel sleepy, call your own name. And not only call it, answer it and say it loudly. Don't be afraid of others. You have been afraid of others enough; they have already murdered you through fear. Don't be afraid. Even in the marketplace you must remember. Call your own name, "Teertha, are you here?" And answer, "Yes sir."

 

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Meditation is deautomatization in the beginning. Then you will start working with a new awareness -- efficiency remains in the body, and consciousness remains alert. You don't become a machine you remain a man. If you become a machine, you have lost humanity.

 

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That is meditation. Put your mind aside. Face reality directly. Encounter it, be face-to-face. Put the mind aside. Look into reality silently, without any thought, so that the thought cannot be a hindrance, a barrier, a distortion. That's what meditation is: seeing what is and seeing what is not.

 

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When one is really detached -- out of understanding, out of meditation -- then there is no detachment either; that thing has to be understood. When one is really detached one is neither attached nor detached. The whole thing becomes irrelevant as if there is no question anymore of attraction, of nonattraction. The whole question drops. You are simply yourself.

 

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The other day Buddha was saying: See that which is and see that which is not. That is meditation, and meditation takes you beyond mind. Mind is constantly asking, desiring, demanding and creating frustration because it lives in expectations. The whole world is suffering through meaninglessness, and the reason is that for the first time man is asking more than he has ever asked. For the first time man is desiring more than he has ever desired. Science has given him so much hope, so much support to desire more.

 

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Meditation will make you inwardly rich, certainly. Inwardly you will become ecstatic, but outwardly it can't be guaranteed that you will become rich, that you will become successful, that you will become very healthy, that no disease will ever happen to you. That is all sheer bullshit!

 

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Raman is dying with cancer, but his eyes are full of joy. He dies laughing. This is real health. In deep agony is his body, but he is just a witness. This is meditation.

 

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Whenever any art is perfect it ends in meditation -- it HAS to end in meditation. If it is not leading you towards meditation then something has gone wrong.

 

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Buddha says that's where meditation brings the master. He is no longer interested in possessing and he is no longer desiring anything. All desires have left him because he has found the ultimate beyond which there is nothing else. He has found the inexhaustible treasure of joy, of bliss, of ecstasy. What else can he desire? He has found a mine of diamonds; now he cannot go on collecting colored stones and seashells on the seabeach. Now that whole activity is stupid -- not that he renounces it.

 

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The man of understanding, the man of awareness, the man who has gone deep into meditation, into no-mind, becomes aware of this whole phenomenon; he drops the whole coin. He is neither interested in hell nor in heaven. He is neither worried about hell nor desirous of heaven, because he knows if you desire heaven you will suffer in hell.

 

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Buddha's whole message is condensed in this one word -- sammasamadhi, right meditation. What is right meditation and what is wrong meditation? If the meditator exists then it is wrong meditation. If the meditator is lost in meditation then it is right meditation. Right meditation brings you to emptiness and aloneness.

 

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There is no greater magic than meditation. To transform the negative into the positive, to transform darkness into light, that is the miracle of meditation. To transform a trembling person into a fearless soul, to transform a person who was clinging to every stupid thing into a nonclinger, into a nonpossessor, that is what happens through meditation.

 

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If you are dancing with absolute passion so that the dancer disappears and only the dance remains, it is meditation

 

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In the night also, when you go to sleep, the last thought becomes the pattern for the whole sleep. If the last thought is meditative the whole sleep will become meditation; if the last thought is of sex then the whole sleep will be disturbed by sexual dreams; if the last thought is of money then the whole night you will be in the market purchasing and selling. A thought is not an accident. It creates a chain, and then things follow and similar things follow.

 

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Remember, meditation is not something that is done by the mind, it is the absence of the mind. When the mind stops meditation happens. It is not something out of the mind, it is something beyond the mind. And whenever you are alert, the mind is not. So we can conclude that your sleepiness is your mind, your unawareness is your mind, your somnambulism is your mind. You move as if drunk, not knowing who you are, not knowing where you are going, not knowing why you are going.

 

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The beginning of meditation is when you start dropping your conditionings. A moment comes when you become unconditioned again, like a child. Then your intelligence explodes. And an intelligent person cannot desire, that is impossible, because desiring only brings misery, frustration. Desiring only creates anxiety, anguish; it never brings any fulfillment, never any contentment.

 

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An intelligent person cannot go on desiring. His very intelligence is enough and desiring disappears -- not that he renounces, remember. Only fools renounce. Intelligent people don't renounce the world. They live in the world, but they live intelligently, without desiring. Whatsoever comes on their way they enjoy, but they don't hanker for anything. Their sleep remains undisturbed; they don't dream for anything. They don't project for the future, they live in the present.

 

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The only thing that can prevent the world war is that you start a totally new consciousness, that you start a new kind of humanity... a man who is capable of love, a man who is capable of meditation. Let love and meditation spread far and wide. Let meditation reach to as many people as possible. Except that, all your efforts at resistance are impotent.

 

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Going beyond thoughts and feelings and becoming a pure isness is maturity. Maturity is the ultimate flowering of meditation.

 

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Meditation is a twenty-four hour thing. It is not that you do it once a day and you are finished with it. It has to become your flavor, it has to become your climate. It should surround you wherever you are, whatsoever you are doing.

 

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The most frightening experience for human beings is to remember, to watch, to be aware; hence the difficulty in meditation. It does not arise from the outside; there is no disturbance outside. The real disturbance is within you. You really don't want to meditate. You are in a double bind. You listen to buddhas talking about the beauties and the blessings and the benedictions of meditation, and you become greedy for it. But then you look at your own investment and you become frightened, so you try to meditate. Yet you don't really want to meditate because meditation means you will have to see things as they are -- the false as false, the true as true -- and that is going to shatter your whole effort of lives in a single moment.

 

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Meditation is nothing but an effort to cleanse your mind of knowledge. Knowledge is dust that has gathered on the mirror of your being; it has to be cleaned.

 

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Meditation is: sitting around doing nothing -- REALLY nothing, not even inside, not even thinking, not even feeling. When action as such stops in toto, meditation begins. When doing ceases utterly, categorically, when there is no movement in your being, then for the first time there is the flowering of meditation.

 

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Buddha used to call meditation a great sword, it cuts your problems at the very root. It makes you aware that you need not be afraid of your inner abyss. It is beautiful, it is blissful. You have not experienced its bliss and beauty because you have never gone into it, you have always been escaping. You have not tasted of it; it is nectar, it is not poison. But how are you going to know without tasting it? You are running away from something which can become your life's fulfillment. You are running away from something which is the only thing worth achieving. You are running away from yourself.

 

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Remember that here my whole approach is an integrated approach. Meditation is needed, so is poetry, so is aesthetics, so is religion, so is music, so is art. Man should evolve in many dimensions in an integrated way. Then comes the ultimate flowering when all your petals have opened. And you will have greater joy and greater benediction in life.

 

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Meditation cannot be a fragmented thing, it should be a continuous effort. Every moment one has to be alert, aware and meditative. But the mind has played a trick: you meditate in the morning and then you put it aside; or you pray in the temple and then forget it. Then you come back to the world, completely unmeditative, unconscious, as if walking in a hypnotic sleep. This fragmented effort won't do much. How can you meditate for one hour when you have been nonmeditative for twenty-three hours of the day? It is impossible. Suddenly to become meditative for one hour is not possible. You can simply deceive yourself.

 

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Consciousness is a continuum; it is like a river, flowing constantly. If you are meditative the whole day, every moment of it... and only when you are meditative the whole day the flowering will come to you. Nothing will come before.

 

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That's the whole effort of meditation: to bring something more to your life which is not a habit, something which is spontaneous, something which is nonmechanical, something which transforms you from a robot into a conscious being.

 

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That's what meditation is all about: a state of silence, a state of no prejudice, a state of no belief. And then you are very close to truth. It suddenly explodes upon you, and its explosion is such a blessing that you cannot imagine it unless you have experienced it. There is no way to imagine it. Buddhas have been talking down the ages, but still you cannot imagine it. It is unimaginable because it is inexpressible -- but it can be experienced. It is experienceable but not expressible.

 

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Meditation requires courage. It requires the basic integrity, sincerity, respect towards your own being. At least don't deceive yourself.

 

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Buddha says: Abandon time -- past, future, present, abandon everything. Forget about time; that's the way to enter into a timeless space within yourself. That is meditation.

 

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When you are in meditation everything stands under you, you are so above it. That's the meaning of understanding. Everything is there far below you, so you can see... like a bird's-eye view. You can see the whole from your altitude. Intellect cannot see it; it is on the same plane. Understanding happens only when the problem is on one plane and you are on a higher plane. If you are also on the same plane, understanding is not possible. You will misunderstand only. And that is one of the greatest problems to be encountered by every seeker.

 

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The second thing Buddha emphasizes is meditation, awareness. Freedom can come only through being more and more aware. By freedom he does not mean any social phenomenon or any political change. There are people... I have come across books written by communists, Marxists, socialists, who try to prove that Buddha's freedom means communism, socialism, that his freedom means a social revolution, a political revolution. That is utter nonsense! Buddha has nothing to do with the outside world; his concern is your interiority. He wants to change your unconsciousness into consciousness, he wants to change your darkness into light, he wants to change your death into deathlessness.

 

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Meditation is not of the body, not of the mind, not of the soul. Meditation simply means your body, your mind, your soul, all functioning in such a harmony, in such wholeness, humming beautifully; they are in a melody... one. Your whole being -- body, mind, soul, are all involved in meditation. That's why my effort here is to start every meditation with the body. That is something new.

 

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The old traditions have created all kinds of barriers to meditation, and then they say, "Meditation is very difficult." Meditation is not difficult; meditation is a simple process, a natural process. But if you create unnecessary hindrances, then you make it something like a hurdle race. You create barriers: you put rocks on the way... you hang rocks around your neck, you keep yourself chained, imprisoned, locked from within and the key thrown out.... Then of course it becomes more and more difficult, more and more impossible.

 

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My effort here is to make meditation a natural phenomenon. Give to the body what is the body's need, and give to the mind what is the mind's need. And then you will be surprised, they become very friendly. And when you tell the body, "Now for one hour allow me to sit silently," the body says, "Okay. You have been doing so much for me, you have been so respectful towards me, I can do at least this much for you."

 

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I am saying this from my own experience. Respect the body, respect the mind, so that they respect you. Create a friendliness. They are yours; don't be antagonistic. All the old traditions teach you to be antagonistic to the body and the mind; they create enmity, and through enmity you cannot move into meditation. Then the mind will disturb you more when you are meditating than at any other time. Then the body will become restless -- more in meditation than at any other time. It will take revenge, it won't allow you to sit silently. It will create so many problems for you.

 

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Just take care of the body and the body will repay you tremendously. Take care of your mind and the mind will be helpful. Create friendship, and meditation comes easily.

 

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Meditation means a state of unconditioned mind. Meditation is the process of undoing the harm that every society goes on doing to every individual -- communist or Catholic, Jaina or Jew, it does not matter. I am not talking about any particular conditioning that is wrong; I am saying conditioning AS SUCH is wrong.

 

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That's what I mean when I tell you to meditate. Meditation is just a situation; silence is not going to be the consequence of it. No, meditation is just creating the soil, the surrounding, preparing the ground. The seed is there, it is always there; you need not put in the seed, the seed has always been with you. That seed is Brahma; that seed is atma. -- that seed is you. Just create the situation and the seed will become alive. It will sprout and a plant will be born, and you will start growing.

 

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Meditation doesn't lead you to silence; meditation only creates the situation in which the silence happens. And this should be the criterion -- that whenever silence happens laughter will come into your life. A vital celebration will happen all around. You will not become sad, you will not become depressed, you will not escape from the world. You will be here in this world, but taking the whole thing as a game, enjoying the whole thing as a beautiful game, a big drama, no longer serious about it.

 

Seriousness is a disease.

 

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Relationship is needed only because you can't be alone, because you are not yet capable of meditation. Hence, meditation is a MUST before you can really love. One should be capable of being alone, utterly alone, and yet tremendously blissful. Then you can love. Then your love is no more a need but a sharing, no more a necessity. You will not become dependent on the people you love. You will share -- and sharing is beautiful.

 

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If you can learn anything from the failure of love, then that thing is: become more aware, become more meditative. And by meditation I mean the capacity to be joyous alone. Very rare people are capable of being blissful for no reason at all -- just sitting silently and blissful! Others will think them mad, because the idea of happiness is that it has to come from somebody else. You meet a beautiful woman and you are happy or you meet a beautiful man and you are happy. Sitting silently in your room and so blissful, so blissed out? You must be crazy or something! People will suspect that you are on a drug, stoned. Yes, meditation is the ultimate LSD! It is releasing your own psychedelic powers. It is releasing your own imprisoned splendor. And you become so joyous, such a celebration arises in your being, that you need not have any relationship.

 

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Meditation is life, not livelihood. It has nothing to do with what you do; it has everything to do with what you are. Yes, business should not enter into your being, that is true. If your being also has become businesslike, then it is difficult to meditate and impossible to be a sannyasin... because if your being has become businesslike, then you have become too calculative. And a calculative person is a cowardly person: he thinks too much, he cannot take any jumps. And meditation is a jump: from the head to the heart, and ultimately from the heart to the being. You will be going deeper and deeper, where calculations will have to be left behind, where all logic becomes irrelevant. You cannot carry your cleverness there.

 

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You can leave the world... you will be the same. You will again create the same world, because you carry the blueprint in your mind. It is not a question of leaving the world, it is a question of changing the mind, renouncing the mind. That's what meditation is and that's what sannyas is.

 

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To be in the mind, to be identified with the mind, is unawareness. To think that "I am the mind," is unawareness.

 

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Awareness is watching that the mind is full of greed, full of anger, full of hate or full of lust, but you are simply a watcher. Then you can see greed arising, becoming a great, dark cloud, then dispersing -- and you remain untouched. How long can it remain? Your anger is momentary, your greed is momentary, your lust is momentary. Just watch a little and you will be surprised: it comes and it goes. And you are remaining there unaffected, cool, calm.

 

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Medicine heals you physically, meditation heals you spiritually. Both are healing processes, both bring health.

 

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Meditation is awareness, so anything that makes you unaware is a distraction; where it comes from does not matter. Whether you create it inside yourself by chanting a mantra or by ingesting some drug, by smoking, by injecting... how you manage it does not matter. If it distracts you from awareness... it may create beautiful dreams, but you are no longer conscious. You may feel the world becoming golden, the trees are greener, the roses are rosier, and everything seems to be tremendously beautiful, psychedelic -- but YOU are unconscious, you are no longer in your consciousness. This is the distraction.

 

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Meditation IS the way: there is no other way to God, there is no other way to truth. Truth is not something ready-made. Truth is something that you have to discover by becoming more and more aware. And you have to discover it not somewhere else, but within your own being. You are truth covered by unconsciousness, covered by forgetfulness, so anything that distracts, anything that takes you away from yourself, is irreligious, is unspiritual.

 

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Either you can collect money, power, prestige -- which will be left on this shore -- or you can accumulate a totally different kind of treasure: of meditation, of love, of bliss, of understanding, of awareness, of godliness. If you attain to this treasure, you will be surprised: when you reach to the other shore, when you go beyond this body, when death happens to this body, you will be received by all the treasures that you have accumulated. They will all rejoice.

 

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Remember, each moment, what you are accumulating. Is it going to be taken away by death? Then it is not worth bothering about. If it is not going to be taken away by death, then even life can be sacrificed for it -- because one day or another life is going to disappear. Before life disappears, use the opportunity to find that which never dies. Become an uddhamsoto. Find the source of existence, of your own being, of all that is. That source is God, that source is nirvana.

 

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Western psychology goes through analysis, thinking -- that is its method. Eastern psychology follows the method of no-mind, of meditation; not of analysis, not of thinking, but of silence. Because to see the beauty of the flower you need silence, not analysis; beauty can never be understood through analysis. The dance of the flower in the wind, in the sun, in the rain, cannot be understood by the head; the heart has to be open for it.

 

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This is of great importance. Never fight with the negative. Your society prepares you for the negative. Transform the negative into the positive; transformation is possible. The medium that has to be used is meditation. Just become more watchful of all your mind things -- anger, greed, meanness; otherwise you can cultivate, you can deceive others and you can deceive yourself, but you will remain mean.

 

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A religious mind is a nonphilosophical mind. A religious mind is an innocent, intelligent mind. The mirror is clear, the dust has not been gathered; and every day a continuous cleaning goes on. That's what I call meditation.

 

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When you seek a result, it is the mind; when you don't seek a result, it is meditation.

 

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I will be there, and if you meditate rightly whenever your meditation is exactly tuned, you will see me.

 

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That's what meditation is all about -- to be in a space where language does not interfere, where learned concepts don't come in between you and the real.

 

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The growth of the ego is a canceric growth. It is like cancer, it kills you. Meditation is not growth of the ego, it is death of the ego.

 

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All the meditation techniques that I have given to you are not dependent on me -- my presence or absence will not make any difference -- they are dependent on you. It is not my presence, but your presence that is needed for them to work. It is not my being here but your being here, your being in the present, your being alert and aware that is going to help.

 

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When a person represses nothing, dreams disappear. So a Buddha never dreams. If your meditation goes deep you will immediately find that your dreams are becoming less and less and less. The day your dreams completely disappear and you attain to clarity in your sleep -- no clouds, no smoke, no thoughts; simple, silent sleep, without any interference of dreams -- that day you have become a Buddha, your meditation has come to fruition.

 

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Try to understand your misery. Live it, go to the very depth of it, find out the cause, why it is there. Let understanding be your meditation. And try to understand your contentment also, your happiness also, and you will see their superficiality. Once you know that your happiness is superficial and your anguish is very deep -- and it is in your hands -- you can change your whole style of consciousness.

 

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This is the first and the most important thing to understand: never force anything, just let it go easily. If you ever want to find out what the secret of your life is, then you have to go inwards. And thoughts are always going outwards; every thought takes you outwards. When all thoughts cease, there is nowhere to go -- you simply are at home. This at-homeness is meditation.

 

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This sitting silently is not avoiding life. Sitting silently is searching for life, the very source of life. And the moment you have found the source, everything grows by itself, just like when spring comes, the grass grows by itself. Virtue, truth, compassion, love -- everything you can conceive of arises out of meditation, and there is no other source for it. They do not arise from prayers, because prayers are addressed to a fictitious God, who does not exist.

 

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Without meditation there is no virtue; there cannot be any virtue! And when I say anything like this, I say it with absolute authority, and I challenge every religion of the world to prove that unconscious people, sleepy people, can do any act without motivation. Selfishness means motivation, you are thinking of some reward. An unselfish act means with no motivation, you are not thinking of any reward. You are doing it out of your abundance. You have too much, you are a rain cloud, you have to shower.

 

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The crowd is living so unconsciously. You cannot expect from this crowd any act of virtue, any act of unselfishness. It is simply not possible. It is categorically impossible. First comes meditation, then everything else follows.

 

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I don't want you to react and become disobedient. I want you to grow beyond the dualities of obedience and disobedience. You should have a bird's-eye view of the whole situation, and according to your awareness, consciousness, your meditation, you should respond. Whether it is obedience or disobedience does not matter.

 

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Christianity doesn't have any approach towards truth, because truth is intrinsic in your consciousness, beyond your mind. It is not a thought. It is not a question of philosophy, nor a question of theological discussions. It is a question of deep meditation that leads you beyond thinking, beyond mind, and you become simply a witness, a pure witness. That witness is divine because it is eternal. It is the ultimate in intelligence, it is the greatest clarity of vision. It takes you away from all dualities. Even the true and the false are a duality, just as birth and death are a duality, just as light and dark are a duality. Passing beyond the mind, you have passed beyond duality.