Osho Quotes on Meditation

 

 

 

Mind is a mechanism to distort. Hence, whether you are on the, path of love or on the path of meditation, one thing is needed on both the paths as a basic requirement: that the mind should be put aside. Mind goes on distorting.

 

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Drop the mind and move into deep meditation. If you dance, dance so totally that there is not a single thought inside, your whole energy becomes dance. Or sing, then just sing. Or sit, then just sit -- be in ZAZEN, don't do anything else. Don't allow a single thought to pass through. Just be quiet, absolutely quiet.

 

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All expectations are unreasonable, but when one expects something out of meditation it is ABSOLUTELY unreasonable. Because the very base of meditation, the very foundation of meditation is to understand that expectation has to be dropped; otherwise meditation never starts. It is expectation that keeps your mind continuously spinning thoughts. It is expectation that keeps you tense. It is expectation, when not fulfilled, that makes you feel frustrated, miserable. Drop expectation and meditation will flower, but it can flower only when you are not expecting. You can go on expecting for many lives; you will not allow meditation to flower. That is not the way.

 

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It is better not to meditate than to meditate with expectation, because at least you will not suffer the frustration. Don't meditate. But if you have decided to meditate, then be clear. Meditation does not guarantee anything to you. Not that nothing happens out of it; it happens, but there is no guarantee. Tremendous possibilities open but you cannot expect them. If you expect, doors remain dosed. It is your expectation that blocks the way.

 

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Expectation is very, very dangerous. With expectation, even if something happens you will not feel fulfilled, because expectation is almost insanity. You go on expecting more and more -- now the man is miserable because he had only two uncles. Whatsoever happens is not going to make you happy if you start with expectations. Drop expectation -- that is not the right thing to bring into meditation -- and immediately things will start happening.

 

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The very act of meditation is a great joy. Just to be able to dance, just to be able to sing, just to be able to sit silently and breathe and be, is more than enough. Don't ask for anything else. Because of your asking you are corrupting your being. You have tried that way, now listen to me and try my way. You simply meditate.

 

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God is always postponed, love is always postponed, meditation is always postponed. Anger, greed, hatred, never; the devil, never. When the devil invites you, you are IMMEDIATELY ready. Immediately, instantly you stand up. You say, "I'm coming!" When somebody insults you, you don't say that "Tomorrow I will be angry"; but for love you always go on postponing. For prayer you say, "Yes, it has to be done." This is a very cunning state.

 

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When meditation releases energy in you, it will find all sorts of ways to be expressed. It depends on what type of talent you have. If you are a painter and meditation releases energy, you will paint more, you will paint madly. You will forget everything, the whole world. Your whole energy will be poured into painting. If you are a dancer your meditation will make you a very deep dancer. It depends on the capacity, talent, individuality, personality. So nobody knows what will happen. Sometimes sudden changes will happen: a person who was very silent and was never talkative suddenly becomes talkative. He may have been repressed. He may not have been allowed ever to talk. When the energy arises and flows, he may start talking.

 

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Mind is narrow; it goes on seeking in a very concentrated way. Concentration is not the approach towards God. Concentration is a mind approach. God is everywhere, so you have to relax, you have to be meditative. That's the difference between concentration and meditation. Concentration is a focusing of the mind exclusively on something. That's what desire is: a concentrated mind, a mind intent to reach somewhere, to reach something, a great seeking -- but it has to be narrow. And God is the infinite.

 

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You have to relax, and you have to drop all searching -- only then you'll find Him. Seek, and you will never find Him. Just be, and He has always been there surrounding you. He has never left you for a single moment, because you cannot exist without Him. It is impossible to be without Him for a single split moment. He is your life. He is your being. You can exist without food for months, you can exist without water for a few days, you can exist without air for a few seconds, but you cannot exist without God even for a split second. It is impossible.

 

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One of the essential parts of meditation is to look at the good side of things, to look at the good side of people, to look at the good side of incidents, so that you are surrounded with everything good. Surrounded with all beautiful things, your growth is easier.

 

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Mind is what you have. No-mind is the search of meditation. And from no-mind blossom flowers of unselfishness, of love, of compassion, of sharing.

 

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There is only one way to learn great things and that is to teach them. That's why I go on saying to you that if you have shared my being in any way, go and spread, go and teach, go and help other people to meditate, and you will suddenly be surprised one day: the greatest meditation will happen to you when you are helping somebody to go into meditation.

 

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While meditating, things will happen. While you yourself are meditating many things will happen, but the greatest will happen only when you are able to teach meditation to somebody else. In that moment you become completely detached -- and in that detachment, you are complete]y silent. You are so filled with compassion -- that's why you're helping the other -- that something immediately happens to you.

 

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Remember, meditation can never be result-oriented; you simply meditate, that's all. Everything happens but it will not be a result. If you are seeking the result nothing will happen; meditation will be useless.

 

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Innocence is meditation. Start being meditative in your acts, just with small things: while eating, be spontaneous; while talking, be spontaneous; while walking, be spontaneous. Allow life to be a response not an answer. If somebody asks you something, just watch whether you are repeating something you always do, just a habit, or whether the answer is a response. Just watch whether the mind is repeating an old habit, whether the answer is coming from memory, or whether it is coming from you.

 

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The West knows nothing as far as meditation is concerned. And meditation is only a name for being alone, silent, waiting for the real to assert itself. It is not an act, it is a silent relaxation -- because whatever you do will come out of your false personality. All your doing for twenty-six years has come out of it; it is an old habit.

 

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Meditation is just a courage to be silent and alone. Slowly slowly, you start feeling a new quality to yourself, a new aliveness, a new beauty, a new intelligence -- which is not borrowed from anybody, which is growing within you.

 

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Enjoy simple things with total intensity. Just a cup of tea can be a deep meditation. If you can enjoy it, the aroma of it, slowly sipping it, the taste of it.

 

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Meditation in the past has been life negative: renounce life and everything that makes life worth living. To me, meditation is just the opposite of what it has been up to now. Meditation is a silent heart, a peaceful mind which can make life more lovable, more livable, which can make life richer in every dimension. I don't want you to renounce anything. I want you to rejoice in everything, whatever you are doing.

 

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Trust is the outcome of deep meditation. Fate is the outcome of your failures, and a mind consolation.

 

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I am telling you that you are already where you want to be, you are already that which you are thinking to become. Becoming is a disease. You are a being. You are not to become anything. But because in your whole life you have been a hard worker, achieving everything that you wanted, it is just the old habit that makes meditation also an effort, enlightenment also a goal, God also somewhere else.

 

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Modern psychology will not accept meditation because meditation will destroy their business. A man of meditation needs no psychoanalysis. The deeper his meditation goes, the saner he becomes and the further beyond the mind is his flight. Meditation is the greatest danger for psychoanalysis, for psychologists. They have to insist that there is nothing beyond mind because if there is something beyond mind, then their whole business can flop.

 

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Dropping the mask and bringing out your original face is the whole alchemy of meditation.

 

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Unless meditation becomes a revolution, a revolution of your whole character, it is not meditation. Meditation liberates you from yourself and brings the new, original face which we have named the buddha. Remember in your day-to-day work who you are. Let your inside affect your activities, your gestures, your language, your relations.

 

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It appears that people who are engaged in meditation are just thinking of themselves, not bothering about the whole of humanity. Absolute nonsense! The people who are engaged in meditation are the only people who will find a place where there is no self, and all selfishness disappears. Then their whole life, their whole love, their whole compassion will be unmotivated. Whatever they will do will be virtuous, because virtue can come only out of a conscious mind, an absolutely conscious mind.

 

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If you meditate, more meditation will be happening to you. If you don't meditate, even those few moments which happen on their own of calm, of quiet, will be taken away. If you are getting crystallized within you, the whole existence will help you to be deeper in crystallization. Everything will help to integrate you. If you are not getting crystallized and you are becoming a bigger and bigger crowd every day, everything will help to make you become even a greater crowd. Whatsoever is happening to you in the inner world, existence helps it.

 

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If you expect anything out of love, or meditation, you will get only frustration, and negative emptiness will happen. If you love for the sheer joy of it, if you meditate for the sheer delight of it and you don't have any result in mind -- you are not goal-oriented -- then there comes an emptiness which is positive. You start feeling full. You start feeling, for the first time, that you ARE. Being is felt, and that being is tremendously beautiful, blissful. It is SATCHITANANDA: it is existence, it is consciousness, it is bliss.

 

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The very essence of meditation is to be so silent that there is no stirring of thoughts in you, that words don't come between you and reality, that the whole net of words falls down, that you are left alone. This aloneness, this purity, this unclouded sky of your being is meditation. And meditation is the golden key to all the mysteries of life.

 

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This is part of meditation in a Zen monastery -- whatsoever you do, do it with awareness. When you walk, walk fully alert; when you move your head, be fully alert. Whatsoever you do, follow it with alertness; don't miss it, don't think of anything else. Be there in it as a light and everything is revealed. Every act, every nook and corner of it is lighted; nothing is in darkness. When you eat, eat with awareness. This is all one has to do in a Zen monastery -- twenty-four hours of alertness.

 

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Meditation is not contemplation, it is action -- action of the whole, of the total being. In the West particularly. Christianity has created a false impression, and meditation looks like contemplation. It is not. Because of Christianity the West has missed many things, and one of them is meditation, the rarest flowering of a human being, because they have made it equivalent to contemplation. Contemplation is thinking. Meditation is no-thinking.

 

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Nothingness is a meditation, not a theory; it is a falling into the abyss.

 

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To me, the first principle of life is meditation. Everything else comes second. And childhood is the best time. As you grow older, it means you are coming closer to death, and it becomes more and more difficult to go into meditation. Meditation means going into your immortality, going into your eternity, going into your godliness. And the child is the most qualified person because he is still unburdened by knowledge, unburdened by religion, unburdened by education, unburdened by all kinds of rubbish. He is innocent.

 

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Meditation is simply a strange surgical method which cuts you away from all that is not yours and saves only that which is your authentic being. It burns everything else and leaves you standing naked, alone under the sun, in the wind. It is as if you are the first man who has descended onto earth -- who knows nothing, who has to discover everything, who has to be a seeker, who has to go on a pilgrimage.

 

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My observation is this: that meditators learn habits of always falling from a certain stage, so whenever that state is again there, they fall. Great effort is needed to reach it again, but now it becomes a point where the mind suddenly takes the wrong step, habitually, mechanically. So it is better to be aware when for the first time you are moving high, so no habit of falling is created in you.

 

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Remember that the ordinary man is living a very abnormal life, because his values are upside down. Money is more important than meditation, logic is more important than love, mind is more important than heart. Power over others is more important than power over one's own being. Mundane things are more important than finding some treasures which death cannot destroy.

 

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Meditation is looking into your emptiness, welcoming it, enjoying it, being one with it, with no desire to fill it -- there is no need, because it is already full. It looks empty because you don't have the right way of seeing it. You see it through the mind; that is the wrong way. If you put the mind aside and look into your emptiness, it has tremendous beauty, it is divine, it is overflowing with joy. Nothing else is needed. Only then a person stops thinking about money, stops thinking about power, stops thinking about paradise -- because he is already in paradise, because he is already rich, because he is already powerful.

 

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Meditation and death are very similar. In death you enter reluctantly, unwillingly. That's why you fall unconscious, in a coma. In meditation you are going with full consciousness, with great totality of being, on your own accord. It is the same point that you will pass in death also, but if you have moved to the center before death, then death is no more a fear. You know it. You have died many times whenever you touched your center, and you have gone again into a resurrection. Every meditation is a death and a resurrection.

 

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It is because of the fear of death that people avoid meditation -- but it is only meditation that can take you beyond the fear of death, that is the irony of the case. You are afraid of meditation because of death, but you don't know it is only meditation that can make you fearless of death -- because to the meditator there is no death, but only life, and life divine and life eternal.

 

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I want you to understand that except meditation there is no act which is unselfish, because it is only meditation which is going to dissolve your self, which is going to dissolve you into the whole. And once you are no more, whatever you do is going to be without motivation. Virtue comes out of a person who has become one with existence. Meditation is the door.

 

Meditation is the only unselfish act.

 

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Meditation is a way to come out of thinking. Once the clouds of thoughts are not there, and the process of thinking ceases, even for a single moment, you have a glimpse of your being.

 

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When thinking ceases, only then does one know who one is. In a non-thinking state of consciousness one realizes one's being, not by thinking, but by non-thinking. Meditation is non-thinking; it is an effort to create a state of no-mind. Doubt is mind. In fact, to say 'doubting mind' is wrong; it is repetitive -- mind is doubt; doubt is mind. When doubt ceases, mind ceases; or when mind ceases, doubt ceases. And then self-evident truth arises within, a pinnacle of light, eternity, timelessness; and then there is trust.

 

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Meditators try to meditate continuously. They do a thousand and one things, other things, but one thing continues as a current, as a thread running underground. They eat, but they make a meditation out of eating. They walk, but they make a meditation out of walking. They talk, but they make a meditation out of talking. They listen, but they listen meditatively. They do many things, but they connect everything with meditation. That becomes their one-mindedness.

 

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A person can use his mind when working on matter; then logic is a great instrument. And the same person can put aside the mind when he moves into his meditation chamber and moves into the no-mind. Because mind is not you -- it is just an instrument just like my hand, just like my legs. If I want to walk I use my legs, if I don't want to walk I don't use my legs. Exactly in the same way you can use the mind logically if you are trying to know about matter. It is perfectly right, it fits there. And when you are moving inwards, put it aside. Now legs are not needed; thinking is not needed. Now you need a deep silent state of no-thought.

 

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When sex leaves you, the doors of meditation open. When sex leaves you, then you are not trying to lose yourself in the other. You become capable of losing yourself in yourself. Now another world of orgasm, inner orgasm, of being with oneself, arises. But that arises only through being with the other; one grows, matures through the other. Then a moment comes when you can be alone, tremendously happy. There is no need for any other. The need has disappeared but you have learned much through it -- you have learned much about yourself. The other became the mirror, and you have not broken the mirror. You have learned so much about yourself. Now there is no need to look into the mirror. You can close your eyes and you can see your face there. But that face you would not be able to see if there had been no mirror from the very beginning.

 

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Meditation will bring you sensitivity, a great sense of belonging to the world. It is our world -- the stars are ours, and we are not foreigners here. We belong intrinsically to existence. We are part of it, we are heart of it. Secondly, meditation will bring you a great silence -- because all rubbish knowledge is gone. Thoughts that are part of the knowledge are gone too... an immense silence, and you are surprised: This silence is the only music there is. All music is an effort to bring this silence somehow into manifestation.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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Meditation transforms. It takes you to higher levels of consciousness and changes your whole lifestyle. It changes your reactions into responses to such an extent that it is unbelievable that the person who would have reacted in the same situation in anger is now acting in deep compassion, with love -- in the same situation. Meditation is a state of being, arrived at through understanding. It needs intelligence, it does not need techniques.

 

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Just remain aware that whether it is a biofeedback machine or a chanting of OM, it does not matter; it only creates a mental peace, and a mental peace is not meditation. Meditation is the flight beyond the mind. It has nothing to do with mental peace.

 

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A man who knows what meditation is cannot be deceived by any techniques, because no technique can give you understanding of the workings of the mind.

 

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Meditation is the ultimate experience of blissfulness. It cannot be produced by drugs, it cannot be produced by machines, it cannot be produced from the outside.

 

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The whole work of religion, of meditation is to make you aware of all that is mind and disidentify yourself with it.

 

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The whole art of meditation is to learn awareness, alertness, consciousness. While you are feeling angry, don't repress it; let it be there. Just become aware. See it as if it is some object outside you. Slowly slowly, go on cutting your identifications with the mind. Then you have found your real individuality, your being, your soul. Finding this awareness is enlightenment -- you have become luminous. You are no more in darkness, and you are no more just a puppet in the hands of the mind. You are a master, not a servant. Now the mind cannot react automatically, autonomously -- the way it used to do before. It needs your permission.

 

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Remember, I don't teach concentration; I teach meditation. And the difference is this: concentration is a narrowing of the mind. And I tell you, that even a camel can pass through the eye of a needle, but one who is concentrating cannot pass through the gates of God -- because the mind becomes narrower and narrower. That is the whole meaning of concentration. Meditation is not concentration. Meditation is simple awareness -- widening of the mind, widening of consciousness -- expansion, not narrowing.

 

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Meditation is all-inclusive. You listen to me... if you are listening to me, and at the same time the crowing of the crows is not reaching your consciousness, it is concentration. Then you may remember what I am saying, but you will never understand -- because a narrow mind cannot understand much. But while I'm speaking and the crow is crowing and the birds are singing -- and you are not narrowed; you are flowing in all directions, aware of all -- in this moment, your consciousness is open to every possibility that is happening. Then I am talking and the crow is crowing and there is no conflict, because the conflict arises only when you are concentrating.

 

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Meditation is effortless awareness; concentration is a narrowing of the mind with much effort. I teach meditation; I teach expansion of consciousness, an ability to flow in all directions simultaneously.

 

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Remember, when you are in a relaxed mood, you are not. You are, only when you are in a tense mood. When you are relaxed you are part of the whole; you are not. Then boundaries are blurred; then the whole and the part are no more separate. They meet, they merge... surrender happens.

 

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What is understanding? -- understanding is pure intelligence. That pure intelligence is originally yours; you are born with it. Nobody can give you intelligence. Knowledge can be given to you, not intelligence. Intelligence is your own sharpened being. Through deep meditation one sharpens one's being; through meditation one drops borrowed thoughts, reclaims one's own being, reclaims one's originality, redaims one's childhood, innocence, freshness. Out of that freshness, when you act, you act out of understanding. And then the response is total, here-now; and the response is because of the challenge, not because of the past.

 

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Reaction is from the thoughts and response is understanding. Reaction comes from the past; response is always in the present. But ordinarily we react -- we have everything already ready inside.

 

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There are many people who become interested in meditation, but in a wrong way. They start fighting with the mind, they start struggling and wrestling with the mind. Then they are not ever going to be victorious. Then they are fighting a losing battle. It is not possible because they have forgotten the projector. Where is the projector?. -- one has to find the projector hidden behind your back. Hidden deep in the unconscious is the projector, hidden in the unconscious: becoming, desiring. It is what Buddhists call TRISHNA. The constant desire to be somebody, to be someone, to be somewhere else, is the cause of the mind; then the mind continues.

 

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The East says, "Unless you attain to a greater awareness, your life will never know what the reality is, what God is." That greater awareness means becoming totally aware, not leaving a single corner of your consciousness dark, dropping all unconsciousness. What the Freudians call the unconscious disappears by and by. By methods of meditation, prayer, love, it disappears; more and more, you become conscious. One moment comes when your whole being becomes conscious, full of light, luminous. Then there is no dreaming and no sleep. Just awareness is the stuff you are made of.

 

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The person who is meditating has the greatest possibility of reaching the highest peaks of intelligence because in meditation he is doing the greatest possible work that a man is capable of -- and that is realizing oneself, knowing "Who am I." Entering into the deepest interiority of one's subjectivity is the greatest work for intelligence. Then you cannot even count -- you cannot count Gautam Buddha's intelligence, it is beyond calculations, beyond measurements.

 

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If you are a meditator, as your meditation goes on becoming more and more luminous, your intelligence will be growing to the last breath of your life. Not only that, even after the last breath your intelligence will continue to grow -- because you are not going to die, only your body will be dying. And the body has nothing to do with intelligence, mind has nothing to do with intelligence. Intelligence is the quality of your awareness -- more aware, more intelligent. And if you are totally aware, you are as intelligent as this whole existence is.

 

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Meditation cannot be purchased, love cannot be purchased, friendship cannot be purchased, gratitude cannot be purchased -- but nobody is concerned with these things.

 

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Consciousness and silence together is what meditation is all about.

 

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To live pleasurably, to live joyously is not against meditation. It is really the basic need of meditation. I know many kinds of ascetics but I have never seen any intelligence in them, I have never seen any creativity in them. I have never seen in their eyes a light of the beyond, or in their gestures some message that cannot be said through words. They don't have anything. They are simply starving -- and starving because it fulfills the ego, because the more they starve, the more they torture themselves, more and more people come to worship them.

 

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Meditation should become a climate around you, a milieu in which you live. And wherever you go, you carry your climate.

 

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Meditators who don't love become lopsided. Their inner being becomes rich, but their outer being becomes very poor. Lovers who are not also meditators -- their outer being becomes richer, but their inner being becomes very poor. I would like you to become richer in both ways love, and meditate.

 

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Meditation can be done in a group: it is a technique. In fact, if you meditate in a group, you will meditate deeply because the group helps, enhances. It fosters confidence. A group mind is created, a great wave of group consciousness is created and you simply move on the wave.

 

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My whole teaching consists of two words, "meditation" and "love." Meditate so that you can feel immense silence, and love so that your life can become a song, a dance, a celebration. You will have to move between the two, and if you can move easily, if you can move without any effort, you have learned the greatest thing in life.

 

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The Jaina method of meditation is to listen, to listen so absolutely and so silently, as if you have become all ears -- that is the symbol. So they have made big ears just to indicate their method of meditation. Their method of meditation is listening: listening to the sound of the wind passing through the pine trees, listening to the birds, just listening to anything. The dog barking or the call of a distant cuckoo...just listening, with no judgment, no evaluation. Jainas say that if a person can listen totally, without any interference of the mind, he can become enlightened -- just by listening: nothing else is needed. To show this, to represent it in the statue, they have made big ears.

 

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Just as love is individual, so is meditation. And to me, religion only means one thing: meditation, going inwards and exploring your consciousness. Just the way science explores matter, meditation is the science of the inner; it explores consciousness.