Osho Quotes on Meditation

 

 

 

As you become more and more mature in your meditation, sex becomes less and less interesting. The day you become fully attuned with existence, sex disappears just like a dewdrop in the early morning sun.

 

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Except meditation, everything can be done by the mind; everything is done by the mind except meditation. Because meditation is not an achievement -- it is already the case, it is your nature.. It has not to be achieved; it has only to be recognized, it has only to be remembered. It is there waiting for you -- just a turning in, and it is available. You have been carrying it always and always. Meditation is your intrinsic nature -- it is you, it is your being, it has nothing to do with your doings. You cannot have it, you cannot not have it, it cannot be possessed. It is not a thing. It is you. It is your being.

 

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Meditation is a state of clarity, not a state of mind. Mind is confusion. Mind is never clear. It cannot be. Thoughts create clouds around you -- they are subtle clouds. A mist is created by them, and the clarity is lost. When thoughts disappear, when there are no more clouds around you, when you are in your simple beingness, clarity happens. Then you can see far away; then you can see to the very end of existence; then your gaze becomes penetrating -- to the very core of being.

 

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Don't be worried about moralities -- about concepts, about what is good and what is bad. Good follows your inner light just like a shadow. You take care of the inner light. That's what meditation is all about -- to become more alert. Live the same life, just change your alertness -- make it more intense. Eat the same food, walk the same path, live in the same house, be with the same woman and the children, but be totally different from your inside. Be alert! Walk the same path, but with awareness. If you become aware, suddenly the path is no more the same, because you are no more the same. If you are aware, the same food is not the same, because you are not the same, the same woman is not the same, because you are not the same. Everything changes with your inner change.

 

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Meditation is the antidote to all the poisons of your life. It is the nourishment of your authentic nature.

 

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Zen does not believe in meditating one hour in the morning, or one hour in the night. It does not make meditation a separate, particular act. It wants meditation to become a quality of your being. So whatever you are doing -- walking, sitting, standing, lying down, chopping wood, carrying water from the well, it does not matter. Whatever you are doing, you are doing it so silently, so peacefully, without any stirring of thoughts in your mind.

 

Then your whole life has become meditation. You go to bed silently, you wake up silently, and one day you will realize that you also sleep silently -- as thoughts disappear, dreams also disappear. Then the circle is complete.

 

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We can fill the whole world with ecstatic people. Just a simple thing has to be accepted .... Whether you are going to be a doctor or an engineer or a scientist, whatever you are going to be, that does not matter. Meditation should be the foundation for every profession, for every dimension of education.

 

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Atisha says: In the morning remember it is a new day, a new beginning. Have a decision deep in your heart that "Today I am not going to waste this opportunity. Enough is enough! Today I am going to be aware, today I am going to be alert, today I am going to devote as much energy as possible to the single cause, the cause of meditation. I will meditate in all my acts. I will do all the activities, the usual day-to-day activities, but with a new quality: I will bring the quality of awareness to them."

 

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When a single person starts meditating, all the nonmeditators are against him. He is doing something which raises questions about their life-style, and if by meditation he becomes more peaceful and more blissful, then of course they become more and more suspicious of their life-style, more and more doubtful -- and nobody wants to live in doubt. And it is easier to kill the person, to destroy the person, than to destroy your doubts. It is easier to remove the buddha, to murder the buddha, than to become conscious.

 

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I call these two types of work: love and meditation. Love is the feminine way and meditation is the masculine way. Meditation means the capacity to be absolutely alone, and love means the capacity to be absolutely together. Love means rejoicing relatedness; meditation means rejoicing solitude, aloneness. Both do the same work, because on both the paths the ego disappears. If you are really in love you have to drop your ego; otherwise love will not be possible. If you want to go deep into meditation you will have to leave the ego behind; otherwise you will not be alone. The ego will be there and the duality will remain: the being and the ego, consciousness and mind. You will have to drop the mind if you want to go into meditation, and you will have to drop the mind if you want to go into love. So the basic mechanism is the same, but the directions are different.

 

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In meditation there is no prayer because there is no other; in prayer there is a dialogue of I and thou.

 

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Buddha gives you only one commandment: awareness. You can call it meditation, you can call it watchfulness. His own word is SAMMASATI -- RIGHT awareness. He insists each time he mentions awareness that it should be of the right kind, because he knows there is a possibility of a wrong kind of awareness too. What is wrong awareness? People can be aware of others' acts, of others' faults: they can be very keenly aware -- in fact they are. It is so easy to see everybody else's faults in the world. That is a wrong kind of awareness; that is not your business at all. Who are you and why should you be worried?

 

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Right awareness is awareness of one's own being in its totality: all that is good and all that is bad. But as you become aware, the bad starts disappearing -- just as when you bring light into the room, the darkness disappears. When light is in the room, darkness cannot exist there. Sin is darkness, forgetfulness, unconsciousness.

 

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Buddha's way is: first become meditation, and then in meditation, truth, God, love, and all that is transcendental will be revealed to you.

 

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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.

 

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The moment you change from mind to meditation your whole life is going to be affected. It is natural. If it is not affected, that will be something unnatural. Your relationships are bound to change.

 

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One thing is certain: after meditation, after MY sannyas, whatsoever happens is going to give you more fulfillment, more maturity, more rootedness, more centering. It will become a life which does not only grow old but also grows towards heights and depths. You will start living not only a horizontal life but a vertical life too. You will live on the horizontal as far as it is needed; otherwise ninety percent of your energies will start moving in the vertical dimension, towards heights and depths.

 

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I would like my sannyasins to live life in its totality, but with an absolute condition, categorical condition: and that condition is awareness, meditation. Go first deep into meditation, so you can cleanse your unconscious of all poisonous seeds, so there is nothing to be corrupted and there is nothing inside you which power can bring forth. And then do whatsoever you feel like doing.

 

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To live out of understanding is compassion. Never try to practice it, simply relax deep into meditation. Be in a state of let-go in meditation and suddenly you will be able to smell the fragrance that is coming from your own innermost depth. Then the flower blossoms and compassion spreads. Meditation is the flower and compassion is its fragrance.

 

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In India you could not conceive that swordsmanship could become an UPAYA, a method for meditation, but in Japan they have done it. And I see that they have brought something very new to religious consciousness. Anything can be converted into a meditation because the whole thing is awareness. And of course, in swordsmanship more awareness is needed than anywhere else because life will be at stake every moment. When fighting with a sword you have to be constantly alert -- a single moment's unconsciousness and you will be gone. In fact, a real swordsman does not function out of his mind, he cannot function out of his mind -- because mind takes time. It thinks, calculates. And when you are fighting with a sword, where is time? There is no time. If you miss a single fragment of a second in thinking, the other will not miss the opportunity: the other's sword will penetrate into your heart or cut off your head.

 

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In Japan, in China, they started to use many things, skills, as an object, as a help, as a support to meditation. Archery is one of them -- and archery is beautiful, because it is a very subtle skill, and you need much alertness to be skillful in it.

 

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In meditation you have to leave all judging: what is good, what is bad -- you have to drop all that division. You simply look. You look without any judgment, without any condemnation, without any appreciation. You don't evaluate, you simply look. The look becomes pure.

 

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Meditation is the only cure for all sicknesses that man is prone to; a single medicine. And I should remind you that the word meditation and medicine come from the same root. Medicine for the body and meditation for the soul. They both bring health.

 

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Mind opens outside; meditation opens inside. Mind is a door that leads you outside in the world; meditation is the door that leads you to your interiority -- to the very innermost shrine of your being. And suddenly, you are enlightened. Enlightenment is always sudden; it is never gradual.

 

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Ego is the state of utter unawareness. The mind has taken possession of your whole being; it has spread like a cancer all over you, nothing is left out. The ego is the cancer of the inner, the cancer of the soul. And the only remedy, the only remedy I say, is meditation. Then you start reclaiming a few territories from the mind. And the process is difficult but exhilarating, the process is difficult but enchanting, the process is difficult but challenging, thrilling. It will bring a new joy into your life. When you reclaim territory back from the robot you will be surprised that you are becoming a totally new person, that your being is renewed, that this is a new birth.

 

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One goal -- truth -- and one method. What is that method? I call it meditation, Atisha used to call it awareness, Buddha used to call it mindfulness. These are different words for the same quality -- the quality of being attentive, alert, awake.

 

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That's what meditation is all about: the art of moving away from the mind, being above the mind, becoming transcendental to the mind, knowing that "I am not the mind." That does not mean that you have to throw out the mind. Knowing that "I am not the mind" makes you again the master. You can use the mind. Right now, mind is not within your hands. You are not a good charioteer.

 

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A meditative person becomes more intelligent, he becomes saner. Whatsoever he does there is an art in it. Whatsoever he touches he transforms into gold. Mind is a blessing with meditation, otherwise it is a curse. Add meditation to your being and the curse disappears, and the curse itself becomes the blessing; it is a blessing in disguise. You have not yet learned the art of how to use it and how to be a master.

 

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There is only one thing which you can take with you, and that is true wealth. Buddha calls it meditation, awareness, watchfulness, mindfulness, consciousness. If you become more and more conscious, you can take that consciousness with you. But you are living a very very unconscious life. Your whole life is mechanical, you simply go on repeating. You are not really living, you are being lived by unconscious desires.

 

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Buddha says: Meditation is the only wealth, because you can take it beyond death. In fact he says this is the criterion: if something can be taken beyond death it is true wealth. If it cannot be taken beyond death, it is untrue wealth, it is a deception. And not only that you are deceiving others, you are deceiving yourself. And when death will knock at your door, you will weep, you will cry, but then nothing can be done.

 

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Sitting in the world means to be in the mind and sitting in meditation means to be in the no-mind. To be in the mind is to be in darkness and to be in no-mind is to be in light.

 

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Meditation is a healing force. The words 'meditation' and 'medicine' are derived from the same root; they both mean healing forces. Meditation is medicine -- medicine for the soul.

 

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Meditation simply means not focusing on anything at all, not even on God -- not focusing at all. Hence it does not exclude anything, it includes all. In meditation you relax, in concentration you become tense. In meditation you are in a deep rest, just alert about whatsoever is happening. A bird starts singing in the woods, a dog barks in the neighborhood, a child starts crying; the traffic noise on the road, delicious smells floating in the air from the kitchen... all this, everything that is present, that surrounds you -- all your five senses are alert, receiving.

 

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Concentration has its uses but it is not meditation. In scientific work, in scientific research, in the science lab, you need concentration. You have to concentrate on one problem and exclude everything else -- so much so that you almost become unmindful of the remaining world. The only problem that you are concentrating upon is your world. That's why scientists become absent-minded. People who concentrate too much always become absent-minded because they don't know how to remain open to the whole world.

 

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Repeating a mantra, doing transcendental meditation, is not going to help. Transcendental meditation has become very important in America because of the objective approach, because of the scientific mind. Now it is the only meditation on which scientific work can be done. It is exactly concentration and not meditation, so it is comprehensible for the scientific mind. In the universities, in the science laboratories, in psychological research work, much is being done about TM, because it is not meditation. It is concentration, a method of concentration; it falls under the same category as scientific concentration; there is a link between the two. But it has nothing to do with meditation. Meditation is so vast, so tremendously infinite, that no scientific research is possible. Only compassion will show whether the man has achieved or not. Alpha waves won't be of much help because they are still of the mind and meditation is not of the mind -- it is something beyond.

 

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Meditation is not concentration but relaxation -- one simply relaxes into oneself. The more you relax, the more you feel yourself open, vulnerable, the more you are less rigid, you are more flexible -- and suddenly existence starts penetrating you. You are no longer like a rock, you have openings. Relaxation means allowing yourself to fall into a state where you are not doing anything, because if you are doing something, tension will continue. It is a state of non-doing. You simply relax and you enjoy the feeling of relaxation. Relax into yourself, just close your eyes, and listen to all that is happening all around. No need to feel anything as distraction. The moment you feel it is a distraction, you are denying God. This moment God has come to you as a bird. Don't deny. He has knocked at your door as a bird.

 

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Watch what you allow into your mind. People are completely unaware; they go on reading everything and anything, they go on looking at the tv, any silly stupid thing. They go on listening to the radio, they go on chitchatting, chattering with people, and they are all pouring rubbish into each other's heads. Rubbish is all that they have. Avoid such situations in which you are unnecessarily burdened with rubbish. You already have too much as it is, you need to be unburdened of it. And you go on collecting it as if it is something precious.

 

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Leave a few gaps in your mind unoccupied. Those moments of unoccupied consciousness are the first glimpses of meditation, the first penetrations of the beyond, the first flashes of no-mind. And then if you can manage to do this, the other thing is to choose physical food which does not help aggression and violence, which is not poisonous.

 

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Death is so powerful, but one thing it cannot take away from you, that is meditation. If you can become rooted in your being, alert, conscious, watchful, you will see that you are not the body, and you are not the mind, and you are not the heart. You are simply the witnessing soul, and that witnessing will go with you. Then you can witness even death. That witnessing is the source of all religion. Those who have attained to that source are the enlightened ones, are the buddhas.

 

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In life, whatever you are doing, whatsoever it is, is wrong if it is not leading you towards meditation.

 

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Meditation is nothing but a way, a method, to connect you with the eternal, to take you beyond time, beyond that which is born and dies, to take you beyond all the boundaries, to take you to the inconceivable and the unknowable. And it is not far away; it is as close as it can be. Even to say that it is close is not right, because it is exactly your very being, it is you. Freshness is your soul.

 

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Your mind is boring, utterly boring. Get out of the mind. At least for a few moments every day, put the mind aside, be utterly nude of the mind. And then you will know it is welling up within you -- the freshness you are asking about. From where does it come? It comes from the deepest core of your being -- and it does not really come. Suddenly you find it has always been the case. It has always been there like an undercurrent, underground, hidden behind many many layers of memories, dreams, desires.

 

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This is one of the greatest fallacies, very much prevalent in the so-called religious circles of the world, particularly in India. Concentration is thought to be meditation -- and concentration is not meditation; it is just the opposite of meditation. Concentration is a mind phenomenon. To concentrate upon something means you are focusing your mind on something. It has its own benefits, but those benefits are scientific, not religious. In science, concentration is needed; concentration is a scientific method.

 

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Desire AS SUCH is a bondage, because when you desire, you become dependent on the other, on the desired object. Whether it is a woman, money, a man, power, prestige, it does not matter -- it is desire, and desire brings bondage. Why? It is simple. When you desire something, your joy depends on that something. If it is taken away, you are miserable; if it is given to you, you are happy, but only for the moment. That too has to be understood. Whenever your desire is fulfilled it is only for the moment that you feel joy. It is fleeting, because once you have got it, again the mind starts desiring for more, for something else. Mind exists in desiring; hence mind can never leave you without desire. If you are without desire mind dies immediately. That's the whole secret of meditation.

 

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Desire fulfilled only for a moment gives you a relief, and that relief has also to be understood. In the moment of a fulfilled desire there is relief. There is relief because in that small moment you are desireless. Desirelessness is joy. When one desire is fulfilled and before the mind projects another desire, between the two there is a small interval when there is no desire. That moment is of meditation.

 

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So remember, Buddha is not saying to starve your desires. He has been misunderstood by people, by his own followers as much as by his enemies. That is the fate of the buddhas: to be misunderstood by the friends and the enemies both. When he is saying that desire makes you blind, he is not saying to repress desire, because a repressed desire is far more dangerous. He is saying, "Understand desire, meditate over the whole phenomenon of it, and through understanding go beyond it, not through repression. Through meditation, transcend desire. Seeing that desire is misery, seeing that desire is bondage, seeing that desire drags you downwards into hell, one simply is released without any repression."

 

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Remember death. It is closer than those swords, it is always closer than anything else. You are living surrounded by death, and if this can be remembered, this can become the greatest stimulation for meditation, for awareness.

 

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Nobody can save you except your own awareness. KNOW THIS... and don't only believe in what the awakened ones say. Know this on your own, let it become an existential experience.

 

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MY suggestion to MY people is: don't carry any idea of God, for or against. Don't carry any image of God. In fact, God is absolutely irrelevant -- be meditative! And meditation means: drop all thoughts, drop all ideologies, drop all knowledge. Drop the mind itself. And then when you are in a state of no-mind, something unimaginable, unbelievable, unpredictable, inexpressible, is. experienced. You can call it God, you can call it truth, you can call it NIRVANA, or whatsoever you want to call it. You are free because no word describes it, hence any word is as good as any other. But don't carry any belief.

 

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MEDITATION is a flower and compassion is its fragrance. Exactly like that it happens. The flower blooms and the fragrance spreads on the winds in all directions, to be carried to the very ends of earth. But the basic thing is the blooming of the flower.

 

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Without meditation, energy remains passion; with meditation, the same energy becomes compassion. Passion and compassion are not two energies, they are one and the same energy. Once it passes through meditation, it is transformed, transfigured; it becomes qualitatively different. Passion moves downwards, compassion moves upwards; passion moves through desire, compassion moves through desirelessness; passion is an occupation to forget the miseries in which you live, compassion is a celebration, it is a dance of attainment, of fulfillment...you are so fulfilled that you can share. Now there is nothing left; you have attained the destiny that you were carrying for millennia within you like an unflowered potentiality, just a bud. Now it has flowered and it is dancing. You have attained, you are fulfilled, there is no more to attain, nowhere to go, nothing to do.

 

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Try to understand what meditation is. Compassion can become a criterion as to whether the meditation was right or not. If the meditation has been right, compassion is bound to come -- it is natural; it follows like a shadow. If the meditation has been wrong then compassion will not follow. So compassion can work as a criterion as to whether the meditation has been really right or not. And a meditation can be wrong. People have a wrong notion that all meditations are right; It is not so. Meditations can be wrong. For example, any meditation that leads you deep into concentration is wrong -- it will not result in compassion. You will become more and more closed rather than becoming open. If you narrow down your Consciousness concentrate on something, and you exclude the whole of existence and become one-pointed, it will create more and more tension in you. Hence the word 'attention'. It means 'at-tension'. Concentration, the very sound of the word, gives you a feeling of tenseness.

 

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The ego is nothing but a deep hypnosis. And meditation is the process of dehypnosis. It is the process of bringing you back to that innocent state where you were not yet hypnotized.

 

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The greatest miracle in the world is to be so intelligent that nobody, no society, no state, no church, can hypnotize you. My work here consists of dehypnotizing you. Hence, all the societies will be against me. Beware of it! To be with me is dangerous -- all the governments will be against you. And this has to be known and accepted. This has to be simply accepted, because this is going to be the case. The more I start working deeply on you.... It is just the beginning of the work: I am preparing the ground from where to take off.

 

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The empty mind is GOD'S workshop, because meditation means nothing but emptiness.

 

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Ego is the only barrier. But don't fight with it -- spiritual or worldly, it is the same. Create more consciousness, be more meditative. Meditation is the only medicine. Both the words come from the same root: 'meditation' and 'medicine' -- because meditation also is a medicine. It heals you, it cures you from the greatest disease, the disease of the ego.

 

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Good is a by-product of meditation, and bad, a by-product of mind.

 

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Remember, nobody can be neutral. Either you create something in life or you destroy; either you live in the mind or you live beyond the mind. If you live beyond the mind you become creative. To be in meditation is to be creative. Then whatsoever you do is beautiful; it brings more glory, more blessings to the world. Otherwise whatsoever you do is going to make the world more ugly.

 

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Try to understand the futility of desire. Try to see that desire is the culprit, that desire goes on taking you away from the present moment. It is desire that is not allowing you to be meditative. It is desire that goes on creating the mind and goes on creating hindrances for meditation. Mind is a hindrance for meditation. It is desire that goes on creating time and time prevents eternity, becomes a rock between you and eternity. See the point -- simply see it! It is not a question of having to drop it. Just see the point, that desire is your hell. Seeing it, desiring disappears, because if you see it clearly, totally, one hundred percent, how can you go on desiring anymore? It will slip out of your hands on its own accord. And in that very moment is enlightenment. That moment is enlightenment.

 

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This serenity cannot be cultivated from the outside; this serenity comes only when you have become a watcher of the mind, when you have become a witness of the mind and through witnessing you have transcended the mind. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, a serenity explodes from all directions. It showers on you like flowers and it goes on showering. Your life then is a life of virtue. It is not a question of cultivating it, it is not a question of creating it -- it is a consequence of meditation.

 

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I believe in religiousness, I believe in culturedness, I believe in humanity. But humanity is not Indian, religiousness is not Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan, culturedness has nothing to do with any country. It is a grace that comes through meditation, through awareness. It is a beauty that happens to you when you become rooted in your consciousness, when you are settled in your consciousness, when nothing can distract you from your consciousness.

 

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Sannyasins should use the time of night more and more for meditation. You can go deeper, and easily, because the winds are blowing that way; you can move with the winds with less effort. In the day you are moving against the winds. In the day active meditations are good; dynamic meditation is good in the day, dancing meditation is good in the day. But in the night vipassana, silent meditations, just sitting and doing nothing, just relaxing because the whole atmosphere is relaxing.... The sun has gone down, the trees have fallen asleep; it is a totally different quality of energy that surrounds you in the night. It is easy to meditate.

 

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Meditation happens only to those who are not result-oriented.

 

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Seeing is transformation. That is our experience in the East. All the Buddhas in the East have given only one meditation: watchfulness, awareness.

 

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Serenity is the flavor of meditation, serenity is the fragrance of meditation.

 

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If you cannot fall asleep in the night, if you suffer from sleeplessness, then methods like Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Transcendental Meditation are perfectly good. That method has nothing to do with meditation; it is neither meditation nor transcendental. It is simply a non-medicinal tranquilizer. It is good as far as it can bring sleep and without any drug -- I appreciate it -- but it has nothing to do with meditation.

 

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Anything can become a meditation -- cooking or washing your clothes, any activity can be transformed into meditation. And the real sannyasin, the real seeker, will transform all his acts into meditation. Only then, when meditation spreads over all your life, not only when you are awake in the day -- slowly slowly it starts penetrating and permeating your being in sleep too -- when it becomes just part of you, like breathing, like your heartbeat, then, only, have you attained to the discipline, to the essential discipline of Zen.

 

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Meditation is an entry into nothingness.

 

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Love is psychological suicide and meditation is spiritual suicide. In love you die psychologically, you drop the psychological ego, and in meditation you drop the very idea of the self, even of the supreme self. You become a nothingness...and in that nothingness blooms the white lotus of a Buddha.

 

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Patanjali calls it dhyana, meditation -- from the same word come zen and CH'AN. Witness the objects, the contents, of the mind. Whatsoever passes before you, watch it, without evaluating, judging or condemning. Don't be for or against, just watch, and dhyana, meditation, is created.

 

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Avoid such situations in which you are unnecessarily burdened with rubbish. You already have too much as it is, you need to be unburdened of it. And you go on collecting it as if it is something precious. Talk less, listen only to the essential, be telegraphic in talking and listening. If you talk less, if you listen less, slowly slowly you will see that a cleanliness, a feeling of purity, as if you have just taken a bath, will start arising within you. That becomes the necessary soil for meditation to arise. Don't go on reading all kinds of nonsense.

 

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Just two small things: meditation and let-go. Remember these two key words: meditation and surrender. Meditation will take you in, and surrender will take you into the whole. And this is the whole of religion. Within these two words Buddha has condensed the whole essence of religion.

 

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The way of Gautama the Buddha is the way of intelligence, understanding, awareness, meditation. It is not the way of belief; it is the way of seeing the truth itself. Belief simply covers up your ignorance; it does not deliver you from ignorance. Belief is a deception you play upon yourself; it is not transformation.

 

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The only way to disconnect yourself from the past is to disconnect yourself from your mind because your mind is the past. Mind means the known, the past. Mind is history, mind is time. Mind is Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, mind is Indian, German, Chinese. And unless you get out of the hold of the mind, whatsoever you do is going to be mischievous. It may or may not appear mischievous to you -- that is another matter -- but it is going to be mischievous. Out of mind nothing good can ever happen.

 

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Words arise in the lake of silence, beautiful words, but they are just forms. Hence the insistence of all the mystics: move from words to wordlessness, move from sound to silence, move from form to formlessness, move from thought to consciousness. Don't get entangled with the forms, thoughts, words. That's what meditation is all about.

 

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The buddha, the awakened, the enlightened one shines both in the night and in the day; there is no difference for him. Once you have become awakened, then nothing makes any difference. But till that happens use the night atmosphere more and more for meditation. And when the moon is there in the night it is far easier to meditate. The full-moon night is the best for meditation. Many people who have become buddhas have attained their enlightenment on the full-moon night, even Buddha himself.