You should find a place which enhances meditation. For example, sitting under a tree will help, rather than going and sitting in front of a movie house or going to the railway station and sitting on the platform; going to nature, to the mountains, to the trees, to the rivers where Tao is still flowing, vibrating, pulsating, streaming all around.

 

Trees are in constant meditation. Silent, unconscious, is that meditation. I’m not saying to become a tree; you have to become a buddha! But Buddha has one thing in common with the tree: he’s as green as a tree, as full of juice as a tree, as celebrating as a tree, of course with a difference — he is conscious, and the tree is unconscious. The tree is unconsciously in Tao, a Buddha is consciously in Tao. And that is a great difference, the difference between the earth and the sky.

 

But if you sit by the side of a tree surrounded by beautiful birds singing, or a peacock dancing, or just a river flowing, and the sound of the running water, or by the side of a waterfall, and the great music of it…

 

Find a place where nature has not yet been disturbed, polluted. If you cannot find such a place then just close your doors and sit in your own room. If it is possible have a special room for meditation in your house. Just a small corner will do, but especially for meditation. Why especially? — because every kind of act creates its own vibration.

 

If you simply meditate in that place, that place becomes meditative. Every day you meditate it absorbs your vibrations when you are in meditation. Next day when you come, those vibrations start falling back on you. They help, they reciprocate, they respond.

 

That’s the idea behind temples and churches and mosques; the idea is beautiful. The idea is that it may not be possible for everybody to have a special room for prayer or meditation, but we can have a special place for the whole village — a temple surrounded by trees on the bank of a river where crowds don’t gather, where mundane affairs are not done. When one wants to meditate one can go to the temple. And everybody knows that he is in the temple, he is not to be disturbed.

 

A sacred place is nothing but a right space for meditation and right conditions. If you are feeling very angry, that is not the time to meditate: it will be going against the flow. If you are feeling very greedy this is not the time to meditate, you will not find it easy.

 

But there are moments when you are easily available to meditation: the sun is rising and you have seen the sun rising, and suddenly all is silent within you, you are not yet part of the marketplace — this is the moment to meditate. You have been feeling good, healthy, you have not been fighting with anybody today — this is the time to meditate.

 

A friend has come and you are full of love — this is the time to meditate. You are with your woman and you both are feeling tremendously happy — sit together and meditate, and you will find the greatest joy of your life happening if you can meditate with your beloved, with your friend.

 

Find the right conditions, and they are always available. There is not a single man who cannot find right conditions. In twenty-four hours’ time many moments come which can be transformed into meditation very easily, because in those moments you are naturally going inwards. The night is full of stars: lie down on the ground, look at the stars, feel in tune, and then meditate.

 

Sometimes it is good to go for a holiday into the mountains — but don’t take your radio with you, otherwise you are taking the whole nonsense with you. And when you go to the mountains don’t give your address and your phone number to anybody, otherwise there is no need to go anywhere. When you go to the mountains forget all about the world for a few days. That is the meaning of a holiday: it has to be holy, only then is it a holiday. If it is not holy, if it is not in tune with the sacred, it is not a holiday. People carry their world with them.

 

Once I went to the Himalayas with a few friends, and then I had to ask them to leave me because they had brought their transistor sets and their newspapers and magazines, and the novels that they were reading. And they were constantly talking, talking about things that they had always been talking about. So I told them, “Why have you come to the Himalayas? You were saying these things at your home perfectly well, and again you are talking the same things, the same gossipping, the same rumors.”

 

And whenever they would go with me to some beautiful spot they would take their cameras, they would take pictures. I told them, “You have come here to see. You have not brought your camera to see the Himalayas!”

 

But they said, “We shall make beautiful albums, and later on we will see what beautiful places we had visited.” And right there they were not there, they were just clicking their cameras. This stupidity has to be left behind.

 

And it is good once in a while to go to the mountains. And I am not saying to start living there; that is not good, because then you become addicted to the mountains and you become afraid of coming back to the world. The holiday has to be just a holiday: then come back into the world and bring all the peace and the silence and the experience of the sacred with you. Bring it with you, make an effort so that it remains with you in the marketplace.

 

These suggestions are for the beginners. When a person has really become a meditator, he can meditate sitting before a picture house, he can meditate on the railway platform.

 

For fifteen years I was continuously travelling around the country, continuously travelling — day in, day out, day in, day out, year in, year out — always on the train, on the plane, in the car. That makes no difference. Once you have become really ROOTED in your being, nothing makes a difference. But this is not for the beginner.

 

When the tree has become rooted, let winds come and let rains come and let clouds thunder; it is all good. It gives integrity to the tree. But when the tree is small, tender, then even a small child is dangerous enough or just a cow passing by — such a holy animal — but that is enough to destroy it.

 

-Osho, “The Secret of Secrets, Vol 2, #1”