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.
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.
I was reading an anecdote.
'I have brought a frog,' said a scientist, a professor of zoology, beaming at his class, 'fresh from the pond, in order that we might study its outer appearance and later dissect it.'
He carefully unwrapped the package he carried and inside was a neatly prepared ham sandwich. The good professor looked at it with astonishment.
'Odd!' he said, 'I distinctly remember having eaten my lunch.
That goes on happening to scientists. They become one-pointed and their whole mind becomes narrow. Of course, a narrow mind has its use: it becomes more penetrating, it becomes like a sharp needle, it hits exactly the right point, but it misses the great life that surrounds it.
A Buddha is not a man of concentration, he is a man of awareness. He has not been trying to narrow down his consciousness; on the contrary, he has been trying to drop all barriers so that he becomes totally available to existence. Watch...existence is simultaneous. I am speaking here and the traffic noise is simultaneous. The train, the birds the wind blowing through the trees -- in this moment the whole of existence converges. You listening to me, I speaking to you, and millions of things going on -- it is tremendously rich.
Concentration makes you one-pointed at a very great cost: ninety-nine per cent of life is discarded. If you are solving a mathematical problem, you cannot listen to the birds -- they will be a distraction. Children playing around, dogs barking in the street -- they will be a distraction. Because of concentration, people have tried to escape from life -- to go to the Himalayas, to go to a cave, to remain isolated, so that you can concentrate on God. But God is not an object. God is this wholeness of existence, this moment; God is the totality. That's why science will never be able to know God.
The very method of science is concentration and because of that method, science can never know God.
It can know more and more minute details. First the molecule was thought to be the last particle, then it was divided. Then an even tinier part, the atom, was known, then concentration divided that also. Now there are electrons, protons, neutrons -- sooner or later they are also going to be divided. Science goes on from the smaller to the smaller, and the bigger, the vast, is completely forgotten. The whole is completely forgotten for the part. Science can never know God because of concentration. So when people come to me and they say, 'Osho, teach us concentration, we want to know God,: I'm simply puzzled. They have not understood the basics of the search.
Science is one-pointed; the search is objective. Religion is simultaneity; the object is the whole, the total. To know the total, that is, to know God, you will have to have a consciousness which is open from everywhere -- not confined, not standing in a window. Otherwise the frame of the window will become the frame of existence. Just standing under the sun in the open sky -- that is what meditation is. Meditation has no frame: it is not a window, it is not a door. Meditation is not concentration, it is not attention -- meditation is awareness.
So what to do? 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.
So, let me tell you a few basic things. One, 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. The next moment he has come as a dog -- barking, or as a child crying and weeping, or as a madman laughing. Don't deny; don't reject; accept -- because if you deny you will become tense. All denials create tension. Accept. If you want to relax, acceptance is the way. Accept whatsoever is happening all around; let it become an organic whole. It is -- you may know it or you may not know it. Everything is inter-related. These birds, these trees, this sky, this sun, this earth, you, me -- all are related. It is an organic unity. If the sun disappears, the trees will disappear; if the trees disappear, the birds will disappear; if the birds and trees disappear, you cannot be here, you will disappear. It is an ecology. Everything is deeply related with each other.
So don't deny anything, because the moment you deny, you are denying something in you. If you deny these singing birds then something in you is denied.
Once it happened that it was spring. The weather was delightful and I was sitting on a park bench. I enjoyed the spring, the birds, the air and the sun. I listened to the melodious chirping of numerous birds.
A stranger was also sitting on the same bench. I turned to him and said to him, 'Is not the music of the birds delightful?'
But he must have been a religious man. He was doing some mantra. He felt disturbed. He felt as if I had interfered.
He scowled and said, 'How the devil can I hear what you are saying over the damned noise of those stupid birds?'
But if you deny, reject, if you feel distracted, if you feel angry, you are rejecting something within you. Just listen again to the birds without any feeling of distraction, anger, and suddenly you will see that the bird within you responds. Then those birds are not there as strangers, intruders -- suddenly the whole existence becomes a family. It is, and I call a man religious who has come to understand that the whole existence is a family. He may not go to any church, he may not worship in any temple, he may not pray at any mosque or gurudwara -- that doesn't matter. That is almost irrelevant. If you do, good, it is okay; if you don't that is even better. But one who has understood the organic unity of existence is constantly in the temple, is constantly facing the sacred and the Divine.
But if you are doing some stupid mantra you will think these birds are stupid. If you are repeating some nonsense within you, or thinking some trivia -- you may call it philosophy, religion -- then these birds become distractions. Their sounds are simply Divine. They don't say anything, they are simply bubbling with delight. Their song has no meaning except an overflowing of energy. They want to share with existence, with the trees, with the flowers, with you. They have nothing to say; they are just being there, themselves.
If you relax, you accept; acceptance of existence is the only way to relax. If small things disturb you then it is your attitude that is disturbing you. Sit silently; listen to all that is happening all around, and relax; accept, relax -- and suddenly you will feel immense energy arising in you. That energy will be felt first is a deepening of your breath. Ordinarily your breath is very shallow and sometimes if you try to have deep breaths, if you start doing PRANAYAM, you start forcing something, you make an effort. That effort is not needed. You simply accept life, relax, and suddenly you will see that your breath is going deeper than ever. Relax more and the breath goes deeper in you. It becomes slow, rhythmic, and you can almost enjoy it; it gives a certain delight. Then you will become aware that breath is the bridge between you and the whole. Just watch. Don't do anything.
And when I say watch, don't TRY to watch, otherwise you will become tense again, and you will start concentrating on the breath. Simply relax, remain relaxed, loose, and look...because what else can you do? You are there, nothing to be done, everything accepted, nothing to be denied, rejected, no struggle, no fight no conflict, breathing going deep -- what can you do? You simply watch. Remember, simply watch. Don't make an effort to watch. This is what Buddha has called VIPASSANA -- the watching of the breath, awareness of the breath -- or SATIPATTHANA -- remembering, being alert of the life energy that moves in breath. Don't try to take deep breaths, don't try to inhale or exhale, don't do anything. You simply relax and let the breathing be natural -- going on its own, coming on its own -- and many things will become available to you.
The first thing will be that breathing can be taken in two ways because it is a bridge. One part of it is joined with you, another part is joined with existence. So it can be understood in two ways. You can take it as a voluntary thing. If you want to inhale deeply, you can inhale deeply; if you want to exhale deeply, you can exhale deeply. You can do something about it. One part is joined with you. But if you don't do anything, then too it continues. No need for you to do anything and it continues. It is non-voluntary also.
The other part is joined with existence itself. You can think of it as if you are taking it in, you are breathing it, or you can think in just the opposite way -- that it is breathing you. And the other way has to be understood because that will lead you into deep relaxation. It is not that you are breathing, but existence is breathing you. It is a change of gestalt, and it happens on its own. If you go on relaxing, accepting everything, relaxing into yourself, by and by, suddenly, you become aware that you are not taking these breaths -- they are coming and going on their own. And so gracefully. With such dignity. With such rhythm. With such harmonious rhythm. Who is doing it? Existence is breathing you. It comes into you, goes out of you. Each moment it rejuvenates you, each moment it makes you alive again and again and again.
Suddenly you see breathing as a happening... and this is how meditation should grow. And this you can do anywhere, in the marketplace also, because that noise is also Divine. And if you listen silently, even in the marketplace you will see a certain harmony in the noise. It is no longer a distraction. You can see many things if you are silent -- tremendous waves of energy moving all around. Once you accept, wherever you go you will feel
The bird is not important but you will feel something tremendously great, you will feel something holy, something luminous, something mysterious. A miracle is constantly happening all around you but you go on missing it.
Once meditation settles in you and you fall into rhythm with existence, compassion is a consequence. Suddenly you feel you are in love with the whole and the other is no longer the other -- God. in the other also you live. And the tree is no longer just 'the tree there', somehow it is related to you. Everything becomes inter-related. You touch a leaf of grass and you have touched all the stars because everything is related. It cannot be otherwise. Existence is organic. It is one. It is a unity.
Because we are not aware we don't see what we go on doing to ourselves. One thing happens and something which you have never thought that it was related to starts happening.
- Osho, “Ancient Music in the Pines, #3’