Sitting silently, doing nothing . . . not even thinking, not even desiring . . . and where will you be?
Going in is not really going in. It is simply stopping going out . . . and suddenly you find yourself in.
Prem Vijen, you need not go in because if you go, you will always go out. Going means going out. Stop going! Stop going anywhere! Can’t you sit silently without going anywhere? Yes, physically you can sit, that is not very difficult. You can learn a yoga posture and you can make your body almost a statue, but the problem is — what are you doing inside? Desires, thoughts, memories, imagination, all kinds of projects? — stop them too.
How to stop them? Just become indifferent to them, unconcerned. Even if they are there, don’t pay attention to them. Even if they are there, don’t give them any importance. Even if they are there, let them be. You sit silently inside — watching. Remember that word ‘watching’ — witnessing, just being alert.
Remember that word ‘watching’ — witnessing, just being alert.
And as watching grows, becomes deeper, the same energy that was becoming desires and thoughts and memories and imagination — the same energy is absorbed in the new depth. The same energy is used by this deepening inwardness. And you will know what it means when I say “Go in.” […]
My whole approach is existential. If you really want to know what it means to go in, go in! And the way is: watch your thoughts and don’t get identified with them. Just remain a watcher, utterly indifferent, neither for nor against. Don’t judge, because every judgment brings identification. Don’t say, “These thoughts are wrong,” and don’t say, “These thoughts are good.” Don’t comment on the thoughts. Just let them pass as if it is just traffic passing by, and you are standing by the side of the road unconcerned, looking at the traffic.
It does not matter what is passing by — a bus, a truck, a bicycle. If you can watch the thought process of your mind with such unconcern, with such detachment, that moment is not very far away when one day the whole traffic disappears . . . because the traffic can exist only if you go on giving energy to it. If you stop giving energy to it . . . And that’s what watching is: stopping giving energy to it, stopping energy moving into the traffic. It is your energy that makes those thoughts move. When your energy is not coming, they start falling; they cannot stand on their own.
And when the road of the mind is utterly empty, you are in.
-Osho
Excerpted from The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol. 1, Discourse #3
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