Meditation is a very simple process: all that you need to know is the right button. The Upanishads call it witnessing-the right button. Just witness your mind process, don’t do anything at all. Nothing needs to be done, just be a witness, an observer, a watcher, looking at the traffic of the mind – thoughts passing by, desires, memories, dreams, fantasies. Simply stand aloof, cool – watching it, seeing it, with no judgment, with no condemnation, neither saying, “This is good,” nor saying, “This is bad.” Don’t bring your moral concepts in, otherwise you will never be able to meditate.
That’s why I am against the so-called morality: it is anti-meditation because a so-called moral person is so full of his moral ideas, shoulds and should-nots, that he cannot watch, he cannot simply watch. He jumps to conclusions: “This is not right and this is right.” And whatsoever he feels is right, he wants to cling to it; and whatsoever he thinks is wrong, he wants to throw it out. He jumps among the thoughts, starts fighting, grabbing, and that’s where he loses all witnessing.
Witnessing simply means a detached observation, unprejudiced; that’s the whole secret of meditation. It is simple! Once you have known the knack of it, it is the most simple thing in the world because each child is born in that innocence. You have known it in your mother’s womb, you have known it when you were a small child, so it is only a rediscovery. Meditation is not something new; you had come with it into the world. Mind is something new; meditation is your nature; it is your very being. How can it be difficult? You just have to know the knack: watch.
Sit by the side of a river and watch the river flowing. Yes, sometimes driftwood passes by and sometimes a boat comes and sometimes a dead body and sometimes a beautiful woman may be swimming in the river – you simply watch, you don’t get bothered, you remain cool, you don’t get excited. You are not supposed to do anything, you have nothing to do. It is the river and it is the river’s business. You simply sit silently. Sitting silently, slowly, slowly the art is learnt . . . and one day, the moment your watchfulness is total, the mind evaporates.
If you are fifty percent watchful, fifty percent of the traffic disappears; if you are ninety percent watchful, ninety percent of the traffic disappears; if you are one hundred percent watchful, totally watchful, the mind totally disappears, the river is no more there.
-Osho
Excerpt from Philosophia Ultima, Discourse #1
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