I Have a Confession to Make

On this day, December 11th, in which Osho came into this world, I have a confession to make. Even though Osho spoke continuously about the need for meditation and introduced us to the 112 meditation techniques of the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, developed his active meditations in order to bring us more quickly into meditation, and while in the body spoke for hours daily bringing us into a listening meditation, I did not regularly sit in meditation until 20 years after he left the body.

And to be honest, for most of those 20 years, I was deceiving myself into thinking that I didn’t need to spend time in sitting meditation because I was meditating all the time. I don’t think that was true, but even if it was, to be watching the activities of the body, eating, walking, relating with others, working or even watching the breath is only the first step in Osho’s Vipassana meditation. And as he tells us, the second step is watching the activities of the mind (thought), and the third step is watching the activities of the heart (feelings). I found that the only way I can really watch my mind is by sitting silently and looking directly at the movement of thought. It is in this watching without grasping, without rejecting, without analyzing and without judgment that occasionally I find myself out of mind.

But since that time 14 years ago, I have sat for an hour a day, every day, with the exception of only a couple of long flight nights. In the beginning, perhaps you could have called it a practice, but I am not even sure of that, but certainly for many years it has been, and continues to be, just a joy to be in those moments when occasionally everything comes to a stop. And so, in gratitude to all that has come before I can only say, “meditate, meditate, meditate, just for the sheer joy of it.” And as the Beatles used to sing, “Jai Guru Dev.”

-purushottama

You may also like to read: The Three Steps of Awareness.

See all 0f Prem’s notes.