concentration – Sat Sangha Salon

Thinking, Contemplation, Concentration and Meditation – Osho

Kindly explain contemplation, concentration and meditation.

‘Contemplation’ means directed thinking. We all think; that is not contemplation. That thinking is undirected, vague, leading nowhere. Really, our thinking is not contemplation, but what Freudians call association. One thought leads to another without any direction from you. The thought itself leads to another because of association.

You see a dog crossing the street. The moment you see the dog, your mind starts thinking about dogs. The dog has led you to this thought, and then the mind has many associations. When you were a child, you were afraid of a particular dog. That dog comes to the mind and then the childhood comes to the mind. Then dogs are forgotten; then just by association you begin to daydream about your childhood. Then the childhood goes on being connected with other things, and you move in circles.

Whenever you are at ease, try to go backwards from your thinking to where the thoughts came from. Go back, retrace the steps. Then you will see that another thought was there, and that led to this. And they are not logically connected, because how is a dog on the street connected with your childhood?

There is no logical connection – only association in your mind. If I was crossing the street, the same dog would not lead me to my childhood, it would lead to something else. In a third person it would lead to still something else. Everyone has associated chains in the mind. With any one person some happening, some accident will lead to the chain. Then the mind begins to function like a computer. Then one thing leads to another, another leads to another, and you go on, and the whole day you are doing that.

Write down on a sheet of paper whatsoever comes to your mind, honestly. You will be just amazed what is happening in your mind. There is no relation between two thoughts, and you go on doing this type of thinking. You call this thinking? This is just association of one thought with another, and they lead themselves… you are led.

Thinking becomes contemplation when it moves not through association, but is directed. You are working on a particular problem – then you bracket out all associations. You move on that problem only; you direct your mind. The mind will try to escape to any bypath, to any side route, to some association. You cut off all the side routes; on only one road you direct your mind.

A scientist working on a problem is in contemplation. A logician working on a problem, a mathematician working on a problem is in contemplation. A poet contemplates a flower. Then the whole world is bracketed out, and only that flower and the poet remains, and he moves with the flower. Many things from side routes will attract, but he does not allow his mind to move anywhere. Mind moves in one line, directed. This is contemplation.

Science is based on contemplation. Any logical thinking is contemplation: thought is directed, thinking guided. Ordinary thinking is absurd. Contemplation is logical, rational.

Then there is ‘concentration’. Concentration is staying at one point. It is not thinking; it is not contemplation. It is really being at one point, not allowing the mind to move at all. In ordinary thinking mind moves as a madman. In contemplation the madman is led, directed; he cannot escape anywhere. In concentration the mind is not allowed to move. In ordinary thinking, it is allowed to move anywhere; in contemplation, it is allowed to move only somewhere; in concentration, it is not allowed to move, it is only allowed to be at one point. The whole energy, the whole movement stops, sticks to one point.

Yoga is concerned with concentration, ordinary mind with undirected thinking, the scientific mind with directed thinking. The yogic mind has its thinking focused, fixed at one point; no movement is allowed.

And then there is ‘meditation’. In ordinary thinking, mind is allowed to move anywhere; in contemplation, it is allowed only in one direction, all other directions are cut off. In concentration, it is not allowed to move even in one direction; it is allowed only to concentrate on one point.

And in meditation, mind is not allowed at all. Meditation is no-mind.

These are four stages: ordinary thinking, contemplation, concentration, meditation.

Meditation means no-mind – not even concentration is allowed. Mind itself is not allowed to be! That is why meditation cannot be grasped by mind. Up to concentration mind has a reach, an approach. Mind can understand concentration, but mind cannot understand meditation. Really, mind is not allowed at all. In concentration, mind is allowed to be at one point. In meditation, even that point is taken away. In ordinary thinking, all directions are open. In contemplation, only one direction is open. In concentration, only one point is open – no direction. In meditation, even that point is not open: mind is not allowed to be.

Ordinary thinking is the ordinary state of mind, and meditation is the highest possibility. The lowest one is ordinary thinking, association, and the highest, the peak, is meditation – no-mind.

And with the second question, it is also asked:

Contemplation and concentration are mental processes. How can mental processes help in achieving a state of no-mind?

The question is significant. Mind asks, how can mind itself go beyond mind? How can any mental process help to achieve something which is not of the mind? It looks contradictory. How can your mind try, make an effort to create a state which is not of mind?

Try to understand. When mind is, what is there? A process of thinking. When there is no-mind, what is there? No process of thinking. If you go on decreasing your process of thinking, if you go on dissolving your thinking, by and by, slowly, you are reaching no-mind. Mind means thinking; no mind means non-thinking. And mind can help. Mind can help in committing suicide. You can commit suicide; you never ask how a man who is alive can help himself to be dead. You can help yourself to be dead – everyone is trying to help. You can help yourself to be dead, and you are alive. Mind can help to be no-mind. How can mind help?

If the process of thinking becomes more and more dense, then you are proceeding from mind to more mind. If the process of thinking becomes less dense, is decreased, is slowed down, you are helping yourself toward no-mind. It depends on you. And mind can be a help, because really, mind is what you are doing with your consciousness this very moment. If you leave your consciousness alone, without doing anything with it, it becomes meditation.

So there are two possibilities: either slowly, gradually you decrease your mind, by and by. If one percent is decreased, then you have ninety-nine percent mind and one percent no-mind within you. It is as if you have removed some furniture from your room – then some space is created there. Then you remove more furniture, and more space is created there. When you have removed all the furniture, the whole room becomes space.

Really, space is not created by removing the furniture, the space was already there. It is only that the space was occupied by the furniture. When you remove the furniture, no space comes in from outside; the space was there, occupied by furniture. You have removed the furniture, and the space is recovered, reclaimed. Deep down mind is space occupied, filled by thoughts. If you remove some thoughts, space is created – or discovered, or reclaimed. If you go on removing your thoughts, by and by you go on regaining your space. This space is meditation.

Slowly it can be done – suddenly also. There is no need to go on for lives together removing the furniture, because there are problems. When you start to remove the furniture, one percent space is created and ninety-nine percent space is occupied. That ninety-nine percent occupied space will not feel good about the unoccupied space; it will try to fill it. So one goes on slowly decreasing thoughts and then again creating new thoughts.

In the morning you sit for meditation for some time; you slow down your process of thought. Then you go to the market, and again there is a rush of thoughts. The space is filled again. The next day you again do this, and you go on doing this – throwing it out, and inviting it in again.

You can also throw all the furniture out suddenly. It is your decision. It is difficult because you have become accustomed to the furniture. You may feel uncomfortable without the furniture; you will not know what to do with that space. You may become afraid even to move in that space. You have never moved in such freedom.

Mind is a conditioning. We have become accustomed to thoughts. Have you ever observed – or if you have not observed, then observe – that you go on repeating the same thoughts every day. You are like a gramophone record, and then too not a fresh, new one – old. You go on and on repeating the same things. Why? What is the use of it? Only one use, it is just a long habit; you feel you are doing something.

You are lying on your bed just waiting for sleep to come and the same things are repeated every day. Why are you doing this? It helps in a way. Old habits, conditionings, help. A child needs a toy. If the toy is given to him, he will fall into sleep; then you can take away the toy. But if the toy is not there, the child cannot fall into sleep. It is a conditioning. The moment the toy is given to him, it triggers something in his mind. Now he is ready to fall into sleep.

The same is happening with you. The toys may differ. One person cannot fall into sleep unless he starts chanting, “Ram, Ram, Ram…” He cannot fall into sleep! This is a toy. If he chants, “Ram, Ram, Ram…” the toy is given to him; he can fall into sleep.

You feel difficulty in falling asleep in a new room. If you are accustomed to sleeping in particular clothes, then you will need those particular clothes every day. Psychologists say that if you sleep in a nightgown and it is not given to you, you will feel difficulty in falling asleep. Why? If you have never slept naked and you are told to sleep naked, you will not feel at ease. Why? There is no relationship between nakedness and sleep, but for you there is a relationship, an old habit. With old habits one feels at ease, comfortable.

Thinking patterns are also just habits. You feel comfortable – the same thoughts every day, the same routine. You feel everything is okay.

You have investments in your thoughts – that is the problem. Your furniture is not just rubbish to be thrown; you have invested many, many things in it. All the furniture can be thrown immediately: it can be done! There are sudden methods of which we will speak. Immediately, this very moment, you can be freed of your whole mental furniture. But then you will be suddenly vacant, empty, and you will not know who you are. Now you will not know what to do because for the first time your old patterns are no more. The shock may be too sudden. You may even die, or you may go mad.

That is why sudden methods are not used. Unless one is ready, sudden methods are not used. One may go suddenly mad because one may miss all the moorings. The past drops immediately, and when past drops immediately you cannot conceive of the future, because the future was always conceived of in terms of the past.

Only the present remains, and you have never been in the present. Either you were in the past or in the future. So when you are just in the present for the first time, you will feel you have gone berserk, mad. That is why sudden methods are not used unless you are working in a school, unless you are working with a master in a group, unless you are totally devoted, unless you have dedicated your whole life for meditation.

So gradual methods are good. They take a long time, but by and by you become accustomed to space. You begin to feel the space and the beauty of it, and the bliss of it, and then your furniture is removed by and by.

So from ordinary thinking it is good to become contemplative – that is the gradual method. From contemplation it is good to move to concentration – that is the gradual method. And from concentration it is good to take a jump into meditation. Then you are moving slowly, feeling the ground at every step. And when you are really rooted in one step, only then do you begin to go for the next one. It is not a jump, it is a gradual growth. So these four things – ordinary thinking, contemplation, concentration, meditation – are four steps.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #10, Q2

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

One Pointedness, Concentration and Meditation – Osho

How are one-pointedness, concentration and meditation related to each other?

Prem Dinesh, one-pointedness, concentration and meditation are not related to each other at all. This is one of the confusions prevalent all over the world.

One-pointedness is another name for concentration, but meditation is just the opposite of concentration. But in most of the books, in most of the dictionaries, and by the so-called teachers, they are used as if they are synonymous.

Concentration simply means one-pointedness. It is something of the mind. Mind can be a chaos, a crowd. Mind can be many voices, many directions. Mind can be a crossroads. Ordinarily, that’s what mind is, a crowd.

But if the mind is a chaos, you cannot think rationally, you cannot think scientifically. To think rationally and scientifically, you have to be concentrated on the object of your study. Whatever the object is, the one thing necessary is that you are pouring your whole mental energy onto that object. Only with this much force is there a possibility to know the objective truth; hence, concentration is the method of all sciences.

But meditation is totally different. First, meditation is not of the mind. It is neither one-pointed mind nor many-pointed mind; it is simply not mind. Meditation is going beyond, beyond mind and its boundaries. They cannot be related; they are opposite to each other. Concentration is mind and meditation is no-mind.

The West, particularly, has not known meditation. It has remained confined to concentration—hence all scientific progress, technology, but it has not known the inner science of silence, peace, of being a light unto oneself.

One-pointedness can reveal the secrets of the outside world. Meditation reveals the secrets of your own subjectivity. It can be said, concentration is objective and meditation is subjective. Concentration moves outwards; meditation moves inwards. Concentration is going far away from yourself. Meditation is coming home to your innermost center. Mind, reason, logic, all point towards the outer — to them, the inner does not exist at all.

But this is a fundamental law of the inner reality that nothing is ever accomplished in the inner world by a reasonable man. It is an irrational, or better to say supra-rational approach—To know oneself you don’t need mind, you need utter silence. Mind is always concerned with some thing or many things. There are thoughts and thoughts, ripples upon ripples — the lake of the mind is never ripple-less.

Your inner being can be reflected only in a mirror without any ripples. No mind — absolute silence of all thoughts, absence of the mind completely becomes the mirror without any ripples, without even a single fluttering of thought. And suddenly, the explosion: you have become aware for the first time of your own being.

Up to now, you have known things of the world; now you know the knower. That’s exactly what Socrates means when he says: Know thyself. Because without knowing thyself — I want to add to the Socratic advice — you cannot be yourself. Knowing thyself is a step to being thyself, and unless you are yourself, you can never feel at ease. You can never feel contented; you can never feel fulfilled; you can never feel at home in existence.

Some discomfort, some misery… you are not exactly aware what, but a constant feeling that something essential is missing; that you have everything and yet something which can make everything meaningful is absent. Your palace is full of all the treasures of the world but you are empty. Your kingdom is big but you are absent. This is the situation of the modern man; hence, the constant feeling of meaninglessness, anxiety, anguish, angst.

Modern mind is the most troubled mind that has ever existed for the simple reason that man has come of age. A buffalo is not disturbed about the meaning of life — the grass is his meaning of life; more than that all is useless. The trees are not interested in the meaning of life; just a good shower and a rich soil and a beautiful sun and life is a tremendous joy. No tree is an atheist; no tree ever doubts. Except for man, doubt does not exist in existence. Except for man, nobody looks worried. Even donkeys are not worried. They look so relaxed, so philosophically at ease. They have no fear of death, no fear of the unknown, no concern for the tomorrow.

It is only man and his intelligence that has given him a very difficult life, a constant torture. You try to forget it in a thousand and one ways, but it goes on coming back again and again. And this will continue until your last breath unless you know something of meditation, unless you know how to turn inwards, how to have a look at your own interiority. And suddenly, all meaninglessness disappears.

On a very high level, you are again as at ease as the trees. At a very high consciousness, you are as relaxed as the whole of existence. But your relaxation has a beauty to it — it is conscious, it is alert. It knows that it is. It knows that while the whole of existence is asleep, it is awake.

What is the point of a beautiful sunrise if you are asleep? What is the beauty of a rose if you are asleep? Mind is your sleep, concentrated or not. Meditation is your awakening. The moment you awake, sleep disappears and with it all the dreams, all the projections, all expectations, all desires. Suddenly you are in a state of desirelessness, non-ambition, unfathomable silence. And only in this silence, blossoms flower in your being. Only in this silence the lotuses open their petals.

Remember that any teacher who says to you that concentration is meditation is committing a great crime. Not knowing that he is misleading you, and misleading you on such a fundamental subject, he is far more dangerous than somebody who can kill you. He is killing you far more significantly and deeply. He is destroying your consciousness; he is destroying your very possibility to open the doors of all the mysteries that you are.

Albert Camus has one beautiful statement to remember: “The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.” Naturally, when mind is not there, no-mind cannot be a rational concept. It is absurd. It cannot say anything reasonably — where it is, what it is, what it signifies. It can only indicate mystically — hence all the parables of the world. The mystics could not say in a logical way what they have experienced. They went around telling stories, parables, which can be understood on two levels: one of the mind and one of the no-mind.

That is the beauty of a parable. You can understand it just like any other story, but it was not meant to be just another story; it was meant to give you some hint, some hidden hint towards that for which mind is absolutely inadequate. I will give you a few examples.

A blind man is brought to Gautam Buddha. The blind man is not an ordinary man, he is a great logician. And his whole village is tired of his logic. They are very annoyed and irritated by the blind man, because he refuses to believe that light exists. And he requires of the whole village that if they say light exists, they have to give him proof: “I can touch things; let me touch your light. I can taste things; let me taste your light. I can smell things; at least let me smell your light. I can hear things; beat the light so I can hear the sound. Do something. These are the only four senses I have.”

Light is neither available to the nose nor to the ears; neither to the mouth, nor to the hands. Unless you have eyes, there is no way to prove that light exists.

Gautam Buddha said to the people, “You have brought him to a wrong man. You have all given all kinds of proofs, and you have not been successful. What can I do? Take him to my personal physician. He is just sitting behind me. He is the greatest physician of our time; perhaps he can cure the blind man’s eyes. He does not need any argument, he needs treatment. He does not need any evidence, logical proof about light; he simply needs eyes. Then there will not be any question or any doubt or any asking for evidence.”

He was given to the physician. It took six months for him to cure that man from his blindness. The day he saw light he cried and went from house to house in the village to offer an apology, “Forgive me. Although I was being rational and logical I had no idea that unless you have eyes, you cannot be given any proof that cannot be rejected by you, argued against.” Although the whole world knows that light exists, the whole world cannot make a single blind man convinced of it.

Your consciousness is not available to the mind. Your mind is not the right vehicle to know yourself. Unless you have a new eye — what in the East we have called the third eye, symbolically…. These two eyes open outwards. Just as a symbol, the third eye opens inwards. The two eyes are for the duality of the world, the one eye is for the singleness of your being.

As you start looking inwards, you are amazed: you were ignoring yourself, and that was the trouble.

That was why you were in misery, anxiety, suffering. You were trying everything to remove the misery, but it was caused by your unawareness, by your unconsciousness, by your ignorance of your own being. That was the cause. And unless that cause is removed, you will never have a taste of blissfulness, of ecstasy, of immortality, of the divineness of existence.

The pretty young thing came slamming into her apartment after a blind date and announced to her roommate, “Boy, what a character! I had to slap his face three times this evening!”

The roommate inquired eagerly, “What did he do?”

“Nothing,” muttered the girl. “I slapped him to see if he was awake!”

But nobody is awake. Spiritually, we are all asleep. Meditation is a way of awakening.

Concentration has nothing to do with meditation. But you have been told by Christians, by Hindus, by Mohammedans, by all your so-called organized religions to concentrate on God; concentrate on a certain mantra; concentrate on the statue of a Buddha, but concentrate. And remember, whether you concentrate on a hypothetical God which nobody has ever seen, nobody has ever met, for which no proof, no evidence exists anywhere…. You can go on concentrating on an empty hypothesis, that is not going to reveal you to yourself.

Concentrate on a statue which is man-made, manufactured by you; you can go on concentrating but you will not find anything to transform your being. Or concentrate on scriptures, mantras, chantings… but all those efforts are an exercise in utter futility.

Go beyond the mind — and the way beyond the mind is very simple — just become a watcher of the mind, because watching immediately separates you from the thing you watch. You are watching a movie; one thing is certain, you are not an actor in the movie. Watching the road and the crowd passing by, one thing is certain; you are standing by the side, you are not on the road in the crowd. Whatever you watch, you are not.

The moment you start watching the mind, a tremendous experience happens — a recognition that you are not the mind. Just this small recognition that “I am not the mind” is the beginning of no-mind. You have transcended the crowd, the voices, the chaos of the mind; you have moved into the silences of the heart.

Here is your home, your eternal being.

Here is your deathless, essential existence.

Knowing this has never been transcended by anything more blissful, more ecstatic.

You may have heard about Segal’s Law: A man with one watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.

Mind is not only two, it is many. A man with mind is not sure of anything. He is doubtful about everything; he is unsure about everything. And a life of doubt and unsureness is not a life; you don’t have any roots anywhere. And without roots you cannot have flowers, and you cannot become fruitful. Your life will remain barren, a desert where nothing grows.

Two women in a train were engaged in an argument. At last, one of them called the conductor. “If this window is open,” she declared, “I will catch cold and will probably die.”

“If the window is shut,” the other announced, “I shall suffocate.”

The two glared at each other. The conductor was at a loss, but he welcomed the words of a man who sat near. These were, “First, open the window; that will kill one. Next, shut it; that will kill the other. Then we can have peace.”

That is what you have to do with your mind if you want peace, peace that passeth all understanding.

-Osho

From The Invitation, Discourse #7

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Watchfullness Not Concentration – Osho

Please explain how I can meditate over something without using my mind.

Meditation has nothing to do with mind; meditation simply means a state of no-mind. The functioning of the mind is the only disturbance in meditation. If you are trying to achieve meditation THROUGH mind you are bound to fail, doomed to fail. You are trying to achieve the impossible.

A Zen initiate was meditating for years and whenever he would come to his Master, whatsoever experience he would bring to the Master, the Master would simply reject: “It is all nonsense. You go back and meditate again.”

One day the Master came to the hut of the disciple – he was sitting in a Buddha posture. The Master shook him and told him, “What are you doing here? If we needed stone Buddhas we have many in the temple! Just by sitting like a stone Buddha you will not attain to meditation. Do what I have been telling you to do. Just by stilling the body, your mind is not going to disappear, because it is through the mind that you are enforcing a certain discipline on the body. Anything done by the mind is going to strengthen the mind. It is a nourishment for the mind.”

A year passed. The Master came again. The disciple was sitting almost in a kind of euphoria, enjoying the morning breeze and sun with closed eyes, thinking that he was meditating. The Master took a brick and started rubbing it on a stone in front of the disciple. It was such a disturbance that finally the disciple had to shout, “What are you doing? Are you trying to drive me crazy?”

The Master said, “I am trying to make a mirror out of this brick. If one goes on rubbing it enough I think it will become a mirror.”

The disciple laughed. He said, “I always suspected that you were a little mad – now it is proved! The brick can never become a mirror. You can go on rubbing it on the stone for lives together; the brick will remain a brick.”

The Master said, “That shows some intelligence! Then what are you doing? For years you have been trying to make meditation out of the mind; it is like trying to make a mirror out of a brick.”

And the Master threw the brick in the pond at the side of the tree the disciple was sitting under. The brick made a great splash in the pond, and the very sound of it was enough to do the miracle.

Something awakened in the disciple. A sleep was broken, a dream was shattered: he became alert. For the first time he tasted something of meditation.

And the Master immediately said, “This is it!”

It happened so unexpectedly – the disciple was taken unawares. He was not waiting for this to happen, that the Master would suddenly throw the brick into the pond, and the splash…

Basho has a beautiful haiku:

The ancient pond.
The frog jumps in.
The sound…

That’s all. The sound can awaken you.

Meditation is not a question of effort because all effort is going to be through the mind, of the mind, by the mind. How can it take you beyond the mind? You will go round and round IN the mind. You have to wake up! Mind is sleep. Mind is a constant process of dreaming, desiring, thoughts, memories.

Dinesh, you ask me: Please explain how I can meditate over something without using my mind.

Can’t you see something just with your eyes? Can’t you watch something without bringing your mind in? The birds chirping, this silence… What need is there of the mind? It is a question of watchfulness not of concentration.

But it is not only your problem; it is the problem of millions of people who become interested in meditation all over the world. They all mistake concentration for meditation. Concentration is something of the mind. It is being taught in the schools, colleges, universities. It has its uses – I am not saying it is useless. It is focusing on a certain object. In science it is needed. You have to focus your mind on a particular object totally so that you can observe deeply. You have to exclude everything else; you have to break it out of everything else.

You have to narrow down your consciousness; you almost have to make a pinpoint of it. That’s a scientific way as far as the objective world is concerned.

But as far as the subjective world is concerned it is of no help, not at all. There you are not to focus your mind on anything – on the idea of God or on some inner light, flame, love, compassion – you are not to concentrate at all; you have to be simply aware of all that is.

The man of concentration can be distracted easily; anything can become a distraction because he is trying to do something unnatural. Just a child crying, and he will be distracted; the traffic noise, and he will be distracted; an airplane passing by, and he will be distracted; a dog starts barking, and he will be distracted. Anything can distract him. And of course, when he is distracted he will feel miserable, frustrated – he has failed again. The man of meditation cannot be distracted for the simple reason that he is not concentrating in the first place.

Existence is not linear, it is simultaneous. For example, I am speaking here, the birds are chirping, the traffic noise is there, the train is passing by – all these things are happening together. You have to be simple, silent, watchful, witnessing all that is – no need to exclude anything because the excluded thing will try to distract you. If nothing is excluded, if your awareness is all-inclusive, then what can distract you? Can this bird distract you? In fact, it will enhance your silence. Nothing can distract you because you are not in a tense state.

Concentration is tension, hence the word “attention”. It comes from the same root, “tension”. Awareness is not attention; awareness is relaxation, it is rest.

So rest silently. Thoughts will pass; there is no need to he worried – what can they do? Desires will come and go. Watch them coming and going. Don’t have any evaluation. Don’t say, “This is good; this is bad.” Don’t say, “Aha! This is something great, spiritual, far out!” Some sensation in the spine – it may be just an ant crawling up and you start feeling your kundalini is rising, or just imagination – you see some light inside, which is not difficult… You can see light; you can see colors, psychedelic colors. You can experience beautiful things, but it is all imagination, howsoever colorful, howsoever beautiful.

Don’t start saying that this is good that Jesus is standing in front of you or Krishna or Buddha and that now you are starting to feel you are coming closer and closer to the ultimate realization. Buddha says, “If you meet me on the Way, kill me immediately!” He means: If I come in your meditation, don’t start feeling very good about it, because if you start feeling good about it you will start clinging to the idea – and it is only an idea. Just watch it with no preference, with no choice. If you can be choicelessly aware of everything outside and inside, meditation will happen one day. It is nothing that you have to do.

You can do only one thing and that is to learn the art of watching, watching without any judgment.

Then one day you simply relax, and in that total relaxation there is pure awareness. All thoughts disappear, all desires disappear; the mind is found no more. When mind is not found, this is meditation. A state of no-mind is meditation.

So you have been misunderstanding me. When I say “Meditate”, I mean “Watch”. If I say “Meditate on the songs of the birds”, I am simply saying “Watch”. I am not saying “Concentrate” – I am against concentration. And because I am for watchfulness you can watch anything. You can sit in the marketplace and watch people and that will be meditation. You can sit in the railway station and you can watch all kinds of noises: the trains coming and the passengers getting down and the coolies shouting and the vendors, and then the train goes away and a silence falls over the station. You simply watch, you don’t do anything.

And slowly, slowly you start relaxing, your tensions disappear. Then insight opens up like a bud opening and becoming a flower. Great fragrance is released. In that silence is truth, is bliss, is benediction.

-Osho

From Tao: The Golden Gate, V.1, Discourse #6

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

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