Don't Control Your Anger, Transform It

All the moralists try to change man on the periphery. Your character is the periphery: you don't bring any character into the world, you come absolutely characterless, a blank sheet, and all that you call your character is written by others. 

Your parents, society, teachers, teachings -- all are conditionings. You come as a blank sheet, and whatsoever is written on you comes from others; so unless you become a blank sheet again you will not know what nature is, you will not know what Brahma is, you will not know what Tao is.

So the problem is not how to have a strong character, the problem is not how to attain no-anger, how not to be disturbed -- no, that is not the problem. The problem is how to change your consciousness from the periphery to the centre. Then suddenly you see that you have always been calm. 

Then you can look at the periphery from a distance, and the distance is so vast, infinite, that you can watch as if it is not happening to you. 

In fact, it never happens to you. Even when you are completely lost in it, it never happens to you: something in you remains undisturbed, something in you remains beyond, something in you remains a witness.

It is bad for the anger to move within, because that means your whole body-mind structure will be poisoned by it.

So the whole problem for the seeker is how to shift his attention from the periphery to the centre; how to be merged with that which is unchanging, and not to be identified with that which is just a boundary. 

On the boundary others are very influential, because on the boundary change is natural. The periphery will go on changing-- even a buddha's periphery changes.

The difference between a buddha and you is not a difference of character -- remember this; it is not a difference of morality, it is not a difference in virtue or non-virtue, it is a difference in where you are grounded.

You are grounded on the periphery; a buddha is grounded in the centre. He can look at his own periphery from a distance; when you hit him he can see it as if you have hit somebody else, because the centre is so distant. It's as if he is a watcher on the hills and something is happening in the valleys and he can see it. This is the first thing to be understood.

The second thing: it is very easy to control, it is very difficult to transform. You can control your anger, but what will you do? You will suppress it. 

And what happens when you suppress a certain thing? The direction of its movement changes: it was going out, and if you suppress it, it starts going in -- just its direction changes.

And for anger to go out was good, because the poison needs to be thrown out. It is bad for the anger to move within, because that means your whole body-mind structure will be poisoned by it. And then if you go on doing this for a long time... as everybody has been doing, because society teaches control, not transformation.

Society says "control yourself", and through controlling, all the negative things have been thrown deeper and deeper into the unconscious, and then they become a constant thing within you. 

Then it is not a question of your being angry sometimes and sometimes not -- you are simply angry. Sometimes you explode, and sometimes you don't explode because there is no excuse, or you have to find an excuse. And remember, you can find an excuse anywhere!

[D]eep orgasm through love becomes impossible -- because you are afraid deep down that if you move totally without control, you may kill your wife...

You are angry. Because you have suppressed so much anger, now there are no moments when you are not angry; at the most, sometimes you are less angry, sometimes more. 

Your whole being is poisoned by suppression. You eat with anger -- and it has a different quality when a person eats without anger: it is beautiful to watch him, because he eats non-violently. He may be eating meat, but he eats non-violently; you may be eating just vegetables and fruits, but if anger is suppressed, you eat violently.

...Then this will move in every way, in every arena of your life: you will make love, but it will be more like violence than like love, it will have much aggression in it. Because you never observe one another making love, you don't know what is happening, and you cannot know what is happening to you because you are almost always so much in aggression.

That's why deep orgasm through love becomes impossible -- because you are afraid deep down that if you move totally without control, you may kill your wife or kill your beloved, or the wife may kill the husband or the lover. You become so afraid of your own anger! 

Next time you make love, watch: you will be doing the same movements as are done when you are aggressive. Watch the face, have a mirror around so you can see what is happening to your face! All the distortions of anger and aggression will be there.

...Through suppression, the mind becomes split. The part that you accept becomes the conscious, and the part that you deny becomes the unconscious. 

This division is not natural, the division happens because of repression. And into the unconscious you go on throwing all the rubbish that society rejects -- but remember, whatsoever you throw in there becomes more and more part of you: it goes into your hands, into your bones, into your blood, into your heartbeat. 

Now psychologists say that so many diseases are caused by repressed emotions: so many heart failures means so much anger has been repressed in the heart, so much hatred that the heart is poisoned.

Why? Why does man suppress so much and become unhealthy? Because society teaches you to control, not to transform, and the way of transformation is totally different.

The first thing: in controlling you repress, in transformation you express. But there is no need to express on somebody else...

The first thing: in controlling you repress, in transformation you express. But there is no need to express on somebody else because the "somebody else" is just irrelevant. 

Next time you feel angry go and run around the house seven times, and after it sit under a tree and watch where the anger has gone. 

You have not repressed it, you have not controlled it, you have not thrown it on somebody else -- because if you throw it on somebody else a chain is created, because the other is as foolish as you, as unconscious as you. 

If you throw it on another, and if the other is an enlightened person, there will be no trouble; he will help you to throw and release it and go through a catharsis. But the other is as ignorant as you -- if you throw anger on him he will react. He will throw more anger on you, he is repressed as much as you are. Then there comes a chain: you throw on him, he throws on you, and you both become enemies.

Don't throw it on anybody. It is the same as when you feel like vomiting: you don't go and vomit on somebody. You go to the bathroom and vomit! 

It cleanses the whole body -- if you suppress the vomit it will be dangerous, and when you have vomited you will feel fresh, you will feel unburdened, unloaded, good, healthy. Something was wrong in the food that you took and the body rejects it. Don't go on forcing it inside.

Anger is just a mental vomit. Something is wrong that you have taken in and your whole psychic being wants to throw it out, but there is no need to throw it out on somebody. Because people throw it on others, society tells them to control it.

There is no need to throw anger on anybody. You can go to your bathroom, you can go on a long walk; it means that something is inside that needs fast activity so that it is released. Just do a little jogging and you will feel it is released, or take a pillow and beat the pillow, fight with the pillow, and bite the pillow until your hands and teeth are relaxed. Within a five-minute catharsis you will feel unburdened, and once you know this you will never throw it on anybody, because that is absolutely foolish.

[T]ake a pillow and beat the pillow, fight with the pillow... The pillow is enlightened, a buddha. The pillow will not react, and the pillow will not go to any court...

The first thing in transformation, then, is to express anger, but not on anybody, because if you express it on somebody you cannot express it totally. You may like to kill, but it is not possible; you may like to bite, but it is not possible. But that can be done to a pillow. The pillow is enlightened, a buddha. The pillow will not react, and the pillow will not go to any court, and the pillow will not bring any enmity against you, and the pillow will not do anything. The pillow will be happy and the pillow will laugh at you!

The second thing to remember: be aware.

In controlling, no awareness is needed; you simply do it mechanically, like a robot. The anger comes and there is a mechanism; suddenly your whole being becomes narrow and closed. If you are watchful control may not be so easy.

Society never teaches you to be watchful, because when somebody is watchful, he is wide open. That is part of awareness. One is open, and if you want to suppress something and you are open, it is contradictory, it may come out. The society teaches you how to close yourself in, how to cave yourself in...don't allow even a small window for anything to go out.

But remember: when nothing goes out, nothing comes in either. When the anger cannot go out, you are closed. If you touch a beautiful rock, nothing goes in; you look at a flower, nothing goes in: your eyes are dead and closed. You kiss a person; nothing goes in, because you are closed. You live an insensitive life.

Sensitivity grows with awareness. Through control you become dull and dead. That is part of the mechanism of control: if you are dull and dead then nothing will affect you, as if the body has become a citadel, a defence. Nothing will affect you, neither insult nor love.

But this control is at a very great cost, an unnecessary cost; then it becomes the whole effort in life: how to control yourself -- and then die! The whole effort of control takes all your energy, and then you simply die. And life becomes a dull and dead thing; you somehow carry it on.

Sensitivity grows with awareness. Through control you become dull and dead... if you are dull and dead then nothing will affect you.

Society teaches you control and condemnation, because a child will control only when he feels something is condemned. Anger is bad; sex is bad; everything that has to be controlled has to be made to look like a sin to the child, to look like evil.

A deep condemnation enters about all that is alive. And sex is the most alive thing -- has to be! It is the source. Anger is also a most alive thing, because it is a protective force. If a child cannot be angry at all, he will not be able to survive. You have to be angry in certain moments. The child has to show his own being, the child has to stand in certain moments upon his own ground; otherwise he will have no backbone.

Anger is beautiful; sex is beautiful. But beautiful things can go ugly. That depends on you. If you condemn them, they become ugly; if you transform them, they become divine. 

Anger transformed becomes compassion... because the energy is the same. A buddha is compassionate: from where does his compassion come? This is the same energy that was moving in anger; now it is not moving in anger, the same energy is transformed into compassion. From where does love come? A buddha is loving; a Jesus is love. The same energy that moves into sex becomes love.

So remember, if you condemn a natural phenomenon it becomes poisonous, it destroys you, it becomes destructive and suicidal. If you transform it, it becomes divine, it becomes a god-force, it becomes an elixir; you attain through it to immortality, to a deathless being. But transformation is needed.

In transformation you never control, you simply become more aware. Anger is happening: you have to be aware that anger is happening -- watch it! It is a beautiful phenomenon... energy moving within you, becoming hot!

Anger is beautiful; sex is beautiful. But beautiful things can go ugly. If you condemn them, they become ugly; if you transform them, they become divine.

It is just like electricity in the clouds. People were always afraid of electricity; they thought in olden days, when they were ignorant, that this electricity was god being angry, being threatening, trying to punish -- creating fear so that people would become worshippers, so that people would feel that god was there and he would punish them.

But now we have domesticated that god. Now that god runs through your fan, through your air conditioner, through the fridge: whatsoever you need, that god serves. That god has become a domestic force... no longer angry and no longer threatening. Through science an outer force has been transformed into a friend.

The same happens through religion for inner forces.

Anger is just like electricity in your body: you don't know what to do with it. Either you kill somebody else or you kill yourself. Society says if you kill yourself it is okay, it is your concern, but don't kill anybody else -- and as far as society goes that is okay. So either you become aggressive or you become repressive.

Religion says both are wrong. The basic thing that is needed is to become aware and to know the secret of this energy, anger, this inner electricity. 

It is electricity because you become hot; when you are angry your temperature goes hot, and you cannot understand the coolness of a buddha, because when anger is transformed into compassion everything is cool. A deep coolness happens. 

A buddha is never hot; he is always cool, centred, because he now knows how to use the inner electricity. 

Electricity is hot; it becomes the source of air conditioning. Anger is hot -- it becomes the source of compassion.

Compassion is an inner air conditioning. Suddenly everything is cool and beautiful, and nothing can disturb you, and the whole existence is transformed into a friend. Now there are no more enemies.. .because when you look through the eyes of anger, somebody becomes an enemy; when you look through the eyes of compassion, everybody is a friend, a neighbour. 

When you love, everywhere is god; when you hate, everywhere is the devil. It is your standpoint that is projected onto reality.

If you become aware of your anger, understanding penetrates. Just watching, with no judgment, not saying good, not saying bad, just watching in your inner sky.

Awareness is needed, not condemnation -- and through awareness transformation happens spontaneously. 

If you become aware of your anger, understanding penetrates. Just watching, with no judgment, not saying good, not saying bad, just watching in your inner sky. There is lightning, anger, you feel hot, the whole nervous system shaking and quaking, and you feel a tremor all over the body -- a beautiful moment, because when energy functions you can watch it easily; when it is not functioning you cannot watch.

Close your eyes and meditate on it. Don't fight, just look at what is happening -- the whole sky filled with electricity, so much lightning, so much beauty -- just lie down on the ground and look at the sky and watch. Then do the same inside.

Clouds are there, because without clouds there can be no lightning -- dark clouds are there, thoughts. Somebody has insulted you, somebody has laughed at you, somebody has said this or that... many clouds, dark clouds in the inner sky and much lightning. Watch! 

It is a beautiful scene, terrible also, because you don't understand. It is mysterious, and if mystery is not understood it becomes terrible, you are afraid of it. And whenever a mystery is understood, it becomes a grace, a gift, because now you have the keys -- and with keys you are the master.

-- Osho

WHEN THE ENERGY IS UNOCCUPIED , IT BECOMES UNDERSTANDING

WHEN THE ENERGY IS UNOCCUPIED , IT BECOMES UNDERSTANDING. …..

The man of meditation becomes the man of understanding because his energy accumulates. He is not wasting it. 

He is not interested in trivia; he does not put any energy at all into petty things. So whenever the time arises to give, he has to give.

Energy is understanding. Be conscious of it and use your energy very consciously, and use your energy in such a way that you don’t simply go on wasting it…..

Complete answer : Question : “ Is there any relationship between understanding and energy?”
OSHO : “ Santosh, yes. There is great relationship. In fact, to call it relationship is not right – because energy IS understanding. They are not two things.

What kind of energy is understanding? 

When the energy is unoccupied, it becomes understanding. 

When energy is occupied, it remains ignorance, it remains: unconsciousness.
For example, your sex energy is occupied with a woman or with a man. It will remain ignorance – because the energy is focused on the object, it is going outward, it is extrovert. If the energy is freed from the object, where will it go? It will start falling into the subject, into your inner source. And energy falling back into the source becomes understanding, becomes awareness.

And I am not saying be against sex. No. But let sex be more a subjective phenomenon than an objective phenomenon. 

And that is the difference between sex and love. Love is subjective, sex is objective.

You become interested in a woman or in a man as an object. And sooner or later the interest will be finished, because once you have explored the object, then nothing is left. 

Then you are ready to move to somebody else. Yes, the woman looks beautiful but how long can she look beautiful? An object is an object. She is not yet a person to you. She is just a beautiful object. It is insulting.

You are reducing a soul into an object, a subjectivity into an object. You are trying to exploit, you are turning her into a means. Your energy will remain ignorant. And you will go on moving from one woman to another, and your energy will go on remaining in a circle. It will never come back home.

Love means you are not interested in the woman or the man as an object. In fact, you are not there to exploit her. You are not there to get something from her. On the contrary, you are so full of energy; you would like to give some energy to her. Love gives. Sex only wants to get.

And when love gives, it remains subjective, it remains rooted into oneself. Lovers help each other to be more and more themselves. Lovers help each other not to disappear, but to become authentically individual. Lovers help each other to be centered. Love is respect, reverence, worship. It is not exploitation. Love is understanding. 

Because energy is unoccupied with the object, it remains free, untethered to anything. And that brings the transformation. It accumulates inside you.

And remember: just as it happens in the world of physics, so it happens in the world of metaphysics.

After a certain quantity of energy… the qualitative change happens. The qualitative change is nothing but quantitative change. 

For example, if you heat water up to a hundred degrees it evaporates. Up to ninety-nine it has not evaporated; it is still water – hot, but still water. But beyond a hundred, it evaporates – it is no more water. It has changed its form. The transformation has happened.

Just like that, when your energy accumulates and you don’t go on wasting it on objects…. And people are wasting it on objects. Somebody is interested in money – he puts his whole energy on the money. Of course, he accumulates much money, but in accumulating it he dies, dissipates, becomes empty, becomes a beggar. Money goes on accumulating and he goes on becoming more and more beggarly. Somebody puts his energy into politics, into power. He becomes a prime minister, but deep down he is a beggar. He may be the greatest beggar in the country….

If you put your energy into objects, you will live a life of non-understanding, unawareness. 

Don’t put your energy into objects. Let energy fall into your being. Let it accumulate. Let your life become a great reservoir. Let your energy just be there without any occupation. And at a certain point… the jump, the quantum leap, the transformation. And energy becomes luminous, turns into awareness, becomes understanding.

You ask, Santosh: Is there any relationship between understanding and energy?

Yes, there is. It is energy that becomes understanding. 

So when you are depleted of energy, you start losing your understanding. When you are tired, your intelligence is less. You have observed it. In the morning your intelligence is more fresh than in the evening. In the morning you are more understanding, more compassionate, more loving, than in the evening.

Have you observed? – Beggars come in the morning to beg. They understand the psychology. In the evening, who is going to give to them? People are so angry by that time, so frustrated with life. In the mowing, they have rested the whole night, a deep sleep, the energy is fresh – eight hours accumulation of energy. They have more understanding, more compassion, more love, more sympathy. It is possible to persuade them to give something to you. They have, so they can give. By the evening, they don’t have; they have lost all they had. They are dead tired.

Children are more understanding than old people. Have you observed it or not? Old people become very, very hard, cruel, cunning. Their whole life they have remained occupied with objects. All old people become Machiavellian.

Young children are innocent, trusting, closer to Buddhas. Why? – The energy is overflowing.

Young children learn things so fast. Why? The energy is there, hence the intelligence. The older you become, the more difficult it becomes to learn a thing. They say it is difficult to teach an old dog new tricks. 

Why? It should not be so, because the dog knows so many tricks, he can learn a few more. It should be easier for him because he has learnt so much. He has practiced learning so much that he can learn a few more easily. But that is not so.

Children learn fast. If a child is born in a town where five languages are spoken, he starts learning all five; he becomes efficient in all five languages. They all become his mother languages. A child has infinite capacity to learn. And the reason is only one: his energy is still overflowing. Soon it will be dissipated in life.

The man of meditation becomes the man of understanding because his energy accumulates. He is not wasting it. 

He is not interested in trivia; he does not put any energy at all into petty things. So whenever the time arises to give, he has to give.

Energy is understanding. Be conscious of it and use your energy very consciously, and use your energy in such a way that you don’t simply go on wasting it. “
OSHO
The Perfect Master, V.2 , Chapter Eight

TRY TO BEFRIEND A TREE

TRY TO BEFRIEND A TREE……

You try to befriend a tree -- go every day to talk to the tree, sit by the side of the tree, touch the tree the way you would touch your beloved -- and within a few days you will see a great transformation happening. When you come, even if there is no wind, the tree starts dancing. When you come, the tree releases its fragrance for you. When you touch it, you can feel that there is no longer the same feeling of coldness; it is warm, it is welcoming you…. What I am saying is according to my own experience. I have lived with trees, and strangely enough, they have a tremendous sensitivity….

“ Hence, the mystics feel it is easier to talk to the trees or with the animals or with the birds. Saint Francis, one of the most authentic men Christianity has produced, used to talk to the animals. He would come to the bank of a river and he would call to the fishes, "Listen, I'm here..." and the fishes would jump out of the water to greet him -- this has been observed by thousands of people. He would go to a tree, hold the tree like a friend holds the hand of another friend, and would talk with the tree.
People used to think that he was a little insane -- this is nonsense talking to the trees. But now modern research about trees says that trees are more sensitive than you are. Of course their sensitivity has a different dimension.

If a woodcutter comes with the idea of cutting a certain tree, that tree goes into a nervous breakdown. And now we have developed machines, something like cardiograms, which are attached to the tree. It has baffled the scientists because the man has not said that he is going to cut a certain tree, he has only the idea, but the idea in some mysterious way is transferred to the tree even without him having spoken. The cardiogram graph which was going very smoothly, suddenly becomes disturbed. The tree is freaking out! And if the gardener comes to water the same tree, even before he has reached the tree, the cardiogram becomes even smoother, more symmetrical -- a friend is coming!

It seems that trees are sensitive to your innermost thoughts. There is no need to say anything, they understand; they listen to the subtle vibrations in your mind. Certainly, soon the whole science will be clear... but as I see it, every thought is nothing but a vibration, and you are radiating, broadcasting certain vibrations around you. 

Because people are dull; their minds are retarded. They have thick skulls; and those vibrations don't reach them…….[……]……

Trees don't have any ears; they feel those vibrations all over their body, each leaf, each branch, the whole trunk, feels it. Don't think that trees are dead; don't think that you can cut them and you are not harming them. Even when you pluck a flower, you are unaware that you have hurt the tree, you have created a wound in it.

If the mystics have been holding counsel with the trees of the forest, there is nothing to be surprised about. The mystics have always been aware that anything that grows is alive, and anything that is alive must have some ways of sensitivity.

You try to befriend a tree -- go every day to talk to the tree, sit by the side of the tree, touch the tree the way you would touch your beloved -- and within a few days you will see a great transformation happening. When you come, even if there is no wind, the tree starts dancing. When you come, the tree releases its fragrance for you. When you touch it, you can feel that there is no longer the same feeling of coldness; it is warm, it is welcoming you.

In the East, because mystics have been working on every possible mystery for thousands of years.... This was the reason why Mahavira and Buddha both said that unless a fruit falls on its own accord, you don't have any right to take it off the tree. That is violence. When it falls on its own accord, it is a gift. The tree is giving to you out of abundance. Don't cut a tree.

You will be surprised... because of this experience of Mahavira, the followers of Mahavira even today don't cultivate. They stopped cultivation completely, because if you cultivate, you have to cut the trees one day, and that will be great violence. People have laughed about it, and even the Jaina monks have no answers which can convince people. What I am saying is according to my own experience. I have lived with trees, and strangely enough, they have a tremendous sensitivity.

When I used to teach in the university, there was a long row of beautiful trees called gulmohars. It has red flowers, and particularly in summer the flowers are so much that you cannot see the green foliage. It is all red, as if the whole tree is afire.

There was a great row, at least twenty trees on both sides of the road approaching the college. I had chosen one tree, which had the biggest shadow -- which was perhaps the most senior tree -- and I used to park my car there. But I never forgot to touch the tree and to say hello to it, good morning to it. People thought, "That man is crazy saying good morning to the tree, and he never bothers to say good morning to the vice-chancellor."

The vice-chancellor's room was very close to the tree, so he used to stand up whenever he heard my car reaching the tree and he would look and he would giggle to himself, "That man is crazy. I wonder what he is teaching to the students. He is saying hello to the tree, he is saying good morning to the tree, and yet when I pass him in the corridor, I have to say good morning to him; otherwise he simply goes on silently."

But a strange thing happened... out of twenty trees, nineteen trees died from a certain kind of disease. The only tree that survived was my tree. Even the vice-chancellor began to think about it... that when all the trees have died, and they are without leaves and without flowers, dead wood, why does that particular tree continue to blossom, grow, have flowers?

One day he said to me, "I don't believe it, but my wife said to me that it is because that tree has a friend. And just as man cannot live without love, no tree can live without love." He said, "I don't believe it. It is all nonsense, it is just a coincidence. What do you think?"

I said, "I cannot say anything about it. It is a secret between me and the tree."

When I resigned, my car stopped coming to the university, and for the last time I said good-bye to the tree. After one year, I was in the city and I wanted to see the tree... how it was. When I went there, it was dead. And when the principal heard my car, he could not believe that after one year... why have I come? I went directly to my tree. I said hello to it, I said good morning to it, but there was nobody to hear, nobody to listen. I touched the tree and felt no vibration, no warmth.

The vice-chancellor was looking from the window. He came out, stood with me by the side of the tree, and he said, "Just forgive me. I never believed -- still there is suspicion in me -- but the fact is, that when you left, that tree started dying.

We cannot understand how it survived for nine years when the other trees died, and it could not survive even one year. Perhaps I am just a suspicious man, but there is something to it. I had to concede, seeing that tree dying every day... I have remembered you, and if anybody can save that tree, it is you. But you were not in the city." For the whole year I had been going around the country.

I said, "I also feel immensely sad. If I had known that that tree would die, I would not have resigned. Just for the sake of the tree, I would have remained in the university, but I was not thinking that she was going to die."

Mystics have been laughed at. But remember, slowly, slowly science is coming very close to mysticism -- and the last laugh is going to be that of the mystics. “
OSHO
The Messiah, Vol 2 , Chapter 22 - A peak unto yourself (9 February 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium)

VIPASSANA IS THE MOST SIMPLE MEDITATION IN THE WORLD

VIPASSANA IS THE MOST SIMPLE MEDITATION IN THE WORLD :

OSHO explains VIPASSANA and ANAPANSATI YOGA , how to be aware of our breath ….

Vipassana is the most simple meditation in the world. 

It is through vipassana that Buddha became enlightened, and it is through vipassana that many more people have become enlightened than through any other method. 

Vipassana IS THE METHOD …
Question: I thought that meditation was a simple thing. But seeing people doing Vipassana, I am losing all hope of ever becoming a successful meditator. Please give me a little encouragement.

OSHO : “ Meditation is simple. Precisely because it is simple, it looks difficult. Your mind is accustomed to dealing with difficult problems, and it has completely forgotten how to respond to the simple things of life. The more simple a thing is, the more difficult it looks to the mind, because the mind is very efficient in solving difficult things.

It has been trained to solve difficult things, it does not know how to tackle the simple. Meditation is simple, your mind is complex. It is not a problem that meditation is creating. The problem is coming from your mind, not from meditation.

Vipassana is the most simple meditation in the world. It is through Vipassana that Buddha became enlightened, and it is through Vipassana that many more people have become enlightened than through any other method. Vipassana IS THE METHOD .

Yes, there are other methods also, but they have helped only very few people. Vipassana has helped thousands, and it is really very simple; is not like yoga.

Yoga is difficult, arduous, complex. You have to torture yourself in many ways: distort your body, contort your body, sit this way and that, torture, stand on your head -- exercises and exercises... but yoga seems to be very appealing to people.

In fact, coming across Vipassana for the first time, one doubts whether it can be called a meditation at all. What is it? -- no physical exercise, no breathing exercise; a very simple phenomenon: just watching your breath coming in, going out... finished, this is the method; sitting silently, watching your breath coming in, going out; not losing track, that's all.

Not that you have to change your breathing -- it is not pranayam; it is not a breathing exercise where you have to take deep breaths, exhale, inhale, no. Let the breathing be simple, as it is. You just have to bring one new quality to it: awareness. “

O S H O
❤ The Guest , Chapter : The Guest Is Inside you

ANAPANSATI YOGA : “ The technique of Anapansati is tremendously valuable. It is a way of watching your own breathing.

You don't have to do a thing about it; you don't have to interfere with your breathing or to breathe in any particular manner. You have only to watch it as it is. 

But it is also true that as soon as you begin to observe it, your breathing becomes a little faster. It is inevitable. With your observation, the manner of your breathing will change, and it will be faster than before. And this change and the observation itself will show results.

But the main objective of Anapansati is not to bring about any changes in your breathing pattern; the main objective is just observing your breath as it is. 

Because when you observe your breathing, and observe it constantly, by and by you begin to separate yourself from it; there occurs a gap between you and your breath. 

Because when someone observes something, immediately the observer becomes separate from the observed.

In fact, the observer cannot be one with the observed. The moment you turn something into the observed, you separate yourself from your object of observation-you become different from it. 

Since you have made your breath the observed, and you have been watching how it works, you become distant from it in the very process of observation. 

And then one day you will find that while breathing is going on you are at a considerable distance from it.

Anapansati yoga brings about your separation from the body; you really experience it.

You can try Anapansati in many ways. If you watch the way you walk-if you just observe how the right foot rises and moves, and then the left foot rises and moves-if you only watch the movement of your feet, you will find in two weeks' time that you are quite separate from your feet. 

You will clearly see your feet as the observed and you remain the observer. Your own feet will seem to you to be functioning mechanically. Such a person can say that walking he does not walk, talking he does not talk, eating he does not eat, sleeping he does not sleep. And he is right.

But it is very difficult to understand such a person who has become a watcher on the hill. If he is a witness to his walking, if he really does not walk while walking, it is only he who actually sees it so; it will be difficult for others even to understand it. If he is a witness to his talking, he will not talk while talking, he will remain a witness alone.

Anapansati is a significant technique; it makes you the witness, the witnessing soul, but it is different from kundalini. “
OSHO
Source book : In the search of miraculous .

More on breath awareness :
SECRETS OF VIPASSANA MEDITATION ( and instructions ) :
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HOW TO LIVE IN THE WORLD ?

HOW TO LIVE IN THE WORLD ? 

" It is certainly a GREAT PROBLEM FOR ALL SANNYASINS when they go back into the world: if they remain the way they are here, they will certainly be thought abnormal, unfit.

They may lose their jobs, they may lose their wives, they may lose everything. They may find themselves in an insane asylum. So it is exactly what you are doing that everybody else is doing – when you go into the world, be normally mad; just fit with their style.

Only one thing has to be remembered: that it is your acting, that you are acting simply in order not to create unnecessary trouble for yourself and for others.

And you can act, because you have been in the world; you know all the roles there. There is no need for anybody to prompt you. You have lived your whole life in that big madhouse; you know its language, its style, its functioning. Act it!

Don’t become normal, just act normal. Deep inside remember that it is madness.

In other words, with awareness adjust yourself to society – but with awareness, so that your consciousness remains floating above and there is no compromise as far as your consciousness is concerned. 

"OSHO
The New Dawn , CHAPTER 7 : Your ego is the distance between you and me.


A SANNYASIN HAS TO BE LIQUID, FLOWING. He has not to be stonelike, fixated. He has to be like flowing water so he can take any form. 

Whatsoever is the need of the moment he responds accordingly -- not according to any fixed pattern, not according to any A PRIORI idea of how a sannyasin should be. There is nothing like that in MY vision of sannyas.

Never ask me how a sannyasin should be, because that will become a pattern and you will act out of the pattern. 

And any action out of a patterned life is wrong. One has to be loose, relaxed, so that one can respond to the situation. And situations go on changing. In the West it is different; here it is different.

So when it is needed to be a warrior, be a warrior; and when it is needed to be meditative, be meditative. When it is needed to be an extrovert, be an extrovert; and when it is needed to be an introvert, be an introvert. 

This fluidity is sannyas. If you become fixated, then you are no more alive -- you have become obsessed. Then you are an extrovert or an introvert, worldly or other-worldly, but you are no more my sannyasin.

My sannyasin is indescribable, as indescribable as God himself, as life itself, as love itself -- as inexpressible as existence itself. 

A sannyasin is in total harmony with existence, so whatsoever the need of the moment, the sannyasin goes with the moment, flows with the river. He does not go upstream; he does not have any idea of how things should be. He has no "ought"; he has no commandments in his mind to be fulfilled, to be followed.

This is true discipline: discipline that brings freedom, discipline that liberates. 

“OSHO Ah, This! , Chapter #6 , Chapter title: Try it My Way

HOW TO RELAX TENSIONS ?

HOW TO RELAX TENSIONS ?

Only if we accept ourselves totally is there no tension. This total acceptance is the miracle, the only miracle. To find a person who has accepted himself totally is the only surprising thing. ……

“ Tension means a gap between what you are and what you want to be. If the gap is great, the tension will be great. If the gap is small, the tension will be small. 

And if there is no gap at all, it means you are satisfied with what you are. In other words, you do not long to be anything other than what you are. 

Then your mind exists in the moment. There is nothing to be tense about; you are at ease with yourself. You are in the Tao. To me, if there is no gap you are religious; you are in the dharma.

The gap can have many layers. If the longing is physical, the tension will be physical. When you seek a particular body, a particular shape - if you long for something other than what you are on a physical level - then there is tension in your physical body. 

One wants to be more beautiful.
Now your body becomes tense. This tension begins at your first body, the physiological, but if it is insistent, constant, it may go deeper and spread to the other layers of your being.

If you are longing for psychic powers, then the tension begins at the psychic level and spreads.

The spreading is just like when you throw a stone in the lake. It drops at a particular point, but the vibrations created by it will go on spreading into the infinite. 

So tension may start from any one of your seven bodies, but the original source is always the same: the gap between a state that is and a state that is longed for.

If you have a particular type of mind and you want to change it, transform it - if you want to be more clever, more intelligent - then tension is created. 

Only if we accept ourselves totally is there no tension. This total acceptance is the miracle, the only miracle. To find a person who has accepted himself totally is the only surprising thing.

Existence itself is non-tense. Tension is always because of hypothetical, non-existential possibilities.

In the present there is no tension; tension is always future-oriented. It comes from the imagination.

You can imagine yourself as something other than you are. This potential that has been imagined will create tension. So the more imaginative a person is, the more tension is a possibility. Then the imagination has become destructive.

Imagination can also become constructive, creative. If your whole capacity to imagine is focused in the present, in the moment, not in the future, then you can begin to see your existence as poetry.

Your imagination is not creating a longing; it is being used in living. This living in the present is beyond tension. 

“OSHO
Source book : The Psychology of the Esoteric

OSHO ON NATARAJ MEDITATION

OSHO explains the spirituality of DANCE , ( with NATARAJ Meditation instructions and video link … )

This is why I have invariably included dance in my methods of meditation, because there is nothing more miraculous for meditation than dancing..[…]...in the dance you dissolve: the dancer disappears and only the dance remains. Dance is one of the deepest meditations possible……

"Dance can only happen outside of the body. This is why if you dance totally you will find you no longer remain a body. 

In the ultimate grace of dance, at the ultimate height, you are out of the body. The body goes on turning, goes on moving rhythmically but you are outside, you are no longer inside.

This is why I have invariably included dance in my methods of meditation, because there is nothing more miraculous for meditation than dancing. 

If you dance fully, it you dance totally, then in that dance your being comes out of the body. The body will go on moving in rhythm but you will experience that you are out of the body. And then your real dance begins: below, the body will go on dancing; above, you will dance. The body on the earth, you in the sky! The body in the earthly, you in the celestial. The body will dance the dance of matter, you will dance the dance of consciousness. You will become nataraj, the king of the dance."

OSHO
The Mahageeta, Vol 1, Chapter #8 - 18 September 1976 am in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

"The religious person is one who has seen the fact that existence is not problematic; it is mysterious, it is miraculous. You dive deep into it. Celebrate it! 

Make a festival out of it. Sing, dance, love, pray, paint, create music — but don't try to solve it.

The musician is much closer than the philosopher; so is the poet much closer than the philosopher; so is the dancer even closer than the musician and the poet. Why is the dancer so much closer?

Because in the dance you dissolve: the dancer disappears and only the dance remains. Dance is one of the deepest meditations possible.

In India we have conceived of God as the dancer, Nataraj. 

That's very significant, because when a painter paints, immediately he becomes separate from the painting. If the painting remains in his being, he is one with it. When it is yet hidden, just a seed, just a thought, a dream, then the painter is one with his painting. The moment he has painted it, poured it on the canvas, he has become separate from it. Duality has arisen. So is it the case with the poet, so is it the case with the musician. 

Only the dancer has something unique: the dancer remains one with the dance. 

Even when he starts dancing, the unity is not broken, there is no duality. Utter oneness. In fact, when the dancer is thinking about the dance there is a duality — the idea of the dance and the dancer — there is a subtle duality. The moment he starts dancing even that duality disappears. Then the dancer is the dance. There is no dancer separate from the dance, no dance separate from the dancer. This is Unio Mystica.

God is a dancer. That means he has not painted the world; otherwise he would have become separate from it. It is not his poetry; it is not his music. It is his dance. He is in it, he is it — right this very moment, these green trees, and the sun pouring its gold through them, and the call of the bird, and you here sitting in silence, just being with me for no particular reason, just enjoying this moment, this silence. This is it."

OSHO
The Secret, Chapter #8 - Fri, 18 October 1978, am in Buddha Hall

OSHO ON NATARAJ MEDITATION ( AND INSTRUCTIONS )….
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AWARENESS IS A SINGLE SOLUTION TO ALL THE PROBLEMS

AWARENESS IS A SINGLE SOLUTION TO ALL THE PROBLEMS : OSHO on Western psychotherapy and the Eastern path of meditation… 

That’s where Western psychology is lost — lost in a chaos. Small problems are not being solved, very small problems. It takes years and years of psychoanalysis… then too nothing is solved. At the most you can do only a kind of window-dressing, a whitewashing. You give the patient a better mask to wear, but his original face remains the same.
Western psychology has failed. The Eastern approach goes far deeper…..

Spiritual growth means growth of awareness; it means nothing else. Becoming more and more alert. Becoming a light unto yourself. And when you are a light unto yourself, darkness starts disappearing of its own accord.

The man of awareness cannot be angry — that is impossible, because to be angry the basic requirement is to be unaware. Try it, and you will be very much surprised. Try to be angry AND aware — you will not be able to manage; nobody has ever been able to manage it. It is impossible. It is not in the very nature of things.

When you are aware, anger will disappear. If you lose awareness, anger will appear. Both are not possible — just as light and darkness cannot exist together; they cannot have a coexistence.

Why can light and darkness not exist together? Because darkness has no substance in it; darkness has no existence in it. It is nothing but the absence of light, so how can absence and presence exist together? If light is there then absence cannot exist. If absence exists, light cannot be present there.

Awareness is a single solution to all the problems…… Spiritual growth means: helping you to be aware. And a single medicine cures all the illnesses….

COMPLETE QUESTION-ANSWER : Osho, you say that your main concern is our spiritual not our psychological growth. What is the difference between them?

OSHO :
“ Deva Yachana, man is a three-storied building: one body, the mind and the soul. The body contains only the body. The mind contains body and mind both. And the soul contains all the three. The higher implies the lower, but not vice versa: the lower does not imply the higher.

This is one of the fundamental laws to be remembered. If you work on the higher, the lower will be automatically solved. If you work on the lower, the higher will not be automatically solved.
Spirit contains all the three dimensions of your being. 

That’s why I say my concern is your spiritual growth — because it contains your totality. To be concerned with your psychological growth will leave the most essential and the highest part of you outside. And then there are many more problems.

Mind is a multiplicity; mind means the many. Millions of problems are there. If you start solving each single problem it will take millions of lives — even then you cannot be certain that you have solved the mind problems.

Greed is there, anger is there, lust is there, jealousy is there… and so on and so forth. If you solve one it will take years and years; and even then nothing is solved. If you try to solve your anger, if you want to grow beyond your anger, at the psychological stage what can you do? At the most you can repress it — because awareness belongs to the spiritual realm. 

At the psychological level you can only fight. You can choose: you can repress one part against the other, but the repressed part is not dying. In fact, the more it is repressed, the more alive it will become — because it will be going closer and closer to the source of your energies and it will be getting more nourishment. And you can repress anger, but it will find some outlet from the backdoor. You cannot transform this way.

That’s where Western psychology is lost — lost in a chaos. Small problems are not being solved, very small problems. It takes years and years of psychoanalysis… then too nothing is solved. At the most you can do only a kind of window-dressing, a whitewashing. You give the patient a better mask to wear, but his original face remains the same.
Western psychology has failed.

The Eastern approach goes far deeper. It does not try to cut the foliage of a tree: it cuts the very roots. And to cut the very roots is to destroy the tree. If you go on pruning the leaves — that’s what psychological work means: pruning the leaves — you are not going to destroy the tree at all. On the contrary, the more you prune it, the thicker the foliage will become. You cut one branch and three branches will come — because the tree will take the challenge that you are going to destroy it. Each and everything tries to survive. And when there is danger, the tree will make every effort to survive. That’s what happens.

If you want to drop your anger, you become angrier than before. If you want to drop your sexuality, you become more and more sexual than before. That’s what has happened to millions of people. 

They want to get out of the prison of sex; they make all kinds of efforts. Their desire is good; they are sincere people, but misguided. They start fighting with sex, and sexuality retaliates with a vengeance. These people become more sexual than ordinary people, their whole mind becomes full of sex. They think of sex, they dream of sex, and they are continuously fighting. The more they fight, the more they give energy to the enemy — because the more and more they become focused on the enemy. They cannot be off-guard.

This has happened down the centuries. You can see the monks, your so-called mahatmas, your so-called saints — their minds are ugly. And the reason is not that they are not sincere people; the reason is that they have started from a wrong end…

That’s why I say my concern is not your psychological growth but your spiritual growth.

Spiritual growth means growth of awareness; it means nothing else. Becoming more and more alert. Becoming a light unto yourself. And when you are a light unto yourself, darkness starts disappearing of its own accord.

The man of awareness cannot be angry — that is impossible, because to be angry the basic requirement is to be unaware. Try it, and you will be very much surprised. 

Try to be angry AND aware — you will not be able to manage; nobody has ever been able to manage it. It is impossible. It is not in the very nature of things.

When you are aware, anger will disappear. If you lose awareness, anger will appear. Both are not possible — just as light and darkness cannot exist together; they cannot have a coexistence.

Why can light and darkness not exist together? Because darkness has no substance in it; darkness has no existence in it. It is nothing but the absence of light, so how can absence and presence exist together? If light is there then absence cannot exist. 

If absence exists, light cannot be present there.
Awareness is a single solution to all the problems.

Greed cannot exist when you are aware — why? Because when you are aware, you are aware that you are the ultimate bliss, that you have the whole kingdom of God within you. What more can you desire, what greed? 

It will be utterly stupid. Greed exists in the person when he is not aware of his own kingdom, when he is not aware that he is a born emperor, and lives like a beggar.

The moment that you become aware that you have all the treasures of the world in you, that nothing is missing, how can greed exist? Greed means you know your inner poverty and you go on accumulating. Greed means you know that you are poor and you have to be rich.

The man of awareness becomes alert that he is rich already! and there is no possibility of becoming richer. He is divine! Greed cannot exist when you know that you are divine.

How can anger exist with a man who is aware? From where does anger come? Anger is a wound in the ego. When your ego is hurt, you become angry. But the man of awareness knows there is no ego at all — now, how can wounds happen to something which is found no more?

You escape from a rope in the night thinking it is a snake; you run, you are frightened to death. And then somebody laughs, takes hold of you — tells you, “It is not a snake, it is a rope! Come with me and we will take a lamp and we will see.” You go with the person, still afraid, still ready to escape in case it is not a rope but a snake. But the closer you come, the better you see… you start laughing. Now, can you be afraid when you have seen that it is a rope?

And it is not that when you had thought it was a snake your fear was unreal — it was absolutely real. It was almost like a heart attack. You were trembling, suffocating, out of breath. You might have died of fear, it was so real. But there was no real snake!

An unreal snake can create real fear. And that’s how it is happening: an unreal ego can create real anger. You feel offended and anger arises. When the light of awareness is inside you, you know there is no ego — there is no snake. Simply anger disappears. And how can you be afraid when you are aware? In awareness it is known that you will never die because you were never born, that birth and death are just on the surface, at the deepest core of your being you are deathless. Then fear disappears.

Yachana, you became worried when I said that I am not concerned with your psychological growth — because what is psychological growth? Helping you not to be angry, helping you not to be an egoist, helping you not to be afraid — that is psychological growth.

Spiritual growth means: helping you to be aware. And a single medicine cures all the illnesses.
And if we go on working on the surface, it may appear that you are changing, but deep down you remain unchanging. It may appear that you are attaining to some psychological maturity, but it will be only skin-deep. Scratch a little and you will find the same old man there.

All your psychological work will be just on the surface. You will appear as if you have changed, but that will be only an appearance. Any real situation will bring your real face back again. This is not transformation: this is just consolation. And I am not concerned with consoling you.

My effort here is to transmute you to let you become something utterly new that you have never dreamt about yourself. Something immensely valuable is hidden in you – that has to be discovered. That is your soul.

And unless you discover that hidden source of all life, you will only be playing games — psychological games, physiological games. Yoga got lost in physiological games. Your so-called yogis are only doing physiological exercises. They have their own benefits, I cannot deny it. They will make you healthier, but that health remains of the body. And the body will be gone when death comes, and with the body all your yoga postures too! And the whole effort that you had made will be lost.

Psychology and psychoanalysis have become too much focused on the mind of man.

Mind is not your real core. It is just a bridge between the body and the soul, and a very fragile bridge it is. It is a very non-substantial phenomenon, because it consists only of thoughts. Behind the mind there is your reality — you can call it soul, spirit, God or whatsoever you will.

My concern here is to help you to penetrate to that core. Once you have known that everything will settle in your life — because with that awareness you will be watchful of the body and you will be watchful of the mind, and all that is ugly will simply disappear.

That is the miracle of spiritual experiences: all that is ugly simply disappears, and all that is beautiful is enhanced. The evil disappears and the good is enhanced. The world and the worldly desires are no more relevant to you — a totally new dimension opens up.”
OSHO
From : Philosophia Perennis, V.2, Chapter Five