MEDITATION - IS FLOWERING, COOL, PLAYFUL, RELAXATION AND TRANSFORMATION

MEDITATION - IS FLOWERING, COOL, PLAYFUL, RELAXATION AND TRANSFORMATION

FLOWERING

"Remember, meditation will bring you more and more intelligence, infinite intelligence, a radial intelligence. Meditation will make you more alive and sensitive; your life will become richer.

"Look at the ascetics: their life has become almost as if it is not life. These people are not meditators. They may be masochists, torturing themselves and enjoying the torture... The mind is very cunning, it goes on doing things and rationalizing them.

"Ordinarily you are violent towards others but the mind is very cunning – it can learn non-violence, it can preach nonviolence, then it becomes violent towards itself. And the violence that you do on your own self is respected by people because they have an idea that to be an ascetic is to be religious. That is sheer nonsense. God is not an ascetic, otherwise there would be no flowers, there would be no green trees, only deserts. God is not an ascetic, otherwise there would be no song in life, no dance in life – only cemeteries and cemeteries. God is not an ascetic: God enjoys life. God is more Epicurean than you can imagine. If you think about God, think in terms of Epicurus. God is a constant search for more and more happiness, joy, ecstasy. Remember that.

"But mind is very cunning. It can rationalize paralysis as meditation; it can rationalize dullness as transcendence: it can rationalize deadness as renunciation. Watch out. Always remember that if you are moving in the right direction, you will go on flowering."

MEDITATION IS COOL

COOL

"If you go to Catholic, Jaina, Buddhist monks you will find them very nervous – maybe not so nervous in their monasteries, but if you bring them out to the world, you will find them very, very nervous because on each step there is temptation. 

"A man of meditation comes to a point where there is no temptation left. Try to understand it. Temptation never comes from without: it is the repressed desire, repressed energy, repressed sex, repressed greed that creates temptation. Temptation comes from within you, it has nothing to do with the without. It is not that a devil comes and tempts you, it is your own repressed mind that becomes devilish and wants to take revenge. To control that mind one has to remain so cold and frozen that no life energy is allowed to move into your limbs, into your body. If energy is allowed to move, those repressions will surface. That's why people have learned how to be cold, how to touch others and yet not touch them, how to see people and yet not see them.

"People live with cliches – 'Hello, how are you?' Nobody means anything. These are just to avoid the real encounter of two persons. People don't look into each other's eyes, they don't hold hands, they don't try to feel each other's energy, they don't allow each other to pour. Very afraid, somehow just managing... cold and dead. In a strait-jacket.

"A man of meditation has learned how to be full of energy, at the maximum, optimum. He lives at the peak, he makes his abode at the peak. Certainly he has a warmth but it is not feverish, it only shows life. He is not hot, he is cool because he is not carried away by desires. He is so happy that he is no longer seeking any happiness. He is so at ease, he is so at home, he is not going anywhere, he is not running and chasing... he is very cool." 

MEDITATION IS PLAYFUL

PLAYFUL

"Meditation is not anything of the mind, it is something beyond the mind. The first step is to be playful about it. If you are playful about it, mind cannot destroy your meditation. Otherwise it will turn it into another ego trip; it will make you very serious. You will start thinking, 'I am a great meditator. I am holier than other people, and the whole world is just worldly – I am religious, I am virtuous.' That's what has happened to thousands of so-called saints, moralists, puritans: they are just playing ego games, subtle ego games.

"Hence I want to cut the very root of it from the very beginning. Be playful about it. It is a song to be sung, a dance to be danced. Take it as fun and you will be surprised: if you can be playful about meditation, meditation will grow in leaps and bounds. But you are not hankering after any goal; you are just enjoying sitting silently, just enjoying the very act of sitting silently – not that you are longing for some yogic powers, siddhis, miracles. All that is nonsense, the same old nonsense, the same old game, played with new words, on a new plane....

"Life as such has to be taken as a cosmic joke – and then suddenly you relax because there is nothing to be tense about. And in that very relaxation, something starts changing in you – a radical change, a transformation – and the small things of life starts having new meaning, new significance. Then nothing is small, everything starts taking on a new flavor, a new aura; one starts feeling a kind of godliness everywhere. One does not become a Christian, does not become a Hindu, does not become a Mohammedan; one simply becomes a lover of life. One learns only one thing, how to rejoice in life.

"But rejoicing in life is the way towards God. Dance your way to God, laugh your way to god, sing your way to God!" 

Osho, The Golden Wind. Talk #8

MEDITATION IS RELAXATION

RELAXATION

"Meditation is rest, absolute rest, a full stop to all activity – physical, mental, emotional. When you are in such a deep rest that nothing stirs in you, when all action as such ceases – as if you are fast asleep yet awake – you come to know who you are. Suddenly the window opens. It cannot be opened by effort because effort creates tension – and tension is the cause of our whole misery. Hence this is something very fundamental to be understood that meditation is not effort.

"One has to be very playful about meditation, one has to learn to enjoy it as fun. One has not to be serious about it – be serious and you miss. One has to go into it very joyously. And one has to keep aware that it is falling into deeper and deeper rest. It is not concentration, just the contrary, it is relaxation. When you are utterly relaxed, for the first time you start feeling your reality; you come face to face with your being. When you are engaged in activity you are so occupied that you cannot see yourself. Activity creates much smoke around you, it raises much dust around you; hence all activity has to be dropped, at least for a few hours per day.

"That is only so in the beginning. When you have learnt the art of being at rest you can be both active and restful together, because then you know that rest is something so inner that it cannot be disturbed by anything outer. The activity goes on at the circumference, at the center you remain restful. So it is only in the beginning that activity has to be dropped for a few hours. When one has learned the art, then there is no question: for twenty-four hours a day one can be meditative and one can continue all the activities of ordinary life.

"But remember, the key word is rest, relaxation. Never go against rest and relaxation. Arrange your life in such a way, drop all futile activity because ninety per cent is futile; it is just for killing time and remaining occupied. Do only the essential and devote your energies more and more to the inner journey. Then that miracle happens when you can remain at rest and in action together, simultaneously. That is the meeting of the sacred and the mundane, the meeting of this world and that, the meeting of materialism and spiritualism."

Osho, The Golden Wind, Talk #15 

MEDITATION IS TRANSFORMATION

TRANSFORMATION

"If you feel much resistance against meditation, it simply shows that deep down you are alert that something is going to happen which will change your whole life. You are afraid of being reborn. You have invested too much in your old habits, in the old personality, in the old identity.

"Meditation is nothing but trying to clean your being, trying to become fresh and young, trying to become more alive and more alert. If you are afraid of meditation it means you are afraid of life, you are afraid of awareness, and the resistance comes because you know that if you move into meditation, something is bound to happen. If you are not resisting at all, it may be because you don't take meditation very seriously, you don't take meditation very sincerely. Then you can play around – what is there to be afraid of?"

Osho, Ancient Music in the Pines, Talk #4

Resistance - Falsities - Afraid?

Chapter 4: Be a Light unto Yourself

Live more authentically. Drop the masks; they are a weight on your heart. 

Drop all falsities. Be exposed. Of course it is going to be troublesome, but that trouble is worth it because only after that trouble will you grow and become mature. 

And then nothing is holding life. Each moment life reveals its newness. It is a constant miracle happening all around you; only you are hiding behind dead habits.

Become a buddha if you don’t want to be bored. Live each moment as fully alert as possible, because only in full alertness will you be able to drop the mask, otherwise you have completely forgotten what your original face is. 

Even when you stand before the mirror in your bathroom and you are alone, there is nobody there. Even standing before the mirror you don’t see your original face in the mirror; there too you go on deceiving.

Existence is available for those who are available to existence. And then I tell you, there is no boredom. Life is infinite delight.