Aug 19, 2008
11,653
167
0
Sri Lanka
osho03.jpg
Osho


Meditation..

"My approach is a discontinuity with the past. I teach you first to live as a Zorba, and only on that foundation will be raised the temple of your buddhahood. And in this way we are joining the outer and the inner in a single unity. The outer is also yours as much as the inner."

What is Meditation?

Meditation is the state of simply being, just pure experiencing, with no interference from the body or mind.

Meditative methods, techniques or devices are means by which to create an inner ambience that facilitates disconnecting from the body mind so one can simply be.

Methods are needed only until the state of meditation – of relaxed awareness, of consciousness and centering – has become not just a passing experience but as intrinsic to one as, say, breathing.
 
Last edited:
Aug 19, 2008
11,653
167
0
Sri Lanka
osho03.jpg
Osho

We train a child to focus his mind, to concentrate,
because without concentration he will not be able to cope with life.
Life requires it; the mind must be able to concentrate.
But the moment the mind becomes able to concentrate,
it becomes less aware.

Awareness means a mind that is conscious but not focused.

Awareness is a consciousness of all that is happening.


Meditation, and all meditation devices, can do one thing: push you away from your negative hindrances. It can bring you out of the imprisonment that is the mind, and when you have come out you will laugh. It was so easy to come out, it was right there. Only one step was needed. But we go on in a circle and the one step is always missed, the one step that can bring you to the center.

You go on in a circle on the periphery, repeating the same things; somewhere the continuity must be broken. That is all that can be done by any meditation method. If the continuity is broken, if you become discontinuous with you past, then that very moment is the explosion!

In that very moment you are centered, centered in your being, and then you know all that has always been yours, all that has just been awaiting you.
 
Aug 19, 2008
11,653
167
0
Sri Lanka
Osho discourse on Receptivity


RECEPTIVITY is a state of no-mind. When you are utterly empty of all thought, when consciousness has no content, when the mirror reflects nothing, it is receptivity. Receptivity is the door to the divine. Drop the mind and be.

In the mind, you are miles away from being. The more you think, the less you are. The less you think, the more you are. And if you don't think at all, those are the moments when being asserts itself in its totality.

Receptivity simply means dropping the garbage that you go on carrying in your head. And much garbage is there, utterly useless. The mind means the past. Now the past is no more of any use; it has happened, and it is never going to happen again, because in reality nothing ever repeats.

Even when you think, feel, that this is the same situation, it is never the same situation. Each morning is a new morning, and each morning the sun that you encounter is the new sun. I am not talking about the material sun. I am talking about the beauty, the benediction, the blessing that it brings every day -- it is so utterly new.

If you go on carrying pictures of the past, you will not be able to see the new. Your eyes will be covered with your experiences, expectations, and those eyes will not be able to see that which confronts you.

That's how we go on missing life: the past becomes a barrier, encloses you, traps you, into something that is no more. You become encapsulated in the dead. And the more you become experienced, grown-up, the shell of the dead experience goes on becoming thicker and thicker around you. You become more and more closed.

Slowly slowly all windows, all doors, are closed. Then you exist, but you exist alienated, you exist uprooted. Then you don't have a communion with life. You don't have a communion with the trees and the stars and the mountains. YOU CAN'T have a communion, because a great China Wall of your past surrounds you.

When I say become receptive, I mean become a child again.

Remember Jesus, who goes on saying to his disciples: Unless you are like small children you will not be able to enter into my kingdom of God. What he is saying is exactly the meaning of receptivity. The child is receptive because he knows nothing; not knowing anything, he is receptive.

The old man is not receptive because he knows too much; knowing too much, he is closed. He has to be reborn, he has to die to the past and become a child again -- not in the body, of course, but the consciousness should always be like a child; not childish, remember, but like a child, grown-up, mature, but innocent.

And that's how one learns, learns the truth that is presented to you every moment of your life, learns to know the Guest which comes and knocks on your doors every moment, day in, day out, year in, year out. But you are so surrounded by your own inner talk, by your own inner procession of thoughts, that you don't hear the knock.

Do you hear the distant call of the cuckoo? Do you hear the birds chirping? This is receptivity. It is an existential state of silence, utter silence; no movement, nothing stirs, and yet you are not asleep, and yet you are alert, and yet you are absolutely aware.

Where silence and awareness meet, mingle and become one, there is receptivity. Receptivity is the MOST important religious quality.Become a child. Start functioning from the state of not-knowing, and then silence will come of its own accord, and great awareness. And then life is a benediction.
 
Aug 19, 2008
11,653
167
0
Sri Lanka
Osho Vipassana meditation Quotes


Osho Vipassana meditation Quotes
  1. 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.
  2. 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.

  3. Vipassana is SO simple that you don't take any note of it. 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.

  4. If you want the silent meditation that Gautam Buddha has given to the world, vipassana, you have to be vegetarian. A non-vegetarian will find it very difficult, because the meditation is for a very sensitive person, and a meat eater is hard. He is not very sensitive; he is insensitive. He has been eating it from childhood so he has no awareness; he has become accustomed to it.

  5. Kaveesha, there is nothing more to say about vipassana meditation. The word `vipassana' means watching, particularly watching the breath -- as it comes out, as it goes in. You simply continue to watch it, its movement in and out. And the method has not to be dropped, because when the time comes it disappears of its own accord.

    When your watchfulness is perfect, the method disappears. All the methods that I have given to you are such that you will not need to drop them. Just use them to perfection, and the moment they are perfect they will drop on their own -- just like ripe fruit falling from the tree. And when a method disappears on its own, it has a beauty; then your watchfulness is unscratched.

  6. Buddha's way was VIPASSANA -- vipassana means witnessing. And he found one of the greatest devices ever: the device of watching your breath, just watching your breath. Breathing is such a simple and natural phenomenon and it is there twenty-four hours a day. You need not make any effort. If you repeat a mantra then you will have to make an effort, you will have to force yourself.

    If you say, "Ram, Ram, Ram," you will have to continuously strain yourself. And you are bound to forget many times. Moreover, the word 'Ram' is again something of the mind, and anything of the mind can never lead you beyond the mind. Buddha discovered a totally different angle: just watch your breath -- the breath coming in, the breath going out.

  7. Vipassana simply means watching your breath, looking at your breath. It is not like YOGA PRANAYAMA: it is not changing your breath to a certain rhythm -- deep breathing, fast breathing. No, it does not change your breathing at all; it has nothing to do with the breathing. Breathing has only to be used as a device to watch because it is a constant phenomenon in you. You can simply watch it, and it is the most subtle phenomenon. If you can watch your breath then it will be easy for you to watch your thoughts.

  8. Buddha became enlightened through this simple method. He calls it vipassana, insight. Breathing brings great insight and when you are aware of breathing, the whole thought process simply comes to a stop -- and great stillness arises. After watching your breathing, it will be easy to watch your thinking directly, because breathing is a little gross.


    Thinking is more subtle. Thoughts have no weight, they are weightless; they can't be measured, they are immeasurable. That's why the materialists cannot accept them. Matter means measure -- that which can be measured is matter. So thought is not matter because it cannot be measured. It is, and yet it cannot be measured; hence it is an epiphenomenon.

    The materialist says, "It is only a by-product, a side effect, a shadow phenomenon" -- just as you walk in the sun, a shadow follows you. But the shadow is nothing. You walk in life and thinking arises, but it is only a shadow. If you watch this shadow, this epiphenomenon, these thoughts and the processes of thought... it is going to be a more subtle phenomenon because it is not as gross as breathing.


    But first, learn the process of awareness through breathing and then move to thinking. And you will be surprised: the more you watch your thinking... again, either you can watch or you can think. Both cannot be done simultaneously. If you watch, thinking disappears.


    If thinking appears, watching disappears. When you have become alert enough to watch your thoughts and let them disappear through watching, then move to feeling -- which is even more subtle. And these are the three steps of vipassana. First breathing, second thinking, third feeling. And when all these three have disappeared, what is left is your being. To know it is to know all. To conquer it is to conquer all.





    Related Articles
    1. Osho on consciousness
    2. Osho Meditation Quotes
    3. Osho on "Who Am I" Question
    4. Osho on Bankei, Zen Master Bankei
    5. Osho Discourse on Sex and Money
    6. Osho Story on Rabindranath Tagore
    7. Osho on Ramtha, Messages from Ramtha
    8. Osho Discourse on "Life is paradoxical"
    9. Osho on Wintessing, What is Witnessing
    10. Osho on Gautam Buddha Renounciation
    11. Osho Discourse on Osho on Guilt and Fear
    12. Osho on Narada Bhakti Sutras, Books Osho loved
    13. Osho on Seeking and Seeker, Osho Rabia parable
    14. Osho on Compassion, Compassion is Therapeutic
    15. Osho Discourse on Body and Ultimate Reality
    16. Osho on Zazen Meditation, Zazen Sitting Meditation
    17. Osho on Gurdjieff Stories, George Gurdjieff Stories
    18. Osho on Mahakashyap, First Zen Master Mahakashyap
    19. Osho Mulla Nasruddin Stories, Mulla Nasruddin Sufi Stories
    20. Osho Discourse to Question " I feel Life is very boring"
    21. Osho on The Secret Doctrine - Blavatsky, Books Osho Loved
    22. Osho Active meditations, Osho Quotes on Active Meditations
    23. Why Osho Active Meditations, need of Osho Active Meditations
    24. Osho Discourse on Friedrich Nietzsche statement that God is dead?


 
Aug 19, 2008
11,653
167
0
Sri Lanka
Buddha's way was VIPASSANA -- vipassana means witnessing. And he found one of the greatest devices ever: the device of watching your breath, just watching your breath. Breathing is such a simple and natural phenomenon and it is there twenty-four hours a day. You need not make any effort. If you repeat a mantra then you will have to make an effort, you will have to force yourself.

If you say, "Ram, Ram, Ram," you will have to continuously strain yourself. And you are bound to forget many times. Moreover, the word 'Ram' is again something of the mind, and anything of the mind can never lead you beyond the mind. Buddha discovered a totally different angle: just watch your breath -- the breath coming in, the breath going out.
 

crazyfool

Member
May 23, 2007
1,852
0
0
38
UK
I've done the thing where you ask the question "Who am I". You find out that the Observer and the Observed are the same thing. In effect, you understand something odd about this thing that goes on in your head called thought. Meditation is excellent, but takes a lot of patience and determination to sit. :) I wish I had that.