Osho Meditation Quotes

Osho Meditation Quotes

1. The meditation that I teach is so simple, so scientific, that if a hundred people take to it, seventy of them are going to make it. There is no condition that you are qualified to do it; that you do it is all that is needed. Besides, you are not required to owe allegiance to any religion, any scripture, or to have faith and belief as a pre-condition to meditation.
2. Thoughtlessness removes the covering. Thoughtlessness is meditation. When there is no thinking, it is then we come to know the one hidden by our thoughts. When there are no clouds the blue sky comes into view. My friends, there is a sky within you as well. Remove the cloud of thoughts so it can be seen, so it can be known. This is possible. When the mind is at rest and there are no thoughts in it, then in the silence, in that deep thoughtlessness, in the total absence of thought, truth is seen.
3. Right-awareness is the method of meditation.
4. The process of meditation does not take you to some new world it only introduces you to the world where you have been for lives upon lives. The process of meditation does not add anything to you, it only takes away what is wrong; cuts it away, sheds it off.
5. The person who wants to go in meditation, has first to be free of these suppressions. We have suppressed anger. We have suppressed desires. We have suppressed worries. There are thousand and one things we have suppressed in our minds. When we wanted to weep, we have not wept; when we wanted to laugh, we have not laughed; when we wanted to shout, we have not shouted; when we wanted to dance, we have not danced. All that we have kept suppressed. There are thousand and one kinds of suppressions in the mind as well as in the body. Unless those repressions are dropped, mind cannot be light enough to be in meditation.
6. If you were only to listen, it becomes meditation. Without meditation you cannot hear. What is the meaning of meditation? Meditation exists only where mind is not; where the internal dialogue is gone.
7. Meditation means an alertness, a freshness, a constant wakefulness, not a single moment of insensibility.
8. Waiting is important, necessary, but not enough. Together with awaiting one should know how to sit at the bank of the stream of the mind. If we sit in the current of the river and wait, there will be no results. Our very being in the river will bring up the dirt. The art of standing aside from the river is meditation. Awaiting is a necessary part of meditation but it, in itself, is not meditation. He who cannot wait cannot meditate; but he who thinks awaiting is meditation is also wrong. Meditation is the art of sitting on the bank. The mind has its own stream of thoughts. No matter how hard you try to watch it with patient awaiting, you shall never be able to step out of the mind. Nor will the stream of the mind clear. Your very presence pollutes the mind. Step out of the mind. Sit on its bank and watch it from a distance, as you would watch the birds in the sky, as you would watch a river flow by. The further you step away from the mind, the clearer and purer will it become. It will become silent, tranquil. This is one thing.
9. I do not consider thoughtful meditation true meditation. True meditation is free from thought, because freedom from thought itself is meditation. Where there is no thought, no deliberation, there is meditation. In deep slumber too there is no thought-process. Hence to say that the absence of thought alone is meditation is not enough. That would imply negation while meditation is not merely the negation of anything. It is also the positive presence of something. That positive something is sentience, awareness, understanding. Hence wakefulness, full consciousness is meditation. Full consciousness is possible only when it is free from thought.
10. The secret of meditation is the art of unlearning. Mind is learning; meditation is unlearning: that is — die constantly to your experience; let it not imprison you; experience becomes a dead weight in the living and flowing, riverlike consciousness.
11. In the West meditation simply means to think about something concentratedly. That is not meditation. In the East meditation means to not think at all. It has nothing to do with ‘about this or that’, it is non-objective. There is no object in it, only pure subjectivity. Soren Kierkegaard said: The innermost core of man is pure subjectivity. That’s what meditation is.
12. To be meditation means an effort to be aware. To be aware of the whole process of life, but in the beginning one can chose some object like breathing. It is a very natural object to be aware: The ingoing and the outgoing of the breath. Be aware constantly: the breath has gone out, it has come in; and the rhythm and the process and the in and out going phenomena, be aware of it. The moment you will be aware, you feel a certain change, a certain chemical change within your mind. Because when you become aware of the breathing process, mind becomes silent. The silence is automatically created. Because your total mind is engaged in seeing, in witnessing the breathing. And the rhythmic circle of breath creates an inner music. That inner music too leads you to more and more silent and sweeter moments within. When you are walking or bathing or eating or doing anything, doing farming, be aware of your breath. But this awareness, this effort of awareness should not be a strain; it should be effortless. The very effort should be effortless. It should not be strenuous, it should not become a tension, you should not do it upto an anxiety is created or a strain is created or you feel some inner tension in doing it. The effort should be effortless. It means do it without any strain.
13. You cannot be meditative with a desiring mind. Because a desiring mind creates another current of desire against the current of awareness. Desire is part and parcel of unconscious mind. So if you desire too much, even if you desire for God, even if you desire for liberation, even if you desire for meditation, samadhi, this too will become a barrier. So don’t desire. Just be curious to know, to know what is meditation. Don’t make meditation to a means towards anything else. Meditation should be the end.
14. Really, there can be no method as far as meditation is concerned. Meditation is not a method. Through technique, through method, you cannot go beyond mind. When you leave all methods, all techniques, you transcend mind. So meditation itself is not a method. Truth cannot be achieved through method.
15. It sounds very illogical to a western mind: meditation without religion? Yes… in fact, if you believe in any religion you cannot meditate. Religion is an interference in your meditation. Meditation needs no God, no heaven, no hell, no fear of punishment, and no allurement of pleasure. Meditation has nothing to do with mind; meditation is beyond it, whereas religion is only mind, it is within mind.
16. Meditation comes only to those who are interested in meditation as an end in itself. Silence comes: that is another thing. Peace comes: that is another thing. The divine comes: that is another thing. These are consequences, byproducts; they cannot be longed for because that very longing creates tension.
17. You must take meditation as a game, a child’s game. People who meditate should be playful — playing with existence, playing with life — weightless, non-tense; not in a doing mood but in a relaxed mood. It is only in a relaxed moment, only in a playful moment, that the happening is possible.