Meditation Quotes, Meditation Sayings, Meditation Quotes of Osho, Quotes on Meditation

Osho Meditation Quotes

Meditation always means no-mind. When the mind is extinguished, the same energy that was involved in the mind becomes your meditation.
Creative persons get more easily into-meditation and go deeper. Poets, painter, musicians, dancers, can get into meditation more easily than businessmen -- they live a routine life, absolutely uncreative.
Mind means words; self means silence. Mind is nothing but all the words that you have accumulated; silence is that which has always been with you, it is not an accumulation. That is the meaning of self. It is your intrinsic quality. On the background of silence you go on accumulating words, and the words in total are known as the mind. Silence is meditation. It is a question of changing the gestalt, shifting the attention from words into silence -- which is always there.
The ambitious mind cannot meditate because the basic foundation of meditation is to be non-ambitious. Ambition means the effort to control others. That is what politics is: the effort to control the whole world. If you want to control others you will have to listen to the mind, because the mind enjoys violence very much.
In Japan they have developed strange things for meditative purposes... Japan has done a tremendous service to humanity. Meditation was developed in India, but it remained a very limited phenomenon -- just sitting in a lotus posture witnessing your thoughts, becoming silent. It did the work, but Japan tried different dimensions, strange dimensions: swordsmanship, but with meditation. Two swordsmen bent upon killing each other have to remain centered in themselves without tension, without fear, without anger, without revenge, just playful.
In meditation you are not unconscious, you are conscious -- more conscious than ever.
Meditation will make you ultimately rich by giving you the world of your innermost being and also relatively rich, because it will release your powers of mind into certain talents that you have. My own experience is that everybody is born with a certain talent, and unless he lives that talent to its fullest, something in him will remain missing. He will go on feeling that somehow something is not there that should be. Give mind a rest -- it needs it! And it is so simple: just become a witness to it.
Slowly, slowly mind starts learning to be silent. And once it knows that by being silent it becomes powerful, then its words are not just words; they have a validity and a richness and a quality that they never had before -- so much so that they go directly, like arrows. They bypass the logical barriers and reach to the very heart. Then mind is a good servant of immense power in the hands of silence. Then the being is the master, and the master can use the mind whenever it is needed and can switch it off whenever it is not needed.
Meditation is the source, compassion is the overflow of that source. The nonmeditative man has no energy for love, for compassion, for celebration. The nonmeditative person is disconnected from his own source of energy; he is not in contact with the ocean. He has a little bit of energy that is created by food, by air, by matter -- he lives on physical energy.
Remember, each situation has to become an opportunity to meditate. What is meditation? Becoming aware of what you are doing, becoming aware of what is happening to you. Somebody insults you: become aware. What is happening to you when the insult reaches you? Meditate over it; this is changing the whole gestalt. When somebody insults you, you concentrate on the person -- "Why is he insulting me? Who does he think he is? How can I take revenge?" If he is very powerful you surrender, you start wagging your tail. If he is not very powerful and you see that he is weak, you pounce on him. But you forget yourself completely in all this; the other becomes the focus. This is missing an opportunity for meditation. When somebody insults you, meditate.
No-mind is another name for meditation.
To me, music and meditation are two aspects of the same phenomenon. And without music, meditation lacks something; without music, meditation is a little dull, unalive. Without meditation, music is simply noise -- harmonious, but noise. Without meditation, music is an entertainment. And without music, meditation becomes more and more negative, tends to be death-oriented.
The man who believes in individualism is not an individual. The man who is really an individual need not believe -- he knows it, so what is the point of believing? Belief is always needed in ignorance, and individualism is a belief. To be an individual is an experience! Individualism is very cheap, but to be an individual needs arduous discipline. It needs great perseverance, work, watchfulness. It comes only out of years of effort in awareness, in meditation.
Remember the source: real knowing comes through meditation, awareness, consciousness, mindfulness, watchfulness, witnessing. And unreal knowledge comes through scriptures. You can learn the unreal knowledge very easily and you can brag about it, but you will remain a fool -- a learned fool, but a fool all the same.
Only the meditator is not an escapist -- everybody else is. Meditation means getting out of desire, getting out of thoughts, getting out of mind. Meditation means relaxing in the moment, in the present. Meditation is the only thing in the world which is not escapist, although it is thought to be the most escapist thing. People who condemn meditation always condemn it with the argument that it is escape, escaping from life. They are simply talking nonsense; they don't understand what they are saying. Meditation is not escaping from life: it is escaping into life. Mind is escaping from life, desire is escaping from life.