Osho - Concentration is not Meditation; it is just the opposite of Meditation

Question - Beloved Master, I have been doing meditation for almost forty years, but I am as far away from the goal of god-realization as ever. What should I do?

Osho - Surendranath, to make God a goal is to start in a wrong direction. God is not a goal; if you think in terms of goals God becomes your desire, an object of desire. Then God-realization is nothing but the ultimate glorification of the ego. Hence you have been missing. I don't know what kind of meditation you have been doing for forty years; it must be some wrong kind. It can't be right mindfulness -- what Buddha talks about -- it must be some wrong mindfulness. You must be doing some kind of concentration and thinking that this is meditation.

This is one of the greatest fallacies, very much prevalent in the so-called religious circles of the world, particularly in India. Concentration is thought to be meditation -- and concentration is not meditation; it is just the opposite of meditation. Concentration is a mind phenomenon. To concentrate upon something means you are focusing your mind on something. It has its own benefits, but those benefits are scientific, not religious. In science, concentration is needed; concentration is a scientific method. And your schools, colleges, universities, all prepare you for concentration because their preparation is for scientific goals, not for religious experience. Concentration means excluding everything out of the mind except one thing on which you are focusing.

Meditation simply means not focusing on anything at all, not even on God -- not focusing at all. Hence it does not exclude anything, it includes all. In meditation you relax, in concentration you become tense. In meditation you are in a deep rest, just alert about whatsoever is happening. A bird starts singing in the woods, a dog barks in the neighborhood, a child starts crying; the traffic noise on the road, delicious smells floating in the air from the kitchen... all this, everything that is present, that surrounds you -- all your five senses are alert, receiving.

Concentration can be disturbed because you are trying to focus on one thing; anything can disturb it. You are repeating "Rama, Rama, Rama," and a dog starts barking. Now you will be angry at the dog. The dog will look like the enemy who always disturbs you; whenever you meditate it starts barking. Must be an agent of the Devil! Or the child starts crying or the wife starts shouting at the kids, or something or other... and thousands of things are going on all around. You cannot stop the whole world because you are doing a foolish repetition: "Rama, Rama, Rama." You cannot stop the whole world for this. The world will continue.

And who knows? The dog may also be doing his concentration in his own way. Barking may be his Transcendental Meditation! They enjoy barking so much and they feel so exhilarated. Have you observed dogs when they bark, why they bark? Either they bark at the policeman or the postman or the sannyasin. They are against uniforms -- a very revolutionary approach! Any uniform... and the dog starts barking. He is never at ease with the uniform; he is always against, suspicious. Or they start barking at the moon. Maybe that is their way of appreciating beauty. And who are you to prevent them? They have as much right to bark as you have.

I have heard:
In an exhibition in Paris all kinds of dogs were exhibited. A couple of Russian dogs had also come and they were talking to the French dogs. The French dog said, "How are things in Russia?"

They said, "Things are beautiful, just beautiful! You can't imagine how beautiful things are. The food is perfect, medical care is perfect; everything that dogs have always imagined is fulfilled. We have attained utopia."
The French dogs felt very jealous, but when the time came for the Russian dogs to leave they asked the French dogs, "Can we renounce our Russian citizenship? Can we stay in France?"

The French dog said, "But why? You are enjoying utopia. Why should you want to stay here? For what?"
They said, "For only one reason: once in a while we want to bark, but barking is not allowed there. No freedom of speech! And once in a while we would like to bark, and we are ready to risk everything for it."

The dog is barking and you are chanting a mantra. He is not disturbing you -- he is doing HIS thing. But you will feel disturbed, not because of his barking but because of your effort to remain focused on one thing. It is because of your effort to focus that you feel distracted. A meditator is never disturbed, is never distracted. You cannot distract him because he starts watching the distraction too. He is just a watcher; he watches everything, distractions included. How can you distract him? He transforms even distractions, disturbances, into deep silence.

Surendranath, my feeling is you must have been doing some kind of concentration; otherwise... forty years is a long time! You must have followed some stupid pundit, some scholar. You may yourself have become a scholar. Forty years is a long time. You may have read the YOGA SUTRAS of Patanjali and you may have read other books on meditation -- and they all talk about concentration.

Buddha is the first person in the history of humanity who has not talked about concentration but about meditation. And he changed the whole phenomenon of meditation; he gave it a totally new color, a new form, a new life. You must be reading people who have not experienced anything but who go on writing.

Murphy's advice will be helpful to you. Murphy says: When all else fails, read the instructions.

I think for forty years you have been doing meditation without reading the instructions. Try to understand what right mindfulness is. In India people go on doing all kinds of things. They concentrate, they chant mantras, they fast, they torture their bodies, and they hope that through all these masochistic practices they will realize God. As if God is a sadist! As if God loves you to torture yourself! As if he demands that the more you torture yourself, the more worthy you become. God is not a sadist; you need not be a masochist.

I have come across people who think that without long fasting there is no possibility of meditation. Now, fasting has nothing to do with meditation. Fasting will only make you obsessed with food. And there are people who think celibacy will help them into meditation. Meditation brings a kind of celibacy, but not vice versa. A celibacy without meditation is nothing but sexual repression. And your mind will become more and more sexual, so whenever you sit to meditate your mind will become full of fantasies, sexual fantasies.

These two things have been the greatest problems for the so-called meditators: fasting and celibacy. They think these two things are going to help -- they are the greatest disturbances!

Eat in right proportions. Buddha calls it "the middle way": neither too much nor too little. He is against fasting, and he knows it through hard experience. For six years he fasted and could not attain to anything. So when he says, "Be in the middle," he means it. About celibacy also: don't enforce it upon yourself. It is a by-product of meditation, hence it cannot be enforced before meditation. Be in the middle there too, neither too much indulgence nor too much renunciation. Just keep a balance. A balanced person will be more healthy, at ease, at home. And when you are at home, meditation is easier.

What then is meditation? Just sitting silently doing nothing, witnessing whatsoever is happening all around; just watching it with no prejudice, no conclusion, no idea what is wrong and what is right.

Surendranath, start from ABC. Forget all those forty years. It is good that you have survived those forty years.

A peddler told a friend that the food for his horse was using up all his profits. The friend suggested that he slowly slowly, reduce the horse's diet by one straw at a time.
Sometime later he ran into his friend again.
"So, Abe, how are things?"
"Terrible!" exclaimed Abe. "I got the horse down to where he was only eating one straw a day and then suddenly he died!"

Surendranath, you have survived -- good! God is gracious. Otherwise, forty years of the wrong kind of meditation, austerities, can kill anybody. You are a strong man -- you have survived. And if you have come here, please put aside your whole knowledge. It has not worked, now don't let it disturb you. Now put it aside completely. Start afresh with me. Still there is hope, there is always hope.

My meditation is simple; it does not require any complex practices. It is very simple. It is singing, it is dancing. It is sitting silently. It is being at ease with existence. It is accepting existence as your home. Forget about God-realization. By your thinking you will never realize God. You simply enjoy life, celebrate life. And one day, when the celebration reaches to its peak, suddenly the curtain disappears from your eyes and the whole existence is nothing but divine. There is no God, but the whole existence is full of godliness. That is God-realization, that is nirvana.

Source - from Osho Book "The Dhammapada Vol 8"

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