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

Osho Meditation Quotes

For Zen, meditation has to be a twenty-four-hour affair. It is not some extra act that you have to do.
The mind is constantly talking. If the inner talk can drop even for a single moment you will be able to have a glimpse of no-mind. That's what meditation is all about. The state of no-mind is the right state. It is your state.
Whenever a desire passes through your mind the stream becomes muddy. So just sit. Don't try to do anything. In Japan this 'just sitting' is called zazen; just sitting and doing nothing. And one day, meditation happens. Not that you bring it to you; it comes to you. And when it comes, you immediately recognize it; it has been always there but you were not looking in the right direction. The treasure has been with you but you were occupied somewhere else: in thoughts, in desires, in a thousand and one things. You were not interested in the only one thing... and that was your own being.
The more you understand the mechanism of the mind, the more the possibility is that you will not interfere. The more you understand how the mind functions, the more the possibility is that you will be able to sit in zazen; that you will be able just to sit, sit and do nothing; that you will be able to allow meditation to happen. It is a happening.
But the understanding of the mind will be helpful, otherwise you may go on doing something which helps the mind to continue to function, which goes on giving cooperation to the mind.
The mind is very ordinary, mundane. It is useful for day-to-day work; its function is in the outside world. In the inner world it is absolutely useless. Those who want to know their inner being have to go beyond mind.
They have to leave the mind behind. That is the whole process of meditation.
Postponement simply means you have not understood. Meditation is not yet on the top of your laundry list, it is somewhere at the bottom. First you will earn money, then you have to marry off your daughter, then your son is going to medical college, then you have to build a house, and so on and so forth -- the laundry list is infinite. And at the bottom of it -- if, God willing you are still alive ...most probably you will not be, because the list is too long and your life is too short -- you won't have time left to meditate. Death will come before meditation comes.
The teaching of the buddhas is: Find time and a place to remain unoccupied. That's what meditation is all about. Find at least one hour every day to sit silently doing nothing, utterly unoccupied, just watching whatsoever passes by inside. In the beginning you will be very sad, looking at things inside you; you will feel only darkness and nothing else, and ugly things and all kinds of black holes appearing. You will feel agony, no ecstasy at all. But if you persist, persevere, the day comes when all these agonies disappear, and behind the agonies is the ecstasy.
In meditation the ego dies, the ego disappears. Once the ego has disappeared, once you have seen yourself as an egoless entity, then there is no death for you.
A person who loves himself can easily become meditative, because meditation means being with yourself. If you hate yourself -- as you do, as you have been told to do, and you have been following it religiously -- if you hate yourself, how can you be with yourself? And meditation is nothing but enjoying your beautiful aloneness, celebrating yourself; that's what meditation is all about. Meditation is not a relationship; the other is not needed at all, one is enough unto oneself. One is bathed in one's own glory, bathed in one's own light. One is simply joyous because one is alive, because one is.
LOVE YOURSELF..., says Buddha. And then immediately he adds: AND WATCH.... That is meditation, that is Buddha's name for meditation. But the first requirement is to love yourself, and then watch. If you don't love yourself and start watching, you may feel like committing suicide.
Be aware, be alert, don't be unconscious. Don't behave in a sleepy way. Don't go on functioning like a machine, like a robot.
Meditation means putting the mind aside so that it no longer interferes with reality and you can see things as they are. Why does the mind interfere at all? -- because the mind is created by society. It is society's agent within you; it is not in your service, remember! It is your mind but it is not in your service; it is in a conspiracy against you. It has been conditioned by society; society has implanted many things in it. It is YOUR mind, but it no longer functions as a servant to you; it functions as a servant to society.
Meditation means: put the mind aside and watch. The first step -- LOVE YOURSELF -- will help you tremendously. By loving yourself you will have destroyed much that society has implanted within you. You will have become freer from the society and its conditioning. And the second step is: watch -- just watch. Buddha does not say what has to be watched -- everything! Walking, watch your walking. Eating, watch your eating. Taking a shower, watch the water, the cold water falling on you, the touch of the water, the coldness, the shiver that goes through your spine -- watch everything, TODAY, TOMORROW, ALWAYS.
A moment finally comes when you can watch even your sleep. That is the ultimate in watching. The body goes to sleep and there is still a watcher awake, silently watching the body fast asleep. That is the ultimate in watching. Right now just the opposite is the case: your BODY is awake but you are asleep. Then YOU will be awake and your body will be asleep. The body needs rest but your consciousness needs no sleep. Your consciousness IS consciousness; it is alertness, that is its very nature.