Oshobuddha Center Meditations Osho has created more methods for awakening spiritual seekers to their Buddha nature than any other contemporary Master. The following meditation techniques are an important part of some of the devices Osho uses. Osho's insights give us ordinary everyday living situations where we can become more aware. But meditation methods can only take you part of the way. In fact there are many paths not just one. Each and every one of us are unique individuals and for each of us a method for going within is needed. These following give us the opportunity for us to exhaust all our efforts to reach the here and now and therefore find ourselves. Think of these methods as an adventure. An adventure that is simply here and now. Meditation is a very simple process: all that you need to know is the right button. The Upanishads call it "witnessing" -- the right button. Just witness your mind process, don't do anything at all. Nothing needs to be done, just be a witness, an observer, a watcher, looking at the traffic of the mind -- thoughts passing by, desires, memories, dreams, fantasies. Simply stand aloof, cool -- watching it, seeing it, with no judgment, with no condemnation, neither saying, "This is good," nor saying, "This is bad." Don't bring your moral concepts in, otherwise you will never be able to meditate. That's why I am against the so-called morality: it is anti-meditation, because a so-called moral person is so full of his moral ideas -- shoulds and should-nots -- that he cannot watch, he cannot simply watch. He jumps to conclusions: "This is not right and this is right." And whatsoever he feels is right, he wants to cling to it; and whatsoever he thinks is wrong, he wants to throw it out. He jumps among the thoughts, starts fighting, grabbing. And that's where he loses all witnessing. Witnessing simply means a detached observation, unprejudiced; that's the whole secret of meditation. It is simple! Once you have known the knack of it it is the most simple thing in the world, because each child is born in that innocence. You have known it in your mother's womb, you have known it when you were a small child -- so it is only a rediscovery. Meditation is not something new; you have come with it into the world. Mind is something new; meditation is your nature. It is your nature, it is your very being. How can it be difficult? You just have to know the knack: watch. Sit by the side of a river and watch the river flowing. Yes, sometimes driftwood passes by and sometimes a boat comes and sometimes a dead body and sometimes a beautiful woman may be swimming in the river -- you simply watch, you don't get bothered, you remain cool, you don't get excited. You are not supposed to do anything, you have nothing to do. It is the river and it is the river's business. You simply sit silently. Sitting silently, slowly slowly the art is learned... And one day, the moment your watchfulness is total, the mind evaporates. "Love is the heart of meditation, meditation is the heart of love. They are together, two names for the same phenomenon. The approaches are different, but the same peak, the same climax, is attained. A few people will find it easy to follow the path of meditation -- in fact fifty percent of people in the world will find it easy to follow the path of meditation: Zen is their way. And fifty percent will find love closer to their being: Sufism is their way. In a real world, an intelligent world, there will be only two paths, Sufism and Zen, and all else will disappear. All else is futile. Why two? Because there are men and there are women. And remember, by 'men' I don't mean biological men, because there are women who are psychologically men, and there are men who are psychologically women. I mean psychological men and women. There are men who are more capable of love than any woman, but they are few. There are a few women who are more capable of meditation than any man, but they are few. The majority of women will have to follow Sufism, and the majority of men will have to follow Zen. But biologically it cannot be determined; it is a totally different affair. You have to watch yourself: whichever feels good for you, whichever feels natural, spontaneous, that is your path." Osho, Unio Mystica Vol. 2 #1 Osho Buddha's Meditation Buddha's method was: FIRST WATCH YOUR BREATHING COMING IN AND GOING OUT. Start with breathing because that is a gross thing and can be watched more easily. Start with the most gross: watch your breathing coming in, going out. He divided your breathing in four steps. First, THE BREATH COMES IN. You just watch the breath going in, the subtle touch, your lungs being filled with it. Then there comes A MOMENT OF PAUSE -- for a split second all stops; the breath is in, nothing is moving. Watch that pause because that is the most important thing. Then another process begins: THE BREATH STARTS GOING OUT. Watch it again. Then your lungs are empty, they shrink; the breath has gone out totally. AGAIN THERE IS A PAUSE -- for a split second all stops. Watch that too, because these two pauses are the most significant for the meditators. Then the breath starts coming in. So these are four things: THE BREATH COMING IN, THE BREATH GOING OUT AND THE TWO PAUSES AT BOTH ENDS. Those two pauses, when everything stops, are of tremendous silence. If you can watch those pauses, then comes the second step: START WATCHING YOUR THOUGHTS. Each thought goes through the same process, the same four steps. THE THOUGHT COMES IN, STAYS FOR A MOMENT, GOES OUT, AND THE PAUSE. ANOTHER THOUGHT COMES IN, PAUSE, THE THOUGHT GOES OUT. Start watching your thoughts. And the third step is . . . Because of watching your breath and thoughts you have come to know now that you are neither thoughts nor your breath; YOU ARE THE WATCHER, THE WITNESS. This is AWARENESS. This is what I call MEDITATION. Once you have known this awareness you are unidentified with your body, with your mind. Now you experience a vastness inside you, in one sense utterly empty and in another sense overflowingly full. Because of its emptiness you will remain calm and quiet. And because of its overflowing fullness you will be creative. But PLEASE -- don't go on guessing, thinking. Experiment, experience! Pillow Beating WHEN you feel angry, there is no need to be angry against someone; just be angry. Let it be a meditation. Close the room, sit by yourself, and let the anger come up as much as it can. If you feel like beating, beat a pillow. Do whatsoever you want to do; the pillow will never object. If you want to kill the pillow, have a knife and kill it! It helps, it helps tremendously. One can never imagine how helpful a pillow can be. Just beat it, bite it, throw it. If you are against somebody in particular, write their name on the pillow or stick a picture on it. You will feel ridiculous, foolish, but anger is ridiculous; you cannot do anything about it. So let it be and enjoy it like an energy phenomenon. It is an energy phenomenon. If you are not hurting anybody there is nothing wrong in it. When you try this you will see that the idea of hurting somebody by and by disappears. Make it a daily practice – just twenty minutes every morning. Then watch the whole day. You will be calmer, because the energy that becomes anger has been thrown out; the energy that becomes a poison is thrown out of the system. Do this for at least two weeks, and after one week you will be surprised to find that whatsoever the situation, anger is not coming up. Just give it a try. Music Meditation MUSIC is meditation – meditation crystallized in a certain dimension. Meditation is music – music melting into the dimensionless. They are not two. If you love music, you love it only because around it somehow you feel meditation happening. You are absorbed by it, you become drunk in it. Something of the unknown starts descending around you ... God starts whispering. Your heart beats in a different rhythm, one in tune with the universe. Suddenly you are in a deep orgasm with the whole. A subtle dance enters into your being, and doors that have remained closed forever start opening. A new breeze passes through you; dust of the centuries is blown away. You feel as if you have taken a bath, a spiritual bath; you have been under a shower – clean, fresh, virgin. Music is meditation; meditation is music. These are two doors to approach the same phenomenon. Live in this moment meditation AS you go deeper into meditation time disappears. When meditation has really bloomed no time is found. It happens simultaneously: when the mind disappears, time disappears. Hence, down the ages, the mystics have said that time and mind are nothing but two aspects of the same coin. Mind cannot live without time and time cannot live without mind. Time is a way for the mind to exist. Hence all the Buddhas have insisted, “Live in this moment.” To live in this moment is meditation; to be simply herenow is meditation. Those who are simply herenow this very moment with me are in meditation. This is meditation – the cuckoo calling from far away and the aeroplane passing and the crows and the birds and all is silent and there is no movement in the mind. You are not thinking of the past and you are not thinking of the future. Time has stopped. The world has stopped. Stopping the world is the whole art of meditation. And to live in the moment is to live in eternity. To taste the moment with no idea, with no mind, is to taste immortality. The Guillotine Meditation ONE of the most beautiful tantra meditations: walk and think that the head is no more there, just the body. Sit and think that the head is no more there, just the body. Continuously remember that the head is not there. Visualize yourself without the head. Have a picture of yourself enlarged without the head; look at it. Let your mirror be lowered in the bathroom so when you see, you cannot see your head, just the body. A few days of rememberance and you will feel such weightlessness happening to you, such tremendous silence, because it is the head that is the problem. If you can conceive of yourself as headless – and that can be conceived, there is no trouble in it – then more and more you will be centered in the heart.Just this very moment you can visualize yourself headless. Then you will understand what I am saying immediately. Making Friends with a Tree GO to a tree, talk to the tree, touch the tree, embrace the tree, feel the tree, just sit by the side of the tree, let the tree feel that you are a good man and that you are not in the mood to harm. By and by friendship arises and you will start feeling that when you come, the quality of the tree immediately changes. You will feel it, on the bark of the tree you will feel tremendous energy moving when you come. When you touch the tree, she is as happy as a beloved. When you sit by the tree, you will feel many things, and soon you will be able to feel that if you are sad and come to the tree, your sadness will disappear just in the presence of the tree. Then only will you be able to understand that you are interdependent. You can make the tree happy, and the tree can make you happy, and the whole of life is interdependent. This interdependence I call God.