Definitions Of Meditation

[Prabhaker]

28 minutes ago, Martin123 said:

And are all those following him fools?

Everybody can't resonate with Osho, I post only selected teachings of Osho. Many of his teaching are suitable for mystics, I don't post them. Leo is honest, he is a good teacher for western people.

[Shin]

41 minutes ago, eputkonen said:

Meditation is not concentration...so the idea is not to focus your attention, which is concentration.

Meditation is not contemplation...so the idea is not to think about stuff, which is contemplation.

Meditation is practicing present awareness.  In Zen Buddhism, their seated meditation is called zazen...aka 'just sitting'.  They are just sitting...nothing else.  Just fully present and aware of what is as it is.  Not adding anything to it, not subtracting anything from it.  There are walking and moving meditations...that is practicing present awareness in motion.  Really, anything can be a meditation.  Mowing the lawn, for example. 

Of course, if you are truly present - 100% devoted to the experience of now - there really is no room for thought.  Thought is only about the past and future, never about now.  So when you are successfully meditating...there is no thought.

[SOUL]

[Guest Annetta]

@SOUL Hahaha!

[Prabhaker]

6 hours ago, SOUL said:

If you are not ready for physical death, there is no shortcut.

 

[SOUL]

25 minutes ago, Prabhaker said:

If you are not ready for physical death, there is no shortcut.

 

There sure is a short cut and it has nothing to do with being ready for physical death.

[Prabhaker]

Just now, SOUL said:

There sure is a short cut and it has nothing to do with being ready for physical death.

Kindly elaborate. 

[SOUL]

1 minute ago, Prabhaker said:

Kindly elaborate. 

Well, there is no elaborating, it's even less words

Just be here now.

[Prabhaker]

Watching is meditation.

What you watch is irrelevant. You can watch the trees, you can watch the river, you can watch the clouds, you can watch children playing around. Watching is meditation. What you watch is not the point; the object is not the point. The quality of observation, the quality of being aware and alert - that's what meditation is.

So perfectly good! Children are beautiful - pure energy dancing around, pure energy running around. Delight in it and watch it. I don't see why you are feeling yourself in trouble. The mind goes on creating trouble. Whatsoever you do, the mind goes on creating trouble.
Now the mind says: Is this meditation at all?

Remember one thing: meditation means awareness. Whatsoever you do with awareness is meditation. Action is not the question, but the quality that you bring to your action. Walking can be a meditation if you walk alertly. Sitting can be a meditation if you sit alertly. Listening to the birds can be a meditation if you listen with awareness. Just listening to the inner noise of your mind can be a meditation if you remain alert and watchful. The whole point is: one should not move in sleep. Then whatsoever you do is meditation - and don't be worried about it!

The mind constantly creates some anxiety. Many times people come to me. They say they are feeling very good, very high - but is this real? Now the mind is creating a new trouble: Is this real? The mind has never asked this before. When you have a headache, do you ask: Is this real? You trust in misery too much. A headache is necessarily real, but if you go high and you feel a peak of bliss, the mind starts creating a subtle anxiety: Is this real? You may be in a delusion, hallucination, imagination. You may be seeing a dream. Or if you cannot find anything else, then: Osho must have hypnotized you. You must be in hypnosis.

You cannot believe that you can be blissful, that you can be happy. Because of this tendency of the mind, the mind clings to the miserable. Mind is always seeking and searching for hell, because it can exist only in misery; in bliss it disappears. Only in misery does it have throbbing life; only in misery does its business go well. Whenever you are happy it is not needed; when you are blissful, who needs mind? - you have already gone beyond it. The mind feels left behind, neglected, it starts nagging you. It says: Where are you going? Are you hypnotized? What illusions are you seeing? These are all dreams!

Because of this tendency, millions of people have come to a meditative point some time or other in their life but they miss the door. The door comes but they cannot believe in it. Meditation is as natural a phenomenon as love. It happens to everybody! It is part of your being, but you cannot believe in it. Even if it happens, you somehow overlook it. Or even if you feel that something is happening, you cannot say to others that something is happening because you are afraid others will think that you have gone mad. Your own mind goes on saying that this is not possible; this is too good to be true. So you forget about it.

Remember again: in your childhood, or later on when you were young, there must have been a few moments. It is impossible that those moments were not there; they have been there in everybody's life. Just try to recollect again and you will remember there have been moments when something was opening, but you closed it, afraid.

Sometimes, sitting on a silent night, looking at the stars - and something was going to happen and you shrank; apprehensive, frightened, you started doing something else. It was too good to be true. You missed an opportunity. Sometimes, in deep love, just sitting by the side of your beloved, something started happening; you were moving in some unknown direction. You became scared, you pulled yourself back to earth.

Sometimes, for no reason at all, just swimming in the river, or running around in the hot sun, or just relaxing on the beach and listening to the wild roar of the ocean, something started happening inside you, some inner alchemical change, as if your body was creating LSD. Something inside... and you were moving in a totally unknown dimension - as if you had wings and you could fly. You became afraid, you started clinging to the earth.

Many times in each person's life, such moments come; but those moments are not aggressive, they cannot force anything against you. If you are ready you can move, drift into them, slip into them, float with them, to the farthest end of existence. If you are afraid you cling to your shore, and you miss the boat. The boat cannot wait for you.

So don't be disturbed by the mind. Watching children playing around is a beautiful meditation - because watching is meditation. But remember, don't think about it. If children are dancing, running around, playing, shrieking, jumping, jogging, don't start thinking - just watch. Watch without any thought. Be aware, but don't think. Remain alert - just seeing, a pure seeing, a clarity, but don't start thinking about it; otherwise you have already moved away. Watching children, you can remember your own child back home. Then you have missed, then you are not watching these children. Some memories are floating in your mind. A film starts moving; then you are in a daydream. Simply watch!

(Osho in The Search #7)

[Prabhaker]

Meditation minus Bliss is not true meditation‏

It is easy to meditate if you don’t want to be blissful — it is very easy to meditate. If you want just to be blissful and you don’t want to be in meditation, that too is easy. The rarest combination is meditation plus bliss. Meditation minus bliss is easy; bliss minus meditation is easy. But meditation minus bliss is not true meditation and bliss minus meditation is not true bliss either. They are true only when they are together.

Many people have tried to meditate without bliss because it is simple, less complex. You have to take only one work upon yourself: that you have to still your mind. And you can force your mind to be stilled, but you will become sad, you will have a long face.

That’s why your saints — so-called saints — look sad. Sadness has become a necessary quality for being a saint. They can’t laugh, they can’t dance, they can’t sing, they can’t love, they can’t rejoice. They talk about bliss but they only talk about it. You don’t see any bliss in their eyes, you don’t see any bliss in their milieu, you don’t see any bliss radiating from their inner center. They look sad, dull, dead, unintelligent, for the simple reason that they have chosen a shortcut and there is no shortcut. They have avoided the complexity of spiritual transformation. They have chosen meditation, they have forced their mind to be still. It is a negative state; their minds are only empty, not silent — forcibly made still. But it is not a natural growth of silence, it is not the flowering of silence. Their silence is like the cemetery, it is not the silence of a garden.

The silence of the garden is full of music: the bees humming and the birds singing and a distant call of the cuckoo. They are all in it, essential parts of it. The garden has a very living silence, full of song and joy. The cemetery is also silent, but it is only the silence of death; because there is nobody, hence there is silence.

You can meditate, force yourself to be silent, but you will miss God, you will miss nirvana. And you can also try to be blissful; that means you can pretend, you can practice, you can rehearse bliss. You can always try to be blissful, smiling, at least looking happy.

Slowly slowly, it becomes so practiced… like Jimmy Carter. Now his smile is disappearing, but just remember two years before — you could have counted his teeth! You can practice it. I have heard that in the beginning days of his presidency his wife had to close his mouth in the night! I don’t know how far it is true, but it appears to be true — because if you practice the whole day, then in the night too your muscles become fixed. Even in sleep you will go on smiling.

You can practice blissfulness too, but a practiced blissfulness is false. Anything practiced is false, remember it — never forget it. Things have to be spontaneous and natural, not practiced, not cultivated. Cultivated blissfulness is only a mask. You are smiling, but the smile is not in the heart. You are showing joy, but you are not joyous. Your heart is a desert; only on the face you have put plastic flowers. They may deceive others, but they can’t deceive you and they can’t deceive a master. Your smile, your joy, is formal — just good manners.

This too has happened. There have been many saints, very blissful, always singing and dancing, but deep down just deserts. They both have chosen only the half, and the half-truth is far more untrue than any untruth.

Truth has to be total, truth has to be whole. And the whole truth is: bliss PLUS meditation. It is difficult of course, arduous, to manage both. Why? — because they seem to be polar opposites. Meditation means silence and bliss means dance. Meditation means stillness and bliss means a song. Meditation means escaping from the world and bliss means sharing with the world. Meditation you can do in a Himalayan cave, but to be blissful you will have to come back to the world.

Bliss needs to be shared; it exists only in sharing. It can’t exist when you are alone, it disappears. It is a communion. Meditation can exist in aloneness and bliss can exist in togetherness. But when both exist then you have to learn a totally new way of life.

Source – Osho Book “Dhammapada, Vol 8″

[Martin123]

@Prabhaker dude like hands down, if you switch your practice for anything but meditation, you will benefit greatly right now.

[Prabhaker]

WHAT MEDITATION IS – AND WHAT IT IS NOT

There are many different, even contradictory ideas, about what meditation is. Primary to the Osho approach is the need for the meditator to understand the nature of the mind, rather than fight with it.

Most of us most of the time are run by, dominated by our thoughts or feelings. It follows that we tend to think we are those thoughts and feeling. Meditation is the state of simply being, just pure experiencing, with no interference from the body or mind. It’s a natural state but one which we have forgotten how to access.

The word meditation is also used for what is, more accurately, a meditation method. Meditative methods, techniques or devices are means by which to create an inner ambience that facilitates disconnecting from the bodymind so one can simply be. While initially it is helpful to put time aside to practice a structured meditation method, there are many techniques that are practiced within the context of one’s everyday life – at work, at leisure, alone and with others.

Methods are needed only until the state of meditation – of relaxed awareness, of consciousness and centering – has become not just a passing experience but as intrinsic to one as, say, breathing.

Some Common Misconceptions

Meditation is…

1) Only for people who are on a spiritual search.

The benefits of meditation are manifold. Chief among them are the ability to relax and to be aware without effort. Useful tools for just about everyone!

2) A practice to gain “peace of mind.”

Peace of mind is a contradiction in terms. By its very nature the mind is a chronic commentator. What you can discover through meditation is the knack of finding the distance between yourself and the commentary, so that the mind, with its constant circus of thoughts and emotions, no longer intrudes on your inherent state of silence. 

3) A mental discipline or effort to control or “tame” the mind, to become more mindful.

Meditation is neither a mental effort nor an attempt to control the mind. Effort and control involve tension, and tension is antithetical to the state of meditation. Besides, there is no need to control the mind, only to understand it and how it works. The meditator does not need to tame his mind, to become more mindful, but to grow more in consciousness.

4) Focusing, concentrating or contemplating.

Focusing, like concentrating is a narrowing of awareness. You concentrate on one object to the exclusion of everything else. By contrast, meditation is all-inclusive, your consciousness is expanded. The contemplator is focused on an object – perhaps a religious object, a photograph or on an inspiring aphorism. The meditator is simply aware, but not of anything in particular.

5) A new experience.

Not necessarily – sportsmen know this space, which they refer to as “the zone.” Artists know it – through singing, painting, playing music. We can know it through gardening, playing with the kids, walking on the beach or making love. Even as children we may have had experiences of it. Meditation is a natural state and one that you have almost certainly tasted, although perhaps without knowing the name of the flavor.

[Prabhaker]

IS IT POSSIBLE TO MEDITATE WITHOUT ANY TECHNIQUE?

Meditation, as such, needs no technique at all. But techniques are needed to remove the obstacles in the way of meditation. So it has to be understood very clearly: meditation itself needs no techniques, it is a simple understanding, an alertness, an awareness. Neither alertness is a technique nor is awareness a technique. But on the way to being alert, there are so many obstacles. For centuries man has been gathering those obstacles — they need to be removed. Meditation itself cannot remove them, certain techniques are needed to remove them.

So the work of the techniques is just to prepare the ground, is just to prepare the way, the passage. The techniques in themselves are not meditation. If you stop at the technique, you have missed the point. J. Krishnamurti was insisting his whole life that there is no technique for meditation. And the total result was not that millions of people attained to meditation; the total result was that millions of people became convinced that no technique is needed for meditation. But they forgot all about what they were going to do with the obstructions, the hindrances. So they remained intellectually convinced that no technique is needed.

I have met many followers of J. Krishnamurti, very intimate ones, and I have said to them, 'No technique is needed ¯ I agree absolutely. But has meditation happened to you or to anyone else who has been listening to J. Krishnamurti?' Although what he is saying is essentially true, he is saying only the positive side of the experience. There is a negative side also. And for that negative side all kinds of techniques are needed ¯ are absolutely needed ¯ because unless the ground is well prepared, and all the weeds and wild roots are taken away from the ground, you cannot grow roses and other beautiful flowers. Roses are in no way concerned with those roots, with the wild plants that you have removed. But the removal of those weeds was absolutely necessary for the ground to be in a right situation where roses can blossom.

You are asking, 'Is it possible to meditate without any technique?' It is not only possible, it is the only possibility. No technique is needed at all ¯ as far as meditation is concerned. But what are you going to do with your mind? Your mind will create a thousand and one difficulties. Those techniques are needed to remove the mind from the way, to create a space in which the mind becomes quiet, silent, almost absent. Then meditation happens on its own accord.

It is not a question of technique. You don't have to do anything. Meditation is something natural, something that is already hidden inside you and is trying to find its way to reach to the open sky, to the sun, to the air. But the mind is surrounding it from all sides; all doors are closed, all windows are closed. The techniques are needed to open the windows, to open the doors. And immediately the whole sky is available to you, with all its stars, with all its beauty, with all its sunsets, with all its sunrises. Just a small window was preventing you...just a small piece of straw can go into your eye and it will prevent you from seeing the vast sky because you cannot open your eyes. It is absolutely illogical that just a small piece of straw or sand can prevent you from seeing the great stars, the infinite sky. But in fact they can, they do. Techniques are needed to remove those straws, those pieces of sand, from your eyes.

Meditation is your nature, is your very potential. It is another name of alertness.

Meditation is simply awareness without any effort, an effortless alertness; it does not need any technique. But your mind is so full of thoughts, so full of dreams, so much of the past, so much of the future ¯ it is not here now, and awareness has to be here now. The techniques are needed to help you to cut your roots from the past, to cut your dreams from the future, and to keep you in this moment as if only this moment exists. Then there is no need of any technique.

Life is a complicated affair. There is good news, and there is bad news. The good news is that there is no need of any technique; but the bad news is, without any technique you are not going to get it.

Osho. The Rebel, Talk #24

[Prabhaker]

Meditation is a lifestyle, not an activity

 

To be asleep means to live a life in which awareness has no place. You are doing something, but your mind is somewhere else. You are walking along the street, your body is there in the street, but your mind is having a conversation with your wife, or may already have reached the office ahead of your physical arrival there. Your mind is already making arrangements in the office while you are still walking along the street. Mind in one place, body in another, is the characteristic of lack of awareness. Mind accompanying body is the characteristic of awareness.

You are here, listening to me. In these moments of listening, if your hearing is all, if only your hearing remains and your mind wanders nowhere else but is here and now, if hearing is the only thing happening, as if the rest of the world has disappeared, as if nothing else remains. Here, I am the speaker, there, you are the listener and a bridge is created between us. Your mind does nothing else, it falls silent, utterly silent; it hears, only hears. When only hearing remains, you experience awareness. For the first time, you discover what meditation is.

Meditation means being in the moment, not leaving this moment. Someone asked Buddha, ”How shall we meditate?”

Buddha replied, ”Whatsoever you do, do it with awareness; this is meditation. Walking, walk attentively, as if walking is everything; eating, eat with awareness, as if eating is everything; rising, rise with awareness; sitting, sit with awareness; all your actions become conscious, your mind does not travel beyond this moment, it remains in the moment, settles in the moment – this is meditation.”

Meditation is not a separate process. Meditation is simply the name for life lived with awareness. Meditation is not an hour-a-day affair where you sit for one hour and then it is over till tomorrow. No, if twenty-three hours are empty of meditation and only one hour is meditative, then it is certain that the twenty-three hours will defeat the single hour. Non-meditation will win, meditation will lose. If you are living twenty-three hours a day without awareness, and only one hour with awareness, then you will never attain to the state of buddhahood. How can this single hour triumph over the other twenty-three hours?

There is something else that also has to be understood. How can one be aware for one hour if in the remaining twenty-three hours one is not aware? How can you be healthy for one hour if you are sick the other twenty-three hours of the day? Health and sickness are the result of an internal flow. If you are healthy for twenty-three hours of the day, you will be healthy for all twenty-four hours, because the internal flow cannot suddenly be broken for just one of those hours. The current that is flowing goes on flowing.

Meditation cannot come about just because you visit a temple or mosque or gurudwara.. If you were not awake in the shop, in the marketplace, or at home, how can you all of a sudden be awake in the temple? Nothing is going to come about suddenly, when it is not part of an internal flowing. This is why Buddha has said that meditation can happen only if you are meditative for twenty-four hours a day.

So understand well that meditation is not just one of life’s innumerable activities. It is not just one link in the chain of man’s endless doings. It is like the thread on which all the flowers of a garland have been strung. Meditation is a lifestyle, not an activity. If one is meditative in everything one is doing, if the thread is running through each of the flowers, only then a garland is created. The thread is not even visible, it is hidden underneath the flowers. Nor can the meditator be seen; he is present, but hidden behind all the activities being done through him. An individual is awakened the day when he begins to live meditatively. While he lives nonmeditatively, he sleeps.

Someone asked Mahavira what was the definition of a sadhu. Nobody else has ever given the answer that Mahavira gave. He said, Asutta muni, sutt amuni– the one who is not asleep is a sadhu, the one who is asleep is no sadhu”. Who is not asleep? The one whose every action is meditative is not asleep. Religion, liberation, is an experience that happens in such a wakeful consciousness

Source – Osho Book “Nowhere To Go But In”

[S33K3R]

Like @Prabhaker said meditation is non-doing. I believe you are asking for something that cant be answered though. While reading "The Book of Secrets" I read Osho's words that said "If you ask what is meditation? I cannot answer you, instead I will give you a method and tell you to go do this method. Come back to me and you tell me what is meditation." 

This question can bring about many answers, the problem is that each of us experiences things differently. That is why a method is needed for this question. It is the same as if you were blind and asked me what is green? How to describe green? I can't, you must experience it.

 

[Prabhaker]

WHAT IS MEDITATION?

Meditation is a simple process

Of watching your own mind.

Not fighting with the mind

Not trying to control it either

Just remaining there, a choiceless witness.

Whatsoever passes you simply take note of it With no prejudice for or against.

You don't call it names

That this should not come to my mind

That this is an ugly thought and

This is a very beautiful and virtuous thought.

You should not judge

You should remain non-judgmental

Because the moment you judge, you lose meditation.

You become identified.

Either you become a friend or you become a foe.

You create relationships.

Meditation means

Remaining unrelated with your thought process Utterly unrelated, cool, calm Watching whatsoever is passing.

And then a miracle happens:

Slowly slowly one becomes aware

That less and less thoughts are passing.

The more alert you are, the less thoughts pass The less alert you are, the more thoughts pass.

It is as if traffic depends on your awareness.

 

When you are perfectly aware

Even for a single moment, all thinking stops.

Immediately, there is a sudden stop

And the road is empty, there is no traffic.

That moment is meditation.

 

Slowly slowly those moments come more and more Those empty spaces come again and again And stay longer.

And you become capable of moving easily

Into those empty spaces with no effort.

So whenever you want you can move

Into those empty spaces with no effort.

They are refreshing, rejuvenating

And they make you aware of who you are.

Freed from the mind you are freed

From all ideas about yourself.

Now you can see who you are without any prejudice.

And to know oneself

Is to know all that is worth knowing.

And to miss self-knowledge is to miss all.

A man my know everything in the world

But if he does not know himself

He is utterly ignorant

He is just a walking Encyclopedia Britannica.

 

Freedom without awareness is only an empty idea.

It contains nothing.

One cannot be really free without being aware Because your unconscious goes on dominating you Your unconscious goes on pulling your strings.

You may think, you may believe that you are free But you are not free, you are just a victim Of natural forces, blind forces.

 

So there are two types of people. The majority Follows the tradition, the society, the state.

The orthodox people, the conventional

The conformists – they follow the crowd

They are not free.

And then there are a few rebellious spirits Drop-outs, bohemians, artists Painters, musicians, poets; They think they are living in freedom But they only think. Just by rebellion Against the tradition you don't become free.

You are still under the rule of natural instincts.

You are possessed by lust, by greed, by ambitions.

And you are not a master of these things You are a slave. Hence I say Freedom is only possible through awareness.

Unless one transforms ones unconsciousness Into consciousness there is no freedom.

 

And that is where only very few people

Have succeeded – a Jesus, a Lao Tzu

A Zarathustra, a Buddha

Just a few people

Who can be counted on one's fingers.

They have really lived in freedom

Because they lived out of awareness.

 

That has to be the work for every seeker:

To create more and more awareness.

Then freedom comes of its own accord.

Freedom is the fragrance of the flower of awareness.

Osho, Eighty Four Thousand Poem

[Loreena]

2 hours ago, Prabhaker said:

WHAT IS MEDITATION?

Meditation is a simple process

Of watching your own mind.

Not fighting with the mind

Not trying to control it either

Just remaining there, a choiceless witness.

Whatsoever passes you simply take note of it With no prejudice for or against.

You don't call it names

That this should not come to my mind

That this is an ugly thought and

This is a very beautiful and virtuous thought.

You should not judge

You should remain non-judgmental

Because the moment you judge, you lose meditation.

You become identified.

Either you become a friend or you become a foe.

You create relationships.

Meditation means

Remaining unrelated with your thought process Utterly unrelated, cool, calm Watching whatsoever is passing.

And then a miracle happens:

Slowly slowly one becomes aware

That less and less thoughts are passing.

The more alert you are, the less thoughts pass The less alert you are, the more thoughts pass.

It is as if traffic depends on your awareness.

 

When you are perfectly aware

Even for a single moment, all thinking stops.

Immediately, there is a sudden stop

And the road is empty, there is no traffic.

That moment is meditation.

 

Slowly slowly those moments come more and more Those empty spaces come again and again And stay longer.

And you become capable of moving easily

Into those empty spaces with no effort.

So whenever you want you can move

Into those empty spaces with no effort.

They are refreshing, rejuvenating

And they make you aware of who you are.

Freed from the mind you are freed

From all ideas about yourself.

Now you can see who you are without any prejudice.

And to know oneself

Is to know all that is worth knowing.

And to miss self-knowledge is to miss all.

A man my know everything in the world

But if he does not know himself

He is utterly ignorant

He is just a walking Encyclopedia Britannica.

 

Freedom without awareness is only an empty idea.

It contains nothing.

One cannot be really free without being aware Because your unconscious goes on dominating you Your unconscious goes on pulling your strings.

You may think, you may believe that you are free But you are not free, you are just a victim Of natural forces, blind forces.

 

So there are two types of people. The majority Follows the tradition, the society, the state.

The orthodox people, the conventional

The conformists – they follow the crowd

They are not free.

And then there are a few rebellious spirits Drop-outs, bohemians, artists Painters, musicians, poets; They think they are living in freedom But they only think. Just by rebellion Against the tradition you don't become free.

You are still under the rule of natural instincts.

You are possessed by lust, by greed, by ambitions.

And you are not a master of these things You are a slave. Hence I say Freedom is only possible through awareness.

Unless one transforms ones unconsciousness Into consciousness there is no freedom.

 

And that is where only very few people

Have succeeded – a Jesus, a Lao Tzu

A Zarathustra, a Buddha

Just a few people

Who can be counted on one's fingers.

They have really lived in freedom

Because they lived out of awareness.

 

That has to be the work for every seeker:

To create more and more awareness.

Then freedom comes of its own accord.

Freedom is the fragrance of the flower of awareness.

Osho, Eighty Four Thousand Poem

Prabby, 101 Dalmatians.. oops .. 101 definitions of meditation..oh wait let me count. 

Thou art microwave safe  Prabby !  

[Prabhaker]

@Loreena  OSHO: Meditation Is a Very Simple Phenomenon

 

 

[Loreena]

@Prabhaker I'm putting you in my pressure cooker.  

 

 

[Prabhaker]

8 minutes ago, Loreena said:

pressure cooker

 Meditation is an outlet for the steam of your internal pressure cooker, it releases all your accumulated emotions.