"Ask how to remain unoccupied...

[SoonHei]

... then meditation happens spontaneously."

-Osho

 

Real meditation means: don’t avoid the inner mad-house, enter into it, face it, encounter it, be watchful, because it is through watchfulness that you will overcome it. It is because of avoiding it that it has been growing on and on. 
You have avoided enough! Now there is no need to take the help of a mantra, no help is needed; just sit silently.
Zen is the purest of meditations. Just sit silently, doing nothing. The most difficult meditation is to sit silently, doing nothing. People ask me, ’Please give us some support. If you give us some mantra it will be helpful, because just sitting silently doing nothing is very difficult, most arduous.’ A thousand and one things arise in oneself: the body starts driving you crazy, the head starts itching, suddenly you feel ants crawling upon your body, and then you see there is no ant, it is just the body playing tricks; the body is trying to give you some support to be engaged. The body wants to change the posture, the legs go to sleep – the body is simply making things available to you so that you can become occupied.
Avoid all occupation. For a few moments just be unoccupied and just see whatsoever is happening inside. And you will be surprised, you WILL be surprised, because one day, just by looking and looking and looking, thoughts start disappearing.
’Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes and the grass grows by itself.’

If you leave a few gaps in your mind unoccupied, those moments of unoccupied consciousness are the first glimpses of meditation, the first penetrations of the beyond, the first flashes of no-mind.

Osho says that the key to meditation is to learn how to remain unoccupied, which despite what you may think, takes a lot of courage:
“When people come to me and they ask, ‘How to meditate?’ I tell them, ‘There is no need to ask how to meditate, just ask how to remain unoccupied. Meditation happens spontaneously. Just ask how to remain unoccupied, that’s all. That’s the whole trick of meditation – how to remain unoccupied. Then you cannot do anything. The meditation will flower.”
“When you are not doing anything the energy moves towards the center, it settles down towards the center. When you are doing something the energy moves out. Doing is a way of moving out. Non-doing is a way of moving in. Occupation is an escape. You can read the Bible, you can make it an occupation. There is no difference between religious occupation and secular occupation: all occupations are occupations, and they help you to cling outside your being. They are excuses to remain outside.”
“Man is ignorant and blind, and he wants to remain ignorant and blind, because to come inwards looks like entering a chaos. And it is so; inside you have created a chaos. You have to encounter it and go through it. Courage is needed – courage to be oneself, and courage to move inwards. I have not come across a greater courage than that – the courage to be meditative.”
The key is to be a witness to your own mind.
According to Osho, the technique that’s especially effective when practicing meditation is to become an “observer of the mind”:
“Meditation starts by being separate from the mind, by being a witness. That is the only way of separating yourself from anything. If you are looking at the light, naturally one thing is certain: you are not the light, you are the one who is looking at it. If you are watching the flowers, one thing is certain: you are not the flower, you are the watcher.
“Watching is the key of meditation. Watch your mind. Don’t do anything – no repetition of mantra, no repetition of the name of god – just watch whatever the mind is doing. Don’t disturb it, don’t prevent it, don’t repress it; don’t do anything at all on your part. You just be a watcher, and the miracle of watching is meditation. As you watch, slowly mind becomes empty of thoughts; but you are not falling asleep, you are becoming more alert, more aware.
“As the mind becomes completely empty, your whole energy becomes aflame of awakening. This flame is the result of meditation. So you can say meditation is another name of watching, witnessing, observing – without any judgment, without any evaluation. Just by watching, you immediately get out of the mind.”
Therefore, what is meditation?
Osho didn’t stop there. He also explained what true meditation is – and why most of the western world get it wrong:
“Then what is meditation? Meditation is just being delighted in your own presence; meditation is a delight in your own being. It is very simple – a totally relaxed state of consciousness where you are not doing anything. The moment doing enters you become tense; anxiety enters immediately. How to do? What to do? How to succeed? How not to fail? You have already moved into the future.

 “If you are contemplating, what can you contemplate? How can you contemplate the unknown? How can you contemplate the unknowable? You can contemplate only the known. You can chew it again and again, but it is the known. If you know something about Jesus, you can think again and again; if you know something about Krishna, you can think again and again. You can go on modifying, changing, decorating – but it is not going to lead you towards the unknown. And “God” is the unknown.
“Meditation is just to be, not doing anything – no action, no thought, no emotion. You just are. And it is a sheer delight. From where does this delight come when you are not doing anything? It comes from nowhere, or, it comes from everywhere. It is uncaused, because the existence is made of the stuff called joy. It needs no cause, no reason. If you are unhappy you have a reason to be unhappy; if you are happy you are simply happy – there is no reason for it. Your mind tries to find a reason because it cannot believe in the uncaused, because it cannot control the uncaused – with the uncaused the mind simply becomes impotent. So the mind goes on finding some reason or other. But I would like to tell you that whenever you are happy, you are happy for no reason at all, whenever you are unhappy, you have some reason to be unhappy – because happiness is just the stuff you are made of. It is your very being, it is your innermost core. Joy is your innermost core.”
Eckhart Tolle agrees: The beginning of freedom is to be an observer of the mind
Eckhart Tolle also talks about the freedom that comes from being an observer of the mind. He also gives a great technique to go about it.
“The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not “the thinker.” The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence.
“You also realize that all the things that truly matter – beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace – arise from beyond the mind. You begin to awaken…The moment you realize you are not present, you are present. Whenever you are able to observe your mind, you are no longer trapped in it. Another factor has come in, something that is not of the mind: the witnessing presence.”

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