Witnessing the Spirit of Meditation

By Osho
Meditation is an adventure, the greatest adventure the human mind can undertake. Meditation is just being, not doing anything; no actions, no thoughts, and no emotions. You just are and it is a sheer delight. From where does this delight come when you are doing nothing? It comes from nowhere, or it comes from everywhere.

Whenever you can find time for just being, drop every thing you are doing. Including thinking, concentration, and contemplation. Even if for only a single moment you are not doing anything and you are just at your center, utterly relaxed ‑ that is meditation. And once you have learned how to do it, you can remain in that state as long as you want; finally you will be able to remain in that state for twenty four hours a day.

Once you have become aware of the way your being can remain undisturbed, then slowly you can start doing things, keeping alert that your being is not stirred. That is the second part of meditation. First learn how just to be, and then learn little actions such as, cleaning the floor or taking a shower, but keeping yourself centered. Then you can perform complicated actions while still staying centered.

Therefore, meditation is not against action. It is not an escape from life. It simply teaches a new way of life; you become the center of a cyclone.

Externally it may seem that you live a normal life, but in reality you will live more intensely; with more joy, clarity, vision, and creativity. Yet, you will be aloof, just as a watcher on the hills, simply seeing all that is happening around you.

You are not the doer of any activity, you are the watcher. That is the whole secret of meditation. Doing continues on its own accord. You can do everything, only one thing is not allowed, your awareness should never be lost. That awareness should remain absolutely unclouded and undisturbed.

The essential theme or spirit of meditation is to learn how to witness.

A crow is crowing and you are listening. There is a object and a subject. But you can not see a witness who is seeing both? The crow, the listener, and still there is someone who is watching both. It is such a simple phenomenon.

You see a tree. You are there, the tree is there, but you can not find one more thing? There is a witness in you which can see you seeing the tree.

Watching is meditation. What you watch is irrelevant. You can watch a tree, a river, the clouds, or you can watch children playing. It does not matter what you watch, the objects are not important.

Remember one thing: meditation means awareness. Whatever you do with awareness is meditation. Action is not important, but the awareness that you bring to your action is important. Walking can be a meditation if you walk alert. Sitting can be a
meditation if you sit alert. 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 quality of observation, the quality of being aware and alert, is the most important and that is what meditation is. One should be alert and watchful, then whatever you do will be meditation.
There are four basic steps:

1. Watch your physical actions (body)
2. Watch your thoughts (mind)
3. Watch your feelings and emotions (heart)
4. Watch the watcher ‑ Ultimate awareness

The first step in awareness is to be very watchful of your actions. Slowly and slowly one becomes alert about each gesture and movement. As you became aware, a miracle happens. Many things that you used to do before without awareness simply disappear, because you realize that they were useless. Your body becomes more relaxed and attuned. A deep peace along with subtle music prevails in your body.

Then begin becoming aware of your thoughts. They are more subtle than your actions and more dangerous as well. When you become aware of your thoughts, you will be surprised to learn what goes on inside your mind. You will see a mad mind inside of you. It affects whatever you are doing and not doing. The sum total of it is going to be your life and this mad mind has to be changed. The miracle of awareness is that you need not do anything except just become aware. The very phenomenon of watching it changes the mad mind. Slowly and slowly the mad mind disappears, and the thoughts start falling into a certain pattern; they become more of a cosmos. Now one observes a deeper peace.

When your actions and your thoughts are at peace you will see that they are attuned to each other. Now they are not running in different directions. For the first time there is a unity between them. This will help immensely to work on the third step, that is becoming aware of your feelings and emotions.

The third step is the most difficult one, but if you can watch your thoughts then it is just one more step. A little more intense awareness is needed when you start reflecting your emotions and feelings. Once you are aware of all three they will all unite into one phenomenon. When all three are functioning together perfectly, you can feel the music, and then the fourth happens. It happens on its own accord. It is a gift from the whole, a reward for those who have accomplished these three.

The fourth step is the ultimate awareness that makes one awakened. One becomes aware of one's awareness. That makes a Buddha, the awakened. Only in that awakening does one realizes what bliss is.

‑ the body knows pleasure
‑ the mind knows happiness
‑ the heart knows joy
‑ the watcher knows bliss

Bliss is the goal of being a seeker, and awareness is the path towards it.

The important thing is that you are watchful. Slowly, as the watcher becomes more and more stable, a transformation happens, at this time the things that you are watching disappear.

For the first time, the watcher itself becomes the watched, the observer itself becomes the observed.

YOU HAVE COME HOME.

The following qualities are essential in all different methods of meditation:

1. a relaxed state of mind, no fight within the mind, no control of the mind, and no concentration.

2. just watch with awareness whatever is going on, without any interference, just watch the mind silently, without any judgment or evaluation.

In summary, a relaxation, a non‑judgemental attitude, and watchfulness all together is meditation.

Slowly and slowly a great silence descends over you. All movements within you cease. You exist but there is no sense of "I am," just a pure space or emptiness remains.

A Story of Baal Shem and a Watchman on Meditation:

Hassidism is a mystical and a rebellious branch of Judaism. Its founder, Baal Shem, was a unique person. He used to go to the river every evening and would return in the middle of the night. At the river in the night, he felt absolutely calm and quiet. He used to simply sit there, doing nothing, just watching his own self, watching the watcher.

One night when he was coming back, he passed by a rich man's house. A watchman was standing by the door of the house. The watchman was puzzled because every night at exactly this time, Baal Shem would pass by.

The watchman said, "Forgive me for interrupting but I cannot contain my curiosity anymore. What is your business? Why do you go to the river? Many times I have followed you, and there is nothing there, you simply sit there for hours, and in the middle of the night you return."

Baal Shem said, "I know that you have followed me many times, because the night is so silent I can hear your footsteps. I know every day you are hiding behind the gate. But it is not only that you are curious about me, I am also curious about you. What is your business?"

"My business? I am a simple watchman."

Baal Shem said, "That is funny, that is my business too!"

The watchman said, "But I don't understand. If you are a watchman, you should be watching a house, a palace, animals, or children. What are you watching there, sitting in the sand?"

"There is little difference. You are watching for somebody outside who may try to enter the palace. I simply watch this watcher. This is my whole life's effort, I watch myself."

The watchman said, "This is a strange business. Who is going to pay you?"

"It is such a bliss, such a joy, such immense benediction, it pays itself profoundly. Just a single moment, and all the treasures in the world are nothing in comparison to it."

"This is strange. I have been watching my whole life, but I have never experienced a bliss. I have never come across such a beautiful experience. Tomorrow night I will go with you. Just teach me. I know how to watch, it seems that I only need to change the direction. You are watching in the opposite direction."

There is only one step, and that step is the change of direction. Either we can be focused outside or let our whole consciousness be centered inwards. Soon we will know that we are knowers and we have never lost our awareness. We have simply got our awareness entangled in our outside activities. Withdraw our awareness from everything else and just let it rest within ourself, then we have arrived home.

This article is summarized from Osho's literature on Meditation.

Unseen force of life

What keeps life going may not always be grasped by machines and medicine
Acharya Mahaprajna

Preksha Dhyan qualifies to be regarded as a philosophy of life because it tries to understand the mind, not theoretically lone but practically too. Full comprehension is not possible on the basis of theoretical study alone. It is possible only through practice. Just like breath, mind is made the object of meditation. It is called Vichar Preksha. We concentrate on the mind and then start perceiving the incoming thoughts. We should neither stop the flow of thoughts, nor provoke it. All we do is fixing the attention on the brain and meditate on it. All thoughts, good as well as bad, are perceived.

Sharir Preksha requires perceiving the body and the vibrations therein. Under Preksha Dhyan one more practice, called Saptadhatu Preksha has been developed. It means perception of seven constituents of the body. We should first meditate on the chyle, then on blood, coursing of the blood, the bones, the marrow, the semen, the flesh and the fat. It is an effort at understanding the seven constituents of the body.Another practice consists in meditating on the vital energy. It is the strongest practice but also very difficult. Medical science uses the terms body, mind, and sense, but refrains from discussing the subject of the vital essence of life, Prana. It does use terms like vital energy and vital force, but there is no serious work done yet on the course of this vital energy. Of course acupressure and acupuncture therapies have given it a lot of attention. In Yoga, we are told about it in the form of Nadis (tubular organs for the passage of pran or energy carrying cosmic, vital, seminal and other energies, as well as sensation, intelligence and consciousness in the causal, subtle and physical bodies) like ida, pingala, sushumna etc. It has been said that there are seventy-two thousand Nadis in the body. If they would have had physical organs, physicians could have identified them, for today's medical scientists know more about the human body than anyone else in the past. But the pran system transcends body. There are thousands of routes through which pran, the cosmic energy, flows through the body.

Let us think of health. Today, there are innumerable instruments and big diagnostic machines the likes of which never existed before. They can reveal even the minute parts of the body. But when both machines and physicians fail to locate ailment in an individual, we advise the practice of pran, because it is a case of unbalanced pran. Treating this imbalance is beyond the competence of any machine or physician to perceive.

With balanced pran many problems become automatically solved. Once a Preksha Dhyan training camp was being held in Tulsi Adhyatma Needam, Jethabhai Jhaveri walked in. He had a collar around his neck. On being asked what the matter was, he said he was suffering from spondylitis. He resorted to the practice of Pran. Next morning he again practised it in the early morning sun, and the third day he discarded the collar.

There are many responses to the question: “When does God laugh?” One of them is, “God laughs when the patient is dying and the doctor says that he will not let him die.” Can any doctor give life to someone? If medicines could keep the people alive, the population of the world would have been many times more than it is today. Doctors would keep everyone alive. What keeps us alive is our Pranshakti or bio-energy. As long as bio-energy is there, cells will retain the power of regeneration. Once the regenerative power ends, our resistance or immunity decreases and gradually a stage is reached when neither the doctor nor any medicine is able to save life.

Pranshakti (bio-energy) is the basis of life. In Sanskrit life and Pran are synonyms. Acquiring this understanding is the main aim of Preksha Dhyan. Once Einstein invited a friend to dinner. The latter arrived at dinnertime but found that Einstein was totally absorbed in his research. In fact, he had forgotten all about the dinner. The guest sized up the situation, helped himself with the food and quietly returned home. When Einstein finished his experiment he found empty used plates on the dining table. He said to himself that possibly he forgot that he had already eaten his dinner and so went back to the laboratory.

How did such a great scientist behave so abnormally? When we are engaged in the subtle investigation of bio energy, our energy withdraws within itself and nothing external is remembered.

(As told to Lalit Garg)

Enlightenment Can Make You Beautiful

Vivek Jain

While beauty might well lie in the eye of the beholder, there are certain aspects which do mandate conventional assessment by those engaged in the business of judging who is beautiful. There was a time when beauty was actually graded in terms of millihelens — 1,000 millihelens making one helen, measuring beauty in units of Helen of Troy, believed to be the most beautiful woman ever to have existed. Quite in contrast is the glow and brilliance emanating from deep within and rather than being in the eye of the beholder is a more universally accepted trait more felt than seen.

One such legendary figure whose beauty captivated all is Lord Mahavira. A "samava-sarana" traditionally is the palace where every tirthankara delivers his first sermon. Lord Mahavira had his at Pavapuri. A samavasarana is basically a circular structure constructed by gods that consists of linked tiers with surrounding balustrades, in which the audience listens to the tirthankara who is seated in the middle. Incidentally at that very time, Saumil was organising a big yagna nearby, where 11 elite Vedic scholars of the time were to participate. Indrabhuti was the senior most and most erudite amongst them.

Seeing the gods moving their chariots ahead, towards the place of Mahavira's sermon, peeved Indrabhuti. Being deeply immersed in self-pride and fully confident that his knowledge was infinite and that there was no branch of knowledge or scripture that he hadn't studied, he wondered if the gods had lost their balance and become bankrupt in their "avadhi gyana" — knowledge of clairvoyance — to drift past the holy place without bowing to him and listening to his discourse.

This little dialogue between two gods: "We have got to hurry to the samavasarana, so as not to miss even a little part of the discourse of the tirthankara" incensed him still further. Unable to resist the temptation to see for himself who the greater omni- scient could be, he, too, made his way to the place of the sermon.

Seeing the exuberant personality before his eyes, Indrabhuti's ego got the first major blow. There, seated under the Ashoka tree, on a golden throne embedded with jewels and covered with three celestial umbrellas he saw Lord Mahavira. Verses describe him to be in a state of serene calmness, with the glow of a full moon and simultaneously of an intellectual dazzling brilliance like that of the midday sun.

Pages are then devo-ted as to how Indrabhuti started wondering if the personality before him was Brahma, Vishnu or Shiva. Indrabhuti then thought of other gods — Kamadeva, Indra, Kuber, Vidya-dhara — but failed to recognise the beautiful person's identity. The comparison then went on with elements of nature where again it turned out that each had some or the other minor defect — the sea was too salty, the Moon has blemishes, the Sun gets too hot, the Sky is invisible, the clouds are empty at times, but the one before his eyes was devoid of any shortcoming. Though there was not a single ornament on his body he seemed most attractive and handsome. His speech was so powerful and effective that even wild animals had abandoned violence.

Beauty nurtured with diet, cosmetics and exercise pale in comparison with the pristine quietude and sublime equanimity one could experience through contemplating unremittingly on the soul, the ultimate truth of being.

E-mail: vivedr@gmail.com

Practice Makes Perfect: It Means Hard Work

What kind of sadhana is it that does not result in the abatement of all passion? The whole system of spirituality and all religious tales are designed to subdue passion.

According to Mahavira, eating is the greatest obstacle to self-control; it gives rise to indolence. How can he who is not moderate in eating, ever conquer sloth? How can a person who does not get rid of lethargy, indolence and negligence, ever achieve self-control?

Begin the practice of self-control with fasting. Eat less. This is the first principle of self-control. The second relates to the body. It is necessary for us to exercise control over the body, to train it.

Start by contemplating upon and practising good habits, and by inhibiting bad habits. Our nerves and muscles are accustomed to function in a particular way and if we do not effect a change, we go on mechanically as before. We have a longing for sweets on certain occasions, because the tongue is accustomed to a particular taste.

The nerves and muscles come to demand something, which they are accustomed to having on a particular occasion.

In the matter of eating, thinking or doing any other work, our sinews habitually function in the manner we have accustomed them to function. Those who live in a lofty building, are at first extremely careful while descending the stairs.

Gradually, they become accustomed to the act and after some time they do it mechanically. To begin with, the novice-typists look at each letter before they type it, but with practice, their fingers move freely without the necessity of looking at the keyboard since the fingers have grown accustomed to it.

Similarly, in any undertaking, our sinews start working in the manner we have accustomed them to function, and the task stands fulfilled without any conscious effort on our part.

One practises meditation today, gives the sinews a taste of meditation and accustoms them to it. Next day, however, he does no meditation, nor the day after. On the fourth day, he sits down to meditate again. Practising by fits and starts does not help in the cultivation of habit. Do not be remiss.

Keep practising daily. Irregular practice is not conducive to the confirmation of the habit of retrospection.

You practise forgiveness today, show tolerance, but quarrel and fight the next day, forgive again and yet again quarrel and fight — this will not confirm in you the habit of forgiveness. If you want to cultivate a habit, do it without any reservation, without any remissness till it is firmly established.

That is the second principle of body training, of accustoming the body to bear pain and discomfort. This state of indifference is achieved through the practice of asanas, pranayama and kayotsarga. The body is so trained as to perform any task you command.

The third principle of self-control is living in seclusion. It means not to allow the present moment to continue but to reverse it. There are two orders — the order of nature and the order of sadhana.

All our sexual impulses originate from the Centre of Energy and it is with the help of this centre that man fulfils his sexual desire. It is a centre provided by nature for gratification of sexual urge. By living in seclusion, we can change it.