Excerpt 21. Meditation Is Living Joyously

What Is Meditation?

Excerpt 21. Meditation Is Living Joyously

Life is purposeless. Don't be shocked.

The whole idea of purpose is wrong – it comes out of greed. Life is a sheer joy, a playfulness, a fun, a laughter, to no purpose at all. Life is its own end, it has no other end. The moment you understand it you have understood what meditation is all about. It is living your life joyously, playfully, totally, and with no purpose at the end, with no purpose in view, no purpose there at all. Just like small children playing on the sea beach, collecting seashells and colored stones – for what purpose?

There is no purpose at all.

Excerpted from 'Zen: Zest Zip Zap and Zing' by Osho

Excerpt 20. Meditation Is Intelligence

What Is Meditation?

Excerpt 20. Meditation Is Intelligence

Have a very penetrating eye inside your mind, see what its motivations are.

When you do something, immediately look for the motivation, because if you miss the motivation, the mind goes on befooling you and goes on saying that something else was the motivation. For example: you come home angry and you beat your child. The mind will say, "It is just for his own sake, to make him behave." This is rationalization. Go deeper... You were angry and you wanted somebody with whom you could be angry. You could not be angry with the boss in the office, he is too strong for that. And it is risky and economically dangerous.

No, you needed somebody helpless. Now this child is perfectly helpless, he depends on you; he cannot react, he cannot do anything, he cannot pay you back in the same coin. You cannot find a more perfect victim.

Look: are you angry? If you are, then the mind is befooling you.

The mind goes on befooling you twenty-four hours a day and you cooperate with it. Then in the end you are in misery, you land in hell. Watch every moment for the right motivation. If you can find the right motivation, the mind will become more and more incapable of deceiving you. And the further away you are from deception, the more you will be capable of moving beyond mind, the more you will become a master.

I have heard:

One scientist was saying to his friend, "I don't see why you insisted that your wife wear a chastity belt while we were away at the convention. After all, between us as old buddies, with Emma's face and figure, who would...?"

"I know, I know," replied the other. "But when I get back home, I can always say I lost the key."

Look, watch for the unconscious motivation. The mind goes on bullying you and bossing you because you are not capable of seeing its real motivations. Once a person becomes capable of seeing real motivations, meditation is very close... because then the mind no longer has a grip on you.

The mind is a mechanism, it has no intelligence. The mind is a bio-computer. How can it have any intelligence? It has skill, but it has no intelligence; it has a functional utility, but it has no awareness. It is a robot; it works well but don't listen to it too much because then you will lose your inner intelligence. Then it is as if you are asking a machine to guide you, lead you. You are asking a machine which has nothing original in it - cannot have. Not a single thought in the mind is ever original, it is always a repetition. Watch: whenever mind says something, see that it is again putting you into a routine. Try to do something new and the mind will have less grip on you.

People who are in some ways creative are always easily transformed into meditators, and people who are uncreative in their life are the most difficult. If you live a repetitive life the mind has too much control over you - you cannot move away from it, you are afraid. Do something new every day. Don't listen to the old routine. In fact, if the mind says something tell it, "This we have been doing always. Now let us do something else." Even small changes: in the way you have always been behaving with your wife, just small changes; in the way you always walk, just small changes; the way you always talk, small changes. And you will find that the mind is losing its grip on you, you are becoming a little freer.

Excerpted from 'Ancient Music in the Pines' by Osho

Excerpt 7. Meditation Is Awareness

What Is Meditation?

Excerpt 7. Meditation Is Awareness

And remember, each situation has to become an opportunity to meditate. What is meditation? Becoming aware of what you are doing, becoming aware of what is happening to you.

Somebody insults you: become aware. What is happening to you when the insult reaches you? Meditate over it; this is changing the whole gestalt. When somebody insults you, you concentrate on the person – "Why is he insulting me? Who does he think he is? How can I take revenge?" If he is very powerful you surrender, you start wagging your tail. If he is not very powerful and you see that he is weak, you pounce on him. But you forget yourself completely in all this; the other becomes the focus. This is missing an opportunity for meditation. When somebody insults you, meditate.

Gurdjieff has said, 'When my father was dying. I was only nine. He called me close to his bed and whispered in my ear. "My son, I am not leaving much to you, not in worldly things, but I have one thing to tell you that was told to me by my father on his deathbed. It has helped me tremendously; it has been my treasure. You are not grown up yet, you may not understand what I am saying, but keep it, remember it. One day you will be grown up and then you may understand. This is a key: it unlocks the doors of great treasures.'

Of course Gurdjieff could not understand it at that moment, but it was the thing that changed his whole life. And his father said a very simple thing. He said, 'Whenever somebody insults you, my son tell him you will meditate over it for twenty-four hours and then you will come and answer him.'

Gurdjieff could not believe that this was such a great key. He could not believe that 'This is something so valuable that I have to remember it.' And we can forgive a young child of nine years of old. But because this was something said by his dying father who had loved him tremendously, and immediately after saying it he breathed his last, it became imprinted on him; he could not forget it. Whenever he remembered his father, he would remember the saying.

Without truly understanding, he started practicing it. If somebody insulted him he would say, 'Sir for twenty-four hours I have to meditate over it – that's what my father told me. And he is here no more, and I cannot disobey a dead old man. He loved me tremendously, and I loved him tremendously, and there is no way to disobey him. You can disobey your father when he is alive, but when your father is dead how can you disobey him? So please forgive me, I will come back after twenty-four hours and answer you.' And he says. 'Meditating on it for twenty-four hours has given me the greatest insights into my being. Sometimes I found that the insult was right, that that's how I am. So I would go to the person and say, "Sir, thank you, you were right. It was not an insult, it was simply a statement of fact. You called me stupid: I am."

Or sometimes it happened that meditating for twenty-four hours, I would come to know that it was an absolute lie. But when something is a lie, why be offended by it? So I would not even go to tell him that it was a lie. A lie is a lie, why be bothered by it?'

But watching, meditating, slowly slowly he became more and more aware of his reactions, rather than the actions of others.

Excerpted from 'The Book of Wisdom' by Osho