What Is
Meditation?
Excerpt 18. Meditation Is in the Present
Mind concentrates: it acts out
of the past. Meditation acts in the present, out of the present. It is a pure
response to the present, it is not reaction. It acts not out of conclusions, it
acts seeing the existential.
Watch in your life: there is a
great difference when you act out of conclusions. You see a man, you feel
attracted – a beautiful man, looks very good, looks innocent. His eyes are
beautiful, the vibe is beautiful. But then the man introduces himself and he
says, "I am Jew" – and you are a Christian. Something immediately
clicks and there is distance: now the man is no more innocent, the man is no
more beautiful. You have certain ideas about Jews. Or, he is a Christian and
you are a Jew; you have certain ideas about Christians – what Christianity has
done to Jews in the past, what other Christians have done to Jews in the past,
how they have tortured Jews down the ages... and suddenly he is a Christian –
and something immediately changes.
This is acting out of
conclusions, prejudices, not looking at this man – because this man may not be
the man that you think a Jew has to be... because each Jew is a different kind
of man, each Hindu is a different kind of man, so is each Mohammedan.
You cannot act out of
prejudices. You cannot act by categorizing people. You cannot pigeonhole
people; nobody can be pigeonholed. You may have been deceived by a hundred
communists, but when you meet the hundred and first communist don't go on
believing in the category that you have made in your mind: that communists are
deceptive – or anything. This may be a different type of man, because no two
persons are alike.
Whenever you act out of
conclusion, it is mind. When you look into the present and you don't allow any
idea to obstruct the reality, to obstruct the fact, you just look into the fact
and act out of that look, that is meditation.
Excerpted from 'The
Heart Sutra' by Osho
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