OSHO QUOTES ABOUT MEDITATION

 

"Meditation is just to be, not doing anything – no action, no thought, no emotion. You just are."

 "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."

"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."

 

JOY AND PLEASURE - JEAN KLEIN - "WHO AM I?"

 "Q. Where does desire come from?
A. All desire is ultimately the search for peace and as such springs from desirelessness. When a desired thing is attained there is a moment of desirelessness without subject and object. Later, we attribute this contentment to the object but in the moment itself there is no cause and effect, no perceiver and perceived. We are on our home-ground. All desire springs from the urge to be at home permanently.
What is generally called desire is a psychological superimposition created by the ego for its survival. Most desire comes from psychological memory, that fortress of the ego. Of course, there is desire which comes from the body itself. It belongs to biological survival and is a natural function.
Q. Would you speak about stimulation?
A. Your completeness is autonomous. That means there is no need for stimulation to fill a lack. A certain amount of stimulation is important for the biological structure, of course, otherwise it dies. But because this appears within your real nature you are not bound by its appearing. It holds no interest for you in itself. All appears in consciousness. Biological stimulation is then jubilation; existence is only play. It is an expression of wholeness. When you are consciousness you see, feel, taste, hear only consciousness. All need springs from lack and almost all our need for stimulation stems from mental confusion.
Q. I often find myself trying to repeat certain experiences or sensations which were pleasurable. Why is this?
A. The person needs experiences to exist and looks to repeat them. Pleasure offers more security for the ego than pain. As long as you take yourself for an experiencer you live in the pleasure-pain cycle. Objectless consciousness, your real nature, is joy without experiencer or experience. It is not connected to time, memory, feeling or sensation, so there is nothing to repeat. You are the guest of joy, you cannot impose yourself.
Q. Would you clarify the distinction between joy and pleasure?
A. Pleasure is always in the shadow of pain. In joy there is no counterpart. Joy is without cause or object. As all appears in joy, pleasure too appears in joy. Joy is the background out of which the opposites, pleasure and pain, arise, and into which they reduce. Pleasure maintains the person whilst joy annihilates the person. Joy may appear spontaneously but often it degenerates into pleasure.
Q. How does this degeneration occur?
A. You conceptualise joy. Joy is global, but what is conceptualised becomes successive since there cannot be more than one concept at a time. Pleasure is fractional. Joy is multidimensional. Pleasure has a beginning and an end but joy is continuous.
Q. Would you say joy is the synthesis of pleasure and pain?
A. Joy is all-encompassing. It is the source, not the synthesis, of fractions. The 'still joy' I speak of is a living principle. Existence. Pleasure and pain are in this joy but it is not bound to them. Where there is only a conceptual - and not a living - principle there is no warmth, no life."

THE FALSE "I" - “Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talk 222

 

"All these are only mental concepts. You are now identifying yourself with the wrong ‘I’, which is the ‘I-thought’. 

This ‘I-thought’ rises and sinks, whereas the true significance of ‘I’ is beyond both. 

There can not be a break in your being. You, who slept, are also now awake.

 There was no unhappiness in your sleep. Whereas it exists now. What is it that has happened now so that this difference is experienced? 

There was no ‘I-thought” in your sleep, whereas it is present now. The true ‘I’ is not apparent and the false ‘I’ is parading itself.

 This false ‘I’ is the obstacle to your right knowledge. Find out wherefrom this false ‘I’ arises. Then it will disappear. You will be only what you are, absolute Being. 

Search for the source of the ‘I-thought’. That is all that one has to do.

 The universe exists on account of the ‘I- thought’. If that ends there is an end of misery also. 

The false ‘I’ will end only when its source is sought.”

 

THE STARTING POINT

 

 

Before trying to understand some unusual concepts about reality, we must be willing to drop most of our core lifelong beliefs.

 

“You see that you have many opinions and conclusions.
You don’t know why you have them or how to be free of them.
Start with not knowing.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti

 

We did not question our beliefs, we took them as absolute truth:

 

“Many of our ideas and beliefs about ourselves and the world are so deeply ingrained that we are unaware that they are beliefs and take them, without questioning, for the absolute truth. For instance, we believe that we are a body, that we are a man or a women and that we were born and will die. We believe that we are an entity amongst other innumerable other entities, and that this entity resides somewhere in the body, usually behind the eyes or in the chest area. We believe that we are the subject of our experience and that everything and everyone else is the object. We believe that we, as this subject, are the doer of our actions, the thinker of our thoughts, the feeler of our feelings, the chooser of our choices. We believe that this entity we consider ourselves to be, has freedom of choice over some aspects of experience but not others. We believe that time and space are actually experienced, that they existed before we did and will continue to do so after we have died.”

Rupert Spira, “The Transparency of Things”

 

The mind will reject new, unconventional ideas that do not fit in with what has already been accepted:

 

“The mind has built a powerful edifice of concepts about Reality that bears little relation to actual experience and, as a result, Consciousness has veiled itself from itself.”

Rupert Spira, “The Transparency of Things”

 

 It is easier to start from a not-knowing state.

 

“It is only when the mind is free from the old that it meets everything anew, and in that there is joy.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti

 

The most clear, complete advice is:

 

“I hope that you will listen, but not with the memory of what you already know; and this is very difficult to do. You listen to something, and your mind immediately reacts with its knowledge, its conclusions, its opinions, its past memories. It listens, inquiring for a future understanding.

 

Just observe yourself, how you are listening, and you will see that this is what is taking place. Either you are listening with a conclusion, with knowledge with certain memories, experiences, or you want an answer and you are impatient. You want to know what is it all about, what life is all about, the extraordinary complexity of life. You are not actually listening at all.

 

You can only listen when the mind is quiet, when the mind doesn’t react immediately, when there is an interval between your reaction and what is being said. Then, in that interval there is a quietness, there is a silence in which alone there is a comprehension which is not intellectual understanding.

 If there is a gap between what is said and your own reaction to what is said, in that interval, whether you prolong it indefinitely, for a long period or for a few seconds – in that interval, if you observe, there comes clarity. It is the interval that is the new brain. The immediate reaction is the old brain, and the old brain functions in its own traditional, accepted, reactionary, animalistic sense.

 

When there is an abeyance of that, when the reaction is suspended, when there is an interval, then you will find that the new brain acts, and it is only the new brain that can understand, not the old brain.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti