ANGER — a sort of meditation?

Mahavir has called KRODHA — anger — a sort of meditation. He has named it ROUDRA DHYAN — meditation on negative attitudes. It is! — because you are concentrated. Really, when you are in deep anger you are so concentrated that the whole world disappears. Only the cause of anger is focused. Your total energy is on the cause of anger, and you are so much focused on the cause that you forget yourself completely. That’s why in anger you can do things about which, later on, you can say, “I did them in spite of myself.” You were not.

For awareness you have to take an about-turn. You have to concentrate not on the cause outside, but on the source inside. Forget the cause. Close your eyes, and go deep and dig into the source. Then you can use the same energy which was to be wasted on someone outside — the energy moves inwards. Anger has much energy. Anger is energy — the purest of fires inside. Don’t waste it outside.

Take another example. You are feeling sexual: sex is again energy, fire. But whenever you feel sexual, again you are focused on someone outside, not on the source. you begin to think of someone — of the lover, of the beloved, A-B-C-D — but when you are filled with sex your focus is always on the other. You are dissipating energy.

Not only in the sexual act do you dissipate energy, but in sexual thinking you dissipate it even more because a sexual act is a momentary thing. It comes to a peak, the energy is released, and you are thrown back. But sexual thinking can continuously be there. You can continue it in sexual thinking, you can dissipate energy. And everyone is dissipating energy. Ninety percent of our thinking is sexual. Whatsoever you are doing outside, inside sex is a constant concern — you may not even be aware of it.

You are sitting in a room and a woman enters: your posture changes suddenly. Your spine is moire erect, your breathing changes, your blood pressure is different. You may not be aware at all of what has happened, but your whole body has reacted sexually. you were a different person when the woman was not there; now again you are a different person.

An all-male group is a different group, and all-female group is a different group. Let one male come in or one female, and the whole group, the whole energy pattern, changes suddenly. You may not be conscious of it, but when your mind is focused on someone, your energy begins to flow. when you feel sexual, look at the source, not at the cause — remember this.

Science is more concerned with the cause and religion is more concerned with the source. The source is always inside; the cause is always outside. With cause you are in a chain reaction. With cause you are connected with your environment. With source you are connected with yourself. So remember this. This is the purest method to change unconscious energy into conscious energy. Take an about-turn — look inside! It is going to be difficult because our look has become fixed. We are like a person whose neck is paralyzed, and who cannot move and look back. Our eyes have become fixed. We have been looking outside for lives together — for millennia — so we don’t know how to look inside.

Do this: whenever something happens in your mind, follow it to the source. Anger is there — a sudden flash has come to you — close your eyes, meditate on it. From where is this anger arising? Never ask the question: who has made it possible? who has made you angry? That is a wrong question. Ask which energy in you is transforming into anger — from where is this anger coming up, bubbling up, what is the source inside from where this energy is coming?

Are you aware that in anger you can do something which you cannot do when you are not in anger? A person in anger can throw a big stone easily. When he is not angry he cannot even lift it. He has much energy when he is angry. A hidden source is now with him. So if a man is mad, he becomes very strong. Why? From where is this energy coming? It is not coming from anything outside. Now all his sources are burning simultaneously — anger, sex, everything, is burning simultaneously. Every source is available.

Be concerned with from where anger is bubbling up, from where the sex desire has come in. Follow it, take steps backwards. Meditate silently and go with anger to the roots. It is difficult but it is not impossible. It is not easy. It is not going to be easy because it is a fight against a long, rooted habit. The whole past has to be broken, and you have to do something new which you have never done before. It is just the weight of sheer habit which will create the difficulty. But try it, and then you are creating a new direction for energy to move. You are beginning to be a circle, and in a circle energy is never dissipated.

My energy comes up and moves outside — it can never become a circle now; it is simply dissipated. If my movement inwards is there, then the same energy which was going out turns upon itself. My meditation leads this energy back to the same source from where the anger was coming. It becomes a circle. This inner circle is the strength of a Mahavir. The sex energy, not moving to someone else, moves back to its own source. This circle of sex energy is the strength of a Buddha.

We are weaklings, not because we have less energy than a Buddha: we have the same quanta of energy, everyone is born with the same energy quanta, but we are accustomed to dissipating it. It simply moves away from us and never comes back. It cannot come back! Once it is out of you, it can never come back — it is beyond you.

A word arises in me: I speak it out; it has flown away. It is not going to come back to me, and the energy that was used in producing it, that was used in throwing it away, is dissipated. A word arises in me: I don’t throw it out; I remain silent. Then the word moves and moves and moves, and falls into the original source again. The energy has been reconsumed.

Silence is energy. Brahmacharya is energy. Not to be angry is energy. But this is not suppression. If you suppress anger, you have used energy again. Don’t suppress — observe and follow. don’t fight — just move backwards with the anger. This is the purest method of awareness.

But certain other things can be used. For beginners certain devices are possible. So I will talk about three devices. One type of device is based on body awareness. Forget anger, forget sex — they are difficult problems. And when you are in them, you become so mad that you cannot meditate. When you are angry you cannot meditate; you cannot even think about meditation. You are just mad. So forget it; it is difficult. Then use your own body as a device for awareness.

Buddha has said that when you walk, walk consciously. When you breathe, breathe consciously. The Buddhist method is known as ANAPANASATI YOGA — the yoga of the incoming and outgoing breath, incoming and outgoing breath awareness. The breath comes in: move with the breath; know, be aware, that the breath is moving in. When the breath has gone out again, move with it. Be in, be out, with the breath.

Anger is difficult, sex is difficult — breath is not so difficult. Move with the breath. Don’t allow any breath to be in or out without consciousness. This is a meditation. Now you will be focused on breathing, and when you are focused on breathing thoughts stop automatically. you cannot think, because the moment you think your consciousness moves from breath to thought. you have missed breathing.

Try this and you will know. When you are aware of breathing, thoughts cease. The same energy which is used for thoughts is being used in being aware of breath. If you start thinking, you will lose track of the breath, you will forget, and you will think. You cannot do both simultaneously.

If you are following breathing, it is a long process. One has to go into it deeply. It takes a minimum of three months and a maximum of three years. If it is done continuously twenty-four hours a day… it is a method for monks, those who have given up everything; only they can watch their breathing twenty-four hours a day. That’s why Buddhist monks and other traditions of monks, they reduce their living to the minimum so that no disturbance is there. They will beg for their food and they will sleep under a tree — that’s all. Their whole time is devoted to some inner practice of being aware — mm? — for example, of breath.

A Buddhist monk moves. He has to be continuously aware of his breath. The silence that you see on a Buddhist monk’s face is the silence of the awareness of breathing and nothing else. If you become aware your face will become silent, because if thoughts are not there your face cannot show anxiety, thinking. Your face becomes relaxed. Continuous awareness of breathing will stop the mind. The continuously troubled mind will stop. And if the mind stops and you are simply aware of breathing, if the mind is not functioning, you cannot be angry, you cannot be sexual.

Sex or anger or greed or jealousy or envy — anything needs the mechanism of mind. And if the mechanism stops, you cannot do anything. This again leads to the same thing. Now the energy that is used in sex, in anger, in greed, in ambition, has no outlet. And you go on continuously being concerned with breathing, day and night. Buddha has said, “Even in sleep try to be aware of breathing.” It will be difficult in the beginning, but if you can be aware in the day, then by and by this will penetrate into your sleep.

Anything penetrates into sleep if it has gone deep in the mind in the day. If you have been worried about a certain thing in the day, it gets into the sleep. If you were thinking continuously about sex, it gets into the sleep. If you were angry the whole day, anger gets into the sleep. So Buddha says there is no difficulty. If a person is continuously concerned with breathing and awareness of the breathing, ultimately it penetrates into the sleep. You cannot dream then. If your awareness is there of incoming breath and outgoing breath, then in sleep you cannot dream.

The moment you dream, this awareness will not be there. If awareness is there, dreams are impossible. So a Buddhist monk asleep is not just like you. His sleep has a different quality. It has a different depth and a certain awareness in it is there.

Ananda said to Buddha, “I have observed you for years and years together. It seems like a miracle: you sleep as if you are awake. You are in the same posture the whole night.” The hand would not move from the place where it had been put; the leg would remain in the same posture. Buddha would sleep in the same posture the whole night. Not a single movement! For nights tog3ether ananda would sit and watch and wonder, “What type of sleep is this!” Buddha would not move. He would be as if a dead body, and he would wake up in the same posture in which he went to sleep. Ananda asked, “What are you doing? Were you asleep or not? You never move!”

Buddha said, “A day will come, Ananda, when you will know. This shows that you are not practising anapanasati yoga rightly; it shows only this. Otherwise this question would not have arisen. You are not practising anapanasati yoga — if you are continuously aware of your breath in the day, it is impossible not to be conscious of it in the night. And if the mind is concerned with awareness, dreams cannot penetrate. And if there are no dreams, mind is clear, transparent. Your body is asleep, but you are not. Your body is relaxing, you are aware — the flame is there inside. So, Ananda,” Buddha is reported to have said, “I am not asleep — only the body is sleep. I am aware! and not only in sleep. Ananda — when I die, you will see: I will be aware, only the body will die.”

Practise awareness with breathing; then you will be capable of penetrating. Or practise awareness with body movements. Buddha has a word for it: he calls it “mindfulness”. He says, “Walk mindfully.” We walk without any mind in it.

A certain man was sitting before Buddha when he was talking one day. He was moving his leg and a toe unnecessarily. There was no reason for it. Buddha stopped talking and asked that man, “Why are you moving your leg? Why are you moving your toe?” Suddenly, as the Buddha asked, the man stopped. Then Buddha asked, “Why have you stopped so suddenly?”

The man said, “Why, I was not even aware that I was moving my toe or my leg! I was not aware! The moment you asked, I became aware.”

Buddha said, “What nonsense! Your leg is moving and you are not aware? So what are you doing with your body? Are you an alive man or dead? This is your leg, this is your toe, and it goes on moving and you are not even aware? Then of what are you aware? You can kill a man and you can say, “I was not aware.’” And, really, those who kill are not aware. It is difficult to kill someone when you are aware.

Buddha would say, “Move, walk, but be filled with consciousness. Know inwardly you are walking.” You are not to use any words; you are not to use any thoughts. You are not to say inside, “I am walking,” because if you say it then you are not aware of walking — you have become aware of your thought, and you have missed walking. Just be somatically aware — not mentally. Just feel that you are walking. Create a somatic awareness, a sensitivity, so that you can feel directly without mind coming in.

The wind is blowing — you are feeling it. Don’t use words. Just feel, and be mindful of the feeling. You are lying down on the beach, and the sand is cool, deeply cool. Feel it! — don’t use words. Just feel it — the coolness of it, the penetrating coolness of it. Just feel! Be conscious of it; don’t use words. Don’t say, “The sand is very cool.” The moment you say it you have missed an existential moment. You have become intellectual about it.

You are with your lover or with your beloved: feel the presence; don’t use words. Just feel the warmth, the love flowing. Just feel the oneness that has happened. don’t use words. don’t say, “I love you,” you will have destroyed it. The mind has come in. And the moment you say, “I love you,” it has become a past memory. Just feel without words. Anything felt without words, felt totally without the mind coming in, will give you a mindfulness.

You are eating: eat mindfully; taste everything mindfully. Don’t use words. The taste is itself such a great and penetrating thing. Don’t use words and don’t destroy it. Feel it to the core. You are drinking water: feel it passing through the throat; don’t use words. Just feel it; be mindful about it. The movement of the water, the coolness, the disappearing thirst, the satisfaction that follows — feel it!

You are sitting in the sun: feel the warmth; don’t use words. The sun is touching you. There is a deep communion. Feel it! In this way, somatic awareness, bodily awareness, is developed. If you develop a bodily awareness, again mind comes to a stop. Mind is not needed. And if mind stops, you are again thrown into the deep unconscious. With a very, very deep alertness you can penetrate, Now you have a light with you, and the darkness disappears.

Source: OSHO

Never a better time than now !

It’s a pity we waste our precious NOW by just aimlessly thinking of the unknown future. The mind has become our master rather than keeping under our control. We lift our arms and legs when we want to, but our mind is beyond our control; it keeps running non-stop even when we need it to stop… like a film roll reeling continuously flashing through the past memories and making future projections despite our will. It gets us so tired ! The mind has taken over us completely, and we have become its slaves. It keeps running aimlessly into the past and future without our even being aware of it ! We must put it back in it’s rightful place to be able to discover our true powers, our true self ! This aimless running of the mind has killed our true capacities and powers, we are much much more than what we have diminished ourselves to. We must remind ourselves that our mind is a utility, a mere device provided for our convenience of recording, calculating, memorizing. We should be able to summon it when WE need it, and not allow it to take us for a ride 24 hrs of the day, even in our sleep! The mind is not at rest even for a second; aimlessly wandering.. making us mentally and physically sick; dominating us ! No one but WE can help ourselves out of it; and once you taste the inner peace, the silence that comes with the mind being still, you will discover your true powers ! Nobody or nothing will be able to agitate you, to affect you in any way.. you will not be dependent on anyone or anything for your happiness. You will be completely at peace with yourself; one with nature.

You can start by simply watching the thoughts that cross your mind… just sit back and watch the thoughts come and go. You will be surprised that most of the thoughts that keep your mind occupied are useless and have no relation to reality; to the present. You will either be making castles in the air of a future that hasn’t even come, a future that is unpredictable which we cannot steer even if we wanted to. OR, it will be dwelling in the past which has already passed now, and we couldn’t re-live it even if we wanted to.

Another starter would be to watch your breathing. Become aware of each breath you take; watch it all the way in, and all the way out(closing your eyes would help still your mind all the more). We normally breathe unconsciously; the very root of our existence, and we are not even aware of it.

Whatever you do, try to be conscious of your actions. Many a tasks we do absent mindedly which proves that the mind has wandered off elsewhere, and is not present with us in what we are doing.

Religion has nothing to do with God, the devil, heaven and hell.

The word religion has to be understood. The word is significant: it means putting the parts together, so that the parts are no longer parts but become whole. The root meaning of the word religion is: to put things together in such a way that the part is no longer a part but becomes the whole. Each part becomes the whole, in togetherness. Each part, separate, is dead; joined together, a new quality appears, the quality of the whole. And to bring that quality into your life is the purpose of religion.

It has nothing to do with God or the devil. But the way the religions have functioned in the world, they have changed its whole quality, the very fabric. Instead of making it a science of integration, so that man is not many, but one…. Ordinarily you are many, a crowd. To melt this crowd into one wholeness, so that everything in you starts functioning in harmony with everything else within you, and there is no conflict, no division, no fight — nobody higher, nobody lower, you are just one harmonious whole….

The religions around the world have helped humanity to forget even the meaning of the word. They are against the integrated man, because the integrated man does not need God, does not need the priest, does not need the church. The integrated man is enough unto himself. He is whole. And to me that makes him holy — because he is whole. He is so fulfilled that there is no psychological need for a father figure, a God somewhere in heaven taking care of you. He is so blissful in the moment, you cannot make him afraid about tomorrow. Tomorrow does not exist for the integrated man. Only this moment is all — neither there are yesterdays nor tomorrows.

You cannot manipulate the integrated man through these childish stupid strategies of “If you do this you will attain to heaven and all its pleasures; if you do that you will fall into hell and you will suffer for eternity.” The integrated man will simply laugh at all this nonsense.

He has no fear of the future, you cannot create hell; he has no greed for the future, you cannot create heaven. He needs no protection, nobody to guide him, nobody to take him somewhere. He has no goals, no motivations. Each moment is so complete that it is not waiting to be completed by another moment which will come sometime in this life, or maybe in the next life…. Each moment is full, overfull, overflowing, and all that he knows is a tremendous gratitude for this beautiful existence.

That too he does not say, because the existence does not understand language. That gratitude is his very being, so whatsoever he is doing, there is gratitude. If he is not doing anything, just sitting silently, there is gratitude. It is not something like Mohammedans who five times a day thank God — but what are you doing between those five times? You are not thanking between those five times. So your thankfulness is just a ritual, it is not your life.

Source: From Unconciousness to Consciousness, OSHO

A MONK SAID TO TOZAN, “YOU ALWAYS TELL LEARNERS TO TAKE THE WAY OF THE BIRDS. WHAT IS THIS WAY OF THE BIRDS?”

TOZAN SAID, “YOU MEET NOBODY ON IT.”

THE MONK THEN ASKED, “HOW CAN WE GO ON THIS WAY?”

TOZAN ANSWERED, “BY EGOLESSNESS, ATTENDING TO EACH STEP AS IT COMES.”

THE MONK SAID, “ISN’T THE BIRDS’ WAY THE SAME AS ONE’S ORIGINAL NATURE?”

TOZAN SAID, “O MONK, WHY DO YOU GET EVERYTHING UPSIDE-DOWN?”

THE MONK ASKED, “WHAT IS THIS PLACE WHERE PEOPLE GET THINGS UPSIDE-DOWN?”

TOZAN SAID, “IF THERE WERE NO TOPSY-TURVINESS HOW COULD A SERVANT BECOME A LORD?”

THE MONK ASKED, “WHAT IS OUR ORIGINAL NATURE?”

TOZAN ANSWERED, “NOT TAKING THE WAY OF THE BIRDS.”

WHEN A MONK ASKED KASSAN, “WHAT IS THE WAY?” HE ANSWERED, “THE SUN OVERFLOWS OUR EYES; FOR TEN THOUSAND LEAGUES NOT A CLOUD HANGS IN THE SKY.”

“WHAT IS THE REAL FORM OF THE UNIVERSE?” ASKED THE MONK.

“THE FISHES AT PLAY IN THE CLEAR-FLOWING WATER MAKE THEIR MISTAKES,” REPLIED KASSAN.

The bird flying across the sky leaves no footprints. This is called the Way of the Birds — simply disappearing into the nothingness of the sky, without leaving a trace behind. Zen wants you to be just like the Birds’ Way — a nobody, a nothingness.

It is strange but true that in your nothingness you are for the first time born. The nothingness is the womb out of which your spiritual heights are revealed.

Just as you cannot follow the bird because he leaves no footprints, the buddha also leaves no footprints. You cannot follow a buddha for the simple reason that you are a buddha; you have just forgotten it. And once you try to follow a buddha, you are going astray.

Those who make footprints behind themselves — create organized religions, give commandments for the coming future, scriptures to be followed by those who have not come yet — are all engaged in nonreligious activity.

Religion is a rebellion — rebellion against following. This is a religious place. You are not my followers. You can love me, I can love you …. Following means a subtle spiritual slavery. I don’t have any follower and I don’t want anybody to be a follower of anybody else either. The moment you start following someone, you are going to miss yourself. You will be lost in dark nights and dark clouds and it will become more and more difficult to find the way back home.

A MONK SAID TO TOZAN, “YOU ALWAYS TELL LEARNERS TO TAKE THE WAY OF THE BIRDS.

WHAT IS THIS WAY OF THE BIRDS?”

TOZAN SAID, “YOU MEET NOBODY ON IT.”

Source: Zen: The Solitary Bird, Cuckoo of the Forest Download Now!
Chapter 1 – The way of the birds

Zen : The Solitary Bird, Cuckoo of the Forest

In this series Osho takes us deeply into the mysteries of the inner world. He explains that the existence of the mind is peripheral and can only exist on the circumference of our consciousness. It is a fine instrument for outside inquiry, but inhibits the internal search. In those moments when we enter our being, it disappears. This is meditation.

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Table of Contents
Chapter 1 – The way of the birds
Chapter 2 – Tearing down, breaking up
Chapter 3 – Don’t wobble
Chapter 4 – Such a moon
Chapter 5 – A very dangerous place
Chapter 6 – In this rackety town
Chapter 7 – Fences, walls and broken tiles
Chapter 8 – Like the tongue of a dead man
Chapter 9 – No words, no mind, and you are in
Chapter 10 – Be at the center
Chapter 11 – Dhyana has no gate
Chapter 12 – Hidden behind these reflecting eyes
Chapter 13 – The price of rice in Joshu
Chapter 14 – Kwatz!
Chapter 15 – The house where nobody lives

I feel as if I only exist in the eyes of other. I feel so unreal. Where am I? What can I do, or not do?

The first thing: it is not only you who only exists in the eyes of others; everybody is existing that way. That is the common way of existence. You use the other as a mirror. Others’ opinions become very important, of immense value because they define you. Somebody says you are so beautiful; in that moment you become beautiful. Somebody says you are a fool; in that moment you start suspecting; maybe you are a fool? You may get angry, you may deny, but deep down you have become suspicious about your intelligence….

If you want to know who you are, you will have even to close your eyes; you will have to go withinwards. You will have to forget the whole world, you will have to forget what they say about you. You will have to go deep inside you and encounter your own reality.

That’s what I am teaching here — not to depend on others, not to look in their eyes. There are no clues in their eyes. They are as unaware as you are — how can they define you?

You are looking into each other’s eyes to find who you are. Yes, some reflections are there, your face is reflected. But your face is not you; you are far behind the face. Your face has been changing so much that you can’t be your face.

…You are not the face. Somewhere deep down hidden is your consciousness; it is never reflected into anybody’s eyes. Yes, a few things are reflected: your actions. You do something; it is reflected into others’ eyes. But your doing is not you. You are far greater than your actions….

Your being is never reflected in the eyes of others. Your being you have to come to know only in one way…and that is by closing your eyes to all the mirrors. You have to enter into your own inward existence, to face it directly. Nobody can give you any idea of it, what it is. You can know it, but not from others. It can never be a borrowed knowledge, it can only be a direct experience, a direct experiencing, immediate.

Osho, The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol. 1,Talk #2

Ecstasy – The Forgotten Language

Osho speaks on the exuberant poems of Kabir, as translated by India’s Nobel Prize-winning poet, Rabindranath Tagore. He also responds to questions as diverse as the difference between relationship and aloneness, mind and society, self and enlightenment, and explains the difference between a crystallized self and a strong ego.

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ECSTASY IS A LANGUAGE that man has completely forgotten. He has been forced to forget it; he has been compelled to forget it. The society is against it, the civilization is against it. The society has a tremendous investment in misery. It depends on misery, it feeds on misery, it survives on misery. The society is not for human beings. The society is using human beings as a means for itself. The society has become more important than humanity. The culture, the civilization, the church, they all have become more important. They were meant to be for man, but now they are not for man. They have almost reversed the whole process; now man exists for them.

The Art of Dying

The Art of Dying

In this volume Osho comments on stories compiled by the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. Osho helps the reader to face the reality of his own death without fear, and thereby living life to the optimum. Originating in Poland around 1750, Hasidim sought a direct, spontaneous religious experience of life, and created a great tradition of laughing saints and wonderful stories. “In a language simple but yet profound, the master Osho indicates the art of ‘dying’ by learning how to live in the here and now, the eternal life.”