PRACTICES OF YOGA – ASANAS, PRANAYAMAS, MUDRAS AND BANDHAS — WERE DISCOVERED IN THE STATE OF MEDITATION

IN DIFFERENT STATES OF MEDITATION, DIFFERENT POSTURES ARE FORMED BY THE BODY FROM WHICH THE DEPTH OF MEDITATION OF THE MEDITATOR COULD BE TOLD. CONVERSELY, CAN THE SAME INNER STATE BE BROUGHT ABOUT BY FORMING THE NECESSARY POSTURES? IN THAT CASE, CAN MEDITATION BE ATTAINED BY THE USE OF VARIOUS ASANAS, PRANAYAMAS, MUDRAS AND BANDHAS? WHAT IS THEIR USE AND SIGNIFICANCE?

First came the experience of meditation. With the experience of meditation it was found that the body assumed many postures. Actually, whenever the mind is in a particular state the body takes an appropriate corresponding posture. For instance, when you are filled with love your face, your expression, is one way, and when you are angry your expression becomes altogether different. In anger you grind your teeth and clench your fists and the body is ready for fight or flight. When you are in a forgiving mood the eyes are soft and the palms of the hand open. When a man is filled with forgiveness his fists will never clench. Just as clenching the fist is a preparation to fight, opening the fist and spreading out the palm is an indication of freedom from the urge to fight; it is an assurance of protection. To clench the fist is to frighten the other person.

The nature of the body is that it works in accordance with the state of mind. The body follows the mind: it always follows behind. So ordinarily we know what a man will do in anger and what he will do in love — also what he will do in a state of trust. But we do not know how he will react to the deeper states of mind.

When deep states are created within the mind a great deal takes place in the body also. Various mudras, gestures, and also many asanas, postures happen that tell of the changes within. In fact, the asanas are formed at the time of preparation for particular inner states. Mudras are formed later and they give information about a person’s inner state.
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The Madman’s Guide to Enlightenment

The Madman’s Guide to Enlightenment

Do at least one meditation every day. Choose any meditation, but persist with one method; don’t go on changing. Whether results come or not, go on persisting in it. Results certainly come; all that is needed is patience. Methods don’t work. What really works is patience. Methods are devices to help you to remain patient and open.

If a person simply sits in his room for one hour every day doing nothing — no method, no technique, just sitting there — if he sits long enough it is going to happen. All meditations are just explanations for people who cannot just sit, rationalisations for people who cannot allow themselves to just sit. They need something, so when they think they are doing meditations they can allow themselves a one-hour gap, otherwise they won’t allow. In fact meditation is nothing. It is simply waiting, resting, a state of no action… and that is our natural state.

Think of the child in the mother’s womb, doing nothing. That is a nine-month meditation marathon. And the child is utterly happy. In fact, because of that blissfulness, one always feels a suffering in life. Compared to it whatsoever happens in life falls short. Although consciously you have forgotten about it, unconsciously it persists as a nostalgia. We know in some subtle way, our body knows, that there was a time when all was just bliss. But you were not doing anything in the womb; you were in a state of no action — ‘wu-wei’. You were just there. That’s what meditation is all about: again creating a womb situation.

So close your doors, sit silently; even that will do. But make it a point that one hour has to be given every day. And results won’t pop up immediately, because we have learned habits of action and they have become so deep-rooted that even when you are sitting, you find some ways to do something. At least you can go on changing your posture, you can think of a thousand and one things. You can have dreams. You can wonder ‘Who is this child crying? Why? Why is this dog barking?’ Or you can create subtle mechanisms in the body to distract you. Maybe an ant is creeping on your leg or there is pain and you have to change the posture. These are nothing but tricks, strategies of the mind to keep you occupied, because the mind dies utterly if there is no occupation. The mind is occupation. Meditation means a state of no occupation.

So if you like any method, you can do it; if you don’t, just sit. Twenty-three hours are yours; one hour give to me.

And finally you will see that only that one hour has been saved; all the other twenty-three hours have gone down the drain.

You have to put the energy into your earning because you have to come forever, so settle things. But one hour for meditation, mm? that will be a contact with me, a connection, and it will rejuvenate you every day. It will go on creating new spaces for you. But don’t hanker for them and don’t expect them. Don’t even think about them. When they happen say ‘thank you’ to the sky and forget all about it.

And don’t for a single moment have the idea in your mind ‘Now it has happened it has to happen every day.’ Once you desire a repetition you are getting into trouble; it will not happen again. It happens only in an innocent mind. It happens only when there was no expectation, no desire, no action, no occupation, just a simple passivity. One was, nothing else — a pure being, a naked, bare being. One was just breathing, one was aware.

So give one hour to meditation and put your energies into the work and come back as soon as you can.

Source: OSHO

When we feel emotionally wounded, memories can pop up that most of us automatically want to throw in the basement of our unconscious.

We think that time will take care of them, but they keep coming back. Here’s a much more effective way to heal your emotional wounds:

“If you are feeling miserable, let it become a meditation. Sit silently, close the doors. First feel the misery with as much intensity as possible. Feel the hurt. Somebody has insulted you: now, the best way to avoid the hurt is to go and insult him, so that you become occupied with him. That is not meditation.

If somebody has insulted you, feel thankful to him that he has given you an opportunity to feel a deep wound. He has opened a wound in you. The wound may be created by many many insults that you have suffered in your whole life; he may not be the cause of all the suffering, but he has triggered a process.

Just close your room, sit silently, with no anger for the person but with total awareness of the feeling that is arising in you — the hurt feeling that you have been rejected, that you have been insulted. And then you will be surprised that not only is this man there: all the men and all the women and all the people that have ever insulted you will start moving in your memory.

You will start not only remembering them, you will start reliving them. You will be going into a kind of primal. Feel the hurt, feel the pain, don’t avoid it. That’s why in many therapies the patient is told not to take any drugs before the therapy begins, for the simple reason that drugs are a way to escape from your inner misery. They don’t allow you to see your wounds, they repress them. They don’t allow you to go into your suffering and unless you go into your suffering, you cannot be released from the imprisonment of it.

It is perfectly scientific to drop all drugs before going into therapy — if possible even drugs like coffee, tea, smoking, because these are all ways to escape. Have you watched? Whenever you feel nervous you immediately start smoking. It is a way to avoid nervousness; you become occupied with smoking. Really it is a regression. Smoking makes you again feel like a child — unworried, non-responsible — because smoking is nothing but a symbolic breast. The hot smoke going in simply takes you back to the days when you were feeding on the mother’s breast and the warm milk was going in: the nipple has now become the cigarette. The cigarette is a symbolic nipple. Through regression you avoid the responsibilities and the pains of being adult. And that’s what goes on through many many drugs.

Modern man is drugged as never before, because Modern man is living in great suffering. Without drugs it will be impossible to live in so much suffering. Those drugs create a barrier; they keep you drugged they don’t allow you enough sensitivity to know your pain. The first thing to do is close your doors and stop any kind of occupation — looking at the TV, listening to the radio, reading a book.

Stop all occupation, because that too is a subtle drug. Just be silent, utterly alone. Don’t even pray, because that again is a drug, you are becoming occupied, you start talking to God, you start praying, you escape from yourself. Atisha is saying: Just be yourself. Whatsoever the pain of it and whatsoever the suffering of it, let it be so. First experience it in its total intensity. It will be difficult, it will be heart-rending: you may start crying like a child, you may start rolling on the ground in deep pain, your body may go through contortions. You may suddenly become aware that the pain is not only in the heart, it is all over the body — that it is aching all over, that it is painful all over, that your whole body is nothing but pain. If you can experience it — this is of tremendous importance — then start absorbing it.

Don’t throw it away. It is such a valuable energy, don’t throw it away. Absorb it, drink it, accept it, welcome it, feel grateful to it. And say to yourself “This time I’m not going to avoid it, this time I’m not going to reject it, this time I’m not going to throw it away. This time I will drink it and receive it like a guest. This time I will digest it.” It may take a few days for you to be able to digest it, but the day it happens, you have stumbled upon a door which will take you really far far away.

A new journey has started in your life, you are moving into a new kind of being — because immediately, the moment you accept the pain with no rejection anywhere, its energy and its quality changes. It is no longer pain. In fact one is simply surprised, one cannot believe it, it is so incredible. One cannot believe that suffering can be transformed into ecstasy, that pain can become joy. Whenever anything is total it turns into its opposite.

This is a great secret to be remembered. Whenever something is total it changes into its opposite, because there is no way to go any further; the cul-de-sac has arrived. Watch an old clock with a pendulum. It goes on and on: the pendulum goes to the left, to the extreme left, and then there is a point beyond which it cannot go, then it starts moving towards the right. Opposites are complementaries. If you can suffer your suffering in totality, in great intensity, you will be surprised…you will not be able to believe it when it happens for the first time, that your own suffering absorbed willingly, welcomingly, becomes a great blessing. The same energy that becomes hate becomes love, the same energy that becomes pain becomes pleasure, the same energy that becomes suffering becomes bliss.”

Source: Osho, excerpted from The Book of Wisdom, Chapter 5

The Book of Wisdom (International Edition)

The Heart of Tibetan Buddhism

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CAN PROBLEMS BE SOLVED THROUGH THINKING?

Yes, certain problems can be solved through thinking — only those problems which are created by thinking can be solved by it. But no real problem can be solved by it, no lived problem can be solved by it. It is not created by it; it is there in life itself. Thinking will not be of much help. Only in one way can thinking help you, and that is that through thinking and thinking and thinking, you will stumble upon the truth that thinking is futile. And the moment you realize that thinking is futile for existential problems, it has helped you in a way. It is through thinking that you have come to this realization.

But problems which are created by thinking can be solved by thinking itself. For example, a mathematical problem: it can be solved by thinking, because the whole mathematics is created by thinking. For example, if there is no man on earth, will there be mathematics? There will be no mathematics. With the disappearance of human mind, mathematics will disappear. There is no mathematics in life and existence. In the garden, trees are there, but when you count ONE, TWO, THREE, three trees are not there, because the THREE is a mental thing. The trees are there, but the figures are not there. The figure three is in your mind. If you are not there, the trees will be there, but not three trees, only trees. The THREE is a quality given by the mind, it is a projected quality.

Mind creates mathematics, so any problem of mathematics will be solved by mind, it will be solved by thinking. Remember, you cannot solve a mathematical problem through non-thinking. No meditation will be of help, because meditation will dissolve the mind, and with the mind the whole mathematics will dissolve. So there are problems which are created by the mind; they can be solved. But there are problems which are not created by the mind, but are existential. Those problems cannot be solved by the mind. You will have to move deep in existence itself.

For example, love. It is an existential problem. You cannot solve it by thinking; rather, you will get more puzzled. The more you think, the less you will be in touch with the source of the problem. Meditation will be of help. It will give you insight, it will lead you to the unconscious roots of the problem. If you think about it, you will remain on the surface.

So remember, life problems cannot be solved by thinking. On the contrary, really, because of too much thinking you are missing all solutions, and more problems are created. For example, death. Death is not a problem created by thinking; you cannot solve it by thinking. Whatsoever you think, how can you solve it? You can console, and you can think that consolation is a solution — it is not. You can deceive yourself; that’s possible through thinking. You can create explanations, and through explanations you can think that you have solved it. You can escape the problem through thinking, but you cannot solve it. And see the distinction clearly.

For example, death is there. Your beloved dies, or your friend, or your daughter — the death is there. Now what can you do? You can think about it. You can think and you can say that the soul is immortal — because you have read it. In the Upanishads it is said that the soul is immortal, only the body dies. You don’t know it at all, because if you really know, there is no problem — or is there a problem? If you really know that the soul is immortal, then death has not occurred; there is no problem at all. But the problem is there: death has occurred, and you are disturbed and deep in sorrow. Now you want to escape this sorrow. Now somehow you want to forget this sorrow.

You can take the explanation that the soul is immortal — now this is a trick. Not that the soul is not immortal — I am not saying that — but for you this is a trick. You are trying to deceive yourself. You are in sorrow, and now you want to escape this sorrow, so this explanation will be helpful. Now you can console yourself that the soul is immortal, no one dies, only the body — just as if one changes the clothes, or one changes the abode — so from one house to another the soul has gone. You can go on thinking, but you don’t know anything about it. You have heard, you have collected information; but through these explanations you will be at ease. You can forget the death.

Really this is no solution to the problem. Nothing has been solved. The next day someone else will die and the same problem will be there. Again someone will die and the same problem will be there. And deep down you know that you will have to die. You cannot escape death — and the fear is there. But you can go on postponing, and you can go on escaping through explanations. This won’t do.

Death is an existential problem. You cannot solve it through thinking. You can create only fake solutions. What to do then? Then there is another dimension — the dimension of meditation; not of thinking, not of mentation. You just encounter the situation.

Death has occurred. Your beloved is dead. Don’t move in thinking. Don’t bring the Upanishads and the Gita and the Bible. Don’t ask the Christs and Buddhas. Leave them alone. Death is there: face, encounter. Be with this situation totally. Don’t think about it. What can you think? You can only repeat old rubbish. The death is such a new phenomenon, it is so unknown, that your knowledge is not going to help in any way. So put aside your mind. Be in a deep meditation with death.

Don’t do anything, because what can you do which can be of any help? You don’t know. So be in ignorance. Don’t bring false knowledge, borrowed knowledge. Death is there; you be with it. Face death with total presence. Don’t move in thinking, because then you are escaping from the situation, you are becoming absent from here. Don’t think. Be present with the death.

Sadness will be there, sorrow will be there, a heavy burden will be on you — let it be there. It is part — part of life, and part of maturity, and part of the ultimate realization. Remain with it, totally present. This will be meditation, and you will come to a deep understanding of death. Then death itself becomes eternal life.

But don’t bring the mind and knowledge. Remain with death; then death will reveal itself to you, then you will know what death is. You will move into the inner mansions of it. Then death will take you to the very center of life — because death is the very center of life. It is not against life; it is the very process of life. But mind brings the contradiction that life and death are opposites. Then you go on thinking, and because the root is false, the opposition is false, you can never come to any conclusion which can be true and real.

Whenever there is a lived problem, be with the problem without your mind — that’s what I mean by meditation — and just being there with the problem will solve it. And if you have really been there, death will not occur to you again, because then you know what death is.

We never do this — never with love, never with death, never with anything that is authentically real. We always move in thoughts, and thoughts are the falsifiers. They are borrowed, not your own. They cannot liberate you. Only the truth which is your own can become your liberation. And you can only come to your own truth through a very silent presence. With any problem, that fails. Thinking will not solve the real problems, but thinking can solve unreal problems created by thinking itself — because those problems follow the rules of logic. Life doesn’t follow the rules of logic. Life has its own hidden laws, and you cannot force logic on them.

One point more about this: wherever you bring the mind, the mind dissects, analyzes. Reality is one, and mind always divides. And when you have dived a reality, you have falsified it. Now you can struggle for your whole life — nothing will be achieved, because basically the reality was one and the mind divided into two, and now you are working with the division.

For example, as I was saying, life and death are one, but for the mind they are two and death is the enemy of life. It is not, because life cannot exist without death. If life cannot exist without death, how can death be the enemy? It is the basic situation. It makes life possible. Life grows in it; it is the soul. Without it life is impossible. But mind, thinking, divides it and puts it as a polar opposite. Then you can go on thinking about. Whatsoever you think will be false, because in the beginning you have committed a sin — the sin of division.

Source: Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 2
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