Rajneesh Quotes

It is not a question of sitting silently, it is not a question of chanting a mantra. It is a question of understanding the subtle workings of the mind. As you understand those workings of the mind a great awareness arises in you, which is not of the mind. That awareness arises in your being, in your soul, in your consciousness.

Zen is the most scientific method to inquire into your consciousness. It takes you beyond mind into a space called no-mind. No self, but pure awareness, and you have a taste of eternity and immortality.

Just one quality of the Buddha has to be remembered. He consists only of one quality: witnessing. This small word witnessing contains the whole of spirituality. Witness that you are not the body. Witness that you are not the mind. Witness that you are only a witness. As the witnessing deepens, you start becoming drunk with the divine. That is what is called ecstasy.

Only no-mind can be without any duality, because it is empty. The no-mind is choicelessness. The no-mind is pure awareness. It is just the empty sky.

Mind is elusive, you cannot hold it in your hand. You cannot force it into a test-tube. The only way to know it is to know it from within, from your witnessing self. The more you become aware, the more you can watch your mind - its subtle functioning. The functioning is tremendously complex and beautiful. Mind is the most complex phenomenon on the earth, the most subtle flowering of consciousness. If you want to really understand what the mind is, then you will have to detach yourself from your mind, and you will have to learn how to be just a witness. That's what meditation is all about.

Mind only thinks, meditation lives.

Desire disappears as you become more and more aware. When awareness is one hundred percent, there is no desire at all.

Only when the mind is still, tranquil, not expecting or grasping or resisting a single thing, is it possible to see what is true. It is the truth that liberates, not your effort to be free.

We live in this thought web; we identify things and put them away and distance ourselves from them. But to be completely present? That is source, that is art, that is spirituality. And meditation is a way to defy fear and experience that source.

We tend to think of meditation in only one way. But life itself is a meditation.

Zen Buddhism is a discipline where belief isn't necessary.

Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.

Mindfulness is a quality that's always there. It's an illusion that there's a meditation and post-meditation period, which I always find amusing, because you're either mindful or you're not.

Meditation is to get insight, to get understanding and compassion, and when you have them, you are compelled to act.

There are things that I value now that I didn't when I first went over there, like Zen Buddhism, which has become part of my life over the last couple years.

Meditation demands an astonishingly alert mind; it is the understanding of the totality of life in which every form of fragmentation has ceased.

What I've learnt is to be in the now. It's something my mum has always said to me, and when I read a book called 'The Power of Now' by Eckhart Tolle, I realised just how important it is.

The ego always needs to be 'doing,' and repeating a mantra guides my mind to a deeper, less active experience.

The universe is within us. We forget that and make up realities for ourselves that we are small and insignificant. Meditation brings us back to our natural state of consciousness.

Become alert about desire and non-attachment begins to appear. This is not to be made to happen, it follows naturally from awareness of attachment. Each one of us has to become aware of his attachments, and keep being so! Nothing should be done unconsciously.

To be conscious of Being, you need to reclaim consciousness from the mind. This is one of the most essential tasks on your spiritual journey.

Go deep into meditation. and be meditation I mean silence, awareness, witnessing. You can meditate any time of the day, you can meditate working, walking, doing things. Meditation is not something separate from life; it should not be separate, otherwise it remains a little artificial. Meditation should be spread all over life. You should walk in meditation, you should sit in meditation; that means silently, fully aware. Slowly slowly it becomes your very flavour, then the bridge is created.

If the mind wants to comprehend reality, it will have to come out of the past and the future. But coming out of the past and the future, it is no longer the mind at all. Hence the insistence of all the great masters of the world that the door to reality is no-mind.

Except witnessing, I don't teach anything else. So just witness your mind and the meditation will be happening. And once you have got in tune with your being, you know the way, you know the how. Then it does not matter where you are. Alone or in the crowd, in the silences of the forest or in the noises of a marketplace, it is all the same. You can simply close your eyes and disappear inwards.

The true purpose of Zen is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes. Zen practice is to open up our small mind.