Rajneesh Quotes

When we sit down to meditate, we connect with something unconditional - a state of mind, a basic environment that does not grasp or reject anything. Meditation is probably the only activity that doesn't add anything to the picture. Everything is allowed to come and go without further embellishment. Meditation is a totally nonviolent, non aggressive occupation. Not filling the space, allowing for the possibility of connecting with unconditional openness - this provides the basis for real change.

Meditation is not contemplation because it is not thinking at all - consistent, inconsistent, crazy, sane. It is not thinking at all; it is witnessing. It is just sitting silently deep within yourself, looking at whatsoever is happening inside and outside both. Outside there is traffic noise, inside there is also traffic noise - the traffic in the head. So many thoughts - trucks and buses of thoughts and trains and airplanes of thoughts, rushing in every direction. But you are simply sitting aloof, unconcerned, watching everything with no evaluation.

When you are practicing zazen, do not try to stop your thinking. Let it stop by itself. If something comes into your mind, let it come in, and let it go out. It will not stay long. When you try to stop your thinking, it means you are bothered by it. Do not be bothered by anything. It appears as if something comes from outside your mind, but actually it is only the waves of your mind, and if you are not bothered by the waves, gradually they will become calmer and calmer.

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.

Listen to the silence. Listen to your life. Be present, not just think about what's going on next week, next month.

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.

It is better not to call anything to anybody - just remain centered in yourself. Look at the world and drop judgments, and you will have such a pure atmosphere around you - no appreciation, no condemnation, just a pure watchfulness. This watchfulness, I call meditation.

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.

Meditation is the way in which we come to feel our basic inseparability from the whole universe, and what that requires is that we shut up.

Let your ears hear without trying to hear. Let the mind think without trying to think and without trying to stop it. That is practice.

Inner silence works from the moment you begin to accrue it. What the old sorcerers were after was the final dramatic, end result of reaching that individual threshold of silence.

In its outward manifestation, meditation appears to involve either stopping, by parking the body in a stillness that suspends activity, or giving oneself over to flowing movement. In either case, it is an embodiment of wise attention, an inward gesture undertaken for the most part in silence, a shift from doing to simply being. It is an act that may at first seem artificial but that we soon discover, if we keep at it, is ultimately one of pure love for the life unfolding within us and around us.

That is, when the mind ceases to create, then there is creation.

Keep the remembrance of your real nature alive, even while working, and avoid haste which causes you to forget. Be deliberate. Practice meditation to still the mind and cause it to become aware of its true relationship to the Self which supports it. Do not imagine that it is you who are doing the work. Think that is the underlying current which is doing it. Identify yourself with the current.

Meditation, witnessing, silently sitting and looking at the mind, will be of much help. Not forcing, simply sitting and looking. Not doing much, just watching as one watches birds flying in the sky. Just Lying down on the ground and watching, nothing to do, indifferent. Not your concern really, where they are going; they are going on their own.

Let go of your mind and then be mindful. Close your ears and listen!

Learning to pause is the first step in the practice of Radical Acceptance. A pause is a suspension of activity, a time of temporary disengagement when we are no longer moving toward any goal ... The pause can occur in the midst of almost any activity and can last for an instant, for hours or for seasons of our life ... You might try it now: Stop reading and sit there, doing 'no thing,' and simply notice what you are experiencing.

The experience of silence alone is the real and perfect knowledge.

Meditation means how to be not a mind. How to be not a mind! Meditation means how to create the state of no-mindedness. It doesn't mean unconsciousness. It means conscious and still, without any disturbance in the consciousness; conscious with no ripples, with no waves, with no vibrations; conscious as a deep, calm, silent pool with no ripples on it, with no disturbances on the surface; just a calm silent pool with no breeze to disturb, just mirrorlike.

Take refuge in silence. You can be here or there or anywhere. Fixed in silence, established in the inner 'I', you can be as you are. The world will never perturb you if you are well founded upon the tranquility within. Gather your thoughts within. Find out the thought centre and discover your Self-equipoise. In storm and turmoil be calm and silent. Watch the events around as a witness. The world is a drama. Be a witness, inturned and introspective.

Meditation is how to drop knowledge. Meditation means how to become ignorant again. Meditation means how to become a child again, a rose bush, a rock. Meditation means how just to be and not to think.

While you're meditating, all kinds of thoughts arise... You don't find your thoughts threatening or particularly helpful. They just become the general gossip of your thoughts. This traffic of your thoughts and the verbosity of your mind are simply part of the basic chatter that goes on in the universe. Just let it go through.

Is there a meditation that is not the ego trying to become? Is meditation conscious if every effort implies time?

We come to meditation to learn how not to act out the habitual tendencies we generally live by - those actions that create suffering for ourselves and others, and get us into so much trouble.