Rajneesh Quotes

Reductionism and elimination make one feel clever, but what happens when the meditator drops her fixation on feeling clever?

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.

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.

Meditation is basically the process of witnessing: looking from your centre all that is happening. Many things are happening on the outside - the noise of the train far away; something is happening in you body - your knees are hurting - right? Your mind is churning many thoughts, that 'What am I doing here?' Your heart is feeling many emotions, you have waited for this moment for so long. There is joy in the heart, a certain ecstasy, a mood, a receptivity. All those things have to be watched very minutely.

Only one thing is going to remain with you: that is your witnessing, that is your watchfulness. This watchfulness is meditation.

Meditation simply means a discipline that makes you capable of being aloof and detached from your mind. So even if the mind is sick, your consciousness is never sick. Even if your mind is going crazy, you are just witnessing it. Mind is only a machine. You are not. Meditation is the experience: "I am not my body, not my mind - I am the witness of it all." This experience, this transcendental experience, immensely transforms the whole situation. Many things which were driving you crazy simply drop away.

Meditation is not an act, it is a quality. Meditation is not something that you do - it is something that you become.

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.

The next time you have a thought... let it go.

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

You cannot turn your brain off or stop your thoughts, but you can try while meditating not to become too invested in them. This is called transcendental meditation, which is the kind I practice.

Meditation is not following any system; it is not constant repetition and imitation. Meditation is not concentration.

To realize that you are not your thoughts is when you begin to awaken spiritually.

Meditation will sharpen your senses and your awareness.

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 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.

Whenever you meditate, there are glimpses. Then the mind comes in and says, 'Be happy! Look, I have done it.' And immediately the contact is lost.

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.

Meditation means undoing what the society has done to you. It has reduced you to a machine; you have to de-automatise yourself, you have to become a man again. You have to come out of this state of unconsciousness, of mechanicalness. You have to come out of this sleep. It is possible only through meditation. There is no other way, there has never been, there will never be. The only way to reduce a man to a machine is take away his consciousness force him to function unconsciously. And just the opposite is the way of meditation: give him back his consciousness.

When you are present, you can allow the mind to be as it is without getting entangled in it.

No matter how many times I tell you this, you're still thinking, thinking, judging, judging, coming to conclusions, trying to work out your life. You have to let go. Totally, absolutely, completely. You have to let go so completely that you will feel no body, no mind, no pain, nothing.

For awareness you need not go to the Himalayas; you need not go anywhere. Your life gives you enough opportunities to be aware. Somebody insults you - listen to it in full awareness. And you will be surprised - the insult is no more an insult. You may even smile. It does not hurt; it hurts only when received in unawareness. Somebody praises and appreciates you - listen with alertness. And then nobody can persuade you to do foolish things. Nobody can bribe you; flattery becomes impossible. You will smile at the whole nonsense.

Meditation cannot be taught, it can only be caught. I am meditation. If you are available you can catch it.

Meditation means cleansing the mirror, dropping thoughts, letting thoughts disappear, attaining to moments when thinking ceases. And those are the most blissful moments in life. Once you have tasted a single moment of no-thought, you have taken a great leap into truth; then things will become more and more easy every day.

Awareness means grasping life just the way it is, without contamination by mental projections.