Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Osho on meditation
Jeroen
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlands Veteran
in Meditation
I came across this short video of Osho describing meditation practice a few days ago, and I thought it might be useful to share it here.
Basically Osho describes meditation as doing nothing, just being. It has definite shades of shikantaza and Zen practice, that also believes that eventually meditation could be practiced continuously, that one could do a range of things as long as “the centering of one’s being is not disturbed”. It’s true that it is very simple, but it’s not that easy to actually do.
3
Comments
A good description of centering whether in stillness or activity.
Only needs the present nano second to be practiced within.
The thing is, doing nothing, just being relaxed, is not so easy. When you start looking at some of the lower levels of your being you find they move automatically. There are a whole lot of things we do automatically, the body breathes, the heart beats, the liver filters blood. Should you make an effort to hold yourself still, to freeze as it were? I think that doesn’t make too much sense, we should let the automatic mechanisms do what they need to do, and instead check on what the mind is doing. All this checking and controlling and freezing, this sounds like the ego is again searching for something to ‘do’.
Finding out where to naturally be still and relaxed without imposing stiffness and stillness on what naturally moves of its own accord is not easy, it is a journey of discovery. And then there is the mind to consider… what naturally moves in the mind are the thoughts, and to be a watcher of the thoughts is known to be a tricky knack to discover.
I think it is less about control and more to do with witnessing while forgetting the witness is there. When we breathe, we do not have to breathe, it just happens without having to think about it. This how we breathe without breathing. Do without doing.
Some call it effortless action and some call it grace. We may know it better as Wu Wei.
The breath is a good example, when we don’t pay any attention to it it just happens effortlessly. When we bring attention to it, with attention comes the impulse to take control. Then there is a struggle, sometimes a freezing.
For me, this impulse to take control has to do with impatience, immediacy, the urge to take action. It’s like some part of me immediately charges in to “do stuff”.
No, when I pay attention to my breathing, I have no impulse 'to take control'. Then I am sometimes prompted to adjust my posure... Strangely enough, since beginning the WH Method, I find I am naturally breathing more deeply and slowly anyway.
So when you shift your attention to your breathing you don’t find yourself having to dictate the rhythm all of a sudden? I used to have that quite intensely, although it has gotten less as I meditate more. In recent years I have managed to pay attention to my breath and not interrupt the current breath.
No, not at all... I sit up more, because perhaps, I have noticed my shoulders slouching, and the only change is that, as a result of shifting my posture, I breathe more deeply, but there is no conscious effort to re-regulate my rhythm...
That's a good thing... you're paying attention to your paying attention...
My teacher said something similar when I sort of misinterpreted the Discourse on the Full Awareness of Breathing (Thays' version of the Anapanasati Sutta) when it says "Breathing in a long breath, I know I am breathing in a long breath. Breathing out a long breath, I know I am breathing out a long breath". I took it to mean we purposely breath in a long (or short as it continues) breath and be mindful of what we are doing but we aren't really supposed to be doing anything but paying attention. My teacher caught me and said the we do not try to control the breath. We notice it is a long breath or a short breath and let it come and go. The lines are for recognition of whatever sort of breath it happens to be, not to force the breath. Our breath will naturally settle into its natural rhythm without our having to do anything more than pay attention.
I find after Wim Hof breathing exercises I can either meditate or work out which is interesting but I can't do mindfulness of the breath with the WH breathing exercise because it is forcing the breath and holding it for certain lengths of time.
It's interesting that it's the same thing that H. W. L. Poonja also says, that if you can just do nothing and be quiet, enlightenment will happen by itself.
I wonder that sometimes with Metta practice. If we can get our minds really quiet, doesn’t Metta just come naturally? Or do we need to cultivate it as a separate practice?
I think the answer to that comes from the smiles of small children. They are so natural, so direct. I think it is indisputable that small children are closer to our true origin than we later are as adults, that the process of becoming adult leads us away from our true selves on some level.
So my intuition is that Metta doesn't come immediately when you get your mind really quiet, that there is still a process of removing traumas. The mature mind has taken quite a beating in rows with loved ones, unfulfilled desires, aspirations, playground fights.
Enlightenment does seem to make changes to our character though. Lovingness and kindness seems to manifest more, there are no longer any moods.
"Suffer the little Children to come unto me; For such is the kingdom of Heaven".
So said Jesus, because basically, he agreed with you...