Introduction
In the 1970s, a new form of meditation took the world by storm. Unlike traditional practices that emphasized stillness and solitude, this approach incorporated dance, music, and exuberant expression. The creator of this dynamic meditation was Osho, a spiritual teacher whose methods continue to captivate seekers worldwide.
"Meditation" by Osho offers a comprehensive guide to his unique approach to mindfulness and self-discovery. This book serves as both an introduction for newcomers and a deepening of practice for experienced meditators. Osho's teachings challenge conventional wisdom about meditation, presenting it not as a solemn ritual but as a joyous exploration of consciousness.
Throughout the book, Osho emphasizes that meditation is not about achieving a particular state or following rigid rules. Instead, it's about cultivating awareness in every moment of life. His techniques range from vigorous physical exercises to silent contemplation, all designed to break through mental barriers and connect with one's true nature.
Let's dive into the key ideas and practices that make Osho's approach to meditation so distinctive and powerful.
The Essence of Meditation: Awareness and Being
At its core, Osho meditation is about developing awareness. This isn't just paying attention to your surroundings or your thoughts. It's a deeper state of consciousness where you become an impartial observer of your entire experience – body, mind, and emotions.
Osho introduces the concept of "the watcher." This is the part of you that can observe your thoughts, feelings, and actions without getting caught up in them. It's like stepping back and watching a movie of your life, rather than being lost in the drama.
Becoming the watcher is a gradual process that unfolds in four stages:
Body awareness: Start by paying attention to every movement and sensation in your body. Notice how your breath flows, how your muscles tense and relax, how your posture shifts.
Thought awareness: Observe the constant stream of thoughts passing through your mind. Don't try to control or judge them – just watch them come and go.
Emotional awareness: Tune into your feelings and moods. Notice how they arise, change, and fade away. This can be challenging, as emotions often feel very personal and powerful.
Awakening: When you can observe all three levels – body, thoughts, and emotions – without getting caught up in them, you may experience moments of profound peace and clarity. This is what Osho calls "awakening" or "enlightenment."
The goal isn't to reach some perfect state of mind. It's to become more aware of your entire being, moment by moment. This awareness brings a sense of freedom and joy that Osho describes as "bliss."
Creating the Right Environment for Meditation
While you can meditate anywhere, Osho suggests creating a dedicated space for your practice. Here are his recommendations:
- Set aside at least one hour a day for meditation. It may seem like a lot, but consider it an investment in your well-being.
- If possible, find a quiet spot in nature. Sitting under a tree is ideal, as Osho believes trees are natural meditators.
- If you can't meditate outdoors, create a special indoor space used only for meditation. The energy of other activities can interfere with your practice.
- Treat your meditation area as sacred. Remove your shoes before entering, and symbolically leave behind your worries, desires, and daily concerns.
Osho acknowledges that it's not easy to sit down and immediately clear your mind. That's why many of his techniques begin with active, cathartic exercises to release pent-up energy and emotions.
Osho Active Meditations: Movement and Catharsis
Osho developed a series of "Active Meditations" to help people overcome the restlessness and mental chatter that often hinder traditional meditation practices. These techniques typically combine vigorous movement, emotional release, and periods of stillness. Here are some of the most well-known:
Osho Dynamic Meditation
This hour-long practice is divided into five stages:
Chaotic breathing (10 minutes): Breathe rapidly and irregularly through your nose. Move your body in any way that feels natural. Build up energy without releasing it.
Catharsis (10 minutes): Let go completely. Express whatever emotions arise – laugh, cry, scream, dance, or shake. Don't hold anything back.
Jumping (10 minutes): Jump up and down with your arms raised, shouting "Hoo!" each time you land. This helps release any remaining tension.
Freezing (15 minutes): Stop suddenly in whatever position you're in. Don't move at all – not even to blink or scratch an itch. Observe your body and mind without reacting.
Celebration (15 minutes): Dance, play music, and express your joy. Carry this positive energy with you throughout the day.
Osho Kundalini Meditation
This one-hour technique has four 15-minute stages:
- Shaking: Let your whole body shake, starting from your feet and moving upward.
- Dancing: Move freely, following your body's natural impulses.
- Witnessing: Stand or sit still, eyes closed, observing your inner and outer experience.
- Lying down: Relax completely, keeping your eyes closed.
Osho Nataraj Meditation
This practice focuses on the power of dance:
- Free dance (40 minutes): Close your eyes and dance however you feel, without trying to control your movements.
- Lying still (20 minutes): Stop dancing and lie down, remaining completely motionless and silent.
- Celebration (5 minutes): Express your joy and gratitude through movement or sound.
Osho Nadabrahma Meditation
This technique uses humming and hand movements:
- Humming (30 minutes): Sit comfortably with closed eyes and hum loudly enough for others to hear. Let the vibration fill your body.
- Hand movements (15 minutes): Move your hands in circular motions – first outward (giving energy), then inward (receiving energy).
- Stillness (15 minutes): Sit or lie down, remaining completely quiet and motionless.
These active meditations are designed to release blocked energy, emotions, and tensions that can interfere with deeper states of awareness. By starting with movement and catharsis, they make it easier to transition into stillness and meditation.
Bringing Meditation into Everyday Life
Osho emphasizes that meditation isn't limited to formal practice sessions. You can bring awareness to any activity, turning your entire life into a meditation. Here are some ways to incorporate mindfulness into your daily routine:
Mindful Movement
Activities like jogging, swimming, or even walking can become powerful meditations if you approach them with awareness. Instead of zoning out or letting your mind wander, pay close attention to each movement, breath, and sensation.
De-automating Habits
We often perform routine actions on autopilot. By bringing conscious awareness to these activities, you can break negative patterns and cultivate mindfulness. Osho shares an example of helping someone quit smoking by turning the act of smoking into a meditation – slowly and deliberately performing each step with full attention.
Vipassana: The Essence of Meditation
Vipassana is an ancient Buddhist technique that Osho considers the "pure essence" of meditation. It involves:
- Being aware of all your movements and actions
- Observing your emotions and moods as they arise, without judgment
- Paying attention to your breath, noticing whether you breathe from your chest or belly
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
This simple technique helps release tension and increase body awareness:
- Start with your face and work your way down to your feet.
- Tense each muscle group for a few seconds, then release.
- Notice the difference between tension and relaxation.
By practicing this regularly, you'll become more aware of unnecessary tension in your body and learn to let it go.
Exploring Light and Darkness
Osho suggests using experiences of extreme light and darkness as gateways to deeper meditation:
Sky Gazing
Lie down under a clear, bright sky. Stare at the vast blueness without blinking, allowing your eyes to water if necessary. Don't think about the sky – simply be aware of it. With practice, you may feel the boundary between yourself and the sky dissolve.
Darkness Meditation
Find a completely dark place, ideally in nature away from artificial light. Keep your eyes open and stare into the darkness. At first, this may feel disorienting or uncomfortable. Stay with the experience, and you may begin to feel a sense of oneness with the darkness.
These practices help us move beyond our usual perceptions and judgments, opening us to new dimensions of awareness.
The Power of Sitting and Listening
Two fundamental Zen practices – simply sitting and listening – can profoundly change your relationship with yourself and the world:
Just Sitting
Sit facing a blank wall for 30 minutes each day. Remain alert and aware, but don't focus on anything in particular. This deceptively simple practice can be incredibly challenging, as it confronts you with the restlessness of your mind.
Just Listening
For one hour each day, do nothing but listen. Don't analyze or label what you hear – simply be open to all sounds. This practice can sharpen your awareness and help you become more present in your daily life.
Overcoming Obstacles to Meditation
As you explore meditation, you're likely to encounter some common challenges:
The Chattering Mind
When you try to sit quietly, you may find your mind bombarded with thoughts, emotions, and distractions. This is normal and doesn't mean you're "failing" at meditation. Instead of fighting against your thoughts, practice observing them without getting caught up in their content.
The Ego's Resistance
Our ego – the part of us that's concerned with self-image, achievement, and control – often resists meditation. It may tell you that sitting quietly is a waste of time or that you should be doing something more productive. Recognize these thoughts as the ego's attempt to maintain its dominance, and gently return to your practice.
Desire for Complexity
The simplicity of many meditation techniques can be off-putting to the mind, which often craves complexity and problem-solving. Trust that the apparent simplicity of practices like watching the breath or sitting still can lead to profound insights and transformations.
Impatience for Results
In a world of quick fixes and instant gratification, the gradual nature of meditation progress can be frustrating. Remember that lasting change takes time. Approach your practice with patience and persistence, celebrating small moments of increased awareness along the way.
The Paradox of Meditation
Osho points out that meditation is full of apparent contradictions. It's about being passive yet gaining control, doing nothing yet achieving profound change. These paradoxes reflect the nature of deeper truths, which often transcend our usual either/or thinking.
By embracing these paradoxes rather than trying to resolve them logically, we open ourselves to new ways of experiencing and understanding reality.
Meditation as Love
To help grasp the ineffable nature of meditation, Osho suggests thinking of it in terms of love. Just as it's impossible to fully describe the experience of falling in love, the deepest states of meditation are beyond words.
The "watcher" state that meditation cultivates doesn't judge or define – it simply is. When we try to put our meditative experiences into words, we've already moved away from pure awareness.
Osho offers a visualization to help connect with this wordless state: Imagine yourself without a head, with your heart opening to receive abundant light. This image can help shift your focus from mental activity to a more intuitive, heart-centered awareness.
Final Thoughts: The Transformative Power of Meditation
Throughout "Meditation," Osho presents a vision of spiritual practice that is both ancient and revolutionary. By combining traditional wisdom with modern psychology and his own insights, he offers a path to self-discovery that is accessible to people from all walks of life.
The core message of the book is that meditation is not a technique to be mastered, but a way of living to be embodied. It's about cultivating moment-to-moment awareness that permeates every aspect of your life. This awareness brings a sense of freedom, joy, and connection that Osho calls "bliss."
Key takeaways from the book include:
Meditation is for everyone: You don't need special skills or beliefs to benefit from meditation. It's a natural human capacity that anyone can develop.
Start where you are: Osho's active meditations acknowledge that many people need to release physical and emotional energy before they can sit quietly. There's no need to force yourself into stillness – begin with whatever state you're in.
Awareness is key: The goal of meditation is not to achieve a particular state of mind, but to become more aware of your entire being – body, thoughts, and emotions.
Embrace the journey: Progress in meditation is often gradual and non-linear. Approach your practice with patience, persistence, and a sense of curiosity.
Integrate meditation into daily life: While formal sitting practice is valuable, the real power of meditation comes from bringing awareness to every moment of your day.
Let go of expectations: The deepest benefits of meditation often come when we stop striving for results and simply allow ourselves to be present.
Trust the process: Even when meditation feels challenging or unproductive, trust that the simple act of showing up and practicing awareness is transforming you in subtle ways.
As you explore the practices and ideas in this book, remember that meditation is a deeply personal journey. What works for one person may not resonate with another. Feel free to experiment with different techniques, adapting them to suit your needs and temperament.
Osho's approach to meditation is an invitation to wake up to the fullness of life – its joys, sorrows, challenges, and mysteries. By cultivating awareness and learning to be the watcher of your own experience, you open the door to a more vibrant, authentic, and fulfilling way of being in the world.
Whether you're new to meditation or have been practicing for years, "Meditation" by Osho offers fresh perspectives and practical tools to deepen your journey of self-discovery. As you integrate these teachings into your life, you may find yourself experiencing moments of profound peace, clarity, and connection – glimpses of the bliss that Osho describes as our true nature.
Remember, the ultimate goal is not to become a perfect meditator, but to live with greater awareness, compassion, and joy. As you continue on this path, may you discover the boundless potential for growth and transformation that lies within you.