Learning to Silence the Mind: Wellness Through Meditation

by Osho

Concentration is always the narrowing of your consciousness. The narrower it becomes, the more powerful it is. It is like a sword that cuts into any secret of nature: You have to become oblivious of everything. But this is not meditation. Many people have misunderstood—not only in the West, but in the East, too. They think that concentration is meditation. It gives you tremendous powers, but those powers are of the mind.

So meditation is not against action. It is not that you have to escape from life. It simply teaches you a new way of life: You become the center of the cyclone. Your life goes on, it goes on really more intensely—with more joy, with more clarity, more vision, more creativity—yet you are aloof, just a watcher on the hills, simply seeing all that is happening around you. You are not the doer, you are the watcher.

You can do all small and big things; only one thing is not allowed and that is, your centering should not be lost. That awareness, that watchfulness, should remain absolutely unclouded, undisturbed.

Whenever a desire passes through your mind, the stream becomes muddy. So just sit. Don’t try to do anything.

Change the focus. Just sitting silently, start looking in the gaps.

A really meditative person is playful: Life is fun for him, life is a leela, a play. He enjoys it tremendously. He is not serious. He is relaxed.

Words are figures; silence is the background.

Words come and go; silence remains.

Mind means words; self means silence. Mind is nothing but all the words that you have accumulated; silence is that which has always been with you, it is

Have a very penetrating eye inside your mind—see what its motivations are. When you do something, immediately look for the motivation, because if you miss the motivation, the mind goes on befooling you and goes on saying that something else was the motivation.

Watch every moment for the right motivation. If you can find the right motivation, the mind will become more and more incapable of deceiving you. And the further away you are from deception, the more you will be capable of moving beyond mind, the more you will become a master.

Remember, whenever you have two things, two alternatives, choose the new one, choose the harder, choose the one in which more awareness will be needed.

Meditation is life, not livelihood. It has nothing to do with what you do; it has everything to do with what you are.

People who are intelligent need not be clever; they are innocent, they need not be cunning. They function out of a state of not-knowing.

It is not a question of leaving the world, it is a question of changing the mind, renouncing the mind. That’s what meditation is.

If you teach a child meditation you are not indoctrinating him. You don’t say he has to believe anything, you simply invite him to an experiment in no-thought.

No-thought is not a doctrine, it is an experience. And children are very, very capable because they

Go slowly, patiently, not in a hurry, because the goal is not somewhere else—it is within you. When you are not in a hurry you will feel it; when you are

Mind thinks. Meditation knows.

The moment you can look at your mind as an object you become detached from it, you become disidentified from it; a distance is created, and roots are cut.

Once the chaos is thrown out, a silence starts happening to you. Then you can sit silently. If rightly done, continually done, then the cathartic techniques of meditation will simply disperse all your inner chaos.

Unawareness creates problems, is the only problem really. So when you become alert, aware, problems disappear—they are not repressed! And if you repress them you will never become aware, remember it; because a

When you are unconscious, you create problems. Unconsciousness has its own language—that is the language of problems.

Anything brought by willpower is going to be wrong—let that be the criterion. Then how to bring awareness? Understand. When anger comes, try to understand why it has come; try to understand without any condemnation, without any justification either, without any evaluation. Just watch it. Neutral you should be.

Always choose a higher thing. Whenever there is a possibility, and you want to choose, choose a higher thing. A moment will come when you will

Wherever energy is needed first, energy moves there first. There is a hierarchy of needs.

Because when lower needs are fulfilled, higher needs arise; when higher needs are fulfilled, ultimate needs arise.

All the things that are really valuable in life only happen; you cannot make them happen, you cannot do them.

Always remain innocent as far as things beyond mind are concerned. Always remain amateur, never become an expert.