Just close your eyes

Just sit under a tree. The breeze is blowing and the leaves of the tree are rustling. The wind touches you, it moves around you, it passes. But don’t allow it just to pass you; allow it to move within you and pass through you.

Just close your eyes, and as it is passing through the tree and there is a rustling of the leaves, feel that you are also like a tree, open, and the wind is blowing through you ― not by your side but right through you.

The rustling of the tree will enter in you, and you will feel that from every pore of your body the air is passing. It is really passing through you. It is not only imagination, it is a fact ― you have forgotten.

You are not only breathing through the nose, you are breathing through the whole body ― from every pore of it, from millions of pores. If you are allowed to breathe through your nose, but all the pores of your body are closed, painted, you will die within three hours. You cannot be alive just by breathing through the nose.

Every cell of your body is a living organism, and every cell is breathing. The air is really passing through you, but you have lost the contact. So sit under a tree and feel.

In the beginning it will look like imagination, but soon it will turn into a reality. It is a reality ― that the air is passing through you. Then sit under a rising sun, and not only feel that the rays of the sun are touching you, but that they are entering you and passing through you, so you become vulnerable, you begin to feel open.

The ego is the barrier. When you feel you are, you are so much that nothing can enter in you. You are filled with your own self. When you are not, then everything can pass through you. You have become so vast that even the divine can pass through you. The whole existence is now ready to pass through you, because you are ready. So the whole art of religion is how not to be, how to dissolve, how to surrender, how to become an open space.

Osho: Excerpted from The Book of Secrets

Meditation is the answer

And the simplest method of meditation is just a way of witnessing. There are one hundred and twelve methods of meditation, but witnessing is an essential part of all one hundred and twelve methods. So as far as I am concerned, witnessing is the only method. Those one hundred and twelve are different applications of witnessing.



The essential core, the spirit of meditation is to learn how to witness. You are seeing a tree: You are there, the tree is there, but can't you find one thing more? - that you are seeing the tree, that there is a witness in you which is seeing you seeing the tree. The world is not divided only into the object and the subject. There is also something beyond both, and that beyond is meditation.



So in every act... and I don't want people to sit for one hour or half an hour in the morning or in the evening. That kind of meditation is not going to help, because if you meditate for one hour, then for twenty-three hours you will be doing just the opposite of it. Meditation can be victorious: witnessing is such a method that it can spread over twenty-four hours of your day.



Eating, don't get identified with the eater. The food is there, the eater is there, and you are here, watching. Walking, let the body walk but you simply watch. Slowly, the knack comes. It is a knack, and once you can watch small things.... This crow, crowing... you are listening. These are two - object and subject. But can't you see a witness who is seeing both? - The crow, the listener, and still there is someone who is watching both.



It is such a simple phenomenon. Then you can move into deeper layers: you can watch your thoughts; you can watch your emotions, your moods. There is no need to say, "I am sad." The fact is that you are a witness that a cloud of sadness is passing over you. There is anger - you can simply be a witness. There is no need to say, "I am angry." You are never angry - there is no way for you to be angry - you are always a witness. The anger comes and goes; you are just a mirror. Things come, get reflected, move - and the mirror remains empty and clean, unscratched by the reflections.



Witnessing is finding your inside mirror.And once you have found it, miracles start happening. When you are simply witnessing the thoughts, thoughts disappear. Then there is suddenly a tremendous silence you have never known. When you are watching the moods - anger, sadness, happiness - they suddenly disappear and an even greater silence is experienced. And when there is nothing to watch - then the revolution.



Then the witnessing energy turns upon itself because there is nothing to prevent it; there is no object left. The word "object" is beautiful. It simply means that which prevents you, objects you. When there is no object to your witnessing, it simply comes around back to yourself - to the source. And this is the point where one becomes enlightened.



Meditation is only a path: the end is always buddhahood, enlightenment. And to know this moment is to know all. Then there is no misery, no frustration, no meaninglessness; then life is no longer an accident. It becomes part of this cosmic whole - an essential part. And a tremendous bliss arises that this whole existence needs you.



Man's greatest need is to be needed. If somebody needs you, you feel gratified. But if the whole existence needs you, then there is no limit to your bliss. And this existence needs even a small blade of grass as much as the biggest star. There is no question of inequality. Nobody can substitute for you. If you are not there, then existence will be something less and will remain always something less - it will never be full. That feeling - that this whole immense existence is in need of you - takes all miseries away from you. For the first time, you have come home.



Osho -"Light on the Path" #1

Accept Life, Thank Life

Junnaid, a Sufi mystic thanked existence everyday for its compassion, its love, its care.

Once, Junnaid was traveling. For three days, he and his disciples went from village to village, but people everywhere were every antagonistic and turning against Junnaid. They thought his teachings were not exactly the teaching of Mohammed. His teachings seemed to be his own. They said, “He is corrupting the people.” So from three villages, they got no food, not even water.

On the third day, they were in really bad shape. His disciples thought, “Now let us see what happens in the prayer. How can he now say to existence, ‘You are compassionate to us. You love us. You care about us. We are grateful to you’?” But when prayer time came, Junnaid prayer a usual. After the prayer, his followers said, “This is too much. For three days, we have suffered hunger and thirst. We are tried, we have not slept and still you are thanking existence and telling it that it takes so much care of us that we are grateful to it!”

Junnaid said, “My prayer does not depend on any condition. Those things are ordinary. Whether I get food, I don’t want to bother existence about it. Such a small thing in such a big universe. If I don’t get water, even if I die, it does not matter. My prayer will remain the same. Because to this vast universe, it makesno difference whether Junnaid is alive or dead.”

This is what I mean when I say, don’t take anything seriously, not even yourself. And then you will see that anger simply has not happened. There is no possibility of anger. Anger is certainly one of the great leakages of your spiritual energy. If you can manage to be playful about your desires, and still be the same whether you succeed or you fail, you will be happy.

Start thinking about yourself at ease – nothing special, not that you are meant to be victorious, not that you have to succeed always in every situation. This is a big world and we are small people. Once this settles into your being, then everything is acceptable. Anger disappears, and the disappearance brings a new surprise, because when anger disappears it leaves behind tremendous energy of compassion, love and friendship.

The Existence wants You to be Playful

To me, there is no division like mundane and sacred. It is one universe. There are not two universes. Yes, the same universe you can look at in a mundane way, you can look at in a sacred way. The distinction is not between two universes, the distinction is only in two outlooks. And my feeling is, the more joyous you are, the more full of juice, love, laughter, music and dance, the more your journey will become a tremendously beautiful pilgrimage.

And because there is no goal ... Life is eternal, hence there cannot be any goal. All ideas of goals are contradictory to the idea of eternal life. And if life is eternal, then you have to enjoy each moment as if you have reached the goal. Each moment is a goal in itself. Don't wait to rejoice when you have reached the goal. That kind of goal does not exist. Use every moment as if you have arrived. It is always as if you have arrived. You are always arriving.

And I don't think existence wants you to be serious. I have not seen a serious tree. I have not seen a serious bird. I have not seen a serious sunrise. I have not seen a serious starry night. It seems they are all laughing in their own ways, dancing in their own ways. We may not understand it, but there is a subtle feeling that the whole existence is a celebration. I teach you celebration. And laughter has certainly to be one of the major ingredients in this celebration.
- Osho