Truth Liberates
January 20, 2009
Letting go of shock-absorbers
Man has created many psychological shock-absorbers around himself. Unless you drop all shock-absorbers you are never going to be free.
Only truth liberates. In the beginning, truth shocks very much — but that’s how it is, that’s how things are, that’s how nature functions. You have to open yourself, you have to be vulnerable to all the shocks of life. It will hurt, it will wound, you will cry, you will weep, you will be in a rage against life. But slowly slowly you will start seeing that truth is truth, and it is pointless to be in a rage against truth. And once the rage has subsided, the truth has a beauty of its own. Truth liberates.
It frightens, it scares, but that is the only way you can grow. Growth has to be with reality, not against reality. And once you have tasted something of reality as it is, you will never gather any other buffers, shock-absorbers, around you again.
Osho, excerpts from The Book of Wisdom #12
Osho book recommendations
The Zen Manifesto; Freedom from Oneself
No Water No Moon: Talks on Zen Stories
Gold Nuggets: Messages from Existence
Unidentified and Silent
December 20, 2008
About meditation the masters of meditation have said mainly one thing: whatever is said is not the truth. Some pointers to the moon…
What is meditation?
Meditation is not really mind-effort. Real meditation is not effort at all. Real meditation is just allowing the mind to have its own way, and not interfering in any way whatsoever — just remaining watchful, witnessing. It silences, by and by, it becomes still. One day it is gone. You are left alone
Leaving thoughts aside
Meditation is nothing but putting the mind aside, putting the mind out of the way, and bringing a witnessing which is always there but hidden underneath the mind. This witnessing will reach to your center, and once you have become enlightened, then there is no problem. Then bring the mind in tune with you.
No concentration, no contemplation, only watching
Meditation does not mean concentration, it does not mean contemplation: it means getting beyond the mind. Concentration, contemplation, are both of the mind. Meditation means getting unidentified with the mind, seeing the mind as separate, knowing the mind as separate, witnessing the mind but not getting identified with it. Slowly slowly as witnessing grows, the distance grows between you and the mind. Soon the mind is a faraway echo, and finally you cannot even hear the echo; then you are left utterly alone.
That needs courage, hence very few people have been able to know their own selves, and very few people have been able to become Buddhas. Before one can become a Buddha, one has to pass through a death — of the mind, of the ego, of all that we think we are. We have to lose all that we think we possess, then only can we possess the eternal.
Being in silence
Meditation is not contemplation either 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.
Osho, excerpts from different sources
Osho book recommendations on meditation
The Book of Secrets: Keys to Love and Meditation
Awareness: The Key to Living in Balance (Osho, Insights for a New Way of Living)
Meditation: The First and Last Freedom
Everyday Osho: 365 Daily Meditations for the Here and Now
Meditation For Busy People: Stress-Beating Strategies To Calm Your Life
Discover the Buddha: 53 Meditations to Meet the Buddha Within
