Osho on Zazen Meditation

Osho – Do all meditations that are available here, but I am giving you a special meditation too : a Zazen method.

Every day at least for one hour, sit silently anywhere – go to the river, or to the garden, or here in the ashram, somewhere where nobody is disturbing. Relax the muscles of the body; don’t strain. With closed eyes, tell the mind, ’Now go on. Do whatsoever you want to do. I will witness and I will watch.’

And you will be surprised – for a few moments you will see that the mind is not working at all. For a few moments – sometimes just for a second – you will see that the mind is not working at all, and in that gap you will have a feel of reality without imagination. But it will be only for a moment, a very small moment, and then the mind will start working.

When the mind starts working and thoughts start running and images floating, you will not become aware immediately – only later on, after a few minutes, will you become aware that the mind is working and you have lost your way now. Then again hold your attention; tell the mind ’Now go on, and I will be just a witness’ and again the mind will stop for a second.

We have been distracted into unnatural motivations: money, prestige, power. Listening to the cuckoo is not going to give you money. Listening to the cuckoo is not going to give you power, prestige. Watching the butterfly is not going to help you economically, politically, socially. These things are not paying, but these things make you happy.

Those seconds are tremendously valuable. Those are the first moments of reality… first glimpses of reality, first windows… very small. Just small holes and they come and go, but in those moments you will start having the taste of reality.

So continue other meditations, you have to do a few groups, but this is a special method that you have to do on your own. And slowly, slowly, by and by, you will see that those intervals are bigger and bigger. They will happen only when you are tremendously alert.

When you are tremendously alert the mind does not function, because the attention itself functions like a light in a dark room. When the light is there, darkness is not there. When you are present, the mind is absent – your presence is the mind’s absence. When you are not present, the mind starts functioning. Your absence is the mind’s presence.

So when you are present there is no imagination. When imagination is there, you are not there – and you both cannot be together. That has never happened and cannot happen by the very nature of things. So just do this method on your own, and as I told you, this name will take your whole life to decode… because if you can come to know reality as it is without imagination, you have come home! Then there is nothing else to be achieved…

Source : from Osho Book  ” What Is, Is, What Ain’t, Ain’t , Chapter 1 ”

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