Osho – What is meditation? — because this whole Heart Sutra is about the innermost core of meditation. Let us go into it. The first thing: meditation is not concentration. In concentration there is a self concentrating and there is an object being concentrated upon. There is duality. In meditation there is nobody inside and nothing outside. It is not concentration. There is no division between the in and the out. The in goes on flowing into the out, the out goes on flowing into the in. The demarcation, the boundary, the border, no longer exists. The in is out, the out is in; it is a nondual consciousness.
Concentration is a dual consciousness: that’s why concentration creates tiredness; that’s why when you concentrate you feel exhausted. And you cannot concentrate for twenty-four hours, you will have to take holidays to rest. Concentration can never become your nature. Meditation does not tire, meditation does not exhaust you. Meditation can become a twenty-four hour thing — day in, day out, year in, year out. It can become eternity. It is relaxation itself. Concentration is an act, a willed act. Meditation is a state of no will, a state of inaction. It is relaxation. One has simply dropped into one’s own being, and that being is the same as the being of all. In concentration there is a plan, a projection, an idea. In concentration the mind functions out of a conclusion: you are doing something. Concentration comes out of the past.
In meditation there is no conclusion behind it. You are not doing anything in particular, you are simply being. It has no past to it, it is uncontaminated by the past. It has no future to it, it is pure of all future. It is what Lao Tzu has called wei-wu-wei, action through inaction. This is what Zen masters have been saying: Sitting silently doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself. Remember, ‘by itself’ — nothing is being done. You are not pulling the grass upwards; the spring comes and the grass grows by itself. That state — when you allow life to go on its own way, when you don’t want to direct it, when you don’t want to give any control to it, when you are not manipulating, when you are not enforcing any discipline on it — that state of pure undisciplined spontaneity, is what meditation is.
Meditation is in the present, pure present. Meditation is immediacy. You cannot meditate, but you can be in meditation; you cannot be in concentration, but you can concentrate. Concentration is human, meditation is divine.
Concentration has a center in you; from that center it comes. Concentration has a self in you. In fact the man who concentrates very much starts gathering a very strong self. He starts becoming more and more powerful, he starts becoming more and more an integrated will. He will look more collected, more one piece.
The man of meditation does not become powerful: he becomes silent, he becomes peaceful. Power is created out of conflict; all power is out of friction. Out of friction comes electricity. You can create electricity out of water: when the river falls from a mountainside there is friction between the river and the rocks, and the friction creates energy. That’s why people who are seeking power are always fighting. Fight creates energy. It is always through friction that energy is created, power is created. The world goes into war again and again because the world is too dominated by the idea of power. You cannot be powerful without fighting.
Meditation brings peace. Peace has its own power, but that is an altogether different phenomenon. The power that is created out of friction is violent, aggressive, male. The power — I am using the word because there is no other word — the power that comes out of peace, is feminine. It has a grace to it. It is passive power, it is receptivity, it is openness. It is not out of friction; that’s why it is not violent.
Buddha is powerful, powerful in his peace, in his silence. He is as powerful as a roseflower, he’s not powerful like an atom bomb. He’s as powerful as the smile of a child… very fragile, very vulnerable; but he’s not as powerful as a sword. He is powerful, as a small earthen lamp, the small flame burning bright in the dark night. It is a totally different dimension of power. This power is what we call divine power. It is out of non-friction.
Concentration is a friction: you fight with your own mind. You try to focus the mind in a certain way, towards a certain idea, towards a certain object. You force it, you bring it back again and again. It tries to escape, it runs away, it goes astray, it starts thinking of a thousand and one things, and you bring it again and you force it. You go into a self-fight. Certainly power is created; that power is as harmful as any other power, that power is as dangerous as any other power. That power will again be used to harm somebody, because the power that comes out of friction is violence. Something out of violence is going to be violent, it is going to be destructive. The power that comes out of peace, non-friction, non-fight, non-manipulation, is the power of a rose flower, the power of a small lamp, the power of a child smiling, the power of a woman weeping, the power that is in tears and in the dewdrops. It is immense but not heavy; it is infinite but not violent.
Concentration will make you a man of will. Meditation will make you an emptiness.
That’s what Buddha is saying to Sariputra. Prajnaparamita means exactly ‘meditation, the wisdom of the beyond’. You cannot bring it but you can be open to it. You need not do anything to bring it into the world — you cannot bring it; it is beyond you. You have to disappear for it to come. The mind has to cease for meditation to be. Concentration is mind effort; meditation is a state of no-mind. Meditation is pure awareness, meditation has no motive in it.
Meditation is the tree that grows without a seed: that is the miracle of meditation, the magic, the mystery. Concentration has a seed in it: you concentrate for a certain purpose, there is motive, it is motivated. Meditation has no motive. Then why should one meditate if there is no motive?
Meditation comes into existence only when you have looked into all motives and found them lacking, when you have gone through the whole round of motives and you have seen the falsity of it. You have seen that the motives lead nowhere, that you go on moving in circles; you remain the same. The motives go on and on leading you, driving you, almost driving you mad, creating new desires, but nothing is ever achieved. The hands remain as empty as ever. When this has been seen, when you have looked into your life and seen all your motives failing….
No motive has ever succeeded, no motive has ever brought any blessing to anybody. The motives only promise; the goods are never delivered. One motive fails and another motive comes in and promises you again… and you are deceived again. Being deceived again and again by motives, one day suddenly you become aware — suddenly you see into it, and that very seeing is the beginning of meditation. It has no seed in it, it has no motive in it. If you are meditating for something, then you are concentrating, not meditating. Then you are still in the world — your mind is still interested in cheap things, in trivia. Then you are worldly. Even if you are meditating to attain to God, you are worldly. Even if you are meditating to attain to nirvana, you are worldly — because meditation has no goal.
Meditation is an insight that all goals are false. Meditation is an understanding that desires don’t lead anywhere. Seeing that…. And this is not a belief that you can get from me or from Buddha or from Jesus. This is not knowledge; you will have to see it. You can see it right now! You have lived, you have seen many motives, you have been in turmoil, you have thought about what to do, what not to do, and you have done many things. Where has it all led you? Just see into it! I’m not saying agree with me, I’m not saying believe in me. I’m simply making you aware of a fact that you have been neglecting. This is not a theory, this is a simple statement of a very simple fact. Maybe because it is so simple, that’s why you go on without looking at it. Mind is always interested in complexities, because something can be done with a complex thing. You cannot do anything with a simple phenomenon.
The simple is overlooked, the simple is neglected, the simple is ignored. The simple is so obvious you never look into it. You go on searching for complexities — the complexity has a challenge in it. The complexity of a phenomenon, of a problem, of a situation, gives you a challenge. In that challenge comes energy, friction, conflict: you have to solve this problem, you have to prove that you can solve this problem. When a problem is there you are thrilled by the excitement that there is a possibility to prove something. But what I am stating is a simple fact, it is not a problem. It gives you no challenge, it is simply there. You can look at it or you can avoid it. And it doesn’t shout; it is so simple. You cannot even call it a still, small voice within you; it does not even whisper. It is simply there — you can look, you may not look.
See it! And when I say, “See it,” I mean see it right now, immediately. There is no need to wait. And be quick when I say, “See it”! Do see it, but quickly, because if you start thinking, if you don’t see it quickly, immediately, in that split second then the mind comes in and the mind starts brooding, and the mind starts bringing thoughts, and the mind starts bringing prejudices. And you are in a philosophical state — many thoughts. Then you have to choose what is right and what is wrong, and speculation has started. You missed the existential moment.
The existential moment is right now. Just have a look, and that is meditation — that look is a meditation. Just seeing the facticity of a certain thing, of a certain state, is meditation. Meditation has no motive, hence there is no center to it. And because there is no motive and no center, there is no self in it. You don’t function from a center in meditation, you act out of nothingness. The response out of nothingness is what meditation is all about.
Mind concentrates: it acts out of the past. Meditation acts in the present, out of the present. It is a pure response to the present, it is not reaction. It acts not out of conclusions, it acts seeing the existential.
Watch in your life: there is a great difference when you act out of conclusions. You see a man, you feel attracted — a beautiful man, looks very good, looks innocent. His eyes are beautiful, the vibe is beautiful. But then the man introduces himself and he says, “I am a Jew” — and you are a Christian. Something immediately clicks and there is distance: now the man is no more innocent, the man is no more beautiful. You have certain ideas about Jews. Or, he is a Christian and you are a Jew; you have certain ideas about Christians — what Christianity has done to Jews in the past, what other Christians have done to Jews, how they have tortured Jews down the ages… and suddenly he is a Christian — and something immediately changes.
This is acting out of conclusions, prejudices, not looking at this man — because this man may not be the man that you think a Jew has to be… because each Jew is a different kind of man, each Hindu is a different kind of man, so is each Mohammedan. You cannot act out of prejudices. You cannot act by categorizing people. You cannot pigeonhole people; nobody can be pigeonholed. You may have been deceived by a hundred communists, and when you meet the hundred and first communist don’t go on believing in the category that you have made in your mind: that communists are deceptive — or anything. This may be a different type of man, because no two persons are alike.
Whenever you act out of conclusions, it is mind. When you look into the present and you don’t allow any idea to obstruct the reality, to obstruct the fact, you just look into the fact and act out of that look, that is meditation. Meditation is not something you do in the morning and you are finished with it, meditation is something that you have to go on living every moment of your life. Walking, sleeping, sitting, talking, listening — it has to become a kind of climate. A relaxed person remains in it. A person who goes on dropping the past remains meditative. Never act out of conclusions; those conclusions are your conditionings, your prejudices, your desires, your fears, and all the rest of it.
In short, you are there! You means your past. You means all your experiences of the past. Don’t allow the dead to overrule the living, don’t allow the past to influence the present, don’t allow death to overpower your life — that’s what meditation is. In short, in meditation you are not there. The dead is not controlling the living.
Meditation is a kind of experience which gives you a totally different quality to live your life. Then you don’t live like a Hindu, or a Mohammedan, Indian or German; you simply live as consciousness. When you live in the moment and there is nothing interfering, attention is total because there is no distraction — distractions come from the past and the future. When attention is total the act is total. It leaves no residue. It goes on freeing you, it never creates cages for you, it never imprisons you. And that is the ultimate goal of Buddha; that’s what he calls nirvana.
‘Nirvana’ means freedom — utterly, absolute, unobstructed. You become an open sky. There is no border to it, it is infinite. It is simply there… and then there is nothingness all around you, within and without. Nothingness is the function of a meditative state of consciousness. And in that nothingness is benediction. That nothingness itself is the benediction.
Source – from Osho Book “The Heart Sutra”