Osho on three ways of Doing Vipassana meditation

All meditations ... hundreds of techniques are available, but the essence of all those techniques is the same,

just their forms differ. And the essence is contained in the meditation vipassana. That is the meditation that has made more people in the world enlightened than any other, because it is the very essence. 

All other meditations have the same essence, but in different forms; something nonessential is also joined with them. But vipassana is pure essence. You cannot drop anything out of it and you cannot add anything to improve it. Vipassana is such a simple thing that even a small child can do it. In fact, the smallest child can do it better than you, because he is not yet filled with the garbage of the mind; he is still clean and innocent.

Raso, I would suggest vipassana as the technique for you. Vipassana can be done in three ways – you can choose which one suits you the best. The first is: Awareness of your actions, your body, your mind, your heart. Walking, you should walk with awareness. Moving your hand, you should move with awareness, knowing perfectly that you are moving the hand.

You can move it without any consciousness, like a mechanical thing. You are on a morning walk; you can go on walking without being aware of your feet. Be alert of the movements of your body. While eating, be alert of the movements that are needed for eating. Taking a shower, be alert of the coolness that is coming to you, the water falling on you and the tremendous joy of it .... Just be alert.

It should not go on happening in an unconscious state. And the same about your mind: whatever thought passes on the screen of your mind, just be a watcher. Whatever emotion passes on the screen of your heart, just remain a witness – don’t get involved, don’t get identified, don’t evaluate what is good, what is bad; that is not part of your meditation. Your meditation has to be choiceless awareness.

You will be able one day even to see very subtle moods: how sadness settles in you just like the night is slowly, slowly settling around the world, how suddenly a small thing makes you joyous. Just be a witness. Don’t think, ”I am sad.” Just know, ”There is sadness around me, there is joy around me. I am confronting a certain emotion or a certain mood.” But you are always far away: a watcher on the hills, and everything else is going on in the valley. This is one of the ways vipassana can be done.

And for a woman, my feeling is that it is the easiest, because a woman is more alert of her body than a man. It is just her nature. She is more conscious of how she looks, she is more conscious of how she moves, she is more conscious of how she sits; she is always conscious of being graceful. And it is not only a conditioning; it is something natural and biological.

Mothers who have experienced having at least two or three children, start feeling after a certain time whether they are carrying a boy or girl in their womb. The boy starts playing football; he starts kicking here and there, he starts making himself felt – he announces that he is here. The girl remains silent and relaxed; she does not play football, she does not kick, she does not announce. She remains as quiet as possible, as relaxed as possible.

So it is not a question of conditioning, because even in the womb you can see the difference between the boy and the girl. The boy is hectic; he cannot sit in one place. He is all over the place. He wants to do everything, he wants to know everything. The girl behaves in a totally different way. That’s why I say, Raso, it will be easier for you to take vipassana in this first form.

The second form is breathing, becoming aware of breathing. As the breath goes in, your belly starts rising up, and as the breath goes out, your belly starts settling down again. So the second method is to be aware of the belly, its rising and falling. Just the very awareness of the belly rising and falling

... And the belly is very close to the life sources because the child is joined with the mother’s life through the navel. Behind the navel is his life’s source. So when the belly rises up, it is really the life energy, the spring of life that is rising up and falling down with each breath. That too is not difficult, and perhaps may be even easier, because it is a single technique.

In the first, you have to be aware of the body, you have to be aware of the mind, you have to be aware of your emotions, moods. So it has three steps. The second sort has a single step: just the belly, moving up and down. And the result is the same. As you become more aware of the belly, the mind becomes silent, the heart becomes silent, the moods disappear.

And the third is to be aware of the breath at the entrance, when the breath goes in through your nostrils. Feel it at that extreme – the other polarity from the belly – feel it from the nose. The breath going in gives a certain coolness to your nostrils. Then the breath going out ... breath going in, breath going out ....

That too is possible. It is easier for men than for women. The woman is more aware of the belly. Most men don’t even breathe as deep as the belly. Their chest rises up and falls down, because a wrong kind of athletics prevails over the world. Certainly it gives a more beautiful form to the body if your chest is high and your belly is almost non-existent.

Man has chosen to breathe only up to the chest, so the chest becomes bigger and bigger and the belly shrinks down. That appears to him to be more athletic. Around the world, except in Japan, all athletes and teachers of athletes emphasize breathing by filling your lungs, expanding your chest, and pulling the belly in. The ideal is the lion whose chest is big and whose belly is very small. So be like a lion; that has become the rule of athletic gymnasts and the people who have been working with the body.

Japan is the only exception, where they don’t care that the chest should be broad and the belly should be pulled in. It needs a certain discipline to pull the belly in; it is not natural. Japan has chosen the natural way; hence you will be surprised to see a Japanese statue of Buddha. That is the way you can immediately discriminate whether the statue is Indian or Japanese.

The Indian statues of Gautam Buddha have a very athletic body: the belly is very small and the chest is very broad. But the Japanese Buddha is totally different; his chest is almost silent, because he breathes from the belly, but his belly is bigger. It doesn’t look very good because the idea prevalent in the world is the other way round, and it is so old. But breathing from the belly is more natural, more relaxed.

In the night it happens when you sleep: you don’t breathe from the chest, you breathe from the belly. That’s why the night is such a relaxed experience. After your sleep, in the morning you feel so fresh, so young, because the whole night you were breathing naturally ... you were in Japan! These are the two points: if you are afraid that breathing from the belly and being attentive to its rising and falling will destroy your athletic form ... men may be more interested in that athletic  form.

Then for them it is easier to watch near the nostrils where the breath enters. Watch, and when the breath goes out, watch. These are the three forms. Any one will do. And if you want to do two forms together, you can do two forms together; then the effort will become more intense. If you want to do all three forms together, you can do all three forms together. Then the process will be quicker. But it all depends on you, whatever feels easy.

Remember: easy is right. As meditation becomes settled, mind silent, the ego will disappear. You will be there, but there will be no feeling of ”I.” Then the doors are open. Just wait with a loving longing, with a welcome in the heart for that great moment, the greatest moment in anybody’s life – enlightenment. It comes ... it certainly comes. It has never delayed for a single moment. Once you are in the right tuning, it suddenly explodes in you, transforms you. The old man is dead and the new man has arrived."

                                  

                                        With courtesy from Osho meditation methods   

Osho on J. Krishnamurti

Question: Osho! Can an enlightened person be wrong? This refers to what you told us about J. Krishnamurti,  who keeps on saying that one does not Need a Master, which is actually not right please comment.

Osho: Prem Pantha, An Enlightened person can never be wrong. Neither J. Krishnamurti is wrong, but he never considers the situation in which you are. He considers only the space in which he is, and that freedom is part of enlightenment. The enlightened person has reached the highest peak of consciousness; his abode is on Everest.

Now it is his freedom to speak according to the peak, the sunlit peak where he is, or to consider the people who are still in the dark valley, who know nothing about the light, for whom the peak of the Everest is only a dream, only a perhaps". This is the freedom of the enlightened person. Krishnamurti speaks in terms where he is.

I speak in terms where you are, I consider you, because if I am speaking to you, you have to be taken in consideration. I have to lead you towards the highest peak, but the journey will begin in the dark valley, in your unconsciousness. If I talk about my experience, absolutely inconsiderate of you, I am right, but I am not useful to you.

An enlightened person is never wrong, but he can be useful or he can be useless. J. Krishnamurti is useless! He is perfectly right; about that there is no question, because I know the peak and what he is saying is certainly true -- from the vision of the peak. Those who have arrived, for them the journey becomes almost a dream phenomenon. For those who have not arrived the journey is real, the goal is just a dream. They are living in two different worlds. When you are talking to a madman you have to consider him; if you don't consider him you cannot help him.

Once a madman was brought to me. He had this crazy idea that one afternoon when he was sleeping, a fly has entered his mouth. And because he used to sleep with open mouth, nobody can deny the possibility. And since then he was very much disturbed because the fly was roaming inside him, jumping inside him, moving in his belly, going to his bladder, circulating in his bloodstream, sometimes in his head, sometimes in his feet. And of course he could not do anything because he was continuously occupied, obsessed with the fly.

He was taken to the psychoanalysts and they said, "This is just in your mind -- there is no fly! And no fly can move in your bloodstream, there is no possibility. Even if a fly has entered it must have died! And now six months have passed; it cannot be alive inside you."

He listened, but he could not believe it because his experience was far more solid. He was taken to the doctors and everybody examined him and they did everything, but finally they will say, "It is just a mental thing. You are imagining." He will listen what they were saying, but he could not trust because his experience was far more certain than their words.

His family brought him to me as a last resort. The man was looking very tired because he was being taken to one person, then to another, then all kinds of physicians -- allopaths and homeopaths and naturopaths -- and he was really tired. In the first place the fly was tiring him, and now all these "pathies", medicines. And everybody was insulting him -- that was his feeling, that they were saying that he was just imagining. Is he a fool or he is mad, that he will imagine such a thing? They were all humiliating him -- that was his feeling.

I looked at the man and I said, "It is so clear that the fly is inside!"
For a moment he was puzzled. He could not believe me, because nobody has said that to him -- because nobody has considered him. And they ALL were right and I was wrong -- there was no fly, but the madman has to be considered.

And I said, "All those fools are just wasting your time; you should have come first here. It is such a simple thing to bring the fly out; there is no need to bother. Medicines won't help -- you are not ill. Psycholanalysis will not help -- you are not crazy."

And immediately he was a changed man! He looked at his wife and said, "Now what do you say? This is the right man," he said, "who really knows. And all those fools were trying to convince me that there is no fly. It is there!"
I said to him that, "It is simple -- we will take it out. You lie down."

I covered him with a blanket and told him to keep his eyes closed and "I will do some mantra, some magic, and we will bring the fly out. You just keep quiet so that the fly sits somewhere. Otherwise the fly is continuously running -- where to catch it?"

He said, "That looks logical. I will keep absolutely still!"
And I said, "Don't open your eyes. Just remain silent, breathe slowly, so the fly settles somewhere, so we can catch hold of it!"

Then I rushed into the house to find a fly. It was a little bit difficult because for the first time I was trying that, but finally I succeeded -- I could get a fly in a bottle. And I came to the man, I moved my hand on his body, and I asked him, "Where the fly is?" And he said, "In the belly." And I touched the belly and I said, "Of course it is there!" And I convinced him that I perfectly believe in him and then I uncovered his blanket and showed him the fly.

And he said to the wife, "Now see! And give this bottle to me; I will go all to those fools and take all the fees that they have taken from me! I have wasted thousands of rupees, and all that they did was they told me I am mad! And now I don't feel the fly anywhere, because it is in the bottle!"

He took the bottle, he went to the doctors.
One of the doctors who knew me, he came to see me. He said, "How you managed? Six months a fly can live in the body? And that man has taken his fee back from me, because he was making such a fuss that I said, 'Better give it back to him!' And he proved that he was right!"
I said, "It is not the point who is right."

Gautam the Buddha defines truth as "that which works". This is the ancientmost pragmatic definition of truth: "that which works"! All the devices are truth in this sense: they work; they are only devices. The Buddha's work is Upaya; Upaya exactly means device.

Meditation is an Upaya, a device. It simply helps you to get nd of that which you have not got in the first place -- the fly: the ego, the misery, the anguish! It helps you to get free of it, but in fact it is not there. But it is not to be told...

And Krishnamurti has been doing that: he has been telling crazy people that the fly does not exist and you don't need any doctor. I say to you: the fly exists and you need the doctor! Because just by telling to you that the fly does not exist is not going to help you at all.

For thousands of years you have been told the ego does not exist. Has it helped you in any way? There have been people who have told, in this country particularly, that the whole world is illusory, MAYA, it does not exist, but has it helped India in any way? The true test is there: whether it has helped, whether it has made people more authentic, more real. It has not helped at all. It has made people more deeply cunning, split, schizophrenic; it has made them hypocrites.

All the religions have done this, because they don't consider you. And you are far more important than the ultimate truth, because the ultimate truth has nothing to do with y ou right now. You are living in a dreamworld; some device is needed which can help you to come out of it. The moment you are out of it, you will know it was a dream -- but a person who is dreaming, to tell him that it is all dream is meaningless.

Have you not observed in your dreams that when you are dreaming it looks real? And every morning you have found that it was unreal. hut again in the night you forget all your understanding of the day -- again the dream becomes real. It has been happening again and again: every night the dream becomes real, every morning you know it is false, but that knowing does not help. In the dream one can even dream that this is a dream.

And that's what has happened in India: people are living in maya, deeply in it, and still talking that "This is all maya." And this talk too is part of their dream; it does not destroy the dream. In fact it makes the dream more rooted in them, because now there is no need to get rid of it -- because it is a dream! So why get rid of it? It does not matter.

In a subtle way all the religions have done this: they have talked from the highest peak to the people for whom that peak does not exist yet. The people are living in darkness, and you go on telling them that darkness has no existence. It is true -- darkness has no existence, it is only the absence of light -- but just by saying to people that darkness has no existence is not going to bring light in.

That's what Krishnamurti is doing; it has been done by many people. Nagarjuna did it -- Krishnamurti is not new, not at least in the East. Nagarjuna did it: he said, "Everything is false. The world is false, the ego is false, nothing exists. Because nothing exists you are already free. There is no need for any meditation, there is no need for any Master. There is no need to find out any device, strategy, technique, because in the first place there is no problem. Why go on looking for solutions? Those solutions will create more problems; they are not going to help."

Nagarjuna did it; before Nagarjuna, Mahakashyap did it, and it has been a long tradition. Zen people have been saying the same thing for centuries. Krishnamurti never uses the word "Zen", but whatsoever he is talking is nothing but Zen -- simple Zen.

Zen says no effort is needed, nothing has to be done. When nothing has to be done, what is the need of a Master? -- because the Master will tell you to do something. Nothing has to be done -- what is the need of the scriptures? -- because the scriptures will tell you to do something, to know something. Nothing has to be done, nothing has to be known. You are already there where you are trying to reach.

And I know this is true, but to talk about this ultimate truth to people who are living in tremendous darkness is futile . Prem Pantha, no enlightened person can ever be wrong, but only few enlightened persons have been of help. The majority of enlightened people have been of no help at all, for the simple reason because they never considered the other.

In fact, George Gurdjieff used to say, "Don't consider the other." It was one of his basic teachings: "Don't consider the other. Just say what is absolutely true." But the absolute truth is truth only when experienced; people are living in relative truth.

My approach is different from Krishnamurti's. I know that one day you will come to that point where nothing is needed -- no Master, no teaching, no scripture -- but right now the scripture can be of help, the methods can be of help, and certainly a living Master can be of immense help. The function of the Master is to give you that which you already have and to take away that which you don't have at all.

Source: from book "I am that" by Osho

Jiddu Krishnamurti talks on reincarnation

Question: Would you please make a definite statement about the non-existence of reincarnation since increasing `scientific evidence' is now being accumulated to prove reincarnation is a fact. I am concerned because I see large numbers of people beginning to use this evidence to further strengthen a belief they already have, which enables them to escape problems of living and dying. Is it not your responsibility to be clear, direct and unequivocable on this matter instead of hedging round the issue?

Jiddu Krishnamurti -We will be very definite. The idea of reincarnation existed long before Christianity. It is prevalent almost throughout India and probably in the whole Asiatic world.

Firstly: what is it that incarnates; not only incarnates now, but reincarnates again and again? Secondly: the idea of there being scientific evidence that reincarnation is true, is causing people to escape their problems and that causes the questioner concern.

Is he really concerned that people are escaping? They escape through football or going to church. Put aside all this concern about what other people do. We are concerned with the fact, with the truth of reincarnation; and you want a definite answer from the speaker.
What is it that incarnates, is reborn? What is it that is living at this moment, sitting here? What is it that is taking place now to that which is in incarnation?
And when one goes from here, what is it that is actually taking place in our daily life, which is the living movement of incarnation - one's struggles, one`s appetites, greeds, envies, attachments - all that? Is it that which is going to reincarnate in the next life?
Now those who believe in reincarnation believe they will be reborn with all that they have now - modified perhaps - and so carry on, life after life. Belief is never alive. But suppose that belief is tremendously alive, then what you are now matters much more than what you will be in a future life.
In the Asiatic world there is the word `karma' which means action in life now, in this period, with all its misery, confusion, anger, jealousy, hatred, violence, which may be modified, but will go on to the next life. So there is evidence of remembrance of things past, of a past life. That remembrance is the accumulated `me', the ego, the personality. That bundle, modified, chastened, polished a little bit, goes on to the next life.
So it is not a question of whether there is reincarnation (I am very definite on this matter, please) but that there is incarnation now; what is far more important than reincarnation, is the ending of this mess, this conflict, now. Then something totally different goes on.

Being unhappy, miserable, sorrow-ridden, one says: "I hope the next life will be better". That hope for the next life is the postponement of facing the fact now. The speaker has talked a great deal to those who believe in and have lectured and written about reincarnation, endlessly. It is part of their game. I say, "All right, Sirs, you believe in it all. If you believe, what you do now matters". But they are not interested in what they do now, they are interested in the future. They do not say: "I believe and I will alter my life so completely that there is no future". Do not at the end of this say that I am evading this particular question; it is you who are evading it.

I have said that the present life is all-important; if you have understood and gone into it, with all the turmoil of it, the complexity of it - end it, do not carry on with it. Then you enter into a totally different world. I think that is clear, is it not? I am not hedging. You may ask me: "Do you believe in reincarnation?" Right? I do not believe in anything. This is not an evasion I have no belief and it does not mean that I am an atheist, or that I am ungodly. Go into it, see what it means. It means that the mind is free from all the entanglements of belief.
In the literature of ancient India there is a story about death and incarnation. For a Brahmin it is one of the ancient customs and laws, that after collecting worldly wealth he must at the end of five years give up everything and begin again. A certain Brahmin had a son and the son says to him, "You are giving all this away to various people, to whom are you going to give me away; to whom are you sending me?" The father said, "Go away, I am not interested".

But the boy comes back several times and the father gets angry and says, "I am going to send you to Death" - and being a Brahmin he must keep his word. So he sends him to Death. On his way to Death the boy goes to various teachers and finds that some say there is reincarnation, others say there is not. He goes on searching and eventually he comes to the house of Death.
When he arrives, Death is absent. (A marvellous implication, if you go into it.) Death is absent. The boy waits for three days. On the fourth day, Death appears and apologizes. He apologizes because the boy was a Brahmin; he says, "I am sorry to have kept you waiting and in my regret I will offer you three wishes. You can be the greatest king, have the greatest wealth, or you can be immortal". The boy says, "I have been to many teachers and they all say different things. What do you say about death and what happens afterwards?" Death says: "I wish I had pupils like you; not concerned about anything except that". So he begins to tell him about truth, about the state of life in which there is no time

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