“You simply watch. Remember, simply watch. Don’t make an effort to watch. This is what Buddha has called Vipassana, the watching of the breath, awareness of the breath, remembering, being alert of the life energy that moves in breath. Don’t try to take deep breaths, don’t try to inhale or exhale, don’t do anything. You simply relax and let the breathing be natural, going on its own, coming on its own, and many things will become available to you.”
AWAKE. BE THE WITNESS OF YOUR THOUGHTS.
Con queste semplici parole Buddha ha regalato al mondo la più grande meditazione: la vipassana.”
OSHO
WHAT DOES VIPASSANA MEAN?
“Vipassana simply means watching your breath, looking at your breath. It is not like YOGA PRANAYAMA: it is not changing your breath to a certain rhythm — deep breathing, fast breathing. No, it does not change your breathing at all; it has nothing to do with the breathing. Breathing has only to be used as a device to watch because it is a constant phenomenon in you. You can simply watch it, and it is the most subtle phenomenon. If you can watch your breath then it will be easy for you to watch your thoughts.
OSHO, The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha
YOU SIMPLY WATCH
OSHO, Ancient Music in the Pines
GET MORE ROOTED INTO WATCHING
“Get more and more rooted into watching, that’s what Buddha calls Vipassana, insight. Just see with inner eyes whatsoever happens, and remain untouched, unattached.”
OSHO, The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha
BE A WITNESS
“When you watch, the mind stops, ceases to be. Yes, in the beginning many times you will forget and the mind will come in and start playing its old games. But whenever you remember that you had forgotten, there is no need to feel repentant, guilty, just go back to watching, again and again go back to watching your breath. Slowly slowly, less and less mind interferes.
And when you can watch your breath for forty-eight minutes as a continuum, you will become enlightened. You will be surprised, just forty-eight minutes, because you will think that it is not very difficult… just forty-eight minutes! It it is very difficult. Forty-eight seconds and you will have fallen victim to the mind many times. Try it with a watch in front of you; in the beginning you cannot be watchful for sixty seconds. In just sixty seconds, that is one minute, you will fall asleep many times, you will forget all about watching, the watch and the watching will both be forgotten. Some idea will take you far far away; then suddenly you will realize… you will look at the watch and ten seconds have passed. For ten seconds you were not watching. But slowly slowly, it is a knack; it is not a practice, it is a knack, slowly slowly you imbibe it, because those few moments when you are watchful are of such exquisite beauty, of such tremendous joy, of such incredible ecstasy, that once you have tasted those few moments you would like to come back again and again — not for any other motive, just for the sheer joy of being there, present to the breath.”
OSHO, The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha
BE NATURAL
“In Vipassana you are not to change the rhythm of your natural breath, you are not to take long, deep breaths, you are not to exhale in any way differently than you ordinarily do. Let it be absolutely normal and natural. Your whole consciousness has to be on one point; watching.”
OSHO, The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha
THE PROCESS OF AWARENESS
“First, learn the process of awareness through breathing and then move to thinking. And you will be surprised: the more you watch your thinking… again, either you can watch, or you can think. Both cannot be done simultaneously. If you watch, thinking disappears.
If thinking appears, watching disappears. When you have become alert enough to watch your thoughts and let them disappear through watching, then move to feeling — which is even more subtle. And these are the three steps of vipassana. First breathing, second thinking, third feeling. And when all these three have disappeared, what is left is your being.
To know it is to know all. To conquer it is to conquer all.”
OSHO, The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha
IT IS SIMPLY VIPASSANA
“You can be driving your car, you can be sitting in your office and you can be doing it. It is not even deep breathing – that others can feel, that you are doing some deep breathing. It is simply vipassana, it is simply watching, watching everything – outside, inside.”