“Meditation is a state of no-mind. Meditation is a state of pure consciousness with no content. Ordinarily, your consciousness is too much full of rubbish, just like a mirror covered with dust. The mind is a constant traffic: thoughts are moving, desires are moving, memories are moving, ambitions are moving – it is a constant traffic! day in, day out. Even when you are asleep the mind is functioning, it is dreaming. It is still thinking; it is still in worries and anxieties. It is preparing for the next day; an underground preparation is going on. This is the state of no meditation – just the opposite is meditation. When there is no traffic and thinking has ceased, no thought moves, no desire stirs, you are utterly silent — that silence is meditation. And in that silence truth is known, and never otherwise. Meditation is a state of no-mind.” OSHO, The Orange Book
What is meditation?
Active techniques
“I created a devise. It is about being active to the point that activity stops by itself, being so madly active that the mind itself that currently craves activity in a spasmodic way, is expelled from the organism. Only then, only after a profound catharsis can you fall into non-activity and have a glimpse of the intuition of a world that is not the world of the effort in which you live.” OSHO, The New Alchemy
Why meditate together?
When we meditate, everything that is important happens in our body and mind, and those who meditate regularly often choose to do so in groups. Meditating together with other people develops such a vital energy, which motivates and supports the meditative space in each of us. When we meditate with other people, we share something important and we can also share our personal experiences. People who frequent Miasto can experience new encounters and a fresh scent of friendship: maybe not knowing much about the other person’s private life, yet the relationships that are created can be very intense and intimate. We meet and greet each other with a clear awareness of being united by something extremely profound. It is an individual and collective work.
When we meditate together, we experience the paradoxical situation of finding ourselves with the same environmental stimuli (sounds, smells, temperature, light, air movements) experienced in completely different and individual ways. From this paradox, one of the group’s additional values arises: the awareness that it is our mind that builds reality and that it is necessary to commit ourselves to observe how this happens. It is not a matter of reaching “special levels”, but simply of contacting reality to discover additional aspects of ourselves and enjoy the benefits.
What are the benefits of meditation?
As you proceed along the path, you realize that meditation becomes a way of life. Meditation is Living Life, it is Working, Playing, and Creativity; it is carrying out every action while remaining centered, observers … it is cleaning our home, it is waiting for the bus at the bus stop; it is being in the present. As we meditate, our sensitivity increases, we become aware of the noises in our head and we discover that this is not our natural state, and we are not obliged to suffer it. Meditation is choosing, choosing to transform our life and expand it by exploring and finding new spaces.
When the awareness goes deeper and deeper in you, slowly slowly, a few moments arrive, moments of silence, moments of pure space, moments of transparency, moments when nothing stirs in you and everything is still.
In those still moments you will know who you are, and you will know what the mystery of this existence is.
And once you have tasted those few dewdrops of nectar, great longing will arise in you to go deeper and deeper into it. Irresistible longing will arise in you, a great thirst. You will become afire!
That’s what sannyas is all about. When you have tasted a few moments of silence, of joy, of meditativeness, you will like this state to become your constant state, a continuum.
The desire to make meditation your whole lifestyle is what sannyas is all about.
Osho, Philosophia Perennis