Osho Quotes on Meditation

• Any action in which you can be total becomes meditation.
   

• Choose one meditation and then put all your effort in it. That effort has to be very regular because will is created only out of regularity. It has to be very persistent and a continuity has to be maintained. Even to miss for one day is to destroy much -- and at least one hour every day has to be given to it.
   

• Remember always that the ultimate value is meditation, so anything you do, do meditatively; and all things can be done in a meditative way.
   

• Once work becomes meditation, then there is naturally great joy. Meditation should never be against work, otherwise there is a conflict, then life is not harmonious. When everything fits together in one pattern there is beauty and balance. So the man who can find meditation in his work is the most fortunate man. Whatever you are doing is not the point -- you may be a woodchopper, that will do; you may may be a brick-maker, that will do. The point is that whatsoever you are doing is not against your being, and that your being and your doing go together hand in hand, in a dance. Then each experience is a growth experience, and out of each experience it is not only that your work grows, you grow. And it is not only that your work succeeds -- you succeed... and that is the real value.
   

• Meditation simply means a state of no-thought, awareness without the process of thought, just pure, mirror-like awareness, with no thoughts passing in the mind.
   

• Compassion is a shadow of meditation; a meditative mind is a compassionate mind. So learn meditation and forget about compassion, otherwise you can become a do-gooder, and that is a dangerous thing. Just think about one thing -- how to cultivate a more silent mood... and that is possible through many things. Through dance it is possible, through music, through meditation, through running, through swimming it is possible -- anything that can take total possession of you, in which you are utterly lost, and out of which there arises that meditative state. Then you will see that out of that meditation suddenly you have become full of compassion. So my whole emphasis is on meditation and on nothing else.
   

• Meditation means cleansing the mirror, dropping thoughts, letting thoughts disappear, attaining to moments when thinking ceases. And those are the most blissful moments in life. Once you have tasted a single moment of no-thought, you have taken a great leap into truth; then things will become more and more easy every day.
   

• Meditation is nothing but a bridge between you and light. Then darkness is just a river, it goes flowing underneath the bridge; you can move to the world of light. And the essential core of meditation is very simple: it is to be a witness of your mind process, not to be identified with the mind processes -- thoughts, desires, imaginations, projections, dreams, memories and so on and so forth -- not to be identified with anything that passes in the mind but to remain aloof, watching, seeing it, knowing, tacitly knowing 'I am separate, I am not it. I am just a mirror reflecting it all but I don't become the reflection.
   

• Meditation means: remain as relaxed as you are in deep sleep and yet alert. Keep awareness there; let thoughts disappear but awareness has to be retained. And this is not difficult: it is just that we have not tried it, that's all. It is like swimming: if you have not tried it, it looks very difficult; it looks very dangerous too. And you cannot believe how people can swim because you simply drown! But once you have tried a little bit it comes easily; it is very natural.
   

• Meditation simply means getting out of this illusory state -- of dreams, desires, past, future -- and just being in the moment that surrounds you. Just to be utterly in the moment, with no thought, is to be in reality. It takes a little effort to drop out of the illusions because we have lived in those illusions for so long; it has become almost habitual, a second nature. It also takes a little effort to get out of those illusions because we have invested in them very much. They are our hopes: it is through them that we go on living, prolonging. To drop them means to drop the future, to drop all hopes; and we don't know how to live in the present without hope.