mind - meditation

[Guest guest]

You say: "During the meditations, my mind still goes five hundred miles per

hour" -- let it go! Let it go faster. You be a watcher. You watch the mind going

around so fast, with such speed. Enjoy this! enjoy this play of the mind.

 

In Sanskrit we have a special term for it; we call it CHIDVILAS -- the play of

consciousness. Enjoy it! this play of mind rushing towards stars, moving so fast

from here and there, jumping all over existence. What is wrong in it? Let it be

a beautiful dance. Accept it.

 

My feeling is that what you are doing is you are trying to stop it -- you cannot

do that. Nobody can stop the mind! Yes, mind stops one day, but nobody can stop

it. Mind stops, but that is not out of your effort. Mind stops out of your

understanding.

 

You just WATCH and try to see what is happening, why this mind is rushing. It is

not rushing without any reason. You must be ambitious. Try to see WHY this mind

is rushing, where it is rushing -- you must be ambitious. If it thinks about

money, then try to understand. Mind is not the question. You start dreaming

about money, that you have won a lottery or this and that, and then you even

start planning how to spend it, what to purchase and what not. Or, the mind

thinks you have become a president, a prime minister, and then you start

thinking what to do now, how to run the country, or the world. Just WATCH the

mind! what mind is going towards. There must be a deep seed in you. You cannot

stop the mind unless that seed disappears.

 

The mind is simply following the order of your innermost seed. Somebody is

thinking about sex; then somewhere there is repressed sexuality. Watch where

mind is rushing. Look deep into yourself, find where the seeds are.

 

In the first place, you cannot succeed; and it is good that you cannot succeed.

If you CAN succeed, if you manage to succeed, that will be very unfortunate --

you will become dull, you will lose intelligence. With that speed there is

intelligence, with that speed there is continuous sharpening of the sword of

thinking, logic, intellect. Please don't try to stop it. I am not in favour of

dullards, and I am not here to help anybody to become stupid.

 

I would not suggest that you stop the mind; rather, that you understand. With

understanding there happens a miracle. The miracle is that with understanding,

by and by, when you understand the causes and those causes are looked into

deeply, and through that looking deeply into those causes, those causes

disappear, mind slows down. But intelligence is not lost, because mind is not

forced.

 

Ambition you carry on -- and you try to stop the mind? Ambition creates the

speed, so you are accelerating the speed -- and putting a brake on the mind. You

will destroy the whole subtle mechanism of the mind, and mind is a very delicate

phenomenon, the most delicate in the whole of existence. So don't be foolish

about it.

 

Don't try to stop the mind. Let the mind have its speed -- you watch.

 

- osho

[Guest guest]

Another perspective--

 

Quieting the mind requires time, commitment and

effort. Certainly, as one commences a practice and

attempts, say half an hour or forty-five minutes a

day, one benefits, I believe from meditations wherein

one simply sits and attempts to neither force the mind

into quiet nor not to force the mind into quiet. Just

sit absolutely still and comitted not to rise until

one's alarm sounds when the time is up.

 

However, I believe that other kinds of meditations

ought to go hand in hand with 'just sitting', or

'watching.' Concentrative meditations are very

useful, perhaps more so when interspersed with the

previously mentioned sort of meditation. Directed

meditations can be anything from committedly following

one's breath, to meditating on a yantra with eyes open

and then closed, alternately, to extended narrative

type inner meditations. An effective kind of

narrative, relaxation meditation suggests that one

visualize colored, sensuous energy entering the body

and slowly absorbing, healing, etc., each and every

part of one's body. This meditation can require a

half an hour or two hours, depending on how slowly one

proceeds. Meditations that actively relax the body,

prepare the meditator for longer meditative

experiences.

 

In any event, I believe that progress in meditation

can be very good when both directed and non-directed

meditation techniques are used.

 

However, I also believe that progress in meditation,

which includes deeper and longer lasting effects of

peacefulness and awareness, can only occur with

progressively greater commitments of time and effort.

One begins with as little time as I can achieve in a

meditation. One progresses by pressing forward and

building on foundational work, by extending meditation

times, and by adding more challenging kinds of

directed meditation. As one discovers fulfilment in

meditations of extended periods--from one to four or

five hours--on a reasonably regular basis, I can

almost guarantee that one will have discovered a very

peacefully abiding consciousness along the way.

 

My experience indicated to me that if I were to truly

progress toward a permanent awareness of peace--even

in the midst of tensions and challenges, that my

conduct throughout the day must include practices that

prepare me for each of twice a day meditations.

 

To progress toward peacefulness, one must, I believe,

commit one's entire waking life to preparation for

meditation: breathing exercises while driving,

standing in lines, etc., choosing not to respond to

negative stimulae with similar behavior. Rather,

choosing to remain emotionally neutral in

circumstances where one does not need to feed one's

inner turmoils by repeating scenes, creating inner

dialogues, etc.

 

Of course, all of this requires discipline. In my

opinion, while simply cultivating "mindfulness" or a

"watching" perspective is useful, it is even more

useful to cultivate practices like breathwork, inner

mantra recitation, which will in turn, lead to

progress with maintaining the state of "mindfulness."

 

Rachel