meditation

1. Meditation is going beyond the mind. It has nothing to do with the mind — except going beyond it. It is not a faculty of the mind, it is transcendental to mind. When you can see without the mind in between you and existence, you are in meditation. It is not concentration. It is utterly silent. It is not focusing… it is absolutely unfocused awareness.
2. All these three things — non-violence, non-possessiveness, authenticity and truthfulness — arise without any effort on your part… IF you succeed in meditation. A man of meditation cannot lie. A man of meditation can not hurt anybody; hence he is non-violent. A man of meditation knows perfectly well that all things are ephemeral. You came into the world without anything, and you will have to go from the world without anything; so you can use things — but you cannot possess them.
3. Only one thing is going to remain with you: that is your witnessing, that is your watchfulness. This watchfulness is meditation.
4. Concentration is not meditation; concentration is a faculty of the mind. Mind concentrates; meditation is the absence of mind. Mind cannot do anything about meditation. It simply does not know meditation, and there is no intrinsic possibility for the mind ever to come in contact with meditation. Just as I said before, darkness cannot come in contact with light because darkness is only an absence — so is the mind. Mind is the absence of meditation. The moment meditation arises in you, mind is found nowhere.
5. Meditation can be possible even in the marketplace, because it does not have to concentrate on anything. Meditation cannot be disturbed, it is all-inclusive. Concentration is exclusive; it excludes everything and just keeps the mind on one point.
6. Meditation is all-inclusive. The car passes… the mind in meditation is fully aware of the horn. The birds start singing… the mind is fully aware of their singing. There is no question of distraction; nothing distracts. Everything — the mind is no longer there — is simply watched. You are only aware that there is a horn, a car is passing by — but it is not a distraction.
7. Thinking is a very low activity; it is of the mind. Meditation is the highest within you; it is beyond mind.
8. Meditation has nothing to do with controlling the mind — because every control is a kind of repression and that which is repressed will take its revenge. Whenever you relax a little, the mind that was in control will immediately come up and start, with vengeance, to stir up everything within you.
9. There are one hundred and twelve methods of meditation; I have talked on all those methods. They differ in their constitution, but the fundamentals remain the same: relaxation, watchfulness, a non-judgmental attitude.
10. Unless you attain to meditation, you have not really lived.
11. Meditation is not control, because control creates tension and meditation is based on relaxation. Meditation has a few essential things in it, whatever the method. But those few essentials are necessary in every method. The first is a relaxed state: no fight with the mind, no control of the mind, no concentration. Second, just watching with a relaxed awareness whatever is going on, without any interference… just watching the mind, silently, without any judgment, any evaluation. These are the three things: relaxation, watching, no judgment.
12. Meditation is not a way to get out of the mind. Meditation says, “Just watch the mind and you are out. In fact, you have always been out.” Your being inside the mind is your fallacious idea. Once you stop the mind functioning, suddenly the fallacious idea will disappear and you will find you are out in the open. Then the whole sky is available to you — your freedom, your eternal life, this vast beautiful existence is always available to you, to shower you with all kinds of blessings.
13. Your meditation has to be without any effort on your part, because all effort is of the mind, and mind has no way of reaching to meditation. So if you are making some effort, your very effort is the barrier to reach to the space you want to reach.
14. Meditation is simply a pure understanding that if you can watch the mind without making any effort — and remember, watching is not an effort, watching is your natural capacity. Effort is something that you have to do; watching is something that you don’t have to do. It is already there. It is your very breathing, it is your very heartbeat, just you have never looked at it.
15. There are things which will disappear as your meditation deepens. All that is false will be gone, all that is illusory will no longer exist; all that you have projected, expected, or dreamt will have no reality. But still there will be something left which is not your dream, which is not your projection, which is not the creation of your mind: this is called the inescapable. In other words, the real will remain — only the false will be gone.
16. Meditation should not be something where you put aside one hour every day in the morning, or as Mohammedans do, five times a day. Different religions have different special times for meditation, but the idea of having a special time for meditation means the remaining time you will remain non-meditative. One hour of meditation and twenty-three hours of non-meditation… do you think there is any hope that meditation will win in the end? Those twenty-three hours will wash out anything that you think you are doing in meditation.
17. Gautam Buddha and the people who have understood him down the centuries insist on a meditation that goes with every action, with anything you do. It follows you like a shadow. It runs within your consciousness like an undercurrent. You may be in the market, you may be in the temple — you may be anywhere, and your inner silence remains undisturbed, unperturbed. This is the only true meditation.
18. Meditation has to be only a watchfulness, then it is possible to have it twenty-four hours a day. Even while going to sleep, be watchful. To the last moment, when you see that now sleep is taking you over — the darkness goes on growing, the body is relaxing and the point comes when suddenly from wakefulness you move into sleep — watch up to that moment. And first thing in the morning, as you become aware that the sleep is finished, immediately start watching; soon you will be able to watch even while you are asleep. Watchfulness will become a lamp that goes on burning day and night inside you.
19. Meditation has nothing to do with mantras and chantings. Meditation is simply the pure consciousness of a child regained — paradise regained. It was once yours, but you had lost it, you forgot it. Because it was yours you started looking all over the world, avoiding just that which was in your very heart. You were born with only consciousness, and everything else you have gathered after that. Whatever you have gathered in the mind after your childhood, put it aside — and you will be no longer in the way. This simple understanding, and you will find the doors of the temple of your being open.
20. As you go deeper into meditation time disappears. When meditation has really bloomed there is no time found. It happens simultaneously: when the mind disappears time disappears. Hence down the ages the mystics have said that time and mind are nothing but two aspects of the same coin. Mind cannot live without time and time cannot live without mind. Time is a way for the mind to exist.
21. All the Buddhas have insisted, “Live in this moment.” To live in this moment is meditation, to be simply herenow is meditation. Those who are simply herenow this very moment with me are in meditation. This is meditation: the cuckoo calling from far away, and the airplane passing, and the crows and the birds. And all is silent, and there is no movement in the mind — you are not thinking of the past and you are not thinking of the future. Time has stopped, the world has stopped. Stopping the world is the whole art of meditation. And to live in the moment is to live in eternity. To taste the moment with no idea, with no mind, is to taste immortality.