Osho on Meditation

Question 5: I like to listen to your talks very much but I hate the meditations. Is it okay, Osho? Perhaps my path is that of prayer.

IF you really enjoy my talks you will enjoy the meditations too because they are interconnected. In fact, my talks are nothing but appetisers — if you enjoy the appetiser and you don’t enjoy the lunch you are going to die sooner or later. You will die, starved. The talks are just to prepare you for the meditations. If you hate the meditations then you have not heard me. Then you may think you have heard me but you have not.

Hearing me, what else is there to do? If you have heard me you will be ready to go deep into the meditations. And whatsoever I am saying will become a real experience only when you have gone into the meditations. Then it will become your experience. Listening to me it will remain borrowed, listening to me you will be thrilled by the possibility of it, listening to me it is as if I am talking about the beautiful Himalayas — and you listen to me and you enjoy it. But you have never been to the Himalayas and whatsoever I say is nothing compared to the beauty of the Himalayas. How can it be put into words? You will have to go.

If you are really listening to me, one day, suddenly, you will feel, ‘Now the time has come and I have to go on the adventure. I have to take the risk.’ Meditations are the real journey. Here I simply seduce you to meditate. It is not the end, it is the beginning.

I have heard.

A movie-house usher was astonished to see a big, brown bear sitting in the front row, munching peanuts.

‘Say, you!’ he shouted. ‘You’re a bear! What are you doing in here?’

‘Why, I enjoyed the book so much,’ replied the bear, ‘that I thought I’d like to see the picture.’

If you are really listening to me and enjoying it, one day you will want to see the picture too.

If it is true that you enjoy whatsoever I am saying, then how is it possible that you hate the meditations? I am not an entertainment. Maybe you are using me as an entertainment.

Maybe sitting here for one and a half hours every day you forget your worries — for one and a half hours you are transported into another world, into my world. And you see beautiful things — at least you visualise, imagine them — and then you are gone. Then you become addicted to it. Every day you have to come and listen to me. Now it is just an intoxicant. It is not going to help. I am talking about the food — just the talk about the food is not going to help. The menu is not the food. The talks are just the menu, and you will have to make an order.

What I am saying to you is just like a faucet. There is a great source behind it from where it all comes. Unless you go in there, just listening to me is not going to help. It may be a solace, a consolation, an addiction, but it is not going to bring any revolution in your life.

You say: IS IT OKAY, OSHO? It is not okay at all. You are wasting your time. If you stop listening to me and continue the meditations that is far better than stopping the meditations and listening to me.

Then you ask: PERHAPS MY PATH IS THAT OF PRAYER. Don’t try to deceive yourself. Have you done any praying? Have you been praying? You say ‘perhaps’ — you have not tried even that. Maybe you are using the word prayer’ just to avoid meditation. Prayer itself is a meditation and to avoid meditation in the name of prayer will not help. These escapes are for weaklings. Don’t be a coward.

People come to me. If I give them prayers and I tell them, ‘Say this prayer,’ they come and they say, ‘Osho, maybe prayer is not my path.’ If prayer is given to them, they say that prayer is not their path. So it is difficult to do the praying. If meditation is given, they think that meditation is not their path. In fact, you don’t want to do anything; you don’t want to grow, you don’t want to be transformed.

Don’t be a coward. Let the little ones pray. You take up the challenge of meditation. It is a challenge. Prayer seems to be easy because you have nothing to do you just have to say, ‘God, do this, do that.’ In prayer you give God work to do — if he does not do it then he is responsible. You said it, so what more can you do?

Meditation is to do the work yourself. And my feeling is that if you do your work to your uttermost capacity only then does God start doing work on you — never before it. Unless you help yourself, no help ever comes from God.

Understand my approach: if your meditations succeed, only then can prayer start. Never before it. When you have done all that you can do, when you have not saved anything, when you have put yourself totally at the stake and you feel that nothing is happening, then you are entitled to ask the sky, ‘Now help me. What more can I do?’ And help comes.

But not doing anything on your own, just saying a prayer every night, half asleep, when you are going to bed — ‘God do this, do that’ — and then going to sleep… this will not help you at all. If you really want God to do something to you, first you have to try your uttermost; at the optimum, help happens, never before it. When you are doing all that you can do, absolutely all that you can do, immediately help is available.

Source:

Listen to complete discourse at mentioned below link.

Discourse series: Tao: The Pathless Path, Vol 2 Chapter #4

Chapter title: Tao Tantra

28 February 1977 am in Buddha Hall

References:

Osho has spoken extensively on ‘meditation and prayer’ in the course of His talks. More on the subject can be referred to in the following books/discourses:

1. 1. The Buddha Disease
   2. Believing The Impossible Before Breakfast
   3. Be Still and Know
   4. The Passion for the Impossible
   5. A Bird On The Wing
   6. The Search
   7. The Secret of Secrets Vol.1-2
   8. A Sudden Clash of Thunder
   9. Buddha: The emptiness of the heart
   10. No Man Is An Island
   11. The Rainbow Bridge
   12. Come follow to you Vol.1-3