The Great Path - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 7. MEDITATION IS THE SEED
The Haji was now so terrified that he woke up! This dream changed his life. He became plain
Mohammed from Haji Mohammed; he also began to pray in secret so that no one would know.
Word went around the village that the Haji was no longer religious. Why, he had even stopped his
prayers! So he reached his dotage. The Haji never refuted what people said. His prayers began to
be meaningful and sincere. It is said that he had no trouble reaching heaven.
If your mind prays it will not allow prayer to happen. It will make prayer yet another way of filling its
ego. Don’t talk about your meditation. Hide your meditation as you would hide your precious jewels.
You always protect your valuables from the gaze of others: do the same with meditation. Don’t talk
about it, don’t fill your ego with it, or the creeper of the mind will reach there also and suck it away.
Whenever the mind reaches, religion is not. Where the mind is not, religion is. The mind is always
outgoing, extraverted; its attention is on the other, and not on itself. Meditation is in-going. It is
introverted.
Meditation means: the focus is on one’s own self and not on the other. Mind means the focus is on
the other. Observe yourself: when you give a two paise coin to a beggar you look around to see
if people are looking at you or not. When you build a temple you take care to inscribe your name
in bold letters on a marble slab right at the entrance. You give to charity, but you see to it that it is
mentioned in the newspapers. Everything you do is in vain. You cannot reach by becoming ’Haji’
Mohammed. Don’t keep an account of your fasts and austerities. God’s realm is not a place of
business. God is not impressed by your balance sheet.
Now look at the Jain munis. Every year they announce in writing how many vows they have
undertaken, how many fasts they have observed in the rainy season. They keep a ledger of all
of this.” They are shopkeepers who just happen to be occupying our temples; they are still not rid of
the habit of keeping accounts. All their fasts and meditations go to waste; they are becoming ’Haji’
Mohammeds.
Don’t worry about the outside world; don’t worry whether people know you are religious or not. What
others say is of no consequence and not worth giving a thought to, for it is your mind that relates
to other people, not you. The day the mind is no more, you shall become disassociated from every
one. It is the mind that binds you together. As long as the mind ties you to the world, you will remain
torn away from God. The day you are divorced from your mind, the mind annihilated, you will be
united with God. You disassociate on one side, while you begin to associate on the other. You break
relations here, you establish relations there. Once the eyes close here they open there.
MEDITATION IS THE SEED, and meditation means: the thoughtless consciousness.
Now the second sutra:
JUST SITTING, RELAXED WITHIN HIMSELF, HE ENTERS SPONTANEOUSLY INTO THE LAKE
OF THE SUPREME BEING.
This sutra is very revolutionary. It is easy and also difficult. The individual, once truly established
within himself, drowns in the lake of the supreme being.
If you were to ask the Zen Buddhists in Japan what you should do in order to meditate, they would
say: ”Do nothing! Just sit!” Now remember, when they say to do nothing it means you have to do
The Great Path 127 Osho