The Great Path - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 9. RIGHT SEARCH, WRONG DIRECTION
Kabir would answer: Whatever I do is ’circling the temple’; whatever I say is japa, and my very being
is my meditation.
What do you do when you become interested in meditation? You give a small corner to meditation
in your world of actions, but meditation is not an action, it is not an act. You look after the shop, you
look after your job; you have to, it is required. Now you do your work and attend to the day-to-day
necessities of life. They form a procession on the periphery of your life, and you treat meditation the
same way. You say: Let me go to the temple before I go to the market.
Be aware of this distinction. You make meditation one more act to add to your daily activities. There
are a thousand involvements in your life already, and you add God as just one more, but you will
miss God, for God cannot be at the periphery. God has nothing to do with the market and the shops.
He is the very core of your being – where you actually are. Where all work becomes rest, where you
simply exist, where there is no doer, where only the witness is – this where He lives.
God does not occupy a part of you. He is vast. He is all-pervading. Only if you are not prepared
to be enveloped by Him completely will you attain. If you allow Him only a part of your time and
attention you will go astray. The day you give yourself completely to Him...
This does not mean that you will give up all your activities; rather, you will do your work better, more
efficiently. Remembrance of God will pervade your very being, it will be your very breath. When you
go about your work, when you are busy in your activities, you do not stop breathing! Respiration
goes on in spite of you; it is not a voluntary process. In just this way the remembrance of God should
become an involuntary function within you. You will be doing your worldly duties and the stream of
remembrance will keep flowing inside incessantly.
There is no question of competition or rivalry here, for this is not a part of your mundane world.
Actions form the mundane world; therefore, as long as the person is involved in actions he remains
attached to the world of objects, samsara. When he attains to non-action, he attains God. Nonaction
means your existence, where there is no question of doing, where there is you and you alone,
your being only. There you are united with yourself.
Every utterance of one who becomes like Shiva becomes a remembrance, japa. You will not find him
praying because he does not need to set apart a time for prayer. You will not find him worshipping
for that is no longer part of his ’actions’; he himself is worship. If you observe such a person minutely
you will find that whatever he does is worship; when he breathes it is remembrance, it is japa. When
he moves his hand that is also worship. When he sits or stands he is performing the ritual of circling
the temple.
All acts of the Shiva-like person are acts of devotion. He need not observe any specific practices.
That would be unnatural. If something has to be practiced we are bound to get tired of it at times.
Then when we are tired we are bound to relax, and to relax means to switch over to the opposite.
If you have practiced saintliness you will be diligent for six days, but on the seventh day you will
have to relax. On that day you will become a non-saint. Thus our so-called saints and sadhus have
to take holidays from their saintliness. The sadhu has to go on leave. If he does not the tensions
mount alarmingly.
The Great Path 160 Osho