The Truth about Meditation - It Needs No Technique

I have been researching a lot about meditation, browsing from website to website, reading everything that would help me know what kind of meditation really helps. It took me about two weeks of reckless searching to realize an important fact: meditation does not have any types... it's just one, and no one can actually teach you to do it. You might be wondering why I'm talking about meditation all of a sudden, but guess what? We have now decided to take up meditation as our primary goal.
Blaise Pascal once said, "All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone." We believe that. We have decided to start our actions from the school level and this is what we are going to encourage our junior friends to do. Of course, before we ask them to even consider trying it out, we have to make sure we know pretty much about it. So that's why I've been surfing from one ocean of nonsense to another.... till I came upon this amazing site - http://www.activemeditation.com

It's about Osho's techniques... I've heard about him, but have never really been very keen in what he's got to say. But after reading what he did have to say, I feel really illuminated. I feel so happy in having discovered the thing I've been searching the whole World Wide Web for. A few excerpts from the website [it's a bit too long... I just couldn't bring myself to shorten it any more that I already have :) ]:

A man who knows what meditation is cannot be deceived by any techniques, because no technique can give you understanding of the workings of the mind. If you want the real, you will have to go through a deep inner search, a profound understanding of your mind, an awareness of all the cunning ways of the mind so that the mind can be put aside. Then the mind is no longer between you and existence, and the doors are open. 

 The outer is the body, the inner is the soul, but between the outer and the inner you exist. You are neither the inner nor the outer. The outer is a part of you and the inner is also a part of you. You exist in between. Become a unity. Become one. Be both body and soul simultaneously. The feeling, just the feeling that you are one, will dissolve your many anguishes, your many tensions, which you have created by an artificial division...

... Only a one-hundred percent effort can bring you any results; less will not do. It's just like heating water. At a particular degree, a hundred degrees, it evaporates. Do not think that at fifty degrees half will evaporate. It will not evaporate at all; it will just become lukewarm.

... Knowledge is not always good; it must unfold itself slowly as your capacity to absorb it grows. You may not be ready to be aware of all the insanity that is inside you; you must be allowed to get to know certain things gradually. I begin with your insanity, not with a sitting posture. With your dancing madly, chaotically, with crying, with chaotic breathing, I allow your madness. Then you begin to be aware of a subtle point, a deep point inside you that is silent and still, in contrast to the madness on the periphery. You will feel very blissful; at your center there is an inner silence. But if you are just sitting, then the inner one is the mad one; you are silent on the outside, but inside you are mad...

... That which you are suppressing is really to be thrown, not suppressed. It has become an accumulation within you because you have been constantly suppressing it. The whole upbringing, the civilization, the education, is suppressive. You have been suppressing much that could have been thrown very easily with a different education, with a more conscious education, with a more aware parenthood. With a better awareness of the inner mechanism of the mind, the culture could have allowed you to throw out many things...

... You can use tricks. You can use breathing rhythms that can force you to be still, to suppress your mind. But it is not good; it is not a flowering. The other way is better; when your mind changes and then, as a consequence, your breath changes; the change comes first from the mind. Awareness is not a static thing. Awareness, too, is movement...a dynamic flow. Silence must be alive, dynamic...

...Body, heart, mind: all my meditations move in the same way – they start from the body, they move through the heart, they reach to the mind, and then they go beyond. Meditation is simply awareness without any effort, an effortless alertness; it does not need any technique. The good news is that there is no need of any technique; but the bad news is, without any technique you are not going to get it...

...Your brain has taken over so much of your being that it dominates you. There is no place for the heart, so the longings of the heart are suppressed. You have never laughed heartily, never lived heartily, never done anything heartily. The brain always comes in to systematize, to make things mathematical, and the heart is suppressed...

...Systematic methodology will not help now, because the brain will use it as its own instrument. Nor can just the chanting of bhajans help now, because the heart is so burdened that it cannot flower into real chanting. Chanting can only be an escape for it; prayer can only be an escape. The heart cannot flower into prayer because it is so overburdened with suppressions. I have not seen a single person who can go deep into authentic prayer. Prayer is impossible because love itself has become impossible ...

...When a person knows the right thing and cannot do anything about it, he becomes doubly tense. He understands, but he cannot do anything. Understanding is meaningful only when it comes from the navel, from the roots. If you understand from the brain, it is not transforming...

Well, that was very long, wasn't it? But it's worth reading. In fact, it has just inspired me to go on with the idea of meditation. Even if it doesn't change anyone else, it will surely change us and that's a great thing... Believe me, from just a year and a half of being a member of CHANGE, I know how hard it is to change others... It's 'cause, you can make someone aware, you can talk to him, show him by example... But that's all you can do. It's true when they say that no one can make anyone else do something without the latter's permission.

Okay... So back to meditation. I'm gonna read about all the techniques the website talks about to prepare ourselves for meditation and then, I'll post about what I've learnt. Till then, ciao!

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