When sadness comes, just sit by the side and look at it and say, “I am the watcher, I am not sadness,” and see the difference. Immediately you have cut the very root of sadness. It is no more nourished. It will die of starvation. We feed these emotions by being identified with them.
I am less interested in your chain-smoking; I am more interested in your habit. Any habit that becomes a force, a dominating force over you, is a sin. One should live more in freedom. One should be able to do things not according to habits but according to the situations.
I have just instructed Laxmi to make a small temple for smoking here in the ashram. But you have to go very alert, aware, meditative! If you can smoke meditatively, it is perfectly beautiful. If it stops by being meditative, that too is perfectly beautiful. Life is sacred.
Mind is a door that leads you outside in the world; meditation is the door that leads you to your interiority – to the very innermost shrine of your being.
In meditation you are not unconscious, you are conscious – more conscious than ever.
Meditation has only one meaning, and that is going beyond the mind and becoming a witness. In your witnessing is the miracle – the whole mystery of life.
Meditation is a flower and compassion is its fragrance.
And meditation is nothing but enjoying your beautiful aloneness. Celebrating yourself; that’s what meditation is all about.
One has to reach to the absolute state of awareness: that is Zen. You cannot do it every morning for a few minutes or for half an hour and then forget all about it. It has to become like your heartbeat. You have to sit in it, you have to walk in it. Yes, you have even to sleep in it.
That’s the moment of enlightenment. That is the moment that you become for the first time an unconditioned, sane, really free human being.
When you are self-conscious you are in trouble. When you are self-conscious you are really showing symptoms that you don’t know who you are. Your very self-consciousness indicates that you have not come home yet.
Meditation means removing all your prejudices, putting all your conclusions aside, seeing without any hindrance, seeing without any curtains, seeing clearly without any mediation of any thought, seeing without Buddha standing between you and reality, or Krishna, or Christ.
Religion has only one answer and that answer is meditation. And meditation means how to empty yourself.
Happiness happens when you fit with your life, when you fit so harmoniously that whatsoever you are doing is your joy. Then suddenly you will come to know: meditation follows you. If you love the work that you are doing, if you love the way you are living, then you are meditative.
I have been teaching you all the methods of meditation. You can choose any method that suits you. There are only one hundred and twelve methods; there is no possibility of adding more. It is exhaustive. All the methods possible have been explored. The simplest is witnessing.
Only one thing is going to remain with you: that is your witnessing, that is your watchfulness. This watchfulness is meditation.
If you were only to listen, it becomes meditation. Without meditation you cannot hear. What is the meaning of meditation? Meditation exists only where mind is not; where the internal dialogue is gone.
If you feel you are the body type, then running can be very beautiful for you: a four, five mile run every day. And make it a meditation. It will transform you completely.
In fact everything can become a sort of meditation, because in everything there are two dimensions – just as there are in the first breath: the outer and the inner.
It is better not to call anything to anybody – just remain centered in yourself. Look at the world and drop judgments, and you will have such a pure atmosphere around you – no appreciation, no condemnation, just a pure watchfulness. This watchfulness, I call meditation.