Meditation Techniques

Awareness / Mindfullness

Maintaining awareness of the present moment requires doing one thing at a time so as to focus on your chief activity. Multitasking is the nemesis of mindfulness. This comes only when you slow down a bit.

Om Swami – Spiritual Monk, Author – If Truth Be Told / A Million Thoughts

Awareness works differently in both cases. If it is a poisonous emotion, you are relieved of it through awareness. If it is good, blissful, ecstatic, you become one with it. Awareness deepens it.

First, learning how just to be, and then learning little actions: cleaning the floor, taking a shower, but keeping yourself centered.

If we can de-automatize our activities, then the whole life becomes a meditation. Then any small thing, taking a shower, eating your food, talking to your friend, becomes meditation. Meditation is a quality; it can be brought to anything. It is not a specific act.

If you want to become a meditator, you have to drop this sleepy habit of doing things. Walk, but be alert. Dig a hole, but be alert. Eat, but while eating don’t do anything—just eat. Each bite should be taken with deep alertness, chew it with alertness. Don’t allow yourself to run all over the world. Be here, now. Whenever you become alert that the mind has gone somewhere else—you are in Paris and the mind has gone to Philadelphia—immediately become alert. Give yourself a jerk. Come back home. Come to the point where you are. Eating, eat; walking, walk; don’t allow this mind to go all over the world.

Osho – Spiritual Teacher – Meditation: The 1st & Last Freedom / The Book of Secrets

Breath

Life is breath: Just listen to your breathing and you will automatically be in the present moment, because your first and fundamental connection with life is breath. it’s when you forget how to breathe that you lose control of yourself.

If you practice it regularly, just breathing deeply will bring you back to normalcy when you are feeling restless or indisposed.

When all else fails, breathe. Even when your mind goes haywire and into analysis mode, remind yourself that for the following five minutes, you are going to listen to your breathing.

Om Swami – Spiritual Monk, Author – If Truth Be Told / A Million Thoughts

Zen

Zen says just do whatever you are doing with mindfulness. Practising Zazen (sitting-down meditation) will help you be more aware while doing all the other activities from bathing to washing dishes, but mostly the focus is to just enjoy everything we do or have to do in our lives.

Zazen you never close your eyes. in Zen, the idea is that the meditative state must be an extension of normal life. Therefore, if I am shutting out the external world to go into meditation, this is of little use to me for it is while operating in the real world that I need the calmness and strength gained from my meditation.

Wall Gazing: Just enjoy life, enjoy living and live every moment as much as you possibly can.

It’s important not to analyze the stone.

Zen tea ritual / Chado: The idea is that you drink your tea mindfully, preparing it with joy and serenity, taking in the aroma, the taste and then savouring it, sip by sip. You drink so deliberately and so naturally, that you experience the tea touching your tongue and then your palate, then going down your esophagus and into your belly. Just inhale it deeply and take the first sip as if you are drinking nectar. Make it a sacred ritual. Enjoy it, one sip at a time, and you can smile throughout.

Zen gives you flexibility: You can do sitting, standing or walking meditation. You may do chado, the Zen tea ritual, or you could simply sit quietly.

Kihin / Walking meditation: The way to practice Kinhin is to take one step at a time, and in that step, pay attention to your movements and shifting of weight.

Om Swami – Spiritual Monk, Author – If Truth Be Told / A Million Thoughts

Catharsis / Dynamic Meditation

Begin with catharsis: I never tell people to begin with just sitting. Begin from where beginning is easy. Otherwise, you will begin to feel many things unnecessarily—things that are not there. If you begin with sitting, you will feel much disturbance inside. The more you try to just sit, the more disturbance will be felt. You will become aware only of your insane mind and nothing else. It will create depression; you will feel frustrated, you will not feel blissful.

You have accumulated anger, sex, violence, greed—everything. Now this accumulation is a madness within you. It is there, inside you.

If you begin with any suppressive meditation—for example, with just sitting—you are suppressing all of this, you are not allowing it to be released. So I begin with a catharsis. First, let the suppressions be thrown into the air. And when you can throw your anger into the air, you have become mature.

Osho – Spiritual Teacher – Meditation: The 1st & Last Freedom / The Book of Secrets

The Observer

“You see, when the water became muddy, the easiest method to clean it was to let it be. Had you made any attempt to clear it at the time, it would have ended up getting worse. You just let it be, you simply waited and the mud settled down on its own. Other than patience, there was no effort. Similarly, when your mind is greatly disturbed just let it be. It’ll calm down, it’ll settle in due course, give it a little time, be patient.” 

It’s quite simple, do not react at any thought, just drop it and get back to your point of meditation. Treat all thoughts with equal indifference. Do not examine or place any importance on any thought. Use mindfulness and alertness to detect the thought at the point of emergence and drop it that very moment.

Om Swami – Spiritual Monk, Author – If Truth Be Told / A Million Thoughts

Meditation has a few essential things in it, whatever the method, but those few essentials are necessary in every method. 

Relaxation: The first is a relaxed state: no fight with the mind, no control of the mind, no concentration.

Watching: Second, just watch with a relaxed awareness whatever is going on,without any interference—just watching the mind, silently,

No judgement: Thirdly, there should be no judgments or evaluation.

If I jump into the stream I will make it dirty again. If I jump into the mind more noise is created, more problems start coming up, surfacing. Sitting by the side I learned the technique. “Now I will be sitting by the side of my mind, too, watching it with all its dirtiness and problems and old leaves and hurts and wounds, memories, desires. Unconcerned I will sit on the bank and wait for the moment when everything is clear.” 

Osho – Spiritual Teacher – Meditation: The 1st & Last Freedom / The Book of Secrets