Meditation

After practicing many different meditations, I have discovered that the essence of all meditations is actually just one thing: awareness, pure awareness. And as such I find two techniques especially helpful: Vipassana and Zazen.
Osho explains that of course there are other techniques but they only help prepare us for Vipassana or Zazen. Finally we always come back to simple awareness...

V I P A S S A N A

...hudreds of techniques are available, but the essence of all those techniques is the same, just their forms differ. And the essence is contained in the meditation vipassana.
That is the meditation that has made more people in the world enlightened than any other, because it is the very essence. All the other meditations have the same essence, but in different forms; someting nonessential is also joined with them. But vipassana is pure essence. You cannot drop anything out of it and you cannot add anything to improve it.
Vipassana is such a simple thing that even a small child can do it. In fact, the smallest child can do it even better than you, because he is not yet filled with the garbage of the mind; he is still clean and innocent. Vipassana can be done in three ways - you can choose which one suits you the best.

The first is:
Awareness of your actions, your body, your mind, your heart. Walking, you should walk with awareness. Moving your hand, you should move it with awareness, knowing perfectly that you are moving the hand. You can move it without any consciousness, like a mechanical thing. You are on a morning walk; you can go on walking without being aware of your feet. Be alert of the movements of your body.
While eating, be alert of the movements that are needed for eating. Taking a shower, be alert of the coolness that is coming to you, the water falling on you and the tremendous joy of it... Just be alert. It should not go on happening in an unconscious state. And the same about your mind:
whatever thought passes on the screen of your mind, just be a watcher. Whatever emotion passes on the screen of your heart, just remain a witness - don`t get involved, don`t get identified, don`t evaluate what is good, what is bad; that is not part of your meditation. Your meditation has to be choiceless awareness. You will be able one day even to see very subbtle moods: how sadness settles in you just like the night is slowly, slowly settling around the world, how suddenly a small thing makes you joyous.
Just be a witness. Don`t think "I am sad." Just know, " There is sadness around me, there is joy around me. I am confronting a certain emotion or a certainmood." But you are always far away; a watcher on the hills, and everythingelse is going on in the valley. This is one of the ways vipassana can be done. And for woman, my feeling is that it is the easiest, because a woman is more alert of her body than a man.

The second form is breathing,:
becoming aware of breathing. As the breath goes in, your belly starts rising up, and as the breath goes out, your belly starts settling down again. So the second metod is to be aware of the belly, its rising and falling. Just the very awareness of the belly rising and falling.... And the belly is very close to the life sources because the child is joined with the mother`s life through the navel. Behind the navel is his life`s source. So when the belly rises up, it is really the life energy,the spring of life that is rising up and falling down with each breath. That too is not difficult, and perhaps may be even easier, because it is a single tecnique.
In the first, you have to be aware of the body, you have to be aware of the mind, you have to be aware of your emotions, moods. So it has three steps. The second sort has a single step: just the belly, moving up and down. And the result is the same. As you become more aware of the belly, the mind becomes silent, the heartbecomes silent, the moods desappear.

The third form is:
...to be aware of the breath at the entrance, when the breath goes in through your nostrils. Feel it at that extreme - the other polarity from the belly - feel it from the nose. The breath going in gives a certain coolness to your nostrils. Then the breath going out....breath going in, breath going out.... That too is possible. It is easier for men than for woman. The woman is more aware of the belly. Most men don`t even breathe as deep as the belly.
Their chest rises up and falls down, because a wrong kind of athletics prevails over the world. Certainly it gives more beautiful form to the body if your chest is high and your belly is almost non - existent. These are the two points: if you are afraid that breathing from the belly and being attantive to its rising and falling will destroy your athletic form...men may be more interested in that athletic form. Then for them it is easier to watch near the nostrils where the breath enters. Watch, and when the breath goes out, watch.

These are the three forms. Any one will do. And if you want to do two forms together, you can do two forms together; Then the effort will become more intense. If you want to do all three forms together, you can do all three forms together. Then the process will be quicker. But it all depends on you, whatever feels easy.

Remember: easy is right. As meditation becomes settled, mind silent, the ego will disappear. You will be there, but there will be no feeling of "I." Then the doors are open. Just wait with a loving longing, with a welcome in the heart for that great moment, the greatest moment in anybody`s life - enlightenment.
It comes....it certainly comes. It has never delayed for a single moment. Once you are in the right tuning, it suddenly explodes in you, transforms you. The old man is dead and the new man has arrived.

(Osho - The New Dawn )

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