Two Passive Techniques

In a situation where you can’t do active techniques? Here are two simple but effective passive methods. And remember, you will find many more in the regularly rotated “Meditation of the Week” and “Meditation For Busy People.”

1. Watching the Breath

Breath-watching is a method that can be done anywhere, at any time, even if you have only a few minutes available. You can simply watch the rise and fall of your chest or belly as the breath comes in and goes out, or try this version….

Step 1: Watch the In Breath

Close your eyes and start watching your breath. First, the inhalation, from where it enters your nostrils, right down into your lungs.

Step 2: Watch the Gap That Follows

At the end of the inhalation there is gap, before the exhalation starts. It is of immense value. Watch that gap.

Step 3: Watch the Out Breath

Now watch the exhalation.

Step 4: Watch the Gap That Follows

At the end of the exhalation there is a second gap: watch that gap. Do these four steps for two to three times – just watching the breathing cycle, not changing it in anyway, just watching the natural rhythm.

Step 5: Counting In Breaths

Now start counting: Inhalation – count 1 (don’t count the exhalation), inhalation – 2, and so on, up to 10. Then count from 10 back to 1. Sometimes you may forget to watch the breath or you may count beyond 10. Then start again, at 1.

“These two things have to be remembered: watching, and particularly the gaps at the top and the bottom. The experience of that gap is you, your innermost core, your being. And second: go on counting, but not more than up to 10; and come back again to 1; and only count the inhalation.

These things help awareness. You have to be aware, otherwise you will start counting the exhalation, or you will go over 10.

If you enjoy this meditation, continue it. It is of immense value.” Osho

More Passive Techniques:

2. Four Levels of Relaxing

This particular method is useful for those time when you are sick because it helps build a loving connection, to create a rapport between yourself and your bodymind. Then you can take an active part in your own healing process.

Step 1: The Body

“Remember as many times as possible to look into the body and see whether you are carrying some tension in the body somewhere – the neck, the head or the legs…. Relax it consciously. Just go to that part of the body, and persuade that part, say to it lovingly ‘Relax!’

You will be surprised that if you approach any part of your body, it listens, it follows you – it is your body! With closed eyes, go inside the body from the toe to the head, searching for any place where there is a tension. And then talk to that part as you talk to a friend; let there be a dialogue between you and your body. Tell it to relax, and tell it, ‘There is nothing to fear. Don´t be afraid. I am here to take care; you can relax.’ Slowly slowly, you will learn the knack of it. Then the body becomes relaxed.”

Step 2: The Mind

“Then take another step, a little deeper; tell the mind to relax. And if the body listens, the mind also listens. But you cannot start with the mind, you have to start from the beginning. You cannot start from the middle. Many people start with the mind and they fail; they fail because they start from a wrong place. Everything should be done in the right order.

If you become capable of relaxing the body voluntarily, then you will be able to help your mind relax voluntarily. The mind is a more complex phenomenon. Once you have become confident that the body listens to you, you will have a new trust in yourself. Now even the mind can listen to you. It will take a little longer with the mind, but it happens.”

Step 3: The Heart

“When the mind is relaxed, then start relaxing your heart, the world of your feelings, emotions, which is even more complex, more subtle. But now you will be moving with trust, with great trust in yourself. Now you will know it is possible. If it is possible with the body and possible with the mind, it is possible with the heart too.”

Step 4: Being

“Then only, when you have gone through these three steps, can you take the fourth. Now you can go to the innermost core of your being, which is beyond body, mind and heart: the very center of your existence.

You will be able to relax it, too, and that relaxation certainly brings the greatest joy possible, the ultimate in ecstasy and acceptance. You will be full of bliss and rejoicing. Your life will have the quality of dance to it.”

(Osho: The Dhammapada: the Way of the Buddha Vol. 1,#8)

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Change Your Focus To the Gaps

Buddha used to say that when a thought arises, note down that a thought is arising. Just inside, note it: now a thought is arising, now a thought has arisen, now a thought is disappearing. Just remember that now the thought is arising, now the thought has arisen, now the thought is disappearing, so that you don't get identified with it.

It is very beautiful and very simple. A desire arises. You are walking on the road; a beautiful car passes by. You look at it ― and you have not even looked and the desire to possess it arises. Do it. In the beginning just verbalize; just say slowly, “I have seen a car. It is beautiful. Now a desire has arisen to possess it.” Just verbalize.

In the beginning it is good; if you can say it loudly, it is very good. Say loudly, ‘I am just noting that a car has passed, the mind has said it is beautiful, and now desire has arisen and I must possess this car.’ Verbalize everything, speak loudly to yourself and immediately you will feel that you are different from it. Note it.

When you have become efficient in noting, there is no need to say it loudly. Just inside, note that a desire has arisen. A beautiful woman passes; the desire has come in. Just note it ― as if you are not concerned, you are just noting the fact that is happening ― and then suddenly you will be out of it.

Buddha says, “Note down whatsoever happens. Just go on noting, and when it disappears, again note that now that desire has disappeared, and you will feel a distance from the desire, from the thought.”

And if you can consider that a desire has arisen and a desire has gone and you have remained in the gap and the desire has not disturbed you.... It came, it went. It was there, and it is now not there, and you have remained unperturbed, you have remained as you were before it. There has been no change in you. It came and it passed like a shadow. It has not touched you; you remain unscarred.

Consider this movement of desire and movement of thought but no movement in you. Consider and dissolve in the beauty. And that interval is beautiful. Dissolve in that interval. Fall in the gap and be the gap. It is the deepest experience of beauty. And not only of beauty, but of good and of truth also. In the gap you are.

Osho, The Book of Secrets, Talk #55

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Sadness as a Meditation

Sadness can become a very enriching experience. You have to work on it. It is easy to escape from your sadness — and all relationships ordinarily are escapes; one simply goes on avoiding it. And it is always there underneath...the current continues. Even in relationship it erupts many times. Then one tends to throw the responsibility on the other, but it is not the real thing. It is your loneliness, your own sadness. You have not settled with it yet, so it will erupt again and again.

You can escape in work. You can escape in some occupation, in relationship and society, this and that, in travelling, but it is not going to go way, because it is part of your being.

Every man is born alone — in the world, but alone; comes through the parents, but alone. And every man dies alone, again moves out of the world alone. And between these two lonelinesses we go on deceiving and fooling ourselves. It is good to take courage and enter into this loneliness. However hard and difficult it may look in the beginning, it pays tremendously. Once you settle with it, once you start enjoying it, once you feel it not as sadness but as silence, once you understand that there is no way to escape, you relax.

Nothing can be done about it, so why not enjoy it? Why not go into it deeply and have a taste of it, see what it is? Why be unnecessarily afraid? If it is going to be there and it is a fact — existential, not accidental — then why not come to terms with it? Why not move into it and see what it is?

Whenever you feel sad, sit silently and allow sadness to come; don’t try to escape from it. Make yourself as sad as you can. Don’t avoid it — that’s the one thing to remember. Cry, weep...have the whole taste of it. Cry to death...fall down on the earth...roll — and let it go by itself. Don't force it to go; it will go, because nobody can remain in a permanent mood.

When it goes you will be unburdened, absolutely unburdened, as if the whole gravitation has disappeared and you can fly, weightless. That is the moment to enter yourself. First bring sadness. The ordinary tendency is not to allow it, to find some ways and means so that you can look somewhere else — to go to the restaurant, to the swimming pool, meet friends, read a book or go to a movie, play a guitar — to do something, so that you can be engaged and you can put your attention somewhere else.

This is to be remembered — when you are feeling sad, don’t lose the opportunity. Close the doors, sit down, and feel as sad as you can, as if the whole world is just a hell. Go deep into it...sink into it. Allow every sad thought to penetrate you, every sad emotion to stir you. And cry and weep and say things — say them loudly, there is nothing to worry about.

So first live sadness for a few days, and the moment that momentum of sadness goes, you will feel very calm, peaceful — as one feels after a storm. In that moment sit silently and enjoy the silence that is coming on its own. You have not brought it; you were bringing sadness. When sadness goes, in the wake, silence settles.

Listen to that silence. Close your eyes. Feel it...feel the very texture of it...the fragrance. And if you feel happy, sing, dance.

Osho, Be Realistic: Plan for a Miracle, Talk #17
(This title is no longer available at Osho’s request)

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