Don’t Just Do Something. Sit There!

The Times of India (What's Hot) - 1^st August, 2008

I see a basic reason. We think too much about ourselves. We think the whole world depends on your doing. Due to this illusory self-image, we lose touch with our real self. The image haunts us and we take on a false identity. One cannot relax with falseness. How can you relax with a shadow? The more we try to relax, the tenser we get! What will it take to let this illusory image recede and the real self emerge?

In The Discipline Of Transcendence, Osho talks about an ancient meditation method, still in use in a few Tibetan monasteries. It teaches us that, at times, we can simply disappearing. Sitting in the garden, you start feeling that you’re disappearing. Just see how the world looks when you have gone from it , when you’ve become absolutely transparent. Try for a single second ‘not to be’. In your own home, be as if you are not. Just think, one day you will still prepare breakfast, the kids will be gone—yet the radio will blare songs, the wife will still go to school…Just visualise this and become a ghost.

Think: “I have no more reality. I am not.” And see how the house continues. There will be tremendous silence. Everything will continue as is. Without you. Then what’s the point of always being occupied, doing something, obsessing with action? What’s the point? You will be gone. Whatsoever you have done will disappear, as if you had signed your name on sand, and it gets swept away by water...

It really is a beautiful way to meditate. You can try it often in 24 hours. Even half a second will do. For just half a second, simply stop! You are not… and the world continues. When you become more alert to the fact that, even without you, the world continues perfectly, then you will quickly discover that part of your being that has been neglected for too long. You will then enter a receptive mode.

You will simply allow, become a door. Things will happen without you. This is what the Buddha means when he says: “Become driftwood. Float in the stream like timber. And wherever the stream goes, let it take you. Don’t make any effort.” The Buddhist approach is receptive. That’s why you see the Buddha sitting under a tree. Sitting, doing nothing.

Osho adds: “To do good work is one thing, and to be good is another. I don’t say don’t do good work. I say let good work emerge from your BEING good. First reach the receptive, non-active mode. When your inner being flowers – and you are in tune with the integrated centre within – death suddenly disappears. All worries vanish because you are no more a body, no more a mind. Then arise compassion, love, prayer. You become a blessing to the world.”

- Swami Chaitanya Keerti