Osho on difference in Concentration & Watchfulness

Question: Beloved Osho, when we start watching our bodies, and then our minds and emotions, there remains an element, although subtle, of concentration. Initially for example, watching my breathing, I would watch it to the exclusion of every thing else - here there was an element of Focus. On other occasions, When Silence is just there, The Breathing may be all there is to watch. this seems to be nearer, But still I feel that more soft focusing of the Awareness would take me further and further back, As if relaxing enough to let the watcher move far enough away so that all is seen, rather than any one thing like thoughts or breathing. Does relaxing allow the Watcher to be on the Hill?

Osho : It is true. Relaxation helps the most. No part of concentration should be in your watchfulness. Concentration is sabotaging the whole process of watchfulness, because concentration is an act of the mind, and watchfulness is something that comes from above, from beyond. If there is any concentration... I can understand, if you start watching your breathing – in the name of watching, you are concentrating on the breathing, you are excluding everything else.

Don’t exclude. Watch your breathing inclusive of all. Watching your breathing... a temple bell starts ringing, a car passes by, a child starts crying – all that should be included. Your watchfulness should be open. Watching the breathing is simply to begin with. It is not the end. It is just learning how to watch. But there is a difficulty – you can start thinking that concentration is watching. Concentration is not watching. Concentration is narrow, narrowing the mind, bringing it to a focus on one thing, forgetting everything else. That’s why in relaxing, you will feel more watchful, yet without concentration. If that is happening, that’s perfectly good. 

The essential thing is watchfulness, inclusive of all. Concentration can be disturbed, watchfulness cannot be disturbed. These are the differences. If somebody is concentrating on something, anybody can disturb him. Just a small boy can do something and he is distracted and his focus is lost – or not even a small boy, just the wind comes and the door opens and the noise is enough. So you will find the phenomenon in so-called religious people. They are always angry, because their concentration is continuously disturbed.

Watchfulness cannot be disturbed. It is simply inclusive of all. If the door opens, makes a noise, the wind passes through the trees singing its song, it is available to it. It is not choosing breathing or anything in particular, but simply being there, open, available, present to everything that is happening. 

So remember the difference: concentration is sabotaging watchfulness. To begin with, something has to be given to you, so you can have a little taste of what watchfulness is. Then it has to be made wider and wider and bigger, so much bigger that there is no need to do anything. You simply sit, or lie down relaxedly and everything that is happening around you is mirrored in you. You don’t think about it, you don’t justify it, you don’t condemn it, you don’t evaluate it – you simply watch. So it is perfectly right. Relaxation, utter relaxation with no focusing of consciousness is real watchfulness. 

Source: “The Transmission of the Lamp” - Osho

 

Osho on Suppression or Transformation of Sexual Energy

Question: Beloved Master, When do I know if my sexual energy is transformed or just repressed?

Osho: It will not be difficult. It will be the simplest thing to know. When sexual energy is repressed you will have sexual dreams, you will have sexual fantasies -- you cannot avoid them. When sex energy is transformed, you will not have any sexual dreams, you will not have any sexual fantasies. This is the simple criterion. 

I will end with a small story.... In Gautam Buddha's time there was one beautiful woman -- she was a prostitute, Amrapali. One Buddhist monk was just going to beg when Amrapali saw him. She was simply amazed because kings have been at her door, princes, rich people, famous people from all walks of life. But she had never seen such a beautiful person -- and he was a monk, a beggar with a begging bowl. She was going on her golden chariot to her garden. She told the bhikkhu, "If you don't mind, you can sit with me on the chariot and I will lead you wherever you want."

She was not thinking that the bhikkhu would be ready to do it, because it was known that Buddha did not allow his bhikkhus to talk to women, or to touch any woman. And to ask him to sit on a golden chariot in the open street where there were thousands of people, hundreds of other bhikkhus, other monks...She was not hoping that he would accept the invitation, but he said, "That's good," and he climbed on the chariot and sat by her side. It was a scene. She was one of the wealthiest women the world had known. 

The world knows only two women -- one in the West, Cleopatra, and one in the East, Amrapali -- who are thought to be the world's most beautiful women. And a bhikkhu with a begging bowl...!A crowd was following the chariot, "What is going on there? Nobody has ever heard..."

And then the bhikkhu said, "My camp has come. Thank you for your being so kind to a poor man. You can drop me here."

But Amrapali said, "From tomorrow, the rainy season is going to be here." In the rainy season the bhikkhus, the monks, don't move. They stay in one place -- only for the rainy season. The remaining months they are always on the move from one village to another village. "From tomorrow, the rainy season is going to begin. I invite you to stay with me. You can ask your master."

He said, "Jolly good, I will ask the master. And I don't see that he will object, because I know him -- he knows me, and he knows me more than I know him."

But before he reached, many others had reached and complained that the man had broken the discipline, the prestige, the respectability... that the man should be expelled immediately. The bhikkhu came -- Buddha asked him, "What happened?"

He told the whole thing and he said, "The woman has asked me to stay with her for the coming four months' rainy season. And I have said to her, `As I know my master I don't think there is any problem, and my master knows me better than I know him.' So what do you say?"

There were ten thousand monks, and there was pindrop silence. Gautam Buddha said, "You can accept her invitation."

It was a shock. People were thinking he would be expelled, and he was being rewarded! But what could they do. They said, "Just wait. After four months Buddha will see that he has committed a grave mistake. That young man will be corrupted in that place, in a prostitute's house. Have you ever heard of a monk staying for four months...?"

The man stayed for four months, and every day rumors were coming that "this is going wrong" and "that is going wrong." And Buddha said, "Just wait, let him come. I know he is a man who can be trusted. Whatever happens he will tell himself. I don't have to depend on rumors." And when the monk came, Amrapali was with him. He touched Buddha's feet and said, "Amrapali wants to be initiated."

Buddha said, "Look, about all these rumors... When a real meditator goes to a prostitute, the prostitute has to change into a meditator. When a repressed person who has all the sexuality and is sitting on a volcano goes to a prostitute, he falls down. He was already waiting for it -- not even a prostitute was needed. Any woman would have done that."

The question is saying that all the religions have taught you to repress your sexual energy, and they have created repressed people all around. And those repressed people are very angry with me for the simple reason that I am saying repression is not going to help you.The energy has to be transformed, otherwise the energy will drag you down more into darkness than towards light.

Do not repress anything. Whatever is natural is good. Whatever is natural is to be accepted with totality. You have to do just one thing: don't be against nature but just be a watcher. Just remain a witness in everything, whether it is eating, whether it is walking, whether it is making love... just remain a witness and you will be surprised. Witnessing is an absolute guarantee of transformation, and you will see the difference. You won't have any sexual dreams, you won't have any sexual fantasies. And if you repress, then you are going to be in trouble. 

Even Mahatma Gandhi, who was repressing his sexuality, at the age of seventy years was having nocturnal emissions. It is ugly. But I am grateful to him because he was truthful. He at least accepted it. Your so-called saints will not accept it. Repression will show itself -- there is no doubt about it. Some day or other it will bring sex to your mind, either waking or sleeping. 

But if the energy is transformed then you will have a radiance, a glow, a certain light around you, a certain silence surrounding you; a blissfulness, a coolness that not only you will feel but those who are open also will feel. If you just pass by their side they will feel that not only a person has passed but a phenomenon has passed. Something of your inner core will have touched them. Some music is bound to be heard by those who have ears. And as far as you are concerned there is an absolute distinction: you won't have any ideas, waking or sleeping, about sex.

Source: from book "The Sword and the Lotus " by Osho

When love wears thin it lets in the emotional weather

When love wears thin it lets in the emotional weather

I am in a beautiful relationship right now; everything is going so harmoniously between us.

Love is always beautiful in the beginning because you don’t bring your destructive energies into it. In the beginning you bring your positive energies into it — both pool their energies positively, the thing goes simply fantastically. But then by and by the negative energies will start overflowing; you cannot hold them back forever. And once you have finished with your positive energy, which is very small...and the negative is very big. The positive is just a small quantity, so within days the honeymoon is over and then comes the negative. Then hell opens its doors and one cannot understand what has happened — such a beautiful relationship, why is it on the rocks?

If one is alert from the very beginning, it can be saved. So pour your positive energies into it, but remember that sooner or later the negative will start coming in. When the negative starts coming in you have to release the negative alone. Go into a room, release the negative; there is no need to throw it on the other person.

If you want to scream and shout and be angry, go into a room, shout, be angry, beat the pillow. Because nobody should be so violent as to throw things on other people. They have not done anything wrong to you, so why should you throw things on them? It is better to throw all that is negative into the dustbin.

If you remain alert, you will be surprised to see that it can be done; and once the negative is released, again the positive is overflowing.

The negative can be released together only very late in a relationship — when the relationship has become very established — and then too it should be done as a therapeutic measure. When the two partners of a relationship have become very very alert, very positive, have become consolidated as one being and are able now to tolerate — and not only tolerate but use the other’s negativity — they have to come to an agreement that now they will be negative together also, as a therapeutic measure.

Then too my suggestion is to let it be very conscious, not unconscious; let it be very deliberate. Make it point that every night for one hour you will be negative with each other — let it be a game — rather than being negative anywhere, any time. Because people are not so alert — for twenty-four hours they are not alert — but for one hour you can both sit together and be negative. And then it will be a game, it will be like a group. After one hour you are finished with it and you don’t carry the hangover, you don’t bring it into your relationship.

The first step: the negative should be released alone. The second step: the negative should be released at a particular time with the agreement that you are both going to release the negative. At the third stage only should one become natural, and then there is no need to be afraid. Then you can be negative and positive and both are beautiful — but only at the third stage.

If in the first stage you start feeling that now anger comes no more — you sit before the pillow, anger does not come. It will come for months, but one day you will find that it is no more flowing, it has become meaningless, you cannot be angry alone. Then the first stage is over. But wait for the other person also to feel whether his first stage is over or not. If his is also over, the second stage starts. Then for one or two hours — whether morning or evening, you can decide — you become negative, deliberately. It is a psychodrama, it is very impersonal.

You don’t hit hard — you hit, but still you don’t hit the person. In fact you are simply throwing out your negativity. You are not accusing the other, you are not saying ‘You are bad’; you are simply saying ‘I am feeling that you are bad.’ You are not saying ‘You insulted me,’ you say ‘I feel insulted’ That is totally different, it is a deliberate game ‘I am feeling insulted, so I will throw out my anger. You are closest to me so please function as an excuse for me’...and the same is done by the other.

A moment will come when again you will find that this deliberate negativity does not function any more. You sit for one hour: nothing comes to you, nothing comes to him. Then that second stage is over.

Now the third stage — and the third stage is the whole of life. Now you are ready to be negative and positive; you can be spontaneous.

This is how love becomes a marriage.