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About Meditation for Busy People (North American Edition)
Nobody needs meditation more than people who have no time to meditate. These busy people may have tried meditation but given it up, as it seems so difficult to integrate into a hectic lifestyle.
Most traditional meditation techniques were developed thousands of years ago for people living very different lives from the lives we live today. Nowadays, very few people find it easy to just sit down and relax. Meditation for Busy People is filled with methods that can easily be integrated into everyday life. A morning commute becomes a centering exercise, and the street noises outside an apartment window in the city become an aid, rather than a distraction, to finding the silent space within. Beautifully illustrated and a pleasure to read, this book is a perfect gift for your busy self, or a busy friend.
Chapter Titles
PART I: UNDERSTANDING THE ROOTS OF STRESS
Lighting Up the Inner
The Pathology of Ambition
PART II: MAKING THE BODY–MIND CONNECTION
Awareness and Relaxation: Two Sides of the Same Coin
Don’t Try Harder
Don’t Choose
Accept the Ups and Downs
Don’t Fight with Your Nature
Look for the Pay-off
Look for the Changing, Appreciate the Unchanging
PART III: RELATING FROM THE CENTER
Living with Others: The Rules and When to Break Them
Start from the Center
Drop the Doing
Three Techniques for Centring
His Story / Her Story
Lovemaking as a Meditation
PART IV: MEDITATIONS FOR EVERYDAY LIFE
Natural and Easy
Breath is a Key
Relaxed Attention
Taking Space
Conscious Eating
The Inner Smile
Rise with the Sun
Saying Yes
Letting Go of Restlessness
Staying in Touch with the Heart
The Stop! Exercise
Breaking Out of the Box
Just Listening
Pillar of Energy
Collapsing Into Silence
Enjoying the Drama
Complete the Circle - A Mirror Meditation
Move from the Head to the Heart
Air Space for Road Warriors
PART V: UNTYING THE KNOTS - ACTIVE MEDITATIONS TO FIND STILLNESS WITHIN
Why Catharsis is Helpful
Techniques
1. Gibberish meditation - emptying the mental trash
2. Start the Day with Laughter
3. A Centering Device
4. Running, Jogging and Swimming
5. Osho® Nadabrahma Meditation
AFTERWORD
Excerpt from Meditation for Busy People (North American Edition)
Accept the Ups and Downs
One has to become more accepting of all the ups and downs in life. There is a rhythm: sometimes you will feel that you are in tune, sometimes you will feel that you are not in tune; that is natural. It is like day and night, summer and winter. One has to learn the shadow part of everything. If you cannot accept the shadow part you become unnecessarily disturbed, and that disturbance will make things more complicated.
When something beautiful happens, accept it, feel grateful; when it doesn’t happen, accept that too and continue to feel grateful, knowing that this is just a resting period. For the whole day you have worked, and in the night you fall asleep -- you don’t feel miserable because you are not able to work and earn money and do a thousand and one things, and there are so many things to do. You don’t worry about it!
There are people who do worry. Then they start losing sleep, and they are not benefited by it. The person who has not been able to sleep in the night feels exhausted in the morning, more tired than he was when he went to bed. The person who forgets the whole day and accepts night as a rest, and goes into deep relaxation, will be able to live again in the morning with new eyes and new being. She will be able to accept the new day and welcome it, will be glad to breathe the air again and to see the sun and people.
Remember always that everything has its rest period. And the rest period is not against the activity, the rest period gives it energy, vitality.
Don’t Fight with Your Nature
The psychologist Hans Selye worked his whole life on only one problem—stress. And he came to certain very profound conclusions. One is that stress is not always wrong; it can be used in beautiful ways. It is not necessarily negative -- and if we think that it is always negative, that it is not good; then we create problems. Stress in itself can be used as a stepping stone, it can become a creative force. But ordinarily we have been taught that stress is bad, so that when you are in any kind of stress you become afraid. And your fear makes it even more stressful; the situation is not helped by it.
For example, there is some situation in the economy and that is creating stress. The moment you feel that there is some tension, some stress, you become afraid that this should not be so: "I have to relax." Now, trying to relax will not help, because you cannot relax; in fact, trying to relax will create a new kind of stress. The stress is there and you are trying to relax and you cannot, so you are complicating the problem.
When stress is there, use it as creative energy. First, accept it; there is no need to fight with it. Accept it, it is perfectly okay. It simply says, "The economy is not going well, something is going wrong, you may be a loser or something." Stress is simply an indication that the body is getting ready to fight with the situation. Now you try to relax or you take painkillers or you take tranquilizers; you are going against the body.
The body is getting ready to fight a certain situation, a certain challenge that is there. Enjoy the challenge! Even if sometimes you can’t sleep in the night there is no need to be worried. Work it out, use the energy that is coming up: walk up and down, go for a run, go for a long walk. Plan what you want to do, what the mind wants to do. Rather than trying to go to sleep, which is not possible, use the situation in a creative way. It simply says that the body is ready to fight with a problem; this is no time to relax. Relaxation can be done later on.
In fact if you have lived your stress totally you will come to relaxation automatically; you can go on only so far, then the body automatically relaxes. If you want to relax in the middle you create trouble; the body cannot relax in the middle. It is almost as if an Olympic runner is getting ready, just waiting for the starting gun, the signal, and he will be off, he will go like the wind. He is full of stress; now that is no time to relax. If he takes a tranquilizer he will never be of any use in the race. Or if he relaxes there and tries to do Transcendental Meditation he will lose all. He has to use his stress: the stress is boiling, it is gathering energy. He is becoming more and more vital and full of potential. Now he has to sit on this stress and use it as energy, as fuel.
Selye has given a new name for this kind of stress: he calls it "eustress" -- like euphoria. It is a positive stress. After the runner has run he will fall into deep sleep; the problem is solved. Now there is no problem, the stress disappears of its own accord.
So try this too: when there is a stressful situation don’t freak out, don’t become afraid of it. Go into it, use it to fight with. A human being has tremendous energy, and the more you use it, the more you have of it.
When it comes and there is a situation, fight -- do all that you can do, really go madly into it. Allow it, accept it and welcome it. It is good, it prepares you to fight. And when you have worked it out, you will be surprised: great relaxation comes, and that relaxation is not created by you. Maybe for two or three days you cannot sleep and then for forty-eight hours you can’t wake up, and that is okay!
We go on carrying many wrong notions—for example, that every person has to sleep eight hours every day. It depends what the situation is. There are situations when no sleep is needed: your house is on fire, and you are trying to sleep. Now that is not possible and that should not be possible, otherwise who is going to put that fire out? And when the house is on fire, all other things are put aside; suddenly your body is ready to fight the fire. You will not feel sleepy. When the fire is gone and everything settled you may fall asleep for a long period, and that will do.
Everybody does not need the same length of sleep either. A few people can do with three hours, two hours, four hours, five hours; others need six, eight, ten, twelve. People differ, there is no norm. And about stress also people differ.
There are two kinds of people in the world: One can be called the racehorse type and the other is the turtle type. If the racehorse type is not allowed to go fast, to go into things with speed, there will be stress; he has to be given his pace. So if you are a racehorse, forget about relaxation and things like that; they are not for you. Those are for turtles! Just be a racehorse if that is natural to you, and don’t think of the joys that turtles are enjoying; that is not for you. You have a different kind of joy. If a turtle starts becoming a racehorse he will be in the same trouble!
So accept your nature. If you are a fighter, a warrior, you have to be that way and that’s your joy. Now, no need to be afraid; go into it wholeheartedly. Compete in the marketplace, do all that you really want to do. Don’t be afraid of the consequences and accept the stress. One has to understand one’s type. Once the type is understood there is no problem; then one can follow a clean-cut line.
Look for the Payoff
If you find that you go on creating unhappiness for yourself, you must be getting something out of it; otherwise, why should one create unhappiness? But sometimes misery can give you tremendous benefits. You may not be aware of the benefits, you may be unconscious of the benefits, so you go on thinking, “Why do I go on creating misery?” And you are not aware that your misery is giving you something that you want.
For example, whenever you are miserable, people are sympathetic towards you. If you are miserable, your husband comes and puts his hand on your head, massages you, is very loving, pays attention to you. When you are in a misery there are many benefits.
You have to look around. Children in the morning immediately start feeling stomachaches when the bus arrives and they have to go to school. And you know it! You know why Johnny has a stomachache. But the same is the case with you. It is not much different; it is the same—maybe a little more sophisticated, more cunning, more rationalized, but it is the same.
When people start failing in their lives, they create heart attacks, high blood pressure, and all kinds of things. They are rationalizations—what can you do? Have you watched it? Heart attacks and blood pressure almost always come near the age of forty-two. Why near the age of forty-two? Suddenly a healthy person becomes a victim of a heart attack.
Forty-two is the age when life comes to a certain conclusion—whether you have failed or succeeded. Because beyond forty-two there is not much hope: if you have made money, you have made it; by the time forty-two arrives, you have made it—because the greatest days of energy and power are gone. Thirty-five is the peak. You can give seven more years; in fact, already for seven years you have been going downhill. But you have done everything that you could do. And now the age has come, forty-two, and suddenly you see that you have failed.
Now you need some rationalization... immediately a heart attack comes. That’s a great boon, a blessing from God. Now you can fall into the bed and you can say, “What can I do? The heart attack disturbed everything. When everything was going to be okay, when I was just going to succeed, make a name or money, this heart attack has come.” Now the heart attack is a beautiful camouflage; now nobody can say that you are at fault, that you didn’t work hard, that you are not intelligent enough. Nobody can say anything like that to you. Now people will feel sympathy for you; they will all be kind to you and they will say, “What can you do? It is fate.”
Misery is chosen again and again because it gives something to you, and you have to see what it is giving to you—only then can you drop it. Otherwise you cannot drop it. Unless you are ready to drop the benefits, you cannot drop it.
If prisons are made so beautifully, then who would like to get out of them? And if you are not getting out of your prison, look again... there must be something—wall-to-wall carpets, color television, air-conditioning, beautiful paintings, no bars on the windows, nobody guarding you. Giving you an absolute sense of freedom! Then why should you try to escape from it? The question is not how to get out of it; the question is how to get into it!
Look again into your misery; don’t condemn it from the very beginning. If you condemn it from the very beginning, you will not be able to watch, you will not be able to observe. In fact, don’t even call it misery, because our words have connotations. When you call it misery, you have already condemned it; and when you condemn something, you are closed to it, you don’t look at it. Don’t call it misery either. Call it XYZ—it makes much difference. Call it X, whatsoever the situation is, be a little mathematical—call it X, and then go into it and see what it is, what its benefits are, what the main causes are that you go on creating it, why you cling to it. And you will be surprised: what you have been calling misery has many things in it that you enjoy. And unless you have seen this, and looked into those things that you would like to have, you will not be able to change anything. Then there are two possibilities.
One possibility is that you stop thinking of getting out of this pattern—that is one possibility, because the benefits are so much that you accept it. And accepting the pattern is a transformation. The second possibility is that by seeing that your unhappiness is created by you yourself, by your own unconscious desires, and those unconscious desires are stupid, seeing the whole stupidity of it, you no longer support it. It disappears of its own accord. These are the two possibilities: your support disappears and the misery is evaporated, or you simply accept it because you like all the things that it brings to you, you welcome it—and in that very welcome, again the misery disappears!
These are the two aspects of the same coin. But understanding is needed, total understanding of your misery -- and you are going to be transformed. Either you will drop everything out of that understanding, or you will accept everything. These are the two ways, the negative and the positive, for the transformation to happen.
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