“THE MIND DISTRACTS ME EVEN WHEN I AM SITTING IN DISCOURSE.”
So let it distract; you simply watch. You don’t interfere. You don’t try to stop, because any kind of action on your part is going to give energy to the mind. So, whenever you can manage, you listen, and whenever mind wanders and takes you away, go easily with the mind. There is no harm.
It will look strange to you that I am saying go with the mind easily. Just be watchful — without condemning the mind, without abusing the mind — just be watchful that the mind is going somewhere else. And you are in for a great surprise.
It will take a little time, but slowly, slowly the mind will not wander so much. You will have a few gaps to listen to me; then those gaps will become bigger. And because you are not creating any relationship with the mind — of love or hate — you are becoming indifferent to mind.
Gautam Buddha has made it a meditation. He called it UPEKSHA — indifference. Just be indifferent to the mind, and it won’t be a disturbance for long.
And it is worthwhile to wait and not be in a hurry, because the very hurry will make your mind more stubborn. If you want to push it away, it will come back with force. You just let it do whatever it wants to do. It is none of your concern, this way or that. Suddenly a watchfulness arises. It takes a little time.
It depends on you, how much indifference you can create towards the mind, how much you can be watchful. The mind will become slowly, slowly rejected. It will stop doing its things, because now nobody is interested. For whom to do all the circus?
Meditation should become a climate around you, a milieu in which you live. And wherever you go, you carry your climate. This is my whole effort: that’s why I don’t send you to isolation, I don’t send you to mountains so that you can meditate the whole day; because that would give you a wrong notion about it, the notion of quantity.
GOING DEEPER AND DEEPER WITHOUT DISTRACTION: you can never go deeper and deeper if you don’t understand what distraction is. If you are trying to avoid distraction, you can never go deeper; because wherever you are, the distraction will follow you — because it is in you.
I will tell you one story: One man was very much distracted by his wife, because whenever he meditated the wife would talk loudly, or walk and close doors so loudly that plates would start falling; and he was very much distracted. So, he left the house. He went into a forest. But then animals and crows started distracting him. Sometimes it was also happening that there was no distraction — then this would become the distraction. What is the matter? — there is no distraction!!
Absolute silence, and he would be distracted: what is happening? Have all the animals and the birds disappeared? Distraction is not something objective, not there outside you; it is something in you. If you cannot accept, you will be distracted; if you accept, distraction disappears.
Once it happened: I was staying in a rest-house. And a political leader was also staying there — a very small rest-house in a very small village. The political leader came to me in the middle of the night, and said, “It is impossible to sleep. How are you sleeping?” He shook me, and said, “How are you sleeping, there is so much distraction?”
Somehow or other at least two dozen dogs… they must have made the rest-house their abode — the whole village’s dogs. Maybe they were having a political gathering also — and they were so many; there was such a loud barking and fighting.
He said, “But how are you sleeping? These dogs won’t allow me to sleep, and I am tired.”
I said to the political leader, “But they are not aware of you. They don’t read newspapers, they don’t listen to the radio, they don’t look at television; they are not aware of you. I was also here before you. That is their usual way: they are not doing it specially for you. You are fighting, resisting. The notion that they are disturbing you is disturbing you; not they. Accept them” I told him to do one small meditation. “Lie down on the bed. Enjoy their barking. Let it be a music. Enjoy it. Listen to it, as attentively as possible.”
He said, “How is it going to help me? I want to avoid, I want to forget that they are there, and you are telling me to listen to them. That will disturb me even more.”
I told him, “You just try. You have been trying your way, and it has failed. Now try my way; and you can see that it has been successful with me.”
He was not ready for it, and he didn’t believe it; but there was no other way, so he tried. And within five minutes he was fast asleep, and snoring. So, I went and shook him up, and I said, “How are you sleeping? How is it possible?”
lf you accept, nothing can distract you. It is the very rejection in you that creates the distraction. So, if you want to meditate without distraction, don’t reject anything. the traffic noise has to be accepted — it is part of this world, and perfectly okay; the child crying and weeping is part of this world, and perfectly okay. Once you say that everything is okay, just watch the feeling that everything is okay and accept it. Something within you melts. Then nothing distracts. And unless this happens, you can go anywhere you like and you will be distracted by one thing or another.
Osho: The Hidden Splendor Chapter #2 Chapter title: Just be indifferent to the mind Q 2. (excerpts)
Osho: Come Follow To You, Vol 3 Chapter #8 Chapter title: I bring the greatest synthesis that is Q 1 (excerpts)
May this Diwali remind us that calm is not the absence of distraction, but the art of being centred within it.
*** Wishing you a bright, balanced, and blissful Diwali! ***
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इस सफ़र में नींद ऐसी खो गई
हम न सोए रात थक कर सो गई ………….राही मासूम रज़ा
ees safar meñ niiñd aisī kho ga.ī
ham na so.e raat thak kar so ga.ī …………..RAHI MASOOM RAZA
In this journey, sleep was lost in such a way,
We didn’t sleep, the night slept out of exhaustion.
Here is a beautiful romantic song from the film “Post Box no.999” (1958), Lyricist P.L. Santoshi, Music by Kalyanji Anandji and melodiously sung by Hemant Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar.