“A master who lived as a hermit on a mountain was asked by a monk: ‘What is the way?’
‘What a fine mountain this is’, the master said in reply.
‘I am not asking you about the mountain’, said the monk, ‘but the way’.
The master replied ‘ So long as you cannot go beyond the mountain my son, you cannot reach the Way.’”
This quotation if from one of Osho’s books, And The Flowers Showered.
Osho’s books are entertaining and insightful and this book is the best of the lot. I have been particularly helped by this quotation as explained by Osho.
What does the master mean? What message was he trying to give to the monk? It is simply this. The mountain is the ego. We need to go beyond the ego in order to find the Way. The Way itself is not difficult. It is the going beyond the ego (the mountain) that is difficult and that requires monumental effort.
When I was doing my meditation practice I used to get distracted as all of us do, and I would get very frustrated and irritated with myself. I wanted to have perfect concentration and focus on the breath so as to meditate perfectly.
Reading the above quotation and Osho’s analysis of it, I came to understand that in fact our getting distracted is the point of the practice. The reason we do meditation is to know ourselves. When we get distracted and have thoughts and feelings intrude on our consciousness we are actually getting to know ourselves.
We need to give our impulses room to play themselves out so that we can become free of them. This we can do by giving expression to our impulses in day-to-day life or we can choose to witness those impulses and have them drop away of their own accord.
Repression of our impulses is clearly not the way out. Expression of our impulses is also dicey as we may easily get into trouble if we go about venting our feelings of rage, anger and pain.
How does this apply to our meditation practice? Recognize that when you get distracted you are getting to know yourself. You are giving your impulses room to play themselves out. Watch them. Study them. Do not judge your impulses. Simply recognize they are there and explore them.
Over time, you will gain insight and understanding about what is driving your impulses, your desires, and your passions. Understanding them is the key to moving beyond them. This is the way we can become free of the impulses. This is the way we can go beyond the mountain of the ego to The Way which lies beyond it.
This insight that I have just now explained to you has transformed my meditation practice and it can easily transform yours also if you let it. I am not saying do not make an effort to focus on the breath or whatever the object of your meditation is. Please do just that. But the reason why we meditation is to get to know ourselves and in that way to be free of ourselves, of the ego. Becoming distracted and observing the distractions non-judgmentally is the way in which we can achieve these objectives.
Osho’s books are most insightful and entertaining and this book is in my view the best of them all. There is another technique described by Osho in the book, which if put into practice is quite enough to put all the psychoanalysts of this world out of business.
Osho takes all of 3 or 4 paragraphs to explain a technique of moving beyond your past. You might think as you read it that surely there is more to it than just this. But there isn’t.
I have tried Osho’s technique of re-living my past memories and the results in my life have been dramatic. I now think and feel about life in a much different way. I urge you to pick up your copy and try out the same. It will be unpleasant but the results will be worth it. I am speaking from experience.
Related posts:
