According to Osho, meditation can be approached through many techniques, but the essence is awareness: watch the breath, the body’s sensations, your thoughts and emotions, and the gaps of silence between. Choose a method that fits your temperament, use it playfully and persistently, and let technique dissolve into effortless, choiceless witnessing.
Pick any method that helps you gently watch what’s happening inside you, and keep watching until it becomes natural.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
In 1969 followers of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi invited Osho to talk to them. This was the first occasion on which Osho addressed a western audience, and the first time he talked publicly at length in English. The discourse has been published in OTI January 1 & 16, 1991; and February 1, 1991. Osho: Really, there can be no method as far as meditation is concerned. Meditation is not a method. Through technique, through method, you cannot go beyond mind. When you leave all methods, all techniques, you transcend mind. So meditation itself is not a method. Truth cannot be achieved through method. Method is our own invention. We, who are ignorant, have achieved knowledge through methods constructed, created, projected, in our ignorance. Through method you can achieve a sort of self-hypnosis, a sort of auto-hypnosis. Any method, whatsoever it's name, can only give you an illusory kind of peace.
Osho, what is the first experience of samadhi like?
You will know only when it happens. It cannot be said; at most a few hints can be given. It is as if, in the dark, a lamp is suddenly lit. Or as if a dying patient, right at the edge of death, suddenly finds a medicine that works; life’s wave, life’s thrill spreads again—so it is. As if a corpse becomes alive—such is the first experience of samadhi. It is the taste of nectar. The experience of the ultimate music. But it will be only when it happens; and only then will you understand. You will not understand by my saying it. It is as with love. How can anyone explain it? To someone who has never loved, never known love, no matter how many explanations you offer—he will hear it all and still ask, “I haven’t understood; please explain a little more.” It is like explaining light to…
What is meditation?
Meditation is not an Indian method; it is not simply a technique. You cannot learn it. It is a growth: a growth of your total living, out of your total living. Meditation is not something that can be added to you as you are. It can come to you only through a basic transformation, a mutation. It is a flowering, a growth. Growth is always out of the total; it is not an addition. You must grow toward meditation. This total flowering of the personality must be understood correctly. Otherwise one can play games with oneself, one can occupy oneself with mental tricks. And there are so many tricks! Not only can you be fooled by them, not only will you not gain anything, but in a real sense you will be harmed. The very attitude that there is some trick to meditation -- to conceive of meditation in terms…
Osho, what is meditation?
No special posture is needed, no special time is needed. There are people who think there are special times. No, not for meditation; any time is the right time -- you just have to be relaxed and playful. And if it does not happen it does not matter; don't feel sad.... Because I am not telling you that it will happen today, or tomorrow, or within three months or six months. I am not giving you any expectation because that will become a tension in your mind. It can happen any day, it may not happen: it all depends on how playful you are. Just start playing -- in the bathtub, when you are not doing anything, why not play? Sitting under your shower, you are not doing anything; the shower is doing its work. You are simply standing there; for those few moments just be playful. Walking on the…
Osho, please explain how I can meditate over something without using my mind.
Meditation has nothing to do with mind; meditation simply means a state of no-mind. The functioning of the mind is the only disturbance in meditation. If you are trying to achieve meditation THROUGH mind you are bound to fail, doomed to fail. You are trying to achieve the impossible. A Zen initiate was meditating for years and whenever he would come to his Master, whatsoever experience he would bring to the Master, the Master would simply reject: "It is all nonsense. You go back and meditate again." One day the Master came to the but of the disciple -- he was sitting in a Buddha posture. The Master shook him and told him, "What are you doing here? If we needed stone Buddhas we have many in the temple! Just by sitting like a stone Buddha you will not attain to meditation. Do what I have been telling you to…