What can be done to prevent losing attention during discourse?

Osho, even after a good night’s sleep, in the morning my attention often gets lost during your discourse. What can be done to prevent this?

Do nothing. If it gets lost, let it be lost. Only keep the awareness that it is lost. Turn even the state of non-attention into attention. And don’t look at the negative; look at the affirmative. You ask: even after a good night’s sleep, in the morning your attention often gets lost in the discourse. Many times it gets lost; many times it does not. Put your attention on the times it does not. Each time it does not, give thanks to the divine. As much as it settles, that much is grace. Is even that too little? If I speak for an hour and a half, and in that hour and a half even five minutes of your attention truly alight on my words, it is done. Let the remaining eighty-five minutes go. Don’t worry. Even if those five minutes come as scattered moments that add up, it is…

Osho, as you have said—to awaken awareness on the breath—but even then the attention does not stay on the breath; it wanders here and there. Should we let it go, or...?

No, no—don’t worry about that at all. Positively concern yourself with being on the breath. It goes here and there; if you start tracking it, you’ll go even farther away. Don’t bother about it. Just keep two things in view: is it on the breath, or not? If not, bring it back to the breath; if it is, all is fine. Don’t be anxious about going along with it. And don’t try to fight it either. Positively keep only this much in mind: with the breath that is moving—are you there, or not? In between it will slip; let it slip. Then return—come back again. It will slip, and it will slip a lot. It will stay for a second or two, and then slip. Because that is its habit of lifetimes. Its habit is doing; it has never been in the present. And now you are putting it into…

Osho, while sitting near you and listening to your discourse continuously for an hour and a half, I become so absorbed in devotion and rasa that I don’t know where my sorrows, anxieties, and troubles disappear. An incomparable peace descends. But shortly after the discourse ends and your presence is gone, I again begin to be surrounded by worries and troubles. Please be gracious and tell me how the experience I have in your discourse and presence can remain for a longer time!

Attention is food. Remember: whatever you give attention to, you give life to. So don’t give attention to the wrong things. Here, listening to me, the heart becomes light, joyful, a coolness descends—you gave your attention toward me. Then you go home and start digging at your wounds again, unwrapping your poultices and bandages, poking your fingers into your aches. What is the need? Do this: while leaving here, keep the resolve not to touch those old wounds. The old habit will move your hand—bring it back! Then you’ll feel a difficulty: “If I don’t do that, what should I do?” There is so much around to give attention to. There are the songs of birds. I cannot speak to you as sweetly as they do. What they are saying to you, I want to say but cannot. Sit quietly and pour all your attention into them. An even deeper…

Mahavira has called apramad—vigilance, awareness, continuous wakefulness—the basis of practice. A friend asks: how can we bring this awareness into our conduct while doing our tasks—in the office, in the shop, while working? If attention remains on awareness, how will the work get done? While engaged in work, what is the place of awareness, and can this itself be a sadhana?

Take attention also as delight. Do not make it a restlessness. Let it not become a burden on your head that “I must work attentively.” Do not load it with strain and effort; let it grow lightly, support it. Whenever the remembrance arises, do it consciously. If you forget, do not worry. When remembrance returns, begin again to do it consciously. If you decide, “Now I will do my work consciously,” you will not be able to do it today itself; it may take years. To keep awareness even for a moment is difficult. You will decide to walk consciously; you will not be able to take even two steps before awareness has gone elsewhere and the feet have started walking elsewhere. Do not be anxious about that; do not repent. Heedlessness is the habit of countless lives; there is no reason to be distressed. We ourselves have cultivated unawareness—whom…

Osho, you say that if there is awareness, then how are the two to be brought into harmony?

That is precisely the practice of active meditation: awareness. Awareness is the very means of going into emptiness in relation to all actions, to the movements of the mind as well. For example, if you lie there for half an hour—what will you do? In that half hour, whatever thoughts are moving in your mind, you are to be simply aware of them. Simply a witness—what else will you do? Just become a witness. Keep silently watching; let them move. But obstacles arise in our seeing. We become absorbed. We fail to remain a witness. We don’t even notice when we have become one with those very thoughts. That sense of awareness fades; a kind of stupor, a moorchha, comes in. A thought comes, a memory arises, and we stop being the watcher. We become part of that thought and of its flow. That is moorchha. And the opposite is…