Mystic Mantra: Zazen The art of just being

Living the fast-paced urban life gets on everybody’s nerves. An increasing number of young people are under tremendous stress and distress, which create numerous physical and mental problems. Stress has been linked to hypertension, heart attacks, diabetes, asthma, chronic pain, allergies, headaches, backaches, skin disorders, cancer and immune system weakness. Some people escape stress by drinking alcohol or consuming drugs, but there are others who do not see any relief from it. As a result, many people are turning to meditation to deal with stress in their lives.

Osho has devised over 200 methods of meditation to help people regain health from the physical level to the spiritual level — from our body-mind roots to our spiritual flowering. The practitioners of Osho’s meditation have been experimenting with these methods in all sorts of life situations, and places. This practice has shown positive results everywhere. These methods are active and passive as well. The passive method, the process of letting go, also work wonders.

There has always been an idea prevalent in the world that we have to focus all the time while doing anything. This notion also has been creating stress and tension and reducing productivity. No, what is really needed is to have intervals between focusing — this rejuvenates the energy and brain cells and the spirit. Srini Pillay, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School says: “What people don’t realise is that in order to complete their tasks they need to use both the focus and unfocus circuits in their brain.” Pillay, who has written a book on the subject called Tinker, Dabble, DoodleTry: Unlock the Power of the Unfocused Mind, believes this counter-intuitive link between downtime and productivity may be due to the way our brains operate. When our brains toggle between being focused and unfocused on a task, they tend to be more efficient. This was reported by the BBC: In order to make the most of our focus and energy, we also need to embrace downtime, or just be lazy.”

This is what is meant by meditation — the ability to move from doing to being. According to Osho, this is Zazen. Zazen means to sit, and just sit, nothing else. There is no doing on the part of the body, no doing on the part of the mind. It’s a state of non-doing. That does not mean that you are fast asleep because sleep is a doing. That does not mean that you are dead because if you are dead you cannot just sit. That simply means that you are tremendously alive, intensely alive, a fire of being, but not moving anywhere — a reservoir of energy in a deep awaiting.

Osho concludes: “When Jesus said, ‘Sit ye here,’ he said to them, “You simply sit, don’t do anything. Just remain alert, silent — a silent pool with no ripples of thought, just sitting.” Be in Zazen.