Bring4th

Osho's point of view on how traditional meditation does not suit modern man/woman. 

I think some of his points are valid, but i am a fan of traditional meditation. 

(07-11-2015, 06:50 AM)Osho Wrote: [ -> ]"Modern man is a very new phenomenon. No traditional method can be used exactly as it exists because modern man never existed before. So, in a way, all traditional methods have become irrelevant.

 
 
 
For example, the body has changed so much. It is so drugged that no traditional method can be helpful. The whole atmosphere is artificial now: the air, the water, society, living conditions. Nothing is natural. You are born in artificiality; you develop in it. So traditional methods will prove harmful today. They will have to be changed according to the modern situation.
 
 
 
Another thing: the quality of the mind has basically changed. In Patanjali's [the most famous commentator on Yoga] days, the center of the human personality was not the brain; it was the heart. Before that, it was not even the heart. It was still lower, near the navel. The center has gone even further from the navel. Now, the center is the brain. That is why teachings like those of Krishnamurti have appeal. No method is needed, no technique is needed – only understanding. But if it is just a verbal understanding, just intellectual, nothing changes, nothing is transformed. It again becomes an accumulation of knowledge.
 
 
 
I use chaotic methods rather than systematic ones because a chaotic method is very helpful in pushing the center down from the brain. The center cannot be pushed down through any systematic method because systemization is brainwork. Through a systematic method, the brain will be strengthened; more energy will be added to it. Through chaotic methods the brain is nullified. It has nothing to do. The method is so chaotic that the center is automatically pushed from the brain to the heart. If you do my method of Dynamic Meditation vigorously, unsystematically, chaotically, your center moves to the heart. Then there is a catharsis. 
 
 
 
A catharsis is needed because your heart is so suppressed, due to your brain. Your brain has taken over so much of your being that it dominates you. There is no place for the heart, so the longings of the heart are suppressed. You have never laughed heartily, never lived heartily, never done anything heartily. The brain always comes in to systematize, to make things mathematical, and the heart is suppressed. So firstly, a chaotic method is needed to push the center of consciousness from the brain toward the heart.
 
 
 
Then catharsis is needed to unburden the heart, to throw off suppressions, to make the heart open. If the heart becomes light and unburdened, then the center of consciousness is pushed still lower; it comes to the navel. The navel is the source of vitality, the seed source from which everything else comes: the body and the mind and everything.
 
 
 
I use this chaotic method very considerately. Systematic methodology will not help now, because the brain will use it as its own instrument. Nor can just the chanting of bhajans help now, because the heart is so burdened that it cannot flower into real chanting. Consciousness must be pushed down to the source, to the roots. Only then is there the possibility of transformation. So I use chaotic methods to push the consciousness downward from the brain.
 
 
 
Whenever you are in chaos, the brain stops working. For example, if you are driving a car and suddenly someone runs in front of you, you react so suddenly that it cannot be the work of the brain. The brain takes time. It thinks about what to do and what not to do. So whenever there is a possibility of an accident and you push the brake, you feel a sensation near your navel, as if it were your stomach that is reacting. Your consciousness is pushed down to the navel because of the accident. If the accident could be calculated beforehand, the brain would be able to deal with it; but when you are in an accident, something unknown happens. Then you notice that your consciousness has moved to the navel.
 
 
 
If you ask a Zen monk, "From where do you think?" he puts his hands on his belly. When Westerners came into contact with Japanese monks for the first time they could not understand. "What nonsense! How can you think from your belly?
 
 
 
But the Zen reply is meaningful. Consciousness can use any center of the body, and the center that is nearest to the original source is the navel. The brain is furthest away from the original source, so if life energy is moving outward, the center of consciousness will become the brain. And if life energy is moving inward, ultimately the navel will become the center.
 
 
 
Chaotic methods are needed to push the consciousness to its roots, because only from the roots is transformation possible. Otherwise you will go on verbalizing and there will be no transformation. It is not enough just to know what is right. You have to transform the roots; otherwise you will not change.
 
 
 
When a person knows the right thing and cannot do anything about it, he becomes doubly tense. He understands, but he cannot do anything. Understanding is meaningful only when it comes from the navel, from the roots. If you understand from the brain, it is not transforming.
 
 
 
The ultimate cannot be known through the brain, because when you are functioning through the brain you are in conflict with the roots from which you have come. Your whole problem is that you have moved away from the navel. You have come from the navel and you will die through it. One has to come back to the roots. But coming back is difficult, arduous.
 
 
 
Traditional methods have an appeal because they are so ancient and so many people have achieved through them in the past. They may have become irrelevant to us, but they were not irrelevant to Buddha, Mahavira, Patanjali or Krishna. They were meaningful, helpful. The old methods may be meaningless now, but because Buddha achieved through them they have an appeal. The traditionalist feels: "If Buddha achieved through these methods, why can't I?""
 
 
 
But we are in an altogether different situation now. The whole atmosphere, the whole thought-sphere, has changed. Every method is organic to a particular situation, to a particular mind, to a particular man. The fact that the old methods don't work doesn't mean that no method is useful. It only means that the methods themselves must change. As I see the situation, modern man has changed so much that he needs new methods, new techniques."

I tend to agree with this, at least from my own experience.

I would agree with his assessment, especially, that modern\western people tend to "verbalize" their thoughts and feelings. Those with any self-awareness seem to immediately funnel it into the so-called "inner monologue." Rather than Sensing ---> Reacting, it becomes Sensing ----> Verbalizing ---> Reacting. That act of verbalization automatically slows down the thought\reaction process, as well as (again, as I see it) robbing the process of much of its energy, especially emotional energy.

Words hold very little emotion, compared to action. "Thinking through" a situation, in western parlance, more or less means attempting to convert it into rational\logical expressions. ie, Stripping it of emotion and trying to look at the situation "objectively." The problem is, this is a very slow process -compared to instinctive action- and much of one's internal resources then get turned towards the business of that inner verbalized debate, rather than the business of doing something. Not to mention that attempting to "objectify" a situation effectively means deliberately introducing dissonance into one's thoughts.

What he seems to be advocating, more or less, is the active-thoughtlessness of, say, the trained martial arts practitioner. One who can shut down those verbalization processes and merely sense\react without internal distractions. This, I believe, is the kind of "chaos" he refers to - situations where rapid action is not just useful, but demanded, for the purpose of trying to subvert\bypass that verbalization stage.

Although the nice thing about modern life is that there's no need to get bruised and bloody to achieve this. Many video games can also, I find, bring about that same sense of thoughtlessness. Personally, I started taking a very "martial" approach to Mario Kart a couple years back, and actually found it to be far more productive than I'd even hoped at the time. Originally, I started using advice from "The Art of War" merely to improve my strategy, and instead, I found it allowed me to gain the sort of quasi-meditative state that Osho advocates here.

Presumably just about any sufficiently frenetic game would qualify. Shoot-em-ups, especially of the "bullet hell" variety like Geometry Wars, tend to also be good at bringing about this trance-like state. (The trance music common to the genre undoubtedly helps...)

That's not to say, of course, that it can or should replace traditional quiet meditation, but I believe his suggestions could be quite effective in guiding the mind towards calm\instinctive action without verbalizing or second-guessing one's actions. Especially for those who have trouble calming their minds enough for meditation to work at all. After all, the real "goal" here is not the ability to sit in meditation for an arbitrarily large amount of time. The goal is simply gaining better control of one's thoughts + energy + actions, and learning how to more fully focus them towards one's goals.

The method of doing this which is best, is the one that works best for the student.

I tend to work with my own methods of finding through practice what works best for me rather than using a set in stone method.

I gather ideas from any sources.

How interesting. According to newer studies, when someone is going through crisis several things may occur: you shut-down your emotions and logically explain it. This is basically emotional repression, which is a shutting down of amygdala (emotional center) and channeling all energy to frontal lobe (your thinking-central). You can also go through emotional-flooding, which cuts off our rational/intellectual functions (that can help you to balance) thereby become highly emotional. This is an overactive amygdala disrupting frontal lobe function. The role of conversation and making sense would help balance those who tend to flood emotionally. A more balanced way is using both information to come to an understanding.

Either way it's not a balanced and whatever works to balance could be taken.

Take people with trauma. The first thing that happens in traumatized people is that their language ability, their ability to express themselves, shuts down. Without being able to conceptually or symbolically process catalyst they end up isolating a 'chest' of memories (cut off from the extensive neuro-network of information). If you can't talk about it, it's a bit hard to process it. You can paint, dance, whatever expression available and not necessarily talk. 

Krishnamurti talks about observing instead of flooding. In the appropriate setting this works, too. It's possible to sit with emotions and troubles during meditation and end up sitting on it instead of working through it. As Ra said, preferable to not overcome but flow with it and let go.