Mystic Mantra: Don’t just do something, sit there

Meditation happens to simple people very easily. It may take a long time to happen to those people who are too restless and too ambitious. Meditation requires us to sit for some time and settle into our being, experiencing pure consciousness beyond the constant chatter of our mind which is very monkeyish.

Osho tells a profound Zen story that a monkey came to Buddha. The monkey represents our mind. Charles Darwin came to know it very very late, but we have always been aware that man must have come from monkeys because he is still monkeyish. You just watch the mind, it’s constant chattering, and then watch a monkey in the tree. You will feel a similarity. The monkey said to Buddha, “I would like to become a Buddha.” Buddha said, “I have never heard of anybody having ever become a Buddha while remaining a monkey.

The monkey said, “You don’t know my powers. I am no ordinary monkey. “No monkey thinks that he is ordinary, all monkeys think that they are extraordinary; that is part of their monkey-ness. He said, “I am no ordinary monkey. What are you talking about? I am a king of monkeys.”

So Buddha asked, “What exceptional or extraordinary powers do you have? Can you show me?”

The monkey said, “I can jump to the very end of the world.” He had been jumping all along in the trees. He knew how to jump.So Buddha said, “Okay. Come onto the palm of my hand and jump to the other end of the world.”

The monkey tried and tried, and he was really a very powerful monkey, a very intense monkey. He went like an arrow, and he went and he went... he went. Months and —the story says — years passed. And then the monkey came to the very end of the world.

He laughed; he said, “Look! The very end!” He looked down. It was an abyss: five pillars were standing there to mark the boundary. Now he had to come back. But how would he prove that he had been to these five pillars? So he pissed near a pillar — a monkey! — to mark it! Years passed and he came back. When he reached Buddha he said, “I have been to the very end of the world, and I have left a mark.” But Buddha said, “Just look around.” He had not moved at all. Those five pillars were the five fingers of Buddha. And they were stinking. He had been there with closed eyes... must have been dreaming.

Osho says: The mind is a monkey with closed eyes, dreaming. You have never gone anywhere, you have always been here and now — because nothing else exists. Just open the eyes. Just open the eyes and have a look around, and suddenly you will laugh. You have always been rooted in the ultimate being, there is no need to merge. The only need is to become alert to where you are, who you are.