Meditation is not an instant coffee

In one of his discourses on Vedanta the Seven Steps to Samadhi, Osho says: People from the West come to me and they say, "This very evening we are leaving, so give us some key. How can we become silent? But we don’t have any time to stay – we must go." They are thinking in terms with which they have become acquainted – instant coffee – so they think there must be some instant meditation, a key I can hand over to them and it is finished. No, there is no key. It is a long effort, it is a deep patience. And the more you are in a hurry, the longer it will take. So remember this: if you are not in any hurry it may happen this very moment. When you are not in a hurry the quality of mind is there, silence is there.

There is an interesting story. Once it happened that two monks were traveling. They crossed a river in a boat, and the ferryman said to them, "Where are you going? If you are going to the city beyond this valley, go slowly." But the old monk said, "If we go slowly we will never reach, because we have heard that the gates of that city are closed after sunset, and we have just one or two hours at the most, and it is a very long distance. If we go slowly we will never reach, and we will have to wait outside the city. And the outside of the city is dangerous – wild animals and everything – so we will have to make haste.”

The ferryman said, "Okay, but this is my experience: those who go slowly, reach." The other monk listened to it. He was a young man and he thought, "I don’t know this part of the country, and this ferryman may be right, so it is better to follow his advice." So he walked slowly, leisurely, as if not going anywhere, not in a hurry, just for a walk.

The old man hurried, started running. He had many scriptures on his back. Then he fell down: tired, carrying weight, old, and in such a hurry, so tense, he fell down. The man who was not in a hurry simply walked and reached. The ferryman was coming and he came near the old man. He was lying by the side of the road; his leg was broken and blood was oozing out. The ferryman said, "I told you that this has been always so: those who walk slowly reach, those who are in a hurry always manage to stumble somewhere or other. These parts are dangerous. The road is rough and you are an old man. And I had advised you, but you wouldn’t listen to me."

I remember the celebrated author and journalist Khushwant Singh who used to say: Meditation is a waste of time. And he was right in one sense because in meditation one sits in idleness, doing nothing.  When you are not doing anything, you are just sitting, you are wasting your life? And there is the same teaching in the West: Time is wealth. Osho differs: It is absolutely wrong, because wealth is created by scarcity, and time is not scarce. The whole economics depends on scarcity: if something is scarce it becomes valuable. Time is not scarce, it is there always. You cannot finish it; it will always be there – so time cannot be economic. It is not scarce; it cannot be wealth. But we go on teaching, "Time is wealth – don’t waste it. Once wasted it never comes again."

This time-consciousness and too much concern about it is the root cause of all tension in our life. We need to slow down, relax and have enough time to reconnect with our own being.  Don't worry about time, give more value to your life, and rejuvenate!

I would like to conclude it with a beautiful poem by Ronnie Terry:

God sends us many blessings

As we travel over life's miles

Like sunsets and gentle breezes

And little Baby's smiles!

We don't take time to enjoy

The gentle dew in the early morns,

Always too busy rushing about