Buddha’s Meditation

This is a beautiful extract from my favorite Master, Osho. This is the best understanding of Meditation I have read and can offer to myself and to you, and with the intention of absolute clarity about meditation, I share this with you:

Ananda, one of Gautam Buddha’s chief disciples, asked Buddha, ”One thing always puzzles me and
I cannot contain my curiosity anymore although my question is irrelevant. The question is that when
you go to sleep you remain the whole night in the same posture. Wherever you put your hands,
your feet, whatsoever side you lie on, you remain exactly the same, like a statue. You don’t move,
you don’t change your side, you don’t move your hands,. your feet – nothing changes. You wake
up in the morning in exactly the same posture that you had gone to sleep in. One night, just out of
curiosity, I looked at you the whole night – not a single movement. Are you controlling yourself even
in your sleep?”
Buddha said, ”There is no question of control. I am awake, I am in meditation. I sleep in meditation.
Just as I wake up early in the morning in meditation, every night I go to sleep in meditation. My
day is my meditation, my night too. I remain absolutely calm and quiet because deep down I am
perfectly aware. The flame of meditation goes on burning smokeless. That’s why there is no need
to move.”

Yoka says:
A MAN OF ZEN WALKS IN ZEN AND SITS IN ZEN.

This is of great significance for you all. Meditation has to become something so deep in you that
wherever you go it remains, abides with you; whatsoever you do it is always there. Only then can
your life be transformed. Then not only will you be meditative in your life, you will be meditative in
your death too. You will die in deep meditation.
That’s how Buddha died. That’s how all the Buddhas have always died: their death is something
exquisitely beautiful. Their life is beautiful, their death too. There is no gap between their life and
death. Their death is a crescendo of their life, the ultimate peak, the absolute expression.
When Buddha died he was eighty-two years old. He called his disciples together – just as he used
to when he talked to them every morning. They all gathered. Nobody was thinking at all about his
death.
And then Buddha said, ”This is my last sermon to you. Whatsoever I had to say to you I have said.
Forty-two years I have been telling you, saying to you… I have poured out my whole heart. Now, if
somebody has any question left he can ask, because this is the last day of my life. Today I leave for
the other shore. My boat has arrived.”
They were shocked! They had come just to listen to the daily discourse. They were not thinking that
he was going to die – and without making any fuss about death! It was just a simple phenomenon,
a simple declaration that ”My boat has come and I have to leave. If you have any question left you
can ask me, because if you don’t ask me today, I will never again be available. Then the question
will remain with you. So please, be kind and don’t be shy,” he told his disciples.
They started crying. And Buddha said, ”Stop all this nonsense! This is no time to waste on crying
and weeping! Ask if you have something to ask, otherwise let me go. The time has come. I cannot
linger any longer.”
They said,’We have nothing to ask. You have given more than we would have ever asked. You
have answered all the questions that we have asked, that we could have asked. You have answered
questions which for centuries will be fulfilling for all kinds of inquirers.”
Then Buddha said, ”So I can take leave of you. Good-bye.”
And he closed his eyes, sat in a lotus posture, and started moving towards the other shore.
It is said: the first step was that he left his body, the second step was that he left his mind, the third
step was that he left his heart, the fourth step was that he left his soul. He disappeared into the
universal so peacefully, so silently, so joyously. The birds were chirping; it was early morning – the
sun was still on the horizon. And ten thousand sannyasins were sitting and watching Buddha dying
with such grace! They forgot completely that this was death. There was nothing of death as they
had always conceived it. It was such an extraordinary experience.
So much meditative energy was released that many became enlightened that very day, that very
moment. Those who were just on the verge were pushed into the unknown. Thousands, it is said,
became enlightened through Buddha’s beautiful death.
We don’t call it death, we call it Mahaparinirvana, dissolving into the absolute – just like an ice cube
melting, dissolving into the ocean. He lived in meditation, he died in meditation.