"Meditation is not an effort, it is not an activity. Rather, it is a deep surrender. Rather, it is to be in non-activity. Basically, just to be is meditation: not doing anything, not desiring anything, not hankering to go somewhere, just being here and now. To be simply here and now, that’s what I call meditation.

"But it is very difficult to conceive. Even to contemplate it is difficult because the mind cannot conceive of anything that is not an effort. The very language of the mind, the very framework, the very structure, is based on effort: to do something, to achieve something, to go somewhere.

"Mind is very serious, and meditation is absolutely non-serious.

"When I say this you may be bewildered, because people go on talking about meditation very seriously. But meditation is not a serious thing. It is just like play: non-serious – sincere, but non-serious. It is not something like work, it is more like play. Play is not an activity. Even when it is active, it is not an activity. Play is just pleasure. The activity is not going anywhere, it is not motivated. Rather, it is just overflowing energy.

"But it is difficult because we are so much in activity. We have always been so active that activity has become a deep-rooted obsession. Even while asleep we are active. Even thinking about relaxing we are active. We even make relaxation an activity: we make an effort to relax. This is absurd! But because of the habit, the robot-like habits of the mind…

"So what to do? The mind cannot now conceive how to be non-active. So what to do? Only non-activity leads you to your inner center. So I have devised a means, and the means is to be active to such an extreme that activity simply ceases – because of its being so extreme, to be so madly active that the mind’s hankering to be active is thrown out of your system.

"Only then, after a deep catharsis, can you fall down into inactivity and have a glimpse of the world that is not the world of effort. Once you know it, you can move into it without any effort. Once you have the feeling of it – how to be just here and now, without doing anything – you can move into it at any moment, you can remain in it anywhere. Ultimately, you can be outwardly active and inwardly deeply inactive.

"But in the beginning, you will have to do a very paradoxical thing. The paradox is this: you have to be active, madly active, violently active, so that everything is released, your obsessions are released." Osho