"I love the statement that the ‘man of Zen walks in Zen and sits in Zen’ for the simple reason that meditation cannot be just a part of your life. You cannot make a fragment of your life meditative; it is not possible to be meditative for one hour and then non-meditative for twenty-three hours. It is absolutely impossible. If you are doing that, that means your meditation is false.

"Meditation can either be a twenty–four–hour affair or it cannot be at all. It is like breathing: you cannot breathe for one hour and then put it aside for twenty-three hours, otherwise you will be dead. You have to go on breathing. Even while you are asleep you have to go on breathing. Even in a deep coma you have to go on breathing.

"Meditation is the breath of your soul. Just as breathing is the life of the body, meditation is the life of the soul.

"The people who are not aware of meditation are spiritually dead.

"George Gurdjieff used to say that very few people have souls – and he is right. One is born not with a soul but only with a seed which can grow into a soul – which may not grow. It will depend on you. You will have to create the right soil, the right climate for it to grow, to bloom. You will have to provoke the spring into coming to you so that your soul can flower, otherwise you are just a body-mind. The soul is only an empty word. Meditation makes it a reality. Meditation is the climate in which the soul happens. Zen is another name for meditation. The word zen comes from the Sanskrit root dhyan – it has traveled far. Dhyan means a state of absolute silence, of thoughtless silence, but full of awareness. Even the thought that ‘I am aware’ is enough to distract you from your meditation. Even to know that ‘I am in meditation’ is enough to destroy it.

"A state of meditation is an innocent, silent state. You are blissfully unaware of your awareness. You are, but you are utterly relaxed. You are not in a state of sleep; you are fully alert, more alert than ever. You are alertness, rather.

" Dhyan is the greatest contribution of the East to the evolution of humanity.

"Buddha himself never used Sanskrit; he used a language that was used by the masses of those days, he used Pali. In Pali, dhyan becomes jhan. When Buddhas message reached China, jhan became chan. And when it traveled from China to Japan, it became zen. But it originates fromdhyan. Dhyan means meditation, but the English word ‘meditation’ does not have that flavor, it has a long association with contemplation. The English word ‘meditation’ means meditation upon something; there is an object of meditation.

"And in Zen there is no object at all, only pure subjectivity. You are aware, but not aware of something. There is nothing to be aware of; everything has disappeared. You are not even aware of nothingness, because then nothingness becomes your object, then nothingness becomes your thought. You are not aware of emptiness either. You are simply aware; there is no object to your awareness. The mirror is empty, reflecting nothing, because there is nothing to reflect.

"You have to remember it, otherwise ‘meditation’ can give you a wrong impression. Whenever the word ‘meditation’ is used, immediately the question arises, ‘On what?’ That question is irrelevant. If you are asking, ‘On what?’ then you are asking what to think about, contemplate about, concentrate on – and that is not meditation.

"Concentration is not meditation, concentration is an effort of the mind to focus itself. It has certain purposes of its own. It is a method in science – useful, but it is not meditation.

"Contemplation is a little vague, more abstract. In concentration, the object is more visible; in contemplation, the object is abstract. You concentrate on a flame of light; you contemplate on love. And in Christianity, contemplation and meditation have become synonymous.

"Meditation should be given a new meaning, a new fragrance – the fragrance of Zen. Concentration is of the mind, meditation is not of the mind at all, and contemplation is just in between, in a limbo. It is something of the mind and something of the no-mind, a mixture; a state where mind and no-mind meet, the boundary.

"One has to reach to the absolute state of awareness: that is Zen. You cannot do it every morning for a few minutes or for half an hour and then forget all about it. It has to become like your heartbeat. You have to sit in it, you have to walk in it. Yes, you have even to sleep in it." Osho