Vipassana retreat


The essence of Vipassana is to observe and accept whatever is happening. While you're sitting, the main thing to watch is the movement of the belly rising and falling, just a little above the belly button, motion caused by breathing in a natural way. It is not a technique of concentration so, while watching the breath, many other things will get your attention. Nothing is a disturbance in the Vipassana: it includes all thoughts, judgements, feelings, body sensations and impressions from the world around you. Watch whatever is surfacing in you and then gently, as soon as you have the possibility to choose, come back to the breath. Remember that it is the process of watching that is important, not so much what you're watching.

While you are sitting, you may get a touch on the head with the Vipassana stick. This is to stay alert and give you additional energy and encouragement to the process of watching.

Second stage: 15 minutes (The  Zen walk)
Now the primary object of your watching is the sensation of the feet touching the floor while walking. Your attention may be captured by other things. See what comes up and whenever it is possible, kindly brings attention to the feet touching the floor. Keep your eyes down, looking a few steps ahead of you. It is a slow, natural walk, about half the normal speed.

In a Meditation Retreat 5 sittings every day.

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Osho words on Vipassana:

"……Watch, witness, observe your thoughts -- without any judgment, without any condemnation or evaluation.... Because the moment you make any judgment for or against, you are no longer a witness; you have already become part of the thought process. Remain silent, and just see whatsoever is passing on the screen of your mind, the way you see a film. Just remember that you are only a seer.
And the same process when you have succeeded on the first layer will make you capable of seeing your feelings which are more subtle. But the person who can see thoughts and remains silently a witness automatically becomes capable of the second step. Soon you will be able to see your feelings, sentiments, moods, emotions.
Once you are beyond the second, then the third... is the deepest in you, the feeling of "I", the separation of you from the universe. Actually you are not separated for a single moment, you cannot exist in separation. You are in tune in every possible way. There are thousands of bridges between you and the existence around you.
Now watch this silence, this is-ness, this feeling of am-ness; simply watch. There is nothing else to watch, just a small boundary around you.
As you watch thoughts, thoughts disappear.
As you watch feelings, feelings disappear.
As you watch being, you are no longer separate.
Only the witness remains, which is your eternal reality. And it has nothing to do with you; it is universal.
Your witness and my witness are not separate.
Wherever witnessing happens, it is the same.
It knows no distance in space and no distance in time. For the witness there is no space and no time; it has no limits.
Before you arrive at this point, all else is the dark night of the soul.
Your arrival at this witnessing starts the beautiful day of the soul.
It is a sunrise which never sets.
But just listening to me will not help. You will have to practice this as much as possible. And it needs no separate time -- that you have to sit for one hour, or twenty minutes, and witness. If you have time you can sit silently and witness, but there is no necessity. You can go on doing your work and still be witnessing.
The whole thing is how to make your witness stronger and stronger, so that it is capable of losing all identities. Only a strong person can lose all identities.
And to be in utter silence... there is light, a light that never began and never ends. And it is yours just to claim. 7:00 mins
And the effort is not so difficult as religions have been telling you.
Walking on the road, what is the problem? Why can't you simply watch your walking? The question is not of the object that you witness, the question is that you witness. Anything helps to strengthen your witnessing energies.
Looking at a beautiful sunset, don't just get lost, don't forget yourself. Remember that you are only a seer. It can go on twenty-four hours a day without anybody knowing that you are doing something. Religion is not something that the world has to know about. It is something that you have to do within yourselves.
Start from this very moment. 8:45 mins
This immense silence -- thousands of people, but it is as if there is no one... just witness. The faraway sound of an aeroplane... You remain only a witness.
And then go on practicing the same thing whatever you are doing -- eating, taking a shower, doing some work in the garden, in the field. It does not matter what you do, what matters is that your witness is always present.
In the beginning you will forget many times, because for many lives you have never been a witness, you have always been a doer. So it is just an old habit. Old habits die hard, but they certainly die.
And it all depends on you. The more you make it a process almost like breathing.... You go on doing everything, still you are breathing. You don't stop your breathing because you are digging a hole in the earth.
Witnessing has to become just like breathing.
It in fact is the breathing of the universal soul in you.
And once you have tasted just a moment of being universal, the morning has come. The dark night of the soul is over."
 Osho, "From Death to deathlessness #30"

"Under Gautam Buddha more people became enlightened than under any man in history. Ten thousand monks continuously followed him, and all they were doing the whole day was simply meditating, just witnessing their minds. In time, in season, the right climate, the right moment... one by one they started exploding.
My experience is that it is very much a triggering process. If one person becomes enlightened and you are sitting close by him, something may trigger in you. Just his changed energy can give a push to your own energy.
Our enlightenment is not something of a kind that has to be achieved; it is already there, it is our very nature. It is the simplest thing in the world, and that has made it the most difficult.
Going within yourself just needs a small push, and that push need not be physical. It is not physical; it is more something like magnetic energy, or something more like electricity. You don't see it, but it can travel from one person to another person, if the other person is ready enough. He will be surprised by the explosion.
Gautam Buddha allowed ten thousand people to be always with him simply to create an energy field. Somebody is a step ahead of you, somebody is two steps ahead of you, somebody is very close to the explosion. If he explodes, he can create a chain reaction and those who are just behind him may catch the fire. Hence in Zen it is called the transmission of the lamp, or transmission of the light."
Osho, "Rinzai n.2"

"Emptiness is the goal of Vipassana. But if you go on being empty and being empty, and you disappear in the emptiness, suddenly that emptiness becomes a fulfillment, a positive state.
In the beginning it will feel like emptiness because the ego disappears, the mind disappears, thinking disappears. All the constituents of the ego disappear by and by. So you are taking the furniture out of the room by and by, and the room feels empty. But simultaneously the room is becoming more roomful. You remove a chair. That chair was occupying a certain room, now the room is free. So furniture is going out, but the room is becoming more and more roomful. Once everything is removed and only roominess is there, emptiness, there comes a transformation, a transfiguration. The gestalt changes. Suddenly you see that the loom is not empty, it is only full of room.
You are emptying your ego, and something greater than you is entering you, but you will become aware only when you have completely emptied it. So continue. Nothing is a problem."
Osho, "Nothing to Lose But Your Head #4"

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