Osho says that looking inside is meditation
Anything that can bring you some light, some conclusion, is not contemplation, it is meditation. It has been an old fallacy that meditation also needs an object to meditate upon. The very word “meditation” is wrong because it gives the idea that you have to meditate upon something. Meditation simply means that you don’t have anything left to meditate upon. All is empty: there is no object, no chanting, no mantra, no sutra...just pure emptiness. And suddenly all your energy of awareness turns upon yourself, without any effort on your part.
And the turning of the energy of awareness upon yourself is the ultimate experience of life, of light, of everything that is valuable; everything that cannot be purchased but can be attained, everything that is not a commodity anybody else can give you but is something that you already have — but you have never looked inside. looking inside is meditation — just pure looking inwards.
You are not going anywhere; you are simply coming from here to here. You are already there where you need to be, just you are not aware. Hence, meditation can be called awareness, watchfulness, alertness, witnessing — but it is not thinking. Contemplation is thinking; it will not lead you anywhere.
No philosopher has reached to any conclusion that solves the ultimate question of life, Who am IIJ But you are not to think about it... what will you think about itIJ There are many people who have followed Maharishi Raman.
His teaching was very simple — he was a simple man, uneducated, not learned. He had escaped from his home when he was only seventeen. He escaped because his father died. When the whole family was weeping and crying, and the neighbours were preparing to take the dead body to the funeral pyre, nobody noticed that Raman had disappeared. The experience of the death of his father became a tremendous revolution in Raman’s mind. He was only 17, the only son of a poor family, and he escaped to the mountains. He remained his whole life on the mountain of Arunachal where he did nothing but just sit and watch inside.
He never asked anybody anything. By just sitting silently watching his own mind, he came to know himself. And by knowing himself he came to know the ultimate bliss — the ecstasy that surrounded Gautam Buddha, the enlightenment that was radiating from Mahavira, the joy, the dance of all those who have awakened. So whoever was asking him, “What are we supposed to doIJ” he had only one answer his whole life: “Meditate on ‘who am IIJ’” But people have misunderstood him.
He was not saying, “Contemplate,” he was not saying, “Think about ‘who am IIJ’” — what can you thinkIJ You won’t find anything by thinking. You will not find out who you are. These things are all on the periphery.
courtesy Oshoworld