HOW TO INTRODUCE MEDITATION TO THE DAILY LIFE OF SO-CALLED ORDINARY PEOPLE?
The question is good because it says "so-called ordinary people." In fact, there are only so-called extraordinary people; ordinary people are just real people, not so-called. Extraordinary people are so-called; they are phony, unreal.
There is no problem in introducing meditation into people's lives — I will not call them ordinary because I don't see anybody who is extraordinary. The whole distinction is created by egoists.
Everybody is a unique individual; either everybody is ordinary or everybody is extraordinary, but there is no distinction between the two. I will just use the word `people'.
Gautam Buddha was just like you before he became enlightened. I was just like you before I entered into my innermost core. There is no speciality in it. Only one thing is missing: you have never endeavored, you have never tried — you have been looking only outside.
Your education teaches you to look outside, your church teaches you to look outside towards a God, towards a HOLY BIBLE, HOLY KORAN, HOLY GEETA… Your politicians go on teaching you to look outward for a promising future. Nobody tells you that you have an inner world too; it is only a question of reminding you.
Have you sometimes seen a man looking for his glasses, and the glasses are sitting on his nose?
Somebody has to remind him, "What are you looking for?"
He says, "I am looking for my glasses."
And somebody has to say to him, "You cannot even look for glasses without glasses. They are sitting on your nose."
And the man feels and says, "My God, I completely forgot."
You have simply forgotten yourself.
Who is looking outside?
Without the inside there cannot be any outside.
Meditation is nothing but a remembrance of your inner being. The English word `sin' is very significant — it was destroyed by the Christians completely. Its root meaning is forgetfulness; it has nothing to do with what your priests go on calling sin. It is simply forgetfulness — you have forgotten yourself.
You can sit silently and start remembering. Close your eyes, watch your thoughts, watch your emotions… and just watching them you will come to realize a new factor — the watcher. That realization is the beginning of an inner revolution: you are the watcher, not the watched. You are not the mind, not the body, but something hidden deep inside you — the watcher.
The watcher goes on watching every up and down in life. Now there is no need to get identified. When you are down you need not be sad, because the watcher is only a watcher. When you are up you need not become egoistic; you are just the watcher. Slowly, slowly all turmoil around you starts settling. Your identification with things which you are not is the problem. Your dis-identification is meditation. Dis-identify with everything until only the pure watcher remains. Remain settled into the watcher, whatever you are doing, wherever you are going.
You will be a new man with a freshness, with a life which you had never known before, with something eternal in your eyes, something of the immortal existence in your every gesture. You will find tremendous strength, power to be yourself against the whole world.
OSHO