Osho - Running is one of the deepest layers of humanity because man has been a runner for millennia

Osho - Running is one of the deepest layers of humanity because man has been a runner for millennia

[A sannyasin, returning to the west, says she fears that the anger which was provoked in the primal group here will surface again with her family particularly her mother – or in self-destructive ways. Osho checks her energy.]

Osho - Mm mm – it is there and very much. You have just touched the tip of it, mm ? The whole iceberg is there and you are very much afraid of it. The fear is not allowing you to express it; the fear is sitting on top of it. And fear is bad – anger is good. If one has to choose between fear and anger, then anger has to be chosen, because anger is hot energy, anger is life energy; fear is death, fear helps you to shrink.

Anger is in the service of life, anger has some survival value, great value. So start choosing anger instead of fear.... But this is how it happens in the childhood: parents force fear to repress anger. They create much fear in the child – that the child will be punished, that the mother will die, the mother will leave the child, or something wrong will happen if the child does not listen to the mother or to the father – so rather than being angry, the child becomes afraid.

Anger is positive energy, fear is negative energy. Something can be done with anger because it is hot and alive; it can be transformed in many ways. Nothing can be done with fear. Fear creates
sadness, fear creates lethargy, fear creates inactivity, and fear makes a person almost imprisoned. So three things you have to do....

One, if it is possible back home that you can go running, that will help tremendously. If it is possible, start running – there is nothing better than running – a three, four mile run. By and by, slowly increase it to three, four miles, but really go into it like a meditation. Go alone early in the morning, then you will be more free with the elements – the air, the sun, the atmosphere, the trees, the birds. Don't be competitive in running. If you run with somebody, our minds are so poisoned by competition, that naturally you start competing.

If you run with somebody, you want to defeat them – unconsciously, you want to come first. The poison has gone very deep, and when running becomes competitive it is no more meditation; it is a sport, not a meditation. So running has to be noncompetitive – one thing .... The second thing: running has to be without any self-criticism – that you should improve it, that you should run more, that you can do better. That is nonsense! You are not competing with anybody,
you are simply enjoying the thrill of it. So do it with no self-criticism – just for fun!

If we can do at least one thing in every day for one hour without any judgement, that is meditation. Just out of fun! And we have been so badly conditioned against fun; everything has to be turned into a utility. People will ask 'Why are you running? You are not fat, so why? You are not interested in reducing your weight, so why? You are not going to compete, then why?'

We have been trained to be always seeking some utility, and all that is beautiful happens only when we are not utilitarians – when we are doing something just for the very joy of it, the sheer joy. And running goes very deep. That is why I am suggesting it. There is fear; below the fear there is anger and below the anger, there is love, and below all these things something has to be found, so start working below all these layers.

Running is one of the deepest layers of humanity because man has been a runner for millennia.
Just for a few hundred years man has stopped running. He was a hunter – running was one of the basic things to know. Still in southern africa, hunters exist; there are tribes which are just hunting tribes.

They have such beautiful bodies, such long necks, that even animals will feel a little jealous. They are runners: they can run for twenty, thirty, forty miles without any gap. They have to run with the animals. Sometimes they are hunting the animals and sometimes the animals are hunting them, and each time they have to run, and run fast; it is a question of life and death.

So the deepest layer in humanity is that of hunting. Our brain cells have an in-built capacity to run. Swimming is not so deep – it is a learned thing – but this running is really deep. So sometimes it happens that a runner can achieve more meditative energy than a meditator! In meditation the possibility is ten percent, in running the possibility is eighty percent.

In a better world, running will become one of the most important meditations, because when you are running fast, breathing deeply, by and by, after the first mile you don't have any separation between you and the body. That division of mind and body disappears, you become psychosomatic: you are one, one unity.

After the first mile when you are running and the breathing has taken hold of you and is really going deep – it has to go deep, exhaling, inhaling, both are the deepest possible – your whole blood is being purified, the air is passing through you – the sun rays are passing through, you are again part of nature, you are again an animal, not a civilised human being – which is a dead thing .... When you are an animal again, suddenly worries disappear. A person cannot run and worry together – that has not been possible. Many people have tried....

I, myself, was running fifteen miles a day for almost ten years. After the first mile you are turned on. No LSD can do that! You are simply no more part of humanity; you are part of the universe. And it is such a certain thing that after two, three months, you can depend on it; every day it will happen! It is just a question of three months.

Once the running reaches to your deepest core and your hunter which is there – you still carry it in the neurons of the brain; it just has to be tapped again, made alive, invoked – becomes alive again, once it is invoked, it will give you tremendous joy. And with that joy, fear will disappear; with that joy, anger will disappear and love will start flowing. One thing – if it is possible; this is the best meditation that I can prescribe for you.

If it is not possible, then jogging – just jog in the room; that is a substitute. But if the first is not
possible then the second. If you feel that even the second is not possible, then put a pillow in front of you and be angry. [See 'Hammer on the Rock' for a full description of the anger meditation.] This pillow meditation then has to be done twice a day – twenty minutes in the morning, twenty in the evening – but if you can run then nothing else is needed. One hour running....

Source: from Osho Book "This is It"

Osho on Running As Meditation, If you can run then there is no need for any other Meditation

[A sannyasin asks: I'm a runner and when I run each day I get a feeling very much like when I'm doing dynamic meditation... Can I use it as a meditation?]

Osho - Yes, use it as much as you can. If you can run then there is no need for any other meditation – it is enough! ... Any action in which you can be total becomes meditation, and running is so beautiful that you can be totally lost in it. And you are in contact with all the elements – the sun, the air, the earth, the sky; you are in contact with existence.

When you are running your breathing naturally goes very deep and it starts massaging the hara centre... which is in fact the centre from where meditative energy is released. It is just below the navel, two inches below the navel. When breathing goes deep it massages that centre, makes it alive. And when you are running, you are throwing all carbon dioxide out of your lungs. Carbon dioxide makes people dull, dead, frozen, blocked.

Carbon dioxide is good for trees and very bad for man. We are in mutual agreement with the trees: they inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen; we inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. That's why as there are becoming less and less trees on the earth, man is becoming less and less alive, because the partner is dying. That's the whole meaning of ecology: we are together! You breathe out, the tree breathes in; the tree breathes out, you breathe in. The tree purifies you through oxygen, you nourish the tree through carbon dioxide.

When you are running, the whole carbon dioxide is thrown out and your lungs are full of oxygen.
When they are full of oxygen they purify the blood, they purify the whole system. That's what purity is; it has nothing to do with morality. Purity has something to do with biology, it is a biological concept. When your blood is pure and is not hampered by poisons and used garbage – it is red and alive, full of joy and each drop of blood is dancing in you – you are in the right mood to catch meditation. Then there is no need to do it – it happens!

Running against the wind is a perfect situation. It is a dance of the elements. And while running
you cannot think: if you are thinking, then you are not running rightly. When you are running totally, thinking stops. You become too earth-bound, the head no more functions. The body is in such an activity that there is no energy left for the head to go on and on; the thinking stops.

And in those moments of non-thinking, your existence is pure, you simply are, you don't know who. You don't know if you are Indian, German, English, Christian, Mohammedan – you don't know who you are. All is forgotten, you are unburdened of the head... you are again an animal! In that moment – when you are again an animal – there is a possibility to contact god.

This is my message – that before a man can contact god he will have to become an animal, never before it... because man is a false entity, not authentic at all. Before we can rise high and reach
the ultimate we will have to become authentic, as authentic as animals. Through running that
authenticity happens.... It is perfectly good, and now it will be coming more and more because now you know what meditation is.

And both these things will help each other: in meditation you will again and again come to those
moments which come in running, and in running you will come again and again to those moments which come in meditation. By and by both methods will become one. Then there will be no need to do them separately: you can run and meditate, you can meditate and run.

Sometimes try one technique.... Just lying down on the bed, imagine that you are running. Just
imagine the whole scene: the trees and the wind and the sun and the whole beach and the salty air. Imagine everything, visualise it, make it as colourful as possible. Remember any morning that you liked the most – when you were running on some beach or in some forest. Let it fill you completely... even the smell of the trees, the pine trees, or the smell of the beach.

Anything that you have liked very much, let it be there as if it is almost real; then start
running in imagination – you will find that your breathing is changing. Go on running... and you can do this for miles. There is no end to it, you can do it for hours. And you will be surprised that even doing this on the bed, you will attain to those moments again when suddenly the meditation is there. So if some day you cannot run for some reason – you are ill, or the situation does not allow, or the city is not worth running in, you cannot run – you can do this and you will attain to the same moments.



Source: from Osho Book "This is It"