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[Osho spoke about the difference between meditation and concentration. In the past the two have been thought to be synonymous, and they are not.]
Not only are they not synonymous, they are absolutely opposite dimensions. They never meet anywhere, they never cross each other's path -- different worlds altogether.
Concentration is something within the mind and meditation is something beyond the mind. Concentration has its own utility. If you are working on a scientific project then concentration is needed; then you have to focus all your mind-energy on a single point. The more focussed you are, the more clear will be your observation, obviously, because your energy will not be spread out; you will not be moving here and there, wavering, thinking of this and that. Your whole energy will be pouring into a single point, you will be ore penetrating. But this state is a state of tension hence the word 'attention'.
Attention means concentration. And one cannot concentrate for a long period because it is unnatural, it is against the natural flow of your being. It keeps you stagnant, and one point, and life is riverlike, life is a flow. Life wants to move, life wants to explore. It feels suffocated being stuck at one point. But concentration has its utility; it helps you to understand the object of observation.
Meditation is relaxation. It is not tension, it is not strain. It has nothing to do with focussing, on the contrary, it is a relaxed opening to all that is. You are not interested in something special, you are not excluding anything from your consciousness.
Concentration excludes much, only then can it focus on the small object that it wants to understand. Meditation does not want to understand anything at all, it wants to relax with existence. It is a let-go. It is not an effort to understand, it is an effort to merge and melt into the reality with no desire to understand -- full of wonder a child, full of awe, ready to go into the mysterious, into the miraculous, with no motive to understand -- because that motive becomes a tension.
I teach relaxation, being at ease with existence, so totally at ease that there is no question
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