Dance: The Most Total Act on Earth

Why do your meditations always seem to include dancing?

“First you have to learn how to dance, and you have to put all your energies into dancing. And one day that strange experience happens when suddenly the dancer disappears in the dance and the dance happens without any effort. Then it is inaction. First you have to learn action to go into inaction. That’s what meditation is all about.

“People come and ask me why I teach active meditations. Because that is the only way to find inaction: dance to the uttermost, dance in a frenzy, dance madly. And if your whole energy is involved in it, a moment comes when suddenly you see the dance is happening on its own, there is no effort in it, it is action without action.”

Osho, The Secret of Secrets, Talk #1

“I have invariably included dance in my methods of meditation, because there is nothing more miraculous for meditation than dancing. If you dance fully, if you

dance totally, then in that dance your being comes out of the body. The body will go on moving in rhythm but you will experience that you are out of the body. And then

your real dance begins: below, the body will go on dancing; above, you will dance. The body on the earth, you in the sky. The body in the earthly, you in the celestial. The body will dance the dance of matter, you will dance the dance of consciousness.”

Osho, Enlightenment: The Only Revolution, Talk #8

“My insistence is always on a dancing meditation. It is not only an outward dance. The outward is nothing but a training for the inner. You dance outwardly, you go on dancing outwardly. By and by an inner dance arises and then you can dance inwardly and move towards the innermost center, the very core of being.”

Osho, Absolute Tao, Talk #7

“Only in dance do you start falling with the heartbeat of the whole. Only in dance does the moment of grace arrive when you are not and the whole is. Only in dance does the separation between the mind and the body disappear. And you are one whole, one piece, all together, no more fragmentary.”

Osho, The Perfect Master, Vol. 2, Talk #5

“There is nothing better than dance for dropping the ego; hence I insist that all meditators should dance. Because if you go really in a whirlwind, if you are really a whirling pool of energy, if you really are in the dance, the dancer is lost.”

Osho, The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol. 2, Talk #8

I have heard you say that life is a dance.

“In many meanings life is a dance. First, life is not constituted of matter but of energy. And energy is never static: it is always dancing. Now the physicists also say that there is no rest in the world, nothing like rest exists. Everything is moving, dancing. A tremendous dance is on. The electrons are dancing, the neutrons are dancing, and from those invisible electrons up to the greatest star, there is

continuous dance. Only man has forgotten how to dance. Trees are dancing in the breeze, the birds and the animals are dancing. Only man has forgotten how to

dance, and by forgetting the language of dance, man has forgotten the language of religiousness. Dance is the basic language of religiousness.”

Osho, The Buddha Disease, Talk #16

I often feel uncomfortable and self-conscious about dancing.

“Sometimes it happens that the meditation you feel most uncomfortable with maybe is the one that is going to help. The discomfort may be because it fights against certain of your habits and deep-rooted things. This is my observation: that the meditation you like is not always the best, and the one you dislike most is not necessarily the worst, because you like something that fits with your mind.”

Osho, Hammer on the Rock, Talk #8

“We are afraid of the body, so we don’t allow it to be really alive. We have made it half-dead. If it is half-dead, it is controllable. If it is totally alive, it is not controllable.

“We are afraid of it. The mind is always afraid. And afraid of only one thing: what will happen if the mind is not in control? The mind can control only a dead body or a half-dead body. If the body is fully alive, the mind becomes afraid. The energy is so much that the mind is thrown off.”

Osho, The New Alchemy: To Turn You On, Talk #18

So, is dancing a better place to start to experience meditation than just sitting?

“The foundation of meditation involves only your periphery, and the periphery of your personality is the body. Hence the periphery of meditation involves only the body. So the first step towards meditation begins with your body.”

Osho, The Path of Meditation, Talk #2

“Sitting in a buddha posture is the last thing to do really; it should never be done in the beginning. Only after you have begun to feel identified totally with movement can you begin to feel totally identified with non-movement.

“So I never tell people to begin with just sitting. Begin from where beginning is easy, otherwise you will begin to feel many things unnecessarily – things that are not there.

“If you begin with sitting, you will feel much disturbance inside. The more you try to just sit, the more disturbance will be felt; you will become aware only of your insane mind and nothing else. It will create depression, you will feel frustrated. You will not feel blissful; rather, you will begin to feel that you are insane. And sometimes you may really go insane.

“If you make a sincere effort to ‘just sit,’ you may really go insane.”

Osho, Meditation: The Art of Ecstasy, Talk #5

“When your body has become active, dynamic, a movement, suddenly you become aware of a point which is still, absolutely still – the unmoving center of the whole moving world. That is effortless. No effort is made for it. No effort is needed, it is simply revealed. Effort on the part of the periphery, no effort on the part of the center. Movement on the periphery, stillness at the center. Activity on the periphery, absolute inactivity at the center.”

Osho, My Way: The Way of the White Clouds, Talk #4

“If you give your body joy, then the shadow of your bliss will fall onto the heart that lies behind the body. Gradually, it will also become blissful, it will also begin to sway. When the heart sways, its shadow will fall onto your soul that is hidden behind the heart, and then the soul too will sway, the soul too will dance.”

Osho, The Last Morning Star, Talk #8

P.S. And if you really dance totally on a regular basis you might be also interested to know that it may slow brain aging by ten years!

OSHO © 2016 OSHO International

Copyright & Trademark Information

OSHO International Meditation Resort Impressions

My name is Prem Jharna and although originally from Colombia I live in Toronto, Canada.

I am participating in the Work as Meditation Living In Program at the OSHO International Meditation Resort, working as a Spanish translator. To support this meditative life style, the meditation team designed a 3-day OSHO Meditation Intensive, to which workers were also invited outside their working hours. We also received techniques every day to remind us to be more aware,

more present, and more alert, especially while working.

Meditation is the essence of this place. In the OSHO Auditorium the day starts at 6 am with OSHO Dynamic Meditation and ends with a beautiful night meditation at 9.30 pm, usually in Chuang Tzu, amounting to ten meditations a day. People can participate in as many meditations as they want to.

Something was opening, flowering inside, expanding. I felt more energetic. The body was not as heavy as it had been before, it became light. It was a unique experience which proved that it is never too late to start anything, to jump into the unknown, to take the risk. Now, after this powerful experience, I feel more alert, more aware in whatever I do. I would recommend everybody to participate in this program because it helps drop the old luggage and grow vertically, which means growing up instead of growing old.

OSHO © 2016 OSHO International

Copyright & Trademark Information

News & Updates

Meet the City: Mindful Living

OSHO © 2016 OSHO International

Copyright & Trademark Information

News & Updates

The Speaking Tree: Let’s Be the First to Renounce Nationalism

OSHO © 2016 OSHO International

Copyright & Trademark Information

News & Updates

The Speaking Tree: When All Longing Disappears

OSHO © 2016 OSHO International

Copyright & Trademark Information