Meditation is Recreation

I am not against sex, and I am not saying drop sex. I am just saying understand it, meditate over it - don't just go on making love in an unconscious way - and that will become your greatest meditation. Be more conscious, alert, aware and see what is actually happening. Is this moment of bliss coming through sex or because there is no sex any more for a few moments and the desire has disappeared? For a few hours after sex you don't think about sex, hence the peace, the calm, the quiet. Again the desire will come and again the desire will disturb; again there will be turmoil and the lake will have ripples, waves.

If one meditates on one's sexuality, one starts understanding great secrets of life; they are hidden there. Sex is holding the very key. It is not only the key to reproduce children, it is also the key to recreate yourself again. It is not only reproduction, it is really recreation.

In English the word 'recreation' has lost its original meaning. Now 'recreation' means enjoying a holiday, enjoying fun, playing around. But in fact, whenever you are playing and you are on a holiday, something is created in you - it is actually recreation, it is not just fun. Something that dies in work and in the day-to-day world, is born again. And sex has become the most recreational act of people's lives. That is their recreation. But on a higher plane it is really recreation, it is not just fun. It holds great secrets in it, and the first secret is - if you meditate you will see it - that joy comes because sex disappears. And whenever you are in that moment of joy, time also disappears - if you meditate on it - the mind also disappears. And there are the qualities of meditation.

My own observation is that the first glimpse of meditation in the world must have come through sex; there is no other way. Meditation must have entered into life through sex, because this is the most meditative phenomenon - if you understand it, if you go deep into it, if you just don't use it like a drug. Then slowly slowly as more understanding grows, the more the hankering disappears, and one day comes a great freedom when sex no more haunts you. Then one is quiet, silent, utterly oneself. The need for the other has disappeared. One can still make love if one chooses to, but there is no need.

Then it will be kind of sharing.

Excerpts from Osho's book
"What is Meditation?"