Yoga may have become very popular these days but the fact is most of the people are interested in meditation, as they are suffering from tension and stress. They think meditation can free them of stress. Today’s world, with its maddening speed and never-ending struggle to achieve certain goals, is creating tremendous tension in our lives.

Various methods of meditation are being offered to make people relax, rejuvenate and energise to deal with stress. At the same time, people are so busy that they cannot spare time for meditating. Therefore, meditation teachers are devising methods to give instant relief to people.

Spiritual coach Deepak Chopra’s one-minute meditation is a method of paying attention to your breath for 60 seconds. It is promised that you will regain mental clarity and be better equipped to handle the demands of the day. It sounds great to busy people, but it is certainly not enough. It is a momentary relief from tension, and it will not last long. One needs to have a lot of patience as far as meditation is concerned. Yes, what can work wonders is that you keep a tap on your breath for five or 10 minutes. Change the gestalt.

Remain watchful and alert — not aggressively, not doing anything, but in a mode of passive alertness.

This is the master key: Living meditatively moment to moment. There is no need to concentrate on anything, as it might create any kind of tension. Just being alert and aware without focusing on anything — being open to everything that surrounds you. Life is in totality, not in fragments.

Osho suggests not to take meditation as work. He says: “Meditation is not a work it is a play. Praying is not a business it is a play. Meditation is not something to be done to achieve some goal — peace, bliss — but something to be enjoyed as an end in itself. The festive dimension is the most important thing to be understood and we have lost it. By festive, I mean the capacity to enjoy, moment to moment, all that comes to you. We have become so conditioned and habits have become so mechanical that even when there is no business to be done, our minds are businesslike. Even when you are playing, you are not playing, you are not enjoying it. Even when you are playing cards, you are not enjoying it. You play for the victory and then the play becomes work; then what is going on is not important, only the result. In business the result is important. In festivity, the act is important. If you can make any act significant in itself, then you become festive and you can celebrate it. Whenever you are celebrating, limits are broken. They are not needed. You come out of your straitjacket, the narrowing jacket of concentration. Now you are not choosing; everything that comes, you allow. And the moment you allow total existence to come in, you become one with it. There is a communion.”

Osho adds: “This communion — celebration, choiceless awareness, non-businesslike attitude — I call meditation. The festivity is in the moment, in the act, not in bothering about results, not in achieving something. There is nothing to be achieved, so you can enjoy that which is here and now.”