The Importance of Breast Feeding & Mother's Milk

 You will be surprised to know that if a child does not get his nourishment through his mother’s milk, if he is not fed with his mother’s milk, then his life-energy remains weak forever. He can be fed milk in other ways also, but if he does not regularly receive the warm touch of his mother’s heart, then his life becomes frustrated forever and the possibility of his living a long life is reduced forever. Those children who are not fed on mother’s milk can never attain to much bliss and silence in their lives.

The whole younger generation in the West, and gradually in India also, is becoming filled with great rebellion. The deepest reason for this, the root cause, is that Western children are not being fed on mother’s milk. Their respect for life and their relation to life is not full of love. From their very childhood their life-energy has received many shocks and they have become unloving. In those shocks, in the separation from their mother, they have become separated from life itself – because for a child there is primarily no other life than his mother.

All over the world, wherever women are becoming educated, they do not like to raise children close to them – and the effect has been extremely harmful. In tribal societies children are fed on mother’s milk for a long time. The more a society becomes educated, the earlier the children are weaned from their mother’s milk. The sooner the children are separated from their mother’s milk, the more difficulty they will have in experiencing peace in their own lives. A deep restlessness will prevail in their lives from the very beginning. On whom will they take revenge for this restlessness? The revenge will be taken on the parents themselves.

All over the world children are taking revenge on their parents. On who else will they take revenge? They themselves do not know what kind of reaction is happening within them, what kind of rebellion is arising within them, what kind of fire is arising within them. But unconsciously, deep within, they know that this rebellion is the result of being separated from their mother too soon. Their hearts know this but their intellects do not. The result is that they will take revenge on their mothers and fathers – they will take revenge on everyone.

- OSHO

Addiction

 There are two types of addiction in life – one is negative addiction: a man becomes an alcoholic or a man becomes a heroin addict or a smoker or anything. Then there are positive addictions: a man becomes a meditator or a man becomes a runner or a great swimmer – these are positive addictions.

The addiction is the same – if you are an alcoholic, you will miss it if you don’t drink; then you will miss it tremendously. The same will happen to you if you become positively addicted. If you run every morning for one hour and one day you don’t run, you will feel very very sad and depressed and that something is missing – and a guilt feeling too. Of course there is no question of any guilt about whether you run or not, but you will feel a guilt feeling too.

If people who are will oriented become negatively addicted, their life is wasted. If they become positively addicted then they are great creators. The addiction is the same, the mind is the same…. So if you can start working on positive addictions you will be tremendously benefited. For example, meditation: choose one meditation and then put all your effort in it. That effort has to be very regular because will is created only out of regularity. It has to be very persistent and a continuity has to be maintained.

Even to miss for one day is to destroy much – and at least one hour every day has to be given to it. Many people have been doing research work on addictions and it has been found that it takes at least sixty minutes per day to become addicted to something… less than that won’t do. And it takes at least three to four months to really become addicted: one hour every day for four months; that is the period. Once you have become addicted, then there is no need for any effort. It becomes natural, it becomes your second nature.

After doing a meditation for one hour every day for three, four months, without break, any meditation will do and you will start finding trance-like states. It can happen through running. Runners know about it – that after running a certain distance they lose the mind and suddenly there is a transcendental state, a trance-like state. They don’t know who they are any more; they are just pure energy. Joggers know that, dancers know that that after a certain moment the dancer disappears… there is only dance. When that moment comes, it is the meditative moment, and it can be done through anything.

In Japan they have used all kinds of things – archery, swordsmanship, wrestling – for meditation. And anything active will be good for you – something like Vipassana won’t help much. If you just have to sit silently it will be unnecessary trouble for you. So choose some active meditation – the Dynamic is good, Kundalini is good, dancing is good – and then persist.

After three, four months, you will become a perfect meditator. The only thing is to be regular and not to relax the effort. It is only a question of three, four months – that is the most important period. Once the foundation is there and you have become positively addicted, then the addiction works.

Osho

Even if you have to give up a meal, do it...but do not give up Meditation

 Even if you have to give up a meal, do it...but do not give up meditation. The more regular you are, the greater depth you will attain. Meditation is such a delicate thing that it takes months to grow but just a day or two to wither away. A delicate thing needs much regularity, continuity. Meditation is the highest; everything else is secondary.

You will not miss much by missing a day’s sleep. One can do without sleeping for five to seven days. It is okay if you miss a meal; man can survive without food for three months. You can go without drinking water for a day; you will not die.

But usually, people give much more importance to such petty things and think that for a day or two they can do without the things that are really significant. But let it be remembered that nothing will go wrong if you do not fulfil the petty things of your routine. You will not gain anything by doing them; nor will you be a loser by not doing them.

But meditation is of the highest, and through it the divine is attained. If you do not meditate, you will not know what you were to gain and what you have missed; you will really not know what you have lost.

The greatest misfortune that can befall people is that they never come to know what they have missed. Apart from missing, people never come to know what they were to gain, they never become aware of it.

So always devote energy to meditation.

Osho