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Meditation is simple. Precisely because it is simple, it looks difficult.

Your mind is accustomed to dealing with difficult problems, and it has completely forgotten how to respond to the simple things in life.

The simpler a thing is, the more difficult it looks to the mind because the mind is very efficient at solving the difficult, but it does not know how to tackle the simple; it has been trained to solve difficult things.

Meditation is simple, your mind is complex.

Meditation is not creating the problem. The problem is coming from your mind, not from meditation.

Vipassana is the simplest meditation in the world. It is through vipassana that Buddha became enlightened, and through vipassana more people have become enlightened than through any other method.

Vipassana is the method. Yes, there are other methods, but they have helped only a very few people. Vipassana has helped thousands, and it is really very simple; it is not like Yoga.

Yoga is difficult, arduous, complex. You have to torture yourself in many ways: distort your body, contort your body, sit this way and that, stand on your head, exercises and exercises – torture. But Yoga seems very appealing to many people.

Vipassana is so simple that you don’t take any notice of it. In fact, coming across vipassana for the first time, you doubt whether it can be called a meditation at all. What is it, just watching your breath coming in, going out – finished? No physical exercise, no breathing exercise, a very simple phenomenon.

That is the method: sitting silently, watching your breath coming in, going out, not losing track – that’s all. You do not have to change your breathing, it is not pranayam; it is not a breathing exercise where you have to take deep breaths, exhale, inhale, no.

Let the breathing be simple, as it is; you just have to bring one new quality to it: awareness.

The breath goes out, watch; the breath comes in, watch. You will become aware of the breath touching your nostrils in one place – concentrate there. The breath comes in, you feel it touching your nostrils; then it goes out, you feel the touch again. Remain there at the tip of your nose.

It is not that you have to concentrate on the tip of your nose; you have to be alert, aware, watchful – it is not concentration.

In the beginning you will miss again and again. Don’t miss: just keep on remembering and bring yourself back. For some people it is difficult to watch the breath there. If it is difficult for you, then you can watch the breath in your belly.

When the breath comes in, the belly goes up; when the breath goes out, the belly goes down. Go on watching your belly. If you have a really good belly, it will help.

Have you seen? – if you look at an Indian statue of Buddha, it doesn’t have a real belly, no belly at all in fact. Buddha looks like a perfect athlete; chest coming out, belly going in.

But you will be surprised if you see a Japanese statue of Buddha. It does not look buddhalike at all – a big belly, so big that you cannot see the chest at all; all belly, almost as if Buddha was pregnant.

The reason for this change happening is that in India, while Buddha was alive, he himself was watching the breath at the nose, hence the belly was not at all important. But as vipassana moved from India to Tibet to China to Korea to Burma to Japan, slowly, slowly, people became aware that it was easier to watch at the belly than at the nose. Then their Buddha statues started being different, with bigger bellies.

You can watch either at the belly or at the nose, whichever feels right for you, whichever feels easier for you. The point is that it be easy. And just watching the breath, miracles happen.

Meditation is not difficult.

It is simple. Precisely because it is simple you are feeling difficulty. There is nothing to do, and you would like to do many things – that is the problem. It is a great problem because you have been taught to do things.

You ask what should be done, and meditation means a state of non-doing. You do not have to do anything, you have to stop doing. You have to be in a state of utter inaction. Even thinking is a kind of doing – drop that too. Feeling is a kind of doing – drop that as well. Doing, thinking, feeling, all gone; you simply are.

That is being. And being is meditation. It is very simple.

In your mother’s womb you were in the same space. In vipassana you will again enter that space. And you will remember, you will have déjà vu. When you enter deep vipassana, you will be surprised that you know it, you have known it before. You will recognize it immediately because for nine months in your mother’s womb you were in the same space, doing nothing, just being.

You tell me, “I thought that meditation was a simple thing, but seeing people doing vipassana I am losing all hope of ever becoming a successful meditator.”

Never think about meditation in terms of success because that is bringing your achieving mind into it, your egoistic mind into it. Then meditation becomes your ego trip. Don’t think in terms of success or failure. Those terms are not applicable to the world of meditation.

Forget all about them; they are mind terms, they are comparative. And that’s the problem: you must be watching others succeeding, reaching, ecstatic; and you are feeling very low.

Sitting, looking at your breath, watching your breath, you will be feeling silly. You must be looking very silly and nothing is happening. Nothing is happening because you are so much expecting something to happen.

In the beginning, every new process looks difficult. One has to learn the taste of it.

A wife had never tasted alcohol in her life, yet her husband was a souse. “Here, you souse,” she said. “Give me that bottle. I want to taste whatever it is that has made you the bum you are.”

Taking the bottle of cheap whiskey, she took a good gulp of it. “Aargh…glompf…breecch…fuy…brrrit…ptui!” she gasped. “That is the most vile-tasting liquid I have ever had the misfortune to let pass my lips. It tastes terrible.”

“You see?” said the old man. “An’ all these years you thought I was having a good time.”

Just wait a little. Just have a little patience. In the beginning everything looks difficult, even the simplest thing. Don’t be in a hurry.

That is one of the problems with the Western mind – hurry. People want everything immediately. They think in terms of instant coffee, instant meditation, instant enlightenment.

A city slicker had just inherited a farm full of cows and, being a shrewd operator, he decided to increase the size of his herd right away. So he imported three of the finest bulls he could find in the area and locked them in the barn with the cows overnight.

The next morning he called the owner of the bulls to complain.

The stud man laughed. “What did you expect?” he asked. Did you think you’d find calves the next day?”

“Maybe not,” retorted the city slicker. “But I sure did expect to see a few smiling faces on those cows.”

No, not even that is going to happen soon.

Just sitting for one day in vipassana, you will not come out of it smiling. You will come out utterly tired. Tired because you were told to not do anything, tired because you have never ever been in such a silly thing before. Not doing anything?

You are a doer. If you had chopped wood the whole day, you would not be so tired. But sitting silently, doing nothing, just watching your silly breath coming in, going out – many times the idea arises: “What am I doing here?”

And it will seem a very, very long time; the time will lengthen because time is relative. One day of meditation will seem like years and years: “What is happening? When is it going to finish? Is the sun not going to set today?”

If you are in a hurry, if you are in haste, you will never know the taste of meditation.

The taste of meditation needs great patience, infinite patience. Meditation is simple, but you have become so complex that it will take time for you to relax. Let me remind you again, it is not the meditation that is taking time, it is your complex mind – it has to be brought down to rest, to a relaxed state. That takes time.

And don’t think in terms of success and failure. Enjoy.

Don’t be too goal oriented. Enjoy the sheer silence of watching your breath coming in, going out, and soon you will have beauty, a new experience of beauty and beautitude.

Soon you will see that one need not go anywhere to be blissful. One can sit silently, be alone, and be blissful. Nothing else is needed, just the pulsation of life is enough. If you can pulsate with it, life becomes a deep inner dance.

Meditation is a dance of your energy, and breath is the key.