osho on Addiction

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