Osho's deep wisdom words on life,religion,religiousness,enlightenment

“I want every individual to have his own religion–in other words his own lifestyle,his own philosophy–and to live according to his own deepening insight.”

Osho







"Osho is a mystical giant, a flowering of a unique intelligence and one of those rare humans ex-pressing himself with joy." Paul Reps, author of Zen Flesh, Zen Bones

"Osho is the most dangerous man since Jesus Christ. He's obviously a very effective man, otherwise he wouldn't be such a threat. He's saying the same things that nobody else has the courage to say. A man who has all kinds of ideas, they're not only inflammatory-they also have a resonance of truth that scares the pants off the control freaks." Tom Robbins, author of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Still Life with Woodpecker and Jitterbug Perfume, and others.

"I've been charmed from reading his books." Frederico Fellini

"The Upanishads talk about ultimate wisdom, Osho tells you how to live it" R.E. Gussner, Professor of Religion, University of Vermont, USA

"I have never heard anyone so beautifully and playfully integrate and then dissolve the psychological problems which, for generations, have sapped our human energies." Rev. Cain, Chaplain, Churchill College Cambridge

"Osho speaks the language of today's Yug Bhasha. His message is for the whole world." Shri Krishnakant, vice-president of India

"He is the rarest and most talented religionist to appear this century." KazuYoindia Shayariadabhi Kino, professor of Buddhist Studies, Hosen Gakuen College, Tokyo, Japan

"Osho is the greatest incarnation after Buddha in India. He is a living Buddha." Lama Karmapa, late head of the Kargyupta, (or Red Hat) Sect of Tibetan Buddhism

The Dalai Lama also commented "Osho is an enlightened master who is working with all possibilities to help humanity overcome a difficult phase in developing consciousness."

Osho Excerpts

"I have heard a beautiful story -

In paradise one afternoon, in its most famous cafe, Lao Tzu, Confucius, and Buddha are sitting and chatting. The waiter comes with a tray that holds three glasses of the juice called "Life," and offers them. Buddha immediately closes his eyes and refuses; he says, "Life is misery."

Confucius closes his eyes halfway - he is a middlist, he used to preach the golden mean - and asks the waiter to give him the glass. He would like to have a sip - but just a sip, because without tasting how can one say whether life is misery or not? Confucius had a scientific mind; he was not much of a mystic, he had a very pragmatic, earthbound mind. He was the first behaviorist the world has known, very logical. And it seems perfectly right - he says, "First I will have a sip, and then I will say what I think." He takes a sip and he says, "Buddha is right - life is misery."

Lao Tzu takes all the three glasses and he says, "Unless one drinks totally, how can one say anything?" And Lao Tzu says, " He drinks all the three glasses and starts dancing!

Buddha and Confucius ask him, "Are you not going to say anything?" And Lao Tzu says, "This is what I am saying - my dance and my song are speaking for me." Unless you taste totally, you cannot say. And when you taste totally, you still cannot say because what you know is such that no words are adequate.

Buddha is on one extreme, Confucius is in the middle. Lao Tzu has drunk all the three glasses - the one that was brought for Buddha, the one that was brought for Confucius, and the one that was brought for him. He has drunk them all; he has lived life in its three-dimensionality.

My own approach is that of Lao Tzu. Live life in all possible ways; don't choose one thing against the other, and don't try to be in the middle. Don't try to balance yourself - balance is not something that can be cultivated. Balance is something that comes out of experiencing all the dimensions o flife. Balance is something that happens; it is not something that can be brought about through your efforts. If you bring it through your efforts it will be false, forced. And you will remain tense, you will not be relaxed, because how can a person who is trying to remain balanced in the middle be relaxed? You will always be afraid that if you relax you may start moving to the left or to the right. You are bound to remain uptight, and to be uptight is to miss the whole opportunity, the whole gift of life.

Don't be uptight. Don't live life according to principles. Live life in its totality, drink life in its totality! Yes, sometimes it tastes bitter - so what? That taste of bitterness will make you capable of tasting its sweetness. You will be able to appreciate the sweetness only if you have tasted its bitterness. One who knows not how to cry will not know how to laugh, either. One who cannot enjoy a deep laughter, a belly laugh, that person's tears will be crocodile tears. They cannot be true, they cannot be authentic.

I don't teach the middle way, I teach the total way. Then a balance comes of its own accord, and then that balance has tremendous beauty and grace. You have not forced it, it has simply come. By moving gracefully to the left, to the right, in the middle, slowly a balance comes to you because you remain so unidentified. When sadness comes, you know it will pass, and when happiness comes you know that will pass, too. Nothing remains; everything passes by. The only thing that always abides is your witnessing. That witnessing brings balance. That witnessing is balance. "

Excerpt from "The Book of Understanding" by OSHO.

Everybody is after being extraordinary. That is the search of the ego: to be someone who is special, to be someone who is unique, incomparable. And this is the paradox: the more you try to be exceptional, the more ordinary you look, because everybody is after extraordinariness. It is such an ordinary desire. If you become ordinary, the very search to be ordinary is extraordinary, because rarely does somebody want to be just nobody, rarely does somebody want to be just a hollow, empty space. This is really extraordinary in a way, because nobody wants it. And when you become ordinary you become extraordinary, and, of course, suddenly you discover that without searching you have become unique.

In fact, everybody is unique. If you can stop your constant running after goals for even a single moment, you will realize that you are unique. Your uniqueness is nothing to be invented, it is already there. It is already the case - to be is to be unique. There is no other way of being. Every leaf on a tree is unique, every pebble on the shore is unique, there is no other way of being. You cannot find two identifcal pebbles anywhere on the whole of earth.

Two identical things do not exist at all, so there is no need to be "somebody." You just be yourself, and suddenly you are unique, inconmparable. That's why I say that this is a paradox: those who search fail, and those who don't bother, suddenly attain.

It is said by one of Lao Tzu's great disciples, Lieh Tzu, that once an idiot was searching for fire with a candle in his hand. Said Lieh Tzu: "Had he known what fire was, he could have cooked his rice sooner." He remained hungry the whole night because he was searching for fire but couldn't find it - and he had a candle in his hand, because how can you search in the dark without a candle?

You are searching for uniqueness, and you have it in your hand; if you understand, you can cook your rice sooner. I have cooked my rice and I know. You are unnecessarily hungry - the rice is there, the candle is there, the candle is fire. There is no need to take the candle and search. If you take a candle in your hand and you go searching all over the world, you will not find fire because you don't understand what fire is. Otherwise you could have seen that you were carrying it in your hand.

You need not search for uniqueness, you are unique already. There is no way to make a thing more unique. The words "more unique" are absurd. It is just like the word "circle." Circles exist; there is no such thing as "more circular." That is absurd. A circle is always perfect, "more" is not needed.

There are no degrees of circularity - a circle is a circle, less and more are useless. Uniqueness is uniqueness, less and more don't apply to it. You are already unique. One realizes this only when one is ready to become ordinary, this is the paradox. But if you understand, there is no problem about it, the paradox is there, and beautiful, and no problem exists. A paradox is not a problem. It looks like a problem if you don't understand; if you understand, it is beautiful, a mystery.

Become ordinary and you will become extraordinary; try to become extraordinary and you will remain ordinary.

Excerpt from "The Book of Understanding" by OSHO.

    Osho Quotes

    “Experience life in all possible ways --
    good-bad, bitter-sweet, dark-light,
    summer-winter. Experience all the dualities.
    Don't be afraid of experience, because
    the more experience you have, the more
    mature you become.”

    “Listen to your being. It is continuously giving you hints; it is a still, small voice. It does not shout at you, that is true. And if you are a little silent you will start feeling your way. Be the person you are. Never try to be another, and you will become mature. Maturity is accepting the responsibility of being oneself, whatsoever the cost. Risking all to be oneself, that's what maturity is all about.”

“Truth is not to be found outside. No teacher, no scripture can give it to you. It is inside you and if you wish to attain it, seek your own company. Be with yourself. ”


“That is the simple secret of happiness. Whatever you are doing, don’t let past move your mind; don’t let future disturb you. Because the past is no more, and the future is not yet. To live in the memories, to live in the imagination, is to live in the non-existential. And when you are living in the non-existential, you are missing that which is existential. Naturally you will be miserable, because you will miss your whole life.”

OSHO-SEX= A great darshan shashtri

Habit is not nature, it is nurture. You learn it by imitation. By seeing people doing things, you start doing them. By seeing what makes people successful, you follow them. It does not come out of your nature, it comes out of your surroundings. Yes, it can become so deep-rooted that in every language there is an expression: habit is second nature. It becomes so deep-rooted that you cannot even make the distinction whether it is habit or nature. But habit is never nature. You did not bring it with you, and any day you want to drop it, you can drop it. Any day you want to change it you can change it.

Nature cannot be changed. And instinct is part of nature. In you, nature is expressed in four layers. Instinct is the lowest. Then there is intellect, which is higher than instinct. Most people never know anything more than these two, and these two are always fighting for supremacy. All the religions have remained with intellect; that’s why they are against instinct.

KNOWLEDGE IS not enough, to rely on it is dangerous. Knowledge is borrowed, it is not knowing. Knowing grows with you, knowing is a growth, an evolution, knowledge is implanted within you from me outside, knowledge is borrowed, it is counterfeit. It looks like knowing, it is not. It deceives, it gives you a feeling that you know you don’t.

On the path of Zen the first thing to be aware of is knowledge: the tradition, the scripture, that which has been handed over to you others. Those eyes are not yours, that light is not yours, and it is better to remain ignorant than to become knowledgeable — because at least ignorance is yours. A least it is authentic, at least it is true, at least it belongs to you Out of the truth of ignorance, knowing can grow, but out of the falsity of knowledge, you will be lost. Nothing can grow out of it. Knowledge is an accumulation of dead facts and information. It has no life in it. It is like stones piled up, one upon another. It can rise to a very great height, but it has no growth because it has no sap of life in it.

A tree is totally different. It so goes higher and higher but it has an organic growth, a sap of life, running through it. It is growing on its own accord. It is rooted in life. It is an alive process. You can keep a plastic tree and it will look just like any other tree: it can be even more green, it can be even more deceptive, more beautiful — but it will be dead. It will not have any roots anywhere, it will not be grounded in existence, it will not be at ease and at home, it will not be an insider. It will be a foreigner, it will be alien..

This is the first thing to understand — then only can you understand the radical attitude of Zen. It is very easy to borrow knowledge. That’s what the schools, the colleges, the universities, are doing. They go on transferring information from one generation to another. They are the via media. And people who collect knowledge from them start feeling that they know. But how can you know if YOU have not known it?

I can talk about love to you, you can listen to me, you can even agree with me, but your agreement is not the point. I may be logical and clever enough to persuade you to agree with me but that will not give you any taste of love. To know love, you will have to fall in love. To know love, you will have to travel the path of love. To know love, you will have to take the dangerous journey.

Knowledge is more of a certainty; knowing is more uncertain. That’s why people choose knowledge. Knowledge is more guaranteed, it has authority, centuries are standing behind it. That’s why every religion tries to prove that it is the oldest religion in the world. Why? Because the older a religion is, the greater the authority it has. Hindus say that the Vedas are the oldest scriptures in the world; — Bibles and Korans and Guru Nankers are just very late arrivals. The Vedas are very, very old. Why so much insistence? Because the older a scripture is, the longer it has stood the test of time, the greater the authority it has gathered around it. Millions of seers are witnesses to it.

Zen says truth has nothing to do with authority, truth has nothing to do with tradition, truth has nothing to do with the past — truth is a radical, personal realisation. You have to come to it.

Knowledge is certain; the search for personal knowing is very, very hazardous. Nobody can guarantee it. If you ask me if I can guarantee you anything, I say I cannot guarantee you anything. I can only guarantee danger, that much is certain. I can only guarantee you a long adventure with every possibility of going astray and never reaching the goal. But one thing is certain: the very search will help you to grow. I can guarantee only growth.

Danger will be there, sacrifice will be there; you will be moving every day into the unknown, into the uncharted, and there will be no map to follow, no guide to follow. Yes, there are millions of dangers and you can go astray and you can get lost, but that is the only way one grows. Insecurity is the only way to grow, to face danger is the only way to grow, to accept the challenge of the unknown is the only way to grow. So I can guarantee only growth.

Knowledge guarantees everything. There will be no danger if you follow the Veda, if you follow the Bible — then you need not worry. Now it is Christ who has to worry about it, and he knows. You have simply to imitate him. And the seers of the Vedas know and Mohammed knows, so there is no need for you to make your own private effort. It has already been known, you simply believe. All that is required from you by ordinary religions is belief.

Zen says belief is counterfeit, borrowed. You have to grow and you have to take the risk. I can guarantee you risk. In the open sky of the truth one searches, with trial and error; many times going astray, and again and again coming back to the right path. That’s the only way. Truth is not cheap; belief is very cheap. Truth is very costly — you will have to pay with your life. Truth requires total sacrifice, nothing less will do.

Zen says that if you are believing scriptures, tradition, others…. It is irrelevant if they are wrong or right, that is not the point. Remember, Zen doesn’t say that the Bible is wrong, Zen doesn’t say that the Veda is wrong — Zen says they are irrelevant. I t has nothing to do with right and wrong. They may be right, they may be wrong, but that is not the point to be considered at all. Through them growth is not possible. Those who have written them were grown-up people, mature. They have asserted something that they have known — but for them that was KNOWING, for you it will be knowledge.

Knowing means that you have seen it with your own eyes; knowledge means you have heard it from others. It is very poor, and one who remains with knowledge remains poor. A pundit, a so-called learned man, is the poorest man in the world. He has only counterfeit money and he goes on counting it.

Source – Osho Book “Dang Dang Doko Dang”