When two mature persons are in love, one of the greatest paradoxes of life happens, one of the most beautiful phenomena. ~OSHO~

A mature person has the integrity to be alone. And when a mature person gives love, he gives without any strings attached to it: he simply gives. And when a mature person gives love, he feels grateful that you have accepted his love, not vice versa. He does not expect you to be thankful for it -- no, not at all, he does not even need your thanks. He thanks you for accepting his love. And when two mature persons are in love, one of the greatest paradoxes of life happens, one of the most beautiful phenomena: they are together and yet tremendously alone; they are together so much so that they are almost one. But their oneness does not destroy their individuality, in fact, it enhances it: they become more individual. Two mature persons in love help each other to become more free. There is no politics involved, no diplomacy, no effort to dominate.
How can you dominate the person you love?
Just think over it. Domination is a sort of hatred, anger, enmity. How can you think of dominating a person you love? You would love to see the person totally free, independent; you will give him more individuality. That's why I call it the greatest paradox: they are together so much so that they are almost one, but still in that oneness they are individuals. Their individualities are not effaced -- they have become more enhanced. The other has enriched them as far as their freedom is concerned.
Immature people falling in love destroy each other's freedom, create a bondage, make a prison. Mature persons in love help each other to be free; they help each other to destroy all sorts of bondages. And when love flows with freedom there is beauty. When love flows with dependence there is ugliness.
Remember, freedom is a higher value than love. That's why in India, the ultimate we call MOKSHA; MOKSHA means freedom. Freedom is a higher value than love. So if love is destroying freedom, it is not of worth. Love can be dropped; freedom has to be saved: freedom is a higher value. And without freedom you can never be happy -- that is not possible. Freedom is the intrinsic desire of each man, each woman -- utter freedom, absolute freedom. So anything that becomes destructive to freedom -- one starts hating it.
Don't you hate the man you love? Don't you hate the woman you love? You hate. It is a necessary evil; you have to tolerate it. Because you cannot be alone you have to manage to be with somebody, and you have to adjust to the other's demands. You have to tolerate, you have to bear them.
Love, to be really love, has to be 'being-love', 'gift-love'. 'Being-love' means a state of love. When you have arrived home, when you have known who you are, then a love arises in your being. Then the fragrance spreads and you can give it to others. How can you give something which you don't have? To give it, the first basic requirement is to have it.

OSHO

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Because of Jealousy you are in constant suffering. ~OSHO~

If everybody is in misery, it feels good; if everybody is losing, it feels good. If everybody is happy and succeeding, it tastes very bitter. But why does the idea of the other enter in your head in the first place? Again let me remind you: because you have not allowed your own juices to flow; you have not allowed your own blissfulness to grow, you have not allowed your own being to bloom. Hence you feel empty inside, and you look at each and everybody's outside because only the outside can be seen.
You know your inside, and you know the others' outside: that creates jealousy. They know your outside, and they know their inside: that creates jealousy. Nobody else knows your inside. There you know you are nothing, worthless. And the others on the outside look so smiling. Their smiles may be phony, but how can you know that they are phony? Maybe their hearts are also smiling. You know your smile is phony, because your heart is not smiling at all, it may be crying and weeping.
You know your interiority, and only you know it, nobody else. And you know everybody's exterior, and their exterior people have made beautiful. Exteriors are showpieces and they are very deceptive.
There is an ancient Sufi story: A man was very much burdened by his suffering. He used to pray every day to God, "Why me? Everybody seems to be so happy, why am only I in such suffering?" One day, out of great desperation, he prayed to God, "You can give me anybody else's suffering and I am ready to accept it. But take mine, I cannot bear it any more."
That night he had a beautiful dream -- beautiful and very revealing. He had a dream that night that God appeared in the sky and he said to everybody, "Bring all your sufferings into the temple." Everybody was tired of his suffering -- in fact everybody has prayed some time or other, "I am ready to accept anybody else's suffering, but take mine away; this is too much, it is unbearable."
So everybody gathered his own sufferings into bags, and they reached the temple, and they were looking very happy; the day has come, their prayer has been heard. And this man also rushed to the temple. And then God said, "Put your bags by the walls." All the bags were put by the walls, and then God declared: "Now you can choose. Anybody can take any bag."
And the most surprising thing was this: that this man who had been praying always, rushed towards his bag before anybody else could choose it! But he was in for a surprise, because everybody rushed to his own bag, and everybody was happy to choose it again. What was the matter? For the first time, everybody had seen others' miseries, others' sufferings -- their bags were as big, or even bigger!
And the second problem was, one had become accustomed to one's own sufferings. Now to choose somebody else's -- who knows what kind of sufferings will be inside the bag? Why bother? At least you are familiar with your own sufferings, and you have become accustomed to them, and they are tolerable. For so many years you have tolerated them -- why choose the unknown?
And everybody went home happy. Nothing had changed, they were bringing the same suffering back, but everybody was happy and smiling and joyous that he could get his own bag back.
In the morning he prayed to God and he said, "Thank you for the dream; I will never ask again. Whatsoever you have given me is good for me, must be good for me; that's why you have given it to me."
 Because of jealousy you are in constant suffering; you become mean to others. And because of jealousy you start becoming phony, because you start pretending. You start pretending things that you don't have, you start pretending things which you CAN'T have, which are not natural to you. You become more and more artificial. Imitating others, competing with others, what else can you do? If somebody has something and you don't have it, and you don't have a natural possibility of having it, the only way is to have some cheap substitute for it.
I hear that Jim and Nancy Smith had a great time in Europe this summer. It's so great when a couple finally gets a chance to really live it up. They went everywhere and did everything. Paris, Rome... you name it, they saw it and they did it.
But it was so embarrassing coming back home and going through customs. You know how custom officers pry into all your personal belongings. They opened up a bag and took out three wigs, silk underwear, perfume, hair coloring... really embarrassing. And that was just Jim's bag!
Just look inside your bag and you will find so many artificial, phony, pseudo things -- for what? Why can't you be natural and spontaneous? -- because of jealousy.
The jealous man lives in hell. Drop comparing and jealousy disappears, meanness disappears, phoniness disappears. But you can drop it only if you start growing your inner treasures; there is no other way.
Grow up, become a more and more authentic individual. Love yourself and respect yourself the way God has made you, and then immediately the doors of heaven open for you. They were always open, you had simply not looked at them.

OSHO

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LEARN THE LANGUAGE OF SILENCE. ~OSHO~

You have always remained just casually related, and when you are formally related to someone, you can go on chattering about a thousand and one nonsensical things because nothing matters it is just a pastime.
But when you start feeling closer to someone and an intimacy arises,then even a single word that you utter matters. Then you cannot play so easily with words because now everything is meaningful. So there will be gaps of silence. One feels awkward in the beginning because one is not accustomed to silence.One thinks something must be said,otherwise what ill the other think?
Whenever you grow close, whenever there is some sort of love,silence comes, and there is nothing to say. In fact, there is nothing to say—there is nothing. With a stranger there is much to say; with friends, nothing to say. And the silence becomes heavy because you are not accustomed to it.
You don't know what the music of silence is. You know only one way of communicating, and that is verbal, through the mind. You don't know how to communicate through the heart, heart-to-heart, in silence. You don't know how to communicate by just being there, through your presence. You are growing, and the old pattern of communication is falling short. You will have to grow new patterns of communication, nonverbal. The more mature one becomes, the more nonverbal communication is needed.
Language is needed because we don't know how to communicate. When we know how to, by and by, language is not needed. Language is just a very primary-school medium. The real medium is of silence. So don't take a wrong attitude, otherwise you will stop growing. Nothing is missing when language starts to disappear; this is a wrong idea. Something new has come into being and the old pattern is not enough to contain it.You are growing,and your dresses are becoming short. It is not that something is missing; something is being added to you every day.
The more you meditate, the more you will love, and the more you will relate. And finally one comes to a moment when only silence helps. So next time when you are with somebody and you are not communicating with words, and you are feeling very uneasy, feel happy.Become silent and allow that silence to communicate.
Language is needed to relate to people with whom you have no love relationship. Nonlanguage is needed for people with whom you have a love relationship. One has to become innocent again, like a child, and silent. Gestures will be there—sometimes you will smile and hold hands, or sometimes you will just remain silent, looking into each other's eyes, not doing anything, just being. The presences meet and merge, and something happens which only you will know. Only you to whom it has happened—no one else will become aware, it happens in such depth.
Enjoy that silence; feel and taste and savor it. Soon you will see that it has its own communication;that it is greater and higher and deeper and more profound. And that communication is sacred; it has a purity about it.
OSHO

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By purity Buddha always means Innocence. ~OSHO~

You will have to learn the ways of purity. By purity Buddha always means innocence, the unburdened consciousness -- unburdened of knowledge, unburdened of scholarship, Vedas, Bibles, Korans. They all burden you, they give you a false sense of knowing; and the false sense of knowing becomes the barrier in knowing. If you really want to become a knower you will have to drop all knowledge, you will first have to become ignorant. That is purity: a mind without any content, a mind like a child's, a pure mind.

And detachment.... By detachment Buddha means, don't think of yourself as the body. If you think yourself to be the body you cannot undertake this adventure of finding yourself, because you have already become identified with your body. Don't be identified with the mind either. If you think that you know already, then you will remain confined to whatsoever you are.
Remain open: that is detachment. Don't say that "I am the body, I am the mind." Say that "I know nothing. The body is there, the mind is there, but I don't know who I am. And certainly I am not my body."

As you go deeper into innocence you will be able to see that if your hand is cut off, your consciousness is not reduced that much -- it remains the same. Your leg can be cut off; your body is no longer the same, but your consciousness remains the same, it is not reduced. If your mind changes -- and mind continuously changes -- your consciousness does not change with your mind; it is an unchanging phenomenon. It is the only unchanging factor in existence; everything else is a flux. Only the witness remains permanent, absolutely permanent. It is eternal. Mind is time and you are timelessness.

But for that you will have to learn the ways of detachment and you will have to release great vigor, great enthusiasm and great energy. Ordinarily your energy is being wasted in unnecessary pursuits. You will have to cut your unnecessary pursuits. That is true sannyas.

Sannyas does not mean renouncing life but renouncing the unnecessary life. Just look, take note, watch, analyze, observe, and conclude how many things you are doing which are unnecessary -- how many things you go on doing because you have become accustomed to doing them. You have never thought about them, whether they are necessary or not. How much do you talk with people? Is it all necessary?

If you start watching you will be surprised: you will become more telegraphic, in words, in actions, in your pursuits. You will become very choosy. And you will be surprised that almost ninety percent of your activity was futile; its only function was to keep you occupied. Its only function was a slow suicide. It was poisoning you. When this ninety percent of your unnecessary activity is reduced, great energy becomes available to you. And only with such energy, such detachment and such purity can you create the right space in which light is seen.

Source - Osho Book "The Dhammapada, Vol7"

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Contemplation is not Meditation. ~OSHO~

Meditation is not a tension, it is not a strain. One is never tired of meditation. It is relaxation -- how you can be tired of it? It is deep rest, it is utter restfulness. One is available to everything; nothing can distract you.
You can listen to me either as concentration or as meditation. If you listen to me as concentration, then anything can distract. A car passes by... the cuckoo starts calling from the distance -- the chattering of the birds. Anything can distract you, any small thing. Not that the birds are interested in distracting you; they are not concerned with you at all. But you will feel anger arising in you.

That's why so-called religious people become more angry than anybody else. They live almost in rage. If a single person in your house becomes religious, he is enough to create trouble for everybody, because each small thing distracts him and then he takes revenge. You can listen to me in meditation. Then you are not concentrating on me; you are simply sitting available, open. The birds go on chattering; that too comes to you, but because you are not concentrating it is not a distraction -- it enriches. What I am saying to you is enriched. The singing of the birds becomes a background to it. And you never feel angry and you never feel tense.

Contemplation is also not meditation. Contemplation means thinking. Thinking can be of two types. One is zigzag, in jumps from one object to another, a little crazy; that is ordinary thinking. Anything leads to anything. A dog starts barking and you start thinking about your girlfriend. There seems to be no relationship, but maybe your girl had said once, "I go on barking at you and you don't listen!"

Suddenly the dog reminds you. Or maybe she also has a dog who barks at you whenever you go to see her. And then from one thing to another... you will not stay with anything long. The girlfriend reminds you of her mother, and so on, so forth. Nobody knows where you are going to end. When you will look retrospectively you will be surprised: just the dog barking in the neighborhood started the whole process of thought.

Contemplation means remaining concerned with one object, thinking about it and only about it. Thinking has a consistency. If you are thinking about love, then you are thinking about love and all its aspects. You don't jump from one thing to another. Yes, you have a little rope just so that you can move around the subject of love, but you keep moving around it, around and around. You forget the whole world -- love becomes your world for the moment.

Meditation is not contemplation either because it is not thinking at all -- consistent, inconsistent, crazy, sane. It is not thinking at all; it is witnessing. It is just sitting silently deep within yourself, looking at whatsoever is happening inside and outside both. Outside there is traffic noise, inside there is also traffic noise -- the traffic in the head. So many thoughts -- trucks and buses of thoughts and trains and airplanes of thoughts, rushing in every direction. But you are simply sitting aloof, unconcerned, watching everything with no evaluation.

OSHO. "The Dhammapada, Vol 9"

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Share more, and let sharing be the only law. ~ OSHO ~

If you are loving you remain relaxed. If you are not loving you become tense. Tension means simply that there is some energy that needs to be shared. If you don’t want to share it then it accumulates and becomes a headache. Always
remember that the more you share, the more fresh energy will be flowing in you.

I was reading the life story of a poet. He says he used to live in a very old house, two hundred years old. It was in a very primitive condition – no modern facilities, no electricity, no running water. The house had a beautiful well with very fresh water, very pure.

When electricity came to the town they closed the well hoping that if some day it was needed it could be re-opened. After fifteen years, just out of curiosity, the man opened the well, just to see how it was. It was one of the most ancient wells in that locality and it had never been dry. When all the other wells were dry, the whole town had come to drink from this one. When he looked in, it was completely dry. He couldn’t find an explanation so he asked the experts.

They said that if you don’t go on carrying water out of the well, sooner or later it dries up because the small springs that feed it with water become closed. Then by and by the water evaporates leaving the well dry. Each day the well needs to share – then it is always flowing, with new water always coming in.

The same is true for human energy also. Each man is a well of energy. Love means that you allow somebody to throw a bucket in you, to draw some energy from you. Don’t be a miser about it, otherwise soon you will start feeling that you are drying up. Then you will become tense and a deadness will gather around you. You become more and more afraid of sharing, because you think that if you share you will become even drier. You are in a vicious circle.

The whole logic is wrong. Whenever you feel something tension-like is gathering, share. Catch hold of any stranger, because in fact all are strangers. Some strangers you have known for a few years, some for a few months, some a few days, some you have just come to know, but you  are strangers. Even your husband with whom you have lived for years is a stranger. Two strangers living together by and by become familiar, that’s all.

Run and share with anybody, but never be miserly. I have been watching (to a sannyasin); you are becoming a little miserly. And you can like yourself only when you love. In fact when somebody likes you, only then can you like yourself. Each relationship is a mirror; it reveals your identity to you. Each relationship brings you something
of your inner heart which was unknown to you before. Man is such an infinity that thousands of relationships are needed – the father, the mother, the brother, sister, husband, wife, friend.

Thousands of types of relationships are needed to reveal you from every corner, from every aspect of your being, so that you know all your faces. Even then, all that you know about yourself will be less than you are. It can never be more than you, and it can never be equal to you because you are such an infinity that all the mirrors of the world cannot exhaust you. Something will always remain
elusive.

Share more, and let sharing be the only law. To be a miser is to be a sinner. That is my definition of being a sinner. Mm? We are here for such a short time; why be a miser? Share, and whatsoever you give, give wholeheartedly and much will come automatically. Not that you ask for it or demand it; it just comes. The whole of existence re-echoes you.

OSHO.  "Hammer on The Rock"

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Laughter is far more sacred than Prayer. ~OSHO~

Religion has been missing one very fundamental quality: the sense of humor. It has been very unfortunate because it has made religion sick.

The sense of humor is part, an essential part, of the wholeness of man. It keeps him healthy, it keeps him young, it keeps him fresh. And for centuries the sad people have dominated religion. They have expelled laughter -- from the churches, from the mosques, from the temples. The day laughter enters back into the holy places they will be really holy, because they will be whole. Laughter is the only quality that distinguishes man from other animals. Only man can see the ridiculous, the absurd. Only he has the capacity and the consciousness to be aware of the cosmic joke that existence is. It IS a cosmic joke; it is not a serious affair.

Seriousness is a disease, but seriousness has been praised, respected, honored. It was absolutely essential to be serious to be a saint; hence only pathological people became interested in religion, people who were incapable of laughter. And people who are incapable of laughter are subhuman, they are not human yet -- what to say about their being divine? That is impossible -- they have not yet become human. And to be human is the bridge between the animal and the divine. Hence I have tremendous respect for the sense of humor, for laughter.

Laughter is far more sacred than prayer, because prayer can be done by any stupid person; it does not require much intelligence. Laughter requires intelligence, it requires presence of mind, a quickness of seeing into things. A joke cannot be explained: either you understand it or you miss it. If it is explained it loses the whole point; hence no joke can be explained. Either immediately you get it.... If you don't get it immediately then you can try to find out the meaning of it; you will find out the meaning, but the joke will not be there. It was in the immediacy. Humor needs presence, utter presence. It is not a question of analysis, it is a question of insight.

As far as humor is concerned, to be a little bit Jewish is very good -- everybody should be a little bit Jewish! For enlightenment it will prepare the ground, it will make you more alive. Enlightenment is becoming totally alive. Laughter brings life to you. And if you can laugh totally there are a few more things to be understood. In deep laughter the ego disappears, it is not found at all. You can't have both laughter and the ego. If the ego is there it will keep you serious. All egoists are serious people, and all serious people are egoists.

To be able to laugh, you need to be like a child -- egoless. And when you laugh, suddenly laughter is there, you are not. You come back when the laughter is gone. When the laughter is disappearing far away, when it is subsiding, you come back, the ego comes back. But in the very moment of laughter you have a glimpse of egolessness.

There are only two activities in which you can feel egolessness easily. One is laughter, another is dancing. Dancing is a physiological method, a bodily method to feel egolessness. When the dancer is lost in his dance he is no more -- there is only dance. Laughter is a little more subtle than dance, it is a little more inner, but it has also the same fragrance. When you laugh.... It has to be a belly laughter. It should not be just superficial, it should not be just polite, it should not be just a mannerism.

OSHO. "The Dhammapada, Vol 11"

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Truth is achieved only by Awareness. ~OSHO~

One cannot find truth by mere thinking. Thinking is not the process that leads you to the truth. It leads only to inference. And inferences are just inferences, they are hypothetical. They may be true, they may not be true. They are just conjectures, not real conclusions. But the mind lives in thinking and it goes on believing that its conjectures are conclusions. They are not conclusions.

Truth is achieved only by awareness. It is not a mind process at all, it is a totally different phenomenon. You are not to think the truth, you have to stop all thinking to know truth; you have to forget all about truth, to know truth. You have to unburden yourself of all the theories, hypothesizes, philosophies, ideologies, that you have learned.

The process of achieving the truth is a process of unlearning, it is a process of unconditioning. Slowly, slowly one has to get out of the mind, to slip out of the mind; and one has to become just a pool of consciousness, a pure awareness. Just a sheer watchfulness: doing nothing, just watching, watching all that is happening in the outside world and in the inside world.

When one can just watch without any judgement interfering, without any old ideas coming in, then truth is revealed. And the miracle is: it does not come from somewhere else to you, it does not descend from above; it is found within you -- it is your intrinsic nature. It is really a great revelation to know truth because you are it and you have never lost it -- even for a single moment. You have always been it. It is impossible to lose it, because it is your nature and your nature cannot be lost. That's why we call it nature. That which cannot be lost is the very definition of nature. That which can be lost is not nature but nurture.

Truth is your nature, your very being, your very existence, your very center. It is through awareness that slowly slowly you reach your own center. When you have arrived at your own center, then you know what truth is. And it is not just knowledge of something objective, something there , but something subjective, something in here . And once known, it is known forever, once discovered, it cannot be forgotten. And to know truth is to be liberated, truth liberates, but remember: only your own truth liberates. Nobody else's truth can liberate you, Somebody else's truth will always become a bondage to you.

So the real master helps you to discover your own truth. He does not hand over to you a theory, a dogma, a creed. He does not hand to you anything at all. He never gives you anything; on the contrary, he goes on taking away all that you have been carrying with you for many many lives. Slowly slowly, he dismantles your mind, he cuts off your head. The day your head disappears you have arrived home. The master does not give you the truth, but he does take away all the lies from you. And once all the lies are taken away, truth is found within yourself. It was lying there, covered underneath the rubbish of thousands of lies.

Sannyas means, putting your head at the feet of the master and praying to him: "Please cut it off!" It is a strange prayer, but that's exactly what it is!

Source - Osho Book "Eight Four Thousand Poems"

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If Love has attachment in it, it is Lust. ~ OSHO ~

When lust is transformed and you enter into the city of love, you enter unattached. Remember, that is their definition of love. If love has attachment in it, it is lust, If love has no attachment in it, only then is it not lust. When you are in lust you are not really thinking of the other, thinking of your beloved or lover. You are simply using the other for your own ends. And of course, attachment is bound to be there, because you would like to possess him, and you would like to possess him or her forever. Because tomorrow also you may need, the day after tomorrow also you may need. You need a lover and you want to possess him.

LOVE is a gift. You give; you need not be worried about whether tomorrow he will be there to receive or not. Because a lover can give to the trees, to the rocks. A lover can give to the emptiness of the sky. A lover can simply flower and send his fragrance to the winds, even if nobody is there. Just think: Buddha sitting under his Bodhi tree, alone, full of love, overflowing.... Not that somebody is there to receive, but God is always there to receive, in so many forms, in so many ways.

Lust is greed, lust is attachment, lust is possessiveness. Love needs no possession, love knows no attachment, because love is not greed. Love is a gift. It is a sharing. You have found something; your heart is full, your fruits are ripe. You hanker that somebody should come and share. It is unconditional; who shares does not matter. But you are so full of it that you would like to be unburdened -- as when clouds are full of rainwater, they rain. Sometimes they rain in a forest, sometimes they rain on a hill, sometimes they rain in a desert, but they rain. The fact of where they rain is irrelevant. They are so full they have to rain. A lover is so full he becomes a cloud, full of lovewater; he has to rain. That raining is spontaneous.

OSHO.  "The Beloved, Volume2"

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Mind tends to be serious and sad. ~OSHO~

Religion has nothing to do with seriousness; seriousness is pathology. Religion is playful, sportlike, it is fun. Prayer is playing with God, and it is possible only if one remembers that one has to continuously choose to be cheerful.

Mind tends to be serious and sad. Mind exists and lives in misery; misery is food for it. The moment you are blissful, mind disappears -- hence the beauty of laughter. Laughter has something intrinsically spiritual in it: when you really laugh, mind disappears, and time also disappears. In total laughter you are herenow. There is no ego, nobody is laughing in you -- it is pure laughter.

The actor disappears, the doer disappears, only the happening remains. That is the beauty of blissfulness, and its benediction. It is possible only for a courageous person because it needs guts to lose the mind. It needs guts to get out of the calculative mechanism of the mind, and unless you get out of the mind you can't enter into the heart. Mind is doubt; the heart is trust, and trust is the door to the divine.

Hate is part of our unconsciousness: the more unconscious we are, the more hateful. The moment one starts waking up, becomes more alert, more aware, more conscious, one starts changing from darkness to light. That is real transformation -- not the change in your character but the change in your very consciousness. And the moment you are full of light, your life is full of love. That love is real character -- not the so-called cultivated virtue.

This inner light is possible only through being more alert. That's what meditation is all about: the art of alertness. Ordinarily we live like robots: mechanically, repetitively. We have to de-automatize ourselves, we have to make each act conscious. Small, ordinary acts, walking, sitting, standing, they all have to be changed into awareness.

Walk, but remain a witness to it. Eat, and remain a witness to it. Think, and remain a witness to it. Slowly slowly you start accumulating great reservoirs of awareness in you. At a certain point awareness changes into light. Just as at one hundred degrees' heat water evaporates, when your being is full of light your actions are full of love. Then love is spontaneous. You are not even thinking of it, you are not doing it: it is happening. You become just a medium to God.
God is love.

OSHO.  "Don't Let yourself be Upset by the Sutra, rather Upset the Sutra Yourself"



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To be born in the time of Buddha is a rare opportunity. ~OSHO~

Buddha says: You may be a human being, you may be born with all senses perfect, but if you are not born in the time of a Buddha you will miss the contact with the unknown. You may see the trees, you may see the flowers, you may see the stars, but these are nothing compared to a man of enlightenment -- because he represents the unknown in the world of the known. He brings a ray of God into the darkness of the earth. He's the real flowering of consciousness.

"It is rare," Buddha says, "to be born in the time of a Buddha." In fact, it is a great blessing just to occupy the same time, the same space, as a Buddha occupies -- because something of his vital vibrations is bound to touch you. His presence is bound to become a showering of benediction. Even if you never go to him, even if you are against him, even if he passes through your town and you don't have any time to visit him, even then his coolness will bring something to you, something unasked for. He will reach you uninvited.

Just think: if Buddha had not been born, the world would not be the same. And Christians have done well to begin their calendar after Christ. It is good -- Christ makes a tremendous break with the past. Just his existence -- Christ was a Buddha -- his existence created a totally different history. It is good that Christians date their history as after Christ and before Christ. Before Christ it is nothing; it is all ordinary. After Christ a tremendous phenomenon happened, and humanity started moving at a different altitude.

In India we could not do that, because we have encountered so many Buddhas. It was difficult for us to do it that way. Otherwise there would be so many calendars, and it would be confusing. But whenever a Buddha exists humanity takes a turn, an upward turn.

Whenever a Buddha enters into history, history is never again the same -- the total perspective changes. And when Buddha is present it is very easy if you meditate, because his energy is moving. You can simply ride on his wave. When you are doing your meditations alone and a Buddha is not present, you are fighting with such great barriers single-handed; it is almost impossible, improbable, that you will be the conqueror. With Buddha it is almost like this.

Ramakrishna used to say, "When the wind is blowing in the right direction, you simply leave your boat in the stream and the wind will take it. Just wait for the right direction; then you need not make any effort. You simply sit in the boat, the wind will take it." When Buddha is blowing and the whole existence is in an up-rise, then everything is going towards God. You can simply join hands, and you can ride on the wave very easily. You can simply leave your boat in the stream, and the stream is already going.

Hence Buddha is right when he says: To be born in the time of Buddha is a rare opportunity.

OSHO. "The Discipline of Transcendence, VOl 4"

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Life has to be a love song; if it is not, it is not life at all ~ OSHO ~

Life has to be a love song; if it is not, it is not life at all, it is only a slow death. It is dragging. One exists but one does not live. Life becomes a life only when your heart starts singing songs of love, when a poet is born in you and when a love affair starts with existence.

That's what sannyas is all about: it is a love affair with existence. It is not a philosophical effort to understand what it is all about, it is not a head trip. It is not trying to figure out the mysteries of life and existence -- no, not at all. It is simply a love affair. We are not concerned with knowing what it is; we are concerned with living it whatsoever it is -- XYZ. Our concern is to live it in its totality, because ultimately that is the only way to know it.

Hence, all creative activities are helpful: singing, dancing, music, poetry, sculpture, acting. All kinds of creative activities are good because they help your love energy to flow, your heart opens up more when you are creative. So whatsoever you do, do with the touch of creativeness. Innovate, bring something new into being.

It is not a question of whether you succeed or not; the only thing that is significant is that you tried. Even if the song is never completed, it doesn't matter -- you tried, and that's the real thing.

The very effort to transform your life into a song is the transformation. It is not a question of success and failure, achievement or non-achievement: it is not a competitive business. Even to fail on the way towards God is better than to succeed in the ways of the world. A love affair is a blind affair -- love is blind, blind in the eyes of logic.

Just this morning I was talking about a saint, Paltu. He has a tremendously beautiful sutra. He says that only those who are blind will be able to understand what I am saying. It is far more significant than what Jesus says. Jesus says: If you have eyes to see, see; if you have ears to hear, hear.

Paltu seems to go deeper than Jesus. He says: Only those who are blind will be able to see what I mean. Although both mean the same thing; when Jesus says, if you have eyes to see, and when Paltu says, if you are blind, both mean the same thing. Jesus is not concerned with the so-called eyes with which we see the world; he also is concerned with the eyes of the heart, but the way Paltu says it is far more beautiful.

He says: If you are logically blind, if you are blind in the eyes of logic and intellect, only then will you have eyes of the heart to see. But he does not mention that -- he says: Just be blind. That means, just be in love, and love is the only way to know God.

OSHO,  "Don't Let yourself be Upset by the Sutra, rather Upset the Sutra Yourself"

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I feel stuffed with my Stinginess - And still I hoard, Why? - ~ OSHO ~

You must be feeling empty. And you are not yet courageous enough to accept that emptiness. Hence one goes on stuffing in many ways. People stuff with food, people stuff with knowledge, and people stuff with many things: money, power.... Deep inside, everybody is empty. And that emptiness is divine, that emptiness is God. Buddha calls it SUNYATA -- nothingness. And sooner or later one has to come to terms with that inner emptiness.
There are only two types of people, the worldly and the other-worldly. The worldly is one who goes on stuffing the emptiness. And the other-worldly is one who comes to see the point that there is no way to stuff it. It remains empty. So why not face it? Why not BE it? Why not accept it? In that very acceptance, the revolution. The radical transformation. The metamorphosis.

And that is the whole art of meditation. But people ARE afraid -- the emptiness looks like death. So what I should suggest , I will suggest: Stuff a little more. Hoard a little more. Go on stuffing. So that you can see the foolishness of it. It seems you have not yet been able to see that the emptiness is eternal and cannot be stuffed by anything. Go on in this nightmare a little more, make it more nightmarish. People change only from the extreme.

It seems has been doing the thing moderately. Only lukewarm. The jump comes only from the hundred-degree point. Go on stuffing as much as you can. Put your whole energy into stuffing. In that very stuffing, a moment comes when you see clearly that the emptiness is eternal, that the emptiness is your very nature, that there is no way to stuff it. You can forget it for a moment by stuffing, but it remains there and asserts itself again and again.

Seeing that, stuffing stops -- not that you stop it. Seeing that, stuffing stops. And suddenly the benediction of emptiness spreads all over you. To be empty is to be divine. To be empty is to have come home. But do a little more.

I have heard a beautiful story: A man came to see his Rabbi, to ask his advice. He said 'Oh Rabbi, my life is so miserable. I have a small house, just one room, and it is much too crowded. There are my wife and myself, our twelve children, her old parents and mine, my deaf uncle and my crippled sister. I cannot pay for a bigger house -- what to do?'

The Rabbi thought for a while and said 'Do you have any animals?'
'Yes' said the man. 'There are five goats, three cows, ten chickens, two cats, two horses and a dog.'
Said the Rabbi: 'Bring them all into your house and let them live there for a week.'

The man was very puzzled, but since he respected his Rabbi very much he went and did as he was told. Life became nightmare. He had to sleep while standing, it was so crowded. And it was so impossible to breathe, it was stinking. He ran to the Rabbi after a week, completely crazy, and the Rabbi said 'I see that you have done what I told you. Very good. Now go home and take all the animals out. You will be surprised to see how much space is there now!'

Do that.

OSHO. "This very Body The Buddha".

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I am afraid of being Nobody. ~OSHO~

Everybody is afraid of being nobody. Only very rare and extraordinary people are not afraid of being nobody. A Gautam Buddha is needed to be a nobody. A Nobody is not an ordinary phenomenon; it is one of the greatest experiences in life -- that you are and still you are not, that you are just pure existence with no name, with no address, with no boundaries... neither a sinner nor a saint, neither inferior nor superior, just a silence.
People are afraid because their whole personality will be gone; their name, their fame, their respectability, all will be gone; hence, the fear. But death is going to take them away from you anyway. Those who are wise allow these things to drop by themselves. Then nothing is left for death to take away. Then all fear disappears, because death cannot come to you; you don't have anything for death. Death cannot kill a nobody.

Once you feel your nobodiness you have become immortal. The experience of nobodiness is exactly the meaning of nirvana, of nothingness, of absolute undisturbed silence, with no ego, with no personality, with no hypocrisy -- just this silence... and these insects singing in the night. You are here in a way, and still you are not.

You are here because the old association with the body. But look within, and you are not. And this insight, where there is pure silence and pure isness, is your reality which death cannot destroy. This is your eternity, this is your immortality.

Enjoy as much as you can moments of nobodiness. And it is such a simple, uncomplicated experience -- because you are nobody; you have just to sink within yourself a little deeper. Your personality is only on the surface. Inside is only a vast sky -- infinite.

Once you taste it without fear, you would love to go back again and again into the experience. Whenever you will have time, you would like to dive deep into your nobodiness. When you are nobody you are a Gautam Buddha. When you are nobody you are the whole existence.

There is nothing to fear. There is nothing to lose. And if you think anything is lost -- your name, your respectability, your fame -- they are worthless. They are playthings for children, not for mature people. It is time for you to be mature, it is time for you to be ripe, time for you, just to be.

Two drunks are walking down the streets of London with nothing to do, as all the pubs have closed long ago. They come by a street light and both stop to stare at it. After a few moments, one of them mumbles, "Is not the moon beautiful tonight?" The other one turns to him in surprise, and says, "The moon? That is the sun you are looking at."

They argue for a while, and just as they have decided to get an opinion, another drunk come stumbling around the corner. One of the first drunks asks him, "Excuse me, is that the sun or the moon?" The drunk shrugs his shoulders, and says, "Sorry, I don't know. I don't live around here."

All your name, and all your fame, and all your degrees and qualifications, and your richness, and your respectability and prestige, are nothing but different kinds of alcoholic beverages.

Only one who is nobody is not drunk. Only one who is nobody is fully awake, fully alert. And in his alertness he gains the whole world; in his nobodiness the whole universe can disappear. It is so vast. Your somebodiness is so small. The more you are somebody, the more small you are. The more you are nobody, the bigger.... Be absolutely nobody, and you are one with the existence itself.

OSHO. "The Razor's Edge".

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Live in the world but don't allow the world to Live in you. ~OSHO~

If you live rightly, in twenty-four hours' time you will cross many times to this shore from that, from that to this, from this to that -- many times God will penetrate you, radiate you. Many times you will be suddenly on the other shore. Walking on the street... and suddenly he is there. The sun is falling on you, the sunrays falling behind the trees... and suddenly the other shore is there. It is not somewhere far away near other galaxies; it is always here. It is a quality of your awareness, it is a quality of your understanding, it is a quality of your meditation. If you are unburdened here, unobsessed with the worldly things....

Live in the world but don't allow the world to live in you. And then you will be alone even in the crowd... and even in the crowd you will see the other shore. The other shore becomes so close that you can cross the barrier any moment you want. It is so easy, like breathing -- but the art has to be learnt. It is a question of art, skill. Be skillful. Love, but don't allow your love to become lust. Love, but don't allow your love to become attachment. Love, but don't allow your love to become a dependence, a slavery. And then... then love tremendously. Then there is no fear. And loving, you will be able to cross to the other shore without any difficulty.

Use money, but don't become money-minded. I'm not saying escape from money, and I'm not saying escape from your wife and children and desert them and go to the Himalayan caves -- I am not teaching any sort of foolishness to you. And neither is Kabir in favor of that. Kabir is tremendously life-affirmative, he's absolutely for life. In fact, anybody who knows God will be for life, because this life is of God. If you escape from life you are escaping from God himself -- from the very opportunity where he was available. Don't escape anywhere. Rather than putting effort into escaping, put more effort into becoming aware. That will be the REAL escape: without escaping anywhere, you will create a cave in your heart... and you will start living there.

And the other shore is always by the corner. Any moment you want, you can move... and you can have as many drinks out of God in the day as you like. Looking at a flower, you can drink him... and the other shore opens. It is a vision -- it is not a material thing. Looking at a roseflower, silently, lovingly, without any verbalization inside -- total silence... and the silence becomes luminous, and the silence becomes a song, and a vision arises. The flower disappears, you disappear... and God is there. In the disappearance of the subject and the object, the gap arises. Between the two notes, the pause... and suddenly you are on the other shore.

OSHO,  "The Divine Melody".

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Man is fast asleep not only in the night but in the day too. ~OSHO~

The fundamental problem is not metaphysical, it is not concerned with the ultimate reality. It is concerned with you, your mind, your functioning of the mind, your sleep, your state of a sleepwalker.

Man ordinarily exists only mechanically. He is not aware although he believes he is aware. In fact that belief hinders him from becoming aware. Man is fast asleep not only in the night but in the day too. He is constantly dreaming. You can watch it yourself. Any time close your eyes, relax a little and you will be surprised: dreams start moving. They were already moving like an undercurrent. You were occupied with outside reality, hence you were not looking at them, but they were there all the time. Your back was towards them. Just look a little in and you will find thousands of dreams crowding you: possible, impossible, consistent, inconsistent.

When you see this state, you will understand why humanity has missed always the awakened ones. The awakened one has no more any undercurrent of dreaming in him. He is fully alert, aware. He speaks the language of awareness and you are asleep. There is no possibility of communication between you and the awakened one. He shouts, he makes every effort to reach you, to penetrate you, to penetrate your sleep and unconsciousness, but it is thick, dense and very deep.

Rarely do you hear him, very rarely, and even when you hear him you misinterpret him. Even when you hear him you don't listen to him. You are like a drunk who seems to be hearing, but still goes on interpreting according to his  drunken state. The whole humanity needs to be part of an organization like Alcoholics Anonymous. You may not be alcoholic, you may not be taking any intoxicant, you may not be taking or injecting any drug, but the society goes on injecting into your blood, into your being, many poisons.

For example, each child is poisoned by the society through teaching him ambition. Ambition is a poison far more dangerous than any alcohol can ever be, far more dangerous than marijuana or LSD, because ambition destroys your whole life. It keeps you moving in a false direction. It keeps you imagining, desiring, dreaming, it keeps you wasting your life. Ambition means a subtle creation of the ego, and once the ego is created you are in the grip of darkness. And the whole social structure depends on ambition. Be the first! Wherever you are, whatsoever you are doing: be the first! -- as if being the first has something divine about it. By what means you become the first is irrelevant. By right means or wrong means, succeed! As if success in itself has become equivalent to life, synonymous with life.

Life has nothing to do with success. Success keeps you rushing towards the future and that becomes your intoxicant. Hoping, hoping for the tomorrow, wasting that which you have or that which you don't have and will never have.

OSHO, "The Dhammapada, Vol 9"

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People see only that which they desire and they project their desire. ~OSHO~

With the dissolution of the mind, the whole world that the mind has created around itself also dissolves, obviously -- it depended on the mind, it was mind's projection. Not that the trees will disappear and the roses will disappear... roses will be far rosier and trees will be far greener. People will be far more beautiful; even pebbles on the seashore will be like diamonds. Everything will become precious.

This world, the real world, is not going to disappear with your mind, but you are living in a totally different private world: the world of your desires. You don't see the real world, you only see your own private world projected on the real world. The real world is simply being used as a screen on which you go on projecting your desires. You never see that which is; you only go on seeing that which you  desire.

It is said that the shoemaker never looks at people's faces, he always looks at their shoes. Of course he is not concerned with their faces, he has nothing to do with their faces; he is concerned with their shoes. And by seeing the shoes he knows about the person; the shoe contains all the messages for him: whether the person is rich or poor, successful or unsuccessful. The shoe will say everything: the shape of the shoe, the newness, the oldness, the tiredness of the shoe; everything will say what kind of man this is. The shoe, analyzed by a shoemaker, will give you a perfect analysis of the man. There is no need to go to a psychoanalyst, you can go to the shoemaker, leave the shoe with him. And he can make a chart about you: what kind of man you are, what is happening in your life.

The tailors never see you, they only see your clothes. They decide from your clothes. People see only that which they desire and they project their desire. If somebody is full of lust even an ugly woman may look beautiful.

OSHO Book "The Dhammapada, Vol 11"

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When I say "become water" I mean become a flow. ~OSHO~

When I say "become water" I mean become a flow; don't remain stagnant. Move, and move like water. Lao Tzu says: The way of the Tao is a watercourse way. It moves like water. What is the movement of water? or of a river? The movement has a few beautiful things about it. One, it always moves towards the depth, it always searches for the lowest ground. It is non-ambitious; it never hankers to be the first, it wants to be the last. Remember, Jesus says: Those who are the last here will be the first in my kingdom of God. He is talking about the watercourse way of Tao--not mentioning it, but talking about it. Be the last, be non-ambitious. Ambition means going uphill. Water goes down, it searches for the lowest ground, it wants to be a nonentity. It does not want to declare itself unique, exceptional, extraordinary. It has no ego idea.

OSHO

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