Best 237 quotes of Osho on MyQuotes

Take the responsibility into your own hands, it is your life. So do whatsoever you like to do, ant never do anything that you don’t like to do. If you have to suffer for it, suffer, but don’t do it; do only that which you enjoy. If you have to suffer for it, suffer for it. One has to pay the price for everything; nothing is free in life. Then that is the price. If you enjoy something and the whole world condemns it, good! let them condemn. You accept that consequence because you like it so much, it is worth it. If you don’t like a thing and the whole world says ’beautiful’ it is meaningless, because you will never enjoy your life. It is your life – and who knows? tomorrow you may die. So enjoy it while you are alive! It is nobody else’s business – neither the parents nor the society’s nor anybody else’s. It is your life. And when you die the society will continue, so don’t bother about the society. When you die, only you die – nobody dies in your place. Your death will be absolutely individual. Death proves only one thing, that each individual is individual. And death is going to be yours, so how can life be of somebody else? You cannot live a borrowed life; you have to live your own life.

Take work as a game and enjoy it. Everything is a challenge. Just don’t go on doing it, dragging yourself because it has to be done. So there are only two possibilities: either find work you like or become capable of liking the work, whatsoever it is. The second is the best alternative because it is very difficult to find work that you like.like. Sooner or later you will dislike it. In the beginning, maybe you like it.

Tantra acceptance is total; it doesn't split you.

Taoism is the profoundest nonconformism that has ever been evolved anywhere in the world, at any time in history; essentially it is rebellion.

Tao simply means the ultimate principle that binds the whole existence together. Existence is not a chaos; that much is certain. It is a cosmos. There is immense order in it, intrinsic order in it, and the name of that order is Tao.

Tapascharya, spiritual practice means: accepting the truth that you are alone; that there is no way one can have a friend, a companion. No matter how much you long for it, regardless of how much you close your eyes and dream of them – you will still remain alone. For lives you built a home, you built a family, and then you lost it – and all through that you have always remained alone. Not even slightly has your aloneness been ever affected. So one who has known, one who has accepted that he is alone, for him there is an indication in this sutra: CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE BEING. Only being is yours, nothing else.

Teaching comes through the head, learning happens through the heart.

That is part of life. And life is more beautiful with a little madness in it.

That’s good. Don’t be a miser about love. Be a spendthrift. The more you give, the more you will have. Love is something that you earn by giving it. If you hoard it, it dies and leaves black holes in your being. If you give it, it flowers and in your being you feel lotuses flowering.

That’s what meditation is all about, to be capable of being alone. And remember, aloneness is not loneliness. Loneliness is the state of the person who cannot live alone; loneliness means you are dependent on the crowd, on the other. Aloneness means you are happy with yourself, you are not dependent on anybody. The moment you are not dependent you are an emperor, you are a god, a goddess. Now you have something to share, you can go into the world.

That which is of great value cannot be attained through aggression. You will be able to find the mystery of life only if you enter through the door of surrender. If you bow down, if you pray, you will be able to reach the center of love. Courting God is almost as good as courting a woman. One needs to approach Him with a heart full of love, gratitude and humility. And there is no hurry! Any haste on your part, and you miss. A great deal of patience is required. Your haste... and His heart will be closed. Even rushing things is an act of aggression.

The attitude of Tao is of cooperation, not conflict. The attitude of Tao is not to be against nature but to be with it, to allow nature, to let it have its way, to cooperate with it, to go with it. The attitude of Tao is of great relaxation.

The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it's not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of another person--without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now. Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, because it is not given by the other.

The choice between good and evil is all a matter of doctrine. In reality, one always has to choose between the greater evil and the lesser evil. Every choice in life is relative. It is not a question of whether what Krishna did was good or bad. The question is whether it would have resulted in good or bad had he not done what he did. The question would be much easier if it was a simple choice between good and bad, but this is not the case in reality. The realities of life are that it is always the choice between greater evils and lesser evils.

THE CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE ATMAN, THE SOUL. The first meaning is: in this world, only consciousness is yours. The word atman means: that which is your own. Regardless of how much the rest may appear to you as your own, it is alien. All of that which you otherwise claim as yours – friends, loved ones, family, wealth, fame, high position, a great empire – it is all a deception. Because one day death will snatch it all away from you. So death is the criterion for determining who is your own and who is the stranger. That which death can separate you from, know that it didn’t belong to you, and that which it can’t, was indeed your own.

The creative person has to dissolve all should and should nots. He needs freedom and space, vast space; he needs the whole sky and all the stars. Only then can his innermost spontaneity start growing.

The day is not only God's, the night is his also.

The day you leave, this will be your only contentment: if you have made the existence a little more beautiful.

The decision to be together should be unconditional. It should not be only if you love me, if you are sweet to me, if you are this and that to me – no. It is to be together whatsoever – sometimes sweet and sometimes very salty; sometimes very beautiful and sometimes a monster. Once you understand that, you have come to a mature love, otherwise love is only baby love. Small school children fall in love. They think in poetry and romance, and write poems and beautiful letters, but that’s all childish. They don’t know what life is going to be. It is a hard struggle. Because love is one of the most precious jewels, the struggle is very very hard. Only very few people achieve it.

The division between the known and the unknown is not complete. The East has a threefold division—known, unknown, unknowable. It agrees with the West that the unknown can become known, but the unknowable will always remain unknowable. There will always be mystery around human consciousness. There will be always mystery around love, friendship, meditation, consciousness. We may be able to know all that is objective. But the subjectivity, the innermost core of human consciousness, will remain always a mystery. And this has been the persistent effort of the East, to make it clear to the whole world that the unknowable should not be denied; otherwise you will take all juice out of human life. You will create robots out of human beings, you will destroy them, and they will be just machines and nothing more.

The family is one of the greatest traps that society has used for millennia to keep man a slave

The first step in awareness is to be watchful of your body. Slowly,slowly one becomes alert about each gesture,each movement. And as you become aware, a miracle starts happening: many things that you used to do before simply disappear. Your body becomes more relaxed,your body becomes more attuned, a deep peace starts prevailing even in your body, a subtle music pulsates in your body.

The golden flower blooms if you are ready to die to the past, if you are utterly in the present. And you can be utterly in the present only if you have no desire to be anywhere else in the future, if you have no desire to be somebody else. This I call enlightenment.

The great appeal of drugs in the West is only because the West has succeeded in destroying the right hemisphere completely because of compulsory education.

The joy of having something comes from the length of time you have been wanting it, expecting it. Happiness really lies in the expectation. So once you achieve it, it loses its charm for you. Every happiness is imaginary: so long as you don’t possess it, it seems to be abounding happiness. But as soon as it is actualized, it ceases to be happiness; our hands are as empty as before. And then we seek some other object for our desire, and we begin to expect it again. We feel so unhappy without it and imagine that happiness will come with it.

The man who had abused him would ask, ”I abused you yesterday, why did you not reply yesterday? You are very strange.” No one waits for a second when you abuse him. He retorts immediately.” Junnaid answered, ”My master taught me not to hurry in anything. Take some time. I must wait a little when someone insults me. If I were to give an immediate answer, the heat of the happening would catch hold of me; the smoke would blind my eyes. So I have to wait and let the cloud pass. When twenty-four hours have passed and the skies are clear again, then I can give my reply in full consciousness. Now I realize how tricky my guru was. Because I have never been able to answer my opponents since then.” Is it possible to hold on to anger for twenty-four hours? It is impossible to maintain it for twenty-four minutes or even twenty-four seconds. The truth is that, even if you hold back and watch for a single second, the anger vanishes. But you do not wait even for a moment. A person abuses you – as if someone switches the button, and the fan starts whirring. There is not the slightest gap between the two, no distance! And you pride yourself in your alertness! You have no control of yourself. How can an unconscious person be master of himself? Anybody can push the button and goad him into action. Someone comes and flatters you, and you are filled with joy; you are happy. Someone insults you, you are full of tears. Are you your own master or anyone can manipulate you? You are the slave of slaves. And those who are manipulating are not their own masters either! And the irony is that everyone is expert in manipulating others and none of them is conscious. What greater insult can there be for your soul than the fact that anyone can affect you?

The mystery is solved when you have become the mystery itself.

The only thing in your hands is your life—make it as rich as possible.

The only way to go beyond death is to accept death. Then it disappears. The only way to be fearless is to accept fear. Then the energy is released and becomes freedom.

The other is never responsible. Try to make this such a permanent state of awareness in you that whenever you start finding something wrong with the other, remember it. Catch yourself redhanded, and drop it then and there. And ask to be forgiven.

The path of Tao is not that of sudden enlightenment. It is not like Zen. Zen is sudden enlightenment, Tao is gradual growth.

The politician is the poorest man in the world, the most empty man, the most hollow—stuffed with straw and nothing else.

The reins of our life are in the hands of the future. Man always lives today in the hope of tomorrow. And likewise he will live tomorrow in the hope of the day after, because when tomorrow comes, it will come as today. So he never lives really, he goes on postponing living for the future. And he will never live as long as he lives on hope for the future. His whole life will pass away unlived and unfulfilled. At the time of his death he will say with great remorse, ”All my life I only desired to live, but I could not really live.” He had wasted all his todays in the hope of a tomorrow that never came. And on the last day of his life he faces a cul-de-sac beyond which there is no tomorrow, and no hope of any fruits of action. That is the despair of a future-oriented life.

There is a great need to be needed. Remember, you feel good whenever you are needed. Sometimes, even if it brings misery to you, even then you love to be needed.

There is a very delicate line between pornography and beauty. A naked woman is not necessarily pornographic; a naked man is not necessarily pornographic. A beautiful man, a beautiful woman, naked, can be examples of beauty, of health, of proportion. They are the most glorious products of nature. If a deer can be naked and beautiful—and nobody thinks the deer is pornographic—then why should it be that a naked man or woman cannot be just seen as beautiful?

There is no God, but I have found something far more significant

There is no other space, no other time. This moment is all. In this moment the whole existence converges, in this moment all is available.

The sensuous person is liquid, flowing, fluid. Each experience, and he becomes it. Seeing a sunset, he is the sunset. Seeing the night, dark night, beautiful silent darkness, he becomes the darkness. In the morning he becomes the light. He is all that life is. He tastes life from every nook and corner, hence he becomes rich. This is real richness. Listening to music he is music, listening to the sound of water he becomes that sound. And when the wind passes through a bamboo grove, and the cracking bamboos, and he is not far away from them: he is amidst them, one of them—he is a bamboo.

These things are natural. One has to accept them and by and by transcend them. If you feel too much anger, move into your room, beat the pillow, cry, weep, scream, but do it alone. Why show your ugly face to the other? What is the point? Just cathart. A wise person moves through his unhappiness alone, and whenever he is happy, comes and shares it with people. A fool shares his unhappiness with people, and when he is happy he sits alone.

The truth is, Krishna was born much ahead of his time. All great persons are born ahead of their time, and all insignificant people are born after their time. It is only mediocre people who are born in their time.

The unconscious mind goes on doing things and creating problems. There is no wall at all that you have to push through. The real thing is that you want to push, you are in a hurry. And because you want to push, you have to imagine a wall. It is your imagination. Just try to laugh at your imagination, at your hurry, because this is not the way meditation happens. Laugh, relax, and just be in the moment – watching whatever is going on, outside or inside, in the world or in the mind. You are neither the world nor the mind. You are behind all, just a pure watching consciousness.

The whole of history is the history of murderers. If you become a murderer, fame will be very easy. You can become a prime minister, you can become a president—but these are all masks. Behind them you will find very violent people, terribly violent people hiding, smiling. Those smiles are political, diplomatic. If the mask slips, you will always see Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadir Shah, Napoleon, Alexander, Hitler, hiding behind.

The worry simply means: you are clinging with something which is no more and you are avoiding that which is. That is worry. You know deep down that it is no more, it is gone and you know deep down that the new has come. But still you want to pretend, you want to deceive yourself. And one can deceive oneself; millions of people are deceiving themselves. But that deception simply destroys all the possibilities of being blissful, of being alive, of being celebrating. One creates great anxiety and a great split.

Things can be copyrighted, thoughts cannot be copyrighted, meditations cannot be copyrighted. They are not things of the marketplace. Understand the difference between an objective commodity and an inner experience.

This is my fundamental teaching: that there is no division between this and that. That is contained in this, the other shore is contained in this shore. You need not go anywhere. If you can be joyous, flowing, alive, sensitive, orgasmic, this very shore immediately is transformed into the other shore . . . this very world the paradise, this very body the Buddha.

This is the secret of the golden flower: if the heart can die the flower will bloom, die as you are so you can be reborn.

This should be one of the basic attitudes—not to think about what the other is doing. That is his life. If he decides to live it that way, that is his business. Who are you even to have an opinion about it? Even to have an opinion means that you are ready to interfere, you have already interfered.

Through understanding comes control. Through ignorance one goes on forcing and suppressing. Always do everything with understanding, and you never harm yourself or anybody else.

To be "great" is an ego goal; to be real is existential.

To see this mysterious existence, to feel it in the deepest core of your heart, and immediately a prayer arises—a prayer that has no words to it, a prayer that is silence, a prayer that doesn’t say anything but feels tremendous, a prayer that arises out of you like fragrance, a prayer that is like music with no words, celestial music, or what Pythagoras used to call “the harmony of the stars,” the melody of the whole. When that music starts rising in you, that’s what the Secret of the Golden Flower is all about: suddenly a flower bursts open in you, a golden lotus. You have arrived, you have come home.