Osho Quotes and Teachings - 108 Quotes and Teachings of Osho

A collection of Osho Quotes and Teachings on awareness, Brahman, Ardhanariswara etc. The Quotes and Teachings of Osho are from books, speeches, newspapers and online.

Nature gives everybody energy that is creative. It becomes destructive only when it is obstructed, when no natural flow is allowed.

People don’t like to do easy things. Before they can do them they want to make them hard, difficult. People enjoy hard things. Why? Because when you face hard thing, your ego becomes subtle, sharp, there is a challenge.

Try to make something perfect and it will remain imperfect. Do it naturally and it is always perfect.

Nature is perfect, effort is imperfect. So whenever you are doing something too much, you are destroying it.

(Source: Creativity Unleashing the Forces Within)

Life does not listen to your logic; it goes on its own way, undisturbed. You have to listen to life.

It is your fear that makes you a slave.

A man who is fearless is neither afraid of anybody nor makes anybody afraid of him. Fear totally disappears.

A person who is alive, really alive, vitally alive, will always move into the unknown.

Heart is the future; heart is always the hope, heart is always somewhere in the future.

Basically courage is risking the known for the unknown, the familiar for the unfamiliar and the comfortable for the uncomfortable.

You are truly wise if you are able to live in this world without being affected by your doings.

Giving up action is not an option because when you run away, that running away becomes your action.

The way for you to be unaffected while performing your duties is to give up the sense of doership.

There are things which can be known without moving into them – those are the futile things, those are intellectual things: philosophies, dogmas, creeds. But all that is real has to be lived, and all that is existential has to be penetrated, and the risk has to be taken.

Whenever something is borrowed, it becomes ugly. Only the firsthand experience is beautiful, because it liberates. The secondhand thing is ugly because it becomes bondage.

Truth can be lived or experienced; truth cannot be expressed in words.

If you believe in a dogma, you will miss the truth for all beliefs are barriers.

You have to die to be reborn; only first hand experience liberates.

The moment truth is uttered it becomes a lie for it is experience that counts.

Truth cannot be contained by any word whatsoever.

The word is a faraway echo of the real experience.

Feel as grateful to existence as possible – for small things, not only for great things… just for sheer breathing. We don’t have any claim on existence, so whatever is give is a gift.

Why wait for reasons to laugh? Life as it is should be reason enough to laugh. It is so absurd, it is so ridiculous. It is so beautiful, so wonderful! It is all sorts of things together. It is a great cosmic joke.

When you judge, division starts.

The other is never responsible. Just watch. If you become wise in the moment, there will be no problem. But everybody becomes wise when the moment is gone. Retrospective wisdom is worthless.

Feel as grateful to existence as possible – for small things, not only for great things... just for sheer breathing. We don’t have any claim on existence, so whatever is given is a gift.

All great discoveries are made by amateurs.

There is only one courage and that is the courage to go on dying to the past, not to collect it, not to accumulate it, not to cling to it. We all cling to the past, and because we cling to the past we become unavailable to the present.

Wherever you find that society is in conflict with nature, choose nature – whatever the cost. You will never be a loser.

The world is an echoing place. If we throw anger, anger comes back; if we give love, love comes back.

The moment you are illuminated, the whole of existence is illuminated. If you are dark, then the whole of existence is dark. It all depends on you.

Wisdom is the experience of your own nature; it is the expression of your self-being. It is the flowering of your own consciousness. It is not information, it is transformation.

We are not here just to survive and live long…We are here to live and know life in its multi-dimensions, to know life in its richness, in all its variety. And when a man lives multi-dimensionally, explores all possibilities available, never shrinks back from any challenge, goes, rushes to it, welcome it, rises to the occasion, then life becomes a flame, life blooms.

If you depend on someone for your happiness you are becoming a slave, you are becoming dependent, you are creating a bondage.

The more things accumulate the more life is wasted because they have to be purchased at the cost of life.

We go on believing that we are separate. We are not; not even for a single moment. Drop the idea of separation and the fear of death disappears. If you become one with the whole you will live forever. You will go beyond birth and death.

One has just to be oneself. That is my basic message. The moment you accept yourself as you are all burdens, all mountainous burdens simply disappear.

Don’t try to force anything. Let life be a deep let go. See god opening millions of flowers everyday without forcing the buds.

The child never dies in anyone. It is not that the child dies when you grow, the child remains. Everything that you have been is still within you, and will remain within you until your very last breath.

But society is always afraid of non-serious people. Non-serious people will not be ambitious for money, or political power; they would rather enjoy existence. But enjoying existence cannot bring you prestige, cannot make you powerful, cannot fulfill your ego; and the whole world of man revolves around the idea of the ego.

Playfulness is against your ego—you can try it and see. Just play with children, and you will find your ego is disappearing, you will find that you have become a child again. It is not only true about you, it is true about everyone.

Osho Quotes on Intelligence

Intelligence needs tremendous courage, intelligence needs an adventurous life.

Intelligence needs that you are always going into the unknown, into the uncharted sea.

Then intelligence grows, it becomes sharpened. It grows only when it encounters the unknown every moment.

People are afraid of the unknown, people feel insecure with the unknown. They don’t want to go beyond the familiar; hence they have created a false, plastic substitute for intelligence – they call it intellect.

Intellect is only a mental game. It cannot be creative.

Intelligence creates a Picasso, a Van Gogh, a Mozart, a Beethoven. Intelligence is a totally different dimension. It has nothing to do with the head; it has something to do with the heart.

The expert, the knowledgeable, the intellectual, has no insight of his own. He depends on borrowed knowledge, on tradition, on convention. He carries libraries in his head, a great burden, but has no vision.

Intellect is in the head; intelligence is a state of heart wakefulness. When your heart is awake, when your heart is in tune with existence, in harmony with existence, out of that harmony is creativity. (Source: Creativity, unleashing the Forces within – Osho International Foundation)

Osho on Attaining Truth

The first and the basic sutra to be understood is that truth is attained in emptiness and is lost in words. Truth is attained in silence and is lost in speech. Truth has no language; all language is untruth.

Language as such is created by man. Truth is not created by man, it is his discovery. Truth is. It is neither to be created nor to be proved but only to be unveiled. And this unveiling of the truth happens only when all the noise of language inside stops, because language is the veil. Thoughts are the only obstacle.

When a child is born he has no language. He does not come with any scripture, any religion, any caste or any nation. He arrives as an emptiness. The sacredness of emptiness is unique. Emptiness is the only virginity, the rest is all perversion.

The child arrives like a fresh flower, there is not even a scratch on his consciousness. He does not know anything. But the child’s capacity to know is pure. He is like a mirror on which nothing is reflected yet, but the mirroring capacity is total and pure. Later on there will be many reflections; knowledge will increase but the capacity to know will go on decreasing. Because that emptiness will become full of words the emptiness will cease to exist. It is as if the reflections on the mirror go on sticking to it and do not disappear from it. Then, the mirror’s capacity to reflect will go on decreasing.

A child is born; he does not know anything but his capacity to know is pure. That is why children learn quickly and old people learn with difficulty. It is so because the old person’s capacity to learn has become less – he has had enough of everything. A lot has been written on his slate; his paper is no longer blank now. For writing something new, the paper has to be made blank all over again.

You can attain truth only if you can become again like the newborn child. So the arrival of the child in this world is the first birth, and the second birth is when sainthood is born in him.

Osho

Source: The Great Transcendence – talks given in November 1975.

The obvious is the grave of the ego – Osho

The most obvious in life seems to be the most difficult; the most simple seems to be the most difficult; the most simple seems to be the most complicated.

The reason why it happens so, is because the mind is not interested in the obvious.

It wants the challenge of the impossible; only with the challenge of the impossible can the mind fulfil its ego. With the obvious, there is no space for the ego to grow or even to exist.

The obvious is the grave of the ego. The simple we take for granted, because it is so simple. Only the far away, the distant, catches our eye, invites us for a journey.

Nobody bothers to enter into himself, and to see the most miraculous, the most mysterious, the most fundamental principle of life, the very source of life – it is so close, so obvious, so simple.

Meditation simply means becoming empty – Osho

The greatest day in life is when you cannot find anything in you to throw out; all has already been thrown out, and there is only pure emptiness. In that emptiness you will find yourself; in that emptiness you find your pure consciousness.

Meditation simply means becoming empty to all the contents on the mind: memory, imagination, thoughts, desires, expectations, projections, moods. One has to go on emptying oneself of all these contents.

The emptiness is empty only as far as mind is concerned. Otherwise it is overflowing, full of being – empty of mind but full of consciousness. So don’t be afraid of the word empty; it is not negative. It negates only the unnecessary luggage, which you are carrying just from old habit, which does not help but only hinders, which is just a weight, a mountainous weight.

Once this weight is removed you are free from all boundaries, you become as infinite as the sky. This is the experience of God or what ever word one likes. Call it dhamma, call it truth, call it nirvana – they all mean the same thing.

Osho Quotes on Awareness

You can clean the floor like a robot, a mechanical thing; you have to clean it, so you clean it. Then you miss something beautiful. Then you waste those moments in only cleaning the floor. Cleaning the floor could have been a great experience; you missed it. The floor is cleaned but something that could have happened within you has not happened. If you were aware, not only the floor but YOU would have felt a deep cleansing. Clean the floor full of awareness, luminous with awareness.

Osho Quotes on Brahman and Ardhanarisvara

It is significant that in Sanskrit the word Brahman or the supreme energy of God, is categorized as neuter gender. Is Brahman male or female? No, it is neutral. …How can the supreme be male or female? That would make Brahman partial. No, the ultimate being is impartial. This impartiality is possible only if the proportion of male and female is fifty-fifty.

The concept of ‘Ardhanarisvara’ is the symbol of Brahman, the supreme, because the proportion of male and female in Brahman is fifty-fifty. Brahman is both man and woman, or it is neither.

Ardhanarisvara depicts a great psychological truth. This ancient symbol is a blend of male and female energies. One of its sides is feminine and the other is masculine, or you can say it is a blending or the combination of the two. It can also be said to be beyond the two.

The concept of God as Ardhanarisvara says that the primeval source of creation is neither male nor female or it is both.

Osho Teachings on Meditation

Whenever you understand that you have missed life, the first principle to be brought back is innocence. Drop your knowledge, forget your scriptures, forget your religions, your theologies, your philosophies. Be born again, become innocent – and it is in your hands. Clean your mind of all that is not known by you, of all that is borrowed, all that has come from tradition, convention. All that has been given to you by others – parents, teachers, universities – just get rid of it. Once again be simple, once again be a child. And this miracle is possible by meditation.

Meditation is simply a strange surgical method that cuts you away from all that is not yours and saves only that which is your authentic being. It burns everything else and leaves you standing naked, alone under the sun, in the wind. It is as if you are the first man who has descended onto earth – who knows nothing, who has to discover everything, who has to go on a pilgrimage.

The second principle is pilgrimage. Life must be seeking – not a desire but a search; not an ambition to become this, to become that, a president of a country or a prime minister of a country, but a search to find out ‘Who am I?’

(Source: Maturity: The responsibility of being oneself/ Osho)

Quotes of Osho on Joy

Joy is forever; happiness is momentary. Happiness is caused by the outside, hence can be taken away from the outside – you have to depend on others. And any dependence is ugly, any dependence is bondage. Joy arises within; it has nothing to do with the outside. It is not caused by others; it is not caused at all. It is the spontaneous flow of your own energy.

If your energy is stagnant there is no joy. If your energy becomes a flow; a movement, a river, there is great joy – for no other reason, just because you become more fluid, more flowing and more alive.

Joy has to be shared by sharing it you are unburdened, by sharing it you find new sources opening up within you, new streams and new springs. That sharing of your joy is love.

(Source: Joy – The Happiness That Comes from Within published by Osho International Foundation

Switzerland

)

Osho Quotes on Sannyasin

A Sannyasin is one who has come to understand the futility of so-called worldly life. A Sannyasin is one who has understood one thing – that something needs to be done immediately about his own being. If he goes on drifting in the old way, he will lose the whole opportunity of this life.
A Sannyasin is one who has become alert that up to now he has lived wrongly, has moved in wrong directions, has been too concerned with things and not concerned with himself has been too concerned with worldly prestige and power and has not been concerned about who he is.
A Sannyasin is one who is turning toward himself, paravritti. A Sannyasin is a miracle – the energy is moving back towards oneself.
Ordinarily the energy is moving away from you, towards things, targets, in the world. There energy away from you, hence you feel empty, dissipated, frustrated…the energy is oozing out every day. The greatest miracle in life is to understand this and to turn the energy towards home. It is a turning in. This turning in, paravritti, is sannyas. (Source: Book – Ancient Music in the Pine, page 169-170)

Osho Quotes and Teachings on Upanishads

Upanishads say you cannot experience God. If you experience God, then the God remains separate and you remain separate, because only the other can be experienced. Experience divides. This is the deepest message of all the Upanishads – experience divides. Because whenever you say experience, it means there three things, the experiencer, the experienced, and the relationship between the two, the experience.
Upanishads say the God cannot be known, because knowledge divides the knower, the known and the knowledge. If really you have become one, how can you experience? So even the experience disappears.
Upanishads say a person who claims he has experienced the divine is false; his claim proves that he is false. A knower cannot claim, one who has really experienced the divine cannot claim, because the very experience disappears.
Upanishads says that the divine can be defined only by negatives, so they go on negating. They say, ‘This is not Brahman, that is not Brahman.’ And they never say directly, they never assert directly. You cannot point to the Brahman with a finger, because your finger will become a limitation. Then Brahman will be where you finger is pointing and nowhere else. You can point to the Brahma only with a closed fist, so you are not pointing anywhere; or – everywhere. (Source: Vedanta: The Supreme Knowledge page 77, 107 – 108)

Osho Teachings on mind – the extrovert and introvert

The mind goes on dividing on every level of being. Wherever the mind looks, immediately it divides; division, to divide, is the nature of the mind. So we say, ‘above and below;’ we say ‘up and down;’ we say ‘this world and the other world’; we say ‘life and death; we say in and out’; ‘extroversion and introversion – but all the division are of the mind. The below is part of the above, the beginning of the above; up is nothing but the extension of down. Life and death are not two, but the same energy arising is life, the same energy dissolving is death. Our mind in are not two; the division is only mental.
But we exist extrovertedly; we exist outside. The ordinary man exists outside; he never goes in. He moves further and further out, because desires can be fulfilled only in the outside; some object is needed to fulfill them. The object can be found in the outside; there is no object within – there is only subjectivity, there is only you. You need something to fulfill desires, so you move in the world. The out is created because desired are moving outwardly.
Then a moment comes in everyone’s life when you get frustrated with this whole business – desires, the search for them, the objects – and you come to realize that the whole thing is futile. Then the other extreme arises in the mind: ‘Don’t go out, go in!’ Then you simply reverse the whole process. Before you were going out, now you start going in, before you were for the out, now you have become against it.
This type of mind which has become against the world, the out, is just the same man, the same mind, standing on its head. You are standing on your feet, he is standing on his head, but he is the same man, there is no difference. The difference comes into being only when you are not moving at all, neither out nor in; when the division between out and in has dropped. (Source : Vedanta : The Supreme Knowledge)

Osho on Why Hindus Don’t use the Word God-Fearing

In English we have a word, ‘god-fearing,’ for religious people. A god-fearing person can never be religious, because if you fear God you cannot love him. Love and fear cannot exist together.

With fear, hate can exist, love cannot exist with fear, anger can exist, love cannot; with fear you can bow down, but you cannot surrender; with fear you can be in a relationship between a slave and a master, but there cannot be a love relationship.

Hindus and Buddhists have a totally different attitude, and that attitude is different because they think the whole existence is a cosmic play; you can be playful.

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