"The greatest fear in the world is of the opinions of others. And the moment you are unafraid of the crowd you are no longer a sheep, you become a lion. A great roar arises in your heart, the roar of freedom."
"Don't move the way fear makes you move. Move the way love makes you move. Move the way joy makes you move."
"Once you have started seeing the beauty of life, ugliness starts disappearing. If you start looking at life with joy, sadness starts disappearing. You cannot have heaven and hell together, you can have only one. It is your choice."
"This is what enlightenment is all about - a deep understanding that there is no problem. Then, with no problem to solve, what will you do? Immediately you start living. You will eat, you will sleep, you will love, you will work, you will have a chit-chat, you will sing, you will dance - what else is there to do?"
"You can love as many people as you want - that does not mean one day you will go bankrupt, and you will have to declare, 'Now I have no love.' You cannot go bankrupt as far as love is concerned."
"Let this truth go as deep in you as possible: that life is already here, arrived. You are standing on the goal. Don't ask about the path."
"Experience life in all possible ways -- good-bad, bitter-sweet, dark-light, summer-winter. Experience all the dualities. Don't be afraid of experience, because the more experience you have, the more mature you become."
"Only people who carry the opinions of others need the support of others. "
"Falling in love you remain a child; rising in love you mature. By and by love becomes not a relationship, it becomes a state of your being. Not that you are in love - now you are love."
"The perfectionist is bound to be a neurotic, he cannot enjoy life, until he is perfect. And perfection as such never happens, it is not in the nature of things. Totality is possible, perfection is not possible."
"The heart is always right-- if there's a question of choosing between the mind and the heart-- because mind is a creation of the society. It has been educated. You have been given it by the society, not by existence. The heart is unpolluted."
"If the whole existence is one, and if the existence goes on taking care of trees, of animals, of mountains, of oceans -from the smallest blade of grass to the biggest star -- then it will take care of you too. Why be possessive? The possessiveness shows simply one thing - that you cannot trust existence. You have to arrange separate security for yourself, safety for yourself; you cannot trust existence. Non-possessiveness is basically trust in existence. There is no need to possess, because the whole is already ours."
"Looking at a sunset, just for a second you forget your separateness: you are the sunset. That is the moment when you feel the beauty of it. But the moment you say that it is a beautiful sunset, you are no longer feeling it; you have come back to your separate, enclosed entity of the ego. Now the mind is speaking. And this is one of the mysteries, that the mind can speak, and knows nothing; and the heart knows everything, and cannot speak. Perhaps to know too much makes it difficult to speak; the mind knows so little, it is possible for it to speak."
"There are only two kinds of people in the world: the majority are running after shadows; their begging bowls will remain with them till they enter their graves. And a very small minority, one in a million, stops running, drops all desires, asks for nothing--and suddenly he finds everything within himself."
"When joy has a reason, it is not going to last long. When joy is without any reason, it is going to be there forever."
"This cloud has to be dropped. And it is just with your decision to drop it that it will disappear. You are clinging to it - the cloud is not interested in you, remember it."
"Drop the idea of becoming someone, because you are already a masterpiece. You cannot be improved."
"Nature doesn't bang any drums when it bursts forth into flower, nor play any dirges when the trees let go of their leaves in the fall. But when we approach her in the right spirit, she has many secrets to share. If you haven't heard nature whispering to you lately, now is a good time to give her the opportunity."
"Everybody who has burned with intense inquiry has found the sunrise. Others only believe. Those who believe are not religious, they are simply avoiding the great adventure of religion by believing."
"All you can do now is to relax into this no-thingness...fall into this silence between the words...watch this gap between the outgoing and incoming breath. And treasure each empty moment of the experience. Something sacred is about to be born."
"The majority consists of fools, utter fools. Beware of the majority. If so many people are following, that is enough a proof that something is wrong. Truth happens to individuals, not to crowds."
"If you really want to know who I am, you will have to be absolutely empty as I am. Then two mirrors will be facing each other, and only emptiness will be mirrored. Infinite emptiness will be mirrored: two mirrors facing each other. But if you have some idea, then you will see your own idea in me."
"People come to me and they say, "We want to know God -- where is God?" Now, the question is just absurd. WHERE IS HE NOT? You ask WHERE He is; you must be dead blind. Can't you see Him? Only He is! In the tree and in the bird, in the animal, in the river, in the mountain, in man, in woman... everywhere He is. He has taken so many forms to surround you, to dance around you. From everywhere He is saying "Hello!" and you don't listen. From everywhere He is calling you. From everywhere He is inviting you: "Come to me!" But you are somehow keeping your eyes closed, or you have got blinders on -- you don't look anywhere."
"True tears are better than false smiles."
"If love cannot give freedom, then it is not love."
"Meaning is man-created. And because you constantly look for meaning, you start to feel meaninglessness."
"The moment you enter into the world of words you start falling away from that which is. The more you enter into language, the farther you are away from existence."
"The time you spend waiting, isn't for regret or impatience - it's for experimenting with timelessness and exploring the effects of dropping expectations. Though it might seem like gestation is taking forever, your bud will bloom in no time at all."
"This waiting makes one a medium for the divine forces of existence."
"The 'zero' place occupied by the Fool is the numberless number where trust and innocence are the guides, not skepticism and past experience."
"Your somebodiness is so small. The more you are somebody, the smaller you are; the more you are nobody, the bigger. Be absolutely nobody, and you are one with the existence itself."
"And each person is such an infinite mystery, inexhaustible, unfathomable, that it is not possible that ever you can say that "I have known her," or, "I have known him." At the most you can say, "I have tried my best, but the mystery remains a mystery." In fact the more you know, the more mysterious the other becomes. Then love is a constant adventure."
"Truth is simple. Very simple. So simple a child could understand it. In fact, so simple that only a child can understand it."
"Only an integrated person can relate, and the paradox is that he does not bother! An integrated person is not bothered about relating or not relating: if it happens, good; if it doesn't happen, it's good. He is happy with himself, his happiness does not depend on relationship... but only he can relate. And the person who is not self-integrated cannot relate, is continuously bothered about how to relate, and thinks that everything will be good if he can relate."
"The original source of all tension is 'becoming'. One is always trying to be something; no one is at ease with himself as he is. The being is not accepted, the being is denied, and something else is taken as an ideal to become. So the basic tension is always between that which you are, and that which you long to become."
"No hurry. No haste. No worry. No waste."
"I am not here to give you answers, I am here to provoke in you the question mark, the ultimate question mark."
"The guide is not outside, the guide is within you. One has to go deeper into one's own being to find the guide. Once the inner guide is found there are no more mistakes, no repentance, no guilt. There is no question of doing good or doing bad. One walks in light and one walks lightly because the head and the burden of the head is no more there. And when one walks in light and walks lightly, life becomes laughter, love, joy."
"Love will give you the courage to move out of the patterns of logic. The person who lives in logic is a coward."
"If you love light, one day you will suddenly recognise that darkness is nothing but a phase of light, a resting phase of light."
"Go in. Go in. Gone."
"Zen has a different approach. It says: Be in the life - life is not wrong. If something is wrong it is wrong in your vision. Your eyes are clouded, your mirror of consciousness is dusty."
"What is politics? Politics is ambition, politics is ego, politics is aggression, politics is violence, politics is an ego-trip."
"To be somebody means creating anxieties in a silent pool, ripples and waves. The greater the ambition, the more tidal is the wave of anxiety."
"Both meet in you - time and eternity. Now it is for you to decide. If you move in ambition, you will move in time; and death exists in time. If you move in desire, you will move in time; and death exists in time. If you hanker for the ego, you will move in time. Death, ego, desire, ambition, they all are part of the horizontal line. If you start digging in the moment and move vertically, you become a nonego, you become desireless, you become nonambitious. But suddenly you are aflame with life, you are an intense energy of life."
"The bottle of ambition contains pure poison, but the label is not that of poison: the label says it is pure nectar."
"What is the root of your misery? The root is your ambition, desiring. One wants to be this and that, one wants to possess this and that, one wants to be somebody, one wants to be significant."
"Man is not destroyed by other small things - marijuana, LSD, etcetera - he is destroyed by something far deeper. Ambition is the most poisonous thing."
"Love is the fire in which everything is reduced to ashes."
"Love is a dangerous path and only those who have courage can travel it."
"Beware of learning, otherwise you may never become wise."
"Drop all diplomacy. Be authentic, sincere; be as you are: no pretensions, no false personalities, no facades; just being utterly nude as you are, utterly naked in your reality. To live in falsities is to live in hell."
"Meditation is just a courage to be silent and alone."
"I seem to you self-contradictory, inconsistent, for the simple reason that I have decided not to die before I die. I am going to live to the very last breath, so you cannot be certain about me till my last breath. After that you can make any image of me and be satisfied with it. But remember, it will not be me. To be with me needs courage, and the greatest courage is being capable of seeing the change and moving with it. It may be difficult; it is easy to have one idea once and then be finished."
"Whatsoever you are with yourself you are with others."
"My work is to undo what the priests have done, to destroy all guilt and instead to create self-love. And whenever one loves oneself, one becomes capable of loving the whole existence."
"Remember always, whatsoever the personality brags about is exactly the opposite of your reality."
"Sometimes stand in front of a mirror and look at yourself with very loving eyes. Sometimes touch your own face with a loving hand. One should learn how to love oneself. Lie down on the bed and feel yourself."
"Dropping all ideals and desires to be somebody or somebody else, and just living moment to moment the simple, ordinary life. And slowly slowly, a clarity arises that nothing has ever been missing. From the very beginning things are perfect."
"Love is the only real richness; all other kinds of richness are deceptive. They are ways to cover our emptiness"
"I teach you to be selfish. I teach you self-love because it is only through self-love that you will be capable of loving others. Self-love is not against altruistic love, in fact it is the beginning of it."
"If a person is incapable of loving himself he cannot love anybody else in the world."
"Unconditional is the only way love can be. Wherever a condition comes in, love disappears. Love can only live like the vast sky. Love knows no boundaries."
"Love unconditionally - the trees and the rocks and the sun and the moon and the people."
"Meditation is not concentration but relaxation - one simply relaxes into oneself."
"Just relax, because only in relaxation will you realize what is hidden in you."
"That is a fundamental understanding of a meditator - that he does not take himself seriously."
"Let-go means no competition, no struggle, no fight... just relaxing with existence, wherever it leads. Not trying to control your future, not trying to control consequences, but allowing them to happen... not even thinking about them. Let-go is in the present; consequences are tomorrow."
"You would like to live a life where there is no suffering, but that life is not possible if you continuously carry the ego with you. You cannot make a life around you so that suffering disappears. If you carry the ego, again and again you will bump into some reality which will hurt the unreal. Whenever there is an encounter between reality and unreality, the unreal causes suffering."
"If you really want to get rid of misery and suffering then you will have to understand - you don't have a self. Then it will be not just a small relief but a tremendous relief."
"Opposites are complementaries. If you can suffer your suffering in totality, in great intensity, you will be surprised: Saul becomes Paul. The same energy that becomes hate becomes love, the same energy that becomes pain becomes pleasure, the same energy that becomes suffering becomes bliss."
"The moment you become identified with your suffering you want to discard it, you want to get rid of it, it is so painful. But if you are a witness then suffering loses all thorns, all stings. Then there is suffering, and you are a witness to it. You are just a mirror; it has nothing to do with you."
"Remember, one who enjoys more is bound to suffer more because he becomes very sensitive. But suffering is not bad. If you understand it rightly, suffering is a cleansing. If you understand it rightly, sadness has a depth to it which no happiness can ever have."
"You have escaped but you escape from one suffering to another, because a mind which was creating a suffering will create another. So you can escape from this suffering to that, but suffering will be there because your mind is the creative force.Accept the suffering and pass through it; don't escape."
"This relaxation is the space in which happiness grows, and again I repeat: for no reason at all. It is not that you are happy because of something. You are simply happy. Happiness is your nature."
"Unhappiness is something nurtured, you have learned it. Every credit goes to you for all your misery, but for happiness, you cannot have any credit. It is natural. You were born happy."
"Bliss is a happiness uncaused. Simply as you are, you are happy. There is nothing to say about why you are happy."
"You may be seeking happiness, but not truth. Happiness happens when truth is achieved. But if you are seeking happiness you cannot achieve truth, because happiness is a byproduct; you cannot achieve it directly, there is no way to it - it comes via truth. If you reach the true, happiness will happen; it is a shadow, it comes with the truth. But if you seek happiness, then happiness is not possible and truth is missed."
"Whenever you feel happy, you were not looking for it."
"Remember moments of happiness: you were not there."
"Why is man unhappy? No animal is so unhappy, no bird is so unhappy, no fish is so unhappy as man. Why is man so unhappy? Because man desires happiness, and the birds are happy right now; the trees are happy right now. Man desires happiness; he is never happy here and now."
"Mind is always bribing you by entertainments: put on the radio, put on the TV, go to the movie or at least to the club, gossip - do something. Boredom is a punishment from the mind to you if you are not doing anything. And the greatest problem for the meditator is boredom. But if you can sit absolutely unconcerned about boredom - let the boredom be there - if you don't get disturbed by the boredom, within three to nine months' time the boredom will disappear. And instead of boredom there will come such a bubbling joy, such freshness, that you have never known before."
"Facing boredom is meditation. Keep alert! Watch it, witness it. If it is there, then it is there. It has to be looked into, to the very core of it."
"The meditators are the only people who destroy boredom completely. They are so thrilled by existence, they are so thrilled just by their consciousness, they are so thrilled by falling in tune with the heartbeat of the universe that it is impossible to be bored. It is changing every moment; it is every moment a new universe, and it is every moment a new dance, a new song, a new music, which you have never heard before."
"The moment the mind becomes impotent, the work of the Master is finished. Then he simply watches. Then he enjoys the disappearance of your ego, your mind, your whole so-called personality."
"The work of a Master is really the work of seduction: he seduces you into the unknown. There is no other way, only seduction can be helpful. You cannot be convinced of the unknown; whatsoever you can be convinced about is bound to be the known. The unknown is unknown. You have not tasted of it, you have not even heard anything about it, you have no idea what it is."
"One thing is certain: once the journey begins you cannot come back. A journey begun is already half the work done; once it begins it has to reach to its climax. Only the beginning part is the most difficult part."
"Zen wants you to resurrect, to take hold of your life again, which you have given to somebody else to be taken care of. Be a master, and you will start blossoming flowers of beauty and blissfulness and ecstasy, and a divine drunkenness."
"According to me, if you are living joyously, you are a holy man."
"Either you can desire or you can live, you can't do both. If you desire, you postpone living; if you live, who bothers about desiring? Today is enough unto itself."
"Life is purposeless. Don't be shocked. The whole idea of purpose is wrong - it comes out of greed. Life is a sheer joy, a playfulness, a fun, a laughter, to no purpose at all."
"My effort here is to help you to worship life, to live so joyously, with such humor, that your life becomes a dance. I don't want you to become sad and serious - sincere of course, but serious, never. I would like you to go deeper into existence. Dance with the flowers!"
"You don't have to transcend anything. You have to live everything that is natural to you, and live it fully, without any inhibition - joyously, aesthetically. Just by living it deeply, a transcendence will come. You are not to transcend anything. Remember my words. A transcendence will come by itself, and when it comes by itself it is such a release and such a freedom."
"Meditation is the art of living with yourself. It is nothing else than that, simply that: the art of being joyously alone."
"I don't promise you anything. I don't promise you the kingdom of God, I don't promise you enlightenment - I don't promise at all. My whole approach is of living moment to moment; enlightened or unenlightened, what does it matter? Living moment to moment joyously, ecstatically, living moment to moment totally, intensely, passionately ... If one lives passionately, the ego dissolves. If one is total in one's acts, the ego is BOUND to dissolve. It is like when a dancer goes on and on dancing: a moment comes when only the dance remains and the dancer disappears. That is the moment of enlightenment."
"Live your today as fully as possible. From where is your tomorrow going to be born? It is in the womb of today. It is going to come from your life that you have lived today. There is no need to worry about it, it will be taken care of. By your living in the present without sacrificing a single moment for any ideal, I can guarantee you all the ideals that have haunted human imagination can be fulfilled - not by sacrifice, but by living as deeply, as fully as possible."
"Dance, then, wherever you may be. I am the Lord of the Dance said me."
"Everybody is capable of living joyously. It is the tomorrow that goes on poisoning you. Forget yesterdays, forget tomorrows. This is our day! Let us celebrate it and live it."
"A man of enlightenment does not practice compassion. He has not even to think about compassion, he simply finds it. As his ego disappears and as he realizes the ultimate universal life force as his own."
"Sympathy is not compassion; it is just the opposite. Sympathy is a kind of exploitation of the other person. When you sympathize with somebody, you are higher, better, and the other is lower, falling, degraded. Your ego gets immense satisfaction out of sympathy. But this is how the unconscious mind functions. You don't know exactly what you are doing."
"If you say you will not move into sadness, that you want only happiness, then you cannot flow. Flow is only possible if you accept everything as it is, unconditionally."
"Let this become your key - next time when anger comes, just watch it. Don't say 'I am angry'; say rather 'Anger is there; I am watching it.' And see the difference! The difference is vast."
"That is the sign of wisdom: freedom from desire. Only fools desire. Wise people live and live joyously, but without desire. Either you can desire or you can live, you can't do both. If you desire, you postpone living; if you live, who bothers about desiring? Today is enough unto itself."
"You don't have to transcend anything. You have to live everything that is natural to you, and live it fully, without any inhibition - joyously, aesthetically. Just by living it deeply, a transcendence will come. You are not to transcend anything. Remember my words. A transcendence will come by itself, and when it comes by itself it is such a release and such a freedom."
"I don't promise you anything. I don't promise you the kingdom of God, I don't promise you enlightenment - I don't promise at all. My whole approach is of living moment to moment; enlightened or unenlightened, what does it matter? Living moment to moment joyously, ecstatically, living moment to moment totally, intensely, passionately"
"A man of truth simply says the truth; whether it hits you, makes you an enemy, who cares? The man of truth only cares about truth."
"You cannot make an opinion about the truth."
"A man of real truth has no need to be humble. He is neither egoist nor humble, because those are the same things in different quantities. Only the egoist can become humble. I cannot say I am a humble man. I cannot say that I am a simple man, because simplicity is only a lesser form of complexity, and humbleness is on a lower strata, the same as ego. They are not different; the degrees are different. I am neither humble nor egoist. I am simply just the way I am."
"Creativity itself is divine."
"Love is never a relationship, and relationship is never love. Love relates, but it is not a relationship. Relationship is a dead thing, a closed thing. Love is a flowing."
"Two individuals relating remain individuals; two individuals getting into a relationship lose their individuality. They become a couple, and to be a couple is an ugly thing. That means you have lost your freedom, you are no more yourself; the other is also no more himself or herself. Both have lost their freedom and nobody has gained anything out of it."
"Life is not serious. You are serious. Life is not anything serious; nothing can be more nonserious than life. Life is absolutely nonserious!"
"Existence exists without any cause. Thinking in terms of causes leads nowhere. If you go beyond one cause then there is another cause. If you go beyond that, then another cause comes. And the why remains. Always, endlessly. You ask why and again you are confronted with another why."
"No matter what, you are alone. And all the fiction that there may be somebody who is just made for you, there may be somebody who will fill this gap, this emptiness in you. Nobody can do it; not because nobody wants to do it, no, everybody would love to do it, but it is just not possible in the very nature of things."
"Our whole education system is based on giving ready-made answers. Because of those ready-made answers you never develop your intelligence; there is no need. You ask the question and a computer teacher answers them."
"To be feminine is to become passive, to be feminine is to allow; to be feminine is to wait, to be feminine is not to be in a hurry and tense; to be feminine is to be in love."
"I am in support of a matriarchal system. I would like the power to go to women because basically they are non - aggressive; they are loving, they are compassionate. But it has nothing to do with biology really; even the male mind can become feminine. And the whole process of transforming the male mind is the art of meditation."
"I would like the woman to become as feminine as possible, only then can she flower. And the man needs to be as masculine as possible, only then can he flower. When they are polar opposites, a great attraction, a great magnetism, arises between them. And when they come close, when they meet in intimacy, they bring two different worlds, two different dimensions, two different richnesses, and the meeting is a tremendous blessing, a benediction."
"Just watch people who have succeeded in the world and you will drop the idea of success. Nothing fails like success. Although you have been told that nothing succeeds like success, I say to you that nothing fails like success. Happiness has nothing to do with success, happiness has nothing to do with ambition, happiness has nothing to do with money, power, prestige. It is a totally different dimension."
"You don't have to change your anger, you don't have to change your greed, you don't have to change anything. You have simply to be alert and aware. And all the projections of greed, all the projections of anger, all the projections of delusion, will evaporate - just the way, every morning, your dreams evaporate. They are made of the same stuff as dreams are made of."
"Fear is natural. Don't condemn it, and don't feel that it is something wrong. It is just part of this whole social upbringing. We have to accept it and go beyond it; without condemning it we have to go beyond it."
"If you start living in the moment, fear disappears. Fear comes through desire. So basically, desire creates fear. Look into it. Whenever there is fear, see from where it is coming - what desire is creating it - and then see the futility of it."
"Love knows to roar like a lion too. Love is not just sweet poetry. If love were just sweet poetry, it could not exist in this insane world. It has to be strong enough, stronger than hate, stronger than anger, it has to be a lion's roar."
Osho