Osho – You are many, you are a crowd. The master is one, he is not a crowd. You are not one, you are many selves. So one moment you are one thing, another moment you are another thing. You go on changing.

Just watch your mind — every moment you go on changing, because one self says do this, then another self comes and says don’t do this, then another self comes and says do something else. And you have many selves — you are multipsychic. You don’t have one mind, you have many minds. And you are being tortured by all these minds, pulled into different directions.

The master has no mind, hence he becomes one. With no desire, with no possessions, with no desire even for heaven, he is bound to become one. He becomes integrated. He is really individual, literally individual.

The word ‘individual’ means one who is indivisible. You are not individuals, you are only persons, personalities — and that too not one. You have many personalities, many faces, you wear many masks. The master has no masks, no faces; he has only one face — his original face. He is simply natural. He has no mind; hence he is one.

And the miracle happens: when you are one with yourself, when you are one within yourself, you become one with the whole. And that is the ultimate state. Call it nirvana, call it kingdom of God, call it God-realization, or whatsoever name you want to give it — it is nameless. But this has been the real goal of all the seekers of truth.

Let this be your only goal. Prepare for it. I hope these beautiful sutras of Buddha will help you tremendously. Meditate over them. They are not philosophy; they are just statements of inner truths, statements of his experience. And they are also statements of my experience.

Whatsoever I am saying here is not just a commentary on Buddha’s sutras; Buddha’s sutras are just an excuse. I am saying something which is my own experience. I would like you to be able to say one day this is your experience too. It is possible. You all have the potential of being a buddha. Don’t settle for anything less than that. Shake yourself and wake up!

source – osho book “the dhammapada vol 12″

Buddha Sutra – “They delight in Meditation.”

Osho on above Buddha Sutra – This is a very significant sutra; remember it. Buddha says: THEY DELIGHT IN MEDITATION. It is easy to meditate if you don’t want to be blissful — it is very easy to meditate. If you want just to be blissful and you don’t want to be in meditation, that too is easy. The rarest combination is meditation plus bliss. Meditation minus bliss is easy; bliss minus meditation is easy. But meditation minus bliss is not true meditation and bliss minus meditation is not true bliss either. They are true only when they are together.

Many people have tried to meditate without bliss because it is simple, less complex. You have to take only one work upon yourself: that you have to still your mind. And you can force your mind to be stilled, but you will become sad, you will have a long face.

That’s why your saints — so-called saints — look sad. Sadness has become a necessary quality for being a saint. They can’t laugh, they can’t dance, they can’t sing, they can’t love, they can’t rejoice. They talk about bliss but they only talk about it. You don’t see any bliss in their eyes, you don’t see any bliss in their milieu, you don’t see any bliss radiating from their inner center. They look sad, dull, dead, unintelligent, for the simple reason that they have chosen a shortcut and there is no shortcut. They have avoided the complexity of spiritual transformation. They have chosen meditation, they have forced their mind to be still. It is a negative state; their minds are only empty, not silent — forcibly made still. But it is not a natural growth of silence, it is not the flowering of silence. Their silence is like the cemetery, it is not the silence of a garden.

The silence of the garden is full of music: the bees humming and the birds singing and a distant call of the cuckoo. They are all in it, essential parts of it. The garden has a very living silence, full of song and joy. The cemetery is also silent, but it is only the silence of death; because there is nobody, hence there is silence.

You can meditate, force yourself to be silent, but you will miss God, you will miss nirvana. And you can also try to be blissful; that means you can pretend, you can practice, you can rehearse bliss. You can always try to be blissful, smiling, at least looking happy.

Slowly slowly, it becomes so practiced… like Jimmy Carter. Now his smile is disappearing, but just remember two years before — you could have counted his teeth! You can practice it. I have heard that in the beginning days of his presidency his wife had to close his mouth in the night! I don’t know how far it is true, but it appears to be true — because if you practice the whole day, then in the night too your muscles become fixed. Even in sleep you will go on smiling.

You can practice blissfulness too, but a practiced blissfulness is false. Anything practiced is false, remember it — never forget it. Things have to be spontaneous and natural, not practiced, not cultivated. Cultivated blissfulness is only a mask. You are smiling, but the smile is not in the heart. You are showing joy, but you are not joyous. Your heart is a desert; only on the face you have put plastic flowers. They may deceive others, but they can’t deceive you and they can’t deceive a master. Your smile, your joy, is formal — just good manners.

This too has happened. There have been many saints, very blissful, always singing and dancing, but deep down just deserts. They both have chosen only the half, and the half-truth is far more untrue than any untruth.

Truth has to be total, truth has to be whole. And the whole truth is: bliss PLUS meditation. It is difficult of course, arduous, to manage both. Why? — because they seem to be polar opposites. Meditation means silence and bliss means dance. Meditation means stillness and bliss means a song. Meditation means escaping from the world and bliss means sharing with the world. Meditation you can do in a Himalayan cave, but to be blissful you will have to come back to the world.

Bliss needs to be shared; it exists only in sharing. It can’t exist when you are alone, it disappears. It is a communion. Meditation can exist in aloneness and bliss can exist in togetherness. But when both exist then you have to learn a totally new way of life.

Source – Osho Book “Dhammapada, Vol 8″

Buddha Sutra – The Seeker is not Sorry.

Osho – Buddha says: Teach people that the search for truth should not be a sad search. This is one of the things which has been very much misunderstood. Somehow the sad people have dominated the whole religious scene down the ages. Only once in a while do you find a Buddha or a Jesus or a Zarathustra who talks about joy, who talks about living in bliss. Only once in a while do you find a Krishna — who not only teaches dance but dances himself, who not only teaches singing but sings himself. Otherwise the scene is dominated by pathological people, either by masochists or by sadists.

Ninety-nine percent of so-called religious people are ill, seriously ill people. They have gone into religion because they have failed in life, they have gone into religion because they could not cope with life. It is an escape — and the escapist can never be happy.

Christians say that Jesus never laughed. Now, there cannot be a greater lie than that. Jesus, and never laughed? Then who will be able to laugh? Then nobody will be able to laugh at all! And the whole life of Jesus proves that he must have been a man of very joyous nature. He must have been really spiritual — in the sense the French use the word SPIRITUEL. In French this word ‘spirituel’ means both “spiritual” and “humorous.” There seems to be a great insight in it — the same word meaning both. He must have laughed with his companions. It is well known that he used to enjoy eating and drinking, and when a man enjoys eating and drinking it is difficult to think of him never laughing. People who enjoy eating and drinking, people who enjoy parties, also enjoy dancing and singing and joking. He must have laughed, he must have joked. One cannot believe that twenty-four hours a day he was delivering only gospels — he must have gossiped!

But the people who are sad, they would like him also to be sad. All the figures, statues, paintings of Jesus seem to be false. And they have been changing down the ages. In the earliest pictures he was shown without beard and mustache. After two centuries, suddenly the beard and the mustache appeared — because without a beard and a mustache he did not look like a prophet; he looked too young, not mature enough. A face without a beard and without a mustache looks a little boyish… suddenly the beard appeared.

In the East just the opposite has been the case. Buddha is never painted with a beard, neither is Krishna or Mahavira, neither is Rama or Patanjali… nobody. Why? — because the Eastern idea is that these people were so young, spiritually young, that it is better to let them appear young from the outside too. The outside should represent the inside. Buddha became very old, he died when he was eighty-two, but still he is never depicted as having a beard.

Jesus died when he was only thirty-three, but the beard appeared after two centuries. Still his face was not sad. After two centuries even that face changed. He became more and more sad — as if he were carrying the whole burden of the earth. Now they have changed him into the savior; he is carrying the cross. He has come to deliver you from your sufferings, he is taking your sufferings on himself. And they have falsified this beautiful man who used to enjoy the company of very ordinary people — carpenters, laborers, gardeners, fishermen, gamblers, prostitutes, drunkards, tax collectors, every kind of people — even tax collectors!

They are making him more and more abstract; he is losing his earthliness. He is becoming more and more a concept rather than a real human being; he is losing his humanity. He is no more the Son of Man, he is becoming only the Son of God. These are the sad people who are projecting their sadness on him. They say he never laughed — I can’t believe it. I can believe a far more impossible thing….

The followers of Zarathustra say that he laughed the very moment he was born — I can believe that, that he was born laughing. It looks absolutely impossible — no child is ever born laughing — but it has something beautiful about it. Zarathustra getting out of the womb, laughing, appeals to me more. Such a joyous spirit! That’s why Zarathustra could not become a world religion. The followers of Zarathustra are confined to Bombay only. And they are good people — not religious in the ordinary sense, not at all.

Nobody thinks that Parsis are religious; in India nobody thinks them religious. They enjoy eating, they enjoy beautiful clothes, they enjoy the beautiful things of life, they enjoy beautiful houses… they enjoy everything! And we have the idea of religion as renunciation.

I can believe Zarathustra coming into the world laughing, but I cannot believe Jesus never laughing, because to me sadness can never become the source for the search — although millions of people go in search of God just because they are sad. You remember God only when you are unhappy, miserable; when you are in deep anguish then you remember God, otherwise who cares?

But let me tell you: if you remember God only when you are miserable, your remembrance is not worth anything. It is almost a complaint; it is not a prayer, it cannot be. You cannot be grateful for being miserable, and prayer needs to be essentially gratitude.

Buddha says: THE SEEKER IS NOT SORRY. He is telling his bodhisattvas: Go to the people and tell them that if you don’t drop your being sorry you can never become a real seeker. Seek God out of happiness, seek God out of joy, seek God because this call of the cuckoo is so beautiful, because the songs of the birds are so joyous, because the flowers are so ecstatic, because life is such a blessing. Look at the blessing that life is and then go for the source of it. From where are all these songs and all these flowers and all these stars born? What is the cause of it all, of this mysterious existence?

Don’t go in search because you are sad, miserable, a failure. If you go with failure in your heart you will be simply repressing your sadness. You may start smiling, but that smile will be only a painted smile. You can see the priests smiling, but that smile is not true, it can’t be true. They have never loved life enough for their smile to be true, they have never lived life enough for their smile to be true. They are escapists, they are afraid of life. And the people who are afraid of life, their search is wrong from the very beginning. But this misunderstanding has happened and this misunderstanding has to be dispelled.

A policeman patrolling lovers’ lane late at night shines his flashlight in the window of a car and sees a couple making love. He taps on the window and says, “I am next!” In ten minutes he comes by again and the couple is still making love, so he taps on the window again and says, “I am next!”
In twenty minutes he comes by again and the couple is still making love. Again he taps on the window and says, “I am next. What’s taking you so long anyway?”
The man looks up and says, “Man, I’m really nervous. I’ve never screwed a cop before!”

Misunderstandings and misunderstandings…. Buddhas have been misunderstood so much that whatsoever you think about Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, Lao Tzu, be very cautious — ninety-nine percent of it is going to be a misunderstanding. If you ask me, “Who are Christians?” I say “The people who have misunderstood Christ.” If you ask me, “Who are Buddhists?” I will say, “The people who have misunderstood Buddha.”

Misunderstanding is so easy because if you want to understand a buddha you will have to rise a little higher to see what he is showing. But if you want to misunderstand you need not move anywhere; wherever you are, remain there and you can misunderstand. To misunderstand is so comfortable, so cozy. You can misunderstand without any effort; it requires no change on your part. But it will show in your life.

People go to the temples, but there is no dance in their eyes. Going to the temple and no dance in your feet and no dance in your eyes — then why are you going? What is the point? Why are you wasting your time? People are praying, but there is no joy, there is no light on their faces. Then why are you wasting your time and God’s time? But one thing is good: that God is utterly deaf — deaf to all languages. He listens only to silence, he is available only to silence. So you can go on praying — nobody is listening. It is a monologue.

Martin Buber says that prayer is a dialogue. I say no, unless a prayer is absolutely silent it is not a dialogue. Martin Buber says a prayer means an I/Thou dialogue. If there is I, then there can be no Thou; these two things can’t exist together. If there is I AND Thou, then the Thou is only a projection and there is no dialogue at all; it is a monologue. You can believe that somebody is listening — nobody is listening. You are simply wasting your time, your breath. Do something else, anything will be better. Even playing cards will be far better, drinking Coca-Cola will be far better!

Your prayers are meaningless. You cannot hide the fact. If you move towards God or truth in sadness, in misery, in some way or other, your life will show it. Truth cannot be repressed.

The Gladwells had a baby born without ears. They brought it home and their neighbors, the Petersons, were preparing to visit it. “Now, please be careful,” said Mrs. Peterson to her husband. “Don’t say anything about the baby not having any ears.”
“Don’t worry,” said Peterson. “I won’t do anything to hurt their feelings.”
So they went next door, up into the nursery and stood over the new baby’s crib with the Gladwells. “He’s so cute,” said Mrs. Peterson to the baby’s mother.
“Yeah,” agreed Mr. Peterson. “What strong arms and legs the kid has — he’s gonna grow up to be a bruiser.”
“Thanks,” said the baby’s father.
“How’s the kid’s eyes?”
“They’re perfect!” said Gladwell.
“They’d better be — he won’t ever be able to wear glasses!”

Somehow or other it is going to come up. How can you avoid it? The more you avoid, the greater is the possibility you will stumble upon it. In fact, the very effort to avoid it makes you focused on it; then you can’t see anything else.

A very holy man went into an optician’s one day to order a new pair of spectacles. Behind the counter was an extremely pretty girl, which reduced the customer to total confusion.
“Can I help you, sir?” she asked with a ravishing smile.
“Er — yes — er… I want a pair of rim-speckt hornicles… I mean I want a pair of heck-rimmed spornicles… er… I mean….”
At which point the optician himself came to the rescue.
“It’s alright, Miss Jones. What the holy man wants is a pair of rim-sporned hectacles.”

Hence Buddha says the seeker has to start his journey not out of misery but out of joy. Rejoice in life.

Source – Osho Book “Dhammapada, Vol 11″

Buddha Says : “Awake. Be the Witness of your thoughts“

Osho on above Buddha Sutra - In these simple words he has given to the world the greatest meditation: vipassana. More people have become enlightened through vipassana than through any other method. There are thousands of methods but vipassana seems to be the easiest, the most perfect, and very natural. It does not demand any unnaturalness from you.

Reverend Johnson, an old black preacher, was warning his parishioners about sin.
“Sin,” he said, “is like a big dog. There is the big dog of pride, and the big dog of envy, and the big dog of gluttony, and finally there is the big dog of sex. Now, folks, you gotta kill those big dogs before you are ever gonna get to heaven. It can be done — I know — because I’ve done it. I killed the big dog of envy, and the big dog of pride, and the big dog of gluttony — and yes, brethren, I killed the big dog of sex!”

“Brother!” came a voice from the back of the church, “Are you sure that last dog didn’t die a natural death?”

You cannot kill these dogs. Either they die a natural death — but that does not bring any transformation to you — or you have to become masters. There is no need to kill… Buddha will not suggest you kill anything. Why kill anything? If you kill anger you will never be compassionate in your life, because it is anger, and the energy involved in anger, which becomes compassion. If you kill sex you will be simply impotent, that’s all; you will not attain to love. It is sex transformed that creates love energy. Love energy is confined to sex. When you bring awareness to it, sex disappears but love energy is released. Anger disappears but compassion is released. Greed disappears and sharing comes in its place.

It is not a question of killing; these are energies. Don’t be such a fool as to kill anything, because if you kill it you will miss something very essential in your life. Transform. Religion has to be the real alchemy, the science of transformation. It is not murderous.

But the stupid religious people go on murdering, destroying. They are destructive, self-destructive. Hence even if they drop their anger they don’t become graceful, they don’t attain to creativity, they don’t contribute to the world and its beauty. They are burdensome, they are not in any way a help. They are a hindrance in the progress of humanity. Buddha will not suggest to you to kill anything. He says: Just be awake. BE THE WITNESS OF YOUR THOUGHTS.

Anger is a thought, sex is a thought. Just watch, be alert, let them move on the screen — anger, greed, lust — and you remain aloof, cool, just a witness. In the beginning it is very difficult, but only in the beginning. If you persist then within three to nine months you will be able to do the impossible.

One day it happens that your witness has become so perfect that the screen remains empty, nothing passes — no thought, no desire. That day you have attained to the first state of samadhi, the first satori. And the first satori is the beginning; it triggers many satoris in you, culminating ultimately into samadhi, into nirvana.

When the mind becomes just a pure mechanism… when you want to use it, you use it, when you don’t want to use it, it remains silent.

Source – Osho Book “Dhammapada, Vol9″

Osho - Pleasure is dependent on others, and whatsoever is dependent on others will make you a slave, will create a bondage. And Buddha’s ultimate goal is freedom, nirvana — freedom from all bondage.

Hence all the awakened ones have been saying: Search for bliss. Don’t waste your time in ordinary pleasures. In the first place they are momentary; in the second place every pleasure brings pain. Pain is the other side of the same coin. It brings pain in the same proportion; the greater the pleasure, the greater the pain. So when you are enjoying something, be aware: soon the pain will follow; it is inevitable. Just as the day follows the night and the night follows the day, pain and pleasure follow each other. They are not separate, they are inseparable.

First, pleasures are momentary, they are just soap-bubbles. To waste your precious life for them is simply stupid, unintelligent. Second, every pleasure brings pain. But people are so foolish that they never look at the association. They think pain has come from some other source, they think pleasures can be forever. Again and again they are ditched by their pleasures into pain; again and again they go on thinking that there were some reasons why this pleasure was destroyed.

Whether reasons were there or not is irrelevant; every pleasure is momentary, it is going to disappear, and in its wake the pain…. You can rationalize it; that rationalization will only help you to continue in the same old rut. But see the fact. Seeing the truth is a great liberation; seeing that every pleasure is inevitably a bringer of pain, you will be freed from both.

And third: it is the same energy that is involved in pleasure which has to move towards bliss. Pleasure is dependent on others; bliss is totally independent, it is your own. It arises within your being, it is your self-nature; hence you are not dependent on anybody. And because it is your self-nature it is forever. There is no contrary, there is no opposite to bliss.

Happiness is just in between pleasure and bliss. In happiness something is independent and something is dependent; it is a mixture of both. Hence the man who lives in sheer pleasure is in a better condition in a way; he is healthy, as healthy as animals are. Animals live in sheer pleasure: when the pain comes they suffer, when the pleasure comes they enjoy. They go on rotating between pleasure and pain. The man who lives only in pleasures — a Don Juan — he is in a way healthy, normal, because he is part of the animal world; he is not yet human. In a way his life is clear, it has no complexity.

But the man who lives in happiness or tries to find happiness, lives for happiness, is far more confused because he is nowhere. He is neither the animal nor yet the divine; he is in a limbo. He is riding on two horses; he will be in very great difficulty. And that’s where almost all human beings are. It is very rare to find a human being who lives purely in pleasure — it is rare to find a Zorba the Greek who lives purely in pleasure. He is clear, there is no confusion in him. He simply walks on the earth; he has no idea of flying in the sky. He has accepted the law of gravitation and he knows no other law.

The man who lives for happiness, who knows the beauty of music, who knows the beauty of paintings, art, who knows something higher than the animals can know, is far more confused; he is in far more of a mess… because while you are listening to great music something is contributed by the music which is outside and something is contributed by the music which is inside; it is a meeting of two polarities. You are hanging in the middle and both are pulling you in separate directions. You will find more anxiety in your life.

That’s why poor people are less in anguish than rich people. Rich countries live in anguish because they have enough pleasure; they are fed up with it. Now they want something higher, and with the higher the problems arise. The animal part is well settled because it is your heritage of millions of years. It is in your chemistry, in your biology, in your physiology. Everything is settled, instinctive. You need not be aware, you need not do anything. But if you seek and search for happiness then you are going into a more shadowy world which is less substantial — higher but more shadowy.

And the third goal is bliss, which again is very clear, as clear as the first, in fact far more clear than the first because the first has a clarity, but the clarity is of a much lower kind. The third has a clarity of the highest quality. Only the awakened one knows the clarity of the third.

Buddha says: RESIST THE PLEASURES OF LIFE…. Become a little more mature. Don’t be childish, don’t remain animals. Put your energies towards the highest goal in life — let bliss be your goal. And people who live in pleasures also have one thing more in their life, and that is the desire to hurt others, because pleasures create competition. If you want more money, of course you have to snatch it from somebody else. If you want power, then somebody else will lose power. If you want to be the president, then somebody else will not be the president. Hence it is a constant struggle. You have to hurt many to succeed. You have to be very destructive, inhumanly destructive.

It is only the goal of bliss which can be nonviolent; otherwise pleasures are going to be violent. Buddha says: RESIST THE PLEASURES OF LIFE AND THE DESIRE TO HURT — TILL SORROWS VANISH. Be alert. He is not saying repress, he cannot say that. Be aware — so that pleasures don’t pull you downwards, so that slowly slowly you are freed from your animal heritage, so that slowly slowly you can transcend your biology.

And avoid the desire to hurt others. There is a certain joy in hurting others. We go on hurting people; it gives you the feeling of power. It helps you to feel that you are powerful when you can hurt somebody. It is a very ugly desire, egoistic, but everybody does that. Watch yourself, in how many ways you hurt people. You may not be doing anything in particular to hurt them, but your gesture may be enough. People walk in such a way, talk in such a way, that others are hurt. And nobody can blame them because what they are doing is so subtle. They use words which can hurt, and they use them with such skill that you cannot blame them. They can always find a way to rationalize.

A black gentleman was arrested for shooting a man. The next morning he was brought into court.
“Why did you shoot that man?” asked the judge.
“Because he called me a black sonofabitch!”
“You didn’t have any business shooting a man for that!”
“Well, Your Honor, what would you have done if he called you that?”
“Oh, he wouldn’t have called me that!”
“I know, Judge, but suppose he had called you the kind of a sonofabitch you are, then? Of course he cannot call you ‘a black sonofabitch’ — you are not black — but the kind of a sonofabitch you are, if he had called you that, what then?”

People can go on finding ways skillfully…. One has to remain aware until all sorrows vanish.

Source – Osho Book “Dhammapada, Vol11″

Buddha Sutra – Life is easy for the Man who is without Shame.
Osho – This Buddhist idea of shame has to be understood in contrast with the Christian idea of guilt. In the dictionaries they seem to be synonymous; they are not. Shame is a totally different phenomenon.

Guilt is imposed by others on you. It is a strategy of the priests to exploit. It is a conspiracy between the priest and the politician to keep humanity in deep slavery forever. They create guilt in you, they create great fear of sin. They condemn you, they make you afraid, they poison your very roots with the idea of guilt. They destroy all possibilities of laughter, joy, celebration. Their condemnation is such that to laugh seems to be a sin, to be joyous means you are worldly.

Christians say Jesus never laughed. What a lie! And they have been lying for centuries and with such theological acumen, with great scholarship. They have been lying very piously, very religiously. Have you ever come across a picture of Jesus or a statue in which he looks happy, blissful, joyous? Impossible! You can’t conceive of a joyful Jesus — after two thousand years of Christian propaganda the whole figure of Jesus has become distorted.

He was a man of great joy. He was a man who knew how to laugh and how to love and how to live festively. He loved eating and drinking. He must have danced, he must have joked with his friends, with his disciples. I cannot conceive of him not having a sense of humor, because it is impossible for me to conceive of a man being spiritual and without a sense of humor. A sense of humor is one of the most fundamental qualities of a religious man.

But the picture that Christians have depicted of Jesus is ugly. He is always sad, in deep sorrow — carrying the whole burden of the original sin committed by Adam and Eve. He has been depicted by the Christians as doing a great service to humanity. He is the savior — and how can the savior laugh? Laughter seems to be such an earthly quality. He has to be very serious, long-faced. They have destroyed the beauty of Jesus.

Jesus has to be resurrected. He was killed twice. First he was killed by the Jews and the Romans, and then he has been killed by the Christian priests. He got away from his first murder, but from the second he has not yet been able to escape. He is still a captive of the Vatican; he has to be freed from the Vatican.

These people who have made Jesus look so serious, so sad, so sorrowful — who have made him a martyr — have also created great guilt in humanity. Whenever you laugh you feel as if you are doing something wrong. Whenever you are happy you start looking guilty. How can you be happy? How can you laugh? How can you dance? How can you sing? The whole world is in such a suffering, and you are singing, and you are dancing? It seems that you must be cruel.

Krishna seems to be cruel to Christian eyes: playing on his flute, dancing, singing, celebrating. He seems to be a hedonist, a Zorba the Greek! Christians can’t conceive Krishna to be spiritual. And in fact, the word ‘christ’ is a derivation of the word ‘krishna’. Jesus must have the same qualities as Krishna; hence he has been called Christ. ‘Christ’ comes from ‘krishna’, and Krishna-consciousness simply means ecstatic consciousness.

But why does the priest go on creating guilt in man? There is a secret behind it. If you can make humanity feel guilty you remain powerful. The guilty person is always ready to serve those who are powerful. He is always ready to serve those who are puritans. He is always ready to be a slave to the priests. The guilty person cannot have courage enough to be a rebel — that is the secret. Only a blissful person can be rebellious. The priests must have found this secret long ago, because they have been practicing it for centuries and they have destroyed all the beauty of the human soul.

Remember, when Buddha says “shame” he does not mean guilt. Shame is a totally different phenomenon. Guilt is imposed by others; shame is your own experience. Shame is interior, guilt is from the outside. Shame is not because of others but because of your own understanding: “What am I doing to my own self? What am I doing to my life? How am I wasting it?” It has nothing to do with the priests, Christian, Hindu or Mohammedan. It has something to do with your awareness. It has nothing to do with the moral codes of a society. It has something to do with your consciousness, not with your conscience.

Guilt is part of conscience, and conscience is created by others. You have a Hindu conscience and a Mohammedan conscience and a Jaina conscience, but consciousness is simply consciousness. There is nothing like a Hindu consciousness or a Mohammedan consciousness.

Consciousness makes you aware of what you are doing to yourself. And when you see that you are destroying tremendously pregnant opportunities for growth, shame arises in you. You start feeling a deep anguish, and that anguish is helpful for growth, that pain is helpful to growth. It brings you, for the first time, a vision of the possible, a glimpse of the peaks.

Guilt simply says that you are a sinner. And the feeling of shame simply shows you that you need not be a sinner, that you are meant to be a saint. If you are a sinner it is only because of your unconsciousness; you are not a sinner because the society follows a certain morality and you are not following it.

All moralities are not moral, and something which is moral in one country is not moral in another country. Something moral in one religion is not moral in another religion. Something is moral today and was not moral yesterday. Morals change, morals are just arbitrary. But consciousness is eternal, it never changes. It is simply the absolute — the truth.

Once you have become a little more aware you start feeling what you have done to yourself and to others. That experience brings shame, and shame is good and guilt is bad. With guilt, deep down you know that it is all nonsense.

For example, in the Jaina religion to eat in the night is a sin. If you are born a Jaina and sometimes you eat at night, you will feel very guilty; knowing perfectly well — if you are intelligent enough you will know it — that this is foolish, there can’t be any sin in eating at night. But still your conscience will prick you, because the conscience is manipulated by the priest, by the outside powers who are dominating you.

Hence guilt creates a dual personality in you: on the surface you are one person and deep down you are another — because you can see the futility of it, the nonsense of it. You become split — guilt creates schizophrenia. And the whole of humanity suffers from schizophrenia for the simple reason that we have created guilt, so much and so deeply that we have divided every man in two.

One part of him is social, formal. He goes to the church and follows the rules as far as they are feasible. He maintains a certain front, a certain face, and from the back door he goes on living a totally different life — just the opposite of what he goes on preaching, just the opposite of what he goes on praising.

The idea of shame never creates any conflict within you, it never creates any split. It creates a challenge, it challenges you, it challenges your guts. It says to you, “Rise above — because that is your birthright. Reach to the peaks, they are yours. Those sunlit peaks are your real home, and what are you doing in these dark valleys, crawling like animals? You can fly — you have wings!”

Guilt condemns that which is wrong in you. The idea of shame makes you aware of that which is possible. Guilt goes on bringing in your past again and again — burdens you with the past. And the idea of shame brings the future to you, it releases your energies. They are totally different.

Source – Osho Book “The Dhammapada, Vol 7″

Osho – Man is born only as a potential. If you don’t develop your potential, if you don’t grow spiritually, you are just like an ox. The body will go on becoming bigger and bigger, but that is not growth. Growing old is not growing up, growing physically is not growing spiritually. And unless you grow spiritually you are wasting a precious opportunity.

Man is the only being on the earth who can attain to buddhahood. Elephants and lions and tigers can’t become buddhas. Only man can become a buddha, only man can become a thousand-petaled lotus, only man can release the fragrance called God.

Don’t waste a single moment in anything else. Do the necessary things, the essential things, but pour more and more energy into watchfulness, awareness. Wake up! Unless you become a buddha you have not lived at all, because you will not know the great poetry of life, the great music of existence. You will not know the celestial celebration that goes on and on, you will not know the dance of the stars. It is for you to become part of this celebration. This bliss is for you! All these flowers and all these songs and all these stars are for you. You are entitled to miracles — but grow up, wake up! Enough for today.

Source: from Osho Book “Dhammapada Vol 5″

Osho – Remember death, never forget it for a single moment! Because of this insistence, many people have thought Buddha is death-obsessed; he is not. You may be life-obsessed but he is not death-obsessed. He is simply bringing everything to a balance.

He says, as much as you are involved in life you have to remember death too, then there will be a balance, an equilibrium. He used to send his disciples, his sannyasins, to watch whenever a dead body was being burned: “Just go, sit there, meditate and watch and remember this is going to happen to your body too.”

Death has to be meditated upon; otherwise life can go on giving you false hopes. If you remember death, life cannot deceive you anymore. Death will keep you alert. Buddha is not death-obsessed, but he has come to know one thing: that it is only by becoming aware of death that one gets rid of the obsession with the body, the obsession with food, the obsession with sex, the obsession with money, the obsession with the world. You have to live in life, but let there be a consciousness, constantly, that this life is slipping out of your hands and death is coming closer every moment. That will not allow you to be a victim of false desires and false hopes.

Source: from Osho Book “Dhammapada Vol 5″

Osho - Buddha says truth is eternal, and whatsoever is not eternal is a dream — beware of the dreams! And your mind is also part of your body; that’s why he says beware of false imaginings. Your mind goes on giving you false ideas; it says, “Look how healthy I am, how strong I am, look how beautiful I am.” It goes on deceiving you, it goes on telling you that death always happens to others, not to you. Nobody is an exception. And the mind is such a deceiver, so cunning, so crafty that it can make you believe anything. It can make you believe in money, and you will have to leave all your money when you go. But you cling to money, people are ready to die for money.

In fact, that’s how many people die: their whole lives are spent accumulating money; they sell their lives just to accumulate a few pieces of gold. That gold will remain here and you will be gone, and the gold has no attachment to you. It is you who have created all kinds of attachments.

And the mind always goes on creating a future; it goes on saying to you, “What has not happened yet is going to happen tomorrow — wait!” It keeps you hoping, it keeps you trying in new ways, in new pastures. If this woman has not satisfied you then the mind says, “It is because this woman is such — find another!” And this will go on and on. If this man is not satisfactory, the mind says, “It is because this man is wrong.” But the mind never allows you to see the fact that no man, no woman, can ever satisfy anybody.

Satisfaction is not possible in this world. Contentment is possible only when you move into your state of being, when you become a no-mind. Contentment is the flavor of no-mind. And when you can manage, mind gives you fantasies, foolish, stupid, absurd. But mind is a great seducer….

Muriel and Tina were discussing their recent experiences over cocktails.
“Say,” asked Muriel, “how did you make out with that eccentric millionaire you met yesterday?”
“He gave me five hundred dollars,” said Tina. “That screwball wanted to make it in a coffin.”
“No kidding!” exclaimed Muriel. “I’ll bet that shook you up?”
“Yeah, but not as much as the six pall-bearers.”

The mind can seduce you into anything, into any stupid thing. And once anything gets into your mind, it tortures you, it haunts you. You have to do it — it seems that is the only way to get rid of it. But before you get rid of it, mind gives you another idea. Mind is very inventive as far as imagination is concerned. Mind can go on inexhaustibly creating new ideas for you; that’s what has been happening for centuries, for lives. You have lived in this world for so many lives repeating the same kinds of things again and again, maybe a little bit different but the things are the same… and still you go on hoping. Buddha says beware of the false imaginings; the body is a shadow, you have to leave it one day. You are not it.

Source: from Osho Book “Dhammapada Vol 5″

Osho – Money, power, prestige — they all make you cunning. Seek pleasure and you will lose your innocence; and to lose your innocence is to lose all. Jesus says: be like a small child, only then can you enter into my kingdom of God. And he is right. But the pleasure-seeker cannot be as innocent as a child. He has to be very clever, very cunning, very political; only then can he succeed in this cut-throat competition that exists all around. Everybody is at everybody else’s throat. You are not living amongst friends. The world cannot be friendly unless we drop this idea of competitiveness.

But we bring every child…. From the very beginning we start poisoning every child with this poison of competitiveness. By the time he will be coming out of the university he will be completely poisoned. We have hypnotized him with the idea that he has to fight with others, that life is a survival of the fittest. Then life can never be a celebration. Then life can never have any kind of religiousness in it. Then it cannot be pious, holy. Then it cannot have any quality of sacredness. Then it is all mean, ugly.

Osho – If you become an intellectual then you will not be a scientist; you will only write histories of science or philosophies of science, but you will not be a scientist, an explorer, an inventor, a discoverer, on your own. You will be simply accumulating information. Yes, that too has a certain use; as far as the outside world is concerned, even information has a certain limited utility, but in the inner world it has no utility at all. It is a barrier; it has a negative effect on the inner experience.

You say, “I understand you to say that the intellect is a barrier to self-realization.” The intellect is neither a barrier nor a bridge; intellect is neutral. Get identified with it, it becomes a barrier; remain unidentified with it, it is a bridge. And without meditation you cannot know your transcendental nature.

In science, concentration is enough; at the most, contemplation is needed. In religion, meditation is the only way. Concentration is not needed, is not a help; it is a positive hindrance. Contemplation also is not a help; it is a compensation for not being meditative, it is a poor substitute for it. Meditation — only meditation — can bring the inner revolution.

Meditation means getting out of the mind, looking at the mind from the outside. That’s exactly the meaning of the word ‘ecstasy’: to stand out. To stand out of the mind makes you ecstatic, brings bliss to you. And great intelligence is released. When you are identified with the mind you cannot be very intelligent because you become identified with an instrument, you become confined by the instrument and its limitations. And you are unlimited — you are consciousness.

Use the mind, but don’t become it. Use it as you use other machines. Mind is a beautiful machine. If you can use it, it will serve you; if you cannot use it and it starts using you, it is destructive, it is dangerous. It is bound to take you into some trouble, into some calamity, into some suffering and misery, because a machine is a blind thing. It has no eyes, it has no insight. Mind cannot see; it can only go on repeating that which has been fed into it. It is like a computer; first you have to feed it.

Source: from Osho Book “Dhammapada Vol 9″