Osho – Be aware, So that pleasures don’t pull you downwards

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″

Osho – Become more and more of a witness

Osho – Remember only one thing: the past is a hindrance, the greatest hindrance. It has to be completely dropped, utterly dropped. To be with me is to be in the now — no past, no future. This moment is all there is and just this moment is god. Everything else is just the mind dreaming, desiring, imagining.

Once the past and future have dropped — and they are always dropped together; if you drop one, the other disappears of its own accord. They are two aspects of the same game. The past projects itself into the future. It wants to repeat itself — in a little more modified way, but still the same. Between the two is the moment. The moment, this moment, is the only reality, and the door to reality.  So let this moment become your whole life. Live moment to moment, with no ideology, with no desire for any kind of future, with no goal. And then you need not go to god — god comes to you.

The mind is never clear and can never be. The mind is what unclarity is. And all relationship is through the mind; hence the problem. You will have to learn the ways of no-mind So it is not a question of how to be clear; it is a question of how to be a no-mind. Through the mind the same thing will go on being repeated, again and again. The mind is repetitive, it is mechanical. It moves like a wheel: the same spokes come up again and again and again.

This is the difference between the western approach and the eastern. The western approach is to bring clarity to the mind. The whole of psychoanalysis is nothing but that: how to bring a clarity to the mind. The eastern approach is how to get out of the mind, because the mind is not going to be clear ever. The mind is confusion. There is not any possibility with the mind. It is not that there are confused minds and minds which are not confused, no. All minds are confused… the mind as such is confusion.

So it is not a question of how to become clear about your relationship; that is just a by-product. You have to get out of the mind slowly, slowly; you have to learn ways of getting out of it. And that’s what meditation is all about: it is slipping out of the mind. The mind is a mechanism. There is no need to get identified with it. Use it, but remain aloof, remain separate. Know perfectly well that you are a witness. Just as you are a witness of the outside world — the trees, the moon and the people — exactly like that you are a witness to the inside world — the dreams, the imagination, the anger, love, hate, jealousy, possessiveness, and all that. But you are always a witness, and the witness is always clear. The mind is always confusion, the witness is always clear.

Become more and more of a witness. Don’t get identified with the mind. It is very close but still it is not you. So there is no point in working on the mind. The whole work now has to be not on the mind but on you. Disconnect yourself from the mind more and more. When anger comes, sit silently and watch it. You are a watcher on the hills and anger is there just like a cloud passing by. There is the hate and there is the jealousy, but you remain aloof; you just see them. Don’t judge them, don’t be against them, because the moment you judge you become entangled. That’s what Jesus means when he says ‘Judge ye not’. That is the secret key to no-mind. Don’t say ‘This is good’, don’t say ‘This is bad’; just don’t say anything. Silently see it, take note of it: anger is there — it is neutral, neither good nor bad. And you will be surprised that it comes, it surrounds you and then it goes away.

Once you have learned the knack of it — that you can remain undisturbed and undistracted by the mind stuff that is continuously moving like traffic — you will have clarity. Not only clarity about this particular problem: you will simply have clarity — clarity about your whole life, clarity about everything that you are doing. And out of that clarity is beauty and benediction. Out of that clarity religion is born. You become religious out of that clarity, but it is never of the mind.

Source – Osho Book “The Madman’s Guide to Enlightenment”

Osho Quotes on Life, Osho Sayings on Life

Osho Quotes on Life

1. This moment, here and now, is the time to taste life.
2. Death is the ultimate mystery. That gift is given only to those who have lived really intensely, who have burned their torch of life from both the ends together. Only then it happens sometimes that in a single moment of intensity the whole life is revealed. In a single moment of total intensity, the whole eternity opens its doors to you, you are welcomed by God.
3. Life is an absurdity — it is a mystery. You need not search for meaning, you have just to live it, enjoy it.
4. Life is not a fasting, it is a continuous feast — a celebration, a festival of lights. Love transforms your life into a festival of lights. And unless your life becomes a feast and a festival, remember: you have not done the thing you have come for on this earth.
5. Life should not be taken as a problem. Once you start that way you are lost. Once you think life is a problem it can never be solved. That’s how philosophy moves — and that’s how philosophy always moves wrongly. There are no right philosophies: there cannot be. All philosophies are wrong. Philosophizing is wrong, because philosophy takes the wrong basic step of thinking of life as a problem. Once life is a problem there is no solution to it. Life is not a problem but a mystery, which is how religion takes it.
6. Life knows only one moment, and that is the present. Life knows only one space, and that is here. Now and here: these two words are the most significant words in the human language; they represent reality.
7. Everything that is of authentic value in life has arisen out of meditation. There is no other way. Meditation is the mother of art, music, poetry, dance, sculpture. All that is creative, all that is life-affirmative, is born out of meditation. All that is life-negative — hate, anger, jealousy, violence, war — is born out of the mind. Man has two possibilities: mind and meditation.
8. To make everything certain is a deep urge in the mind because mind is afraid of life. Mind creates science just to kill every possibility of life. Mind tries to find explanations once an explanation is found, the mystery is dissolved.
9. Look for the mysterious in life. Wherever you look — in the white clouds, in the stars in the night, in the flowers, in a flowing river — wherever you look, look for the mystery. And whenever you find that a mystery is there, meditate on it. Meditation means: dissolve yourself before that mystery, annihilate yourself before that mystery, disperse yourself before that mystery. Be no more, and let the mystery be so total that you are absorbed in it.
10. A man of meditation simply enjoys the flowers, the birds, the trees, the rain, the sun, the moon, the people. It is good that we are all engulfed in a mysterious whole. Life will be utterly boring if every mystery is decoded.
11. When I say ‘to die’ I really mean: live intensely; I really mean: live passionately. How can you die unless you have lived totally? In total life there is death, and that death is beautiful. In a passionate, intense life, death comes spontaneously — as a silence, as a profound bliss. When I say ‘to die’, I am not saying anything against life; in fact, if you are afraid of death you will be afraid of life also.
12. Move with life with a deep trust, wheresoever it leads. Don’t create your own goal; if you create your own goal you will become false. Life has no goal; if YOU have a goal you are against life. Life moves not like a business, it moves like poetry; life moves not from the head, it moves from the heart — it is a romance. Trust is needed, doubt won’t be helpful. Life is not scientific, it is irrational. Life doesn’t believe in Aristotles and the logicians, it believes in love, in the poets, it believes in the mystics. It is a mystery to be lived, not a riddle to be solved — it is not a puzzle, it is not a problem. The secret is open, only you are closed. It is revealed everywhere: in each tree, in each leaf, in every ray of the sun it is revealed — but you are closed.
13. All that is needed is a certain deepening of your consciousness, and that happens through meditation. Then all your actions, your behavior, your life starts changing on its own accord; you start seeing things clearly. Right now you see things through such smoke that nothing seems to be clear.
14. Religion is nothing but a science to attain wisdom, understanding, to know what life is, and to live it in utter celebration. And you can live life in celebration only if you know there is no death. If you know that it is going to be eternal, that there is no beginning and no end, only then can you live without misery.
15. No society wants individuals so powerful in themselves. Every society wants you to remain dependent on it. Your independence is being curtailed in every possible way. And because your independence, your individuality is being curtailed, death comes before meditation comes. Life has been a wastage. Unless you attain to meditation, you have not really lived.
16. Life is immediate, life is always now and here. And live it with all the frailty of a human being, with all the frailty of a rose flower, and you will come to know the greatest splendor in the moment — not in eternity. It is always now and it is always here! Don’t condemn the momentary, rejoice in it, rejoice to abandon.
17. It is up to you to make whatsoever you want out of your life. An enlightened consciousness makes even death beautiful. An unenlightened consciousness makes even life ugly. For an enlightened consciousness, only beauty exists — only beauty; only bliss exists — only bliss.
18. Live here now! Living in hope is living in the future, which is really postponing life. It is not a way of living, but a way of suicide. There is no need for any hope and there is no need to feel hopeless. Live here now. Life is tremendously blissful, it is showering here and you are looking somewhere else. It is just in front of your eyes, but your eyes have moved far away, they look at the horizon. It is within you, but you are not there.
19. The future is just your hope, expectation. And when this life is not fulfilling you start looking further, beyond death. All these are fictions just for you to survive somehow. But this survival is not how you are supposed to be. Existence has not given you birth just to live in hopes. You can be really ecstatic this moment, and there is no other moment. Meditation is, Zen is living now and here.
20. Now and here put in your total energy, and you will be enlightened. Enlightenment is your nature, so you are not to find it somewhere else. You don’t have to go on any pilgrimage. You don’t have to go to any holy place. You don’t have to believe in any theology, in any religion. You just have to dig deeper into yourself, in the present moment, and suddenly the whole of life springs up.
21. Look at people’s faces. They carry life as a burden — boring, with no meaning. It seems that everything is just a nightmare, a very cruel joke, that somebody is playing a trick, torturing them. Life is not a celebration, it cannot be. With a mind burdened by memory life cannot be a celebration. Even if you laugh, your laughter carries boredom. Look at people laughing: they laugh with an effort. Their laugh may be just to be mannerly, their laugh may be just etiquette.
22. Just live your life with as much joy and celebration, as a gift of God. Dance with the trees in the sun, in the rain, in the wind. Neither do the trees have any scriptures, nor do the animals have any scriptures; neither do the stars have any scriptures, nor do they have any saints. Except man, nobody is obsessed with the dead. This obsession I call one of the greatest mistakes which has been committed over thousands of years. It is time it should be stopped completely.

Osho on Meditation Meditation is a state of No-Mind

This is the state of no meditation — just the opposite is meditation. When there is no traffic and thinking has ceased, no thought moves, no desire stirs, you are utterly silent — that silence is meditation. And in that silence truth is known, and never otherwise. Meditation is a state of no-mind.

And you cannot find meditation through the mind because mind will perpetuate itself. You can find meditation only by putting the mind aside, by being cool, indifferent, unidentified with the mind; by seeing the mind pass, but not getting identified with it, not thinking that “I am it.”

Meditation is the awareness that “I am not the mind.” When the awareness goes deeper and deeper in you, slowly slowly, a few moments arrive — moments of silence, moments of pure space, moments of transparency, moments when nothing stirs in you and everything is still. In those still moments you will know who you are, and you will know what the mystery of this existence is.

And once you have tasted those few dewdrops of nectar, great longing will arise in you to go deeper and deeper into it. Irresistible longing will arise in you, a great thirst. You will become afire!

That’s what sannyas is all about. When you have tasted a few moments of silence, of joy, of meditativeness, you will like this state to become your CONSTANT state, a continuum. The desire to make meditation your whole lifestyle is what sannyas is all about.

And if a few moments are possible, then there is no problem. Slowly slowly, more and more moments will be coming. As you become skillful, as you learn the knack of not getting involved in the mind, as you learn the art of remaining aloof, away from the mind, as you learn the science of creating a distance between you and your own thoughts, more and more meditation will be showering on you. And the more it showers, the more it transforms you.

A day comes, a day of great blessings, when meditation becomes your natural state.  Mind is something unnatural; it never becomes your natural state. But meditation is a natural state — which we have lost. It is a paradise lost, but the paradise can be regained. Look into the child’s eyes, look and you will see tremendous silence, innocence. Each child comes with a meditative state, but he has to be initiated into the ways of the society — he has to be taught how to think, how to calculate, how to reason. how to argue; he has to be taught words, language, concepts. And, slowly slowly, he loses contact with his own innocence. He becomes contaminated, polluted by the society. He becomes an efficient mechanism; he is no more a man.

All that is needed is to regain that space once more. You had known it before, so when for the first time you know meditation, you will be surprised — because a great feeling will arise in you as if you have known it before. And that feeling is true: YOU HAVE known it before. You have forgotten. The diamond is lost in piles of rubbish. But if you can uncover it, you will find the diamond again — it is yours.

Source – Osho Book “Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2″