Osho Quotes on Life

 

 

 

What binds you is the lust for the unlived life. So live life totally and let this lust disappear.

 

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Life can be really lived only if you live it naturally. If you impose artificial commandments over it, you will destroy it.

 

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Meditation will help you to come closer to life. Love will help to bring you closer to life. Creativity will bring you closer to life. Enjoying small things which have been condemned by your stupid so-called saints will bring you closer to life.

 

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Just look at the lighter side of life and enjoy it to its fullest, and all fear will disappear.

 

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Life is a woman. Try to understand life and you will become a mess. Forget all about understanding. Just live it and you will understand it. The understanding is not going to be intellectual, theoretical; the understanding is going to be total. The understanding is not going to be verbal; it is going to be non-verbal. That is the meaning when we say life is a mystery. It can be lived but it cannot be solved.

 

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Existence is freedom. It is not determined beforehand. It is not predestined. If it were predestined then all meaning would be lost. Life is not a drama, but you can take it as a drama. If you take it as a drama, you transcend life. But remember, life is not a drama; life is total freedom. Nobody can predict what is going to happen the next moment, because the next moment comes as if out of the blue, totally free and fresh. If it could be predicted, then all meaning would be lost.

 

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Life is not just to pass, it is to reach somewhere deep within you. Life is not on the surface, it is not the circumference, it is the center. And you have not reached to the center yet. Sober up! Enough time is already wasted. Be alert and see what you are doing. And what are you doing? Searching for money? It is finally, ultimately useless. It is again a game, the money game. You have more than others, you feel good; others have more than you, you feel bad. It is a game. But what is the meaning of it? What do you gain from it? Even if you have all the money the world contains, at the moment of death you will die as a beggar. So the whole wealth of the world cannot make you rich. Games cannot make you rich. Sober up!

 

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Old age, when death is just standing close to you, creates the question, "What is the meaning of life?" But when you are alive, when death is far away beyond the horizon of your vision, who cares about the meaning of life? -- you live it, you have it, you sing it, you dance it. It is in every breath, it is in every beat of your heart. One thing has to be understood clearly: that the people who have asked so-called great questions about the meaning of life, about the meaning of the very existence, about the meaning of love, about the meaning of beauty, are thought to be great philosophers but they have one foot in the grave. Just before slipping into their graves, they are raising all these questions.

 

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Life in itself is not meaningful. It is meaningful only if you can sing a song of the eternal, if you can release some fragrance of the divine, of the godly, if you can become a lotus flower -- deathless, timeless. If you can become pure love, if you can beautify this existence, if you can become a blessing to this existence, only then does life have significance; otherwise it is pointless. It is like an empty canvas: you can go on carrying it your whole life and you can die under its weight, but what is the point? Paint something on it! Meaning has to be created in life; meaning is not given already. You are given freedom, you are given creativity, you are given life. All that is needed to create meaning is given. All the essential ingredients of meaning are given, but meaning is not given, meaning has to be created by you. You have to become a creator in your own right.

 

And when you became a creator in your own right, you participate with God, you become a part of God.

 

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Remember, life is always uncertain. Everything dead is certain, life is always uncertain. Everything dead is solid, fixed - its nature cannot be changed; everything alive is moving, changing - a flow, a liquid thing, flexible, able to move in any direction. The more you become certain, the more you will miss life. And those who know, know life is God. If you miss life, you miss God. Act spontaneously. If there is discomfort in the beginning allow it to be there; don't hide it and don't suppress it - and don't imitate. Be childlike but don't be childish. If you are childlike, you will become a great saint; if you are childish, you will become a great, knowledgeable person.

 

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The very insecurity makes life a thrill; the very danger that tomorrow you may not be here makes you live today as intensely as possible, makes you love as totally as possible, because postponement is not at all conceivable.

 

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I want you to belong to the present so that you can live each moment fresh, young, alive, with a great adventure for the coming moment. Unless your life becomes an ecstasy, you have not lived it. You have missed the very point, the bull's eye.

 

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My rebellion is life-affirmative. I want you to dance and sing and love and live as intensely as possible and as totally as possible. In this total affirmation of life, in this absolute yes to nature we can bring a totally new earth and a totally new humanity into being.

 

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Through planning life becomes more and more unconscious, and the more unconscious you are, the more you need planning. Before really dying, you are dead. Alive means responding, sensitive. Alive means: whatsoever comes, I will be there to respond, and the response will come from me, not from the memory. I will not prepare it.

 

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Whatsoever you do, whatsoever you don't do, whatsoever you say, whatsoever you don't say, reveals you. Everywhere mirrors are all around you. Every other person is a mirror, every situation is a mirror -- and whom do you think you are deceiving? If deception becomes a habit, ultimately you will have deceived yourself and no one else. It is your life you are wasting in deceptions.

 

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People are just dragging. You don't need to look at others' faces, just look in the mirror and you will find out what dragging means -- neither alive nor dead. Life is so beautiful, death is also beautiful -- dragging is ugly.

 

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When you are surrounded by fear, remember that in life there is only one thing certain, and that is death. Hence, those who understand drop the fear. Because what else could be more insecure than life? To be alive means that at any moment death is possible. Security is possible only in the grave, because nobody has ever heard that anybody dies in the grave. Everything is secure and safe.

 

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Those who want to really live drop all fears, all thinking, all security, all safety. They risk everything, because life is so precious and so fleeting, so momentary that you cannot go on postponing. And thinking is a way of postponing, feeling is a way of postponing, desiring is a way of postponing.

 

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Life is such... today it is one thing, tomorrow it is another, the day after tomorrow nobody knows what it will be. Your memorized answers, your borrowed knowledge from others never fits with life, because life goes on changing and your scriptures remain the same.

 

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The moment you are at the very center of your being, you have such clarity about all the problems of life that one thing is certain: you will not create any problem; and another thing is certain: you will spread your vision, your understanding, to other people. All problems are our own creation. In our ignorance of ourselves we have created them. In our consciousness, they will dissolve just like dewdrops disappearing in the morning sun.

 

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Basically life is just a preparation for dying, and only those are wise who learn in their life how to die. If you don't know how to die you have missed the whole meaning of life: it is a preparation, it is a training, it is a discipline. Life is not the end, it is just a discipline to learn the art of dying. But you are afraid, you are scared, at the very word death you start trembling. That means you have not yet known life, because life never dies. Life cannot die.

 

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When a person has known the transcendental in himself, death is nothing but another face of God. Then death has a dance to it. And unless you become capable of celebrating death itself, remember, you have missed life. The whole life is a preparation for this ultimate.

 

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The most fundamental thing to be remembered is that life is dialectical. It exists through duality, it is a rhythm between opposites. You cannot be happy forever, otherwise happiness will lose all meaning. You cannot be in harmony forever, otherwise you will become unaware of the harmony. Harmony has to be followed by discord again and again, and happiness has to be followed by unhappiness. Every pleasure has its own pain, and every pain has its own pleasure. Unless one understands this duality of existence, one remains in unnecessary misery. Accept the total, with all its agonies and all its ecstasies. Don't hanker for the impossible; don't desire that there should be only ecstasy and no agony.

 

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Become more conscious, become more aware, become more alive. Let all your juices flow. Don't hold yourself back. Respect your nature, love yourself, and don't be worried about unnecessary things. Unworried, move into the thick of life, explore it. Yes, you will commit many mistakes -- so what? One learns through committing mistakes. Yes, you will go into many errors -- so what? It is only by going into errors that one comes to the right door. Before one knocks at the right door, one has to knock on thousands of wrong doors. That is part of the game, part of the play.

 

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In this life, your so-called ordinary life, you must be rooted; and in your inner space, in the spiritual life, you must be weightless and flying and flowing, floating.

 

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Life is possible only through challenges. Life is possible only when you have both good weather and bad weather, when you have both pleasure and pain, when you have both winter and summer, day and night. When you have both sadness and happiness, discomfort and comfort. Life moves between these two polarities. Moving between these two polarities you learn how to balance. Between these two wings you learn how to fly to the farthest star.

 

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Life is such a mystery, no one can understand it, and one who claims that he understands it is simply ignorant. He is not aware of what he is saying, of what nonsense he is talking. If you are wise, this will be the first realization: life cannot be understood. Understanding is impossible. Only this much can be understood -- that understanding is impossible.

 

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Life is not static. If life were static there would be no need for meditation. The mind would do. Then you could think, and whenever, after many lives, you knocked at the door, the girl would be waiting for you. But life is a flux, a movement. Every moment it is changing and becoming new. If you miss a moment, you have missed.

 

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Remember: life is a rhythm between day and night, summer and winter. It is a continuous rhythm. Never stop anywhere! Be moving! And the bigger the swing, the deeper your experience will be.

 

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Life is a mystery; that means it cannot be solved. And when all efforts to solve it prove futile, the mystery dawns upon you. Then the doors are open; then you are invited. As a knower, nobody enters the divine; as a child, ignorant, not knowing at all- the mystery embraces you. With a knowing mind you are clever, not innocent. Innocence is the door.

 

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Remember, life is always uncertain. Everything dead is certain, life is always uncertain. Everything dead is solid, fixed - its nature cannot be changed; everything alive is moving, changing - a flow, a liquid thing, flexible, able to move in any direction. The more you become certain, the more you will miss life. And those who know, know life is God. If you miss life, you miss God.

 

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This is what I call understanding. If you understand, insecurity is an intrinsic part of life -- and good that it is so, because it makes life a freedom, it makes life a continuous surprise. One never knows what is going to happen. It keeps you continuously in wonder. Don't call it uncertainty -- call it wonder. Don't call it insecurity -- call it freedom.

 

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Nothing is secure. That is my message. Nothing can be secure, because a secure life will be worse than death. Nothing is certain. Life is full of uncertainties, full of surprises -- that is its beauty! You can never come to a moment when you can say, "Now I am certain." When you say you are certain, you simply declare your death, you have committed suicide.

 

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The whole of life has become an institution, a madhouse in which duties are to be fulfilled not love; in which you have to behave, not be spontaneous; in which a pattern has to be followed, not the overflow of life and energy. That's why the mind thinks and decides everything, because there is danger.

 

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Our whole life is a fooling around. You can do it because you are not aware of how you waste time, how you waste energy -- how life is wasted you are not aware. It is going down the drain. Everything is going down the drain. Only when death comes to you, you may become aware, alert: What have I been doing? What have I done with life? A great opportunity has been lost. What was I doing fooling around? I was not sober. I never reflected upon what I was doing.

 

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Life is not just to pass, it is to reach somewhere deep within you. Life is not on the surface, it is not the circumference, it is the center. And you have not reached to the center yet. Sober up! Enough time is already wasted. Be alert and see what you are doing. And what are you doing? Searching for money? It is finally, ultimately useless. It is again a game, the money game. You have more than others, you feel good; others have more than you, you feel bad. It is a game. But what is the meaning of it? What do you gain from it? Even if you have all the money the world contains, at the moment of death you will die as a beggar. So the whole wealth of the world cannot make you rich. Games cannot make you rich. Sober up!

 

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Somebody is after power, prestige, somebody is after sex, and somebody after something else. All is a game. Unless you touch the center of your being all is a game. On the surface only games exist, and on the surface are only waves, and in those waves you will only suffer and drift. You cannot be anchored into your self. This is why he had to call, "Sober up!" He was saying, "Don't play games. Enough, you have played enough. Don't be foolish any more. Use life for anchoring, use life to gain roots, use life as an opportunity to reach the divine. You are sitting just outside the temple, sitting just on the steps, playing games, and the ultimate is waiting just behind you. Knock and the door shall be opened unto you..." But you have no time left from the games.

 

 

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Life is not a problem but a mystery. For science life is a problem, but for religion it is a mystery. A problem can be solved, a mystery cannot be solved - it can be lived but it cannot be solved. Religion offers no solutions, no answers. Science offers answers; religion has none.

 

This is the basic difference, and before you make any effort to understand what religion is, this basic difference in the very approach of a religious mind and a scientific mind is to be deeply understood.

 

When I say that science looks at life as a problem, as something which can be solved, the whole approach becomes intellectual. Then the mind is involved, not you. You are out of it. The mind manipulates, the mind tackles, the mind penetrates and analyses. The mind argues, doubts, experiments, but you as a totality are out of it. Hence this very puzzling phenomenon: a scientist may be a very keen intellectual as far as his own department of research is concerned, but in ordinary life he will be just as ordinary a human being as anyone else - nothing special, just ordinary. In his own branch of knowledge he may be a genius, but in life he is just ordinary.

 

- Osho, "Vigyan Bhairav Tantra Vol 2, #25"

 

 

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Life is not a problem. If you are trying to solve it you will miss it. The door is open, it has never been locked. If the door was locked, then scientists would find the solution. If the door was locked, then philosophers may find a system to open it. But the door is not locked, so only faith can go -- without any solution, without any readymade answer. Push the door open and get out.

 

Life is not a riddle to be solved, it is a mystery to be lived. It is a deep mystery, so trust and allow yourself to enter into it. No debate can be of any help -- with somebody else, or with yourself inside the mind -- no debate. All debates are futile and stupid.

 

- Osho, "No Water, No Moon, #2"

 

 

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Don't try to understand life. Live it! Don't try to understand love. Move into love. Then you will know -- and that knowing will come out of your experiencing. That knowing will never destroy the mystery: the more you know, the more you know that much remains to be known. Life is not a problem. To look at it as a problem is to take a wrong step. It is a mystery to be lived, loved. experienced.

 

- Osho, "The Art of Dying, #8"

 

 

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Only the eagle knows the aloneness of the heights, the silence of the heights, the dangers of the heights. But without knowing dangers, one never grows. Zarathustra's basic teaching is: live dangerously. Follow the eagle to faraway skies; don't be afraid, because your inner self is immortal. Those who are afraid of danger are the people who don't know their immortal self. Their fear shows their ignorance and nothing else.

 

- Osho, "Zarathustra - The Laughing Prophet, #1"

 

 

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To become enlightened means to live this moment without any hesitation, without being half-hearted. Put everything at stake. Be a gambler! Risk everything, because the next moment is not certain. So why bother? Why be concerned?

 

Live dangerously! Live joyously! Live without fear, live without guilt; live without any fear of hell or any greed for heaven. Just live! Death is not creating any illusion for you, it is your mind. Put this mind aside, so that it cannot disturb your dance, your song, your music.

 

- Osho, "From the False to the Truth, #28"

 

 

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Living dangerously means whenever there are alternatives, beware: don't choose the convenient, the comfortable, the respectable, the socially acceptable, the honorable. Choose something that rings a bell in your heart. Choose something that you would like to do in spite of any consequences.

 

The coward thinks of consequences: "If I do this, what will happen? What will be the result?" He is more concerned about the result.

 

The real man never thinks of the consequences. He thinks only of the act, in this moment. He feels, "This is what is appealing to me, and I am going to do it." Then whatever happens is welcome. He will never regret. A real man never regrets, never repents, because he has never done anything against himself. The coward dies thousands of times before death, and continuously regrets, repents: it would have been better if he had done that, married that man, that woman, chosen that profession, gone to that college.... Thousands of alternatives are always there, and you cannot do them all.

 

The society teaches you, "Choose the convenient, the comfortable; choose the well-trodden path where your forefathers and their forefathers and their forefathers, since Adam and Eve, have been walking. Choose the well-trodden path. That is a proof: so many millions of people have passed on it, you cannot go wrong." But remember one thing, the crowd has never had the experience of truth.

 

Truth has only happened to individuals.

 

- Osho, "From Unconciousness to Consciousness, #30"