Osho on Sin and Virtue

 

 

 

Bring your whole mind to light and you will see -- all that is miserable starts dying, and all that is beautiful and blissful starts sprouting. In the light of consciousness, that which remains is good, and that which dies is bad. That's my definition of sin and virtue. Virtue is that which can grow with absolute awareness; there is no difficulty. Sin is that which cannot grow with awareness; it needs unawareness to grow. Unawareness is a must for it.

 

- Osho, "The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol 2"

 

 

 

This is my understanding: that no mistake is ever repeated once you have understood it as a mistake. If you repeat it, it simply shows you are doing it fresh, because the past has not entered in your consciousness yet. You are doing it for the first time again; but it is not a repetition. If you have understood it, then it cannot be repeated. Understanding is alchemical; it transforms you.

 

So I am not telling you to become very clever, calculating, and always thinking what is good and what is bad and what to do and what not to do, what is moral, what is immoral -- I am not saying that. I am simply saying to you: from wherever you are passing, pass with full alertness, so nothing that is wrong is repeated again.

 

This is the beauty of awareness: that which is right is enhanced through it; that that which is wrong is destroyed through it. Awareness functions as life energy to good and as death energy to bad. Awareness functions as a blessing to good and as a curse to bad. If you ask me my definition of sin, this is my definition: that which can be done with full awareness is not sin; that which cannot be done with full awareness is sin. Or that which can only be done in unawareness is sin, and that which can only be done in awareness is virtue. So forget about sin and virtue. Remember awareness, that's all.

 

The whole point of evolution is between awareness, unawareness. Become more aware and less unaware. Bring your energy to be more aflame with awareness, that's all.

 

- Osho, "Yoga - The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 9"

 

 

 

All the people who are suffering from schizophrenia may never know that the basic schizophrenia comes from the split between God and existence. Then you are continuously in split: your body wants to do one thing, your mind says that is wrong. Because your religion teaches you celibacy and your body wants to make love. You are torn apart. If you listen to the body you will feel guilty. If you listen to the mind you will become a pervert sexual. In both the cases you are going to be a loser. So emphatically and absolutely I say, "God is the greatest lie that has to be removed from human consciousness. And once man is free from God, hell and heaven, sin and virtue, his intelligence is free to grow. All the barriers have been removed. And it is his intelligence will be now decisive -- about his actions -- and he will be himself responsible. And each act brings its own punishment or its own reward, so there is no need to wait for the last judgement day!

 

Each act: if you are compassionate to someone, you feel a joy of being compassionate -- that is its reward. If you are angry at someone, you are first burning inside yourself. Even before you have acted on your anger, you have suffered the punishment.

 

In my vision every action has its intrinsic reward or punishment. So a man of intelligence soon starts finding what are the acts which bring you happiness, joy, blissfulness, and what are the actions which create misery, suffering. There is no need to wait for the last judgement day, there is no need to wait after death -- you will be thrown into hell or into heaven. Each moment completes itself.

 

- Osho, "The Last Testament, Vol 2"

 

 

 

You have created intelligence to a high peak, now you will create foolishness to a deep valley. Only then there is balance. If you have created a highly structured society, you will create hippies -- that is the balance. If you have come to a highly structured, planned society for the first time in the history of the world -- everything planned, structured, patterned -- you are bound to create an alternative society: unstructured, unplanned, chaotic. That gives the balance.

 

But we are not aware of this deep complementariness: sin and virtue are complementary.

 

This sutra says: FOR ME THERE IS NEITHER VIRTUE NOR SIN. It means that for me sin is not sin, and virtue if not virtue. It means that for me sin and virtue are not two opposites. It means that for me the totality is both and neither -- they both complement each other and negate each other. So God is neither good nor evil; God is neutral. But the expression of the neutral is both good and evil. Expression is inevitably dual; existence is non-dual.

 

I SUFFER NOT DESTRUCTION... because the total can never suffer destruction; only parts suffer destruction. How can the total suffer destruction?

 

Scientists say that nothing is added in existence, and nothing deleted. Not a single atom has been added, cannot be added. From where can you bring it... when we talk about the total, from where can you bring a single atom? Or if you want to destroy a single atom, how can you destroy it? Where can you push it? Science says that nothing can be destroyed and nothing can be created. The totality remains the same, but the parts change. A tree is destroyed, a body is dead; a flower is coming up, a tree is alive.

 

Things come up, things go down; things are born, things die.

 

But the totality remains as it is.

 

- Osho, "That Art Thou"

 

 

 

Enjoy your imperfection. Enjoy the way you are.

 

And drop all distinctions between the holy and the unholy, sin and virtue, good and bad, God and devil. Destroy all those distinctions. Those are the traps you are caught in. Those are the traps which don't allow you to live, don't allow you freedom. You cannot dance: one foot is encaged in inferiority, another foot is encaged in superiority. You are chained. How can you dance? Drop all these chains.

 

That's what Zen people say: "A hair's distinction, and heaven and hell are set apart." That's what Tilopa says. A little distinction, a hair's distinction, and hell and heaven are set apart, and you are caught in the duality. No distinction, and you are free. No distinction, is freedom.

 

The profundity of the trivial and the trivialness of the profound, that's what I teach.

 

- Osho, "The First Principle"

 

 

 

The distinctions between sin and virtue, between sinner and saint, are our creations. And because of these distinctions we remain in illusion. We worship a saint and hate a sinner; we honor the good and condemn the bad. But God is both. He is as much in the bad man as he is in the good. Otherwise how could the bad man live? The bad man exists, and God looks after him.

 

- Osho, "The Great Secret"

 

 

 

You can be positive of anything of which others are as ignorant as you are.

 

It is because of such fundamental principles that God goes on existing, the devil goes on existing, heaven and hell go on existing, sin and virtue go on existing. And you can be positive, absolutely positive... because neither you know nor anybody else knows, so nobody is going to contradict, nobody is going to negate. Only an innocent person may perhaps start saying things which go against all the ignorant people of the world.

 

- Osho, "The Great Pilgrimage - From Here to Here"

 

 

 

And this is the criterion: that which disappears by watching is sin, and that which grows by watching is virtue. That's the only definition I can give to you. I don't say that "this is sin and that is virtue." No, sin and virtue cannot be objectified. That which grows by watching is virtue; that which disappears by watching is sin. Anger will disappear by watching; love will grow. Hatred will disappear; compassion will grow. Violence will disappear; prayer will grow, gratitude will grow. So whatsoever disappears through watching is sin. Nothing else is needed to be done with it. Just watch it and it disappears. It disappears just as when you bring light to a dark room the darkness disappears. The room does not disappear; the darkness disappears.

 

You will not disappear by watching. In fact by watching, you will be revealed. Only darkness will disappear: the darkness of anger, the darkness of possessiveness, the darkness of jealousy -- all that will disappear. Only you will be left in your pristine purity. Only your inner space will be left -- empty, void.

 

- Osho, "Yoga - The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6"

 

 

 

That's my definition of 'good' and 'virtue': the action of an awakened person is virtue, and the action of an unawakened person is sin. There is no other definition of sin and virtue. It depends on the person -- his consciousness, his quality that he brings to the act. So sometimes it can happen that the same act may be virtuous and the same act may be sinful. The acts may apparently be the same, but the people behind the acts can be different.

 

For example, Jesus entered into the temple of Jerusalem with a whip in his hand to throw out the moneychangers. He upset their moneychanging boards. Alone, singlehandedly, he threw all the moneychangers out of the temple. It looks very violent -- Jesus with a whip, throwing people out of the temple. But he was not violent. Lenin doing the same thing will be violent, and the act will be sinful. Jesus doing the same act is virtuous. He is acting out of love; he cares. He cares about these moneychangers too! It is out of his care, concern, love, awareness, that he is acting. He is acting drastically because only that will give them a shock and will create a situation in which some change is possible.

 

The act can be the same, but if a person is awake the quality of the act changes.

 

A sannyasin is a person who lives more and more in alertness. And the more there are people who exist through awareness, the better the world that will be created. Civilization has not yet happened.

 

- Osho, "The Heart Sutra"

 

 

 

For a man of clarity, for a man of absolute perceptiveness, for a man full of light beyond the mind, life becomes a choiceless phenomenon. You simply do the right thing. It is not that you think that it is right, "That's why I am doing it."

 

With me, the definition of right and wrong, good and bad, sin and virtue, absolutely changes. Whatever the enlightened person does is right. Whatever the enlightened person does not do, is wrong.

 

So I don't teach you any discipline, any morality. I simply teach you to be awake, and in your awareness you cannot do anything wrong. You cannot harm anybody, you cannot violate anybody's freedom, you cannot interfere into anybody's territory. A great respect for life, reverence for life, arises in you, and it has nothing to do with your religion, it has nothing to do with your belief systems.

 

A man of awareness does not belong to any organized religion. Organized religion is against religiousness. Every organized religion kills the truth!

 

- Osho, "Christianity The Deadliest Poison and Zen its antidote"

 

 

 

The believer is afraid. The atheist is also in fear. When I say this you will be a little surprised. Usually people think that if the atheist were afraid he would believe in god. People have failed in their attempts to make him afraid, failed to create the fear of hell in him. They draw very elaborate scenes of hell, a bird's eye view. They give a complete picture of hell: flaming fires, boiling cauldrons, monstrous devils who will torture you badly, beat you and throw you into burning fires. They terrorize so much, yet the atheist does not believe in god, so people think perhaps the atheist is fearless. They are wrong.

 

Anyone who looks deeply into man's mind will see that the atheist denies god because he too is afraid. His denial is also out of fear. He is afraid that god may exist. Then there will be hell and heaven. There will be sin and virtue. If god exists, then someday he will have to answer to him. If there is god, then some eye is watching us. Somebody is checking on us, somewhere an account of our lives is being kept and we are answerable to somebody, we can't get out of it just like that. If there is a god, then we will have to transform ourselves. Then we will have to live such that we can hold our heads up in front of him.

 

And if god should exist another fear grips the atheist. If there is a god I will have to seek him, my life will have to be put at stake. It is not cheap. It is easier if there is no god, then we are free. Free of god you also become free of heaven and hell. There is neither fear of hell nor fear of missing heaven. Nor the fear that those who are worshipping in the temples will be going to heaven. It doesn't exist. Who has ever gone to heaven? Who will go? Where? Man does not survive death. What virtue? What sin?

 

- Osho, "Death is Divine"

 

 

 

The only hope for man is to start looking into the ways of the heart. A great change, a shift, from intellect to intuition, from logic to love, is needed. To be initiated into sannyas means to be initiated out of the world of logic into the world of love.

 

Deva means divine, suniti means virtue -- divine virtue. The divine virtue is not something against sin: it is a transcendence of all duality. The ordinary duality between sin and virtue is also included in that transcendence.

 

Ordinary virtue is against sin, morality is against immorality, the saint is against the sinner. And because you are against something, you cannot be whole. The sinner is not outside the saint; it is part of his own being. Being against it he will repress it in the unconscious and he will be afraid to enter into his own being because he is going to meet the sinner there. That's why the so-called religious or moral man becomes split: he is one thing on the surface and just the opposite in his depth. He lives a double life; he is not one person but two. Hence the so-called religious man is bound to be a hypocrite, it cannot be avoided.

 

A totally different vision is needed to avoid hypocrisy. That's why I call it divine virtue, not human virtue. Divine virtue is nothing but being totally aware. Then you are neither moral nor immoral; you are a pure consciousness, a witness of all, good and bad, and detached from both, far away from both, unidentified with either.

 

- Osho, "Zorba The Buddha"

 

 

 

That is the whole definition of the right and the wrong. The wrong is that which cannot be done with awareness, for which unawareness is a must. The right is that which can be done only with awareness, for which unawareness has to be dropped; otherwise it cannot be done. Awareness is a must. The right is that for which awareness is a must, the wrong is that for which unawareness is a must. That is my definition of sin and virtue. And YOU are to decide; the responsibility is yours.

 

- Osho, "The Beloved, Vol 2"

 

 

 

In India, to marry one woman is a virtue. If you marry four, you will be in trouble. So if a Hindu marries one woman it is a virtue, because without marriage you won't be free of paternal debt -- you will have no children so how can you be free of paternal debt? A Hindu marrying four women is a sin. If a Mohammedan marries four women, it is a virtue, there is no sin in it at all. The currency of four wives is recognized by Mohammedans, not by Hindus.

 

Virtue and sin are also currencies, they too are recognized by society. If you are alone in a jungle, what is a virtue and what is a sin there? And what will you make of your hundred rupee bill there? What is the use of your one rupee bill there? In the jungle the hundred rupee bill is nothing but a piece of paper. Your virtue is a piece of paper there, your sin a a piece of paper there. Howsoever good a person you may be, you cannot earn any goodness in the forest. And how will you become good in the forest? There is no one there on whom you may bestow your kindness; there is no one there whom you may serve. How will you become bad there? There is no one there you may call names or murder. You are alone there so the sin and virtue have both disappeared. Sin and virtue are coins of the society.

 

- Osho, "Nowhere To Go But In"

 

 

 

The fundamental difference between moral thinking and religious thinking is this alone. Moral thinking splits life into two always. It scorns one and praises the other. That which it praises, it honours and encourages; that which it scorns, it insults and humbles. Have you ever considered what is the secret behind this strategy? What is the secret behind the whole of these moral scriptures? It is the Ego.

 

We say a thief is bad, he is low, despicable, worthy of despise. When we say this, we are telling the ego of people that if you are caught stealing you will lose your reputation, you will be insulted, you will become worthless; people will look down upon you. If you do not steal, you will be respected, people will felicitate you, garland you, respect you; you will win glory not only in this world but also in the next. If you do evil, you will rot in hell, in sin and sluggishness. What are we actually doing by this? We are hurting the bad man's ego and satisfying the good man's ego. We are teaching people that if you wish your ego to reach completion, be good. If you are bad, your ego will suffer.

 

The entire frame-work of Ethics stands on the ego. Now it is strange that it never occurs to us how moral scriptures can stand on the ego! What can be more immoral than the ego? But it is a fact that ego is at the base of all ethics. When Lao Tzu says this, he pulls down the entire frame-work of ethics. He says, "We do not accept good and evil, we do not accept sin and virtue. We desire that state of mind in which there is no idea of duality." But there is no existence of ego also. Religion is an ego-less state whereas ethics stand on the foundation of ego.

 

- Osho, "The Way of Tao, Volume 1"