Question 2: Osho, What is the difference between the christian way of being selfless, modest and humble, and your way of being egoless and ordinary? The Christian way of being humble, modest, selfless, is basically wrong. The words they are using may sound exactly the same as I use, but the...

The devotee — the real follower — is constantly watching what he is doing, how he is doing, why he is doing. Even in small matters he de-automatizes himself. Walking, he does not just walk; he walks with meditative awareness. He knows that he is walking. Eating, he knows he is eating. You e...

THE SEEKER IS NOT SORRY. 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...

See what Is…. That is meditation. Put your mind aside. Face reality directly. Encounter it, be face-to-face. Put the mind aside. Look into reality silently, without any thought, so that the thought cannot be a hindrance, a barrier, a distortion. That’s what meditation is: seeing what is and...

Drop the ego, howsoever bitter it is, howsoever painful it is, and you will be tremendously rewarded. Meditation sharpens your brilliance. Ordinarily your sword is rusty. You have never cared about it, you have not even taken it out of its sheath. And it needs constant sharpening, otherwise...

Question 1: My mind has difficulty understanding the Existence of Beginninglessness. Would you please talk about it? Prem Viraj, reality is indefinable. Reality simply is; there is no way to say what it is. It is not a “what,” it is not even a “that,” it is this. It is this-ness: you can ex...

Passion creates many things in you. It creates fever, it makes you more unconscious — more unconscious than you already are. It drags you deeper into the mud. And with passion come hatred, illusion and desire — and then you are distracted from your nature. Your nature is poisoned, your inno...

Question 4: Osho, Do you feel that the hippie way of life – a life of nonachieving, all play and no work, living for the moment, wandering about instead of remaining in one place – is better for a spiritual seeker than the usual life of marriage, family and career? The first thing: the hipp...

[A new sannyasin said she couldn’t get into the Dynamic meditation mainly because she was lazy….] If it is just laziness, then it is good to continue meditating. It is good if laziness disappears – laziness makes one toneless. The sharpness of consciousness is lost, and one becomes blurred....

Question 1: Osho, Why is it so difficult to forgive, to stop clinging to hurts long since past? The ego exists on misery – the more misery the more nourishment for it. In blissful moments the ego totally disappears, and vice versa: if the ego disappears, bliss starts showering on you. If yo...

Heraclitus touches the deepest problem of man: that is — fast asleep even while awake. You sleep when you sleep, but you also sleep while you are awake. What is the meaning of it? — because this is what Buddha says, this is what Jesus says, this is what Heraclitus says. You look wide awake,...

Question 5 : What is the difference between Prayer and Meditation? A lot of difference. A great difference. in fact they are absolutely different things. Their movement is in different directions. There are two types of religions in the world: prayer oriented religions and meditation orient...

Question 1 Beloved Osho, You speak on the psychology of the buddhas, the psychology of transcendence, as the essence of the work happening here in the buddhafield. what is the uniqueness of this third psychology? is there a psychotherapy of transcendence? Amitabh, Sigmund Freud introduced p...

The moment you change from mind to meditation your whole life is going to be affected. It is natural. If it is not affected, that will be something unnatural. Your relationships are bound to change. For example, a man may believe that he loves his wife. The moment he starts meditating it wi...

[A sannyasin says that during a group she began to speak in a language she knew nothing about. She has a fever afterwards. Since the group it has been happening many times to her. Osho tells her to go into it while he checks her energy.] You have stumbled upon a beautiful method of meditati...

You can be a participant but not an observer in religion. You can be be an observer in science, never a participant. Really, for science this is a basic condition: you should not be a participant. Because if you participate you are involved in it, then you become a party to it. So you must ...

Beloved Dharm Jyoti, Love. Don't ever repress the mind. Repression is a disease. And that which is repressed will never be completed. It comes back again and again to attack you. The mind is to be understood. Finally, only understanding the mind becomes the solution. Repression is merely po...

[A sannyasin says: I was doing buddhist meditation for two years.... I kept falling asleep!] Mm, that's possible in a buddhist meditation... very possible. That's why zen masters have to keep a staff continuously to hit the disciples, because they are always dozing. The whole method is so s...

Misery is human, bliss is divine. Animals are unaware of both; they are neither miserable nor blissful, they are living in a kind of deep sleep. Man has awakened a little bit, just a small part of his being has become conscious; hence the split. Animals are total, there is no split, they ar...

Unless one is ready to dissolve one’s ego, the fish is going to remain thirsty. Dissolve the ego and all thirst disappears, because the moment you dissolve the ego, the wall between you and the ocean disappears; then you are part of the ocean. How can you be thirsty then? And man is certain...

Question 5: I have seen many Women having strong Catharsis in Meditation, But never Men. Why? Don’t they need it? They need it more than any woman. But they have been conditioned not to weep, not to cry; from the very childhood a boy is taught not to be sissy, not to be like a girl. If he c...

Mind is misery and cannot be otherwise, because mind lives in desires, ambitions, it is always hankering for the more — and that hankering cannot be satisfied. It always goes on jumping ahead of you, wherever you would be, the mind will be asking for more. It is always ahead of you. The dis...

You should find a place which enhances meditation. For example, sitting under a tree will help, rather than going and sitting in front of a movie house or going to the railway station and sitting on the platform; going to nature, to the mountains, to the trees, to the rivers where Tao is st...

Buddha is saying: Don’t consider what is right and what is wrong, because if you consider what is right and what is wrong you will be divided, you will become a hypocrite. You will pretend the right and you will do the wrong. And the moment you consider what is right and what is wrong, you ...

[To a new Indian sannyasin:] So you have arrived – I have been waiting for you. You had to come and you have arrived in the right time…. And remember a few things. The most important is that now meditation should become the very center of your life; everything else should be secondary. Noth...

BY DAY THE SUN SHINES, AND THE WARRIOR IN HIS ARMOR SHINES. BY NIGHT THE MOON SHINES, AND THE MASTER SHINES IN MEDITATION. These are code words. The sun represents the warrior. The sun is hot energy; the sun is violent energy. The moon represents the meditator, the mystic; it is cool energy...

Watching is meditation. What you watch is irrelevant. You can watch the trees, you can watch the river, you can watch the clouds, you can watch children playing around. Watching is meditation. What you watch is not the point; the object is not the point. The quality of observation, the qual...

The secret of immortality is to die as an ego. Be just a zero and you have attained to the eternal, because the zero cannot be killed by death. The ego can be killed by death, it is bound to be because it is our invention, it is man-made — and whatsoever is man-made cannot last forever. Eve...

You have been doing the Meditations very Courageously here. Back home, you may feel alone. But don’t feel it as a loneliness. If you are ready, I can help you there also. Just remember me, feel my presence, and then meditate. Space, distance, is meaningless if there is love. You may be sitt...

There is an ancient Sufi parable: A man gave to a Sufi mystic a present, a golden bowl with a beautiful fish in it. The Sufi looked at the bowl and the fish and felt very sorry for the fish, because the bowl is an imprisonment. He went to the lake and he was tremendously happy in liberating...

Question 7: Why do you prefer to call meditation the art of dying rather than calling it the art of growing? Because I know your ego will like it very much if I called it the art of growing. The art of dying comes like a shock. Let me tell you an anecdote. One day Mulla Nasrudin saw a crowd...

Question : How can a meditator know that he is going higher and deeper, or if he is stuck somewhere? It is very simple. First, there are qualities which grow as meditation deepens. For example, you start feeling loving for no reason at all. Not the love that you know, in which you have to f...

Question 2: Why is love so essential for spiritual growth? Love and awareness is the highest form of polarity – just like man/woman, life/death, darkness/light, summer/winter, outer/ inner, yin/yang, the body and the soul, the creation and the creator. Love and awareness is the highest form...

Question 2: Osho, You tell us that awareness is enough. then why discourses, groups, sannyas? Rick Ferris, how did you come to know that awareness is enough? I have to tell it again and again — that awareness is enough, that no discourse is needed. But even that has to be told to you: that ...

[A sannyasin describes an experience he had at a full-moon party when his mind became clear and he saw that people are in difficulty. He wanted to make himself useful, but he closed up again.] No, you cannot do anything about it. You cannot retain it… you cannot bring it. Whenever it comes ...

Meditation is nonsocial. It is not concerned with anyone else; it is concerned only with yourself. So no mask is needed; you can be authentic. But you cannot be authentic because you don't know the distinction. Even in meditation I feel that you are doing many false things. Freud became awa...

My Beloved Ones, In this first meeting of the meditation camp, I would like to talk about the first step for a meditator, a seeker. What is the first step? A thinker or a lover follow certain paths but a seeker has to travel on a totally different journey. For a seeker, what is the first st...

Prem means love, vatayana means now, the present moment – love now. And my whole emphasis is on this moment, because this moment contains all. Now is the only reality – all else is either memory or imagination. And even for the past to exist as memory, now is needed. It doesn’t exist as the...

Question 1: Will you please explain to me the Lord’s Prayer, as given by Jesus? MEDITATION CAN BE EXPLAINED, prayer never. It can be understood, but it cannot be explained. Prayer is something of the heart, very elusive, very indefinable. You can feel it, but you cannot think it. That is pa...

[A sannyasin asks: I’m a runner and when I run each day I get a feeling very much like when I’m doing dynamic meditation… Can I use it as a meditation?] Yes, use it as much as you can. If you can run then there is no need for any other meditation – it is enough! … Any action in which you ca...

When you meditate on “Who am I?” you will come across this point, and it will dissolve. And the deeper you will go… then deeper questions will come: first sociological, theological, then biological. You have a man’s body or a woman’s body: the question will arise, “Am I a man or a woman?” T...

Question : How is it possible always to remain centred? There is a tendency to go astray… Don’t create any conflict about going astray and being centred. Float. If you create a conflict, if you become afraid of going astray, then there is more possibility that you will go astray – because w...

Man has only to allow; bliss is always established by god. We can create misery but we cannot create bliss. Misery is within our hands, bliss is not. Bliss has to be allowed to happen. It is not a doing, it is a happening. The moment you surrender, misery starts disappearing and bliss is es...

Question 5 : What is the difference between Prayer and Meditation? A lot of difference. A great difference. in fact they are absolutely different things. Their movement is in different directions. There are two types of religions in the world: prayer oriented religions and meditation orient...

DESIRES ARISE FROM THESE THREE-FOLD KARMAS WHEN CIRCUMSTANCES ARE FAVORABLE FOR THEIR . If you do a pure karma, a good act, a saintly act, then desires will arise, of course, to do more good. If you do an impure act, desires will arise to do more impure acts, because whatsoever you do creat...

Question : Do you recommend any particular discipline besides dynamic meditation? Even to move into an undisciplined life you have to follow some discipline. But you must remain the master; it must not become a slavery. The real thing, the end, is always to be spontaneous As we are, we are ...

[A sannyasin says: My mouth opens when I’m meditating; I feel energy there. I don’t know what I should do about it.] No problem at all. When the mouth opens, just allow it. Don’t close the mouth when it wants to open. It is nothing of a problem. It is perfectly good. The mouth opens because...

KILL OUT DESIRE FOR SENSATION. We live for sensations, we hanker for sensations. We go on seeking newer and newer sensations; our whole life is an effort to obtain new sensations. But what happens? The more you seek sensations, the less sensitive you become. Sensitivity is lost. It looks pa...

Osho Quotes on Active Meditations Catharsis helps. If you cathart, if you go through chaotic meditations, you throw all these clouds outside, all these darknesses outside, then mindfulness becomes easier. That is my reason why I emphasize first chaotic meditations and then silent meditation...

Question 2: What is Meditation? MEDITATION is A STATE OF NO-MIND Meditation is a state of pure consciousness with no content. Ordinarily, your consciousness is too much full of rubbish, just like a mirror covered with dust. The mind is a constant traffic: thoughts are moving, desires are mo...

Question : We were told that the people who are working here at the commune driving a bulldozer, for example, that was their meditation. do you agree with that? You will have to understand what I mean by meditation. Meditation means: alertness, awareness, mindfulness. So whatever you are do...

Do not make meditation the last thing on your schedule. Make it the first. Then when you feel that now it is not an effort, when you can sit for an hour together completely immersed in breathing – aware, attentive – when you only know this, that you have achieved attention of breathing with...

Question 8 Osho, I have been doing meditation for almost forty years, but i am as far away from the goal of god-realization as ever. what should i do? Surendranath, to make God a goal is to start in a wrong direction. God is not a goal; if you think in terms of goals God becomes your desire...

Question 3: Beloved Osho, What is meant by a spiritual ego? Is spiritual greed one of its symptoms? Is it curable? Anand Tarangini, the spiritual ego is not something different from the ordinary ego. Somebody feels his ego because he has money, somebody feels his ego strengthened because he...

Don’t be worried that you are alone. Slowly slowly, you will become able to balance yourself. Slowly slowly, in slow steps, you will be able to go beyond the known. Slowly slowly you will be able to die as an ego and be born as an egoless presence. It may take a little longer time. It may t...

[A sannyasin says: I have so many problems with my mind in every meditation – I can’t stop it!] I understand. Start doing one thing: every day, for one hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon, sit and say whatsoever comes in the mind, loudly, mm? so that not only do you think it, ...

Question 2: During my dancing meditation i kept having flashes about what you said concerning the society, drugs, etc. And wondering that now that i am intoxicated by the ultimate drug, You, Osho, can anyone take that away from me? Bring me down from that eternal high? No one except you. Yo...

Dancing is not passive, it is very active. In the end you become movement; the body is forgotten, only movement remains. Really, dancing is a most unearthly thing, a most unearthly art, because it is just rhythm in movement. It is absolutely immaterial so you cannot hold on to it. You can h...

[An Indian sannyasin had come before darshan to talk to Osho about a frightening experience he had had recently while meditating. As people arrived for the darshan Osho was saying:] One gets really scared. Really, it came too early and you weren’t yet ready. It can happen that suddenly a ke...

Question 4: Having never had the opportunity to truly fall in love, to know that surrender, is that keeping me from truly falling in love with you, being in that mad state of love? Is it enough just to feel quiet love, respect — though not necessarily that odd form of insanity? Don’t be wor...

Question 5: We are to stand and let the waters settle on their own, why all the Active Meditations? If you can sit, there is no need for meditations. In Japan, for meditation they have the word “zazen”. It means just sitting, doing nothing. If you can sit, not doing anything, this is the ul...

In life, you go on compromising without knowing, not only with the society but even with your family. Even the people you love demand compromise. Nobody likes the individual; everybody wants to overpower you, to dominate you. The husband wants to dominate the wife; the wife in her own ways ...

Meditation needs not followers but friends. The follower is stupid; he follows out of his stupidity: because he cannot depend on himself he starts depending on somebody else, but he is a slave, a psychological slave, and psychological slavery is a deeper slavery than all other slaveries. It...

Meditation is a flower and compassion is its fragrance. Exactly like that it happens. The flower blooms and the fragrance spreads on the winds in all directions, to be carried to the very ends of earth. But the basic thing is the blooming of the flower. Man is also carrying a potentiality f...

[A sannyasin says: I was doing buddhist meditation for two years.... I kept falling asleep!] Mm, that's possible in a buddhist meditation... very possible. That's why zen masters have to keep a staff continuously to hit the disciples, because they are always dozing. The whole method is so s...

Before you start helping others, live it in all possible ways. Walk meditatively, eat meditatively, sit meditatively, even sleep meditatively. Let meditation be spread all over your life. It should become a twenty-four-hour phenomenon, like breathing — so much so that you need not remember ...

Question 5: Osho, I know I should be unattached. Now I judge myself for having bought beautiful orange material rather than having the courage to run around like some do in some dirty rag. Now at least have the courage to wear those beautiful orange things. I’m not against beauty and I’m no...

Question 1 Dynamic meditation is very active, very strenuous.can one not go into meditation just by sitting silently? You can go into meditation just by sitting, but then be just sitting; do not do anything else. If you can be just sitting, it becomes meditation. Be completely in the sittin...

[A sannyasin says: The other night I got very frightened. I was in my room lying on my bed, and for some reason I started thinking that I am not my body alone. The room stood out very strongly, everything in the room stood out strongly, but it wasn’t warm, it was cold.] It was an effortless...

[A sannyasin who came to Osho because he has cancer of the foot, has just discovered that it has now spread to the rest of his body. He says he feels strangely at peace. He is returning to the West.] Mm mm, no, nothing to be worried about; just go. But this time don’t be scared of the opera...

The inner exploration is such that one can never have enough. The more you have, the more you will have the feeling that you don’t have anything the more you have it, the more your thirst grows. It is a non-ending journey – and it is good that it is non-ending. It is good that you cannot ha...

Whenever you listen to the voice of the ego, sooner or later there will be trouble. You will fall into the trap of misery. This you have to watch: ego always leads into misery, always, unconditionally; always, categorically, absolutely. And whenever you listen to nature, it leads you to a w...

But the same mind, if mastered -- mastered by watchfulness, mastered by meditation -- is transformed. It becomes the greatest friend. Nobody can help you as much as it. The mind is a ladder: unguarded it takes you downwards, guarded it takes you upwards. The same ladder! The mind is a door:...

Question 9: Osho, Any marks for Choiceless UnAwareness? Anand Buddha, even if you are aware of that, that will do. Are you aware of choiceless unawareness? That will destroy that choiceless unawareness. Make it an object of awareness and it will disappear, evaporate. And no marks can be giv...

The real definition of good and bad can only be this: the good is that which grows with meditation, watchfulness, and the bad is that which disappears as you grow in watchfulness, as you grow in awareness. Awareness has to be the decisive factor. When you become aware of your anger there ha...

Buddha means one who is enlightened, and prem means love — love for the enlightened one, or love for enlightenment. Buddha is not a person — mm? it is a state of ultimate being. There have been many buddhas, and everybody is potentially a buddha. The word itself means tremendously awakened,...

THEY DELIGHT IN MEDITATION. 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 eas...

Question 1: Osho, Many times I feel so merged in you that it is as If I have died and only you are. But this feeling doesn’t remain constant, and always the ego returns. This happens when ever I have to again communicate with others or return to activity. Why doesn’t the Ego remain Dead? If...

Watch your life. Buddha is all for watchfulness. IN ALL THINGS BE A MASTER OF WHAT YOU DO AND SAY AND THINK. BE FREE. If you can be a master, if you can be watchful, freedom comes on its own accord. Freedom is the shadow of being a master of your life. YOU ARE A SEEKER. Remember, always rem...

Meditation brings rebellion in life — rebellion against all traditions, conventions, dogmas, creeds, rebellion against the whole past, because unless you are completely clean of the past you cannot be totally herenow. And unless you are totally herenow you will never know what the truth is....

Nanak says that none of the methods and tricks devised to be free of samsara have any strength in them either. The authentic power lies in the hands of Him who creates the world and, having created, admires it. It is all in His hands. All strength, all power lies in His hands. Become weak, ...

Question 2: Osho, You’ve said meditation is a flowering. And for us, the perfume of the flower is gratitude. Is there anything we can do for you? Yes. Meditation, compassion and gratitude. Whenever you are meditative, you feel blissful; whenever you are in compassion, you feel ecstatic. And...

MAHAMUDRA RESTS ON NOUGHT. WITHOUT MAKING AN EFFORT, BUT REMAINING LOOSE AND NATURAL.... And this is the whole method of Tilopa, and the whole method of Tantra: WITHOUT MAKING AN EFFORT... because if you make an effort, the ego is strengthened. If you make an effort, YOU come in. So love is...

Question 1: What is Dynamic Meditation? The first thing to be understood about Dynamic Meditation is that it is a method of creating a situation through tension in which meditation can happen. If your total being is completely tense, the only possibility that remains is relaxation. Ordinari...

It says that one of the pillars of Christianity is forgiveness. It looks beautiful when you hear the word `forgiveness’, but the implications are very evil. A man rapes a woman. The man will be forgiven by God, but what about the woman? The criminal is forgiven, what about the victim? There...

This whole mind of communicating with people in an attempt to be verified by them simply shows a deep darkness inside; otherwise, there is no need. And I am not saying that when a man becomes full of light he stops communication — no. Only he can communicate, because he has something to com...

You have many minds but you have only one heart. Have you observed this fact? You don’t have one mind; you are multi-psychic, you have many minds. They constantly change — every moment your mind changes. One moment it is full of doubt, another moment it is full of belief, and another moment...

Question 3: Osho, For me the most beautiful meditation is to sit in a corner and watch the Children playing around the ashram. But i’m in trouble: is this a meditation At all? Watching is meditation. What you watch is irrelevant. You can watch the trees, you can watch the river, you can wat...

When Buddha says: MASTER YOUR WORDS, he means, be conscious. Why are you saying something? To whom? And what is the purpose of it? Be clear, otherwise be silent. It is better not to burden others with your garbage. If you can enlighten, good; if you can unburden, good; otherwise it is bette...

All kinds of things are going on inside the mind. One day just sit down and write whatsoever is coming into the mind. And don’t cheat, just write exactly whatsoever comes in and you will be surprised that this is your mind, this is where you have been living your life from. You will find it...

Question 2: Osho, Why Do I go on Forgetting myself? Gyan Deva, IT IS an ancient habit; for many, many lives you have practised it. You have put so much energy into it, into forgetting yourself. You remember money, you remember others, you remember the world. To remember all these things — a...

[A sannyasin, returning to the west, says she fears that the anger which was provoked in the primal group here will surface again with her family particularly her mother – or in self-destructive ways. Osho checks her energy.] Mm mm – it is there and very much. You have just touched the tip ...

[A sannyasin says she is not doing the meditations because: It feels too much of an effort. I enjoy just sitting and walking, and being with friends.] Then don’t create problems! – because that sitting and enjoying you have been doing your whole life. That has not changed you. Your problems...

Question 1 Osho, Why is growth painful? Growth is painful because you have been avoiding a thousand and one pains in your life. By avoiding you cannot destroy them -- they go on accumulating. You go on swallowing your pains; they remain in your system. That's why growth is painful -- when y...

When a scientist looks at a certain thing he looks with a rational eye; he wants to know what it is. When a poet looks at the same thing he looks with the aesthetic eye; he wants to enjoy it. When a devotee looks at the same thing he looks with the eye of devotion; he wants to worship it. I...

Rumi does not mean anything, it is a name of a place; because he came from Rum he was called Rumi. His message is love, and he belongs to the highest categories of the Buddhas. He was the man who inverted a new method of meditation, whirling. There have been hundreds of devices; Rumi has al...

On the path nothing more is needed than patience. Man can do everything that he is capable of, but still there is no necessity that the ultimate happens; it may happen, it may not. We can grope in the dark; the door may open, it may not So if one has not infinite patience, one starts gettin...

Question 3: Osho, When this question arises — who am i? — i get very afraid. Is there something to be said about it? Prem Dada, THIS QUESTION MAKES EVERYBODY AFRAID. It is nothing exceptional; it is absolutely the case with everybody. Whoever wants to go deep into the question, into the que...

Find out the witness and then obey him. First find the witness and then obey him, because to find the witness means to find one’s own innermost core. We live on two layers, two levels. One is the periphery: the world of action. The other is the inner being, the world of no-action: the world...