HOW TO ATTAIN PEACEFUL MIND?''OSHO''

 People come to me and they ask, “How to attain a peaceful mind?” I say to them, “There exists nothing like that: peaceful mind. Never heard of it.”

Mind is never peaceful; no-mind is peace. Mind itself can never be peaceful, silent. The very nature of the mind is to be tense, to be in confusion. Mind can never be clear, it cannot have clarity, because mind is by nature confusion, cloudiness. Clarity is possible without mind, peace is possible without mind; silence is possible without mind, so never try to attain a silent mind. If you do, from the very beginning you are moving in an impossible dimension.

                                                                   Osho, Tantra: The Supreme Understanding, Talk #2

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Remember always that whatsoever is happening around you is rooted in the mind. Mind is always the cause. It is the projector, and outside there are only screens – you project yourself. If you feel it is ugly then change the mind. If you feel whatsoever comes from the mind is hellish and nightmarish, then drop the mind. Work with the mind, don’t work with the screen; don’t go on painting it and changing it. Work with the mind.

 

But there is one problem, because you think you are the mind. So how can you drop it? So you feel you can drop everything, change everything, repaint, redecorate, rearrange, but how can you drop yourself. That is the root of all trouble.

 

You are not the mind, you are beyond mind. You have become identified, that’s true, but you are not the mind.

 

And this is the purpose of meditation: to give you small glimpses that you are not the mind. If even for a few moments the mind stops, you are still there! On the contrary, you are more, overflowing with being. When the mind stops it is as if a drainage which was continuously draining you has stopped. Suddenly you are overflowing with energy. You feel more!

 

If even for a single moment you become aware that the mind is not there but “I am,” you have reached a deep core of truth. Then it will be easy to drop the mind. You are not the mind, otherwise how can you drop yourself? The identification has to be dropped first, then the mind can be dropped.

Osho, The Book of Nothing: Hsin Hsin Ming, Talk #5
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When all identity with the mind is dropped, when you are a watcher on the hills and the mind is left deep down in the darkness of the valleys, when you are on the sunlit peaks, just a pure witness, seeing, watching, but not getting identified with anything – good or bad, sinner or saint, this or that – in that witnessing all questions dissolve. The mind melts, evaporates. You are left as a pure being, just a pure existence – a breathing, a beating of the heart, utterly in the moment, no past, no future, hence no present either.

Osho, The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol. 1, Talk #6

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Mind is illusory – that which is not but appears to be, and appears so much that you think that you are the mind. Mind is maya, mind is just a dream, mind is just a projection…a soap bubble – nothing in it, but it appears like a soap bubble floating on a river. The sun is just rising, the rays penetrate the bubble; a rainbow is created and nothing is there in it. When you touch the bubble it is broken and everything disappears – the rainbow, the beauty – nothing is left. Only emptiness becomes one with the infinite emptiness. Just a wall was there, a bubble wall. Your mind is just a bubble wall – inside, your emptiness; outside, my emptiness. It is just a bubble: prick it, and the mind disappears.

Osho, A Bird on the Wing, Talk #2
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You say, “Why are you so against the mind?” I am not against the mind; I am simply stating the fact – what the mind is. If you see what the mind is, you will drop it. When I say, “Drop the mind,” I am not against the mind. I am simply making it clear to you what the mind is, what it has done to you, how it has become a bondage.

 

It is not a question of using it or abusing it. The mind itself is the problem, not its use or abuse. And remember, you cannot use the mind till you know how to be without the mind. Only people who know how to be without the mind, are capable of using the mind, otherwise the mind uses them. It is the mind that is using you, but mind is very clever, it goes on deceiving you. It goes on saying, “You are using me.”

 

It is the mind that is using you. You are being used; the mind has become the master of you, you are a slave, but the mind is very clever, it goes on buttressing you. It says, “I am just an instrument, you are the master.” But watch, look into the mechanism of the mind, how it goes on using you. You think you are using it. You can use it only when you know that you are separate from it; otherwise how will you use it? You are identified with it.

Osho, The Book of Wisdom, Talk #2
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Osho,

Are mind and consciousness separate things? Or is the silent mind, or the concentrated mind, what is called “consciousness”?

 

It depends, it depends on your definition. But to me, mind is that part which has been given to you. It is not yours. Mind means the borrowed, mind means the cultivated, mind means that with which the society has penetrated you. It is not you.

 

Consciousness is your nature; mind is just the circumference created by the society around you, the culture, your education.

 

Mind means the conditioning. So, you can have a Hindu mind, you cannot have a Hindu consciousness. You can have a Christian mind, you can’t have a Christian consciousness. Consciousness is one: it is not divisible. Minds are many. Societies are many, cultures, religions are many and each culture, each society, creates a different mind. Mind is a social by-product. And unless this mind dissolves, you cannot go within; you cannot know what is really your nature, what is authentically your existence, your consciousness.

 

To struggle for meditation is to struggle against the mind. Mind is never meditative and mind is never silent, so to say “a silent mind” is meaningless, absurd. It is just like saying “a healthy disease.” It makes no sense. How can there be a disease that is healthy? Disease is disease, and health is the absence of disease.

 

There is nothing like a silent mind. When there is silence, there is no mind. When there is mind, there is no silence. Mind, as such, is the disturbance, the dis-ease. Meditation is the state of no-mind – not of a silent mind, not of a healthy mind, not of a concentrated mind, no. Meditation is the state of no-mind: no society within you, no conditioning within you – just you, with your pure consciousness

WHERE IS HEAVEN AND HELL?''OSHO''

 Hell and heaven are within you, both gates are within you.

When you are behaving unconsciously there is the gate of hell; when you become alert and conscious, there is the gate of heaven.

WHAT IS GREED AND WHERE IT COME FROM ?''OSHO''

 Where does greed come from? Could you give me some tools to help me deal with it?

Just to understand the nature of greed is enough. You need not do anything else to get rid of it; the very understanding will clarify the whole mess.

Man is full if he is in tune with the universe; if he is not in tune with the universe then he is empty, utterly empty. And out of that emptiness comes greed. Greed is to fill it: by money, by houses, by furniture, by friends, by lovers – by anything, because one cannot live as emptiness. It is horrifying, it is a ghost life. If you are empty and there is nothing inside you, it is impossible to live.

To have the feeling that you have much inside you, there are only two ways: either you get in tune with the universe.... Then you are filled with the whole, with all the flowers and with all the stars. They are within you just as they are without you. That is real fulfillment. But if you don’t do that, and millions of people are not doing that, then the easiest way is to fill it with any junk.

I used to live with a man. He was a rich man and he had a beautiful house. And somehow he became interested in my ideas; he listened to a few of my lectures, and he invited me, saying, “Why live far away, out of the city? I have a beautiful house in the city and it is so big; you can have half of the house. And I am not going to charge you, I simply want your presence to be there in my house.”

I was living outside, in the mountains, but it was difficult to come from there to the university. From his house the university was very close. His house had a beautiful garden and was in the best locality of the city, so I accepted his invitation.

But when I went into his house I could not believe it; he had so much junk collected that there was no place to live. The house was big, but his collection was bigger...and a collection which was absolutely stupid. Anything that he could find in the market he would purchase. I asked him, “What are you going to do with all these things?”

He said, “One never knows, some day one may need it.”

“But,” I said, “where is one going to live in this house?” So much furniture of all ages...because the Europeans had left the country so they had to sell all their things. He could not have enough; he managed to purchase anything, things which he did not need. A car was standing in the porch which always remained standing because it was too old, broken. And I asked him, “Why don’t you throw it away? At least to clean up the place...”

He said, “It looks good in the porch.”

All the tires were punctured; it was of no use. Whenever you had to move it from here and there, you had to push it, pull it back. And it was there, rotting. He said, “I got it at a very reasonable price. It belonged to an old woman who used to be a nurse here and who has gone back to England.”

But I said, “If you were interested in purchasing a car then at least you should have purchased a car which moves.”

He said, “I am not interested in movement. My bicycle is perfectly good.” And his bicycle was also a marvel. You would know that he was coming from one mile away, the bicycle made so much noise; it had no mudguards, no chain cover; it must have been the oldest bicycle made. It had no horn.

He said, “There is no need for a horn. It makes so much noise that at least for one mile ahead people are already giving way. And it is a good thing, because it cannot be stolen.”

I said, “That is strange. Why can’t it be stolen?”

He said, “Nobody else can ride on it. It has been stolen twice, and the thief was caught immediately...because it makes so much noise, and everybody knows that it is my bicycle, so people caught the thief and asked him, `Where are you taking the bicycle?’

“I can leave it anywhere. I go to see a movie – I don’t put it on a bicycle stand, because then you have to pay money. I put it anywhere, and it is always there;when I come back it is always there. Everybody knows that it is a trouble. And even if you can get it to your home you cannot ride on it in the city – you will be caught. So it is better not to bother with it.”

He said, “It is a rare specimen.”

I said, “The way you describe it, it looks like it.”

And he had all kinds of things in his house...broken radios, because he could get them cheap. He was a Jaina and he had a broken statue of Jesus Christ on the cross.

I said, “What have you purchased it for?”

He said, “The woman gave it to me free when I purchased the car – she offered it to me as a present. I don’t believe in Jesus Christ or anything, but I could not refuse a piece of art.”

I said to him, “Half of the house from today you take to the other half; my part has to be empty.”

He was very happy to take everything. Already his house was so full you could not walk; you could not find your way. He took everything. He had so many kinds of furniture that he had piled up on the sofa; it was not used, because you cannot sit on a sofa that is touching the roof. And I asked, “Why?”

“He said, “you don’t understand 151; the price! And someday I may get married” – he was not married – “and I may have children and they may need all these things. You don’t be worried, everything will be of some use sometime.”

Even on the road, if he could find anything lying there which had been thrown by somebody, he would pick it up. One day he was walking with me from the garden to the house and he found a bicycle handle, and he picked it up. But I said, “What will you do with a bicycle handle?”

He said, “You don’t understand. I will show you.” I went with him. In his bathroom he had almost a bicycle – just a few things were missing. And he said, “All these things I have picked up from the road. And I go on joining them and putting them together. Now a few things are missing. The chain is not there, the seat is not there, but I will get them. Somebody is going to throw them away someday. Life is long, and what is the harm? It looks perfectly good in the bathroom.”

Greed simply means you are feeling a deep emptiness and you want to fill it with anything possible; it doesn’t matter what it is. And once you understand it, then you have nothing to do with greed. You have something to do with your coming into communion with the whole, so the inner emptiness disappears. And with it, all greed disappears. That does not mean that you start living naked; that simply means you do not live just to collect things. Whenever you need something you can have it.

But there are mad people all over the world, and they are collecting.... Somebody is collecting money although he never uses it. That is strange. In the commune, we had made a sticker for cars: “Moses earns, Jesus saves, Osho spends.”

A thing has to be a utility; if it is not a utility then there is no need for it.

But this thing can take any direction: people are eating; they are not feeling hungry and still they go on swallowing. They know that this is going to create suffering, they will be sick, but they cannot prevent themselves. This eating is also a filling-up process.

So there can be many directions and many ways to fill emptiness, although it is never full; it remains empty, and you remain miserable because it is never enough. More is needed, and the more and the demand for more is unending.

I don’t take greed as a desire; it is some existential sickness. You are not in tune with the whole, and only that tuning with the whole can make you healthy. That tuning with the whole can make you holy.

It is strange that the word health, and the word holy both come from wholeness. When you are feeling one with wholeness all greed disappears. Otherwise...what have religions been doing? They have misunderstood greed as a desire, so they try to repress it: “Don’t be greedy.” Then one moves to the other extreme, to renounce. One collects – the greedy person – and the person who wants to get rid of greed starts renouncing. There too there is no end.

Mahavira could never recognize Gautam Buddha as enlightened for the simple reason that he still carries three sets of clothes – just three sets of clothes, which are absolutely necessary. One you are using, one has to be washed, and one for emergency reasons...someday the clothes may not come from being washed or they are not dry, or it is raining the whole day. So three seems to be very essential...one emergency....

Mahavira is absolutely against greed. Now, that has taken to an extreme form; he is naked. Buddha carries a begging bowl. Mahavira cannot accept it because even a begging bowl is a possession, and an enlightened man, according to him, should not possess anything. A begging bowl...it is made of coconut. You cut the coconut in the middle...and there are special coconuts which are very big. You cut from the middle, you take all of the fruit out, and then two bowls are left, hard shells. That is the cheapest thing, because they are thrown away; you cannot eat them. To have a begging bowl and to call it being possessive is not right.

But when you see greed as a desire and you become stubborn, going against it, then everything is a possession. Mahavira lived naked, and instead of a begging bowl he used to make a bowl of his two hands. Now it was a very difficult thing: his two hands are full of the food and he has to eat just like the animals, because he cannot use his hands – so he has to use his mouth directly to take the food from the hands.

Everybody in the world eats sitting. But Mahavira’s idea is that when you eat sitting, you eat more. Now this is going to the opposite extreme. So he was teaching to eat food standing – standing, with the food in your hands; it is such a strenuous thing. You can take food only one time, so whatever can fit in your two hands at one time is one meal. You have to eat it standing, and everything has to be taken together, sweet, salty, and they all get mixed. That is Mahavira’s idea of making it tasteless, because to enjoy taste is to enjoy the body, is to enjoy matter.

To me, greed is not a desire at all. So you need not do anything about greed. You have to understand the emptiness that you are trying to fill, and ask the question, “Why am I empty? The whole existence is so full, why am I empty? Perhaps I have lost track; I am no longer moving in the same direction, I am no longer existential. That is the cause of my emptiness.”

So be existential.

Let go, and move closer to existence in silence and peace, in meditation.

And one day you will see you are so full – overfull, overflowing – of joy, of blissfulness, of benediction. You have so much of it that you can give it to the whole world and yet it will not be exhausted.

That day, for the first time you will not feel any greed – for money, for food, for things, for anything. You will live naturally, and whatever is needed you will find it. And you will live, not with a constant greed that cannot be fulfilled, a wound that cannot be healed

HOW CAN A MAN BE WHOLE MAN?''OSHO''

 A man should be just man, a man should be just human – total, whole. And out of that wholeness will arise a new kind of health.”

The East is introvert, the West is extrovert. Man is split, mind is schizophrenic. That’s why all the great masters have come from the East and all the great scientists have come from the West. The West has developed science and has completely forgotten about the inner soul; is concerned with matter, but has become oblivious of the inner subjectivity. The whole focus is on the object. Hence all the great scientists are born in the West.

The East has become too much concerned with the inner soul and has forgotten objectivity, matter, the world. Great religious masters developed out of this, but this is not a good situation, this should not be so.

Man should become one.

Man should not be allowed to be lopsided anymore. Man should be a fluidity, neither extrovert nor introvert. Man should be capable of being both together. The inner and the outer, if balanced, give the greatest ecstatic experience.

The person who is neither leaning towards the inner too much, nor towards the outer too much is the person of equilibrium. He will be a scientist and a mystic together. That is something that will happen, that is something that is going to happen. We are preparing the field for it. I would like to see a man who is neither Eastern nor Western, because to be Eastern as against Western is ugly. To be Western as against Eastern is again ugly. The whole earth belongs to us and we belong to the whole earth. A man should be just man, a man should be just human – total, whole. And out of that wholeness will arise a new kind of health.

The East has suffered, the West has suffered. The East has suffered; you can see it all around – the poverty, the starvation. The West has suffered, you can see inside the Western mind – tension, anxiety, anguish. The West is very poor inwardly, the East is very poor outwardly. Poverty is bad. Whether it is inner or outer makes no difference, poverty should not be allowed.

Man should be rich, inner, outer, both.

Man should have all-dimensional richness.

Just think of a man who is an Albert Einstein and a Gautam Buddha both. Just meditate on that possibility – that is possible. In fact if Albert Einstein had lived a little longer, he would have turned into a mystic. He had started thinking about the inner, he was becoming interested in the inner mystery. How long can you remain interested in the outer mystery? If you are really interested in mystery then sooner or later you will stumble upon the inner too.

My concept is of a world that is neither Eastern nor Western, neither inner nor outer, neither extrovert nor introvert – which is balanced, which is whole.

But this has not been the case in the past. That’s why your question is relevant. You ask: “Why have all the great masters come from the East?” Because the East has been obsessed with the inner as against the outer. Naturally, when down the centuries you have been obsessed with the inner, you will create a Buddha, a Nagarjuna, a Shankara, a Kabir. It is natural.

If you are obsessed with the outer as against the inner, you will create an Albert Einstein, an Eddington, an Edison, that’s natural. But this is not good for the totality of human beings. Something is missing. The man who has inner growth and has not grown outwardly remains juvenile in the outside, remains stupid outside. And the same is the case with the man who has grown much, who has become mature, very mature, as far as mathematics goes and physics goes and chemistry goes, but who inside has not been even born yet, who is still in the womb.

This is my message to you: drop these hemispheres – East and West – and drop these hemispheres of inner and outer. Become fluid. Let movement, flow, be your very life. Remain available to the outer and to the inner both.

That’s why I teach love and meditation.

Love is the passage to go out, meditation is the passage to go in.

And a man who is in love and meditative is beyond schizophrenia, is beyond all kinds of split. He has become one, he is integrated. In fact, he has soul.

WHAT IS ENLIGHTENMENT ?''OSHO''

 Enlightenment is a simple realization that everything is as it should be.

That is the definition of enlightenment: everything is as it should be, everything is utterly perfect as it is. That feeling...and you are suddenly at home. Nothing is being missed. You are part, an organic part of this tremendous, beautiful whole. You are relaxed in it, surrendered in it. You don´t exist separately – all separation has disappeared.

A great rejoicing happens, because with the ego disappearing there is no worry left, with the ego disappearing there is no anguish left, with the ego disappearing there is no possibility of death any more. This is what enlightenment is. It is the understanding that all is good, that all is beautiful – and it is beautiful as it is. Everything is in tremendous harmony, in accord.

WATCH THE MIND.''OSHO''

 Watch what you allow into your mind. People are unaware; they go on reading everything and anything, watching any silly thing on the TV, passing on any stupid gossip and pouring rubbish into each other´s heads.

Avoid such situations in which you are unnecessarily burdened with rubbish. You already have too much. You need to be unburdened!

Talk and listen only to the essential and slowly slowly you will see that a cleanliness, a feeling of purity, as if you have just taken a bath, will start arising within you. That becomes the necessary soil for meditation to arise. If you leave a few gaps in your mind unoccupied, those moments of unoccupied consciousness are the first glimpses of meditation, the first penetrations of the beyond, the first flashes of no-mind.

HOW TO STOP THOUGHTS?''OSHO''

 Your thoughts have no roots, they have no home; they wander just like clouds. So you need not fight them, you need not be against them, you need not even try to stop thoughts.

This should become a deep understanding in you, because whenever a person becomes interested in meditation he starts trying to stop thinking. And if you try to stop thoughts they will never be stopped, because the very effort to stop is a thought, the very effort to meditate is a thought, the very effort to attain buddhahood is a thought. And how can you stop a thought by another thought? How can you stop mind by creating another mind? Then you will be clinging to the other. And this will go on and on, ad nauseam; then there is no end to it.

Don´t fight – because who will fight? Who are you? Just a thought, so don´t make yourself a battleground of one thought fighting another. Rather, be a witness, you just watch thoughts floating. They stop, but not by your stopping. They stop by your becoming more aware, not by any effort on your part to stop them

WHAT IS THIS ATTACHMENT TO MISERY?''OSHO''

There are reasons. Just look into your misery, watch, and you will be able to find what the reasons are. Then look into those moments when once in a while you allow yourself the joy of being in joy, and then see what differences are there. These will be the few things....

When you are miserable you are a conformist.

Society loves it, people respect you, you have great respectability, you can even become a saint; hence your saints are all miserable. The misery is written large on their faces, in their eyes. Because they are miserable they are against all joy. They condemn all joy as hedonism; they condemn every possibility of joy as sin. They are miserable, and they would like to see the whole world miserable. In fact only in a miserable world can they be thought to be saints. In a happy world they would have to be hospitalized, mentally treated. They are pathological.

Look into your misery and you will find certain fundamental things are there. One: it gives you respect. People feel more friendly towards you, more sympathetic. You will have more friends if you are miserable.

This is a very strange world, something is fundamentally wrong with it. It should not be so; the happy person should have more friends. But become happy and people become jealous of you, they are no longer friendly. They feel cheated; you have something that is not available to them. Why are you happy? So we have learned down the ages a subtle mechanism: to repress happiness and to express misery. It has become our second nature.

My sannyasins have to drop this whole mechanism. You have to learn how to be happy, and you have to learn to respect happy people and you have to learn to pay more attention to happy people, remember. This is a great service to humanity.

Don’t sympathize too much with people who are miserable.

If somebody is miserable, help, but don’t sympathize. Don’t give him the idea that misery is something worthwhile. Let him know perfectly well that you are helping him, but “This is not out of respect, this is simply because you are miserable.” And you are not doing anything but trying to bring the man out of his misery, because misery is ugly. Let the person feel that the misery is ugly, that to be miserable is not something virtuous, that “You are not doing a great service to humanity.”

Be happy, respect happiness, and help people to understand that happiness is the goal of life – Sat-Chit-Anand.

The Eastern mystics have said the divine has three qualities. It is sat: it is truth, being. It is chit: consciousness, awareness. And, ultimately, the highest peak is anand: bliss. Wherever bliss is, the dvine is.

Whenever you see a blissful person, respect him, he is holy.

And wherever you feel a gathering which is blissful, festive, think of it as a sacred place.

We have to learn a totally new language, only then can this old rotten humanity be changed. We have to learn the language of health, wholeness, happiness.

It is going to be difficult because our investments are great.

That is why it is so difficult to be happy and so easy to be miserable

HOW TO BUILD CONTACT WITH BODY?''OSHO''

 “If everything is okay [with your body] you remain completely unaware of it and, really, that is the moment when contact can be made – when everything is okay – because when something goes wrong then that contact is made with illness, with something that has gone wrong and the wellbeing is no longer there. You have a head right now; then the headache comes and you make contact.

“But we have almost lost that capacity. Try to make contact with your body when everything is good.

“Just lie down on the grass, close the eyes and feel the sensation that is going on within, the wellbeing that is bubbling inside. Lie down in a river. The water is touching the body and every cell is being cooled. Feel inside how that coolness enters, cell by cell, and goes deep into the body. The body is a great phenomenon, one of the miracles of nature.

“Sit in the sun. Let the sunrays penetrate the body. Feel the warmth as it moves within, as it goes deeper, as it touches your blood cells and reaches to the very bones. Sun is life, its very source. So with closed eyes just feel what is happening. Remain alert, watch and enjoy.

“By and by you will become aware of a very subtle harmony, a very beautiful music continuously going on inside. Then you have the contact with the body; otherwise you carry a dead body.

“Your body can be used as a mechanism; then you need not be very sensitive about it. The body goes on saying many things you never hear because you don’t have any contact. So try to be more and more sensitive about your body. Listen to it; it goes on saying many things, and you are so head-oriented you never listen to it.

“Whenever there is a conflict between your mind and body, your body is almost always going to be right more than your mind, because the body is natural, your mind is societal. The body belongs to this vast nature, and your mind belongs to your society, your particular society, age and time. The body has deep roots in existence and the mind is just wavering on the surface. But you always listen to the mind, you never listen to the body. Because of this long habit contact is lost.

“The whole body vibrates around the center of the heart just as the whole solar system moves around the sun. You became alive when the heart started beating, you will die when the heart stops beating. The heart remains the solar center of your body. Become alert to it. But you can become alert, by and by, only if you become alert to the whole body.

UNHAPPINESS IS TEMPORARY.''OSHO''

If you are unhappy, that simply means that you have learned tricks for being unhappy. Nothing else! Unhappiness depends on the frame of your mind. There are people who are unhappy in all kinds of situations. They have a certain program in their mind that transforms everything into unhappiness. If you tell them about the beauty of the rose, they immediately start counting the thorns. If you say to them, "What a beautiful morning, what a sunny day!" they will say, "Only one day between two dark nights, so why are you making so much fuss?"

The same thing can be seen from a positive reference; then suddenly each night is surrounded by two days. And then suddenly it is a miracle that the rose is possible, that such a delicate flower is possible among so many thorns.

All depends on what kind of frame you are carrying in your head. Millions of people are carrying crosses. Naturally, obviously, they are burdened; their life is a drag. Their frame is such that it immediately becomes focused on everything that is negative. It magnifies the negative. That is a morbid approach towards life, pathological. But they go on thinking, "What can we do? The world is such."

No, the world is not such! The world is absolutely neutral. It has thorns, it has roses, it has nights, it has days. The world is utterly neutral, balanced - it has all. Now it depends on you as to what you choose. That´s how people create hell and heaven on the same earth

ART OF GIVING.''OSHO''

Love is innocent when there is no motive in it. Love is innocent when it is nothing but a sharing of your energy. You have too much, so you share... you want to share.

And whosoever shares with you, you feel grateful to him or her, because you were like a cloud - too full of rainwater - and somebody helped you to unburden. Or you were like a flower, full of fragrance, and the wind came and unloaded you. Or you had a song to sing, and somebody listened attentively... so attentively that he allowed you space to sing it. So to whomsoever helps you to overflow in love, feel grateful.

Imbibe that spirit of sharing, let that become your very style of life: to be capable of giving without any idea of getting, to be capable of giving without any conditions attached to it, to be capable of giving just out of your abundance

THE PROBLEM AS AN EGO TONIC.''OSHO''

 The ego does not feel good, at ease, with molehills; it wants mountains. Even if it is a misery, it should not be a molehill, it should be an Everest. Even if it is miserable, the ego doesn’t want to be ordinarily miserable; it wants to be extraordinarily miserable!

People go on and on, creating big problems out of nothing. I have talked to thousands of people about their problems and I have not come across a real problem yet! All problems are bogus – you create them because without problems you feel empty. There is nothing to do, nothing to fight with, nowhere to go. People go from one guru to another, from one master to another, from one psychoanalyst to another, from one encounter group to another, because if they don’t go, they feel empty, and they suddenly feel life to be meaningless. You create problems so that you can feel that life is a great work, a growth, and you have to struggle hard.

The ego can exist only when it struggles, remember – when it fights. And if I tell you, ‘Kill three flies and you will become enlightened, you will not believe me. You will say, ‘Three flies? There doesn’t seem to be much to that. And I will become enlightened? That doesn’t seem to be likely. If I say you will have to kill seven hundred lions, of course that looks more like it! The greater the problem, the greater the challenge...and with challenge your ego arises, soars high. You create problems. Problems don’t exist.

The priests and the psychoanalysts and the gurus – they are happy because their whole trade exists because of you. If you don’t create molehills out of nothing and you don’t make your molehills into mountains, what will be the point of gurus helping you? First you have to be in a shape to be helped.

The real masters have been saying something else. They have been saying, “Please look what you are doing, what nonsense you are doing. First you create a problem, then you go in search of a solution. Just watch why you are creating the problem, just exactly in the beginning, when you are creating the problem, is the solution – don’t create it!” But that won’t appeal to you because then you are suddenly thrown flat upon yourself. Nothing to do? No enlightenment? No satori? No samadhi? And you are deeply restless, empty, trying to stuff yourself with anything whatsoever.

You don’t have any problems; only this much has to be understood. This very moment you can drop all problems because they are your creations. Have another look at your problems: the deeper you look, the smaller they will appear. Go on looking at them and by and by they will start disappearing. Go on gazing and suddenly you will find there is emptiness...a beautiful emptiness surrounds you. Nothing to do, nothing to be, because you are already that.

Enlightenment is not something to be achieved, it is just to be lived. When I say that I achieved enlightenment, I simply mean that I decided to live it. Enough is enough! And since then I have lived it. It is a decision that now you are not interested in creating problems, that’s all. It is a decision that now you are finished with all this nonsense of creating problems and finding solutions.

All this nonsense is a game you are playing with yourself: you yourself are hiding and you yourself are seeking, you are both the parties. And you know it! That’s why when I say it you smile, you laugh. I am not talking about anything ridiculous; you understand it. You are laughing at yourself. Just watch yourself laughing, just look at your own smile; you understand it! It has to be so because it is your own game: you are hiding and waiting for yourself to be able to seek and find yourself.

You can find yourself right now because it is you that is hiding. That’s why Zen masters go on hitting. Whenever somebody comes and says, “l would like to be a buddha,” the master gets very angry. Because he is asking nonsense, he is a buddha. If Buddha comes to me and asks how to be a buddha, what am I supposed to do? I will hit his head. “Whom do you think you are befooling? You are a buddha!”

Don’t make unnecessary trouble for yourself. And understanding will dawn on you if you watch how you make a problem bigger and bigger and bigger, how you spin it, and how you help the wheel to move faster and faster and faster. Then suddenly you are at the top of your misery and you are in need of the whole world’s sympathy.

The ego needs some problems. If you understand this, in the very understanding the mountains become molehills again, and then the molehills also disappear. Suddenly there is emptiness, pure emptiness all around. This is what enlightenment is all about – a deep understanding that there is no problem. Then, with no problem to solve, what will you do? Immediately you start living. You will eat, you will sleep, you will love, you will have a chit-chat, you will sing, you will dance. What else is there to do? You have become a god, you have started living!

If people can dance a little more, sing a little more, be a little more crazy, their energy will be flowing more, and their problems will by and by disappear. Hence I insist so much on dance. Dance to orgasm; let the whole energy become dance, and suddenly you will see that you don’t have any head. The stuck energy in the head is moving all around, creating beautiful patterns, pictures, movement. And when you dance there comes a moment when your body is no longer a rigid thing, it becomes flexible, flowing. When you dance there comes a moment when your boundary is no longer so clear; you melt and merge with the cosmos, the boundaries are mixing. Then you don’t create any problems.

Live, dance, eat, sleep, do things as totally as possible. And remember again and again: whenever you catch yourself creating any problem, slip out of it, immediately

DEATH IS A DOOR TO BEGINNING.''OSHO''

 What can be said about death? How can you say anything about death? It is not possible for any word to carry the meaning of death. What does this word ‘death’ mean? In fact it means nothing. What do you mean when you use the word death? It is simply a door beyond which we don’t know what happens. We see a man disappearing inside a door; we can see up to the door, and then the man simply disappears. Your word death can give only the meaning of the door. But what happens really, beyond the door? because the door is not the thing.

The door is to be passed through. Then what happens to one who disappears through the door that we cannot see beyond? What happens to him? And what is this door? Just a stopping of the breath? Is the breath the whole of life? Don’t you have anything more than the breath? Breath stops...body deteriorates...if you are body and breath alone, then there is no problem. Then death is nothing. It is not a door to anything. It is simply a stopping, not a disappearance. It is just like a clock.

The clock is tick-ticking, working, then it stops; you don’t ask where the tick-tick has gone that would be meaningless! It has gone nowhere. It has not gone at all, it has simply stopped; it was a mechanism and something has gone wrong in the mechanism – you can repair the mechanism, then it will tick-tick again. Is death just like a clock stopping? Just like that?

If so, it is not a mystery, it is nothing really. But how can life disappear so easily? Life is not mechanical. Life is awareness. The clock is not aware. You can listen to the tick-tick; the clock has never listened to it. You can listen to your own heartbeat. Who is this listener? If only the heartbeat is life, then who is this listener? If breath is the only life, how can you be aware of your breath? That’s why all Eastern techniques of meditation use breath awareness as a subtle technique...because if you become aware of the breathing, then who is this awareness? It must be something beyond breath because you can look at it and the looker cannot be the object. You can witness it; you can close your eyes and you can see your breath going in and coming out. Who is this seer, the witnessing? It must be a separate force that does not depend on breathing. When the breathing disappears it is the stopping of a clock, but where does this awareness go? Where does this awareness move to?

Death is a door, it is not a stopping. Awareness moves but your body remains at the door just as you have come here and left your shoes at the door. The body is left outside the temple, and your awareness enters the temple. It is the most subtle phenomenon, life is nothing before it. 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.

Somewhere you have become identified with the body, with the mechanism. The mechanism is to die, the mechanism cannot be eternal, because the mechanism depends on many things; it is a conditioned phenomenon. Awareness is unconditional, it doesn’t depend on anything. It can float like a cloud in the sky, it has no roots, it is not caused, it is never born so it can never die.

Whenever someone dies you have to be meditative near them, because a temple is just near and it is holy ground. Don’t be childish, don’t bring curiosities, be silent so you can watch and see. Something very very meaningful is happening. Don’t miss the moment

WHAT TO LOVE HUMAN BEINGS OR HUMANITY.''OSHO''

 It is always simple to love abstract things. It is more simple to love humanity than to love human beings, because in loving humanity you are not risking anything. A single human being is far more dangerous than the whole of humanity.

Humanity is a word, an abstraction; there is no corresponding reality to it. The human being is a reality, and when you come across a reality there are going to be good times, bad times, pain, pleasure, ups and downs, highs and lows, agonies and ecstasies. Loving humanity, there will be no ecstasy and no agony. In fact, loving humanity is a way of avoiding human beings. It is because you can´t love human beings that you start loving humanity just to deceive yourself

INTEGRATION.''OSHO''

Man ordinarily is a crowd. No man ordinarily is one, but many. And that´s why there is so much noise within - many voices, many faces - and a constant quarrel. One part wants to do one thing. Another part is simply against it and wants to do something else. It is a miracle how we go on managing to keep ourselves together. Otherwise we are constantly falling apart. There is no center. The master is missing. 

There are only servants, and each servant is trying to claim masterhood. For a moment each servant sits on the throne, proclaims himself the master, and in that moment you think, “This is the master.” When there is anger, anger becomes the master, but soon it will be gone. It is a constantly changing scene. After anger comes regret. Then regret is the master and you feel sorry. Sometimes it is love, sometimes it is hate, and the scenes change so fast. Still you do not become aware that you cannot be so many things. We become identified with anything that comes in front of us. When the cloud of anger is there we think we are anger. When the cloud of love is there we think we are love. When compassion is there we think we are compassion. When sadness is there we think we are sadness.

We are none of these - we are the watcher! Anger will come and go and the watcher abides. Sadness comes and passes by and the witness remains. To remember that witness more and more will make you integrated, because that is the only center which is everlasting, eternal. Only on the eternal rock of witnessing can a real life be built.

HOW CAN YOU END ANGER?''OSHO''

 When you are angry with someone and you throw your anger on him, you are creating a chain reaction. Now he too will be angry. This may continue for lives and you will go on being enemies. How can you end it? There is only one possibility. You can end it only in meditation, nowhere else, because in meditation you are not angry with someone: you are simply angry.

This difference is basic. You are not angry with someone. You are simply angry and the anger is released into the cosmos. You are not hateful towards anyone. If hate comes, you are simply hateful and the hate is thrown out. In meditation, emotions are not addressed. They are unaddressed. They move into the cosmos, and the cosmos purifies everything.

It is just like a dirty river falling into the ocean: the ocean will purify it. Whenever your anger, your hate, your sexuality, moves into the cosmos, into the ocean - it purifies it. If a dirty river falls into another river, then the other river also becomes dirty. When you are angry with someone, you are throwing your dirt at him. Then he will also throw his at you and this will become a mutual dirtying process.

In meditation you are throwing yourself into the cosmos to be purified. All the energy that you throw is purified in the cosmos. The cosmos is so vast and so great an ocean, you cannot make it dirty. In meditation we are not related with persons. In meditation we are related directly to the cosmos

MIND BEAUTIFUL SERVANT, DANGEROUS MASTER.''OSHO''

 Man consists of three layers: the body – the most visible; the being – the most invisible; and the mind – in between.

The mind is a good mechanism, but not a good master.

It can serve you if you are the master and the mind is the servant. But if the servant becomes the master and starts ruling over you, that is the state of insanity. That’s why I say the whole humanity is “normally insane.”

What is mind? It is all borrowed, and borrowed from different sources – from the parents, from the neighbors, from the teachers, from the priests, from the libraries. Its hunger is insatiable; it goes on swallowing all kinds of information. That information may be contradictory, that information may create tensions, may create a split – or many splits. If you somehow can maintain your balance, this is normal insanity. Insanity is there, but it is just the same as everybody else’s. Unless you come in close proximity to a saner person, you will not be able to think yourself insane.

The function of the psychotherapist is, whenever somebody goes beyond the boundary of the normal humanity, to bring him back. It is not an easy job. It takes years, and only the very rich can afford it. Then, too, success is not certain, because the person who is treating him is himself repressing his own insanity. Psychotherapy has not done much good to humanity. It cannot. The state of no-mind is unknown to the West, and it is only in the state of no-mind that one becomes aware of that which is beyond mind....

Because when all the chattering of the mind stops and there is no more noise, the still small voice of the being is heard.

For the first time one becomes aware, “I am here. I was not there in that crowded place, I was always out of it.

A single moment of knowing yourself to be above the mind has given you a master key. Now the mind can never become your master. And if the mind can never become your master it can never drive you mad. Now the mind cannot go on accumulating whatever it wants. Once the being asserts itself, the mind becomes very submissive – immediately.

Meditation is a direct route to being. It simply bypasses the mind. And once you are centered in your being, the mind, which was jumping up and down pretending to be your master, suddenly becomes submissive; it immediately falls silent, drops all its noise. And a man of being can use the mind just the way you can use any mechanism. But if the mechanism starts using you, that is an ugly state.

Man should remember that he is the master of his body and of his mind. Certainly the master must be beyond both. And I say it on my own authority: it is so. You can play with psychotherapy and other therapies; they are just games. If you like those games, no harm. They are better than football, but they are no more than games. And they are not going to give you a new life, they are not going to give you an authentic intelligence, a clarity which can see into every problem without any question of either/or.

Psychotherapy’s days are numbered. As meditation spreads, psychotherapy will start shrinking. If we can spread meditation around the earth, psychotherapy will simply disappear. There is no use for it, and it has not helped in any way.

Meditation takes you to being. It is a direct route to the beyond.

And once the master is there, mind immediately surrenders. In that surrender is health, because the master is in his place and the servant is in his place; the harmony is restored. And to be harmonious is all that health means

POWER OF TEARS.''OSHO''

 Never be afraid of tears. The so-called civilization has made you very afraid of tears. It has created a kind of guilt in you. When tears come you start feeling embarrassed. You start feeling, “What will others think? I am a man and I am crying! It looks so feminine and childish. It should not be so.” You stop those tears...and you kill something that was growing in you.

Tears are far more beautiful than anything else that you have with you, because tears come from the overflow of your being. Tears are not necessarily of sadness; sometimes they come out of great joy and sometimes they come out of great peace and sometimes they come out of ecstasy and love. In fact they have nothing to do with sadness or happiness. Anything that stirs your heart too much, anything that takes possession of you, anything that is too much, that you cannot contain and it starts overflowing – that brings tears.

Accept them with great joy, relish them, nourish them, welcome them, and through tears you will know how to pray.

Through tears you will know how to see. Tear-filled eyes are capable of seeing truth. Tear-filled eyes are capable of seeing the beauty of life and the benediction of it