Osho Quotes on Living Consciously

1. The way of living unconsciously is called by Buddha the dark way. And the way of living consciously, attentively, moment to moment, bringing your consciousness to each act, each small act, each detail, is the way of light.
2. From birth to death you go on living, groping in darkness with no light — and you could have created the light. You cannot find it in the scriptures; nobody can hand it to you. It is not purchased or sold; it is nontransferable. But you can create it — you can put all your energies together. You can start living consciously from this very moment.
3. If you are living in an unconscious way it makes no difference whether you live to seventy, eighty, ninety, a hundred; it does not matter. Living consciously even for a single moment is enough.
4. A stupid person behaves mechanically: an intelligent person behaves consciously.
5. Consciousness means living with a witness; unconsciousness means living without a witness. When you are walking on the road, you can walk consciously — that’s what Buddha says one should do — you are alert, deep down you are aware that you are walking; you are conscious of each movement. You are conscious of the birds singing in the trees, the early morning sun coming through the trees, the rays touching you, the warmth, the fresh air, the fragrance of newly opening flowers. A dog starts barking, a train passes by, you are breathing… you are watching everything. You are not excluding anything out of your alertness; you are taking everything in. The breath goes in, the breath goes out… you are watching everything that is happening.
6. This life that you are living is sorrow, but this is not the only life. This is the life you have chosen. You can live another kind of life: Buddha lived it, I am living it, you can live it. You can live in a totally different way: you can live desirelessly, you can live meditatively, you can live with choiceless awareness. You can live so centered and rooted in your being that no sorrow can remain. No sadness, no misery, no death remains possible; they all disappear. As you become full of light, your life goes through a transformation. This is not the right kind of life that you are living.
7. If you are living your life consciously, alertly, not repressing, not being against your body, you will have a tremendous silence. In your night there will be no disturbance — no dreams, just silent sleep. And in your day you will have a very cool feeling surrounding you — no thoughts, no traffic of thoughts which keeps your head hot the whole day.
8. Unless you become alert and aware in life, unless you change the quality of your living, you will not die consciously. And only a conscious death can bring you to a conscious birth; and then a far more conscious life opens its doors.
9. It is through decisiveness that the soul is born. If you exist accidentally, like driftwood, you live without a soul; your life is not much of a life. It is pseudo, it is lukewarm; it has no intensity; it has no flame; it has no light. You cannot experience the truth. Living accidentally, knowing the truth is impossible. One has to be so decisive, so committed, so consciously involved with life, so intensely adventurous, that all is at stake every moment. One has to be creative — not only unfolding, but creative.
10. Sannyas is the beginning of the day, sannyas is the dawn. Let the night disappear, don’t cling to it. Become more alert so that the night cannot take possession of you again. Night means unawareness, day means awareness. Night means living a life mechanically, day means living a life with awareness, consciously.
11. If you are centered, nothing can be destroyed. No fire can destroy your centering. Not even death is capable of distracting you. And this centering is possible only if you start living each moment meditatively, fully alert, aware. Don’t move like an automaton. Don’t react like a mechanism. Become conscious. Collect yourself more and more so that a crystallized consiousness continuously illuminates your inner being, a flame goes on burning there and it lights wherever you move. The path, the way, whatsoever you do, it lights it.
12. Heaven is not somewhere else: it is a way of living. So is hell — a style of life. Hell is living unconsciously; heaven is living consciously. Hell is your own creation, so is heaven. If you go on living unconsciously, through your unconscious desires, instincts, motives — of which you are not the master but only the victim — then you create hell around yourself. But if you start living a conscious life, a life of bringing more and more light to the deep, dark corners of your being, if you start living full of light, your life is moment-to-moment ecstasy.
13. Be skillful and live life consciously. Otherwise life becomes boring. You feel it. You know how it feels. Sooner or later everything feels boring; one is bored to death. One goes on living because one is not courageous enough to commit suicide. One goes on living just in the hope that sooner or later one will die — the death is coming.
14. Spirituality is not other-worldliness. Spirituality is a way of living in this world meditatively, totally, blissfully. It is not against this world; in fact it enhances this world, enriches this world, it makes this world more beautiful, more blissful. But religions up to now have done just the opposite. They have made this earth a hell. I hold the so-called religions absolutely, categorically responsible for the misery that exists in the world.
15. I am teaching everybody to enjoy the moment, and don’t be bothered by tomorrow. Living in the moment intelligently, consciously, meditatively, will take care of the future. There is no need for me to give you directives, guidelines for what you have to do when I am gone. That’s what all the old religions have done.
16. Before death comes you will become unconscious, so you will miss the experience of death. The people who are living consciously — and that is my basic teaching, live consciously every moment. Even while making love, remain conscious and a witness. It is a life… long growth if becoming alert. Then you can die consciously and you can experience death as the ultimate orgasm. It is far bigger than any sexual orgasm. In fact, the difference is not only of quantity, the difference is of quality. It is immeasurable. Living moment to moment, one learns how to die. beautifully, silently, joyously.
17. It is not my belief ‘that man should live more meditatively’, it is my understanding that man can live only in meditation — otherwise there is no life. Meditation is life. Not to be in meditation is not to live. Then you only pretend that you are living; then your life is just a mask. It has no authenticity in it, it has no depth; it is just the surface, the facade.
18. If you live consciously, if you try to bring consciousness to every act that you go through, you will be living in a silent, blissful state, in serenity, in joy, in love. Your life will have the flavour of a festival. That is the meaning of heaven: your life will have many flowers in it, much fragrance will be released through you. You will have an aura of delight. Your life will be a song of life-affirmation, it will be a sacred yes to all that existence is. You will be in communion with existence — in communion with stars, with the trees, with the rivers, with the mountains, with people, with animals. This whole life and this whole existence will have a totally different meaning for you. From every nook and corner, rivers of bliss will be flowing towards you. Heaven is just a name for that state of mind. Hell means you are living so unconsciously, so absurdly, in such contradiction, that you go on creating more and more misery for yourself.
19. I teach you to be expressive and to accept all your nature with pride — it is your inheritance from nature. Living naturally without inhibition, things like rape will disappear. Living silently and meditatively, violence is not possible. Compassion will be just a natural phenomenon.
20. If you know the art of living… and that’s what I call religion — real, authentic religion — the art of living. If you know the art of living… and it consists of small things, not of big, great commandments… very small things… just sipping your tea joyfully, meditatively, tasting each sip as if this is the last sip. Perhaps you may not be able again to hold the cup in your hands — there is no guarantee.
21. In short: to live means to live in God — consciously, totally. And those who are not living that way, they are dead. They are WORSE than dead! because they THINK they live, and they are not alive. They are not yet even born. They are only seeds, potential but not actual. A Jesus has to happen to them, a Master has to happen to them, only then will they fall in the soil. A gardener is needed — only then will the seed die and be born as a tree. And then there will be great rejoicing, great flowering, and great fulfillment, great fruition.

Osho Quotes on Living Joyously

1. According to me, if you are living joyously, you are a holy man.
2. That is the sign of wisdom: freedom from desire. Only fools desire. Wise people live and live joyously, but without desire. Either you can desire or you can live, you can’t do both. If you desire, you postpone living; if you live, who bothers about desiring? Today is enough unto itself.
3. Life is purposeless. Don’t be shocked. The whole idea of purpose is wrong — it comes out of greed. Life is a sheer joy, a playfulness, a fun, a laughter, to no purpose at all. Life is its own end, it has no other end. The moment you understand it you have understood what meditation is all about. It is living your life joyously, playfully, totally, and with no purpose at the end, with no purpose in view, no purpose there at all. Just like small children playing on the sea beach, collecting seashells and coloured stones — for what purpose? There is no purpose at all.
4. My effort here is to help you to worship life, to live so joyously, with such humor, that your life becomes a dance. I don’t want you to become sad and serious — sincere of course, but serious, never. I would like you to go deeper into existence. Dance with the flowers! Have dialogues with the stars! Look into people’s eyes and love and don’t hold back. The only unspiritual people are those who are holding back, who are living in a miserly way, who are living only partially, fragmentarily, who are not integrated.
5. The miserable person cannot be graceful, cannot be really beautiful. His beauty can only be very superficial, skin-deep. But the person who has attained to bliss, who is living in his innermost core joyously, has a grace, has a beauty. He is a blessing to himself and to the world. That’s what a sannyasin has to be: a blessing to himself and to the world.
6. These two things are of great importance living life as music, creating a harmony in everything that you do, in everything that you are, and out of that harmony not relaxing into an escape — which religious people have done down the ages. When you are in harmony the second thing is that your harmony has to be creative. You have to enrich the world, you have to leave the world a little better, a little more beautiful than you found it; only then does one feel contentment, only then does one live and die joyously.
7. You don’t have to transcend anything. You have to live everything that is natural to you, and live it fully, without any inhibition — joyously, aesthetically. Just by living it deeply, a transcendence will come. You are not to transcend anything. Remember my words. A transcendence will come by itself, and when it comes by itself it is such a release and such a freedom.
8. Meditation is the art of living with yourself. It is nothing else than that, simply that: the art of being joyously alone. A meditator can sit joyously alone for months, for years. He does not hanker for the other, because his own inner ecstasy is so much, is so overpowering, that who bothers about the other? If the other comes into his life it is not a need, it is a luxury.
9. To be religious means to live a life full of love, joy, innocence, freedom, individuality, to the extent that even if life has to be sacrificed for the higher values of freedom, love, truth, then one sacrifices it joyously. It is worth! Freedom cannot be sacrificed, bliss cannot be sacrificed, love cannot be sacrificed, and life is significant only if these things are flowering, blossoming. The moment these things are sacrificed there is no point in living. Then life is simply vegetating.
10. I don’t promise you anything. I don’t promise you the kingdom of God, I don’t promise you enlightenment — I don’t promise at all. My whole approach is of living moment to moment; enlightened or unenlightened, what does it matter? Living moment to moment joyously, ecstatically, living moment to moment totally, intensely, passionately…. If one lives passionately, the ego dissolves. If one is total in one’s acts, the ego is BOUND to dissolve. It is like when a dancer goes on and on dancing: a moment comes when only the dance remains and the dancer disappears. That is the moment of enlightenment.
11. Live your today as fully as possible. From where is your tomorrow going to be born? It is in the womb of today. It is going to come from your life that you have lived today. There is no need to worry about it, it will be taken care of. By your living in the present without sacrificing a single moment for any ideal, I can guarantee you all the ideals that have haunted human imagination can be fulfilled — not by sacrifice, but by living as deeply, as fully as possible. If all people on the earth live joyously today — singing, dancing, praising the beauty of life and being grateful to existence — can tomorrow be different? It will be better. You will have become more alert to the beauty of living in the present.
12. A really religious person will say yes to life joyously, dancingly. His whole being will be a celebration. He will not act out of fear, he will act out of love. He will not be worried about hell and heaven, he will not be worried at all. He will live moment-to-moment, but he will live each moment with utter totality. and that total living brings bliss, that total living is the path of bliss.
13. If you understand meditation then that’s enough: sitting silently anywhere you can fall into meditativeness. Meditativeness is not action but a state of silence, a state of inaction when everything stops: time stops, all movement disappears, you are in total rest. And those are the moments when you know that you are immortal, that only the body will die; you are not going to die. Then all fear disappears because all fear is rooted in death. And to be fearless is the most fundamental thing for living life joyously.
14. If you are living fully, joyously, there is no reason at all to think of the future. It does not arise at all in your being. And your contentment, moment to moment, goes on making you more and more fulfilled, so fulfilled that you could not have imagined, dreamed of it. With this fulfillment, if death comes you will live that death-moment too, with joy and ecstasy, because it will be opening a new door, a new possibility. You will be thrilled. It will be an adventure and a challenge. And you will not be afraid of death because what can death take from you? What can death disturb? What can death stop? But a person who has not lived, he is afraid of death, and trembling.
15. I am not interested in the future at all. This moment is too much, too overwhelming. I am rejoicing in it. And this is my way of life: to live moment to moment. I am not a prophet, I have not come here to determine the whole course of humanity in the future — that kind of bullshit does not appeal to me at all. Who am I to decide the whole course of humanity in the future? I am living my moment joyously; that’s enough. And the people who will be coming will find their own ways to live. To suffer or to rejoice — it all depends on their intelligence.
16. Sannyas means living life in a relaxed way, with no hurry, with no worry, as if nothing is serious, living life joyously, playfully, from moment to moment, not bothering about the past, not bothering about the future either, not bothering at all; whatsoever happens is good and whatsoever does not happen is also good. Taking things with such calmness and equanimity brings a restful spirit. Slowly slowly the whole turmoil settles and suddenly there is bliss, out of nowhere it starts welling up. You become flooded with light, with life, with love. Those are the three dimensions of bliss. It makes you more light-full, makes you more life-full, makes you more love-full. And when all these three L’s — these are the learned, one has arrived home.
17. This is what I call sannyas: living joyously in infinite inconsistencies, without trying to choose, without trying to impose a pattern on life, living moment to moment, not with a plan but ad hoc. Whatsoever this moment demands accept the challenge and respond. Don’t say ‘I have to behave in this way’; there is no ‘have to’. You are free to behave in this moment as this moment requires you to… not according to the past, not according to any character, not according to any mind, not according to any plan.
18. Everybody is capable of living joyously.
    It is the tomorrow that goes on poisoning you.
    Forget yesterdays, forget tomorrows.
    This is our day!
    Let us celebrate it and live it.

Osho Quotes on Living Life Intensely and Totally

1. I affirm life, I rejoice in life. And I would like you all to be deeply, intensely, passionately in life, with one condition only: alertness, watchfulness, witnessing. And I know the difficulty arises, because you will be living with millions of sleepy people — and sleep is contagious; just as awareness is. Awareness, too, is contagious; hence the significance of being with a master.
2. The real man knows no other goal than life itself. Living totally is his goal; living moment to moment, intensely, passionately, hot, that is his goal. Then each moment becomes so precious, such a gift. And only when you know those gifts can you be thankful to god, can you feel grateful, can prayer arise in you.
3. Life has been given to you to live. It is a gift of nature to you. It is not a punishment; it is simply a gift from existence. Rejoice in it, and burn your life’s candle from both ends together. Live as intensely as possible, and the very taste of life will give you the clue why death is not to be feared. Once you have known your life, its fire, you will know that there is no death. This life that one comes to know by intense living is eternal. The feeling of its eternity arises simultaneously as you live. The deeper, the more intensely you live, the quicker you feel there is no death. In my religion death is celebrated because there is no death. It is only an entry into another life.
4. We are part of existence, we are not separate. Even if we want to be separate, we cannot be. Our life is part of being together with existence. And the more you are together with existence, the more alive you are. That’s why I insist continually to live totally, to live intensely, because the deeper your living is, the more you are in contact with existence. You are born of it; every moment you are renewed, rejuvenated, resurrected by each of your breaths, by each of your heartbeats — existence is taking care of you.
5. Death is a constant reminder that, “I can come any moment. Be prepared.” And what is the preparation? The preparation is: live life so totally, so intensely, be so aflame with it that when death comes there is no complaint, there is no grudge. You are absolutely ready because you have lived life so totally, you have known all its mysteries — there is no point in living anymore. Death has come exactly at the right time, when you may have thought to die yourself. I call that death perfect which comes at the moment when you yourself may have thought, “It is enough.”
6. My religion is of celebration. My religion is of delight. My religion is of dance. I don’t want you to worship any god who cannot dance; then he is no more a god. I want to teach you how to live life so intensely, so passionately, that you live it and yet you don’t cling to it, because clinging always shows a miserable mind. You cling to things only if you are not living them well.
7. Death is the pinnacle of life. If you hate death how can you love life. And that is a great misunderstanding. People who think that they love life always hate death — and by hating death they become incapable of living. The capacity to live, the capacity to live at the maximum, comes only when you are ready to die, and ready to die at the maximum. It is always proportionate. If you live in a lukewarm way you will die in a lukewarm way. If you live intensely, totally, dangerously, you will also die in a deep orgasm.
8. I am not interested in the after-life, I am not interested in heaven and hell, I am not interested in virtue and vice — I am interested only in how to impart to you an understanding of living intensely, delightfully, because God is delight.
9. Man is alive only when love is aflame, when the heart is hot, otherwise man lives in a kind of ice-coldness. And to live in a cold way is not to live at all; it is a kind of slow suicide. One should live passionately, intensely, totally. One should burn one’s life torch from both the ends together, and then even if one only lives for a single moment it will bring contentment. Otherwise one can go on living for lives together — a lukewarm life will never bring any contentment.
10. Don’t look for any salvation in the afterlife. Salvation is HERE, because salvation is through experience. Salvation is not through renunciation, salvation is not through virtue, salvation is not through doing good to people. Salvation is through experiencing life as deeply, as intensely, as passionately as possible. Virtue arises out of that passionate living. Good happens to people — it happens naturally without any effort on your part.
11. In this temple you are allowed to be yourself without any inhibitions. I would like this to happen all over the world. This is only the beginning. Here, start living moment to moment totally and intensely, joyfully and playfully — and you will see that nothing goes out of control; that your intelligence becomes sharper; that you become younger; that your love becomes deeper. And when you go out into the world, wherever you go, spread life, playfulness, joy, as far away as possible — to every nook and corner of the earth.
12. Living totally, intensely, burning your torch of life from both sides together, you become a tremendous danger to the crowd. Because everybody starts feeling he could also have lived the way you are living — this dance could have been his too, this song could have been his too. And because you remind him about the wounds that he is carrying and hiding within himself, because you make him utterly nude and exposed to himself, he cannot forgive you.
13. You are trying to live as intensely and as totally as possible, because life is so short and the next moment is so uncertain that we have to take every moment as if it is the last moment. Just the very idea — as if it is the last moment — will transform you.
14. Religion is living. Living totally, living intensely, without any purpose because purpose is always in the future and living is always in the present. If you have a purpose to live your life is divided between present and future — you cannot be total. And without being total you cannot experience what life is. The only way to be total is to forget all about purpose.
15. One can live as intensely and totally in one second as people live in their whole life. But their living is very thin, spread all over a long time. That does not mean that they are the fortunate ones, because authentic living needs great intensity and great totality, not a thin layer. A lukewarm survival is not living. But if you know that the next moment you are going to die you will drop everything that you were involved in, and the only priority will be to know yourself. Before death comes at least be aware who you are. You don’t have time to postpone.
16. Pseudo-religions cannot support your living. They cannot teach you the art of how to live, and live intensely and totally. They can only teach you how to escape from life, how to avoid knowing the truth.
17. It is through decisiveness that the soul is born. If you exist accidentally, like driftwood, you live without a soul; your life is not much of a life. It is pseudo, it is lukewarm; it has no intensity; it has no flame; it has no light. You cannot experience the truth. Living accidentally, knowing the truth is impossible. One has to be so decisive, so committed, so consciously involved with life, so intensely adventurous, that all is at stake every moment. One has to be creative — not only unfolding, but creative.
18. To me, to be a Zorba is the beginning of the journey, and to become a buddha is reaching the goal. And it can happen in the same individual — it can only happen in the same individual. That’s why I am insisting continuously: don’t create any split in your life, don’t condemn anything of the body. Live it — not unwillingly — live it totally, intensely. That very living will make you capable of another search. That’s why I don’t say my sannyasins have to be ascetics, that my sannyasins have to leave their wives, their husbands, their children. All that nonsense has been taught for centuries, and how many people — out of millions of monks and nuns — how many people have blossomed? Not even a single one. I want you to live life undivided. And first comes the body, first comes your outer world.
19. If you are really alive then you are a danger to everybody, everybody who tries to exploit you, everybody who is a parasite on you. You are going to fight tooth and nail. You would rather die than live like a slave, because even death for a fully alive person is not death; it is the culmination of life. Even dying he goes on living intensely and totally. He is not afraid of death, he is not afraid of anything.
20. The commune has no tomorrow, it lives here and now. And it lives totally and intensely, because we are not living as a means to some other life. We are living as an end to itself.
21. Take life joyfully, take life easily, take life relaxedly, don’t create unnecessary problems. Ninety-nine percent of your problems are created by you because you take life seriously. Seriousness is the root cause of problems. Be playful, and you will not miss anything — because life is God. Forget about God; just be alive, be abundantly alive. Live each moment as if this is the last moment. Live it intensely; let your torch burn from both sides together. Even if it is only for one moment, that is enough. One moment of intense totality is enough to give you the taste of God. You can live in a lukewarm way, the bourgeois way, the middle-class way. You can go on living, dragging yourself for millions of years — you will only collect dust from the roads and nothing else. One moment of clarity, totality, spontaneity, and you burn like a flame. Just one moment is enough! One moment will make you eternal; you will enter from that moment into eternity. That’s my whole message for my sannyasins: live it in such way that you need not repent, ever.

Osho Quotes on Life

1. Life is so vast, so immense, so strange, mysterious, it cannot be reduced into a rule or a maxim. All maxims fall short, are too small; they cannot contain life and its living energies. Hence the golden rule is significant, that there are no golden rules. An authentic man does not live by rules, maxims, commandments. That’s the way of the pseudo-man. The authentic man simply lives.
2. The ego is false. If you live according to the false ego, your whole life will remain false. If you live without the ego your whole life will have the flavor of reality, truth and authenticity. Think, meditate, practice.
3. Life is a mystery. The more you understand it, the more mysterious it becomes. The more you know, the less you feel that you know. The more you become aware of the depth, the infinite depth, the more it becomes almost impossible to say anything about it
4. The whole of life is a preparation to be aware in death. That’s what a sannyasin should do, that’s what a seeker should do: be ready! Don’t lose a single moment, because once lost it cannot be regained. And the only richness that you can get out of it is by being more aware. Do whatsoever, but do it with alertness, awareness. Your lives may be different but your inner search cannot be different; it is the same.
5. Everything is mysterious: it is better to enjoy it rather than trying to understand it. Ultimately the man who goes on trying to understand life proves to be a fool, and the man who enjoys life becomes wise goes on enjoying life, because he becomes more and more aware of the mysterious that surrounds us. The greatest understanding is to know that nothing can be understood, that all is mysterious and miraculous. To me this is the beginning of religion in your life.
6. A man of meditation simply enjoys the flowers, the birds, the trees, the rain, the sun, the moon, the people. It is good that we are all engulfed in a mysterious whole. Life will be utterly boring if every mystery is decoded.
7. The mind always tries to avoid things which it cannot comprehend, and death is one of the most incomprehensible mysteries. There are only three mysteries: life, death and love. All these three are beyond mind. So mind takes life for granted; then there is no need to inquire. That is a way of avoiding. You never think, you never meditate on life; you have simply accepted it, taken it for granted. It is a tremendous mystery. You are alive, but don’t think that you have known life.
8. Buddha used to send his disciples to the funeral pyres to meditate there. The newcomers had to be there for three months in the beginning. Where bodies are burned, they would just sit there and watch, day in and day out. People would be brought in, burned, and then the friends would leave. What kind of life is this? What substance has it got? Just the other day, the man was so haughty, so proud, so egoistic, that if you had said anything wrong he would have jumped on you. And now where is he? Disappeared in the flames. This is what life is. “Sooner or later I am also going to be on the funeral pyre and all will be burned. So why bother, why make so much fuss? It is only a few days’ dream. And those few days are not much in the eternity of time, they are just momentary.”
9. People are living like somnambulists; mechanical is their life, unconscious is their behavior. They are not aware who they are, they are not aware what they are doing, they are not aware where they are going. Their life is accidental, a driftwood.
10. The religion of the Bauls is very down-to-earth; it believes in the here-now. It does not say that paradise is somewhere else; it is here, and you cannot postpone it, and all postponement is dangerous, suicidal. If you cannot discover it here-now, you will never discover it anywhere else because you will remain the same. And whenever you will be, life will always come in the form of here-now. So the only door to reality is here, this very moment.
11. Life is a mystery. There is no why, no purpose, no reason. It is simply here. Take it or leave it, but it is simply here. And when it is here, why not take it? Why waste your time in philosophizing? Why not dance and sing and love and meditate? Why not go deeper and deeper into this thing called “life”? Maybe at the ultimate core you will know the answer. But the answer comes in such a way that it cannot be expressed. It is like the dumb man’s taste of sugar. It is sweet — he knows that it is sweet, but he cannot say it. The buddhas know but they cannot say. And the idiots know not and they go on saying, and they go on giving you answers. Idiots are very clever in that way — in finding, fabricating, manufacturing answers. Ask any question and they will answer you.
12. 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.
13. You have to learn how to be alert and meditative; otherwise, you won’t get anything, no orgasmic experience. Because the experiencer will be in a coma. The whole life is a preparation for death, and you should be able to be so conscious in life that when you are making love, there are not only two persons, but four persons. Two persons making love, and two consciousnesses watching, witnessing. Or you are walking on the road, you have to walk with watchfulness, alertness, so that you can see your own body walking.
14. If you take life easily, if you enjoy life, if your life by and by becomes a fulfillment, the same will be your death. What are we doing? We are not enjoying life, we are only preparing to enjoy it — and life is here and now, no preparation is needed. I see people always preparing — they are preparing to live a great life somewhere in the future. They will be afraid of death because in the future death is waiting. And your life is also in the future. You are making a house, purchasing a car, and this and that, accumulating things; just getting ready to live. You will never be ready, and by the time you are ready, death will knock at your door. That’s the fear: that death may come before you are ready. A man of understanding lives life here and now, every moment he lives it. For him there is no death because there is no future life. He exhausts the moment, he lives it totally, he enjoys it, he thanks God for it, he is grateful.
15. Live here now! Living in hope is living in the future, which is really postponing life. It is not a way of living, but a way of suicide. There is no need for any hope and there is no need to feel hopeless. Live here now. Life is tremendously blissful, it is showering here and you are looking somewhere else. It is just in front of your eyes, but your eyes have moved far away, they look at the horizon. It is within you, but you are not there.
16. The dimension of the Baul is here-now; the dimension of the American is somewhere else — then-there, but never here-now. The American is chasing, chasing hard, trying to get something out of life, trying to squeeze life. Nothing comes out of it because that is not the way. You cannot squeeze life; you have to surrender to it. You cannot conquer life. You have to be so courageous to be defeated by life. Defeat is victory there, and the effort to be victorious is going to prove to be nothing but your final, UTTER failure. Life cannot be conquered because the part cannot conquer the whole. It is as if a small drop of water is trying to conquer the ocean. Yes, the small drop can fall into the ocean and become the ocean, but it cannot conquer the ocean. In fact, dropping into the ocean, slipping into the ocean is the way to conquer. Dissolve yourself.

Osho Quotes on Life

1. People come to me and they ask, ‘What is the meaning of life’ As if meaning is there somewhere sold in the market. As if meaning is a commodity. Meaning has to be CREATED. There is no meaning in life. Meaning is not a given thing, it has to be created. It has to become your inner work. Then there is meaning — and there IS GREAT meaning. Love and meditate and you will attain to meaning. And you will attain to life, and abundant life.
2. This is the way to be ready: exert yourself sincerely — not seriously but sincerely. There are people who are always doing things halfheartedly; lukewarm is their life. They never achieve anything because they are always holding back. They never move into anything totally, intensely. They are always standing on the bank and thinking of the farther shore. Or even if sometimes they try, they are riding on two horses; in case the one fails, the other will always be there. They are riding in two boats. Their life is so divided that whatsoever they do they always do with a dividedness. And any flowering of consciousness is possible only when there is an organic unity in you.
3. The religious person is ordinary, very ordinary. He lives a very simple, unpretentious life with no claim to extra-ordinariness. But that’s what makes him extraordinary.
4. Life should be lived naturally, life should be lived according to the laws of nature — not according to the laws of Manu, not according to the ascetics, not according to the saints, but according to the Dhamma. Ais dhammo sanantano, Buddha says: This is the eternal law. We have to find the eternal law in things, how the whole universe runs in a harmony, how there is such tremendous order. It is not a chaos, it is a cosmos. Man has also to become a cosmos, and it is possible only through love.
5. I agree with the Zen people: the small things of life have to be transformed by your inner transformation. This I call the religious quality; everything becomes sacred. Taking a bath, making love, eating food, going to sleep — everything becomes sacred, because wherever you look is God and whatsoever you do you do WITH God.
6. It is said the first thing that Zarathustra did in his life was to laugh the moment he was born. Now children are not supposed to laugh when they are born, they are supposed to cry! Zarathustra laughed, and that laughter remained like an undercurrent his whole life. He is the most life-affirmative Buddha ever. He loved life so deeply that for him there was no God other than life.
7. LIFE is basically insecure. That’s its intrinsic quality; it cannot be changed. Death is secure, absolutely secure. The moment you choose security, unknowingly you have chosen death. The moment you choose life, unawares you have chosen insecurity.
8. The American way of life depends on ambition, and my new man has to be utterly ambitionless. America’s whole approach is: things should be bettered, everything should be made better. It does not matter where it is going to lead, but things have to be better, better and better. They are obsessed with the idea of bettering things. You have to have more speed, better machines, better technology, better railroads, better roads — everything better! Of course, in the same way, you need a better man. It fits with the whole American style of life.
9. The new man will have a totally different vision of life. He will live in a more loving way, because to him love is richness. He will know that money cannot buy love or joy. He will know that money is utilitarian; it is not the goal of life.
10. This is the way people are — just living in a thick cloud of unconsciousness. Their life is not that of light but of darkness, and out of this darkness, confusion, smoke, what can you expect? They are bound to do something foolish, something wrong.
11. Man goes on arguing about great things, but goes on living in a totally different way. His thoughts are very great; his life is very.immature. In fact, he creates all those great thoughts to cover up his immaturity.
12. My approach is totally different. I declare to you that you are perfectly right, that nothing is wrong with you, that you are not to follow somebody else, that you are not to imitate anybody else, that you have to love yourself, trust yourself, that you have to live a life of freedom, a life of rebellion, a life of exploration.
13. My own experience is this: that life has to be used in its totality, in all its dimensions. Yes, even the darker ones, they have their own share to contribute to the richness of life. Whenever you make a division that “this is good and this is bad,” that “this should be and this should not be,” you are creating trouble for yourself. Life is one organic unity. When it is night, sleep; when it is day, wake up. Don’t hanker for the night in the day; don’t hanker for the day in the night.
14. Individuality makes your life significant. It makes your life a beautiful song, but the song is no more yours, the song is God’s. Individuality is divine. You are simply a hollow bamboo: you become a flute on the lips of God or on the lips of the whole existence. Then whatsoever the whole wants, you allow it; you remain in a let-go.
15. Life is insecurity and nothing is wrong in it. In fact, life cannot be otherwise. Death is secure, life is insecure. Marriage is secure, love is insecure. Marriage is dead, love is alive. The more alive you are the more your life remains in insecurity, because the livelier person will be exploring the unknown, he will be adventurous. It is life’s nature, its law, its very intrinsic soul. But the priest has exploited it. He has given you consolations, securities, insurances, not only for this life but for future lives too. He says, “Don’t be worried. If you follow a certain code of conduct, if you cultivate a certain character, if you follow the commandments given in the scriptures, then you need not be afraid. Then God is going to reward you. You will be punished only if you go against the convention, against the tradition.”
16. I am not teaching you a religion which is life-negative. I am teaching a religion which is absolutely life-affirmative. Life is God.

Osho Quotes on Life

1. To know life is not to know about life. To know life is to live life in intensity, with passion, with totality; that’s the only way to know life. By being more alive one knows life, and by being more alive one becomes more divine.
2. People live at the minimum, hence they go on missing God. God is found only when you live at the optimum, when the torch of your life is afire, from both ends together. In a total intensity of love, a single moment is enough to know God, because in total intensity a single moment becomes eternity. Otherwise one can go on dragging for lives and lives. And that’s what we have been doing — dragging and dragging. Life seems to be a great load, a burden to be carried somehow. Life should be a dance; it can be a dance, it is meant to be a dance. That’s my message: love life, and with such intensity, with such fire, that you can reach to the optimum of your being. It is there that the meeting with God happens.
3. Always look at life with new eyes. Look at people with new eyes. Look at things with new eyes. Never bring in the old. Never look through the memory, never look through experience. They are all clouds which surround you, and through which you lose the freshness of life. Always make way and look direct, immediate, and you will see that everything is so new.
4. Each moment, it is complete. Each moment, as it is, is complete… it is perfect. Life moves from one perfection to another perfection. It is not from imperfection to perfection. It is just from perfection to another perfection, from one grandeur to another grandeur, from one richness to another richness.
5. Go on dropping knowledge and always remain learning, learning. Learning is open, knowledge is closed. Don’t carry any conclusions, and life will bring such a benediction. That benediction is divine…
6. Remember it always. We are missing many things in life just because the mind won’t believe, just because the mind has a certain fixed, obsessive attitude. It only opens itself to certain things and then closes.
7. The root cause of misery is fear: we are too afraid of the unknown. We remain confined in the known, and because we remain confined in the known, life becomes a repetition, a circle; one goes on moving in the same circle again and again and again. Because of this continuous, repetitive, routine life, one feels misery, boredom, futility.
8. Life is tremendously beautiful, but we never go into the unknown — and life belongs to the unknown. The more you go into the unknown, the further you go into the unknown, the more alive you become because then life has newness, youth. Nothing is ever repeated, hence no boredom is created. Every morning brings something new, unexpected, uninvited. Life remains a thrill, an adventure… but for that one has to be courageous.
9. Great courage is needed to explore the unknown territories of life, existence, being. The courageous person will explore in both ways: he will explore in the outside, and that exploration becomes science, and he will explore his interiority, and that exploration becomes religion. And both are beautiful.
10. Life has not to be taken as a problem; it is not. It has to be taken as a gift, a tremendously valuable gift from God. Life has not to be taken as a burden but as a dance. One need not drag oneself. We can dance the whole way, we can laugh the whole way, and we can love the whole way.
11. Life is meant to be a miracle, but it depends: if we choose misery, life becomes misery. Life is very obliging: if you choose misery it becomes misery, if you choose darkness it becomes darkness. It is so obliging, whatsoever you choose it becomes that for you. If you choose bliss it becomes bliss, if you choose God it becomes God. It depends on you.
12. People go on choosing wrong things, and then they make life responsible. In fact they are responsible: whatsoever happens, happens because they have willed it so. Knowingly, unknowingly, consciously, unconsciously, they have willed it so. It happens only when somehow, somewhere, in your being, you have willed it.
13. My sannyasin has to live life in its totality. Love life, trust life! And life is the only master, the real Master. I can only indicate the way; I can only show you how I have attained to life. You are not expected to imitate me or to follow me. You are just expected to listen and understand, and then to go on your own way, following your own insight.
14. Life is so complicated that you only become acquainted with a part.

Osho Quotes on Life

1. Doubt can kill. It is negative, it cannot give you life. Doubt is death. Trust is life. And as the trust grows more and more, more abundant life becomes available to you.
2. Life and death are one — one phenomenon, one energy. Life is the manifestation of that energy, and death is again relaxation. Life is coming to a form, and death is moving again into the formless. The end and the beginning meet. Life is not separate from death, death is not separate from life — they meet and mingle. Even to say they meet is not right because the mind immediately brings: “If there is a meeting then there must be two.” It is not a meeting, it is one phenomenon.
3. If there is no morning, don’t think that there will be evening always and always — there will be no evening at all. And if there is no death, don’t think that there will be life eternal — there will be no life at all… because death creates the situation, sets an energy phenomenon. Every life brings death, every death brings life again.
4. Nothing is ever the same. Everything goes on changing. Only mind is old and dead. To be capable of looking at life without mind is meditation.
5. One who has lived his life truly, authentically, one who has enjoyed it, is always ready to die, is always ready to leave. One who has not enjoyed and celebrated, one who has not lived the moment, the life, is always afraid to leave because “the time has come to leave and I am yet unfulfilled.” The fear of death is not the fear of death, it is a fear of remaining unfulfilled. You are going to die, and nothing, nothing at all could you experience through life — no maturity, no growth, no flowering. Empty handed you came, empty handed you are going. This is the fear!
6. Don’t make life a question of argumentation, or truth a question of arguments, or love a question of arguments, or joy a question of arguments. Live, experience, because that is the only way to know. Argument is not the way to know. Knowing is only through experiencing.
7. You cling to life because your life is unfulfilled. You have not risen against a strong wind. You have not known the morning, and the evening has come. You have never been young, and old age is knocking at the door. You never loved, and death is coming. This unfulfilled state and the coming of death creates the fear. Buddha says that if you have lived you will always be ready to die. And that readiness will not be something forced upon you. It will be the thing, it will be a natural thing! As you are born, you die. As you come, you go. This is the wheel of existence. You lived the being part, now you will live the nonbeing part. You existed, now you will not exist. You rose, you manifested, now you will move into the unmanifested. You were visible, embodied, now you will move without the body to the invisible. You had your day; now you will take rest in the night. What is wrong in it?
8. If each moment brings you something from the unknown, if each moment is a penetration of the unknown into the known, then life is an excitement — without expectation. Then life is a constant movement into the unknown. Nothing can frustrate you because in the first place you never expected that anything was going to be the same for ever.
9. An old person becomes beautiful if he has lived life. If he has not lived, then he wants to cling to some past moment which is there no more. And this is the ugly man: when youth has passed and you are trying to show that you are young; when sex has passed — should have passed if you have lived — and you are still seeking things which are good in their season, which are beautiful in certain moments of life. But an old man is ridiculous falling in love… ridiculous! He is as ridiculous as a young man NOT falling in love — out of season, out of step with life.
10. Life is mysterious. You cannot be mathematical about it. Nobody knows. You may be a king, but you cannot force love. He may be a slave, but love will make a king out of him. Nobody knows! Life is mysterious. It is not arithmetical, it is not economics.
11. This is the greatest crime that society commits against every child. No other crime can be greater than this. To spoil a child’s trust is to spoil his whole life because trust is so valuable that the moment you lose trust, you also lose your contact with your own being.
12. Life is not a tension anywhere except in the minds of humanity. To take life with ease, without any tension, without any hurry — that is not laziness, that is easiness.
13. Don’t make life a question-answer game. Make it more authentic, and anything that feels right to you, try to experiment with it. There are millions of people who know what is right, millions of people who know what is good, millions of people who know what has to be done. But they just know, they never try to transform their knowing into action, into actuality.
14. Unless God is realized, your life has been a wastage. And that is your capacity, your potential — the realization of the divineness of existence. Just a little taste and your whole life will become full of such glory, such ecstasy, such splendor that you cannot even dream about it.

Osho Quotes on Life

1. Life is a mystery to be lived, not to be understood.
2. If you live a bored life, nobody else is responsible for it but you. You ask for boredom. And boredom is misery. You ask for boredom because you ask for repetition.
3. When you are in danger and you are facing life, you are for the first time in contact with your soul. The soul is not cheap. You have to put everything at stake.
4. Buddha says: Life should be simple, not complex. Life should be based on needs, not on desires. Needs are perfectly okay: you need food, you need clothes, you need a shelter, you need love, you need relationship. Perfectly good, nothing wrong in it. Needs can be fulfilled; desires are basically unfulfillable. Desires create complexity. They create complexity because they can never be fulfilled. You go on and on working hard for them, and they remain unfulfilled, and you remain empty.
5. The first thing about livelihood is: it should be based on needs, not on desires. Then a very small quantity of things is enough. Secondly: it should not be violent. You should not do something just because you can get some money out of it. You can kill somebody and get some money, you can be a butcher and you can make your livelihood, but that is inhuman… and very unconscious. Better ways are possible. One should be creative in one’s livelihood, one should not be destructive.
6. One should be a little more alert. Money is not all, and one should not destroy one’s own life just in accumulating money. Poverty can be tremendously beautiful. If you are just living by your needs, poverty can be a tremendous contentment. In fact, you will never find rich people contented. Sometimes you can come across a beggar with a contented face, but never a millionaire.
7. If you are talking, be watchful. If you are listening, be watchful. If you are eating, be watchful. Never allow any act to be done without awareness, and then nothing else is needed. This awareness will spread all over your life; it will be a twenty-four-hour thing. There is no need to keep separate hours for meditation. And Buddha says that meditation cannot be separate from life; it has to spread and mix with life, it has to be one with life.
8. Life is such a complex phenomenon; how can you be certain? Everything is possible and nothing is certain. If you become afraid, this is just your psychology. Something has to be done to your mind.
9. It is very simple: pain is there because pleasure is there. Pleasure cannot exist without pain. If you want a life absolutely painless, then you will have to live a life absolutely pleasureless. They come together in one package. They are not two things really; they are one thing — not different, not separate, and cannot be separated.
10. What I suggest is a very life-affirmative, life-loving way. My suggestion is: when there is pain, go deeply into it, don’t avoid it. Let it be so, be open to it, become as sensitive as possible. Let the pain and its arrow penetrate you to your very core. Suffer it. And when the pleasure comes, let that too move you to your innermost core. Dance it. When there is pain be with pain, and when there is pleasure be with pleasure. Become so totally sensitive that each moment of pain and pleasure is a great adventure.
11. Be innocent, not knowledgeable. Be ignorant. It is better, because in your ignorance you accept the mystery of life. Life cannot be explained. All explanations are very tiny, small, rigid; and life is so vast, so immense — it cannot be contained in any explanation.
12. Life is there to be lived. Life has no question-mark; it is a mystery, there is no explanation. And it is good that there is none: it would be a great misfortune if there were an explanation. If there were an answer that could satisfy you, just think how flat things would become, how boring, how monotonous — because no answer can answer your questions. Life remains an adventure, it remains a constant search. Searching, one day you come to a point where you understand that you are wasting your energies in searching. The same energies can be put to celebration. You can enjoy.
13. That is one of the great secrets of life, that life is a movement. And if you are stuck somewhere you lose contact with life.
14. That is what meditation is too: you have to flower in your own being. You don’t know what you are going to be, you don’t know what flowers will come to you, what will be their color and what will be their perfume — you don’t know. You move into the unknown. You simply trust life-energy. It has given birth to you, it is your foundation, it is your being. You trust it. You know that you are a child of this universe, and this universe, if it has given birth to you, will take care too.
15. A real sannyasin is one who does not care about others’ opinions, who has decided to live his life as he wants to live it. I don’t mean for you to be irresponsible. When you start living your life responsibly, you not only care about yourself, you care about others also — but in a totally different way.
16. Now you will take every care that you don’t interfere in anybody else’s life — this is what responsibility is. You don’t allow anybody to interfere in your life, and naturally, you will not interfere in anybody’s life. You don’t want anybody to guide your life, you don’t want your life to be a guided tow. A guided tour is not a tour at all. You want to explore on your own. You want to move in the forest without any map, so that you can also be a discoverer, so that you can also come to some fresh spots for the first time.
17. You cannot eat respectability, and you cannot eat money, and you cannot eat prestige. They are just games: meaningless, stupid, mediocre. if you are intelligent enough you will understand that you have to live your life and you are not to bother about other things. All other considerations are meaningless: it is your life. You have to live it authentically, lovingly, with great passion and with great compassion, with great energy. You have to become a tidal wave of bliss. Whatsoever is needed to do for it, do.Unlearning will be needed. Unlearning means that you stop those wrong routes, you stop moving in those wrong ways that the society has forced persuaded you, seduced you to go in. You take charge of your own life; you become your own master. That is the meaning of sannyas. That’s why I call sannyasins SWAMI. ‘SWAMI’ means: one who has become a master of his own life. It has nothing to do with orthodox SWAMIS; they are not masters of their own lives. They are again on the same train, with the same society, with the same stupid power, prestige, politics.