“We can make our life just a restlessness or a dance. Rest is not in the nature of things, but we can have a very chaotic restlessness—that is misery, that is neurosis, that is madness. Or we can be creative with this energy; then restlessness is no longer restless. It becomes smooth, graceful—it starts taking the form of a dance and a song. And the paradox is that when the dancer is totally in dance, there is rest—the impossible happens, the center of the cyclone. But that rest is not possible in any other way. When the dance is total, only then does that rest happen.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 97)
Quotes from Everyday Osho
“Love has to be cherished, tasted very slowly, so that it suffuses your being and becomes such a possessing experience that you are no more. It is not that you are making love—you are love.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 96)
“With meditation there is a deep necessity for love. They are both like wings, and you cannot fly with one wing. If meditation is going well, suddenly you will see that love is missing. If love is going very well, suddenly you will see that meditation is missing. If nothing is going well, then it is okay. One settles with one’s sadness, one’s closedness. But when one wing has started moving, the other wing is needed.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 95)
“If vulnerability grows along with power, there is no fear that power will be abused.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 94)
Letting Your Bow Relax—A Short Story About Not Being So Serious All Of The Time
Excerpt: The emperor couldn’t believe his eyes—a zen master rolling on the floor laughing? It was an embarrassment… Until the zen master replied…
Read More »Letting Your Bow Relax—A Short Story About Not Being So Serious All Of The Time
“Your profession should only be one part of life. It should not overlap into every dimension of your life, as ordinarily it does. A doctor becomes almost a twenty-four-hour doctor. He thinks about it, he talks about it. Even when he is eating, he is a doctor. While he is making love, he is a doctor. Then it is madness; it is insane. My suggestion is that you work for five or six hours. Use the remaining hours for other things: for sleep, for music, for poetry, for meditation, for love, or for just fooling around. That too is needed. If a person becomes too wise and cannot fool around, he becomes heavy, somber, serious. He misses life.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 87)
“People are very absolutist. They think in terms of absolutes: This is truth and whatever is against it is wrong. This attitude has crippled the whole earth—Hindus and Muslims and Christians are all fighting because everybody claims the absolute truth. But nobody has any claim on it. It is nobody’s monopoly. Truth is vast. Infinite are its facets and infinite are the ways to know it. Whatever we know is limited; it is just one part.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 82)
“Love is very delicate, fragile. If you look at it, gaze at it directly, it will disappear. It comes only when you are unaware, doing something else. You cannot go directly, arrowlike. Love is not a target. It is a very subtle phenomenon; it is very shy. If you go directly, it will hide. If you do something directly, you will miss it. The world has become very stupid about love. They want it immediately. They want it like instant coffee—whenever you want it, order it, and it is there. Love is a delicate art; it is nothing you can do. It always takes you unaware.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 75)
“Every heart has love, because the heart cannot exist without it. It is the very pulse of life. Nobody can be without love; that is impossible. It is a basic truth that everyone has love, has the capacity to love and to be loved. But some rocks—wrong upbringing, wrong attitudes, cleverness, cunningness, and a thousand and one things—are blocking the path. Withdraw unloving acts, unloving words, unloving gestures, and then suddenly you will catch yourself in a very loving mood. Many moments will come when suddenly you will see that something is bubbling—and there was love, just a glimpse. And by and by those moments will become longer.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 74)
“Those strong winds that hit hard are not really enemies. They help to integrate you. They look as if they will uproot you, but in fighting with them you become rooted.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 70)
“Openness is vulnerability. When you are open, you feel at the same time that something wrong can enter you. That is not just a feeling; it is a possibility. That’s why people are closed. If you open the door for the friend to come in, the enemy can also enter. Clever people have closed their doors. To avoid the enemy, they don’t even open the door for the friend. But then their whole life becomes dead. But there is nothing that could happen, because basically we have nothing to lose—and that which we have cannot be lost. That which can be lost is not worth keeping. When this understanding becomes tacit, one remains open.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 67)
“Just by being okay, how will you love? Why be so miserly about it? But there are many people who are stuck at okayness. They have lost all energy just because of their ideas. Okayness is like a person who is not sick but who is also not healthy, just so-so. He is not ill, but he is not alive and healthy. He cannot celebrate.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 66)
“All paralyzed people—psychologically paralyzed, spiritually paralyzed—live life in hell. And how do they create it? The secret is that they live in fear; they only do a certain thing when there is no fear, but then there is nothing left worth doing. All that is worth doing has certain fears around it.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 58)
“People who have never suffered and have lived a convenient and comfortable life are almost dead. Their lives will not be like a sharp sword. It will not even cut vegetables. Intelligence becomes sharp when you face challenges. Pray every day to God, ‘Send me more challenges tomorrow, send more storms,’ and then you will know life at the optimum.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 52)
“It is good to be available to the wind, to the rain, to the sun, because this is what life is. So rather than becoming worried about it, dance! Dance when the storm comes, because silence will follow. Dance when challenges come and disturb your life, because in responding to those challenges you will be growing to new heights. Remember, even suffering is a grace. If one can take it rightly it becomes a stepping stone.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 52)
“The friend, the enemy: both are your imagination. When you stop imagination completely, you are alone, absolutely alone. Once you understand that life and all its relationships are imagination, you don’t go against life, but your understanding helps you to make your relationships richer. Now that you know that relationships are imagination, why not put more imagination into them? Why not enjoy them as deeply as possible? When the flower is nothing but your imagination, why not create a beautiful flower? Why settle for an ordinary flower?”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 47)
“Sooner or later the outer poverty is going to disappear—we now have enough technology to make it disappear—and the real problem is going to arise. The real problem will be inner poverty. No technology can help.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 47)
“Animals are not neurotic because they don’t have any ideals. Trees are not neurotic because they don’t have any ideals. They are not trying to become somebody else. They are simply enjoying whatever they are. You are you. But somewhere deep down you want to become a Buddha or a Jesus, and then you go around in a circle that will be unending. Just see the point of it—you are you. And the whole, or existence, wants you to be you. That’s why existence has created you, otherwise it would have created a different model. It wanted you to be here at this moment. It did not want Jesus to be here in place of you. And existence knows better. The whole always knows better than the part.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 44)
“Whenever you see that something is creating misery, drop it then and there—don’t hold it for a single moment. This is courage: courage to live, courage to risk, courage to adventure. And only those who are courageous are one day rewarded by the whole, by light, by love, bliss, and benediction.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 42)
“Never settle for any mediocrity, because that is a sin against life. Never ask that life should be without risk, and never ask for security, because that is asking for death.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 41)