Zen is non-serious. Zen has a tremendous sense of humor. No other religion has evolved so much that it can have that sense of humor.
RajneeshIt is a strange thing ,that every child is born with a closed hand , and every body dies with an open hand !
RajneeshAloneness is the presence of oneself. Aloneness is very positive... You are so full of presence that you can fill the whole universe with your presence and there is no need for anybody.
RajneeshMisery comes the moment you become clinging, attached. The moment you put conditions on life.
RajneeshIf you deceive someone, you lose one of life's greatest treasures, you lose the capacity to trust. Because without trust, love is not possible.
RajneeshReligion is nothing but a science to attain wisdom, understanding, to know what life is, and to live it in utter celebration.
RajneeshAnd the miracle is: if you can go into your suffering as a meditation, watching, to the deepest roots of it, just through watching, it disappears. You don't have to do anything more than watching. If you have found the authentic cause by your watching, the suffering will disappear.
RajneeshTo be choiceless is to be in meditation. To be choiceless is to enter the eternal. To be of choice is to enter the world: the dream world, the divided world, the false, the pseudo, the illusory world.
RajneeshWhen becoming disappears, all the smoke of becoming disappears, there is the flame of being, and that very flame is celebration.
RajneeshIf you can come to this nowness without sex, sex, by and by will become useless, it will disappear. It will not be a desire then. If you want to move in it you can move into it as a fun, but not as a desire. Then there is no obsession in it because you are not dependent on it.
RajneeshLive in this world, because this world gives a ripening, maturity, integrity. The challenges of this world give you a centering, an awareness. And that awareness becomes the ladder. Then you can move from Zorba to Buddha.
RajneeshThe West has enough technology, enough science, enough affluence, enough money, but something of the inner is missing. There is no peace, no silence, no joy, no bliss, no meditativeness, no experience of godliness.
RajneeshRemember: whatsoever I am saying is not the thing that I want to say to you. Whatsoever I am saying has nothing to do with truth, because truth cannot be said. Whatsoever I am saying is nothing but a hammering. If you become awake, you will see the truth.
RajneeshWhy has marriage failed? In the first place, we raised it to unnatural standards. We tried to make it something permanent, something sacred, without knowing even the abc of sacredness, without knowing anything about the eternal. Our intentions were good but our understanding was very small, almost negligible. So instead of marriage becoming something of a heaven, it has become a hell. Instead of becoming sacred, it has fallen even below profanity.
RajneeshA split personality can never become non-greedy. It can try, but it can never become. A split personality can never go beyond anger. It can try, but it can never go beyond. A split personality can never go beyond sex. It can fight. So many monks in the monasteries are doing it. They don't go beyond sex; at the most their sexuality becomes perverted, their love becomes poisoned.
RajneeshDont avoid extremes, and dont choose any one extreme. Remain available to both the polarities - that is the art, the secret of balancing.
RajneeshIt is impossible to pursue happiness. Nobody has ever pursued it. One has to wait for it. And it is not a right at all. No law court can force you to be happy or force happiness to be with you. No government violence is capable of making you happy. No power can make you happy.
RajneeshDesire means the way to go out; desire is the path that leads you out. If your mind is still desiring, you cannot move within.
RajneeshThe beauty of facing life unprepared is tremendous. Then life has a newness, a youth; then life has a flow and freshness. Then life has so many surprises. And when life has so many surprises, boredom never settles in you.
RajneeshAnd meditation is nothing but enjoying your beautiful aloneness. Celebrating yourself; that's what meditation is all about.
RajneeshThese seven centers, these seven chakras Yoga and Tantra have talked about down the ages, are nothing but five knots in your body electric current. They can be changed; they can be rearranged. They can be given a new shape, form. Two lovers can be transformed so deeply that all their seven centers can start meeting.
RajneeshUnless your freedom turns into a creative realization, you will feel sad. Because you will see that you are free-your chains are broken, and you are no longer in prison; you are standing under the starry night, completely free. But where do you go?
RajneeshMy whole effort is how to beautify this present moment, how to make people more celebrating, how to make people more joyous, how to give them a little glimpse of blissfulness, how to bring laughter to their life. Then the future takes care of itself. You need not think of the tomorrow, it comes. It comes out of this moment. Let this moment be of great celebration.
RajneeshBuddha introduced the idea that young people should become sannyasins. Then it is something significant. When a young person goes beyond sex, when a young person goes beyond desires, when a young person goes beyond greed, ambition, the longing to be powerful, the ambition to be famous, then it is something tremendously meaningful, significant.
RajneeshOnly no-mind can be without any duality, because it is empty. The no-mind is choicelessness. The no-mind is pure awareness. It is just the empty sky.
RajneeshWith your ego you cannot know. Only in an egolessness, in a deep abyss, in the absence of the ego, does the perception happen - then you become a mirror. With the ego you will always interpret, you cannot know the truth. With the ego you will always be there interpreting in subtle ways, and your interpretation is not the truth. You are the medium of all falsification. Through you everything becomes false. When you are not there, the true reflects.
RajneeshOnce you start drinking a little of meditativeness, a little of love, you start growing wings.
RajneeshThere have been many poets who have lived at the fifth center of creativity and never gone ahead - many painters, many dancers, many singers who created great art, but never moved to the third eye. And there have been mystics who have remained with the third eye, knowing their own inner beauty; it is so fulfilling that they thought they had arrived. Somebody is needed to tell you that there is still something more ahead; otherwise, in your ignorance, what you will do is almost unpredictable.
RajneeshLove is happy when it is able to give something. The ego is happy when it is able to take something.
RajneeshIn the name of celibacy, sex has been repressed for centuries and you have become just full of sexuality. Rather than transcending it you are boiling within.
RajneeshIf you are really spontaneous, people will think you are mad. If you go to a tree and start talking, or to a flower, people will think you are mad. If you go to a church and talk to a cross or to an image, nobody will think your are mad, they will think that you are religious. You are talking to a stone in a temple and everybody thinks you are religious because this is the authorized form.
RajneeshI am not against marriage - without marriage, ninety-nine percent jokes will disappear from the world. How I can be against marriage? I am all for it.
RajneeshLife is a continuity always and always. There is no final destination it is going towards. Just the pilgrimage, just the journey in itself is life, not reaching to some point, no goal - just dancing and being in pilgrimage, moving joyously, without bothering about any destination.
RajneeshThat is one of the great secrets of life, that life is a movement. And if you are stuck somewhere you lose contact with life.
RajneeshJealousy means ego, jealousy means unconsciousness. Jealousy means that you have not known even a moment of joy and bliss; you are living in misery. Jealousy is a by-product of misery, ego, unconsciousness.
RajneeshMeditation is a silent heart, a peaceful mind which can make life more lovable, more livable.
Rajneesh'I am' is nothing but another name for the ego. Now you will be getting into trouble. If the ego is convinced that the only way is to drop the ego, then who is going to drop whom? And how? It will be like pulling yourself up by your own shoestrings. You will look just silly. Watch each word that you use. 'I am' is nothing but the ego.
RajneeshThere is no heaven and there is no hell. They are not geographical, they are part of your psychology. They are psychological. To live the life of spontaneity, truth, love, beauty is to live in heaven. To live the life of hypocrisy, lies, compromises,to live according to others, is to live in hell. To live in freedom is heaven, and to live in subjection is hell.
Rajneesh