Rajneesh Quotes

Belief is like plastic flowers, which look like flowers from far away. Trust is real rose. It has roots, and roots go deep into your heart and into your being.

One thing: you have to walk, and create the way by your walking; you will not find a ready-made path. It is not so cheap, to reach to the ultimate realization of truth. You will have to create the path by walking yourself; the path is not ready-made, lying there and waiting for you. It is just like the sky: the birds fly, but they don't leave any footprints. You cannot follow them; there are no footprints left behind.

Don't move the way fear makes you move. Move the way love makes you move. Move the way joy makes you move.

A serious person can never be innocent, and one who is innocent can never be serious.

Happiness happens when you fit with your life, when you fit so harmoniously that whatsoever you are doing is your joy. Then suddenly you will come to know: meditation follows you. If you love the work that you are doing, if you love the way you are living, then you are meditative.

Each obsession is a knot in your being. Once it is opened, great energy is released

Destroying something, any idiot can do. Creating needs intelligence.

Drop envy and jealousy, otherwise there is no possibility , because love cannot exist where envy and jealousies exist.

As you become more conscious of your cruelty, of your violence, gross and subtle, you start becoming more and more compassionate. Not that you cultivate compassion. Just by becoming aware of your cruelty, violence, ugliness... the very awareness brings new changes in you. And the energy that was involved in cruelty, in violence, starts changing. The same energy becomes purified, the same energy becomes compassion.

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.

Zen is a kind of unlearning. It teaches you how to drop that which you have learned, how to become unskillful again, how to become a child again, how to start existing without mind again, how to be here without any mind.

Accept the responsibility of being yourself as you are, with all that is good and with all that is bad, with all that is beautiful and that which is not beautiful. In that acceptance a transcendence happens and one becomes free.

Vegetarianism should not be anything moral or religious. It is a question of aesthetics: one's sensitivity, one's respect, one's reverence for life.

Death is more important than life. Life is just the trivial, just the superficial; death is deeper. Through death you grow to the real life, and through life you only reach death and nothing else.

Science is concerned about quantity; religion is concerned about quality. Religion is concerned with the art of how to live life and how to die life.

When you attain to an egoless emptiness great creativity happens.

People expect too much. People who expect heaven always fall into hell - that is the law. Expect heaven and hell is certain. Don't expect heaven and there will never be any hell.

Meditation is totally different. When you concentrate you close your mind to everything else. Meditation means just an openness, a relaxed openness. It is not concentration. While listening to me you are listening to the birds singing in the trees too. The wind passing through the trees singing its song - you are open to it too. The aeroplane passing by, or the train - you are open to it too. This is meditation - you are simply open, available, conscious, available, all doors are open.

Sadness comes, joy comes, and everything passes by. What remains always is the witness. The witness is beyond all polarities.

Only those people are really sane who have transcended the mind, who have gone beyond it into silence where no thoughts, no desires, no emotions, nothing exists. Only in that peace is your real health.

Tantra is the science of transforming ordinary lovers into soul mates. And that is the grandeur of Tantra. It can transform the whole earth; it can transform each couple into soul mates.

Ordinarily, even when people become religious, they go on thinking in terms of having - possessing heaven or possessing the pleasures of heaven - but still they go on thinking in terms of having. Their heaven is nothing but their projected desire of having everything. All that they have missed here they would like to have in the after-life. But it is the same desire.

Bring awareness to each act. Walking on the road, walk fully alert; eating, eat with awareness. Whatsoever you are doing, don't let the past and the future interfere. Be in the present. That's what awareness is all about.

And this sensitivity will create new friendships for you - friendships with trees, with birds, with animals, with mountains, with rivers, with oceans, with stars. Life becomes richer as love grows.

A Sufi mystic who had always remained happy was asked.... For seventy years people had watched him, he had never been found sad. One day they asked him, 'What is the secret of your happiness?' He said, 'There is no secret. Every morning when I wake up, I meditate for five minutes and I say to myself, 'Listen, now there are two possibilities: you can be miserable, or you can be blissful. Choose.' And I always choose to be blissful.'

This mind goes on continuing. This mind will go on continuing, unless you become aware. And this is a miracle: that the moment you become aware the continuity is broken. Now you will be, but not of the past. Now you will be of the moment - fresh, young, new. Now each moment you will die, and you will be reborn.

Touch your inner space, which is nothingness, as silent and empty as the sky; it is your inner sky. Once you settle down in your inner sky, you have come home, and a great maturity arises in your actions, in your behavior. Then whatever you do has grace in it. Then whatever you do is a poetry in itself. You live poetry; your walking becomes dancing, your silence becomes music.

She feels so contented in giving birth to a child, in helping the child to grow; and that's why she does not need any other kind of creativity. Her creative urge is fulfilled. But man is in trouble: he cannot give birth to a child, he cannot have the child in his womb. He has to find a substitute, otherwise he will always feel inferior to the woman. And deep down he does feel that he is inferior. Because of that feeling of inferiority man tries to create paintings, statues, dramas, he writes poetry, novels, explores the whole scientific world of creativity.

Freedom means the capability to say yes when yes is needed, to say no when no is needed, and sometimes to keep quiet when nothing is needed - to be silent, not to say anything. When all these dimensions are available, there is freedom.

Meditation is not concentration. It is simple awareness. You simply relax and watch the breathing. In that watching, nothing is excluded. The car is humming - perfectly okay, accept it. The traffic is passing - that's okay, part of life. The fellow passenger snoring by your side, accept it. Nothing is rejected. You are not to narrow down your consciousness.

Laughter is the real religion. Everything else is just metaphysics.

Only people who carry the opinions of others need the support of others.

Meditation means awareness. Whatsoever you do with awareness is meditation. Action is not the question, but the quality that you bring to your action. Walking can be a meditation if you walk alertly. Sitting can be a meditation if you sit alertly. Listening to the birds can be a meditation if you listen with awareness. Just listening to the inner noise of your mind can be a meditation if you remain alert and watchful. The whole point is: one should not move in sleep. Then whatsoever you do is meditation.

Celibacy can only be spontaneous, there is no other type of celibacy. If it is not spontaneous, it is not celibacy. You can force it. you can control your sexuality, but that is not going to help. You will not be celibate, you will be only more and more sexual. Sex will spread all over your being. It will become part of your unconscious. It will move your dreams, it will become your motivation in dreams, it will become your fantasy. In fact, you will become more sexual than you ever were before. You will think more about it and you will have to repress it again and again.

Seriousness is a disease.

Another significant point to remember: if you witness anything - fear, anger, hate - they will disappear, leaving a tremendous amount of energy in you which you can use for creativity. You will have to use it, the leaking holes have disappeared; you will be overflowing with energy. But if you witness your love, compassion, kindness, humbleness, they will not disappear. They also have tremendous energy, but the more you witness them, the more they will become strong in you; they will overpower you, overwhelm you.

There is no failure in life. It all depends how you take things. If you are desiring too much - you want to reach too high, and you cannot - then there is frustration and failure. But if you are not desiring anything and you are perfectly happy wherever you are, life is moment-to-moment victory.

Walking is Zen, sitting is Zen. Then what will be the quality? Watchfully alert, joyously unmotivated, centered, loving, flowing, one walks. And the walking is sauntering. Loving, alert, watchful, one sits, unmotivated - not sitting for anything in particular, just enjoying how beautiful just sitting doing nothing is, how relaxing, how restful.

Remember, if you have not known sadness together with happiness you have not known anything yet. Then your happiness is superficial; your sadness is also superficial. Then you have been living on the surface; then you have known only the waves; you have not known the depth of the ocean that you are.

Only when all your desires disappear does that energy become compassion, KARUNA. You cannot cultivate compassion. When you are desireless, compassion happens; your whole energy moves into compassion. And this movement is very different. Desire has a motivation in it, a goal; compassion is nonmotivated, there is no goal to it, it is simply overflowing energy.

Worship the Silent Space in you.

Meditation is the alchemy of transforming. The unconscious into the conscious. It gives you a tremendous power, Far greater than anger, greed and lust.

To come across a Master and to miss the Master is the greatest accident, very unfortunate, that can happen to a man.

A man of meditation functions differently. Whatever profession he chooses, it does not matter. He will bring to his profession some quality of sacredness. He may be making shoes, or he may be cleaning the roads, but he will bring to his work some quality, some grace, some beauty, which is not possible without samādhi.

Ordinarily we think sex makes people loving - sex can never make people loving. In fact, it is sexuality that prevents love from growing - because it is the same energy that has to become love. It is being destroyed in sex. To become love, the same energy has to move to the heart centre.

The mind is a mechanism. It has no intelligence. The mind is a bio-computer. How can it have any intelligence? It has skill, but it has no intelligence; it has a functional utility, but it has no awareness. It is a robot; it works well but don`t listen to it too much because then you will lose your inner intelligence. Then it is as if you are asking a machine to guide you, lead you. You are asking a machine which has nothing original in it.

Mind is repetitive, mind always moves in circles. Mind is a mechanism: you feed it with knowledge, it repeats the same knowledge, it goes on chewing the same knowledge again and again. No-mind is clarity, purity, innocence. No-mind is the real way to live, the real way to know, the real way to be.

"The first awareness of the child comes with his ego. He becomes aware of the "I", not of the Self. Really, he becomes aware first of the "thou". The child first becomes aware of his mother. Then, reflectively, he becomes aware of himself. First he becomes aware of objects around him. Then, by and by, he begins to feel that he is separate. This feeling of separation gives the feeling of ego, and because the child first becomes aware of the ego, ego becomes a covering on the Self. "