Osho speaks on the topic of ‘Nudity’; “We have created a world around ourselves and we have cut ourselves off from nature. We have become uprooted – and this uprootedness is one of the basic causes of your misery.”
Dropping your clothes sometimes gives you a great acceptance of your body. And dropping your clothes will help you to have a beautiful body too – because then you will start contemplating about it. You have not even seen your own body in total nudity, so you are not aware of what you are doing with your body – that you are eating too much or that you are not eating enough, that your ways of life are unhealthy.
It is perfectly good to be nude – perfectly good to be nude with friends, perfectly good to be nude in your family with your children, because if small children know the bodies of their parents from the very beginning they will never become obsessed. They will never become obsessed with anybody’s body; they will have a totally different kind of approach. They know what bodies are – they have known their mother, they have known their father, their brothers. But even that is impossible.
In deep love relationships one should be nude! – with friends, with family. Once in a while it is tremendously helpful; it brings you closer to nature. […]
The whole of nature is nude except man. And by your clothes you have become disconnected from nature. It is of tremendous significance sometimes to be nude on the beach and to lie down in the sand under the sun, and feel the sand with your whole body and the sun with your whole body. Sometimes it is utterly beautiful to dance nude under the stars, so that you can again feel the cosmic rhythm that surrounds you, the cosmic vibe.
But we have made a totally plastic world. We are surrounded not by God’s nature but by man-made clothes. We live not with trees but great huge ugly cement structures. We move not on the naked earth but on coal-tar roads, cement roads.
We have created a world around ourselves and we have cut ourselves off from nature. We have become uprooted – and this uprootedness is one of the basic causes of your misery. Become rooted again into the soil. […]
I have heard about a great Zen Master. The emperor of Japan went to see him – he had heard that the Master lived totally nude. The emperor thought maybe he had no clothes, so he prepared, ordered the best clothes possible. He took beautiful velvet clothes and gowns studded with diamonds as a present to the naked fakir.
The Master started laughing. He said, “Thank you for your present, but you will have to take it back.”
The emperor said, “Why?”
The Master said, “You know, I am the only human being here. All my friends are trees and birds and animals – they will laugh at me, they will think I have gone mad. They are all nude, they understand nudity. They won’t understand these beautiful clothes, they won’t understand these diamonds, they won’t understand at all. And if I wear these clothes they will not only laugh at me and they will not only ridicule me – they will start going away from me. We will lose contact. You please take your clothes back.”
If you live in the mountains and if the weather allows you, be nude. And that will give you a tremendously new thrill. A new life will surge up in you.
In a better world, we will learn more and more to be nude. Clothes should be used for comfort, not for any other reason. Clothes should be used for convenience, not for any other reason. Clothes have no morality in them!
Osho, Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2, Ch 2
Quote published in The Book: An Introduction to the Teachings of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
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