In this two-part essay, Shanti explores the path from the mind to living from the heart.
“Intellectuals are profound archers – first they shoot the arrow and then they draw the target!” explains Osho.
“Whatever you have, you don’t recognize its value unless you lose it,” says Osho.
Osho states, “In science, in archery, in other arts, concentration may be of great use – but it is not meditation.”
Osho states: “There is no need to have boundaries of nations, because the earth has no boundaries.”
Osho says, “Freedom means tremendous responsibility; you are on your own and alone.”
Osho states, “All your work is concerned with shifting your focus from the object to the subject.”
Bodhidharma: “No action is holy, because every action arises out of the ego…”
“Your mind is hell. Going beyond your mind is heaven,” states Osho.
“What kind of home is this where people go on changing? It is a caravanserai. It is just an overnight stay, and then one has to go.”
“You have to catch hold of your inner light with your own awareness. Other than that there is no way,” says Osho.
“The answer comes in a moment of relaxation,” states Osho.
“Just sit by the stream of your mind. Don’t do anything; nothing is expected from you.”
Osho states, “Life has to be lived without questions and without answers…”
“Prayer is just your effort to persuade God to do things according to you… I am against prayer. I am for meditation,” says Osho.
“You need not worry; you do the best you can do with life… And everything else will follow on its own accord,” states Osho.
Osho states, “Ask questions – not out of knowledge… Ask out of your ignorance.”
Osho states, “The flower of love can blossom only when there is no ego, when there is no effort to dominate…”
Osho comments, “Only a master can save you who comes near to you and at the same time is far away from you.”
“No one recognises souls, only the clothes are recognized,” states Osho.
“I am love. And if you cannot see it in my dancing, then you will certainly not see it at all when I stop dancing.”
“He does not paint for any purpose. Painting is his dance with colors,” says Osho.
“Men have not allowed women to become enlightened… to be anything that is their potential,” states Osho.
Osho says, “That which is unnatural cannot be moral.”
“Wherever you are sitting, wherever you are, your being there should make the place important, not vice versa,” states Osho.
Osho quotes Coleridge: “These poems are the poems of my freedom – existence becoming free through me. These poems will have to wait.”
Osho says, “You have to remember that wherever you are it is a holy land and whatever you are doing it is divine.”
“Between these two, everybody exists. Being a prince or being a beggar are just identities given by others. It is not your reality.”
Osho states, “In Sufism there is no one compared with Rabiya al-Adabiya.”
Osho: “That’s what I have been doing my whole life, telling people, ‘Just a little more. Soon you will be reaching.'”
Osho says, “A poet cannot be corrected by a grammarian, by a linguist or by a scholar.”
Osho says, “Your mind is just… a TV screen or a drama stage. You are not supposed to act. You are not supposed to do anything.”
Osho says, “If surrender sits on the shoulders of your will, you have managed one of the greatest things in life.”
“Staking everything, knowing that you are gambling with the unknown… you may be victorious, you may be a failure, but it does not matter,” states Osho.
“Our own imagination is our last barrier. Once we are without imagination then reality is there face to face,” says Osho.
“The best in art, the best in music, the best in literature, the best in philosophy, the best in religion – all are mysteries,” says Osho.
“You are living surrounded by death, and if this can be remembered, this can become the greatest stimulation for meditation, for awareness,” says Osho.
Osho states that “all religions have been teaching that everything is a dream.”
“The man of compassion has to lie. The lie is only a device to wake you up,” explains Osho.
Osho states, “Each system is perfect and works. But don’t mix it with anything else; let it function on its own.”
“If your life is becoming insane just look deep down – you will find that all this deciding is driving you mad too,” says Osho.
Osho states: “He was a conqueror. He was pushing the river of life according to his desires… Please, flow with the river. You are a part, you cannot impose yourself on the whole; the whole is infinite.”
Osho says, “There is a way of being in contact with reality without words… Words don’t help, they hinder.”
Osho quotes Rabia al-Adawiyya as saying: “The heard is the lie and the seen is the truth.”
“Perfectionism is a kind of inhuman ideal. You cannot think of Buddha crying,” states Osho.
“Nothing is small in itself and nothing is big in itself. It is all comparative,” states Osho.
Osho: “Yes, to know oneself is very elementary.”
Osho states, “Understanding is not gradual, understanding is a sudden flash.”
“The quintessence of Tao is ‘Tathata’, acceptability. Where there is total acceptability, there is the condition of desirelessness,” states Osho.
“The One and only God is known only when a person gets beheaded,” comments Osho on this anecdote.
Osho says, “To be encrusted in gold and to die are one and the same thing… The greater the wealth you want to achieve the more dead you have to be…. All heights are suicidal!”
Osho states, “We come and we go; we are like the line drawn over water…”
Osho states, “The moment you say something about the first principle, you go wrong.”
Osho says, “The ego thinks it can do everything. It lives with this fallacy. The part lives with the fallacy that it is the whole.”
“Carrying fuel, drawing water from the well and he says, ‘How mysterious.'”
Osho tells a story about the Sufi mystic, Junaid, who had lived with almost all the great masters…
Osho states, “The whole of existence exists without any logic. It may be a poetry but it is not a syllogism – hence it is so beautiful.”
Osho says, “Either you can become a man of being, or you can become a man of having.”
Bauls say, “Whatsoever you love you become, and whatsoever is your love you will find.”
Zarathustra has said, “Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the superman. He is a bridge and you should not make your house on the bridge…”