Osho Insights and Advice on 10 Burning Topics

Osho (born Chandra Mohan Jain) was a mystic, guru, and spiritual teacher from India. A voracious reader, his personal library was estimated to contain 80,000 books. With such a large base of knowledge, he himself authored many books on a variety of topics. I would like to share some of his insights:

1. Living life

"If you want to avoid death, avoid life – but then what is the point of it all? You will be dead. Before death, you will be dead. If you want to be perfectly secure, enter into your grave and lie down there and you will be perfectly secure."

"There is risk, but life itself is risk. For a higher life there will be higher risks. You move on a dangerous path. But remember, there is only one error in life, and that is not moving at all; that is, just sitting afraid that if you move something may go wrong, so it is better to wait and sit. This is the only error. You will not be in danger but no growth will be possible."

"The valley is nothing but a situation in which a peak becomes possible. They are joined together."

2. Why can’t you lose weight?

"People who are afraid of death eat more because eating seems to be the base of life. The more you eat, the more alive – because if you don’t eat you die. …So if you are afraid of death you will eat more, or if nobody loves you, you will eat more. Food can become a substitute for love because the child, in the beginning, comes to associate food and love….[they] enter his consciousness simultaneously. …whenever the child gets more love he will reduce his food, because the love is so much that food is not needed. Whenever love is not there he will eat more, because a balance has to be kept. If there is no love at all then he will fill his belly."

Dieting doesn't address the root of the problem - it only deals with the symptoms.

Wise Insights and Advice from Osho on 10 Topics

3. Marriage

"What are your marriages except business contracts?...You are following law, which is the lowest thing in existence, and the ugliest. When you bring love to the court you are committing a crime that cannot be forgiven….Do you think this is not a great insult to love? Are not you putting law above love?"

The law comes into love because love is not there.

4. Alcohol

"Alcohol is certainly not a temptation of the devil, because Jesus Christ was drinking alcohol – not only drinking it but making it available to his apostles. Alcohol is not against Christianity – Christianity accepts alcohol perfectly, because to deny alcohol would be putting Jesus in jeopardy."

I guess what he's saying is drink up, enjoy.

5. Why are some guys on GAG so miserable?

"If you ask for love you have to give love, and you have to give more than you can ask for….He cannot get love because he cannot give love, but he can get sympathy. Sympathy is a poor substitute for love. So he is sad: when he is sad people give him sympathy. Whoever comes to him feels sympathetic because he is always crying and weeping. His mood is always that of a very miserable man. But he enjoys! Whenever you give him sympathy he enjoys it. He becomes more miserable, because the more he is miserable, the more he can get this sympathy."

6. Fear

"Fear cannot be eliminated altogether, it cannot be mastered, it can only be understood. Understanding is the key word here. And only understanding brings mutation, nothing else."

"First, drop the idea of dropping fear. Second, accept it; it is part of you. And third, watch it, observe it; try to understand why it is there and what it is. If you do these three things you will bring it into balance."

7. Prejudice

"You have a preconception, a prejudiced mind, and this prejudiced mind gives you wrong-knowledge….There may be bad Mohammedans, bad Hindus, good Mohammedans, good Hindus. Goodness and badness do not belong to any nation, to any race, to any culture, they belong to individuals, personalities."

8. Love

"The other can say no. A 50% possibility of no is there, but just because of the 50% possibility of no, you choose a 100% life of no love?"

"Love is not lust, true; but love is not without lust – that too, is true….Love is the lotus, lust is the mud the lotus arises out of."

9. Expectation

"If you cling to expectation you can feel frustration. If you simply come to realize that there is no possibility of expecting anything, then where is the frustration? Then this is the nature of existence, that there is no possibility of expecting anything, there is no possibility of hope. When this becomes a certainty, how can you feel hopeless? Then both [hope and hopelessness] have disappeared."

10. Meditation

"You meditate, but you meditate with the motive that through meditation you will reach somewhere, some goal. You are missing the point. Meditate and enjoy it! …Don’t make it a means. It is the end. This is the whole point to be understood."

“Yoga says the more impatient you are, the more time will be needed for your transformation. The more in a hurry, the more you will be delayed. Hurry itself creates such confusion that delay will result. The less in a hurry, the earlier will be the results. If you are infinitely patient, this very moment transformation can happen. If you are ready to wait forever, you may not wait even for this next moment. This very moment the thing can happen because it is not a question of time, it is a question of the quality of your mind.”

Other

Here's one extra to help cheer you up, especially if you have low self-esteem.

“There is no need to be somebody. You are already accepted as you are. The whole existence accepts you, is happy about you. You are an individual flowering, different from any other, unique. And God welcomes you, otherwise you could not be here. You are here only because you are accepted. You are here only because God loves you or the universe loves you or existence needs you. You are needed.”