Osho Celebration Quotes

Take hold of your own life. See that the whole existence is celebrating. These trees are not serious, these birds are not serious. The rivers and the oceans are wild, and everywhere there is fun, everywhere there is joy and delight. Watch existence, listen to the existence and become part of it.

Vulnerability is the least celebrated emotion in our society

My whole teaching consists of two words, meditation and love. Meditate so that you can feel immense silence, and love so that your life can become a song, a dance, a celebration. You will have to move between the two, and if you can move easily, if you can move without any effort, you have learned the greatest thing in life.

Be the celebrators, celebrate! Already there is too much—the flowers have bloomed, the birds are singing, the sun is there in the sky—celebrate it! You are breathing and you are alive and you have consciousness, celebrate it!

I don’t think existence wants you to be serious. I have not seen a serious tree. I have not seen a serious bird. I have not seen a serious sunrise. I have not seen a serious starry night. It seems they are all laughing in their own ways, dancing in their own ways. We may not understand it, but there is a subtle feeling that the whole existence is a celebration.

And meditation is nothing but enjoying your beautiful aloneness. Celebrating yourself; that’s what meditation is all about.

The intelligent person will go inward first. Before going anywhere else, you will go into your own being. That is the first thing, and it should have the first preference. Only when you have known yourself can you go anywhere else. Then wherever you go you will carry a blissfulness around you, a peace, a silence, a celebration.

Energy can have two dimensions. One is motivated, going somewhere, a goal somewhere, this moment is only a means and the goal is going to be the dimension of activity, goal oriented--then everything is a means, somehow it has to be done and you have to reach the goal, then you will relax. But for this type of energy the goal never comes because this type of energy goes on changing every present moment into a means for something else, into the future. The goal always remains on the horizon. You go on running, but the distance remains the same. No, there is another dimension of energy: that dimension is unmotivated celebration. The goal is here, now; the goal is not somewhere else. In fact, you are the goal. In fact there is no other fulfillment than that of this moment--consider the lilies. When you are the goal and when the goal is not in the future, when there is nothing to be achieved, rather you are just celebrating it, then you have already achieved it, it is there. This is relaxation, unmotivated energy.

Life can become a celebration if you know how to live without concern. Otherwise life becomes a long prolonged disease, an illness which culminates only in death.

Dance madly as if all of life is meant for dancing and celebrating.

Eat like an emperor. That does not depend on the quality of the food, it depends on the eater, the way he celebrates it.

Man is a question mark . . . and it is a blessing—celebrate it. It is a blessing because only man is a question mark; no dog is, no tree is. The rose bush is beautiful but not as beautiful as man, and the moon is beautiful but not as beautiful as man—because they are unconscious. Only man is consciously on a quest. And how can you be on a quest if you don’t have a question mark in your being?

No, life is meant to be a celebration; celebration is its central note. If someone asks you, better ask this question of yourself: ”Do I live to work or work to live?” Then the answer will become very clear to you, and you will move much closer to Krishna. You do everything so you live, and not so you live to work and work meaninglessly. And to live you don’t need to do much; too much doing has no meaning.

Love is prayerfulness groping toward godliness. Love is poetry born out of the sheer joy of being. Love is song, dance, celebration: a song of gratitude, a dance of thankfulness, celebration for no reason at all, for this tremendous gift that goes on showering on us, for this whole universe, from the dust to the divine.

One Sufi mystic who had remained happy his whole life—no one had ever seen him unhappy—he was always laughing. He was laughter, his whole being was a perfume of celebration. In his old age, when he was dying—he was on his deathbed, and still enjoying death, laughing hilariously—a disciple asked, “You puzzle us. Now you are dying. Why are you laughing? What is there funny about it? We are feeling so sad. We wanted to ask you many times in your life why you are never sad. But now, confronting death, at least one should be sad. You are still laughing! How are you managing it?” And the old man said, “It is a simple clue. I had asked my master. I had gone to my master as a young man; I was only seventeen, and already miserable. And my master was old, seventy, and he was sitting under a tree, laughing for no reason at all. There was nobody else, nothing had happened, nobody had cracked a joke or anything. And he was simply laughing, holding his belly. And I asked him, ‘What is the matter with you? Are you mad or something?’ “He said, ‘One day I was also as sad as you are. Then it dawned on me that it is my choice, it is my life. Since that day, every morning when I get up, the first thing I decide is, before I open my eyes, I say to myself, “Abdullah”—that was his name—‘what do you want? Misery? Blissfulness? What are you going to choose today? And it happens that I always choose blissfulness.’” It is a choice. Try it. The first moment in the morning when you become aware that sleep has left, ask yourself, “Abdullah, another day! What is your idea? Do you choose misery or blissfulness?” And who would choose misery? And why? It is so unnatural—unless one feels blissful in misery, but then too you are choosing bliss, not misery.

The worry simply means: you are clinging with something which is no more and you are avoiding that which is. That is worry. You know deep down that it is no more, it is gone and you know deep down that the new has come. But still you want to pretend, you want to deceive yourself. And one can deceive oneself; millions of people are deceiving themselves. But that deception simply destroys all the possibilities of being blissful, of being alive, of being celebrating. One creates great anxiety and a great split.

Knowing one’s original face is the beginning of a life of love, of a life of celebration. You will be able to give so much love—because it is not something that is exhaustible. It is immeasurable, it cannot be exhausted. And the more you give it, the more you become capable of giving it. The greatest experience in life is when you simply give without any conditions, without any expectations of even a simple thank-you. On the contrary, a real, authentic love feels obliged to the person who has accepted his love. He could have rejected it. When you start giving love with a deep sense of gratitude to all those who accept it, you will be surprised that you have become an emperor—no longer a beggar asking for love with a begging bowl, knocking on every door. And those people on whose doors you are knocking cannot give you love; they are themselves beggars. Beggars are asking each other for love and feeling frustrated, angry, because the love is not coming. But this is bound to happen. Love belongs to the world of emperors, not of beggars. And a man is an emperor when he is so full of love that he can give it without any conditions.

Osho was very generous with his genius. When I went to Poona in 1988, he answered a question of mine. “Rumi says, ‘I want burning, burning.’ What does this burning have to do with my own possible enlightenment?” “You have asked a very dangerous question, Coleman. Burning has nothing to do with your enlightenment. This work you have done with Rumi is beautiful. It has to be, because it is coming out of Rumi’s love. But for you these poems can become ecstatic self-hypnosis.” He pretty much nailed me to the floor with that one. Sufism is good, but end up with Zen. It was a fine hit he gave me. I am still drawn to the Sufi longing and love-madness, but clarity is coming up strong on the inside. I have not assimilated his wisdom yet, but I mean to. I am very grateful to him. But it is not wisdom for everyone. Osho crafted his words to suit the individual. Ecstatic self-hypnosis might be just the thing for someone else. He was showing me a daylight beyond any beloved darkness, an ecstatic sobriety beyond any drunkenness.

See that the whole existence is celebrating. These trees are not serious, these birds are not serious. The rivers and the oceans are wild, and everywhere there is fun, everywhere there is joy and delight. Watch existence, listen to the existence and become part of it. Be non-serious. I'm not saying not to be sincere. Be sincere, but be non-serious. Sincerity is something else; seriousness is totally different. Be sincere with existence, then you will be true; you will become part of this cosmic LEELA, this cosmic play.

And the way to it is surrender. Stop fighting. And to stop fighting just an understanding is needed, because it creates misery, it never brings bliss. So to stop it is not a problem. The only problem is to understand it, to understand how we are creating our own misery. The ego is a self-created hell. The mind is our own creation and it is a nightmare, a constant on-going nightmare. When the mind is no more, for the first time one realises how beautiful life is, what a benediction, what a blessing. Then celebration starts. Learn to be in a let-go.

...you are part of an infinite energy and by doing you are gaining, not losing. By giving you are attaining, not losing. Live as the ocean. Be oceanic! Never think of losing, about anything. Nothing is lost, nothing can be lost. And you are not an individual; you only appear as an individual. The whole is joined to you; you are just a face of the whole, just a way the whole has happened. Enjoy, celebrate, be active, and always be a giver. To be a giver so totally that you never think of retaining or holding anything is the only real prayer. To give is to pray. To give is to love. And those who can give, they are always given more.

When I say celebrate, I mean become more and more sensitive to everything. In life, dance should not be apart. The whole life should become a dance; it should be a dance. You can go for a walk and dance. Allow life to enter into you, become more open and vulnerable, feel more, sense more. Small things filled with such wonders are lying all around. Watch a small child. Leave him in the garden and just watch. That should be your way also; so wonderful, wonder-filled: running to catch this butterfly, running to catch that flower, playing with mud, rolling in the sand. From everywhere the Divine is touching the child. If you can live in wonder you will be capable of celebration. Don't live in knowledge, live in wonder. Life is surprising; everywhere, it is a continuous surprise. Live it as a surprise, an unpredictable phenomenon: every moment is new. Just try, give it a try! You will not lose anything if you give it a try, and you may gain everything. But you have become addicted to misery. You cling to your misery as if it is something very precious. You become cruel because you don't know how to become compassionate. It is a negative state. The same energy that is cruelty will become compassion. With an unalert mind the energy becomes violence; with an alert mind the same energy becomes compassion. In sleep the same energy becomes torture, either of yourself or of somebody else. When you are awake, the same energy becomes love, for yourself and for others also. You are already where you need to be, you are already in that space which you are seeking. Just make a little effort to come out of your clinging to misery. Don't invest in misery; invest in celebration. You take one step towards life and life takes one thousand towards you. Just take one step out of your clinging to misery. The mind will go on pulling you backwards. Just be indifferent to the mind and tell the mind, 'Wait, I have lived enough with you, now let me live without mind.' That's what a child is: living without mind, or, living with no mind.

..life in its totality is good. And when you understand life in its totality, only then can you celebrate; otherwise not. Celebration means: whatsoever happens is irrelevant -- I will celebrate. Celebration is unconditional; I celebrate life. It brings unhappiness -- good, I celebrate it. It brings happiness -- good, I celebrate it. Celebration is my attitude, unconditional to what life brings. When I say 'Celebrate', you think one has to be happy. How can one celebrate when one is sad? I am not saying that one has to be happy to celebrate. Celebration is gratefulness for whatsoever life gives to you. Whatsoever God gives to you, celebration is a gratitude; it is a gratefulness. I have told you and I will tell you again.... A Sufi mystic was very poor, hungry, rejected, tired of the journey. He went to a village in the night and the village wouldn't accept him. The village belonged to the orthodox people... They wouldn't even give him shelter in the town. The night was cold and he was hungry, tired, shivering with not enough clothes. He was sitting outside the town under a tree. His disciples were sitting there with great sadness, depression, even anger. And then he started praying and he said to God, 'You are wonderful! You always give me whatsoever I need.' This was too much. A disciple said, 'Wait, now you are going too far, particularly on this night. These words are false. We are hungry, tired, with no clothes, and a cold night is descending. There are wild animals all around and we are rejected by the town, we are without shelter. For what are you giving your thankfulness to God? What do you mean when you say, "You always give me whatsoever I need?"' The mystic said, 'Yes, I repeat it again: God gives me whatsoever I need. Tonight I need poverty, tonight I need being rejected, tonight I need to be hungry, in danger. Otherwise, why should He give it to me? It must be a need. It is needed and I have to be grateful. He looks after my needs so beautifully. He is really wonderful!' This is an attitude that is unconcerned with the situation. The situation is not relevant. Celebrate, whatsoever the case. If you are sad, then celebrate because you are sad. Try it. Just give it a try and you will be surprised -- it happens. You are sad? -- start dancing because sadness is so beautiful, such a silent flower of being. Dance, enjoy, and suddenly you will feel that the sadness is disappearing, a distance is created. By and by, you will forget sadness and you will be celebrating. You have transformed the energy.

When I say celebrate what do I mean? I mean that whatsoever you do, don't do it as a duty, do it from your love; don't do it as a burden, do it as a celebration. You can eat as if it is a duty: long-faced, dull, dead, insensitive. You can throw food inside yourself without ever tasting, without ever feeling for it. It is life; you live through it. Don't be so insensitive to it. Indians have said, 'anam brahman,' food is Brahman. This is celebration: you are eating brahman, you are eating God through food, because only God exists. When you are taking a shower, it is God showering because only God exists. When you go for a morning walk, it is God on a morning walk. And the breeze is also God, and the trees are also God -- everything is so Divine. How can you be a long-face, dead and dull, moving in life as if you are carrying a burden? When I say celebrate, I mean become more and more sensitive to everything. In life, dance should not be apart. The whole life should become a dance; it should be a dance. You can go for a walk and dance. Allow life to enter into you, become more open and vulnerable, feel more, sense more. Small things filled with such wonders are lying all around. Watch a small child. Leave him in the garden and just watch. That should be your way also; so wonderful, wonder-filled: running to catch this butterfly, running to catch that flower, playing with mud, rolling in the sand. From everywhere the Divine is touching the child. If you can live in wonder you will be capable of celebration. Don't live in knowledge, live in wonder. Life is surprising; everywhere, it is a continuous surprise. Live it as a surprise, an unpredictable phenomenon: every moment is new. Just try, give it a try! You will not lose anything if you give it a try, and you may gain everything. But you have become addicted to misery. You cling to your misery as if it is something very precious. You become cruel because you don't know how to become compassionate. It is a negative state. The same energy that is cruelty will become compassion. With an unalert mind the energy becomes violence; with an alert mind the same energy becomes compassion. In sleep the same energy becomes torture, either of yourself or of somebody else. When you are awake, the same energy becomes love, for yourself and for others also. You are already where you need to be, you are already in that space which you are seeking. Just make a little effort to come out of your clinging to misery. Don't invest in misery; invest in celebration. You take one step towards life and life takes one thousand towards you.

When I say the world is unreal I don't mean that these trees are unreal. These trees are absolutely real - but the way you see these trees is unreal. These trees are not unreal in themselves - they exist in god, they exist in absolute reality - but the way you see them you never see them; you are seeing something else, a mirage. You create your own dream around you and unless you become awake you will continue to dream. The world is unreal because the world that you know is the world of your dreams. When dreams drop and you simply encounter the world that is there, then the real world. There are not two things, god and the world. God is the world if you have eyes, clear eyes, without any dreams, without any dust of the dreams, without any haze of sleep; if you have clear eyes, clarity, perceptiveness, there is only god. Then somewhere god is a green tree, and somewhere else god is a shining star, and somewhere else god is a cuckoo, and somewhere else god is a flower, and somewhere else a child and somewhere else a river - then only god is. The moment you start seeing, only god is. But right now whatsoever you see is not the truth, it is a projected lie. That is the meaning of a mirage. And once you see, even for a single split moment, if you can see, if you can allow yourself to see, you will find immense benediction present all over, everywhere - in the clouds, in the sun, on the earth. This is a beautiful world. But I am not talking about your world, I am talking about my world. Your world is very ugly, your world is your world created by a self, your world is a projected world. You are using the real world as a screen and projecting your own ideas on it. When I say the world is real, the world is tremendously beautiful, the world is luminous with infinity, the world is light and delight, it is a celebration, I mean my world - or your world if you drop your dreams. When you drop your dreams you see the same world as any Buddha has ever seen. When you dream you dream privately. Have you watched it? - that dreams are private. You cannot share them even with your beloved. You cannot invite your wife to your dream - or your husband, or your friend. You cannot say, 'Now, please come tonight in my dream. I would like to see the dream together.' It is not possible. Dream is a private thing, hence it is illusory, it has no objective reality. God is a universal thing. Once you come out of your private dreams, it is there. It has been always there. Once your eyes are clear, a sudden illumination - suddenly you are overflooded with beauty, grandeur and grace. That is the goal, that is the destiny.

When you are sad, celebrate, and you are giving a new composition to sadness. You are bringing something to sadness which will transform it. You are bringing celebration to it. Angry? -- have a beautiful dance. In the beginning it will be angry. You will start dancing and the dance will be angry, aggressive, violent. By and by, it will become softer and softer and softer, when suddenly, you will have forgotten anger. The energy has changed into dancing. But when you are angry, you can't think of dancing. When you are sad, you can't think of singing. Why not make your sadness a song? Sing, play on your flute. In the beginning the notes will be sad, but nothing is wrong with a sad note. Have you heard, in the afternoon sometimes, when everything is hot, burning hot, fire all around, and suddenly from a mango grove you can hear a cuckoo start singing? In the beginning, the note is sad. She is calling her lover, her beloved, on a hot afternoon. Everything is fiery all around, and she is hankering for love. A very sad note, but beautiful. By and by, the sad note changes into a happy note. The lover starts responding from another grove. Now it is no more a hot afternoon; everything is cooling down in the heart. Now the note is different. When the lover responds, everything has changed. It is an alchemical change. You are sad? -- start singing, praying, dancing. Whatsoever you can do, do, and by and by, the baser metal is changed into a higher metal -- gold. Once you know the key, your life will never be the same again. You can unlock any door. And this is the master key: to celebrate everything. If you are sad, then I say celebrate, dance, sing. What are you to lose? At the most, sadness will be lost, nothing else. But you think it is impossible. And the very idea that it is impossible will not allow you to give it a try. And I say it is one of the most easy things in the world, because energy is neutral. The same energy becomes sadness; the same energy becomes anger; the same energy becomes sexuality; the same energy becomes com passion; the same energy becomes meditation. Energy is one. You don't have many types of energies. You don't have many separate pockets of energy where this energy is labelled 'sadness' and this energy is labelled 'happiness'. Energies are not pigeon-holed, they are not separated. There exists no watertight compartment in you. You are simply one. This one energy becomes sadness, this one energy becomes anger. It is up to you. One has to learn the secret, the art of how to transform energies. You simply give a direction and the same energy starts moving. And when there is a possibility of transforming anger into bliss, greed into compassion, jealousy into love... you don't know what you are losing. You don't know what you are missing. You are missing the whole point of being here in this universe. Give it a try.

Question : BELOVED OSHO, I AM A GOD-FEARING MAN, BUT YOU SAY THAT ALL FEAR HAS TO BE DROPPED. HAS THE FEAR OF GOD ALSO TO BE DROPPED? Osho : Ramchandra, fear is fear: it does not matter of what, of whom. The object makes no difference; your subjectivity is full of fear. And if you are God-fearing you can never be God-loving. How can you love God if you are afraid of him? You may submit and surrender, but deep down there will be resistance, anger. And fear is just the opposite of love. Hate is not really the opposite of love - you will be surprised - fear is the exact opposite. Hate is love standing upside down; fear is just the opposite. And if you follow a religious life out of fear it will be the life of a slave, not of a man who is free. And if you start in fear you cannot end in freedom; you will end in slavery. And all that you will do out of fear is going to be wrong; it is going to be false, superficial. If you do things out of fear you can't do them with your heart. Up to now, religion has been based on fear. That's why the earth has remained irreligious or only superficially religious. Religion has remained just something like a painted face: false, pseudo. And the basic reason why it has failed is fear. The priests have based the religion on fear and greed - which are two aspects of the same coin. And in the scriptures they have invented so many methods of torture that it seems that Adolf Hitler must have read all the scriptures of the world, otherwise how had he come across so many methods to torture people? They can be found only in religious scriptures. The priests have based their religion on two basic, ugly instincts: fear and greed. And both have nothing to do with real religion. Real religion is freedom from greed and freedom from fear. We love out of fear, we pray out of fear. Parents are afraid of their children and children are afraid of their parents. Children are afraid of their teachers and teachers are afraid of their pupils. Everybody is afraid of everybody else - it seems as if fear is the only climate we live in. People are loving even... even love is nothing but fear - a diplomacy, a strategy, to keep things running smoothly. Ramchandra, if you really know what prayer is then prayer itself is its own reward...praying itself is such a beautiful phenomenon that who cares about the future and who bothers about the reward? Prayer in itself is such a celebration, it brings such great joy and ecstasy, that one prays for the prayer's sake. One does not pray out of fear and one does not pray out of greed; one prays because one enjoys it. If you enjoy dancing, you simply dance! Whether anybody sees the dance from the sky or not is not your concern. Whether the stars and the sun and the moon are going to reward you for your dance, you don't care. The dance is enough of a reward in itself. If you love singing you sing; whether anybody listens or not is not the point. So is prayer. It is a dance, it is a song, it is music, it is love. You enjoy it, and there it is finished. Prayer is the means and prayer is the end; the ends and the means are not separate. Only then do you know what prayer is. Prayer means surrender. Prayer means bowing down to existence. Prayer means gratitude. Prayer means thankfulness. Prayer means silence. Prayer means that "I am happy that I am." Prayer simply means that "This tremendous gift of life is so much for such an unworthy man like me. I don't deserve it, yet the unknown has showered it on me." Seeing it, gratitude arises. Ramchandra, you ask me: "I am a God-fearing man, but you say that all fear has to be dropped. Has the fear of God also to be dropped?" Yes, absolutely yes. Only then you will know what God is, and only then you will know what love is, and only then you will know what being religious means, what it is all about.

The fear of death is fear of time, and the fear of time is, deeply, fear of unlived moments, unlived life. So what to do? Live more, and live more intensely. It is your life, live it. Don't sacrifice it for words, theories... It is your life, LIVE IT! Live it! And don't think that it is a courage to die. The only courage is to live life totally, there is no other courage. And live in total freedom so intensely that every moment is transformed into eternity. If you live a moment intensely it is transformed into eternity. There are two ways of being related with time: one is just to swim on the surface of the ocean, another is to dive deep, to go to the depths. If you are just swimming on the ocean of time you will be always afraid because the surface is not the reality. The surface is not really the ocean, it is just the boundary, it is just the periphery. Go to the depth, move towards the depth. When you live a moment deeply you are no more part of time. If you have been in love, and deeply in love, time disappears. When you are with your beloved or your lover or your friend suddenly there is no time. You are moving in depth. If you have loved music, if you have a musical heart, you know time stops. If you have the sense of beauty, aesthetic sensibility and sensitiveness - look at a rose and time disappears, look at the moon and where is time? The clock immediately stops. The hands go on moving but time stops. If you have loved anything deeply you know that you transcend time. The secret has been revealed to you many times. Life itself reveals it to you. Life would like you to enjoy. Life would like you to celebrate. Life would like you to participate so deeply that there is no repentance for the past, that you don't remember the past, because every moment you go more and more deep - every moment life becomes more and more beautiful, more orgasmic, a peak experience, and by and by, when you become attuned to the peak, that becomes your abode. That's how an enlightened man lives, he lives totally and moment to moment. Time is a problem because you have not been living rightly - it is symbolic, it is symptomatic. If you live rightly the problem of time disappears, the fear of time disappears. So, what to do? Each moment, whatsoever you are doing, do it totally. Simple things - taking a bath; take it totally, forget the whole world; sitting, sit; walking, walk, above all don't wobble; sit under the shower and let the whole existence fall on you. Be merged with those beautiful drops of water falling on you. Small things: cleaning the house, preparing food, washing clothes, going for a morning walk - do them totally, then there is no need for any meditation. Meditation is nothing but a way to learn how to do a thing totally - once you have learnt, make your whole life a meditation, forget all about meditations, let the life be the only law, let the life be the only meditation. And then time disappears. And remember, when time disappears, death disappears. Then you are not afraid of death. In fact you wait. Just think of the phenomenon. When you wait for death how can death exist? This waiting is not suicidal. This waiting is not pathological. You lived your life. If you have lived your life death becomes the very peak of it all. Death is the climax of life, the pinnacle, the crescendo. You lived all small waves of eating, drinking, sleeping, walking, making love, small waves, great waves, you lived - then comes the greatest wave. You die! You have to live that too in its totality. And then one is ready to die. That very readiness is the death of death itself. That's how people have come to know that nothing dies. Death is impotent if you are ready to live it, death is very powerful if you are afraid. Unlived life gives power to death. A totally lived life takes all power from death. Death is not.

Religion in the West has a very wrong connotation. It has almost reached to a point where the very word 'religion' creates a repulsion, where the very word 'religion' reminds one of dead churches and dead priests. It reminds one of serious looking people, long faces. It has lost the capacity to dance, to sing, to celebrate. And when a religion has lost the capacity to dance, to celebrate, to sing, to love, just to be, then it is no more religion -- it is a corpse, it is theology. Theology is dead religion. In the West theology has overpowered religion. When theology overpowers religion, then religion is nothing but philosophy. And the philosophy is also not very philosophic -- because philosophy can exist only through doubt, and theology bases itself on faith. So it is impotent philosophy, not even philosophy in the real sense. Religion is not based on belief or faith: religion is based on awe, religion is based on wonder

Love can make a great celebration out of your life - but only love, not lust, not ego, not possessiveness, not jealousy, not dependence.

Whatsoever you can be you are. There is no goal, and we are not going anywhere. We are simply celebrating here. Existence is not a journey, it is a celebration. Think of it as a celebration, as a delight, as a joy. Don’t turn it into suffering, don’t turn it into duty, work. Let it be play.

..seriousness has been misunderstood as sincerity. Seriousness is a sickness. A serious seeker is searching for truth with sadness, with a burden on his head. He is not interested in the pilgrimage. Life is eternal, hence there cannot be any goal. All ideas of goals are contradictory to the idea of eternal life. And if life is eternal, then you have to enjoy each moment as if you have reached the goal. Each moment is a goal in itself. Don't wait to rejoice when you have reached the goal. That kind of goal does not exist. Use every moment as if you have arrived. It is always as if you have arrived. You are always arriving. And I don't think existence wants you to be serious. I have not seen a serious tree. I have not seen a serious bird. I have not seen a serious sunrise. I have not seen a serious starry night. It seems they are all laughing in their own ways, dancing in their own ways. We may not understand it, but there is a subtle feeling that the whole existence is a celebration. I teach you celebration. And laughter has certainly to be one of the major ingredients in this celebration.

I celebrate myself, and I hope soon the day will come you will be celebrating yourself. And when thousands and thousands of people around the earth are celebrating, singing, dancing, ecstatic, drunk with the divine, there is no possibility of any global suicide. With such festivity and with such laughter, with such sanity and health, with such naturalness and spontaneity, how can there be a war? Life is not given to you to murder, to destroy. Life has been given to you to create, and to rejoice, and to celebrate. When you cry and weep, when you are miserable, you are alone. When you celebrate, the whole existence participates with you. Only in celebration do we meet the ultimate, the eternal. Only in celebration do we go beyond the circle of birth and death.

teaching consists of two words, “meditation” and “love.” Meditate so that you can feel immense silence, and love so that your life can become a song, a dance, a celebration. You will have to move between the two, and if you can move easily, if you can move without any effort, you have learned the greatest thing in life.

To be sincere is one thing, to be serious is another. A man who loves life is sincere, authentic, but never serious. Remember, an authentic religious person is not fear-oriented, he is love-oriented. A really authentic religious person becomes religious to enjoy life more, to enjoy it deeply and totally. A real religious man looks at life as a game: it is not business, it is a game. Hindus call it LEELA, a play; not even a game but a play. There is a difference between a game and play. Children play, but you even make a game out of play. Then it becomes business-like, then even in playing you are seeking victory, success, gain, profit. Life is a play. There is nothing to be achieved out of it, it itself is the goal; there is nowhere to reach, it itself is the Ultimate. It is just like children playing, you cannot ask them: For what are you playing? What is the purpose? They will say: We are simply playing. It is so beautiful! Profit is not their concern, and profit should also not be your concern, but play. Life is a moment to celebrate, to enjoy. Make it fun, a celebration, and then you will enter the temple. ...if you have lived, lived a life of celebrations, then you can die celebrating - it is fun. When you know that you are not going to die, that something in you is eternal, then the whole of life becomes fun. It is a great cosmic joke and you can play with it.

Life should not only be lived, it should be celebrated.

Buddha says the ego is a continuity, it is not a substance – continuity like a flame, continuity like a river, continuity like the body.

God is a byproduct. God is not a primary experience, but a secondary experience. The basic thing is the capacity to be prayerful and praise and to celebrate.

Always listen to the depth and don’t be worried what people say. The world can become very, very beautiful, and life can become really a celebration if you stop listening to people’s words and you start listening to people’s hearts. Then you will not be deceived.

...religion is an insight, insight into the beauty of existence, insight into the tremendous mystery that surrounds us, insight into your own being and into the beings of others. We are trying to live a meditative life, working in the ordinary way but working it with a different quality. People are working in the kitchen, cleaning the toilets, or in the carpentry shop or in the boutique or in the bakery or in the garden - just the ordinary kind of activities, but with a different quality: with a joy, with silence, with love, with bliss, with a dance in their heart, with celebration. ...that is true religion: to be able to celebrate life is religion. In that very celebration you come close to God. If one is able to celebrate, God is not far away... God appears only in deep celebration, when you are so full of joy that all misery has left you, all darkness has left you. When you are so full that there is no emptiness in you, that you have started feeling the significance of the ordinary, day-to-day existence, when moment to moment you live totally, intensely, passionately, then God is available. It is not philosophy in the ordinary sense.. It is philosophy in the truest sense of the word - philosophy means love for wisdom; then it is philosophy. Religion, the word, very word, means to be in tune. It comes from RELIGERE: to be in deep harmony with the whole, to be married with the whole, to be related with the whole, to forget your ego and your separation.

Celebrate aloneness, celebrate your pure space, and a great song will arise in your heart. And it will be a song of awareness, it will be a song of meditation. It will be a song of a lone bird calling in the distance— not calling to somebody in particular, but just calling because the heart is full and wants to call, because the cloud is full and wants to rain, because the flower is full and the petals open and the fragrance is released…unaddressed. Let your aloneness become a dance.

Remember that when you leave the world, you can die in contentment only if you have made this world a little more worth living in, a little more meaningful, with a little more dancing, celebrating. If you have added a little festivity to it, a little laughter, a little sense of humor, if you have been able to light a small lamp of light and you have been able to disperse a little darkness from the world, you will die in utter joy – you are fulfilled, your life has been of fruition and flowering. Otherwise people die in misery.

The fear of death is fear of time, and the fear of time is, deeply, fear of unlived moments, unlived life. So what to do? Live more, and live more intensely. It is your life, live it. Don't sacrifice it for words, theories... It is your life, LIVE IT! That's the message. And then there will be no fear. Live it! And don't think that it is a courage to die. The only courage is to live life totally, there is no other courage. And live in total freedom so intensely that every moment is transformed into eternity. If you live a moment intensely it is transformed into eternity. If you live a moment intensely you move into the vertical, you drop out of the horizontal. There are two ways of being related with time: one is just to swim on the surface of the ocean, another is to dive deep, to go to the depths. If you are just swimming on the ocean of time you will be always afraid because the surface is not the reality. The surface is not really the ocean, it is just the boundary, it is just the periphery. Go to the depth, move towards the depth. When you live a moment deeply you are no more part of time. If you have been in love, and deeply in love, time disappears. When you are with your beloved or your lover or your friend suddenly there is no time. If you have loved anything deeply you know that you transcend time. The secret has been revealed to you many times. Life itself reveals it to you. Life would like you to enjoy. Life would like you to celebrate. Life would like you to participate so deeply that there is no repentance for the past, that you don't remember the past, because every moment you go more and more deep - every moment life becomes more and more beautiful, more orgasmic, a peak experience, and by and by, when you become attuned to the peak, that becomes your abode. That's how an enlightened man lives, he lives totally and moment to moment. Time is a problem because you have not been living rightly...if you live rightly the problem of time disappears, the fear of time disappears. So, what to do? Each moment, whatsoever you are doing, do it totally. Simple things - taking a bath; take it totally, forget the whole world; sitting, sit; walking, walk, above all don't wobble; sit under the shower and let the whole existence fall on you. Be merged with those beautiful drops of water falling on you. Small things: cleaning the house, preparing food, washing clothes, going for a morning walk - do them totally, then there is no need for any meditation. Meditation is nothing but a way to learn how to do a thing totally - once you have learnt, make your whole life a meditation, forget all about meditations, let the life be the only law, let the life be the only meditation. And then time disappears. And remember, when time disappears, death disappears. Then you are not afraid of death. In fact you wait. Just think of the phenomenon. When you wait for death how can death exist? This waiting is not suicidal. This waiting is not pathological. You lived your life. If you have lived your life death becomes the very peak of it all. Death is the climax of life, the pinnacle, the crescendo. You lived all small waves of eating, drinking, sleeping, walking, making love, small waves, great waves, you lived - then comes the greatest wave. You die! You have to live that too in its totality. And then one is ready to die. That very readiness is the death of death itself. That's how people have come to know that nothing dies. Death is impotent if you are ready to live it, death is very powerful if you are afraid. Unlived life gives power to death. A totally lived life takes all power from death. Death is not.

Meditation is a flower and compassion is its fragrance. Exactly like that it happens. The flower blooms and the fragrance spreads on the winds in all directions, to be carried to the very ends of earth. But the basic thing is the blooming of the flower. Man is also carrying a potentiality for flowering within him. Until and unless the inner being of man flowers, the fragrance of compassion is not possible. Compassion cannot be practiced. It is not a discipline. You cannot manage it. It is beyond you. If you meditate, one day, suddenly, you become aware of a new phenomenon, absolutely strange -- from your being compassion is flowing towards the whole of existence; undirected, unaddressed, it is moving to the very ends of existence. Without meditation, energy remains passion; with meditation, the same energy becomes compassion. Passion and compassion are not two energies, they are one and the same energy. Once it passes through meditation, it is transformed, transfigured; it becomes qualitatively different. Passion moves downwards, compassion moves upwards; passion moves through desire, compassion moves through desirelessness; passion is an occupation to forget the miseries in which you live, compassion is a celebration, it is a dance of attainment, of fulfillment...you are so fulfilled that you can share. Now there is nothing left; you have attained the destiny that you were carrying for millennia within you like an unflowered potentiality, just a bud. Now it has flowered and it is dancing. Now what will happen to the energy? You start sharing. The same energy that was moving through the dark layers of passion, now moves with light rays upwards, uncontaminated by any desire, uncontaminated by any conditioning. It is uncorrupted by any motivation -- hence I call it fragrance. The flower is limited but not the fragrance. Once compassion happens, it is not rooted; it simply moves and goes on moving. Buddha has disappeared but not his compassion. The flower will die but the fragrance that has been released will remain forever and forever.

God is herenow, always herenow. God is THIS very condition. He is THIS very condition! THIS MOMENT, within and without, God is. And God is not something sacred, holy, far away again in heaven. God is all the conditions - and when I say all, I mean all: the sacred/the profane, the body/the soul, matter/consciousness. The lowest of the low is God. and the holiest of the holy is God, and there is not any difference between the two. To understand it is to relax. Then there is nowhere to go, then there is nothing to do. Then what is left is celebration, then what is left is to live joyously. Rejoice moment-to-moment, and don't divide things. Drinking tea is as sacred as doing yoga. Sleeping silently, relaxed, is as sacred as prayer. Looking at a tree, talking to a friend, walking early in the morning, working in the factory or in the office, is as holy as anything else. This is the understanding that is needed for Tao to happen. Tao is already happening; just your misunderstanding... Tao is already showering - in the sunrays, on the green trees. But you just think, "This is just the sun and they are just the trees - where is God? These are just people - where is God?" You want God to be something specific, and that's why you miss... God is not something special, not something specific. God is all these conditions, God is this totality. This moment - my talking to you, your listening to me, this communion, this silence, this bridging - yes, this is God, this is Tao. So forget all about achieving. Don't become an achiever. My sannyasins have to drop all kinds of ambitions - material. worldly and spiritual - all. My teaching to you is: live herenow! Drop ALL kinds of ambitions. This is sannyas: drop ALL kinds of ambitions, and see the miracle happening. Once you drop all ambitions you will have so much energy left that there will be no way other than to celebrate. You will have so much energy in you - all the energy that is involved in ambitions is released because ambitions have been dropped - and that energy becomes an oceanic experience within your soul. That is paradise, that is God. God is not a goal, but an experience of a non-ambitious mind. Tao has not to be achieved! The achievers go on missing it. The non-achievers suddenly realize that they have always lived in paradise, but because of their ambitions they were not able to see it. ..just try to understand what I am sharing with you. I am sharing with you this moment, this space. I am not giving you any goals. I am not driving you crazy for some achievement in the future. I am not inspiring you to run and chase some shadows. I am simply imparting to you what has happened to me. I want it to be shared with you. Dropping all ambition, I have arrived. Drop all ambitions and just be, and see the beauty and the benediction of existence. It is incredible, it is simply far-out! You have never dreamt about it, how beautiful it is. You could not have dreamt about it, it surpasses all your imaginations and fantasies. Its beauty is unbelievable, and the grace that is showering on you is just showering for no reason at all. It is very unreasonable! God does not give you because you are worthy. God gives you because He has so much, He cannot contain it!

Question : IF LIFE IS A BLISSFUL COSMIC PLAY, THEN WHY ARE ALL BEINGS SUFFERING? Osho : You, please, forget about all beings. You don't know. I'm not suffering. You may be suffering; don't talk about all beings. You don't even know yourself. How can you know the other? Just talk about yourself, because things are already much too complicated. When you start talking about all, you will make it almost impossible for yourself to understand the thing. Just you will do. Say only this: "Why am I suffering? If life is a blissful cosmic play, then why am I suffering?" -- only this much will do. Forget about all beings -- that is none of your business. If they want to suffer let them suffer. You, please, decide only for yourself. Even that is too much, not easy. Why are you suffering? The ego suffers. The whole is a cosmic play; it is beautiful. It is a tremendous celebration -- moment to moment, moving to higher and higher peaks. You are suffering because you are not part of it. The ego is never part of the whole; the ego tries to be separate. The ego tries to have its own plans, to have its own ideas, to have its own goals. That's why you are suffering. If you become part of the whole there is no suffering. Suddenly you start floating with the stream. You are no longer moving upstream. You are no longer even swimming, because then too there is effort. You are just floating with the stream: wheresoever it leads, there is the goal. You have dropped private goals; you have accepted the destiny of the whole. Then you live easily, you die easily. There is no resistance. Resistance is suffering -- and you cannot win against the whole. So every moment you resist you fail, you suffer. Try to live without your ego, and there is no more suffering. Suffering is an attitude; it is not an actuality. You fall ill: you immediately start fighting with illness; suffering arises. If you accept it, suffering disappears. Then you know that God wills this; there must be some point in it. It must be needed for your growth. You ask me if life is a blissful cosmic play, then WHY... then why is there suffering. There is suffering because you are still not part of the cosmic play. You have your own small drama, and you want to play it. You are not part of the whole; you are trying to create a small world of your own. Every ego creates its own world, that's the problem. Float with the whole, and suffering disappears. Suffering is symptomatic: it shows you must be fighting the whole, that's all. You are not suffering for your sins committed in the past; you are suffering for the sin that you are continuing right now, committing right now. The sin is simple: to fight, not to accept. The word "sin" is beautiful. It comes from a root which means "to separate." The word "sin" itself comes from a root which means to separate: you are separated, that is the only sin. Just the opposite is the concept of Patanjali -- He insists on "yoga," to be joined together. ..sin means to be separate; yoga means to be joined together again. If you are joined together again with the whole, there is no suffering. The more you go far away from the whole, the more you suffer. The more you are, the more you will suffer.