One has to become inwardly rich, one has to conquer oneself; one has to become centred at the very core of one’s being.
Rather than wasting energy in something man-made, why not discover that which god has made within you?
With such a small life, with such a small energy source, it is simply stupid to waste it in sadness, in anger, in hatred, in jealousy. Use it in love, use it in some creative act, use it in friendship, use it in meditation: Do something with it which takes you higher. And the higher you go, the more energy sources become available to you. At the highest point of consciousness, you are almost a godliness.
Life is nothing but an opportunity to find it.
There is nothing more valuable than meditation. The people who have not tasted meditation are the poorest in the world. They may have all the riches, but still they are beggars because they have not known the real treasure yer — the treasure that cannot be destroyed by death, the treasure that cannot be taken away from you, the treasure that you are.
We are carrying an inexhaustible treasure of diamonds but we are not exploring it. We have completely forgotten to explore our own inner world. We have become too obsessed with the outside. We have become so outwardly, so extrovert, that not only do we not explore the inside, we don’t believe that there is any inside. That’s what people say when they say there is no soul, no god. In fact they are saying there is no interiority to man. They are saying there is no interiority to existence. They are talking nonsense because the outer cannot exist without the inner, nor can the inner exist without the outer.
In the ancient days the so-called saints talked nonsense: they said the outer is false, the inner is true. Now the pendulum has moved to the other extreme. Now people say that the inner is false, only the outer is true. Both are wrong, both are lopsided, both are extremists. My approach is that both the outer and the inner are true, and one has to be aware of both, then only is life really balanced, harmonious. Then life is a synthesis and a song.
Turn in, search inside. Our true reality is there. And the wonder of wonders is that the moment you know your own treasure, the whole existence becomes infinitely more beautiful because it starts reflecting your richness. Existence is like a mirror: it reflects you. If you are rich, fulfilled, contented, it reflects your richness, fulfillment, contentment. If you are poor, ugly, depressed, it reflects that. It simply goes on echoing you. The same existence becomes hell for a few people and becomes a paradise for a few other people. It all depends on you.
The whole magic is in the art of meditation. Without meditation the world is a hell, life is hell. With meditation it is paradise.
Osho – Fingers Pointing to the Moon (With Meditation Life Is Paradise)
I’m the beginning and the end of every word, every feeling, every beat…everything. I am mostly what I always dreamed to be and sometimes what I feared more to became. I’m my biggest love and sometimes I simply choose not to love the most my own. I believe and fear the most my nature. I love and adore everyday the most the way I am and still I continue to worship “Something” I don’t really know and I will never understand. I believe every night in my strength and that I am the only owner of my destiny but someday I just surrender hopeless to the fate and gods. I was able to give an explanation to everything that surrounds me but at times I don’t even understand the way I feel. I am the beginning and the end of every breath, every smile, every tear…everything…
The meeting with oneself is, at first, the meeting with one’s own shadow. The shadow is a tight passage, a narrow door, whose painful constriction no one is spared who goes down to the deep well. But one must learn to know oneself in order to know who one is. For what comes after the door is, surprisingly enough, a boundless expanse full of unprecedented uncertainty, with apparently no inside and no outside, no above and no below, no here and no there, no mine and no thine, no good and no bad. It is the world of water, where all life floats in suspension; where the realm of the sympathetic system, the soul of everything living, begins; where I am indivisibly this and that; where I experience the other in myself and the other-than-myself experiences me.
Carl Gustav Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (via yourbonyknees)
One day the Zen monk Rinzai is speaking in a temple. He has gone into a sermon, but someone is disturbing him there. So Rinzai stops and asks, “What is the matter?” The man stands up and says, “What is soul?” Rinzai takes his staff and asks the people to give him the way. The man begins to tremble. He never expected that such will be the answer.
Rinzai comes to him, takes hold of his neck with both hands and presses it. His eyes come out. He goes on pressing and asks, “Who are you? Close your eyes.” The man closes his eyes. Rinzai goes on asking, “Who are you?” The man opens his eyes and laughs and bows down. He says, “I know you have really answered ‘what is soul’.”
Such a simple device! But the man was ready. Someone asks Rinzai, “Would you do the same thing when anybody asks?” He says, ”That man was ready. He was not just asking for the question’s sake. He was ready. The first part was fulfilled. He was really asking. This was a life and death question to him: ‘What is soul?’ The first part was fulfilled completely. He was disillusioned completely with life, and he was asking, ‘What is soul?’ This life has proved just a death to him. Now he is asking, ‘What is life?’ So no answer from me would have been meaningful. I helped him to just stand still in the present.”
Of course, when someone presses your neck just on the verge of killing you, you cannot be in the future, you cannot be in the past. You will be here and now. It is dangerous to miss the moment. I just say to such a man, “Go deep and know who you are.” The man becomes transformed. He goes into samadhi. He stands still in the moment. If you are in the present even for a single moment, you have known, you have encountered, and you will never be able to lose the track again.
A Zen Story
We are partners in the same organic unity and everybody is essential; from the smallest blade of grass to the biggest star, everybody is needed, equally needed. There is no hierarchy in existence. The grass blade and the star have no inequality; they are equal. Existence supports them both in the same way, it makes no discrimination. To the sinners, to the saints, it is the same. The sun shines for all, the flowers bloom for all, the birds sing for all. It is our home! But without a taste of blissfulness it cannot be felt.
Your love makes you ready to go into aloneness, because one can be with people only for a certain time then the desire to be alone arises. It is a necessary phenomenon, a natural phenomenon. And when one is alone one can be alone only for a certain period because when one is alone one accumulates energy. It is not used, one becomes a reservoir and then one needs people to share it. That is what love is sharing the energy that becomes accumulated in your aloneness. But when you share your energy, when you live with people, slowly you feel exhausted, tired, depleted; again the need has come to move into aloneness.