Osho Quotes: 70 Teachings That Will Transform Your Life

Born Chandra Mohan Jain, Osho arrived in this world on December 11th, 1931, in the small town of Raisen, Madhya Pradesh. Little did anyone know that this child, born in such a humble environment, would one day captivate hearts and minds across the globe with his revolutionary teachings on spirituality and love, becoming a source of inspiration for countless people.

More than just a spiritual leader, Osho was a prolific author whose books, such as "The Book Of Secrets," and "Gita Darshan," became bestsellers, igniting souls with their profound insights. His words possess a rare power, unveiling layers of truth that illuminate the path to self-discovery and inner freedom.

Such was Osho's impact that even the streaming giant Netflix immortalized a few years of his extraordinary life journey in the docuseries "Wild Wild Country," captivating audiences with the tale of his controversial commune in Oregon.

Osho's legacy lives on through his quotes, each one a gem of wisdom distilled from a life devoted to exploring the mysteries of existence. His words on love, spirituality, self awareness, and the human condition continue to inspire and challenge, inviting us to shed our self-imposed limitations and embrace the boundless potential within.

I spent 17 years learning directly from Osho in his physical presence and a total of 26 years in his community. I was blessed beyond measure to absorb his powerful transmission of Meditation and Tantra in multidimensional ways. Even after he left his body in 1990, his mystic presence continues to ignite a fire of transformation in countless people around the world. I share what I have learned with him in my tantra school as a continuity of his lineage.

In this article, we delve into the timeless teachings of Osho, a modern-day mystic whose words have the power to awaken the seeker within us all. Prepare to have your perspectives shifted and your understanding of life enriched as we explore the profound quotes of this extraordinary visionary.

Best Osho Quotes

• “Experience life in all possible ways – good-bad, bitter-sweet, dark-light, summer-winter. Experience all the dualities. Don't be afraid of experience, because the more experience you have, the more mature you become.”
• “Life begins where fear ends.”
• “Friendship is the purest love. It is the highest form of Love where nothing is asked for, no condition, where one simply enjoys giving.”
• “Truth is not something outside to be discovered, it is something inside to be realized.”
• “If you love a flower, don’t pick it up. Because if you pick it up it dies and it ceases to be what you love. So if you love a flower, let it be. Love is not about possession. Love is about appreciation.”
• “Be — don't try to become.”
• “Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived.
• “Love the body, it is through the body you reach the divine.”

Osho Quotes on Tantra

• “Tantra is the whole way -- neither obsession with the world, nor withdrawal from it. It is being in the world lightly, with a little smile. It is playful-ness. It doesn't take things seriously. It is light of heart, it laughs. It is unashamedly earthly and infinitely other-earthly. The earth and the sky meet in Tantra; it is the meeting of polar opposites.”
• “Two lovers can be transformed so deeply that all their seven centres can start meeting. Tantra is the science of turning ordinary lovers into soul mates. It can transform the whole earth; it can transform each couple into soul mates. It is one of the greatest treasures that is lying there, unused. The day humanity uses it, the earth will become aglow with a new love.
• “Tantra is one of the most important secrets ever discovered. But it is very delicate because it is the GREATEST art. To paint is easy, to create poetry is easy, but to create a communion with the energy of the other, a dancing communion, is the greatest and the most difficult art to learn.
• People are against me because I am telling people how to love. I am telling people how to make love a prayer. I am telling people how to love so deeply that love itself becomes your religion, that your woman one day disappears and you find God there, that your man one day disappears and you find God there; that one day, in deep communion, in deep orgasmic experience, in that ecstasy, for a moment you both disappear and there is only God and nothing else.'

Osho Quotes on Love

• “Millions of people are suffering: they want to be loved but they don't know how to love. And love cannot exist as a monologue; it is a dialogue, a very harmonious dialogue. ”
• “Courage Is a Love Affair with the Unknown”
• “The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it's not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of another person--without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now. Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, because it is not given by the other.
• “Falling in love you remain a child; rising in love you mature. By and by love becomes not a relationship, it becomes a state of your being. Not that you are in love - now you are love.”
• “Become a temple of love. If you can do that much then the remaining can be left to God. A single step in love from your side, and God walks at least one thousand step towards you. Let love become your secret mantra. Not that you have to repeat "Love, love, love". . .you have to live it, in all kinds of situations, circumstances, good and bad, in failure and success. But never lose track of love. That small thread of love should always be remembered. In no circumstances should it be forgotten. That is your work. And soon something of tremendous importance is going to happen; it is already on the way.”
• “First you have to learn to love yourself, because only if you love yourself can you love the other. You have to love yourself so much that love starts overflowing. Perhaps that is where you are; you need the other. That is the second stage of love. Loving the other is a difficult job. Loving oneself is simple. Because the other need not fit with you, need not fulfill your expectations; the other may start power trips, ego trips, all kinds of numbers. And you will need love enough not to be dominated, not to be destroyed by the other; otherwise, the other always destroys it.”
• “You have to be so loving that your love transforms the other, to such an extent that you can say the other is not hell. You have to be very articulate, very understanding. It is one of the greatest experiments in life. There is no other experiment which is bigger. You have to love in such a way that slowly, slowly it changes the other person, and the other person starts dropping the effort to dominate, the effort to manipulate. It all depends on your love.”

Osho Quotes on Life

• “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.”
• “Listen to your being. It is continuously giving you hints; it is a still, small voice. It does not shout at you, that is true. And if you are a little silent you will start feeling your way. Be the person you are. Never try to be another, and you will become mature. Maturity is accepting the responsibility of being oneself, whatsoever the cost. Risking all to be oneself, that's what maturity is all about.
• “Be realistic: Plan for a miracle”
• “Try to see life -- as a divine gift. It is of tremendous value. Just to be is such a benediction, but because of our complaining mind and our grumbling mind, we never see the beauty that has already happened. We never see the treasure that has already been handed over to us.
• For small things we go on being negative and the great blessing of life simply passes by us. So try to see it. There are troubles, but they are nothing compared to the beauty that life makes available. There are anxieties... I am not saying it is all a bed of roses; there are thorns -- but negligible. And in fact they make roses more beautiful. They help, they enhance life by contrast. If you start looking towards the positive, the negative loses meaning, because whatsoever we look at, we pour energy into. Then it surrounds us more and more. If you pay attention to the wrong, you are feeding the wrong. Attention is food -- very subtle food, very vital food. So just don't pay attention to the wrong. Don't pay attention to the black side of things. It is there -- accept it. Nobody is denying it, but what is the point of paying too much attention to it? That is a little pathological. It is a perversion, but everybody is doing that. That's how we go on missing god.”

Osho Quotes on Nature and Ecology

• “The whole existence is nothing but a great brotherhood. We are all interdependent. Nobody is independent, nobody is dependent; it is an organic unity. Even if a pebble is missing in the world, the world will not be the same. There is no hierarchy, it is not that something is higher and something is lower; there is immense equality. In fact existence is very communistic: it exists in equality, it exists in brotherhood. And man has destroyed that harmony, he has destroyed the whole ecosystem of existence. Man has poisoned ecology because of a mad desire to be at the top, the stupid longing to conquer nature. It has been the greatest calamity. We are now on the verge of committing a universal suicide.”
• “Science has been a success, and science has completely crippled life. Now, in all the countries where science has become very developed, it has become a menace. The whole ecology is suffering. Rivers and lakes are becoming dead, trees are dying. The earth itself is dying, on its deathbed. The whole atmosphere is poisoned. And there is panic in those who know, for there seems to be no possibility of stopping it – because who will stop it? Scientists themselves are impotent now. They have released the demon; now they don’t know how to put it back in the bottle again. And the politicians won’t allow them to put it back in the bottle.”

Quotes on The Arts

• “Creativity is the greatest rebellion in existence.”
• “If you can dance, dance to abandon so you disappear completely in the dance and there is no more any dancer but only the dance remains. Dance so totally that there is only the dance and no dancer. And you will not be a loser, because in those moments of disappearance of your personality, you will come to know your essential spirituality -- your eternity. Then the whole universe is you."
• “You can paint in two ways. You can paint to compete with other painters; you want to be the greatest painter in the world, you want to be a Picasso or a Van Gogh. Then your painting will be second-rate, because your mind is not interested in painting itself; it is interested in being the first, the greatest painter in the world. You are not going deep into the art of painting. You are not enjoying it, you are only using it as a stepping-stone. You are on an ego trip. And the problem is: to really be a painter, you have to drop the ego completely. To really be a painter, the ego has to be put aside. Only then can God flow through you. Only then can he use your hands and your fingers and your brush. Only then something of superb beauty can be born.”

Osho Quotes on Health

• “My disciples are vegetarian not as a cult, not as a creed. They are vegetarians because their meditations make them more human, more of the heart, and they can see the whole stupidity of people killing living beings for their food. It is their sensitivity, their aesthetic awareness that makes them vegetarians. I do not teach vegetarianism; it is a by-product of meditation. Wherever meditation has happened, people have become vegetarian, always, for thousands of years. “
• “The Chinese medicine enters one layer more. It works on the vital body, the pranamayakosh. It tries to work on the vital body. It tries to work on bioenergy, the bio plasma. It settles something there, and immediately the gross body starts functioning well. If something goes wrong in the vital body, Allopathy functions only on the body, the gross body. Of course, for Allopathy, it is an uphill task. For acupuncture, it is a downhill task. It is easier because the vital body is a little higher than the physical body. If the vital body is set right, the physical body simply follows it because the blue print exists in the vital body. The physical body is just an implementation of the vital.”
• “To try to change the vital through the physical is absurd. It is trying to change the master by changing the servant. It is almost impossible because the master won't listen to the servant. If you want to change the servant, change the master. Immediately, the servant follows. Rather than going and changing each soldier, it is better to change the general. The body has millions of soldiers, cells, simply working under some order, under some command. Change the commander, and the whole body pattern changes.”
• “Homeopathy goes a little deeper still. It works on the manomayakosh, the mental body. The founder of homeopathy, Hahnemann, discovered one of the greatest things ever discovered: the smaller the quantity of the medicine, the deeper it goes. He called the method of making homeopathic medicine potentizing. They go on reducing the quantity of the medicine. He would work in this way: he would take a certain amount of medicine and would mix it with ten times the amount of milk sugar or water. In this way he would go on: again from the new solution he would take one quantity and would mix it with nine parts more water. This he would do, and the potency would increase.

Deep & Powerful Osho Quotes

• “I love this world because it is imperfect. It is imperfect, and that's why it is growing; if it was perfect it would have been dead. Growth is possible only if there is imperfection. I would like you to remember again and again, I am imperfect, the whole universe is imperfect, and to love this imperfection, to rejoice in this imperfection is my whole message.”
• “One thing: you have to walk, and create the way by your walking; you will not find a ready-made path. It is not so cheap, to reach to the ultimate realization of truth. You will have to create the path by walking yourself; the path is not ready-made, lying there and waiting for you. It is just like the sky: the birds fly, but they don't leave any footprints. You cannot follow them; there are no footprints left behind.”
• “Although there is darkness there is no cause for despair. The deeper the darkness, the closer the dawn. In the offing I see a spiritual regeneration for the whole world. A new man is about to be born and we are in the throes of his birth. But this regeneration needs the cooperation of each of us. It is to happen through us and through us alone. We cannot afford to be mere spectators. We must all prepare for this rebirth within ourselves. The approach of that new day, of that dawning, will only happen if we fill ourselves with light. It is up to us to turn that possibility into a reality. We are all bricks of the edifice of tomorrow and we are the rays of light out of which the future sun will be born. We are creators not just spectators."

Osho Quotes on Karma

• “It is not in fact a law, because there is nobody behind it as a lawgiver. On the contrary, it is intrinsic to existence itself. It is the very nature of life: whatsoever you sow, you reap. But it is complex, it is not so simple, it is not so obvious. My definition is: that which goes against your nature, that which goes against your self, your being, is a crime. And how to know that crime? Whenever you commit that crime it records in your unconsciousness. It records in a certain way: it records and starts giving you a feeling of guilt. You start feeling yourself despised by yourself, you start feeling yourself unworthy, you start feeling yourself not as you should be."
• “The law of karma is not some philosophy, some abstraction. It is simply a theory which explains something true inside your being. The net result: either we respect ourselves, or we despise and feel contemptible, worthless and unlovable. Every moment, you are creating yourself; either a grace will arise in your being or a disgrace: this is the law of karma
• Nobody can avoid it. Nobody should try to cheat on karma, because that is not possible. Watch… and once you understand it things start changing. Once you know the inevitability of it you will be a totally different person.”

Osho Quotes on Education

• “It is a very insane world in which we are living; where no education is given to people about the art of life, the art of love, the art of friendship, the art of silence, the art of meditation, and finally the art of death. These are the most essential things, and we are wasting almost one-third of people's lives in teaching them about a history which is just shame and nothing else. We are teaching them about geography, which is mostly man-made: nations and their boundaries, which are ugly. We are not teaching them anything that can make their lives a search for truth, that can make their lives a rejoicing, that can fill their beings with so much fragrance that they will have to share it. Only in that sharing is there friendship, is there love, is there compassion. But we are keeping people from knowing this."

Osho Quotes on Men and Women

• “The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new." and so in you the child your mother lives on and through your family continues to live... so at this time look after yourself and your family as you would your mother for through you all she will truly never die.”
• “I would like the woman to become as feminine as possible, only then can she flower. And the man needs to be as masculine as possible, only then can he flower. When they are polar opposites, a great attraction, a great magnetism, arises between them. And when they come close, when they meet in intimacy, they bring two different worlds, two different dimensions, two different richnesses, and the meeting is a tremendous blessing, a benediction.”

Osho Quotes on Happiness

• “That is the simple secret of happiness. Whatever you are doing, don’t let past move your mind; don’t let future disturb you. Because the past is no more, and the future is not yet. To live in the memories, to live in the imagination, is to live in the non-existential. And when you are living in the non-existential, you are missing that which is existential. Naturally you will be miserable, because you will miss your whole life.
• “You feel good, you feel bad, and these feelings are bubbling from your own unconsciousness, from your own past. Nobody is responsible except you. Nobody can make you angry, and nobody can make you happy.”
• “Nobody can say anything about you. Whatsoever people say is about themselves. But you become very shaky, because you are still clinging to a false center. That false center depends on others, so you are always looking to what people are saying about you. And you are always following other people, you are always trying to satisfy them. You are always trying to be respectable, you are always trying to decorate your ego. This is suicidal. Rather than being disturbed by what others say, you should start looking inside yourself…
• When you are self-conscious you are in trouble. When you are self-conscious you are really showing symptoms that you don’t know who you are. Your very self-consciousness indicates that you have not come home yet.”
• “Sadness gives depth. Happiness gives height. Sadness gives roots. Happiness gives branches. Happiness is like a tree going into the sky, and sadness is like the roots going down into the womb of the earth. Both are needed, and the higher a tree goes, the deeper it goes, simultaneously. The bigger the tree, the bigger will be its roots. In fact, it is always in proportion. That's its balance.”
• “People are constantly living in discontent about everything. It is a habit. It is not that if they have more money and a better house and a better wife or a better son or a better job they will be contented -- it is not that. Whatsoever they have they will remain discontented. Poor, they will be discontented; rich, they will be discontented. Discontent is a habit of the mind. Mind lives through it, it is intrinsic to mind; mind can never be contented. Once you understand this a miracle happens; then you can put the mind aside because it is never going to give you contentment. That is not in its nature, so you are asking for the impossible. And what cannot happen cannot happen, it is futile. This has been the experience of the whole of humanity for centuries. Still everybody tries, hoping that he is an exception; nobody is an exception. And discontentment creates misery.”
• “Give all your energy to joy, and fear will disappear. Ignore fear, don't pay any attention to fear, because the more attention you pay to it, the longer it will linger on. Pour yourself totally in the direction from where joy is arising, and fear will disappear just as darkness disappears when you bring light in. Joy is light. And joy is the beginning of a great pilgrimage which ends in finding God. So go on -- without any fear, because existence always protects those who trust it. Relax, give yourself to existence and allow the joy to overwhelm you. Let it become your wings, so that you can reach to the stars.”

Quotes about God

• “The truth surrounds you, you exist in it. Just like the fish exist in the ocean, you exist in the truth. God is not a goal. God is what is here and now. These trees, these winds blowing, these clouds moving, the sky, you, I ... this is what God is.”
• “Music consists of seven notes and, exactly like that, man consists of seven centers. Man is like a rainbow: he has seven colors. When all the seven colors meet in deep harmony white is created. —And as you move deeper and deeper into this harmony, more and more joy, more and more ecstasy arises. At the ultimate point all the seven colors meet and you explode into white light. That experience is called god. God is not a person but the ultimate experience of harmony.”

• “God is an energy-field. So don′t look for his face, he has none. And don′t look for his location, because you cannot locate him. He is like an energy-field. But you can feel it: if you are available, you can feel his presence. And once you have felt his presence, you will know; then you will come across his presence the whole day, in many ways.”
• “Presence has to be felt. It needs a silent, meditative, loving heart. You cannot touch it; it is not gross, it is very subtle - the subtlest. But it is there. It is always everywhere. We live in the presence called God, we live in the ocean of God′s presence. Become a little more sensitive to it. And what are the ways of becoming sensitive? This sutra gives a few keys to you. One: Drop the magnifying glass of your ego. Second: Trust, surrender. He cares for you. Third: He is constantly healing you from your own sources, from within. Go to the inner well of your being, and from there you will find his nourishment, his constant welling-up energy. Fourth: Be true. Drop your masks, your phoniness. Fifth: Learn God′s way of knowing - that is innocence. Sixth: Be silent, because that is his only language.”
• 'When God descends on earth ....His name is love...Love is an alchemical phenomenon. Even if one heart has flowed towards you, God has reached through that heart. Somebody looked towards you with love; in that moment God looked at you. Watch the eye full of love, the hand full of love, and you will find God throbbing there – because it is always God who loves.

Quotes on Prayer

• “If you eat, eat with love; because what you eat is God. If you walk, walk with love; because you are walking on Earth, sacred ground. If you bathe, do it with deep devotion, with love and respect for your body, since this is not your body, it is the body of God; it is His temple. So the little things in life that had no meaning will begin to have immense value. And when the little things start to have meaning, they are no longer small: you turned them into big things. It's up to you to live a small and insignificant life, or a great life: if you live without love, you will live a very small life. If you live with love, through love, you will have a great life, because love makes everything great. Love is the philosopher stone: anything it touches is turned into gold.
• “No child is born with a long face; every child is born with laughter, with a great joy which is ready to explode. We destroy his joy. My effort here is to release that joy again, to bring your childhood back to you.”

Quotes on Sex

• “Sex can become orgasmic only when afterplay and foreplay are completely balanced. The climax turns into an orgasm just in their balance. The word orgasm has to be understood. It means that your whole being – body, mind, soul, everything – becomes involved, organically involved. Then it becomes a moment of meditation. To me, if your sex does not become finally a moment of meditation, you have not known what sex is. You have only heard about it, you have read about it; and the people who have been writing about it know nothing about it. I have read hundreds of books on sexology by people who are thought to be great experts, and they are experts, but they know nothing about the innermost shrine where meditation blossoms.
  Just as children are born by ordinary sex, meditation is born by extraordinary sex.”
• Sex must not remain sex; that is the Tantra teaching. It must be transformed into love. And love also must not remain love. It must be transformed into light, into meditative experience, into the last, ultimate mystic peak. How to transform love? Be the act and forget the actor. While loving, be love -- simply love. Then it is not your love or my love or anybody else's -- it is simply LOVE. When you are not there, when you are in the hands of the ultimate source current, when you are in love, it is not you who is in love. When the love has engulfed you, you have disappeared; you have just become a flowing energy.”

Quotes on Meditation

• “Laugh as much as you can; don’t miss a single opportunity. Any excuse will do… even no excuse will do! And make it a point that every night before you go to sleep, for at least two, three minutes let there be a belly laughter and then go to sleep. And in the morning the first thing – the moment you feel the sleep is no more there; you are waking – start laughing for two, three minutes in the bed. You will see the quality of your energy changing within three weeks. You will become immensely happy. You have a great capacity to be loving, to be laughing, but you have not used it yet. The potential is there untouched. Once you start digging into it you will be surprised how much joy you are carrying within yourself; you are pregnant with it!
• “My meditation is simple. It does not require any complex practices. It is simple. It is singing. It is dancing. It is sitting silently”
• “Whenever you have a chance, close your eyes, sit silently, relaxed, and look inside. Slowly, slowly the turmoil settles, the mind becomes quiet, and a deep silence prevails. And suddenly you start feeling your innermost being, your very center of life, which is alone. There is nobody and there can never be anybody. Nobody can approach there except you. It is your territory. It is the only place which belongs to you. Nobody can take it away, not even death. That will happen to the outside, to the body, to the mind, but not to this inner space, which for centuries we have called the soul, the spirit or the god within you -- whatever name you want. But this aloneness, once known, simply removes all fear. In fact it brings a new dimension of blissfulness. Rather than being afraid of aloneness, you become more and more intrigued with its mystery. And you will feel such a joy arising in you, such a song out of your silence, such fragrance that you have never known before.”

Quotes on Enlightenment

• “Intelligence is dangerous. Intelligence means you will start thinking on your own; you will start looking around on your own. You will not believe in the scriptures; you will believe only in your own experience.”
• “I'm simply saying that there is a way to be sane. I'm saying that you can get rid of all this insanity created by the past in you. Just by being a simple witness of your thought processes.
  It is simply sitting silently, witnessing the thoughts, passing before you. Just witnessing, not interfering not even judging, because the moment you judge you have lost the pure witness. The moment you say “this is good, this is bad,” you have already jumped onto the thought process. It takes a little time to create a gap between the witness and the mind. Once the gap is there, you are in for a great surprise, that you are not the mind, that you are the witness, a watcher."
• “All is a vast oneness, one tree merging into another tree, earth merging into the trees, trees merging into the sky. I merging in you, you merging into me. Everything merging, distinctions lost, melting and merging waves into other waves...a vast oneness, vibrating, alive. The sage merging into the sinner, the sinner merging into the sage, good dissolving into the bad, bad dissolving into the good, night turning into the day, day turning into the night, life melting into death, death melting again into life. Everything has become one. When you are as huge as the universe, when you contain all; when stars start moving within you, and the earths are born in you and disappear; when you are this cosmic expansion then the work has finished. You have come home.”
• “This silence, this peace, this centering is the language that humanity unfortunately has forgotten completely. It has to be reminded of it. Be soaked in its light, in its love, in its music, in its dance. Remain aware of it twenty-four hours, whatever you are doing, and your every act will be virtue. Your silence will be a song, your actions will be your devotion. Whatever you do, if you can remember this center, is an offering to existence. You can offer to existence only if you are a buddha; awakened, free, showered with all the ecstasy that the skies contain. Remember, you are a buddha. To be a buddha is your birthright. To be anything else is to go astray.”

Author

Ma Ananda Sarita

Ma Ananda Sarita is a Tantra master, initiated into Tantra in 1973 by Osho. With over 30 years of teaching experience, she offers courses and retreats worldwide. As the voice behind this blog, Sarita offers readers a glimpse into the power of Tantra.