Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh started a spiritual movement with the name Osho.
Osho was born on December 11, 1931, in central India. His parents were a railway switchman and a housewife. Osho says he was born an atheist, but despite his family’s opposition to religion, he became one of the leading spiritual teachers of the 20th century.
He believes that humans can be awakened from their conditioning that makes them unhappy and that this awakening will lead to lasting happiness for all people. He also believes in “losing yourself” through meditation—a process where thoughts aren’t allowed to linger, creating space for new ideas and experiences to arise without resistance or judgment.
Osho’s approach to meditation was entirely different from the conventional approaches. The standard meditation methods, such as sitting still and focusing on your breath, were not for him. Instead, Osho would go on long walks or run through the forest without his shoes. He would also often take a shower in cold water and eat raw food.
Osho taught that one must drop all sense of “self” and identify entirely with everything around us to become enlightened.
Here is the list of 129 inspiring Osho quotes on success, life, happiness
“Darkness is an absence of light. Ego is an absence of awareness.”
“Creativity is the greatest rebellion in existence.”
“Discover yourself, otherwise you have to depend on other people’s opinions who don’t know themselves.”
“Friendship is the purest love. It is the highest form of Love where nothing is asked for, no condition, where one simply enjoys giving.”
“The basic fallacy that you are carrying within you is that you always loved somebody.”
“Mind: A beautiful servant, a dangerous master.”
“Never be ashamed of your tears. Be proud that you are still natural. Be proud that you can express the inexpressible through your tears.”
“This very moment you can drop all problems because they are your creation.”
“Whatever you feel, you become. It is your responsibility.”
“To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it.”
“Commit as many mistakes as possible, remembering only one thing: don’t commit the same mistake again. And you will be growing.”
“What is discipline? Discipline means creating an order within you. As you are, you are a chaos.”
“Discipline has its own beauty, it is not all slavery. And freedom has its own dangers and is not all beautiful. A real person is always capable of infinite discipline and infinite freedom – he is not a slave or an addict to anything.”
“Nobody has the power to take two steps together; you can take only one step at a time.”
“Respect life, revere life. There is nothing more holy than life, nothing more divine than life.”
“The greatest freedom is to be free of our own mind.”
“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.”
“Never belong to a crowd; Never belong to a nation; Never belong to a religion; Never belong to a race. Belong to the whole existence. Why limit yourself to small things? When the whole is available.”
“It is beautiful to be alone, it is also beautiful to be in love, to be with people. And they are complementary, not contradictory.”
“The past is no more and the future is not yet: both are unnecessarily moving in directions which don’t exist. One used to exist, but no longer exists, and one has not even started to exist. The only right person is one who lives moment to moment.”
“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.”
“Get out of your head and get into your heart. Think less, feel more.”
“The real question is not whether life exists after death. The real question is whether you are alive before death.”
“Life repeats itself mindlessly – unless you become mindful, it will go on repeating like a wheel.”
“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.”
“To be creative means to be in love with life.”
“Sadness comes, joy comes, and everything passes by. What remains always is the witness. The witness is beyond all polarities.”
“Be. Don’t try to become.”
“Courage is a love affair with the unknown.”
“Life is not a problem. To look at it as a problem is to take a wrong step. It is a mystery to be lived, loved, experienced.”
“Relax, let go. But remember only one thing: You are a Witness.”
“The greatest fear in the world is the opinion of others, and the moment you are unafraid of the crowd, you are no longer a sheep, you become a lion. A great roar arises in your heart, the roar of freedom.”
“Wherever you feel death, feel it. Don’t escape. Death is beautiful; death is the greatest mystery, more mysterious than life.”
“The more you share your inner wealth, the more you have it.”
“People say love is blind because they do not know what love is. I say unto you, only love has eyes; other than love, everything is blind.”
“Yoga means now. You will have to be a harmony. You will have to become one.”
“Life is a balance between rest and movement.”
“The feminine is more powerful than the masculine, the soft is more powerful than the hard, the water is more powerful than the rock.”
“You need power only to do something harmful. Otherwise love is enough, compassion is enough.”
“Don’t be serious about seriousness. Laugh about it, be a little foolish. Don’t condemn foolishness; it has its own beauties.”
“Find ecstasy within yourself. It is not out there. It is in your innermost flowering. The one you are looking for is you.”
“If you really want peace on earth, create peace in your heart, in your being. That is the right place to begin with and then spread.”
“Love is the goal, life is the journey.”
“You will come closer and closer to perfection, but you will never be perfect. Perfection is not the way of existence. Growth is the way.”
“Be realistic: Plan for a miracle.”
“Rather than thinking how to get love, start giving. If you give, you get. Everybody is interested in getting and nobody seems to enjoy giving. Love is not a business, so stop being businesslike.”
“A certain darkness is needed to see the stars.”
“I love life. That’s why I give teachings of celebration, celebrate everything. From body to soul, physical to spiritual, sex to superconsciousness, everything is divine for me.”
“Always remember to judge everything by your inner feeling of bliss.”
“Don’t move the way fear makes you move. Move the way love makes you move. Move the way joy makes you move.”
“Love the person, but give the person total freedom. Love the person, but from the very beginning make it clear that you are not selling your freedom.”
“When you love, love as if the person is a god, not less than that. Never love a woman as a woman and never love a man as a man.”
“All that is great cannot be possessed – and that is one of the most foolish things man goes on doing. We want to possess.”
“Don’t try to understand life. Live it! Don’t try to understand love. Move into love.”
“My meditation is simple. It does not require any complex practices. It is simple. It is singing. It is dancing. It is sitting silently. ”
“When you really laugh for those few moments you are in a deep meditative state. Thinking stops. It is impossible to laugh and think together.”
“Be a lotus flower. Be in the water, and do not let the water touch you.”
“Philosophy is the blind man’s effort. It is said: Philosophy is a blind man in a dark room on a dark night, searching for a black cat which is not there….”
“Trust simply means that whatever happens we are with it, joyously, not reluctantly, not unwillingly – then you miss the whole point – but dancingly, with a song, with laughter, with love. Whatever happens is for the good.”
“Truth is not something outside to be discovered, it is something inside to be realized.”
“You need either to create something or to discover something. Either bring your potential to actuality or go inwards to find yourself, but do something with your freedom.”
“A single moment of love is equal to the whole eternity of love.”
“If you clean the floor with love, you have done an invisible painting. Live each moment in such delight that it gives you something inner.”
“Die each moment so that you are renewed each moment.”
“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.”
“Tomorrow never comes, it is always today.”
“In the East we have another word, dhyan. It does not mean concentration, it does not mean contemplation, it does not mean meditation even. It means a state of no-mind.”
“Existence cannot go wrong. If it does not fulfill our desires, that simply means our desires were wrong.”
“Your honesty, Your love, Your compassion should come from your inner being, not from teachings and scriptures.”
“Love is the ultimate, the end. You love for love’s own sake. It is not a means to anything else, it is its own end.”
“I live my life based on 2 principles. One, I live as if today was my last day on earth. Two, I live today as if I am going to live forever.”
“Don’t seek, don’t search, don’t ask, don’t knock, don’t demand – relax.
If you relax it comes, if you relax it is there. If you relax, you start vibrating with it.”
“Be. Don’t try to become. Within these two words, be and becoming, your whole life is contained. Being is enlightenment, becoming is ignorance.”
“It cannot be called freedom, a freedom which can choose only the right and not the wrong; then that is not freedom.”
“You are being taught everything, but you are not being taught to be yourself. This is the ugliest form of society possible, because it makes everybody miserable.”
“Wherever you are afraid, try to explore, and you will find death hiding somewhere behind. All fear is of death. Death is the only fear source.”
“Listen to your being. It is continuously giving you hints; it is a still, small voice. And if you are a little silent you will start feeling your way.”
“Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars… and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful.”
“Drop the idea of becoming someone, because you are already a masterpiece. You cannot be improved. You have only to come to it, to know it, to realize it.”
“Freedom is not license, and does not mean no structure. It simply means flexibility, that one can move from one structure to another easily – from no-structure to structure, from structure to no-structure. If your freedom is afraid of being in a structure, then it is not freedom at all.”
“It is not a question of money, power, and prestige; it is a question of what intrinsically you want to do. Do it, irrespective of the results, and your boredom will disappear.”
“Intelligence comes from meditation, intelligence comes from rebellion, intelligence does not come from memory.”
“The way of love is the way of no-expectation. Love exists only when there is a total acceptance and no desire to change anything.”
“You can see the whole history of philosophy: every answer has brought thousands of unnecessary questions. It has not been an answer, it has been a problem.”
“One just needs a little alertness to see and find out: life is really a great cosmic laughter.”
“One just needs a little alertness to see and find out: Life is really a great cosmic laughter.”
“If you suffer it is because of you, if you feel blissful it is because of you. Nobody else is responsible – only you and you alone. You are your hell and your heaven too.”
“A comfortable, convenient life is not a real life – the more comfortable, the less alive. The most comfortable life is in the grave.”
“This pain is not to make you sad, remember. Thats where people go on missing…. This pain is just to make you more alert–because people become alert only when the arrow goes deep into their heart and wounds them.”
“Help the world to become better. Don’t leave the world just the same as you have found it – make it a little better, make it a little more beautiful.”
“Love in its purest form is a sharing of joy. It asks nothing in return, it expects nothing. Love is a spiritual phenomenon; lust is physical. Ego is psychological; love is spiritual.”
“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.
Be like an alone peak high in the sky. Why should you hanker to belong? You are not a thing! Things belong!”
“Don’t seek, don’t search, don’t ask, don’t knock, don’t demand ~ relax. If you relax it comes, if you relax it is there. If you relax, you start vibrating with it.”
“When I say be creative I don’t mean that you should all go and become great painters and great poets. I simply mean let your life be a painting, let your life be a poem.”
“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.”
“A woman is to be loved, not understood. That is the first understanding.”
“Life begins where fear ends.”
“Each person comes into this world with a specific destiny–he has something to fulfill, some message has to be delivered, some work has to be completed. You are not here accidentally–you are here meaningfully. There is a purpose behind you. The whole intends to do something through you.”
“Don’t try to understand life. Live it! Don’t try to understand love. Move into love. Then you will know and that knowing will come out of your experiencing.”
“The less people know, the more stubbornly they know it.”
“They say: Think twice before you jump. I say: Jump first and then think as much as you want!”
“Love and respect yourself and never compromise for anything. And then you will be surprised how much growth starts happening of its own accord.. as if rocks have been removed and the river has started flowing.”
“Life is a mirror, it reflects your face. Be friendly, and all of life will reflect friendliness.”
“Be like an alone peak high in the sky. Why should you hanker to belong? You are not a thing! Things belong!”
“Only laughter makes a man rich, but the laughter has to be blissful.”
“To avoid pain, they avoid pleasure. To avoid death, they avoid life.”
“Don’t wait for someone to bring you flowers. Plant your own garden and decorate your own soul.”
“There is no other greater ecstasy than to know who you are.”
“Love has to be of the quality that gives freedom, not new chains for you; a love that gives you wings and supports you to fly as high as possible.”
“Just look at life with more playful eyes. Don’t be serious. Seriousness becomes like a blindness. Don’t pretend to be a thinker, a philosopher. Just simply be a human being.”
“Awareness functions almost like magic.”
“You cannot cling to anything in a changing world.”
“Life in itself has no meaning. Life is an opportunity to create meaning.”
“To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty.”
“That which makes you miserable is the only sin. That which takes you away from yourself is the only thing to be avoided.”
“In relationship, be blissful, in aloneness be aware and they will help each other, like two wings of a bird.”
“Celebration is my attitude, unconditional to what life brings.”
“My meditation is simple. It does not require any complex practices. It is simple. It is singing. It is dancing. It is sitting silently.”
“Only silence communicates the truth as it is.”
“No thought, no mind, no choice — just being silent, rooted in yourself.”
“Don’t be so short of trust, and don’t be in a hurry. If I say something, wait, search, and you will find the way.”
“Take it easy, and remember “Easy is Right.”
“You can become happy just by deciding to be happy.”
“When you say to a woman or a man, ‘I love you,’ you are simply saying, ‘I cannot be deceived by your body, I have seen you. Your body may become old but I have seen you, the bodiless you. I have seen your innermost core, the core that is divine.’ Liking is superficial. Love penetrates and goes to the very core of the person, touches the very soul of the person.”
“Love brings freedom. Loyalty brings slavery.”
