Don’t try to blend them; pick the one that fits your heart and go all-in.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, Buddha says: live on the minimum, only on what is absolutely necessary. You say: don’t live stingily or lukewarm; live to the maximum, in excess. How are we to reconcile the two?
Movement doesn’t happen like that. Movement is in one direction. Choose west—then west it is. Forget that the other three directions even exist. Granted, they exist. Granted, some people are walking there. But you have left those directions. Now you go west. Don’t let one hand go east, the other west, and one leg south. That “coordination” won’t set; in attempting it, you will be badly fragmented. This has become humanity’s condition. Earlier, when the world was not so close-knit—before the earth became a small village, before religions were mutually familiar—many realized the ultimate. As the earth shrank and people became acquainted with one another’s religions, religiosity declined. Why? Because all directions entered everyone’s mind. You read the Quran and you read the Gita. You drown in neither. When you read the Quran you remember the Gita; when you read the Gita you remember the Quran—and you keep trying to…
Osho, Lord Buddha used to tell a story. A man met a tiger in a field. He ran. The tiger chased him. He reached the edge of a terrifying ravine, with no way forward. Grabbing the root of a wild vine, he hung down into the chasm. The tiger came up and sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked into the ravine and saw another tiger below, waiting to swallow him. Meanwhile two mice—one white and one black—began gnawing the root of the vine. And just then the man spotted a ripe, sweet fruit. Holding the vine with one hand, he plucked the fruit with the other. How sweet it tasted! Osho! Pl
The story is older than Buddha, but the way Buddha used it is entirely his own. Both meanings are worth understanding. The story, in its original form, is the essence of Hindu thought. But Buddha wrote over it with a bold, new ink—and the entire meaning changed. Buddha’s interpretation is unique. First, let us understand the Hindu perspective. It has its own validity. Then we will also see how the same symbol can become a foundation for two different visions. Change the way of seeing, and what is seen also changes. The world is in our vision, not in things. As the seer is, so the world appears. Hindu thought rests on the idea that the world is maya—illusion. The pleasures found in it are momentary, not true. Now they are, and in the next moment they are not. Death erases life—indeed, every moment it is erasing it. The white…
The other day you said that Lord Buddha went to his monks and awakened them to renounce wealth, sex, and status in order to attain Buddhahood and to listen to the Dharma. Buddha tells us to leave life, and you tell us to live life as a celebration; this creates a dilemma for us. Kindly shed some light on this.
The mind creates the dilemma. In truth there is no dilemma at all; it’s quite simple. Buddha is saying what I am saying, and I am saying what Buddha is saying. Buddha says: there is suffering in the outer life—drop it, so that you can attain the inner, nectar-like, blissful happiness. I say: attain the inner, blissful, ambrosial—so that the outer drops on its own. It is only a difference in how it’s spoken. Buddha says the glass is half empty; I say the glass is half full. There is no reason for confusion. My emphasis is on the full; Buddha’s emphasis is on the empty. And there is a reason to emphasize the full: you won’t easily understand the language of emptiness. Emptiness frightens you; it makes you run. Empty! You flee at once. I speak of fullness—there’s no reason to run. I do not tell you life is…
Osho, Mahavira’s dispassion, Christ’s holy indifference, Buddha’s disregard, and Krishna’s non-attachment—what are their subtle similarities and differences? Please shed light on this.
In this, some similarities appear. Krishna will arrive at a peace like Buddha’s, because he has nothing to attain—whatever is, is already attained. At times he will appear dispassionate like Mahavira, for his joy knows no bounds. He will appear to proclaim God as Jesus does—but not because there is a God sitting in this world or the next: rather, because all is God. Krishna’s non-attachment is total surrender—“the disappearance of ‘I.’” To know that the “I” is not. Once this is known, whatever is happening is happening. There is nothing to be done about it. There is no possibility of our doing anything. Krishna sees himself as a wave in the ocean. Since there is no choosing, there is no attachment. If we understand correctly, non-attachment is not a state of mind; it is the dropping of all states of mind, the dropping of all positions—and becoming one with…
She said, "You are behaving like a simpleton. If the sun is here, I cannot be here; if I am here, the sun cannot be here. We cannot stand each other. You will have to hear our story separately and then decide." God said, "That is not my way. You both have to be present here so I can be certain that nobody is lying." The woman said, "Then it is better I take my complaint back." Since then, the woman has not appeared again. Once in a while the sun comes to inquire, "What happened to the woman -- because I want to clear it up, it has become a worry on my head that somebody is being hurt by me, perhaps unknowingly." God said, "You need not be worried. The problem is such that it cannot be solved.