According to Osho, if there is no God, prayer has no place in religion: it is God-oriented, thus baseless, humiliating begging addressed to nobody. All prayer is extroversion that keeps you away from yourself. True religion turns inward; replace prayer with meditation. Stop pleading to a fiction; become inwardly alert, self-reliant, and sovereign—meditation transforms a beggar into an emperor.
If no one’s there to hear, praying is like asking the sky for candy—better sit quietly, look inside, and grow strong yourself.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Is there any place for prayer in religion if there is no god?
In an authentic religion, meditation has a place, but not prayer. Prayer is extrovert, meditation is introvert. Meditation makes you a buddha, prayer simply makes you a beggar. And prayer is fiction-oriented, meditation is truth-oriented. Meditation is Zen, and prayer is nothing but part and parcel of the fiction called God. Avoid prayers, they are taking you away from your own existential reality. Go deeper into meditation. That is the only religiousness possible. The sutras: <q>OUR BELOVED MASTER, WHEN SEKITO RECEIVED THE PRECEPTS, HIS MASTER, SEIGEN, ASKED HIM, "NOW YOU HAVE RECEIVED THE PRECEPTS, YOU WANT TO LEARN THE VINAYA, DON'T YOU?"</q> Vinaya is one of the scriptures of Gautam Buddha. The whole name is vinaya pitak. Seigen asked Sekito, "You are initiated into sannyas, do you now want to learn the scriptures called VINAYA?" The word vinaya means humbleness. It is one of the series of discourses of Buddha.…
Osho, if God and religion are but names for the Supreme Law, nothing else, then prayer, devotion, worship—all become futile. Then religion becomes synonymous with science, and religion remains only the quest for that Supreme Law. Please shed more light on this.
Prayer, worship, adoration are not because of God. But because of prayer, worship, adoration, the world begins to appear God-like. It is not that God is—and therefore we pray. We pray—and therefore God happens. People say, “God created you,” and I say, “Your devotion creates God.” Where your devotion flowers, there God manifests. Where your devotion departs, there God departs. God is your way of seeing. Religion is law. But to enter that law, you must change yourself—only then is it possible. Prayer is to change you. Ordinarily we pray to change God. You are ill, so you pray, “Make me well.” Our prayer is an attempt to change God’s intention. If you are ill and truly a devotee, you would accept, “God wills that I be ill; that is why I am ill.” We try to change God’s view: “Make me healthy; I am poor—make me rich. I am…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, IF THERE IS NO GOD, WHAT IS PRAYER? Next day he put the palace up for auction. He informed all the nearby kingdoms, whoever was interested. Many kings, queens and rich people came; everybody was interested. They were all puzzled to see that, just in front of the palace, there was a cat chained to a marble pillar of the palace. The rich man came out and he said, "This palace and the cat, both are up for auction together. The price of the cat is one million dinars" -- their dollars, one million dollars -- "the price of the cat one million dollars, and the price of the palace, one dollar: one million and one dollars." The people said, "For this cat one million dollars, and for this palace just one dollar?" The businessman said, "You don't bother about it.
Gautam the Buddha says there is no god forget all about it. In fact he is saying prayer is not for the grown-up people it is not for mature people. For mature people meditation is the way. Meditation means no hypothesising about god on the outside. Meditation simply means becoming silent a centering becoming rooted in your very being. And in that rootedness for the first time you start finding a new quality. That new quality can be called godliness -- not god but godliness. Because it is something which vou have never known some new name has to be given to it -- call it truth, liberation, freedom. It is such a transcendental quality, that "godliness" is a perfectly beautiful word for it. But you won't find any god, not some ancient, old man sitting somewhere above the clouds. That is very childish.
Osho, you say there is no place for prayer in Buddhism. But in Buddhist temples their followers are seen bowing in prostration and prayer. How is that?
Buddha said: there is no God. This does not mean there is no divine. It only means that if there is the divine, it is hidden in your consciousness. It is the fragrance of your consciousness. Refine your consciousness and the divine will be revealed. Not by prayer, by meditation. In prayer there is an other. In meditation there is no other; you descend within yourself. You polish yourself, cleanse yourself, wipe away the dust. Little by little, when thoughts shed off, when desires fall away, then within you that luminous, consciousness‑made being is revealed. In your clay‑made form, the consciousness‑made is hidden—this is what Buddha said. It will not happen through prayer, it will happen through meditation. But, as I said earlier, who listens to Buddha! People began to pray to Buddha himself! They built temples to Buddha. And they said, “All right, if there is no God, so…