According to Osho, American females are 'ladies'—though in American slang 'lady' cheekily implies 'a good lay.' He uses the joke to spotlight how words—and cultures—carry different energies. Beyond labels, he praises America’s aliveness born from crossbreeding, urging us to drop tribal boundaries in love and life, embrace diversity, and value vitality and intelligence over rigid conventions.
He jokes that Americans call women “ladies” (sometimes with a naughty twist), and the deeper point is to drop rigid labels and welcome lively, diverse mixing.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHY DON'T YOU ADDRESS YOUR AUDIENCE? Moreover I am not a messiah, not a prophet. You are not to think of yourselves as my followers -- because I am nobody's leader. We are all fellow travelers, seeking, searching, enquiring. Nobody is higher and nobody is lower. I start my talks without addressing you because these are not gospels, or sermons, or lectures. I simply love to gossip, and in gossips you don't address anyone. I enjoy talking to you, you enjoy listening to me. There is a synchronicity. Without you, who am I? Without me, who are you? There is no separation. We cannot exist separately, we are an organic whole. And my talks are just friendly talks, the way you talk with your friends. Do you address them first, "Ladies and Gentlemen"? There is no need. That creates a distance, a formality. You simply talk.
Osho, I’ve become intoxicated, drinking again and again the wine poured in your tavern. Osho, the world burns at the sight of lovers, but even the other drinkers in your own tavern are so opposed to love—especially fifty percent of the Indians who have been with you for the last ten or twelve years. Our foreign friends feel happy seeing lovers, but the Indians not only burn with jealousy, they look at them with a criminal eye and gossip sarcastically for hours. This crowd knows only one meaning of love—“sex.” Why is that? Is there no other dimension of love, especially in the relationship betw
I would like these friends to drift away little by little. Even their questions that come to me are not worth answering—trash questions with no purpose or value. In the relationship of man and woman, the Indian mind has held only one notion: there can be only one bond—sexual. That friendship can exist between man and woman has never been part of Indian tradition. Indian tradition has never had the courage to conceive friendship between man and woman. Sex is one relationship. It is not the whole. Friendship is also possible—and it should be. A beautiful, cultured person should have enough capacity to befriend a woman or a man. Friendship means there is no question of bodily give‑and‑take; it is a connection of souls. In the West this happens: a man and a woman can have a friendship like that between two men or two women. The basis can be…
Beloved Osho, I thought I heard you say that if one goes deeply into sex it will eventually drop off by itself. I have thought long and hard about this, desperately trying to penetrate its hidden meaning, but all I got was a headache.
No medical researcher has come to the conclusion, but I say it from my own discoveries that I go on and on making -- I'm an incurable discoverer -- and sooner or later science will have to agree with me. The sex center exists in the head, not in the genitals -- that much science has come to know. And if the sex center exists in the head and not in the genitals, then sex deprivation can create a headache. It will not create genital ache because there is nothing... it is only an extension of a certain center in your mind. Why have people started thinking -- and doctors have started even advising their patients -- that sex is good for your mental health? And they are right: all the people who have repressed sex in the past in the name of religion, have suffered tremendously with headaches. Even…
Osho, the young women of this country are blindly imitating fashions from the West and ruining their character, which will ultimately cause the moral collapse of the whole society. Out of compassion, please suggest ways to stop this blind imitation.
Men shouting about these things—I understand; it is part of their scheme to keep women under control. But how foolish are the women who join! They were kept foolish deliberately—barred from reading scriptures, barred from the Vedas. Kept as uneducated as possible so that whatever men said would seem true. They too bow and worship; they never ask, Were there any “male satis”? Any shrines for them? Men never did such things. A woman dies and they remarry instantly. But when a man dies, the woman should die with him. Why? Because she is the man’s property. And the man doesn’t trust that after his death another man might love her, or that she might love again or remarry. The limit! As if he bought her soul! She’s not a person; she’s a thing. And women tolerated this. Not only tolerated—they began to feel pride in it. The ideas we…
Question: DEAR-A OSHO-A, I DIG-A IT A LOT-A. IT WAS-A FAR OUT-A. CAN YOU-A LAY-A SOME-A MORE-A ON US-A? YOU ARE OUT-A SIGHT-A! LIKE-A THANK YOU A LOT-A! P.S.-A: YOU SEE-A, I AM-A AMERICAN-ITALIANO -- A REAL MESS-A! Prem Patipada, I KNOW, because just the other day somebody was talking about you. A swami was saying to another swami, "Boy, she is a high explosive girl!" "High explosive girl?" "Yes, dangerous when dropped!" Italian plus American -- it is the most dangerous combination. "That wasn't your daughter screaming," the Italian told the horny broad's father when he came down to the living room with a loaded shotgun. "That was me!" You get it? Let me repeat it: "That wasn't your daughter screaming," the Italian told the horny broad's father when he came down to the living room with a loaded shotgun, "That was me!