According to Osho, taking risks is the very pulse of life: the more risks you take, the more alive, meaningful, and joyous you become. Security belongs to death; courage is the only virtue. Adventure awakens vitality, love, and song, restoring childlike presence. Avoiding risk breeds masks, misery, and emptiness, while embracing danger reconnects you to the living flow of existence.
When you dare to step into the unknown, you feel truly alive; playing too safe makes you dead inside.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Is it good to take risks?
Good or bad is not the question. If you are alive you have to take risks. Life is a risk. Only death is secure, life is never secure -- there is no security. The companies that are called Life Insurance should really be called Death Insurance; in life there can be no insurance. Life is alive only because there is risk, danger -- that's why there is so much thrill. You ask 'Is it good to take risks?' If you want to be alive you have to take risks, and the more risks you take, the more alive you will be. So really you are asking 'Is it good to be alive?' Rightly interpreted, your question will mean 'Is it good to be alive?' Now, I am not a murderer, and I don't want to poison your life. Many people have done that: the priests, the politicians -- they are…
What does it mean to live dangerously?
If you enjoy many more things for their own sake, you will be more alive. Of course, your life will always be in a risk, danger. But that's how life has to be. Risk is part of it. In fact the better part of it is risk, the best part of it is risk. The most beautiful part of it is risk. It is every moment a risk. You may not be aware. You breathe in, you breathe out. There is risk. Even breathing out, who knows whether the breath will come back or not? It is not certain, there is no guarantee. But there are a few people whose whole religion is security. Even if they talk about god, they talk about god as the supreme security. If they think about god, they think only because they are afraid. If they go to pray and meditate, they are going…
Naturally when a child is feeling happy and somebody says, 'Don't make a noise. Don't jump. Don't shout,' he feels great anger arising, but you could not be angry either. How can you be angry with your father and your mother? They are powerful and you are helpless. So deep inside the pleasure was there and the anger came; they got hooked. So now when you become angry you feel pleasure, and if you want to feel happy and pleasant, immediately you feel a certain anger arising. That has to be settled. That hooking has to be dropped, and pleasure and anger have to be disconnected. The only way to disconnect it is to go through that experience which has been stopped. It has remained incomplete in your being and it can be dangerous. It can create many sorts of diseases, so it has to be finished with.
No, Osho, what happens is that our mind is in one of two states. Either I feel I will be able to solve it, or I’m afraid that I won’t be able to solve it...
Because of that ignorance, we create many problems we don’t even suspect. For instance, in India almost everyone assumes that the sexual act is devastating. Physiologically that is absolutely wrong—completely wrong. In fact, sexual inactivity is devastating. Activity is not devastating. And it is also interesting that anyone who thinks he can go to extremes in sexual activity is mistaken. The body has checks. You cannot go to extremes; there are bodily checks. Nature has arranged it so you cannot expend surplus force beyond what the body allows. But one can misuse it, right? Even misuse is not possible—if you use full understanding. As far as sex has been understood, misuse is not possible. Misuse is impossible. Then not just sex—by that argument you can’t misuse anything! If we extend that very argument, you can’t misuse anything! No, no—you can misuse many things. Why not sex? Because the entire arrangement…
Osho, you relish the process of becoming; through it we can enter new situations with courage and joy. But what about the uncertainties that our actions will also generate?
Uncertainty is a very good thing. My point is: certainty is not a sign of life. Uncertainty—that very uncertainty—is the element of life. The glamour of uncertainty. Yes, that uncertainty is so juicy that we should create it. It becomes a mystique. Yes, absolutely a mystique. And we should create it. The simple truth is: security is absolutely false; life is insecurity. And the art of living depends on how much we can savor that insecurity.