Sit quietly to know yourself; this clear, kind awareness naturally stops you from doing harm and helps good grow.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, since evil exists, how can we eradicate it by meditation alone?
It is like someone saying: There is illness—how will we get rid of it by merely taking medicine? Show me some direct way to remove the illness. A man says, I have a cough, a cold, a fever; I have TB, cancer. The doctor hands him a bottle. The man says, Have you gone mad? Here I am dying of cancer and you hand me a bottle? What will this bottle do? He says, I am dying of cancer and you give me red-colored water to hold? What will this red-colored water do? But it does not occur to him that cancer or disease is not going to be pulled out and placed outside directly. To remove cancer or illness, to bring about a change, something opposite has to be introduced. We are ill; by applying what is opposite to the illness, the illness will be cut off. It is…
Osho, how can I meditate while there is so much suffering, poverty, and wretchedness in the world? In such a situation, isn’t meditation pure selfishness? Even if I were to meet God, instead of asking for my own peace I would rather ask for punishment for those because of whom there is exploitation, suffering, and injustice in the world.
As you wish! If one doesn’t want to meditate, any excuse will do. If you don’t want to meditate you can convince yourself by any logic that meditation is wrong. But you haven’t even yet understood what meditation is. Nor have you understood that all this suffering, pain, and turmoil in the world is precisely because there is no meditation. A suffering person spreads suffering. Even if he wanted to give something else, he couldn’t. You can only give what you have. If you don’t have it, how will you give it? The unhappy give unhappiness; the fulfilled give fulfillment. If you want joy in the world, inner peace and inner awareness are essential conditions. Don’t stumble over the word “meditation.” It simply means you begin to sink into the juice of your own being. When you are full of inner nectar, it flows through your actions. Then whatever you…
A friend has asked: Osho, what is the difference between sin and virtue? And as long as the mind is filled with sin, how can there be faith, devotion, feeling? How will prayer happen while the mind is full of sin? So first let the mind be filled with virtue; then prayer will happen!
It sounds right. It seems reasonable. Yet it is not right—and it is full of unawareness. It sounds right to say, “As long as the mind is full of sin, how can there be prayer!” But that is like a physician saying, “As long as you are sick, how can I give you medicine! First get well and healthy, and then take the medicine.” But once you are well, why would you need medicine? If you decide to pray only after you’ve dropped all sin, you will never get the chance to pray. As long as there is sin, you won’t pray. And when there is no sin left, why pray? What would be the meaning of prayer then? Prayer is the medicine. Therefore, one has to pray while still a sinner. And another thing: how will sin go? It cannot go without prayer. Those who try to remove sin…
Osho, why do Shankara and you, before telling us to sing the praises of Govinda, always address us as fools?
Edison said, people say I know a great deal. My condition is like that of a small child on the seashore who has gathered a few shells and conches. That is the extent of my knowledge—just a few shells in my fists—while the vast ocean lies there, unknown to me. Your little knowledge seems very big to you! You have lit a small lamp; its flickering light falls a little around you, a small area gets illuminated—and you call this knowledge! And the infinite lies there filled with darkness; you have no awareness of it! When you understand your foolishness, you will say, “Is this knowledge—the flicker of a tiny lamp!” The infinite lies ahead to journey through, to explore, to search—and I, clutching these shells in my hands, am posing as a wise man! Then you will drop even this “knowledge.” And the day you know that you are…
Osho, please explain how, in meditation practice, the dissolution and sublimation of violent tendencies—that is, dissolution and sublimation—take place?
Mahavira was standing near a village and some people came and beat him severely. Someone drove iron pegs into his ears. He stood watching. Later someone asked him, “You said nothing at all? You could at least have said, ‘Why are you beating me without cause?’” Mahavira said: “They were not beating me without cause. There must surely have been some cause in their minds to beat. Perhaps the cause was not related to me, but there was a cause within them. And I thought it would be better if they beat me; if they beat someone else, they would not return without receiving a return blow. Let their violence undergo nirjara. Better than me they would find it hard to find anyone.” Mahavira behaved like a pillow with those people. In meditation the nirjara of all suppressed surges takes place—whether of violence, of anger, of sex, or of greed—meditation…