According to Osho, a puzzle is finite and solvable—apply logic and you reach an answer. A mystery is existential and inexhaustible: the more you probe, the deeper it becomes. Life is a mystery; it cannot be solved, only lived. True wisdom is surrender—letting the ego dissolve into the vastness rather than seeking closure.
Puzzles can be fixed like toys; life’s mystery is like an ocean—you don’t solve it, you relax and swim until the “you” disappears.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Question: Last question: Osho, is life a question or a riddle? It is certainly not a question, because life has no answer. That which has no answer cannot really be a question. It is indeed a riddle—but a riddle with no solution. Life is not a riddle that can be solved. That is why the wise have called it a mystery. Mystery means: a riddle for which no solution is possible. You can live it, but you can never know it. You can never turn it into knowledge. It can become experience, but it will never become knowledge. You will never be able to imprison it in your fist. Understand it like this: you can enter the ocean, but you cannot hold the ocean in your fist. The ocean is vast, infinite; your fist is small.
Osho, life is suffering, yet man does not wake up. Despite the hell of life, how does man keep on going?
You asked, “Life is suffering...” You have not yet seen this for yourself. You have heard the buddhas say that life is suffering. It is not your own realization, not your own seeing. That won’t do. Borrowed words will prick your chest like thorns; they will not turn into flowers. Borrowed words become thorns—pricking, wounding—but from them the rain of joy does not fall. Have you known that life is suffering? Or have you merely heard the buddhas? Or have you agreed that since the buddhas say so, it must be true? Why would they be wrong? If they knew, they must be right. That is like someone believing that fire burns because others say so. Can you see the difference between others saying “fire burns” and your own knowing that fire burns? One’s own knowing creates a revolution. Then, as they say, once burned by milk, you blow even…
Osho, a small question. The original Sanskrit here uses āsakta-manā for “undivided love.” In me, what would be the spiritual meaning of being one with an “attached mind” (āsakta-manā)? Please clarify.
Mystery means, the more you know, the more you dissolve. You know—and you dissolve more. And still more. A day comes when the knowing is complete, but you are not there at all. The claimant is finished. The one who could claim, “I have known; truth is in my fist,” disappears. Neither the fist remains, nor the one who clenched it. What remains is a mystery. Also, even when fully known and intimately familiar, that knowledge is not bound by logic. It is not logical. It is like a mystery—misty. As in the early morning when the sun has not yet risen and fog hangs everywhere—things appear mysterious. Or on a full-moon night: under some trees there is darkness, elsewhere soft moonlight, and everything turns mysterious. A mist surrounds all. When one enters that mystery, it is like a deep moonlit night in which everything seems mysterious; nothing seems complete…
Om. That is perfect, and this also is perfect. For only the perfect is born out of the perfect; and when the perfect is taken from the perfect, behold, the remainder is perfect. Om. Peace, peace, peace.
Rinzai kept one particular problem ready. He used to say, "Listen, if you solve my problem, I will solve yours." The questioner felt pleased that there was a person who would solve his problem, provided he solved the other's first. Rinzai would say, "My difficulty is that I kept a goose's egg in a bottle. The young one hatched out of the egg and began to grow. I used to feed it through the mouth of the bottle. Now I want to get it out, but it has grown so much that the neck of the bottle is too narrow for it; but I do not want to break the bottle as it is very valuable. Now show me the way. The goose is trapped in the bottle, and the neck of the bottle is too narrow for it to come out. So don't say, 'Bring it out through the…
Ask, What is love? Everyone says they love. And even those who do not, pretend. Countless stories of love — all stories are of love. Precisely because man has not yet loved, he writes of love to console himself. All poems are about love. The man whose life lacks love begins to write love poetry. Poetry is easy; love is difficult. Poetry is made by tying rhymes; love is born by breaking all rhythms. Poetry has meters and rules; love is utterly unmetered — without prosody. Where it begins and ends, none can say. No measures, no fixed place. Poetry can be learned and made. Love has no way to be made or learned. Yet we talk all day of love — and if someone asks, What is love? G. E.