Truth is like a giant ocean; teachers can only bring a small salty sip, so their words differ, and the real ocean is felt in quiet.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, awakened ones, considering place, time, circumstance, and the era-appropriate psychology of people, have expressed the same truth in very different forms. To the point that they appear mutually quite disputatious and even contradictory. Is an absolute expression of the ultimate truths of life and existence not possible? Will the limits of the age and the condition of the people always continue to be imposed upon truth?
Expression will always be limited. Expression will always be relative. The speaker and the listener—both create the boundaries of expression. I will say only what can be said. You will understand only what can be understood. Truth is vast. If I go to see the ocean and you say to me, “On your way back, bring a little of the ocean,” I will not be able to bring the whole ocean. I may bring a little water from it. But in that water much will be missing. There will be no storm of the ocean, no waves. And that was the real ocean: that tumultuous roar and fierce thunder! Waves crashing against cliffs! Those surges rising and spreading for miles! That swell! None of that will be there. I will bring a vessel filled with a little ocean water. Still, there will be something! If you taste it, it will…Read the full discourse →
Beloved Osho, you spoke the other night about honest truth. Mystics have often spoken of the "ultimate truth." can the truth be anything other than ultimate?
Mahavira says that truth itself is relative: he has no ultimate truth. Buddha has no ultimate truth. Again the difficulty is that Mahavira and Buddha can be misunderstood when they say that there is no ultimate truth but that every truth is relative: it can be one thing in one situation, it can be another thing in another situation, and because it is related to situations it cannot have any ultimacy. This goes against all the great mystics. Only Mahavira and Buddha, two people... But I know both, and I understand both better than their own followers, because none of their followers have been able to make any sense out of it: either all the mystics are wrong, or Buddha and Mahavira are wrong! I say nobody is wrong. What Mahavira says is that truth has seven aspects, and Buddha says that truth has four aspects. They are really referring…Read the full discourse →
Osho, what is the definition of God?
Words are very small. If you say God is light, then what of darkness? The scriptures have said that God is light. Suppose we accept this as a definition—then what about darkness? Where will darkness go? Darkness is too; in fact it is far more than light. Light sometimes is and sometimes is not; darkness is always, eternal. Where will you place darkness? If you say God is light, darkness is left out. If you say God is darkness, then light is left out. If you say God is both darkness and light, a contradiction arises: they cannot be together. Try to have both darkness and light in the same room. If you bring in light, darkness disappears; if you preserve darkness, you cannot have light. Then how can both be together? That becomes an impossibility. So you cannot say “both” either. Then the fourth device is to say: it…Read the full discourse →
The master foso hoyen said: 'they say that buddha uttered five thousand and forty-eight truths during his lifetime. They include the truth of emptiness and the truth of being. They include the truth of sudden enlightenment and the truth of gradual enlightenment. Are not all these yea-sayings?
'BUT ON THE OTHER HAND, YOKA, IN THE "SONG OF ENLIGHTENMENT" SAYS THERE ARE NO BEINGS AND NO BUDDHAS -- SAGES ARE SEA-BUBBLES, AND GREAT MINDS ARE ONLY FLICKERINGS OF LIGHTNING. ARE NOT ALL THESE NAY-SAYINGS? 'OH MY DISCIPLES, IF YOU SAY YEA, YOU DENY YOKA, AND IF YOU SAY NAY, YOU CONTRADICT BUDDHA. IF BUDDHA WERE HERE WITH YOU, HOW WOULD HE SOLVE THIS PROBLEM? 'IF WE KNEW WHERE TO STAND WE WOULD QUESTION BUDDHA EVERY MORNING AND GREET HIM EVERY NIGHT. BUT AS WE DON'T KNOW WHERE TO STAND I WILL LET YOU INTO A SECRET: WHEN I SAY THIS IS SO, PERHAPS IT IS NOT A YEA-SAYING. WHEN I SAY THIS IS NOT SO, PERHAPS IT IS NOT A NAY-SAYING. 'TURN TO THE EAST AND SEE THE HOLY WESTERN LAND, FACE SOUTH TO SEE THE NORTHERN STAR.' But if a man is stupid and he becomes silent,…Read the full discourse →
Osho, while refuting Adi Guru Shankaracharya’s aphorism “the world is illusory, Brahman alone is true,” you said the world is true and Brahman is true. But the definition of truth is: that which is not perishable. Since the world is perishable, how can it be true? It must be illusory. Brahman is imperishable, therefore true. I request you to define truth and shed light on this aspect.
Call a rose “rose,” or give it another name—there are thousands of languages, so the rose has thousands of names. Does the rose care? Call it beautiful or ugly—does it change the rose? Fashions change daily. A hundred years ago, who would imagine you would place a cactus in your drawing room, that a cactus would be called beautiful? Tell a villager today that a cactus is beautiful—he will stare: “What nonsense!” He plants cactus as a fence to keep animals and thieves out. He cannot imagine putting it in his house. He’ll say, “Am I mad?” Roses were beautiful—but now to insist “the rose is beautiful” sounds old-fashioned. The modern, cultivated people keep cactus. New poetry sings of cacti; new painters paint them. The rose has become passé. Nobility is out; the cactus is the proletariat. This is the age of socialism. To praise roses—aren’t you ashamed? Kings are…Read the full discourse →