According to Osho, spirituality doesn’t come from what you eat; inner awakening transforms your eating. Vegetarian or non-vegetarian diets do not create compassion; meditation changes your essence, and then non-violence, simpler food, and looser habits arise naturally. If you reverse the order—using diet as a ladder to spirit—you breed repression or obsession. Real change starts within; food and lifestyle follow effortlessly.
Don’t try to become spiritual by changing food; become peaceful inside and your food choices will naturally become gentle.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Our beloved master,
YOU WERE JUST TALKING ABOUT FOOD, AND NOW IN THE WEST FOOD IS A BIG CULT. IT'S ONE OF THE THINGS COMING IN AS A BASIS OF SPIRITUALITY. YOU SAID IF WE'RE NATURAL, WE'LL KNOW WHAT TO EAT AND WHEN TO EAT, BUT NOW WE ARE OUT OF TOUCH WITH OUR CHILDLIKE NATURE. ALSO, MANY RELIGIONS SAY THAT THE FOOD YOU EAT DOES MAKE A DIFFERENCE TO ONE'S SPIRITUAL PATH. IS THERE ANYTHING YOU CAN TELL US ABOUT FOOD AS A GUIDE FOR THE WEST? It is the other way round: food cannot make you spiritual, but if you are spiritual your food habits will change. Eating anything will not make much difference. You can be a vegetarian and cruel to the extreme, and violent; you can be a non-vegetarian and kind and loving. Food will not make much difference. In India there are communities who have lived totally with…
What about food? Is it not absolutely essential to be a vegetarian for spiritual growth?
Nobody has been as penetrating as the Zen poets, and in a few small words. They have written such great poetry -- to write that poetry others need to write great books, big books; they go on writing and writing, and even then not much poetry is found. But it has nothing to do with spirituality. Spirituality is possible without being a poet, without being a dancer, without being a musician. But if you are a musician, a poet, a dancer, your life will have more fulfillment. Spirituality will be at the center and all these values will be on the circumference. You will have a far richer life. A spiritual person can be a poor person -- he may not have any capacity to enjoy music. In fact that's what is happening in the world. If you go and see a Jaina monk and you talk about classical music…
Osho, does diet have an effect on the mind?
Some foods are stimulating; they create excitement. All of them are obstacles in spiritual life. Some foods are non-stimulating; they do not arouse excitement. They support spiritual life. Some foods are intoxicating, giving a kind of inebriation; some are non-intoxicating. Intoxicating and stimulating foods are obstacles in spiritual life. But our craving for intoxicating, stimulating foods—the taste for them, the urge within to take them—will dissolve through meditation. As the mind begins to grow quiet, the diet will begin to change accordingly. Recently such incidents have occurred around me. Some friends were meat-eaters. When they first came to me they immediately asked, “We eat meat; you won’t make it a condition of meditation that we must give it up? We can’t give it up.” I told them, I don’t talk about diet at all. Eat whatever you like, enjoy it; I have nothing to do with it. But begin meditation.…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHY ARE ALL YOUR DISCIPLES VEGETARIAN? I do not believe in vegetarianism, because I do not believe in anything. My disciples are vegetarian not as a cult, not as a creed. They are vegetarians because their meditations make them more human, more of the heart, and they can see the whole stupidity of people killing living beings for their food. It is their sensitivity, their aesthetic awareness that makes them vegetarians. I don't teach vegetarianism; it is a by-product of meditation. Wherever meditation has happened, people have become vegetarian, always, for thousands of years. The oldest religion in the world is Jainism. It is a small religion, that's why not much is known to the outside world; it exists only in India. Jainism has no God; hence, there is no possibility of prayer. When God and prayer are discarded, then what is left for a religion?
So many dishes in the ashram kitchen contain onions. Remembering that raman maharshi said to avoid chillies, excess of salt, onions, etc, I am struck with the question: is the kitchen sabotaging our possibilities of enlightenment?
Remember, anything that prevents you from becoming enlightened is your knowing, your thought-process, nothing else. And there is the real task -- how to drop the thought-process. And because you feel impotent there, you create small problems: how to eat only once a day, how to eat without salt, how to eat without ghee, how to eat this way or that way. Jaina monks eat standing. If you eat sitting, enlightenment is sabotaged. Jaina monks eat only once a day. If you eat twice, enlightenment is sabotaged. One Jaina monk come to see me and he said 'Eating twice is not good.' I said 'Eating once?' He said 'Eating once is okay.' I told him 'Half the enlightenment is sabotaged.' And enlightenment does not come in parts. Either it comes whole or it doesn't come. If twice a day is dangerous then once a day is fifty percent dangerous. You…