Osho Quotes on Religion | Religion is after Nothingness

Osho Quotes on Religion

1. This is the difference between magic and religion; magic is after power, religion is after nothingness. A mantra is a part of magic not of religion at all, but everything is a big mess, mixed up. People who are doing miracles are magicians, not spiritual in any way. They are even anti-spiritual because they are spreading magic in the name of religion, which is very dangerous.
2. Philosophy has many questions, many answers — millions. Religion has only one answer; whatsoever the question the answer remains the same. Buddha used to say: You taste sea water from anywhere, the taste remains the same, the saltiness of it. Whatsoever you ask is really irrelevant. I will answer the same because I have got only one answer. But that one answer is like a master key; it opens all doors. It is not concerned with any particular lock — any lock and the key opens it. Religion has only one answer and that answer is meditation. And meditation means how to empty yourself.
3. Look, and always try to find the unity. In unity is religion, in disunity religion is lost. And avoid being against. If you are against, you will become rigid, hard, and the harder you become the more dead you will be.
4. Life exists without rules; games cannot exist without rules. So real religion is always without rules; only false religion has rules, because false religion is a game.
5. Science is knowledge. Religion is not knowledge. Religion is love. The word ‘religion’ comes from a root which means binding together — falling into love, becoming one.
6. When a religion has lost the capacity to dance, to celebrate, to sing, to love, just to be, then it is no more religion — it is a corpse, it is theology. Theology is dead religion.
7. Religion makes no effort to explain life. It tries to live it. Religion does not take life as a problem to be solved — it takes life as a mystery to be lived. Religion is not curious about life. Religion is in awe, in tremendous wonder about life.
8. Religion is not based on belief or faith: religion is based on awe, religion is based on wonder. Religion is based on the mysterious that is your surround. To feel it, to be aware of it, to see it, open your eyes and drop the dust of the ages. Clean your mirror! and see what beauty surrounds you, what tremendous grandeur goes on knocking at your doors. Why are you sitting with closed eyes? Why are you sitting with such long faces? Why can’t you dance? and why can’t you laugh?
9. Science grows out of doubt. Religion grows out of wonder. Between the two is philosophy; it has not yet decided — it goes on hanging between doubt and wonder. Sometimes the philosopher doubts and sometimes the philosopher wonders: he is just in between. If he doubts too much, by and by he becomes a scientist. If he wonders too much, by and by he becomes religious.
10. If you become too sceptical, you become scientists. If you become too childlike, you become religious. Science exists with doubt. Religion exists with wonder. If you want to be religious then create more wonder, discover more wonder. Allow your eyes to be more filled with wonder than anything else. Be surprised by everything that is happening. Everything is so tremendously wonderful that it is simply unbelievable how you go on living without dancing, how you go on living without becoming ecstatic. You must not be seeing what is happening all around.
11. So the first thing to be understood is what this sleep consists in — because Zen is an effort to become alert and awake. All religion is nothing but that: an effort to become more conscious, an effort to become more aware, an effort to bring more alertness, more attentiveness to your life.
12. So many religions are there because so many people are unhappy. A happy person needs no religion; a happy person needs no temple, no church — because for a happy person the whole universe is a temple, the whole existence is a church. The happy person has nothing like religious activity because his whole life is religious.
13. Be happy! and meditation will follow. Be happy, and religion will follow. Happiness is a basic condition. People become religious only when they are unhappy — then their religion is pseudo. Try to understand why you are unhappy.
14. If your religion says you are a Mohammedan and says, “Fight Hindus! and sacrifice your life!” or you are a Hindu and Hinduism says, “Go and fight and kill the Mohammedans! Even if you are killed, don’t be worried — in heaven you will be paid well” — don’t listen to all that nonsense. Enough is enough! Much has happened on the earth, much suffering because of these people.
15. LAUGHTER is the very essence of religion. Seriousness is never religious, cannot be religious. Seriousness is of the ego, part of the very disease. Laughter is egolessness. Yes, there is a difference between when you laugh and when a religious man laughs. The difference is that you laugh always about others — the religious man laughs at himself, or at the whole ridiculousness of man’s being.
16. Religion cannot be anything other than a celebration of life. And the serious person becomes handicapped: he creates barriers. He cannot dance, he cannot sing, he cannot celebrate. The very dimension of celebration disappears from his life. He becomes desert-like. And if you are a desert, you can go on thinking and pretending that you are religious but you are not.