Osho Quotes on Birthday
- Man is very clever in deceiving himself. Each of your birthdays is an effort to forget that it is not your birthday, it is your death day; you have died one year more. But with flowers and candles and cakes, one forgets the immediacy of death. It is always with you. Birth is the beginning of death.
- The day of your initiation into sannyas becomes your real birthday. You disown the past and you tell me: “I am ready for a new future — I will not continue my past; I am ready to discontinue it. And I will not insist on my past — I disclaim, I disown it. And I am absolutely open: wherever you lead, I am ready. I have no prejudices.”
- Every day you are coming closer and closer to death. In fact the day you were born was not the day of your birth; it was the day you started dying. And since then you have been dying every day. Every birthday, your death has come one year closer.
- In India, for centuries, we have only celebrated the birthdays of the Buddhas, and for very strange reasons — because these were the people who knew that there is no birth and no death; hence we have celebrated their birth, we have celebrated their death. But as far as ordinary human beings are concerned, nobody in India even remembers his birthday. The idea that everybody celebrates his birthday has come from the West. There is nothing worth celebrating because nothing has happened yet ! Unless you know that you were before your birth, your birthday is not of any value. Unless you know you will remain after your death, your death also has no value. We celebrate Krishna’s birthday and Buddha’s birthday, and of course, the day they disappeared from the world, we have celebrated that too, but ordinarily nobody bothers to celebrate his birthday. The has come from the West. Now many rich Indians, educated Indians, have started celebrating their birthday. It is sheer stupidity! Only when you come to know something beyond time do you have meaning — and that happens through love.
- Your life is short, and your life is slipping out of your fingers. Each moment you are less, each day you are less, and each day you are less alive and more dead! Each birthday is a death day; one more year is gone from your hands. Be a little more intelligent.
- Passing through the master you are going to enter into a life which is eternal. No mother can give you an eternal life. She can give you only a mortal life, the life of the body which is going to die sooner or later. In fact it starts dying from the very first moment. It takes it seventy, eighty or a hundred years to reach the grave, but it goes on moving towards the grave. You think that on each birthday you are celebrating life? You are wrong. Each birthday you are celebrating death. Each birthday means one year has slipped by. You are more dead than you have been, and you are coming closer to the grave. The queue is becoming smaller and smaller.
- Meditation is the process of coming our of the psychological womb, coming out of the mind. The moment you are out of the mind, you are free of all limitations. There are only two kinds of limitations: the limitations imposed by the body and the limitations imposed by the mind. These are the only prisons, the only chains. Once you are out of these two you are as vast as the universe itself. Then you are just pure awareness, with no beginning, no end. The pure awareness is beyond time and space both. This is the beginning of true life, a life that is eternal, a life that knows no death. The first birth is not true birth because it will come to an end. It is bound to be followed by death. How can one call it a birth? It implies death. It is not the beginning of life, in fact it is the beginning of death. The moment a child is born he starts dying; when he is one day old it means he has died one day. If he is going to live seventy years now there is one day less. Every day life will be running out of his hands. Each birthday will be really a death day. A life that ends to death is not true life. Only a life that knows no death, knows no end, can be called a true life. Sannyas is the search for the true, the search for the second birth. In India we have called the seers twice-born, vija.
- That’s what sannyas is: a deliberate, conscious choice to be reborn again.
- This word ‘KALA’ is very meaningful: one meaning is time, another meaning is death. The same word means time and death. It is beautiful, because time is death. The moment you enter into time, you are ready to die. With birth, death has entered into you. When the child is born, he has entered into the realm of death. The birthday is also the deathday. Now only one thing is certain: that he will have to die. Everything else is just uncertain; it may happen, it may not happen. But the moment a child is born, the moment the child has taken his first breath, one thing is absolutely certain — that he will die. Entering into life is entering into death; entering into time is entering into death. Time is death, hence the Sanskrit word KALA is very beautiful. It means both time and death.
- The body is a momentary phenomenon. One day it was not, one day it will not be again. It exists only for the time being — it is like foam; looks so beautiful from the shore, the foam, the white foam of a wave. And if the sun has risen, around the foam can be created a rainbow; looks so beautiful, looks like diamonds, looks so white and so pure. But if you take it in your hands, it starts disappearing. Only your hands are left wet, that’s all. So is the case with the body. It looks beautiful, but death is growing in it, death is hiding in it, old age is waiting there. It is only a question of time. It is not that at a certain date you die. In fact, the reality is that the day you are born, you start dying. The child who is one day old has died a little bit, he has died one day. He will go on dying day by day. What you call your birthday is not really your birthday — you should call it your deathday. The man who is celebrating his fiftieth birthday is really celebrating his fiftieth deathday. Death has come closer. Now, if he is going to live seventy years, only twenty years are left. Fifty years he has already died! We are continuously dying as far as the body is concerned…it is foam disappearing. Don’t be deceived by seventy years because seventy years mean nothing in the expanse of eternity — what is the meaning of seventy years? It is foam, it is momentary.
- Death is bound to come. When you die is not important; death is absolutely certain, THAT is important. After birth only one thing is certain in life and that is death; everything else is uncertain. Don’t try to escape death, don’t try to avoid it. For centuries people have been trying all kinds of ways to avoid death, but death comes all the same. Whether married or unmarried it doesn’t matter: you will die. You are dying! In fact, death does not come one day suddenly; it starts the day you are born. You start dying from the very first breath. Each birthday is a deathday. Your life is slipping out of your hands and you cannot escape.
- We say ‘a child is born’. We should not say that — language creates the trouble: the birth continues. The child is not just born at a certain moment, at seven o’clock in the morning, and then starts living, no. He will continue to be born till he dies, so it is a continuous birth process for seventy years. The first day is not the birthday, it is just the beginning of the process of birth, and then he will be born and born and born and born. Again and again in a thousand and one ways he will go on growing. The process ends only at death, and that too, only apparently. Those who have known deeply, they say it never ends: beyond this life it will continue into another life. It ends only when a person has attained enlightenment; then the life wheel stops. Then there is no birth and no more birthing.
- A sannyasin is one who trusts in his own organism, and that trust helps him to relax into his being, and helps him to relax into the totality of existence. It brings a general acceptance of oneself and others. It gives a kind of rootedness, centering. And then there is great strength and power, because you are centered in your own body, in your own being. You have roots in the soil. Otherwise you see people uprooted, like trees that have been pulled up from the soil. They are simply dying, they are not living. That’s why there is not much joy in life. You don’t see the quality of laughter; the celebration is missing. And even if people celebrate that too is false. For example, it is the birthday of Krishna and people celebrate. How can you celebrate Krishna’s birthday? You have not even celebrated your own birthday. And somebody who was born five thousand years ago — how are you concerned with that, and how can you celebrate it? It is all phony. How can you celebrate Jesus Christ’s birthday? It is impossible. You have not celebrated the God that has come to you, that is inside you. How can you celebrate some other God who was born in a stable two thousand years ago? In your very body, in your very being, this very moment, God is there — and you have not celebrated it. You cannot celebrate. Celebration has to happen first in your own home, at close quarters. Then it becomes a great tidal wave and spreads all over existence.
- The moment you start feeling your inner light, your whole perspective starts changing. You will feel compassionate towards human beings even if they are doing stupid things. And you will feel immensely joyous, celebrating, even though you don’t have anything to celebrate. Nothing is needed to celebrate — only excuses… my birthday is just an excuse! But if you want to celebrate, you will find a thousand and one excuses. It is your life, and whatever becomes of it is your creation. Remember, there are hidden signatures on it. You cannot disassociate yourself from what you create, from the way you live, the way you respond. Once you are overflowing with love and blissfulness, you cannot, even in your dreams, act in a way which is humiliating to another. Because the other is not really the other, it is just part of us. We are one consciousness filling the whole universe.
- A single Buddha helps the world to flower again to its very peak; to sing again to its utmost; to dance again to its utter possibility; to bring its whole potentiality to a manifestation, to a celebration. So when a Buddha dissolves — as there is no other way to say it in language — when a Buddha dissolves the uniqueness becomes the uniqueness of the whole. Then the whole is enriched. Then the whole will never be the same again. It will never be. That is the meaning of Christians deciding on Jesus’ birth as a dividing factor in history. The whole calendar of Christians, and of non-Christians, is based on Jesus’ birthday. It is very symbolic. It means that history will now never be the same again because Jesus was born and because Jesus was crucified, and because Jesus has overcome death, is resurrected. Now the whole world is totally different — you may know it or you may not know it. If you were born before Jesus you would have been born in a totally different world. Jesus has given his quality to the world. It is a historic moment. Mahavir, Buddha, Lao Tzu, are all historic moments. Through them the universe is reaching higher and higher, the universe is reaching to a crescendo.
- Every moment the body is only in a relative balance, because death is progressing with life; you are dying also. You are not simply alive, you are dying simultaneously. Death and life are not two ends far away from each other. They are like two legs simultaneously walking – and they both belong to you. This very moment you are alive and dying both. Something is dying within you every moment. Within a span of seventy years, death will reach the goal. Every moment you will go on dying and dying and dying, and then you will die. The day you were born you started dying. The birthday is also the death-day. If you are dying continuously – and death is not something which will come from without, but something which will grow within – then the body can never be really healthy. How can it be? When it is dying every moment, how can it be really healthy? It can only be relatively healthy. So if you are normally healthy, it is enough. It is the same with the mind. The mind cannot be really healthy, whole, because the very existence of the mind is such that it is bound to remain diseased, ill at ease, tense, anxious in anxiety. The very nature of the mind is such.
- I was reading a song this morning and a few lines of that song appealed to me: JOR HE KYA THA JAFA-E-BAGVAN DEKNA KIYE ASHIAN UJRA KIYA HUM NATWAN DEKHA KIYE. The meaning is: The garden was being destroyed and I watched it helplessly. Yes, your whole life is the same story. Your garden will be destroyed daily. The spring will soon be over. Youth will also pass away. This speed and this energy will gradually become less and less. The house will be destroyed and death will come nearer and nearer. Life is only a momentary dream; death is approaching every minute. You are dying since the day you were born. A birthday is actually the death day also. You cannot postpone death, you cannot run away from death. It is coming nearer and nearer.
- Life goes on finishing drop by drop. Do not call it life, it is a lie. You can call it a gradual death. Do not celebrate birthdays, all are deathdays. The day you see death in your birthday and you hear the footsteps of death in life, you will know the truth. That truth will give you freedom. As soon as you know that truth you will start a new search — money will seem meaningless, the body will seem meaningless; the relations of body and money will become meaningless and even the world based on money and body will seem meaningless. And before knowing the truth it is necessary to know the untruth as untruth, the false as false.
- When a child is not born yet, he seems to be full. Just born, he starts emptying. The first day of birth is the first day of his dying. He starts emptying: one day dead, two days dead, three days dead. What you call your birthday would be better called your deathday — it would be nearer the truth. You have been dying for one year and you say a birthday has come. You have been dying for fifty years and you say you have lived for fifty years: “Let’s celebrate my golden anniversary.” But you died for fifty years. Death is drawing nearer and life is receding further and further: the bucket is emptying. Do you base your thinking about life on what is receding or do you base it on what is drawing nearer? What kind of inverted arithmetic is this? We are dying every day, death keeps creeping closer.
- Sannyas is a birthday, and it is the birthday of Christ in you.
- This is my message for you on your sannyas birthday: start seeing the splendour — it is tremendous. Feel more and more and love will arise of its own accord. One day suddenly you will be surprised — you are praying. And then prayer has a beauty of its own when it has a surprise. A learned prayer is bogus. A learned prayer is Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan. It is parrotlike, it is mechanical; you repeat it from the head. It does not arise out of your being; it does not come as a surprise. Real prayer always comes as a surprise. Suddenly you feel one day an immense urge to bow down… not to anyone in particular but to this beautiful existence itself. And that’s how one bows down to god.
- My sannyasins have all to be dancers, and no excuse should be missed; each excuse has to be used as an opportunity to dance. Somebody’s birthday, dance; somebody has died, dance. Somebody is ill, dance around him. Somebody is going for a journey, give him a farewell dance. Somebody is coming, welcome him with dance. Make it a point that the more you dance, the more you are in tune with god. When you dance it is god who dances in you; that’s why it is so beautiful. Whenever you dance you are no more separate, you don’t have a split. You are no more body/mind; you are no more this and that. You don’t have alternatives. All alternatives disappear, all dualities disappear. In fact there is no dancer and the dance; there is only dance! One comes to a state of non-duality, and non-duality is orgasm. That’s what people are searching for through love, through alcohol, through drugs — a state where they are no more separate from existence. But those methods are dangerous and very costly. You gain very little joy and you destroy your whole chemistry, your body. It is not worth it. Through dance you don’t lose anything and you gain infinity…. So dance here, mm? Very good!
- Become a sannyasin and things will change! By becoming a sannyasin you will die to your old past. There is no need to carry it; you can start afresh. Why not start your life anew, from ABC? This loaded life is not good. Erase it completely, make it discontinuous with the past. Let this be your birthday and start again. It is always good to start afresh.
- So this is my message to you on your sannyas birthday: let your meditations, your work on yourself, be creative, and remember always that one has to create more and more and more; and there is no end to it. Then your creative discontentment becomes a prayer towards god, your offering to god.
- The full-moon night has a very alchemical impact on the human consciousness. Buddha became enlightened on the full-moon night — not only that, he was born on the same full moon night, he became enlightened on the same full-moon night, he died on the same full moon. His birthday, his death day, his enlightenment day, all fall on one day — the full-moon night… the same month, the same night.
