Osho Quotes on Sacrifice
- The moment is the most important thing. So whatsoever you are doing at the moment, if you are on the path of love, do it with deep love, as if you are doing it for God. Make it a sacrifice. The word ‘sacrifice’ comes from the same root as ‘the sacred’. Sacrifice means making a thing sacred. If you are on the path of love, make everything that you are doing a sacrifice, a holy thing, as if you are preparing for God. He is to come, the guest is to come and you are doing everything for him. And in fact, it is so. The whole of life is a preparation for the guest and the whole of life is a preparation to become the host, so that when he comes, you are ready, when he knocks at the door everything is ready to receive him. If you are on the path of meditation, then too — this moment is the most important moment. On the path of meditation, the past has to be dropped, the future has to be dropped. You have to be just here-now.
- Life should be the supreme value. Nothing should be put above life. I call a man religious who puts life as the supreme value, and sacrifices everything to life, and never sacrifices his life to anything. Even if your country says, “The country is in difficulty — sacrifice your life! Become a martyr!” don’t be foolish. Life is the supreme value. No country has any right to sacrifice a single life. It is your life, and it is only yours.
- Never sacrifice your life for anything! Sacrifice everything for life! Life is the ultimate goal — greater than any country. greater than any religion, greater than any god, greater than any scripture.
- These two precepts of awareness and compassion are so valuable that even if you sometimes have to sacrifice your life for them, it is worth it. Life is nothing but an opportunity to attain to awareness and compassion. If you don’t attain awareness and compassion, what is the point of going on living? It is meaningless. Just meditate over it. If one is so much ready, so intent, so deeply committed to be aware and compassionate that he is ready to sacrifice his life, will he remain unaware long? Impossible! This very moment, if this intensity is there, awareness will happen out of this intensity. This intensity will flare up like a light inside, and out of that light, the radiance of compassion. Life in itself is not meaningful. It is meaningful only if you can sing a song of the eternal, if you can release some fragrance of the divine, of the godly, if you can become a lotus flower — deathless, timeless. If you can become pure love, if you can beautify this existence, if you can become a blessing to this existence, only then does life have significance; otherwise it is pointless. It is like an empty canvas: you can go on carrying it your whole life and you can die under its weight, but what is the point? Paint something on it! Meaning has to be created in life; meaning is not given already. You are given freedom, you are given creativity, you are given life. All that is needed to create meaning is given. All the essential ingredients of meaning are given, but meaning is not given, meaning has to be created by you. You have to become a creator in your own right. And when you became a creator in your own right, you participate with God, you become a part of God.
- Buddha says: Forgo everything that you have thought up to now meaningful, significant. Sacrifice everything for this ultimate because this is the only thing that will make you contented, that will make you fulfilled, that will bring spring to your being… and you will blossom into a thousand and one flowers.
- He says there is one thing which is higher than lust, that is the thirst for truth. There is one thing which is higher than life and that is the search for truth. People can sacrifice their life for it. They can sacrifice their passion for it. The highest passion is for truth; Buddha calls it the passion for truth — you can call it the passion for God — it means the same thing.
- Once you have known the ecstasy, it is worth going through all the pain. You can sacrifice everything for the ecstasy, because ecstasy is another name for God approaching closer to you. Your melting into God is what ecstasy is all about.
- Don’t pay much attention to excuses — they are meaningless. Behind the excuses the real problem hides. The real problem is: to become religious, one has to deny oneself — that is the only sacrifice needed. The ego has to be dropped. The mind has to cease for the God to be — and of course, then there is resistance.
- The search for truth is the search for the impossible. Religion itself is nothing but a passion for the impossible. But the beauty is — that impossible happens, that impossible also becomes possible. But you have to pay for it, and you have to pay tremendously. You have to sacrifice yourself utterly. You have to stake your whole life. If you stake your so-called life, you will attain to what Buddha calls to be alive, to what Jesus calls to be reborn, to what Hindus call to be twice born, dwij. Then a totally new dimension and a totally new quality of being arises in you… uncorrupted by time and space, uncontaminated by anything, absolutely and eternally virgin. Long for the impossible. Desire for the impossible.
- 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.
- God never asks any sacrifice from you. How can he ask any sacrifice from you? It is not a market. The paradise is not to be earned. You are not to pay for it. You have only to learn to enjoy it, that’s all. If you know how to enjoy it, right now it is available. You are not to pay for it. But our whole mind has been trained by economists and politicians. They say you will have to pay. Sacrifice your childhood in education so that when you are young you can have a beautiful house, a family, respect, a respectable job. You will have to pay for it — so sacrifice your childhood so when you are young you have all the pleasures of the world. Then when you are young your wife says, ‘Make insurance, because the children are growing and they will need. And we will be growing old — and old age? What are you going to do?’ Sacrifice your youth for old age so that in old age you can retire, and comfortably. So you sacrifice your youth for your old age. And then what do you do when you retire? Now the whole life is gone. Just preparing for something else always. And the more you prepare, the more you become skilful in preparing, that’s all. Then you can prepare more. A man who becomes skillful in preparing is never ready to live. He becomes more ready to prepare, that’s all. That’s how the whole life is missed. And then in the old age they say, ‘Now prepare for the other world. What are you doing? Pray, meditate, go to the church. Now become religious. What are you doing? Death is coming. Prepare for the afterlife.’ Now this whole logic is foolish. The childhood sacrificed for youth, the youth sacrificed for old age, the old age sacrificed for after-life. So everything is just a sacrifice. When comes the time to enjoy? Let me say to you — if you want to enjoy, never prepare! If you want to enjoy, enjoy! Do it right now, because there is no other way to do it.
- Forget about humanity, remember the human being — the real, the concrete, the throbbing, the alive. It is very easy to sacrifice human beings for humanity. It is very easy to sacrifice human beings for Islam, Christianity, Hinduism; it is very easy to sacrifice them for the idea of Christ, Buddha, Mahavir. Help, but don’t sacrifice. Who are you to sacrifice anybody? Each individual is his own end. Don’t use him as a means. That is the meaning when Jesus says: “The Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” Everything is made for man; man is the supreme value. Even God, the idea of God, is for man, and man is not for the idea of God. Sacrifice everything to man and don’t sacrifice man to anything whatsoever. Then you help. If you start sacrificing man, then you are not helping. You are destroying, you are crippling the other. You are violent, you are a criminal. So all your so-called mahatmas who try to change the other are criminals. One can just love, help, be ready to give unconditionally. Share your being, but let the other move towards his own destiny. That destiny is unknown; nobody knows what is going to flower. Don’t give a pattern, otherwise the flower will be crushed. And remember that each individual being is unique. There has never been such a being before and there is never going to be again. God never repeats, he is not repetitive. He goes on inventing.
- This is compassion — when the other becomes more valuable than you. This is love — when you can sacrifice yourself for the other. When you become the means and the other becomes the end, this is love. When you are the end and the other is used as a means, this is lust. Lust is always cunning and love is always compassionate.
- I don’t know Jesus through Christian theology; I know him directly. And my knowing is that he cannot talk in terms of sacrifice — first thing, the very first. A man like Jesus does not talk in terms of sacrifice; it is celebration, not sacrifice. He is going to meet his God dancing, singing. It is not sacrifice; he is not a martyr. The Christian church tries to make him the greatest martyr, the greatest man who has sacrificed himself for the salvation of the world from the sins of man. In the first place it is not sacrifice — sacrifice looks business-like — it is celebration! Jesus is celebrating his life and his death. Secondly: nobody can solve the problems of others, nobody can be the salvation of the world. And you can see it: the world is still the same. Twenty centuries have passed and Christian priests go on talking nonsense, that he sacrificed himself for the salvation of the world. But where is the salvation of the world? Either he failed, he could not manage… that they cannot accept, that he failed. Then what happened? The world seems to be exactly the same — nothing has changed! Humanity remains in the same misery. But Jesus cannot have said, I have come for the salvation of the world.
- Whenever there is a possibility of any conflict between love and knowledge, real education will help you to be ready to drop your knowledge and move with your love; it will give you courage, it will give you adventure. It will give you space to live, accepting all risks, insecurities; it will help you to be ready to sacrifice yourself if love demands it. It will put love not only above knowledge but even above life, because life is meaningless without love. Love without life is still meaningful; even if your body dies it makes no difference to your love energy. It continues, it is eternal, it is not a time phenomenon. To have a loving heart, you need a little less calculating head. To be capable of loving you need to be capable of wondering. That’s why, Nur, I always say that awe and childlike innocence are deeply related with the energy called love. In fact they are different names for the same thing.
- A lover knows nothing of sacrifice. When you are surrendered, you are dead as far as your ego is concerned. Then whatsoever happens, you not only accept it, you accept in deep gratitude.
- The head cannot sacrifice. Only the heart can sacrifice. Unless you are ready to sacrifice your all, God cannot become a truth to you. He demands all, not a small bit less. He demands you totally. That is the challenge. Only the heart is mad enough to do that; the head is too clever. It can give a little, but it always holds much back. It can come out a little, but the major part remains inside: watching. seeing, calculating whether it is worth it. It is always ready to withdraw if things go too far.
- This moment is available to you: sing a song, live it in its totality. And don’t try to sacrifice it for any other moment that is going to come in the future. Live it for its own sake.
- Desiring is insane. Enjoy life! — but don’t be too much bothered about tomorrows. Don’t sacrifice your today for tomorrows; otherwise you will always go on missing all the opportunities which open up for your inner growth.
- I am not preparing you for any subtle enjoyment in the future, my whole method is to enjoy it right now. Who knows? There may be no future. Why waste this moment? Enjoy, delight! There is no need to sacrifice this moment for any other moment, because any other moment, if it is ever to come, is going to be just like this moment. So why sacrifice this moment? I am against all sacrifice. I don’t tell you to sacrifice the present for the future — that has been told to you by your parents, your teachers, your educational system, your society. They all say sacrifice the present for the future. I say don’t sacrifice anything. Live it, delight in it, so that you can learn how to be blissful. Once you know it, even in the future you will be able to delight.
- You can drop your ego only if you come across a person who catches hold of your heart so tremendously that his being becomes more important than your own being, that you can sacrifice all that you have for him.
- Truth is not cheap; belief is very cheap. Truth is very costly — you will have to pay with your life. Truth requires total sacrifice, nothing less will do.
- Sri Aurobindo also talks in the same language — the language of evolution. Not the superman but the supermind is the goal. And you have to sacrifice your present for that supermind; again the same idea of sacrifice. Man has remained dominated by the idea of sacrifice. Sacrifice! Sacrifice! Sacrifice! Be a martyr! That’s the only way to create a golden future. My effort here is just the opposite. Avoid Adolf Hitlers and Sri Aurobindos. No sacrifice! Don’t try to be a martyr! There is no other goal than this moment, and existence is as perfect as is ever possible. Existence is as perfect as it ever will be. Existence is perfection.
- Live in the world without any idea of what is going to happen. Whether you are going to be a winner or a loser, it doesn’t matter. Death takes everything away. Whether you lose or win is immaterial. The only thing that matters, and has always been, is how you played the game. Did you enjoy it? — the game itself — then each moment is of joy. You never sacrifice the moment for the future.
- Darkness is only the absence of light — so is ego: absence of self-knowledge. You cannot sacrifice it. It has been told to you again and again: “Sacrifice your ego” — and the statement is patently absurd, because something that does not exist cannot be sacrificed. And if you try to sacrifice it, something which is not there in the first place at all, you will be creating a new ego — the ego of the humble, the ego of the egoless, the ego of the person who thinks he has sacrificed his ego. It will be a new kind of darkness again. No, I don’t say to you: Sacrifice the ego. On the contrary, I say: Try to see where the ego is. Look DEEP into it; try to locate it, where it exists, whether it exists at all or not. Before one can sacrifice anything one must be certain about its existence. But don’t be against it from the very beginning. If you are against it, you cannot look deep into it. There is no need to be against anything. The ego is your experience — maybe it is just apparent, but it is still your experience. Your whole life moves around the phenomenon of the ego. It may be a dream. But to you it is so true. There is no need to be against it. Dive deep into it, go into it. Going into it means bringing awareness into your house, bringing light into darkness. Be alert, watchful. Watch the ways of the ego, how it functions, how it manages at all. And you will be surprised: the deeper you go into it, the less it is found. And when you have penetrated to the very core of your being, you will find something totally different which is not ego, which is egolessness. It is self, supreme self — it is God. You have disappeared as a separate entity; you are no more an island, now you are part of the whole. In that experience of being one with the whole, the ego IS sacrificed, but that is only a way of speaking, a metaphor. Don’t take it literally. Try to understand the ego. Analyse it, dissect it, watch it, observe it, from as many angles as possible. And don’t be in a hurry to sacrifice it, otherwise the greatest egoist is born: the person who thinks he is humble, the person who thinks that he has no ego.
