Osho Quotes on a Buddha or Awakened One or Enlightened Person

Osho Quotes on a Buddha or Awakened One or Enlightened Person

1. The help is possible only through a buddha. The help is possible only through the awakened one.
2. Blind people are leading other blind people and they have created all kinds of superstitions, mythologies, religions. Only a buddha is capable, only one who is awakened, only one who up to now had belonged to you. You are asleep and he is awake, that is the only difference; there is no other difference. He can help you to be awakened because he knows how he has become awake, how difficult it is, what problems have to be faced. He knows your state.
3. Who is an awakened man? One who has come to know what is dream, one who has come to know what is not dream. When you are asleep, dream looks real. In the morning when you awake, then you know that it was unreal. A Buddha is one who has awakened — awakened out of this so-called life and has come to realize that it is a dream. If you are also feeling the pain, the frustration, the misery of this dreamlife, this futile life, only then you start moving towards a source of light; otherwise not. Buddha says those are the few favoured ones.
4. Remember, by `buddha’ is not meant any personal name. `Buddha’ simply means the awakened one. Anyone who becomes awakened, enlightened, is the buddha. You are also the buddha; the only difference is that you are not aware of it. You have never looked inside yourself and found the buddha there.
5. Buddha simply means one who is awakened. Gautam Buddha is the most famous awakened person but that does not mean that he is the only awakened person. There have been many buddhas before him and there have been many buddhas after him and as long as every human being can become a buddha, there will go on springing up new buddhas in the future. Because everybody has the potentiality …it is only for a time, the right time that you are waiting. Some day, tortured by the outside reality, in despair of having seen everything and found nothing, you are bound to turn inwards.
6. If on any one single theme all the buddhas of the world agree, this is the theme: that man as he is is asleep, and man as he should be should be awake. Wakefulness is the goal, and wakefulness is the taste of all their teachings. Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Jesus, Buddha, Bahauddin, Kabir, Nanak — all the awakened ones have been teaching one single theme, in different languages, in different metaphors, but their song is the same. Just as the sea tastes of salt — whether the sea is tasted from the north or from the east or from the west, the sea always tastes of salt — the taste of buddhahood is wakefulness.
7. Remember only one thing: your basic nature is absolute silence, serenity, peace, almost a nothingness, an emptiness. And that is your buddha-nature, that is your nature awakened to its own potential. To be aware of it is the greatest experience of life, because it brings liberation from life, birth, death. It takes you out of the wheel that goes on eternally giving you birth and death, and all the agonies and the sufferings. It takes you out into the world of ecstasy, of eternal blissfulness.
8. The moment you reach to the center, you are no more. You find for the first time your original face. I call that original face the buddha, the awakened one.
9. The East has called the original face the buddha, the awakened one. The buddha has only one quality — witnessing. Witness that you are not the body. Witness that you are not the mind. Witness that you are not the seven subtle bodies behind the body, layer upon layer. Witness that you are only a witness, and nothing else — a pure consciousness.
10. We have called the awakened ones by another name also: paramahansa, the great swan, who flies alone into the unknown and disappears into the cosmos, becomes one with the cosmos — not a part but the whole.
11. Just remain watchful, witnessing the body, the mind. You are neither of them. You are only the witness. This witness is metaphorically referred to as the buddha, the awakened one.
12. The nearer you reach to your center … a great peace arises within you. And the moment your arrow of consciousness penetrates into the center, for the first time you encounter your original face. The other name of your original face is the buddha, the awakened one. The only quality of the buddha is witnessing.
13. Just at the very center you are the buddha, the awakened one.
14. The very word `buddha’ simply means awareness.
15. Live like a buddha. The only thing to remember is: just be a witness. The witness is the master key. Thousands of masters have come to the same conclusion: that to be at the center, just a witness, is to become a buddha, the awakened one. Then, slowly slowly persuade the buddha to come to your ordinary life. From the hidden sources, bring him to your extrovert activities. When the inner and the outer become one, the miracle has happened.
16. The only hope for you is to be in deep contact with somebody who is awakened. The awakened one is called the master — SATGURU. If you can find a master, don’t miss the opportunity — surrender, relax into his being, imbibe his awareness, let his fragrance surround you. And the day is not far away when you will also be awakened, you will also be a buddha. Keep on reminding yourself that unless you are a buddha, your life is a wastage. Only by being a buddha does one’s life have grace, beauty, intelligence, significance, benediction.
17. When the awakened one knocks on your door, please open the door, because you may miss the opportunity and you may miss it for many many lives. It is very rare to come across a Buddha, a Christ, a Krishna, a Mahavira, a Mohammed. If you are fortunate enough to come across an awakened person, then don’t be miserly. Then drop yourself totally, then be committed totally.
18. Whenever a buddha passes, those who are on the borderline of sleep feel that something has happened to this man. He behaves differently, he speaks differently, he lives differently, he walks differently. Something has happened to this man. Those who are on the borderline can feel it, but they are asleep. And this borderline is not permanent. Again they may go in a deep sleep, but even a word can pull them out. So before they fall down into deeper unconsciousness they can surrender to the awakened one.
19. One can be helped only by a buddha, by one who is awakened, because only the awakened can wake those who are fast asleep. If you are asleep and your psychoanalyst is asleep, who is going to wake you up?
20. That’s exactly the meaning of the word ‘buddha’: one who has become awakened, one who is enlightened, one who is no longer dreaming. And when you are not dreaming, you have clarity, you can see. And that very seeing becomes the determining factor of your life. Only then you do that which should be done and you don’t do that which should not be done. It is not a question of discriminating between right and wrong. It is a question of coming out of your sleep. Wake up!
21. The only difference between you and the awakened one is that you go on being dominated by the frantic mind, which is continuously restless. Buddha has overcome it; he has put his mind to rest. This is the only difference.
22. Only a buddha, only one who is awakened, can wake you up. Shakespeare is as fast asleep as you are, or maybe even deeper asleep than you are, because he is having such beautiful dreams. His sleep is bound to be deep, because he is not only having dreams, he is singing his dreams. He is bringing his dreams to expression — and still his sleep is not broken. Buddha is one who is awakened. Only one who is awake can wake you up.
23. Christ is not a person, it is an experience. Jesus had it, you can have it. Christ is synonymous with Buddha. What we call in the East the buddha, the awakened, the West has called the christ, the crowned one. Jesus Christ cannot come back, but you can become christ any moment. Christ is already hidden in you as a seed; you are all bodhisattvas, buddhas in essence, in seed. Just a little effort, a little understanding and you can bloom, and your fragrance can be released. Jesus bloomed, Buddha bloomed, so can you. Why wait for Jesus Christ’s coming? That is avoiding the fundamental quest. Why not become one? What is the point of waiting for someone else to come and deliver you, and how can anybody else deliver you? The deliverance that will come from somebody else will not be much of a deliverance. Freedom has to be earned, it cannot be given; if it is given, it can be taken away. If it is given it is not yours, it is not your growth. And anything that is given to you remains only an accumulation on the outside. It never becomes part of your interiority.
24. Christ is equivalent to buddha. Buddha has nothing to do with Gautam Siddhartha — anybody can become a buddha. Whosoever becomes awakened is a buddha and whosoever is awakened, is crowned by the glory of awakening, is christ. Christ means the crowned one. One who has come home and is crowned with the glory of becoming one with God is a christ. You can be a christ. There have been many christs before Jesus Christ and there will be many more. In fact, ultimately, each individual has to reach to the state of christhood.
25. If you are rightly following the way of the awakened ones — Jesus, Buddha, Mahavira, Mohammed, it does not make any difference — then one sure sign is that you will be joyful for no reason at all. You will be just joyful, naturally. If that thing is missing, remember, you have misunderstood. You have gone onto some wrong track, you have misinterpreted.
26. Buddha says: Know thyself. Socrates says: Know thyself. They all say: Know thyself. All the awakened ones have only one message: Know thyself. We listen and yet we don’t listen. We go on moving on the same rotten tracks, we go on living in the same old miserable way. And the reason is, the old, miserable way has one thing to give to you — the ego. And if you go in you will have to pay the price. The price is, you will have to lose your ego.
27. Perhaps all the awakened ones have emphasized the fact — they have to because it is so real and so significant, it has to be told to the people — that the master cannot give anything to you. If he could, he would have given you everythin. But as far as enlightenment is concerned it is absolutely your individual, private territory. Nobody can interfere with it. Then what is the purpose of the master? His purpose is to take away from you things which you think you are. His purpose is negative — he simply takes away your false conceptions. And once all false conceptions are taken away from you, that which is real illuminates in all its beauty. He has not given you anything, but he has removed all the obstructions, all the hindrances which you were clinging to. The moment you become enlightened, you will know that this experience has been always with you — just your eyes were closed. The master tries in every way, with arbitrary devices, to wake you up. Once you are awake nothing has to be said, because you are seeing yourself. And the experience of enlightenment is exactly the same.
28. A person who is enlightened, who is awakened, feels he is even responsible for the whole mess that you have created. A buddha feels compassion. A buddha feels guilty for your crimes, for your sins; he feels involved, he feels responsible. He knows that you do not know; he is fully aware. For example, the third world war is going to come. The one who is awakened knows full well that it is coming. It is coming nearer daily. Soon it will be over us. You are asleep and deep in it. He is not in a sleep, he is not in a dream. He is fully conscious like radar; he knows the future that is coming. He feels guilty, he must do something. For example, you are in a plane, flying in the sky. You are asleep, dreamy, but the pilot is aware. If anything is going to happen, if the engine begins to make a noise, a very slight noise; if no one knows about it but something has gone wrong, only he will be responsible. No one else is responsible. He is fully awake, and the only one.