Osho Quotes on Body
- Do you respect your body? It serves you for seventy years without any salary, without going on a strike, without taking a morcha — a protest march — against you. But you have not even thought that some respect is due, that your body needs to be valued.
- Whatsoever I’m doing is not enforced, it is spontaneous. That’s how by and by I became aware of my body’s needs. I always listen to my body. I would never impose my mind on the body. Do likewise and you will have a happier, a more blissful life.
- When a man is happy with his body, has enough to eat, has a good house to live in, he starts becoming interested in music, poetry, literature, painting, art. Now a new hunger arises. The bodily needs are fulfilled, now psychological needs arise. There is a hierarchy in needs: the first is the body; it is the base, it is the ground-floor of your being. Without the ground-floor, the first storey cannot exist. When your bodily needs are fulfilled, psychological needs arise. When your psychological needs are also fulfilled, then your spiritual needs arise.
- There are physical needs which should be fulfilled first, because without the body the soul may melt and merge into the cosmos, but it cannot live on the earth.
- You are what you eat, because what you eat makes your mind, makes your body, makes your senses, gives you qualities.
- I say Patanjali is scientific. If you want to change the body posture, Patanjali will say change your food habits, because every food habit creates subtle body postures. If you are a meat eater you cannot sit Buddha-like. If you are non-vegetarian your posture will be different, if you are vegetarian your posture will be different — because the body is built by your food. It is not an accident. Whatsoever you are putting in the body, the body will reflect it. So vegetarianism for Patanjali is not a moralist cult, it is a scientific method. When you eat meat you are not only taking food, you are allowing a certain animal from which the meat has come to enter in you. The meat was part of a particular body; the meat was part of a particular instinct pattern. The meat was the animal just few hours before, and that meat carries all the impressions of the animal, all the habits of the animal. When you are eating meat your many attitudes will be affected by it. And if you are sensitive you can become aware that whenever you eat certain things, certain changes immediately come. You can take alcohol and then you are not the same. Immediately a new personality has come in. Alcohol cannot create a personality, but it changes your body pattern. The body chemistry is changed With the change of the body chemistry, the mind has to change its pattern and when the mind changes pattern a new personality has come in.
- If you change direction, the body takes a jump; only the direction has to be changed. One should become aware, that whatsoever one is eating must be such that it doesn’t make one’s body heavy. This heaviness is not concerned with weight: sometimes you feel that you are weightless, as if you can fly. So the food that can give you the feeling of weightlessness is the right food. The food that gives you the feeling of being burdened is not the right food. All non-vegetarian foods make you more rooted in the earth; you cannot fly. Vegetarian foods give you wings; you have an inner feeling that you can just levitate, you can just go out of gravitation. Food is right if it is non-gravitational. If you can feel non-physical in it, it is good. Really, the body is felt only when it is heavy; when you have the feeling of heaviness inside, only then you feel the body. When the body is not heavy with wrong foods, you are bodiless. That’s why when the body is diseased, when the body is ill, you feel it; when it is healthy, you don’t feel it. You feel your head only when there is a headache; when there is no headache, there is no head.
- If you are against your body, you are bound for trouble. You will fight with your body, and you and your body are one energy. The body is the visible soul, and the soul is the invisible body. The body and soul are not divided anywhere, they are parts of each other, they are parts of one whole. You have to accept the body, you have to love the body, you have to respect the body, you have to be grateful to your body. Only then will you attain to a certain kind of integrity, a crystallization will happen; otherwise you will remain troubled. And the body will not leave you so easily; even after hundreds of lives the fight will be there. You cannot defeat the body.
- I am not saying that the body cannot be won over, mind you, but you cannot defeat the body. You cannot defeat it by being inimical towards it. You can win over it by being friendly, by being loving, by being respectful, by trusting it. That’s exactly my approach: the body is the temple, you are the deity of the temple. The temple protects you, shelters you against rain, against wind, against heat. It is in your service! Why should you fight? It is as stupid as the driver fighting the car. If the driver fights with his car, what is going to happen? He will destroy the car and he will destroy himself in fighting with it. The car is a beautiful vehicle, it can take you on the farthest journeys.
- The body always gives you the right indication in the right moment. If you just listen to the wisdom of the body, all your wise men will look fools. Your body has its own wisdom. Rather than looking in THE HOLY BIBLE, or in the holy KORAN, or in the holy GITA, you should listen to your own body. When it is thirsty, it says; when it needs rest, it says. When it is rested, it wants some exercise, it wants to run, to play, to swim, to go for a long walk. But you are not listening to the body because your religions have said that the body is your enemy. Once you accept the idea that the body is your enemy, naturally you are not going to listen to the enemy. And who is the friend? — the priest, the prophet, the savior, the messenger, who are all somehow crackpots. If you look into their lives without any prejudice you can see the cracks in the pot.
- The first thing Kabir says is: O SADHU! PURIFY YOU BODY IN THE SIMPLE WAY. Don’t fight with it, cooperate with it. Befriend it, and be spontaneous with it. Fulfill bodily needs, because the body is a chariot and you can make it go to God. It will become your passage, it will take you, you can ride on it. It has been given to you for a particular goal. It is a very valuable mechanism: science has not yet been able to create anything comparable to the body — and I don’t think they will ever be able to create anything comparable to the body. The body is God’s most beautiful mechanism.
- Animals eat, man eats. Then what is the difference? Man makes a great aesthetic experience out of eating. What is the point of having a beautiful dining table? What is the point of having candles burning there? What is the point of incense? What is the point of asking friends to come and participate? It is to make it an art, not just stuffing. But these are outward signs of the art; the inward signs are to understand the language of your body: to listen to it, to be sensitive to its needs. And then you eat, and then the whole day you will not remember food at all. Only when the body is hungry again will the remembrance come. Then it is natural.
- The body has great wisdom — allow it. Allow it more and more to follow its own wisdom. And whenever you have time, just relax. Let the breathing go on on its own, don’t interfere. Our habit to interfere has become so ingrained that you cannot even breathe without interfering. If you watch breathing, you will immediately see you have started interfering: you start taking deep breaths, or you start exhaling more. No need to interfere at all. Just let the breath be as it is; the body knows exactly what it needs. If it needs more oxygen it will breathe more; if it needs less oxygen it will breathe less. Just leave it to the body! Become absolutely non-interfering. And wherever you feel any tension, relax that part. And slowly slowly… first begin while you are sitting, resting and then while you are doing things. You are cleaning the floor or working in the kitchen or in the once — keep that relaxedness. Action need not be an interference in your relaxed state. And then there is a beauty, a great beauty, to your activity. Your activity will have the flavour of meditativeness.
- The body is very wise. The mind is a very late arrival. The body has lived millions of years, it knows what is needed. It is the mind that interferes. Mind is very immature, body is very mature. Listen to the body. And when I say listen to the body, I don’t mean remain confined to the body. If you listen to the body, the body will not have anything to say to you — things will be settled. And when the body is at ease, relaxed, and there is no tension, and the body is not fighting for something, is not trying to attract your attention because you are not fulfilling a need, when the body is calm and quiet, you can float high, you can fly high, you can become a white cloud. But only when body needs are truly looked after. The body is not your enemy, it is your friend. The body is your earth, the body has all your roots. You have to find a bridge between you and your body. If you don’t find that bridge, you will be constantly in conflict with your body — and a person who is fighting with himself is always miserable. The first thing is to come to a peace-pact with your body and never break it. Once you have come to a peace-pact with your body, the body will become very, very friendly. You look after the body, the body will look after you — it becomes a vehicle of tremendous value, it becomes the very temple. One day your body itself is revealed to you as the very shrine of God.
- When the body sits completely immobile it helps the mind to relax, because body and mind are not two separate things — they are one. You are not body and mind, you are bodymind. You are psychosomatic, so everything that happens in the body has subtle vibrations in the mind; and anything that happens in the mind reaches to the body.
- Your body needs food, your soul also needs food. The bodily food is gross, obviously; the body is part of the gross world. The spiritual food is invisible — in music, in poetry, in beauty, in dance, in song, in prayer, in meditation…and you go deeper and deeper towards the spiritual nourishment.
- A moment finally comes when you can watch even your sleep. That is the ultimate in watching. The body goes to sleep and there is still a watcher awake, silently watching the body fast asleep. That is the ultimate in watching. Right now just the opposite is the case: your BODY is awake but you are asleep. Then YOU will be awake and your body will be asleep. The body needs rest but your consciousness needs no sleep. Your consciousness IS consciousness; it is alertness, that is its very nature.
- The body tires because the body lives under the law of gravitation; it is gravitation that makes you tired. That’s why running fast you will be tired soon, going upstairs you will be tired soon, because the gravitation pulls you downwards. In fact, to stand is tiring, to sit is tiring. When you lie down flat, horizontal, only then is there a little rest for the body, because now you are in tune with the law of gravitation. When you are standing, vertical, you are against the law; the blood is going towards the head, against the law, the heart has to pump hard.
- A buddha is awake. Even while he is asleep he does not dream. When desires disappear, dreams disappear too. Dreams are desires translated into the language of sleep. A buddha sleeps with absolute alertness. The light goes on burning within him. The body needs rest, hence the body sleeps, but he needs no rest — the energy is inexhaustible. There, at the center of his being, a small light goes on burning. The whole circumference is fast asleep, but that light is alert, awake. We are asleep even while we are awake: he is awake even while he is asleep.
- When your basic needs are fulfilled — your body is healthy, you have a hygienic world to live in, a good house, good clothes, good food, nourished — suddenly you feel that you need something of the aesthetic world — music, art, poetry. You become interested in Picasso and Van Gogh, and you become interested in Pablo Neruda — and a thousand doors open. When your aesthetic needs are also fulfilled, when you are getting bored by Beethoven also, Mozart also, then suddenly another door opens — the door of the Buddha, Krishna, Christ. That is the highest need. When every lower need is fulfilled then spirituality arises.
