Osho Quotes on Suicide
- I know you are bored with life. If you are really bored, then meditation is the way, not suicide — because suicide will bring you to the SAME life, maybe an uglier life than you have right now, because suicide will create its own ugliness in you. To commit suicide is such an ungrateful act towards God. He gives you life as an opportunity to grow, and you throw away the opportunity. And unless you grow, unless you grow and become a Buddha, you will be thrown back into life again and again. Millions of times it has happened before: it is time now you should become aware. Don’t miss this opportunity.
- Sannyas is a suicide — the real one. It is not destroying the body, because destroying the body is not going to help; you will be immediately born again somewhere in some other womb. It will only be renewing the body; it is not real suicide. Sannyas is real suicide, because it destroys the mind, it takes you beyond the mind. And if you are beyond the mind you will not be born again. Why be born again and again? Why go on in this vicious circle? I know you are bored with life. If you are really bored, then meditation is the way, not suicide — because suicide will bring you to the SAME life, maybe an uglier life than you have right now, because suicide will create its own ugliness in you. To commit suicide is such an ungrateful act towards God. He gives you life as an opportunity to grow, and you throw away the opportunity. And unless you grow, unless you grow and become a Buddha, you will be thrown back into life again and again. Millions of times it has happened before: it is time now you should become aware. Don’t miss this opportunity.
- To commit suicide in a single moment won’t do because in a single moment you can be deluded, you can be in an illusion. If you take poison, it can be done in a single moment. It is my feeling that if people who commit suicide are delayed for even a single moment, they will never do it; if delayed for even a single moment, they will change their mind. They commit suicide in a sort of madness. They are so fed up, they do it in a single moment, and they don’t have any chance to go back on their own decision. There is no time left. They jump. They may suffer in the ocean and they may start crying and weeping and shouting, ‘Save me!’ but now it is too late. Their whole being would like to come back to life. And soon they will be back in a womb. This is no suicide, a temporary suicide is no suicide. You will be back again in another womb, and, worse than that, the committing of suicide will hang around you, it will become a karma. It will be like a dark shadow, a gloominess around your face, around your being. You will move in life shrouded in death. That will not be good. I can allow you and I can admit you to total suicide: that’s what I am all about, that’s what I am doing here — preaching total suicide. Total means no coming back, and that is possible only through deep meditation. A point comes when all desires really disappear.
- I will teach you real suicide, you can go for ever. That’s what it means to become a Buddha — to go for ever. When somebody used to commit this suicide in samadhi, Buddha had a special name for him, he would call him ANAGAMI — one who will not return. One who has gone to the farthest shore and will not be coming back. I can make you anagami, a non-returner. Then no womb can be a trap for you again.
- By committing suicide, by jumping into a river, or in the ocean, or from a hilltop, you can destroy the physical part of you. But your physical part is not basic, your mental part is the base. Your mental part carries the blueprint for the physical. Your mind will jump into another womb and will start gathering another physical part. It will be born again. Suicide is useless. I am not against suicide because it is a crime. I am against suicide because it is futile, it is foolish. It is stupid. If you really want to commit suicide, then become a sannyasin. Then you will be destroying the mind, the deep blueprint for your future lives. That’s what Buddha said — become a srotapanna, enter the stream. Rather than jumping from the cliff, rather than jumping into the ocean and dying a physical death, jump into a Buddha and die a spiritual death. That’s what sannyas is all about — dying in me. It is carrying your own cross. If you are really fed up with your life, then destroy the very possibility of its being repeated again and again. Become a srotapanna. Then you will become a skridagamin; once more you will come. Then you will become an anagamin; no more you will come.
- To feel that life is utterly meaningless is to be on a crossroads: either you choose suicide or you choose sannyas; either you choose madness or you choose meditation. It is a great turning-point!
- Suicide leads nowhere, it simply enters your consciousness into another womb of a lower kind, because you could not manage to live on a higher level.
- Dying in suicide is dying in such anguish, because it is one of the most unnatural things to do, most abnormal things to do. No animal commits suicide, no tree ever commits suicide — only man. Only man can go that insane. Nature knows nothing of suicide; it is man’s invention. It is the most ugly act. And when you do something ugly to yourself you cannot hope that you will get a better life. You will die in an ugly state of mind and you will enter an uglier womb.
- Each creative act becomes a rebirth for the creator, and each indifferent act becomes a suicide, a slow death. Be overflowing. Don’t be misers. Don’t try to hold — share! And let care be your very center of life. And then there is no need to go to the church, no need to go to the temple, no need to kneel down before any god and pray. Your butterfly life, your way of life, is prayer. Whatsoever you touch will become sacred. I say whatsoever, unconditionally. Love makes everything sacred. Carelessness makes everything ugly.
- In the East, sannyas has a totally different flavour. The moment you become a sannyasin you are no longer a Hindu, you are no longer a Mohammedan, you are no longer a Christian. The moment you become a sannyasin, you drop out of all collectivities. You become yourself. You will be surprised to know that in the East people don’t commit suicide as much as in the West. And the difference is big — too big to be just accidental. In the East we have created a creative kind of suicide, that is sannyas. You can still live, but you can live in your own way. Then the need for suicide disappears, or becomes very much less. In the West it always has happened that the unique individuals have to commit suicide. The mediocre go on living, the unique have to commit suicide. A van Gogh, a Hemingway. a Mayakovski, a Nijinsky — these are unique individuals. Either they have to commit suicide or they have to go mad — the society drives them mad. The society puts so much pressure on them that either they have to yield to the society and become just anonymous, or they have to go mad, or they have to commit suicide. And all are destructive alternatives.
- Sannyas takes you out of this life in a very creative way — it becomes a transcendence.
- To me, in my understanding, a person who is ready to commit suicide is the right person for sannyas, because that means that he is really fed up with the whole nonsense that the so-called life is. He is fed up with it and sees no meaning in it. But ordinary suicide is simply very destructive. I teach you a very creative suicide. You die — but you not only die… you resurrect. On this side there is crucifixion; on another side there is resurrection. That is the meaning of jesus’ crucifixion that he died and yet he didn’t die. Sannyas is that type of death. You die and yet you really become, for the first time, alive. This situation comes to every sensible man, to every man who has a little awareness, a little intelligence. He starts thinking, ‘What is the point of it all? It seems so pointless.’ Only mediocre minds never think about it. Only stupid people go on in the rut — moving in the rut. But if you have a little intelli-gence, you are bound to feel that this life has no meaning — some other life has to be searched for. So intelligence is a great responsibility, and intelligence is a great chaos, because intelligence is creativity. I can understand your turmoil — because you are an intelligent person; that’s why you are in a turmoil. Stupid people are never in a turmoil. They are unfortunate. Become a sannyasin!
- Why should one want to commit suicide? Death is coming on its own — why are you in such a hurry? Death will come, it always comes. Even if you don’t want it to come, it comes. You need not go to meet it, it comes uninvited. But you must be missing your life badly. It is out of anger, out of desperation, that you want to commit suicide. I will teach you the real suicide: Become a sannyasin. And the ordinary suicide will-not help much, you will be born immediately into some other womb somewhere. Some foolish couple will be making love somewhere, remember…and you will be trapped again. You cannot escape so easily — there are fools and fools. Before you will be escaping from this body you will be caught in another net. And again you will have to go to the school and the college and the university — just think of that! Think of all those miserable experiences — that will prevent you from committing suicide.
- Being here with me, learn the real art of suicide. The real art consists not in destroying the body…the body is beautiful, the body has not done any wrong. It is the ugly mind. The body is beautiful, the soul is beautiful, but between the body and the soul there is something which is neither body nor soul. This in-between phenomenon is the mind. It is mind that goes on dragging you back into the womb. When you die, if you commit suicide you will be thinking of life. Committing suicide means you are thinking of life. You are bored, fed up with life; you would like a totally different kind of life, that’s why you are committing suicide — not that you are really against life. THIS life you are against. Maybe you don’t want to be the way you are: you would like to be an Alexander, a Napoleon, an Adolph Hitler; maybe you want to be the richest man in the world, and you are not. This life has failed, and you would like to be famous, successful — destroy it! People commit suicide not because they are really finished with life but because life is not fulfilling their demands. But no life ever fulfills anybody’s demands. You will always go on missing something or other: if you have money, you may not be beautiful; if you are beautiful, you may not be intelligent; if you are intelligent, you may not have money.
- Meditation is the method of inner transformation. When suicide and meditation remain the only two alternatives and nothing else is left — either destroy yourself because your whole life is meaningless, or transform yourself into a new plane of being — one has to choose between suicide and meditation.
- Sannyas is a transformation of life. Suicide is an escape from life. In both the ways you go beyond. In both the ways you get rid of this so-called life. But by suicide it is only a temporary thing — again you will be back, again and again you will be back. With sannyas, the door opens. You may not come back, or, even if you come, you will come in a better way, more aware. Even if you come, you will come to learn something, to mature.
- Sannyas is creative, suicide is destructive. In suicide, you are simply doing something desperate. In sannyas, you are doing something very deliberate to transform your ways, your very style of life. In fact it is not with life that you are fed up it is with your way of life. It is not really with life that you are fed up — because in fact you don’t know what life is — but with your pattern of life, the narrowing that you have made your life, the tunnel-like phenomenon that you have created out of your life, the imprisonment that you created out of your life.
- Sannyas is a suicide — a suicide of the personality — and a rebirth, a rebirth of individuality. And the innocence and the freshness and the beauty of it is just beyond words. It is simply an ecstasy that goes on growing every day bigger and bigger. It knows no limits.
- We can commit a deep suicide — not of the body, but of the mind. And that deep suicide of the mind is SAMADHI. That deep suicide of the mind is meditation.
- I need people who are ready to commit suicide because these are the only people who can become sannyasins. Sannyas is also a suicide — but not your suicide. It is the declaration that the society is dead and we don’t want to live in a graveyard; we would like to create our own society and we would like to create our own life. Don’t be in a hurry. Life is so precious; don’t throw it away like that. There is no need. You can see my people who are in the same situation — but rather than committing suicide they have decided to transform their lives in spite of the ugly society in which they are living. They have ignored the society. They have accepted the death of the society and the civilization and the religion.
- Even suicide is not suicide; because you have manipulated it you will be somewhere. But you cannot commit suicide, suicide is impossible. You go and you hang yourself — you are doing it, the mind is there. This mind will lead you to a new life, to a new womb. You cannot commit suicide — there is only one suicide known and that is samadhi, but then the mind is not the manipulator. That’s why Buddha dies and simply dies, and is never born again. That’s why we say when a man has achieved samadhi, the final enlightenment, he is born no more. Because the mind is gone, who can lead into a new desire, who can lead into a new motivation, who can lead into the new body? The mind has left. There is only one death and that is the death of the mind.
- Just as suicide is the decision of life, sannyas is the decision of the ego. But once you have decided the ego starts disappearing, the ego has committed suicide. In fact, sannyas and suicide are very similar. Suicide is a false sannyas, sannyas is a real suicide — because in suicide only the body dies and you will be born again. In sannyas the ego dies, and if you work it out totally, you may not be born again.
- Even the people who commit suicide don’t want to commit suicide. They commit suicide because they expected too much from life and they could not get it. The failure was so great, that to live shamefully became difficult. They committed suicide not against life; they committed suicide because they could not manage to learn the art of life. They wanted life to be a great benediction, and it was a drag. It seems to be a fallacy all over the world that just because you are born you know how to live. This is not right. To be born is one thing. To know the art of living and of living fully is totally different. Birth is only an opportunity — you can make it or mar it. Birth is not equivalent to life. Almost everybody thinks that birth is equivalent to life; so it is bound to become a drag — just breathing, eating every day, going to sleep, waking up in the morning, going to the same office, the same files and the same routine. For idiots it is perfectly okay, but for anybody who has some intelligence it is bound to become drag. Because he can see — what is the point? Why after all am I living? If tomorrow is again going to be just a repetition of today, as today has been a repetition of yesterday, then why go on living? What is the point of unnecessarily repeating the same circle, the same routine, the same happenings? But the fallacy is in the fact that you have accepted a wrong concept, that birth is life. Birth is only an opportunity. Either you can learn to live a beautiful life or you can just drag yourself towards the graveyard. It is up to you. There are people for whom life is a drag, and there are people for whom even death is a dance. I want to say to you that if you make your life an art, your death will be the culmination of the art — the highest peak, a beauty in itself.
- One basic thing about suicide is that it arises only in people who are clinging very much to life. And when they fail in their clinging, the mind moves to the opposite pole. The function of the mind is of either/or: either it wants the whole, or none of it. The lust for life cannot be fulfilled totally, because life as such is a temporal thing; it is bound to end at a point, just as it began one day at a point. You cannot have a line with only the beginning; somewhere or other there is bound to be an end. So the people who commit suicide are not against life; it only appears so. They want life in its totality, they want to grab it whole, and when they fail — and they are bound to fail — then out of frustration, out of failure, they start thinking of death. Then suicide is the only alternative. They will not be satisfied with whatsoever life gives them; they want more and more and more. Life is short, and the series of the desire for more and more is infinite, so the failure is certain. Somewhere or other there is bound to come a moment when they will feel they have been cheated by life. Nobody is cheating them — they have cheated themselves. They have been asking too much, and they have only been asking, they have not been giving anything, not even gratefulness. In anger, in rage, in revenge the pendulum of the mind moves to the other end — still they do not know with whom they are taking the revenge. They are killing themselves: it does not destroy life, it does not destroy existence.
- Meditation can make you inwardly rich. Then suicide is out of the question; even if you want to destroy yourself, there is no way. Your being is indestructible. And to know this immortality is a great freedom — from death, from disease, from old age. All those things will come and go, but you remain untouched, unscratched. Your inner health is beyond any sickness. And it is there, just to be discovered.
- Only meditation can kill the mind, nothing else. Meditation is mind suicide, mind committing suicide. If you can put the mind aside — without any chemicals, without any physical means — then YOU become the master. And when you are the master, everything is new. It has been always so. From the very beginning to the very end, everything is new, young, fresh. Death has never occurred in this world. It is life eternal.
- You can commit suicide; you can manage your own death. You can have your revolver ready, contemplate it, put it to your chest or your head, pull the trigger yourself consciously, see the explosion and see death. This is one possibility. It is a very destructive possibility. Another possibility is to go more and more into meditation, to attain to a state of awareness that cannot be drowned by death. Then there is no need to commit suicide. Then whenever death comes, let it come. You will be dying fully alert, aware, watchful. So it is suicide or sannyas, suicide or samadhi.
- So to me, meditation is not only a salvation for the individual, a transformation for the individual; it can also provide the groundwork for the transformation of the whole society, of the human being as such.
