Osho Quotes on Gautam Buddha

Osho Quotes on Gautam Buddha

1. Gautam Buddha is teaching nonviolence — don’t kill anybody. He is teaching compassion, he is teaching love, and he is teaching meditation — which will make you graceful, loving, compassionate.
2. Tathagato is one of the names given to Gautam the Buddha. It means one who lives in the suchness of life, who accepts whatsoever is the case. who accepts everything totally.
3. Meditation is always the essential awakening, witnessing, watchfulness, consciousness. It is never unconscious. It is never a deep sleep. It is a deep awakening. The moment you are alert, you can see the body, you can see your mind, and you can experience yourself. And beyond this `yourself’ you cannot go. You cannot go behind it or beyond it. It is your very being. You cannot jump out of it. It is not a dress that you can jump out of. It is you yourself. It is your very essence. This essence is transcendental. But all religions have created their own ideas about meditation. Except Gautam Buddha, no other religion has been able exactly to find the right meaning of meditation. Hence he remains a pillar of light to all those who are seeking, searching. All other religions have fallen into the trap of chanting, prayer, mantras, rituals. A single man in the whole of history stands alone like an Everest denying everything except witnessing. That’s what he means by vipassana. It is the art of witnessing all your actions, physical or mental.
4. Gautam Buddha in a sense is one of the most profound psychologists that the world has produced. To be in the middle in every action of your life — always find the middle and you have found the path of meditation and the path of liberation.
5. The whole idea of Gautam Buddha about meditation is so unique and so tremendously beautiful that it has been a problem for other religions to understand it — because every religion thinks earnest effort is needed. But Gautam Buddha’s idea is beautifully represented by Basho’s haiku: “Sitting silently, doing nothing… the spring comes and the grass grows by itself.” There is no question of any effort; you are simply sitting, doing nothing… If you want to do something, effort is needed. But if you are in a state of non-doing, no effort is needed… and if, for non-doing, effort is needed, what kind of non-doing will it be? Effort is doing, and out of doing, you cannot create non-doing. You have to renounce doing. Sitting silently, doing nothing… the spring comes. It is not your effort that brings the spring; it comes, in its turn. It has always been coming. And when the spring comes, you don’t have to pull the grass and make earnest effort so that it grows — it grows on its own accord. The grass grows by itself… Nobody except Buddha has come to this tremendous discovery, that meditation is a very simple phenomenon.
6. Gautam Buddha and the people who have understood him down the centuries insist on a meditation that goes with every action, with anything you do. It follows you like a shadow. It runs within your consciousness like an undercurrent. You may be in the market, you may be in the temple — you may be anywhere, and your inner silence remains undisturbed, unperturbed. This is the only true meditation.
7. That word `ignore’ reminds me of Gautam Buddha. His suggestion to his disciples was, “As far as meditation is concerned, ignore the mind.” His word for ignoring is upeksha, which is a very beautiful word. “Just bypass it; let it go on saying whatever it wants; don’t pay any attention to it.” Soon the mind understands where he can be listened to and where he is absolutely unwelcome. The day the mind understands where it is unwelcome, it stops saying anything about that. And it has to be stopped from interfering in your inner growth.
8. It will look strange to you that I am saying go with the mind easily. Just be watchful — without condemning the mind, without abusing the mind — just be watchful that the mind is going somewhere else. And you are in for a great surprise. It will take a little time, but slowly, slowly the mind will not wander so much. You will have a few gaps to listen to me; then those gaps will become bigger. And because you are not creating any relationship with the mind — of love or hate — you are becoming indifferent to mind. Gautam Buddha has made it a meditation. He called it upeksha — indifference. Just be indifferent to the mind, and it won’t be a disturbance for long. And it is worthwhile to wait and not be in a hurry, because the very hurry will make your mind more stubborn. If you want to push it away, it will come back with force. You just let it do whatever it wants to do. It is none of your concern, this way or that. Suddenly a watchfulness arises. It takes a little time. It depends on you, how much indifference you can create towards the mind, how much you can be watchful. The mind will become slowly, slowly rejected. It will stop doing its things, because now nobody is interested. For whom to do all the circus?
9. Gautam Buddha used to say to his disciples, “After each meditation when you are feeling blissful, full of joy, peace, silence… shower and share your silence, your peace, your blissfulness with the whole of existence — with men, with women, with trees, with animals, with birds — with all that is, share it. “It is not a question whether someone deserves it or not. The more you share it, the more you will get it. The farther your blessings reach, the more and more blessings will shower on you from all directions. Existence always gives you back more than you have given to it.”
10. A man of meditation like Gautam Buddha showers his love — he is a rain cloud, or better to call him a love cloud, who showers his love to all those who are thirsty, to all those who are aware that love is showering.
11. Gautam Buddha had to deny that God existed — not that he was against God, a man like Gautam Buddha cannot be against God. And if Gautam Buddha is against God, then it is of no use for anybody to be in favor of God. His decision is decisive for the whole of humanity, he represents our very soul. But he was not against God. He was against your ego, and he was constantly careful not to give your ego any support to remain. If God can become a support, then there is no God.
12. Gautam Buddha was the most cultured and the most educated, the most sophisticated person ever to become a mystic. There is no comparison in the whole of history. He could see where the innocent mystics had unknowingly given chances for cunning minds to take advantage. He decided not to use any positive term for the ultimate goal, to destroy your ego and any possibility of your ego taking any advantage. He called the ultimate, nothingness, emptiness, shunyata, zero. Now, how can the ego make zero the goal? God can be made the goal, but not zero. Who wants to become zero? — that is the fear. Everybody is avoiding all possibilities of becoming zero, and Buddha made it an expression for the ultimate. His word is nirvana. He chose a tremendously beautiful word, but he shocked all the thinkers and philosophers by choosing the word `nirvana’ as the most significant expression for the ultimate experience. Nirvana means blowing out the candle.
13. Many came to Buddha and turned away, because nobody can make nothingness be his life’s achievement — for what? So much discipline and so much great trouble in getting into meditation just to find out that you are not… strange kind of man this Gautam Buddha. We are good as we are, what is the need of digging so deep that you find there is nothing? Even if we are dreaming, at least there is something.
14. A Gautam Buddha does not dream. Meditation is a way to go beyond mind. He lives in utter silence twenty-four hours — no ripples on the lake of his consciousness, no thoughts, no dreams.
15. Gautam Buddha preached the philosophy of TATHATA and tathata is very close to the word `suchness.’ Whatever happens, Buddha says, such is the nature of things. There is no need to be happy, there is no need to be miserable, there is no need to be affected at all by anything that happens. Birth happens, death happens, but you have to remain in a suchness, remembering that this is how life functions. This is the way of life. You cannot do anything against it. Just as rivers move towards the ocean, that is their suchness. Just as fire is hot, that is its suchness. Suchness is our self-nature. So whatever happens …somebody comes and insults Gautam Buddha, abuses him. He listens silently and when asked by his disciples, when the man went, “Why did you remain silent?” Buddha said, “That was his suchness, that was his way of behaving. It was my suchness to remain silent. I’m not holier than that man, I’m not higher than that man, just our suchness is different, our natures differ.” The word tathata is of great profundity. A man who understands what tathata is becomes undisturbed in every situation; nothing can disturb him, he becomes unperturbable. And TATHAGAT means one who has been living moment-to-moment in tathata. Tathagat is one of the most beautiful words possible in any language: one who lives simply according to his nature without being bothered about other people’s nature.
16. Tathagata is another name for Gautam Buddha, or for anyone who has awakened to the suchness of things.
17. Gautam Buddha has no God; his approach is more sophisticated. If somebody insults him and his disciples become angry, he says to them, “You don’t understand, such is the case. That man could not do anything else. If you had been brought up in the same conditions, in the same situations, you would have insulted me also. And I can see so clearly that he does not have any bad intentions. All that he could do, he has done. And all that I can do, I am doing. He can insult me;this is his suchness. I can still feel love and compassion for him; this is my suchness.”
18. To go beyond accidents means you have attained a tremendous accord with existence. There is no failure possible, there is no frustration possible. Your silence and your serenity cannot be disturbed. Gautam Buddha has named this understanding the experience of “suchness.” Whatever happens he says, “Such was going to happen.” If you were expecting otherwise, then certainly you are sad and you are frustrated — life has not been kind towards you. But to Gautam Buddha, life is always kind, existence is always compassionate, because whatever happens, that’s how it should happen. Gautam Buddha has no other desire than existence itself.
19. The next time you enter a temple of Gautam Buddha or Mahavira just sit silently, watch the statue. Because the statue has been made in such a way, in such proportions that if you watch it you will fall silent. It is a statue of meditation; it is not concerned with Gautam Buddha or Mahavira. That’s why all those statues look alike — Mahavira, Gautam Buddha, Neminatha, Adinatha…. Twenty-four tirthankaras of Jainas… in the same temple you will find twenty-four statues all alike, exactly alike.
20. If you want to understand exactly what meditation is Gautam Buddha is the first man to come to its right, exact definition — that is witnessing. Learn from Gautam Buddha witnessing, and learn from Patanjali the discipline that can be helpful for meditation. This way, yoga and mediation can become a synthesis. Yoga is a discipline, just an outer support — immensely helpful but not absolutely needed. And Gautam Buddha has given to the world the very fundamental and the most essential thing: witnessing as meditation.
21. Gautam Buddha has chosen a meditation which can be called the essential meditation. All other meditations are different forms of witnessing, but witnessing is present in every kind of meditation as an essential part; it cannot be avoided. Buddha has deleted everything else and kept only the essential part — to witness.
22. The name Bodhgaya comes from Gautam Buddha’s becoming enlightened there; bodh means enlightenment. Just because of Buddha the great city came into existence, because thousands of people wanted to live there, meditate under the same tree where Buddha had meditated, tried to do the same walking meditation by the side of the temple that one king had raised behind the tree as a memorial to Gautam Buddha’s enlightenment.
23. If you go to Bodhgaya, where Gautam Buddha became enlightened, you will find a temple raised in the memory of his enlightenment. And also, by the side of the temple, there are stones in a long line, and behind the temple is the bodhi tree where he used to sit. His meditation had two positions, sitting and walking. One hour you sit, silently watching your thoughts; then one hour you walk slowly, again watching your thoughts-alternate sitting and walking meditation. It is a beautiful experience because soon you become aware that whether you are sitting or walking, whether you are awake or asleep, something in you remains constantly aware, the same. It does not become different when you walk, it does not become different when you sit. It does not become different even when you sleep; something like a small candle or light goes on burning in your sleep too. Your awareness has become a twenty-four-hour circle. This is the perfect enlightenment. This walking meditation in Japanese is called kinhin.
24. Gautam Buddha had told his disciples that the last thing and the first thing in the morning has to be meditation. Begin the day with meditation. As the sun rises, rise to the heights of meditation, of silence; and as the sun sets, go deep into meditation in your own inner depths where even sunrays cannot reach. This way you will know your heights and your depths. A man who knows his heights and his depths becomes complete. This was a routine thing, so Buddha did not need to repeat it every day. He simply used to say when he gave his evening sermon and the sun was setting and darkness was descending…. Rather than saying go and meditate, he would say, “Now is the time to do the last thing before you go to sleep… disperse.”
25. If you want the silent meditation that Gautam Buddha has given to the world, vipassana, you have to be vegetarian. A non-vegetarian will find it very difficult, because the meditation is for a very sensitive person, and a meat eater is hard. He is not very sensitive; he is insensitive. He has been eating it from childhood so he has no awareness; he has become accustomed to it.
26. Gautam the Buddha defines meditation as the source of compassion. He says unless you are a meditator you cannot have compassion.’Compassion’ is a beautiful word: it is passion transformed, it is passion gone through the alchemy of meditation. It is the same energy that was involved in your passions now passing through the alchemical process of meditation, silence, awareness. It is freed from all pollution, from all that is foreign to it; it becomes purer and purer. When your meditation reaches its ultimate height, your whole energy becomes overflowing love — it is compassion.
27. Gautam Buddha’s emphasis on compassion was a very new phenomenon as far as the mystics of old were concerned. Gautam Buddha makes a historical dividing line from the past; before him meditation was enough, nobody had emphasized compassion together with meditation. And the reason was that meditation brings enlightenment, your blossoming, your ultimate expression of being. What more do you need? As far as the individual is concerned, meditation is enough. Gautam Buddha’s greatness consists in introducing compassion even before you start meditating. You should be more loving, more kind, more compassionate. There is a hidden science behind it. Before a man becomes enlightened, if he has a heart full of compassion there is a possibility that after meditation he will help others to achieve the same beautitude, to the same height, to the same celebration as he has achieved. Gautam Buddha makes it possible for enlightenment to be infectious. But if the person feels that he has come back home, why bother about anybody else? Buddha makes enlightenment for the first time unselfish; he makes it a social responsibility. It is a great change. But compassion should be learned before enlightenment happens. If it is not learned before, then after enlightenment there is nothing to learn. When one becomes so ecstatic in himself then even compassion seems to be preventing his own joy — a kind of disturbance in his ecstasy … That’s why there have been hundreds of enlightened people, but very few masters. To be enlightened does not mean necessarily that you will become a master. Becoming a master means you have tremendous compassion, and you feel ashamed to go alone into those beautiful spaces that enlightenment makes available. You want to help the people who are blind, in darkness, groping their way. It becomes a joy to help them, it is not a disturbance.
28. To be a criminal needs great unconsciousness. Meditation destroys your unconsciousness, opens the doors of light and suddenly what you were doing in the darkness starts disappearing. A civilization can be based only on meditation. The only people who have been civilized were people who were in touch with their own being: a Gautam Buddha, a Socrates, a Pythagoras, a Lao Tzu; these people are civilized. Only individuals once in a while have been found civilized, but the collective mass is still far below the standard of civilization.