Page 1 of 4, Quotes 1-20

Source: celibacylife.blogspot.com

  1. Sex makes man a fool.

    Truth is that sex makes man a fool, gives him the idea that he is the master of it, while he is only a slave. And the slavery has to be broken — he has to be pulled out of this ditch. But if he thinks that that ditch is a palace then you cannot pull him out. You cannot even persuade him to come out of it; hence, the condemnation of sex by all the religions. But they overdid it, and they forgot the ninety-nine percent dangers just for the one percent. It could have been done very easily without taking the risk of ninety-nine percent falsehood. But they saw the danger of man being simply a means, and that is the lowliest position possible; you are just a means, not an end.

    You are being used by some unknown force of which you have no idea. The man living on the instinctive level only has an hallucination of love. That hallucination is created by nature, by biology, chemistry. You have in your body drugs which are released when you are making love, and you start moving into euphoria. That is one of the reasons why people who become addicted to drugs slowly slowly become uninterested in sex.

    People become addicted to sex. And a very strange thing about addiction is that if you have the drug, it is nothing; if you don't have it, you are missing. You never think what you are missing because when you have it, it is nothing. Each time you have it you feel that it is just a futile effort, nothing comes out of it. You don't move a single inch in evolution. You just jump for a moment in the air and with a thump you fall back on the ground.

  2. Desires never fulfill anyone.

    Buddha has said it is not the nature of desire to be fulfilled. Fulfillment comes only by desirelessness. Now, this is one of the most important paradoxes: if you drop desiring, you will be fulfilled. The more you desire, the more you are getting into desire, the farther and farther away you go from your possibility of fulfillment.

    One desire creates many more desires, then many more desires, millions more. It is like a tree. First it is one, then many branches, then many small offshoots, and on and on it goes. The person has asked, "I feel stuck." Everybody who has been living in desire feels stuck. The problem is that if you don't try to fulfill your desire, you remain unfulfilled. If you try, even if you get the goal of your desire, then you remain unfulfilled — then too, nothing changes. This is the nightmare of life.

  3. Osho on Repressed Sexuality.

    And my own observation is, the moment you accept something totally, the very acceptance brings a revolution, a radical change. It is your energy — accept it. It will make you stronger. Reject it, it keeps you weak. Fighting with your own energy is dissipating it. And fighting with your sex will take so much of your time and so much of your energy — then when are you going to look at God who is knocking on your door?

    Old age is the last opportunity given to you: before death comes, prepare. And how does one prepare for death? By becoming more meditative. If some lurking desires are still there, and the body is getting old and the body is not capable of fulfilling those desires, don't be worried. Meditate over those desires, watch, be aware. Just by being aware and watchful and alert, those desires and the energy contained in them can be transmuted.

    But before death comes, be free of all desires. When I say be free of all desires I simply mean be free of all objects of desires. Then there is a pure longing. That pure longing is divine, that pure longing is God. Then there is pure creativity with no object, with no address, with no direction, with no destination — just pure energy, a pool of energy, going nowhere. That's what buddhahood is.

  4. Sex keeps you unconscious.

    I don't call sex a sin, I simply call it stupid. I am not saying that you will suffer hell — what more hell do you need to suffer? You are already suffering in it. And what does it go on giving to you? It just keeps you engaged — engaged in the other so that you can avoid yourself. That is its basic stupidity: it keeps you ignorant because it keeps you ignoring yourself.

    It is as if you are standing on the road and I am sitting on the treetop. I say to you, "A bullock cart is coming down the road." You say, "I don't see any bullock cart. There is no bullock cart." But I can see; my perspective is greater because I am on a height. You will only see the bullock cart when it comes very close to you, and then after a few yards it will disappear again. And I will say to you, "It has not disappeared. It is still there on the road." You will say, "It is no longer there, it is gone."

    The higher you rise, the more you can see. And when you reach the ultimate height, Buddhahood, you can see everything. Then there is no past and no future; then there is only present. And in that clarity, sex is the most stupid thing because it keeps you in bondage the longest.

    I am not condemning it, I am simply stating a fact. It is your bondage. It keeps you unconscious. It does not allow you to see what you are doing. You are possessed by it. That's why I call it stupid: it keeps you unconscious, it keeps you in a kind of possession. It is hormonal, it is chemical. It is not you; it is just your biology that goes on forcing you to do certain things.

    If you watch, you will be surprised: What are you doing? And why are you doing? What are you gaining out of it? What have you gained up to now? And in your saner moments you know perfectly well what I am saying, you understand it; but those saner moments are very superficial — they come and go — and soon you are back in the same trap again.

  5. Transforming Lust with Awareness gives indescribable Bliss.

    Passion creates many things in you. It creates fever, it makes you more unconscious — more unconscious than you already are. It drags you deeper into the mud. And with passion come hatred, illusion and desire — and then you are distracted from your nature. Your nature is poisoned, your innocence is poisoned. You lose all simplicity, all humbleness. Beware of the poisoning by passion. Be warm, be loving — that is a totally different phenomenon — but don't be full of lust. Warmth is possible with your consciousness.

    A Buddha is very warm, a Jesus is very warm, very loving. Passion has disappeared. Passion has become transformed into compassion. Their compassion showers on you like flowers. Just as passion poisons you, compassion purifies you. Compassion is nectar if passion is poison.

    The energy that is involved in passion can be released into compassion. Try, when you are angry, to be conscious, and you will be surprised — you are in for a great surprise. If you become conscious, anger disappears. And suddenly you have found a key, you have stumbled upon a secret. When sex dominates you and you are full of lust, close your eyes, sit silently and meditate on this energy that is surrounding you, this lust that is surrounding you like a cloud. Just watch it, see it. I am not saying be against it, because if you are against it you have already taken a standpoint.

    Now you cannot watch. For watching, the necessary step, the most necessary, is not to take any prejudice, not to conclude beforehand. Just remain silently watchful, neither for nor against. And within minutes you will be surprised that that great storm of lust is over. And when the storm is over, the silence that is left behind is so profound, is so great, such a blessing that you may not have felt it ever.

    No sexual experience can give you the beauty that will come if you watch your lust and through watchfulness the lust disappears. Then a silence comes to you which is virgin, which belongs to the beyond, which belongs to the other shore.

  6. Repression of any kind is destructive to body, to the mind, to the soul.

    Energies have to be transformed, not repressed. Energies are your potential wealth, raw; you have to polish them, then they can become great diamonds. These same energies, sexual energies, can become your spiritual liberation. Repressed you will be in a bondage.

    I am not saying to become indulgent; that is going to the other extreme. Buddha will also not support your indulgence. He is absolutely for the middle way, the golden mean. Neither be repressive nor be indulgent. Be watchful, be alert; be friendly to your energies, sympathetic. They are your energies; don't create a rift, otherwise you will always be in conflict, and to fight with your own energies is an unnecessary dissipation.

    Fighting with your own energies, you are fighting with yourself: you cannot win. You will be simply wasting the whole opportunity of life. Be aware, don't repress, don't indulge. Be aware, be natural. Let energies be accepted and absorbed, and then the same energies, crude energies, become so refined, passing through awareness, that great flowers bloom in your being — lotuses of enlightenment.

  7. Sleepy person knows only a few sensations of the body food, sex.

    Q: What is Happiness? Osho: It depends. It depends on you, on your state of consciousness or unconsciousness, whether you are asleep or awake. There is one famous maxim of Murphy. He says there are two types of people: One, who always divide humanity in two types, and the other, who don't divide humanity at all.

    I belong to the first type ... Humanity can be divided in two types: the sleeping ones and the awakened ones — and, of course, a small part in between. Happiness will depend on where you are in your consciousness. If you are asleep, then pleasure is happiness. Pleasure means sensation, trying to achieve something through the body which is not possible to achieve through the body, forcing the body to achieve something it is not capable of.

    People are trying, in every possible way, to achieve happiness through the body. The body can give you only momentary pleasures, and each pleasure is balanced by pain in the same amount, in the same degree. Each pleasure is followed by its opposite because body exists in the world of duality, just as the day is followed by night and death is followed by life and life is followed by death.

    It is a vicious circle. Your pleasure will be followed by pain, your pain will be followed by pleasure. But you will never be at ease. When you will be in a state of pleasure you will be afraid that you are going to lose it, and that fear will poison it. And when you will be lost in pain, of course, you will be in suffering, and you will try every possible effort to get out of it — just to fall again back into it.

    Buddha calls this the wheel of birth and death. We go on moving in this wheel, clinging to the wheel... and the wheel moves on. Sometimes pleasure comes up and sometimes pain comes up, but we are crushed between these two rocks. But the sleepy person knows nothing else. He knows only a few sensations of the body — food, sex. This is his world; he goes on moving between these two.

    These are the two ends of his body: food and sex. If he represses sex he becomes addicted to food: if he represses food he becomes addicted to sex. Energy goes on moving like a pendulum. And whatsoever you call pleasure is, at the most, just a relief of a tense state. Sexual energy gathers, accumulates; you become tense and heavy and you want to release it. The man who is asleep, his sexuality is nothing but a relief, like a good sneeze. It gives you nothing but a certain relief. A tension was there, now it is no more there; but it will accumulate again. Food gives you only a little taste on the tongue; it is not much to live for. But many people are living only to eat; there are very few people who eat to live.

    The story of Columbus is well-known. It was a long trip. For three months they saw nothing but water. Then one day Columbus looked out at the horizon and saw trees. And if you think Columbus was happy to see trees, you should have seen his dog! That's why the Siberian dogs are the fastest in the world: because the trees are so far apart.

    But this is the world of pleasure. The dog can be forgiven, but you cannot be forgiven. It depends on people what can be called happiness. To the sleeping, pleasurable sensations are happiness. He lives from one pleasure to another pleasure. He is just rushing from one sensation to another sensation. He lives for small thrills. His life is very superficial; it has no depth, it has no quality. He lives in the world of quantity.

    Then the people who are in between, who are neither asleep nor awake, who are just in a limbo, a little bit asleep, a little bit awake. You sometimes have that experience in the early morning: still sleepy, but you can't say you are asleep because you can hear the noise in the house, your wife preparing tea, the noise of the samovar or the milkman at the door or children getting ready to go to school. You can hear these things, but still you are not awake. Vaguely, dimly these noises reach to you, as if there is a great distance between you and all that is happening around you. It feels as if it is still a part of the dream. It is not a part of the dream, but you are in a state of in-between.

    The same happens when you start meditating. The nonmeditator sleeps, dreams; the meditator starts moving away from his sleep towards awakening. He is in a transitory state. Then happiness has a totally different meaning: it becomes more of a quality, less of a quantity; it is more psychological, less physiological. He enjoys music more, he enjoys poetry more, he enjoys creating something. He enjoys nature, its beauty. He enjoys silence. He enjoys what he had never enjoyed before, and this is far more lasting. Even if the music stops, something goes on lingering in [him].

    The difference between pleasure and THIS happiness is: it is not a relief, it is an enrichment. You become more full, you become a little overflowing. Listening to good music, something is triggered in your being, a harmony arises in you — you become musical. Or dancing, suddenly you forget your body; your body becomes weightless. The grip of gravitation over you is lost. Suddenly you are in a different space: the ego is not so solid, the dancer melts and merges into the dance.

    This is far higher, far deeper than the joy that you gain from food or sex. This has a depth. But this is also not the ultimate. The ultimate happens only when you are fully awake, when you are a buddha, when all sleep is gone and all dreaming is gone, when your whole being is full of light, when there is no darkness within you. All darkness has disappeared and with that darkness, the ego is gone. All tensions have disappeared, all anguish, all anxiety.

    You are in a state of total contentment. You live in the present; no past, no future anymore. You are utterly here-now. This moment is all. Now is the only time and here is the only space. And then suddenly the whole sky drops into you. This is bliss. This is REAL happiness.

    Seek bliss; it is your birthright. don't remain lost in the jungle of pleasures; rise a little higher. Reach to happiness and then to bliss. Pleasure is animal, happiness is human, bliss is divine. Pleasure binds you, it is a bondage, it chains you. Happiness gives you a little more rope, a little bit of freedom, but only a little bit.

    Bliss is absolute freedom. You start moving upwards; it gives you wings. You are no more part of the gross earth; you become part of the sky. You become light, you become joy. Pleasure is dependent on others. Happiness is not so dependent on others, but still it is separate from you. Bliss is not dependent, is not separate either; it is your very being, it is your very nature. To attain it is to attain to God, to nirvana. [Osho Book "Dhammapada Vol 10."]

  8. If you have really experienced the inner light, sex will disappear.

    Love will happen to you, but sex will disappear; sexuality will disappear. Love, a very loving personality, will take its place. There will be no desire for sex. If the desire for sex remains, you have not experienced the inner light. Then the inner light is just a projection of the mind.

  9. What happens with your sex energy depends on how you use it.

    What it can become does not depend on it alone, but on your understanding and on how you live your life. Have you not observed that it becomes brahmacharya, the state of celibacy when it is transformed? Bramhacharya is not hostile to passion; brahmacharya is the purification, the transcendence, the sublimation of passion. In the same way, the energy that manifests itself in violence becomes peace, serenity and tranquility. It is only a question of transformation.

  10. Love is the creative refinement of sex energy.

    And so, when love reaches perfection, the absence of sex automatically follows. A life of love, an abstinence from physical pleasures is called brahmacharya, and anyone who wishes to be free from sex must develop his capacity to love. Freedom from sex cannot be achieved through supersession. Liberation from sex is only possible through love.

  11. Both are easy:

    it is perfectly easy to go unconscious in sex, to completely forget what is going on, to get intoxicated is easy. To control sex, to force it to stop, to prevent yourself is also easy. But in both you miss. The one who indulges misses; the celibate misses too. The real brahmacharya happens when you stand in the middle between these two, then you are only watching.

    Then you will find that sex arises in the body and reverberates in the body; in the mind a shadow briefly falls and departs. You remain standing far away. How can sexual desire be in you? How can any desire be in you? You are nothing but the observer.

  12. Sex is there: do not condemn it.

    Accept it. Do not create a division in your being, between parts of your being. Anger is there: accept it. Greed is there, or whatsoever: accept it. I do not mean be greedy. Rather on the contrary, the moment you accept you go beyond, because acceptance creates a unity, and when you are united within you have the energy to go beyond.

  13. The mechanism of sex is a momentary phenomenon

    It only functions momentarily; if you do not cooperate at the right moment, it stops. At the right moment your cooperation is needed, otherwise it cannot work. It is only a momentary mechanism, and if you do not cooperate with it, it will stop by itself.

  14. First the energy will try its best to be released sexually,

    because that is its usual outlet, its usual center. So one must first be aware of one's downward "doors." Only awareness will close them; only non-cooperation will close them. Sex is not so forceful as we feel it to be. It is forceful only momentarily: it is not a twenty-four-hour affair, it is a momentary challenge.

  15. Real awareness always leads you beyond sex,

    and celibacy happens on its own accord. Because to be in sex you have either to be identified with the male or identified with the female. A real celibate is one who has gone beyond, who is neither.

  16. Remember, to translate Brahmacharya as "celibacy" is not right.

    The word Brahmacharya simply means living like a god, living with the experience of the Brahma, the absolute, living meditatively. If I am to translate Brahmacharya I Will translate it as "the life of meditation".

  17. Meditation brings a kind of celibacy, but not vice versa.

    A celibacy without meditation is nothing but sexual repression. And your mind will become more and more sexual, so whenever you sit to meditate your mind will become full of fantasies, sexual fantasies.

  18. When you become violent, non-violence comes in. When you become non-violent, violence waits behind.

    They go together. All dualities go together. When sex disappears, celibacy disappears too — remember it. If you start claiming that you have become a celibate then sexuality still exists, and any day it can explode. You are sitting on a volcano. When sex has gone what is the meaning of celibacy? Then it is simply meaningless, the word is meaningless. 'Celibacy' can carry meaning only in reference to sex. Buddha says: When both dualities are gone you are simply in the middle — silent, calm, pure. The Way is attained. The Way is the middle Way.

  19. Celibacy should be brought very slowly.

    All that brings you again and again to sexuality has to be dropped slowly, in steps. And once you start enjoying the energy that becomes available, when you are not obsessed with sex, just that pure energy becomes a dance in you — that is called enriching. Then your energy is not wasted. Your energy goes on showering on yourself. Remember, there are two types of celibates: One, who has simply forced celibacy upon himself — he is a wrong type, he is doing violence to himself. The other, who has tried to understand sexuality, what it is, why it is; who has watched, observed, lived through it, and, by and by, has become aware of its futility; by and by, has become aware of a deep frustration that comes after each sexual act.

  20. Kabir says: Repression is not Brahmacharya.

    Repressing your desires and destroying your desires is not the way of celibacy, because if you repress your desires you will remain hung-up with them. Whatsoever is repressed, you have to repress it again and again and again, and whatsoever is repressed, you have to sit on it continuously; otherwise there is fear — if you move somewhere else, it may bubble up again. Repression can never bring freedom. Repression makes you a slave. Repress anything, and that will become your master.

top of page