Courage: The Joy of Living Dangerously (Osho Insights for a New Way of Living)

by Osho

I am not here to give you a dogma—a dogma makes one certain. I am not here to give you any promise for the future—any promise for the future makes one secure. I am here simply to make you alert and aware—that is, to be here now, with all the insecurity that life is, with all the uncertainty that life is, with all the danger that life is.

I would like to make you more insecure, more uncertain—because that’s how life is, that’s how God is. When there is more insecurity and more danger, the only way to respond to it is by awareness. There are two possibilities. Either you close your eyes and become dogmatic, become a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan … then you become like an ostrich. It doesn’t change life; it simply closes your eyes. It simply makes you stupid, it simply makes you unintelligent. In your unintelligence you feel secure—all idiots feel secure. In fact, only idiots feel secure. A really alive man will always feel insecure.

If everything is predestined, then there is no glory, no grandeur. Then you are just robots.

a secure life will be worse than death.

Freedom creates fear. People talk about freedom, but they are afraid. And a man is not yet a man if he is afraid of freedom.

That’s why so many people have chosen to be Christians, to be Hindus, to be Mohammedans, to be Jainas—they don’t want freedom, they want fixed formulas.

Don’t cling to any certainty. Life is uncertain—its very nature is uncertain. And an intelligent man always remains uncertain.

This very readiness to remain in uncertainty is courage. This very readiness to be in uncertainty is trust. An intelligent person is one who remains alert whatsoever the situation—and responds to it with his whole heart.

Don’t call it uncertainty—call it wonder. Don’t call it insecurity—call it freedom.

Courage means going into the unknown in spite of all the fears. Courage does not mean fearlessness. Fearlessness happens if you go on being courageous and more courageous. That is the ultimate experience of courage—fearlessness:

The experience of the joy that the unknown brings, the great ecstasy that starts happening with the unknown, makes you strong enough, gives you a certain integrity, makes your intelligence sharp.

One never knows whether one will be able to make it or not. It is gambling, but only the gamblers know what life is.

Life does not listen to your logic; it goes on its own way, undisturbed. You have to listen to life; life will not listen to your logic, it does not bother about your logic.

It is your fear that makes you a slave—it is your fear.

A man who is fearless is neither afraid of anybody nor makes anybody afraid of him.

The word courage is very interesting. It comes from a Latin root cor, which means “heart.” So to be courageous means to live with the heart.

To live through the heart is to discover meaning. A poet lives through the heart and, by and by, in the heart he starts listening to the sounds of the unknown.

And if you are authentic about your joy, your tears, your dance, sooner or later there will be people who will start understanding you, who may start joining your caravan.

My responsibility is toward my heart, not toward anybody else in the world. So is your responsibility only toward your own being. Don’t go against it, because going against it is committing suicide, is destroying yourself.

Your sole concern should be to take care of and protect those qualities that you can take with you when death destroys your body, your mind, because these qualities will be your sole companions. They are the only real values, and the people who attain them—only they live; others only pretend to live.

DON’T LISTEN TO THE SCRIPTURES—listen to your own heart. That is the only scripture I prescribe: listen very attentively, very consciously, and you will never be wrong.

But don’t follow rules imposed from the outside. No imposed rule can ever be right—because rules are invented by people who want to rule you!

Yes, sometimes there have been great enlightened people in the world, too—a Buddha, a Jesus, a Krishna, a Mohammed. They have not given rules to the world—they have given their love. But sooner or later the disciples gather together and start making codes of conduct.

What Jesus did was his own heart’s whispering, and what Christians go on doing is not their own hearts’ whispering. They are imitators—and the moment you imitate you insult your humanity, you insult your God.

Never be an imitator, be always original.

Buddha is a Buddha, a Krishna is a Krishna, and you are you. And you are not in any way less than anybody else. Respect yourself, respect your own inner voice and follow it.

because to come to the right door one has to knock first on many wrong doors. That’s how it is. If you suddenly stumble upon the right door, you will not be able to recognize that it is right.

in the ultimate reckoning no effort is ever wasted; all efforts contribute to the ultimate climax of your growth.

So don’t be hesitant, don’t be worried too much about going wrong. That is one of the problems: people have been taught never to do anything wrong, and then they become so hesitant, so fearful, ...

Commit as many mistakes as possible, remembering only one thing: don’t commit the same mistake again. And you will be growing.

it is part of your dignity to go even against God. And it is sometimes beautiful to go even against God. This is how you will start having a spine; otherwise there are millions of people, spineless.

You cannot depend on ready-made answers for what is right and what is wrong. Only stupid people depend on ready-made answers because then they need not be intelligent, there is no need. You already know what is right and what is wrong, you can memorize the list; the list is not very big.

Intelligence is aliveness, it is spontaneity. It is openness, it is vulnerability. It is impartiality, it is the courage to function without conclusions.

It is a courage because when you function out of a conclusion the conclusion protects you; the conclusion gives you security, safety.

Knowing what is error, one comes closer and closer to what is truth. It is an individual exploration; you cannot depend on others’ conclusions.

Science means thinking, philosophy means thinking, theology means thinking. Religiousness does not mean thinking. The religious approach is a nonthinking approach. It is more intimate, it brings you closer to reality. It drops all that hinders, it unblocks you; you start flowing into life.

And there is a different kind of knowing. It cannot be called “knowledge.” It is more like love, less like knowledge. It is so intimate that the word knowledge is not sufficient to express it. The word love is more adequate, more expressive.

Religiousness

In the history of human consciousness, the first thing that evolved was magic. Magic was a combination of science and religion. Magic had something of the mind and something of the no-mind. Then out of magic grew philosophy. Then out of philosophy grew science. Magic was both no-mind and mind. Philosophy was only mind. And then mind plus experimentation became science. Religiousness is a state of no-mind.

Religiousness and science are the two approaches to reality. Science approaches through the secondary; religiousness goes direct. Science is an indirect approach; religiousness is an immediate approach. Science goes round and ro...

Thinking can think only about the known—it can chew the already chewed. Thinking can never be original. How can you think about the unknown? Whatsoever you can manage to think will belong to the known. You can think only because you know. At the most, thinking can create new combinations. You can think about a horse who flies in the sky, who is made of gold, but nothing is new. You know birds who fly in the sky, you know gold, you know horses; you combine the three together. At the most, thinking can imagine new combinations, but it cannot know the unknown.

Relate it to Plagiarism

Thinking is never original.

TRUTH IS AN EXPERIENCE, NOT A BELIEF. Truth never comes by studying about it; truth has to be encountered, truth has to be faced.

The person who studies about love is like the person who studies about the Himalayas by looking at the map of the mountains.

Koran, Bible, Gita—different maps of the same truth. But you are too full of the maps, too burdened by their weight; you cannot move even an inch.

The prejudiced eye is blind, the heart full of conclusions is dead.

Too many a priori assumptions and your intelligence starts losing its sharpness, its beauty, its intensity. It becomes dull.

Dull intelligence is what is called intellect. Your so-called intelligentsia are not really intelligent, they are just in...

If you really want the experience of the mysterious, then you will have to open a new door in your being. I am not saying stop being a scientist; I am simply saying that science can remain a peripheral activity to you.

Look at the flowers—and not in a scientific way, because when you look at a rose in a scientific way, it is a totally different kind of thing that you are looking at. It is not the same rose that a poet experiences.

The experience does not depend on the object. The experience depends on the experiencer, on the quality of experiencing.