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

by Osho

To accept the challenge of the unknown, in spite of all fears, is courage. The fears are there, but if you go on accepting the challenge again and again, slowly slowly those fears disappear.

But basically courage is risking the known for the unknown, the familiar for the unfamiliar, the comfortable for the uncomfortable, arduous pilgrimage to some unknown destination. One never knows whether one will be able to make it or not. It is gambling, but only the gamblers know what life is.

It is your fear that makes you a slave—it is your fear. When you are fearless you are no longer a slave; in fact, it is your fear that forces you to make others slaves before they can try to make a slave out of you. A man who is fearless is neither afraid of anybody nor makes anybody afraid of him. Fear totally disappears.

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

Forget all about what you have been told, “This is right and this is wrong.” Life is not so fixed. The thing that is right today may be wrong tomorrow, the thing that is wrong this moment may be right the next moment.

What is my definition of right? That which is harmonious with existence is right, and that which is disharmonious with existence is wrong. You will have to be very alert each moment, because it has to be decided each moment afresh. 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.

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.

heart full of conclusions is dead.

Don’t try to understand life. Live it! Don’t try to understand love. Move into love. Then you will know—and that knowing will come out of your experiencing. That knowing will never destroy the mystery: the more you know, the more you know that much remains to be known.

Only change is permanent, only change never changes.

And this I call maturity of mind: when somebody comes to the point of looking at life without any questions, and simply dives into it with courage and fearlessness.

They have been taught to believe, they have not been taught to know—that’s where humanity has missed.

Only a man of great trust is capable of great doubt, great inquiry.

In India I have never come across a person who is looking for peace of mind. Peace of the stomach has to be taken care of first—peace of mind is too far away. From the stomach the mind is almost millions of miles away.

Life can only be lived dangerously—there is no other way to live it. It is only through danger that life attains to maturity, growth. One needs to be an adventurer, always ready to risk the known for the unknown. And once one has tasted the joys of freedom and fearlessness, one never repents because then one knows what it means to live at the optimum. Then one knows what it means to burn your life’s torch from both ends together. And even a single moment of that intensity is more gratifying than the whole eternity of mediocre living.

to be blissful is the greatest courage. To be miserable is very cowardly. In fact to be miserable, nothing is needed. Any coward can do it, any fool can do it. Everybody is capable of being miserable, but to be blissful, great courage is needed—it is an uphill task.

If you feel there is fear in your being, love more. Be courageous in love, take courage. Be adventurous in love; love more, and love unconditionally, because the more you love the less will be the fear.

In fact, not only that, the society hinders every effort to love. Parents don’t like their children to fall in love. No father likes it, no mother likes it; whatsoever their pretensions no father, no mother, likes their children to fall in love. They like arranged marriage.

But it always happens that the more you love, the more you feel fear. That’s why women feel more fear than men, because they have more potentiality for love.

psychologists say there are many people who are clinging to illnesses because of the advantages illnesses have. And they have invested in their illnesses for so long that they have completely forgotten that they are clinging to those illnesses. They are afraid if they become healthy they will be nobody again.

to be an individual is the greatest courage.

nobody can come home with a crowd. Everybody can come home only alone.

These are their ways to cover up a hole that is uncoverable; whatever you do the hole is there. In fact the more you cover it, the more emphatically it is there.

Whatever you do, life is a mystery and is going to remain a mystery.

The more alive the person, the more problems there are. But there is nothing wrong in it because struggling with problems, fighting with the challenge, is how you grow.

The ego is the egg, and you will have to come out of it. Be ecstatic! Get out of all protections and shells and securities. Then you will attain to the wider world, the vast, the infinite. Only then you live, and you live abundantly.

All our formalities are nothing but helping each other’s ego. They are lies. You say something to somebody and he returns the compliment. Neither you nor he is true. We go on playing the game: etiquette, formalities, the civilized faces and masks.

Fear means only one thing: losing the known and entering into the unknown.

Just your change from the known to the unknown, your readiness to move from the known to the unknown, is what matters. It is immensely valuable. And in all kinds of experiences, go on doing that. That will prepare you for death, because when death comes you cannot suddenly decide, “I choose death and leave life.” These decisions are not made suddenly.

Never miss the unknown. Always choose the unknown and go headlong. Even if you suffer, it is worth it—it always pays. You always come out of it more grown up, more mature, more intelligent.

One should be able to be happy alone and one should also be able to be happy with people. One should be happy inside and one should also be happy in relationships. One should make a beautiful house inside and outside too. You should have a beautiful garden surrounding your house and a beautiful bedroom too. The garden is not against the bedroom; the bedroom is not against the garden.

Whenever you feel like closing—open yourself. If

on the helplessness of a human child depends so much that you may be surprised: your family, your society, your culture, your religion, your philosophy—everything depends on the helplessness of the human child.

Once you have heard a truth it is impossible to forget it. That is one of the qualities of truth, that you don’t need to remember it.

In fact he does not exist; only the agent exists. This is a very strange business. Religion is the strangest business of all. There is no boss, but there are mediators: the priest, the bishop, the cardinal, the pope, the messiah, the whole hierarchy—and on top there is nobody.

Existence goes on pouring so much over you that to ask for more is just ugly. That which you have received, you should be grateful for it. And the most beautiful thing is that when you are grateful, more and more existence starts pouring over you. It becomes a circle: the more you get, the more you become grateful; the more you become grateful, the more you get … and there is no end to it, it is an infinite process.

the hypothesis of God is gone; the moment you called it a hypothesis the idea of God has been already dropped. Whether you are afraid or not, you cannot take it back; it is finished.