Osho Quotes on Understanding

 

Osho Quotes on Understanding

1. What is understanding? — understanding is pure intelligence. That pure intelligence is originally yours; you are born with it. Nobody can give you intelligence. Knowledge can be given to you, not intelligence. Intelligence is your own sharpened being. Through deep meditation one sharpens one’s being; through meditation one drops borrowed thoughts, reclaims one’s own being, reclaims one’s originality, redaims one’s childhood, innocence, freshness. Out of that freshness, when you act, you act out of understanding. And then the response is total, here-now; and the response is because of the challenge, not because of the past.
2. Buddha calls those people kings who have intelligence, understanding. He does not call a person a king who has much money, a great kingdom — no. Buddha calls a man a king, an emperor, who has conquered himself, who has conquered his foolishness, his unconsciousness, who has been able to dissipate all illusions. He is the real king: he has entered into the kingdom of God.
3. The way of Gautama the Buddha is the way of intelligence, understanding, awareness, meditation. It is not the way of belief; it is the way of seeing the truth itself. Belief simply covers up your ignorance; it does not deliver you from ignorance. Belief is a deception you play upon yourself; it is not transformation.
4. People go on believing that they understand — and this very idea that they understand keeps their ignorance intact. The first step to be taken towards understanding is to understand that you don’t understand, to recognize and realize your ignorance, to realize in deep humility that you have been ignoring the truth.
5. Imitation is a substitute for understanding, and a very poor substitute. If understanding is there, there is no question of imitating or of following: you will follow understanding. Keep this very clear: if you follow your understanding, you will be following me. By and by you will see that your path and my path are running parallel. By and by you will see that you are following me if you follow your understanding. If you follow me and forget your understanding sooner or later you will see that I am gone and you are left in darkness. The real way to follow me is not to follow me but to follow your understanding — then even when I am gone you will be following me. It looks paradoxical but Zen is paradoxical.
6. The ego needs some problems. If you understand this, in the very understanding the mountains become molehills again, and then the molehills also disappear. Suddenly there is emptiness, pure emptiness all around. This is what enlightenment is all about  –  a deep understanding that there is no problem.
7. The real man of understanding and intelligence accepts the imperfections of the other and still loves. Love is great enough; it can even love people who have no character, people who are not pure according to your ideas, people who sometimes go astray, people who sometimes commit small sins. Love is big enough to accept all this and to transform it too.
8. To live out of understanding is compassion. Never try to practice it, simply relax deep into meditation. Be in a state of let-go in meditation and suddenly you will be able to smell the fragrance that is coming from your own innermost depth. Then the flower blossoms and compassion spreads. Meditation is the flower and compassion is its fragrance.
9. Misunderstanding is certainly natural to the human mind. Mind is a misunderstanding, and through mind whatsoever you understand is misunderstanding. Understanding arises only when mind is absent, because what is mind after all? — just a collection of thoughts, none of which is your experience. Through that screen of collected thoughts, whatever you see you interpret. You never see what is there, you only see what your mind can interpret. And all interpretations are misunderstandings. When there is no interpretation, you simply see the fact, the truth… that which is. Then the mind does not distort, does not color, does not give meanings to it. You don’t have any mind; you are just an opening, a mirror reflecting reality as it is.
10. Meditation is not an effort against the mind. It is a way of understanding the mind. It is a very loving way of witnessing the mind — but, of course, one has to be very patient. This mind that you are carrying in your head has arisen over centuries, millennia. Your small mind carries the whole experience of humanity — and not only of humanity: of animals, of birds, of plants, of rocks. You have passed through all those experiences. All that has happened up to now has happened in you also. In a very small nutshell, you carry the whole experience of existence. That’s what your mind is. In fact, to say it is yours is not right: it is collective; it belongs to us all.
11. No-mind is not against mind: no-mind is beyond mind. No-mind does not come by killing and destroying the mind: no-mind comes when you have understood the mind so totally that thinking is no longer needed — your understanding has replaced it.
12. A good man is an understanding man. A good man is alert, aware — that’s all. Awareness is the only value for me — all else is meaningless. Awareness is the only value for me. So when I say a good SANNYASIN, I mean a SANNYASIN who is aware. Of course, when you are aware, you behave according to the law, the fundamental law. When you are unaware, you go on destroying yourself — you go on being suicidal.
13. When you come close to a Buddha, he is silent because of his intelligence, he is silent because of his awareness, he is silent, not because he has forced himself to be silent, he is silent simply because he has understood the pointlessness of being disturbed in any way. He is silent because he has understood that there is no point in being worried and there is no point in being tense. His silence is out of understanding. It is overflowing understanding. When you come near a Buddha you will have a totally different fragrance — the fragrance of consciousness.
14. God is playing. And a real man of understanding becomes godly — godly in the sense that he is in the world and yet he remains out of it; on the periphery and yet he remains mindful of his center. Doing a thousand and one things, yet he remains a non-doer. In tremendous activities, but he is never lost. His inner light burns bright.
15. Life is one, it goes on moving. It comes into you; it passes through you. In fact to say that it comes into you isn’t right, because then it seems as if life comes into you, and then passes out of you. You don’t exist  –  only this life’s coming and going does. You don’t exist  –  only life exists in its tremendous forms, in its energy, in its millions of delights. Once you understand this, let that understanding be the only law. And start living as Buddhas from this very moment.
16. Unhappiness is the incapacity to understand life, the incapacity to understand oneself, the incapacity to create a harmony between you and the existence. Unhappiness is a discord between you and reality; something is in conflict between you and existence. Happiness is when nothing is in conflict — when you are together, and you are together with existence also. When there is a harmony, when everything is flowing without any conflict, smooth, relaxed, then you are happy. Happiness is possible only with great understanding, an understanding like the peaks of the Himalayas. Less than that won’t do.
17. Children are very receptive, and if you are respectful towards them they are ready to listen, ready to understand; then leave them with their understanding. And it is a question only of a few years in the beginning; soon they will be getting settled in their intelligence, and your guarding will not be needed at all. Soon they will be able to move on their own.
18. Meditation transforms. It takes you to higher levels of consciousness and changes your whole lifestyle. It changes your reactions into responses to such an extent that it is unbelievable that the person who would have reacted in the same situation in anger is now acting in deep compassion, with love — in the same situation. Meditation is a state of being, arrived at through understanding. It needs intelligence, it does not need techniques. There is no technique that can give you intelligence. Otherwise, we would have changed all the idiots into geniuses; all the mediocre people would have become Albert Einsteins, Bertrand Russells, Jean-Paul Sartres. There is no way to change your intelligence from the outside, to sharpen it, to make it more penetrating, to give it more insight. It is simply a question of understanding, and nobody else can do it for you — no machine, no man.
19. To understand a buddha you have to be intelligent. Not only that Buddha’s creation is of tremendous intelligence, but it is so superb, it is so supramental, that even to understand it you will have to be intelligent. Intellect won’t help even in understanding.
20. Real renunciation means unconditioning the mind. Real renunciation means you don’t belong to any society, you don’t belong to any religion, you don’t belong to any country  – you don’t BELONG, you are alone. You belong to the whole in your aloneness. But that is possible only by tremendous understanding, intelligence, awareness, not by playing this game of renunciation — renouncing one thing, creating another, then renouncing that, still creating another.
21. Meditation is not so cheap. Meditation is a total transformation of your being. And a great understanding is needed and a great intelligence. Buddha’s sutras are only for those who are really intelligent people and who really want to get out of the misery that they have created around themselves. It is only for those who are really fed up with misery and are ready to get out of the trap. It is up to you, it depends on you. You have created it! Once you understand how you have created it, it will disappear — because then you will not be able to create it any more.