Q: How to conquer sex? How to conquer anger?

Osho: This is a question so frequently asked nowadays. The mistake lies in asking the question.

The problem is not to conquer, it is to know. We know neither anger nor sex. This ignorance is what defeats us.

Knowing brings victory. When there is anger, when there is sex, we are not. There is no awareness, hence we are not. What happens in this state of unconsciousness is completely mechanical. When the unconsciousness releases its grip, remorse follows -- but that is futile. Because the one who now repents will fall asleep again as soon as sex catches hold of him. If he does not sink into sleep -- if he lets consciousness, wakefulness and right remembrance prevail - he will find that there is neither anger nor sex. The mechanicalness is broken and there is nothing to be conquered - the enemy has gone.

You may understand this better through a symbolic story. In the darkness, a rope is taken for a snake. Seeing it, some run away, some get ready to kill it. Both are mistaken because they both take the rope for a snake. Somebody goes near it and finds that there is no snake at all. He does not need to do anything more than approach it.

Man has only to approach himself. Whatever is within him, he must be familiar with it all. He does not have to fight with anything. And I say unto you that victory comes to him without a fight.

Right watchfulness towards one's own mind is the key to victory over life. 

How to be free from the fear of death?

Last night a man breathed his last. Today people mourn at his door.

At such moments a memory of an event in my childhood arises in my mind. It was my first visit to the burning ghats. The funeral pyre had been lit, and the people were chatting in small groups.

The village poet said, "I am not afraid of death. Death is a friend."

Since then I have heard this same assertion in different forms from different people. I have also looked into the eyes of those who say this and have found that these fearless words arise from fear.

Nothing changes just by giving death beautiful names. In fact, the fear is not of death, the fear is of the unfamiliar. What is unknown creates fear in us. It is necessary to become acquainted with death. This acquaintance brings one to fearlessness. Why? Because it is through acquaintance that one comes to know that there is no death to what is.

It is only the personality, which we have taken to be our "I", that shatters, that dies. It shatters because it is not. It is only a combination, a union of a few elements. As this union disintegrates, the personality shatters. This is what death is. Hence, as long as personality is taken to be one and the same as the true self, there is death.

Move deeper from the personality, and as you arrive at the true self, the deathless is attained.

The path of this journey, the penetration from the surface of personality to the core of the self, is religion.

It is in samadhi, enlightenment, that acquaintance with death happens. Just as darkness ceases to exist the moment the sun rises, so does death when samadhi is attained.

Death is neither an enemy nor a friend, it simply does not exist. One needs neither to fear it nor not fear it. One has only to know it.

Ignorance of it is fear, knowing it is fearlessness.

A repressed fire can burst into flames at any moment

A so-called saint was sitting alone before his dhuni, his holy fire pit. Someone came by to test him, saying, "Babaji, is there any fire in the dhuni?"

The saint said, "There is none."

He said, "Please stir it, perhaps there are coals."

Raising his eyebrows the saint said angrily, "I told you there is no fire."

The man provoked him again, saying, "Babaji, surely there must be a few sparks?"

Leaning forward on his fire tongs the saint said, "What kind of idiot are you anyway?"

Then the man said, "Babaji, I see a few sparks."

The saint said, "What? Am I blind?"

The man said, "A few flames become visible now!"

Then the saint completely lost his senses - his eyes filled with sparks and his voice with flames. Picking up his fire tongs he started chasing after that man to beat him.

Fleeing for his life the man said, "Babaji, look, now the fire has taken flame totally!"

Only a repressed fire can burst into flames. And a repressed fire can burst into flames at any moment. Repression is self-enmity and a self-deception.

In the middle, between indulgence and repression is the door to peace, to liberation, to strength, to truth, to samadhi. Search for this door.

Don't ever repress the mind. Repression is a disease. And that which is repressed will never be completed. It comes back again and again to attack you. The mind is to be understood. Finally, only understanding the mind becomes the solution. Repression is merely postponement of diseases. The path is neither in indulgence nor repression. The path is in understanding. Hence know your own mind in all its forms. Live consciously. Live wakefully. Then what is meaningless disappears on its own. And its energy is transformed into the meaningful. Otherwise we create a vicious circle for ourselves.

Know the strong fort inside you

A sadhu was asked by his friends, "If wicked people attack you, what will you do?"

He said, "I will go sit inside my own strong fort."

This conversation reached the ears of the enemies. Then one day the enemies surrounded him while he was alone and said, "O sadhu! Please tell us, where is your strong fort?"

The sadhu began laughing and then, placing a hand on his heart, said, "This is my fort. No attack can ever be made on it. The body can be destroyed, but that which is inside cannot be. This is my very fort. My only security is to know my way there. "

The person who doesn't know this strong fort his entire life is insecure. His life is surrounded by enemies every moment. Such a person has not yet found a shelter for peace and security. And those who search outside for that shelter, search in vain, because it is inside.Only by being established in your being does the real acquaintance with life happen, because the periphery which is outside this center is created by death.

One finds life only from knowing that which is inside one's being. One who doesn't know this is surrounded every moment by death and the fear of death.

Dont TRY to be natural, just BE natural

Suzuki tells a story:

A monk once asked one of the old Chinese Masters: What is the way?

The Master replied:The natural one, the ordinary one, is the way.

How, continued the monk, am I to be in accord with it? Asked the monk.

When you try to be in accord with it, said the Master, then you deviate from it.

Does this mean that one should not try?

No, because that too is a way of trying. Of course, indirect, but still intentional; that too will not help. But just see the dilemma clearly and you are out of it.

ARE YOU, NOT?

Meditation requires understanding and not effort, understanding is essential, not effort, and remember always that you cannot substitute understanding with any effort whatsoever. But what do I mean by understanding? By understanding I mean - living a natural life. Of course, you cannot try to be natural, that is self-contradictory!

You can BE natural but you cannot try to be natural.

All the ultimate answers are foolish

In a little backwoods school the teacher was at the blackboard explaining arithmetic problems.

She was delighted to see her dullest pupil giving slack-jawed attention, which was unusual for him. Her happy thought was that at last the gangling lad was beginning to understand.

When she finished she said to him: YOU were so interested, Cicero. that I am sure you want to ask some questions.

Yes ma’am, drawled Cicero, I got one to ask.

Where do those figures go when you rub them off?

All the ultimate answers are foolish in a way because the ultimate is not only unknown, it is unknowable. A mature mind is one who understands the impossibility of knowing the ultimate, and with this understanding there is a new dimension: the dimension of being. Knowing is not possible, but being is.

Or in other word: in relation to the ultimate only - being is knowing. This dimension is the religious dimension and unless one is religious in this sense one goes on asking absurd questions and accumulating even more absurd answers.