Osho – Life basically is an expression of love. Love is the fragrance of the flower of life. They are two sides of the same coin. The person who avoids love is simultaneously avoiding life too; hence the people who have been life-negative have also been love-negative. In fact escaping from the world was really escaping from any situation where love can arise.
For thousands of years man has lived in tremendous fear of love — and love is god, and love is life, and love is the very core of existence. But one has to learn the art of loving. It is an art. The capacity is inborn but it can be refined, it can be slowly slowly helped to grow, to become an Everest, a peak. and only when love comes to its crescendo you experience godliness. Then life becomes a sheer joy, then each moment is ecstatic. Then all this nonsense of calling life a misery, condemning life as sin, trying to escape from life, avoiding life, looking so idiotic that one cannot believe that for thousands of years man had lived under this impact.
This very life/love-negative attitude proves that man has not allowed his intelligence to bloom. He has lived in a retarded way, like an imbecile.
My own approach is that religion is the name of the art which teaches you how to love, how to live, which makes you capable of loving without attachment, without possessiveness, without any manipulation, without any ego trip. It makes you understanding the complexities of existence, it helps you to work out your way in the jungle of life. It is a great challenge. It is worth accepting, because only those who accept it grow. Those who turn their hips towards life. they never grow. The remain juvenile.
All escapists are basically hippies. Hippies means those who have shown the hip to the life. All your saints, mahatmas, sages are hippies. They are real hippies, howsoever serious and sombre they may look, but they have shown their hips to the world. They are cowards.
But they have been worshipped, they have been imitated by others. Every effort has been made to make the whole humanity follow these stupid people. It is time enough to say a total “Stop!”, a full stop to all this nonsense that has been going on and on. Enough is enough.
And my sannyas is a full stop to the whole life-denying approach; in place of it I teach you to love, to live, to be a light unto yourself. That’s the only way to become awakened, to be enlightened. That’s the only way that one can realise one’s potential of becoming a Buddha or a Christ. Not be following Christianity one becomes a Christ, but by living one’s own life authentically, without any hypocrisy, without any pretensions, utterly naked in the sun, in the wind, in the rain, open and available. Because there is no need to fear — it is your life and you are not accountable to anybody else, you are the master of your life — then why create misery? And why live life in such a way that it becomes a sad affair?
The same energy can become a dance and the same energy can become a death. It is the same energy: all depends on you. You can accumulate the manure in your living room, then it will stink, it will be horrible to live there. But the same manure can be used in the garden and then it will bring beautiful roses, great lotuses. It is the same manure which will stink in the room but will create perfume in the garden. One just needs to arrange one’s life in a beautiful way, then there is no need to go anywhere. Paradise is herenow! This very body is the Buddha and this very land the lotus paradise.
Source – Osho Book “Nirvana Now or Never”