Freedom to protest against the status quo....

Liberty has never come from the government.  Liberty has always come from the subjects of it.  The history of liberty is a history of resistance.  ~Woodrow Wilson

Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks.  Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools.  And their grandchildren are once more slaves.  ~D.H. Lawrence

Books won't stay banned -
Ideas won't go to jail.
~Alfred Whitney Griswold


You can cage the singer but not the song.  ~Harry Belafonte

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.

George Washington (1732-1799) First President of the USA.

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) Danish philosopher and writer.

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties. John Milton (1608-1674) English poet.

Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself. Salman Rushdie (1948-?) Anglo-Indian novelist.

A people which is able to say everything becomes able to do everything. Napoleon I (1769-1821) Napoleon Bonaparte. French general.

History does not teach fatalism.  There are moments when the will of a handful of free men breaks through determinism and opens up new roads.  ~Charles de Gaulle


Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed - else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die.  ~Dwight D. Eisenhower


Liberty is the possibility of doubting, of making a mistake,... of searching and experimenting,... of saying No to any authority - literary, artistic, philosophical, religious, social, and even political.  ~Ignazio Silone,The God That Failed, 1950


Liberty: One of Imagination's most precious possessions.  ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary


The patriot's blood is the seed of Freedom's tree.  ~Thomas Campbell



Here is my advice as we begin the century that will lead to 2081.  First, guard the freedom of ideas at all costs.  Be alert that dictators have always played on the natural human tendency to blame others and to oversimplify.  And don't regard yourself as a guardian of freedom unless you respect and preserve the rights of people you disagree with to free, public, unhampered expression.  ~Gerard K. O'Neill, 2081

Liberty has never come from the government.  Liberty has always come from the subjects of it.  The history of liberty is a history of resistance.  ~Woodrow Wilson

Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks.  Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools.  And their grandchildren are once more slaves.  ~D.H. Lawrence

Books won't stay banned -
Ideas won't go to jail.
~Alfred Whitney Griswold


You can cage the singer but not the song.  ~Harry Belafonte

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.

George Washington (1732-1799) First President of the USA.

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) Danish philosopher and writer.

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties. John Milton (1608-1674) English poet.

Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself. Salman Rushdie (1948-?) Anglo-Indian novelist.

A people which is able to say everything becomes able to do everything. Napoleon I (1769-1821) Napoleon Bonaparte. French general.

History does not teach fatalism.  There are moments when the will of a handful of free men breaks through determinism and opens up new roads.  ~Charles de Gaulle


Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed - else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die.  ~Dwight D. Eisenhower


Liberty is the possibility of doubting, of making a mistake,... of searching and experimenting,... of saying No to any authority - literary, artistic, philosophical, religious, social, and even political.  ~Ignazio Silone,The God That Failed, 1950


Liberty: One of Imagination's most precious possessions.  ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary


The patriot's blood is the seed of Freedom's tree.  ~Thomas Campbell



Here is my advice as we begin the century that will lead to 2081.  First, guard the freedom of ideas at all costs.  Be alert that dictators have always played on the natural human tendency to blame others and to oversimplify.  And don't regard yourself as a guardian of freedom unless you respect and preserve the rights of people you disagree with to free, public, unhampered expression.  ~Gerard K. O'Neill, 2081


Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.  ~Abraham Lincoln


I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.  ~Simone de Beauvoir


My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.  ~Adlai Stevenson, speech, Detroit, 1952


It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you.  ~Author unknown, sometimes attributed to M. Grundler


We on this continent should never forget that men first crossed the Atlantic not to find soil for their ploughs but to secure liberty for their souls.  ~Robert J. McCracken


You have freedom when you're easy in your harness.  ~Robert Frost


For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.  ~Thomas Paine


In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.  ~Franklin D. Roosevelt


Freedom is the oxygen of the soul.  ~Moshe Dayan


There are two freedoms - the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where he is free to do what he ought.  ~Charles Kingsley


No one is free when others are oppressed.  ~Author Unknown


Freedom means choosing your burden.  ~Hephzibah Menuhin


Men fight for freedom, then they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from themselves.  ~Author Unknown


Freedom is that instant between when someone tells you to do something and when you decide how to respond.  ~Jeffrey Borenstein


Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.  ~Harry Emerson Fosdick


The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions.  ~Adlai Stevenson, speech, New York City, 28 August 1952


They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.  ~Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759


Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness on the confines of two everlasting hostile empires, - Necessity and Free Will.  ~Thomas Carlyle, Essays, "The Opera"

We have enjoyed so much freedom for so long that we are perhaps in danger of forgetting how much blood it cost to establish the Bill of Rights.  ~Felix Frankfurter


No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.  ~Frederick Douglass, speech, Civil Rights Mass Meeting, Washington, D.C., 1883


Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.  ~George Washington


I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.  ~James Madison, speech, Virginia Convention, 1788


Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.  ~Mahatma Gandhi


Freedom has a thousand charms to show,
That slaves, howe'er contented, never know.
~William Cowper


The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power.  ~Daniel Webster


Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.  ~Albert Camus


I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery.  ~Author Unknown


Freedom is the will to be responsible to ourselves.  ~Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 1888


Without freedom, no one really has a name.  ~Milton Acorda


A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century.  ~Baron de Montesquieu


Liberty means responsibility.  That is why most men dread it.  ~George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, "Maxims: Liberty and Equality," 1905


Freedom is never free.  ~Author Unknown


We are free, truly free, when we don't need to rent our arms to anybody in order to be able to lift a piece of bread to our mouths.  ~Ricardo Flores Magon, speech, 31 May 1914

We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.  ~John Stuart Mill,On Liberty, 1859


The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen.  ~Tommy Smothers

We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard.  ~Voltaire,Dictionnaire Philosophique, 1764


Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.  ~Voltaire

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it.  If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth:  if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.  ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859


Books won't stay banned.  They won't burn.  Ideas won't go to jail.  In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost.  The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.  ~Alfred Whitney Griswold, New York Times, 24 February 1959


A free press can be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom a press will never be anything but bad.  ~Albert Camus


To reject the word is to reject the human search.  ~Max Lerner, 1953, on book purging


What progress we are making.  In the Middle Ages they would have burned me.  Now they are content with burning my books.  ~Sigmund Freud, 1933


Every burned book enlightens the world.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


The paper burns, but the words fly away.  ~Akiba ben Joseph


Did you ever hear anyone say, "That work had better be banned because I might read it and it might be very damaging to me?" ~Joseph Henry Jackson


If you don't have this freedom of the press, then all these little fellows are weaseling around and doing their monkey business and they never get caught.  ~Harold R. Medina


The test of democracy is freedom of criticism.  ~David Ben-Gurion


If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.  ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859


To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves.  ~Claude-Adrien Helvétius

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values.  For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.  ~John F. Kennedy

God forbid that any book should be banned.  The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.  ~Rebecca West

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.  ~Noam Chomsky


Every human being has a right to hear what other wise human beings have spoken to him.  It is one of the Rights of Men; a very cruel injustice if you deny it to a man!  ~Thomas Carlyle



I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.  ~Evelyn Beatrice Hall, The Friends of Voltaire, 1906, a description of Voltaire's attitude, commonly misattributed to Voltaire, the closest of his documented sentiments being "I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write." in a 1770 letter 

The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may thing what we like and say what we think.

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) American author and poet.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) British author.

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.  ~Abraham Lincoln


I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.  ~Simone de Beauvoir


My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.  ~Adlai Stevenson, speech, Detroit, 1952


It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you.  ~Author unknown, sometimes attributed to M. Grundler


We on this continent should never forget that men first crossed the Atlantic not to find soil for their ploughs but to secure liberty for their souls.  ~Robert J. McCracken


You have freedom when you're easy in your harness.  ~Robert Frost


For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.  ~Thomas Paine


In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.  ~Franklin D. Roosevelt


Freedom is the oxygen of the soul.  ~Moshe Dayan


There are two freedoms - the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where he is free to do what he ought.  ~Charles Kingsley


No one is free when others are oppressed.  ~Author Unknown


Freedom means choosing your burden.  ~Hephzibah Menuhin


Men fight for freedom, then they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from themselves.  ~Author Unknown


Freedom is that instant between when someone tells you to do something and when you decide how to respond.  ~Jeffrey Borenstein


Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.  ~Harry Emerson Fosdick


The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions.  ~Adlai Stevenson, speech, New York City, 28 August 1952


They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.  ~Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759


Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness on the confines of two everlasting hostile empires, - Necessity and Free Will.  ~Thomas Carlyle, Essays, "The Opera"


We have enjoyed so much freedom for so long that we are perhaps in danger of forgetting how much blood it cost to establish the Bill of Rights.  ~Felix Frankfurter


No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.  ~Frederick Douglass, speech, Civil Rights Mass Meeting, Washington, D.C., 1883


Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.  ~George Washington


I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.  ~James Madison, speech, Virginia Convention, 1788


Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.  ~Mahatma Gandhi


Freedom has a thousand charms to show,
That slaves, howe'er contented, never know.
~William Cowper


The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power.  ~Daniel Webster


Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.  ~Albert Camus


I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery.  ~Author Unknown


Freedom is the will to be responsible to ourselves.  ~Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 1888


Without freedom, no one really has a name.  ~Milton Acorda


A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century.  ~Baron de Montesquieu


Liberty means responsibility.  That is why most men dread it.  ~George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, "Maxims: Liberty and Equality," 1905


Freedom is never free.  ~Author Unknown


We are free, truly free, when we don't need to rent our arms to anybody in order to be able to lift a piece of bread to our mouths.  ~Ricardo Flores Magon, speech, 31 May 1914

We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.  ~John Stuart Mill,On Liberty, 1859


The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen.  ~Tommy Smothers

We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard.  ~Voltaire,Dictionnaire Philosophique, 1764


Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.  ~Voltaire

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it.  If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth:  if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.  ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859


Books won't stay banned.  They won't burn.  Ideas won't go to jail.  In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost.  The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.  ~Alfred Whitney Griswold, New York Times, 24 February 1959


A free press can be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom a press will never be anything but bad.  ~Albert Camus


To reject the word is to reject the human search.  ~Max Lerner, 1953, on book purging


What progress we are making.  In the Middle Ages they would have burned me.  Now they are content with burning my books.  ~Sigmund Freud, 1933


Every burned book enlightens the world.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


The paper burns, but the words fly away.  ~Akiba ben Joseph


Did you ever hear anyone say, "That work had better be banned because I might read it and it might be very damaging to me?" ~Joseph Henry Jackson


If you don't have this freedom of the press, then all these little fellows are weaseling around and doing their monkey business and they never get caught.  ~Harold R. Medina


The test of democracy is freedom of criticism.  ~David Ben-Gurion


If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.  ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859


To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves.  ~Claude-Adrien Helvétius

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values.  For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.  ~John F. Kennedy

God forbid that any book should be banned.  The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.  ~Rebecca West

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.  ~Noam Chomsky


Every human being has a right to hear what other wise human beings have spoken to him.  It is one of the Rights of Men; a very cruel injustice if you deny it to a man!  ~Thomas Carlyle



I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.  ~Evelyn Beatrice Hall, The Friends of Voltaire, 1906, a description of Voltaire's attitude, commonly misattributed to Voltaire, the closest of his documented sentiments being "I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write." in a 1770 letter 

The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may thing what we like and say what we think.

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) American author and poet.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) British author.

"I want to suggest to you that citizens of free societies, democracies, do not preserve their freedom by pussyfooting around their fellow-citizen's opinions, even their most cherished beliefs.

In free societies, you must have the free play of ideas. There must be argument, and it must be impassioned and untrammeled.

A free society is not calm and eventless place - that is the kind of static, dead society dictators try to create.

Free societies are dynamic, noisy, turbulent, and full of radical disagreements.

Skepticism and freedom are indissolubly linked; and it is the skepticism of journalists, their show-me, prove-it unwillingness to be impressed, that is perhaps their most important contribution to the freedom of the free world.

It is the disrespect of journalists-for power, for orthodoxies, for party lines, for ideologies, for vanity, for arrogance, for folly, for pretension, for corruption, for stupidity, maybe even for editors-that I would like to celebrate...and that I urge you all, in freedom's name, to preserve." 

Salman Rushdie

Let a child teach us how to pray

ABCD of praying ( literally the Baal Shem way) ..

Osho tells us to be child-like....

He tells us like no one else can...

Read on...

When you are praying it is unseemly to make a display of your spiritual knowledge or to recite the scriptures. That is why the prayers of children bear more fruit. And when a saint prays, his prayer is as good as that of a child.

Once a young boy went into his bedroom, jumped straight into bed, and covered himself with his blanket. His mother reminded him that he had not said his prayers. The child replied, "Is it right to awaken God from His sleep on such a cold night? And so late?"

From such a child, God needs no prayer composed of words. His concern that the night was so cold and that it was too late to disturb God's sleep is prayer itself. Feeling like this is enough; there is no need to say anything.

And the word 'God' is merely an excuse, a help in expressing our feelings to the totality. In fact, the whole of existence is God. All is divine. And when you are filled with this feeling of divinity, you become united with the whole of existence. The solution to your problem is in that union.

Your real problem is that you are uprooted. And because you are uprooted you are thirsty. Your roots are unable to absorb water, that is why you feel so afflicted. Even when you have everything you have wished for, you still have the feeling you are missing something, the feeling that you want something. If your roots are not deep beneath the soil you will not be able to absorb water even if the rain is falling. And so you are certain to remain thirsty. To be united with existence is prayer. Prayer is this particular state of feeling.

There is a very fine anecdote about a famous Hebrew mystic named Ba'al Shem. He was a peculiar kind of devotee -- in his prayers he generally quarreled with God. Only lovers can quarrel. If something he didn't like happened, he used to make a lot of fuss. His prayers were worth hearing because they were direct conversations with God.

Baal Shem thought the world was getting worse and worse every day, so he complained to God, "Why don't You come down to earth as You promised? You said You would come when things really got bad. Why are You delaying?" The story tells us that God was greatly harassed by him in this way, and quite often too.

One of Baal Shem's disciples used to make a note of whatever he said. He was writing Baal Shem's biography, and he also used to jot down these chats with God.

The story goes on to say Baal Shem once bothered God so much, He sent His messenger to earth, telling him to brainwash Baal Shem and his disciple so they would forget everything.

Baal Shem was that much of a nuisance. The divine messenger carried out his instructions to the letter. When Baal Shem arose from his prayers, he had forgotten everything. He could not even remember his own name. He did not remember that the world was full of problems and that he wanted God to come and remedy them immediately. He could neither remember who he was nor where he was.

But when he looked at his disciple he had a vague recollection, as if in a dream, that he was a mystic and that this man was his disciple. He asked the disciple to tell him what he could remember of the past. The disciple was unable to tell him anything, he had been brainwashed totally. He replied, "I do not even remember who I am either."

Baal Shem said, "I have given you many lessons in the past. Try to remember a sutra from any one of them and repeat it quickly. Time is passing and we may find ourselves in some difficulty."

The disciple replied, "I remember nothing but the Hebrew alphabet -- ALEPH, BETH, GIMMEL, DALETH..."

Baal Shem said, "Be quick. Speak the letters aloud." The disciple began to recite the alphabet, and Baal Shem followed suit. This one clue brought their memories back. And then Baal Shem began to take God to task. "Why did You play this trick on me?" he asked.

It is said that Baal Shem finished his prayer by repeating the alphabet and thus regained his lost memory. There is nothing of substance in the letters ALEPH, BETH, GIMMEL, or DALETH, but he repeated them with such attentiveness that he regained his original self. And then he shouted to God, "It is absolutely essential the Messiah come down to earth now!"

God recalled His messenger and told him he had not done his job very well. The messenger replied, "It is dangerous to work on this man. No matter how hard one tries, his prayer cannot be snatched away from him. We can take everything from him except his prayer. His prayer has no relationship whatsoever with his brain -- his prayer comes from his totality. His intellect, his words, can be snatched away from him, but his love cannot, his prayer cannot. There, even you are helpless."

Source - Osho ook "The Great Secret"

Is palace and kingdom an ideal place for Nirvana?

Some one asked Osho : “ If I want to be the Buddha, will I have to renounce all luxuries..”

His  response is incomparable, which can come only from Osho!

Osho says:

“I call these people idiots because they don’t know exactly what they are talking about. I will tell you a story about Gautam Buddha; perhaps this will help these idiots to understand.

Buddha renounced in ignorance, not as a buddha. He renounced his palace and kingdom and luxuries, not as a buddha – he was as ignorant as you are. He was in search of light, he was in darkness and doubt. He was as blind as anyone can be. In this blindness, in this darkness, he thought perhaps renouncing the kingdom, renouncing all comforts and luxuries was going to help him find truth.

What relationship is there? If this is the truth, that you have to renounce the kingdom, then how many people have kingdoms? Then the people who don’t have kingdoms cannot become buddhas. And how big was the kingdom? Do you understand? – there were two thousand kingdoms in India at the time of Buddha. His kingdom was not more than a small tehsil – a part of a district.

But when he became enlightened he came back to his palace to see his old father, whom he had betrayed in a way, because he had been hoping that in his old age his son would take over the burden of the kingdom, but instead he escaped. He was coming back after twelve years to ask forgiveness from the old man, and also his wife, and his son who was now grown twelve years.. the night he was born was the night Gautam Buddha had escaped from the kingdom.

He had gone to see the face of the child, but the child was clinging to the mother and they were covered with blankets. He was afraid to wake up the wife because she might create some tantrum, and his renunciation of the world might be prevented – or delayed, certainly. So he left from the door without seeing the face of his child.

After twelve years, when he became enlightened, the first thing he did was to go back to his kingdom. The father was very angry, but Buddha stood in absolute silence. When the father had said whatever he wanted to say, when his rage was finished, he looked again at the face of the Buddha – he was absolutely unaffected.

When his father had calmed down, Buddha said to him, ”You are unnecessarily being angry with me. I am not the same person who left the palace. I am a new being, with eyes to see. I have achieved the ultimate. Just look at my face, my silence; look into my eyes and the depth of my eyes. Don’t be angry, I have just come to ask your forgiveness that I had to renounce the kingdom. But I have brought a bigger kingdom of the inner, and I have come to share it with you, and all.”

Then he entered into the palace to meet his wife. Of course she was angry... but she also belonged

to a big empire. She was the daughter of a far bigger kingdom, and as the daughter of a great

warrior she had waited for these twelve years without saying a word. What she said is immensely amazing.

She said to Gautam Buddha, ”I am not angry that you renounced the kingdom. I am angry that you

did not say anything to me when you left. Do you think I would have prevented you? I am also the

daughter of a great warrior....”

Buddha felt very embarrassed; he had never thought about it. Her anger was not that he had

renounced the kingdom – that was his business. Her anger was that he did not trust in her, in her love; that he did not trust in her and thought she would have interfered in his renunciation. She was not that type of ordinary woman; she would have rejoiced that he was renouncing the kingdom. Buddha had to ask forgiveness.

His wife – her name was Yashodhara – said, ”For these twelve years I have been carrying only one

question to ask to you. And that question is: whatever you have attained – and certainly you have attained something, I can see it in your eyes, on your face, in your grace. My question is: Whatever you have attained, was it not possible to attain it in the palace, in the kingdom? Was renunciation necessary?”

Gautam Buddha said, ”At that time I thought so, because for centuries it has been said that unless you renounce the world you cannot find the ultimate truth. But now I can say with absolute certainty, whatever has happened to me could have happened in the kingdom, in the palace; there was no need to go anywhere.”

This is my answer to the stupid.”

From “No Mind: The Flowers of Eternity”

Osho tells a Tao story of a beautiful journey!

A Taoist parable:

There is a statue of Lao Tzu, the founder of Tao. And a young man has been thinking for years to go to the mountains and see the statue of Lao Tzu. He loves the words, the way Lao Tzu has spoken, the style of life that he has lived, but he has never seen any of his statues. There are no Taoist temples, so there are very rare statues and they are all in the mountains - standing in the open, carved out of the mountain - no roof, no temple, no priest, no worship.

And years pass, and there are so many things always coming in between. But finally one night he decides that he has to go - and it is not that far, only a hundred miles - but he is a poor man, and he has to walk. In the middle of the night - he chooses the time in the middle of the night so that the wife and the children and the family are asleep and no trouble arises - he takes a lamp in his hand, because the night is dark, and goes out of the town.

As he comes out of the town to the first milestone, a thought arises in him: 'My God, one hundred miles! And I only have two feet - it is going to kill me. I am asking the impossible. I have never walked one hundred miles, and there is no road...' It is a small hill path, a footpath - dangerous too. So he thinks: 'It is better to wait till the morning. At least there will be light, and I can see better; otherwise I will fall somewhere off this small footpath. And without seeing the statue of Lao Tzu, simply be finished. Why commit suicide?'

So he was sitting just outside the town, and as the sun was rising an old man came by. He saw this young man sitting; he asked: 'What are you doing here?' The young man explained.

The old man laughed. He said: 'Have you not heard the ancient saying? Nobody has the power to take two steps together, you can take only one step at a time. The powerful, the weak, the young, the old - it doesn’t matter. And the saying goes: `Just one step by one step, a man can go ten thousand miles’ - and this is only a hundred miles! You seem to be stupid.

And who is saying to you that you should go continuously? You can take time; after ten miles you can rest a day or two days, enjoy. This is one of the most beautiful valleys and the most beautiful mountains and the trees are so full of fruits, fruits that you may not have even tasted. Anyway, I am going; you can come along with me. I have been on this path thousands of times, and I am at least four times your age. Stand up!'

The man was so authoritative, when he said: 'Stand up!' the young man simply stood. And he said: 'Give your things to me. You are young, inexperienced; I will carry your things. You just follow me, and we will take as many rests as you want.'

And what the old man had said was true - as they entered deeper into the forest and the mountains, it became more and more beautiful. And wild, juicy fruits... and they were resting; whenever he wanted, the old man was ready. He was surprised that the old man himself never said it was time to rest. But whenever the young man said it was time to rest, he was always willing to rest with him - a day or two, and then they would start the journey again.

Those one hundred miles just came and went by, and they reached one of the most beautiful statues of one of the greatest men who has ever walked on the earth. Even his statue had something - it was not just a piece of art, it was created by Taoist artists to represent the spirit of Tao.

Tao believes in the philosophy of let-go. It believes you are not to swim, but just to flow with the river, allow the river to take you wherever it is going - because every river ultimately reaches to the ocean. So don’t be worried, you will reach the ocean. There is no need to be tense.

In that lonely spot the statue was standing, and there was a waterfall just by the side - because Tao is called the watercourse way. Just as the water goes on and on flowing with no guidebooks, with no maps, with no rules, no discipline... but strangely enough in a very humble way, because it is always seeking the lower position everywhere. It never goes uphill. It always goes downhill, but it reaches to the ocean, to its very source.

The whole atmosphere there was representative of the Taoist idea of let-go. The old man said: 'Now begins the journey.'

The young man said: 'What? I was thinking, one hundred miles and the journey is finished.'

The old man said: 'That is just the way the masters have been talking to people. But the reality is now - from this point, from this atmosphere, a journey of one thousand and one miles begins. And I will not deceive you, because after one thousand and one miles you will meet another old man - perhaps me - who will say: `This is just a stopover, go on.’ Go on is the message.'


The journey itself is the goal.


It is infinite. It is eternal.

                                 Osho, Tao The Pathless Path