Osho [Hindi: ओशो] (11 December 1931 – 19 January 1990), born Chandra Mohan Jain [चन्द्र मोहन जैन], and also known as Acharya Rajneesh from the 1960s onwards, as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh during the 1970s and 1980s and as Osho from 1989, was an Indian mystic, guru, and spiritual teacher who inspired a controversial spiritual movement in India, the United States, the Netherlands, Germany, and many other countries. His syncretic teachings emphasise the importance of meditation, awareness, love, celebration, courage, creativity and humour — qualities that he viewed as being suppressed by adherence to static belief systems, religious tradition and socialisation.
Biography information from
Wikiquote·
Portrait adapted from
Wikimedia Commons, Sjakkelien Vollebregt (Public domain / CC0)
Find ecstasy within yourself. It is not out there. It is in your innermost flowering. The one you are looking for is you.
Any mundane activity can become meditative. Digging a hole in the garden, planting new roses in the garden — you can do it with such tremendous love and compassion, you can do it with the hands of a buddha. There is no contradiction … I say unto you, your every act should be a ceremony. If you can bring your consciousness, your awareness, your intelligence to the act, if you can be spontaneous, then there is no need for any other religion: life itself will be the religion.
Zen is the purest of meditations: just sit silently, doing nothing.