Osho Quotes on Living Life Intensely and Totally

1. I affirm life, I rejoice in life. And I would like you all to be deeply, intensely, passionately in life, with one condition only: alertness, watchfulness, witnessing. And I know the difficulty arises, because you will be living with millions of sleepy people — and sleep is contagious; just as awareness is. Awareness, too, is contagious; hence the significance of being with a master.
2. The real man knows no other goal than life itself. Living totally is his goal; living moment to moment, intensely, passionately, hot, that is his goal. Then each moment becomes so precious, such a gift. And only when you know those gifts can you be thankful to god, can you feel grateful, can prayer arise in you.
3. Life has been given to you to live. It is a gift of nature to you. It is not a punishment; it is simply a gift from existence. Rejoice in it, and burn your life’s candle from both ends together. Live as intensely as possible, and the very taste of life will give you the clue why death is not to be feared. Once you have known your life, its fire, you will know that there is no death. This life that one comes to know by intense living is eternal. The feeling of its eternity arises simultaneously as you live. The deeper, the more intensely you live, the quicker you feel there is no death. In my religion death is celebrated because there is no death. It is only an entry into another life.
4. We are part of existence, we are not separate. Even if we want to be separate, we cannot be. Our life is part of being together with existence. And the more you are together with existence, the more alive you are. That’s why I insist continually to live totally, to live intensely, because the deeper your living is, the more you are in contact with existence. You are born of it; every moment you are renewed, rejuvenated, resurrected by each of your breaths, by each of your heartbeats — existence is taking care of you.
5. Death is a constant reminder that, “I can come any moment. Be prepared.” And what is the preparation? The preparation is: live life so totally, so intensely, be so aflame with it that when death comes there is no complaint, there is no grudge. You are absolutely ready because you have lived life so totally, you have known all its mysteries — there is no point in living anymore. Death has come exactly at the right time, when you may have thought to die yourself. I call that death perfect which comes at the moment when you yourself may have thought, “It is enough.”
6. My religion is of celebration. My religion is of delight. My religion is of dance. I don’t want you to worship any god who cannot dance; then he is no more a god. I want to teach you how to live life so intensely, so passionately, that you live it and yet you don’t cling to it, because clinging always shows a miserable mind. You cling to things only if you are not living them well.
7. Death is the pinnacle of life. If you hate death how can you love life. And that is a great misunderstanding. People who think that they love life always hate death — and by hating death they become incapable of living. The capacity to live, the capacity to live at the maximum, comes only when you are ready to die, and ready to die at the maximum. It is always proportionate. If you live in a lukewarm way you will die in a lukewarm way. If you live intensely, totally, dangerously, you will also die in a deep orgasm.
8. I am not interested in the after-life, I am not interested in heaven and hell, I am not interested in virtue and vice — I am interested only in how to impart to you an understanding of living intensely, delightfully, because God is delight.
9. Man is alive only when love is aflame, when the heart is hot, otherwise man lives in a kind of ice-coldness. And to live in a cold way is not to live at all; it is a kind of slow suicide. One should live passionately, intensely, totally. One should burn one’s life torch from both the ends together, and then even if one only lives for a single moment it will bring contentment. Otherwise one can go on living for lives together — a lukewarm life will never bring any contentment.
10. Don’t look for any salvation in the afterlife. Salvation is HERE, because salvation is through experience. Salvation is not through renunciation, salvation is not through virtue, salvation is not through doing good to people. Salvation is through experiencing life as deeply, as intensely, as passionately as possible. Virtue arises out of that passionate living. Good happens to people — it happens naturally without any effort on your part.
11. In this temple you are allowed to be yourself without any inhibitions. I would like this to happen all over the world. This is only the beginning. Here, start living moment to moment totally and intensely, joyfully and playfully — and you will see that nothing goes out of control; that your intelligence becomes sharper; that you become younger; that your love becomes deeper. And when you go out into the world, wherever you go, spread life, playfulness, joy, as far away as possible — to every nook and corner of the earth.
12. Living totally, intensely, burning your torch of life from both sides together, you become a tremendous danger to the crowd. Because everybody starts feeling he could also have lived the way you are living — this dance could have been his too, this song could have been his too. And because you remind him about the wounds that he is carrying and hiding within himself, because you make him utterly nude and exposed to himself, he cannot forgive you.
13. You are trying to live as intensely and as totally as possible, because life is so short and the next moment is so uncertain that we have to take every moment as if it is the last moment. Just the very idea — as if it is the last moment — will transform you.
14. Religion is living. Living totally, living intensely, without any purpose because purpose is always in the future and living is always in the present. If you have a purpose to live your life is divided between present and future — you cannot be total. And without being total you cannot experience what life is. The only way to be total is to forget all about purpose.
15. One can live as intensely and totally in one second as people live in their whole life. But their living is very thin, spread all over a long time. That does not mean that they are the fortunate ones, because authentic living needs great intensity and great totality, not a thin layer. A lukewarm survival is not living. But if you know that the next moment you are going to die you will drop everything that you were involved in, and the only priority will be to know yourself. Before death comes at least be aware who you are. You don’t have time to postpone.
16. Pseudo-religions cannot support your living. They cannot teach you the art of how to live, and live intensely and totally. They can only teach you how to escape from life, how to avoid knowing the truth.
17. It is through decisiveness that the soul is born. If you exist accidentally, like driftwood, you live without a soul; your life is not much of a life. It is pseudo, it is lukewarm; it has no intensity; it has no flame; it has no light. You cannot experience the truth. Living accidentally, knowing the truth is impossible. One has to be so decisive, so committed, so consciously involved with life, so intensely adventurous, that all is at stake every moment. One has to be creative — not only unfolding, but creative.
18. To me, to be a Zorba is the beginning of the journey, and to become a buddha is reaching the goal. And it can happen in the same individual — it can only happen in the same individual. That’s why I am insisting continuously: don’t create any split in your life, don’t condemn anything of the body. Live it — not unwillingly — live it totally, intensely. That very living will make you capable of another search. That’s why I don’t say my sannyasins have to be ascetics, that my sannyasins have to leave their wives, their husbands, their children. All that nonsense has been taught for centuries, and how many people — out of millions of monks and nuns — how many people have blossomed? Not even a single one. I want you to live life undivided. And first comes the body, first comes your outer world.
19. If you are really alive then you are a danger to everybody, everybody who tries to exploit you, everybody who is a parasite on you. You are going to fight tooth and nail. You would rather die than live like a slave, because even death for a fully alive person is not death; it is the culmination of life. Even dying he goes on living intensely and totally. He is not afraid of death, he is not afraid of anything.
20. The commune has no tomorrow, it lives here and now. And it lives totally and intensely, because we are not living as a means to some other life. We are living as an end to itself.
21. Take life joyfully, take life easily, take life relaxedly, don’t create unnecessary problems. Ninety-nine percent of your problems are created by you because you take life seriously. Seriousness is the root cause of problems. Be playful, and you will not miss anything — because life is God. Forget about God; just be alive, be abundantly alive. Live each moment as if this is the last moment. Live it intensely; let your torch burn from both sides together. Even if it is only for one moment, that is enough. One moment of intense totality is enough to give you the taste of God. You can live in a lukewarm way, the bourgeois way, the middle-class way. You can go on living, dragging yourself for millions of years — you will only collect dust from the roads and nothing else. One moment of clarity, totality, spontaneity, and you burn like a flame. Just one moment is enough! One moment will make you eternal; you will enter from that moment into eternity. That’s my whole message for my sannyasins: live it in such way that you need not repent, ever.