Tattva

Courage: The Joy of Living Dangerously, by Osho 

Osho is one of the best known and most provocative spiritual teachers of the twentieth century. More than a decade after his death in 1990, the influence of his teachings continues to expand. We will take a look at his second best selling book, Courage: The Joy of Living Dangerously, the best selling being The Book of Secrets. Osho’s style is undoubtedly unique. He can be direct, shocking, rational, beautiful and mesmerizing at the same time. His style is in stark contrast to Yogananda’s sublime, beautiful speech in Autobiography of a Yogi. Here is an extract from the foreword: “I would like to make you more insecure, more uncertain– because that’s how life is, that’s how God is. When there is more insecurity and more danger, the only way to respond to it is by awareness. There are two possibilities. Either you close your eyes and become dogmatic, become a Christian, or a Hindu or a Mohammedan. Then you become like an ostrich. It doesn’t change life; it simply closes your eyes. It simply makes you stupid, it simply makes you unintelligent. In your unintelligence you feel secure - all idiots feel secure. In fact, only idiots feel secure. A real man will always feel insecure.”   

Get the idea? Often he will give one-line insights that seem very strange to begin with, but begin to make sense as he explains. For example, “Freedom creates fear. People talk about freedom but they are afraid. And a man is not yet a man if he is afraid of freedom. I give you freedom; I don’t give you security. I give you understanding; I don’t give you knowledge. Knowledge will make you certain. If I can give you a formula, a set formula, that there is a God …– finished!- then you are certain. That’s why so many people… don’t want freedom, they want fixed formulas.” If you like such kind of insights, then this book has tons of it. 

 If you read Osho’s books, you will realize that a bulk of his writing is used to break down all preconceived notions that our society has built about anything including love, God, and truth. Osho is described as the “ultimate deconstructionist.” He blames blind following of religious dogmas and doctrines for the problems we face in our lives. He blames society for making us feel guilty about ourselves. The society puts up rules for us to follow which do not allow us to express our natural self. This has created a false and unnatural set of standards against which we measure ourselves. Osho asks us to look beyond what society forces us to see. This is where courage comes in, since it takes courage to go against society’s standards of what is good and bad.

By this I do not mean that Osho is giving us a license to freely commit crime; rather he has the courage to live life in an adventurous way. He says our attitude must not be that of an insurance seeker but that of a mountain-climber or a glider. It is the process of discovering the truth that is called life, while doing things for which you already know the end result is death. This can be applied to our daily life at many levels. From working in the office to studying to making career decisions, Osho’s advice holds the promise of making the process more involving, interesting and finally a rewarding experience. All this takes courage. 

Having said that, his teachings can be said to be rooted in Dharmic philosophy. Osho believes in rebirth and describes his death in his previous life too! He claims to have achieved salvation and also describes the experience in a way similar to other Hindu monks’ descriptions. He quotes Buddha extensively and gives a lot of Zen stories to illustrate his one-line insights. Not all the text in Courage is strange insight. A sizable chunk of the text is good-natured inspiring advice that you can read in typical spiritual texts. For example, “Commit as many mistakes as possible, remembering only one thing: don’t commit the same mistakes again. And you will be growing.” But every now and then he will stump you and set you thinking with his one-line insights like, “Dull intelligence is what is called intellect” or “Science is the murder of mystery.”

One of my favorite lines: “If a man knows what peace is, and what mind is, he cannot write a book entitled “Peace of Mind,” because mind is the cause of lack of peace, all restlessness. Peace is when there is no mind. So peace of mind—no commodity like this exists.” This is where the appeal of this book lies: seemingly strange one-line insights followed by compelling explanations.  The book’s ability to set average people thinking about their long-held beliefs is second to none. Personally I feel this book is like nuclear fission. If you apply it completely to your life it might turn your life upside down. But if you gradually let it trickle down in your actions, it can be a long-lasting source of vitality.

Neeraj Korde is a software engineer based in Seattle, Washington. His interests include practicing yoga. He can be reached at nkorde@gmail.com. 

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 1st, 2007 at 9:40 am and is filed under Book Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.