Rajneesh Quotes

Don't get too attached to anything.

I saw that nothing was permanent. You don't want to possess anything that is dear to you because you might lose it.

I’m not sentimental about anything. Life flows by, and you flow with it or you don’t. Move on and move out.

Life is a flux, nothing abides. Still we are such fools, we go on clinging. If change is the nature of life, then clinging is stupidity, because your clinging is not going to change the law of life. Your clinging is only going to make you miserable. Things are bound to change; whether you cling or not does not matter. If you cling you become miserable: you cling and they change, you feel frustrated. If you don't cling they still change, but then there is no frustration because you were perfectly aware that they are bound to change. This is how things are, this is the suchness of life.

To renounce things is not to give them up. It is to acknowledge that all things go away.

When you cling, life is destroyed; when you hold on to anything, you cease to live.

The more you cling to things, The more you love them, The more the pain you suffer, When they're taken from you.

To remember non-attachment is to remember what freedom is all about. If we get attached, even to a beautiful state of being, we are caught, and ultimately we will suffer. We work to observe anything that comes our way, experience it while it is here, and be able to let go of it.

Let come what comes, let go what goes. See what remains.

So how can you lose what you've never owned?

The secret of zen is just two words: not... always... so.

No matter how many times I tell you this, you're still thinking, thinking, judging, judging, coming to conclusions, trying to work out your life. You have to let go. Totally, absolutely, completely. You have to let go so completely that you will feel no body, no mind, no pain, nothing.

I miss the grasshoppers much, but suppose it is all for the best. I should become too much attached to a trotting world.

I don't really have a problem saying good-bye to things. All things come to an end.

At least half of your mind is always thinking, I'll be leaving; this won't last. It's a good Buddhist attitude. If I were a Buddhist, this would be a great help. As it is, I'm just sad.

When you stopped wishing things wouldn't fall apart, you'd stop suffering when they did.

We can't control what thoughts and emotions arise within us, nor can we control the universal truth that everything changes. But we can learn to step back and rest in the awareness of what's happening. That awareness can be our refuge.

Once we see that everything is impermanent and ungraspable and that we create a huge amount of suffering if we are attached to things staying the same, we realize that relaxing and letting go is a wiser way to live. Letting go does not mean not caring about things. It means caring about them in a flexible and wise way.

We are like children building a sand castle. We embellish it with beautiful shells, bits of driftwood, and pieces of colored glass. The castle is ours, off limits to others. We’re willing to attack if others threaten to hurt it. Yet despite all our attachment, we know that the tide will inevitably come in and sweep the sand castle away. The trick is to enjoy it fully but without clinging, and when the time comes, let it dissolve back into the sea.

We can't hold on to anyone or anything, you know. We lose everything except that which we carry within us.

I've had no contact with my daughter for years. That's her choice. Anyway, you move on. If people don't want to bother with me, fine. You know, God bless them, and move on.

I lost a company. So what? It's just stuff. Can't take it with you.

Animals have a much better attitude to life and death than we do. They know when their time has come. We are the ones that suffer when they pass, but it's a healing kind of grief that enables us to deal with other griefs that are not so easy to grab hold of.

You go through all the emotions when you're told to move on.