The Dhammapada is a collection of sayings of the Gautama the Buddha in verse form and one of the most widely read and best known Buddhist scriptures. This is volume two of a 12-volume series of Osho Talks, bringing Buddha's Dhammapada into the 21st century and opening them for a new understanding for contemporary people.

Gautama the Buddha raised the most important question. The most important question of all questions is: What is true happiness? "People are living just to impress. They must be really very poor inside, because only people suffering from an inferiority complex want to impress others. A really superior person never compares himself with anybody else. He knows he is incomparable; not only that, he knows others are also as incomparable as he is. He is neither superior nor inferior."

The Dhammapada is a collection of sayings of the Gautama the Buddha in verse form and one of the most widely read and best known Buddhist scriptures. This is volume one of a 12-volume series of Osho Talks, where Osho brings Buddha's Dhammapada into the 21st century, opening them for a new understanding for contemporary mankind.

"The World Is on Fire" is the title of the first chapter in this new fifth volume of The Dhammapada, Osho’s contemporary presentation of the sayings of Buddha. What does Buddha mean by fire? He means anguish, anxiety, despair, misery; that's what Buddha means by fire. It is a symbol. Everybody is on fire because everybody is divided, split, schizophrenic. Everybody is on fire because there is great anxiety in the world, the anxiety of: “Am I going to make it this time or not?” Does this sound familiar to you?

More than 2,500 years ago, Gautama the Buddha walked the earth, teaching to all who would listen. Buddhist lore has it that shortly after he passed away, his disciples met to recall all that they were able of the truths that Buddha had spoken. These sayings were compiled into The Dhammapada, an anthology of 423 verses containing the essence of his principles.

The Dhammapada is a collection of sayings of the Gautama the Buddha in verse form and one of the best-known Buddhist scriptures. This is volume nine of a 12-volume series of Osho Talks, bringing Buddha's Dhammapada into the 21st century and opening them for a new understanding for contemporary people.

More than 2,500 years ago, Gautama the Buddha walked the earth, teaching to all who would listen. Buddhist lore has it that shortly after he passed away, his disciples met to recall all that they were able of the truths that Buddha had spoken. These sayings were complied into The Dhammapada, an anthology of 423 verses containing the essence of his principles. Osho is one of the most provocative mystics of our time, who inspires millions of people worldwide in their individual search for meditation and transformation.

Wisdom, says Buddha, arises from within, and is the only true knowledge. In The Dhammapada Osho speaks on wisdom, which he calls knowing, and on the difference between knowing and knowledge. Knowing, he says, is spontaneous response: it comes from inner silence, it is our own truth, an existential experience. Knowledge is dependent on the past, it is mechanical, it is second-hand, it comes from another, and hides the truth from ourselves. Knowing gives us inner direction; knowledge only outer direction. And the key to the intuitive faculty of knowing is meditation.

In these delightful and playful talks, Osho introduces the mystery, the wonder and the emptiness that is Zen, not comparable to anything else and a completely different approach to life. The chapters alternate between elaborating original excerpts by the 14th Zen master, Ikkyu, taking us into the world of Zen – and responding to personal questions, which brings the world of Zen into our lives, connects with our issues and questions.

There is a famous Zen story about a disciple, Riko, who once asked his master, Nansen, to explain to him the old Zen koan of the goose in the bottle. Namely, if a man puts a gosling into a bottle and feeds the gosling through the bottle's neck until it grows and becomes a goose - and then there is simply no more room inside the bottle - how can the man get it out without killing the goose or breaking the bottle? In response, Nansen shouts, "Riko!" and gives a great clap with his hands.