Death and life are two sides of the same coin; one cannot exist without the other. OSHO explains how death is not an enemy of life
I have heard a beautiful story. Some years ago a successful American had an identity crisis. He sought help from psychiatrists but nothing came of it, for there were none who could tell him the meaning of life — which is what he wanted to know. By and by he learned of a venerable and incredibly wise guru who lived in a mysterious and inaccessible region of the Himalayas. He sold all his worldly possessions and began his search for the all-knowing guru. He spent eight years wandering from village to village throughout the Himalayas in an effort to find him. And then one day he chanced upon a shepherd who told him where the guru lived and how to reach the place.
There he came upon his guru, who was indeed venerable, in fact well over one hundred years old. The guru consented to help him, especially when he learned of all the sacrifices the man had made towards this end. “I need to know the meaning of life,” the man said. To this the guru replied, “life is a river without end.” “A river without endIJ” said the man in a startled surprise, “After coming all this way to find you, all you have to tell me is that life is a river without endIJ” The guru was shaken. He became angry and said, “You mean it is notIJ” Nobody can give you the meaning of your life. It is your life, the meaning has also to be yours. It is your life and it is only accessible to you. Only in living will the mystery be revealed to you.
The first thing I would like to tell you is: Don’t seek it anywhere else. Don’t seek it in me, don’t seek it in scriptures — they don’t explain. They simply stuff your empty mind; they don’t make you aware of what is. And the more the mind is stuffed with dead knowledge, the more dull and stupid you become. Knowledge makes people stupid; it dulls their sensitivity. It strengthens their ego but it does not give light and does not show them the way.
The temple is not outside, you are the shrine of it. So the first thing to remember if you want to know what life is, is: never seek it without, never try to find out from somebody else. The meaning cannot be transferred that way. The greatest Masters have never said anything about life — they have always thrown you back upon yourself.
The other thing to remember is: Once you know what life is you will know what death is. Death is also part of the same process. Ordinarily we think death comes at the end, we think death is against life, the enemy, but death is not the enemy. And if you think of it as the enemy, then it simply shows that you have not been able to know what life is.
Death and life are two polarities of the same energy, of the same phenomenon — the tide and the ebb, the day and the night, the summer and the winter. They are not separate and not opposites, not contraries; they are complementaries. Death is not the end of life; in fact, it is a completion of one life, the crescendo of one life, the climax, the finale. And once you know your life and its process, then you understand what death is.
Death is an organic, integral part of life, and it is very friendly to life. Without it life cannot exist. life exists because of death; death gives the background. Death is, in fact, a process of renewal. And death happens each moment. The moment you breathe in and the moment you breathe out, both happen. Breathing in, life happens; breathing out, death happens.
Excerpts from Osho’s discourses