People often ask: Is there life after death? Osho counter-question: Is there life before death?

People often ponder over this question that “Is there life after death?” Osho does not give an answer. He counter-questions: Is there life before death? And even if we know what lies beyond death, will we gain anything?

In his discourse on ‘From misery to Enlightenment’, Osho tells a beautiful story. In a restaurant in paradise, Jesus, Buddha, Confucius and Lao Tzu are in discussion. An apsara come dancing, wine flask in her hands. She says, “You are talking about life. Listening to you, I wondered. Life is available here in this restaurant; that is our special recipe. We make life, the juice called life. I have brought it in this flask. There is no need to discuss it. Why don’t you drink and taste it?”

Buddha immediately closed his eyes, and said, “Birth is pain, death is pain, and between two pains there is no possibility of life being bliss. I don’t even want to see it.” Jesus said, “Life is born in sin, and you are trying to tempt us? You must belong to the devil. Get out of my sight!” Confucius was more human. He said, “I cannot be like these two guys; they are against life. I am a pragmatist. I cannot say anything without tasting. Give me a little of this juice you call life.” He tasted it and said, “No, this is bitter. Those two are right.” Lao Tzu said, “Unless you drink the whole of it you cannot pass ant judgement, because there are things that are bitter in the beginning and sweet in the end. Moreover, one has to learn tasting too. Just taking one sip, with no flask, drank up the contents, thanked the apsara and told his great friends, “It is tremendously beautiful and delicious, but one really has to experience it in its totality. Less than that won’t do.”

This is the approach of the pagan. Lao Tzu is a pagan. That’s why in his writings you will not find God mentioned, or heaven and hell talked about. He is concerned solely with the here and now. He lived that way.

Another time, Confucius asked Lao Tzu: “People ask me about death but I don’t know anything about it. You are older and wiser. You love to move into dangerous spaces of consciousness. Do you have some idea?” And Lao Tzu said, “Without dying, there is no way to know death. The only way to know it is to experience it. Finding out about it beforehand is silly. Right now, try to live; otherwise you will miss this too!”

- Swami Chaitanya Keerti