Life consists of very small things.

One man was asking me – I was in Calcutta, and he was one of the richest men of India, Sahu Shanti Prasad; he had the greatest palace in Calcutta.

We were walking in his big garden... because he has, in the middle of Calcutta, at least a hundred acre green garden. The palace once used to belong to the viceroy of India, when Calcutta was the capital.

When the capital shifted to New Delhi,the palace was sold. Now the president of India lives in the same kind of palace in New Delhi, with
a one hundred acre garden.

So we both were walking and he asked me, ”I always wanted to ask you what happens after death.”

I said, ”Are you alive or not?”
He said, ”What kind of question is this? I am alive.”
I said, ”You are alive. Do you know what life is?”
He said, ”That I cannot answer. Honestly, I don’t know.”
I said, ”When you are alive, even then you don’t know what life is. How can you know death when you are not dead yet? So wait.

While you are alive, try to know life; and soon you will be dead, then in your grave contemplate about death. Nobody will be bothering you.

But why are you concerned what happens after death? Why are you not concerned what happens before death?

That should be the real concern. When death comes we will face it, we will see it, we will see what it is. I am not dead so how can I say?

You will have to ask somebody who is dead what happens. I am alive. I can tell you what life is, and I can tell you how to know what life is.”

”But,” he said, ”all the religious teachers I go to listen to talk about death; nobody talks about life.”
They are not interested in life, in fact; they want you all not to be interested in life.

Their business depends on your interest in death. And about death, the most beautiful thing is that you can create any kind of fiction and nobody can argue against it.

Neither you can prove it, nor can anybody disprove it. And if you are a believer, then of course all your scriptures are in support of the priest,
the monk, the rabbi, and he can quote those scriptures.

I would like you to remember: Live, and try to know what life is.
Don’t be bothered about death,
heaven and hell, and this goddammed God.

You simply remain with the life that is dancing in you, breathing in you, alive in you. You have to come closer to yourself to know it.

Perhaps you are standing too far away from yourself. Your concerns have taken you far away. You have to come back home.

So remember that while you are alive it is so precious – don’t miss a single moment.

Squeeze the whole juice of it, and that juice will give you the taste of the existential, and that will be a revelation of all that is hidden from you and will remain hidden from you.

Respect life, revere life.

There is nothing more holy than life, nothing more divine than life.

And life does not consist of big things.

Those religious fools have been telling you, ”Do big things,” and life consists of small things. The strategy is clear. They tell you, ”Do big things, something great,something that your name will be remembered for afterwards.

Do something great.” And of course
it appeals to the ego. The ego is the agent of the priest.

All the churches and all the synagogues and all the temples have only one agent, and that is the ego. They don’t use different agencies.
There are not other agencies.

There is only one agency, and that is the ego – do something great,something big.
I want to tell you, there is nothing big, nothing great. Life consists of very small things.

So if you become interested in so-called big things, you will be missing life.

OshO 
CHAPTER 29. I TEACH YOU REVERENCE FOR LIFE
From Unconciousness to Consciousness