Always remember that to be happy is to be religious, to be happy is to be virtuous. To be celebrating is to be prayerful. To be festive, and to remain in a festive dimension continuously, is to be a sannyasin. Then you enjoy whatsoever happens. You enjoy health when it happens; you enjoy illness also when it happens. Then both become beautiful. In health you enjoy activity; when you are ill you enjoy relaxation.
It is beautiful sometimes to be ill and just Lying on the bed, resting, not worrying about the world; allowing yourself a good holiday; singing, praying, meditating on the bed; reading a little bit, listening to music; or just doing nothing, just being lazy. It is beautiful! If you know how to enjoy health, you will be able to know how to enjoy illness also. Then you become a master, you become skillful.
This is the whole art of life!
You enjoy your youth, and when you become old you enjoy your old age. Old age has its own beauties; no young man can have those beauties. Youth is shallow; full of energy but shallow. Old age is not so full of energy, but things are settling and depth is arising.
If you miss your youth, you will miss your old age also — remember. So I am not saying become old while you are young. I am saying be whatsoever you are; let that moment be your totality. When a child, be a child; never enforce your wisdom on any child because that is a crippling thing. Don't try to make a child old before he is old, don't crush him.
That's what has happened in the world: old people are dominating children, and they want to pull them out of their childhood faster than nature allows. They kill and they crush — the child loses something forever. And when a child was not a child when he was a child, he will not be young when he is young. Something will always go on missing. He will always be late in life — he will miss the train.
That's why so many people dream of missing the train. This is one of the commonest dreams in the world: people rushing towards the railway station, doing everything in a hurry; somehow they reach on the platform and the train is moving, or has moved, and they just see the last bogie leaving the platform.
This is the commonest dream; it is very significant. It simply shows that somehow you have been missing the train that life is. You always reach late; you are never in time. And the wonder of wonders is that everybody is studying the timetable so much. People go on studying the timetable, but when they reach they are always late. They waste their time with the timetable.
This is what is happening when you read the Bible or you read the Koran or you read the Gita — these are timetables. And reading the timetables you miss the train of life. Good sometimes to read them, when you have nothing else to do — but don't make them a substitute for life. They are nothing compared to life.
While you can read the book of life, don't substitute it by any other book. When you can read a tree, read the tree! When you can read the rosebush, read the rosebush! When you can read a man, read the man! When you can read a woman, read the woman! These are alive books, the real Bibles. But you are too much concerned with dead books, and by the time you raise your eyes, the train has left.
A child has to be a child when he is a child. A young man has to be a young man when he is a young man. An old man has to be an old man when he is old. If you miss your youth then you will be in difficulty: you will never be really old; your body will start deteriorating and your mind will hanker around your youth.
The unfulfilled desires, the sensuality, the sexuality, the greed, the ambition — all that you always wanted to do and could not because at that time you were reading the Bible or the Gita — now will haunt you. Now your mind will go after those things.
My whole emphasis is to live the moment whatsoever it is, and live it with tremendous energy.
If you are a young man while young, you will be an old man while old — very wise. You will have known all that is good and bad in life: the day and night, the summer and winter — all you will have have known. By your own experience a wisdom will arise. And when you are dying, you will have enjoyed your life so tremendously that you will be able to enjoy your death also.
Only a person who has enjoyed his life becomes capable of enjoying his death. And if you are capable of enjoying your death, you have defeated death. Then there is no more birth for you and no more death for you — you have learnt the lesson.
This is what we call Enlightenment: learning the lesson that life can teach you.
Become aware of such tendencies. And next time when a beautiful moment passes by — dance! sing! paint! love! Death will take care of itself. It will come one day. Be ripe when it comes — and the only ripeness that is possible is through living.
Live deeply, live totally, live wholly, so when death comes and knocks at your door you are ready — ready like a ripe fruit to drop. Just a small breeze comes and the fruit drops; sometimes even without the breeze the fruit drops from its own weight and ripeness. Death should be like that. And the readiness has to come through living.
Watch a dead person — every person looks beautiful, silent. Not that he died in silence, not that he died beautifully — rarely does a person die beautifully. Ninety-nine percent of people struggle very badly — fight, great stress arises.
Just think! — a small ant crawling on your body, a small thorn in your foot, and how uncomfortable you become. A small headache, stomach a little disturbed, and how much you become concerned. Just think! — the body and soul are being taken apart.
With the body you have become so involved; you have completely forgotten that you are a soul — and you are being taken apart. You cling. You leave your claim with great difficulty, very reluctantly — fighting, struggling, crying. But nobody can see it; it is something inside you — only you can see it. You cannot even say anything.
You die in misery. Only a few people die blissfully. And when death becomes a bliss, it is a samadhi. When death is a relaxation…real relaxation. Deep inside you surrender, you welcome. You have known life, now you want to know death also. You have lived life, you have enjoyed it.
A great trust has arisen in you about life — and you know death is the culmination of life, the crescendo. It must be beautiful! When the whole journey has been beautiful, why not the goal? There is no reason to be afraid. When the whole journey has been such a tremendous joy, why not the end? It is the culmination. You have come home. You welcome, you are ready to embrace death. You relax, you simply slip into death.
And that's the moment! If you can die without any fight, you don't die — and you are never born again. You have simply slipped out of the body confinements — of the world. You live! — you live eternally. But then you live as an unembodied existence, with no limitations, with no boundaries.
Body gives you a boundary. Death takes away all boundaries from you. Body gives you a definition, makes you a man or a woman, makes you ugly or beautiful, makes you intelligent or unintelligent, makes you this and that — body gives you definition. Death takes all definitions away. It simply leaves life undefined.
Life undefined is what God is. But to know this death you will have to know life well.
So if you can accept my suggestion: next time when a beautiful moment passes by, think in terms of life — "What a beautiful moment to live and dance and be alive!" Then one day when death comes, you will say the same to death: "What a beautiful moment to die!"
All moments are beautiful, only you have to be receptive and surrendering. All moments are blessings, only you have to be capable of seeing. All moments are benedictions. If you accept with a deep gratitude, nothing ever goes wrong.
OSHO