Do you see the meditativeness of the trees surrounding you? Such stillness! Just as you are listening to me, they are listening to me, not even a leaf moving. The birds are singing.

In this talk Osho takes his audience into the world of Zen. "There are a few essential things which make Zen absolutely different from any kind of teaching. The most important of these essentials is that Zen is a revolution. All other religions are servants to the vested interests. The rich people and the powerful people, the politicians, have dominated all the religions. The priests have been nothing but servants to these criminals. It is such a worldwide conspiracy that no one recognizes it."

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.

Today, humanity is caught up in the mad complexity of the mind and there is an urgent need to rediscover simplicity and innocence. Here, the contemporary mystic Osho brings to life the inherent and timeless wisdom of traditional Zen stories, showing that Zen is a way of dissolving philosophical problems, not of solving them - a way of getting rid of philosophy, because philosophy is a sort of neurosis.

I love the statement that the "man of Zen walks in Zen and sits in Zen" for the simple reason that meditation cannot be just a part of your life. You cannot make a fragment of your life meditative.

This series of talks is on one of the most esoteric treatises in the world. It will show you the way to become more than the body and the way to bloom - how not to remain a seed but to become a golden flower. What, in India, they call the one thousand-petalled lotus, in China they call the golden flower. It is a symbol that represents perfection, totality. Moreover, the flower represents the actualization of the potential - the beauty, the grandeur, the splendor of being.

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.

Humans have an inbuilt drive to search for their inner power and potentiality. This search is the search for life itself. We are here, we have life - but we don't know what life really is. We can feel our energy but don't know where this energy comes from and to what goal this energy is going. We are that energy; we have glimpses of its true source and our connection to it, and those glimpses keep us going even when it seems we will never find what we are seeking - but still we do not know what that energy is.

“To be a buddha is not a difficult job. It is not some achievement for which you need a Nobel Prize”. Commenting on anecdotes and haikus by the Zen masters, Osho explains that being a buddha is the easiest thing in the world - it has already happened without you knowing. The empty heart, a place beyond thoughts and feelings, is within everyone. Meditation, and becoming truly thoughtless, is the key. Osho presents Zen as potent, alive, and relevant to the modern world.

The Magic of Self-Respect is the second volume in a series titled Authentic Living. So much of the experience of everyday life, says Osho in this insightful guide, is shaped by religious and social conditioning - and we are not even aware of the fact.