Courage: The Joy of Living Dangerously

Courage: The Joy of Living Dangerously
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Courage is not the absence of fear, says Osho. It is, rather, the total presence of fear, with the courage to face it. This book provides a bird’s-eye view of the whole terrain – where fears originate, how to understand them, and how to find the courage to face them.

In the process, Osho proposes that whenever we are faced with uncertainty and change in our lives it is actually a cause for celebration. Instead of trying to hang on to the familiar and the known, we can learn to enjoy these situations as opportunities for adventure, and for deepening our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. The book begins with an in-depth exploration of the meaning of courage and how it is expressed in the everyday life of the individual.

Chapter Titles
    #1: Foreword
    #2: What Is Courage?
    #3: When the New Knocks on Your Door, Open It!
    #4: The Courage of Love
    #5: Take Yourself out of the Crowd
    #6: The Joy of Living Dangerously
    #7: In Search of Fearlessness

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Courage is not the absence of fear, says Osho. It is, rather, the total presence of fear, with the courage to face it.

Excerpt from: Courage: The Joy of Living Dangerously, Chapter 6
"Love is very rare. To meet a person at his center is to pass through a revolution, because if you want to meet a person at his center you will have to allow that person to reach to your center also. You will have to become vulnerable, absolutely vulnerable, open.

"It is risky. To allow somebody to reach your center is risky, dangerous, because you never know what that person will do to you. And once all your secrets are known, once your hiddenness has become unhidden, once you are exposed completely, what that other person will do, you never know. The fear is there. That’s why we never open.

"Just acquaintance, and we think love has happened. Peripheries meet, and we think we have met. You are not your periphery. Really, the periphery is the boundary where you end, just the fencing around you. It is not you! The periphery is the place where you end and the world begins.

"Even husbands and wives who might have lived together for many years, may be just acquaintances. They may not have known each other. And the more you live with someone the more you forget completely that the centers have remained unknown.

"So the first thing to be understood is, don’t take acquaintance as love. You may be making love, you may be sexually related, but sex is also peripheral. Unless centers meet, sex is just a meeting of two bodies. And a meeting of two bodies is not your meeting. Sex also remains acquaintance – physical, bodily, but still just an acquaintance. You can allow somebody to enter to your center only when you are not afraid, when you are not fearful.

"There are two types of living: one fear-oriented, one love-oriented. Fear-oriented living can never lead you into deep relationship. You remain afraid, and the other cannot be allowed, cannot be allowed to penetrate you to your very core. To an extent you allow the other and then the wall comes and everything stops. Osho

"Were enough Americans to heed the brilliantly provocative words in this book, we might actually become ’the land of the free and the home of the brave.’ Imagine that!" Tom Robbins

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More Information
Type    Compilations
Publisher    St. Martins Press, USA
ISBN    0312205171
ISBN-13    978-0312205171
Dimensions (size)    5.4 x 0.6 x 8.2 inches
Number of Pages    208