Courage

ABOUT COURAGE... (some excerpts from COURAGE... The Joy of Living Dangerously by OSHO)

The word courage comes from the latin root cor, which means heart,so courageous means to live with the heart. The way of the heart is the way of courage.

It is to live in insecurity; it is to live in love, and trust; it is to move in the unknown. It is leaving the past and allowing the future to be.

Courage is to move on dangerous paths. Life is dangerous, and only cowards can avoid the danger--but then, they are already dead.

A person who is alive, really alive, vitally alive, will always move into the unknown. There is danger there, but he will take the risk.

The heart is always ready to the risk, the heart is a gambler. The head is a businessman. The head always calculates--it is cunning. The heart is non calculating.  What is your mind?  It is all that you have known.  It is the past, the dead, that which has gone. Mind is nothing but the accumulated past, the memory.

Heart is the future; heart is always the hope, heart is always somewhere in the future.  Head thinks about the past and heart dreams about the future.  To accept the challenge of the unknown in spite of all fears...is courage.

The fears are there, but if you go on accepting the challenge again and again, slowly those fears disappear. The experience of the joy that is the unknown brings, the great ecstasy that starts happening with the unknown, makes you strong enough, gives you a certain integrity, makes your intelligence sharp.  For the first time you start feeling that life is not just days of boredom, but an adventure. Then slowly slowly fears disappear; then you are always seeking and search for some adventure.

But basically courage is risking the known for the unknown, the familiar for the unfamiliar, the comfortable for the uncomfortable, arduous pilgrimage to some unknown destination.
One never knows whether one will be able to make it or not. It is gambling, but only the gamblers know what life is.