Sex and Death – Two Great Taboos

Before starting my write-up I would like to present a transcript of osho’s talk.

‘Sex and Death – Two Great Taboos’

‘Any animal born out of sex is going to die. He cannot be immortal in the body. So these two things have been taboos in the world, Sex and Death. Both have been kept hidden. Nobody talks about sex. I have been condemned all around the world because I simply talked about every taboo without any inhibitions because I want you to know everything about life from sex to death. only then you can raise beyond sex and death. In your understanding you can start approaching something that is beyond sex and beyond death. That is your eternity. That is your life in pure energy. By sex, your body is born, not you. By death your body dies, not you. So it is absolutely unnecessary to make those taboos’

The above talk greatly influenced me. It has a great relevance to our perspectives towards life and also to the problems prevailing in the society. Sex and death are entry and exit of life in the human body. Unfortunately, we are not able to speak openly about these two basic things of human life.

Sex is the most exploited thing of human life. A boy or girl entering into teenage feels the urge to unite. Thanks to our family system and society norms, everyone has to suppress that natural need. That suppression manifests into various forms of negative emotions and this leads the people to commit to rapes and molestation. The only socially acceptable  way to kill that suppression is through marriage. I must confess here that I am one of those restless souls thinking about sex. Marriage became a gateway for sex and marriage also lost it’s purpose. I feel there is something radically wrong in our traditional system.

Few doctors and psychologists advocate Sex as stress buster and as great exercise etc… I strongly feel that it’s much much beyond these. It’s a celebration of love. It is submission of our ego and channel to get closer to one self. Let us preserve the sanctity of it. Let us appreciate the gift given by nature. Let us not treat it like a mere exercise and degrade ourselves!

Death, The most frightening word in English. The word which draws sympathy for even for a hard core criminal if he dies. If we are severely frustrated with someone how will we react?? I will kill you bastard!! Even our law books gave death a devil status as it is treated as highest form of punishment. I wonder if birth is beautiful and birth is celebrated why not death! After all, man is mortal.

It is this inability from our side to accept the truth that is causing misery to human kind. We unknowingly believe that death is something which happens to some one else and not to self. When we attend to any funeral we feel some emotional discomfort and in that discomfort lays the reality. When we break that barrier life looks absolutely beautiful. Out of our chase to create wealth for ourselves and our future generations we are compromising on our health and values. Let us create assets outside while maintaining and sharpening the inner assets.

Making sex and death taboos is the great mistake civilization has done to us. Without them there is no human life!! Those are great gifts from nature. Let us celebrate them in their purity and not in aberrated forms.

Ravi