Factotum, 2005 - If you re going to try, go all the way! (ending) BUKOWSKI

If you're going to try, go all the way.
Otherwise, don't even start.
This could mean losing girlfriends,
wives, relatives and maybe even your mind.
It could mean not eating for three or four days.
It could mean freezing on a park bench.
It could mean jail.
It could mean derision.
It could mean mockery--isolation.
Isolation is the gift.
All the others are a test of your endurance,
of how much you really want to do it.
And, you'll do it,
despite rejection and the worst odds.
And it will be better than anything else you can imagine.
If you're going to try, go all the way.
There is no other feeling like that.
You will be alone with the gods,
and the nights will flame with fire.
You will ride life straight to perfect laughter.
It's the only good fight there is.

Charles Bukowski, Factotum

RISK EVERYTHING FOR AWARENESS, BUT NEVER RISK AWARENESS FOR ANYTHING!!!!! (NOTHING TO LOSE, BUT SO AFRAID TO LOSE IT!!!!!)

Sannyas means putting your total energy into awakening. Just a total effort is needed—passionate, intense. From this moment think of awareness as a question of life and death. In fact it is a question of life and death. Without awareness you are simply dying every day; with awareness you start living for the first time and then life goes on growing bigger and bigger, vaster and vaster.
Risk everything for awareness, but never risk awareness for anything. This is the commitment of a sannyasin: that he is ready to lose his life but not his awareness; he has found a value which is higher than life. There is no other value which is higher than awareness. Awareness is the seed of godliness in you. When it comes to its full growth, you have come to the fulfillment of your destiny.
The sutras of Buddha have to be meditated on deeply, imbibed, followed. He says:
Wakefulness is the way to life. You are alive only in the proportion that you are aware. Awareness is the difference between death and life. You are not alive just because you are breathing, you are not alive just because your heart is beating. Physiologically you can be kept alive in a hospital, without any consciousness. Your heart will go on beating and you will be able to breathe. You can be kept in such a mechanical arrangement that you will remain alive for years—in the sense of breathing and the heart beating and the blood circulating. If this is life, then you can be kept alive. But this is not life at all. Just to vegetate is not life.
Buddhas have a different definition. Their definition consists of awareness. They don't say you are alive because you can breathe, they don't say you are alive because your blood circulates; they say you are alive if you are awake. So except for the awakened ones, nobody is really alive. You are corpses—walking, talking, doing things—you are robots.
Wakefulness is the way to life, says Buddha. Become more wakeful and you will become more alive. And life is God—there is no other God. Hence Buddha talks about life and awareness. Life is the goal and awareness is the methodology, the technique to attain it.

osho