Can a businessman be religious?

It makes me feel very sad whenever you say that a businessman cannot be religious, because I am in business. Is there no possibility for me?

A BUSINESSMAN IS ONE THING, and to be in business is quite another. You can be in business AND religious, but you cannot be a businessman AND religious And they are poles apart. They are not synonymous. I am not saying that you have to renounce all your businesses to become religious. I am never in favor of any renunciation of the world. But when I say a businessman cannot be religious I mean something totally different. I mean the psychology -- not the work that you do in the market-place, but the psychology, the mind. The mind of a businessman is always bargaining, always greedy, always thinking of the profit, always in the future, always interested in petty things, mundane objects. When I say, "Don't be a businessman," I mean drop this psychology. And you can drop the marketplace and go to the Himalayan caves -- that won't help…

Beloved master, I am a businessman. Can I also meditate and become a sannyasin?

Remain a businessman, but for a few hours forget all about it. I am not here to tell you to escape from your ordinary life. I am here to tell you the ways and the means, the alchemy, to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. Be a businessman in your shop and don't be a businessman at your home. And sometimes for a few hours forget even the home, the family, the wife, the children. For a few hours just be alone with yourself. Sink deeper and deeper into your own being. Enjoy yourself, love yourself. And slowly slowly, you will become aware, a great joy is welling up, with no cause from the outside world, uncaused from the outside. It is your own flavor, it is your own flowering. This is meditation. Sitting silently, doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself. Sit silently, doing nothing,…

Is it possible to live religiously and continue on the road to enlightenment while living in a country like the usa and involving oneself in a competitive business?

It is not accidental that Jesus' followers go on talking about Jesus' miracles.What are those miracles? First, they are physiological: a blind man is given eyes, an ill person is healed; or miracles like Jesus' turning stones into bread. Just think! These miracles say something. Jesus does not turn stones into sermons, but into bread; Jesus does not turn stones into music, but into bread; and he turns water into wine. Now we don't have any miracles like that around Buddha. There are miracles, but they are totally different -- the hierarchy. Buddha's miracles are so different that you will be surprised. A woman goes to Buddha: her child is dead and she is crying and she is weeping, and she is a widow and she will never have another child, and the only child is dead, and that was all her love and all her attention. She goes crying…

Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHAT IS YOUR BUSINESS? My business is to keep many people in business! All the religions have been teaching people to renounce the world. My business is to help people not to renounce the world. Be in business! All the religions, without exception, are against life. My business is to destroy the conditionings that have been forced upon you against life; to give you a joy in life, to make you love life, sing, dance -- because life is a celebration. My business is to create this whole existence into a celebration.

Osho, is it possible for a politician to be a religious man or for a religious man to be a politician?

IT is absolutely impossible for a political man to be religious, because the ways of politics and religion are diametrically opposite. You have to understand that it is not a question of adding something to your personality -- religion is not an addition. If you are political, you can be a painter, you can be a poet, you can be a musician; these are additions. Politics and music are not diametrically opposite; on the contrary, music may help you to be a better politician. It will be relaxing, it will help you to get unburdened of the whole day and the anxieties that a politician has to go through. But religion is not an addition, it is a diametrically opposite dimension. So first you have to understand the political man, exactly what it means. The political man is a sick man, psychologically sick, spiritually sick. Physically he may be perfectly…