According to Osho, expecting bliss to fill your inner emptiness keeps you from true hollowness; the very desire blocks the bamboo. Real 'hollow bamboo' means total desirelessness—no expectation, no future. Celebrate emptiness for its own sake and forget even God. Then, without your seeking, fullness descends by itself—suddenly, silently—because true emptiness is already radiant, pure, and available.
Don’t wait for bliss to fill you; drop every wish, enjoy being empty now, and joy comes by itself.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
I am often able to achieve the state -- or what seems like the state -- which you call 'being a hollow bamboo' -- silent, watching, empty. The only problem is that there is no bliss in that emptiness: it is just nothing. Can I expect something to fill it one of these days?
Mariel Strauss, it is because of this idea that you are missing the whole beauty of nothingness: this desire to fill it. You are not-really a hollow bamboo, because in this hollow bamboo this desire is there, and this desire is enough to fill the hollow bamboo, to block its emptiness. This desire to fill it one day, this expectation that "Some day, God will come and fill my emptiness"' this very idea is preventing you from really becoming a hollow bamboo. Drop this desire. Forget all about filling your hollow bamboo -- then you are a hollow bamboo. And when you are a hollow bamboo, it is immediately full of God. But not that you have to desire it; if you desire it you will go on missing it. This is one of the basic paradoxes to be understood about religious inquiry. Understand it as deeply as possible, let…
This state of bliss which ordinarily we come to know only in deep sleep, has to be known in full consciousness. So either in great deep sleep one comes to it, or in great awakening -- in buddhahood, enlightenment, one comes to know it. So there are only two possibilities of being blissful: either blessed are the ignorant -- or the awakened. You are blissful either when you fall back into deep unconsciousness.... Then you become part of the cosmos -- your ego cannot exist there. When you cannot dream, how can your ego exist? -- because the ego is a dream. Then your desires are not there, because all desires are your dream. And with that whole bundle of desires disappearing, you have disappeared -- because you are nothing but a bundle of desire -- so you are part of the cosmos.
The song continues:
DO NOUGHT WITH THE BODY BUT RELAX; SHUT FIRM THE MOUTH AND SILENT REMAIN; EMPTY YOUR MIND AND THINK OF NOUGHT. LIKE A HOLLOW BAMBOO REST AT EASE WITH YOUR BODY. GIVING NOT NOR TAKING, PUT YOUR MIND AT REST. MAHAMUDRA IS LIKE A MIND THAT CLINGS TO NOUGHT. THUS PRACTICING, IN TIME YOU WILL REACH BUDDHAHOOD. A lunatic is a person whose whole world is confined in himself. He is the talker and he is the listener; he is the actor and he is the spectator -- he is all, his whole world is confined in himself. He has divided himself in many parts and everything has become fragmentary. That's why people are afraid of silence -- they know they may crack up. And if you are afraid of silence that means you have an obsessive, feverish, diseased mind inside, which is continuously asking to be active. Activity is…
The ordinary eyes can only see the superficial. There is a hidden eye behind these two eyes -- the mystics have always talked about it as the third eye. It is not functioning because we have never paid any attention to it. Once we start pouring energy into it, it starts functioning again. And it is through that third eye that one can see bliss, love, God -- all that has depth. Otherwise we live in the shallow. The ordinary eyes can only see the waves on the ocean but can never see the depth of the ocean. All the techniques of meditation are nothing but to trigger the third eye. Once it starts functioning you enter into a totally different world. In a sense everything remains the same; in another sense everything is different. Because you see differently, your seeing brings a different quality to whatsoever you see.
Osho, could you say something about what is going on in Delhi?
I’ll tell a little story. When Lanka’s former ruler Ravana was on his deathbed, Rama sent Lakshman to learn statecraft from him—saying, “Son, we may have won, but we have no experience of running the administration here; go and ask him how to run things.” Lakshman went there and said to Ravana, “You are dying now—tell us how to govern here.” Ravana said, “Half the politics I handled, half Kumbhakarna did. Had you gotten in touch with Kumbhakarna as well?” Lakshman said, “Yes—he said: eat to your heart’s content and then sprawl on the sofa with your eyes closed. This is the best method.” “Tell me,” Ravana asked, “are you going to unleash dictatorship, or will you run things by democracy? Which method will be suitable?” “What will go down well with the people?” “Nothing,” said Ravana. “When you impose dictatorship, the people will yearn for democracy; and when you…