According to Osho, joy and mental peace don’t come through sacrifice or willful renunciation; anything that requires forcing yourself breeds sorrow and inner wounds. Seek the highest truth instead: when a richer awareness is realized, the lesser drops away effortlessly—like a dry leaf—leaving no regret or struggle. Let renunciation happen; don’t do it.
Don’t throw things away by force; find something truly better and the old will stop mattering by itself.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
The question is: To attain joy in life or mental peace, does one have to make some sacrifice, some renunciation? Or can peace and the joy of life be attained in another way?
So if you have to leave something—if you say, I must make a sacrifice—the trouble has begun. Don’t do sacrifice. Never leave anything by force. Rather, make efforts to attain the highest in life. And whenever something higher comes to you, the substitute—the inferior—will drop. It will drop by itself. You cannot drop restlessness, but you can find peace. And when peace is found, restlessness drops. One cannot abandon wealth, but one can discover dharma. And when dharma is found, the hold of wealth drops. But what do we do? We get into the reverse cycle. A man thinks: If I give up money, I will gain dharma. If I leave home, I will find God. If I drop this, that will happen. The very language of leaving is wrong. The true language of life is the language of attaining. The language of leaving is the language of death, not…
Osho, what is the definition of God?
Words are very small. If you say God is light, then what of darkness? The scriptures have said that God is light. Suppose we accept this as a definition—then what about darkness? Where will darkness go? Darkness is too; in fact it is far more than light. Light sometimes is and sometimes is not; darkness is always, eternal. Where will you place darkness? If you say God is light, darkness is left out. If you say God is darkness, then light is left out. If you say God is both darkness and light, a contradiction arises: they cannot be together. Try to have both darkness and light in the same room. If you bring in light, darkness disappears; if you preserve darkness, you cannot have light. Then how can both be together? That becomes an impossibility. So you cannot say “both” either. Then the fourth device is to say: it…
Another friend, yet another friend has asked: Does renunciation mean to gain, or to give up?
Ordinarily, the very word “renunciation” makes us think we must give something up. To drop something is renunciation—that is the echo in the word, the meaning that seems to be hidden there. But let me tell you: on this earth no one is ever ready to give up anything unless, behind that giving up, something has already been found. If a man’s hands are full of pebbles and we open a pouch and place diamonds before him, he will drop the pebbles. He must empty his hands in order to hold the diamonds. When the diamonds are about to come into his hands, the pebbles are dropped. The world will say—those still clutching their pebbles—“What a great renunciate he is! He has given up what we are still gathering.” But those who have found the diamonds will say, “How intelligent he is! It’s common sense—what ‘renunciation’ is there in it?…
Osho, I do want to attain God, but I cannot muster the courage to do anything in that direction. Hearing you say that renunciation is not necessary makes the mind feel very good. But then a doubt arises: isn’t this self-deception?
You ask: “I do want to attain God, but I cannot muster the courage to do anything in that direction.” Then there is no life in that desire. It is a lifeless wish. You want God for free—perhaps to find him lying by the roadside! You don’t want to do anything for God; you don’t want to stake yourself. God is last on your list. For wealth you strive; for position you run day and night; but for God you say you cannot gather the courage to do anything. Look at this closely. This inability to gather courage has one basic reason: in truth you do not want God. Because when we truly want something, we become ready to do anything for it. For money a person is ready to steal, to kill, to go to prison—even to face the gallows! For position, what is a person not willing to…
A friend has asked, Osho: Because of the small and great sorrows of life, the mind sometimes becomes agitated, despondent, and restless. So how can one, while living in the world, keep the mind always calm, joyful, and enthusiastic?
The vision of destiny says: do not do anything. You cannot do anything; simply consent. Try this experiment. Restlessness has come many times, and you have tried to become calm—and you have not managed it so far. Try the second experiment. When restlessness comes, accept: “I am restless. I am such a person that restlessness will come to me. I must have done such actions that restlessness is coming to me. In my destiny I am a vessel fit for restlessness.” Accept this. Do not struggle even a hair’s breadth against this restlessness. What will happen? The moment you accept, restlessness begins to vanish. Because the feeling of acceptance becomes its death. The sorrow we consent to—where does that sorrow remain? We are such that we cannot even consent to happiness; consenting to sorrow is far more difficult. But the very thing to which we consent… Just a few days…