Even if you have enough, be thankful and keep kindly reaching higher, working without worrying about the reward.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
A friend has asked: Osho, if a person feels he is adequately meeting his needs, does he also need to be discontent?
In this regard, two or three things must be understood. First, a person who thinks his needs are being met stops the process of growth—his own and others’. One who believes that what he has is sufficient stops moving forward. It may be that he himself does not suffer much from this, but the society of which he is a part certainly does. And he himself will also be harmed. Ordinarily we have been taught to arrest our needs at some point and to assume they are fulfilled. We have gone on defining the religious person as one who reduces his needs and becomes content. The truth is quite the opposite. In my view, the religious person is of a different kind altogether. I call religious the person whose needs begin to touch the sky beyond the earth. I call religious the one whose needs rise above the body and…
Beloved Osho, is it necessary to develop a sense of divine discontentment, when being around you provokes nothing but divine contentment? Or is it enough just to be sad about not being realized?
There is no need to develop a divine discontentment. It is for those who are contented with mundane things -- with money, with power, with prestige -- they need to develop a sense of divine discontentment. But if you have a divine contentment, you are in a totally different category. You need not be sad that you don't have discontent, you should be happy and rejoice. Medicines are for those who are sick. When you are not sick, don't be sad -- "How unfortunate I am that I have to live without medicines." Divine discontent is a medicine for those who are feeling contented with things which are simply rubbish, crap. They have to be drawn out of their so-called contentment, and a discontent for the divine has to be created in them. But you are feeling a divine contentment, you are feeling health; you don't need the medicine. Now…
Osho, total contentment is a consequence of desirelessness, moment to moment living and total flowering of the consciousness. This is the state of an enlightened one. But a spiritual seeker who is just a seed, a possibility to grow into the divine, is bound to pass through spiritual anguish, spiritual thirst and the uneasiness of the dark night of the soul. Thus, a seeker is bound to be in a constant inner discontentment unless enlightenment happens. How can a seeker cope with the fact of his inner discontentment in view of the principle of total contentment?
You can become your own teacher only when you have met many, many teachers and followed them. Only meeting will not do. When you have followed them and still your discontent remains, only then. Otherwise, listening to Krishnamurti you feel, "Okay! No teacher is needed. I am already a teacher." You are deceiving. A moment comes when no teacher can help, but that moment comes only through a long line of teachers -- and that, too, not just by meeting and listening to them, but by following them. Then Buddha said, "Now no one can help me. I am helpless, so I will try on my own." And he tried, and that was a long effort. He did whatsoever came to his mind. It was an effort into the unknown, so everything was uncharted: no guide, no teacher. Whatsoever came into his mind he would try. He tried long fasts.…
Osho, you said there should be contentment toward the world and discontent toward God. And you also said that no craving should remain; there should be acceptance of what is, and a witnessing attitude. Please have the compassion to clarify the apparent contradiction between these two statements.
The world is not made to fit together. If it did, you would never search for God. Why does the search for the divine arise? Because the world does not fit. If it did, would Buddha search? Would Mahavira? Would Ashtavakra? If the world fit, God would become nonessential! Understand this: If contentment were possible in the world, religion would be meaningless. Religion has meaning because contentment is not possible here. So we seek contentment elsewhere. That is why I said: whatever is here—little or much—be at ease with it. Being at ease does not mean you will find contentment in it; it means don’t keep running after it. Don’t try to assemble this toy; it won’t fit. And toward God become discontent. There, discontent itself is contentment. There, thirst itself is the quenching. The more intense the thirst, the nearer the lake comes. The day the thirst is so…
Poverty is sanctioned by the shadow of contentment. How then will there be revolution? Transformation? The birth of the new? We clutch the old to our chest and call it contentment. Do you know, the old tree dies by giving birth to new seeds? The old person departs by giving birth to new children. Old leaves fall so new leaves can sprout. But our social beliefs—old beliefs—neither die nor depart. There is no space for the new. No room where a new sprout could break through—no chance, no opening. No—the old must be rejected; we must be dissatisfied with what is. Only then can we create what should be. Dissatisfaction with what is is essential to give birth to what ought to be. But does anyone teach us to be dissatisfied? Even small children are told: be content; there is great joy in contentment.