Take the seat you’re given—it’s yours—and be fully present there.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, my condition has become like Trishanku. I can neither return to the past nor see any road ahead. If I am to go, where should I go?
And once the inner resonance becomes audible to you—call it Om, or whatever you like—once you hear that inner sound, then whether you are in the marketplace or at a shop or anywhere, it makes no difference. The veena within goes on playing. It has always been playing. Only you have not cultivated the habit of listening. You have not developed the capacity. You have not found the rhythm with it. So it is good that your condition has become like Trishanku: no path backward—give thanks to God! No way forward—great good fortune! Now sit down. Sit right where you are. Do not look back, nor forward. Close your eyes. There is nowhere to go. Come to yourself. What you seek is hidden within you. Where you are going is where it already resides. In the end it is discovered that what we were searching for was concealed in the…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, UNDERSTANDING RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE IF YOU WANT TO STUDY THIS PATH, YOU MUST UNDERSTAND RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE. AS SOON AS YOU RELY ON THE SLIGHTEST KNOWLEDGE, YOU MISS THE SCENE RIGHT WHERE YOU'RE STANDING. WHEN YOU'VE COMPLETELY COMPREHENDED THE SCENE RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE, THEN ALL KINDS OF KNOWLEDGE -- ALL WITHOUT EXCEPTION -- ARE THINGS RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE. THUS THE PATRIARCH SAID, "AT THE VERY MOMENT ONE SPEAKS OF KNOWLEDGE, KNOWLEDGE ITSELF IS MIND. AND THIS VERY MIND ITSELF IS KNOWLEDGE." SINCE KNOWLEDGE IS RIGHT NOW, IF RIGHT NOW YOU DON'T GO ANOTHER MOMENT, BUT DO AWAY WITH YOUR KNOWLEDGE RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE, THEN YOU'LL JOIN HANDS AND WALK ALONG TOGETHER WITH THE PATRIARCHS. IF YOU CANNOT YET BE LIKE THIS, DON'T GO WRONG IN YOUR KNOWLEDGE.
Osho, you say that getting lost in bhajan is an intoxication. You also say that if we seek joy in swimming, in play, in meditation, joy is lost—and that when we dissolve in them, joy itself finds us. Please clarify immersion, and the boundary-lines between awareness and unawareness.
Doing bhajan in order to get lost is intoxication; getting lost while doing bhajan is not intoxication. Let me repeat. It is a little intricate, subtle—but you will understand. To do bhajan so that you can get lost—only to get lost—is intoxication. There is anxiety in life, sorrow, pain, tension, restlessness, anguish. One wants to escape it, to forget it, to keep oneself busy anywhere so it is forgotten. Someone goes to the cinema and forgets for two hours; someone sits in a bar and forgets for two hours; someone goes to the temple and begins kirtan and forgets there. These are different methods of forgetting, but all three have the same aim—to forget anxiety. But when you return home, anxiety is waiting. You are the same as before; those two hours have gone to waste; nothing of substance has happened. Those two hours will not dissolve anxiety. Seeking to…
Osho, where to go—we can’t see! We set out but there is no path! What are we seeking—we’ve no idea! We keep weaving dreams, breath by breath.
All peace, meditation—forgotten. Such bad company!” Religious leaders give blessings at marriages. Whenever there is a wedding, the guru blesses. It is a whole conspiracy. He blesses: “Live long, may your sorrows end now.” Three months later the young man returns: “Master, we don’t want to live long! Take back your blessing! And what was that you said—that now our sorrows will end—what did it mean? I wasn’t suffering before!” The priest said, “Child, I didn’t say which end. Sorrows have two ends. One where they begin, and one where they end. Two extremities. I never said which end had come. Now you know which end arrived.” And the priest said, “Don’t worry—however soon you die, it will feel as if you lived for ages.” For a married man, life feels long indeed. It just doesn’t pass. He devises ways to kill time—playing cards, reciting ballads of Alha-Udal, as if…
Osho, the journey so far has been hard, but with your hint and support I have passed through it. I feel blessed to have received what I had never even imagined! Whatever I experienced, I kept explaining to others as well. But the journey ahead seems not only difficult, it feels absolutely impossible. You say, “You are at the destination; drop the very idea of journey.” It seems somewhat understandable, yet the resolution doesn’t stay. Osho, why does this complaint arise? Am I expecting the impossible before its time? Is waiting an even harder practice than practice itself? Osho, what is this r
You get a glimpse that the teaching is right; but the ancient mind won’t let the glimpse stay. It protests, “How can this be right? What will happen to me? Where will I go? If you are already God, then what is the point of religion? What meaning has practice? If you are God, then who is saint and who sinner? Who is Ravana and who Rama?” The mind creates a thousand disturbances. “Then what difference between a drunkard and a devotee—if all are God?” It becomes hard to answer such questions. And the truth is: between saint and sinner there is no difference—only on the surface, in the mind; within, the same One resides. Between Rama and Ravana there is no difference. Have you ever gone behind the stage of a Ramlila? There the reality is revealed. The curtain lifts: Rama and Ravana stand with bows and arrows aimed,…