Stop trying to be famous or rich; just do what you love with your whole heart right now, and let any success be a byproduct.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
I have always dreamt of becoming a world-famous man, rich and successful. Osho, can you help me in the fulfilment of my desire?
No, sir, not at all, never, because your desire is suicidal. I cannot help you to commit suicide. I can help you to grow and be, but I cannot help you to commit suicide, I cannot help you to destroy yourself for nothing. Ambition is poison. If you want to be a better musician, I can help you, but don't think in terms of becoming world-famous. If you want to be a better poet, I can help you, but don't think in terms of Nobel prizes. If you want to be a good painter, I can help you -- I help creativity. But creativity has nothing to do with name and fame, success and money. And I am not saying that if they come then you have to renounce them, if they come it is okay, enjoy them. But don't let them become your motivation, because when a person is…
Osho, I want to be rich, I want a high position, and I want a beautiful woman too. What should I do?
A man once placed an advertisement—meant for people like you: “Send two rupees and learn the formula to become a millionaire overnight.” Now who wouldn’t want to become a millionaire for two rupees! Almost a hundred thousand people sent their money. A week later, everyone who had sent the two rupees received the reply: “Do exactly what I did.” He had indeed become a millionaire overnight! One lakh people sent two rupees each—two lakhs landed in his lap. This is how you’re being duped—through gambling, matka. And it’s not only people who run these scams; governments do it too. Governments that claim to be Gandhian run lotteries! A lottery is gambling—a cheat dressed up nicely. But the greedy get hooked: “Just one rupee for a chance at lakhs. If it comes once, that’s enough…!” But what will you do after getting lakhs? There’s a famous story by Tolstoy: A tailor…
Osho, what does a successful life mean? First of all, if there is life, it is successful. If there is no life, it is a failure. And there is no life. We are alive, but there is no life. To be merely alive is one thing—breath goes on, we eat, we sleep, we get up—so we are alive, not dead. But mere aliveness is not enough for life. Life means: all the energies of being alive are dedicated to a direction from where music arises, from where love arises, from where bliss arises, from where peace arises.
When he would not agree, they said, “Ask for something that benefits others.” He said, “I won’t ask even that, because the idea that others are benefitted by me can bring ego. I will not ask that. But if you insist, do something such that, even if something happens through me, I never come to know that it has happened through me.” They asked, “What should we do?” He said, “Arrange it so that wherever I pass, my shadow that falls behind me—if it can benefit someone, let it do so. If my shadow falls on a sick person, let him be healed; if it falls on a withered plant, let it turn green. But let me never know that it happened through me. Because I want nothing through me; I want everything through God.” So the story says Augustine’s shadow received the boon. Wherever Augustine’s shadow fell, flowers blossomed.…
I want to be a great man, famous and known and politically powerful. This ambition haunts me day and night. Osho, can you help me?
WHAT do you want to become? Jimmy Carter? Brezhnev? Morarji Desai? You must have gone off your rockers! I will only tell you one story. It happened in New Delhi. Jimmy Carter -- or let us call him Reverend Jimmy Carter -- Comrade Brezhnev and Mahatma Morarji Desai went for a morning walk. This little kid is sitting in front of his house playing, when Reverend Jimmy Carter comes to the child and says 'Hello, Bonny. What are you doing?' The little boy says 'Mixing shit with sand.' Somewhat taken aback, he says 'And what are you making?' The boy says 'Jimmy Carter.' This upsets Jimmy Carter very much, and he is standing on the side muttering to himself. Comrade Brezhnev, seeing Jimmy Carter so pigged off, asks him 'What's going on?' 'Why' says Carter 'that rotten kid is sitting there mixing shit with sand and making a Jimmy Carter.'…
Osho, entangled in the hope of becoming something, nothing happened. Only the awareness remained that I am. Neither wealth came, nor a house was built, nor music arrived, nor did I become a scholar. Even living itself did not suit me. After coming here, unknowingly I gave life a new direction. The past has been spent in wandering, the present in sannyas, and you decide the future—what will it be?
Deepak Bharti! In life there is only one entanglement, the one and only—and it is there in everyone’s life without exception—the hope of becoming something. You are what you are; you cannot be otherwise. The very effort to be otherwise is anxiety, gloom, anguish. In that effort a vicious circle is born. Then with your own hands you raise new whirlpools; you sink and you rise, you sink and you rise. Your life becomes a long series of dreams—and of every dream’s shattering. If a rose wants to become a lotus, madness is certain. If champa wants to become jasmine, illness is certain. What is, as it is—its acceptance is sannyas. Sannyas means: tathata, thusness; to embrace oneself totally—not in defeat, not as a consolation, not as a sop, because that would be false; but with understanding, with awareness, by seeing this truth: a rose is a rose, and as…